The Tattooed Heart (17 page)

“Take your game and shove it right up your—”

It makes it a bit easier when they remain belligerent.

Messenger nodded to me.

I steeled myself for what was to come. Despite her fame and talent, Nicolet was not so very different from me. She could have been a girl at my school. Was her sin so different from my own? Had she even known what Mr. Joshua was doing to Graciella? A horrible person, yes. But perhaps not quite
that
horrible.

I stood behind Nicolet and placed my left hand over her heart, and pressed my right palm against her head. This was ritual and I knew the words I must speak. “By the Source. By the rights granted to the Heptarchy. By Isthil and the balance She maintains. I
claim passage to your soul.”

My first entry into her mind and memory put that thought to rest. I saw the conversation between Nicolet and Mr. Joshua. It had taken place in a hotel room.

Mr. Joshua:
Gonna have to lean on her, that's the thing.

Nicolet:
Can't we do something legally? You know, sue her or whatever?

Mr. Joshua:
Look, Nicky, the thing is, I checked and she is a minor. We take her to court that contract gets thrown out. So it can't be legal, what we do.

Nicolet:
I don't want any of this coming back to me.

Mr. Joshua:
Obviously. I mean, I am here to protect you. After all—

Nicolet:
After all, you make your money from me.

Mr. Joshua:
Exactly. So this'll be the last time we talk about this. But if Graciella won't shut her trap, I'll have to teach her a lesson. And it has to be a harsh one.

Nicolet:
Has to be. She's the one to blame.

Mr. Joshua:
I'll take care of her.

Nicolet:
Her own damn fault.

This conversation was right at the top of Nicolet's consciousness, being actively recalled. The
confrontation with Messenger, and no doubt my own accusatory words, had brought it bubbling up out of her memory.

But proving her guilt was not the duty I was there to perform. I was not searching for guilt, I was searching for fear.

It is like what I suppose a hallucination must be. Images rose to me, floated by, twirled away, as if I were swimming underwater and these memories were bubbles drifting up from some scuba diver below me. Some passed quickly, too quickly to really see. Others lingered long enough for me to see patterns and events, to feel secondhand emotion, to appreciate scenes of beauty or moments of hilarity.

Bad people do not have only bad memories. There were many interesting, joyful, exciting memories floating by. But fears are different. If normal memories are shimmering bubbles, fears are like those deepest of sea creatures that come in fantastic, otherworldly shapes and must create their own sullen and sickly light.

It was these that I followed down, chasing them as they tried to evade me. I caught them each in turn: the fear of failure, the fear of amputated limbs, the fear of
losing her voice. But one terror slipped my grasp again and again until, at last, I had it.

It was prosaic, really, nothing terribly original. But as I rose back through the layers of Nicolet's mind, I saw memories that confirmed that this fear had a powerful hold on Nicolet.

I blinked and was out. Messenger waited patiently. Nicolet cursed a blue streak and Oliver was clearly looking for an exit, any exit, hoping that we were too distracted to notice him.

Haarm was watching me intently, curious I guess. And, as earlier, I could not help feeling that something about him was more off than previously. I did not know Haarm well, but he had from the start exuded a cocky self-confidence. Now he seemed wary. Was this just a result of me refusing his advances? Or had Messenger or perhaps even Daniel had a little talk with him?

“What is Nicolet's doom?” Messenger asked.

“Her greatest fear is pretty common,” I reported. “Nicolet is terrified of flying.”

Nicolet confirmed this by blanching. Her abuse and endless shouts for Mr. Joshua stopped as suddenly as if I had thrown a switch.

“So, what are you going to do, force me onto a plane? Security will stop you. No way. Uh-uh. No way. No. Way.”

I resisted the urge to answer,
Way.
But honestly, I was wondering how it would be done.

Messenger finally lost patience with her renewed yammering, raised a hand, and while she continued to move her mouth and tongue, no sound came from her.

“Oliver Benbury,” Messenger said. “You have chosen to play. And so, in Isthil's name, I call upon the Master of the Game.”

17

I STEELED MYSELF FOR WHAT WAS TO COME. I wondered if the time would ever come when I would not dread the approach of the Master of the Game.

The foul yellow mist, that harbinger of supernatural terror, rose now. But it came in a way unlike any previous appearance. I stared in fascination as the hundreds of still-life people in the audience opened their mouths wide. It was an eerie thing, no question, to see men and women, young and old, each insensate, oblivious, and unseeing, open their jaws to the point where I heard jawbones crack.

From these open mouths, and from nostrils as well, rose the yellow mist, as if these orifices were pipes. The mist first drifted then streamed and finally seemed to blast like steam, until it concealed all those distorted faces and circled around us on the stage. The purple lights still shone down on us and where the light touched the mist, took on the color of excrement.

I had seen the Master of the Game in several guises, and I expected some new nightmare shape. But the Game Master is endlessly inventive, and capable of becoming corporeal in many shapes.

This time he was no maze of doomed humans, no nest of snakes formed into human shape. He emerged from the mist and he was not a he. The Master of the Game came in the shape not of a fantastical monster, but of a girl.

It was Graciella who stepped slowly into view. Graciella. I saw the recognition in the eyes of the two accused. I saw concern, but not abject terror.

Until this embodiment of Graciella began to change.

She approached as she was in real life, but with each lessening of the distance between us I saw details that defied the overall impression of a young girl. It
first became apparent in the way her flesh seemed to undulate, as though her bones did not quite provide the rigidity her body needed. As though she were a sort of water balloon, a sack, a plastic bag in the shape of a girl but containing a sluggish liquid. This suggestion of a viscous fluid just beneath her skin became ever more real as the flesh grew first translucent, and then ever more transparent.

Her arms. Her legs. Her neck and face. Sheets of clear plastic film over some seething corruption beneath.

“No, no, no,” Oliver cried. “That's not . . . This is all just special effects, hah hah, you almost got me, almost!” And that shrill verbal denial lasted until the Master of the Game had stepped all the way clear of the mist and stood bathed in the stage lights and Oliver could see, as I could see, that what lay pulsating beneath the fragile flesh was not muscle or bone or blood.

Have you ever seen a scanning electron microscope picture of disease organisms? Bacteria and viruses, proliferating amoebas, voracious worms, and the clanking spidery creatures called mites? They say there are something like five pounds of bacteria and other parasites alive in and on the human body. This
body, this accusatory vision of Graciella, was a hundred pounds more, all magnified to visibility. She was nothing here but the filth of human existence, all roiling madly beneath a surface that threatened to burst open from the pressure like rotting fruit.

And then, unable to look away, unable to save myself from the full horror, I saw that these creatures of disease, these invaders, were feasting on a million tiny Graciellas, burrowing into microscopic iterations of her, writhing in silent agony as spirochetes corkscrewed their way into her.

Later I would wonder at the artistry of the Game Master, at the vibrant but sadistic imagination he brought to his duty. But seeing this creature, seeing this embodiment of disease and corruption, I could only wish that I might somehow stop the images from imprinting themselves on my memory. Later I could achieve a shaky objectivity, but not now, not now.

Still muted, Nicolet screamed in silent terror. She screamed until her face was red and bathed in sweat. She screamed until I thought her eyes would be forced from their sockets.

Oliver vomited. Haarm was almost as badly affected.
I wondered if he had ever encountered the Master of the Game, and if so in what guise he had appeared.

Messenger and the Master of the Game spoke the ritual words that consigned Oliver's fate to the game.

“This is the game,” the Game Master said in a voice that was so perfect a re-creation of Graciella's own soft alto that it sent a chill up my spine. “The game is called Hangman.”

“Hangman,” Oliver said, wary of believing his luck. “You mean, like guessing the letters in a word?”

The Master of the Game waved a hand and from the surrounding mist appeared a set that was reassuringly familiar, a large chalkboard with nine short horizontal lines for letters.

“A word,” the Game Master said. “Nine letters. Each time you miss, a body part is added. There are seven portions: head, shoulders, left arm, right arm, torso, left leg, right leg. You may guess only consonants. Each wrong guess adds a part. You may purchase a vowel, but doing so will cost you a body part.”

I saw Oliver relax a little. He was an intelligent boy and thought he would win. An intelligent boy, but not one familiar with the ways of the Game Master.

Unlike Oliver, I was not terribly surprised when rather than a glittery wheel, a shape that has terrified the wicked for centuries appeared at the far end of the stage.

It was a platform made of rough wood. It was raised atop thirteen steps. And on that high platform stood two stout upright beams buttressed at the base. A crossbeam connected the two uprights, and it, too, was strengthened by short angled segments. In all it formed a wide, upside-down
U
.

It was a gibbet. A gallows, lacking only a noose.

“Okay, my first letter is—”

But the Master of the Game was not done and Oliver fell silent as he saw “Graciella's” mouth open wide, wider, too wide so that if she were real her jaw must have come unhinged.

A blue-black tongue, split at the end, shot from that mouth, and withdrew as though it had tasted the air and not liked what it found. The next details visible were eyes, one on either side of the tongue that now tasted again and withdrew, again and withdrew. These eyes were dully polished brass balls, split by pointed vertical ovals, forming the irises.

Snake's eyes.

The head of the snake now pushed out, as big as “Graciella's” distended mouth could accommodate. Inch after inch the scaled body followed, and then foot after foot, until the snake's head drooped to the stage floor. Four feet. Six feet. Eight feet. More. It was impossible, of course, the snake in all its glory was bigger than the body from which it had emerged. But we were in a world not limited by the possible.

At last the tail appeared and the snake slithered quickly to the platform, slithered sidewinder style up the thirteen steps, curled itself around one of the uprights and maypoled around it till it reached the crossbeam.

By now Oliver could see where this was going. He tried to make a joke of it. “What, you couldn't just buy rope?”

The Master of the Game was not bothered by the quip. The truly powerful do not need to insist on their power, they have merely to possess it.

The snake crawled out onto the crossbeam, looped its tail around the beam, and dropped its head. It writhed a little, but otherwise seemed content to hang there.

“Begin,” the Game Master said.

“Okay, no vowels, right?” Oliver licked his lips and I could see him sounding out various possibilities. “
T
!” he cried at last.

On the chalkboard the fourth line sprouted a letter
T.

_ _ _ T _ _ _ _ _

“Yeah. Okay,” Oliver said, feeling a possible escape ahead. “Okay, next letter,
D
.”

What happened then was too sudden and too swift for human eyes to follow. The snake shot forward as fast as its own flicked tongue, it extended well beyond its own length. It moved so fast that it created a loud crack, like a bullwhip. It wrapped around Oliver's neck and sliced bloodlessly through his flesh and bone.

The snake withdrew as fast as it had flung itself forward, and when it came to rest, Oliver's head and neck hung in a living noose.

This at last brought a shocked cry from Haarm. I was proud of the fact that I did not react: I had already guessed the nature of this particular game of Hangman.

Oliver's headless body remained standing. I might
not have recoiled in shock, but I stared in fascinated horror at the sight of a still-living body, minus its head and neck, standing. Even more than the sight of Oliver's head hanging from the noose, this fascinated me.

It was even more disturbing to Oliver who shrieked, somehow still able to speak though his lungs were now ten feet from his vocal cords. His eyes stared, incredulous, at his own body.

“This can't be,” he said.

It's the sort of thing I used to say when I was still new to the powers of Isthil's servants.

“This is a nightmare. I'm just having a dream. This is all—”

“Next letter,” the Master of the Game urged blandly.

“This is bull!” Oliver yelled. “This is insane! I'm waking up now. I'm waking up now! Now!”

It could have been comical. It was like something out of an old cartoon: a head entirely apart from its body, hanging from a snake's noose, and ordering himself to wake up.

When he kept yelling and ignoring the order to choose a letter, the Game Master summoned an hourglass with swift-falling sand. “Choose before the last
grain falls or a body part will be added.”

“Um . . . okay, okay . . . um, um . . .
E
!”

In his panic, Oliver had chosen a vowel. The
E
appeared on the chalkboard in the second spot. But in payment a line of light sliced across his standing body from shoulder to shoulder, and all that was above that line appeared now, attached to the hanging head and neck.

_ E _ T _ _ _ _ _

Oliver's arms remained behind, attached now to nothing, but still in their place.

The weight of his shoulders added to his head dragged Oliver downward. The snake noose tightened. Oliver tried to scream but his larynx was being crushed and the sound that came out was a pitiful croak.

The hourglass turned of its own accord.

“This isn't a game,” Haarm said. He looked more anxious than horrified.

“
L
!” Oliver managed to say, and with that his left arm flew to attach itself to his shoulder. The additional weight was cutting off the flow of blood to his brain, and he grabbed the snake noose with his one arm and managed to lessen the pressure enough to say, “
N
.”

Here followed one of the more unusual moments I've ever experienced in one of the Game Master's games. The Game Master, still in Graciella's young voice, asked, “
M
or
N
?”

“
N
!” Oliver grated.

“Like Netherworld? Or like Malech?”

“Like . . . like . . . nine!”

“Mine?” the Master of the Game repeated.

I do not believe for a moment that the Game Master had a sense of humor. That would be impossible. And yet . . .

“Or like never?”

“Never! Never!”

And with that Oliver found his other arm. Both hands now gripped the noose and this was enough to allow him to scream curses for several seconds as sand rushed too quickly from teardrop to teardrop in the hourglass. Seconds before the last grain fell, Oliver gasped, “
H
!”

Without comment, two letters appeared on the board. It now read:

H E _ T _ _ _ H _

I solved the puzzle. But the audience must never
shout out answers. So I kept my peace.

“
R
!”

And yes, there was an
R
in the sixth place. But a wrongly guessed
S
added his torso, leaving just his legs still standing in place.

The weight doubled as his body, from pelvis upward, joined the rest of him and dragged him down. He strained with both hands, biceps quivering, neck a twist of arteries and distended tendons, face shining from sweat, eyes bulging.

Oliver was very frightened now. Nicolet no longer looked as if she regretted not playing.

And Haarm was becoming agitated. He kept looking over his shoulder as if expecting someone to arrive and put a stop to this vicious game.

I glanced at Messenger, wondering whether he had noticed Haarm's distraction, but Messenger refused to meet my eyes and instead looked fixedly at Oliver. At what was now most of Oliver.

“I . . . ca . . . I . . .” Oliver was choking as his arms weakened.

“Are you choosing the letter
I
?” “Graciella” asked innocently.

“Chhh . . . chhggr . . . no . . . letter . . .
P
!”

And yes, as I had guessed, there was a
P
in the third slot.

H E P T _ R _ H _

It seemed obvious to me now, but then I had heard the word frequently since adopting my new duties as apprentice. It was not otherwise a common word, not a word Oliver was likely to have on the tip of his tongue.

That tongue now bulged between his lips. It had turned a dark red color. The muscles in his body strained to hold the choking weight.

With a supreme effort Oliver pulled himself up just enough to gasp, “
B
!”

His left leg now hung from the rest of him and kicked at the air, seeking something to rest upon. It hung just eight or ten inches above the platform. Too far for Oliver, and too heavy. The additional weight caused him to lose his grip on the noose and he swung, voiceless, airless, while the sand fell through the hourglass.

One more wrong letter and he would lose.

But he could not speak. His hands had been dropped to his side so that circulation could be restored, but I doubted he would have strength enough to rise for the
last letters, the letters that might save him.

Yet I had underestimated the drug-dealing pimp, for he found a last reservoir of strength and managed to gasp, “
C
!”

H E P T _ R C H _

He had it now. I could see that he had it. There was desperate awareness in eyes now bulging out of his face above tongue turned black.