Chapter 12
Marla stood on the doorstep, flanked by Carl and Becky and a few large muscular people that Elizabeth did not recognize. The emaciated face of Trip's sister appeared in the narrow gap between the overdeveloped biceps of the henchpeople. Jennifer was holding some papers rolled into a stiff tube, which she tapped nervously against her fingertips.
From behind her, Elizabeth heard Rififi pound up the stairs, his paws drumming on the wooden treads. Fraidy cat! was all she had time to think before Marla and her gang barged into the hall.
Marla jabbed her in the gut with a fist and when Elizabeth doubled over, Becky and one of the thugs grabbed her arms and dragged her along. They all followed Marla, who appeared to know exactly where she wanted to go. She marched straight back into the depths of the house, pausing at the music room door to direct Carl and another thug to pull Penrose's portrait off the wall and bring it back to the dining room.
All down the hall, Elizabeth struggled and shouted, in an effort to give Bob some warning of what was headed his way, until her hair swung into her mouth and made her cough.
As they entered the dining room, Marla issued a barrage of orders to her followers: hold onto Elizabeth, move that here, move this there. She told Jennifer to go find Bob.
Elizabeth spat her hair from her mouth and said, "He's gone. I'm here alone."
Marla cackled. "Nice try. We know he's here. We've been watching the house."
Elizabeth allowed herself feel a momentary triumph when Jennifer was unable to locate Bob anywhere in the house, but since she had her arms firmly pinioned behind her back and her shoulders felt like they were being ripped out of their sockets, it was small comfort.
From the direction of the music room came the sounds of furniture being dragged roughly across the floor and of bolts being ripped from plaster. Moments later, Carl and his assistant appeared in the doorway carrying Penrose's portrait between them. They brought it into the dining room and leaned it against the wall beside the fireplace.
Marla instructed Carl to start building a fire and sent the others to collect candlesticks. She inspected each candlestick as it was brought to her, throwing some to the floor and placing others on the table. Soon she had a motley collection of brass and crystal candlesticks, some empty and crusted with old wax, some holding tall tapers and others only unusable stumps of spent candles.
A cold wind howled through the gaping windows, but that was not what made Elizabeth shiver. With more bravado than she felt, she demanded, "What are you doing? And why aren't you doing it someplace else?"
Marla's lips stretched into a corrosive smile. "As to what we'll do, you'll see soon enough. Why here? Because this house has everything we need: astral power, fresh blood, the seven candlesticks, and a direct line to Hell." Playing a macabre connect the dots game, she toyed with the arrangement of candlesticks on the table. "These won't work," she said as she dug stumps of wax from the candlesticks with a knife she produced from her sleeve. "Where do you keep the candles in this house?" she asked Elizabeth.
Elizabeth knew of some emergency candles in the kitchen, but she was not inclined to give Marla any assistance, especially if Bob was hiding in there. "Didn't you bring any of your own? That's not what I'd call prepared. And if you want black ones, you're out of luck."
Becky and Jennifer returned carrying more candlesticks. Becky was lugging a heavy crystal candelabrum from the music room and Jennifer had found two pretty silver candlesticks which Elizabeth recognized as having lately rested next to a china shepherdess on an end table in the living room. Marla approved of the candlesticks, but rejected the candelabrum. Shrugging, Becky held it away from her body and dropped it. The candelabrum shattered on the floor with a tinkling crash and its fragments glittered in the light cast by the chandelier.
Outraged by the casual destruction, Elizabeth tried to yank away from her captor. He tightened his grip and shook her like a washrag. She said, "The police are coming back. They'll be here any minute."
Most of them ignored her. Marla spared her a brief glance and ordered Becky to search for candles in the drawers of the sideboard and in the kitchen. Jennifer walked over to Elizabeth and unrolled the papers she had brought. She flashed them before Elizabeth's eyes too quickly for her to read.
"This is our house now. You're only here under our sufferance and that won't last much longer. If the police do come back, you'll be the one in trouble. Trespasser!" She laughed and threw the papers onto the table.
Elizabeth tried to kick her, but her captor pulled her back. Taking a timeout from her candle search, Becky came over and slapped her, stepping away while the muscular man took both Elizabeth's wrists and wrenched them up between her shoulder blades. Holding her easily with one hand, he wrapped the fingers of other hand in her hair and yanked her head back. Elizabeth's eyes watered from the pain. Becky smiled nastily and sneezed in her face before going into the kitchen.
Elizabeth tensed when Becky disappeared through the door. When she heard no outcry from Becky or Bob, she figured Bob must have run up the back stairs or outside into the yard. She quelled her disappointment at his apparent desertion. Bob was too smart to go up against this many people by himself, he must have gone for help. That would, of course, be the sensible thing to do, she told herself.
Becky returned unmolested and with the box of emergency candles. Wiping her nose on her dreadlocks, she presented her booty to Marla, then helped Carl with the fire.
Carl was using some of the wood and kindling that Dirk had carried in that morning. It was so conveniently at hand that Elizabeth momentarily suspected Dirk of complicity, but immediately quelled that disloyal thought. Carl had stacked the kindling in the fireplace with the care and precision of a boy scout and loosely stacked a few logs on top, leaving plenty of room for air to circulate. "Paper," he grunted, holding out a hand.
Becky took a leather-bound book from among the pile resting on the sideboard. She ripped out a few pages and handed them to Carl who grunted again and crumpled them into balls that he tucked beneath the lattice of kindling.
The desecration of the book was as painful to Elizabeth as the feeling of her hair being separated from its roots. She struggled again and tried to shout at Becky, but her shout came out as a squeak when her captor pulled her head back even further. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a movement over in the corner where an unseen hand was drawing a chair away from the table. Unless Penrose had suddenly recovered, it could not possibly be he and she did not want to think what else might be engaging in the unpleasant scene that was unfolding in the dining room. She tried to cheer herself with the thought that Bob might have found the ring of invisibility and be even now sneaking around among her tormentors and plotting her release.
Carl took a lighter from his chrome-studded leather jacket and lit the paper in several places. Tall flames sprang up and soon the kindling was burning merrily. He blew on the fire and poked it experimentally with the poker until the logs began to catch.
At a word from Marla, the electric chandelier was turned off and the hungry faces of her followers glowed weirdly in the unsteady light from the fireplace.
Elvis watched them from above. The black velvet melted into shadow and the jumpsuit slashed across the darkness, the sequins coruscant in the flickering light. His lip curled scornfully, but the shaded eyes betrayed interest in the proceedings that unfolded below him.
Marla put a candle in each empty candlestick and arranged them to form a cross, inverted with respect to the Velvis. She lighted one candle in the now roaring fire and used it to light the rest. As she touched the flame to the tip of each candle, she said, "We, the children of Nyx, daughter of Chaos, will bring the powers of dread into this world. Let the earth quake, the sun turn black, and the moon run with blood. Stars will fall and mountains move from their places into the sea. Hail and fire will mingle with blood and be cast down onto the earth." Marla began to walk in a circle around the table which held the candlesticks, and around Elizabeth and the minion who twisted her arms a bit more. Her rotator cuffs creaked.
"Tonight we will call upon our master, the Serpent, the recipient of the Profane Kiss, and to him shall yield another seal and Famine shall join Death. Soon the fourth part of the earth will fall to Death, War, Pestilence, and Famine," Marla intoned, drawing Jennifer to her side. "With the blood upon the knife—"
Elizabeth broke in again. "Hey, biblical literature never was my strong point, but isn't that out of order? I thought Pestilence came first. Is this some kind of favoritism?"
"Silence!" Marla shouted. "I don't have to explain myself to you. My people shall all be rewarded in good time."
Elizabeth thought she detected dissatisfaction in the faces of those around her, especially Becky who, now that she thought of it, was probably the germiest person she'd ever met. Hoping that this signaled a weakness in the cohesion of the group that she might exploit, and not merely irritation with herself for interrupting their leader, Elizabeth tried to plant some seeds of discord. "Y'all? The four horsemen of the Apocalypse? You've got to be kidding. And they're more than four of you, so I guess some of you are stuck being tools," Elizabeth sneered.
"Silence! Hail and fire will mingle with blood!" She took her knife from the table and brandished it menacingly, leaving little doubt about whose blood would be mingling with the hail and fire.
Elizabeth ignored her. "The four major lame horsemen of the mildly apocalyptic inconvenience is more like it. Let me see, for Pestilence you've got a germy Goth. What kind of plague is she going to come up with? Post-nasal drip? And for Famine and War you've got an anorexic lawyer and." her eyes fell on Carl, who had risen, still holding the poker ".a rude guy who ran off after getting smacked on the head by an aerobics instructor. So you're Death, huh, Morticia? I did notice the dead cactus in your office."
Still waving the knife, Marla shouted, "You ignorant little fool, you know nothing! And what were you doing in my office?"
"Just poking around. Tell me, are you looking to expand the shoe store before or after the Apocalypse?"
"Shut her up! I can't concentrate with this idiotic babbling," Marla snarled.
Elizabeth's captor slapped a hand over her mouth before she could speak again.
Chanting in Latin, Marla made another circuit of the candles and Elizabeth. She withdrew a small vial from her sleeve and, uncorking it, poured a gray powder into the palm of one hand. She cast the powder over the candles, which spewed an acrid smoke that set everyone to coughing. Marla's path brought her around to Penrose's portrait, where she halted and began to speak in English.
"This is the last barrier that separates us from unlimited power. With him out of the way, nothing will stand between us and the power that flows up from the Netherworld into this house," she mused, running one hand along the top of the gilt frame. "And it's such a flimsy thing after all. He can hardly stand in our way." She traced her fingernails over the canvas, then bunched her hand into a fist and extended her index finger, which ended in a grotesque red talon. With sudden violence she stabbed her fingernail right through the canvas beside the image of Penrose's face. The canvas gave easily with a small cracking sound.