way. The bonds are so agonizingly tight from his efforts that all circulation is cut off, but at this point...
It is his turn.
The door is flung open and they come for him. Henry fights as best he can, shouting, “Don’t touch me! Back off!” but they grab him under the armpits and haul him through like a piece of furniture.
Entering that smaller chamber, Henry’s frantic gaze is drawn to the source of the firelight: three flames burning in the eyes and mouth of what looks like a huge, hideous jack-o-lantern. It is the mask again, that same grotesque face he first saw as a child, carved in stone beneath the wharf, and then again at the head of the procession outside his hotel. This one is made of hammered metal joined with rivets, scorched by fire. The sight causes him to gasp, “Oh, Jesus.”
“Iacchus,” someone corrects.
At least ten feet high, the leering mask is bright red and dripping, its tusks freshly painted with blood. The two flames in its eyes are propane torches; the fire in its mouth an open furnace, an incinerator, through which Henry can see a clawed hand charred black. There is a deafening roar of ventilation fans.
The great mask is an altar, a low table at its base piled with offerings. An artful arrangement of nature’s bounty sits waiting to be burned: hearts and flowers, meat and veggies—the white horns of Angel’s Trumpet. The glistening collage of flesh is weirdly elegant by firelight, like a painted still life of overripe fruit. The floor before the altar is smeared with blood, quantities of which have been collected in a trough—the better to brush it on the idol. There is also a bloody sledgehammer and a medieval selection of cutting tools.
On the shelf is room for one more heart.
Henry struggles like an animal, screaming in wild-eyed rage and despair at this last second of life. Then someone grabs his head and holds it steady. A brutal hand is clapped over his eyes, but between the fingers Henry glimpses something bright and sharp coming at him…
Then he is gone.
Chapter Twenty-Six
ACT SIX:
SALVATION
It takes him a while to come back. For a long time there is only the blackness of the grave—Henry can’t think or move. Is it over? Where am I?
At first it is soothing, womblike. He gradually senses heavy fabric encasing him like a cocoon, and the weight of earth pressing in. When he tries to turn his head, dirt crackles down along folds in the stiff cloth. There is only the slightest space above his mouth from which to draw shallow breaths.
Henry shudders, waking in abject panic. I’m buried alive! Uncontrollable spasms wrack his whole body and he starts hyperventilating, thoughts careening wildly. Ruby! Moxie! The panic attack comes in waves, rising to peaks of hysterical frenzy and then settling into troughs of hopeless, sobbing resignation. How long will it take to suffocate? The waiting is intolerable, and there is not a single thing he can do about it. Let me die, he prays. Take me quickly.
Weak from exhaustion, Henry hears something. There is a scraping sound from above—the sound of someone digging. All at once he can feel it! Hands burrowing down to him, pushing off the heavy mounds of soil. The thick canvas is peeled back.
Weeping gratefully, Henry shields his eyes to see the beautiful face of a child eclipsing the light.
It’s the horned boy. There is a golden haze around him, a tunnel of light, and in this brilliant glare his nubs are glowing, his body sun-shot and nearly translucent, ember-red at the extremities. He is wearing a sort of loincloth, and his hair is a mop of copper-bright dreadlocks. The eyes gleaming in that elfin face are solemn and glad.
“What is this?” Henry asks, his voice a cracked whisper.
Smiling, the boy takes Henry’s hand and strains backward, pulling him up. The earth is light and dry. Henry accepts the help and shakily rises out of his grave. As he struggles to his feet, there is a loud rushing noise like surf—what sounds like an approaching wall of water. Henry cringes in fear…then stands straight.
It is the sound of applause. A standing ovation.
Beyond the bright lights is a crowded auditorium—Henry is on stage.
The set around him is a field of shallow graves, burial mounds exactly like the one from which he has just emerged, against a backdrop of sky and clouds.
The boy moves on. Leading Henry by the hand, he stops beside the next grave,