by Edward Lee
Howard talks as if he can detect your thoughts. “It’s a steam-car, the latest design, an Archimedes Model 6. It burns sulphur, not coal—Hell never enjoyed a Carboniferous Period.” The car rocks over more chunks of butcher’s waste. “The sulphur heats the blood and other organic waste in the boiler; steam is produced and, hence, mobility. Nothing like the motors of my day, I’m afraid, though I never liked them. Awful, soot- and smoke-belching contraptions. But this suffices more than, say, a buggy drawn by an Emaciation Squad.”
You don’t understand how your head—the Snot-Gourd—can turn upon the command of your will—I’m just a fruit on a stick!—nevertheless, it does, and now that you’re getting used to it you find the courage to look upon the more distant surroundings with greater scrutiny.
The street stinks, and then you spot a globed pole that names the street: GUT-CAN LANE. Mottled storefronts whose bricks contain swirls of innards pass on either side. You notice more signs:
SCYTHER’S
PAYCHECKS NOT CASHED
THYMUS GRINDER’S
TOE-CHEESE COLLECTOR
A chalkboard before a café boasts the day’s specials: BROILED BOWEL WITH CHIVES and BEER-BATTERED SHIT-FISH.
When the steam-car clamorously turns through a red light—Abattoir Boulevard—you detect buildings that appear residential, like festering, squat town houses whose walls are impossibly raised as preformed sheets of innards.
“I don’t believe this place,” you finally say. “Everything’s made of . . . guts.”
“Construction techniques differ greatly here from the Living World; where you utilize chemistry, physics, electrical engineering, we utilize Alchemy, Sorcerial Technology, Agonitical Engineering.”
“But how can they make guts and bone chunks . . . hold together?”
“Gorgonization, Mr. Hudson,” Howard replies and points past the vehicle’s rim. “Your masons pour cement into molds and allow it to dry, ours pour slaughterhouse residuum and Gorgonize it with Hex-Clones of the Medusa’s head.”
You see what you can only guess are demonic construction workers emptying hoppers of butcher’s waste into various sheet and brick molds. After which several cloaked figures with purplish auras walk slowly past the molds bearing severed heads on stakes. Each severed head has living snakes for hair. The horned construction workers are careful to look away from the process. Hoods are then placed over the Gorgon heads; then the molds are lifted, revealing solid bricks and wallboards fully hardened.
Impossible, you think. And everything here is made of it . . .
“Fascinating, eh?” Howard remarks as the car rattles on. “At any rate, untold Districts exist in Hell, to compose an endless city called the Mephistopolis. Lucifer prefers diversity to uniformity; therefore each District, Prefect, or Zone features its own decorative motif. You’ll see more as we venture on.”
Beyond, though, you have the impression of losing your breath when you see what sits beneath the bloodred sky. It’s a panorama of evil, leaning skyscrapers that stretch on as far as you can see.
“Hell is a city,” Howard explains, “which I didn’t find all that surprising myself. Why would it be? More and more the Living World is becoming metropolitan, so why shouldn’t Hell follow suit? Progress is relative, and so is evolvement, I suppose. Lucifer has seen to it that Hell progresses in step with Human civilization. It’s only the direction of the steps that are antithetical. It provides for a rich environment, and more so in this District than most others.” And then Howard’s nose crinkles at an awful smell that reminds you of the Dumpster at the restaurant where you used to shuck oysters. “It’s just that the smell is appalling, not to mention the clamor—a babel of filth and noise, a breeding pot of cheapness and vulgarity. This horror-imbrued place reminds me of New York City in 1924. Ugh! I hope you’ve never had the misfortune of visiting there, Mr. Hudson.”
You try to frown again but then think of something. “Hey. How do you know my name? I didn’t tell it to you back when we were doing the hole-in-the-wall thing.”
“An Osmotic Incantation apprised me of everything about you. Every aspect. It’s necessary, and part of my duties in this little side job of mine as the Trustee for the Office of the Senary.”
“Side job? But didn’t you say something about being a writer? That you worked in the Hall of Writers?”
“The Seaton Hall of Automatic Writers,” Howard corrects. “One of many, but my facility devotes itself entirely to the writing of fiction. This is my forte; my job, since my Damnation, is to produce copy—novels, novellas, stories—which a select group of Wizards known as Trance Channelers then communicate to fiction writers in the Living World via the process of Automatic Writing and Slate Chalking. It’s Lucifer’s way of influencing worldly art forms so, quite wisely, he picks the most qualified of the Human Damned for the task.”
A writer, you think, in Hell? “So . . . before you came here, you were a writer, too?”
“Indeed I was, sir, a writer of weird tales, and it’s been conveyed to me that my work has since risen to considerable acclaim. Just my luck, eh? Posthumous acclaim—now I know how Poe felt.”
“When did you die?”
“March 15, 1937—the Ides. Fitting that I should expire on the celebration day of the Mother Goddess Cybele. I penned a tale concerning that once but—drat!—my memory fails me. Something about rats . . . The Rats in the . . . House? The Rats in the . . . Tower?” Howard shakes his pale head. “Such are the pitfalls of Damnation. You’re not allowed to remember anything gratifying. But it was some ballyhoo called Bright’s disease that killed me—shrunk my kidneys down to walnuts—oh, and cancer of the colon. Too much coffee and soda crackers, I can only presume. It’s no wonder ‘The Evil Clergyman’ wasn’t very good.” As Howard straightens his tie, he appraises the orb of your head with something hopeful in his eyes. “Are you a reader, sir? Perhaps you’ve heard of me—my name is Howard Phillips Lovecraft.”
You strain your memory, picturing a beaten paperback with a foamy green face and glass shards pushing through the head. “Oh, yeah! You’re the guy who wrote ‘The Shuttered Room!’ Wow, I loved that story!”
Howard’s bluish white pallor turns pink as he stares, vibrating in his spring-loaded seat. Then he hangs his head over the side of the open-topped vehicle and throws up.
“Are you, are you all right?” you ask.
Howard regains his composure, slumping. “Sir, I can tell you with incontrovertible authority that I most certainly did not write ‘The Shuttered Room.’ ”
“Oh, sorry. You know, I could’ve sworn that your name was on it.”
Questions upon questions still bubble up in your gourd-head, but they all stall with every glimpse you take of the nefarious street. Panels of guts raised like Sheetrock, cinder blocks of such butcher’s waste formed walls, sidewalks, and even entire buildings. You turn away as you drive past.
“And in the event that you’re wondering,” Howard mentions, “you’re able to traverse the Snot-Gourd by means of a Psychic-Servo motor. Your impulses engage the gears.”
You hadn’t thought about that, nor about how the steam-car itself is even being maneuvered. “Is it some kind of black magic that’s driving the car?”
“Not at all, and my apologies for failing to introduce you to our driver.” Howard leans forward and pulls back a webbed canopy before them, which reveals a hidden driver’s compartment whose bow tie–shaped steering wheel is surrounded by knobbed levers. Seated just behind the wheel is—
Holy SMOKES! you think.
—a stunningly beautiful nude woman. Hourglass curves rise up to grapefruit-size breasts, which offer nipples distending like overlarge Hershey’s Kisses. By any sexist standard, she’s perfect in every way . . . save for one anomaly.
She’s made of clay.
“She has no name,” Howard explains. “She’s a Golemess. Dis-Enchanted riverbed clay is what she’s made of. Her male counterpart—Golems—are quite larger, while these femal
e versions are manufactured more petitely, and to be sexually provocative.”
The wet grayish clay shines—indeed—as if a centerfold has been airbrushed. Her hair, however—on her head as well as between her fabulously toned legs—bears sculptor’s marks.
A Golemess, huh? you think. That’s a pretty attractive piece of clay . . .
“Quite a comely monster,” Howard says, “though my detractors could hardly conceive of me making such an observation, I suppose. They said I was homosexual, for goodness sake, in spite of my having married a woman! Regrettably, though, love is quite temporary, and I’ll admit, her pocketbook was impressive to a poor artist such as myself. But, more dread luck—barely a year after we were wed, she was dismissed from her lucrative position! We had to move into an absolutely pestilent rooming house in Brooklyn; one could scarcely distinguish between the tenants and the rodents! And forty dollars a month the slum barons charged!”
You hardly hear Howard’s odd aside of petulance, in favor of scrutinizing the Golemess’s astonishing features. She was what Randal would probably call a “brick shithouse,” and . . .
You could literally build one out of her.
“Pardon my digression,” Howard says. “It’s just that I have so much rancor now—a sin, of course: wrath—but still . . .” Howard seems dejected. “I can scarcely believe that Seabury Quinn was the name of the day while I foundered on considerably lower tiers. Gad! Have you ever read his work? Let’s hope not. As for the Golemess, you may be wondering if it’s sexually functional, which I can happily or unhappily asseverate. Quite a lot in Hell is, for reasons that need not be expounded upon. The common veils of empiricism are no less prevalent here than in the Living World. So, too, are the notions of invidiousness. I was an atheist but hardly a bad sort, yet here I am. The circumstances which led to my Damnation are barely even explicable. You, on the other hand, are in quite another circumstance, hmm?”
Your pumpkin-face frowns; at least you are getting the knack of it now. But you barely understand your fussy tour guide. “Because I’m going to the seminary, to become a priest?”
Howard grimaces over a bump and another waft of organic stench. “Miasmal! Ah, but to respond to your legitimate query, you, Mr. Hudson, are more than just a priest-to-be, you’re one who is spiritually well-placed on the—how shall I phrase it?—the plus side of the Fulcrum . . .”
Your furry brow arches. The Fulcrum . . . The deaconess had said something similar, hadn’t she?
The steam-car, at last, pulls off the chunky pavement as the Golemess turns the wheel. A sign floats past: TOLL BOOTH AHEAD. You can’t keep your thoughts straight.
“I just don’t get it. The Fulcrum?”
“Think of the apothecarist’s triple-beam balance,” Howard tells you, “where the weights on one side are godly acts, and on the other side, ungodly acts. Very recently, I’m told, you have tipped the scale to 100 percent Salvation.”
“Howard, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“In spite of your capacity for sin—which all men and women possess—you’ve managed to clear the balance, from 99 percent, to 100. It is that achievement which has enabled you to win the Senary. You’ve tried with much diligence to lead a life that acknowledges God in the utmost, and when you do sin, you’re truly sorry and you make every effort to repent. It’s your own volition, Mr. Hudson, your own—and I emphasize—your own free will. That notion alone—free will—provides the summation of it all.”
The steam of your soul feels hot in confusion. “Free will? A triple-beam balance? Ninety-nine to 100 percent?”
“Your excursion several nights ago? The Scriptures state quite interestingly that ‘a whore is a deep ditch.’ ”
The line rings a bell in your bizarre head. Those two hookers at the Lounge the other night . . . “You don’t mean—”
“You had decided in your heart that you would partake in the delights of two ladies of the night? You even willingly ventured to procure the necessary funds, yet, at the last moment you decided to bestow those funds upon someone else, someone in grievous need . . .”
The redneck woman with the two kids at the Dollar General! you remember.
“And what you hitherto purveyed was what God perceived as the ultimate act of charity, so said St. Luke, ‘Whosoever has two coats must share with one who has none . . . ’ ”
Your jaw, however awkwardly, drops. “I gave the money to the poor woman instead of the two bar whores . . .”
“Indeed,” Howard says, half smiling. “And that gesture suffices. Allow me to convey it this way: if you were to die right now, your soul would ascend to the Kingdom of Heaven in a most instantaneous manner, where you would live in the Glory of God, forever.”
You feel a vast echo in your psyche.
When Howard taps the shapely clay shoulder of the Golemess, the steam-car stops, and he looks right at you, probably for effect.
“Lucifer wants that 100 percent, Mr. Hudson, and he’s willing to pay exorbitantly for it . . .”
Your head seems to quiver. “I—”
“Of course, it’s much to take in, and it’s our good fortune that our previous time constraint no longer exists, so put your multitudinous questions aside for a bit, and enjoy the ride . . .”
You take the advice as the car clatters on, though you have to admit, there’s not much to enjoy. You seem to be leaving the Offal District through an archway in a great fortresslike wall of hardened organic waste via blocks the size of minibuses. Next comes a road of crushed sulphur, which grinds grittily beneath the car’s narrow tires. “Here a toll, there a toll, everywhere a toll,” Howard complains as they idle up to a shack whose single occupant is a man with a face axed down the middle.
“Toll,” the attendant somehow utters.
Howard hands him a canvas sack that contains something the size of a melon. The toll-taker peeks in, nods, then waves them on.
“What was in the bag?” you have to ask.
“The gonad of an immature Spermatagoyle. They sell them to wealthy culinarists and executive chefs who carefully extract the seminiferous tubules. It’s a favorite dish of Grand Dukes, Barons, and the higher Nobiliary, for it’s the closest thing you’ll ever get to spaghetti in Hell.” Howard’s brow raises. “But I suppose you’re a bit of a culinarist yourself. It’s my understanding that you are an oysterman, yes?”
“I used to shuck oysters in a tourist trap,” you append.
“Ah, the fruits of the sea. I grew up in a veritable nexus of shellfish and crustaceans. Oysters as large as your open hand, and lobsters the size of infants.” Then Howard’s face seems to corrugate in aggravation. “And wouldn’t you know it? My iodine allergy prevented me from being able to eat any of it!”
Poor guy, you think.
“And though you excelled in university,” Howard states the dim truth, “you might be interested to know that it was understandably forecast that I would surely do the same at Brown University, but—curse Pegana—my shattered nerves—thanks to a mother off her rocker—foreclosed the possibility of my even graduating high school. Lo, I would never be a university man . . .”
This guy really gets off track, you think. “Where are we going?”
“The Humanus Viaduct, which runs from the Dermas District to Corpus Peak, crossing the Styx.”
DERMABURG, reads a skin-toned sign that floats by.
Howard gestures the sign. “This District is made of—as you may have ascertained—skin.” And as Howard speaks the words, your Ocularus eyes remain peeled on the new surroundings. Row houses and squat buildings line the fleshy street, all covered by variously colored cuttings of skin. Some seem papered with dermal sheets as impeccable as the skin of the deaconess, while other edifices suffer from acne and other outbreaks. The car, then, turns right at a perspiry intersection. You glimpse the sign: FASCIA BLVD.
“A whole town made of skin?”
“These days, the majority of it is Hexegenically Engineered, save for t
he loftier real estate here, south of town, where natural epidermis is procured. Oh, there’s a City Flensing Crew now . . .”
You notice the activities on one corner, where a troop of beastly, slug-skinned things with horns, talons, and terrifying musculatures prepare themselves around a row of Humans pilloried nude. Cuts are made at the back of each victim’s neck, taloned fingers slide in, and then the entire “body suit” of epidermis is sloughed off, leaving the victim skinless from the neck down.
You wince as the beasts go right down the line.
“The attendants are called Ushers, a longtime pure-breed that serve as government workers and police,” Howard explains. “Human skin is much more valuable.”
“Ushers,” you murmur. “So they . . . peel the skin off and then—”
“Stretch it over wall frames.” Then Howard points again.
At the opposing corner, workmen congregate at a corner unit (more of the hunched, implike creatures) to evidently build an addition. But when two of them raise a wall frame, you see that long, banded-together bones comprise each strut rather than two-by-fours. After the frame has been erected, other workmen stretch skin over it.
As for the pilloried “victims,” you see that they’re actually willing participants; when released—skinless now—an Usher hands them some money, then sends them on their way.
“Lucifer prefers Hell’s denizens to choose to sell their skin, rather than merely taking it,” Howard says.
“They sell their own skin?”
