House Infernal by Edward Lee

by Edward Lee

  "The equivalent of a quarter of a penny. It's the cheapest thing they can use for ball ammunition. Lead's way too expensive and gold is too soft."

  "Huh?"

  "Gold's worthless here, and so are diamonds. In Hell they have alchemists that turn gold into lead. Zircons, on the other hand, are worth millions."

  Ruth was hating this more and more. "That's the dickstupidest thing I've ever heard."

  "Uh-huh. What's worthless in the Living World is priceless here, and vice versa. That's how Satan wants it."

  Next Ruth looked in the bag of bills. "And what's with all this funky money?"

  "Hellnotes are the official dollar here. Brutusnotes are worth fifty, Tiberiusnotes a hundred. Check out the Boni- facenote, the one with a thousand on it. There's one on my roll."

  Ruth found one. "So this is a G-note, huh?"

  "Yes. But look at the face. It's one you'll need to recognize eventually."

  Ruth examined the odd portrait on the bill, which she guessed had been printed on some kind of skin. "It looks like a fat pope wearing a mask. Why do I need to know what he looks like?"

  "Because you'll be meeting him soon."

  Ruth didn't want to know.

  Her eyes drifted to some other things around Alexander's neck, next to the Abyss-Eye: a pouch on one pendant and something like a decorative horn on another. "What's all that stuff? Hell-jewelry?"

  "Hardly. The pouch is just ... a pouch."

  "Thanks."

  "It's a goodie bag, sort of."

  .You mean it's got special things inside, huh?"

  "Yes." but his reluctance to talk details was plain.

  Ruth glared. "So what's in it? Jesus! Why don't you ever tell me anything?"

  "Because it's too much, too soon, Ruth," he said with some fatigue. "There's magic stuff in the pouch. It's too much for you to absorb all at once. You're still a Newcomer. You haven't even been in the Mephistopolis for a day yet."

  "Well then, what's that horn?" she asked next. A pang of hope. "Has it got booze in it?"

  "No booze, Ruth." He frowned in resignation. "All right, take if off my neck and check it out. But be careful."

  She took the connecting pendant off of him to examine the queer object. The horn was empty, its walls thin and bonelike. She imagined the last six inches cut off an elephant's tusk, which was then hollowed out. There was a hole at the small end too, and the horn had been intricately engraved-indeed, like ivory-but the characters were foreign to her.

  "It looks like a hollowed out tusk," she observed.

  "Close. It's the fore-horn of a virgin Demonness who hanged herself in rebellion to Lucifer's authority. Most of the words engraved on it are in a language called Enochian, one of the Angelic tongues, and some of them are in Zraetic, which is even older. It might have been the language originally spoken by God at Mount Sinai, but I'm not positive. They didn't tell me for sure."

  "They?"

  Alexander sighed. "My intelligence source, and some others, shall we say. The people who recruited me."

  "And me, too, I guess, without even asking," she added.

  Anger threatened his gaze. "You're not taking this very seriously. It's not a joke. You'll be transferred from Hell to Purgatory if we succeed."

  "Yeah, but I have to wait a fuckin' thousand years!" she complained.

  "It's better than a million. Believe me, Ruth, it's an offer you can't refuse. Purgatory's no picnic, but it's not"-he took a grim look around-"it's not ... here. These are powerful entities we're dealing with. If you keep raising a fuss, keep complaining, keep being totally ungrateful for this historic opportunity ... then they might just pull the plug on the whole deal, and you get nothing. You get to stay here. Forever."

  Fuck, she thought. Men are dicks. "Chill, man." She used the horn to change the sour subject. "So what's this thing again?"

  "It's called a Vox Unterwelt."

  Ruth didn't have a clue. "So you blow in it, like a trumpet?"

  "No, but I can talk into it, to someone very specific, someone ... in the Living World."

  "You're shitting me!" The prospect sounded thrilling. "Who? Someone you know?"

  "The ultimate purpose of our mission here is to relay critical instructions to this person I'm referring to."

  "Who the fuck is it?" Ruth said insistantly.

  "Look in the fat end of the horn."

  Ruth did so and saw ... someone's name? She wasn't sure, because the writing was fat, murky, and black, like Magic Marker, only she had a deeper impression that the name was written in some kind of charcoal. She looked closer. "Is it ... Veronica? Virginia?"

  "The name is Venetia. From what I understand she's a theology student contemplating the convent. And she's chaste-a very important factor."

  "Chased by what?"

  "For pity's sake, Ruth-chaste! It means she's celibate."

  Ruth's head turned. "Celebrating what?"

  "It means she's a virgin!" his voice rocked.

  Ruth turned furious. "Hey, fuck you and your stupid Vox-whatever-the-fuck this is! Just 'cos I don't know all the fancy words you do don't mean you can yell at me like I'm trash! So you can kiss my ass and shove this stupid thing up yours!" she bellowed and was about to throw the Vox Unterwelt at him.

  "Ruth, Ruth, wait!" he snapped. "Relax, okay? I'm sorry."

  "You better be, damn it. You can't even put this thing back around your neck 'cos you got no arms. So stop treating me like shit 'cos I'm not shit!"

  "I know you're not." He calmly paced his words. "You're a child of God."

  "I ain't no child of God, either!" she continued to rage, hormones in havoc. "'Cos God wouldn't send one of His children to this shit hole!"

  "You sent yourself, Ruth, and I did, too. But I apologize. I guess I'm not a very nice guy in the long run, which is my reason for never making it to Heaven. Plus I'm cranky, irritable, and unreasonable sometimes. But let's both work together so we can both get out of this-what you just said."

  Shit hole, she thought. Fuck, I need a Pamprin, and they probably don't have that here either. She continued to halfexamine the Vox Unteruaelt in her hands. "So somebody wrote this chick's name inside and that makes it magic?"

  "That's the best way to phrase it, yes."

  "Who wrote the name?"

  Another long, weary sigh. "I can't tell you."

  'I "bat's great. That's just fuckin' great."

  "But it works, so that's all that matters-er, I should say, it works some of the time. See, for the transmission to be unfazed, Venetia has to be tired. She can't be fully asleep, but she can be fatigued or about to fall asleep."

  "Sounds like more bullshit."

  The priest shrugged. "I think it's because her mental blocks are down when her brain waves are heading toward sleep. That's when I can actually talk to her. But you can see all the time. Take a look."

  "What?"

  "Put the small end to your eye, like a telescope."

  Ruth did, then exclaimed, "Fuckin' cool! That's the world! Our world!"

  "Yes, it is. We see everything she sees through her eyes. And when she's looking in a mirror, we can even see her. What's she looking at now?"

  Ruth's eye opened wide. "Outside. She's looking out a window and it's nighttime and there's a big bright moon and there's, like, a weedy field and a bunch of trees way off, and-oh, wait, now she's walking out of some kind of room and ... she's looking down over a rail and..."

  "Yes?"

  "She must be upstairs in a school or something, or maybe an old hotel 'cos now she's looking down at a really big wide-open room with a bunch of furniture all over the place, bookshelves surrounding every thing and ... some of the furniture's covered by sheets and ... looks like a bunch of old shitty pieces of carpet over this really big floor...."

  "It's not a school or hotel," Alexander informed her. "It's a prior house built over forty years ago."

  "The fuck's a prior house?"

  "Like a monastery, a rectory, an abbey. It's so
rt of a multipurpose building, for the Catholic Church to use as it sees fit. The reason Venetia's there is to help clean the place up-or at least that's what she thinks. Let's just say that my intelligence source has some better ideas for her."

  Ruth didn't hear much of what he said; she was too excited to keep looking into this bizarre Demon-horn called the Vox Unterwelt and see little slices of the world she used to live in.

  The world I took for granted, something caused her to add.

  "Pretty cool little device, huh?"

  "Oh, shit-yeah ..."

  "Can't even imagine how much energy and Celestial resources it took to make it and get it to me."

  "Huh?"

  "Just keep looking, Ruth," Father Alexander said with some contentment, "and let me know when it looks like she's getting ready for bed."

  "What happens then?"

  "That's when we get to talk to her .. .

  Chapter Six

  (I)

  "So you're telling me Freddie Johnson was a pretty straight-up guy?" Berns said.

  The captain's name was Desmond, a proverbial salty dog. Old, bent, wizened, but tough from a lifetime of working the water. As he spoke with Berns, he was scraping small barnacles off a crab trap with a wire brush, and had an accent that sounded more like Maine than New Hampshire. "Ya mean did he steal? Naw, not that I ever heard. He was a partier, sure, but who ain't in this business?"

  Berns gazed off the dock into a deep blue bay. "Drugs, you mean?"

  "Naw, but he drank a lot of beer. Saw him with a bunch of folks once drinkin' at Abney's one night, and now that ya mention it, sure, they looked like druggers."

  Important, Berns knew. "His friends-.-A girl and another guy?"

  The leathery face squinted at the remark. "Yeah, I think ya might be right. Skinny girl, dirty-blond hair, looks forty but's probably thirty." Desmond picked up a chewed cigar end that had been sitting on the raw dock, and put it in his mouth. "Can't really recall the other fella."

  "If I showed you mug shots, could you pick them out?"

  A reluctance touched the old man's hooded eyes. "Wouldn't wanna do that, memory ain't what it used to be. Lotta folks come 'n go in this little town, lookin' for odd jobs-not just crabbin', mind you. All's I remember is the girl had tattoos, and the fella, too, I think. Guttermouthed, both of 'em. But I'd just be half-guessin' lookin' at pictures."

  "I understand," Berns said. People always liked to talk, but never back it up. Too much responsibility. Not that Bems had any mug shots anyway. "Tell me more about Freddie Johnson."

  "He was a damn good crabber-that's all we gave a crap about." Desmond moved the brush to another trap, gnawing the cigar butt. "Me 'n the other captains would damn near get in fights over him. But whoever's boat he went out on always came back with a full load of Jonahs and Peekytoes. Some guys just have the knack, and that was Freddie Johnson. Said he tweaked the bait, that was his secret, but I just think he was lucky. He'd work for me a lot 'cos I'd always throw in a case of beer on top of his pay."

  "How many commercial crabbers are there in Wammsport?" Berns asked. He watched another boat pull in as its deckhands were sizing a trough of live crabs.

  "Five or six-depends on the season. We're small-time here. The big boats trap outta Portsmouth. But we do all right. They got places in town that pay solid money for live bushels of Peekytoe, then get a buncha illegals to pick the meat 'n sell it to restaurants ... er-aw, shit, guess I shouldn't have said that."

  "Don't worry about it." Bems almost chuckled.

  "That's why the crab cakes are so good 'round hereit's all fresh-picked meat. You eat a crab cake at Abney's tonight and you can bet the meat in it was alive 'n in the bay yesterday." The leathery face looked up. "You ever had a Peekytoe crab cake, Captain?"

  "Actually, no. Not into seafood."

  "Aw, that's a shame. But anyway, that's how it works. We sell off most of our Peekies around here. The Jonahs go inland. And since you're so interested in Freddie Johnson, I can tell ya, I ain't never had a bad day on the water when he was working my boat. He works hard."

  Worked, Berns thought.

  "I been doin' this over fifty years, crabbin' just like my daddy did. In ails that time I never saw a guy could fill traps like Freddie. If he weren't so damned unreliable, he could make a fortune in this business, have his own boat and crew."

  Another interesting remark. "How was he unreliable?"

  "He'd sign on for a week, two at a time, then the bastard wouldn't show up on his third or fourth day. He'd have a good night playin' poker, or hustle some fellas on the pool table or some such, and then he'd disappear for a couple weeks and I'd have to take the boat out myself. Like that, ya know?"

  "Good old transient labor. They're great when they show up."

  Berns found himself repeatedly distracted by the environment. Forgot how beautiful New Hampshire is on the water ... Seagulls floated overhead, while smaller birds shot down into the water on a split second's notice, then shot back up with a minnow. He was taken aback by the clean salt scent of the sea coming off the bay. As a violent crimes captain, his duties almost never brought him to the state's meager sixteen-mile coastline. "All right, so Freddie worked hard but hardly worked."

  "Pretty much."

  "And beered it up."

  "Ee-yuh."

  "You see him out in the bars a lot?"

  "Not that much but I know he threw 'em back on account he smelled like beer whenever he worked for me. But I never saw him out much in town, just that one night at the bar I told ya about, and maybe a couple, three more times. Come to think of it he hustled some guys on the pool table that one night, too-for a couple of hundred-and I was just sitting there with my beer thinkin' holy shit, with them winnings I'll bet my ass he don't show for work the next momin'. Damned if I weren't right."

  Berns knew the type-all cops did. But he needed something new. The tattoos, he remembered. He mentioned the girl had a lot of tattoos. He pulled out one of the booking photos he'd gotten, surprised by the Lubec PD's thoroughness of photographing all identifying marks on the arrestee. "The girl you saw him with-did she have a tattoo like this?"

  The old man seemed to experience distaste when he looked at a close-up photo of the bizarre tattoo on Freddie Johnson's lower abdomen. "The hail's that? A fella's stomach?"

  "Freddie Johnson, taken the night he was arrested in Lubec, Maine. Ever seen anything like that before?"

  "You can bet not, son. The tattoos on that gal was all silly shit like I told ya, skulls and such. Don't know what that is."

  "Neither do I." Berns reclaimed the photo and took a glance at the strange spiral within the bordered rectangle, and arrows pointing inward from three corners.

  "Looks damned Satanic or somethin', don't it?" Desmond commented.

  "Yes, sir, and I'm glad you mentioned that. Do you have any reason to believe that Freddie might have been involved in any cult activity? Devil-worship, something along those lines?"

  The old man seemed addled by the question. "Like all that heavy-metal shit, upside-down crosses? Shit, I don't know. I never heard of nothing like that around here. It's all out in California, I thought."

  Desmond's friendly demeanor was rapidly eroding. Either I'm starting to annoy him, Berns thought, or the references to devil worship are getting under his skin.

  "We'se just a bunch of watermen here, son." Desmond slammed the lid down on a crab trap. "Northeast red necks. That means hard workin' and hard drinkin'. There ain't none of that weirdo California shit here."

  "How about-"

  "And it ain't that I don't wanna cooperate with the police"-Desmond wiped his slimy hands on his pants"but I'm a tad busy here. I told ya everything I know about Freddie Johnson."

  That's all I'll get out of him, Berns decided. "Thanks for your time, Mr. Desmond. Oh, one last thing-"

  The old man glared.

  "Are there any tattoo parlors around here?"

  Desmond began scraping the next trap, waving one
arm but not looking at Berns. "Across the street, son. You're none too observant for a police captain, are ya?"

  Jesus. Berns felt inept when he turned his head and immediately saw the shop. TATroos BY TERRY. "Thanks, sir."

  "Yeah, yeah."

  Berns walked quickly off the dock. Am I that irritating? The sun was baking him in his drab sports jacket, but he couldn't take it off due to his shoulder holster. While he waited to cross the pierfront road, a dented pickup rumbled by with its stereo turned up so loud Berns had a mind to write the driver a ticket for disturbing the peace. "Satan's just around the bend!" wailed the singer. Great, Berns thought. A shirtless, tattoo'd redneck in the driver's seat sneered. Maybe that's one of Johnson's accomplices. Then he realized how ridiculous the notion was. This is a redneck Waterman town, and watermen all have tattoos.... Berns jaywalked a moment later, yet movement behind him caught his eye.

  He stopped in the middle of the street and turned.

  A dock bum in rotten clothes dug through a garbage can, but when his yellowed eyes caught Berns', he shirked away.

  "Get out of the road, ass!" someone yelled, leaning on their horn. Berns almost shouted at the start, then felt himself blush as he jogged across the street.

  "Chowderhead!" yelled the driver. The arm crooked out the window bore a tattoo of a grinning skull.

  Great day so far ... He took out the photo of Johnson's tattoo again. He remembered the convict's cryptic reply when asked what the tattoo was: It's ... my trademark, man, with that big gold-toothed smile. It's probably just some death-metal logo. Probably a million people have the same tattoo. He sighed in relief when the parlor's AC seemed to suck him inside. Four walls and partition panels displayed hundreds of tattoo designs: flowers, crosses, Oriental characters, and the like. In the back was a counter and a chair almost like a dentist's.

  Anyone here?

  "Don't tell me a police officer wants a tattoo," came the voice of an energetic woman behind him. "That would be a first."

  Berns didn't like the surprise, nor the comment. One look and I'm made, he thought, disgusted. But then a double take prevented him from saying anything right off.

  A slim, very attractive woman in a blue bikini stood in front of him, off-blond, big eyes, her hair pulled back. She had no body fat at all, just tan curves and sleek, flawless skin, and ... lots of upbeat tattoos. Big yellow, blue, and red stars crawled up her legs, while pink kiss marks crawled up her arms. Just above the waistband of her bikini bottom were the words wE►..coi TO THE HAPPIEST PLACE IN THE WORLD! Just to the left of it, Mickey Mouse peeked out. Berns had to collect himself a moment.