Primal Scream (4 page)

"Volatile stuff," said Spann.

"I think Moses John has outlived his usefulness to Grizzly. I suspect the doomsday cult wants to be rid of him. Does the sundance embrace the spirit of nature or cataclysmic doom?"

"What'd you say to John?"

"No one's been killed in the standoff so far. They have my word we'll be fair if they come out peacefully, and give up whoever shot the headless man frozen in the ice. He said he didn't know what I was talking about. I said it would show good faith if they let us remove the body, and he spoke to you."

"Let's go," said Spann.

George turned to Dodd. "The body's waiting at Zulu base. Follow the road two klicks west from the lake. In the woods. On the left. You'll see it."

The snowmobiles parted at right angles, going west and north, Spann seated motorcycle-style behind George. They followed the plane skids back across the lake, the snow drifting around them from gusts of cross wind, and tumbling thicker and thicker as they advanced. The roar of the engine was a blasphemy to Nature, personified in every aspect of the Great Lone Land. Then suddenly over Ghost Keeper's shoulder she saw the ghosts, two snowmen on the northern shore. As the snowmobile came to a halt twenty feet from land, they shook the flakes from their clothes to reveal themselves.

Two native men.

One with a gun.

The gunman was dressed in combat fatigues. Over top was a sweatshirt emblazoned with a portrait of Almighty Voice, the Plains Cree blown to death by cannons during a showdown with the Mounted in 1897. His lower face was masked by a kerchief in Haida patterns worn like a Wild West outlaw under a blue beret. His rifle was a surplus Lee Enfield No. 1, World War II vintage with a ten-shot magazine of .303 British cartridges. Spann pegged Voice as one of Grizzly's men.

Spiritual leader Moses John bared his pride to the sky, long black hair in two braids woven with beads and feathers. Over an antique breastplate of wampum shells, his great-grandfather's winter robe draped to the snow. Wary eyes watched as George turned the snowmobile about so it faced south, and left the motor idling with Spann in the saddle for a quick getaway. In one mitt the holy man gripped an eagle feather.

Trudging through the drift, George met John at the lakeshore.

What they said to each other, Spann couldn't hear, but eventually John motioned Voice to store the En-field hi the branches of a tree, then move to a position some distance away. George returned to the snowmobile to ask for Spann's Smith, which she withdrew from the holster under her parka.

"Go to him," said Ghost Keeper, placing the pistol on the snowmobile's seat. "He'll answer questions about the body at the falls."

Breath billowing like smoke signals, Spann tramped across the buried ice to the lakeshore. Up close, Moses John's stare was evangelical.

"Who killed the man in the ice?" she asked.

"Not us," said John.

"Did you know the body was there?"

"No," he replied.

"The man was shot with an arrow. Any suspicions by whom?"

"I may have spied his killer hunting in the woods. On the bluff above the falls in the twilight before the freeze."

"Who?" pressed the Mountie.

As the Indian stepped forward to meet her eye to eye, a blast of wind cleared the snowfall from sightlines to the sundance forest. The answer the sergeant thought she heard uttered was "The white man ..." But no sooner had the phrase escaped from the native's mouth than one side of his head exploded in a shower of blood and bone and brain.

Voice ran for the rifle.

Spann for the snowmobile.

The wind opened and closed the snow in a series of curtain calls.

Grabbing her pistol, Spann swung backward onto the seat, throwing an arm behind her to grip Ghost Keeper's shoulder. "Let's get out of here!" she cried and braced for acceleration, the jerk as they left yanking her gun arm into the air, and that's when she saw the Enfield's muzzle aimed at her heart.

Voice pulled the trigger.

The shot found its mark.

And the force of the slug slamming her heart slammed Spann back against Ghost Keeper's spine.

Vancouver

Round and round went the tape in the tape recorder playing on the desk. . . .

". . . but what I remember most of all is those rings piercing her lips.

"Suzannah's lips.

"Suzannah was my Mother.

"It was Mardi Gras time in New Orleans. ..."

Jazz was in the streets, where it wafted up on the warm night air, this musical mix of ragtime and bop and boogie-woogie and swing, drifting up over the heads of drunken revelers snaking through the French Quarter, up over the mingling of rich and poor, of black and white, of priest and libertine, higher up over the surging mob crowded eight deep, some on scaffolds, some on stepladders, some on the tips of their toes, higher still over parents who sipped pink spirits from hurricane glasses while pushing and jostling children toward the front of the line, children munching on popcorn and hot dogs and apples on a stick, everyone shuffling about on a carpet of confetti and broken bottles. Up rose the jazz over a maze of costumes and masks, "He-Shebas" dressed in drag as butterflies and snails, Comus with his goblet raised in parade to meet Rex, a King Kong here, and a Zigaboo there, and the Queen of Hearts with fig-leafed Adam and Eve. Up from the "Big Shot of Africa" and away from the Zulu King, up from the one-eyed cyclops and away from a cowboy garbed in white leather except his ass was bare, up and away from Royal Street with its banners and limp streamers, up to where the jazz slid softly through the wrought iron balcony to open French doors of Suzannah's House of Pain.

Here the jazz gave way to Elvis on the radio singing "Don't Be Cruel" . . .

". . . I could hear Elvis through the keyhole between my prison and the main room. We lived in this old Lafon house in the French Quarter, the top floor of which was furnished in antiques. Bookcase, credenza, chiffonier, and desk by artisan Prudent Mallard. The clock on the wall su
rrounded by masks a genuine Gus
tav Becker. Here, during Mardi Gras, Mother made a fortune by torturing men. When we arrived from Canada, after she killed Dad, by poisoning him to watch him die before cutting a hole in the lake to bury him in the Arctic, we didn't have a penny. Suzannah found work stripping in sleazy Bourbon Street bars, but soon found kink was where money begged to be made. I spent weeks at a time locked away in that room, light out because she knew how much I dreaded the dark, that keyhole my only window on the world outside. 'Mommy! Mommy, I'm sorry! Forgive me, Mommy! Please!' I would cry while she pranced about her parlor, the rings passing the keyhole each time Suzannah slinked by. When she was high on cocaine—and that was most of the time—Mother used to talk to the masks. ..."

On the wall facing the French doors to the balcony hung carved wooden masks from Africa. A Baga Nimba with an Ashanti fertility head. A Bambara elephant face with an Oule mask from Bobo. Staring vacantly at the door to Sparky's prison were painted masks from the Near or Far East. A mummy mask from Egypt with a Roman mask of Pan. A Japanese Gigaku with a Chinese T'ao T'ieh. Around the keyhole and its teary eye hung faces from pre-Columbian times. An Inca death mask with a Hopi Katchina doll. An Iroquois false face with a Salish spirit mask. Circling the French doors open to greet the masks of Mardi Gras were masks each guilty client would don before she took him downstairs.

Hollow eyes.

On naked flesh.

Bending over the table.

Tearful eye.

At the keyhole.

Fixed on Mother's rings.

The razor blade tapped to the music as she chopped up the white powder, working it into thick lines across the glass table. Rolling a crisp hundred-dollar bill into a tube, she placed it to one nostril and plugged the other, and then inhaled sharply to suck up all the drug. A shudder shook her spine, jiggling her ample breasts, the rouged nipples of which she plucked as she threw back her bald head and groaned an orgasmic "Ahhhhhhhhh . . ." To complete the ritual she wet her index finger and washed it over the surface, then rubbed the residue of coke around her gums.

Also on the tab
le were the texts of her trade:

The 120 Days of Sodom
by the Marquis de Sade.

"A Child Is
Being Beaten" by Sigmund Freud.

"The Discipline of
Pain" by Henry Havelock Ellis.

Psychopathia Sexualis
by Richard von Krafft-Ebing.

Jitterbugged by the drug, Suzannah strutted to the doors and spread her hands high and wide to embrace the fireworks. "Carnival! Flesh, farewell! Mardi Gras!" she cried. "Let the Lupercalian rites begin! Come to me, my lovelies! Pagan, perverse, and unrestrained. Hide those faces, yes. But you can't hide from me. For I know your secrets, and you've been naughty boys. Only punishment will relieve your guilt. And my kind of punishment will cost you dearly. So bring me money, or bring me jewels, and let the blood flow!"

Turning from the balcony, she sashayed across the parlor, rolling her shoulders to twirl her breasts as she did onstage when all those piggy male minds drooled for her body. This bedroom off the parlor was a riot of red and black. The walls were red satin with red velvet drapes to match, the spread on the bed a red patchwork quilt. The carpet was black; the dresser, wardrobe, and washstand were onyx; and each ebony post supporting the canopy of the bed had chains and handcuffs of blackened steel.

This was the room where Mother straightened Sparky out.

On the bed.

"Watch the rings."

With the tools of her trade . . .

". . . saddle straps to separate the buttocks for the bite of the taws. Slave sandals, locking bibs, posture collars, anal probes, cattle prods, choke gags, valved submission helmets, and the like she used upstairs. The heavy-duty stuff was down in the cavern. ..."

Cocaine shivers tingled her skin. Trickles of cold sweat snaked down between her shoulder blades to tickle the small of her back, while her heart beat wildly in a bid to burst out through her breasts. Eyes glazing in a face flushed by blow, she pinched her nose to sniff her head full of snow. She sat across from the Ice Queen in the boudoir mirror and washed a hand with red-lacquered nails across her shaved scalp. The blue veins spreading like fingers reaching up from her temples throbbed with the rapid pulse at which her heart pumped blood. Feline green eyes watched her blacken sultry lids with theater makeup, fingertips working the smoky shadows around the sides of her head. Having cleaned her hands with cream, she chalked her face white, then painted her mouth with bloodred lipstick. Suzannah kissed the mirror.

"You beautiful bitch," she purred.

Feeling ferocious and dominant, she gathered tools and work clothes from the wardrobe, then strode back to the parlor to douse the lights. Bursting over the krewe parades along Royal Street, fireworks flashes danced on her masks, the sightless eyes focused on the keyhole in the door. The flame of the match Suzannah lit to ignite the candelabra flared the eye at the keyhole and caused it to blink.

The gold rings winked.

The chair on which Mother sat, one leg raised high to pull on a stocking, had leg irons affixed low on the rear legs, and handcuffs low on the front legs to grasp the wrists of men bent over bare so she could flog what Shakespeare called "the afternoon of the body." Lifting a red garter belt from the pile of clothes, she pulled back one suspender like a slingshot elastic, then fired the snap at the nearest mask. The whap of the slap rang hollow within the German executioner's mask next to the Beelzebub by Theodore Benda.

"Will you be coming to Mardi Gras for
Gesasserotik
this year? Your
Gauleiterin
is waiting with her bridle, saddle, burs, and spurs. What guilt you carry from what you did during the war, Mein Herr General, so lay those diamonds you smuggle in from Paraguay at my feet, and I will ride you around below like the horse meat you are, until your plump white crupper is one ruby
Mensur
scar. Did you know my father in Vichy France? He collaborated with your ilk, when he wasn't fucking me in the stables of our vineyard. I don't have him, but I have you, Mein S.S. Assman, so
Gesasserotik
it shall be with my Horns of Venus."

Suzannah fastened the garter belt around her waist and tethered the top of each stocking with two snaps at the thigh. The nylons rasped softly as she bent to pick up the birch, the red suspenders blood through cream to the eye at the keyhole.

"Behold your dreaded soko birch, my ardent flagellomane." She held the whip out to the empty eyes of the Corbel hung between the Creon mask from Stratford and a death's head Hussars busby. "The closest to poetry in a flogging tool. Made, at most, of five or six long, lean withes, toughly budded and further hardened by steeping in brine. Birch being a water-retentive wood, salt eats into wounds. Compounded with strips of whalebone of the kind once used to stiffen ladies' corsets. A wire wound around makes it stiffer still."

She poked one eye of the Corbel with the rod.

"Are you and your quivering nates coming to Mardi Gras, my lord?
Le vice anglais
I promise you. We French know in every Englishman's subconscious lurks a cat-o'-nine-tails and a maid in black stockings, so here waits the maid"—she plucked a garter and let it snap back—"eager for you. In no land has passion for the rod been as systematically cultivated as in yours. What evil did you yoke on your empire that burdens you so? You remind me of my husband, shiny brass buttons and all. So tough on the outside and penis puerile within. What he did to me I'll do a hundredfold to you. No tidy pain. Birching to blood, my lord. You'll find Horns of Venus make me a
perfect
prefect."

With a pirouette by candlelight, Suzannah spun and lashed out at the whipping chair,
pff-ffuikk pff-ffuikk pff-ffuikk
ing
the birch so splinters tore from the wood thrashed with all her strength. Rings glint-glinting at the keyhole eye, breasts bobbing rhythmically with each vicious stroke, the
pff-ffuikk pff-ffuikk pff-ffuikk
ing
a relentless rain of terror, her breath hissed raggedly through even white teeth as each bite of the rod curled her lips into a satisfied grin.

"English pig," she snarled, tossing the soko birch aside. "You think yourself superior to your own osychology. ..."

". . . I was afraid to watch, but even more afraid to back away. For there were things in the darkness behind waiting to swallow me. Things injected by her before my first memory. ..."

Each tick of the clock seemed to tug the room into tighter focus, bitter coke running down her throat from her nose, while Suzannah did her striptease in reverse, preparing for tonight's work. The corset was cut low in front to accentuate her cleavage, and ended just short of her groin. Stitching both sides of the black leather garment were red laces, while circles cut in the bodice exposed her rouged nipples. Leather straps running from the armpits up to her throat were fastened to a studded black collar. To complement the fantasy, the dominatrix pulled on a pair of spike-heeled, red-laced, knee-high black boots with silver spurs. Then a pair of shoulder-length, red-laced black gloves snapped onto the collar, with fingertips sliced away to reveal her red-lacquered nails.

"I'm ready for you, precious. See," she said, hand holding a cigarette case full of needles up to the hood of the Ku Klux Klan, mounted between a New York Yankees catcher's guard and World War I gas mask. "We all yearn to hide behind a mask. There's no culture in history in which masks don't play a part, so carnival appeals to a basic human urge. But you, my Yankee Doodle Dandy, give 'Flesh, farewell' such literal meaning. Hide under your second skin all you like; the plaster will make a
white
white supremacist out of you, but"—plucking five-inch needles from the case and slowly jabbing them into the hood—"don't think you can stop me getting under your skin."

Suzannah turned.

"Now you, Sparky . . ."

". . . I watched her walk toward me through the penis of the keyhole. Have you ever noted a keyhole's phallic shape, the knob at top for the rod of the key and shaft below for the teeth? As she neared, candelabra in hand, her head and feet, then breasts and knees, then stomach and thighs disappeared, until all that filled the penis was her thatch of pubic hair. ..."

"Are you your father's child? Or do you belong to me?" The voice from above was hoarse and throaty. "Time to go to Mother's bed and straighten you out."

The candlelight winked off six gold rings piercing the labia of her sex and glittering in Suzannah's pubic hair.

The rings through her lips were laced shut with a black leather thong.