City Infernal

by Edward Lee

  That body!

  The word hearty came to mind. Blue jeans spread tight across the wide hips. The plush, hourglass figure and thrusting bosom socked him in the eye.

  Even when she smiled, showing a missing tooth, the image remained intense.

  That there is one hot slab of country pie. If I don’t quit looking at her, I’ll probably have another heart attack right here.

  He fought to distract himself, thought up some small talk. “I had a lucky day fishing at the creek.”

  “Yes sir, I saw them fine-lookin’ fish in the fridge. I’d be happy to clean ‘em and cook ’em for ya, Mr. Heydon. I’ll just send Jervis on home. You ain’t had catfish till you’ve had it country fried.”

  It sounded delicious, almost as delicious as the idea of watching her quietly lusty body bending over the range.

  Which was why he said, “No, thanks, Mrs. Conner, but thanks for the offer. Cassie really enjoys cooking. By the way, have you seen her?”

  “Not since this morning, sir. She was runnin’ off somewheres, town I imagine.”

  Bill looked at his Rolex. “Been gone all day,” he muttered.

  “I’m sure she’ll be along presently,” Mrs. Conner offered. “We cain’t keep too tight a leash on our young ones—much as we might want to. Gotta let ’em roam, see things on their own.”

  “Of course, you’re right.” Bill averted his eyes from her pressing bosom. The nipples shone through her blouse, the size of the bottom of a soda can. “She’s probably just walking around with her Discman somewhere.”

  “You sure you don’t want me to stay?”

  “No, that’s all right, Mrs. Conner. See you tomorrow.”

  “Bye!”

  When she strutted off, Bill was helpless to stare after her.

  Christmas! he thought. I need to get a life! He chased more distraction, poured himself a soda, turned on the radio for some music. Ah, Vivaldi. Thank you! The spacious sonata lulled the edges off his mood.

  Better. Much better.

  Beyond the fine windows, the sky had darkened further. He glanced again at his watch.

  Where the hell is Cassie?

  (V)

  “Wow!” came a strange, delighted voice. “Who are you?”

  “Uh, Cassie,” Cassie said. Her first reaction was defensive, to camouflage her fear with aggression, to demand what this person was doing on her property. But—

  The figure facing her was a young woman, probably eighteen or twenty, slim but curvy, and with a demeanor that seemed not really butch but definitely tom-boyish. What took Cassie most aback was the girl’s appearance: shiny leather boots and black leather pants, a studded belt, a deliberately shredded black t-shirt under a black leather jacket. Not Goth but more like late-’70s punk. Buttons on the jacket confirmed the estimation. THE GERMS, THE STRANGLERS, a button of The Cure’s first album cover and another of Siouxie and the Banshee’s THE SCREAM. White haphazard letters on the t-shirt read SIC F*CKS!

  “Wow,” the girl repeated. “This is great! A newbie!”

  “Pardon me?” Cassie said.

  “I love what you’re wearing. Where’d you get it?”

  “I—” Cassie began but that was all she could get out.

  “And your hair’s great! I’d do anything to get my hands on some dye like that. Where’d you get it?”

  “I—” Cassie tried again.

  “We’ve never seen you before. How long have you been here?”

  “A month or so.”

  “Still getting to learn your way around—it takes a while.” The girl reached into her jacket, pulled out a cassette. “Here, have a tape. It’s great stuff. We ripped a bunch of them off the other night, in the city.”

  Cassie reluctantly took the cassette tape. The city? She must mean Pulaski, or Charlottesville. “Uh, thank you.” The cover was black with silver Gothic letters: ALDINOCH. “I’ve never heard of them. What is it? Metal?”

  “You’ll love it. And it’s really the only thing going on in the city right now.” The girl seemed effervescent, overcharged. Her hand shot out. “Oh, sorry! I’m Via.”

  Cassie shook her hand—it felt hot. “Cassie,” she repeated. “So where do you live?”

  “It’s just me and two others—Xeke and Hush.” Her thumb pointed behind her, up the trail. “We stay at that big ugly-ass house on the hill.”

  What! Cassie felt bewildered. “You don’t mean Blackwell Hall?”

  “Yeah. Right up here. On top of the hill.”

  This was too weird. “You must mean someplace else. I live at Blackwell Hall.”

  Via didn’t seem at all fazed. “Oh, well that’s cool. You can squat with us.”

  Squatters. That would explain it, but—

  “We stay up in the oculus room during the day.”

  Could this possibly be true? The house was so large that Cassie supposed squatters could stay there in some remote area. But how feasible was it that they could remain unheard and undetected for all this time?

  “It’s the strongest part of the house,” Via went on. “The basements aren’t bad either, but the oculus room is where Blackwell killed all the babies.”

  Cassie suddenly felt rooted to the ground. What is going on? What is she talking about?

  “You have a really strong aura,” Via added cheerfully. “Did you know that? Bright blue. Why don’t you come with me to the Station? You can meet the others. We’re going to the city tonight.”

  Cassie’s thought processes seemed to grind like a series of cogs. Her eyes were fixed on Via’s wrist—and the open slit held together by crude black stitches. She could see dried blood in the wound, as if it hadn’t healed.

  But now Via was looking back just as strangely.

  At Cassie’s wrist.

  “That’s impossible,” she whispered. She grabbed Cassie’s wrist and looked at the similar scar, similar only in that it denoted the same intent. But Cassie’s scar was—

  “Healed,” Via muttered. “It’s healed.” Then her darkly mascara’d eyes looked stupefied into Cassie’s.

  “Oh my God,” Via said. “You’re not dead, are you?”

  In spite of the compounding strangeness, Cassie blurted a laugh. “What kind of a ridiculous thing is that to say? Of course I’m not dead.”

  “Well I sure as hell am!” Via exclaimed and ran away down the hill.

  Chapter Three

  (I)

  Delusion. Hallucination.

  What else could it be? At the hospital, they’d told her that some of the psych drugs could produce such side effects. She’d stopped taking them rather abruptly; perhaps hallucinosis was the result.

  Either that or I’m just going nuts. I’m going schizo.

  Memory of the incident clung to her, unpleasant as the day’s humidity. Had she fallen asleep in the woods and dreamed it?

  No. It felt too real.

  “Hi, honey!” her father had called out from the spacious living room. “I was getting a little worried.”

  “I ... got a little lost coming back from town,” she’d fabricated an excuse. She’d gasped when she opened the refrigerator and saw the hook-line full of catfish. It reminded her of the awful story Roy had told.

  That’s what this tall guy had... only it was a hook-line full of babies, and he was draggin’ ’em up the stairs.

  “Damn, sorry,” her father said, hustling into the kitchen. “I forgot to clean the fish.” He retrieved the weighty hook-line, thunked it in the sink.

  She smelled remnant cigarette smoke, but didn’t say anything. She turned away at the wet grisly sounds of him gutting the fish. She needed to get her mind off her own musings: Via, the story Roy had told, Blackwell and the babies.

  But she felt more like an automaton as she turned on the stove and prepared to cook dinner.

  Via’s words slipped back: We stay at that big ugly-ass house on the hill.

  There is no Via, she told herself.

  “So you checked out town today?” her father
asked.

  She clunked around in the cupboard for the right pan. “Yeah. It’s not really even a town. Just a few old stores on the strip.”

  “Well, I know it’s dull around here. Maybe we’ll drive to Pulaski this weekend, do some shopping.”

  “Cool,” she said, unenthused.

  Her father had piled the fresh catfish fillets on a plate. “You’re awful quiet tonight. Are you okay?”

  Peachy, Dad. Today I found out that the guy who used to live here sacrificed infants to Satan. I also met a dead girl named Via. Oh, she lives in the house with her friends.

  “Just tired, I guess. I must’ve been out in the sun too long.”

  “Go lie down. I’ll cook dinner.”

  “I’m fine, really. I want to do it. Go watch your sports stuff.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure. Two people in the kitchen is one too many. Makes me bitchy.”

  Her father laughed, retreating back to the family room.

  Cassie poached the fish in soy sauce and fresh-ground horseradish. But when they ate, she barely tasted it. “This is great!” her father complimented. “You could be a chef!”

  Cassie picked through her food, still bothered. Of course, what she’d seen today—Via—had been her imagination, minor heat-stroke or something.

  It had to be.

  She looked blankly at the huge television: a pre-season football game. Nothing seemed more pointless in the world than grown men running back and forth over grass trying to move a leather bag full of air.

  “Fuckin’ Leon!” her father suddenly shouted, pounding the coffee table with the bottom of his fist. “Do us all a favor and chicken-walk your ass back to Dallas, you lazy no-talent sham motherf—” He caught himself in the tirade, looked sheepishly to Cassie. “Er, sorry.”

  She just smiled and took the plates back to the kitchen, washed and dried them by hand rather than using the newly installed dishwasher. Something was side-tracking her thoughts, and she knew exactly what it was.

  She knew what she wanted to do.

  “I’m going up to my room, Dad. Gonna listen to some music for a while.”

  “Okay, honey. Thanks for cooking. You sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m fine. Enjoy your game.”

  She edged out, started walking up the carpeted stairs. Brass flicker-bulb lamps lit the way up, throwing shadows on the various old statues and oil paintings.

  Yes, she knew what she wanted to do.

  On the second-floor landing, she glanced down the dark hall toward her room. Then she glanced up the next flight of stairs.

  Her father’s muffled shouting echoed from the living room: “Don’t bother trying to tackle the guy, Leon—oh, no! We wouldn’t want you to actually break out into a sweat for your EIGHT MILLION A YEAR!”

  Cassie looked at the cassette tape. She’d probably just picked it up somewhere, or found it. Or maybe Roy had given it to her. The name on the cover sounded sinister.

  ALDINOCH.

  No, Roy must’ve given it to me, and I don’t remember. I’m just having some weird drug flaskback from all that crap they pumped into me at the hospital.

  Now she felt convinced.

  There was no Via. There was no dead girl.

  More hesitation. She could go back to her room and listen to the tape, or—

  She started going up the next flight of stairs. Every few steps creaked. A chill crept beneath her skin; if the story was true, she was making the exact same trek that Fenton Blackwell had—with the babies.

  Only a few lights glimmered on the third floor. The halls to either side were grainy with darkness.

  Another glance upward. Deeper darkness.

  The final flight of steps was carpetless and much more narrow. When she flicked on a wall switch, only the most meager light winked on up above.

  She took one step up, stopped, then took another.

  Oh, come on! Don’t be such a chicken! What? You think you’re going to go up there and find people there? Come on!

  She ascended the rest of the way quickly. There was no door to the oculus room; the stairs merely emerged up into it.

  There. See?

  A single hanging bulb lit the room. There was no Via, no people waiting for her. Three bare mattresses lay on the dusty floor, and this bothered her a little when she thought about it. Cobwebs festooned the small room’s comers, and the walls appeared to never have been papered, just old wooden slats.

  The oculus window stared back at her like an odd face.

  Then something caught her attention. Against one rickety wall stood an old tea table, and sitting on top of it was a dusty boombox.

  She fingered her cassette tape. She could plug it in now, listen to it here. But as she hit the button to pop the cassette lid, she saw that a tape was in there already.

  Her guts were already beginning to sink when she pulled out the tape. ALDINOCH, it read.

  It was identical to the tape she had.

  Her heart rate jumped. “Don’t freak out,” she slowly demanded. “There’s an explanation. Just ... get a grip on yourself.”

  She reclosed the lid and pushed the PLAY button. The sudden blare of volume shook her; she quickly turned it down.

  Death Metal, just as she’d thought. Multiple layers of abrasive guitars and discordant synth-drums washed back and forth over corroded vocals:

  “Inverting every cross toward Hell

  This church is now the Goat’s!

  Praise him, whores of holiness,

  Before I slit your throats!”

  Cassie’s lips pursed as if she’d tasted something sour. She liked the rhythms and the dense cords, but the negative lyrics turned her off.

  Next, a chorus roared:

  “I have chosen my afterlife

  And darkness it shall be

  Satan!!! Open wide the gates of Hell for me!”

  The Gothy mix of Hard-Industrial treatment with Slayer-like lyrics didn’t work for her. She switched the boombox off. But what could explain this strangeness? It was the same cassette tape that the girl in her delusion had given her. The tape in the boombox was real, and so was the one in her hand.

  And there was another coincidence, wasn’t there? I just happen to find a tape full of satanic music ... in a room where a satanist supposedly sacrificed babies.

  She sighed and turned. The round oculus window full of stained glass re-faced her. The faintest light glowed in a scarlet pane—the moon, no doubt.

  Something urged her to open the window. The metal hinge squealed when she pushed against the circular frame. Warm air brushed her face. She looked out the window.

  And fainted at once.

  It was not the rolling nighted landscape that she’d glimpsed when she looked out.

  It was a city, miles distant and seemingly endless. A city silhouetted by a luminous dark-red sky.

  A city that wasn’t there.

  (II)

  When Cassie wakened, she felt as though she were rising from an entrenchment of hot tar. Some aspect of her consciousness pushed upward, and when she opened her eyes, she saw only strange blurred squares. “Cassie?”

  The voice helped her to focus; the squares sharpened. They were, of course, the fancily embossed brass and tin ceiling tiles in her bedroom.

  She was lying inert on top of her bed.

  “Cassie, honey? What’s wrong?”

  The voice, warbled at first, was her father’s. He leaned over, his face stamped with worry.

  Scraps of memory began to re-assemble.

  I was upstairs....

  The oculus room.

  A breath seemed to snag in her chest.

  That ... city.

  A city that didn’t exist. A city so immense that it seemed to go on without limit. The south side of Blackwell Hill extended as miles of open farmland and then a gradual rise of forest belts that ended at the mountains.

  But when she’d looked out that window ...

  No Blue Ridge Mountains, n
o farmland, no trees.

  Instead she’d seen a cityscape that glowed as if built on embers. She’d seen a starless twilight of raging scarlet. She’d seen bizarre, lit skyscrapers haloed by dense shifts of smoke.

  What WAS that?

  “I found you upstairs, in the oculus room,” her father said. “You had passed out.”

  “I’m ... all right now,” she murmured, leaning up in bed.

  “I should probably call a doctor—”

  “No, please. I’m okay.”

  “What were you doing up in that room, honey?”

  What could she say?

  “I thought I heard something. I’d never been up there before, so I went up.”

  “You thought you heard something?”

  “I don’t know, I thought so.”

  “Then you should’ve come and gotten me.”

  “I know, but I didn’t want to bug you. Sorry.”

  Her father sat in a cane chair beside the bed. He looked exerted, which was no wonder because he’d obviously been the one who carried her back downstairs to her room. She didn’t like to lie, but how could she tell him the truth? There’re dead people living in the house, and the sky outside is red. I saw a city where there IS no city. He’d have her committed for observation immediately. No, she couldn’t tell him the truth.

  She didn’t even know what the truth was.

  The difficulty of the next question shone in his pinched expression. “Honey, have you been drinking again, or taking drugs. If you have, just tell me. I promise I won’t go apeshit, but I need to know.”

  “I haven’t, Dad. I swear.” The question didn’t anger her as it had in the past. After all my screwing up, what’s he supposed to think? “It’s just the heat, I think. Too much sun. I’ve felt kind of sick all day.”

  He patted her hand. “You want me to get you anything?”

  “No, that’s all right. I just want to go to sleep.”

  “If you’re still not feeling well tomorrow, you’re gonna tell me, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll get your old doctor out here right away.”

  “Dad, she’s in D.C.”