Maps of Hell Read online

  Back in the seventies, Hinkey had realized the place wouldn’t last much longer on its clientele of working-class alcoholics and slumming students. He hit on the idea of hiring bands, particularly cheap and talent-free ones he could pay in beer. The old man was tone-deaf, so he didn’t care if the musicians played rock, punk, post-punk, grunge or whatever shit was in fashion. Not blues or soul, though. The black man’s music wasn’t his thing. He never got big crowds, but for three nights a week he made a half-decent profit. Hinkey Part Two wasn’t tone-deaf, but he was into equal opportunity—he hated all music and all the people who came to listen. As for the bands, they featured the worst kind of lowlifes—tuneless, loudmouthed, thieving scum. The only time anyone saw Hinkey Part Two smile was when the audience threw glasses at the musicians.

  Old Hinkey still handled the bookings, mainly because he had more interest in turning a buck than his 220-pound son. He didn’t pay attention to the bands’ names, but he kept up with D.C. scuttlebutt enough to go only for acts that brought in some kind of crowd. He’d heard that Loki and the Giants were popular with long-haired, highly tattooed kids who dress only in black, so he closed the deal with the lead singer—of course they didn’t have a manager.

  It turned out to be one of the worst decisions he’d ever made.

  Loki was in what Hinkey called the dressing room. The proprietor had told him he used to take broads there back in the days when piss wasn’t all that came out of a dick. That explained why there was an ancient bed with a rat-chewed mattress along one wall. Maybe the cracked mirror on the opposite wall dated from then, too. Hinkey had put a battered table and a light under it, and called it a dressing table. Pity he didn’t pay more attention to his own dressing—the Hawaiian shirt he was wearing made Loki’s eyes burn.

  Still, the singer thought, the shit hole had some good points. The so-called dressing room had a door that opened onto the yard at the back of the bar. It had been asphalted and there was just room for the band’s van to park there. That had saved them humping the amp, speakers and instruments through the front of the dive. It also meant that pussy could be checked in and out without anyone noticing.

  Loki took out a Baggie and emptied some of the contents onto the table. That was another advantage to Hickey’s—it had a resident dealer upstairs. He chopped out a couple of lines and bent low to snort them. The stuff had been heavily cut, but it still did the job. He sat back and twitched his head, feeling greasy strands of his waist-length hair slap against his cheeks. Since he’d turned forty, he’d had to start dying it black—gray hair didn’t cut it when you were a thrash-metal Nazi satanist. He bared his teeth at the mirror. The lower part of his face was covered by a beard that reached his belly, while his cheeks and forehead had been tattooed with Viking runes and whorls. His arms bore similar designs in red and black. His prize tats—the ones that would have gotten him beaten up in the street or even arrested in some of the more liberal states, including the hyper-politically-correct District of Columbia—were under his black T-shirt. There was a ten-inch swastika on his chest and an Iron Cross hanging from the bottom hook, while the words I Am the Final Solution adorned his back in six-inch-high Gothic letters. If the audience was the right kind, he’d take a chance and strip off to give them the full show. He’d had Mein Kampf tattooed on his lower abdomen, with an arrow pointing to his groin. He didn’t think the Führer would disapprove.

  Loki—born Duane Speckesser—had come a long way from Wisconsin. His parents were third-generation Germans with a small farm. When he was a teenager, he got progressively angrier about their lack of interest in the Fatherland. His old man had served in the Airborne and was proud that he’d kept the victors’ peace in Berlin after the end of the Thousand Year Reich. As far as Duane was concerned, he should have hung his head in shame. A quarter of Americans had German roots, but very few of them showed any respect to the greatest German of all. Although the young Loki had little ability as a singer, he threw himself into the far-right music scene because he understood the power of songs to influence and inspire people. It also got him laid more often than his unprepossessing appearance would otherwise have merited. He had started off as a skinhead then found his real place in the underground metal scene that emerged in the eighties. He didn’t even have to sing anymore, as roaring vocals out was the preferred style.

  Loki did another line and stretched his muscular arms. He might have put on a load of pounds, but he still worked out with weights on the long drives between gigs. The Giants were the most popular Nazi satanic metal band in the South and Midwest, but the opportunity to play the capital, the seat of the Zionist Occupation Government, was not to be turned down, even if Hinkey was paying peanuts—the old fucker had tried to pay them off with a couple of crates of beer, but Loki had put him right. Maybe he’d put him even more right after the show. Then again, Loki was doing pretty well, what with album sales on the Internet—his songs were bought around the world, thanks to modern technology—and with donations from clandestine far-right organizations that approved of his agenda. Compositions like “Aryan Race,” “Rise Up and Fight,” “Smoke over Auschwitz” and “We Are Satan’s Storm Troopers” had turned out to be real money-spinners. He had to be careful how he presented himself in public, though. That was why he’d chosen the name of Loki, the Norse trickster god, and given the other musicians giants’ names. He’d have preferred to have performed as the Children of the Führer, but that would have gotten the ZOG and its pinko pals jumping like scalded cats. He’d been inside more than once and he wasn’t going back.

  The singer stood up and slapped his black leather pants. They were getting tight; he could do with a new pair. Maybe he’d go shoplifting tomorrow. It was amazing how easy it was to rip things off when the rest of the band started brawling and threatening to throw up in shops. Which reminded him… Where were his sidekicks? There was less than an hour till showtime. The assholes had probably disobeyed his orders and gone into one of the black districts. It wouldn’t be the first time they turned up for a gig covered in blood. Still, it was good for the image.

  There was a double knock on the back door. Loki opened up.

  “Look what we got!” said Bergilmir, the stick-thin bassist.

  “Fresh as a Dachau daisy,” added the guitarist Skadi, a podgy woman with dyed white hair down to her ass.

  The drummer, Thiazi, pushed forward a young woman in a head scarf. “Guess what, big man? I reckon this one’s a virrrgin.” He smiled, revealing several missing teeth.

  Loki grabbed the woman and pulled off her scarf. She had thickly curled dark hair. Around her neck was a gold chain with a small pendant. Loki pulled it off and let out a loud shout.

  “A Star of David,” he said, looking at the band. “You finally got one.” He dropped the pendant and crushed it with his biker’s boot. “Right, you guys get ready in here. I’m taking the dog to the van.”

  “Aw,” Skaldi moaned. “Can’t we watch?”

  “Not this time,” Loki said. “I’ve got something real special planned for this piece of Yiddish meat.” He shoved the young woman toward the door. “No peeking,” he said, staring at the musicians.

  They nodded sullenly but cheered up when they saw the bag of coke on the table.

  Outside, Loki opened the rear doors of the ramshackle white van and dragged his victim in. She was whimpering, but she hadn’t given up struggling. When he ripped her blouse open, she let out a scream. The sound stopped abruptly when he slapped her cheek so hard that her head bounced against the sidewall. She slumped down, unconscious.

  “Shit,” Loki said. “I was going to ram Big Adolf down your throat.” He unzipped his trousers. “Guess he’s going somewhere even wetter.” He grunted and pulled up the woman’s skirt.

  It was then that he heard a faint noise outside.

  “Get lost, you assholes!” he shouted.

  There was no reply, but the sound of footwear on asphalt came again.

  Loki lurched for the doo
r. “Will you get the fuck out of here?” he said, opening it.

  A figure stepped into view.

  “No,” said a hoarse voice.

  Loki took a punch to the face and crashed back onto the floor of the van. “Jesus,” he said, raising his hand and feeling blood. “You broke my nose.” He knew there was solid metal inside his masked assailant’s glove.

  The figure in black came in and leaned forward, then punched him again. There was a crack as Loki’s left cheekbone broke and his head slammed back again. He screamed in agony.

  “What is this?” he gasped. “I’ll let the bitch go.”

  His assailant nodded. “Yes, you will. But I am not so merciful.”

  Loki looked up in the dim light of the streetlight. He saw the glint of polished steel in each hand above him. Then he opened his mouth in horror, unable to move as a skewer rammed through each of his ears. The lead vocalist didn’t manage even a brief swan song before his brain shut down and he died.

  The killer ripped open the dead man’s T-shirt, then removed a transparent plastic file containing a single sheet of paper from a jacket pocket and smoothed it over the swastika tattoo, before securing it to his skin by pressing a pin into each corner.

  After checking the still unconscious woman’s pulse, the killer got out of the van, then closed the doors and walked at an unhurried pace toward the street, cell phone in hand.

  Hinkey’s Bar wouldn’t be having a musical evening after all.

  Four

  I woke up in my cell. The light was on and a ragged blanket had been thrown over my naked body. My head was aching and I felt nauseous. When a tray of bread and cheese was pushed through the hatch, I was able only to gulp down the water. Not long after that, I was violently sick, though what came up was nothing but liquid. I sat on the uneven bed with my legs drawn up, seeing the scarring on my knee at close range. It reminded me of something, but I couldn’t remember what. My memory was very limited again. To my surprise, I found my heart beat fast. I was excited, alert, but I couldn’t fathom why. Then I remembered the masked figures and the upturned cross. What the hell was going on?

  The loud music came on and I sat motionless, letting it crash into me, all thoughts driven from my mind. I was seeing red, literally—it was as if I were immersed in a sea of blood. I felt sick again, but was only able to retch up a few mouthfuls of evil-tasting fluid. The room was suddenly very hot and I threw the blanket to the floor. It lay there like a tattered mat. I stared at it with mounting fascination, trying to understand why it was suddenly exercising such power over me.

  At the same time, I was working on summoning up images, words, anything from my memory. Nothing appeared. I had the feeling that I had found some way of building up my identity, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. All I could think of, in an attempt to stave off the blood that seemed to be flooding over me, was the blanket on the floor. What did it mean? A thin, scratchy covering that either kept me too hot or too cold, that was often damp from the flow of water that came through the door. The blanket lying on the floor. Like a rug. Or a mat.

  A flash of clear white light drove the redness away. Mat. Why was the word so significant. Because the bastards in gray were trampling me as if I were a mat? No, there was more to the word than that. Mat. The blanket would act like a bath mat if I left it on the floor for the next spray of freezing water. No. What was the significance of mat?

  My heart missed a beat and I leaped to my feet. Mat. It was my name. Matt, with two ts. I slapped the wall for joy and tried to dance a jig. My legs gave way and I dropped onto the blanket. My name was Matt. They hadn’t taken away my identity after all—I had managed to keep something of myself from them.

  I kneeled there with a slack smile on my lips. I was Matt. I was still what I had been before I arrived at this awful place.

  Then I slumped forwards as the realization hit me—I might have known one of my names, but I had no idea of the others. Just as I had no idea of where I was or why I was here. And the next time I was put under the sinister box, I might lose the little that I had managed to salvage.

  Time was running out for Matt, whoever the hell he was.

  I didn’t know how many more sessions under the machine I endured. Sometimes I could remember that my name was Matt, sometimes not. There were other occasions, the worst ones, when I doubted that I was called Matt at all, and that I was only hallucinating.

  Then everything changed. I was dragged to the treatment room by the silent men in leather aprons. I remembered how asphyxiating it felt when the long box was lowered over me—and then, more quickly than usual, everything turned to black.

  When I came round, I found that I was lying on a comfortable bed, one that seemed to be at the correct angle to the rest of a large room. I was hooked up to numerous machines. I felt as if I were floating, but my mind was sluggish, like it had been chained down. I tried to work out who I was, but failed. I was forced to lie back and look around.

  To my left, beyond a desk equipped with an angled lamp and a computer screen, there was a window. The shackles on my mind immediately loosened at the sight of the trees in the middle distance, a great green carpet of them rising up a slope. This room was obviously above ground level. I tried to get up, but found that my arms and legs were secured. That darkened my mood. I had the feeling that I’d been in captivity before, though nothing specific flashed before me. My memory was sluggish.

  A young woman wearing a white uniform came towards me, a warm smile on her lips. “Good morning,” she said. “You’ve been asleep for a long time.” She took a cell phone from her belt and pressed buttons. She spoke in a low voice and then turned her attention back to me. “How are you feeling?”

  I shrugged. “Like my head’s been filled with cotton wool. What happened?”

  She gave me another smile and started checking the monitors. “The doctor will be here soon.”

  I let the evasive answer go. I could see I wasn’t going to get anything else out of the nurse. A man with a goatee came in. He was wearing a white coat over a gray uniform. I was sure I’d seen both him and his clothing before but, again, I couldn’t come up with any specifics.

  The doctor gave me a tight smile and took my pulse. He then looked at the clipboard on which the nurse had been recording readings from the machines. He gave her a curt nod.

  “You are doing well,” he said, looking at me but avoiding my eyes.

  “Am I?” I said. “I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me my name.”

  His expression went blank.

  “Or what you’ve been doing to me here?”

  He remained silent.

  “Or even where here is?”

  The two of them moved away. I decided to feign sleep in the hope that would make them drop their guard. That turned out to be a total failure. Not only did they keep their distance, but I fell into a profound slumber.

  For some reason, the image of a bath mat filled my mind before I lost consciousness.

  I woke up and looked around surreptitiously. The nurse was at her desk, head bowed. I closed my eyes again and tried to drive away the lethargy that seemed to have infected my thought processes. Then I remembered the bath mat I’d seen before I fell asleep. It seemed to mean something important, something more than “remember to put this down before you have a bath or you might slip when you get out.” But I couldn’t reach that layer of significance.

  The machines around me were beeping and humming in random sequences. I found myself tapping my finger and thumb together and becoming aware of a rhythm. I kept my eyes shut as I discerned a melody. Music, it meant something, it was important to me. Suddenly, a string of words came to mind. I repeated them under my breath.

  “Dylan, Young, Springsteen. Dylan, Young, Springsteen…”

  The mantra gave me a warm feeling—it seemed to bring me closer to myself.

  Then the words were changed by some opaque part of my brain.

  “Pop, Hell, Rotten, Strummer. Pop, Hell, R
otten, Strummer….”

  I didn’t know what the words referred to, but I knew the person that I once was, the character that I’d lost, had paid attention to them. I was in the dark about my past, but there were still a few beacons lighting the way back.

  At some point, the nurse roused me with a tray with the kind of food I hadn’t seen for what seemed like months—fresh bread, bacon, eggs, fruit, orange juice, coffee. I ate and drank ravenously. It was hard to fend off real sleep after that, but I repeated my mantra again to stay surreptitiously awake.

  Eventually—I had no idea how much time had passed—my patience was rewarded. I heard two pairs of footsteps approaching. The doctor and nurse were being very careful, keeping their voices low, but I heard one of the man’s sentences clearly enough.

  “Advise control center that L24 will be ready for coffining and psych-process closure tomorrow.”

  I took it that I was L24. The designation meant nothing to me and I had the distinct feeling I’d never heard it before. L24? It sounded like I was a machine rather than a human being. Screw that.

  Then I started wondering about the other things the doctor had mentioned—control center, coffining, psych-process closure. All three of the terms were alarming. What was the center controlling? And what was the psych-process that sounded like it was almost completed? Worst, what was coffining? Surely they weren’t going to kill me. I tried to convince myself that if the people who were holding me had wanted that, they could have done it easily when I’d been comatose. But I wasn’t going to take the chance. No way was I undergoing coffining.