and he would guarantee a good harvest, or victory over your enemies.”
“Well, then, I think we can look forward to a very good harvest this year,” I said, but neither one of them appeared to think that was worth even a tiny smile. Ah well, you do what you can to bring a little cheer into this dreary world, and if people refuse to respond to your efforts it’s their loss.
“What’s the point of burning the bodies?” Deborah demanded.
Keller smiled briefly, kind of a professorial thanks-for-aski
ng smile. “That’s the whole key to the ritual,” he said. “There was a huge bull-headed statue of Moloch that was actually a furnace.”
I thought of Halpern and his “dream.” Had he known about Moloch beforehand, or had it come to him the way the music came to me? Or was Deborah right all along and he had actually been to the statue and killed the girls—as unlikely as that seemed now?
“A furnace,” said Deborah, and Keller nodded. “And they toss the bodies in there?” she said, with an expression that indicated she was having trouble believing it, and it was all his fault.
“Oh, it gets much better than that,” Keller said. “They delivered the miracle in the ritual. Very sophisticated flummery, in fact. But that’s why Moloch had such lasting popularity—it was convincing, and it was exciting. The statue had arms that stretched out to the congregation. When you placed the sacrifice in his arms, Moloch would appear to come to life and eat the sacrifice—the arms would slowly raise up the victim and place it in his mouth.”
“And into the furnace,” I said, not wanting to be left out any longer, “while the music played.”
Deborah looked at me strangely, and I realized that no one else had mentioned music, but Keller shrugged it off and answered.
“Yes, that’s right. Trumpets and drums, singing, all very hyp-notic. Climaxing as the god lifted the body up to its mouth and dropped it. Into the mouth and you fall down into the furnace.
Alive. It can’t have been much fun for the victim.”
I believed what Keller said—I heard the soft throb of the drums in the distance, and it wasn’t much fun for me, either.
“Does anybody still worship this guy?” Deborah asked.
164
JEFF LINDSAY
Keller shook his head. “Not for two thousand years, as far as I know,” he said.
“Well then, what the hell,” Deborah said. “Who’s doing this?”
“It isn’t any kind of secret,” Keller said. “It’s a pretty well-documented part of history. Anybody could have done a little research and found out enough to do something like this.”
“But why would they?” Deborah said.
Keller smiled politely. “I’m sure I don’t know,” he said.
“So what the hell good does any of that do me?” she said, with a tone that suggested it was Keller’s job to come up with an answer.
He gave her a kindly professor smile. “It never hurts to know things,” he said.
“For instance,” I said, “we know that somewhere there must be a big statue of a bull with a furnace inside.”
Deborah snapped her head around so that she faced me.
I leaned close to her and said softly, “Halpern.” She blinked at me and I could see she hadn’t thought of that yet.
“You think it wasn’t a dream?” she demanded.
“I don’t know what to think,” I said. “But if somebody is doing this Moloch thing for real, why wouldn’t he do it with all the proper equipment?”
“Goddamn it,” Deborah said. “But where could you hide something like that?”
Keller coughed with a certain delicacy. “I’m afraid there’s more to it than that,” he said.