reality. Well, if you Adam and Eve the tales. Let’s say . . .” And here he paused, leaning nearer, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
“. . . that your neighbor’s Chihuahua barks all night, every goddamn night. And this neighbor, he’s a real twat, all right, and the tosser won’t do shite to keep his wee ugly mutt quiet. So, you take up that hunk of stone, and by the power invested therein by beings not to be named, click the heels of your ruby slippers, and, voilà, it’s bye-bye, poochie wanker. Abracadabra, presto-chango, alakazam, nothing up your sleeve, and Bob’s your uncle. No trace remains. And I mean no trace remains, kitten. You wouldn’t even remember there’d been an annoying yappy Chihuahua that you had to get rid of, because, thanks to ye olde Unser Mutter von der Nacht, poof, there never was.”
He laughed and stared at the plaster stump where his hand had been. And you know those little cartoon lightbulbs? Right then, one blinked on over my head.
“Your name,” I said. “You’ve seen the Madonna before.”
And he smiled that dingy smile again.
“Well, it’s not as simple as that. Not quite, anyway, and it’s a dreadfully long story,” he said. “But maybe I’ll have time to tell it someday, should we live to see the far side of this commotion.”
“So, what are Isaac and Isobel Snow planning to unbirth?” I asked.
“I don’t know, and I think that it hardly matters. Whatever or whomever they’ve decided will give them what they want, which is this globe remade as their own personal charnel house.”
“I think I need to lie down,” I said.
And . . . I’m really dragging this out, aren’t I? Yeah, so . . . cut to the chase, already. I didn’t leave the Madonna lying on that bench in Central Park. Ten or fifteen minutes later, B and I met Charlee at the corner of Central Park West and West 77th. He was driving a shiny cherry-red Porsche 911, and he told me to get in. I got in. I was too tired and too confused to argue. I tucked the bundle snugly beneath my seat. B whispered something to Charlee and gave him a kiss, and then we pulled away and left the raggedy old man standing in the shadow of the American Museum of Natural History. I honestly thought that was the last I’d ever see of him.
“Fasten your seat belt,” said Charlee with two e’s, and I did.
“You know,” I said. “I don’t need a chauffeur. I could have done this on my own.”
“Don’t be a braggart,” he said, and so I shut up as Charlee weaved his way through the traffic with as much disregard for red lights, stop signs, pedestrians, and other drivers as any cabbie ever born. In no time at all we were on FDR Drive, headed north at twenty or so miles above the speed limit. I had a feeling Charlee didn’t have to worry much about cops and tickets. I took out the pages B had given me back in the park, and I started reading. Some of it I’d already heard before, from Selwyn. Some of it completely contradicted what I’d seen and been told. The rest, well, it sure as shit didn’t make me any more eager to find myself face-to-face with Isaac and Isobel Snow. It was titled simply “A Prophecy,” and the last page was signed KPK:
In the perpetual twilight of the Lower Dream Lands, the twins stand at the precipice, with the desolate plateau and peaks of Thok stretching behind them. Far below the precipice, lost in shadows, stretches the bone-littered vales of Pnath. They have imagined, these two from Above, that if they shut their eyes and listen very carefully, they can hear the rattle and rumble of gigantic bholes plowing through those jackstraw heaps. No one has ever set eyes on those creatures and lived to tell the tale. But, from time to time, the noise of their busy habits rises up the high cliffs of slate to the ears of any who are listening.
The twins, though partway human, are neither guests nor tourists in the abyss. They belong here as much as any ghoul. They may travel awake down the seven hundred steps to the Gates of Deeper Sleep. They may pass freely; none dare bar their way.
His name is Isaac, and her name is Isobel. They were born, not by chance, in the final minutes of an