Virgil cowered back a step.
“Right. Yes. Sorry.”
“Anyway,” Milton said, desperate to keep the plan from derailing before it even left the station, “after Marlo and I grab as many jars as we can, we’ll meet at the gates and wait for them to open.”
Virgil nodded. Milton noticed his new friend was trembling.
“Where are we going?” Milton said with a motivating clap of his hands.
“The Surface!” Marlo and Virgil replied in unison.
“When are we getting there?”
“Real soon!”
“Okay, then,” Milton said soberly. “Let’s do it.”
Virgil wiped away a budding tear and headed down the hallway toward Mr. Dior’s office.
Marlo reattached her Boogey head and led Milton down the creepy corridor leading to the Assessment Chamber. It was different from the other hallways, Milton thought. The white marble corridor seemed as if it had been here way before Heck was even conceived, an ancient passage that the architects of this awful place had to build around.
“Hopefully they’re off duty,” Milton whispered as his sister shuffled him along.
“If they aren’t,” Marlo asserted behind her row of bright yellow teeth, “just follow my lead.”
As they approached the great door, Milton felt as if his very essence was slowly sliding down the insides of his body like spiritual honey, and gradually leaking out of the soles of his feet.
Milton drew in a deep breath as his shaking hand touched the doorknob. Once I go in, he thought, there’s no turning back. I either come out with an armload of other people’s lost souls, or empty-handed and lost—without mine.
38 · SOUL SEARCHING
THE SQUEAK OF the ancient hinges reverberated through the massive chamber.
“So much for surprise,” Milton said.
The round room was as still as a photograph. The atmosphere hung thick and heavy. Everything felt denser here, as if twice the normal amount of molecules were forced to crowd into the same space.
“Hello?” Marlo called in a poor approximation of a leathery demon voice. “Boogeyperson here on official Heck business.”
Marlo looked around through her big red eye.
“Looks dead in here,” she murmured. She scanned the rows of glass jars housing writhing, ectoplasmic goop. “Let’s go shopping.”
As they walked softly across the gleaming floor, they heard a big wet yawn.
Coiled on a round satin pillow beneath the scales on the sunken stage, Annubis raised his long, dignified head. He stretched languidly, resembling a shaved, oversized greyhound clad in a spotless white tunic. After sniffing the air with his moist snout, he gradually opened his soulful eyes.
“Milton,” he said majestically in a voice like dark rumpled velvet.
It was hard to explain what hearing his name coming out of the dog god’s mouth felt like exactly. But Milton knew the effect had made it impossible for him to lie. Annubis’s probing gaze was like a mental and emotional X-ray.
“We…we…,” Milton stammered. Marlo poked him in the back with her paw, knocking her brother’s voice back into groove like one of her father’s old jazz records. “We came to get some of the jars,” he continued.
Annubis rose. His limbs unfolded and he became terribly tall and terribly thin. The half man, half hound was the only thing that seemed to fit this imposing hall of marble and gold.
“The jars,” Marlo added in her creaky Boogeyperson voice. “Principal Bubb wanted us to collect the lost souls and take them to her office. She said she found some secret use for them.”
Annubis sniffed the air suspiciously. Just then an ivory chest adorned with silver inlays of smiling bunny skeletons that was next to the dog god began to shake. The lid slid off and landed with a clatter on the gold floor of the stage. Out rose Ammit from a bed of dry ice.
“What is going on?” he croaked in a voice gurgling with phlegm.
Annubis never once took his eyes off Milton. The stately creature had been, during their last encounter, something of a friend, albeit, a friend who reached into your etheric body and plucked out your soul. Milton simply couldn’t read him—and Milton could read just about anything.
“They want to take some of the jars of lost souls,” Annubis said slowly. “Miss Fauster says that Principal Bubb has found a secret use for them.”
“That’s right,” Marlo croaked. “We…wait, I’m not…”
Marlo’s voice faltered as she stammered between her real voice and poor Boogeyperson imitation.
Milton swallowed. He and his sister squeezed hands.
“The nose knows,” Annubis said, sensing their confusion and discomfiture.
Marlo whispered to Milton.
“I say we grab as many as we can and make a break for it.”
Annubis scratched himself behind the ear.
“I heard that of course, and—for your sakes—I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“I thought dogs were a man’s best friend,” Marlo muttered.
Ammit coughed, jiggling his gelatinous bulk in rippling waves. He rubbed his chin dubiously.
“This must be some kind of test,” he carped. “Principal Bubb must have put them up to it.”
Annubis trod gracefully toward Milton and Marlo. “I would like to help you,” he said with glum sincerity. “Truly I would. But I can’t.”
His hangdog face surveyed the wall of countless jars, each containing a glistening, restless spiritual essence.
“If a dog god is anything, he’s loyal to his master,” Annubis continued. “Besides, if those souls were released, there would be chaos. If even one of them reached the Surface, it would break the Prime Defective.”
“What’s that?” Milton asked while inching furtively toward the wall.
Ammit scratched himself in a place just south of proper. “It’s an unshakable statute,” he said while the remains of his last meal plopped farther down his transparent digestive tract. “An edict. The rule of rules. In short, it strictly forbids anyone or anything disturbing the queue of souls either entering or exiting the Stage.”
Ammit grew agitated. “I don’t have time for this,” he said, sloshing toward his headset lying between the scales of justice. “Whether this is a drill or an act of insurrection, I need to call Principal Bubb stat.”
Marlo nudged her brother.
“This isn’t working. It’s time for Plan B.”
“Plan B?” Milton replied apprehensively. “What Plan B?”
Marlo took off her Boogeyperson head and cleared her throat.
“Kum ba yah, my Lord, kum ba yah!
Kum ba yah, my Lord, kum ba yah!”
Oh no, Milton thought as he clapped his hands over his ears. Not singing. Anything but Marlo’s singing.
“Kum ba yah, my Lord, kum ba yah!
O Lord, kum ba yah!”
Annubis’s ears drooped. He hunched over and twirled in tight, nervous circles.
Marlo straightened and raised her terrible, screeching, nails-on-a-chalkboard voice.
“Hear me singing, Lord, kum ba yah!
Hear me singing, Lord, kum ba yah!”
A faint, dopey smile creased Ammit’s face as he sat placidly down on his ivory chest. Annubis, however, was anything but tranquil. His eyes trained on Marlo, Annubis snarled and licked flecks of foam from his quavering lips and took one staggering step forward.
“Hear me singing, Lord, kum ba yah!
O Lord…”
Milton nudged his sister sharply in the ribs.
“Okay, Plan B gets an ‘F.’ Now what?”
Marlo was oblivious as she strained to hit frightened notes that tried desperately and successfully to elude her unique vocal stylings.
“Ms. Von Trapp said this song soothed demons,” she said in between breaths.
The growling dog god pawed closer to the source of his auditory torment.
“Maybe demons,” Milton said, licking his dry lips, “but I thin
k it’s rubbing him the wrong way.”
Ammit shook his jelly head and came to his senses.
“This is ridiculous,” he said groggily. “I’m calling the principal.”
As Annubis, by all appearances consumed by rabies, came within pouncing distance of the Fauster children, Marlo realized that it was time for Plan C, whatever that was.
“Marlo,” Milton murmured as he clutched his sister’s shaggy green side, “I never thought I’d say this, but I hope you’ve got something else up your sleeve.”
Up my sleeve, Marlo thought with a jolt of inspiration. She cast aside her Boogeyperson gloves as Annubis, still seized by a temporary madness, stalked closer. Marlo wriggled Ms. Mallon’s rib loose from its home, tucked away close to her forearm. She waved the rib over her head.
“Here, doggie!” she cried. “Come get your bone! C’mon…who’s a good boy? Annubis is a good boy!”
Annubis’s pupils dilated until they were twin caves of dark, primal want.
“Come get your yum-yum! Mmmm…bony bone good!”
The once dignified dog god’s jaw dropped open. A river of saliva leaked from his foam-drenched flews. His head followed the arc of the waving bone like a ticking metronome.
Ammit went for his transmitter headset. In the blink of an eye, Milton grabbed the bone from his sister’s hand and raced down the descending concentric stairs and landed on the gleaming gold stage.
The quivering blob of goo snatched his headset triumphantly.
Milton roared and—clutching the rib over his head with both sweating hands—brought the bone down hard into Ammit’s gaping mouth and deep into his throat.
The creature was startled, stock-still. Unable to resist his urge to swallow, Ammit gulped the rib down into his visible stomach, where it bobbed provocatively in a sea of bile.
Milton and Ammit turned to see Annubis, skulking down each marble ring, licking his lips and staring at the bone bobbing within the jelly demon.
“Now, now, friend,” Ammit rasped while backing away, “let’s just take a deep, grounding breath and think this through.”
Milton vaulted up the stairs to Marlo’s side.
“Quick,” he panted, “grab as many as you can.”
Marlo smirked with pride at her continually surprising little brother. She and Milton began grabbing jars and dropping them into the Boogeyperson head.
“These are heavy,” she said.
Milton, too, struggled with the surprisingly hefty jars.
“I guess they have to be,” he grunted, “to keep the souls put…I just hope this is enough.”
Meanwhile Annubis crept onto the golden stage and eased his weight back on his quivering haunches, ready to spring.
Marlo looked on with fascinated disgust.
“This isn’t going to be pretty.”
“C’mon!” Milton shouted, and the two children left the chamber, dragging the heavy Boogey head behind them.
The door shut as they fled down the corridor to the clatter and tinkle of jostled jars.
“Bad doggie!” Ammit yelled before his voice was drowned out by a series of savage gulps, growls, and slurps.
Marlo looked over her fuzzy green shoulder.
“Guess there’s always room for Jell-O.”
39 · A STITCH JUST IN TIME
THE DRESS WAS incredibly tight. So tight that, had Virgil been an actual girl, he very well might have caused a civil disturbance. He crept with surprising grace considering his bulk through Mr. Dior’s seemingly endless rows of empty hangers, with the odd negligee, tank top, and jogging suit breaking up the monotony.
Virgil poked his head out between a pair of too-stretched pants and a moth-eaten muumuu.
There, between Virgil and the large tub of sturdy boys’ clothing he needed, was Mr. Dior, half asleep and cradling a jug containing (judging by its label) “spirits.”
Eerie glowing vapors leaked out of the jug as Mr. Dior took a sleepy swig.
“Ah,” he moaned with satisfaction, “phantasmic!”
His bloodshot eyes trained upon Virgil, whose attempt at camouflage would have been more successful had he been surrounded by other two-hundred-pound boys in dresses.
“Either my dressing dummy has gained a few pounds, or I see a naughty little boy who likes to play dress-up.”
Virgil gulped, though his budding Adam’s apple couldn’t quite squeeze past his tight, ruffled collar.
Mr. Dior drooped forward.
“Zere is nothing to be ashamed of, boy,” he said with a mischievous smirk. “I myself used to play ze dress-up as a child.”
The bald man savaged by scars loosened his silk ascot and beckoned Virgil forward.
“Let me see you.”
Virgil, grudgingly, left the imaginary safety of the clothing rack.
“Hello, Mr. Dior,” Virgil replied, his chins collapsed tightly to his chest as he looked down at the floor. “I just came to, uh, to get some clothes for a sewing project.”
Mr. Dior smiled and crossed his legs primly. “I took ze Stage by storm, with my leetle sewing projects,” he reflected groggily.
“Yeah,” said Virgil, seeing an opportunity to distract his dapper obstacle. “I think my mom had some of your clothes. So why is a big-time designer like you down here?”
Mr. Dior’s face bloomed with a smile. “Oui,” he said with faraway eyes, “I used to be ze French toast of ze town in my day. I made people beautiful.”
The plump man heaved a melancholy sigh.
“But, according to ze rules, I helped fan ze flames of vanity and its dark twin, insecurity. So here I am, serving time for my fashion crime.”
Virgil eyed the tub of clothes and tried to creep closer. “That is so wrong,” he said earnestly.
As Virgil edged nearer, he studied Mr. Dior’s jigsaw puzzle of a face, which looked, fittingly, as if it had been stitched together. “How did you get here?”
Mr. Dior rubbed the thick scars that crisscrossed his head. “Vell,” he mused, “in ze catty and competitive fashion world, I vuz constantly forced to outdo myself. So I decided to do something unheard of: hold a runway fashion show on a real runway, at ze Charles de Gaulle International Airport to be exact! But my nincompoop assistant failed to inform ze airport officials about our dress rehearsal. So as my latest line was making its way down ze runway, a jet plane landed and, vell, I was sucked into ze engine like a bird!”
By this time Virgil was at the tub of boys’ clothes, pondering how he could leave with enough to make a decent-sized balloon.
“I see you like those tacky, modern clothes all ze boys had to cast away,” Mr. Dior said, snapping out of his reverie.
“I—I was going to—if it is okay with you—use them to make a, um, new suit,” Virgil improvised. “I just find you so inspiring.”
Mr. Dior glared at Virgil for an uncomfortably long time. Finally, he stood.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do zat,” he replied.
Virgil’s supersized stomach sunk like a stone. What was even worse than not breaking out of this awful place was the fact that he had let his two friends down.
Mr. Dior stood stout and stern before him.
“Rules are rules: zese tasteless, inelegant rags cannot leave zis room.”
He reached deep into his pocket with a look of brooding intensity.
“But,” he continued, “zere is no rule zat says zey cannot leave as a jumbo-sized Dior creation!”
Mr. Dior pulled out a long, rusty needle and a spool of catgut thread.
“Ze tools and materials are crude,” he said with a smile, “but I am nothing eef not resourceful.”
Virgil breathed a deep sigh of relief, and—in the process—burst through his already immodest dress. Mr. Dior shook his head.
“I must hurry,” he said. “Time is vasting, and your vaist is spreading. Your clothes are a dictatorship and your body is revolting.”
Virgil’s face sank sadly.
“Vell,” Mr. Dior continued,
“you know vat I mean.”
40 · A GATE WITH DESTINY
MILTON AND MARLO hid behind several deflated hippity-hops and a pair of rocking horses so old they should have been made into rocking glue, and eyed the imposing Gates of Heck. They carefully set down their collection of soul jars and waited.
Milton picked up a jar and pressed his nose against the glass. A speckled black glob rushed at his face, like an angry, man-eating fish.
“A lot of these souls are mostly dark,” Milton said worriedly. “They just seem…mean and heavy. See how they just kind of sink to the bottom? I hope there are enough of the light, rainbow floaty ones to get us to the Surface.”
Marlo looked down the main hallway. “If Virgil doesn’t get here soon, it won’t really matter.”
A metallic squeak pierced through the background drone of the hallway. Milton and Marlo stared at each other with round, apprehensive eyes.
Through the swirls and eddies of greasy smoke, they could see the glint of some metal…thing… wheeling toward them. As Milton and Marlo tried to make peace with the fact that they would probably soon be captured by some new, awful robot thing, they heard a familiar voice call from the murk.
“Look!” Virgil exclaimed as he wheeled the clothing rack toward the gate. Draped over the rack was a huge patchwork of jeans, T-shirts, and hoodies, stitched together into an enormous shirt. Virgil pulled off the extra-extra-extra-large shirt and showed it to Milton and Marlo.
“I got Mr. Dior to make it,” he said with pride. “Then—when he passed out—I sewed up the sleeves and the bottom, so all we have to do is release the souls into the neck, and tie it up with these belts.”
Virgil unraveled a coiled mass of belts tied tightly together, then grinned with satisfaction.
“Wow,” Marlo said with respect. “You really did it. Not that we doubted you or anything, we just thought you’d screw it up somehow. Nice dress, by the way.”
Virgil looked down and blushed.
Milton jabbed Marlo in the ribs. He gave Virgil’s hand a hearty shake and patted him on the back. Virgil looked up shyly.
“So far so good,” Milton said, “but we’re only halfway there.”
Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go Page 16
