Project Purple

47 - The Detective

He knew he was getting close—but to what, exactly, he didn't know.

Rigor was in India, a café—flop house in Bangalore. He didn't know how he'd found it... Well, he did follow a young man who had a beckoning smile. And on the table, a room key lay there, waiting for him. Room fifty-five. And underneath the key, on the napkin, that haunting message:

'Someone has written on your wall.'

Was he supposed to now go find some computer café, open an account, tell the world where he was? They already wanted him for murder, and they'd most likely catch up soon enough. That's why he had to keep moving. And he knew that was what they wanted, as well.

He went up to room fifty-five. It was a business hotel with small rooms, but they were clean. They wanted him there in that room, but there was no computer, only a nightstand. The TV was mounted on one wall. The other wall was nothing but a grey slab of smooth cement. Strange. He felt the wall and it was cool to his touch.

Rigor sat on the bed and waited. But not for long. The wall then turned into a big screen, and Rigor was looking at the face of the Goatwench. He got up and backed away from the wall to see the projected image better—some kind of rear projection?

Her face had hardened, and she was staring into the camera with a menacing look, as if about to jump right off the wall at him. She was stronger, she had confidence, authority, in the way she stood.

"No more appeasement," she said, "we're done playing Pilgrim for your enjoyment."

She seemed no longer vulnerable. It was like she had evolved into another woman entirely.

Then she leaned into the camera with a rebellious sneer, "You want us, you come and get us ... you little pinchfarts."

And then the head of an axe filled the screen before going blank. She'd just smashed the camera.

It ran all of eleven seconds, but Rigor was beginning to understand a big piece of the puzzle that was Henrietta Dobie—the old Henri, the dominatrix reemerging.

The man-eater was back. And it didn't lessen his infatuation one little bit. She was thining, slowly starving, looking like no more than some toy sketeton—one with alliances.

Rigor wanted to be with her, and there was no turning back now, not for him, not for her. And somehow he'd make her see they were meant to be together.

Toy skeletons with alliances.

They'd fallen into their own feral tribes, governed by self-preservation and brute strength. And the cold, and the fear, and the starvation, it all intensified.

And it wasn't over. The good part was just starting! — What they called 'the element of chafe' — Because then even the tribes splintered off, letting the strong prey on the weak; when they stopped experiencing ordinary human feelings like compassion and understanding, when some kind of psychic deadening crept in.

This was what they were waiting for. This was what they wanted to chronicle. Because then things sank to a whole, fun, new level for these Nazi doctors, these lunatics...

A thought occurred to him: Maybe they didn't know it; just maybe, this Rhizome had swallowed the high school teacher-artist bit; maybe they didn't know anything about her previous life, what had happened to her family, about Thaxton.

Was it possible they didn't know what they had on their hands? If that was the case, things were going to get real interesting!

He wanted to be there, and he figured they wanted him to go, as well. That seemed clear now. He'd been a detective, but now he was a... what? An angel? A patsy? Rigor had yet to understand his role in the Rhizome.

...Or maybe, on a more primal level, he did.

But that was a place he wasn't ready to explore. Because that meant traveling back through the years, picking through the collage again, seeing her again on the trail, happy to die... A place he had closed, sealed, barricaded, denied. The horror place. A nightmare. A figment. It never existed, anyway.

The Rhizome would never get into that room, because he refused to admit its existence.

He stepped out to the narrow balcony, which had a small table and two square wooden chairs. It overlooked the street, and when he looked down again, the boy with the nice smile was there.

He looked up, shyly, as if waiting.

Rigor had located his guide again.