Hellraiser: Hellfire: Part Two

by XanderDig

"There is an end to earthly pleasure, Mr. Shaw. There are only so many delicacies a man can devour before even the finest meals lose their flavor, only so many riches he can possess before the luster of gold seems muted and flat. But you know that already, do you not?"

The shades were drawn in the White King's office. They were made of thin, white paper, and the sun from outside made them glow with natural fluorescence. Though they were opaque, Edward Buckman stood facing them attentively. Whatever he was seeing beyond the blinds held him in rapt attention. I thought to answer his rhetorical question when he turned back to me, his watery blue eyes lost behind the beginnings of cataracts. Buckman pursed his tight mouth. "Yes, yes. You know that already. You already know. Been making your own preparations, have you? Learning your craft? You can feel it in your very *bones*, can't you?"

"I'm not entirely sure what you mean, Mr. Buckman."

"Do not play smart with me, sir. Do not do that. I can read you. Oh yes. I can read you like a book." A vein stood out, bisecting the White King's pale forehead and for a moment I believed the reedy man might attack me. Then he smiled. His upper lip was sweating, and he flicked his tongue over it before he spoke. "Like you read the tomes in my library."

"I am so appreciative of being in the Club that I endeavor to take advantage of every luxury it affords me," I said. Buckman's expression did not change. With my best salesman smile fixed on my face, I took a deep breath. The air in the colorless room stank of antiseptic, the synthetic lemon of hospitals and mortuaries.

The Hellfire Club came to America in the 1770s, and had called this lot on Fifth Avenue its home for nearly the entire time. This building was more then a hundred-fifty years old, and most of the place smelled pleasantly of old books, ghostly pipe smoke and the linseed oil used to breath life into the wood. The King's chamber was different, though. The room was white and featureless. Its only fixture was a stainless steel sink set into the far wall, its only furniture a white table that might have served as a desk. There was a book on it, old and black and bound in a peculiar, dimpled black leather. It was utterly incongruous in the sanitary room, as though it were a hole carved out of space. I wondered if the White King ever sat down, if he had minions to cart in a chair whenever his legs grew weary.

"I am no fool, Shaw," he said at last.

"No, Mr. Buckman."

"You're not like the others your age. They're all soft and weak. Feckless and stupid. But you . . . you're different, aren't you? There is something hard about you. Something hidden." The gaunt man's mouth moved, as though he were saying something but no words emerged. He rubbed his hands together in a slow, circular motion and walked toward me, his footfalls whispering over the white tiles.

"Mm. They come to our parties and fill our coffers, but do you think these other youths have any conception of the work we do? Of the doors we hold the keys to?" He slowly circled me, and for a moment I thought he might have been trying to bed me. I suppose I might have complied for the right reward, but his seduction turned out to be of a different sort. "Only the very few even attempt to ask. What is it that you're looking for, Shaw, when you sit in my library until the sun rises? What truths do you seek?" He finished his circle to stand in front of me. His breath smelled of listerine.

"Secrets, Mr. Buckman. I've always found that knowledge is power, and there is a lot of it hidden in those dusty books." Buckman laughed.

"That there is! That there is!" He clapped his hands like a schoolgirl. "But what manner of information, hm? What books have your fingerprints on them?"

"The Club was born of the Masons. It grew out of the Golden Dawn. I don't know much, but I know that the secrets at the heart of the Order are powerful ones. I know that this is more than a social club, White King, and that I can bring more to it than my annual dues." Buckman gasped, theatrically putting his hand to his mouth in a pantomime of mocking surprise.

"Can it be? More than a social club? More than the deals you make over brandy and cigars? More than the whores we provide your out-of-town clients when they want a thrill in the big city?"

"Yes. Much more. I know it."

"Perhaps. Perhaps we serve a greater purpose. Perhaps we serve greater gods than the almighty dollar after all. Maybe we serve a more sinewy deity whose temple is less barren than your bank or your boardroom." He reached up and placed his hand on my shoulder. "Or even your bedroom. I may have called you here, but you have been all but begging for your chance in the light. What is it you believe you can bring me?"

"I am strong. I am smart. I am fearless and . . ."

"Strike me down then. If you are without fear, then assume my throne. I am thin and old while you are a strong, young man - you wouldn't even break a sweat." I thought about it for a moment, considering the White King's gamble. I wondered what cards he held. "Well? No? Of course not."

He moved his hand to my cheek and touched it lightly, then turned and walked slowly to the sink as he spoke. "You are wise beyond your years. I have read the books in the library, them and many others and I have given them what they asked of me. I have been rewarded richly for my efforts. There is no earthly possession that I cannot hold, Shaw, and few beyond the mortal coil either." He began washing his hands, paying special attention to the one he touched me with.

"Had you moved to strike me here in my sanctum, your heart would have withered in your chest. Do you doubt it?"

"No," I said. I found that I really didn't.

"Good. Such is my control over reality," he said, scrubbing his hands with a hard steel brush. "That is the root of magic, Shaw. Have your books told you that yet? That real spellcraft is only excerpting your will over what the uninitiated call real? I'm sure they have, so let me tell you a different secret." He turned to look at me, patting his hands dry on an unblemished white towel. Though I was dressed in the 18th Century vestments that served as the ceremonial garb of the Club, Buckman wore plain white pajamas that might have been fashioned from paper. His hands were red from their scrubbing. It was only then I realized that though the White King was powerful, he was also quite mad.

"I've watched you, Sebastian. How you lead the young. How they flock to you to hear you counsel and listen to your conquests. You are quite correct, of course. The Hellfire Club is more than business meetings and kinky social pleasantries. We have power and influence the world over and can make any desire, any fantasy flesh as easily as I can draw water from this faucet. I believe that you are the man who should help me to design the future of our Order. You cannot begin to comprehend the fruits you will taste. I am a King. I would that you were my Knight."

"Thank you. Thank you so much. I . . ."

"But first you must prove yourself. Like all knights, you must go on a quest. I have grown weary, Shaw. I have tasted all that there is to taste in this world and crave something new. There is only one thing I know that can rejuvenate me. Only one thing that can awaken my tired nerves to the new era we sit on the precipice of."

"Is it the blood of seven virgin girls?" I joked.

"When I say I have tasted everything this little world has to offer, Sebastian, I mean it. No. My requirements are somewhat more occult than mere blood." He pressed a space on the wall that seemed the same as any other and a slot opened. He dropped the towel down the shoot, and when he turned his head, I noticed the thin pink scar behind his ears - a face lift. He approached the table.

"Have you ever heard of LeMarchand's Box?" he asked.

I shook my head and he came to stand with the table between us. The White King plucked a pair of thin white cotton gloves from the waistband of his pajamas and pulled them on. As he spoke he flipped through the book on the table. The writing inside was in a Cyrillic alphabet I didn't recognize, but what the images depicted showed was familiar enough. Heavy black engravings not unlike the work of Hieronimus Bosch blighted the ancient pages with scenes of tortures, demons, devils. This was a book of suffering.

"Philippe LeMarchand was a clockmaker in Napoleonic France. It may be that he was the finest artisan of his kind in history. Regardless, he put the Swiss to shame, and nothing built today comes close to the intricacy and beauty of the chronological sculptures he created. I own a LeMarchand Clock, Shaw. I had it purchased in an auction at Christie's for a sum so large that wars could have been fought over it, but the money was worth it. Sometimes I open the case to my clock and watch the gears turn endlessly. Do you know what I see?"

"What?"

"Sometimes, very late at night, I see God in the gears of my clock." He continued to flip absently through the pages for a moment. One of the drawings he passed idly over was of the gates to hell. Bodies swam over the surface of the stone, and it was impossible to tell if the naked forms were screaming in pain or pleasure.

"But LeMarchand did not only make clocks. He used his prodigious mechanical skills to make amusements for the local children. He made puzzles for them. And it is one of his puzzle boxes that I desire. His finest creation, commissioned by Viscount De L'Isle."

"De L'Isle? I know that name," I said. The man was written about in the occult histories alongside Rasputin and Crowley. "He was a magician, wasn't he? They say that after he was beheaded by the guillotine his head screamed until his body burned on the pyre."

"The very same. He paid LeMarchand a king's ransom to create a puzzle box to the most exacting mathematical specifications. To build it with only the most exotic of materials. Ah, here we are," said the White King. He turned the book around to show me a drawing.

There were several views of the puzzle box on the page. At first glance, the object was simplicity itself: a cube held at an angle with gold leaf inlay tamped into the paper. I frowned and leaned down to examine the drawings. The grain of the wood stood out clearly. It was not pine or maple but a pale ebony the color of coffee if the artist was to be believed. More interesting still was the gold filigree covering the box. The designs seemed wrong for France. They were oriental, ornate and delicate, and they seemed to border on language. It was as though the box itself were trying to say something through the page.

LeMarchand's box was tilted this way and that in the drawings, and the genius of its design was apparent. Each of the six sides bore a different design, but the whole of the piece flowed as one. Concentric circles whirled into spirals that faded into geometric patterns that might have been the hieroglyphics of some long-dead world. The final drawing in the sequence was different. At first it appeared to be another object altogether, but on closer inspection it seemed to be the box folded over on top of itself. I looked at Buckman.

"They're instructions. Instructions for solving the puzzle." He stared at me for a moment, his face unreadable. Then he shut the book with a dull thud.

"Instructions? Who's to say? What is certain is that I want the box, and I want it unsolved and unopened. That is your knightly quest, Shaw. I want you to retrieve it for me."

"Why is it so important?" I asked, knowing it was the wrong question even before the words left my mouth. I continued despite myself. "What do you want it for?"

"The box has no significance in and of itself. All that matters is that I wish to have it." He moved around the table and close to me again, pulling the gloves from his hands. "I wish to have it, and if you bring it to me, you will have whatever you wish as well. Do we have an understanding Mr. Shaw?"

It would be a step toward what I wanted. A big one. A Knight of the Council of the Chosen of the Hellfire Club. At twenty-four years old.

"Yes. We have an understanding, Mr. Buckman." On a whim, I held out my hand. Whatever reason he had to want this antique puzzle, it was large enough that he would do things he found repellent. The White King looked from my face to my hand and back, licking his lips again. Then he shook with an awkward grip unaccustomed to such niceties.

"Where do I have to go? Where is the box?" Buckman released my hand abruptly.

"Two separate questions. The box is lost. I have had texts searched far and wide, and where the box is hidden remains a mystery. Its guardians seem cunning."

"Guardians?"

"They are written about, no different than a mummy's curse. Even if they are real, Shaw, the quest of a knight is not an easy road. I have chosen you for your courage and your skill." He smiled at me, an odd appeal to my ego that might have made an impression were his eyes not continually flicking toward the sink. "What I have only lately discovered, though, is someone who may know the path. A man who found the box, but who was too fearful to solve its mystery. Too cowardly to learn its lessons."

"This man. Where is he? What is his name?"

"He is a low-life and a failure. A con-man who fancies himself a magician. The man is in London. His name is John Constantine. Chantel will give you his information on your way out."

With that my meeting, my audience was ended. Perhaps it was foolhardy, but I could not resist a final shot. I took the White King's hands in my own and gave them a squeeze.

"I am *honored* to serve you," I said. I gave his hands a shake and then released them, turning to walk out the door. I stepped into Buckland's waiting area, the more pleasant smells of the club proper replacing the medicinal scent of his office. I heard water running from the faucet, the brittle thrash of his scrubbing before I even closed the door behind me.

                              ***

The Club was all but empty this early in the day. I took this Constantine's London address from Buckman's beautiful secretary (she was stunning, and I reminded myself to take her to dinner, to dinner and breakfast upon my return), then walked down the stairs to the front. As I passed the dour portraits of Club luminaries from decades and centuries past I pondered my meeting with the White King.

Was my ego so blinding me that I was missing something? How had this paranoid, neurotic scarecrow of a man held dominion of the richest and most powerful members of society for so long? Ever since I was a boy, I had regarded the rich and powerful with a mixture of awe and contempt. I watched them drive as quickly through my neighborhood in South Philly as they could, desperate to avoid the soot from the smokestacks that they themselves owned, and I hated them. Even in that hate though, I would stare down from where my father had me cleaning gutters and watch their beautiful cars, their beautiful clothes, their beautiful lives. I would stare. I would want. I knew that one day, I would *have*.

Buckman was desperate for this child's toy. Desperate enough to send me half-way around the world on a goose chase to find it. Were it only an item of monetary value, the White King would have hired an investigator to go and buy the puzzle box. There was no need to waste capital within the Hellfire Club for some object d'art. No. There was more to LeMarchand's Box than its utility as a bauble, even an occult one listed in an ancient grimoire. I could feel that there was more to it. I saw it in the strange designs that cris-crossed its surface. Knightship or not, Buckland would find Sebastian Shaw something significantly more than an errand boy.

I passed an Asian janitor silently buffing the floor in the foyer. He looked up at me and I gave him a smile. The man tilted his head slightly, as thought confused, then looked back down at his task. I pulled my coat close around me and stepped out the front door.

Fifth Avenue blared cacophony in front of the Club. The entire street was motionless as a parking lot, and it seemed that every person in every car was laying on their horns. My secretary, a Jersey gum-chewer with a penchant for New Wave had introduced me to a group called Art of Noise. I thought that they might have done well to take lessons from this traffic jam. There were several people standing outside their automobiles despite the cold, staring down the road in morbid curiosity. An accident then.

The Club's valet was standing out at the curb, leaning out into the street and ogling in the same direction as the other lookey-loos. I abhor a person who ignores their responsibilities. I walked up behind him and tapped him twice on the shoulder, hard. The man nearly leapt from his skin. He whirled and, on seeing me glowering down at him, tugged at the bottom of his red jacket to straighten it.

"Mr. Shaw!"

"What happened?" I asked.

"I was only . . ." he realized I wasn't asking about his dereliction of duty. "It was an accident, sir. A bad one. A truck lost control in the slush. It hit a guy on a bike." He looked back up the street. "Poor son of a bitch," he said.

This time, I followed his gaze past the long line of cars. Perhaps a hundred yards up Fifth, right at the intersection of Park were a number of police cars, fire trucks and ambulances. A red pick-up with Nevada plates lay on its side, and even at my distance I could plainly see the skeleton of a bicycle poking out from under the wreckage. I thought of Oz, the Great and Terrible, and of the Wicked Witch of the East crushed under the dislocated house of that Kansas child.

"Yes," I said, turning back to the solid wall of traffic in front of the club. "Poor fellow. Where is my car? I need to be going." The valet turned to me with a perturbed look on his jowly face. He seemed ready to say something beyond his station, but decided against it.

"No getting through this snarl, Mr. Shaw, and they ain't going to be clearing that intersection for a good while. You best go up around the block and meet your driver 'round the other side." He pointed toward the accident and I nodded to him and began walking toward Park. If the valet expected a tip for his lollygagging, he was sorely mistaken.

I strolled up the road, listening to the symphony of honking horns. What did these fools believe all of this noise would accomplish? I thought again of LeMarchand's Box. I considered its symmetry, the perfection of the shapes that crawled upon the cube's surface. As I walked, I glanced from car to car, noting the curves of a Jaguar, the boxy strength of a Volvo. The faces of the drivers ranged from enraged to bored, blank to animated. All of them though, each and every one was pressing their horns at intervals approaching regularity.

Just as I reached Park and was about to turn, the atonal noise of the cars reached a level of syncopation that captured my attention. I slowly turned around to peer at the traffic. It was as though everyone were honking to the beat of some internal metronome. More strange still, when all of the cars blared together, what I had initially taken for tonelessness created a sort of internal harmony.

A percussive note struck this brass band. The truck finally succumbed to the will of the NYFD and fell to its four wheels with a crash. The driver stood with a police officer nearby, his only apparent injury a mildly black eye. The man's demeanor was considerably more wounded, though. He held his hand to his mouth, and tears streamed down his face as he stared at something I couldn't see. For a moment I stupidly thought he might be moved by the operatic harmony the car horns were creating. Then I saw the object of his distress.

Two paramedics came around the other side of the truck pushing a Gurney between them. A Their pace was unhurried, and they seemed to be move to the same unheard beat compelling the drivers in their cars. A third medic kneeled above the broken shape, performing CPR on the victim. A white sheet covered the twisted form, a figure that could not possibly have been that of a man. With each chest compression, bright red liquid spread on the sheet. I gawked despite myself, held pat by both the grisly scene and the impossible score beneath it.

The trio of laconic healers came around to the rear door of their ambulance and the man on top leapt down with practiced grace, his back to me. He jumped in to guide while the other two collapsed the wheels of the stretcher and pushed it into the back of the vehicle. The sheet was almost entirely red. One of them ran up front and jumped into the cab. He hit the siren while the other two worked in back. After a moment, the medic who had been working so desperately on top of the body (for that was all it was, a body) reached out to pull shut the doors with blood soaked hands. Then time stopped, the single harmonious note of the horns, the siren, even the idling engines seeming to stretch out.

The paramedic looked in my direction. I knew that he was looking directly at me despite the fact that the pallid man had no eyes. It was the figure from Studio 54, a featureless gray man whose lipless mouth was frozen into an eternal smile. A wave of nauseous vertigo struck me and I felt I was falling on watery knees. The figure's hand dripped gore when he grabbed the door handles.

"Wait," I croaked.

Space stretched impossibly and I thought that I might have been dying, that a stroke or a aneurism might have been the hidden cost of the paranormal abilities I kept a secret. For the first time since my father's death I wished that I had been born normal until I realized that it was not the world shifting at all, it was the ambulance. It was pulling away. The faceless man smiled his inhuman grin and slammed the doors as the vehicle sped past a line of police cars.

At once, the world returned to normal. The siren was only a siren, and though everyone in traffic might have been laying on their horns, it was no different in tone than any Manhattan rush hour. As the ambulance rumbled away, I knew I only had one chance.

I ran forward, making for the faceless man, willing strength into my weak legs. So single minded was my need to discover who or what this stalking thing was that I barely noticed the cop who interjected herself into my path. I flung her aside and continued to run. The ambulance slowed to make the turn away from Central Park and my hand had almost reached the handle when my shoulder was roughly grabbed. I spun around, almost losing my feet even as power flowed into my limbs from the force of my pursuer.

Almost of its own accord, my hand reared back to teach the cop who grabbed me the error of his impudence. If there had been any chance that I could have still caught up with the ambulance I probably would have. I looked into the angry face of the policeman, at the woman I had knocked down standing behind him with her hand on the butt of her service revolver. All around me, policemen stared. I lowered my hand, and when the cop spun me around roughly and slapped handcuffs on my wrists, I made no move to resist. In the distance, the ambulance sped away.

                                 ***

The time with the police had been frustrating. They yelled and screamed about assault charges and a litany of other sins that could put me in prison for years. I said nothing to them, of course. My lawyer arrived and made things right with the precinct captain. The three of us laughed together as I waited for my driver to pull around, and the captain held my door open as I sat down. Behind him, the officer I knocked over in my haste stared daggers at me. She had a hard look, so I marked her face well.

It was past three o'clock by the time I arrived back home. The doorman informed me that Pierce stumbled out sometime past noon. When I asked him about Emma, all he could give me was a blank stare.

"A blonde, you say?"

"That's right. Gorgeous figure. Half naked. You must have seen her."

"'Fraid not, Mr. Shaw. Sounds like a real keeper, though."

"Hm," I said. I went upstairs expecting that the woman would still be around. Much to my surprise, she was nowhere to be found, and the money I had left on the pillow was still sitting untouched. I frowned and went to the unmade bed. I pulled the pillow she'd slept upon to my face and breathed in. Her smell was ambrosia. Then I looked back down at the bills on the other pillow and realized how slow my lack of sleep had made me.

"Shit," I said, and bolted to the study.

The Hopper was not on the wall, and the safe that hid behind it hung open and empty. I grabbed the end of my desk. It was an oak slab, heavy and solid, and I crushed the edge to pulp in my fist before I cast it across the room as easily as a child might toss a toy. Though this action expended little of the energy that had accumulated in my body at the hands of New York's Finest, I still managed to badly damage both the desk and the wall. Fortunately, my temper tantrum was brief.

How in hell had the bitch gotten into it? I went to the safe and peered inside. Thousands of dollars gone in a flash. However, the gaping maw was not entirely empty. There was a small slip of white paper inside. It was folded in half. I reached in and pulled it out.

"Temper temper" was written on the outside in a script less feminine than one might expect from so beautiful a woman. I grinned and looked around the room, certain I was being spied on. Silly, of course. The woman wrote this long before I arrived home. I unfolded the slip to find seven numbers written inside. She was either a stupid thief or my perfect match. Either way, I would discover how she got into the safe. Either way, I would find a satisfying punishment for the transgression. But not today.

I put the note into my shirt pocket and went back to my bedroom. I called my secretary to find her annoyed at my absence. She became more so when I had her cancel my week and get me on a redeye to London.

"You're incorrigible, Sebastian," Elspeth said. She was the only of my employees who called me by my first name. I heard Devo playing in the background, and could imagine her bopping away to the small radio at her desk. She ran down the list of appointments that this would entail rescheduling.

"They can all wait. I have to be in London tomorrow." Despite her complaining, I knew that Elspeth would have me on a Concord eight hours after I hung up. She wished me luck on my journey. As it would turn out, I would have plenty, though little of it would be good.

After we had worked out the details at the office, I rested on the bed, surrounded by the commingled smells Emma and I had left behind. Yes. She would be my first call upon returning from Buckman's little quest. It had been nearly forty-eight hours since I slept, and I drifted off quickly.

                               ***

A sledgehammer to the chest awakens me. My eyes flit open and I find flourescent lights streaking by overhead. When I try to take a breath, my lungs fill with bees and I want to cry. A million miles away, I hear car horns singing a mournful chorale.

"It's Mozart," says a familiar voice beside me. "The Requiem."

My head lolls to the side, even this small motion filling my body with agony to its pours. I see an EMT walking determinedly beside the Gurney I lie on. I try to tell him to turn around. I'm desperate to see his face, because I know he doesn't have one. No voice escapes my mouth, only a rasp. Something leaves though, something pink and alive that drools down my cheek.

There's a loud crash as we careen through a set of double doors. The impact feels like a thousand pins, a thousand fish hooks pulling at once. I want to scream, but I don't. I hold it in. I don't want any more of my insides coming out. We come to a stop in the middle of a vast, white room, and I can feel hot wetness beneath me. I'm leaking. Good God, I'm turning inside out.

The paramedic turns heel and walks away, and I want to beg him to stay but I know he wants to eat me alive. He would if he were in charge. He isn't.

After some time alone, I lift my head. My head sticks to the plastic pillow beneath it, coming away with a muted, tearing noise. Emma stands against the wall staring at me in terror. He chest heaves as she hyperventilates.

"Help me," I mouth. She does nothing. She only lifts her hands to the side of her head as though trying to protect herself from a sound only she can hear. She averts her eyes.

I hear the doors open behind me and a number of footsteps enter this operating theater. I am quickly surrounded by nurses and orderlies in white. They prepare instruments silently, almost ignoring my presence. The wetness beneath me is saturating, and I hear a steady drip splat against the floor. As I wait for help, the dripping becomes a steady flow, the flow a shower. I'm not leaking, I'm pouring out of myself. When the liquid beneath me begins to squirm with a life of its own, thick tears begin leak from my eyes.

I look back to Emma, and her pale skin has blanched. She has pushed herself against the wall, nearly into it. Whatever horror she sees birthing from me is driving her mad. I summon all of my strength.

"I'm bleeding," I manage.

"It's all right." I turn my head. My father is lying beside me, a tube running from his arm. "You gave me your blood once. Now I give you mine."

"No. No. It's poison," I say. The door opens behind me again, and this time Emma screams. She screams in horror and revulsion.

"Poison?" A deep voice, bass dragged over gravel, speaks behind me. Emma continues to scream. The man with the voice moves in front of me. He is dressed in the green scrubs of a doctor, masked and capped, only his eyes are visible. They are black. "Yes, poison. You are filled with poison."

The Doctor holds out his hand and a nurse hands him an instrument. The horrifying blade is fashioned from rusted brass or gold, the shape of a crescent moon. Emma's screams turn to shrieking, shrill and hysterical.

"This is not for you, Emma Frost," growls the Doctor. "Not for your eyes. Begone." Emma's cries cease and the man turns back to me.

"Now. The time has come, Shaw. We must cut the poison out."

He reaches down with the sickle and my torso explodes in watery fire. I hear the brittle crunch of my rips, and my scream is wet. It tastes of copper and bile. I turn back to my father. He smiles at me lovingly from where he sits on the edge of his stretcher. In his hands is LeMarchand's Box.

"You'll get used to it, boy. You'll find you can get used to anything."

***

I stumbled across my apartment in the dark, my breathing ragged, the images of the dream clinging. When I reached for the scotch I knocked it from the shelf and it shattered on the floor. Glass cut my foot, the liquor scalding even more. I found the pain brought me out of the dream, and for that I was grateful. The vodka was more willing, so I drank deeply straight from the bottle. I paused for breath, then I drank again, this time swallowing the Valium I had grabbed from the medicine cabinet as well. At last my heart began to slow.

The black-eyed doctor's voice haunted me, but not as much as my old man's. He hated it when I called him that. Mortality was the only thing that had frightened him.

I took another gulp and went to my closet. I didn't need to leave for JFK for another two hours, but I packed nonetheless. The man I sought, Constantine, had been too afraid to solve the puzzle box. What was there to be afraid of? To my addled, post-nightmare mind, any mystery worth fearing was worth solving. Though I was tired and unrested, there would be no sleep before I left for London. There would be no rest for the wicked.

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