by Edward Lee
Next he was shuffling out of the first-floor bedroom, in his underwear. The headache pulsed; he kept the lights off, preferring a dark trip through the foyer to the pantry behind the kitchen. Moonlight through the back bow windows barely gave him enough light to see by, but eventually he got his hand around the bottle of Glenlivet that he kept stashed behind some sacks of flour. Given Cassie’s former drinking problem, he didn’t want any hooch sitting around to tempt her. Thank God, though, that she’d worked hard to put all that behind her. As far as Bill knew, his daughter hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol since Lissa had died.
He took the bottle into the kitchen where the moonlight was brighter, carefully retrieved a glass from the cabinet, and poured himself two fat fingers. The first sip sang down his throat. Ooo, yeah! Then he sealed the ritual by lighting a cigarette. Yeah, momma! In his retirement, at least, this seemed appropriate. Nothing wrong with a man who’d worked hard all his life having a drink and a cigarette.
At midnight.
In the dark.
In his underwear.
Well ...
To hell with it, he thought again.
He downed the drink, poured himself another. Just a finger and a half this time. Hell, he’d heard on the health shows a bunch of times that a few drinks a day could even be good for you, lowered the cholesterol count or some such. What could be the harm, especially to a man with some heart troubles?
He took another edgy sip.
And that’s when he heard the footsteps.
Shit! Cassie’s coming down the stairs!
The last thing he wanted was for her to catch him sneaking a nip and a smoke at midnight. In his underwear. He stashed the glass in the cabinet, doused the cigarette in the sink. Then he walked back out into the foyer, trying to seem as casual as possible.
Casual, yes. At midnight in his underwear.
Strange.
The hall lights on the second-floor landing remained off. And the long stairwell was empty.
Jackass, he called himself for a second time. I must have one grade-A class of the willy’s. He was certain he’d heard Cassie coming down the long stairs.
Back to the kitchen, to retrieve his drink.
What the hell is going on! Is this some kind of a damn joke?
Not two seconds back in the kitchen, he heard it again.
Footsteps. Slow but deliberate footsteps.
Only this time they were going back up the stairs. He dashed back to the foyer. Turned on the crystal chandelier.
There was no one on the stairs.
All right, I’m still shook up over the dream, or whatever the hell it was. It was the only explanation possible ... or so he thought. I’m like a little kid, scared of the dark and wanting mommie to make the monsters go away!
Out went the chandelier and back went Bill to the kitchen. He finished his drink but then—
Holy MOTHER-
—dropped the glass when he felt a hand gently touch his shoulder from behind. The glass shattered, spewing wet fragments across the kitchen floor.
He spun around, and in spite of his fear, he knew there’d be nothing there.
And was wrong.
In the moon-lit darkness, a slender young woman stood before him.
Grinning.
She was nude, her skin pale as cream. Just standing there.
Bill couldn’t move a single fiber of muscle.
The young woman’s slender arms reached out. Her white hands touched his chest but the touch seemed to dissolve. Her hands seemed tangible for only a moment, then they disappeared into his chest.
A ghost touching him.
But now he knew who the ghost was.
The long black hair with the white streak on the right side.
It was Lissa, his dead daughter.
Worse was the obvious mutilation.
Her breasts were gone, as if sliced off, leaving only two angled lines of black stitches in their place.
“I’m in Hell now, Dad,” she said, but the voice flowed from her mouth like some corrupted dark fluid.
Then the apparition disappeared.
I’m fucked up, Bill concluded, wiping his brow on his t-shirt sleeve.
There’d been no ghost, of course. There were no such things. But there were hallucinations, optical illusions, and horrible images produced by the subconscious. There were powers of suggestion from unknown and undeciphered traumas and stress. There were alcohol-induced visual tricks.
Bill regained his breath. He refused to let this bother him. He was a mature man, not a nut. He poured the expensive, eighteen-year-old scotch down the drain in the fancy brass-and-porcelain-fitted kitchen sink. It gurgled away, leaving its warm aroma floating in the air.
That’s enough of that, he thought firmly.
Lissa was dead. It was the worst tragedy of his life, and it had obviously left its mental scars. True, the entirety of those scars would probably never go away altogether, and he realized that.
But she was dead and buried and gone now.
There were no ghosts. There were no spirits haunting the dark.
He walked stolidly back to his room, turned off the bedside lamp, and got under the sheets.
Jackass. Just go to sleep.
He was determined to do exactly that, but when he rolled over he saw that someone else was in bed with him.
(II)
Cassie felt distressed as she, Via, and Hush trotted away from the abattoir of the park, their gory footprints trailing behind. As they ran off, Constabulary platoons marched in the opposite direction, followed by Collection Crews pushing their wheeled hoppers to pick up the carnage and deliver it to the Pulping Stations. In spite of the gruesome incident, the rest of the district seemed back to normal only minutes afterward, as though such outbursts of atrocity were as routine as a fender-bender in any other city.
Evidently, they were.
“We’ll be pretty safe here,” Via suggested to her. “The Constabs don’t generally pay much attention to the heart of Boniface Square. Lucifer likes all the money that pours in from the clubs, restaurants, and stores.”
“It’s like a shopping district?” Cassie asked.
“Entertainment district is a better way to think of it. The better-heeled residents of Hell come here to party. It’s like the Hollywood Boulevard of Hell.”
“But as ex-residents—XR’s,” Cassie ventured, “I thought that makes you fugitives, right? Doesn’t that mean that the Constabulary will be looking all over the place for you?”
“Technically, yes, but there aren’t any official warrants out for us here. The Ghettoblocks and Industrial Zone are another story, ’cos we’ve committed a lot of crimes there. Mostly stealing, and things that would be considered Crimes of Nonconformity.”
“Crimes of—” Cassie began to question.
“Resisting arrest, killing Ushers and other Constabs, ripping demons off—stuff like that,” Via answered as though it were no big deal. “One time Hush painted Satan Sucks on the front door to the Westminster Church of the Anti-Christ, so the Constabs but an APB out on us. Then there was another time when they sent an entire regiment of Conscripts after us ’cos Xeke blew up a police station near Baalzephon Mall.”
“So ... you’re like urban guerillas?” Cassie saw the association. “Like the terrorists Xeke was talking about earlier?”
“We do our part, but it’s all nickel-dime compared to the real revolutionaries. Like Xeke was saying, there is a bona fide resistence movement—the Satan Park Contumacy—but they operate mainly in the City Center. We don’t have the guts to join them.”
This sounded fascinating to Cassie. “Why not? It seems to me that if enough people banded together—”
“We could overthrow Lucifer?” Via laughed at the idealism. “It’ll never happen, Cassie. The Contumacy is led by Ezoriel, one of the Fallen Angels, but even with half a million volunteers, he can’t beat Lucifer’s security forces. They’ve been trying to break into the Mephisto Building fo
r a thousand years, but even with the power of a Fallen Angel, they’ve barely been able to penetrate the Flesh Warrens. It may sound cowardly, but if we joined them, we’d just wind up in the Torture Factories eventually. We gotta spend eternity here—eternity’s a long friggin’ time. Why would we want to make it even worse for ourselves?”
Cassie couldn’t very well argue. After all, she was still a member of the Living World, and as-yet Un-Damned. She only hoped she could keep it that way.
“Well, at least that’s something of a relief,” she observed, “that we’re safe from the Constabs in this district.”
Concern on her face, Hush pulled on Via’s punky leather jacket and silently mouthed the word Nicky.
“Oh, yeah,” Via was reminded. “There is one guy we’ve got to look out for, though. Nicky the Cooker. He’s not in the Constabulary; he’s a Mob guy. A while back, we ripped one of his shylocks off for five thousand.”
“Like a loan shark, you mean?”
“Yeah, same thing here. Nicky’s one guy who’ll always be looking for us, so we’ve got to be careful. ’Cos of the strip clubs and bars, he does a lot of business in Boniface Square.”
Cassie hated to ask, but she asked anyway. “Why do they call him ‘The Cooker?’ ”
“If you cross him and he catches you, he cooks you.”
“Cooks you?”
“Yeah. He owns a sulphur pit in Outer-Sector East,” Via calmly explained. “They put you in a big metal drum, seal the lid, and throw the drum into the pit. So you just sit there in that drum and cook. Forever.”
Jesus! Cassie thought.
“It’s real funny how a lot of the Mob guys in the Living World kick off, go to Hell, and continue being Mob guys here. Live or dead, I guess you are what you are. Lucifer loves organized crime and all the corruption that comes with it.”
Cassie imagined so, and Nicky the Cooker was one person she hoped she’d never have to meet.
Soon they were walking through an urban maze of strip malls and commercial buildings boasting a multitude of enterprises. “Boniface Square is huge,” Via said. “Where we just came from—the restaurant and hotel district—is the Square’s ritzy area. from here down, things get kind of seedy. Bars, strip joints, porno parlors, and bordellos, like that. It’s where wealthier citizens buy their drugs and get their jollies. The music clubs are all mixed in here, too.”
Music clubs, Cassie reminded herself. Like the place where Lissa works. The endeavor to find her sister remained foremost on her mind, but then there was always the issue of Xeke. Cassie was terribly worried about him, but Via seemed unperturbed.
“Aren’t you even a little worried about Xeke?” she asked.
“A little? Sure. This is Hell. There’s lots to worry about. But I’ve seen Xeke rip his way through Mutilation Squads and Constabs a bunch of times. The smartest thing for us to do is simply follow his instructions. He knows what he’s talking about. He told us to meet him at the S&N Club, so that’s exactly what we’ll do.”
“Yeah, but what if he doesn’t make it to the club?” Cassie had no choice but to challenge Via’s confidence.
“He’ll make it,” was all Via said.
More questions arose, a force of habit. “I’m a little confused, you know, about you and Xeke—your—”
“Relationship?” Now Via seemed subtly displeased. “I’m in love with him. How’s that?”
It seemed so. “But—”
“Is he in love with me? Hell, no. To him, we’re just pals, we’re ‘buds.’ Jesus. We’ve never even gotten it on, never even kissed, which pisses me off ’cos I’ve given him every chance.” A dolorousness crept into her voice.
“Fuckin’ men—in either world they’re supreme pains in the ass.”
“Why don’t you—”
“Make the first move?” Via kept finishing Cassie’s questions. “He’d just think I was a tramp if I did that. And, no, I’ve never told him that I love him. That’d just drive him away. Isn’t that how it always works?” She sputtered to herself. “He’s actually right, though. He doesn’t want to have a relationship with me because he knows what everybody here knows. Relationships never work out in Hell. I wish I could be as strong and as smart as him.”
Cassie felt bad for her. She could easily tell that Via’s genuine feminine feelings were seeping through the harsh, tom-boy veneer. Another thing that seeped through was just as plain: in spite of Xeke’s street-smarts and combative prowess, Via was truly worried about him.
A long fence topped with rolls of razor wire lined one side of the block. Demon sentries marched guard posts along the interior perimeter. Beyond the fence, Cassie could see long rows of dark concrete buildings.
“This almost looks like a military compound,” she said. “What’s it doing in an entertainment district?”
“Every district has at least one government facility,” Via replied, walking along. “That’s a Supernatural Services Installation. Lucifer can’t live in the Living World, so he takes any opportunity to mess with it.”
Cassie squinted at bizarre stenciled signs:AUTOMATIC-WRITING BARRACKS
SEANCE PROJECTION
CHANNELING POST
“Seances, channeling?” Cassie questioned. “Doesn’t all that have to do with communication with the dead?”
“Sure does. And it’s all fake.”
“What?”
“It’s all bullshit for gullible minds in the Living World,” Via said. “It’s all an instigation of Lucifer’s sorcery technologies. Ouija boards, phone calls from your dead relatives, trance-channelers who think they’re writing notes from Edgar Cayce, stuff like that. It’s all fake. It’s all manufactured here. When people fool around with Ouija boards and become convinced that they’re in contact with their dead Uncle Harry, it’s really just a Necromancer on this end, manipulating the board so it seems real. Remember that guy who claimed that Mozart was contacting him to finish his last symphony? They even compared the hand-writing to letters and sheet music that Mozart wrote himself, and it matched. But it was really just a technician in the Automatic-Writing Barracks, forging it all and channeling it to this moron.”
Cassie was astonished by the information. “That’s fascinating.” Another sign loomed by:
N.D.E. GENERATORS
“N.D.E. stands for Near Death Experience,” Via went on. “I’m sure you’ve read about the stuff. All these people who get brought back to life in emergency rooms, or drown and get revived by CPR—and they all say that they saw a great white light and their dead relatives are all waiting for them in paradise afterlife?”
Cassie was well familiar with the stories.
“It’s all manufactured bullshit. Imagery Spells are projected to the people who get revived, and since the imagery is all the same, their stories sound credible. Doesn’t matter if they’re good people or bad, Christians or Jews or Muslims or Atheists. The experience is the same so it suggests that there’s this wonderful non-Bible-oriented place of perfect peace waiting for us when we die. But it’s really all just a trick. Same thing with alien abductions—Jesus. Imagery Spells are randomly projected to people in the Living World; the images make them think they’ve been kidnaped by aliens. If you get people to believe in aliens—”
“They won’t believe in God,” Cassie got it. “And if people think aliens are real and God is a myth ... they reject the notion of salvation.”
“And their asses land right here the minute they die.”
They passed the creepy compound, Cassie’s fascination brimming. Lucifer’s schemes were intricate and brilliant. She wondered how many millions had been deceived by him.
Suddenly Hush was pulling Cassie along harder by the hand; she seemed giddy with excitement.
“Hush loves to window-shop,” Via said.
Here, odd store fronts lined the sulphur-lit street. EVITA’S SECRET, one window read. Behind the glass, hellish skeletons served as mannequins, displaying the latest lacy fashions. INFERNAL CONCUBINE? PRO
STITUTE? OR JUST AN UPTOWN GIRL? LOOK YOUR SEXIEST IN OUR NEW COFFIN-WORM-SILK NIGHTIES!
The next store read CROWN OF THORNS BOOKS, whose window display showed an array of books, The Glyphs of She, Cultes Des Ghoules, Megalopisomancy, The Gospel According to Judas. Another sign blared, DONT MISS OUR NEXT SIGNING! CAPOTE AND LOVECRAFT AUTOGRAPH THEIR LATEST RELEASES, PORTRAIT OF THE WRITER IN HELL AND THE SHADOW OVER PROSPECT STREET. Between the next two shops a midget Gremlin tended to a tuxedo’d demon as might a shoe-shine boy: the demon was having his horns sharpened. Another Gremlin sold smoking nuts of some kind from a wheeled stand. Cassie doubted they were chestnuts.
Big-screen televisions were displayed in the next shop, with strangely oval screens. Sony they ain’t, Cassie thought. The grainy screens flickered in washed-out color. One screen showed what appeared to be a bikini contest, with demonic contestants. A game show flickered on the next. “And what’s behind Door Number Three?” a handsome human host with hook hands announced. The door raised, revealing a torture chamber, complete with squirming bodies shackled to racks and quivering in spiked iron maidens. Yet another screen showed an arena with packed grandstands. On the field, huge birdlike demons ripped strips of flesh off naked humans. The crowd roared with applause.
I guess football doesn’t make it here....
Next, Hush was beaming at a shop whose transom read TRANSPLANT PARLOR (AN AUTHORIZED COMMERCIAL ANNEX OF THE OFFICE OF TRANSFIGURATION). It reminded Cassie of a realtor’s, where an audio tape was triggered by a motion detector when browsers walked by. An energetic voice announced: “Don’t trust your body modifications to an unlicensed surgeon. Come in and meet one of our government-approved Transfigurists for all your transplant needs. Get rid of those insufficient human arms and let our doctors give you a pair of powerful Troll arms. Get revitalized with a demonic transfusion. If it’s Nether-Wolf fangs you want, we’ve got them. And don’t forget about our easy low-interest payment plan.”
