Robert W. Walker (24 page)

-13-

Stroud gathered his inner resolve and strength in order to go on. He'd had to put the skull down after seeing the kind of torture the victims of
Ubbrroxx
had to endure there in the dark pit; unable to see anything but
Ubbrroxx's
eyes, the helpless victims were reduced to begging and quivering, for in the eyes was the soul of the beast, and the soul of
Ubbrroxx
was by far the most hideous thing about it. It was not a physical ugliness as much as it was an ethereal ugliness of despair, hopelessness, darkness and a never-ending desperation brought on by a feeling of being trapped wholly, completely, forever and ever, stripped of one's own soul for this thing's pleasure, for this thing slowly devoured your soul when it finished with your body.

Most of the victims were soon past screaming, however, as the apparatus for screaming was one of the first things the creature removed, turning a man dumb. It went for the other senses soon, leaving only the nerves, the eyes and the brain functioning as it stripped away parts of the victim held helpless under its
talonlike
grasp, much as a predatory bird rips away at its prey, one strip at a time.

After the body succumbed to this slow death, the monster went in for the soul, taking it and nourishing itself on the newfound soul, much as it took possession of its zombie army members, with one small difference--there was no escaping ever from its grasp. At least the infected zombie mob had by chance remained alive, and would be returned their souls in the end--if the promise of history held true.

"How can we combat this dread?" Stroud asked, grasping the skull in his hands once more.

Just as he did so, Kendra Cline pushed open the door and stared at the light emanating from within the crystal skull and realized that the naked man sitting in the lotus position and cradling the skull in his hands was Abraham Stroud.

The crystal went dark and Stroud spun around, a look of sheer anger directed at her. "Get out and close that door, and stay out until I'm ready for you!"

She backed out without a word, fright distorting her features.

Stroud prayed that the spirit in the crystal would come again. It may take more hours now, thanks to Kendra's barging in.

"You are
Esruad
,"
said a soothing voice from inside the crystal.
"
Esruad
is you. It knows this, and now you know this."

"
Esruad
," Stroud said. "Stroud ...
Esruad
... Stroud ...
Esruad
." The words took on the flavor of a lilting chant, and soon the light from inside the crystal returned.

"
There is a way,
" it told him.

"Thank God."

"
You must take the battle to it, into the ship,
" said the voice from the skull.

"Who are you?" Stroud asked. "Why should I trust you? As far as taking the battle to the ship, it's sheer suicide for us all."

"There is a worse fate waiting in store for you if you do not, Stroud. Trust me."

"Why? Why should I trust the spirit of the skull?"

"Spirits ... for there are many of us imprisoned here."

Stroud thought about this and recalled the demon's saying that it was legion, that it was everyman. The similarities were eerie, save for the voice. The voice that had spoken through
Weitzel
rattled demonic; the voice in the skull sounded desperate and terribly sad.

"I am you,"
said the voice.

Stroud shook his head in confusion. It was the sort of thing his grandfather's ghost might say, but it wasn't his grandfather's voice. "I don't understand."

"I am
Esruad
."

"The Etruscan?"

"Follow my dictates."

Stroud felt somehow connected to the spirit of the crystal, and that it was no accident that
Mamdoud
was moved to get the crystal into Stroud's possession; in fact, Stroud wondered if his having gone to Egypt in the first place hadn't been somehow "preordained" by
Esruad
, who, in the netherworld of the spirit, had known that the ancient ship would be unearthed long before Stroud or the others knew.

"You are to take me with you, into the pit,"
said the shining, silvery crystal skull in the half-light of the candle.
"You must do it."

Stroud wondered how. How were they possibly going to get past the army of guards without themselves becoming victims? He wondered if he should reenter alone with the skull, somehow holding off the zombies.

"They will part for you, Stroud, so long as I am in your possession."
It read his mind, his thoughts. For a moment, he wondered if this was not all a trick of the satanic power menacing the city. He recalled how
Weitzel's
body had been used in an attempt to kill him, recalled the claw hammer that had come down at his own skull, recalled the attack on him, Kendra and Nathan.

"Trust me, Stroud, as I must trust you."

"How will we destroy
Ubbrroxx
?"

"
Ubbrroxx
must choke on the crystal."

"Down its throat?
But what will happen to you?"

"I will only rest when it is done. I and the 500,000 other souls trapped in this crystal."

"Five hundred thousand?"

"Our souls give the crystal its life and energy."

Stroud marveled at the revelation. "You ... you are the ones who sacrificed the others to
Ubbrroxx
?"

"To our eternal shame and damnation, yes."

Stroud was finally beginning to understand the Etruscan seer in the crystal.

Stroud rejoined the others to find Kendra on the telephone, with someone from the hospital, it seemed. They were still searching for and talking about a medical cure, now something to do with brain chemistry. Stroud went to Wiz and Leonard, cradling the crystal skull in the crook of his arm. The other two men stared at it, seeing the silver shimmer of lights that seemed to race through it like the electrical synapses in the human brain. It unnerved the two archeologists while at the same time fascinated them.

"I need to know all that you have on this man
Esruad
,
Wisnewski
," he told them.

"I'll make it available to you--"

"At once."

"--at once, yes."

"What about the skull, Dr. Stroud? What does it mean?" asked Leonard.

"That's what I've been trying to learn. It could prove to be our most powerful weapon, or our downfall."

Kendra hung up the phone and said, "What's left of my team at the hospital has discovered on autopsy that the levels of serotonin in the brains of the zombies is at extreme levels; that this thing acts on the human mind through a narcotic effect much stronger than anything we've ever seen. We have drugs that can counterattack the serotonin levels, but
it's
dicey staging a chemical war inside a man's head. The 'cure' could be as dangerous as the disease."

"Put together whatever you can, Dr. Cline," Stroud told her. "We're going to need all the weaponry at our disposal when we reenter the pit."

"Not me," said Leonard. "I'm not going back down there. If you
fools
--"

"Suit
yourself
," said Stroud. "I've got some research to do." He then joined
Wisnewski
, who led him to the books and pamphlets he wished to see.

There Stroud hunched over the material, with the skull beside him as if reading along with him, the eyes sparkling below the light. Wiz thought he saw movement inside the crystal, forms and shapes, but perhaps it was the light as it played over the thing.

"In an hour," Stroud informed Wiz, "we're all to meet and form a strategy against this thing. Tell the others. There's no more time to lose."

"Yes, of course, Dr. Stroud," said Wiz, closing the door on Stroud.

In
Wisnewski's
darkly furnished, book-lined office, Abe Stroud gathered the others around him and told them what he had learned from the crystal skull.

"The Etruscans could not destroy or even contain the evil. Their backs to the wall, as ours are now, they fed it instead, giving in to its demands, much as we are now."

"But we haven't given in to its demands!" shouted Wiz.

"No, you haven't, Dr.
Wisnewski
, nor did Dr. Leonard, but every man out there at the pit tonight has."

"But they're helpless to do otherwise," said Kendra. "They've been--their bodies have been invaded, taken control of by this thing."

"Every single one of them has the choice," he corrected her. "They may be unaware of the choice, or afraid to face it, but each one of those zombies out there can either die or serve this devil. That is the choice given them. But in serving, they must feed the unholy beast."

"You learned this from staring into that skull?" asked Leonard.

"The zombies will sacrifice
the rest of us,
just as you said, Dr. Leonard. The zombies are not the sacrificial lambs,
we are
--those left uninfluenced by the monster. It feeds on our pain, our fear, our being and our senses. It does not enjoy feeding on the emotionless automatons it has created of the others. They'd feel no terror, no suffering, as we who remain whole and intact do. The zombie herd is created to ensure that the demon gets its due, and according to the skull, it has raised the ante, as you've said, to five million
souls
."

"How can you be sure of all this?" asked Kendra, coming toward him to resolutely stand before him. "Suppose it's a trick ... this ... this skull spirit. Suppose it was sent here by the thing in the pit?"

"It is bound up with the demon, yes. It holds the lost souls of those who committed the others to the demon's tortures so many hundreds of years ago, and those trapped souls in the skull belong to the men, women and children who sacrificed their brothers, sisters, mothers to the creature in Etruscan times. The principal voice in the skull was that of this man named
Esruad
."

"The soothsayer?" asked Wiz. "The one much mentioned in the records?"

"It was no coincidence that we found his document in the ship," added Stroud, pacing now. "The creature has confused me with
Esruad
on more than one occasion." Stroud stopped before the skull, his hand lightly moving over the object as he said,
"
Esruad
was a magician of sorts and a physician in his day. He dabbled in what we might call alchemy and witchcraft. In fact, it was he who discovered a method of fashioning pure crystal into skull molds, a technique which is unknown and considered impossible today. He molded the skulls to house the souls of men like himself for a dual purpose."

Wiz, Leonard and Kendra were now held in rapt attention, as he continued. "One, the skull acts as a receptacle for the souls of men filled with greater remorse than can be contained anywhere else in the universe. Two, the skull acts as a kind of beacon or transmitter through history."

Wiz took a deep breath and came around to Stroud, saying, "My impression of
Esruad
was that he was some sort of Rasputin, or Merlin--"

"He sacrificed many lives to learn of the mysteries of the universe," said Stroud, "but this one mystery was more horrible than he had begun to suspect until it was too late. He was quite likely the first surgeon, the first man to cut into a cadaver to unravel the mysteries of the human body. He also dabbled in the occult, and it led to
Ubbrroxx
."