by Edward Lee
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HIGH PRAISE FOR EDWARD LEE!
"The living legend of literary mayhem. Read him if you dare!"
-Richard Laymon, Author of The Midnight Tour
"Edward Lee's writing is fast and mean as a chain saw revved to full-tilt boogie."
-Jack Ketchum, Author of Offspring
"Lee pulls no punches."
-Fangoria
"The hardest of the hardcore horror writers."
-Cemetery Dance
"Lee excels with his creativity and almost trademark depictions of violence and gruesomeness."
Horror World
THE NIGHTMARE NEVER ENDS
When Ruth awoke, she was drowning in blood. She gagged, mindless, her arms and legs churning in the hot, coppery brew. But could it really be blood? All of this?
She couldn't think. She didn't even know who she was yet. Only instinct fired her nerves: the will to survive.
It didn't occur to her just yet that she was already dead.
Her thoughts screamed: Where am I? What is this? Somebody help me!
She desperately breast-stroked, but more madness shrieked through her psyche when glimpses upward showed her a sky that was as red as the blood she was swimming in, and smudged clouds idling across a black moon shaped like a -sickle.
I'm having a nightmare! She managed to think. I'm seeing things. The sky isn't RED, and the moon isn't BLACK, and it's IMPOSSIBLE for me to be swimming in a LAKE of blood!
Just keep moving. Eventually the nightmare will end...
Other Leisure books by Edward Lee:
SLITHER
THE BACKWOODS
FLESH GOTHIC
MESSENGER
INFERNAL ANGEL
CITY INFERNAL
EDWARD LEE
HOUSE
INFERNAL
LEISURE BOOKS
NEW YORK CITY
A LEISURE BOOK® October 2007 Published by Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc. 200 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book." Copyright © 2007 by Edward Lee All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. ISBN-10: 0-8439-5806-5 ISBN-13: 978-0-8439-5806-5
The name "Leisure Books" and the stylized "L" with design are trademarks of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc. Printed in the United States of America. Visit us on the web at www.dorchesteroub.com.
HOUSE
INFERNAL
Prologue
Blood bricks were used to construct the district's most prominent edifices and roadways. For thousands of years, the City of Abandoned Hope churned as a diabolical microcosm that could be likened to an endless jigsaw puzzle, and one of the puzzle's biggest pieces was this districtthe Boniface District-and the reason it could be seen from a hundred miles in any direction was because it had essentially been built with blood.
A thousand cauldrons boiled ceaselessly, each filled to the brim with the blood of abducted citizens, fugitives, Demons, mongrels, Hybrids, etc., and even occultengineered blood, a more recent technological breakthrough. As the cauldrons boiled, their levels reduced. Water was distilled from the steam, of course, but eventually, when the blood had boiled down to paste, it was blended with lime and milled bone, then pressed into foundry molds. When the bricks dried, they were later disenchanted by specially trained Warlocks from the district's Collegium of Sorcerial Sciences. These spells would not only bolster the bricks' resistence to stress and deterioration but also strengthen any wall against the occasional malcontents and anti-Luciferic terrorists trained in the black arts.
A hundred yards long and fifty wide, Fortress Boniface was the first structure to be built with blood bricks. When humidity was high, the bricks would "bleed" slightly, and district residents would touch their fingers to the fortress's walls for good luck.
Boniface gazed south over the parapet. Hot winds carried smoke and a thousand screams as the sky churned bloodred behind a black sickle moon. Beyond, the city extended into its wondrous, demented infinity. Griffins and Caco- Bats swept down out of bruise-colored clouds to tear limbs off unsuspecting inhabitants, including children and infants. Gargoyles lurked about the crestwork of the higher buildings, hunting for vermin, weak windows, and ledge jumpers. Lower, in the nooks and crannies of the city's guts, Boniface could see the everyday life: Broodren-the demonic young-cooking horned newts on sticks over flaming sewer grates; taloned Ushers with faces of slag disemboweling the helpless in a regional Mutilation Zone; nine-foot-tall Golems standing watch on every corner; rows of chained mongrel slaves hauling great two-wheeled limbers full of body parts to the district De-Boning Line and Pulping Station ...
Perfect order, Boniface thought.
He moved farther down the parapet of this macabre, dark scarlet edifice that comprised the Exhalted Duke's Fortress. A glance over the edge showed him the Boniface District itself, his first gift from the Lord of Lies. Oh, Lucifer, my great god, I give thee thanks, Boniface sang in his head. Damnation and status had changed his features to something stolid and blocklike, while his face, long ago consumed by Bapho-Rats, remained covered by a mask fashioned from the salt of the Valley of Siddim. This was the same salt that Lot's wife, Edith, had been changed to when she ignored Gabriel's warning and dared look behind her as the two most vile cities on the earth were razed in flame.
The scarlet sky cast a long shadow at the Exhalted Duke's feet, which gave him satisfaction. Boniface had been a short man on earth, and he remained short in Hell. Dressed in his gilded white cassock, the shadow seemed like a huge chess piece made even longer by the antipontiff's miter hat emblazoned by a gold inverted crucifix. His squat fingers were embellished by pyrite rings which bore the unglimpsable faces of Lucifer and the premier Fallen Angels, and in his left hand he bore a pastoral staff made from the arteries of past concubines. The blood vessels had been twisted, hexed, and then desiccated in a sulphur kiln. Boniface would add to its girth on occasion, when he wearied of a doxy.
"My lord," Willirmoz announced as he approached. "recently, I divined what I am about to tell you."
Boniface's nearly fleshless skull beneath the salt-mask grinned. "The Usher Squads have found the fourth Oblation? Tell me it is so...."
Willirmoz' face was nearly fleshless as well, but from another symptom. The Exalted Duke's personal adjutant and fortune-teller had lost his countenance-and a great deal of the rest of his flesh-to fire. In the Living World, Willininoz had been burned at the stake in St. Claude, France, in 1680 for black magic and molestation. Since the time of his Damnation, he'd risen to the rank of High Priest in the Guild of Lithomancy. The totems of his trade were in constant evidence, as they had been stitched into every square inch of his gown: the most mystical of crystals, namely ophite, bloodquartz, and deadly Lapis Bae- tullum stones, just to name a few. His most recent imperial training had taken place at the Oppenheimer Monastery, and one condition of induction was for all Lithomancers to mimic the conditions of their deaths in the Living World.
Yet the High Priest's skills were incontestable. "Indeed, my lord. The fourth Oblation has been procured." A charred finger pointed over the parapet. "Bear witness ... and rejoice."
Now Boniface gazed down into the courtyard, whose cabalistic geometry provided its powe
r. The courtyard was a great rectangle; limestone blocks the size of coffins sat at each of the yard's four corners, and on top of each stood a stone font-called a Morte-Cisterna-full of moldering blood. The blood in each basin had come from the slit throats of three Human sacrifants.
"Is the blood sufficiently corrupted?" Boniface asked.
"Yes, my most atrocious lord. It is rotten, spoiled, brown from curdling-the perfect consistency. Come, to the Watch-Turret."
Boniface followed the vile magician to the fortress's fourth corner-the southeast corner-from which a turret with ramparts bulged. Boniface stood behind the pulpit and looked down into his courtyard between the stone merlons. It was this point that would afford him an optimum view of the ritual....
"Be ready, my lord," Willirmoz whispered from within his hood, "and watch."
Boniface's sickly eyes began to go teary behind the mask. It's all coming together, my great Satan.... Below, the platoon of hideous Ushers-with their eyes and mouths like knife-cuts in meat-hauled the final sacrifant from the jail-wagon.
A lone feminine shriek pierced the open air.
The creatures that hauled the wagon were known as Metastabeasts, something like a horse, only twice the size, that had been placed under a mutation conjuration. Cancers had been implanted into their musculatures and stimulated rampant growth, so the beasts could haul astronomical loads. Eyes bulged from mutated sockets over long snouts of bone, while irregular fangs twisted from their mouths. They were hairless and gray, and webbed with veins.
By psychic command, the beasts stopped. A slugskinned Usher opened the wagon's door of iron bars and pulled out its only occupant.
"She's quite comely," Boniface observed, surprised. "Are you certain she's chaste?"
The wagon's prisoner fainted the instant she glimpsed the Usher's face. The young blond-haired woman was flipped over the Usher's runneled shoulder; eighteen years old, perhaps. Strips of rags comprised her clothing, between the gaps of which showed a supple, fresh physique.
"She is quite chaste, my lord," Willirmoz assured. "Six teams of Channelers and Tactionists have examined her memory. She's untouched. Unblemished."
"She can't have been Damned long, judging from the excellent condition of her Spirit Body...
"A relatively new arrival, which is how she managed to avoid being raped. It was a Golem on Ghettoblock duty who reported her. The dead thing could smell her virginity issuing from the alley crevice she lived in. That's when the nearest platoon of Ushers was summoned; they took her posthaste to the De Rais Asylum for psychic inspection." The High Priest's crusted black lips turned up. "She was Damned for murdering her parents-for a land inheritance. And her father ... was a Methodist minister."
"Lucifer, bless her!" Boniface chuckled.
"Another inmate murdered her in prison ... then she came here."
"It's our good fortune, Willirmoz. Finding virgins in Hell is no easy feat. Simply finding the first three took long enough."
"And now we have the fourth, and final, sacrifant, my abhorrent lord. It's providential that she be so stunningly attractive."
Boniface watched as the girl's limp body was laid on the fourth Dolmen and stripped of the rags. Were she not so essential for the rite, he would've liked to go down there and eat her alive, but not before a fastidious carnal ravaging.
Below, from one of the De-Vestry arches, scarlet smoke began to pour and fill the courtyard, but when the smoke thinned, a coven of Arithmetrices stood around the fourth Dolmen, where the fainted girl had now been tied. These occult mathematicians belonged to a rarefied sorority of witches known as the Cultes des Pythagorae, and they'd existed in damnation for thousands of years. All of these ancient women were obese and grimly stood naked, every square inch of their pallid bodies branded with tiny numbers and equations. Even the whites of their eyes were inscribed with the most minuscule numerals. The Arithmetrices were masters of the conversion of number systems into quantifiable abyssal energy.
One, the fattest and squattest, began to read from the only existing copy of the Book of the Involution, perhaps Hell's rarest tome. But it was not words that drifted from the witch's branded lips but theorems, in a language known only to the Culte.
"I can feel it," Boniface whispered.
"Indeed, my lord." Willirmoz's charred gaze held fast to the nearly silent spectacle below. "Only through the skills of the Arithmetri does metaphysical ideology become palpable, as solid as the blood bricks lain to erect the walls of your fortress."
Boniface felt his immortal skin crawl beneath his vestments; the intonations below made the air chum, and the remnant censer-smoke left hanging in the yard began to draw out in long vermillion lines and then began to spiral inward....
When the witch fell silent and closed the unholy book, Boniface saw with some startlement that she was no longer hideously obese-none of the coven were now. Instead they stood emaciated, the rigors of the secret spells having converted all that body fat into energy.
Then the entire coven looked up to Boniface in the Watch-Turret. In the air, Boniface made the sign of the inverted cross and nodded. The coven turned and straggled back to the De-Vestry.
Willirmoz mouthed something in total silence, a psychic command to the Sergeant at Arms below. This Sergeant, armored in demonic hide and with a great bronze helm, came from the lauded Diocletian Brigade. These conscripts were the most loyal Human-Demon Hybrids in the city, and proved their allegiance to Lucifer by murdering-and devouring-their families. In a voice like heavy wood splitting, the Sergeant ordered, "Render of the House! Front and center!" and from the sacristies a Cutter-Demon emerged. The tall, chock-faced thing wore nothing but wrist-cuffs and a chain mail kilt while his arms, legs, back, and chest remained all bare black-green skin and muscles. Renders were experts with the blade, and hand-forged their own cutting instruments, and on this one at least a dozen blades were in evidence. There were no scabbards, however; instead each knife was buried to its hilt in the Render's own flesh.
He followed the Sergeant to the Dolmen. The Human girl remained unconscious. An attending Usher hung her head over the Dolmen's edge, and directly below this point stood the wide stone Cistern, like a birdbath, waiting to be filled.
"In the name of the Lord of Lies, once God's bringer of light and now Hell's bringer of darkness!" shouted the Sergeant. "And in the name of Boniface the Exaltedcommence!" And then the Render withdrew a small paring knife from his left pectoral and very quickly slid it against the side of the girl's throat. Even in unconsciousness, she hitched on the slab, released a garbled scream, but then the Usher's taloned hand grabbed her hair to hold her head down. Meanwhile, the Sergeant had straddled her, pinning her down.
And the blood poured like a tapped keg into the Cistern's stone basin.
It drained quickly, rife with rich, red bubbles. When the flow began to retard, the Sergeant pumped the victim's bare chest-a heinous CPR-to coax more blood into the font. Eventually four Soubrettes approached each corner of the Dolmen, their wanton faces wide with grins. The Soubrettes were Boniface's chambermaids, bred for sexual appeal, breasts, privates, and other features hexegenically enhanced. Each woman, all dressed in clinging pink tongue-gowns, raised one of the victim's limbs and massaged it from top to bottom. Smaller gushes renewed at the gash.
"Lovely," Boniface whispered.
When no more blood could be squeezed out, the Sergeant climbed off and dismissed the others.
"It is done, Exalted Duke!" he barked upward.
Boniface's salt-mask nodded. "Give what's left to the streets of my proud District, and cover the precious blood. Post guards."
The Sergeant snapped orders, then more teams of Conscripts and Ushers came into the yard. A field Archlock slid a stone lid over the Cistern, so that the blood would rot properly, while Golems and Ushers were posted at all four comers of the courtyard.
Still more attendants tightened a noose around the girl's ankles; then she was hoisted up to the rampart and expeditiously t
hrown over the side. She wasn't "dead," of course; as one of the Human Damned, her Spirit Body could never die unless completely destroyed. But drained of all blood?
She'd he paralyzed in the streets. Now that her virginal blood had been secured, her body didn't matter. She'd likely be raped and eaten in short order, or perhaps some crafty Broodren would get to her first and sell her body parts to various vendors....
Boniface looked at the Hasdrubal Clock Tower in the distance. All clocks in Hell had no hands on their faces. "It is nearly time," the whisper escaped the lip slit in his mask.
"Another week, perhaps; little more."
Boniface grasped the sleeve of his High Priest as if desperate. "I must succeed, Willirmoz. I must achieve for Lucifer what has never been."
The charred face within the hood could barely be seen. "You will, my revolting lord. In the visions of my manes, I've already seen that it will all be so."
"Swear to me, Priest."
"I swear, my lord. If I'm wrong, I shall feed myself to a Ghor-Hound."
Boniface allowed himself to relax; he sighed through the mask. "It's so difficult to be patient in Hell, Willirmoz. And that doesn't make sense, does it? Where everything is forever?"
"It makes perfect sense, my lord. The four Cisterns have been filled. All that remains is the final conditioning of our most important visitors." The charred hand bid his underlord toward the stone stairs. "Let us go to the Lower Chancel ... to bid them our best wishes...."
Boniface and his Priest went down the spiral stairs to a very special place deep in the bedrock of Hell.
Chapter One
m
"I'm familiar with all the rectories, monasteries, and theological academies in New Hampshire, but St. John's Prior House?" Venetia commented from the backseat of the Cadillac SIN. "I've never heard of it."
"I don't even know what it is," her father remarked from the driver's seat. Richard Barlow, as he'd aged, reminded Venetia of the father on that old black-and-white show called Dennis the Menace, but just a bit more cynical. He and Venetia's mother seemed perfect for each other in their oblivion. A pipe-which he wasn't allowed to light anymore, due to blood pressure-hung from the man's mouth. He chewed its end while he talked. "When your mother told me about the assignment, at first I thought she said fry house. I thought, That's just great. I put my daughter through college so she can work the fryer at a fish-and-chips joint."
