Ammon's Horn

Book One

Prodrome

"When constabulary duty’s to be done

to be done,

A policeman’s lot is not a happy one..."

—Gilbert & Sullivan

Prodrome

The symptoms were there all along, if they had only known what to look for.

The problem was the symptoms had a own unique way of hiding and prolonging discovery. There was no specific diagnosis because medical science had never come across this particular pathogen before, but the prognosis was always the same.

A man might keep doing things, odd little things, without wondering why he had done them. If he ever started to worry about it, a psychic circuit breaker in his head would kick in and the lights would go out. You could actually see it happening in his eyes, like looking through the windows of a haunted house. You might not know what was happening in there, but it was clearly something frightening and cursed. You certainly didn’t want to come knocking at that door, because you could never tell who—or what—might answer.

A few moments later the breaker would reset itself, but the man wouldn’t be able to recall what he had just done. Chunks of time had sloughed off like dead skin. The thought would vanish, leaving only a vague sense of... what? Disquiet? Unease? Anxiety?

Yes, those words surely applied, and yet didn’t quite go far enough. The feeling was ultimately indescribable, those people who felt the feeling of wrongness kept their own counsel. How could you make someone understand something you yourself couldn’t?

And could you trust them, even if you could tell them? That was the big question.

Besides, this feeling of malaise—but that wasn’t right either, not quite—was so slow and insidious that no one could tell anything was wrong.

Nothing was wrong.

And yet. And yet…

* * *

While half the country was trapped inside during the winter, when the days and nights were long, slow and gray, there were sharp rises in the reports of domestic violence, homicides and suicides. Cabin fever, the experts claimed, but it wasn’t that, not just that. It ran deeper, and the papers didn’t report just how uncommonly grisly, how inventively violent the murders were.

And then, it was spring.

With the thaw, the migration toward the desert west or toward the Arctic north began. The migration saw spiked increases in an early 21st-century phenomenon known as Road Rage. Every other driver on the road was a sworn mortal enemy, like something from an ultra-violent video game that had no other point but to kill or be killed.

Drivers cut off other cars in traffic, purposely ramming into them or running them off the road, then tracked the survivors down as they fled the wreckage, and killed them. By the time the killer had gotten back into his own vehicle, he had forgotten what he had done. He’d even convince himself the dents and scrapes on his car were caused by some careless fool in the parking lot, the blood on his hands was forgotten the moment he washed it off, because memory is not linear. Without hard landmarks with which to fix a particular memory in mind, retrieval became more difficult.

The harsh winter weather had kept the maniacs indoors, where they could damage only one another or themselves. Now, the murderous migration had begun with all the brainless, unstoppable momentum of an avalanche.

It was while on his lunch hour in the Loop, the downtown hub of Chicago, that Martin Rapasorda first noticed the disproportionate number of east coast license plates. On an average day, it might be every 20th or 30th car he saw that bore an out-of-state plate, when he noticed them at all. Just lately, it was every seventh or eighth car. Martin had a feeling that the high number of out-of-state plates was connected with the feeling of wrongness that had been festering in him all winter. Like an itch that wasn’t there.

The phantom limb, he said suddenly, surprised to hear his own voice. He looked around, but no one else had heard him, or at least pretended they hadn’t.

His first case as a very junior partner with the law firm was to represent a client who had lost an arm in a terrible car accident. The man had been drunk when he pulled out in front of an ambulance speeding to an emergency. Martin successfully sued the elegant bar that had served his poor, ruined client so much debilitating, judgment impairing alcohol. He also sued the ambulance company, and the driver of the ambulance.

He’d even sued the widow of the man to whose home the ambulance was speeding, claiming it was not an emergency, since the man had suffered a fatal heart attack. The truth, like anything else, was negotiable.

The bar agreed to settle out of court for a number that was nothing short of stupefying, and over celebratory drinks, Chicago’s newest multi-millionaire told Martin: It doesn’t hurt, but the itching in my hand is driving me crazy.

Martin had laughed, a little uneasily, thinking his client was making a sick joke. He later learned it wasn’t a joke. The phantom limb was a very common, albeit creepy, complaint among many amputees.

Until that moment, Martin had not completely understood or even given it much thought, but he thought about it now. The flickering, weaving unease he’d been feeling was like that, an itch that couldn’t be scratched because it didn’t exist. He couldn’t explain the feeling to someone who himself had not experienced it, any more than he had understood his client’s complaint of the itch in his missing palm.

So, during his lunch hour in the Loop that first warm spring afternoon, Martin Rapasorda bought a brand new handgun and waited uneasily for the itch to grow unbearable.

* * *

Gemma was just about to pack it in and head back to the studio when Debbi jumped from the very same taxi Gemma had raised her hand to hail. Debbi paid the driver and squeezed her way to the sidewalk between two parked cars. I know, I’m late, I’m sorry, she said by way of greeting. The session with my life-coach ran long. He thinks we’re about to make some major progress. Were you waiting long?

In fact, Gemma had time to browse most of the legitimate news magazines and a goodly number of their trailer-trash relatives on display at the newsstand kiosk where she’d been waiting. One item that found a home on both sides of journalism’s fence was that animal and cattle mutilations were back with a vengeance, especially heavy on the east coast.

Good! Debbi continued, not giving her the chance to respond. She grabbed Gemma by the elbow and hustled her through the revolving door of the run-down office building.

The dimly-lit foyer smelled of stale losses, unfiltered cigarettes and urine. Old newspapers formed a crude bed in the corner where the far walls met. There was a building directory hanging near the steps, its movable letters rearranged to form: MERCY MERCY MERCY MERCY MERCY MERCY MERCY MERCY MERCY.

Simply that, over and over. The unused letters lay scattered about the floor in a slurry of nonsensical words, like the shed husks of insects.

Debbi led Gemma up five broad steps into a cage elevator, slid the gate shut and pressed an oversized black button. The old motor wheezed in the dark basement as the car fretted and fumed its way up the cable.

The elevator opened onto the third floor hallway, lined with identical doors all fronted with pebbled glass. The one closest to them had a name—Madame Zandia—written on it in flowery script. Beneath that was an all-seeing eye inside a crystal ball, with waves of what Gemma construed to be mystic energy radiated outward from the iris. Below that was "Spiritual Advisor: Love. Marriage. Finance. Past-Lives. By Appointment Only." And below that the holy trinity of Visa, MasterCard, and Discover.

And I shall dwell in the house of debt forever and ever, oh man.

Not getting cold feet now, are you? Debbi asked, her hand resting on the doorknob. You’re the one who wanted to immerse yourself in the whole New Age scene, remember?

Yes, yes, she did. Gemma hosted a phenomenally popular daily TV news journal called Weird World, dedicated to the supernatural and the paranormal, that other pop-culture trinity of Ghosts, Angels, and UFOs. She wanted to be more than just a talking head that read the news, a ventriloquist’s dummy that spoke someone else’s words. Debbi was her personal assistant and her friend; it was Debbi’s idea that Gemma should produce a good audition tape to send out to the major news markets like Dateline, Sixty Minutes, 20/20, Prime Time, even Today, for fuck’s sake. Not for the need to convince them they needed Gemma on their team, but to help convince her she actually deserved to be in the majors.

Okay, Gemma said, turning back to Debbi. Let’s do it.

Debbi opened the door. The first thing Gemma noticed was the sweet, overwhelming smell of burning incense. There were large, stuffed pillows stacked on the floor of the anteroom, presumably for sitting, and a single wicker chair by the window. A small library of New Age books and periodicals filled the shelves of the massive bookcase next to the chair. Most of them looked to be self-published, and all of them were for sale.

Gemma studied one of the prints hanging on the wall of the waiting room, the barren California coast at sunset or maybe the east coast at sunrise. As she studied it, she thought she could hear the slow, timeless roll of the surf, regular as breathing. At length, she realized there were hidden speakers placed strategically around the room, piping in the hypnotic susurrus of the surf and almost subliminally below that the sound of New Age music.

The incense was making her lightheaded and she could feel her thoughts swimming upstream against the currents. She blinked and looked away from the print, focusing instead on the traffic moving through the broad streets below, heading west.

You’re not worried, are you? Debbi asked. About what she might tell you, I mean.

How can I be worried about something I don’t believe in?

Well, even so… don’t you want to know if you’ll get a job in one of the major markets?

Of course she did, she just wasn’t so sure she would find her future here, in an almost-derelict office building where the homeless slept and relieved themselves in the lobby, begging for mercy on the directory board. She didn’t want to think her future smelled of urine and failure and fear.

Despite Debbi’s late arrival, they were still early for their appointment. Through the beaded curtain separating the foyer from Madame Zandia’s counseling room, they could see the advisor doing a reading for another client.

Madame Zandia herself was rather slight and young and attractive, not at all what Gemma had expected from the name and avocation. She had envisioned a seam-faced Gypsy woman, with long skirts, kerchief around her head and jangling gold hoop earrings, like the old Rom in The Wolfman. What was her name? Maria Ouspenskaya. With that memory came a second, because Gemma likewise recalled her immortal cinematic line, as well. Even a man who is pure in heart… That image and her words, if not exactly the actor’s name, had been forever spot-welded to a place in Gemma’s memory.

Debbi was right about that much, at least. We all have our beliefs and notions, and don’t try to change my mind with the facts. No wonder Weird World was so popular. It ran on high-octane paranoia, the one fuel that was never in short supply because it was self-replenishing.

Every few moments, Madame Zandia would stop to purse her lips and study the arrangement of tarot cards. The table on which she did her reading was round and covered with a heavy, fringed velvet cloth the color of blood. There’s an indication of an ailment, Madame Zandia announced at length.

An ailment? the little woman parroted. Is it serious?

She consulted the cards again. Not as such, she hesitantly ventured. But left untreated, other complications could set in.

Well, I knew it! the woman said. I told my husband I’d been feeling off my feed just lately, but he wouldn’t listen to me. I’ll make a doctor’s appointment right away.

Madame Zandia nodded her approval.

Gemma felt what little goodwill and charity she had been able to generate for Madame Zandia burn up like a magician’s flash paper. Even from that short distance, she could see Madame Zandia’s client was sick. Waves of illness seemed to radiate from her like the wagon wheel of mystic energy surrounding the all-seeing eye painted on the door.

Madame Zandia had concluded her reading and was escorting her client through the anteroom to the exit. Now that Gemma could see the little woman’s face more closely, she could tell how drawn and waxy it was, the geometry of her skull barely hidden by the parchment of her flesh, her eyes looking like two frightened animals driven into hiding at the back of deep caves. Gemma fought down—just—a superstitious need to cross herself.

Madame Zandia then swept aside the beaded curtains and ushered Gemma into her chamber. At the very least, Gemma thought, I’ll have a story to tell Danny tonight.

Madame Zandia gathered the tarot cards from the table, blessed them, tied a silken sash around them, and put them back in their box. You don’t believe in any of this, do you? she asked Gemma point-blank. Please, don’t deny it to spare me embarrassment. I’ve been at this long enough you can’t embarrass me. You don’t have to believe anything I tell you, that’s always your option. But, perhaps what you hear will help you in some way, and sometimes, knowing the future changes nothing. Sometimes, some events are immutable, their shadows cast out long before us. Those unfortunate people aboard the planes that struck the Twin Towers knew their futures, but they were all powerless to alter it.

She crossed to a small secretary desk and removed an oblong package wrapped in silk from one of the drawers. She unknotted the scarf and laid it aside. Gemma saw it was another deck of tarot cards.

"A new deck, just for me? Oh, I am honored."

I didn’t like the answers the other deck was giving me, Madame Zandia said, brushing off Gemma’s not-so-veiled attempt at sarcasm. I think they may have become tainted by discordant vibrations.

Gemma giggled before she could stop herself. You’re serious?

Consider them like milk, if it makes the analogy any easier to understand. An open carton of milk in the refrigerator picks up sour smells from the other foods around it.

Milk, Gemma repeated, feeling as if she were reading back Madame Zandia’s grocery list instead of a psychic reading. Got it. How about some eggs and a loaf of bread while I’m picking up the milk?

Gemma watched the reader spread the colorful cards before her. She had never looked closely at a deck of tarot cards, and was intrigued by the half-human, half-animal creatures they depicted. Does each of these cards have a meaning? Gemma idly flipped one of the cards, revealing a drawing of a tower being struck by lightning, its side cut in a jagged split, people falling from the breach, tumbling into eternity.

The unfortunate people aboard the planes that struck the Twin Towers knew their futures, but they were all powerless to alter it.

Gemma fought a chill. Coincidence, that’s all.

They have many meanings, Madame Zandia answered managing to sound wise, cryptic, and evasive, all at once. For example, that card, The Tower, could mean change, but by itself, you don’t know if it’s change for the better or the worse. It all depends on the total reading, depends where they come up in the spread, whether they are reversed or upright, what cards surround them, your own particular vibrations… She was warming to the subject now, moving into safer territory.

In other words, they mean what you want them to mean.

No… they mean what they mean.

Well… let’s get to it then, shall we?

Madame Zandia agreed. Gemma had a feeling Zandia would be glad to do this reading and be done with her. There was no room for heretics and non-believers in this church.

We need to pick a card to represent you.

What about this one? Gemma suggested, tapping a card.

Madame Zandia picked it up. The Queen of Cups, she said. A good choice. She placed the card in the center of the table, then gathered and squared the rest of the oversize deck. She handed the cards to Gemma and told her to shuffle them. Think of a question you want to ask. Concentrate only on your question.

So they can pick up my vibrations? Gemma asked, her mind hearing the Beach Boys sing: I’m pickin’ up good vibrations, which brought an unwelcome bubble of laughter to the surface. She shoved it aside and shuffled the cards, finding the task awkward because of their size.

Concentrate, Madame Zandia reprimanded. Think only of your question.

Gemma shuffled, but had more difficulty deciding on her question. Her questions all seemed as big and unwieldy as the cards. What did she want to know about? Career? Danny? Their marriage? Will I be handsome, will I be rich? She settled on a more general question that would encompass everything: What does the future hold for me?

She finished and placed the cards on the table. Now what?

Cut them into three piles, left to right.

Gemma did as she had been instructed, and Madame Zandia picked them up in reverse order. The first card she dealt from the deck she laid squarely on the Queen of Cups. This covers you, she said. And this crosses you. She placed another card over that, forming a cross.

Madame Zandia referenced the top card, a heart pierced by three swords. Your romance has had some difficulties lately. Arguments, disagreements, a feeling that you’re both pulling in opposite directions.

As she spoke, she dealt out four more cards, placing them above, below and to either side, forming a larger cross with the Queen of Cups at its center. This is beneath you, this is behind you. This is before you, this crowns you. She spoke with the voice of one who had made that particular journey many times, a tour guide who no longer notices the landscape.

She frowned slightly.

Is it bad? Gemma asked.

Not necessarily. As I told you, it all depends on the total reading.

Zandia’s eyes betrayed her, and Gemma felt a dry, prickly ball of fear in her chest and throat. Her head was hammering from the thick smell of incense.

Madame Zandia continued on in more general terms, saying things they both felt better hearing. To the right and below the cross, Madame Zandia placed the final four cards. The next card she peeled off the deck was the Hanged Man. Life in suspension, she explained. The feeling that things aren’t progressing fast enough to please you, either in your romance or your career. She considered a moment and added Possibly both.

Is that all it means?

No. It’s the most ambiguous card in the deck. It can mean anything. Here, following the Seven, Eight, Nine, and Page of Swords, it can also mean strength.

The cards that followed were not vague in their meaning. They were like a straight flush of Doom, Death, and Destruction. The Tower once more, shattered by lightning and spilling bodies like some ghastly piñata. The Fool, the smiling, heedless, hardy Fool, forever one misstep from the precipice and disaster. Death. No point pretending, they had both been expecting that one.

A leering skeleton clad in black armor, swinging a great scythe, he rode a horse of bone, its red, wild eyes glowing like twin coals coughed up from hell’s furnace. Beneath the horse’s uncaring hooves lay the crushed and bleeding body of the King. No one, poor or rich, could escape this rider.

Mine?

Madame Zandia studied the card in thoughtful silence, and if she was trying to build suspense, then she was a master symphony conductor.

Mine? Is it— Gemma snapped, the fear building to an explosion.

Madame Zandia shook her head slowly, unable to look away from the last card. The death card is used to signify change, the end of an era and the beginning of another.

But? Gemma sensed there was more.

But, depending on its position in the reading, the cards surrounding it, once in a great while, it will let you know a sick or elderly relative isn’t much longer for this world.

If it isn’t mine, is it Danny’s?

Not necessarily. It seems to be all around you.

My mother?

Again, Madame Zandia shook her head, then suddenly swept the cards back into the stack before Gemma could ask any further questions. Sometimes you don’t get a very good reading, she said apologetically. She squared the deck and set them aside. Your vibrations might be off, or—

You saw something, Gemma protested, surprised by how angry and upset she was. An hour ago, she didn’t believe in any of this New Age claptrap, but now she was badly frightened, her heart pounding out a cardiac ragtime.

No, Madame Zandia managed a smile. I’ve been having difficulty lately, getting an accurate reading, though I can’t imagine why that is.

As she made that admission, with the spring sun slanting in through the windows and motes of dust floating dreamily in the shaft of sunlight, she was no longer a woman who held any sort of power over Gemma. She was just a woman, an actor playing a part, like the actress who played the Gypsy in The Wolfman, one more huckster selling hope.

And Gemma had bought it. She’d told herself she wouldn’t, but for one foolish moment, she had bought everything. Bought it, and wanted more of the same.

We could try again, Madame Zandia suggested, or perhaps you’d rather I read your palm?

No, Gemma said, standing, unable to meet the other woman’s eyes for fear she might see something in them. We really should be getting back. Another time, perhaps.

Madame Zandia walked them to the door. Debbi said she would call and set up an appointment for herself, but the fortune teller said she thought she would be taking some time off.

* * *

Madame Zandia returned to her chamber, poured herself a cup of green tea, sat down at the table, and shuffled the cards. She picked the Queen of Swords to represent herself and laid out the Celtic cross, as she had done for Gemma’s reading.

What she told Gemma—that she’d been having difficulty getting an accurate reading—was true. The same cards, The Tower, The Hanged Man, The Fool, Death, kept turning up. Not always in the same reading, not always in the same order, but they appeared more often than blind chance could account for. And there was one card that never varied in its position. The Death card was always there, in every hand she dealt, and always in the last position.

Fucking always.

If this were Las Vegas, they’d run her out of town on a rail for dealing from a stacked deck.

She began turning over the last four cards.

The Magician, offering his chalice of dark potions.

The Moon, a threat, possibly from The Magician.

The Hanged Man. Nothing ambiguous about it now. It meant bad news, following those other two cards.

She hesitated before she snapped over the final, tenth card, noticing the slight tremble in her hand.

Don’t, she told herself. A dew of cold sweat covered her forehead and slicked her palms. Don’t turn that card over.

She turned, taking her cup of green tea with her to the window. Below, she saw Gemma and Debbi climbing into the back seat of a taxi.

It was just a game, of course, a friendly game, telling people what they wanted to hear, and what was wrong with giving them a little hope? The world was a hostile, unfriendly place. But Gemma had recognized the game for what it was from the start, and that made Madame Zandia angry. She’d seen Gemma on TV—who hadn’t?—and that made her determined to put a little fright into her. So maybe she had stacked the deck subconsciously and fudged a bit when she interpreted the reading.

And if Gemma thought she had seen something awful in her future and was withholding the truth, then so what? Surely whatever horrible things she imagined Madame Zandia was hiding would be worse than any lie she could have told. She had given Gemma something to believe in, all right.

It was only a game, and she controlled the cards.

Then why did the Death card keep turning up? Especially in her own readings? Did she have some sort of death wish?

No… no, of course not. But, just the same… don’t turn that card.

She set her cup down heavily and before she could reconsider, flipped the last card over. She inhaled sharply, a sound like a knife scraped across a whetstone. It was the Death card, all right, just as she knew it would be.

But when her pulse, leaping like a candle flame, finally crept back down to normal and she could again make herself look at the card she’d turned so quickly it had torn almost in half, she saw it for what it was.

The Fool.

She threw back her head and laughed.

Chapter One

This is how it started:

On August 27, Martin Rapasorda, junior partner in a Chicago law firm with a suite of offices in Daley Plaza, boarded the ‘L’ that would take him to his home in outlying Evanston. He had worked late and the car he had chosen was almost empty, as he had hoped.

A middle-aged black man who sat near the doors in a seat reserved for the elderly and handicapped, although he showed no signs of being either, glanced up without much interest as Martin boarded the car. Martin kept walking, although there were plenty of vacant seats, to the single seat that formed an ‘L’ at the end of the main body of seats. There, his back was protected and he could keep an eye on everything. He sat stiff as pig iron, his black briefcase across his lap, his delicate hands folded neatly together atop his briefcase.

He tipped his head back and pretended to doze.

He wished he