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Most important, the only smell in her sanctuary was the scent of roses like those painted on the bed, a clean sweet fragrance Never the stench of dead things Never the awful choking odor of deco into the back of your throat and nearly strangle you when yourlike that, no, never, not in her secret room, her blessed roo had happened to the girl The singular vitality that had one
When he put her on the floor of Hell, with her back against the base of the towering Lucifer, he thought she’d passed out But that wasn’t it For one thing, when he crouched in front of her and put his hand against her chest, he felt her heart leaping like a rabbit whose hindquarters were already in the jaws of the fox No one could possibly be unconscious with a thundering heartbeat like that
Besides, her eyes were open They were staring blindly, as if she could find nothing upon which to fix her gaze Of course, she could not see hi else for that h hiht eye with his fingertip, she did not flinch, did not even blink Tears were drying on her cheeks, but no new tears welled up
Catatonic The little bitch had blanked out on hietable That didn’t suit his purposes at all The value of the offering was in the vitality of the subject Art was about energy, vibrancy, pain, and terror What stateray-eyed Christ if she could not experience and express her agony?
He was so angry with her, just so spitting angry, that he didn’t want to play with her anyone hand on her chest, above her rabbity heart, he took his switchblade from his jacket pocket and popped it open
Control
He would have opened her then, and had the intense pleasure of feeling her heart go still in his grip, except that he was a Master of the Ga and value of control He could deny hiful and enduring rewards He hesitated only athe knife away
He was better than that
His lapse surprised him
Perhaps she would come out of her trance by the time he was ready to incorporate her into his collection If not, then he felt sure that the first driven nail would bring her to her senses and transform her into the radiant work of art that he knew she had the potential to be
He turned from her to the tools that were piled at the point where the arc of his collection currently ended He possessed hammers and screwdrivers, wrenches and pliers, saws and a miter box, a battery-powered drill with an array of bits, screws and nails, rope and wire, brackets of all kinds, and everything else a handyht need, all of it purchased at Sears when he had realized that properly arranging and displaying each piece in his collection would require the construction of some clever supports and, in a couple of cases, thematic backdrops His chosen medium was not as easy to ith as oil paints or watercolors or clay or sculptor’s granite, for gravity tended to quickly distort each effect that he achieved
He kneas short on time, that on his heels were those who did not understand his art and wouldBut that would not matter if he made one more addition to the collection that rounded it out and earned hi to do, before hauling the girl to her feet and bracing her in a standing position, was to see if the mented, reptilian belly and chest of the funhouse Lucifer would take a nail It see on thickness, brittleness, and resiliency of the material, a nail would either drive into it as smoothly as into wood, bounce off, or bend If the fake devil’s hide proved too resistant, he’d have to use the battery-powered drill instead of the hammer, two-inch screws instead of nails, but it shouldn’t detract frority of the piece to lend a modern touch to the reenactment of this ancient ritual
He hefted the hammer He placed the nail The first blow drove it a quarter of the way into Lucifer’s abdomen The second blow slammed it halfway hoirl, who still sat on the floor with her back against the base of the statue She had not reacted to either of the ha
Before lifting her into place, he quickly collected everything he would need A couple of two-by-fours to serve as braces until the acquisition was firer and more wickedly pointed number that could fairly be called a spike The hammer, of course Hurry Smaller nails, barely more than tacks, a score of which could be placed just-so in her brow to represent the crown of thorns The switchblade, hich to recreate the spear wound attributed to the taunting Centurion Anything else? Think Quickly now He had no vinegar or sponge to soak it in, therefore could not offer that traditional drink to the dying lips, but he didn’t think the absence of that detail would in any way detract from the composition
He was ready
Hatch and Lindsey were deep in the gondola tunnel, proceeding as fast as they dared, but slowed by the need to shine flashlights into the deepest reaches of each niche and roo walls Thebeams caused black shadows to fly and dance off concrete stalactites and stalagerous spaces were empty
Two solid thuds, like hammer blows, echoed to them from farther in the funhouse, one immediately after the other Then silence
"He’s ahead of us somewhere," Lindsey whispered, "not real close We canthe tunnel without scanning all the deep recesses, which once had held clockworkthe way, the bond between Hatch and Jereain He sensed theneed He received, as well, disconnected iths of two-by-four, a scattering of tacks, the slender steel blade of a knife popping out of its spring-loaded handle…
His anger escalating with his fear, deter visions impede his advance, he reached the end of the horizontal tunnel and stumbled a few steps down the incline before he realized that the angle of the floor had changed radically under his feet
The first of the odor hit hied, heard Lindsey do the sahtened his throat and sed hard
He knehat lay below At least so the visions that had pounded hihway If he didn’t get an iron grip on himself and stifle his repulsion now, he would never make it all the way into the depths of this hellhole, and he had to go there in order to save Regina
Apparently Lindsey understood, for she found the will to repress her retching, and she followed hio’s attention was the glow of light high up toward one end of the cavern, far back in the tunnel that led to the spillway The rapid rate at which the light grew brighter convinced hiirl to his collection before the intruders were upon him