Infernal Angel

by Edward Lee

  So was the notion of dead punk rockers occupying her house.

  “I told you to be careful.” Via chuckled, leading on.

  “Something smells good,” Xeke said.

  It did. Via was leading them into the kitchen, and when the four of them entered, Cassie saw her father puttering at the range, clumsily wielding a metal spatula. When he glanced—and noticed her sheer, short nightgown—he cast her a fatherly frown. “You trying out for Victoria’s Secret?”

  “Relax, Dad. No one’s going to see me,” she replied.

  “No one except us,” Xeke piped in. “Your daughter’s got some smokin’ hot bod, huh, Dad?”

  He and Via laughed out loud.

  Cassie’s father clearly didn’t hear them, or see them.

  “You feeling better?”

  “Fine, Dad. I was just out in the sun too long yesterday,” she tried to placate him.

  “Well, good, ‘cos you’re just in time for a Cajun catfish omelette.”

  “Sounds a little too heavy for me,” Cassie said.

  “Hey, Dad, look!” Via exclaimed. She walked right up to him, hoisted her black t-shirt, and flashed her breasts.

  BiU Heydon didn’t see it.

  “So what are you going to do today, honey?” he asked, searching for the pepper grinder.

  Xeke chuckled. “Yeah, honey?”

  Shut up, Cassie thought. “I don’t know. Probably wander around.”

  “Yeah, Dad,” Via chided. “She’s gonna wander around with the dead people living in your house.”

  “Well, remember. Not too long in the sun this time.” Her father tried to sound authoritative.

  “I won’t.”

  “Still don’t believe us?” Via asked her.

  “I guess I do,” Cassie answered, then immediately thought Damn!

  More laughter from her cohorts.

  Her father looked at her. “You guess you do what?”

  “Sorry. I was thinking out loud.”

  “That’s a sign of senility, you know.” Now her father was dropping pieces of catfish into the fry pan. “You’re too young to be senile. Me? That’s another story.”

  “Hush?” Via said. “Show her.”

  The short mute girl in black drifted across the kitchen. She grabbed Cassie’s bare arm and squeezed, to verify it to Cassie. Then she grabbed her father’s arm but—

  Hush’s small hand seemed to disappear into Mr. Heydon’s solid flesh and bone.

  “All the way now,” Via instructed.

  Hush stepped into Bill Heydon’s body—and all but disappeared.

  He suddenly shivered. “Damn! Did you feel that cold draft?”

  “Uh, yeah,” Cassie said as an afterthought. Her fascination gripped her as she watched Hush step back out of her father’s body.

  “If you don’t believe us now,” Via said, “then you’ve really got a problem.”

  “Tell me about it,” Cassie said.

  Another funky look from her father. “Tell you about what, honey?”

  Diamn! Did it again!

  More laughter.

  “Come on, honey,” Xeke said. “Let’s get out of here before your father thinks you’ve completely lost it.”

  Good idea. This was getting way too confusing. “See ya later, Dad,” she bid.

  “Sure.” He gave her another look, shrugged, then returned to his cooking.

  She followed them out, back toward the atrium-sized living room. Hush smiled at her and took her hand, as if to say, Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it.

  Cassie had no idea where they were taking her. Via led the way down the hall. Her leather boots thunked loudly on the carpet, but by now, Cassie realized that only she could hear them.

  “Down here,” Via said at the door. “We can talk better down here, in the basement.”

  “So,” Cassie deduced once they were down. “You’re ghosts.”

  “Nope.” Xeke sat on the cold stone floor, lounging back against the basement’s long wall of tabby bricks. “Nothing like that at all. We’re living souls. We’re physical beings.”

  Hush sat beside Cassie on a row of moving boxes; she leaned her head against Cassie’s shoulder as if tired, her black hair veiling her face. Via remained standing, walking back and forth.

  “How can you be living souls,” Cassie asked, “if you’re dead?”

  Via answered, “What he means is that we’re living souls in our world. We’re physical beings in our world. In your world, though, we’re subcorporeal.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means that we exist... but we don’t.”

  “But we’re not ghosts,” Xeke said. “Ghosts are soulless projections. They’re just images left over. No consciousness, no sentience.”

  Cassie considered this. “If that’s true, then what are you?”

  Via took off her punky leather jacket and dropped it in Xeke’s lap. By her attitude and gestures, it was clear that she was the leader of this little group. She began to diddle with the safety pins holding the tears in her t-shirt together. “It’s a long story, but here goes. First, you gotta understand that there are Rules. We weren’t really bad people in life, but we were fucked up. We couldn’t hack it. So we killed ourselves. That’s one of the Rules.”

  “No ifs, ands, or buts,” Xeke said.

  “If you commit suicide, you go to Hell. Period. No way around it. If the Pope committed suicide, he’d go to Hell. It’s one of the Rules.”

  Cassie touched her locket, felt something shrivel inside. Her sister, Lissa, had committed suicide. So she went to—

  Cassie couldn’t finish the thought.

  “This house is a Deadpass. Fenton Blackwell, the previous owner, committed atrocities so extreme that they created a Rive—that’s, like, a little hole between the Living World and the Hellplanes. If you’re like us—if you can find one of the holes—you can take refuge in the Living World.”

  “But no one in the Living World can see you,” Cassie figured.

  “No one. Period. That’s another one of the Rules.”

  Cassie began, “Then how come—”

  “You can see us?” Xeke held his finger up. “There’s a loophole.”

  A dense silence filled the narrow basement. Via, Xeke, and Hush were all trading solemn glances. Hush held Cassie’s hand and squeezed it, as if to console her.

  Cassie looked back dumbfounded at them all. “What is it?”

  “You’re a myth,” Via said.

  “In the Hellplanes,” Xeke went on, “you’re the equivalent of Atlantis. Something rumored to be true but has never been proven.”

  Via sat down next to Xeke and slung her arm around him. “Here’s the myth. You’re a virgin, right?”

  Cassie flinched uncomfortably but nodded.

  “And you were never baptized.”

  “No. I wasn’t raised in any particular faith.”

  “You’ve genuinely tried to kill yourself at least once, right?”

  Cassie gulped. “Yes.”

  “And you have a twin sister who did kill herself.” Via wasn’t even asking anymore; she was telling Cassie what she already knew. “A twin sister who was also a virgin.”

  Cassie was beginning to choke up. “Yes. Her name was Lissa.”

  More solemn stares.

  “In Hell, you hear about it the same way you hear about the angelic visitations here, like these people who see Jesus in a mirror, or St. Mary on a taco,” Via went on. “Stuff like that. You hear about but you never really believe it.”

  “It’s all written down in the Infernal Archives,” Xeke said. “The Grimoires of Elymas, the Lascaris Scrolls, the Apocrypha of Bael—the myth’s all over the place. We’ve all read about it, and never really believed it either. But you’re real.”

  “And the myth is true,” Via said. “You’re an Etheress.”

  The strange word seemed to flit about the basement like a trapped sparrow. “Etheress,” Cassie repeated.

  “J
ust like it says in the Grimoires,” Via continued, “you’re a physical bond in the Etheric Realm, something that’s created by astronomical circumstances. Two twin sisters, both virgins and both suicidal. One commits suicide and one survives. Both born on an occult holiday.”

  Now Cassie frowned. “Lissa and I were born on October 26. That isn’t any occult holiday.”

  Via and Xeke laughed out loud. “It’s the date of Gilles de Rais’s execution,” Via explained.

  Then Xeke: “To the Satanic Sects, it’s their most powerful day of worship. Makes Halloween and Beltane Eve look like a sock hop.”

  Via spoke louder now, her voice echoing. “You’re an Etheress, Cassie. You’re very very special.”

  Cassie didn’t understand. Very special? Me? She’d never felt special in her life.

  “We’ll show you how special you really arc,” Via said.

  Xeke: “As a true Etheress, you have powers...”

  Powers, Cassie thought.

  Then Via went on, “And one of those powers is the ability to enter Hell anytime you want.”

  Cassie’s eyes widened in the mounting confusion.

  “You’re a living person, but you can enter the realm of the dead...”

  “We’ll show you,” Via promised. “We’ll show you the city...” It was nothing she could have ever expected. Why should she? Cassie didn’t even believe in the existence of Hell—until now, of course. There were some surprises.

  They left the garage through the side door, stepping out into the sultry night. The chirrups of crickets throbbed loudly. Moonlight made the woods fluoresce. They wound around to the front of the house, which faced south. “You said we’re going to the city,” Cassie stopped them.

  “That’s right,” Via replied. “It’s called the Mephistopolis.”

  “You’re talking about Hell, right?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Xeke answered. “Home, sweet home.”

  “Sort of,” Via amended. “See, we don’t live there anymore—we can’t. We’re XR’s—ex-residents.”

  “Same as fugitives,” Xeke explained. “In the city, there are two social castes: Plebes and Hierarchals. We’re Plebes, commoners, and as XR’s we’re not allowed to reside in the city anymore. We’re considered criminals because we haven’t conformed. That’s why we have to live in a Deadpass, like your house, or the Deadpasses in the other three Outer Sectors. It’s a bitch, but if we stay in the city too long, the Constabularies get wise to us. We wouldn’t last very long if we tried to stay in the city limits.”

  Via could read the confusion on Cassie’s face. “Believe me, it’s easier to just learn as you go. You still do want to go, don’t you? Remember, you don’t have to.”

  “I still want to go,” Cassie said testily. “I just want to know exactly where it is we’re going. Hell? Hell isn’t supposed to be a city. It’s supposed to be a sulphur pit, a lake of fire, stuff like that.”

  Xeke chuckled. “It used to be—several thousand years ago when Lucifer was cast out of Heaven. But just use your common sense. Take New York City, for example. What was New York City several thousand years ago?”

  “Woods, I guess,” Cassie said, still not getting the point. “Just ... land.”

  “Right, undeveloped land. So was Hell when Lucifer first arrived; it was just a hot plain, a wasteland.”

  Then Via put it this way: “Just as human civilization has evolved over the past three or four thousand years ... so has Hell.”

  Xeke: “And just as God’s creatures have developed here on Earth, Lucifer and his dominion have developed equally. Progress and technology don’t just happen in your world, Cassie. They happen in ours as well. That sulphur pit is now the biggest city to ever exist.”

  Hush pulled Cassie along by the hand, pointing. Xeke said, “Here’s the Pass. Just walk a few more steps...”

  Cassie walked out ahead of them now, her flipflops crunching over the trail’s carpet of twigs and fallen leaves. But as she progressed, she felt something strange, something that could only be described as variants of pressure and temperature. Vertical layers of hot and cold, an annoying strain in her ears. Then came a sensation like dragging her hand through dry beach sand, only the sensation encompassed her entire body, through her clothes right to her skin.

  For a moment, all she saw was utter blackness.

  Then—

  “My God,” she muttered, looking out.

  That’s all it took. One more step.

  Now Cassie stood at the foot of another world.

  Overhead the sky churned in gradients of scarlet. An exotic, sweet-smelling heat caressed her. A sickle-shaped moon hung in the horizon: a moon that was black and whose black light impossibly lit her face. Indeed, a scrub, smoking wasteland extended from her feet over what had to be the next fifty or even a hundred miles. She could see everything, every detail in a crisp macrovision. And beyond this intricate wasteland stood the Mephistopolis.

  The scape of the city—with its buildings, skyscrapers, and towers—seemed forged against the scarlet horizon. It truly was immense. When Cassie looked to the left, the city’s face extended farther than she could see, and the same to the right.

  Smoke—more like black mist—rose from the city into the sky, and so did myriad spears of multicolored lights, which she could only equate to spotlights. Birds—or winged things—could be seen sailing away in the distance.

  The sight of it all stole her breath.

  The others had stepped through the threshold and now stood behind her. They seemed to marvel at Cassie’s speechless awe.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” Via bid.

  “Kind of makes Chicago look like a pup tent.”

  “I couldn’t believe it, either, the first time I saw it. Couldn’t believe it’s where I’d be spending eternity.”

  Finally Cassie was able to speak. She glanced again to the left and right. “It ... never ends.”

  “Actually it does,” Xeke explained. “Ever read the Book of Revelation? In Chapter Twenty-One, St. John reveals the actual physical dimensions of Heaven, so Lucifer deliberately used the same dimensions when he produced the original blueprints for Hell. Twelve thousand furlongs square. That’s, like, 1500 miles long and 1500 miles deep—the surface area is over two million square miles. If you took every major city on Earth and put them together... this is still bigger.”

  Cassie couldn’t really even envision these dimensions. “So, since Lucifer fell from God’s grace, he’s been building this city?”

  “That’s right. Or, we should say his minions have. Most entrants into Hell become part of the workforce in some way. And in a sense, the Mephistopolis is just like any other city. It’s got stores and parks and office buildings, transportation systems and police and hospitals, taverns, concert halls, apartment complexes where people live, courthouses where criminals are tried for crimes, government buildings where politicians rule. Just like any city, er, well ... almost.”

  Via explained further. “In the Mephistopolis, people aren’t born—they arrive. And they live forever. And where the social order on Earth is the pursuit of peace and harmony amongst the inhabitants—”

  “The social order in Hell is chaos,” Xeke informed.

  “You have Democracy, we have Demonocracy. You have physics and science, we have black magic. You have charity and good will, we have systematized horror. That’s the difference here. Lucifer’s social design must function to exist in a complete opposite of God’s. Lucifer has built all of this to offend the entity that banished him here.”

  “So ... it’s not underground like in the legends?” Cassie asked. “It’s not on Earth someplace?”

  “It’s on a different Earth that occupies the same space,” Xeke informed her. “It’s just on another plane of existence that God created. So is Heaven.”

  “So,” Cassie began, “when you die—”

  “You either go to Heaven, or you come here. Just like it says in the Holy Bible. Just like it says in most religious s
ystems.” Xeke cocked a brow. “Not really much of a surprise when you think about it.”

  As Cassie continued to stare at the distant cityscape, her mind turned over a thousand questions. How could she ask them all?

  “Let’s just go,” Via said, as if deciphering her thoughts. “Your questions will all be answered.”

  Eventually, they were.

  Cassie dreamed of it now—a year later. Not in the confines of a normal bed but on little more than a cot in the precaution ward of a private mental hospital. Indeed, she entered the Mephistopolis with Via, Hush, and Xeke, all for the purpose of finding Lissa. All Cassie wanted in the world was to be able to tell Lissa she was sorry for what happened, and her new-found powers as an Etheress would enable her to do that—or so she thought. Down a hundred different alleys and a hundred different smoking streets, through one district and prefecture after the next, wielding spells, hexes, and the most arcane charms, Cassie and her friends had invaded Hell time and time again, harassing the authorities, striking down Lucifer’s agents, destroying power plants, Constabulary stations, and evil tabernacles like a squad of guerilla fighters. During these visits, she thought it best to maximize her time: while her search for Lissa was perpetual, Cassie and her friends felt it only appropriate to wreak a little havoc along the way—terrorism, by any other name. Once, they’d scaled the Industrial Zone’s hundred-foot iron walls and managed to shut down the Central Power Plant by closing a pressure-relief valve at the exact same time the furnace was being stoked. It hadn’t taken the outflow gases long to skyrocket, and the Plant’s exterior structure—the size of a football stadium—to spectacularly explode. The detonation rocked the entirety of the district, flattened the Foundry, and toppled all the Bone-Grinding Stations, all during peak hours. Lastly, the explosion had triggered a seismic shift which caused an impressive hellquake, opening a thousand-foot long fissure across the Zone. Not bad for three girls barely out of their teens. Last fall, Cassie had entered the Mephistopolis alone—she’d been bored and her CD player was broken—and she’d cast an Enchantment Spell on an entire garrison of Constabularies—Satan’s police. She’d ordered them one by one into Boniface Square’s Flesh-Processing Terminal where they’d each calmly and willingly lie down on the primary conveyor belts. The terminal’s sweatshop of thousands of workers didn’t bat an eye as the Constabs were submitted to “processing”; they were fileted alive, muscles promptly shorn off bone, organs removed, skin flensed—all to be tossed into the constant parade of rolling hoppers. It was in these terminals that most of the city’s food came from; Cassie liked the idea of demons unknowingly feasting on police officers. She wondered if they tasted like chicken. Time and time again, either with her friends or without, Cassie had returned to that primeval city, racing through its crimson alleys, blasting any demon, Usher, or Golem with a mere thought, offending Lucifer at any opportunity, using her powers as an Etheress to simply do her part. But even as her powers accelerated, so did those of her adversaries. Hell’s resistance movement—the Satan Park Contumacy—had been her greatest ally in the early days—an entire army of anti-satanic terrorists—but they’d all been wiped out by a single Faith Plague engineered by Lucifer’s Biowizards and Arch-Locks at the College of Spells and Discantations. Millions strong, the Contumacy was destroyed overnight, each and every member succumbing to one of Lucifer’s favorite afflictions: Karyolysis, Hell’s equivalent to nesh-eating disease. The pus and putrefactive slime from all those Contumacy members rotting to death 43 at once had actually formed a lake in the middle of Satan Park. Lucifer had immediately inducted the lake as a national landmark, and often ordered convicts and vagrants to be publically executed in it, via drowning.