The gates were part of a circular fence, made of crisscrossed iron slats, that girded a small, enclosed area. Welded to the top of the arch—beneath a marquis reading FIBBLE! as if the circle was the latest blockbuster film—were a metal rooster and a cow. Marlo scrunched up her brother’s face.
“I don’t get the rooster and the cow,” she said to no one in particular, never completely taking her eyes off the malevolent clown head overhead.
“It’s a cock and bull, actually,” the duck demon said, waddling to her side with Mr. Nixon’s bags.
Marlo stared at Dr. Brinkley, still not getting it.
“Like a cock-and-bull story,” Mr. Nixon clarified. “You know … malarkey. A pile of cock-a-doodle-doo. Don’t you know that old phrase?”
“No, I cock-a-doodle-don’t,” she replied. “Old phrases are for old people.”
Inside the fenced area were a pair of masked demon guards in flowing black robes, sitting on folding metal chairs reading GYP, Heck’s fittingly terrible newspaper. As soon as they noticed Marlo, Mr. Nixon, and Dr. Brinkley, they rose suddenly like Jack-the-Ripper-in-the-boxes. The backs of Marlo’s arms turned to gooseflesh at the sight of the demons.
Molded to their bald, decomposing heads were burnished brass metal masks with eyes like the shutters of old-time cameras, clenching and relaxing as they adjusted to the fluctuations in light. The demons strode toward the visitors, their floor-length robes fluttering behind them, and opened the gates with a scrape of metal against ice. Dr. Brinkley trembled and waddled to meet them.
“I, um, QUACK!” Dr. Brinkley said nervously, his bill chattering like a pair of wind-up teeth. He cleared his throat and tried again. “We … I … am here with Mr. Nixon, a teacher visiting from Limbo on Principal Bubb’s orders, and a new pupil … Milton Fauster.”
It was all Marlo could do to not turn around, looking for her brother.
“Shall I tie my team of Night Mares anywhere special?” the doctor asked as he glanced over his shoulder at his stagecoach, caught just inside the shadow of Fibble suspended above it. The intimidating demon guards stared mutely at the doctor.
“Um … I suppose they’re fine right there, then,” Dr. Brinkley muttered.
The demons beckoned the threesome inside the gates, pointing to a large target painted on the ground—a series of concentric red, blue, and yellow rings with a bull’s-eye in the middle. Marlo stepped through the gates and looked above her. In the middle of the platform supporting Fibble was a circle about the same size as the target area they were standing in.
Must be some kind of elevator, Marlo thought as Mr. Nixon, fidgeting beside her, squinted up at Fibble looming overhead.
“How do we get up there?” he asked, looking around for some kind of entrance.
The demon guards herded Marlo, Mr. Nixon, and Dr. Brinkley to the bull’s-eye of the target, before kneeling down to pick up two large megaphones. Standing back-to-back, the tall, slender guards held their megaphones up to their scabby mouths, training them out toward the rim of stilts beyond.
“Life isn’t fair,” the demon guards bellowed in a deep, deafening unison, “and neither is death.”
Instantly, as if reacting to the guards’ thunderous roars, the wooden stilts supporting Fibble quivered. Then, with a fresh peal of creaking screams, the wooden supports violently contracted, and Fibble came plummeting down.
“Aaaaaeeeiieeeyyyy!!” Marlo, Mr. Nixon, and Dr. Brinkley screamed in unison, clutching one another as the massive wooden platform of tents struck the ground with a gigantic thud. It felt—and sounded—as if their heads had been torn off, though, Marlo realized, her ability to think at all clearly meant that she still had a head on her shoulders.
Trembling, Marlo forced open her eyes and saw that Fibble had fallen down around them, and that here—inside the target zone—they were safe.
“Ta-da!” barked an unseen man through a megaphone. Suddenly, a spotlight shone on Marlo, Mr. Nixon, and Dr. Brinkley. Marlo winced and vainly tried to shield her eyes from the glare.
Well, I was sort of right about the elevator, Marlo thought as she noticed huge shreds of paper tangled in the tips of the circular fence. Luckily we just passed through a paper hole or something.
The three visitors disentangled themselves as one of the masked demon guards opened the gates and urged them forward. This time, instead of passing through the strobing, rainbow neon portal back to the frozen Falla Sea, they entered a circus Big Top, surrounded by grandstands filled with children clapping tepidly.
The man with the megaphone—a stout silhouette standing in front of a spotlight—chortled.
“Hurry, hurry, step right up!” he shouted as the demon guard, after leading Marlo, Mr. Nixon, and Dr. Brinkley to the grandstands, hurried back through the gates to join his colleague at the painted bull’s-eye. As Marlo’s eyes grew accustomed to the light, she noticed that most of the children in the stands were nothing more than painted cutouts.
“B-but my stagecoach,” whined Dr. Brinkley, tears forming in his eyes. “My Night Mares …”
The full-bodied shadow-man turned toward the duck demon.
“You didn’t bring your mangy mares inside the gates?” he scolded.
Dr. Brinkley shook his downy head.
The man laughed as phlegm rattled in his chest like a seething snot-pit of rattlesnakes.
“A fool and his ponies are soon parted. Well, it looks like you are our guest. Forever. Poor, poor flattened fillies …”
The figure emerged from the beam of harsh, dazzling light. It was a stocky, swollen man with a froggish face, dressed in a top hat and swishing tails.
“I am your vice principal, P. T. Barnum,” he bellowed heartily, “and welcome to Fibble: The Greatest Show Under Earth!”
And with that, he punched his big, brass belt buckle, and the vice principal’s pants were engulfed in flames.
2 • HOORAY FOR HELLYWOOD
BEING A GIRL feels really weird, Milton thought as he dangled his sister’s aching feet off the high-end office chair. Dressed like a model pretending to be a secretary, Milton had expanded his definition of “uncomfortable” exponentially. As one of the devil’s Inferns, Milton—in Marlo’s body—was forced to wear the latest designer clothing: that is, clothing designed to exact as much bodily pain as possible.
First there were the shoes: “pumps,” one of the other girls (the real girls) had called them. They would have been somewhat tolerable if Milton had, say, three fewer toes on each foot. Next was the dress: a scratchy, wool thigh-length thingie that clung to him like corn dog bits to a retainer. Plus, it had an unfortunate tendency to creep up, which creeped Milton out. Where was the dress going? And to what end?
Then there were the, um, aptly named unmentionables: the less said about them the better. Even though Milton had once, after solving a Rubik’s Cube in twenty-one moves, made his own Rubik’s Icosahedron out of Styrofoam and toothpicks, he was infinitely perplexed by girls’ underwear. It had taken him most of the morning to figure out why Marlo’s lace hat had two caps.
His borrowed body felt alternately simpler and more complicated—frustrating in its sheer, confounding un-fathomability. Just like girls, Milton thought.
Milton tried his best not to overanalyze the skin he ached to jump out of: just thinking about being his older sister, Marlo—at least on the outside—made his skin crawl. Or hers. Whatever.
Milton hoped that by working undercover he could save not only both of their skins, but their eternal souls. Maybe he’d even stumble onto a way to save the souls of every kid toiling in Heck—at least the ones who didn’t seem to deserve to be there. Judging from Milton’s experience down here, that was darn near most of them. Some of them, like his friend Virgil, were even—
“Nice necklace,” a fellow Infern named Terri Belle said, pointing to the string of paper clips Milton had hung around his neck after noticing that he was the only girl in the office without jewelry.
“Thanks,” Milton
replied, not quite realizing that some girls tie their sarcasm with a pretty bow.
“Anyway,” Terri continued with a yawn, “these boxes aren’t going to unpack themselves.” She pointed to a stack of bulging cartons.
“But wouldn’t that be cool if they could?” Milton replied. “Like if the boxes were actually robots composed of electromechanical cardboard that—”
Terri walked away. Milton had yet to master the art of girl-to-girl conversation. He looked over at the pile of boxes and sighed.
Milton, as Marlo, had been claw-picked by Satan himself to help get the epitome of all evil’s new entertainment network off the ground, or as off-the-ground as you can get something way down here. The only problem was that Milton hadn’t even met the Big Guy Downstairs, and his “role” was as vague as a question mark made of fog. All he knew for certain was that he had been transferred from Marlo’s job as a Deceptionist for h-e-double-hockey-sticks to this dismal gray labyrinth of cramped workspace cubes in the southwest region of the Netherworld. Judging from the crumbling sign on the fire-scorched hill just outside the office window, this smoggy place was called HELLYWOOD, INFERNIA: HOME TO A GALAXY OF FALLEN STARS.
Milton heard a snarl of laughter, quickly stifled. Looking up, he noticed Terri and several other girls snickering at him. Milton realized that he was sitting, legs splayed, on the edge of his seat, which is nothing for a twelve-year-old boy, but to a teenage girl in a dress with a mind of its own, it was a case of instant humiliation: just add Milton.
He crossed his tingly, panty-hosed girl-legs and scooted his chair under his desk. Milton could feel Marlo’s cheeks blushing, which, he knew, would have earned him one of his sister’s lethal noogies, as Marlo worked hard on her deathly, Goth-girl pallor. Lucky for Milton’s cranium, Marlo wasn’t here, not really.
Lucky, Milton reflected with a sharp pang of loss as he thought of his pet ferret. Milton had once shared an etheric bond with Lucky, but—just outside of Blimpo—it had been abruptly severed. Now, Milton assumed, his fuzzy white pet was somewhere in the Furafter. Milton bit his sister’s nails, hoping that Annubis, the dog god responsible for switching his soul with Marlo’s, could locate him.
Just then, an immense man with a salt-and-pepper beard and sad, troubled eyes lumbered into the office, eating two hot dogs at once. The other girls were suddenly and mysteriously absent, leaving Milton to deal with the imposing visitor.
“Hello, um, and welcome to … wherever this is,” Milton said. “My name is—”
“Moawrlo,” the man sputtered between a mouthful of semimasticated frankfurter and bun. He swallowed. “Marlo. I’m here to see Marlo Fauster,” he punctuated with a sly wink.
“I … I’m Marlo Fauster,” Milton managed with difficulty, struggling with a half-truth that was indeed half true.
“The name is Welles,” the man said with a deep, velvety rumble as he lit a cigar. “Orson Welles. Actor, director, spokesperson, magician, fortune-teller … genius. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”
Milton squinted at Mr. Welles, though Marlo’s eyes were far sharper—like a thieving magpie—than the orbs Milton was accustomed to.
“Oh yeah,” he replied. “Weren’t you in one of the Muppet movies?”
Mr. Welles bit down on his cigar so hard that it smacked him on the forehead. “Even geniuses need to eat,” he said as he patted out his smoldering eyebrow. “Some more than others.”
He rummaged through his coat pocket and pulled out two Beastern Union Penta-grams.
“These are to inform you of your new role here,” Mr. Welles announced as he handed Milton the envelopes. “About the beginning of T.H.E.E.N.D.”
“The end?” Milton said as two custodial demons in overalls took off their work boots, stood on their hands, and pounded a sign into the door with their hammer-toes. “But … but I just got here.”
Mr. Welles laughed.
“No,” he said with a smirk as he presented the new door sign with fanfare. T.H.E.E.N.D.: TELEVISED HEREAFTER EVANGELISTIC ENTERTAINMENT NETWORK DIVISION.
Milton studied the two Penta-grams in his hands, not knowing which to open first. He shrugged and ripped one open with his thumbnail. (One of the few fringe benefits of being his sister were her sharp, should-be-registered-as-deadly-weapons thumbnails.)
BEASTERN UNION PENTA-GRAM
To: Marlo Fauster, Infern, Hellywood From: The Big Guy Downstairs
This is the second telegram. Stop. You were supposed to open the other telegram first. Stop.
The Big Guy Downstairs
Milton sighed as he wadded up the Penta-gram and tore open the next.
BEASTERN UNION PENTA-GRAM
To: Marlo Fauster, Infern, Hellywood From: The Big Guy Downstairs Defective immediately, you are to be reassigned as production assistant to my ultimate mass media endeavor, T.H.E.E.N.D., the full, unabbreviated moniker of which should currently be hanging on your door. Stop. You may well ask why I am heaping such responsibility upon someone as untried and untrue as yourself. Stop. Firstly, you have exhibited a temerity where others have shown timidity. Stop. Lastly, you are an outsider, and I always value bringing outsiders in, until they become insiders. Stop. Mr. Welles (you may remember him from one of the Muppet movies) will give you your first assignment. Stop.
Yours, etc., The Big Guy Downstairs
Milton furrowed his brows, which—he had recently realized—his sister plucked on a regular basis.
“But I thought Satan already had URN: the Underworld Retribution Network?” Milton said to Mr. Welles, who was leaning against the desk and unwittingly pressing it into Milton’s chest. “Why does he need another television network?”
Mr. Welles smiled around his fat, smoldering cigar.
“Ah, yes, but T.H.E.E.N.D. goes straight to the top!” he said with a sly purr. “Or the Surface, I should say …”
“The Surface?!” Milton yelped. “Satan is broadcasting to the Surface?”
Mr. Welles grinned.
“Yes … Satan is ready for prime time,” he snorted, belching clouds of sickening smoke. “A genius idea if I do say so myself! Those philistines upstairs are going to find out that Orson Welles, while dead, is very much alive … with creative fire and burning ambition!”
Mr. Welles continued. “Mysteriously, the Big Guy Downstairs found out about a way to pierce the Transdimensional Power Grid from beneath, sending transmissions from below up above. The key just seemed to fall into his lap from some unknown source. And while it’s all too easy to pierce the grid to arrive on this side, it’s quite something else to send information the other way … it’s like a catfish dog-paddling upstream—”
“I think you mean like a salmon swimming—”
“Regardless of the particular fish or stroke, it’s unprecedented. T.H.E.E.N.D. is not just a television network. It is a piece of sprawling theater—impervious to DVR, I might add. A collection of volatile, religious-themed shows that play off and directly against each other, creating a complex web of divisive controversy, pushing the buttons of their specific audiences as if they were on speed dial. The network is like an ensemble cast of antagonistic programming, where each show has its own, unique role to play.…”
Mr. Welles flicked cigar ash to the ground.
“And the play’s the thing, after all,” he added, before pointing to a cast-iron hatch at the far end of the room with the tip of his cigar.
“… and that, young lady, will be your playpen for the next month or so.…”
Milton swallowed as he eyed the windowless metal door edged with steel bolts.
Just when we thought TV couldn’t get any worse, Milton reflected, along comes the devil to lower the bar … all the way down to h-e-double-hockey-sticks.
3 • TOUR DE FARCE
MARLO AND THE half-dozen boys that had been waiting in the grandstands squeezed into a red-and-yellow clown car. A pasty-faced, shifty-eyed kid with brown stringy hair that hung in his face like a shredded curtain accidentally put his hand
on Marlo’s knee.
“Watch it, Grabby,” she spat. “Keep those hands where I can see them.”
The boy’s pupils darted toward Marlo.
“What?” he said, puzzled.
Marlo realized that she was Milton—a lanky, grubby boy—and not a girl surrounded by lanky, grubby boys.
“Um … just joking,” she replied carefully. “The name is Milton Fauster.”
The boy held his hand out at his side like a little flipper, being that personal space was nonexistent in this stuffy, smelly clown car.
“Colby Hayden,” the boy said. “Youngest American astronaut. Ever. Died upon reentry after delivering puppies from a Soviet canine cosmonaut trapped aboard a Russian spy satellite as its orbit decayed. Luckily I’m also a veterinarian paramedic.”
“Right.” Marlo nodded. “I think I read about that in Deluded Dork magazine.”
P. T. Barnum, pants still ablaze, hopped up on the hood of the clown car. Seconds later, a stooped, shrimp-like demon—a foot and a half tall in its rainbow-colored fright wig—dove into the car, scrambling atop a pile of broken toys, dismembered Barbie parts, and already-colored coloring books to reach the tiny steering wheel.
The vice principal swelled to dangerous life, a hot-air balloon buoyed by flammable gas in a lightning storm. “Okay, Scampi, now that all of our new guests have finally arrived,” he said, arching his bushy eyebrow Marlo’s way, “let us begin our spectacular tour!”
He signaled for Scampi to turn the key in the ignition.
“Welcome to Fibble, Heck’s very own Three-Ring Media Circus!” he barked through his tiny blue megaphone. “No bottles, cameras, or pictures of bottles or cameras, or tiny cameras in bottles, please.”
The car rumbled to life. Marlo could feel Milton’s body getting tight with claustrophobia, while the ache in her brother’s gut throbbed and thrummed like a big zit full of bees.
Thanks a lot, bro, Marlo thought as the car lurched forward. At least I left my body in decent working order before you switched us.
Fibble: The Fourth Circle of Heck Page 2
