House Infernal by Edward Lee

by Edward Lee

  A mocking laugh. "Mrs. Newlwyn, that big dyke? And how do you like that horny nutball daughter of hers?"

  Venetia's heart was still racing. "She said the place is haunted. Is it?"

  Ann blew another plume of smoke. "Gimme twenty dollars and I'll tell you."

  I should just leave, Venetia thought, but instead, she gave the coarse woman a twenty-dollar bill.

  "Yeah, Bo-Peep, it sure as shit is."

  "And you've seen the ghost?"

  For the first time, the drunken woman turned stolid. "Yeah. Three times. Diane saw it too, and so has Mrs. Newlwyn and her kid. On the stair-hall, in the atrium, and sometimes outside."

  "Who is it?"

  Ann's eyes thinned. She cocked a hip. "You really want to know, don't you?"

  "Yes."

  "Tessorio. Who did you think? He was really a Satanist, did you know that? And I mean a real one." She leaned closer. "He built that place for a reason, and it had nothing to do with God. It's some kind of plan."

  A plan? "What are you talking about?"

  "That's what Whitewood told me, and I believe it. And I can tell you this-he knew more than he was telling about that place, and I'll bet whoever replaced him does, too."

  Venetia tried to assess the remark but felt bewildered.

  "I never really believed in ghosts until I took that assignment. But I do now." In stages, Ann McGowen's hard veneer began to crack; her lower lip trembled. "It walks around at night and poisons our dreams...."

  Now Venetia felt pinned against the wall by something intangible.

  "And there's a voice.... You'll hear it."

  Venetia gulped, then admitted, "I already have."

  "It's Tessorio," Ann said, but now her resolve was crumbling. "He tried to coerce us to go into the basement. He wanted us to do something there. But now? He'll want you to do it."

  Venetia felt staggered. "I didn't know there was a basement...."

  "There isn't." Then Ann McGowen banged out of the restroom.

  Night had fully fallen by the time they left the bar. Venetia tried to lighten the mood by jesting, "Gee, I can't wait to never go there again."

  Dan nodded. Instead of going back to the car, he insisted they sit down on the docks. "Trust me, you'll like it ... the sound of the riggings slapping the mast posts."

  They sat down on opposing benches off a short pier. The sound was dreamy: the weird chime of all those sail ropes striking the masts of the hundreds of boats in the marina.

  "It's hypnotic," she said.

  "Yeah."

  The big adrenaline rush from the bathroom had dissipated. She let a sea breeze sift her hair. "Shouldn't we be getting back? Why did you want to sit here?"

  "Atmosphere,' he said, and to Venetia's shock he produced a cigarette and lit it.

  She gaped. "First you chug four beers in an hour, and now ... you smoke?"

  He flapped a dismissive hand, exhaling through a satisfied smile. "Relax, Mom. I smoke one a month. And we were in there more than an hour."

  "Not much more."

  "A couple beers and one cigarette a month is a pretty lame vice."

  An excuse, she thought, but then realized she was being judgmental again, which she guessed was as bad a sin.

  He chuckled smoke, eyeing her. "But for the life of me, I can't imagine what your vices are."

  Venetia could think of no reply. She didn't tell him anything that Ann had done or said in the ladies' room, and now that the edgy confrontation was over, she began to manage the events of the night fairly well. Addiction, bad luck, and bad environment are just more aspects of the real world. It's just the Devil's way of trying to separate us from God, she reasoned, hoping she really believed it. Some of us succumb, some don't.

  But she felt bad for Dan. "I'm sorry for your friends, especially Ann."

  "Shit happens," he sputtered, looking at the cigarette tip. "And they weren't really friends-I'd just see them every now and then. The one I saw the most was Father Whitewood."

  The comment rekindled a snippet of the bathroom conversation. Whitewood. And what else had Ann said?

  He knew more than he was telling about that place, and I'll bet whoever replaced him does, too....

  "How long has Father Driscoll worked for the New Hampshire Diocese?" she asked.

  Dan seemed more focused on smoking than anything else. "Huh? Oh, not long. He's done a lot of different things for the Church, all over the world."

  "How does he ... seem to you?"

  "Seem?"

  Venetia wasn't sure what she was asking. "He strikes me as keeping a lot to himself. Do you get that impression?"

  "Of course, 'cos I know a little bit more about him than most." Dan let a plume of smoke spew from his nostrils and be carried away. "Driscoll has sort of a cryptic reputation"

  "Why?"

  'Because he took sequestered classes in Rome and Avignon."

  Venetia squinted at the response. "I've never heard of 'sequestered' lasses."

  Did Dan smile in the dark? "It means they're secret, stuff the Vatican doesn't want the world to know it's still teaching."

  Venetia studied the answer. In a sense he'd just corroborated her own query, hadn't he? Maybe Driscoll really is hiding something.

  A clatter resounded at the front of the pier; when she looked she noticed a dock bum rummaging through a garbage can.

  "I guess we should be good Catholics and buy him a sandwich."

  But Dan had already stood up, and he seemed to look astonished at the vagabond. "Wait ... here," he insisted.

  What's he-To Venetia it seemed that Dan recognized the bum.

  She watched him stride down the pier. Now this is odd, Venetia thought. She couldn't hear with any detail, but Dan was talking to the raddled man, who stood stoopshouldered in a greasy black rain jacket and ratty sneakers. The jacket's hood was up, leaving only a shadowed oval for a face.

  When Dan handed over some money, Venetia thought she heard the bum say, "God bless you, Dan. And be safe."

  Then the bum shambled off, bowed and limping.

  "Let's get back to the prior house," Dan suggested when he returned.

  "You know that man," she said.

  Dan spewed the last of his cigarette smoke and flicked the butt. "Yeah, I sure do. Or I should say I used to know him. He's not the same guy anymore."

  "Who is it? Not a relative I hope."

  "Nope." He dug out the keys and headed for the car. "It's Father Russell Whitewood, the priest who ran the prior house for the last twenty years."

  Chapter Thirteen

  (I)

  Ruth noticed smoke rising from sewer grates along the road-Spirochete Avenue-but when she looked closer she also saw fingers wriggling in the gaps. Eww ... "How much longer?"

  "We're taking a shortcut," the priest told her, thundering ahead. "This is Satan Park."

  "Oh, that sounds like a place I want to go," she complained.

  "Don't be frightened by the name. Satan doesn't live there anymore. He can't."

  "Why not? He runs this whole fucked-up city, doesn't he? You'd think he could live anywhere he wanted."

  "Not here. It's an eyesore to him now. It reminds him of his greatest humiliation." The priest glanced back at her. "But with any luck, our mission will succeed ... and he'll never be able to live it down."

  Alexander's big, gnarly Ushers' feet splashed through a pool of blood, some of which speckled Ruth's face.

  "Hey!"

  "Oh, sorry.,,

  Ruth wiped the blood off on the sleeve of her pink Yuck soo T-shirt. Fucker... "I thought we were going to this restaurant so I can land a job and wait on this Aldezhor dude."

  "He's no dude, Ruth. He's a powerful Grand Duke, with machination powers. But we're cutting through Satan's Park because ... I want to show you something."

  Ruth wasn't enthused. I'm sure it'll be fucked-up, like everything else around here. She paused to look at a very large ant on a tree-then she shrieked when she noted a human face o
n the insect. When the face stuck its tongue out at her, she swatted it with her flip-flop.

  "Quit fooling around and listen." Alexander frowned back at her.

  Ruth wasn't sure but it seemed that just ahead, the scarlet sky wasn't quite as scarlet, and-

  Is that ... fresh air I smell?

  "Do you know what the theory of relativity is, Ruth?"

  Her not very evolved intellect cogitated. "Oh, yeah, some law that was discovered by that Einstein guy. He was, like, the smartest guy in the world, but then he got tired of being an egghead and opened a chain of sandwich shops with his brother."

  Alexander groaned. "In a nutshell, Ruth, the theory of relativity proves the existence of the propagation of space and time: the only thing in the universe that can never stop is the passage of time."

  Ruth was scrutinizing her fingernails. "Do they have nail polish in Hell?"

  "Oh, for God's sake, Ruth. Listen. This is important. In Hell, it's the opposite. Time is not a constant. What we have in the Mephistopolis is the theory of irrelativity. What this means is that in certain circumstances, things that have already happened have not yet occurred."

  "Gimme a break!" she yelled. "Why do you think I dropped out in seventh grade?"

  " I don't expect you to understand completely because the theory is designed to not be understandable. But we know enough about it now to use it to our advantage. It's just something I want you to think about while our journey continues."

  Ruth guessed her period was on. "I'm sick of listening to bullshit! And you know what? I'd say there's a really good chance that I'm not going to spend a whole fuck of a lot of time thinking about the fuckin' theory of irrelativity, because shit that's already happened stays in the past!"

  Alexander stopped and raised his brows at her. "Ruth, that's great! You get it! I've already told you, everything is opposite here. So how does that apply to what you just said?"

  Ruth whined; her brain hurt. "I don't know! Shit in the future is already behind us?"

  "Yes! Well, that is, some of it. You can never tell what exactly-because time, in Hell, in inconstant. You're getting it!"

  fuck this shit, man, she thought. I just want some fuckin' nail polish 'cos my nails look like shit.

  "And if time is no longer a reliable unit of measure, and if everything is opposite here, explain that." The priest pointed upward with a fat taloned finger.

  Holy shit ...

  Just moments ago, Ruth had noticed a lessening in the sky's hue of crimson; now she shielded her eyes-against sunlight in a modest but irrefutable aperture of blue sky.

  "Sunlight! Like on earth!"

  "Yes, Ruth. And if everything is opposite here ... how can this be?"

  Ruth's eyes sparkled at the glorious site. Real sunlight was bathing her face. "I guess, I guess," she tried to answer, "uh, something got ... fucked-up?"

  Alexander's fro"-Indicated his disapproval of her choice of words, but he said, "That's good enough. Something happened here once that contaminated the constant environment of the Mephistopolis, but remember that, here, contamination means purification."

  "So what happened?"

  "Look down now..."

  Ruth had been too busy looking at the circle of beauti ful blue sky that she hadn't even noticed what the impossible sunlight was shining on. Her eyes dragged down-

  "The fuck is that?"

  She was looking at a pile of rubble the size of the largest pyramid in Egypt.

  "It used to be Lucifer's home, the tallest skyscraper in history. It was a 666-floor building called the Mephisto Building."

  "Looks like somebody did the job on it."

  "Exactly. A Human Being gained entry to Hell and became sanctified through an act of Holy Martyrdom. She sacrificed her own life in that building, in God's name. The result was a fissile atomic reaction, almost the same as a nuclear bomb going off. It turned the entire building into a pile of junk in two seconds," the priest related.

  "Wow. It's 'a bummer that the guy who did it is dead now.,,

  "Not a guy," Alexander muttered.

  "What?"

  "But that doesn't matter. The suicide sanctified the most unholy plot of land in Hell. It's purified forever. Nothing evil can ever exist there."

  Ruth considered the situation and chuckled. "I'll bet that pisses Satan off big-time."

  "Yep. Satan's former domicile is now that only sanctified perimeter in Hell. But as you can see, it's not a very big perimeter." He offered her a cunning smile. "We've got something up our sleeves, though, that can create another sanctified zone that will just grow and grow."

  "How?" she asked.

  "In time-I don't want to overwhelm you." His stout gray legs flexed as he began to approach the virtual mountain of rubble. "Come on, I need you to read something."

  Read something? Ruth couldn't imagine what he meant.

  As the got closer to the pile, Ruth nearly swooned at the surge of fresh air. The sun on her face brought a delight to her heart unlike anything she could ever remember. Then-"Flowers!" She rejoiced when she saw the bright multicolored blooms growing between slabs of concrete the size of cars. Ruth had tears in her eyes by the time they reached the edge of the debris.

  But what had he said? He's got some plan to sanctify more land in Hell?

  "Remember that Spanish friar I mentioned?" he asked.

  "Oh, the guy who wrote all that shit on your skin?"

  "The calligrapher, yes. Well, he ran out of room so he had to inscribe some information on my back."

  Ruth saw with some alarm that every square inch of the priest's torso was covered with the scar-tissue scribbling. Even his back.

  "Most of the writing is in Enochian or Zraetic, which you won't recognize," he informed. "Just look for six weirdo-looking names in a row. They should be glowing."

  Ruth spotted it at once, for they were indeed glowing in a soft whitish blue light, like luminous paint. She slowly pronounced them:

  "Ablissa, Eylla, Azusis, Belith, Gesmary, Tzaella."

  "Perfect. You've found them. Now-are the names glowing?"

  "Yeah." Ruth ran a finger across the flesh-embossed script, and found the letters strangely cool. "It looks like that stuff they use on watches to make the hands glow in the dark."

  "Whitish blue light?" the priest asked, concerned. "Not dark red?"

  "It's whitish," she began, but then her eyes widened. As she looked at the line of strange glowing names, they"They just changed! Now they're glowing in red."

  Alexander nodded, lowered his shirt. "That means the time is getting closer. The Angels just lost their purity."

  "Angels?" Ruth asked.

  "Those names are the names of six very special Angels," the priest began, and led Ruth away from the glorious opening in the sky. "T'hey're called Caliginauts. They're Holy warriors that infiltrate Hell and battle Lucifer's operations. That's their mission, to sneak into the Mephistopolis and ..." He seemed to struggle for the right words.

  "Fuck shit up?" Ruth offered.

  Alexander frowned, as always. "Yeah, Ruth. These little skirmishes between Heaven and Hell have been going on for thousands of years." The desolate road darkened the farther they strayed from the mountain of rubble. "But these particular Angels are prisoners now."

  "You mean they're in jail?"

  "They're in a place worse than jail. They're in the Lower Chancel of the Fortress Boniface. I've already told you a little about him. A long time ago he captured these Angels, and he's been Unanointing them ever since. That's the reason we're here, and that's the reason their names on my back just changed from light to dark. It means their Unanointment Reversion is taking root. Originally they were Blessed and Holy, but after so much debasement they've lost their state of Sanctity."

  "What's all that jive mean?" Ruth asked.

  "It means we're very close to the time when the Involution will be charged."

  "And what does that jive mean?"

  "It's numbers and geometry, Ruth. In th
e Heaven the perfect number is seven but in Hell the perfect number is one less-six. The geometric equivalent to the number six is an angleless curved plane called the Involution. Think of it as Lucifer's lucky shape. Think of it as a magic shape."

  When a Griffin flew by, a gust of wind mussed Ruth's hair. "This shit's too confusing, man. What's a shape have to do with Angels?"

  "Because this shape-the Involution-is a Power Dolmen, and Lucifer's Warlocks have discovered various ways to harness that power. The Involution can be charged, like a battery, but instead of electricity it runs on the Deathforce energy of innocent blood. And it's the Involution that will-for lack of a better term-transport the six Angels from Hell to Earth. It's Boniface's job to do this, but he can't until the Angels have been properly deconditioned. That's why he's subjected them to rape, debasement, and torture for the last hundred years."

  The last hundred years, she thought, annoyed now. "How do you know it's been a hundred years if time doesn't exist in Hell?"

  Alexander stopped and spun; he seemed overjoyed by her question. "You're starting to get it, Ruth-that's great! You're understanding information that deliberately can't be understood. Let me simplify. A Human life is a cycleyou're born, you grow up, and you die. And because the Human soul is immortal, every minute of your life is, too, on multiple planes of existence."

  Ruth gaped at him.

  He raised a monstrous finger. "Now, think of every minute of your life on Earth as a deck of cards. What Lucifer can do through his specialized sorcery is shuffle that deck to suit his needs. To change the chronological order of the manner in which your life transpired."

  Ruth winced. "Why would he want to fucking shuffle every minute of my life?"

  "Well, he doesn't. I'm just using you as an example. He's actually shuffling someone else's life, because it's part of his plan to gain a powerful ally in Hell."

  Smirking ever harder, Ruth scratched her belly button. "So who's life is he shuffling? Yours?"

  The monster-limbed priest seemed disappointed. "No, no, not mine. Venetia Barlow's."

  "Who?" But then she blinked her awareness. "Oh, the chick you were talking to on that funky hom-"