SS 04: Devil Said Bang: A Sandman Slim Novel

by Richard Kadrey

  What the hell is this? How do a stalker photo album and a bunch of mutilated soldiers go together? Was Mason stone-cold crazy by the end, staring at my life while slicing up the only victims who’d willingly come into Norman Bates’s rec room?

  I go over to the blackboard schematic. On a nearby table are wire cutters, soldering irons, a voltmeter, and other electronic hobby gear. Something like a computer or an elaborate radio lies gutted on the table, circuit boards and bits of fiber-optic cable scattered around it. It looks like someone was scavenging for parts. The device is vaguely familiar but I can’t place it. I push one of the circuit boards out of the way and find something I was hoping I’d never see again.

  A Golden Vigil logo. It fell off the device when it was pried open. Now I remember what it is. It’s angelic tech—a psychic amplifier. I saw a few around the Vigil’s L.A. warehouse. Their Shut Eye psychics used them to supercharge their powers for interrogations and remote viewing experiments. As much as I want to be surprised, I’m not. Mason was working with Aelita, the old head of the Vigil. Maybe she dropped this off with a basket of blueberry muffins as a housewarming present.

  I pick up a curled metal shaving from the table. Turn it over in my hands. It’s a dull silver and dense. Not like something that would go into a machine as delicate as the amplifier. There are more shavings and half-melted ingots on the floor. I kick through them and there, lying by the toe of my god-awful, shiny dress shoe, is what I’ve been looking for.

  I pick up the metal and go back to the chair with the dead soldier. The metal fits perfectly into the divot behind her head. The same thing for the holes in the hand- and footrests.

  I weigh the key in my hand. It’s heavy and solid and comforting. I never realized until now that I miss the weight of the key in my chest. This isn’t like my key. It won’t get anyone out of here but this possession key has its own charms, and with the psychic amplifier, I bet it’s how Mason got the thing to work and let him ride people back on Earth like a voodoo Loa.

  I thought Mason’s workshop was upstairs, but the forge and tools were just for show. This is the real lab. And the dead soldiers were his first experiments as he tried to make the key work. These aren’t Lucifer’s clues and none of this gets me any closer to getting out of here, but it’s still useful. Whoever has the key must also have a working psychic amplifier, the one Mason was scavenging parts for. That means I don’t necessarily have to find the key. If I can find and smash the amplifier, it might kill the key’s power. Better yet, if I can find the key and the amplifier, I might be able to talk to someone back in L.A.

  This is good news. Not break-out-the-champagne-I’m-coming-home good news. More like open-a-six-pack-of-malt-liquor-I-didn’t-drop-my-keys-down-the-toilet-at-work good news. But after the last three months, I’ll take any good news I can get.

  The dissected Hellion is really starting to stink up the place. I want to go back to my room and sandblast my skin off but there’s one more thing.

  By itself, in the corner of the room, is an ornate wooden table holding a black lacquered box. The box is perfectly square and featureless. When I touch the top, I can feel faint vibrations from inside.

  I feel along the edges and find a subtle seam. Then others nearby. I push on one and nothing happens. Others move an inch or two. The damn thing is a puzzle box, but I’m not in a puzzle mood. I take out the black blade and bring it down hard, slicing off one side. No explosions or poison gas or snakes with machine guns. That’s a good sign. I hack off the other side, get my hands inside, and push. A second later, the box rips apart in a shower of splinters and black velvet lining. It’s kind of a pretty sight. Like an exploding ventriloquist dummy.

  Something heavy and metal hits the floor. I try to pick it up, and rip the tip of my middle finger. Getting down on one knee, I slip the blade underneath it, raising it up like balancing an egg. In the light, I can’t see any sharp edges. Carefully, I rest it in the palm of my hand. It’s definitely a weapon but I’ve never seen one like it. When I turn it side to side, something weird happens.

  As the light hits it from different angles, the thing changes shape. It’s a spiked ball the size of a tangerine. It’s a long silver dart with barbs at each end. It’s a spinning cone of fire. It’s ice knuckle-dusters. A parang. An elaborate Balisong, with six hinged joints that move at 180-degree angles to each other. Whatever kind of slice-and-dicer this is, it wasn’t made for human hands.

  Fighters liked to tell tall tales around the arena. Stories about ultimate weapons they’d heard about that would make them impossible to kill. Over a few jugs of bitter Hellion wine (our prize for having survived the day), we came to the consensus that the ultimate weapon would be the one that killed all your enemies and then flew you away to Heaven or Valhalla or anyplace where when you said the word Hell the locals would say, “What’s that?”

  One fighter from some Hellion backwater said that he’d seen the real ultimate weapon. Only archangels had them and only Gabriel was brave enough to use his.

  “No rebel angel could defeat him because each time he used his weapon it was different. There was no way to attack or defend yourself against it. Before the battle was over, thousands of our rebel brothers and sisters lay dead at his feet. These other fools think it was God who defeated us, but the few of us who survived the battle know it was Gabriel.”

  I remember something Alice said before Samael took her back to Heaven. I’d left her alone with Neshamah, one of the five entities that have made up God since His nervous breakdown. Alice said that Aelita killed Neshamah with a weapon Alice had never seen before. I wonder if that’s because what she saw was really a million different weapons. That would be pretty damn hard to describe at the best of times and even harder if it was only for a few seconds while someone gutted God in front of you.

  Among the lacquered splinters is a kind of leather sheath that roughly corresponds to the shape of the weapon when it’s configured like circular-saw blades. Carefully, I slip the thing into the case and lock the top flap closed.

  I wonder if Aelita left the weapon for Mason to use on me or if he was just holding it for her while she hunted down the other four God brothers? Either way it’s mine now. I drop it in my jacket pocket and get the hell out of Mason’s butcher shop.

  I head to the bedroom but stop at the library to leave red “get your ass over here now” signal cards in front of a couple of peepers for Ipos and Merihim.

  In the bedroom I strip off the suit and give it a sniff. The abattoir-fresh aroma all the kids love is deep inside the material. That’s never coming out. I toss the suit over with the dead motorcycle jacket. It’s sort of comforting seeing the growing pile of ruined clothes. I’ve killed off a lot of men’s casual wear while getting shot and stabbed. Now all I have to do is decapitate someone and I’ll feel like I’m home sweet home.

  I grab an overcoat from the closet and toss it on the bed. I feel enough like me that I put on the leather bike pants and boots I wore when I came down here. They feel good. A little stiff with dried blood, most of it mine. I put on my hoodie. It’s blood stiff too and one of the sleeves is missing from when the red legger relieved me of my left arm. I sliced him in half like a side of beef with my Gladius, my flaming angelic sword.

  I keep the glove on, but leave my prosthetic arm bare since no one is going to see it under the coat.

  Back in the library I smack the gyroscope like Merihim, making it spin backward. The monster-movie voice chitt
ers like a groundhog that’s burrowed into a meth lab. I check the peeper images on the movie screen. Brimborion is prowling his office, smiling at his staff. Trying to play it cool. He’s almost pulling it off, but if you look hard enough you can see the wheels whirring in his head. Is one of these fuckers selling me out? Maybe better to kill them all and let God or the Devil or Oprah sort them out.

  In other parts of the palace, people do funny little square dances when they come around a corner and find a hellhound. Maintenance guys on break in the basement check out my motorcycle. Staff witches sort through piles of dried bugs and plants. Outside, a couple of officers are kicking the shit out of a low-ranking Hellion while another officer uses his long leather sap to poke the dead bikers in the gibbets. Guess the book club let out early.

  Ipos and Merihim show up a few minutes later. I tell them about the secret room while taking out my eye. I drop the other peepers into their saline storage jars so that mine is the only one showing on the screen. They watch the show like a couple at a drive-in movie. Bored during the dark part but starting a little when the lights flick on, giving them a full frontal of Ed Gein’s rumpus room.

  “Too bad you can only see the place and not smell it. It’s memorable.”

  “You think this is Mason Faim’s work?” says Merihim when we come to the first close-up of a dissected brain.

  “Unless this is what Hellions call ‘playing doctor.’ ”

  He shoots me a look. I distract him by holding out the Magic 8 Ball.

  “Ever seen one of these before?”

  Merihim is too smart to grab things the Devil finds weird but Ipos is more impulsive. He grabs the ball, turns it, and immediately gets his hand skewered by a barb.

  He curses in lower-class street Hellion, which sounds even worse than regular Hellion. Like a shop vac sucking up sewer sludge.

  On the screen I’m moving the soldier’s body around while the pile of body bags forms a pastoral slaughterhouse tableau in the background.

  Merihim bends to look at the ball in Ipos’s bleeding hand but doesn’t move to take it.

  “Whatever this is, it reeks of unnatural power. You should let me take it and bury it deep in the Tabernacle vaults.”

  Everyone is on a power trip here, the church included.

  “Thanks but no thanks. It stays with me.”

  “This isn’t something to be left lying around.”

  “Which is why it stays with me and not buried somewhere I can’t see it.”

  “And where will it end up if something happens to you?”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it. If whoever knows how to work this gets ahold of it again, my guess is that we’ll all be dead by morning. Another good reason to keep me on the unkilled team.”

  On the screen I’m poking at the psychic amplifier. I watch them closely. Neither has ever seen one before. Neither reacts to the Vigil logo either. At least I don’t have to worry about them working with whoever has the key.

  “Either of you come up with any new information?”

  Ipos nods and his church tattoos move like a flag promising salvation.

  “I might have,” he says. “The soldiers who attacked you were from Wormwood’s legion. There are an unusual number of suicides and murders among his troops. Apparently it’s been going on for some time, but since the dead no longer disappear into Tartarus he can’t hide it anymore. My spies in other legions found that the same thing is starting to happen in other parts of the legion.”

  Merihim says, “Red leggers have been caught delivering bogus potions to physicians and hospitals. The real ones end up on the black market.”

  “Okay. Maybe bad drugs get them to kill themselves, but what do they have to do with killing me?”

  Merihim shrugs.

  “Well, no one likes you very much.”

  On the screen I’m examining the weird weapon. Ipos watches closely, safe from slicing himself open.

  He says, “General Semyazah controls the distribution of vital goods. That gives him access to you and to a lot of power. There’s a long list of generals who would like to replace him.”

  Damn.

  “We’re back to generals stabbing generals in the back? I thought that shit was over with when I killed Mason.”

  “In peace or war, there are always men who want power for its own sake.”

  Ipos has given up pretending to look at the peeper projection and has gone to my desk to fix the wobbly leg.

  “You think Semyazah is letting his own trucks get ripped off?”

  From under my desk Ipos says, “It’s possible. Being smart doesn’t exempt you from corruption.”

  He hammers a wooden spacer under one of the desk legs. Between taps with a small hammer he says, “Of course it could be another general earning some extra money while making Semyazah look bad.”

  “Why not just kill him? That seems to be a quick way to get promotions down here.”

  Merihim shakes his head.

  “Murdering Semyazah risks an all-out war among the generals. Legion against legion. No one wants that.”

  Ipos says, “If someone could possess Semyazah and have him, say, attack you, then he could be killed and you would have to appoint another supreme general.”

  Merihim opens his hands in a weary gesture.

  “We’re back to speculating. We know more than we did but not enough to come to any reasonable conclusions.”

  I go to my eye and start the projection over again in case I missed something the first time through.

  Ipos comes out from under the desk. He wipes dirt from his knees and says, “Even without war we’re still trapped in chaos and fear. It reminds me of waking up here after the fall from Heaven.”

  He looks at Merihim.

  “Do you remember? How many brothers and sisters cut their throats or threw themselves off the high mountains?”

  “And the ones who turned on each other. I remember. It was a terrible thing to see.”

  Ipos looks at me.

  “Lucifer saved us. The first one. Like you, he had us work building Pandemonium. It took our minds off those . . . other possibilities.”

  Neither of them looks at each other or at me. Their eyes are glazed in an ex-soldier’s thousand-yard stare.

  I never thought of Hellions this way. They always seemed so full of Fuck You spirit when it came to the war in Heaven. It never occurred to me that being thrown here was as terrible for them as it was for me. When Heaven started shipping in damned souls, it must have been a nice distraction, but only for a while. Guarding passive, broken ghosts can’t be that exciting. And maybe they reminded the fallen angels too much of themselves. The damned minding the damned. If Hellions hadn’t tortured me for all those years, I might even feel sorry for them. But they did, so I don’t.

  I take a picture from my pocket and hand it to Merihim.

  “While we’re on the subject of lousy deaths, this is a girl from L.A. She had dyed green hair and worked at a donut shop on Hollywood Boulevard. She was murdered by two Kissi sometime between last Christmas and New Year’s. I don’t know if she’s down here, but if she is, can one of you find her?”

  Merihim hands the photo to Ipos. He wipes the blood from his hands before taking it. “There can’t be that many pretty mortals killed by monsters in donut shops at Christmas. If she’s here, we’ll find her.”

  “When you do, get her a job. Something safe. Away from
the craziness. I’d do it myself but being near me is what got her in trouble in the first place.”

  Ipos puts the photo in the breast pocket of his work overalls.

  “She’s a friend of yours?”

  I shake my head.

  “I don’t even know her name.”

  On the screen I watch myself unwrapping the soldier’s body.

  Merihim cocks his head.

  “I can’t help but be curious: you want us to find a complete stranger to ease the burden of her damnation but you’ve never once asked about your mother or father.”

  “I don’t have to. Believe it or not, I’m capable of doing a few things on my own. They’re not here. It turns out being drunk and miserable are only venial sins after all. Lucky them.”

  Ipos says, “Didn’t your father try to shoot you? Shouldn’t he be here with us?”

  “I suppose by Heaven’s standards, killing an Abomination isn’t the same as killing a regular human,” says Merihim.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  I look at the screen, not really watching it.

  I say, “I think we’re done here for now. Don’t you?”

  As they head for the fake bookcase, Merihim says, “Yesterday I said that I’d bring you a protective potion. That will have to wait until I can check that they’re not bogus.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m not sitting around waiting to get my brain cut open. I’m going to do something.”

  “What exactly?”

  “I have no idea. Something, you know, subtle.”

  Merihim says, “Like when you burned Eden? I only ask because I’m still trying to gauge your definition of ‘subtle.’ ”

  I look at him and can’t help but smile.

  “That was a fun afternoon. Anyway, you’ll know it when you see it.”

  “I have no doubt.”

  They go out and Ipos pulls the bookcase shut behind them.