What Hell May Come

by Rex Hurst

  In the basement monitor, near a far corner was a sneaker. No, not a sneaker. His sneaker. He zoomed in. The little zipper on the side confirmed it. How the fuck did it get down there? He knew that, no matter what state he was in, there was no way he would’ve entered that dank hole.

  The rewind button was pushed. The image of the basement spooled backwards. Nothing, nothing, nothing. It was like a slug negotiating a staircase. Was that . . . ? Nope, just his mother taking out a load of laundry, his younger sister dancing behind her in ballet shoes, then walking backwards up the stairs. Time zipped on. She came back down and put the laundry in. Then nothing. Nothing stirred, not even a mouse. It wasn’t until the very end, the last minute of tape that he saw—

  Four figures in black hooded robes carrying his naked body. Weird marks were painted in red up and down his frame, circling the genitals and nipples. His face had been coated with a white paste. One figure held his clothes and accidently dropped the sneaker. Then they went upstairs.

  He leapt to the other cameras and rewound those tapes. After frantic pushing and waiting, he pieced together a few more scenes. One was him being hauled through the living room. No one’s face was visible. His older sister still lay there, hotdog dangling from her mouth. Another scene had him being propped up in the shower. The red and white body paint trickled down the drain. Finally, he was tossed onto the bed and his clothes thrown in a corner.

  Okay . . . okay . . . calm down. Wipe away the cold sweat. Another shot? Hell, make it two. Regrettably, the terror of what he’d uncovered chased away any effects of the alcohol. Was it some perverted sex thing? What were those symbols? Assuming two were his parents, who were the others? Absolom seemed to be a new arrival, so that, at least, left two others. His parents didn’t have any friends that he knew of. A statement that spoke volumes about them.

  Then he heard his name from a live camera. Clear as a bell, his mother had said, “Jon.” The rest was garbled by distance from the camera. He flipped the monitors back on. The three of them were standing, pants pulled back up. His mother wearing a different skirt. Absolom was examining an earthenware bowl while the others drank cognac.

  “ . . . will happen like we wanted to,” Father was saying.

  “I’m worried,” his mother said. “The way he’s been acting is troubling.”

  Troubling? Troubling how? In what manner? Hadn’t he gone along with whatever they told him? And if they were troubled, what would they do to him— beyond, apparently, what they were doing while he was unconscious. No sleep tonight.

  “I know better than you do. No woman could understand what a boy goes through. You’ve never had to do it yourself.”

  “But . . . ”

  “That’s enough,” Father ordered and she immediately shut her mouth.

  Absolom gave up the bowl with a wink. “It is good,” he proclaimed. “Just what the physician ordered. Now, when can it be delivered?”

  “Later,” Father said, handing his wife the item. “Put it in the safe.”

  Safe? What safe? Jon’s mother nodded and ascended the stairs. To his horror Jon realized she must be coming into the master bedroom. He fumbled over the chair and, as quietly as he could, replaced the concealed door. Retaking his seat, he peered at the bedroom monitors. His blood froze.

  Mother was already in the room. She stood at the end of the bed and was staring at the closet. Long minutes dragged by and she just stood there. Motionless, looking, listening. He held his breath and clutched the bottle close like it was a comfort animal. Finally, eyes still on the closet, she began to move to the head of the bed. She flipped up the ugly picture over the headboard. It was some Blake print of a nearly naked guy doodling with an old-fashioned compass. Underneath it was a safe embedded in the wall. It was rather modern with a computerized keypad, Jon had no idea when they could have had it installed. As she jabbed in a key code, Jon pushed the picture in as close as he could, mentally repeating the numbers over and over. The bowl was deposited and the room restored.

  Downstairs there was laughing. When Mother joined them, it was suggested that they all go out for steaks, drinking, and dancing. The proposal was roundly applauded and the trio left. After emerging from the hidden hole, the first thing Jon did was flip the picture and yank the safe open. Inside, there was about ten-thousand dollars, two .45 automatic pistols, various deeds to properties around the city, a very detailed genealogical chart of the St. Fond family, and the bowl.

  The outside of the bowl was fired red earthenware with a thick glaze. Crude symbols were etched all through it, then painted in white. Intersecting lines and circles mainly, with pluses and Os darting inside and along the closed sections of the lines. One fat wave ran all along the bowl, connecting every symbol. The inside was something else entirely. The bottom half was inlaid with a convex shaped bone, possibly a skull cap. Scrimshawed on it was a complex circular pattern, much more skillful than the outside.

  The pattern was a series of concentric circles, each with runes or glyphs or just decoration that Jon couldn’t decipher. The center was an ugly face, grimacing up at the world with a pleated knife for its tongue. Two clawed hands clutched a human heart. Four squares surrounded the center, each depicting a monstrous face. Two animal skulls snarled out at the rest of the circles that were all filled with bizarre symbols. They became smaller and smaller, until you needed a microscope to see the images.

  Jon couldn’t see much point to the item, but he assumed it wasn’t for anything good. He quickly became much more interested in the charts. Once unfolded, it spread across the whole of king-sized bed like an extra comforter. Hundreds of names and dates were recorded on the yellowed paper, right up into modern times, with the addition of a 5th cousin born only two weeks ago from a family branch in Louisiana. Many of his relatives were still in France, it seemed.

  Jon knew his family’s origin was French. He had some famous ancestor who wrote various important books on geology and ballooning—well “important” to people who cared about any of that stuff. Benjamin Franklin had had a brief correspondence with the man, and their letters were warehoused at the National Archives. The extent shown on the chart, however, surprised him. Obviously, his parents still kept in touch with the extended family, but Jon had never been exposed to them. He did remember one trip his mother had made to France, about three years ago, along with his younger sister. He’d been told the trip was something to do with her feminist business, but that may have been a lie.

  Mildly curious, he looked for his own name and found it listed with his two sisters. Above it, he saw his parents’ names and something odd. It seemed his mother’s maiden name was St. Fond as well. A further line connected her to a branch of the family residing in Key West. His parents were cousins . . . distant cousins, but still blood related. Was he the product of incest? The thought nauseated him. He saw many other such pairings all across the chart. Yuck.

  So, what to do? There was money. He could run. But where? The only place that might be a refuge was Michael’s house. Well, Michael’s room. The rest of that family was disinterested in him. Louis and Kathy might be able to help him out as well. Then he remembered that Kathy’s parents had something to do with archeology and historical junk. Perhaps they could shed light on this weird thing.

  He grabbed a Polaroid camera from his parents’ closet and shot twelve photos of the bowl. As for the cash, he grabbed about a hundred dollars, a little back payment for the abuse he had suffered. He thought about taking more but decided to leave the rest. If he needed to run, then he’d grab it. Maybe there was some possible non-sinister explanation for all this. He laughed at himself. Highly unlikely.

  The bowl was shut back up in the safe and the painting restored. The problem was how to erase himself from the tapes. He couldn’t just leave them off, that would attract suspicion, but now they were un-synced. Several of them would stop before the rest. Maybe they would automatically rewind and start over, some of these machines did that. Or perhaps no one would l
ook at the tapes. After all, his parents couldn’t go through them every day, could they? Then if he stayed away from the house, that would give them the incentive to look at the tapes and see what he had discovered.

  Screw it. He could go round and round like this forever. Jon stopped all of the tapes, retrieved the sneaker from the basement—doing his ritual, running as fast as he could in and out of there, the sick feeling gripped him harder now—then rewound all of the tapes back two hours and hit record. If they checked, he would still be seen leaving the master bedroom. A risk he had to take.

  After grabbing a few juice packs and granola bars from the pantry, he zipped off down the road to meet his gaming buddies. But somehow the adventures of Crixen Runeburner were dim and lifeless that night.

  CHAPTER 4

  The Judas Goat

  Jon woke with a start on Michael’s bedroom floor. The grungy shag carpeting had scored a number of macaroni-sized ruts in his face. The usual disorders of not knowing where he was claimed him for a second, but his senses took in reality quick enough. The stink of yesterday’s clothes, hard particles of crud from a carpet that had never been vacuumed, stale air from an unventilated room.

  A typical teenage boy’s room. Iron Maiden posters on the wall. A pile of dirty laundry in the closet. A tottering stack of well-read comics next to the bed. Porno mags hidden under the bed. Trashcan filled to the brim. Loose leaf paper, pens, spiral notebooks, backpack. Textbooks with a brown paper bag cover to minimize damage. Not much different from his own, except the furniture was more ragged.

  He shook the sleep from his face. Michael was elsewhere, which was just as well, Jon needed to scratch his balls and didn’t want anyone around for that. After the game last night, when they had extricated themselves from the grain elevator ruins, Jon called in a favor and asked to flop at Michael’s place. There was no question of refusing, the two were close enough that he almost didn’t have to ask. However, the latter kept pushing for details as to why Jon needed a new place and Jon clammed up. What was he going to say? That he didn’t want to be sexually manhandled in some occult ritual? If that’s even what his parents were doing.

  Through a crack in the bedroom door, he heard Michael down below, talking on the phone. Others shuffled about, getting ready to commence the daily grind.

  “I can pick that up later,” he was saying. “No, no. It’s great . . . Everything’s fine . . . Well that might be a little tricky, he uh . . . ”

  “Are you gonna be on the phone all goddamn day?” Michael’s dad yelled at him. “Some of us got to go ta work.”

  “How is me taking a call stopping that?”

  “Well, uh, maybe I gotta make a call. You think of that? No.”

  “Besides you need to eat,” his mom chimed in.

  “Did you make me something?” Michael asked hopefully.

  “What? Your arm’s broken?”

  The rest of the family laughed with bovine idiocy. The joke had probably been made a hundred times before and they still found it just as funny. Michael hung up.

  “You’re always talking to people and stuff. All ritzy,” his dad commented, as if it were some great crime.

  “I’m planning for my future,” Michael whined. “I’ve got to meet people who know other people if I’m gonna get ahead. That will be very useful once I graduate college.”

  “Get ahead. Please,” his dad snorted.

  “You’re not even out of high school yet,” his mom scolded,” and you’re wasting your time talking about going to college. It’s a long ways off.”

  “Only a year.”

  “This is giving me a headache,” Michael’s father declared. Scraping sounds of a chair pushing across linoleum. “I’m out of here. Oh, tell your brother to get off his lazy butt and go find a job today.”

  The dad walked into view, slipping on a plaid work shirt over his stained wife-beater T, a lunchbox stuffed in his armpit. Dishes clanked on the table.

  “Is that kid, what’s his name, still here?” his mom asked.

  “Jon? Yes.”

  “I want him out when you leave.”

  Jon retreated to the bed and wiped a greasy hand over his face. The pair had been friends for over nine years, a good chunk of their lives, and Michael’s parents still didn’t know Jon’s name. Oh well, that lack of interest could work in his favor. He might be able to sneak back in another night. If not, there weren’t many places for him to go. Maybe Kathy . . .

  “Kathy is such a sad sack of shit,

  That no one will tickle her tit,

  It would make her so glad,

  To be banged by a lad,

  Her jeans cream at the mere thought of it.”

  The words floated back from yesterday when Michael spat out this limerick as they headed to the game. Sexual jealousy? Sour grapes? Maybe he just wanted attention. Maybe he just hated the idea of anyone else having sex besides himself. Whatever was bothering him about the girl, Michael wasn’t coughing up, but suddenly he was very down on her. Not to her face, of course. The Black Rock way was to always talk trash just out of earshot.

  Kathy had agreed readily enough when Jon asked her to pass on the photos of the bowl to her parents. Then she repeated the kiss of the other night, much to Michael’s amusement. He didn’t spend a thought on whether he should go out with her. Things were way too weird to waste time on it. Besides, the fantasy of the horny supermodel who was into underage boys always lingered just around the corner of his mind.

  Michael appeared, scratching his head shamefacedly. “Um, we—”

  “Yeah, I heard.”

  “You heard?”

  “Your mom wants me out.”

  “Yeah. Were you listening in?”

  “She was kind of loud.”

  “That’s true. Alright. We missed the bus, so we gotta bike. You can use my brother’s since he’s usually too stoned to stay on it anymore.”

  School was the same chore it had been for the last eleven years. Droning classes. Homework, given and received. Notes taken, but never read again. Lessons learned, then forgotten with the first footfall out the door. Yawns stifled. Clock ticking. Bored teachers. Bored students. Bored janitors.

  At a break between classes, a laughing mick by the name of Coughlin told him that a group of Italians was smacking Michael around by the bathroom. Apparently, they had pulled down his pants to impress some girls, then things took a dark turn. Jon went to see.

  A large crowd had gathered around, looking and mocking. Vinnie Gabbaducci had the half-naked boy on the ground and was straddled across his chest, battering him about the head and neck. His hook-nosed butt-buddies, Carlo Abandanzo and Gino Giordino, were right behind the bully, egging him on, taking mock shots in the air. The sight of blood excited them to frenzy.

  Behind the boys were the tittering girls. Their lips all warbled about what disgusting brutes the boys were, but their eyes sang high praise. A restless gleam shone in them, and their thighs rubbed together at the bravado. Jon’s heart skipped a beat. Among the girls, wearing a tight sweater and short skirt, was his dream girl, Maria Maleventum. Large breasts, thin waist, pearl skin, bountiful auburn curls. She was perfect.

  Whenever she hovered into view, his mind melted, the blood drained southwards, and all he could do was babble stupidly.

  It took a few minutes before a few brave teachers ventured in and pulled the boys apart. The blood lust was deep on Gabbaducci now and it took three full grown men to wrestle him down the hall and toss him into the detention room.

  Michael, red-faced with shame and choking back tears, was sympathetically led to the nurse’s station to be looked over by the geriatric employed there. His pants, tossed into the girl’s bathroom, were retrieved and slung over his shoulder.

  The poor guy could never catch a break. The Dutch family was—well, probably Dutch in origin, even though it could easily been some other WASP delineation. The main ethnic groups in the school were the Irish, Italians, and blacks, and they did not get alon
g. It was almost taboo for a member of one pack to speak to someone of a different lineage. On a good day, they would only hurl insults at each other. On the worst, mini race riots would break out. Michael, not related to any group even by marriage, was alone.

  The main ethnic groups in the school were the Irish, Italians, and blacks, and they did not get along. It was almost taboo for a member of one pack to speak to someone of a different lineage. On a good day, they would only hurl insults at each other. On the worst, mini race riots would break out. Michael, not related to any group even by marriage, was alone.

  Jon was, too. Not many St. Fonds in the area, the genealogical chart pointed that out, but something about Michael attracted these groups to bully him. He had the smell of an easy mark. His stooped shoulders and downward glance, gave away his beta gene. Whatever it was, the vermin would flock to feed on his corpse.

  After that scene, he decided not to risk going to Michael’s house a second night, and instead approached Louis. The jock agreed readily enough, saying that his family always had a couch open in case a stray member of their extended family should amble on up. Jon then sought out Kathy and caught up to her as she was about to enter a class.

  “Hi,” she said, eyes dancing eagerly over his face.

  Some females nearby whispered softly and giggled at them. Suddenly self-conscious, Jon stared at the floor as they talked.

  “So what did they say?”

  “Say?”

  “About the photos. Your parents.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t get a chance to show them.”

  “Jesus Christ, it’s important you know.” He stalked away, shaking in head in irritation.

  “I’m sorry,” she called after him.

  The night at Louis’s place was odd. Well, not really odd, they were just more like a typical TV family than Jon was used to. They seemed actually happy to be around one another. Spending time together was something they wanted to do, rather than it being an obligation. Instead of watching TV and gulping down food, they sat around at a table for their evening meal and talked happily. They even said a prayer while holding hands, something Jon had never done. Afterwards, they spent time playing games, doing homework, reading, and generally enjoying each other’s company without one of them verbally attacking the other.