Cat's Claw

by Amber Benson

  “That’s not what happened,” Richard said, sticking up for his brother finally. “Why are you lying, Sandy? She was the one who accidentally kicked—”

  Without warning, Chanduthra walked over to Richard and punched him in the gut, hard. The slender young man fell forward, clutching his belly and gagging as he gasped for air. Chanduthra raised her fist high in the air, then pointed it right at Ralph, shaking it in his weasely face as a reminder that she was not above punching him, too, if he crossed her.

  “Like, where was I?” the girl said, turning back to face Snarly head, her pale blue eyes glinting bright red in the sunlight.

  Wait a minute. Did I just say her blue eyes were glinting red?!

  I stared harder at the large, black-clad girl, trying to catch another glimpse of her eyes, but she wasn’t facing me anymore. I replayed the last ten seconds in my mind, checking to see if I’d imagined the whole thing, if my mind was just addled from the overwhelming heat.

  Not getting any help from my compromised memory, I decided I was gonna have to get a closer look at the girl’s face in order to discover if there was more to “Chanduthra” than met the eye.

  I left my spot in the tree line and moved forward, strategically placing my body between the Goth girl and a small outcropping of rocks about the size and shape of a rollaway hot dog stand. I was well positioned, hidden behind the rocks, so that the girl couldn’t see me, but I could get a decent view of her face.

  As she continued to talk—explaining in more detail about the candle getting knocked over “by accident” and the lock on the door getting jammed (by accident again, I wondered?)—I watched her eyes for some sign that I wasn’t crazy. Ten seconds later I saw it: pale blues eyes, flashing red in the sunlight like an animal’s. It only took an instant to realize what kind of game was afoot here.

  Our little friend Chanduthra is not alone in that body.

  I stood there, unsure of what to do, but then I had the most amazing idea: I would save Cerberus and knock my favor out at the same time! It was a perfect plan and I couldn’t believe how quickly it had come to me.

  I was getting to be a regular genius these days, if I didn’t say so myself.

  “She’s not alone!” I yelled, sprinting forward and throwing myself full throttle into the Goth girl, surprising myself with my own strength as I knocked her to the ground.

  It didn’t take me long to realize that she was a lot bigger than me—and thus a heck of a lot stronger—but I was able to hold her off long enough for the twins to join in the fray. They jumped on their friend, pushing her into the dirt and pummeling her back so that I could make my escape.

  “The demon they called. It’s inside her!” I yelled at Snarly head as I stood up and dusted myself off—but instead of the enthusiastic thank-you I was expecting, the big yellow eye just stared at me, indifferent.

  “Aren’t you gonna help them?” I said, watching the twins work frantically to keep the angry Chanduthra subdued, but old Snarly head did nothing

  “Did you even hear what I said?” I asked again, starting to feel peeved at the three-headed dog’s lack of interest in the quickly escalating situation.

  Finally, Snarly head blinked its giant, yellow eye and sighed.

  “Yes, Miss Reaper-Jones, I am apprised of the situation. Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  The ugly, one-eyed head closed its eye and instantly the two normal dog heads started barking like crazy, sounding off some kind of hellhound alarm. I watched, dumbfounded, as the giant stone doors flew open, expelling a small army of creatures that looked exactly like my little buddy Chuck, only bigger and with longer tails, but with the same teddy bear ears and button eyes.

  The creatures instantly circled the scuffling would-be Satanists, pulling the two boys out by their collars, so that they could focus all their attention on Chanduthra. I heard a low hissing sound and one of the creatures stepped forward, its four pairs of eyes like laser beams, pinning themselves to the girl’s thrashing body. The creature lifted its right hand just as the girl opened her mouth to scream, but strangely, nothing happened. Instead, I watched as her whole body was engulfed in a pale violet light, making her skin seem translucent, almost like she had become an X-ray of herself. I could clearly see the writhing shape of another creature trapped inside her, hiding within the girl’s corpulent frame.

  At this point, I didn’t know if this was, like, the coolest thing I’d ever seen or the grossest, but it was definitely the most transfixing. I couldn’t stop staring at the Goth girl and the otherworldly violet light that encircled her.

  There was a loud ripping sound that filled the air, and then the creature started to separate itself from its host. It was as if the thing inside her were her child, but she was birthing it through her skin rather than her womb. I continued to watch, horrified, as her skin began to stretch and buckle, then slowly split apart so that the thing inside could finally emerge.

  Like a snake shedding its scales, the creature shed the girl’s skin, letting it pool to the ground around him like a human-skin coat. As it stepped into the light, covered in the mucus-y afterbirth of Chanduthra’s sinew and guts—and nothing else—it gave me a wide smile.

  It was pretty apparent the thing was male—although I have to say that I’ve seen much bigger penises in my day—and he was much taller than the Goth girl had been. He had a mop of wet brown hair tied in a knot at the very top of his pointed head, adding even more height. He possessed long, almost skeletal arms and legs, and a barrel chest and porcine neck, which sat oddly on such sticklike appendages. The most interesting aspect of the man’s countenance was his bright red skin. He resembled a lobster after it had been in the pot too long—only without the claws and stalked eyeballs.

  “Hello, everyone,” he said, his tandoori red skin glistening in the heat of the day. He turned to me and bowed. “I guess you caught me.”

  Snarly head opened its massive yellow eye and shook its head, sending a string of drool shooting from its mouth and right onto my Missoni-covered shoulder.

  What did I say about wearing nice clothes in Hell?

  “Don’t encourage the girl, Abalam,” Snarly head said, a long sigh escaping from its massive jaws. Then: “Are you ready for your return to the excrement pile?”

  “Please, I beg of you,” the demon implored, dropping to his knees, hands clasped together in supplication. “You may send me to any place of your choosing, but please, please, please do not send me back to the excrement pile! I cannot bear the place anymore . . .”

  “You know that is not my choice to make,” Snarly head said, looking none too pleased with the errant demon. “I cannot choose what place in Hell you must work in. You can take any changes to your position up with the Devil himself.”

  The excrement pile, I wondered to myself. What kind of terrible thing did a demon have to do to get itself a commission working there? And even more worrying than that, what sin did a person have to commit to get judged worthy of being sent to the excrement pile in the first place?

  I was dying for more details, but before I could ask any questions, Snarly head shot me a nasty look as if it to say, “I know exactly what you’re thinking and you had better keep your mouth shut if you know what’s good for you.” Taking its nonverbal advice, I decided that I didn’t really need to know anything about the excrement pile after all. Unlike a few other folks I could name, I had zero interest whatsoever in getting on the bad side of the Guardian of the North Gate of Hell.

  “Thanks for the fun, kid,” the demon said, turning back to me and flashing a toothy grin. “I ain’t been that near a smokin’ female body in about a thousand years.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about—” I started to protest, but he gave me a wink.

  “See you on the other side, sweetheart.”

  Cerberus’s two dumb heads bayed again, and there was another flash of violet light from the older Chuck-like creature that had done the X-ray thing with its eyes a few moment
s earlier. It shot out a paler violet light this time, engulfing the demon and making its eyes roll up into its head. As the light intensified, the demon’s hair started to smoke and then poof . . . The demon was gone.

  Once Abalam was no more, the Chuck-like creatures circled the trembling twins—one of which (they were identical, so how was I supposed to know which was which?) was crying—and gently herded the boys toward the stone gates. I tried to sneak a peek inside the interior of Hell as the long-tailed Chuck-like creatures made their exit, but all I could see was a great mass of swirling black nothingness pulsing just inside the gates.

  Whatever it was, just a few seconds of staring into its depths made me clench my teeth so hard that my mouth started aching again and a trickle of blood pooled at the side of my lip.

  As I closed my eyes and willed away the pain, I heard the stone gates close with a loud crunch. When I opened my eyes again, the twins and their guards had disappeared, leaving me outside with Cerberus—and the oozing afterbirth that was once a Goth girl named Chanduthra.

  I felt slightly dirty after my run-in with the demon (something to do with his job at the excrement pile, maybe?), but it wasn’t even like we’d touched for more than three seconds, so I didn’t know why I felt like I needed to take a shower so badly—maybe it was just the combined smell of dog drool and dog pee, mixed in with all the sweating I’d been doing since I’d gotten to Hell, that was making me feel so foul.

  Before I could ask Cerberus what exactly was going to happen to the demon now that he’d pulled a no-no and tried to escape, one of the dumb dog heads licked the side of my face, adding to my dog drool collection.

  Maybe I could start a line of cologne called Eau de Dog Drool, I mused. You only wore it when you didn’t want to attract a man.

  I sighed, knowing that I was just gonna have to go with the flow and accept the fact that I was nothing more than a large, soft-bodied chew toy for one of the three-headed hounds of Hell to play with.

  God, I just hoped my dry cleaner could get the drool stains out of my sweater—I couldn’t bear to throw a Missoni in the garbage, no matter how bad it stank.

  “Calliope Reaper-Jones,” Snarly head said, spraying a little more drool in my direction as it spoke, its voice low and full of menace.

  I tensed, expecting the worst.

  “You’re late.”

  eight

  “I may be late, Mr. Cerberus, sir,” I said, trying not to sound defensive, “but it’s not my fault.”

  I knew it sounded lame. Everyone says that it’s not their fault when they show up at the Gates of Hell, but seriously, this time it really wasn’t my fault—I just didn’t know how best to explain this to Cerberus without sounding like a liar.

  “I was in Hell exactly when I was supposed to be,” I continued, deciding that the best thing I could do was to be absolutely honest about my whereabouts up until that very moment, “but Jarvis must’ve screwed up the wormhole or something because I ended up right where I always end up when I go to Hell . . . the desert.”

  Snarly head didn’t say anything, so I took that as my cue to go on.

  “I really, really hate that part of Hell, but I’ve been there more times than anywhere else in this sweatbox—”

  Snarly head snickered, seemingly amused by my choice of words, but still it did not speak.

  “Anyway, I had to walk all the way here, which it turns out is a really long way, but then I found this dog and then this monster kid—kind of like the ones that shoot violet-colored light out of their eyes, only smaller—”

  “They’re called Bugbears,” Snarly head said, interrupting me, “and they work for the Devil and live in the woods surrounding the Northern and Western Gates.”

  “Okay, interesting,” I offered, glad to know at least what to call the creatures from now on. “So, then I saw that you were dealing with those Goth kids and since I’d never seen anyone enter the interior part of Hell before, I decided to just hang out and watch—that was okay, wasn’t?” I queried.

  Snarly head blinked twice and the other two heads just panted. I didn’t know what that meant, but I decided to take it as a passive—very passive—yes.

  “And then I saw the girl wasn’t really a girl, but something else—”

  “How astute of you,” Snarly head said dryly. Apparently, Snarly head wasn’t in the mood to answer direct questions, yet sarcastic asides seemed well within its capacity, which makes for great conversation . . . not.

  “By the way, how did the demon get inside the girl in the first place?” I asked.

  “When you call a demon, you not only allow him into your dimension, but you also offer him succor at your own breast.”

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  Snarly head sighed.

  “Abalam was allowed to possess the girl’s body because she called him. He then sacrificed the two brothers so that he could stay on that plane. He had no idea that her body had been so ill-used that it would have a heart attack from all the stress and die. And thusly, he would be returned to the Afterlife.”

  “Yeah, for sure he never planned on that happening,” I said. “What a prick.”

  Snarly head only nodded.

  “A prick? I don’t know about that. But stupid? Yes.”

  I was starting to feel a little camaraderie with Mr. Snarly head, so I decided to just take a stab at getting him to let me out of my favor.

  “Hey, since I helped you out with the whole Abalam thing and all, could we just call it even-steven and discharge my favor—”

  Snarly head snorted, the other two heads joining in gleefully. Instinctively, I knew they were snorts of derision at my expense, but I decided to soldier on, ignoring the attitude Cerberus was throwing around. If I started back-talking, he might call for a Bugbear escort and then I’d end up stuck in Hell with the two Goth twins. Anyway, I wanted something from him (to keep Runt at Sea Verge) so it was best to appease the beast, not piss him off.

  “The harvesting team realized that a possession had occurred, so I was forewarned. You were of no help to me . . . only a hindrance,” Snarly head said, enjoying my discomfort immensely.

  I sighed and rethought my approach. I decided that if I could make him forget that I was late, then I’d at least done something.

  “But if you already knew that there was a demon inside of that girl,” I added obsequiously, “then I guess that’s not really worth a favor, is it . . . ?”

  I trailed off, biding my time.

  “No,” Snarly head said, considering.

  “So, what favor may I do for you, then, O great Guardian of the North Gate of Hell?” I said, bowing my head in supplication. Maybe I was overdoing it, but there was a lot on the line here.

  I looked up and saw Snarly head mulling over what I’d just said.

  “I’ll make a deal with you, Calliope Reaper-Jones. One that will be mutually beneficial to both of us,” Snarly head proposed, taking a step closer to me so that its words would not be overheard by anyone or anything but the other two heads.

  “Anything you wish,” I murmured, but in the back of my mind a little voice instantly started fretting over what exactly I might just have agreed to.

  “There is a man named Senenmut, a talented architect that worked on some of the great Egyptian monuments. For reasons unknown, he has been removed from the system—even though his soul was due here at my gate centuries ago,” Snarly head said, giant yellow eye unblinking.

  So far, so good, I thought. I could get the supernatural yellow pages out and dig up this guy easy enough.

  Not.

  “Of course, I have no way of knowing where Senenmut is, or even if he still exists. As far as I have been able to ascertain, he has never stepped inside any of the other Gates of Hell, but I cannot say if he was ever smuggled across Heaven’s shores. His soul might very well have been returned for renewal upon his death and no one thought to erase him from my book.”

  “You mean, he might be someone else now?” I ask
ed curiously.

  I was always acquiring new pieces of information about how Death worked. I had no plans for needing the information in a work-related way, but I didn’t want to look like a total loser when Jarvis got going on one of his lectures about the Afterlife.

  All three heads nodded in unison at my question.

  “But wouldn’t he still retain some memory of his old self?”

  Snarly head thought about this for a moment, then nodded.

  “Yes, it’s rare, but in some cases, a soul can retain a vestige of its former memory,” Snarly head conceded.

  “Uhm,” I said, “I don’t mean to be a pain in the ass, but do you have any ideas, or leads, or whatever, on how I might discover this guy’s whereabouts? I’m not really much of a PI, but I’m pretty sure you already knew that.”

  “I can only assume that if you find his Death Record, then you will find the man, in whatever form he now resides in,” Snarly head said, offering the only help I was gonna get out of him.

  “You said earlier that this would be a mutually beneficial undertaking?” I inquired. I wasn’t gonna just do something for nothing, favor or not. I wanted Runt and this was my ticket to getting her.

  “Yes, I did say that, didn’t I,” Snarly head mused. “You are still in possession of my daughter, Giselda. I would be willing to broker her freedom from Hell if you were to do this small favor for me—”

  “And the favor I owe you for trying to steal Runt—I mean, Giselda—in the first place? That would be discharged, too?”

  Snarly head nodded in consent.

  “We don’t need to sign anything or something, do we?” I asked. “Your word is good enough—”

  “MY WORD IS LAW!” Snarly head bellowed.

  Crap, I hadn’t even meant to offend the three-headed beast, but that was exactly what I had done. I was a terrible negotiator.

  “Of course it is,” I murmured. “Just double-checking.”

  Snarly head glared at me, just a crack of yellow revealing itself between the massive eyelids. The other two heads continued to pant. Apparently, the heat in Hell got to the folks who lived here, too. I wondered why the Devil didn’t try putting on a little air-conditioning every once in a while. Might be pretty good for morale.