“But,” Billy says, gathering resolve. “No. I have a question.”
Lucifer sighs loudly, but he stops poking at the ThinkPad’s little pointing stick and trains his attention on Billy.
Billy does not ask How is this going to screw me? What he asks, instead, is “Is there a Hell?”
“Billy,” says Lucifer. He folds his hands in his lap. “I’m going to be frank with you. Just one hundred percent up-front. There is a Hell.”
“Oh,” Billy says. He presses his face into his hands and tries not to envision horrible shit like being on fire. He’s seen a guy on fire before: an accident, at the first kitchen he ever worked in, and it left an impression on him, the impression mostly being: it’s not cool to be on fire.
“But Billy,” Lucifer says. “It’s not like people say. It’s not Hieronymus Bosch creatures and torture chambers. There aren’t saints looking down on you from above, enjoying the perfection of their beatitude by jerking off to the punishment of the damned.”
Billy raises his head out of his hands. “People say that?” he asks.
“Aquinas said that,” Lucifer says. A hitherto unnoticed bass note in his voice seems to subtly double, and his face contorts into an expression of what appears to be genuine anger. “That fat fuck.”
“Aquinas said jerking off?” Billy asks, a little spooked. This is the first time Billy’s seen an expression on Lucifer’s face that doesn’t look like it was learned from some kind of demonic field guide to human emotions, and he finds himself hoping that it’ll go away quickly.
“He didn’t say jerking off,” Lucifer concedes. “But he implied it.” His expression goes blank again.
Billy’s face goes back down into his hands. “So, what?” Billy says. “Is this the part where you tell me how awesome Hell is? That it’s, I don’t know, like I’m going to be getting hot oil massaged by virgins the entire time I’m there?”
“Billy,” says Lucifer. “You still appear to believe that I’m attempting to defraud you. That I am after something ineffable, that I want to lock you into some horrible cosmic payback. It will not be like that. This is simpler. Much simpler. I have a thing that I need to have done, and I can’t do it myself. If you do it for me, I shall ensure that your novel gets published. And then our obligations to one another will be mutually concluded. I don’t get your soul. You don’t burn in eternal torment. You get to be happy, and I get to be happy. That is the extent of the transaction.”
You get to be happy. “Well,” Billy says, considering this. “Okay. What’s the thing you need done?”
“Watch the presentation,” Lucifer says, curtly. He points at the laptop, and Billy looks.
“This,” Lucifer says, “is Timothy Ollard.”
First slide. Billy peers at it through his stoned daze. It depicts a tall, thin man, sitting on an overstuffed ottoman, his knees higher than his hips. Youngish-looking, maybe in his early thirties. Smiling into the camera, a variety of self-confidence around the eyes, a smugness, like he’s quite certain that he’s the brightest person in the room. He’s wearing a very twee suit, and an ascot. It might just be because Billy is high, but he takes an instant dislike to the fellow.
“I don’t like him,” Billy says.
“That’s good,” Lucifer says.
Lucifer clicks again and a name appears over the image in, like, 48-point font:
TIMOTHY OLLARD
“So what’s his deal?” Billy says.
“Timothy Ollard is a warlock,” Lucifer says. “In my estimation he is the key warlock on the eastern seaboard.”
“A warlock?” Billy says. “Like, a wizard?”
“A warlock isn’t a wizard,” Lucifer says. “A warlock is a male witch.”
“Okay …?” Billy says. He frowns. “So, this guy is a witch?”
“A warlock,” says Lucifer.
“This is a real thing?” says Billy. “People go around calling themselves warlocks?”
“You never met anyone who called themselves a witch?” Lucifer says.
Billy thinks. “Well, sure,” he concedes, “but they were mostly chubby girls who liked herbal tea and burning incense in their dorm rooms. I thought it was kind of a thing that most people would give up by senior year. I didn’t think it was exactly a career path.”
“You’re more correct than you know,” Lucifer says. “Most American witches don’t get very far. And most American warlocks get even less far—there are fewer of them to begin with. There are, however, a few witches and warlocks who excel, who remain active for a longer period than most, and at some point they begin to become a problem.”
“So how long has this guy—Ollard—how long has he been, what would you call it, warlocking?”
“I cannot say precisely when he began. But I have known Timothy Ollard to be practicing high-level black arts in New York City for the last eighty years.”
“Eighty years?” Billy says.
“Take a look,” Lucifer says. New slide. An old photo. People at some sort of Jazz Age party: a crowd reveling among streamers and glittering curtains. Lucifer clicks for the caption: 1924. He clicks again and a red circle pops up around the face of a guy standing way off to the edge of the photo, a dour face among the partygoers.
“Is that supposed to be the same guy?” Billy says. He can’t tell for certain: there are shadows on the guy’s face and the hair is differently styled. It could be the guy’s grandfather or even just a random guy with a similar facial structure. The ascot is the same.
“It is him,” Lucifer says. “As near as I can tell, the last time he aged was a single afternoon in 1945, during which he went from age thirty-three to thirty-six.”
“Good trick,” Billy says.
“His current base of operations is here,” Lucifer says.
Slide. A stone tower. Dank, rotting, covered in creepy crenellations and greeble. It’s got these scary bits hanging off it that look like they might be made out of long chains of human ribcages, like something you might dream up after a tour of Cambodian genocide sites. Every available surface has shit spanged onto it: wires or pipes or crumbling gargoyles drooling black autumnal slime.
“Yeesh,” Billy says.
“Don’t be too impressed,” Lucifer says. “The edifice you see is mostly illusory.”
“What even …,” Billy says. “What part of the planet is this on?”
“It’s here,” Lucifer says. “It’s in Manhattan.”
Slide. A Google Maps screenshot with one of those little red bulbs pointing at a corner that looks like it’s somewhere in Chelsea.
“Huh,” Billy says. “You’d think I’d have heard about some freaky-ass black tower being in the middle of Manhattan.”
“People can’t see it,” Lucifer says. “Ollard has cloaked it. Wrapped it in a perceptual blind spot.”
“So, what, eight million people walk past this building and nobody notices it?”
“No cloak is perfect,” Lucifer says. “So it is likely that people notice it all the time. Hence Ollard’s choice to make what lies behind the cloak appear fearsome. When people get a glimpse of something that troubles them, that disturbs, their minds turn off toward it. They unnotice it. Their defensive human psychologies effectively partner with the cloak. In the end, people see what they want to see: a Manhattan without a—how did you put it—a freaky-ass black tower in it.”
Lucifer clicks through to the next slide. It’s a picture of one of those cat statues that Billy has seen in every sushi bar he’s ever been in.
“This is the Neko of Infinite Equilibrium,” Lucifer says.
“That’s a lucky cat statue,” Billy says.
“Neko means cat,” Lucifer says. “And don’t be confused. This particular lucky cat statue is unique.”
“What does it do?”
“It waves.”
“Well,” Billy says, “sure.”
“Technically the gesture is supposed to represent a form of beckoning.”
“Huh,”
Billy says.
“Ideally, it does not do anything else. Ideally, the Neko sits on a shelf in Hell, doing nothing. Beckoning. This was the state of affairs until two weeks ago, when Ollard saw fit to divest me of it.”
“He … divested you of it?”
“He stole it. He stole the Neko and placed it in his tower. It is crucial that it be retrieved. Part of my function is to retain possession of certain items that would have unfortunate effects if they were used by human beings.”
“Uh. Define unfortunate effects.”
“The Neko beckons,” Lucifer says. “It beckons endlessly. It does not require a source of energy. This makes it”—he pauses to contemplate—“abhorrent to this world’s thermodynamic laws. Once fully in this world the Neko’s surplus energy will be given off as heat. Since the Neko has, effectively, an infinite amount of surplus energy, it has the potential to produce an infinite amount of heat.”
“Infinite heat is bad?” Billy asks.
“Infinite heat means that you are starting a fire which can be neither extinguished nor contained.”
“That sounds bad.”
“Nothing could stop such a fire,” Lucifer says. “It will burn until it has consumed the entire atmosphere. It will burn until it has consumed the combustible matter that constitutes this planet and the life on it.”
“Oh,” Billy says.
He takes a moment and tries to let this sink in. He momentarily reviews all the things in the world that qualify as combustible matter, tries to think about them vanishing into fire. Vietnamese spring rolls. The Black Flag T-shirt he bought fifteen years ago, which is now the most comfortable item of clothing he owns. Anil’s Xbox. Anil himself. Denver. Everyone. And at that point his capacity to imagine the annihilation of all earthly endeavor fails.
“Why would somebody want to do that?” he asks, quietly. “Torch the world?”
“I do not know what he hopes to gain,” Lucifer says. “It could be some sort of necromantic rite, a bid to attain godlike supremacy. The thanatotic power released by murdering a world would be substantial; Ollard may be able to put it to some use. But his ultimate aim is obscure to me.”
“So, wait, why aren’t we dead right now? Like—is Chelsea on fire right this second, or will it take a while to really get going?” Billy asks, hoping that maybe he can add supernatural fire to the list of things that might kill him at some point in the future but that are out of the range of his direct control, like global warming, or the world’s collective failure to develop a superpowered laser to blow up giant earth-threatening asteroids.
“The Neko has a set of protective defenses. When taken out of Hell, a set of six seals sprang into place around it. Until those seals are dispelled the Neko technically has not entered this world; it exists effectively in a sort of limbo. Over the last two weeks Ollard has dispelled four of these six seals.”
“Four?” Billy says. His stoned brain tries to calculate a percentage. “That’s a lot,” is what he ends up with.
“The remaining two are—challenging,” Lucifer says. “They may thwart him. They will, at the very least, slow him down.”
“Slow him down?” Billy says. “Can’t you—stop him?” A pleading note that he isn’t entirely fond of has entered his voice.
“I intend to stop him.”
Billy feels a surge of hope. “You’re going to save the world,” he says.
“There are challenges involved. Ollard knows that I seek the return of the Neko, and he has prepared accordingly. He has thrice-warded the tower against me. I can’t enter it. I can’t get within five hundred feet of it.”
“So—” Billy says. And then he stops. He does not plan to be the one who completes this thought.
“So that’s where I need you,” says Lucifer. He clicks again and a picture of Billy comes up. It’s from earlier that night: Billy standing on the subway platform, with Lucifer’s business card in his hand. Billy jumps a little in his chair, seeing this.
“William Harrison Ridgeway,” Lucifer intones. “I task you with this objective. Enter Timothy Ollard’s tower, retrieve the Neko, and return it to me. At the completion of this objective you will be rewarded. The challenges involved will be minimal.”
“Minimal?” Billy says. “The most powerful warlock in the eastern United States, and the challenges will be minimal? He’s powerful enough to make an ugly tower invisible to eight million New Yorkers? Powerful enough to steal some dealie from out of Hell and do the thrice-ward thing you were talking about? If he can fuck with you then what’s going to stop him from hitting me with a lightning bolt or—you know,” he churns the air with his hands, “killing me in some other wizardly way?”
“Well, he’s not a wizard,” Lucifer says. “He’s a warlock.”
“Yeah,” Billy says, “but the important part is the Me Getting Killed part.”
“He won’t kill you. Ollard has warding powers, but I have ones of my own. I can ward you against him.”
“That would work?”
“It will work,” Lucifer says.
This is crazy, Billy thinks. He does not think about what it would be like to get his book published. He does not think about reconciling with Denver. He thinks This is a good way to die.
“Billy,” Lucifer says. “I care about this world. I do not wish to see it come to harm. I need your help.”
“Man,” Billy says. “Aren’t you supposed to be evil? Why aren’t you asking me to do some evil shit that I could say no to? Why do you care about the world anyway?”
Lucifer looks at Billy for a long second.
“You know what I do?” he says, finally. “I tempt people. I’ve done it for a long time. I like it. I’m good at it. And if the world goes away there will be no people left to tempt. There will be cinders and there will be ash. And looking at cinders and ash for the rest of eternity strikes me, frankly, as no fun at all.”
“I have to think about it,” Billy says.
Lucifer looks at his watch. “How long do you think you’ll need?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. How long do we have?”
“Maybe a week,” Lucifer says, after taking a moment to pause for some kind of calculation.
“Okay, then,” Billy says. “I had a long day. I’m tired and I’m high and even if I weren’t it’d still be a good idea to sleep on it.”
Lucifer watches Billy’s face, reading something in it, then says, “As you wish.”
“Let me do the reading, get that over with, and then after the reading I’ll have a decision for you.”
“After the reading,” Lucifer says.
“Yeah,” Billy says. “But I don’t necessarily mean the second I step down off the stage. I mean, like, a while after.”
“I am reasonable,” says Lucifer. “I agree to these terms.” He closes the laptop and stuffs it back in his messenger bag, swaps it for a manila folder. “I’ll leave you with these for your review.”
Billy takes the folder. Inside is a printout of all the PowerPoint slides. “Uh, thanks,” says Billy.
“Until after the reading,” Lucifer says. As he turns to go, something nags at Billy, some question that Anil raised.
“Hey, wait a second,” Billy says, remembering.
Lucifer, half out the door, pauses.
“What about God?” Billy says.
Lucifer frowns.
“I mean, if I believe in you—the Devil—then it reasonably follows that I should believe in God. But I don’t know if I believe in God, not really. So—I don’t know—I just thought I’d ask you, like, is there a God?”
Lucifer looks at Billy.
“Don’t talk to me about God,” he says, and then he’s gone.
Billy stands there, at the doorway, for a long time. He latches the chain. He tries to get back to having the feeling he had this morning, the victorious feeling he had at having turned the Devil away the first time. But it’s not working. He no longer feels like turning the Devil down is proof that he’s
not a fuck-up. This time, with the fate of the goddamn world hanging in the balance, he only feels like a coward.
Why me? he wonders. Why put this on me? There are people out there who infiltrate places for a fucking living. Navy SEALs. CIA spooks. Fuck, send a UPS guy; he could at least get Ollard to open the door.
It’s because you’re desperate, he thinks. The only person desperate enough to say yes.
But that can’t be it. There are plenty of desperate people. He lives in New York; he sees buttloads of human desperation every time he goes out to get a coffee. So why him?
Eventually, Billy convinces himself that it doesn’t have to be him at all. I might be desperate, but I’m not a dumbass, he tells himself. Lucifer will ask someone else, someone braver. Someone stupider. Someone more morally corrupt.
Or maybe more morally prepared? Billy tries to picture saintlike people, risking their lives in the scary tower for the good of all humanity. He envisions Martin Luther King Jr., back from the dead, kicking open the door. An Uzi in his hands, spitting out fire.
Okay, he thinks, jarred out of his reverie by this image. Let’s think about something else. And he does. He checks the phone again to make sure Denver hasn’t called. He ravages the cupboards for a dinner, ends up eating two bags of Mixed Berry Fruity Snacks and a half-dozen fistfuls of oyster crackers. He washes each fistful down with a slug of Jørgen’s Scotch.
He gets online. The tab for dog is still open in Wikipedia. For a minute, he stares glassily at this sentence: “The domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris) is a subspecies of the gray wolf (Canis lupus), a member of the Canidae family of the mammalian order Carnivora.” Eventually, against his better judgment, he clicks over to Bladed Hyacinth and rereads the pan of his work. His stomach sinks in the exact same way it did when he read it the first time. I’ve wasted my life, he thinks. The world is going to end and all I’m going to be is a guy who sucks.
The Weirdness Page 6
