by Edward Lee
“Yes.”
“I thought you would.” And now she had the plastic bag again, and reached in. Hudson grimaced before she even extracted the contents: the rotten head of a baby.
The small face had dried to a rictus. But then Hudson noticed something even worse. The top of the head was missing.
The deaconess threw the head through the hole in the wall, where it landed, bouncing, in the scrub-laden backyard.
“But I thought—”
“That I needed it for a ritual of some sort?” the gleaming woman finished. The nipples on the high breasts stood out as if she were sexually frantic. “Not the head itself. This. The skullcap.” And from the bag she produced just that: the top of the infant’s skull, which had obviously been sawn off. At once Hudson recalled the smudged coping saw at the church.
She’s really been busy.
“The brain had already putrefied.” She showed him the inside of the empty dome. Then she raised her brow at the prostitute. “I’m afraid the newborn of our friend here wouldn’t do. It hadn’t lived long enough to be touched by Original Sin. It had to be this baby, from this house.”
“And what did you call this house, earlier?” Hudson asked.
“A Bleed-Point,” she said, her bare, flat stomach glistening. Droplets of sweat beaded in her pubic mound like clear little jewels. “Think of it as a sieve.”
“A hole between here and Hell?” Hudson figured but couldn’t believe what he’d said so convincingly and with such nonchalance.
“Yes, but only a semidimensional hole. A viewport, so to speak.”
So if I look through this hole, I see Hell? But when he did it was still just the mangy backyard in view. He paused and narrowed his eyes, to glimpse a raccoon waddling away with what was left of the baby head.
Good Lord . . .
“Come on, I gotta crack it up,” griped the prostitute, scratching at imaginary bugs on her stomach. “When can I go?”
“Be patient,” the deaconess assured; then her eyes returned to Hudson’s. “You’re still under no obligation. You can still leave.”
Hudson churned in place. Haven’t I seen enough? Now he was genuinely beginning to want to get away from all this.
“But why not continue? You can even say no after you’ve taken the tour.”
The tour . . .
She smiled thinly over the exorbitant breasts. “And I can assure you, it’s quite a tour.”
“Let’s continue,” the words clicked in his throat.
“A venturous man, and a wise one . . .”
Really? Hudson wondered. I’m standing naked in a ghetto house with a deaconess and a crack whore for some—some Satanic purpose. What, though? A tour? What could that mean? Foremost, Hudson thought of himself as a Christian. He believed in the power of God, and in his own salvation. So why would he want to go on a tour of Hell?
Maybe . . . seeing Hell will make me a better priest . . . After all, Christ descended into Hell after his Crucifixion, only to reascend on the Third Day, the resurrected Son of God.
The house creaked. The veil of candlelight wavering on the attic walls seemed to darken . . .
“Over here now, my dear,” the deaconess said, positioning the prostitute behind Hudson.
“What the fuck’s this all about?” she protested.
The deaconess touched her shoulder. “It’s about you earning your money, just as Judas earned his.” And then onto Hudson’s bare back she squirted a liberal amount of baby oil from a small bottle. “Rub your hands around, dear, his back, his buttocks, his legs, but in motions like this . . .” The deaconess then put a hand on Hudson’s back, and through the oil made motions that were invariably like sixes.
“Like sixes,” she said. “You do the back, I’ll do the front.”
The prostitute frowned, then proceeded.
More warm oil was applied to Hudson’s chest, and then Deaconess Wilson’s adroit hands began to massage it in. She smiled, rubbing six after six after six over his gleaming skin.
Hudson stood petrified, arms and legs rigid at the luxuriant sensations that seemed to envelop him. Never in his life had he been touched so directly, so intimately by women. This is the ultimate tease, he thought, gritting his teeth. The prostitute’s hands swept slowly about his clenched buttocks, while those of the deaconess smoothed over his nipples, then down across his stomach, then—painstakingly—around his groin and over his inner thighs. The sensations began to crush him, and when he looked down, his arousal was plain.
“He needs to be stimulated till he can’t see straight.” Now the deaconess’s grin looked vulpine, her hands stoking him. “He needs to be titillated till he’s fit to burst. He needs to be bursting with sperm.”
Madness, Hudson thought. Each sixlike motion over his slick skin made Hudson feel as though he were standing on a high wire. Now the deaconess urged herself right up against him. He cringed in place as the large, slippery breasts slid over his skin. The confusion blankened his mind until all he could contemplate was lust even as he strained to resist it. She bowed his head down, placed a nipple in his mouth, and whispered, “Suck . . .”
Hudson did so, uncomprehending. The nipple swelled in his mouth to the size of a bonbon; meanwhile, her hand played over his stomach, then slid to his genitals, which caused him to lurch. Fingers teased him, not overtly, but only traceably.
All right, I can’t let this go on anymore, he determined, but then the woman’s fingers seemed to sense the thought, and began to fondle him more pointedly.
“Harder now,” she told him, and switched nipples.
It seemed the harder he sucked the nipple, the more of his will drifted away. Suddenly, Hudson was lost, lost in unreckonable sensations, lost in this brazen sin of flesh. His erection throbbed against her hot belly as the fingers played further. He was sucking the nipple so obsessively that sometimes he forgot to breathe, which caused him to break, gasp, and then begin sucking again. One of her hands played with the back of his head, as a mother’s might. Hudson had to wrap his arms around her to keep from falling.
The deaconess chuckled in his ear. “They were definitely right when they told me you’d like this.”
They, Hudson thought, but kept sucking.
This went on for minutes and minutes; Hudson was cross-eyed when she pulled her breasts away and then actually looked at her watch.
“You’re . . . timing this?” came the nearly delirious query.
“Oh, yes.”
He managed a frown, even as the voracious sensations rose. “Let me guess. Sixty-six minutes?”
“Of course,” she whispered. “Only thirty-four to go now. Try to enjoy every one of them. The more excited you are, and the more seed you produce, the more positive the conduction.”
“The conduction,” he groaned. His penis felt strained. It felt like a spring about to break.
The desire to climax was excruciating, and his desire for that to happen wiped his mind, even as his unheard thoughts stretched like rubber bands: I can’t-I can’t-I can’t let this happen . . .
The deaconess had leaned briefly away, and returned.
Where did she—
She came back, but seemed intent on her watch. Hudson felt brainless now, his body nothing but an arrangement of frantic sexual nerves beginning to short-circuit. Then—
“Now, now,” she snapped abruptly and took Hudson’s erection into her mouth. Her lips stroked over it at a mad speed; Hudson was reeling—knowing the dreadful sin of it all, knowing that he must pull away and leave this evil place, but before he could—
His climax occurred like an ash can going off. The deaconess mewled as Hudson felt his ejaculation belt into her mouth, and when he was finally finished, he fell over.
The orgasm had beclouded him. The prostitute crawled to a corner, muttering, “Bunch’a nutty bullshit.” When Hudson looked again, the deaconess was spitting his copious ejaculation into the baby’s skullcap. It looked like a mouthful of thin yogurt.
&nb
sp; “This really is some fucked-up shit,” the prostitute remarked, but then the deaconess was briskly approaching her.
“Up, up! Quickly.”
“Hey!” the prostitute squealed when the other woman’s hand grabbed her hair and lifted.
“The seed must be covered without delay—”
The deaconess held the top of the baby’s skull beneath one of the prostitute’s sodden breasts, and with her fingers she began to urgently milk the nipple. The white fluid sprayed out at first, then began to dribble. “As much as possible. Help me.”
The prostitute looked disgusted when she girded the breast with her hands and squeezed. The extra pressure trebled the volume of milk coming out. When the lactation began to peter out, the process was switched over to the other breast.
Hudson could only watch, head spinning.
“Good, good,” the deaconess murmured, transfixed. By the time the second breast had been exhausted, the skullcap was over an inch deep with milk.
“Now . . .”
Hudson stared, and so did the prostitute. The deaconess stood firmly with her legs parted. She lowered the skullcap to her crotch.
What’s she going to do?
The prostitute shrieked, and even Hudson yelled aloud in his stupefaction. A tiny glint showed him what the deaconess had produced: a razor blade, which she immediately slipped right up the middle of her clitoris.
Instead of screaming, herself, she moaned in what could only be ecstasy.
“Lady, you’re fuckin’ cracked!” spat the prostitute. Hudson looked away but something kept dragging his eyes back to the event. Two fingers were kneading the split clitoris, squeezing out blood. The blood ran right into the skullcap.
“There,” she announced when she was done. Between the sperm, the milk, and the blood, now the skullcap was over half-full.
“Can I go now?” the prostitute asked.
“Bring me that box,” the deaconess said, “and remove the stand, then, yes, you may be on your way.” She held the skullcap ever so carefully, so not to spill its macabre contents, while the sickened whore dragged a cardboard box to the room’s center, then removed a Sterno stand.
Hudson thought, Why do I think we’re NOT going to be cooking a Chinese pupu platter?
“Set the stand immediately below the hole in the wall, please.”
The prostitute’s pallid breasts depended as she leaned to do so. She glared at the deaconess, half in derision and half in nausea. “Look, I know that I’m one of the most fucked-up people to ever be born but, shit, lady. This shit here? It’s even more fucked up than me.”
“Go with the blessing of the Morning Star,” the deaconess said with a great pumpkin grin. “Take your money and your drugs and your hatred and despair, and give thanks as you revel in your curse. Spread your degradation in the glory of his name, sell your body to the lustful, and indulge yourself in reverence to him. Have more babies to leave to die in gutters, and spread more disease, and continue to let yourself be used as a reservoir of filth and an altar for every offense against God . . .”
The prostitute stared.
“One day, you will receive a wondrous reward . . .”
The prostitute raked up her clothes, then barged out of the room, and thunked down the stairs. A moment later, Hudson heard the front door slam.
The deaconess looked at Hudson. “Do you wish to continue?”
He wanted to say no with all his heart, yet something . . .
Something made him say, “Yes.”
“Good.” She smiled over the skullcap. “Let’s begin . . .”
Hudson sat mute in the chair as he watched her. It didn’t surprise him when she placed the skullcap atop the Sterno stand, though he couldn’t imagine why. From the box she also withdrew the strangest of objects: a foot-long cutting of ordinary garden hose.
A match flared as she bent to light the Sterno.
“Bubble-bubble, toil and trouble?” he misquoted Macbeth.
“These are powerful cabalistic components, Mr. Hudson.” The bleeding between her legs had ceased, leaving her pubic hair matted crimson and the insides of her toned thighs streaked. “What you need to know is that in Hell, ideas are objects, notions are material, symbols are tangible things wielded as tools or burned as fuel, and the waste of lust is the Devil’s favorite tool. Symbols of fecundity and creation when turned to waste become occult energy.”
“Milk, sperm? Come on,” Hudson challenged.
“Yes! What a great spoiler of God’s intent. Mother’s milk but from the teat of a mother who murders her babies. And sperm, sacred by God’s gift of procreation, but sullied when spilled deliberately outside of the womb—a harrowing offense. And now . . . blood . . . The blood of the chaste, virginity upheld to honor the chastity of Christ, and then spoiled for this atrocious ministration to bid the glorious and unholy power of Lucifer.”
Hudson looked perplexed at the skullcap sitting above the flame, and then he looked into the hole in the wall.
Just nighttime outside.
“Don’t get it.”
“You will, once you really see.” Her naked body gleamed, not merely from the profuse sweating but from excitement. The candlelight crawled. “It’s all science, or I should say sorcery, which serves as science in Lucifer’s domain. What we’re doing here is called an Ethereal Viewing. I told you, this house is a Bleed-Point; the horrors that occurred here have bruised the skin between the Living World and Hell. This rite will eventually nick that bruise enough that you’ll actually be able to see the Trustee, and converse with him, too.”
“The Trustee,” Hudson muttered. “A demon?”
“Possibly. I’m not sure. But I won’t be able to see him. Only you.”
“Why?”
Two perfect drops of sweat dripped off the tips of her nipples. “Because you’re the person who’s won the Senary. There’s not much more I need to say to prepare you.” She stood behind him and errantly rubbed his shoulders. “Just sit and wait . . . and reflect on the fact that very few people ever receive an opportunity such as this.”
Hudson jerked his head back. “But why? Why me? And don’t say it’s because I won the Senary!”
“Just be patient.”
“So . . . what? When all that crap in the baby skull starts to boil, the hole in the wall becomes a window to Hell? I’m supposed to believe that?”
Her fingers glided hard over his sweat-slick shoulders, then slid forward to rub his pectorals. “That’s as good a way of putting it as any. Upon boiling, the steam that rises off the Elixir will trigger the Conduction. You’ll have exactly six minutes to listen to the Trustee, ask any questions you have, and then accept or reject the offer. And even if you accept, which I pray you’ll do, you’re under no obligation. Nothing becomes binding unless you say yes upon completion of the tour.”
The tour . . . Those words bothered him more, perhaps, than anything else tonight. There was something potent about them. Even when he thought the words, they seemed to echo as if they were called down from a mountain precipice.
But then more thoughts dripped. “This is a pact with the Devil, you mean.”
“Not a pact. A gift. One thing to keep in mind. The Devil doesn’t need to offer contracts for souls very often these days. Think about that . . .”
Hudson’s eyes narrowed. “But I’m a Christian. I’m a theologian and student of Christ. I’m about to go to the seminary. To be a priest!”
Her voice drifted in delight. “Perhaps what you see will dissuade you. Your reward will be beyond imagination.”
Hudson gave her remark some thought, even in the “afterglow” of his sin. So THAT’S it! They want to tempt me, they want to make me break. Suddenly the madness and sheer impossibly of everything made wild sense.
What greater way could there be to prove his faith? To take this tour and realize these rewards, only to say no in the end? Christ had been tempted, hadn’t he? Only to likewise say no.
Hudson resolved to do the s
ame.
The prospect made him gleeful, but then he heard the faintest bubbling. The contents of the skullcap—the Elixir—was boiling.
“It’s time,” she whispered and stepped away. “Look at the hole in the wall . . . and prepare to meet the Trustee.”
Hudson tensed in his seat, squinting. The teeming night was all that continued to look back at him from the hole. The steam wafting off the skullcap was nearly nonexistent. How on earth can—but after a single blink . . .
The hole changed.
In that blink the hole’s ragged boundary of Sheetrock and shingles had metamorphosed into something like ragged flaps of what he would only think of as organ meat. Hudson leaned forward, focused.
My God . . .
What he looked at now was a room, or at least a room of sorts. Is that . . . No, it couldn’t be, he thought, because the room’s walls appeared to be composed of sheets of what looked like butcher’s waste (intestines, sinew, bone chips, and fat), which had all somehow been frozen into configuration. Amid all this sat a splintery wooden table on which had been placed . . .
That’s a typewriter!. Hudson realized, and he could even read the manufacturer: Remington. Atop a shelf in the rear, more odd objects could be seen: a package of Williams shaving soap, a square tin of Mavis talcum powder, and an empty can of Heinz beans. Hudson meant to glance behind him, to question the deaconess, but her hands firmly pressed his temples.
“Don’t take your eyes off the Egress,” she said.
When Hudson refocused on the hole . . . a man stepped into view.
The Trustee . . .
It was a very gaunt, stoop-shouldered man who looked back at Hudson. “There you are, at last,” he said in a squeaky accent that sounded like New England. He had close-cropped hair shiny with tonic and a vaguely receding hairline to show a vast forehead, which gave the man an instant air of learnedness. He wore a well-fitting but threadbare and very faded blue suit, a white dress shirt, and narrow tie with light and dark gray stripes. Small, round spectacles. His jaw seemed prominent as though he suffered from a malocclusion. The only thing about him that wasn’t normal was the pallor of his face. It was as white and shiny as snow just beginning to melt but marbled ever so faintly with a bruised blue.
