Devil Said Bang (Sandman Slim 4)

“I have to but you don’t,” I say. “Drop us off and I can steal something.”

He shakes his head.

“No. I want to tell you a story and I’d like to tell it now. It has to do with the Qomrama Om Ya and it ties into all this madness.”

“The ghost girl too. She’s scared to death of it.”

“You showed it to her?”

“I hit her with it. It’s the only thing that stopped her. And she has a name. Lamia.”

“Are you absolutely sure about that?”

Traven sounds about like someone just read him the winning Lotto numbers and he thinks he hit the Mega Millions.

“It’s two syllables. Even I can remember that.”

“So what is the Qomrama?” asks Candy.

Traven looks at me out of the corner of his eye.

“Remember you once asked me where I thought the old gods, the Angra Om Ya, had gone?”

“Yeah. You said you thought they hadn’t left but you didn’t say what that meant.”

“Well, I was wrong. They are gone. But not for much longer.”

“How soon is longer? I mean the world is coming apart.”

Traven picks up a book from the dashboard. It’s an old one I once saw in his apartment. There are rust-colored stains on the front that are probably blood.

“Lamia is the name of an avatar of one of the Angra Om Ya.”

“I pistol-whipped a goddess?”

He shakes his head.

“I think what you encountered was a kind of demon. An incomplete piece of one of the Angra.”

“But she’s the ghost of a real little girl. She was born in Spain.”

“How will lost deities enter our universe from the outside? They’re creatures without form. Maybe they have to do it through the mortal bodies to gain substance. What kind of a girl was she? Was she considered holy? Did she perform miracles?”

“She was a monster. Her own village killed her and buried her in an unconsecrated cemetery.”

Traven is quiet for a minute.

“I wonder if she brought the Qomrama Om Ya with her or came to retrieve it?”

“Forget the girl. What’s the Qomrama?”

Traven slows and steers us around a sinkhole that’s swallowed part of a sandwich shop and auto-parts store. Cops on the side streets look worn and shell-shocked.

“In the first language, ‘Om Ya’ simply means ‘God.’ ‘Angra,’ depending on how you say it, means ‘great’ or ‘grievous.’ ‘Qomrama’ is a bit murkier but it means something like ‘devourer.’ The Qomrama Om Ya is the Godeater. A weapon designed by gods to kill other gods.”

I check the side mirror.

“Father, did you come straight to the Chateau from your place?”