Devil Said Bang (Sandman Slim)

by Richard Kadrey

  “Why?” I say. It’s all I can get out.

  “Why didn’t I kill you when I met you at Blackburn’s? Why didn’t I feed you to King or send you straight to Teddy to die? Because I knew all I had to do was give you a little push and you’d find your way up the hill on your own. And it would hurt a lot more along the way. I hope it did. But not as much as what’s going to happen.”

  “Mr. Osterberg,” says Traven. “When God threw Satan out of Eden, he said, ‘Thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field. Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.’ Do you know how much lower than that you are?”

  Good for you, Father.

  Teddy raises his eyebrows in mock innocence.

  “None of this is my fault. I was just hungry and King Cairo told Lula here my secret. All the men in my family have the hunger. If you want to blame someone, blame Great-Grandfather. He made a deal with . . .” Teddy leans down into my face and yells, “The Devil. Yes, Great-Grandfather made a deal for wealth and power and volunteered to become something abominable—an eater of the dead—to prove his loyalty to Satan.”

  Samael must have laughed his ass off at that. He would have been happy with the idiot’s soul, but when the nitwit offered to eat corpses for the next fifty years, how could he say no to that? Some people are too stupid to even damn themselves properly.

  “None of you will be as tasty as the kids but I’m forced to go on a child-free diet for a while. The Imp hasn’t killed all the parents of the ones I’ve already taken and until then I’m forced to subsist on dreary adults.”

  I was right. He used the girl to kill for Aelita, then for himself when Aelita didn’t need her. A sweet deal for a guy like Teddy. I wonder if he used her to kill new food for his pantry? How could he resist? I think I finally know what Aelita wanted out of all this. Not that it matters down here on the floor.

  I take a deep breath and cough up blood on Teddy’s shoes.

  His face turns red and he kicks me in the teeth. Lula slaps him hard enough to leave a mark.

  “You don’t touch this one.”

  Traven says, “How do you control something as powerful as the girl? You barely seem to be able to control yourself.”

  Lula hits him in the back of the neck with the gun butt.

  Teddy goes to a table where a child’s skull sits under a bell jar.

  “Isn’t she beautiful? The angel bought me the Imp’s cemetery for safekeeping. As payment, she gave me the skull. There was hardly any flesh left on her and it was as dry as paper. I soaked it in toddler fat and fried it brown and crispy. The Imp was exquisite. And after I said the words the angel gave me, her ghost was mine to command.”

  “That’s it,” says Lula. “They’ve heard enough to know they’ve been fucked all along. Especially this one.”

  She kicks me in my injured side. Teddy laughs.

  “He pulled a gun on me, you know.”

  Lula rolls her eyes.

  “Yes, I know. You’ve told me at least twenty times.”

  “I was being polite and he pulled a gun.”

  She nods.

  “Go play with yours and leave mine alone.”

  “I want to watch,” he says.

  “Then get out of my way.”

  Lula disappears and comes back with a big jerry can. I can smell the gasoline from here. She kicks Traven.

  “Turn him over on his back and drag him outside on the canvas. We don’t want to break the circle. I want plenty of room to see him squirm while he burns.”

  Teddy smiles down at me.

  “Burn yours if you want. I’m eating mine raw.”

  Fish and stones fall outside. Traven looks scared. He doesn’t want to help Lula kill me or go out into the supernatural rain. I know the look on his face. He’s vapor-locked. His brain can’t process the choices. He’s a good man and good men shouldn’t be in places like this having to do these things.

  I feel a tiny earthquake. Teddy screams and drops the Imp’s skull. Tries to turn and falls backward into a hole.

  All I can see is the top of the hole. Teddy’s hands scrabble around the edges trying to pull himself out while Cherry’s bony arms pull him back down. Lula points the gun at Traven and sidles up to the hole.

  “What the fuck?”

  She’s disgusted. The dead are misbehaving. You have no idea, lady.

  Lula points the pistol into the hole and fires shot after shot. She doesn’t see Traven. He picks up the Imp’s skull and hits Lula from behind. She drops the pistol into the hole and falls to her knees. Traven hits her again and knocks her against the wall. He pushes Lula upright and pins her arms.

  “Do you want to go to Hell, young lady?”

  “Fuck you.”

  She spits at him. Traven leans in like he’s going to kiss her. Black vapor and dust stream from his mouth into hers. I watch with Lucifer’s eyes, as her skin, already stained black with sin signs, turns wet and sloppy like she’s been dipped in hot tar. Her body sags. Traven has to hold her up to continue the Dolorosa.

  “Enough” is all I can get out. Traven stops. I’ve never seen that look of fury on his face before. It’s happened. He wanted to do more and he walked into the belly of the beast. Ghouls. Jabbers. Murderers and hit men. All in a day. The good man that came in the house is gone. The man I’m looking at is still good but in an angry, wounded way that matches Traven’s lined soldier’s face.

  Traven looks to where Lula slid down the wall into a sitting position. She’s unconscious and twitching. Eyes rolled back and breathing hoarse as her body tries to absorb the Dolorosa poison.

  I whisper, “Help me.”

  That wakes Traven up. He looks at me in a dazed way. Recognizes what’s happened and flips through all the books in his head. He takes the knife from inside my coat and slits the canvas, ripping out a piece to break the circle. Suddenly I can take a decent breath. I can even stand. Slowly. I spit blood and go to where Traven is bent over Candy.

  I collapse onto my knees next to her body.

  “She’s alive,” Traven says. “But the other woman. I think I might have killed her.”

  “Who cares? Dead now or dead later. Either way she’s hellbound.”

  He looks at me with a mixture of sorrow and shame. The preacher inside is still hanging on by his fingernails. Traven understands damning someone but not being an executioner. Maybe later I’ll tell him that the first one is always the hardest. Maybe not.

  “Do you know how to do mouth-to-mouth?”

  “Yes,” he says. “The Red Cross came to the seminary.”

  “Get her to the car and do what you can. She’s just paralyzed now but we don’t want any brain damage, do we?”

  “No.”

  “Get her out of here.”

  Traven nods. Picks Candy up in his arms and runs with her through the cursed rain.

  I go to the hole and look inside. Lula plugged Teddy five or six times. There are lots of bone fragments in the dirt. She hit Cherry too.

  I shouldn’t do what I’m doing but I’m still doing it. I pick up the Imp’s skull and throw it on the floor as hard as I can. The marble cracks and the skull explodes into a thousand pieces, destroying Lamia’s connection to this world. I don’t have to kill her. She was never really responsible for what she did. She was a slave killing for a sick bastard. I did plenty of that in Hell. With any luck, she’ll be just another ghost in the Tenebrae now. Maybe she’ll be strong enough to squeeze out whatever hole she came through and go home to the Angra. Who knows, maybe freeing her will buy humanity some brownie points when the Angra come back to eat our lunch. They can keep us around like sea monkeys and teach us tricks. Why not? One God fucked with us at the beginning of time. What’s one more?

  I pick up the jerry can and spread gasoline all over the floor. Before I light it, I find the kitchen and rip all the gas hoses out of the walls. I go outside and light a Malediction, letting the house fill with fumes. When I’m ha
lfway through the smoke, I open the front door and toss it inside. The house catches. Windows blow out, sending burning debris onto the perfect lawn. Traven starts the car. The flames light our way down the long hill.

  Good-bye, Teddy. So long, Lula. I hope Lamia and the ghosts of those kids don’t let your souls get to the afterlife too quick. I hope they give you a good long tour of the Tenebrae. Welcome to the Hell you made, assholes.

  By the time we hit Hollywood, the sky has stopped puking ocean down on our heads. The streets are choked with dying fish and colorful stones. I don’t think there’s a car windshield or store window left intact anywhere in Southern California. Traven steers around the worst of it as well as he can with a cracked windshield, heading for Allegra’s clinic.

  “I thought you had a falling-out with the woman who runs the clinic.”

  “Allegra might be pissed but she won’t let anything happen to Candy.”

  Traven carries her out of the car while I pound on the clinic door until they open it. Fairuza looks out and lets Traven inside. I stay in the parking lot.

  Traven comes out a few minutes later.

  “They say it’s a common drug. She’ll be fine,” he says.

  “Thanks.”

  “What happens now?”

  “You mean what does a person do after car chases, arson, and their first kill?”

  Traven looks out into the street. Some of the fish are still alive, gasping for breath on the sidewalk. He’d like to save every one of them.

  “Even if you’re in the right, how do you cope with it?”

  I shrug. It hurts.

  “Drinking helps.”

  He looks at himself in the clinic windows. I know the move. He’s checking to see if he’s still him.

  “You jumped on a flying saucer today, Father. You’re on a whole other planet now.”

  “That’s exactly how it feels.”

  “There’s no going back. You know that, don’t you? You can’t unsee or unknow any of this.”

  “I wouldn’t if I could. I didn’t just translate books because I had an aptitude for it. I did it hoping that one or two might reveal some deeper truth. That somehow my work would benefit people. These last few days . . .”

  “I know. Truth can kick your ass. You know the Greek word for ‘revelation,’ right?”

  “Apokálypsis.”

  “Apocalypse. The truth shall set you free, but not before blowing your brain to Rice Krispie Treats.”

  “Would you like to get a drink?”

  “Yeah. But tomorrow. I have one more stop to make before this thing is over.”

  “Are you going after Aelita?”

  “No. She’ll be long gone with the 8 Ball. I’m seeing someone who owes me a favor.”

  “Do you want some company?”

  “This one I have to do on my own. But I’d be grateful for a ride back to the Chateau.”

  The Metro’s windshield is too far gone. Traven and I kick it out of the frame and throw it in a Dumpster at the back of the lot. We don’t talk on the ride across town. My chest hurts like I was hit by a cruise missile, but I’m not spitting up blood. Kasabian is asleep on the couch when I get back. A big metal dog curled up and surrounded by beer cans. I lie down and nap in bed for a couple of hours. When I wake up, I change clothes, get on the Hellion hog, and head downtown.

  The Bradbury Building is an Art Deco beauty in one of the amnesic parts of town that can’t remember whether it wanted to be a neighborhood or a tourist wasteland and now isn’t quite either. Once upon a time I killed a vampire named Eleanor near here. Her family was the one I locked in the Chateau Marmont with a roomful of zombies. Now I’m back here again, not starting trouble but trying to end it.

  I park the bike on a pile of dead fish. The sky flickers like a lightning storm but there’s no thunder.

  The Bradbury Building is closed up tight but I jimmy the lock with the black blade. Silent motion-sensor alarms will go off the moment I’m inside. I’m sure the cops will rush right over after they dig out their squad cars from under all the rocks and carp. Even if they come, they’ll never find me where I’m going.

  I get in one of the ornate wrought-iron elevators and press the buttons for the first and third floors simultaneously. The elevator rises to the thirteenth floor in a building that only has five.

  I get out and walk to Mr. Muninn’s antiques shop. The door is unlocked. Go through the store, out the back exit, and down hundreds of feet of bare stone steps into a cavern below the city.

  “Mr. Muninn!” I yell. “Olly olly oxen free.”

  Mr. Muninn comes out from behind a Russian icon-style portrait of a king from a country that hasn’t existed for two ice ages.

  “I didn’t expect you to come in that way. I’m so used to you appearing out of the shadows.”

  “That’s Saint James’s trick these days. I just break into buildings and ride the Wonkavator to places that aren’t there.”

  “It sounds like more fun when you say it.”

  Muninn’s cavern is maybe the biggest antiques shop, curiosity cabinet, and junkyard in the universe. Shelves and tables sag under his crazy trinkets. Helmets and ancient weapons enough to take on Hannibal. Acres of old coins and endless galleries of paintings, jewelry, potions, karakuri, and old books. Piles of what look like dinosaur bones beside a moored zeppelin. Like a raven, he’s been plucking shiny pieces of this and that and hiding them in his lair for aeons. Maybe that’s why he goes by a raven’s name.

  “I thought you might come to see me before this.”

  “That was the plan but there was this ancient god and a whole Apocalypse thing happening. Maybe you heard about it.”

  “I wouldn’t worry. You saved the dreamers. In a few days, they’ll take control of reality from the safety of their slumber and the sky will be blue and the world will be made beautiful again.”

  “Make that brown skies, panhandlers, and things getting back to passable and I’ll believe you.”

  “Always the optimist.”

  I lean on a table and knock over piles of Confederate money.

  “Sorry.” Then, “You lied to me, Mr. Muninn. This whole time. And I trusted you.”

  “I know. And I have no excuses, just an explanation. I was afraid. To break down from one mind to five is troubling enough but then my own brother, Ruach, let Aelita kill brother Neshamah to save himself. It was too much to take. I don’t even know where my other two brothers are.”

  He picks up a pile of gold Minoan coins and tosses them through the eye socket of a pterodactyl skull. A nervous tic.

  “I’ve been down here and away from family squabbles since the world was young and I had hoped to stay here for eternity. But that’s not going to happen, is it?”

  I shrug.

  “That all depends on you. You asked me to take the singularity to one of your brothers in Hell. You said you’d owe me a favor. I made the delivery and now I’m calling in the favor. That’s if you’re willing to keep your part of the bargain.”

  “Do you have the singularity with you?”

  “No. It’s somewhere safe. I’ll keep it for now. If I get bored, maybe I’ll start a new universe, just like the Angra Om Ya.”

  “I know Father Traven told you the story. Would you like to hear my side of it?”

  “Yes. But not right this minute. I took some bullets today, and don’t tell anyone, but they still hurt.”

  “Would you like me to take them out for you?”

  “Sure. Later. Right now I want to get the other thing settled. Are you willing to do me the favor you promised?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you know what it is.”

  “I suspect so.”

  I walk over to him, passing a table piled with old Hollywood head shots and shattered pieces of the Druj Ammun seal.

  “I don’t care if you didn’t really create the universe. You still made the souls. There are a lot of them Downtown that could use someone to keep an eye on them be
tter than Hellions can. The Hellions aren’t doing all that well themselves. They’re killing each other when they aren’t killing themselves. Hellions are your children too, right? They can both use the kind of help a half-assed Lucifer like me can’t give them.”

  “And you think I have the right experience to be Lucifer? I’m not sure if I should be flattered or hurt.”

  “You’re a deity. At least you have something to work from. I was just playing free jazz. You really need to take the job. If I go back to Hell, I’ll never leave and Hell will burn without a Lucifer.”

  He looks away and throws the last of the coins in the air. They hang there before falling on the table in a neat stack.

  “Of course I’ll go. A bargain is a bargain. But you must do something for me first.”

  “What?”

  “Forgive the part of you you call Saint James.”

  “Forget it. He’s a useless Pat Boone twerp with a bad case of poor poor pitiful me. I’m always the bad guy and he’s always the victim. Forget it. He left. He can stay left.”

  “Are you sure that’s how you want it?”

  “I have the armor. I don’t need him.”

  “But you just appointed me Lucifer. The armor is mine.”

  I hadn’t thought of that.

  “He left. I don’t beg favors.”

  “You don’t have to. Just tell me, would you like to be whole and complete again?”