Decay and death, with just a hint of pestilence. Exactly what I was looking for.
Four rooms on the first floor of the pyramid. Three of them were fairly narrow, one on each wall, with the fourth in the center.
The latter was Spider Ripley’s living room-if a pyramid could contain such a room-and considering what I knew about Ripley, the decor ran true to form.
Circe had told me that Spider was a member of an Egyptian revival cult before joining her father’s church. It was common knowledge that Whistler’s own brand of religion drew heavily on the Egyptian beliefs concerning death and rebirth, so it wasn’t surprising that Spider’s pyramid was decorated in a style that could only be described as very late Egyptian…or very early Diabolos Whistler.
In a series of papyrus friezes that hung on the walls, a pharaoh who looked very much like Diabolos Whistler traveled the cycle of death and rebirth. The furniture was simple, black, and spare. There were statues and small idols everywhere, intricate portrayals of Egyptian gods and Whistler’s own deities. Fortunately, most of the statuary bore small name-plates-a necessity for an unbeliever like myself.
There was Bes, the Egyptian god of a happy home, a strange bearded creature who reminded me of the gnome I’d tossed through the window, though Bes wasn’t quite as well-endowed. Bastet, the cat goddess, crouched at his side. Korthes’h-the hideous creature tattooed on Circe Whistler’s back-loomed on a low table, hovering over Sakhmet and Anubis, Manth’ss and Krake.
Many of the pieces were museum quality, elaborate statues inlaid with lapis lazuli, turquoise, and carnelian. Even so, the room reflected an almost childlike sense of completion and display, as if Ripley needed to reinforce his faith by surrounding himself with icons. I could almost imagine the freakish giant acting out Whistler’s modern mythology of new gods that slew the old like a kid with a set of very expensive action figures.
But I wasn’t here to play psychiatrist. I climbed a staircase to the second floor. Only two rooms there, and they held more of the same.
A bedroom and an expansive master bath. I guessed Spider spent most of his time in these two rooms. Both had televisions and telephones…and several boxes of Ramses condoms, birth control fit for a pharaoh.
Besides that, the bedroom contained a kingsize-plus bed with plenty of room for the seven-foot bodyguard, a female guest, and its current occupant-a realistic looking mummy that on closer examination turned out to be a doll. Staring at it, I couldn’t help remembering the all-too-real mummies stacked in Diabolos Whistler’s study. Maybe the things were de rigueur when it came to cultist decorating… Beyond that, I didn’t want to dwell on the implications of a mummy-be it authentic or ersatz-in a kingsize-plus bed.
I didn’t want to think about the sarcophagus-shaped tub in the bathroom, either. Or the Canopic jars with lids shaped like the heads of Whistler’s gods that stood on the toilet tank in the pissoir.
No way was I going to lift the lids of those jars and peek at the contents. I left them behind, along with a collection of pleasant-smelling incense burners and scented cones that stood on a shelf above them, and I followed a sharper, less appealing scent that led me to a trapdoor set in the ceiling above the kingsize-plus bed.
A man of Ripley’s height wouldn’t have had any trouble reaching that door. I had to climb on top of the bed to slide it open.
It clicked into place and disgorged a black ladder that I barely dodged. Nothing was going to slow me down now that I was on the proper scent. I climbed the ladder and entered a cramped chamber that filled the uppermost section of the pyramid.
Votive candles flickered here. Crucifixes gleamed. A wooden Christ spilled splintered blood, while a statue of Mary wept glass tears. The Christian symbols didn’t surprise me. After all, I’d seen the crucifix eclipsing the ankh branded on Spider Ripley’s chest.
It wasn’t hard to discover the cause of Spider’s latest conversion. The thing itself rested on the triangular black table in the center of the room.
An iron box covered with welded crucifixes, barred in the front, and padlocked.
The contents: Diabolos Whistler’s head.
Dull, hazel eyes stared through ropes of long white hair that hung across his face. Whistler’s left cheek had flattened against the bottom of the backpack during our trip, cementing his lips in a strange expression that could be a sneer or a smile depending upon the light.
He wasn’t pretty. That much was certain. But I didn’t much care how he looked. Diabolos and I were old friends. We’d traveled together. Talked through the long, empty night.
Or I talked and he listened. Diabolos was a good listener. Excellent company, as far as I was concerned. Hey, I’d duct-taped his head to the Toyota’s differential and he hadn’t complained one bit.
Oh, maybe he sneered a little if the light was wrong, his twisted lips curling cynically in that bristling white goatee. Maybe he was having his own private joke at my expense. But how far was a sneer from a smile? Really?
It was all a matter of perspective. Just like locking Whistler’s head in an iron box. Perspective driven by fear, resulting in action.
Spider Ripley had taken action. The iron box with its welded crucifixes was only the beginning of his preparations. He obviously felt the trappings of Christianity would restrain Diabolos Whistler. Short of the Shroud of Turin and the Holy Grail, Spider Ripley had done his best to create a divine prison that would hold the darkest of the dark ones at bay.
I wondered if Spider had gone down on his knees and prayed in his secret shrine. It wouldn’t have surprised me. Circe had said that her bodyguard was deathly afraid of her father’s powers. Obviously, he believed the things I’d read in those pamphlets handed out by Whistler’s followers-that Whistler’s death would indeed signal the arrival of a new satanic age, and Satan himself would be reborn from the ruin of Whistler’s corpse.
“That’s where you’ve got them fooled,” I whispered to Diabolos. “You’re a bright boy, all right. Getting them to focus on your head. I bet they forgot all about your body. You’re probably busting out of a Mexican morgue right now. You’ll snatch some other corpse’s head, slap it on, buy a Toyota from some surf bum, come north and claim your head like a fallen crown.”
Diabolos only sneered.
“That’s the plan. Isn’t it, buddy?”
I leaned in close. And that was when I discovered the final touch. A silver chain encircled Whistler’s neck, the fine links disappearing between his shriveled lips.
I tugged on the chain and drew another crucifix from Diabolos Whistler’s dead sneer, dislodging several communion wafers in the process.
Free of the crucifix, Diabolos didn’t say a word.
I laughed. He still looked awfully dead to me.
I grabbed the metal box and blew out the votive candles. Darkness closed in.
I might have been in an empty room. A room that was not shaped like a pyramid. A room that held nothing at all.
It was a place I might have lingered.
I couldn’t afford to do that. Not now.
I descended the ladder, leaving the darkness for the light.
I needed other answers, and I wasn’t prepared to leave Spider Ripley’s pyramid until I found them.
I didn’t expect to be disturbed. Spider and his merry band were no doubt busy enough, and I doubted that he’d be heading home anytime soon. With his fear of Whistler’s head, I was sure that Ripley didn’t want to be anywhere near it unless he absolutely had to.
There were two things I needed first and foremost, and both were in Spider Ripley’s bedroom.
A television and a remote. I picked up the latter and turned on the former. It was the top of the hour, so I was lucky. I found a news anchor who didn’t annoy me, and I stuck with him for nearly twelve minutes.