Irena Pantera seemed particularly desperate that her stepmother be found before her father awakened at sunset. Whether it was out of concern for him or for herself, I could not tell. Even those familial bonds that survive a "turning" are never really quite the same. How can they be when the person turned loses their humanity? Whichever her motivation—dutiful daughter or daddy's little thrall—it was the leverage Mama Samm needed to get us admitted to the "holy of holies."
<So where do we look, first?> I asked as we were let into Marie Laveau's chambers.
My physical host loosed a mental snort. >You s'posed to own a detective agency. So, start detectin'.<
<But you're the one who knows her. Has had steady communications with her these past few months. Maybe we should—>
"Please do not disturb anything," Irena said as she turned a switch on an external lighting circuit. "My stepmother would be very angry if she thought I had come in here. I don't know what she would do if she discovered that I had brought outsiders into her peristyle." Bare bulbs nursed reddish sparks to fully whitened glows, illuminating the cavernous room.
Tapestries softened the harshness of the stone-block walls but couldn't diminish the effect of the room's vast dimensions. Laveau's furniture would have been ornate in the parlors of old New Orleans' historical houses. Down here in this echoing, warehouse setting they took on the appearance of cheap, dollhouse furnishings.
There was a bed—no need for the comforting confines of a coffin so far underground—and a row of armoires, some containing clothing, others serving as organizers for relics and apothecarial supplies. Being limited to the use of Mama Samm's eyes, it was hard to examine much in the way of evidence when her head kept swinging this way and that.
<If you want me to detect, you need to slow down!>
"There's an altar," she announced abruptly. Irena stared at her. I would have, too, if there had been any way to take a couple of steps back. For all of their history, Marie Laveau and Sammathea D'Arbonne had never met anywhere but on neutral ground. "Somewhere near by!"
She cast about like a dog attempting to pick up a scent.
And we saw it together: large tapestries covered the walls to our left and right as we came through the door. But the wall on the opposite side was a curtain, not a tapestry.
Mama Samm approached it with her arms out, hands extended, and palms forward.
<I've got a bad feeling about this. . .>
>Oh, hush up! You sound jus' like them bad movies you always watchin'.<
<Those "bad" movies, as you call them, are actually educational. You can learn all sorts of things from them.>
>Like what?<
<Like—the killer is never really dead. No matter how many times you dispatch him. Or when you find a dead body don't split up and go out alone in the dark to look for clues. . . . >
>Mmm-hmm. And, of course, don't get naked to take showers or have sex in creepy old houses, or wear nighties with high heels in case you have to start running.<
<Good advice, wouldn't you say?>
She shook her head as she reached out to touch the heavy, dark curtain. >First of all, Cséjthe, there ain't much chance that we are going to split up. Second, I ain't taking no shower nor wearing no nightie and I sure as hell ain't running—in high heels or anything else, for that matter.<
<Well, we haven't discussed the more fundamental rules,> I argued, as she pulled the edge of the drape aside. <Like the one about the monster always being on the other side of the door.>
>This is a curtain, not a door,< she snapped, as she pulled the split open wider.
The monster was on the other side of the curtain.
Call it a Sigourney Weaver moment.
Or maybe not.
The actress who inhabited the role of Lieutenant Ellen Ripley in the first four Alien movies was mercifully absent in the fifth Alien vs. Predator installment. In other words, she wasn't around—cinematically speaking—to see the intergalactic trophy hunters take on the face-hugging, chest-bursting, acid-blooded, extendible-double-dentifriced denizens of LV-426.
So, lacking the reference points for those particular close-encounters-of-the-third kinds, she certainly wouldn't/couldn't imagine the flipside.
I'm talking about the other kind of "close encounter."
Despite the unlikely biological gestalt, my first impression in looking at the thing that reared up on the other side of Laveau's false wall, was that at least one "Alien" and one "Predator" had eschewed the polemics of their peers and slapped make love, not war bumper stickers on their respective spacecraft. More than that, they had made the two-backed star beast.
Performed personal docking maneuvers.
Linked life support, engaged thrusters, ejected a payload or two—spawning the thing that lurked on the other side of Laveau's curtained divider.
Bad enough either species might have the bad taste to reproduce. The thought that they might cross-pollinate and produce a love child twice as hideous? Well, a single glance at Junior here was enough to guarantee the passage of any extraterrestrial miscegenation laws that the rest of the universe might want to legislate.
In theory, that is, because our particular monster was a statue.
Fortunately.
Because nothing that hideous—that appalling—could actually exist outside of a seriously twisted imagination.
Except . . .
<Okay. I know who this is.>
>Ah . . . < There was a moaning sound far back in the depths of Mama Samm's mind. >I was afraid of this . . . <
<It's Gnarly.>
I felt the double take without her actually moving her head. >What?<
<Whatsisname. Nyarlathotep. Ole tentacle puss.>
I mean it was pretty simple to figure out. Laveau was hardly the type to go in for movie collectibles. And this thing didn't quite match up to the aforementioned creature features. The first glaring dichotomy was that someone had replaced this thing's head with a mutant octopus. After that anomaly, other bits—like the scaly body and the long, narrow wings that emerged from its shoulders like an ill-fitting Burberry trencher—were evidence that Moby Squid, here, had nothing to do with either Hollywood franchise. In fact, the prodigious claws on its hind and fore feet seemed almost quaint after taking in the tentacled face for the third or fourth time.
And, while I'd never laid eyes on such a diverse collection of grotesqueries in a single critter, there could be only one pseudopod Pinnochio on the suspect list . . .
Except . . . >This is not a graven image of Nyarlathotep, Cséjthe.<
<It isn't?>
>No.<
<Oh. Well then. Who? Or what . . . is it?>
>Don't you know?<
<Doctor Octopus?> I ventured.
>What? No!<
<Dr. Zoidberg?>
> <
<Billy the Squid?>
>I do not know why I even asked.<
<I don't know why you asked, either. Obviously you know; I don't. So, tell me.>
>I was testing to see if a link had been established.<
<Meaning?>
> <
<Davy Jones? From Pirates of the Caribbean—not The Monkees, of course.>
>Stop making up these ridiculous guesses!<
<Then tell me what I want to know!>
"What is it?" Pantera asked.
<Yeah, what is it?>
"Child . . ." Mama Samm turned away from the grotesque carving in green stone and stared blindly back at the door on the far side of the room. ". . . we gots to find Marie Laveau soon as possible! Her life is in great danger!"
<It is?>
>Yes,< she answered me with uncharacteristic grimness. >We got to kill the Vampire Queen of New Orleans before she can bring about the end of the world!<
Irena went to work searching for any clues that might help us locate her stepmother, totally unaware that Mama Samm was plotting Laveau's murder. While the stepdaughter combed through her personal effects, the juju woman concentrated on Laveau's tools of the trade. Me? I was just along for the ride.
The statue stood upon a crude altar against the stone wall just ten feet beyond. By now I had seen a few voodoo shrines and altars but the collection of trinkets, offerings, and spell components weren't like anything I had run across in illustrated books much less up close and personal. But then I doubted Marie Laveau would practice any form of Voudon like anyone else.
Above the arcane workspace—above the statue that reared over us as we approached—cryptic symbols were scratched and clawed, like a mad etching from some meaningless alphabet:
La Mayyitan Ma Qadirun Yatabaqqa Sarmadi
<It doesn't look like French,> I observed. <Maybe Yoruba. If it's a clue, we should copy it down. Perhaps one of the voodoo shops has African connect—>
"That is not dead which can eternal lie," Mama Samm intoned, staring at the eerie inscription. "And, with strange eons, even death may die!"
<Well . . . that's disturbing . . . >
"What does it mean?" Irena asked.
"They are the words of the Mad Arab."
<"Osama bin Laden?>" Irena and I asked together.
"What? No! I speak of Abdul Alhazred, the madman! He who brought forth Al Azif from the Nameless City in the wastes below Irem and in his final days in the cursed sector of Damascus, during fell days of the eighth century!"
I stole a glance at Irena, out of the corner of Mama Samm's eye. Clearly we were simpatico: she was as baffled as I.
"So that would be a big 'no' to my second guess," she reasoned aloud; "Jafar from Disney's Aladdin, as well?"
I was starting to like this girl.
My hostess, however, turned her attention back to the altar with disgruntled musings on the inadequacies of today's educational system.
Since I had to look where she looked, we contemplated the shimmery topography of Laveau's voodoo workstation.
What first appeared to be a riot of color, shape, and purpose slowly emerged to the patient eye as an ever-shifting pattern of geometric shapes, like an ever-evolving equation in three dimensions. Beads of various hues, sizes, and configurations flowed in cacophonous strands over and under and around and about everything: strands of pearls and gems, Mardi Gras leis and rosary chains—the latter ritually defaced and changed into something foul and fell. The chromatic rainbows of droplets seemed to be in constant motion, appearing and disappearing in the shimmering landscape like herds of tiny chameleons, transforming and redefining their relationships with their surroundings.
Two books were immediately visible in the roiling collage. They were positioned side by side with uncharacteristic precision. Mama Samm picked up the one to the left and looked at the title: L'Île Mystérieuse. A quick perusal of the book's interior revealed two things: that the text was in French and a portion of one line had been highlighted: 34°57' S 150°30' W. Repeatedly fanning the pages revealed no other markings or notes but the author's name gave us some additional context. We were holding an old French edition of Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island.
The other book was in English and of more recent vintage: And The Sea Will Tell by Vincent Bugliosi. A quick perusal of the contents yielded another highlighted set of coordinates: 5°52' N 162°6' W.
>What do these numbers mean?< Mama Samm asked me.
<They're geographical coordinates. Longitude and latitude—>
>I know that. You're the boat person. Where are they? What do they have in common?<
<What do I look like, a world atlas? I need charts. Though I'm pretty sure of two things. Both locations would be somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. And both probably refer to islands.>
>Anything else?<
I shrugged. Or tried, anyway. Not having my own body or having it while wearing a straightjacket—pretty much the same end result. <One's from a book by a French science fiction author back in the 1870s and the other's from a book by the guy who prosecuted Charlie Manson back in the 1970s.>
Mama Samm flipped to the front. >Says 1991 here.<
I tried shrugging again. <Different case. Try digging around and see if Laveau's got Helter Skelter tucked away in there.>
Mama Samm plunged her hands into the shimmering sea of beads, bowls, and offerings and pulled another book to its chroma-keyed surface. It seemed to resist her efforts to extract it but, with a mighty heave, it finally pulled free.
It was an old, leather-bound tome, heavy with thick, parchment-like pages. Mama Samm examined the fine, golden-brown binding, marred only by a stippled, circular impression near the outer corner. <What's that?> I asked as she held the book a little further away.
>A nipple.<
<A . . . nipple . . . ? Like as in . . . ?>
>Yes, Cséjthe, this accursed thing is bound in human skin.<
Well.
Okay.
I mean, yuck, but it's not like this sort of thing is totally unheard of.
The practice of binding books in human skin was not completely uncommon in centuries past: some of our country's finest libraries have such books in their collections.
Put your library card back in your pocket, psycho nerd: they're not out on the public shelves.
A lot of said volumes are medical texts where the doctor/author had access to skin from amputated parts, patients' bodies that went unclaimed, executed criminals, medical school cadavers, and the very poor—who never had much say over their own lives while still breathing and even less after they had stopped.
A 1568 anatomy text by the Belgian surgeon, Andreas Vesalius, resides in Brown University's John Hays Library. The College of Physicians of Philadelphia has several volumes bound by Dr. John Stockton Hough, who diagnosed the city's first case of trichinosis. He used some of that patient's skin to provide covers for three of his tomes.
And while some physicians were credited with the practice as a means of honoring some patients and/or providing an educational tie-in to informative works, other books have a decidedly unsavory hint of marketing attached. Two nineteenth century editions of The Dance of Death—a medieval morality tale on the theme of how death prevails over all, rich and poor—are bound in human skin.
An 1837 copy of George Walton's memoirs was bound in his own skin. Walton, a highwayman of some repute, bequeathed his own hide-bound book to one of his victims. No doubt with some "pound of flesh" joke invoked at some point in the process.
The Cleveland Public Library has a Quran that may have been bound in the skin of its previous owner, an Arab tribal leader. I shudder to think what the Vatican may have tucked away in its secret archives.
<So . . . what sort of book would Marie Laveau have on her altar, bound in human—it is human—?>
>Yes.<
<—human skin, that could contribute to the kind of sympathetic magic that would bring about the end of the world?> The skeptic in me was uncomfortable with voodoo having any kind of influence outside of the tourist industries for New Orleans and Haiti. Of course, the skeptic in me was uncomfortable with the concept of vampires and werewolves and demons and elves when you get right down to it.
She opened the book and gasped.
Actually, there was no sharp intake of breath. A "gasp" is the closest analog I have to my host's reaction to the spiked script that slashed across the pages in crabbed lines. The inside of her head seemed to grow dark as if all of the light in the room had dimmed and a simultaneous eclipse of the sun had commenced outside. The darkness seemed to roil with menace and inaudible voices that gibbered and whispered just beyond the range of human hearing.
Irena did gasp, though. "Is it the Necronomicon?"
<Necronomicon? What's that? The Phonebook of the Dead?>
Mama Samm ignored me and rounded on Laveau's stepdaughter. "What do you know of such things, little girl? A Latin or Greek translation of that monstrous work would be an abomination beyond telling! But this!" she hissed, shoving it toward Irena like a weapon, "this, is far worse! It is one of the Al Azif—the original Arabic texts of Abdul Alhazred the Mad! No original copy of the source material has been known to have survived the first millennium!"
Until now apparently.
<And yet like a long overdue library book—> I mused.
>That's it! I need to be getting you outta my head and finding you another ride back home, now.<
<What? No way. Not without my peeps! And you can use my help—>
>You are a distraction and you are using up conjure memory that I am likely to—<
She had opened the book and was turning the pages as if each piece of parchment had been dipped in excrement. Dozens of handwritten notes had been scribbled in the margins—in a variety of handwriting styles and inks. Two notations seemed to jump off the page with unnerving vitality.
Additional coordinates: 47°9' S 126°43' W and 49°51' S 128°34' W.
Without setting the book down Mama Samm fished through her valise-sized purse and landed her cell phone.
"Um," Irena said, "cell phones don't work down here. You can't get a signal."
"Can't, huh?" Mama Samm touched the phone to her forehead and whispered something that even I couldn't hear. Then she hit number six on her speed dial and within two rings Zotz was on the other end of the connection.
"Everything all right?" my erstwhile caretaker asked.
"Didn't anyone ever tell you the proper way to answer the phone is to say 'hello'?" Her voice lacked its accustomed snap.
"Caller ID," he answered. "I knew it was you."
"I got an assignment for you."
"Oh goody. My existence has no meaning when I'm not steppin' and fetchin' for your beneficent consideration and past kindnesses."
"This is for Mister Chris," she said sourly.
"That's different; I actually am in his debt."
"I need you to do some research for us—him. Can you go online without getting distracted by all the nasty stuff?"
He sniffed. "The fact that my studies of the human condition include research on human sexuality—a major factor in human motivation to both create and destroy—does not mean that I am a porn addict, madam. I merely seek clarity."
"Yeah? Well, I got some numbers for you to clarify. You got a pencil?"
"Gimme a moment."
While Zotz rummaged for a writing implement, I whispered in her—um—"ear" to ask after our own, personal homeland security.
"Ready whenever you are, S.D."
"Before we continue I need to ask you a question," she said, shooting a sidelong glance at Laveau's stepdaughter.
"What? Like Truth or Dare?"
"No. Like how's the fishing up your way? I hear it's so good the fish are just climbing out of the river and into your boat. Are they still biting?"
"Uh, that's a big negatory there, Big Mama. But we are taking no chances. I've got spear guns and firearms stashed everywhere, the weapons lockers are unlocked, and I've rigged a dozen homemade depth charges. The fish-finders are alarmed and running night and day. No one's sticking their feet in the water and anything sticks its head out, I'm taking it off."
"Good to know. I'm gonna give you four sets of numbers, now. They're geographical coordinates in latitude and longitude. Do you know what that—"
"I know what longitude and latitude are; just give me the damn numbers. And tell me if 'his nibs' is all okay."
"He is. That's all I can say at the moment."
"Got company, huh?"
"You're smarter than you look. Of course, you'd have to be just to walk erect."
"Yeah, I love you, too. Gimme the numbers: Olive's coming over shortly to see if her nephew needs changin'. I'll make a run to the library then."
She repeated the four sets of coordinates, they exchanged a couple more unpleasantries and she refolded her phone and dropped it back into her bag.
"Um, Miss Sammathea?" Irena tugged on our arm. "I know there's no love lost between you and my stepmother. And this . . . book . . . means that she's probably crossed a line that—well—there's probably no uncrossing. But if saving the world could coincide with saving Marie Laveau from herself?" She looked up at us with large, liquid brown eyes. "Well, that wouldn't be such a bad thing, would it?"
Mama Samm gazed back down at her and smiled. I think the smile was meant to be reassuring. I know that it took all kinds of effort. "Where is she, child? Do you know where she's gone?"
Irena nodded. "I think so."
"Tell me."
"Better than that, I'll drive you."
Now it was the juju woman's turn to lay her hand on the young girl's arm. "It would be better if I went alone. Just tell me."
My host fumed all the way to the New Orleans' Museum of Art.
>Another five minutes and I would have figured it out on my own!<
<Sure.>
>The newspaper was lying right there! Opened right to the Arts & Culture section for gods' sakes!<
<Not to mention the clippings taped to the wall above the altar,> I agreed.
>What? Where?<
<I guess that Necri-whatsis book had you sorta distracted.>
>It's hard to concentrate with a babbling fool carryin' on inside your head. Bad enough babysitting one. Now I'm babysitting two!<
"You alright back there?" Irena asked from the front seat. "You haven't said two sentences since we crossed Esplanade Avenue."
"I'm thinking, child." Mama Samm lifted the newspaper from her lap and skimmed the trio of grainy photos accompanying the article on the NOMA exhibition. "Marie Laveau said something about a Russian key. This exhibit contains hundreds of religious icons and artifacts from Russia and it closes tomorrow. The odds are, we're too late to prevent her from taking what she needs for her sorceries . . ."
"But, if we can figure out what she's taken," Pantera's daughter extrapolated, "it might give you a clue as to what sort of a spell she was working on and how to counter it?"
Tap.
Mama Samm nodded but I just folded my nonexistent arms and glowered at the back of Irena's head. <How about she didn't have enough pre-daylight to get into the museum, find her key, get back out, and reach alternate shelter before sunrise? I'm betting she's still holed up inside, somewhere.>
Tap tap.
Mama Samm nodded again, this time for my benefit. >Which is why I didn't want her tagging along. The next time I see Marie Laveau, it won't be a "come, let us reason together" kind of moment.<
Tap-a tap tap.
<Well, at least she's pinned down until dark and sunset's still hours away.>
Tap tap-a tap tap tap-a tapita . . .
"Listen, I'm going to drop you off by the front door," Irena said, putting on her turn signal, "because my umbrella's pretty small and I don't see any parking places under the one-hundred-yard dash."
Thunder boomed in the distance and the tapping of random drops of rain on the car roof moved from background noise to a roar of sound that essentially drowned out any further conversation.
Oncoming traffic switched their headlights on.
Between the back door of Irena's car and the front entrance of the New Orleans Museum of Art, I learned how to curse in Haitian, Yoruba, and some humming-clicking dialect that the old juju woman refused to identify for me.
Maybe it was a passing squall. Rain in Southern Louisiana and the Crescent City, in particular, was both common and transitory, sometimes occurring two to three times a day with hours of sunshine sandwiched in between. This might last twenty minutes, pass on, and we'd have a few more hours of daylight to keep Marie at bay while we searched the museum for her handiwork.
That would be a typical weather scenario.
Unfortunately, typical had gone out the window with tentacle-faced beings from other dimensions and dreamcasts from Deep Space Malign.
<Now what?> I asked, as she snatched up a brochure and began studying the list of exhibition areas.
>We split up and begin searching,< Mama Samm growled. I actually felt the vibrations.
<Hardy har,> I intoned as the thunder outside made an ear-splitting, tearing sound. It stopped "raining." Instead, water fell out of the sky as if some cosmic reservoir had, indeed, been ripped asunder.
>Irena and I split up,< she clarified. As Irena came slamming though the main entrance, looking like a drowned—well—certainly not a "drowned rat" as the saying typically goes. Her long, dark hair was plastered to her head, shoulders, and back so that the tips of her ears poked out like little kitty-cat triangles. Similarly, her shirt was now reapplied to the sweet curves of her upper body like a second coat of paint, semitransparent where the swell of bosom stressed the wet fabric, and leaving little to the imagination. Her jeans drooped on her hips from the weight of waterlogged denim, exposing a two-inch strip of bare, brown belly. Unlike Volpea's, the shadowed whorl of her navel was still empty and virginal.
>Will you keep your mind on the business at hand?< Mama Samm snapped, giving me a sharp mental elbow. >What would Miss Lupé think?<
<She already thinks the worst, so what should I care? Besides, I'm not really interested because—among so many other things—she is too young.>
>Not to mention, a lesbian.<
<Will you stop?>
She turned to Irena. "Baby, we can cover more ground if we split up. Why don't you take—"
Pantera's daughter shook her head, creating a small rainstorm of her own. "I'm sticking with you. If you find my stepmother first, I need to be there!" It was clear to both of us that arguing the issue would just waste more time.
Mama Samm sighed. "All right, let's go."
We headed for the main gallery with Irena trailing slightly behind, making squishy sounds in her wet sneakers.
The overall theme for the exhibition was "Windows on Russia" but most of the collections on display were religious icons and relics ranging from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries.
<So what are we looking for?> I asked. Irena voiced the same question just a half second later.
"I'm afraid this is more of an 'I'll know it when I see it' situation," she replied. >I hope.<
As we walked, she explained how icons were usually painted upon a wooden base or icon board which, in turn, was composed of several parts bound together and backed by planks. The picture is painted in the "ark," a shallow, rectangular groove or depression that has been primed with a covering of fabric, glue, and chalk and then covered with an initial coating of dark, red-brown or greenish paint. Ochre or whiting was applied, depending on the subject to be portrayed. After the portrait of saint or savior was accomplished, additional touch-ups were applied in gold, called "assist." While these were initially radial lines associated only with images of the Christ, they eventually ended up gilding everything by the fifteenth century. And, if gold wasn't enough, precious gems were included in some icons, and holy relics were embedded in more than a few.
Since the icons were at the centers of not only the churches and the church services but the very religious practices of many communities—which meant they spent a lot of time being kissed, touched, carried, incensed, holy watered, and hanging about in close proximity to generations of beeswax candles—they were further layered in ornate frames called "oklads," which were more like metal covers with cutouts designed to display the faces, hands, feet, or key elements of the icon enclosed within. These oklads were often made of silver or gold with elaborate workmanship and additional jewels, gems, and engravings and, in some cases, were capable of holding multiple icons and were called iconostases.
The question was, which would Marie Laveau deem most suitable for her dark purposes?
And how would the former voodoo queen handle such a sacred object now that she was of the undead persuasion?
As we slowly made our way to the eleventh and twelfth century galleries, we worked out a process where I would scan the even-numbered icons and their accompanying cards while Mama Samm took in the odd-numbered displays immediately adjacent. Irena made several attempts to find out what Mama Samm intended to do when they found her stepmother, as she worked the other side of the room. The conversation was rather choppy as other patrons occasionally drifted within earshot. Mama Samm tried to use these occasions to end the conversation but it was clear that Irena wasn't ready to shut up. Mama Samm's attempts to stonewall her only seemed to make her that much more determined to keep the conversation going.
And when she saw the old fortune-teller wasn't about to respond to any further lines of inquiry regarding Marie Laveau, Irena did the next best thing. As we moved into the gallery displaying the Pre-Mongol Period icons, she changed the subject.
"Tell me about the vampire demon you serve," she said. "Tell me about Domo Cséjthe!"
<S'cuse me?>
Mama Samm didn't bat an eye. "What do you want to know, child?"
"I've heard so many stories about him!" Irena continued. "Most of them are so unbelievable yet there must be something to them or my own stepmother would not fear him so. Is it true that he has already slain twenty wampyri lords as well as the Domans' Dracula and Báthory?"
<Gee, how Tolkienesque,> I observed. <The tale grows with the telling.>
"No, Miss Irena, these kinds of stories inevitably get the facts wrong," my host explained. "The count of slain vampire alphas is closer to forty, by now, with numerous attached lines wiped out in the bargain . . ." she continued.
<Actually more of a surrogate accomplishment,> I mused. <I didn't actually get my hands dirty. Or bloody. Much . . . >
" . . . the Countess Báthory was actually a demon in disguise, bringing the number of hellspawn destroyed to four . . ."
<Four? Including Kadeth Bey and that fire elemental, I only count three! How do you figure four?>
" . . . and Dracula lives but as Domo Cséjthe's thrall."
<Thrall?> I couldn't believe my ears! Come to think of it, I couldn't believe her ears! <You're making Vlad Dracul Bassarab V my thrall? Oh great! Once he hears that there won't be a hole deep enough! He's gonna be really pissed!>
"Is he tall, dark, and handsome?" Irena wanted to know.
"Tall? Yes."
<Go on. You're on a roll. Tell her I'm nine feet tall and eat lightning and crap thunder.>
>You full o'crap, all right,< she thought back at me. To Irena: "And dark. But handsome? I don't think 'good-looking' would be one of the terms to come to mind for anyone setting eyes on him for the first time."
<Well, finally back onto the main road, are we? Let's just stick to the truth from here on out. Wait, here's a better idea: let's just change the subject altogether!>
"Domo Cséjthe exudes a dark charisma that is irresistible over time," she continued. "It is how he draws others to his cause without using mind control or domination."
<What? Wait—>
"Oh yes," Irena breathed. "I understand he has taken many concubines!"
"I can't begin to keep count," Mama Samm answered.
<Now who's full of crap?>
"Is it true that the vampire lords are jealous and fear that he will sire a generation like himself through the wombs of the wampyri?" Irena continued. "That many of their females will turn to him for his potency after centuries of barrenness?"
"Word do get around," Mama Samm replied with a smile.
<What are you doing?>
"And that he is equipped—" Irena hesitated and her face turned a color to match the background ochre in half a dozen of the nearest icons. "—well, do they really call it 'The Stake'?"
<Oh. My. God. She thinks I'm some kind of undead porn star!>
>A star is born,< she agreed.
<Well, we've got to nip this in the bud! Tell her the truth! And find out where she heard this nonsense so we can . . . we can . . . >
>Oh, settle down! Ain't you learned nothin' from riding your big, bad, not-so-true reputation these past couple of years?< she scolded. >Your enemies will always seek to exploit the weaknesses and the motivations of the Christopher Cséjthe they know, not the one that you actually are. As long as those two peoples ain't the same, you've got some maneuvering room. Once you start feeding them the facts instead of fiction, your cover is lost and you is way too outnumbered to play fair wit' them odds. 'Sides, do you really want me to tell this lovely young thing dat the real Mister Chris is this pathetic, lonely man whose closest encounter with the opposite sex these past six months, has been with a gay shapeshifter who was only pretending to be interested so she could trick him into getting trapped inside her flesh for purposes other than pleasure or procreation?<
<Gee,> I answered, <when you put it that way, I don't know why I even bother to carry my privates around with me, these days. Maybe I should put them in a little bitty coffin and bury them in my back yard. Oh, wait, I live on a boat: I don't have a back yard, anymore.>
>Oh, calm down, Mister Chris. At least you still have yours wit' you. Nobody chopped 'em off and put 'em on display in a museum halfway around the world like they did to this po' fool . . . <
I followed the nod of her head and saw that we had arrived at the entrance to a side room. Inside, the displays were confined to the artifacts and items relating to the last of the tsars: Nicholas and the royal family.
And not just the end of the Russian Romanov dynasty, but a unique tribute to the man who directly and indirectly brought doom down upon them: Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin.
The Mad Monk.
As I stared into the room beyond, it took a moment for me to realize what the fortune-teller meant by her last comment. Then I saw it: one of the track lights was focused like a baby spot on a glass cylinder that sat upon an elevated dais. The liquid within seemed to glow with a blue-white radiance of its own accord. The placard beside it proclaimed the contents within to be Rasputin's . . . er . . . genitalia.
Yikes!
And yuck for the second time within the past hour.
Albert Einstein's body was cremated after his death in 1955. His brain, however, was preserved in a jar for many years thereafter. Today its remnants reside in a number of jars: the consequence(s) of medical research. Just one of many precedences, I suppose . . .
But pickled privates?
It's true that in another age the organs of certain famous men were kept as—well—trophies. Scientific curiosities. After they had passed on and had no earthly use for them.
Napoleon's "package" was a famous example. And just as Albert Einstein's mental prowess was legendary, so, too, was the would-be emperor when it came to conquests between the sheets. If he'd been half the genius in the field that he was in the bedroom, Bonaparte would have conquered most of the Eastern Hemisphere.
Rasputin's sexual appetites were even more prodigious according to legend. Small wonder that the Russians—who mummified Stalin and Lenin, keeping the latter on display even today in the Red Square—would hang on to a piece of the guy who may have done more for the rise of socialism than Stalin, Lenin, and Trotsky all put together.
As we walked closer, we could see the placard attributed the temporary donation of "Rasputin Junior" to Igor Knyazkin, Chief of the Prostate Research Center at the Russian Academy of Natural Science in St. Petersburg.
Nudge, nudge; wink, wink . . .
According to the placard, the organ in question measured a full thirty centimeters in length—which might go a long way toward explaining this unwashed barbarian's popularity with the ladies of the Russian aristocracy. I mean, being a so-called holy man will only get you so far when you have the table manners of a pig and the body odor to match.
So, given the prodigious dimensions promised by the legend next to the display, it was impossible to not look. We all looked. Stared into the depths of the preservative medium that filled the small "aquarium" on the pedestal.
"I have to say," Irena said after a long, thoughtful pause, "eleven-point-eight inches isn't what it used to be."
Other than the slightly milky liquid, the tank was empty.
Mama Samm didn't say anything but I could tell that she was upset. I doubted it was from disappointment at missing out on hundred-year-old pickled privates.
"Maybe they took it out for—um—cleaning," Irena offered. Then shrugged, straightened up, and prepared to continue the search for a missing icon.
"She took it," Mama Samm said finally. "This is what she came for. This is what she meant by the Russian key."
<What? Are you saying Rasputin had some kind of a magic johnson? What can she do with—with—something like that?> If this was a "key" I didn't even want to think about what kind of a lock it was supposed to open.
>I do not know, yet. I must think. Be still for a while . . . <
While Irena was wandering around in the next gallery, we lingered and studied the abbreviated history of the Mad Monk of St. Petersburg, looking for clues and all the while wondering: what became of the monk, the monk, the monk, the monk. . . .