CHAPTER 22

      THE PROJECTION BOOTH might have seemed too small for two men as large—in different ways—as Jelly Biggs and Deucalion. Nevertheless, it became the space they shared when they preferred not to be alone.

      The booth was cozy, perhaps because of Jelly’s collection of paperback books, perhaps because it felt like a high redoubt above the fray of life.

      For extended periods of his long existence, Deucalion had found solitude appealing. One of those periods had ended in Tibet.

      Now, with the discovery that Victor was not dead, solitude disturbed Deucalion. He wanted companionship.

      As former carnies, he and Jelly had a world of experience in common, tales to tell, nostalgic reminiscences to share. In but one day they found that they fell into easy conversation, and Deucalion suspected that in time they would become true friends.

      Yet they fell into silences, as well, for their situation was similar to that of soldiers in a battlefield trench, in the deceptive calm before the mortar fire began. In this condition, they had profound questions to ponder before they were ready to discuss them.

      Jelly did his thinking while reading mystery novels of which he was inexpressibly fond. Much of his life, imprisoned in flesh, he had lived vicariously through the police, the private investigators, and the amateur detectives who populated the pages of his favorite genre.

      In these mutual silences, Deucalion’s reading consisted of the articles about Victor Helios, alias Frankenstein, that Ben had accumulated. He pored through them, trying to accustom himself to the bitter, incredible truth of his creator’s continued existence, while also contemplating how best to destroy that pillar of arrogance.

      Again and again, he caught himself unconsciously fingering the ruined half of his face until eventually Jelly could not refrain from asking how the damage had been done.

      “I angered my maker,” Deucalion said.

      “We all do,” Jelly said, “but not with such consequences.”

      “My maker isn’t yours,” Deucalion reminded him.

      A life of much solitude and contemplation accustomed Deucalion to silence, but Jelly needed background noise even when reading a novel. In a corner of the projection booth, volume low, stood a TV flickering with images that to Deucalion had no more narrative content than did the flames in a fireplace.

      Suddenly something in one of the droning newscast voices caught his attention. Murders. Body parts missing.

      Deucalion turned up the volume. A homicide detective named Carson O’Connor, beseiged by reporters outside the city library, responded to most of their questions with replies that in different words all amounted to no comment.

      When the story ended, Deucalion said, “The Surgeon How long has this been going on?”

      As a mystery novel aficionado, Jelly was interested in true crime stories, too. He not only knew all the gory details of the Surgeon’s murder spree; he also had developed a couple of theories that he felt were superior to any that the police had thus far put forth.

      Listening, Deucalion had suspicions of his own that grew from his unique experience.

      Most likely, the Surgeon was an ordinary serial killer taking souvenirs. But in a city where the god of the living dead had taken up residence, the Surgeon might be something worse than the usual psychopath.

      Returning the clippings to the shoe box, rising to his feet, Deucalion said, “I’m going out.”

      “Where?”

      “To find his house. To see in what style a self-appointed god chooses to live these days.”