Lucifer's Lottery

HIGH PRAISE FOR EDWARD LEE!

“The living legend of literary mayhem. Read him if you dare!”

—Richard Laymon, Author of Funland

“Edward Lee’s writing is fast and mean as a chain saw revved to full-tilt boogie.”

—Jack Ketchum, Author of Joyride

“He demonstrates a perverse genius for showing us a Hell the likes of which few readers have ever seen.”

—Horror Reader

“Edward Lee continues to push the boundaries of sex, violence and depravity in modern genre lit.”

—Rue Morgue

“One of the genre’s true originals.”

—The Horror Fiction Review

“The hardest of the hardcore horror writers.”

—Cemetery Dance

“Lee excels with his creativity and almost trademark depictions of violence and gruesomeness.”

—Horror World

“A master of hardcore horror. His ability to make readers cringe is legendary.”

—Hellnotes

TO SEE THE DEPTHS OF HELL

“You’ll have exactly six minutes to listen to the Trustee, ask any questions you have, and then accept or reject the offer. And even if you accept, which I pray you’ll do, you’re under no obligation. Nothing becomes binding unless you say yes upon completion of the tour.”

The tour . . . Those words bothered him more, perhaps, than anything else tonight. There was something potent about them. Even when he thought the words, they seemed to echo as if they were called down from a mountain precipice.

But then more thoughts dripped. “This is a pact with the Devil, you mean.”

“Not a pact. A gift. One thing to keep in mind. The Devil doesn’t need to offer contracts for souls very often these days. Think about that . . .”

Hudson’s eyes narrowed. “But I’m about to go to the seminary. To be a priest!”

Her voice drifted in delight. “Perhaps what you see will dissuade you. Your reward will be beyond imagination . . . .”

Other Leisure books by Edward Lee:

EDWARD LEE

LUCIFER’S

LOTTERY

For Rex Miller—Rest in peace.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This project is a novelization of my previously published small-press novella The Senary. I liked the concept so much that my Muse demanded I transform it into a full-fledged novel for my mass-market readers. Ultimately, I must thank you, the reader, for buying it! I hope you like reading the book as much as I liked writing it. More thank-yous to: Don D’Auria, Wendy Brewer, Dave Barnett, Tim McGinnis, GAK, Bob Strauss, Larry Roberts, Jason Byars, William Patrick, Thomas Deja, and Christine Morgan. William at the Tyrone Barnes & Noble; Shroud Magazine; my friends at Wild Willy’s in Largo, Florida, the coolest bar in the world: Nick, Rhonda, Johnny, Bob Monday, Sheri, Roz, Stacy, Mitch, Randi, English Richard, James, Royce, Doug, and the rest. Krist at Diabolical Radio; Tracy Lee Hunt and Temple Arnold Corson IV. Also to the following fans and readers: Paul Legerski; Sandy Griffin and Tony Brock; Jonah Martin, Rob Johns, James L. Harris, Jordan Krall, splatterhead4ever, harleymack, Amy M. Pimental, mrliteral, Horror Freek, Lilith666, Bateman, Lazy Old Fart, vantro, TravisD, JameyWebb, reelsplatter, boysnightout, Nephrenka, carthoss, Amano Jyaku, Insalubrious, VT Horrorfan, bgeorge, Tod Clark, John Copeland, dathar, godawful, Ken Arneson, Bob & Jaime Taylor, Killa Klep, darvis, antitheism, Onemorejustincase, S. Howard, S. Eliot-O’Leary, FrederickHamilton, niogeoverlord, horrormike, Serra, swix, vladcain, Kerri, lazy2006, bellamorte, GNFNR, mpd1958, sassydog, IrekB, jesus was a robot, dk78, FeedMeaStrayCat, sunnyvale22, goregirl, Zombified420, Becki, Patricia Maier, Cyberkitty, squeakytherat, sikahtik, Craig Cook, Qweequeg. Plus, special thanks to Monica O’Rourke and Wrath James White for pulling off a dynamite Killer Con in Vegas.

PROLOGUE

Six minutes after he officially died, Slydes found himself standing agog on a street corner like none he’d ever seen. He stood as he had in life: broad-shouldered, tall, dark dirty hair and a bushy black beard. Blue jeans and work boots, and his favorite T-shirt stretched tight over his beer belly; it read ST. PETE BEACH – A QUIET LITTLE DRINKING TOWN WITH A FISHING PROBLEM. Slydes was a redneck, tried and true, a shitkicker. A bad ass. He’d seen a lot of outrageous things in his day, but now . . . Now . . .

This?

The wind screamed. Winged mites swarmed in the humid air and splotched red when he swatted them against his brawny forearms. What kind of city is this? he thought as his gaze was dragged upward. Dim, drear-windowed skyscrapers seemed a mile high and leaned this way and that at such extreme angles, he thought they might topple at any moment. Twisted faces that couldn’t possibly be human peered out of many of the narrow panes, while other panes were either broken out or spattered with blood. The sky visible between the buildings appeared to be red, and there was a black sickle moon hanging between two of them. Slydes blinked.

A dream, it had to be. It was this notion that he first entertained. His Condemnation only minutes old, he couldn’t remember much. He couldn’t remember where he was born, for instance, he couldn’t remember his age, nor could he remember his last name. Indeed, Slydes couldn’t even remember dying.

But die he had, and for a lifetime of wincingly outrageous sins and wickedness, he’d been Damned to Hell.

So here he was.

A nightmare, that’s all, he convinced himself. A red sky? Office buildings leaning over at sixty-degree angles? And—

SWOOSH

A black bat with a six-foot wingspan and a vaguely human face glided by just over his head. Slydes felt a stinking gust, then recoiled when the impossible animal shat on his head.

“Fucker!” Slydes yelled.

The bat—actually a Hexegenically created Crossbreed of one of several genera known as Revoltus Chiropterus—looked over its leathery shoulder and smiled.

“Welcome to Hell,” it croaked.

Slydes stared after the words more than the creature itself. Hell, he thought quite obliquely. I’m not really in—

WELCOME TO ST. PUTRADA CIRCLE, HELL’S NEWEST FISTULATION & TRANSVERSION PREFECT, the sign said.

Slydes could only stare at the sign as the splat of monstrous guano ran down the sides of his face.

Hell’s newest . . . WHAT?

At the corner another sign blinked DON’T WALK, and then a rush of pedestrians crossed the street. Slydes just kept staring . . .

He didn’t know what they were at first: People? Monsters? Combinations of both? A slim couple held hands as they strode by, flesh rotting from their limbs and faces. Several impish children wove through the crowd, with fangs like a dog’s and eyes as big and as red as apples. A werewolf in a business suit and briefcase passed next, and after that a fat clown with a hatchet in its face. To Slydes, the clown bid, “Hi, how are ya?”

Slydes could not respond.

If anything, the street was worse. Cars that looked more like small steam engines chugged by on spoked wheels, a smokestack up front gusted black-yellow soot and vapor. Carriages and buggies rolled by as well, hauled along not by horses but by things like horses, whose flesh hung in dripping tatters. One carriage was occupied by a woman with skin green as pond scum who wore a tiara of gallstones and a dress made from tendons meticulously woven together. She fanned herself with a webbed, severed hand. In another carriage rode a creature that could’ve been a pile of snot somehow shaped into human form. Then came a haulage wagon of some sort, powered by six harnessed beasts with festering carnation-pink skin pocked with white blisters; Slydes thought hideously of skinned sheep when they bleated and spat foamy sputum. A man perched behind them cracked a long, barbed whip—or . . . perhaps man wasn’t quite right. He wore a wool cloak and banded leggings like a shepherd of the old days, yet atop his anvil-shaped head grew a brow of horns. The whip cracked and cracked, and the bleating rose to a mad clamor. Slydes looked one more time and noticed that, like the bat, these bald “sheep” had faces grimly tainted by human features.

“Oh my God, I am in some shit,” Slydes stammered. Things were starting to click in his head, and with each click came more and more fear. Did a tear actually form in his eye? “I-I-I,” he blubbered. “I don’t think this is a dream . . .”

“It’s not,” sounded a voice that was somehow raspy and feminine simultaneously. The woman who approached him was nude, and yet—he thought at first—checkerboarded. Slydes squinted at her impressive physique and recalled women with similar physiques whom he’d raped and sometimes even murdered without vacillation. But this woman?

Every square inch of her skin was crisply darkened by black tattoos of upside-down crosses. Even her face, around which shimmered long platinum blonde hair.

“Slydes, right?” she asked. “My name’s Andeen, and I’m your Orientation Directress. You may not even realize this yet, but you’re what’s known as an Entrant.”

“Entrant,” Slydes murmured.

“And, no, this isn’t a dream. You should be so lucky. This is all real. Over time your memory will re-form.”

Before Slydes could mutter a question, his gaze snapped to another passerby: another impressively figured nude woman. Her arms, legs, abdomen, and face were but one colossal psoriatic outbreak. Only the breasts and pubis were without blemish.

“Rash lines,” remarked Andeen. “In the Living World you have tan lines, here we have rash lines.”

Slydes’s gaze snapped back to the tattooed woman. “Here . . . as in . . .”

“As in Hell. You’re dead, and for your worldly sins, you’ve been Condemned.” Her slender shoulders shrugged. “Forever.”

Slydes began to grow faint.

She grabbed his hand and tugged. “Come on, Slydes. We gotta get you out of this Prefect. Believe me, you don’t want to be here.” Then she tugged him down the street and ducked into an alley. “We’ll lay low a while, and try to get you someplace where your ass won’t be grass.”

“I-I,” Slydes blubbered. “I don’t understand.”

“Listen, there’s no good place in Hell, but there are places that are worse than others. Like this place, St. Putrada Circle. You must’ve been a real scumbag to be Rematerialized here. Yes, sir, a real humdinger of a shitty person.”

“I don’t understand!” Slydes now sobbed outright.

“A Prefect is like a small District. And this one happens to be a Fistulation and Surgical Transversion Prefect. I’ll keep an eye out for Abduction Squads. They’ll Transvert anybody here, Humans and Hellborn alike, but Humans are the desired target. The Surgery Centers pay the most for Humans.”

Slydes looked cross-eyed at her.

“The short version. Every Prefect, District, or Town has to have an active mode of punishment, while there are some areas, known as Punitaries, that exist solely for punishment. But anyway, this Prefect uses Fistulatic Surgery to conform to the Punishment Ordinances. Fistula is Latin; it means ‘communication between,’ and Transversion is, like, rerouting things. That’s what they do here—they reroute your insides.”

Even though Slydes didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, he stammered, “Whuh-whuh-why?”

Andeen smirked. “Because it’s perverse and disgusting, the way it’s supposed to be. This isn’t Romper Room, Slydes. This is Hell, and Hell is hard-core. Eternal torment, suffering, and abhorrence is the name of the game. It pleases Lucifer, therefore, it’s Public Law.” She smirked more sharply this time. “Look, go over to that public washbasin and wash the bat crap out of your hair. It’s grossing me out.”

Dazed, Slydes noted the elevated stone basin only feet from the alley mouth. He dunked his head in the water, agitated the rank guano out of his hair, then seized up and jerked his head out when he realized what he was washing in.

“That’s not water! That’s piss!”

“Get used to it,” Andeen said. “Unless you’re a Grand Duke or an Archlock, you’ll never get near fresh water. Only other way is to distill it yourself out of the blood of what you kill.”

Revolted, Slydes flapped the urine off his face, then noticed lower basins erected intermittently along the smoky street. “What are those things? They look like–”

“Oh, the commodes. It’s another Public Law. In this Prefect, it’s mandatory that everyone urinate, defecate, and give birth in public.”

Slydes’s bearded jaw dropped.

“And there”—Andeen pointed—“across the street. There’re the various Surgery Suites.”

Slydes scanned the signs over each transom . . .

RECTO-URINARY TRANSVERSION

URETHRAL-ESOPHAGEAL REVERSAL

UTERO-RECTAL FISTULA

And many, many more.

Slydes could not conceive of any of this.

When he glanced inadvertently between two more spiring buildings, he could’ve shrieked. Far off in the distance, some monumentlike thing stood impossibly high, but it was a figure. He remembered seeing the Statue of Liberty once a long time ago, on a drug run between Florida and New York—that’s what this reminded him of . . . sort of. A giant statue, he thought. But . . .

Andeen caught him staring. “Oh, the Demonculus. It hasn’t been up long. Pretty awesome, huh?”

Slydes peered at her, incredulous, then peered back up at the statue. “A Deeeee—”

“Demonculus. It’s farther away than it looks—that’s actually the Pol Pot District over there. The Demonculus is 666 feet high. Looks like a statue, right?”

Slydes dumbly nodded, noting the pointed crown about the form’s head, akin to the Statue of Liberty. But . . . was it a crown, or horns?

Andeen inspected her black fingernails with tiny white upside-down crosses. “Well, it’s not a statue, it’s a living thing—just another one of the Boss’s obsessions.”

The impact of her words finally registered. Slydes looked pleadingly at her. “Living . . . thing?”

“Um-hmmm. Once it’s activated, it will tear the shit out of whole Districts to root out insurgents.” She smiled at his trauma. “For the rest of eternity, Slydes, you’re gonna be seeing some really wild and really awful stuff.”

Her evilly tattooed hand pulled him back into the alley. “And look, there’s an Abduction Squad. The clay men are called Golems. They’re like state employees, public works, police, security, stuff like that . . .”

Slydes watched with a cheek to the edge of the alley wall as a troop of gray-brown things shaped like men thudded down the sidewalk, each shoving along a handcuffed Human, Demon, or Hybrid. The Golems were nine feet tall and walked in formation. Then they all stopped at the same time, and marched their prisoners into various Surgery Suites.

“And like I said, the state pays more money for Humans, so that’s why we gotta get you out of the Prefect.”

Slydes whipped his face back around, and repeated, helplessly now, “I don’t understand . . .”

“Once you’ve seen what goes on here . . . you will. Oh, and check out this chick.”

Slydes watched as a morose-faced nude woman who appeared to be half Human and half Troll staggered toward one of the street commodes. She leaned over, parted her buttocks, and began to urinate out of her anus.

“See?” Andeen asked. “Oh, wow, and check this out! Here comes a Uteral-Oral Fistulation . . .”

A woman in a bloody smock labored down the street. She was covered with red-rimmed white scales . . . and was obviously quite pregnant. She held a scaled hand to her bloated belly, and when she could walk no longer she stopped, leaned over, and—

SPLAT!

—out gushed a slew of amniotic water from her mouth. She maintained the uncomfortable position, and as her belly began to tremor, her jaw came unhinged. Her throat began to impossibly swell, and as her stomach shrunk in size, a squalling, demonic fetus slid hugely out of her mouth and flapped to the pavement.

“How’s that for the spectacle of childbirth?” Andeen jested. “Pregnancy is a big deal in Hell, Slydes. If Lucifer had his way, every single female life form here would be pregnant at all times. You see, the more babies, the more food, fuel, and fodder for Lucifer’s whimsy.”

Slydes leaned against the wall, moaning, “No, no, no . . .”

“Yes, yes, yes, my friend. And if you think that was bad, get a load of this guy. Remember what I said about pregnancy?”

Slydes’s gaze involuntarily veered back to the street. This time, a Human man stumbled along. He wore a wife-beater T-shirt and stained boxer shorts dotted with Boston Red Sox insignias. If anything, though, his stomach looked even more bloated than the woman who’d just delivered a devilish baby through her mouth.

Slydes stammered further, in utter dread, “He’s not—he’s not—he’s not—”

“Pregnant?” Andeen smiled darkly. “Male pregnancy is a fairly new breakthrough here, Slydes. And you can bet it tickles Lucifer pink. Teratologic Surgeons can actually transplant Hybrid wombs into male Humans and Demons. It’s a trip. Watch.”

Slydes watched.

Grimacing, the bloated man stepped out of his boxers and squatted. Amid boisterous grunts and wails, his rectum slowly dilated, then—

He shrieked.

—out poured a gush of what looked like squirming hairless puppies, with tiny webbed paws and little horns in their heads.

“Ah,” Andeen observed, “a brood of Ghor-Hounds. Pretty rowdy, huh?”

“Rowdy!” Slydes bellowed. “This is FUCKED UP! That guy just pumped a litter of PUPPIES out his ASS!”

“Yeah. And watch what he does now . . .”

Gravid stomach gone now, the exhausted man abandoned his litter on the sidewalk and trudged over to one of the street commodes. What, he’s gonna take a piss? Slydes wondered when the man poised an understandably shriveled penis over the commode.

The answer to his question, however, would be a most resolute No.

Now the man’s cheeks billowed. He began to grunt.

And his penis . . . began to swell.

“Ahhhh,” he eventually moaned as the penis, next, began to disgorge firm stools. Quite a number of them squeezed out and dropped into the commode. When he was finished, he pulled his boxers back on, and at the same time caught Slydes staring agape at him.

“What’s the matter, buddy? You act like you never saw a guy take a shit through his dick before.”

“In case you’re wondering,” his hostess said, “the procedure that guy underwent is called a Recto-Urethral Fistulation . . .”

Slydes reeled. When he could regain some modicum of sense, he glared back at Andeen, and howled, “This is impossible! Women can’t have babies out their mouths! Their mouths aren’t big enough! And men can’t shit turds through their cocks! Their peeholes aren’t wide enough! It’s IMPOSSIBLE!”

Andeen seemed amused. “You’ll learn soon enough that in Hell . . . anything is possible. Now come on.”

Dizzied, aghast, Slydes trudged after her. She walked fast, her high breasts bouncing, her flawless rump jiggling with each stride. “Once I get you out of this Prefect and on one of the Interways, you’ll be a lot safer. Believe me, you don’t want to hang out here.” She grinned over her shoulder. “You’re damn lucky I’m an honest Orientation Directress, Slydes.”

“Huh?”

“There are a lot of dishonest ones. They’d tip off an Abduction Squad and turn you in—for money, of course.”

“Huh?”

“Just come on. I know, you’re confused right now, and you can’t remember much. Eventually it’ll all sink in, and you’ll be all right.”

Slydes sorely doubted that he would ever be all right, not in Hell. But he did feel some gratitude toward Andeen for endeavoring to get him out of the abominable Prefect. Anywhere, anywhere, his thoughts pleaded. Take me anywhere because no matter how bad the next place is, it can’t be as bad as this . . .

“Here’s the shortcut out, and don’t worry about the gate.” She lifted something from beneath her tongue. “I have the key.”

Thank God . . . Slydes followed the lithe woman down another reeking alley whose end terminated in a chain-link gate closed by an antiquated lock. When Andeen finnicked with the key, rust sifted from the keyhole.

That thing better open, Slydes fretted.

“I guess the hardest thing to get used to for a Human in Hell is, well, the insignificance. Know what I mean?”

“Huh?” Slydes said.

“No matter what we were in the Living World, no matter how strong, how beautiful, how rich, how important . . . in Hell we’re nothing. In fact, we’re less than nothing.” She giggled, still jiggling the key. “Do you follow me, Slydes?”

Slydes was getting pissed. “I don’t know what’cher talkin’ about! Just open that fuckin’ lock so we can get out of here!”

She giggled but then frowned. “Damn. This bugger’s tough. Check the alley entrance, will you—”

“All riiiiiiiii—” But when Slydes looked behind him he shrieked. Proceeding slowly down the alley was a congregation of the short, dog-faced, implike things he’d seen previously on the street. They grinned as they moved forward, fangs glinting.

Slydes tugged Andeen’s arm like a child tugging its mother’s. “Luh-luh-look!”

Andeen’s tattooed brow rose when she glanced down the alley. “Shit. Broodren. They’re demonic kids and they’re all homicidal. The little fuckers have gangs everywhere—”

“Open the lock!”

She played with the key most vigorously, nervous herself now. “They’ll haul our guts out to sell to a Diviner; then they’ll screw and eat what’s left . . .”

“Hurry!” Slydes wailed.

Suddenly the pack of Broodren broke all at once into a sprint, cackling.

When they were just yards away—

CLACK!

—the lock opened. Slydes peed his jeans as Andeen dragged him to the other side. She managed to relock the gate just as several Broodren pounced on it, their dirty, taloned fingers and toes hooked over the chain links.

“Jesus! We barely made it!”

Andeen sighed, wiped her brow with her forearm. “Tell me about it, man.”

“What now?” Slydes looked down a stained brick corridor that seemed to dogleg to the left. “How do we get out?”

“Around the corner,” Andeen said.

They trotted on, turned the corner, and—

“Holy motherfuckin’ SHIT!” Slydes yelled when two stout gray-brown forearms wrapped about his barrel chest and hoisted him in the air.

Tall shadows circled round in total silence.

Slydes screamed till his throat turned raw.

“One thing you need to know about Hell,” Andeen chuckled, “is that trust does not exist.”

Five blank-faced Golems stood round Slydes now, and it was in the arms of a sixth that he was now captive.

One of them handed Andeen a stack of bills. “Thanks, buddy. This guy’s a real piece of work. He deserves what he’s getting.” Then she winked at Slydes and pointed up to another transom. It read: DIGESTIVE TRACT REVERSAL SUITE.

“For the rest of eternity, Slydes,” she intoned through a sultry grin. “You’ll be eating through your ass and shitting out your mouth.”

“Nooooooooooooo!” Slydes shrieked.

The Golems trooped toward the door, Slydes kicking and screaming, all to no avail.

“Welcome to Hell,” were Andeen’s parting words.

Slydes’s screams silenced when the suite door slammed shut, and Andeen traipsed off, greedily counting the stack of crisp bills. Each bill had the number one hundred in each corner, but it was not the portrait of Benjamin Franklin that graced each one, it was the face of Adolf Hitler.

PART ONE

THE SENARY

CHAPTER ONE

(I)

Six words drifted across his mind when he entered the bar:

A whore is a deep ditch . . .

It was a line from Proverbs, one of many that warned men of the power of lust. Hudson had studied the Bible with great zeal—and he still did—but what would seem strange about that? He’d graduated from Catholic U. with a master’s in theology, and within a month would be entering the seminary. No, what might seem strange, instead, was his presence in this bar, a place known to be a whore bar, or at least that’s what he’d heard.

His first name was the same as his last—Hudson—something he’d never understood of his parents, who’d both seemed distant or distracted since the time his memories commenced. He didn’t get it. They were dead now. They’ll never get to see me ordained, and I’ll never get to ask them why they named me Hudson.

Six tiny cracks could be seen in the long bar mirror, but why would Hudson count them? Obsessive-compulsive? he wondered. How could he really ever know? His contemplations itched at him. He knew why he was here, and was slightly discomfited by the patrons. The bar was simply called LOUNGE; that’s what the tacky neon said outside, and aside from its notoriety as an establishment that condoned prostitution, his friend Randal had warned that the place catered essentially to “white trash.”

So . . . what does that make me?

His reflection in the mirror looked like that of a bus bum. Unkempt, hair in need of cutting, eyes open wider than they should be as if used to looking for something that wasn’t there.

When he glanced down the long, dark room, he counted only six customers—three men, three women—then he noticed they were all smoking. Tendrils of smoke hung motionless in the establishment’s open space, like slivers of ghosts. Hudson didn’t smoke. He’d never even tried because he recalled a childhood sermon: “Your body is a gift from God, and any gift from God is a temple of God. When we inhale cigarette smoke into our bodies, it’s the same as throwing rocks through the stained-glass windows of this very church. Desecration . . .”

Hence, Hudson never lit up. He did drink a little, however, and not once did he consider that the same minister who’d given the smoking sermon had never added alcohol to his list of substances that desecrated one’s God-given body, nor that said minister had died years later of cirrhosis.

“I ain’t kiddin’ ya,” one redneck with a Fu Manchu affirmed to another redneck with a bald head. “I know it was the same ho’ who ripped me off a year or so ago. But she was so fucked up on Beans the bitch didn’t even remember me!”

“What’chew do?” asked the bald one.

“Jacked her out’s what I did—”

“Bullshit.”

“Think so?” Fu Manchu pulled out a blackjack, jiggled it, then put it back in his pocket. “Jacked her out right in the car, gave her a poke, and took her cash but ya know what? All the bitch had on her was six bucks . . .”

The bald one looked suspicious over his Black Velvet and Coke. “You didn’t jack no one out, man.”

“Buy me a drink if I prove it?”

The bald one laughed. “Sure, but you can’t prove it.”

Fu Manchu flipped open his cell phone. “I love these camera phones, man.” He showed the tiny screen to the bald one. “What? Ya think all that red stuff’s ketchup?”

The bald one slumped and ordered the guy a drink.

A real highbrow crew tonight, Hudson thought.

One of the women—a middle-aged blonde—had drifted over to the cigarette machine. Very tan, in a clinging maroon T-shirt and cutoff jeans. She’d knotted the T-shirt to reveal an abdomen whose most obvious trait was an accordion of stretch marks. Lots of eye shadow. Veiny hands. Too weathered, Hudson judged.

“Hi, honey,” she said in a Marlboro-rough voice and as she headed back to her stool, her hand slid along Hudson’s back. “Come on over, if ya want. I mean, you know what this place is all about, right?” But before Hudson could even dream up an answer she was already back in her seat.

Indeed, Hudson did know what the place was all about—that’s why he was here. Prostitution that was not quite the bottom of the barrel. He could afford little more. His conscience squirmed amid his blooming sin. Obviously she’d struck out with the other men in the bar.

Yeah, but the weathered ones know what to do . . .

“Another beer?” asked the barkeep. He was a ramshackle rube with a circular patch on his gas station shirt that read BARNEY.

“Yes, please.”

The keep leaned over, as if to relay a confidence. He had shaggy hair, and a pock on his cheek that looked like a bullet scar, and he was probably sixty. “Don’t worry, it’s all cool. I know you ain’t a cop.”

“What?” Hudson questioned, dismayed.

“I can tell at a glance, you ain’t got the look.” The keep grinned. “ ’N’fact, ya look more like a priest.”

Terrific, Hudson thought.

“And you been sittin’ here a while, right?”

“Yeah, an hour, hour and a half, I guess.”

“I figure you must know what the Lounge is all about—” He jerked his eyes down toward the old blonde. “Like she done said.”

Hudson’s chest felt tight. “I-uh-” One of several TVs showed a baseball game. “I’m just in to watch the game.”

“Sure, sure,” the keep chuckled. He pulled out another bottle of beer and set it down next to five empties. Hudson paid for each beer one at a time, for in establishments such as this, tabs were never run.

“I kinda look the other way, got no problem with what a gal feels she has to do for money—” Then the keep winked. “As long as there’s a cut for me. You wanna get some action in the bathroom, that’s cool. Just make sure you slide me a ten first, ya hear?”

“Uh, uh-sure,” Hudson blabbered.

“Ya been here a while now so I thought maybe ya didn’t know the deal.” The keep winked again. “But now ya do.”

“Um, thanks for filling me in . . .”

The keep leaned in closer to Hudson. “But as for Thelma over there—”

“Who?”

“The blonde.”

Hudson glanced over, and suddenly found that the woman’s burgeoning bosom possibly nullified her beat looks. “What about her?”

“She’s been around the block more times than the mailman, get it? Just some neighborly advice. She fucks like a champ but if you make any deals with her . . . wrap it—if ya catch my drift.”

Hudson flinched when a toothy grin floated just to the right side of his face. It was Fu Manchu. “Wrap it? Shit, man. Thelma’s cooch is toxic. She’s got stuff up there that can melt a triple-Trojan like one’a them Listerine breath strips.” He elbowed Hudson. “You do her? Put a scuba foot on your pecker.” He and the barkeep broke out in laughter.

Hudson couldn’t have been more uncomfortable. “Thanks, uh, thanks for the pointers, guys.”

Hudson gazed up at the TV. Tampa Bay led New York six to nothing, but the sound was down. He glanced aside, pretending to be looking for someone. Two more women—younger but nearly as weathered as Thelma—sat apart at the far end, one brunette with a ludicrous mullet and a shirt that read DO ME TILL I PUKE. The other, a rusty redhead, wore a T-shirt that claimed NO GAG REFLEX. Well, there they are, Hudson thought. So what am I doing? When am I going to make a move?

But Hudson hadn’t noticed the other man—he must’ve just come in. Young but somehow despondent, a false smile that looked on the verge of shattering. He was in a wheelchair. Those two prostitutes must know him, Hudson figured, for they both stood stooped, talking to the young man. Their grins could be described as vulturine. The man shook his head; then Hudson overheard him say, “I can’t anymore.” Then the redhead said, “Pay us twenty each to try. We’ll give ya lots of time.” But the man in the chair shook his head and wheeled away.

“Fuckin’ cripple,” the redhead whispered to her cohort.

Oh, what a bounty of goodwill in the world, Hudson thought, and then that’s when it occurred to him: he’d seen the man before, in church.

Another TV hung just above the brunette’s head, also silent: a dashing evangelist in a huge stadium. Hudson could read the closed-caption blocks as the revivalist’s mouth moved.

WHEN YOU STRIVE TO NOT SIN, WHEN YOU MAKE THAT EFFORT, GOD HOLDS YOU IN SPECIAL FAVOR. GOD PUTS HIS SHIELD OF PROTECTION OVER YOU. SO TO STAY IN GOD’S FAVOR, WE MUST ALWAYS STRIVE NOT TO SIN. WE MUST DO EVERYTHING WE POSSIBLY CAN TO RESIST THE TEMPTATIONS THAT LUCIFER THROWS BEFORE US . . .

Hudson’s eyes lowered—in shame. No shield of protection for me today, he thought to his beer.

Sin was everywhere. And he needed to know it before he could absolve it, just like Monsignor Halford had said . . .

I know I shouldn’t be here but I’m staying anyway, he realized. I’m here to pick up a hooker . . . and that’s what I’m going to do because I’m not strong enough to walk out . . .

He did good deeds. He felt he had true compassion. He gave to charities, he gave to the homeless—even though he was poor himself. Above all, he believed in God, and he could only pray that God’s mercy was as everlasting as the Bible claimed.

AND MANY OF YOU MIGHT BE THINKING RIGHT THIS SECOND, “BUT PASTOR JOHNNY, I’M A GOOD PERSON, I GO TO CHURCH, AND I TRULY DO STRIVE NOT TO SIN . . . AND I’M TRULY SORRY WHEN I DO SIN . . . LIKE LAST WEEK WHEN I WENT TO THAT PORNO STORE, OR THE WEEK BEFORE THAT TEEN-SEX WEB SITE, OR THE WEEK BEFORE THAT WHEN I PICKED UP THAT PROSTITUTE . . .

Hudson stared.

IT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE EASY, MY FRIENDS, AND LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING. IT WASN’T EASY FOR JESUS EITHER.

Hudson’s soul felt stained black. He’s talking about me. Maybe Halford was wrong, but if I believe THAT, then how can I believe in the infallibility of the church?

AND SOMETIMES WE WANT TO CHALLENGE GOD, WE WANT TO SAY TO HIM, “GOD, YOU’VE GIVEN ME THESE DESIRES BUT TELL ME IT’S A SIN TO ACT ON THEM. WHY? IT’S NOT FAIR!” The evangelist seemed to look directly at Hudson. BUT HERE’S WHY IT IS FAIR, AND PLEASE, MY DEAR FRIENDS, LISTEN TO ME. IT’S FAIR BECAUSE GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT HE GAVE HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON . . .

Hudson felt sick. Were his palms sweating? He couldn’t keep his eyes off NO GAG REFLEX. All I have to do is slip the keep a ten and go over there . . . The other one, with the mullet, looked not half bad as well (except for the mullet). Had she tweaked her nipples? They stuck out against the DO ME shirt like bullet casings.

She looked right at Hudson—in the same way the evangelist had—and mouthed, Blow job?

MOST OF THE TIME, FRIENDS, BEING A GOOD PERSON ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH. WE SIN AND THEN DO GOOD WORKS BECAUSE WE THINK ONE GOOD THING CANCELS OUT THE BAD, BUT DON’T BE DECEIVED BY THIS. DON’T BE A CRUMMY PERSON BY PURSUING YOUR TEMPTATIONS. DON’T LIVE A CHUMP-CHANGE LIFE. WE TEND TO SIN IN SECRET, BECAUSE NOBODY CAN SEE. HUSBANDS, YOU THINK THAT NOBODY SEES YOU WHEN YOU WALK INTO THAT PORNO STORE, OR SLIP INTO THAT MASSAGE PARLOR. YOUR WIFE CAN’T SEE YOU WHEN YOU’RE DRIVING DOWN THAT DARK ROAD AFTER WORK TO LOOK FOR A STREETWALKER. AND WIVES? YOU THINK THAT NOBODY SEES YOU WHEN YOU SNEAK INTO THE BATHROOM TO DO THAT LINE OF COCAINE. NOBODY SEES YOU WHEN YOU CHEAT ON YOUR HUSBAND WITH YOUR OFFICE MANAGER. BUT HEAR ME, FRIENDS. GOD DOES SEE YOU . . .

Hudson felt percolating now, half aroused just from the contemplation, even as the evangelist’s silent words haunted him. Now DO ME was standing next to GAG REFLEX, whispering. Every image of carnality steamed in Hudson’s mind.

GOD LOVES US ALL, HE WANTS ALL OF US TO JOIN HIM SOMEDAY IN THE FIRMAMENT OF HEAVEN, BUT THE TRUTH, MY FRIENDS, IS THAT MOST OF US WON’T GET THERE BECAUSE MOST OF US DON’T TRY HARD ENOUGH TO RESIST THE DESIRE TO SIN. AND SOME OF YOU MIGHT WANT TO SAY TO ME, “PASTOR JOHNNY? IF GOD REALLY LOVES ME, THEN HOW CAN HE SLAM HEAVEN’S DOOR IN MY FACE FOR ACTING ON THE DESIRES THAT HE GAVE ME?” BUT I SAY TO YOU, JESUS WAS SUBJECTED TO THE SAME TEMPTATIONS THAT WE ARE BUT HE NEVER SINNED, SO IN THE LIGHT OF THAT TRUTH, WHEN YOU DON’T TRY HARD ENOUGH TO TURN YOUR BACK ON THOSE TEMPTATIONS, IT’S NOT GOD WHO’S SLAMMING THE DOOR IN YOUR FACE. IT’S YOU.

Hudson tore his eyes off the TV, then groaned to himself. DO ME and GAG REFLEX were gone—

Damn it, he thought. They must’ve left—

He almost yelped as several hands played across his back. DO ME pressed in on one side, GAG the other. Cheap perfume and shampoo suddenly intoxicated him.

“Hey, there,” GAG said. She began to rub his back where he sat, her breasts pressing. “My name’s Sylvia.”

“My name’s Jeanie,” said the other. “What’s yours?”

Hudson couldn’t resist. “How about . . . John?”

The two women looked at each other, stalled, then laughed aloud.

“I like this guy!” said GAG. “And we were wondering . . .”

“Yeah,” said DO ME. Her hand rubbed his chest, and when the keep disappeared in back, she smoothly rubbed his crotch. “Ever had a doubleheader?”

Hudson was taken aback. “Uh, well—”

GAG’S breath smelled like Juicy Fruit. “Ask anyone. Me’n Jeanie do the best doubleheaders. We know all the right stuff guys like—”

Hudson opened his mouth . . .

They both flashed their bare breasts right in Hudson’s face. Four pink, plucked nipples looked back at him. Hudson got drunk just from the sight. A side-glance showed him Fu Manchu and the bald guy both grinning at him, and nodding approval.

The T-shirts came back down when the keep returned. GAG’S lips touched his ear when she whispered, “And it’s only fifty bucks each, plus ya gotta give the—”

“Ten to the bartender.” Hudson finally said something coherent. “Yes.” He felt flushed, prickly. Here goes. Monsignor Halford better be right . . . He looked in his wallet. “I only have sixty dollars on me. Is there—”

“An ATM?” DO ME finished his question. “At the bank—”

“—right across the street,” the other hot, wet whisper brushed his ear. “You could be back in five minutes.”

Hudson felt disconnected from himself when he stood up. “I’ll be right back . . .”

GAG gave his buttocks a squeeze when Hudson rushed out. He crossed the parking lot with a drone in his head. Darkness had arrived like an oil spill; the old sodium lights painted glowing yellow lines across the cracked asphalt. His anticipation revved his heart. I’m going to be in the seminary soon, but in about five minutes I’m going to be standing in a dump bar’s bathroom with my pants down in front of two hookers. Oh, God . . .

He quickstepped past a dollar store, then crossed the street to the bank. Six people stood in line before him at the ATM, mostly half-broken rednecks or old people. Come on, come on, he thought, tapping his foot. When he glanced across the street, he saw GAG and DO ME watching him through the glass door. With my luck someone else’ll pick them up while I’m waiting in this line!

Finally Hudson got his turn and withdrew five twenties. He grimaced at the receipt where it read AVAILABLE BALANCE: $6.00.

“Damn it,” he sputtered, and then he stood there for a time, spacing out. Put the money back in the bank and go home! his alter ego yelled at him. You don’t need to do this! Look at yourself! You’re a scumbag! You’re a whoremonger!

But he could, couldn’t he? He looked at the cash. He could redeposit it right now, save it for the things he needed rather than wasting it on this experiment in lust. But—

Instead he put it in his pocket and left the machine.

On his way back his mind was clogged with the lewdest images. Even as the block letters flashed behind his eyes—DON’T BE A CRUMMY PERSON BY PURSUING YOUR TEMPTATIONS. DON’T LIVE A CHUMP-CHANGE LIFE—Hudson couldn’t see them.

The drone dragged him on. He had no awareness of making the mental decision to stop, but when he realized he had, he found himself several yards from the dollar store where a skinny woman in a dirty sundress and lanky hair was having a conniption at the front door. A pair of scrawny little kids with dead eyes stood next to her. “Fuckin’ bullshit! I can’t fuckin’ believe it!” she was yelling at herself. “It’s not supposed to be this fuckin’ hard!”

Hudson wanted to move on, to the tacky delights that awaited. Instead, he said, “Is something wrong?”

“Yeah! Everything’s wrong! I got two fuckin’ kids to feed so I go in there to buy food”—she held up a plastic card with an American flag on it—“and the machine says my food credits are all used up. My fuckin’ husband maxed out the card out before he split yesterday. Instead of paying the power bill, he spent the money on crack; then he maxes out the card and leaves town! Fucker leaves me with two kids and no food, and even if I had food, I can’t cook it ’cos I got no power, so I gotta buy Pop-Tarts and canned spaghetti, but I can’t even buy that ’cos my fuckin’ piece of shit husband MAXED OUT MY CARD!”

The woman looked close to a psychotic break. Meanwhile, her two children looked up at Hudson, stared a moment, then looked away.

The woman’s eyes were red now. “Mister, could you give me five or ten bucks? Please? This shit’s fuckin’ killin’ me.”

“I—” Hudson began but didn’t finish.

“My fuckin’ food card doesn’t renew till the sixth—that’s over a week from now. I’ll have to feed my kids garbage till then.”

“I—” But Hudson thought, I could give her twenty bucks and still have plenty for the whores . . .

“Aw, fuck it!” she wailed. “You guys are all the same! Don’t wanna help anybody. Ya think I’m gonna buy drugs with the money. Shit! Does it look like I’m tryin’ to buy drugs!”

“I—”

The woman shoved both of the kids. “Come on, we’re going home . . .”

“Wait,” Hudson said. She turned and glared at him. Hudson took everything out of his wallet and gave it to her. “This should help,” he said.

She looked cockeyed at the $160. “Aw, fuck, man! Thanks! You saved our asses!” She yelled at the kids. “Come on, you little crumb-snatchers! In the store! They close in ten minutes!”

Hudson watched blankly as she pushed her kids back into the store. The woman fully entered, but then stuck her shabby head back out.

“Hey, man.” She smiled. “God bless you.”

I hope so, Hudson thought. “Good night.”

He turned and headed down the sidewalk. Behind him, from the bar, DO ME and GAG screamed at him.

“What did you do?”

“You ASSHOLE!”

“Scumbag motherfucker!”

Hudson looked at them in the doorway and shrugged. He cut across the sodium-lit bank parking lot, then headed through the alley toward his cheap cinder block efficiency. I guess this is hopscotch of the new age, he thought, taking awkward steps around the used condoms and discarded hypodermics that littered the asphalt. Behind him, in the distance, he would still hear GAG and DO ME cursing. Then he laughed when it fully sunk in:

I almost picked up two prostitutes a week before I enter the seminary and take initial vows of celibacy . . .

A minute later he was home, not really knowing if he felt good or awful.

(II)

Smoke the color of spoiled milk gusted from the intermittent censers as far as the eye—be it demonic or Human—could see. What an interesting color, Favius mused, mystified. He stood on the southernmost ramparts, proud to know that a large part of this security sector was under his command: sixty-six meters of a multiple-square-mile construction reservation recently dubbed the Vandermast Reservoir.

Its depth? Sixty-six feet.

The reason that Favius marveled at the hue of the censer smoke was simply because of the contrast: out here, in the black-sand expanse of Hell’s Great Emptiness Quarter, everything, like the sand, was black. The walls of the Reservoir itself were black, as were the sub-inlets and enormous inflow pipes. The causewalks, too, were black—constructed of basalt bricks—and even the barracks were black. Very little of the scarlet sky could be viewed just then, due to the blankets of black clouds. Favius noted only a single rift in said cloud cover, which revealed a sickle moon.

A sickle moon, yes, that was black.

Hence the sickish-white smoke rising from the curtilage of untold censers amazed this steadfast servitor of Satan. The churning wisps of contrast broke the endless visual monotony of what he’d been looking at for longer than he could remember.

Bronze-helmed and breast-plated, Favius had long ago earned the rank of Conscript First Class. This rank he’d earned faster than most due to his predilection for logic, efficiency, and unhesitant brutality. In life he’d served the in the Third Augustan Legion, circa AD 200, slaughtering women and children in a village called Anchester during Rome’s occupation of Angle-Land. Now, in death and damnation, he was a loyal member of Grand Duke Cyamal’s Exalted Security Brigade. Since time was not measurable in Hell, Favius had no way of calculating how long he’d actually been serving this post, but it had to have been the Living World equivalent to hundreds of years.

The notorious Exalted Security Brigade were sworn on their damned lives to guard by all means necessary the six-billion-gallon facility. Directly under his command were a hundred foot soldiers and countless Golems, all who coalesced to form a living and not-so-living security shield. This far out in the Quarter, infiltration and/or vandalism against the Reservoir was unlikely, but no chances could be taken.

If this project were not very important, Favius knew, my expertise would not be needed here, and nor would the Brigade’s . . .

Sword always in hand, Favius turned and gazed out at the bleak and awesome sight: the Reservoir’s empty pit. He remembered when the Emaciation Squads had first broken ground with mere shovels, digging out and carting away the sinking black sand and corrupt soil. Surely millions of these workers had toiled themselves, literally, to nothingness, and when their labors had reduced them to sunken-faced twigs, they were buried alive beneath the unholy Reservoir’s soil, where they would twitch and mutter and think—forever.

All in the service of their detestable Lord.

I am so honored, the Conscript’s voice creaked through his mind. Only the most loyal, the most trusted, and the most heinous of Lucifer’s soldiers were granted such esteemed duty.

A noxious breeze trailed across the Conscript’s helmed face, and at once he smiled. The breeze carried the rich, organic stench of the Mephistopolis, the place he dreamed of returning to once his duties here were done. He longed to rape, to maim, to slaughter: his natural instincts. And just then he dared to wonder, How much longer?

Such thoughts, he knew, could be deemed treasonous in the event any Archlocks were about—Archlocks, Bio-Wizards, or other servitors skilled in the reading of minds. Favius indulged himself, raising from about his muscled neck the pair of Abyss-Glasses—Hell’s version of binoculars. Instead of lenses, the powerful viewing device was fitted with a pair of eyeballs plucked from the sockets of a Dentata-Vulture, an infernal creature possessed of superlative vision. Favius’s tar black heart fluttered when he scanned the farthest fringe of the Reservoir, admiring the fencelike barrier of Golems forever watching outward for signs of assault or trespass. Within this impenetrable wall of manufactured monsters patrolled Conscripts of Favius’s class who were overseen only by one of sixty-six Grand Sergeants. Favius hoped that one day he might rise to such a hallowed rank . . .

He snapped to attention at the sudden, encroaching sound: footsteps and the clatter of plate-mail. He held his legionnaire sword in the present-arms position. Grand Sergeant Buyoux, he realized.

“Stand at ease, friend Favius,” came his superior’s voice. The Grand Sergeant wore a full smock of plate-mail armor, from knees to the top of his head. Only his poxed face showed through an oval in the hood. He carried a flintlock sulphur pistol, and emblazoned on his chest was the seal of Grand Duke Cyamal—a trine of sixes fashioned via intricately engraved skulls.

“State the status of your post, Conscript.”

“All clear, Grand Sergeant!” Favius barked.

“As always, a good thing.” The corrupt face in the oval smiled thinly. “And now? State the status of your disposition.”

“My heart sings in the unblessed opportunity afforded me, the opportunity to serve our abyssal Lord! I exist, Grand Sergeant, for no other purpose than to be of use to Lucifer!”

“Yes, you do, don’t you?” Buyoux’s voice receded as he looked distractedly back and forth over endless causewalks and the great black gulf of the empty Reservoir. “Loyalty is so rare these days. I heard that a full dozen of the Somosan Guard defected to the Contumacy recently, after destroying several Hell-Flux Generators and Agonicity Stations in the Industrial Zone.”

“Blasphemy, Grand Sergeant!”

“Um-hmm.” Then suddenly the Grand Sergeant seemed to stare off, not into the as-yet-unfilled Reservoir, but more into his own reflections. Favius wished he might read the Grand Sergeant’s mind.

“Have you ever wondered, Conscript?”

“I do not wonder, sir!” Favius snapped. “For to wonder is treason without proper license!”

“Yes, and you may consider this your license then, but have you ever wondered when our responsibilities at this ghastly reservation might be at an end?”

Favius shivered. He did not answer.

Buyoux’s voice, now, could barely be heard. “We’d all be mad not to wonder about that, yes? In an eternity where time cannot be calculated? Where day and night do not exist and where the sky is always the same color of ox blood and where the moon never changes phase? Lucifer Almighty.” But then the Grand Sergeant nodded. “No doubt, at least, you’ve heard rumors . . .”

“I’ve heard nothing, Grand Sergeant. I do nothing but stand my post and command my rampart, by your nefarious grace.”

Buyoux paced back and forth, his Dark Ages armor rasping. “Things are going well, I can tell you that, and soon? I’ll be able to tell you exactly why the Unholy Ministry of Engineering ordered the very construction of this Reservoir in the first place . . .”

Favius stood still as one of the Golems, his ears itching to know.

“Soon, just not now.” Buyoux eyed the muscled Conscript. “For the love of every Anti-Pope, I’ve always wondered why they would build this in such a pestilent perimeter of wasteland.”

“The more removed the Reservoir is from the City, the safer it shall stand against infiltrators,” Favius dared speculate.

Again, Buyoux nodded. His keen discolored eyes suddenly went flat. “And safe it had best remain . . . or we’ll all be fed alive into a Pulping Station, of that you can rest assured.”

Why, though? Favius did indeed wonder. Why had they built this strange place?

“And friend Favius, would your heart sing as well were I to tell you that after what must be centuries, we may be privileged enough to leave soon? To return to the Mephistopolis?”

Favius began to shake, his heart racing. But he did not reply.

“I can tell you this. The last of the Emaciation Squads have finished their toil.”

Favius wanted to shout aloud but, of course, could not. Instead, his exuberance seemed to build up from within, threatening to blow him apart.

Next Buyoux pointed over the rampart, to the termination of the great endless Pipeway connected to the Main Sub-Inlet. “And did you know that the Pipeway is now complete?”

“I-I,” Favius stammered, “I did not know, your wretched Grace.”

“Well, it is, and you know what that means . . .”

Favius’s eyes bloomed. “Soon, then, they’ll begin to fill the Reservoir . . .”

“Indeed. With exactly what, I’ve not yet been apprized, but the sooner it is filled, the sooner its actual use will be realized, and, hence?”

“The sooner our duties here will have been discharged.”

“Quite correct. So who says hope does not exist in Hell, hmm?” Buyoux studied Favius in his stance. “I’m feeling charitable today, Favius.” He held up his own pair of Abyss-Glasses. “You’re a loyal servant and inexhaustible soldier; therefore, you deserve a glimpse. Would you like a glimpse?”

Favius could’ve collapsed from the joy of the prospect, but he answered via protocol. “I am unworthy and undeserving, Grand Sergeant. I am but rags in your presence.”

“No, you’re not,” Buyoux’s word came, drained. “We’re all the same, if you want to know the truth.” He gave Favius the Abyss-Glasses. “Go ahead. You have my permission.”

Favius’s large hands trembled when he took the glasses. The model supplied to Grand Sergeants was hundreds of times more powerful than the pair Favius had been requisitioned.

Very slowly, the Conscript turned and raised the Abyss-Glasses to his jaded eyes . . .

The sights took his breath away: the blazing scarlet sky shimmering above the illimitable city. Here was Osiris Heights with its gleaming black monoliths and ceaseless pillars of smoke from the Diviners Stations. Next, the recently rebuilt Bastille of Otherwise Souls, the eternal black prison for Humans damned only for the sin of suicide. Bosch Gardens was a frenzy of giant beaked Demons pitchforking a pitiable Human horde into steaming crevices or feeding the children of Crossbreeds into the mouths of mammoth Gastrodiles. Gremlins prowled through subcorporeal footholds in the coal black clouds, while Gargoyles skulked the ledges and sills of leaning skyscrapers and pointed pinnacles rising to titan heights. Between the drab buildings of the Ghettoblocks stretched cables from which the Damned unwisely hanged themselves, only to learn that the death they longed for would never come, leaving them to hang by their necks, alive, for time immemorial. Gryphons and Wolf-Bats, some the size of airships, glided serenely through the soiled air. Favius zoomed in on a middle school’s playground, where sinister and often-fanged teachers fired young students back and forth on catapults, punishment for earning superior grades. On a foul street corner—the Filth District?—several slug-colored Ushers torqued the arms and legs off a Hybrid man for evidently double-parking his steam-car; and on another corner, a pack of Broodren were raping a half-bred Succubus while simultaneously disemboweling her by a hook shoved down her throat.

“It’s-it’s . . . beautiful,” Favius whispered in awe.

“Yes, it is,” his superior replied in similar awe. “Look to the North Quadrant. There’s something there you’ll find very interesting . . .”

Favius followed the instruction, then paused, locked in a rigor of shock and wonderment.

“It’s the Pol Pot District, and as you can see, fine Conscript, good things are all about.”

Favius could barely maintain his train of thought. There, spiring from the middle of the smoke-hazed District known for beautification via staked heads and “cubing” the Human Damned in massive industrial compactors, was a great statue-like obscenity higher than any building in the vicinity. An enormous, horned thing standing perfectly still.

Parched, Favius uttered, “Antichrist Almighty . . . A Demonculus . . .”

“So it is. The myths are true. While we’ve been guarding this wasted post for centuries, the De Rais Academy has built that. I can scarcely believe they did it. We all thought it was impossible . . .”

“The sorcerial technologies must have multiplied by leaps and bounds,” Favius, in his awe, postulated.

“And why not? It does in the Living World. Stands to reason the same should be true here.” Buyoux’s blemished lips turned to a sharper smile. “Who knows when they’ll be able to bring it to life, but when they do? Our troubles with the Contumacy will be finished in short order.”

“I pray Satan . . .”

The Grand Sergeant pointed down off the rampart. “Now, follow the Pipeway, and maximize your magnification . . .”

Favius did so, training the supernatural binoculars on the massive pipeline sixty-six yards in diameter.

“A hundred miles, a thousand,” Buyoux uttered, “no one really knows. But pay heed. What is your interpretation, Conscript?”

Favius followed the perfectly straight line of the Pipeway from its connection here at the Reservoir all the way across the black, blasted plain of the Great Emptiness Quarter. It took minutes to follow the Pipeway’s complete terminus at the Mephistopolis, and there, where it seemed to officially end, he noticed the features of the Sector District it disappeared into . . .

Gushing smokestacks pumping endless soot into the air, squat buildings stained black from said soot, and the workers atop those buildings stained as well. Yet this zone’s most salient feature clearly existed in its composition. The outline of its high buildings, towers, and industrial structures appeared fuzzy, blurred, imprecise. Spongy, Favius thought. The mishmash of colors—all drab reds, greens, and yellows—offered the most bizarre contrast. Then, Favius knew . . .

“Rot-Port?” he asked rather than stated.

“I think so, almost assuredly,” Buyoux said.

“The District where all within is composed of some type of rot. The walls of the skyscrapers and buildings, the streets and sidewalks, even the very bricks themselves are manufactured by using deliberately cultured strains of rot, waste, and mold.”

“You know much, Favius.” The Grand Sergeant seemed pleased. “You’ve performed duties there in the past?”

“No, Grand Sergeant, but I have heard of the place.”

“Splendid. Then what else is Rot-Port known for other than its plaguey composition?”

“I believe, sir, that Rot-Port is the most active harbor in the Mephistopolis, and the largest guarded District along the Gulf of Cagliostro.”

“You’ve learned well,” Buyoux approved, “for that is quite true. It’s the most elaborate Port District in the city.” Now the Grand Sergeant eyed Favius narrowly. “Speculations?”

An excited hush caught in Favius’s armored chest. “It must be the Bloodwater of the Gulf itself that the Engineers mean to fill this Reservoir with . . .”

Buyoux nodded, arms crossed as he looked out. “And it’s no stretch to assume. Rot-Port is guarded nearly as well as Satan Park and the very domain of Lucifer’s new manse. If any District is impervious to insurgent meddling, it is there. Therefore, we may well have the answer . . . or at least half of it.”

Favius understood at once. “Yes, Grand Sergeant. The other half being this: what purpose could there be in tapping six billion gallons of the Gulf and pumping it here?”

Yes. All at once, like a bomb going off, it made perfect sense now, but that only left the even more bizarre question.

“Until that is answered, soldier, we can only tend to our tasks—to the death, if need be—and wait.” Buyoux’s voice ground lower. “At least we’ll have something to ponder until the time comes when our Great Dark Lord deems that we should know.”

Favius felt an ecstatic privilege having the conclusion shared with him. Joy was little felt here—save for the joy of serving Satan—but now he’d been blessed with a joy greater even than that of slaughtering the innocent.

“Our respite is finished now, good servant,” Buyoux said and took back the Glasses.

“Thank you for bestowing me the honor, Grand Sergeant . . .”

“You deserve it.” Again, Buyoux’s voice declined in volume. “There are great wonders afoot, here, there, all about. And we are privileged to be a part of it.”

“Yes, your Wretched Eminence!”

Buyoux seemed to pause, suddenly taken by the Conscript’s adornments on his arms and face. “Tell me, just how many women and children did you kill in Angle-Land?”

Favius paused. “I . . . never kept count, sir. Hundreds, I’m sure.”

“But what of the men?”

“They were hobbled and enslaved, then forced to build fortifications until they dropped.”

“Then why not do the same to the women and children?”

“It was viewed as too great a risk, Grand Sergeant. Better to butcher the women so that their wombs may never bear future enemies, and better to butcher the children so that they may never grow to adulthood to raise a sword against Rome.”

Buyoux’s scabbed brow rose. “My. You are quite a killer . . .” He patted Favius’s armored back. “And soon, by the grace of the Morning Star, you may be killing again.”

Favius snapped to attention. “I live to serve Lucifer!”

Buyoux, hands behind his back, began to walk away. “And, Favius? Mind your tongue.”

“I would halve myself with a halberd before I would betray a confidence, Grand Sergeant!”

Buyoux, still smiling, raised his left forearm. “Until we meet again, hail Satan . . .”

“Hail Satan!”

Favius brimmed in the news of his departing commander. Yes! There IS hope . . . What else might the Grand Sergeant have implied of the future? But as he turned to ponder this question he found himself staring down at the rampart’s stone floor . . .

He stared.

The shining black surface of basalt shined like polished obsidian; and in that reflection he peered at the adornments of his Oath in the Brigade.

The prideful thought slipped into his head: Praise to Lucifer. My adornments look so much better than the Grand Sergeant’s . . .

Indeed. Onto nearly every square inch of Favius’s body had been grafted the severed face of a murder victim, the Human Damned, the face of a species of Demon, a Hybrid, a Troll or Imp—it didn’t matter.

Favius liked his modifications, especially those most recent. Onto each cheek had been grafted the face of a butchered demonic newborn babe.

(III)

Gerold rolled out of the downtown library, into stifling heat.

Jesus . . . Between Florida’s high temperatures and the outrageous humidity, he felt as though he’d just rolled into a pizza oven. He wilted even before he’d made it to the Fourth Street bus stop.

Gerold didn’t walk, he rolled. In a Tracer EX2 wheelchair. The IED near Fallujah had penetrated the floor of his Hummer, just a week before the vehicle had been scheduled for up-armoring. Gerold had killed four insurgents that day with the caliber .50—his first enemy kills, he was pretty sure—and felt awful about it, even knowing that the four would’ve gladly killed him and not felt awful about it. On his way back to the firebase, the bomb had gone off, shattering his spine and shredding his kidneys. He’d never walk again, and would need dialysis for the rest of his life.

Still, he kept the faith, or at least he had until last night.

Shit. Last night. What was I doing? Then: “Shit!”

In a gust of exhaust-stoked heat, the bus roared by when Gerold was but five yards from the bus stop. The driver had pretended not to see him, and he knew why. Because it’s a pain in his ass to lower the wheelchair ramp . . .

Sweat trickled down his forehead as he wheeled north.

Last night. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. The last time he’d been in that bar was three years ago—on a thirty-day leave—and, yes, he’d solicited a prostitute, the very one he’d seen last night wearing the NO GAG REFLEX shirt. The sin made him feel tainted, but he wanted to be with a woman, if only for a few minutes, in case he got killed when he went back to his combat duty station. Last night, though? Why? Why go in there knowing I can’t do anything anymore! It doesn’t make sense! It was almost as if some cruel sliver of his psyche had forced him in there just to make him feel lousy. Impotent. Sterile.

That’s when he had snapped, and determined to go to the library the following day . . .

Gerold had opted for a manual chair rather than a battery-powered one; at least if his legs no longer worked, he’d have strong arms. But . . .

Big deal, he thought now, huffing as he wheeled farther up. The heat was killing him. And though Florida possessed mind-boggling heat, it also possessed mind-bogglingly attractive women. They walked by this way and that, braless breasts bouncing beneath sheer tops, with sleek tan legs, silken hair, and beaming faces. However, this, too, had become an annoyance even worse than the heat because as the women passed they either averted their eyes or merely didn’t see him at all, as though he were utterly invisible. Just more reminders of what he could never have.

Up the road he wheeled around to the Fourth Street Shrimp House, one of his favorite restaurants before he’d shipped out. He knew it was his subconscious that had brought him here—the same cruel mechanism that had sent him into that bar last night. As he stared at the specials sign, he realized that his ruined kidneys now precluded him from eating fried seafood because it would raise his creatinine levels and force him into an emergency dialysis session.

Fuck! he thought.

Today just wasn’t Gerold’s day.

“Hey, I remember you,” said one of the cooks. The slim, straggly man stood outside the restaurant, smoking. “You used to eat here all the time, but then . . . Oh, you went into the army, right?”

Gerold remembered the guy, because the restaurant had an open kitchen. “Yeah. Got back a year ago . . . like this.”

“Sorry to hear it, man, but, shit, my uncle was in a chair for thirty years and he always said ‘walking or rolling, it’s still a beautiful world.’ ”

Gerold couldn’t reply.

“You guys are hard-core,” the cook went on. “I hope you know that all of us peacetime candy-ass civilian punks honor your service.”

“Thanks,” Gerold said.

“Come on in. Your lunch is on me. All-you-can-eat clam strips, man, and they’re hand-dipped. None of this pre-breaded frozen shit.”

Gerold felt dizzy in despair. “Thanks but . . . I can’t now. I don’t even know why I came here. I’m on a restricted diet ’cos of my kidneys.”

“Shit, that sucks. Those fuckers.” The cook paused. “Did you . . . Well, never mind. None of my business.”

“What?”

“Did you get any of them?”

Gerold didn’t look at him when he said, “Four, I think. With a machine gun called an M2. It tore them apart.”

“Fuck ’em.”

“Half hour later . . . this happened.”

The moment collapsed into cringing awkwardness. “I gotta go,” Gerold said.

“Sure. See ya around.”

I doubt it. Gerold wheeled away, back up into scorching sun. His throat felt swelled shut; he didn’t want the cook to see the tears in his eyes. Eventually he made it to one of the covered bus shelters—finally, some damn shade—but when he wheeled in, a squalid face peered over very quickly. It was a woman, probably a lot younger than she looked. She wore dingy shorts and a baggy men’s white T-shirt. “Hey,” she said and smiled.

“Hi.” Gerold knew at once what she was, from the smile. Her teeth were gray, from either meth or crack. A street whore, he knew. There seemed to be twice as many of them now, since the recession had bitten in.

“You know,” she began, and now her bloodshot eyes were intent on him. She stood up. The sweat-damp T-shirt betrayed flat, dangling breasts. “We could go over by them trees.” She pointed.

Gerold saw one of many stands of trees around the park. Gerold sighed. “I’m not looking for any action, if that’s what you mean.”

She walked over and without warning began to rub his crotch.

Gerold frowned.

Her desperate whisper told him, “Let’s go over to them trees. Twenty-five bucks. I’ve done guys in chairs before; some of ’em get off.”

“I don’t get off!” he spat.

“Hmm? You sure?” She kept rubbing, her grin knife-sharp. “You feel that, don’t you?”

“No,” he grumbled. He was enraged and humiliated. “I’m paraplegic. You know what that means? It means dead from the waist down.”

“Come on, just let me play with it anyway. Twenty bucks. You’ll like it.”

“Get away from me!” he bellowed.

“Well fuck you, then!” she yelled back. “Fuckin’ cripple.”

“Yeah,” he said, grimacing. He got out his wallet. There was his bus pass and a fifty-dollar bill. “Do you have a knife or a gun?”

“What?”

“I’ll give you fifty bucks, my bus pass, and my bank card—”

“For what?”

“I want you to kill me.”

The junkie face seemed to pucker like a pale slug sprinkled with salt. She left the shelter and jogged away.

Anyway, that’s what had brought Gerold down here in the first place. That’s why he’d been in the library: to use their computer, go online, and read about castor bean poison, which he’d found quite easily. Just as easily, however, he’d found that the extraction process was way too complicated, save for anyone but a chemist; and then when he’d looked up some other poisons, he’d caught the librarian eyeing his screen with a troubled frown on her face. He’d felt idiotic so he’d left in a rush.

SWOOOSH!

The next bus drove right by, its driver pretending not to see Gerold waiting in the shelter.

No. Today just wasn’t Gerold’s day.

(IV)

When Hudson finally fell asleep, he dreamed almost in flashback: the recent past. A year ago when he’d graduated from Catholic U., he’d taken a summer job for a Monsignor Halford, the chancellor of the Richmond Diocesan Pastoral Center. Hudson needed a letter of reference to get into a quality seminary, so here he was.

Halford had to have been ninety but seemed sharper and more energetic than most clerics half his age. He did not beat around the bush with regard to spiritual counsel. He said right off the bat, “The only reason you’re working here is for a reference, but I won’t give you any manner of reference or referral unless you do this: take a year or two off, go into the work force—not volunteer work or hospices—you’ll do plenty of that during your internship.” The pious old man chuckled. “Work a real job, live like real people, the other people. You have to be one of them before you can be one of us. Work in a restaurant, a store, do construction work or something like that. Earn money, pay bills, know what it’s like to live like they do. Go to bars, get drunk, smoke cigarettes, and, above all . . . familiarize yourself with the company of women, like St. Augustine. There’s nothing worse than a young seminarist going straight from college to seminary and taking all his idealism with him. Those are the ones who fold halfway through their pastorship.”

Hudson sat agog. St. Augustine was a whoremonger before he found faith . . . “You don’t mean . . .”

“I mean as I’ve said,” the elder replied in a voice of granite. “Am I ordering you to engage in sexual congress outside of wedlock? No. But hear this, Hudson. A venal sin now is much more forgivable than a grievous sin later, later as in after your ordination.”

Hudson couldn’t believe such an implication.

“Are you receiving my meaning, son?”

“I’m . . . not sure, Monsignor.”

“In the real world you’ll be subject to the same temptations that Christ faced. We in the vocation all need to know that.”

“But I’m perfectly happy with a vow of celibacy.”

The monsignor smiled, and it was a sardonic smile. “Go out into the world first, and that includes the world of women. If you don’t, you’ll probably quit in ten or twenty years. It doesn’t do God any good to have priests that quit when they start feeling that they’ve missed out. It’s the same things with the nuns—good Lord. I’ve been around a while so I know what I’m talking about.”

Before the notion to ask even occurred consciously, Hudson began, “Monsignor, did you ever . . .”

The old man lurched forward in his chair. “Did I ever break my vow of celibacy? Are you being audacious enough to ask me that? Me?”

“I-I-I,” Hudson bumbled. “Not audacious, sir. But . . .”

“Fine. It’s an honest answer. God needs priests with balls, too.”

Hudson’s brow shot up.

“No, I never broke my vow of celibacy, and I’ve been a priest for almost seventy years.” The monsignor’s gaze sharpened to pinpoints on Hudson. “But I’ll tell you this. I almost did many times, but in the end, I resisted.”

“That’s . . . probably easier said than done.”

“Nope. I asked God to take the burden of my temptations off of my shoulder and onto his. And he did. He always does”—very quickly, the Monsignor pointed—“if you have faith.”

“I have faith, Monsignor.”

“Of course you do, but you’re also full of idealism—you’re too young to know what you’re talking about.” The old smile leveled on Hudson. “I’ll bet you don’t even masturbate—”

Hudson didn’t, but he blushed.

“I won’t ask if you do or you don’t, but know this, young man. There’ll be none of that shit after you’re a priest.”

Hudson had to laugh.

“All I’m saying is it’s reasonable in God’s eyes to get all of that out of your system before you take your true vows. That’s why I won’t give you a referral until you’ve gone out into the world for a year or so. You see, if I recommend you to a seminary, what I’m really doing is recommending you to God. Don’t make a monkey out of me in front of God.”

This guy’s a trip, Hudson thought. “I understand, sir.”

“Good, so where are you going?”

Hudson drew on a long breath. “Florida, I think. I grew up in Maryland, where I learned to shuck oysters. I could get a job doing that.”

“Good, a real-world job, like I’ve been saying.”

“A friend of mine lives down there now. We were acolytes together.”

The old priest’s eyes widened. “Is he in the vocation?”

Hudson chuckled. “No, sir, I’m afraid not. He’s, I guess, lost his faith, but—”

“Excellent. You can help him find it again while you’re shucking oysters in Florida and experiencing real life. The real world, Hudson. You need to know it before you can be a priest.”

“Yes, sir.”

The monsignor looked at his watch. “I have a golf match now. Make sure you clean all the windows in the chancellery today. Then you can take off. Go to Florida, live amongst the other people. Then come back in a year or so and I’ll get you into any seminary you want.”

“Thank you, Monsignor.” Hudson kissed the old man’s ring as he reached for his golf bag . . .

That was the dream. Hudson awoke late, slightly hung-over. He supposed a soon-to-be seminarist getting half drunk was easily more pardonable than soliciting hookers. He was proud of himself for resisting the temptation last night, but then . . .

Pride’s a sin, too.

Had it really been resistance, had it really been faith? Had passing up the prostitutes to help a poor woman really been a good deed? Or was it just guilt?

He hoped it wasn’t the latter.

He had very little money right now, especially after emptying his wallet to the poor mother last night. And he’d been let go at the Oyster House several days ago due to a recession-induced lull in local tourism. It didn’t matter, though; he’d be leaving for the seminary in Jersey in less than a week, and he could always get a meal at the church where he helped out with lay duties. He had to go there today, as a matter of fact, to help Father Darren prep for the late service. God will provide, he thought, and believed it. But still . . .

It would be nice to have a little cash for his remaining days in town.

Hudson grimaced when a knock resounded at the door.

Oh, for pity’s sake . . . It had to be somebody selling something. No one else ever knocked on Hudson’s door. He pulled on his robe inside out.

“Look, whatever it is you’re selling,” he preempted when he opened the front door, “I’m flat broke—” But the rest was severed when he looked at his caller.

An attractive but blank-faced woman stood without. The cause of Hudson’s jolt was her attire: a long black surplice and, of all things, a Roman collar. A female minister? he hazarded. Must be asking for donations—He could’ve laughed. Lady, you picked the WRONG door to knock on today!

Her blonde hair had been pulled back; her eyes were an odd dull blue. She was in her forties but striking: shapely, ample bosomed. A stout wooden cross hung about her neck.

“Are you Hudson Hudson?” the woman asked in the driest tone.

“Yes, and I’d love to give a donation but I’m afraid—”

“My name is Deaconess Wilson.” She stared as she spoke, as if on tranquilizers.

“I’m sorry . . . Deaconess, but I don’t have any money—”

“I’m here to tell you that you’ve won the Senary,” she said.

Hudson stalled. “The what?”

She handed him a nine-by-six manila envelope. “May I . . . come in, Mr. Hudson?”

Hudson winced. “I’d rather you didn’t, the place is a—” He looked at the envelope. “What is this?”

“It . . . would be easier if I told you inside . . .”

He stepped back. Obviously she was Protestant. “All right, but just for a minute. I’m very busy,” he lied.

She entered slowly as if unsure of her footing. Hudson closed the door. “Now what’s this? I’ve won the what?”

She turned and stood perfectly still. It occurred to Hudson now that whenever she spoke, she seemed to falter, as if either she didn’t know what to say or she was resisting something.

“The Senary,” she said in that low monotone. “It’s like . . . a lottery.”

“Well I never signed up for any Senary, and I never bought a ticket.”

“You don’t have to. All you have to . . . do is be born.” She blinked. “I’ve been instructed to inform you that you’re the twelfth person to win the Senary. Ever. In all of history.”

“Oh, you’re with one of those apocalyptic religious sects—”

“No, no.” The deaconess ground her teeth. “I’m just . . . the messenger, so to speak.” Then she flinched and shook her head. “I’m-I’m . . . not sure what I’m supposed to say . . .”

Crazy, Hudson thought, a little scared now. Mental patient with some religious delusion. Probably just escaped from a hospital.

She groaned. “You see, every . . . six hundred . . . and sixty-six . . . years, someone wins the Senary. This . . . time it’s . . . you.”

She reminded Hudson of a faulty robot, experiencing minor short circuits. Several times her hands rose up, then lowered. She’d shrug one shoulder for no reason, wince off to one side, flinch, raise a foot, then put it back down. And again he had the impression that some aspect of her volition was resisting an unbidden impulse when her hands struggled to rise again.

Shaking, they stopped at the top button of her surplice. Then, as if palsied, her fingers began to unfasten the buttons.

Her words faltered. “Ssssssss-atan fell from Heaven in 5318 BC. The ffffffffff-irst Senary was held in 4652 BC. It was wuh-wuh-won by a Cycladean coppersmith named Ahkazm.”

Crazy. Pure-ass crazy, Hudson knew now. Yet, he didn’t throw her out. Instead he just stood . . . and watched.

Watched her completely unbutton the surplice, skim it off along with the Roman collar and cross. She jittered a bit when she faced Hudson more resolutely, as if to display her total nakedness to him.

I don’t BELIEVE this . . .

“Listen,” he finally forced himself to say. “You’re going to have to—”

The image of her body stunned him. Her torso was a perfect hourglass of flesh; high, full breasts; flat stomach and wide hips. Her skin shone in perfect, proverbial alabaster white.

Hudson’s eyes inched lower, to her pubis, where his speechless gaze was hijacked by a plenteous triangle of bronze fur.

This deaconess had one full-tilt body . . .

“I-I-I,” she faltered. The dull blue of her eyes seemed to implore him. “I’ve been instructed . . . to tell you that you kuh-kuh-can sodomize me if you ssssssso . . . desire, or-or-or I will give you . . . oral . . . ssssssex. It’sssss part of winning the Senary.” She seemed to gag. “It’ssss what they said to say.” Then she turned, quite robotically—showing an awesome rump—and foraged through some old cupboards.

“They said?” Hudson questioned. “Who’s they?”

“A Class III Machinator and his Spotter,” she told him, still rummaging. “They’re Bio-Wizards. They work in a Channeling Fortress in the Emetic District. They’re mmmmmm-achinating me. That’s why . . . I’m acting errrrrrr-atically. They’re manipulating my . . . will.” Then she bent over, to search a lower cabinet.

Holy moly! As wrong as all this was—especially for a future seminarist—Hudson couldn’t take his eyes off her physique. When she’d bent, the action only amplified the magnificence of her rump. “What are you looking for?” he finally asked.

“Ah. Here.” She straightened, holding a bottle of Vigo olive oil. She stood awkwardly then, and began smoothing palmfuls of the oil over her body. Hudson stared, stupefied.

What am I going to do? he thought. I’ve got a buck-naked deaconess with a body like Raquel Welch in Fantastic Voyage lubing herself up with my Vigo. This is insane. SHE’S insane.

She sat up on the dowdy kitchen table and lay back, continuing to spread the oil. Her skin glimmered almost too intensely to focus on for long. “They t-t-told me you’d like thissssss.”

“Uh, well . . .”

“I-I-I’m chaste, by the way—I have . . . to tell you that, too.” Now her hands were reoiling her breasts and belly. “It’s a prerequisite. Any Senarial Messenger mmmmm-ust be virginal, as well as a guh-guh-guh-godly person.” She pulled her knees back, then splashed some oil between her spread legs. “You kuh-kuh-can put it right . . . here,” she said, and touched her anus. “Would you like to?”

Hudson stared at the question as much as the gleaming spectacle. Simply thinking about doing it seemed more luxurious than anything he’d ever fathomed. But—

I am NOT going to have anal sex with a crazy deaconess!

“Or-or-or . . . here,” she said, now pressing the perfect breasts together, to highlight the slippery valley. “Just nuh-nuh-not my vuh-vuh-vuh-vagina . . . I mmmmmust remain chaste.”

The action of her hands, in tandem with the shining, perfect skin, nearly hypnotized Hudson. It seemed as though she were wearing a magnifying glass out in the sun; that’s how brightly she gleamed. His arousal became uncomfortable in his pants. This woman’s off the deep end. I need to get her out of here. Yet every time he resolved to tell her to leave, the image of her body grew more intense, silencing him, commanding him to watch.

Now her hands massaged the oil into the abundant triangle, which began to shine like spun gold.

This is too much . . . Hudson thought.

The woman simply lay still, waiting.

“You-you-you-you’re allowed to,” she droned.

Hudson reeled, staring.

“No,” he blurted, cursing himself. I want to, damn it, but . . . “You’re going to have to leave, miss. Are you on medication or something? Drugs? I could call a hotline through my church—”

“You’re-you’re-you’re . . . not interested?”

“No.”

“Oh,” she responded. “Okay.” Then she dully put her raiments back on, adjusting the white collar. She shambled to the sink to soap and wash her hands.

For land’s sake. What is going ON?

Hudson watched, mute, as she ground her teeth a few more times, winced, then headed for the door.

“You’re-you’re under no obligation, by the way,” she said, her back to him. “I’m-I’m-I’m ssssss-upposed to tell you that, and muh-muh-make it clear.”

“What is this Senary stuff!” Hudson barked.

“But if you’re . . . interested . . . Fuh-fuh-follow the instructions,” she feebled, and then she walked out of the apartment, leaving Hudson dumbstruck, painfully aroused, and smelling olive oil.

Did any of that really happen? He stared at the closed door for five full minutes. Perhaps he’d dreamed it; perhaps he was sleeping. He pinched himself hard and frowned. But if you’re interested . . . follow the instructions.

Only then did he realize he was still holding the envelope she’d initially given him.

He opened it and pulled out, first, a plain sheet of paper on which had been floridly handwritten:YOU HAVE WON THE SENARY. ALL WILL BE EXPLAINED IF YOU CHOOSE TO PROCEED. SHOULD YOU DECIDE THAT YOU ARE INTERESTED, CARRY ON TO THE FOLLOWING ADDRESS AFTER SUNDOWN WITHIN THE NEXT SIX DAYS.

An unfamiliar address—24651 Central—was written below, which he believed was somewhere in the downtown area. Hudson read what remained.YOU ARE UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO ACCEPT, AND WHETHER YOU DO OR NOT, YOU MAY KEEP THE REMUNERATION.

Remuner—

Hudson dug back into the envelope and discovered another envelope.

It felt fat.

He tore it open and found—

Holy SHIT . . .

—$6,000 in crisp and apparently brand-new one-hundred-dollar bills. The bills were oddly bundled, however, in paper-clipped divisions of six.

CHAPTER TWO

(I)

“You gotta be shitting me!” Gerold muttered when he wheeled up to Worden’s Hardware Store. He’d always liked the place because it reminded him of days past—days when recessions weren’t strangling the economy and changing the way people shopped. Now everything was malls, Internet shopping, and Home Depots the size of naval vessels. Whatever happened to mom-and-pop shops? Modernity, that’s what. There was no place for them these days, just as there was no place for small, family-owned hardware stores like Worden’s where the people working there actually knew what they were talking about.

Hence, Gerold’s displeasure, after wheeling three blocks in the sun from the bus stop. The sign was a sign of the times: SORRY, WORDEN’S IS NO LONGER IN BUSINESS. THANK YOU FOR FIFTY YEARS OF SUPPORT.

Gerold had specifically come here for something, but now he’d have to bus to Home Depot. Shit.

He’d come here to buy about twenty feet of decent gauge rope so that he could hang himself. “Not today,” he mumbled and wheeled off. He wasn’t up for the extra bus to Home Depot right now. Looks like I’ll have to go to work tomorrow after all . . . ’cos I won’t be dead yet.

He’d already figured how he would do it, but it would have to be late. Gerold’s apartment was on the third floor (the only inexpensive apartment building in town with an elevator). He’d wait till two, three in the morning, tie one end of the rope to the balcony rail, then fling himself off. If anybody even woke up in the apartment below, Gerold felt sure he’d be dead before they could do anything, and he didn’t like those people anyway—a snitty retired couple who always ignored him and frowned when he was doing his laundry. He guessed they thought a paraplegic’s dirty laundry was grosser than theirs.

Maybe when I hang myself, I’ll do it naked, with my catheter bag hanging. When those assholes come out in the morning for their coffee—surprise! The idea made Gerold smile.

Months ago he printed a how-to sheet off the Internet: the precise way to make a hangman’s noose.

The sun’s heat drummed into him, but in the time it would take the next bus to come, he could be home anyway. Several rednecks in a dented hot rod grinned at him when the WALK light came on. “It says walk, not roll!” one of them laughed. Gerold said nothing; he was used to it. His rolling trek continued, down the main road. Eventually, though, he stopped, and he didn’t know what caused him to do so. He sat there for several minutes, staring.

His eyes had fixated on a looming crucifix . . .

The church, he realized after several more moments. Why had he wheeled a block past his apartment? Subconscious, probably. The dying Catholic in him knew the never-changing rule: If you kill yourself, you go to Hell. No matter what. No exceptions.

It seemed like a ridiculous rule.

Shit, I don’t even know if I believe in Heaven or Hell . . . Still, without much forethought, he wheeled toward the high-ceilinged church, the same church he attended every Sunday. What am I doing? If I don’t believe in Heaven or Hell, then that means I don’t believe in God, and if I don’t believe in God, why am I rolling this FUCKIN’ chair toward the CHURCH?

A slim, dark-haired man in his midtwenties came out of the rectory/school building. He was toting a garbage bag. “How’s it going? Is there anything I can help you with?”

Gerold felt silly. “Well, um . . .” That’s when he recognized the guy—one of the church assistants. He wore black shoes, black slacks, black shirt, but no white collar. “I’ve seen you plenty of times.”

“Yeah, my name’s Hudson.”

They shook hands. “I’m Gerold.”

“I’ve seen you, too,” Hudson said.

I’m easy to remember. The young guy in the FUCKIN’ chair. “Oh, and you know, I think I saw you in the bar last night, the Lounge . . .” Gerold’s eyes thinned. “Er, well, maybe it was someone else.”

“I confess,” Hudson said. “It was me. I was . . . having a few beers.”

“Oh, yeah, and the baseball game.” But now it all felt dismal. It reminded him of going there in the first place, and seeing those two hookers.

“You look like something’s on your mind,” Hudson said.

“Yeah, I guess there is.” Then Gerold laughed. “I’m not even sure why I came here.”

“There’s a late service at 7:30, but you’ve still got a few hours to wait.”

“I . . . have a question, I guess.”

“Okay.”

“But . . . you’re not a priest, are you?”

“No, no, but I hope to be some day. I leave for the seminary next week. I just help out around here, Communion prep, Epistle readings”—he held up the big plastic bag—“taking out the garbage. If it’s spiritual counsel you want, I can make an appointment for you with Father Darren.”

The thought chilled Darren. “Oh, no, see, he knows me—”

Hudson laughed. “He’s a priest, Gerold. He’s sworn to confidentiality.”

Gerold wasn’t convinced. He didn’t want to be embarrassed or look foolish. “I’d rather ask you ’cos you strike me as a regular guy.”

Hudson chuckled. “Well, I am, I suppose. What’s your question?”

“If,” he began but at once, he didn’t really know what to say. “If you’re sorry for your sins, you’re forgiven, right?”

“Sure. If you’re really sorry.”

“Well . . . is it possible to be sorry for a sin you haven’t committed yet but know you will?”

Hudson paused, and something about his demeanor darkened. “I’m not liking the sound of this, Gerold. Are you talking about suicide?”

Gerold could’ve howled. How the hell did he know! “No, man. It’s just a question. I’m curious.”

Hudson’s look indicated that he didn’t believe it. “The answer to your question is no. Being truly sorry for a sin is fine, even a potential sin, but only along with an act of repentance. How can a person repent if they’re dead?”

Gerold said nothing.

“Let’s go into the office right now. I’ll hook you up with one of the hotlines.”

“No, no, you’ve got this all wrong,” Gerold lied, sweating hard now. “I’m not going to kill myself—”

“Let me get Father Darren. He’d be happy to talk to you—”

“No, no, please, it’s nothing—”

“Gerold. Swear that you won’t kill yourself, or I’ll call a hotline right now.”

Gerold cringed in the chair. Me and my big mouth! “I swear I won’t kill myself.”

“Swear to God.”

Gerold sighed. “All right, I swear to God I won’t kill myself—”

“Swear to God on the Bible.”

Gerold laughed. “What, you carry a Bible around in your back pocket?”

From his back pocket, Hudson produced a Bible.

“Come on, man,” Gerold groaned.

“Swear on it.”

Gerold put his hand on the Bible. “I swear to God on the Bible that I won’t kill myself.”

“Good.” Hudson regained his ease. “If you break that, you’ll be in a world of hurt. God’s a nice guy but he’s also been known for some big-time wrath in the past. Trust me, you don’t want to incur it—”

“I’m not gonna kill myself, man . . .”

“You’re coming to the service tonight?”

“No. Sunday.”

“For sure?”

Jesus! “Yes. I always do.”

“Good. I’ll make an appointment for you to talk to Father Darren afterward, okay?”

Gerold slumped in place. “Okay.”

Hudson grinned. “Now, if you don’t show up, I’ll find out where you live—it’s in the church records—and I’ll bring half the congregation to your apartment, and there’ll be a big scene, and you’ll really be embarrassed—”

Gerold laughed outright now.

“—so you’ll be there, right?”

“Yes!” Gerold insisted. “I promise!”

“Good.” Hudson winked. “I’ll see you then.”

“Yeah. Later.” Gerold thought, What a pain in the ass! But at least he was laughing as he wheeled back down the block. His shadow followed him along the sidewalk. He didn’t feel very good about lying so outright but what could he do? Hudson expected him in church Sunday, but he was certain he’d be dead by then.

(II)

The Electrocity Generators hummed as the main phalanx of Ushers marched in formation about the security perimeter. The brimstone wall completely encircled the construction site, each joist fitted with a chapel in which Mongrels and the Human Damned were mutilated and sacrificed on a regular basis. The constant torture and screams and death kept the Hell-Flux about the Demonculus rich.

In the tallest minaret, the Archlock Curwen—the Devil’s Supreme Master Builder—watched from the eyelike observation port. He existed as Hell’s most talented Organic Engineer.

He looked up, up, up . . .

This close, the 666-foot figure looked mountainous. Tens of thousands of forced laborers had been required to build it, most of the abomination’s body being forged out of noxious slop by the bare hands of trained Trolls and Imps. The majority of the labor contingent, however, had been comprised of sundry other denizen slaves engaged in the task of hauling the immeasurable amounts of construction material from the Siddom Valley’s famed Basin Putrudus, the Inferno’s most immense corpse pit. Technically, the Demonculus was a Golem—the largest ever built—but unlike this lower variant, it was not made of corrupted clay; instead, the appalling wares of the Basin Putrudus were used: peatlike muck commingled with the putrefaction of unnumbered dead bodies—millions, no doubt. The material’s very vileness gave the Demonculus its sheer power. So gorgeous, Curwen mused. Looking at the motionless creature now, he thought of a heinous version of the Colossus of Rhodes . . .

The Master Builder was pleased, as he knew Lucifer would soon be as well.

Curwen had died in 1771 when suspicious villagers had raided his subterranean chancel and caught him in an act of blasphemous coition with a conjured demonness. He was buried alive on Good Friday. Yet his unrepentant sorcery—including the untold murder of children, the consumption of virginal blood for ritualism and sport, and the overall pursuit of all things ungodly—left him in great favor upon his death and descent into Hell, such that the ultimate Benefactor here entrusted Curwen to this most unholy of endeavors. Indeed, Lucifer had told him outright in his impossible, shining voice, “My brother Curwanus, you are perhaps the only of the Human Damned I trust; hence, it is into your hands that I place this task, one of the greatest offenses against God ever devised. I have foreseen that you shan’t disappoint me.”

Indeed, I shan’t, Curwen thought, still staring up at the beatific—and atrocious—thing. Soon, he knew, the lifeless horror that was the Demonculus’s very body would thrum with life . . .

MY life. To forever serve the Lord of Lies . . .

In his lofty title of Master Builder, Curwen wore the brand of the Archlock on his forehead—the inverted cross blazing within the Sign of the Eye, proof of his Oath of Faith and completion of Metaphysical Conditioning—and a radiant warlock’s surplice of spun lead. This rarest of garments shined much like Lucifer’s voice, and proved still more of his Lord’s trust in him. And being one of status, Curwen knew that the Demonculus was but one of many such new projects serving Satan’s un-divine plan, projects of the most serious import. He’d heard rumors—which were rife in Hell—that something incalculable was brewing in the Great Emptiness Quarter. Though he hoped that all ungodly pursuits succeeded grandly, his pride made him hope that the Demonculus succeeded above all the others, for there was no true god but Lucifer, the Morning Star, once the Angel of Light but now the Prince of all Darkness.

The creature’s sheer height—that of a seventy-story building—forbade the use of scaffolds, which turned impractical past 300 or so feet. Instead, crew pallets buoyed in the air by noble gas balloons—Balloon Skiffs—sufficed, each overseen by a Conscript and Air Operator. From the skiffs, Imps and Trolls leaned out to manipulate the Demonculus’s flesh, with bare hands and styli administering the final touches to the thing’s pestilent outer skin. Many such artisans fell—indeed, some jumped of their own will—but were replaced by the next cycle.

The Master Builder watched fascinated as the highest such balloon hovered at the Demonculus’s face, a slab of horror with gashes for eyes and mouth. Soon, Curwen thought, unholy life will shine behind those dead eyes, while MY heart beats in its infernal chest . . .

Hundreds of feet below him, a clamor rose, as did Curwen’s joy. Ushers and Constabularies were unloading prison wagons full of the next round of sacrifants, most of whom appeared to be women and children.

(III)

After sundown within the next six days, the words rolled around his head like dice. Hudson walked down the side road toward the glittering lights and hot-rod-and-motorcycle traffic of the main drag, his return trip from that evening’s church duties. The money hadn’t vanished yet, so by ten P.M. he had no choice but to believe that the entire incident with Deaconess Wilson was not the product of a dream.

That’s a lot of money, he thought.

Walking along, he wondered briefly about the young guy he’d spoken with earlier—Gerold, in the wheelchair. Hudson had seen that look before during his volunteer duties in hospices and critical-care wards. The look of death in someone still alive. One could only do so much, he knew, but at least Hudson felt some relief in the nearly universal notion that true suicidals never raised the issue. He felt reasonably sure that Gerold would attend Sunday services and talk to Father Darren afterward.

He damn well better.

He walked into the Qwik-Mart, a ubiquitous 7-Eleven clone that was stuck between a pizza place and a Thai restaurant. It was here that Hudson’s best friend from childhood worked night shifts—Randal—who’d now risen to manager. One could never see inside due to the literal wallpapering of the front glass with poster-size advertisements: mostly LatinoAmerica! phone cards and the state lottery. PLAY TO WIN! one poster assaulted him. Doesn’t everybody? Hudson figured. Does anybody play to LOSE? But then he caught himself staring.

Lottery, he thought. Senary. Then: It’s like . . . a lottery, he recalled the naked deaconess. But how could I win when I never played? I never bought a ticket, never got my numbers. Hudson didn’t even believe in lotteries, which tended to bilk money out of the poor with false hopes. When he nudged the thought behind him and edged into the store, an irritating cowbell rang.

No customers occupied the disheveled and poorly stocked store. A rat looked up from the hot-dog rotisserie, then darted into the gap between the wall and counter. I pity the rat that eats one of those hot dogs, Hudson commiserated. He frowned around the establishment. No customers, true, and no Randal.

A door clicked, then came the aggressive snap of flip-flops. Hudson’s brow shot up when a skanky young woman in frayed cutoffs and a faded but overflowing bikini top snapped out of the rear hall. Her sloppy breasts were huge, swaying as though the top’s cups were hammocks, and no doubt most of their distention could be attributed to the fact that their scroungy owner had to be eight-plus-months pregnant. The tanned, veiny belly stretched tight as an overblown balloon around a popped-out navel like someone’s pinkie toe. That’s not a bun in the oven, Hudson thought. It’s the whole bakery. But he saw women such as this all too frequently. A prostitute even lower on the social rungs than the women he’d nearly solicited last night. These drug-addict urchins were the flotsam of the local streets.

“Is, uh, Randal around?”

She frowned back, neglecting to answer. She kept her lips tightly closed, and began looking around the store. Hudson immediately got the impression that she had a mouthful of something and was desperate to find a place to expectorate.

When she found no convenient wastebasket—

splap . . .

—she bowed her head by a carousel of potato chips and spat on the floor.

Then she winced at Hudson in his neat black attire. “What are you, a priest or somethin’?”

“I’m a . . . seminarist-to-be,” Hudson replied.

She kept wincing.

“Is Randal around?”

“I don’t know the asshole’s name, buddy,” she snapped. She yanked off several bags of chips, attacked a Mrs. Freshley’s snack cake rack, paused, then darted behind the service counter and grabbed a carton of Marlboros. “The tightwad poo-putt motherfucker’s in back.” Then the cowbell clanged and she flip-flopped briskly out, milk-sodden breasts tossing as if they sought to rock their way out of the top.

The sidewall was hung with black velvet paintings of either Elvis, Jeff Gordon, or Christ. The Jesus paintings were cheapest. Randal appeared next, looking displeased. “Oh, hey, man.”

“Hi, Randal. An . . . acquaintance of yours just made a speedy exit. Probably not on her way back to Yale.”

“The dumb ho. Pain in the ass. Gives the worst bj’s in town but at least I talked her down to fifteen.” Randal shook his head—a shaggy head and an atrocious Talibanlike beard. “Guess I get what I pay for.”

“You may have gotten a little more than you paid for.” Hudson pointed to the floor where the woman had spat.

Randal’s nostrils flared, like those of an indignant bull. “That bitch! She spat my load on the floor?”

“And then promptly relieved you of some chips, snack cakes, and one carton of Marlboros.”

“That bitch! That thieving pregnant bitch!”

“ ‘The wages of sin are death,’ ” Hudson recited. “It’s God’s way of saying ‘what goes around, comes around.’ Think about it.”

“Oh, listen to Mr. Almost-A-Priest over here. Mr. Celibacy. I’ve seen you eyeball chicks before.” Randal grinned wickedly. “Didn’t Jesus say that if you look at a chick and think, ‘Wow, I’d love to plug her slot,’ that’s the same as really doing her?”

“Well, not in language quite so refined,” Hudson laughed, “but, yes, he did.” He was going to further point out his lifelong celibacy but then declined. Don’t be a hypocrite. Crude as he may be, Randal’s right. Last night I came very close to being a whoremonger.

“So what is it, next month you’re going to this seminary?”

“Next week,” Hudson corrected.

“Fuck, man. Change your mind. You can still do good deeds and shit without becoming a priest.”

“Well said, Randal, but, no, I’m not changing my mind. It’s something I’ve been thinking about my whole life pretty much. You’re my best friend, you should want me to pursue my dreams.”

“If never getting laid is your dream? You’re fucked up.”

“Thanks.”

“Besides, look what you’re doing to me. You’ll be leaving me stuck in this criminal armpit town of ours. I’ll be all alone with junkies, bums, whores, psychos. How can you do that to me?”

“You’ll manage. And since I won’t be seeing you again for a while, why don’t you go to church with me this Sunday? It’ll be like old times, when we were kids.”

Randal hesitated. “Naw, not my style. I haven’t been to church in so long, I’d probably get repelled by the cross, like a fuckin’ force field.”

“Have some faith, Randal. You used to.”

“Yeah, before I started working here.” He clattered out a mop and bucket. “Here’s my faith, man. This mop.” He ground his teeth. “How do you like that dizzy, knocked-up ho? Walks in here with a bellyful of white trash and rips me off? Hocks my jizz on the floor?” He sloshed the mop over the spot. “Got to clean this up before some junkie, bum, ex-con, or all of the above walks in here, sees it, then slips on purpose. Then the redneck scum sues the store for ten million bucks and wins.”

Wow, that’s some heavyweight cynicism, Hudson thought. He watched Randal haphazardly mop up the expectorant, then roll the bucket back down the hall. “You know, you’ve got to be the only guy in town who wants to stay a virgin his whole life.”

“There’s plenty of Catholic clergy in this town, and everywhere, Randal. Sexual abstention is an utmost oblation to God. Christ was chaste, so when a mortal man strives to be chaste, he struggles to imitate Christ. God likes that.”

Randal looked off, nebulous. “Speaking of celibacy, wasn’t there some saint a long time ago who actually cut his own johnson off to prove his faith in God?”

Hudson sighed. “Actually several saints are rumored to have done that but no one knows for sure.”

Now Randal looked focused. “Okay, so say a saint did it—he cut off his meat missile . . . Aren’t saints supposed to be—shit, what’s the word? Pristine? When they die, they don’t rot?”

“There are dozens of cases of dead saints being exhumed and their bodies found in pristine condition, yes.”

Randal stroked his chin, in deep thought. “Okay, so say some saint in the Middle Ages cut off his pud. Well?”

“Well what?”

“Well then his pud would be pristine, too, right? It would have to be. So when he dies, he never rots, but neither does his cut-off dick.”

Hudson groaned.

“Serious. If it’s true, then there’s probably some box somewhere that’s got some saint’s dick in it, and it looks like it got cut off a minute ago.”

Hudson shook his head at the whimsy. “Randal, if you used your powers of creative thinking for something practical, you’d be a genius.”

“Yeah.” Randal began to diddle with a clipboard, his ludicrous contemplations already faded. “Anyway, as you can see, my job’s a pile of shit, so how’s yours going? The oyster shucking business?”

“They were about to lay me off again so I just put in my notice and they let me go on the spot.”

“Wow, that really shucks, man.” Randal laughed. “Get it?”

Hudson groaned. “It’s no big deal because I’m leaving next week anyway.”

Randal poured two coffees, but the brew looked like squid ink. “That pregnant hooker really pisses me off. One of these days I’ll find a decent one.”

“Most of those girls are drug addicts,” Hudson affirmed. “When you solicit them for sex, you’re helping them remain in an environment of moral bankruptcy, degradation, and misery.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Randal sputtered.

“If you give them money for drugs in exchange for action, it’s the same as if you’re buying the drugs yourself. It all goes to the same place, the same evil. Besides, hookers and johns offend God.”

“Here we go with this shit again.” Randal grabbed a broom and whisked it around the store, half assed. “If there was a God, then there’d be no drug addiction, so then there’d be no girls offering to do you for money.”

Hudson frowned. “I think God is about free will, Randal. It’s about the choice. Does one choose to do drugs or does one choose not to? Do they choose to consort with prostitutes or do they choose not to? God’s really got nothing to do with it.”

“Whatever . . .” Randal swept some dust beneath the counter. “So, what? You came in here tonight just to try to con me into going to church?”

“Well . . . I wanted to ask a favor.”

“Fuck no, man. Get out of my store.” Randal hooted. “Relax! I’m kidding.” Then his eyes darted. “Damn, I forgot.” He opened the glass door on the rotisserie, then spat on the hot dogs.

“What the hell!”

Randal smirked. “Those fuckin’ things are a buck a pack wholesale. But if you spit on ’em every hour, they last longer. Only people who buy ’em are the bums and illegals. Big deal. Besides, the heat kills the germs.”

Hudson didn’t know what to say.

“So what’s this pain-in-the-ass favor?”

Hudson didn’t like to lie but in this circumstance—A nude deaconess?—he could surmise no other option. “I found a hundred-dollar bill today in the street but, I don’t know—it feels funny.”

“Funny?” Randal questioned. “As in fake?”

“Well, yeah, I guess. It’s, like, brand-new. But I’ve seen you check bills here with the funky pen . . .”

“Anything for a friend.” Randal got it. “You want to make sure it’s not funny money before you try to spend it.”

“Exactly.”

Behind the counter, Randal produced a fat black pen whose body read SMARTCASH—COUNTERFEIT DETECTION MARKER. Hudson gave him one of the ultracrisp bills.

“I get a 20 percent commission if it’s real, right?” Randal posed, holding the uncapped marker.

Anything for a friend, my ass, Hudson realized. “Yeah, sure.”

Randal rubbed the bill between his fingers. “Wow, that is new.” He grinned up. “You sure you’re not printing these up in your pad?”

“With what? My oyster board?”

Randal chuckled. “Or maybe in the church! That whacko Father Darren’s probably printing his own funny money and getting you to pass it!”

“Hilarious.”

Randal drew a quick notch on the bill, then gave the iodine-saturated ink time to dry.

It’s fake, Hudson knew. It’s got to be fake. It’s just some scam I haven’t figured out yet. Six grand landing in his lap out of the blue like this? Too good to be true.

Randal shrugged, deposited the bill in the register, and gave Hudson eighty dollars back. “It’s real.”

“You’re kidding me . . .”

“It’s as real as my coffee is bad.”

“That’s real.”

“I’m gonna spend my end on another hooker tonight, but not that ratchet-job knocked-up cow that just left. What’cha gonna spend the rest on?”

Hudson wavered, suddenly hard-pressed to conceal his excitement. But this is avarice, isn’t it? He’d been given a very mysterious $6,000 via a very mysterious scenario. Nevertheless, the money was real, and the arcane note she’d left indicated that he could keep it under no obligation. “I’ll probably put it in the church plate.”

Randal bristled. “Fuck that! Put it in my plate! That damn church gets all kinds of money!”

“Tell you what, I’ll take us both out to dinner before I leave.”

“Cool!”

Two roughneck construction workers came in and each purchased a hot dog. Hudson cringed as they left.

“I should’ve asked them how my spit tastes.” Randal honked laughter.

“That’s pretty revolting, man.”

The bell rung. “You wanna talk about revolting? Check this homeless scumbag out,” Randal said.

A malodorous man who surely weighed 400 pounds squeezed through the door. He mumbled to himself, his lips like mini bratwursts on the huge, greasy face. A rim of long gray-black hair (with flecks of garbage in it) half circumscribed the bald, dirt-smudged head. Stained orange sweatpants clung to elephantine legs, and for a shirt he wore a reeking yellow raincoat. He seemed to jabber something like, “I am by a vent with a bone,” and, “Would somebody please cut off my head?”

Jesus, Hudson thought. The poor bastard. Totally destitute and schizophrenic. It seemed there were more and more of these lost souls popping up all the time since the recession hit.

Randal cut Hudson a snide grin. “So we’re all children of God, huh? Well if so, then God’s got a shitload of fucked-up kids.”

“It doesn’t involve God at all,” Hudson answered, unfazed. “Humanity exists in error ever since Eve bit the apple. God gave us the brains and the wherewithal to help people like this guy, with medical technology and compassion. But we have to choose to have the grace to do it.” Hudson reached in his pocket.

“Don’t you dare give that walking garbage can money,” Randal ordered. “The shit-smelling fucker rips me off all the time.” He rapped a baseball bat against the counter, and yelled at the man, “Get out of here! I’ve got you on tape ripping off Wing Dings and Yoo-hoos three nights in a row!”

The man looked back, wobbling. His phlegmatic voice fluttered. “I wanna-wanna ha-ha-hot dog! It was Peter Lawford—Bobby watched the door . . .”

Randal CLACKED! the bat again. “Take your crazy ass out of here! Otherwise I call the cops after I joggle that piss sponge you’ve got for a brain!”

“Fucker,” the voice rattled back; then he hitched and released a trumpet blast of colonic gas.

“Aw, Jesus! You’re a fuckin’ animal! How can somebody homeless weigh that much? You shoplift five thousand calories a day?”

Hudson’s eyes teared from the sudden waft.

“You’re a fucker!” the man warbled back.

Randal waved the bat. “I’m killin’ ya if you don’t GET OUT!”

The huge man shimmied in place, then leaned over, stuck his fingers down his throat, and—

“No! Don’t!”

—burped up what had to be a gallon of vomit. It hit the floor like a bucket of barley and vegetable soup.

“Holy shit!” Randal came around the counter with the bat, but Hudson grabbed him.

“Just let him go, man. He’s messed up, he can’t help it.”

Randal fumed, but by now the man had already wobbled out of the store. He looked at the splatter of vomit on the floor and nearly keeled over.

“Yeah, he can’t help it—shit.”

“It’s called compassion, man,” Hudson said, gagging at the smell. “You really have a lot of ill will inside, Randal. He can’t help the way he is.”

Randal wailed. “He just puked Niagara Falls on my floor!”

“Compassion, Randal. Compassion.”

“Fine, smart guy. Ready to walk it like you talk it?”

“How’s that?”

“Now you can have some compassion for me.” Randal threw Hudson a mop. “And help me clean this up.”

Hudson laughed and said, “Sure.”

(IV)

That night Hudson was heckled by a stew of awful dreams. He heard a wind that sounded like screams. Words seemed to fly in the air as if abstract birds: “DON’T BE A CRUMMY PERSON!” and “I AM BY A VENT WITH A BONE,” and “WALKS IN HERE WITH A BELLYFUL OF WHITE TRASH AND RIPS ME OFF?” and “I’M HERE TO TELL YOU THAT YOU’VE WON THE SENARY.”

He dreamed, first, of being body-rubbed by GAG and DO ME, both naked, of course, but just as the duo prepared to fellate him, they began to cackle like witches. Hudson’s eyes sprang open to see they now both had vampire fangs. Next, the dream showed him a Polanski-like tracking shot which soared about the nighted town amid an aural muttering that could only be described as black, and suddenly the point of view soared down onto a drab sidewalk and a fence and a trashily dressed woman climbing over that fence with a shovel in her hand, and as she did so she spat! in disgust, and now that Polanski dream-camera moves off; it’s picking up speed as it absurdly changes tenses; it seems to swerve, then dive, and caroms off to a strange smoking street tinted in weird light, which then opens to a football stadium–sized clearing sitting in the middle of a city crammed with leaning decrepit buildings, and this clearing is surrounded by a wall of pale white bricks the size of houses, and within this wall stands a drab statue hundreds of feet high, the largest statue Hudson has ever seen, and then the “camera” zooms in on the statue’s face, which looks like a great grimacing mask of mud, after which a squeaking noise is heard and visible however tinily along the top of the wall is a young man in a wheelchair and then—ZAP!—the point of view explodes to another grim and impossible place where hunched and vaguely unhuman workmen labor in silence as they build a house but very soon it becomes discernible that the workmen aren’t using bricks to build the house, they’re using human heads, and then, next, the camera shoots upward, rocketlike, and only plunges after an exceedingly long period until it fires through a stained-glass window and stops in the chancel of a church where six horned demons that look like skeletons covered with raw chicken skin cavort within a circle of brown ashes and stinking candles. A woman lies naked on the floor, her arms and legs lashed wide. One demon studies a scroll of yellowed paper while the other five amuse themselves by fondling the squirming woman. A lipless mouthful of pus sucks at the fur-rimmed flesh between the woman’s legs, two more sloppily suckle her bosom. The first looks up from the scroll and orders, “The Benumbment Spell has taken effect. The Inscriptions must begin.” But the entity’s voice sounds echoic and like gravel being poured from a dump truck. On command, each of the remaining things dip long, jointy fingers into what looks like a mortar. The fingers come away brown. “Anoint her,” speaks the primary demon. “Make her despoilment rich. It nourishes the Flux . . .” With their sullied fingertips, the demons begin to write on the woman’s luxuriant, nude body, and in the midst of the dream, Hudson’s psyche becomes active, and he wonders, What was that stuff in the cup? But the query is stifled when he sees exactly what the demons are inscribing: a multitude of sixes. “Good, good,” the first demon approves. “The anointing is sufficient.” The voice crackles and grinds. “We must discorporate shortly. Light the Subservience Ash.” Then it begins to intone words in some unknown language. Before the dream veers away, the woman’s face is finally revealed: Deaconess Wilson.

That’s when Hudson woke up.

What a pile of crap for a dream! his thoughts squalled. The recollections disgusted him. He dragged himself up, showered, then nearly howled when he looked at the clock.

Six P.M.

I slept the whole day away!

He searched the cupboards for something to eat but found nothing—just a bottle of Vigo olive oil. Great . . . Then he stared at the kitchen table, noticing the envelope full of money and the handwritten notice that he’d won the “Senary.” At least that part wasn’t a dream.

But what would he do with the cash? Save it? Or: I’ll put half in the bank and give the rest to the church or a homeless shelter.

Would that make him a better person in God’s eyes? He wondered. Don’t be a crummy person, the evangelist’s words kept sideswiping him. But when he looked at the envelope again . . .

Maybe it’s time to see what this Senary business is all about . . .

Two winos shared the bus shelter with him, sleeping or passed out. A third man, who looked normal, must’ve been possessed by some syndrome like Tourette’s. He peered right at Hudson and spouted, “Fuck luck suck druck muck cluck nuck tuck BLUCK!”

And a good day to you, too, Hudson thought. He dressed normally, in faded jeans and a T-shirt, sneakers. The shelter’s plastic windows shuddered when the bus pulled up.

Hudson took the first seat, while the winos neglected to get on. Maybe they’re . . . dead, he considered, looking out the window at them. They remained sidled over in the shelter, drooling. The Tourette’s man went all the way to the back; then the bus jerked away.

The Senary, Hudson contemplated. What the hell is it? He looked at the announcement, with the address and instructions.

. . . CARRY ON TO THE FOLLOWING ADDRESS AFTER SUNDOWN WITHIN THE NEXT SIX DAYS . . .

It had only been one day, and a glance to the horizon showed him he still had several hours before sundown. A copy of the Tampa Bay Times sat on his seat; Hudson picked it up, began to thumb through. One article enthused over the governor’s bid to build a “biomass” electric plant; the plant ran on natural gas derived from elephant grass and dog feces. Then Hudson spotted this:

FEMALE PASTOR DISAPPEARS

The article went on to disclose that Andrea Wilson, forty, a well-regarded deaconess at the Grace Unitarian Church of St. Petersburg, seemingly disappeared from her post several days ago. She gave no notice of resignation, nor notice of taking leave.

It’s her, Hudson thought when he looked at the accompanying picture, the blonde hair conservatively pulled back, the strongly angled but attractive face, and the Roman collar.

“She’s such a wonderful person,” quoted a woman who regularly attended the church. “She’s so inspiring, so full of faith. And she’s simply not the type of person to leave and not tell anyone where she went.”

I know where she went yesterday, came Hudson’s dreadful thought. My apartment, to tell me I’ve won a contest called the Senary, and then strip nude and rub herself down with my olive oil . . .

He wondered if he should call the police and tell them that he’d seen the missing woman, but . . . No. What on earth could I say?

He squinted at the next, shorter article, which reported that a grave had been vandalized late last night at Carver Forest Memorial Cemetery, and the very instant Hudson read the information, he glanced out the window to discover that the bus was cruising by a long, overgrown cemetery. The sign at a fenced entrance read CARVER FOREST. Uncanny, he thought. The spotty article went on to reveal that the grave vandalized had been that of a four-month-old infant who’d been murdered last spring.

Lord. What a world . . .

Hudson closed the paper when he saw his stop nearing. Had he turned the page he would’ve seen a grimmer article about the discovery of a dead newborn baby found in a recycle bin last night. Hudson pulled the cord. “Thank you, driver,” he said, and the driver, in turn, frowned. The Tourette’s man railed from the back of the bus just as Hudson stepped off: “Fuck suck schmuck gruck huck puck duck buck zuck wuck six.” Then the doors flapped closed.

Hudson turned as the bus pulled away. Did he say six? He squinted after the disappearing vehicle and saw the Tourette’s man give him the finger through the back window.

He walked down Central, shirking at loud cars and motorcycles. He’d already memorized the street address (24651) because he didn’t want to be consulting his wallet in this neck of the woods. The area was mostly ghetto, small saltbox houses in various states of disrepair. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, he considered when he noticed stragglers obviously selling drugs only blocks deeper off the road. Burned-up yards fronted most of the little houses; piles of junk sat like tepees amid trashed cars. So much for urban renewal . . .

He sensed more than saw a figure behind him.

“Yo!” came a girl’s voice.

Hudson turned, not quite at ease. A black girl in tight knee jeans and a zebra-striped tube top boldly approached him. Her dark skin gleamed over robust curves.

“How’s, uh, how’s it going?” Hudson bumbled.

“Why’n’cha lemme put some sizzle in your swizzle, man, like I’ll lay some bigtown xtralicious super gobble game on you for, like, twenty-five bucks,” she said.

“No, really, I—”

“Bullshit, man.” She stood haughtily, hand on a cocked hip. “I knows a john when I see one, and you a john. Come on, pussy or mouth, I got both. You wanna fuck, I kin tell.”

“No, really—”

“Yeah, you white guys’re all cheap motherfuckers. Awright, twenty bucks for a blow.”

Only now did Hudson fully realize how out of place he was. “I’m . . . not interested. I’m just trying to find an address.”

The gleam of her white teeth matched that of her skin. “Shee-it. You lookin’ for the Larken House, I know. Lotta folks always lookin’ for it. 24651, right?”

Hudson was astonished. “Well, yes.”

“Folks been walkin’ by it since it happened.”

“Since . . . what happened?”

“Don’t’choo watch the news?” She adjusted her tube top. “Couple, three months ago, a brother named Larken, work construction, he cut off his ole lady’s head when he found out the baby she had a couple months ’fore that were from a other dude. Cut her head off in the house, then walk right down this street and stick it on the antenna of the dude’s car ’cos, see, he hadda old car that had one’a them old-fashioned antennas on it. Then Larken come back the house and cut the baby’s head off, and he microwave it. Some say he fuck the headless wife on the kitchen table, too, but I dunno. Then he hang hisself. Said he had his cock out when he step off the chair.” She looked at him. “Fucked-up house, man.”

Hudson felt perplexed. “So that’s why people walk by it? Because it’s . . . infamous?”

“Yeah, man. ’Cos, sometime, they say, you kin see Larken in there, hangin’ by his neck. Sometimes you hear the baby cryin’.”

A HAUNTED house. Terrific, Hudson thought. “Most of these houses don’t seem to have addresses, even the ones that are obviously lived in.”

“Shee-it, sure. They take the numbers off so the pigs get confused,” she said. “You gimme twenty dollars’n I show you where the house is.”

“I’d be much obliged.” Hudson slipped a twenty from his pocket and gave it to her.

She grinned, stuffing the bill into her top, and pointed to the small, boarded-up house right in front of him.

“That’s it? For real?”

“Fo’ real, man.”

At first Hudson thought he was being taken but when he peered over the door, he noticed a black metal number six but also the ghosts of numbers that had fallen, or been taken off, a two and a four to the left, and a five and a one to the right.

“Thank you,” he said but the girl was already walking away.

Hudson peered at the squat house. It looked in better repair than many of the others on the street, even with its windows boarded over. Clapboard siding, fairly faded, portico over gravel where a garage should be, one level save for an awned attic. Screen door with a ripped screen.

What should I do, now that I’m here? he quizzed himself. Was he really going to break into a house where murders had occurred? And what if there were homeless people inside, or addicts? Am I REALLY going to do this?

But then he thought: The Senary . . .

The instructions, however, mentioned after sundown. Hudson still had about an hour, he thought. I’ll get something to eat and think this over.

He jaywalked to a Zappy’s Chicken Shack. Six patrons stood in line, and five of them appeared to be African American prostitutes. When his turn came, a Hispanic woman with half of one ear missing asked if she could help him.

Hudson ordered the Number Six special: three wings, a biscuit, and a drink. There’s that number six again, he reckoned. Just as he would sit down with his food, one of the prostitutes, a scarily thin woman with huge eyes and pigtails, slipped beside him and whispered, “Gimme a wing.” Hudson did; then she whispered lower, “Why’n’cha lemme put some sizzle in your swizzle, man, like I’ll lay some bigtown xtralicious super gobble game on you for, like, twenty-five bucks.”

What, is that the patented line around here? Hudson politely informed her that he had no interest in her proposal, and edged quickly out of the restaurant.

God, these are good! he thought, scarfing his remaining wings and biscuit as he walked down the street.

He still had time to kill, but he didn’t want to get killed himself as sundown approached. He walked down Central a ways, trying to look inconspicuous and knowing he wasn’t doing a very good job. Sirens rose and fell in the distance, and then he jumped a bit at either a faraway gunshot or backfire. Hurry up, sundown, he thought, and patted his wallet to make sure it was still there, then the other pocket where he’d slipped a slim flashlight. At the corner a dark hulk loomed, and then a shadow covered Hudson: the shadow of a cross cast by the sinking sun. A church, he noticed next of the drab, pilelike edifice. For no apparent reason he stopped to study it. The sign read: GRACE UNITARIAN CHURCH OF ST. PETERSBURG, but a smaller sign in magic marker added, CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

This is the deaconess’s church!

An old building of streaked gray stone. High, double-lancet windows framed mosaics of stained glass that looked black, and drought had killed most of the ivy that crawled up the walls. Hudson was surprised to find the large front door unlocked, and even more surprised by his lack of hesitancy in entering. Fading sun tinted the nave with reddish light; as he approached, his nostrils flared at a smell like urine and something more revolting. He passed empty pews, crossed the chancel. Several apsidal rooms arched behind the altar, two empty but on the floor of one he found, oddly, a coping saw. Hudson ran his fingers along the thin blade and found it tacky. Could it be blood? No, no, that’s ridiculous, he felt sure. It was probably tar or something, resin, maybe. Nevertheless, the saw irked him and he stepped quickly out.

Tires crunching over gravel alerted him; he hustled to a rear window in the dressing room where, in fading light, he saw a black car pulling out.

What would I have done if it was pulling IN?

And who might be driving it?

Probably just smoochers, he resolved. Or, in this area? A drug deal.

A draped baptistery stood to his right. Did he hear something? Hudson put an eye to the gap in the scarlet drapes, and seized up.

“Yeah, yeah,” a man with his pants down huffed. He was in his fifties, graying hair on the sides of a bald pate, and he wore a dress shirt and tie. His cheeks billowed at the obvious activity at his groin. He stood before another man who was on his knees—a fetid, homeless man. Hudson could swear he saw flies buzzing around the bum’s horrifically sweat-stained ball cap. Six inches of dirty beard jutted from his chin as his head bobbed frenetically back and forth.

Hudson pulled the curtain back. “This is a church, for God’s sake!”

The corpulent client’s face turned sheet white. “Shit! Shit shit shit!” he shrieked. He yanked his overlarge slacks up and barreled out of the baptistery, stumbled down the nave, and banged through the front door.

The homeless man raged. “You fucker, man!” Spittle flew from his chapped lips. “That was my trick, man! He was gonna pay me twenty bucks! I ought to kill you, man!”

Hudson stepped back, not nearly as afraid as he’d expect himself to be. “Relax.” He kept his cool. “I was just looking around. Here.” He handed the bum a twenty-dollar bill.

The bum turned instantly joyous. “Cool, thanks. Gimme another twenty and I’ll do you, too.”

“No. No, thanks,” Hudson said, realizing now that the man’s beard was one of the scariest things he’d ever seen. “Who are you?”

“Forbes,” said the bum.

“Forbes? So . . . Forbes, this is where you . . . do . . . business? A church?”

When the bum scratched his beard, dandruff fell like salt from a shaker. “Aw, Deaconess Wilson, she’s cool. Let’s me sleep here at night as long as I’m out by five in the morning.” Now he lifted the liner out of the baptismal font and drank the water in it. “I feel bad ’cos, see, she sleeps upstairs and sometimes I sneak up there and watch her take showers and shit. She’s got the best boobs—”

I know, Hudson thought.

“—and this big, gorgeous fur-burger on her, man. Blonde. And I just can’t help it. I see that all wet and shiny in the shower, I just gotta beat off. Shit.” He grinned, showing rotten gums. “Guess I’ll probably go to Hell, huh?”

“They say only God can judge,” Hudson said lamely.

The bum scratched his ass. “She gives me canned food a lot, too, makes me feel even guiltier. I guess I’m just a shit. It sucks when ya have to eat your own nut just for the calories, ya know? You ever do that?”

Hudson paled. “Uh, no.”

“Yeah, man, when you’re homeless ya gotta do it ’cos there’s, like, a couple hundred calories in it. Been times it’s the only thing that kept me from starvin’.”

Hudson felt staggered. “There’s a soup kitchen on Fifteenth Street. Forbes, please. Go there instead.”

“Really?” The bum beamed. “Didn’t know. But what’re you doin’ here, man? You a friend of Deaconess Wilson?”

Finally a topic of conversation he could take part in. “Not really, but I did meet her once. Do you know where she is?”

The bum reached down into the front of his rotten jeans and scratched. It sounded like sandpaper. “Disappeared, they say, but . . . I don’t know about that.” He pulled his hand out and sniffed it. “See, when I’m sleepin’ in here at night, sometimes I think I hear her coming in. I can hear her car.”

“A black car?”

“Yeah. Old black car.”

Interesting. “I just saw a black car pulling out of the lot behind the church.”

“Shit! Really?” The bum scampered past Hudson, leaving dizzying B.O. in his wake. “Ain’t there now,” he said, peering out the window.

“Maybe she’ll be back,” Hudson contemplated. “Or maybe it wasn’t her.” He eyed the bum. “Say, did she ever mention a strange word to you? The word Senary?”

Forbes was only half listening. “Naw, never heard no word like that.” He picked his nose and nonchalantly ate what his finger brought out.

What am I DOING here? Hudson asked himself.

The window was turning dark, and at once the bum seemed edgy. “Shit, it’s sundown—”

Sundown, Hudson repeated.

“—and I gotta get out.”

“But I thought you said you slept here.”

“Yeah but I ain’t gonna do that no more,” Forbes said, and shuffled back toward the chancel. “Every night since the deaconess been gone, I have me these really scary dreams.”

Hudson didn’t know what compelled him to ask, “What . . . dreams?”

The bum’s eyes looked cloudy. “Aw, weird, sick shit, man, like in some city where the sky’s red and there’s smoke comin’ out of the sewer grates on every street, and black things flyin’ in the air and other things crawling up and down these buildings that are, like, a mile high, and people gettin’ their guts hauled out their asses and these big gray things eatin’ girls’ faces off their heads and drownin’ kids in barrels’a blood and playin’ catch with babies on pitchforks’n shit, and then, then this giant statue with the scariest face—oh, yeah, and a house, man. A house made of heads . . .”

Hudson stared.

“—and, fuck, last week, right before Deaconess Wilson disappeared, I was sleepin’ in the pews and dreamed that these monsters were fuckin’ with her, and reading all this evil shit like Latin or something.”

“Monsters?”

“Yeah, man. Like, just skin-covered bones and horns in their heads. Had teeth like nails made of glass. They hadda bunch of candles burnin’ in a circle and layin’ inside the circle was Deaconess Wilson with no clothes on, man.” Now Forbes looked sickened in the recollection. “They started writin’ on her, man. They’re writin’ on her, with shit, but it wasn’t just any ole shit—it was Satan’s shit. Somehow I knew that in the dream.”

Hudson was getting unnerved. He didn’t believe in shared delusions or shared nightmares. But . . .

Forbes started toward the front door, but kept talking. “And last night, shit. I dreamed I seen the deaconess walkin’ around here buck naked with her big tits and bush stickin’ out, but ya know what she was carryin’?”

“Whuh-what?” Hudson grated.

“A coffin, man.” He kept walking, his voice echoic in the nave. “But it was a little coffin. Like a baby’s. So, shit on that, ya know? I ain’t sleepin’ here no more ’cos this place gives me fucked-up dreams.” Rotten sneakers scuffed as the bum pushed open the front door and left.

Jesus, Hudson thought in the fading light.

He had every intention of following the man out, but for some reason his steps took him not toward the door but to the left, along the sides of the pews. He shined his flashlight beneath one, caught a breath in his chest, then knelt.

A shovel had been stashed there. Hudson fingered the earth on the blade and found it—

Fresh . . .

There was also a pair of work gloves on the floor that appeared soiled but recently purchased.

What the hell is this?

Stashed under the last pew in the farthest corner was a coffin.

A little coffin. Like a baby’s.

The sun had sunk quickly, like something trying to escape. Hudson looked up and down the street to find it oddly vacant. The drab housefront peered back at him as if with disdain. The Larken House, he thought. A MURDER house.

Of course, Hudson didn’t believe that a house could influence people by the things that had happened in it. A HOUSE can’t have power . . . But maybe belief was the power. Could a person’s conception of terrible events create the influence?

Hudson wasn’t sure why he would even consider such a thing. It simply occurred to him.

He traversed the weed-cracked front path, surprised by his boldness, and opened the screen door. No way the door’s unlocked, he predicted. That would be senseless.

The oddest door knocker faced him. It had been mounted on the old door’s center stile, an oval of tarnished bronze depicting a morose half-formed face. Just two eyes, no mouth, no other features. The notion made Hudson shiver:

I knock on the door and Larken answers . . .

“Here goes,” he muttered, then thought a tiny prayer, God, protect me. He grabbed the knob and turned it.

The door opened.

An unqualified odor assailed him when he entered. Not garbage or excrement or urine but just something faintly . . . foul. Hudson snapped on his flashlight, panned it around the empty living room. His stomach sunk when he discerned brown footprints tracked over the threadbare carpet. Old blood, he reasoned. From the murder night. The compulsion to leave couldn’t have been more pronounced but, I have to stay, he ordered himself. I have to find out what this is all about. He followed the footprints to a begrimed kitchen and was sickened worse when he saw great brown shapes of more dried blood all over the linoleum floor. The footprints proceeded to the microwave. Larken must’ve killed his wife and the baby in here. He eyed the kitchen table and gulped. In the corner stood a chair directly under a water pipe. And that’s where he hanged himself . . .

Then Hudson froze at a sound: a quick snap!

A cigarette lighter?

That’s what it reminded him of. His heart hammered. This was crazy and he knew it. An abandoned house in this neighborhood? Vagrants, addicts, or gang members . . .

Yet he didn’t leave.

He turned the flashlight off and walked down a shabby side-hall toward the sound. He paused and, sure enough, in a dark bedroom he detected what could only be the flicker of a cigarette lighter. In addition, he heard an accompanying sound, like someone inhaling with desperation.

I could be killed . . . so why don’t I leave? Hudson had no answer to this logical question, save for, God will protect me. He HAS to. When he took a step forward, the floor creaked.

His heart nearly stopped when a woman’s voice shot out of the dark. “Oh, good, you’re back. I’m in here.” Then the lighter flicked again but this time to light a candle.

In the bloom of light, Hudson couldn’t believe his eyes.

A woman sat on a mattressless box spring, holding a crack pipe. A white woman, with dark lank hair, wearing a bikini top and cutoff shorts. The hostile face glared at him.

“Shit, you’re not her,” she complained. “Who the . . .” But then she squinted. “Wait a minute, I remember you . . .”

Indeed, and Hudson remembered her. It was the pregnant prostitute he’d seen in the Qwik-Mart last night. It didn’t take him long to realize why she looked different.

She was no longer pregnant.

“Yes,” Hudson droned. “At the store. And I see that you’ve had your baby.”

She maintained her glare. The huge breasts hung satcheled in the faded top. Her exposed midriff below the top looked corrugated now, rowed. All she said was, “What the fuck are you doing here? Are you with that woman?”

That woman, Hudson’s brain ticked. “Do you mean . . . a blonde woman in a black gown? A white collar?”

The prostitute idly fingered groovelike stretch marks on her belly. “Yeah, like what a fuckin’ priest wears, but it’s a chick, not a guy.” Then she calmly lit the pipe, inhaled deeply, then collapsed against the wall. Her expression turned to a mask of oblivion.

“What is this woman to you? Deaconess Wilson?” Hudson actually raised his voice.

The prostitute slipped up the stuffed bikini top to cover a great half circle of nipple. “She paid me six fuckin’ hundred bucks, that’s what.”

Hudson was dismayed. And I got 6,000. “So, you’ve won the Senary as well?”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. All I know is what I’m supposed to do.”

“And what was that? What did you do for the six hundred?”

She shrugged. “Dug up a grave. Think I give a shit?”

Hudson stared in the flickering light, thinking of the article. “Was it . . . a child’s grave?”

“Yeah, man. A baby’s. She said the baby was murdered in this house, had its head cut off. Said she needed the head.”

Confusion circled round Hudson like a feisty crow. “But . . . what happened to your baby? You were pregnant last night.”

“I popped the kid out behind the Qwik-Mart,” she said, pressing another piece of crack into the pipe. “Fuckin’ mess. I dropped it in one of those blue bins the recycling trucks pick up; then I split. Couple hours later, I met her.”

“And she—”

“Paid me six hundred bucks to dig up the grave.” She sucked off the pipe and chuckled. “Kind’a weird, you know? An hour after I dump my own baby, this chick pays me to dig up somebody else’s baby. Ain’t that a trip?”

“Yes,” Hudson uttered. “A trip . . .”

“She waited for me in her car. Didn’t even take as long as you’d think, and the coffin was tiny, barely weighed anything. They always say six feet under, right? But this was like two, three. So I put the coffin in the back of her car, and she drives me downtown . . . and gave me six hundred bucks. Said she’d give me another six hundred if I showed up tonight. Said she needed me, said she needed my milk.”

“Your milk? What on earth for?”

She shrugged again, and reloaded the pipe. “Said ’cos I was lactating. You think I care?” She held up a baggie full of pieces of crack. “I mean, look at all this rock, man. And when she lays another six hundred on me tonight? I won’t have to blow another guy for a month. Fuck, I hate it. Crack doesn’t leave a woman with any choice. You have to suck ten dirty dicks a day at least, just to keep up your jones. Think about that, buddy. Ten dicks a day. It’s like letting guys blow their nose in your mouth for money. Every time I see another dick in my face I wanna cut my throat but I know that if I do . . .” She jiggled the bag of crack. “I’ll never be able to get high again.”

Hudson frowned. “Deaconess Wilson told me I won a contest of some sort, and told me to meet her here. Where is she?”

“Right here,” answered a silhouette in the doorway.

Hudson grimaced from the shock. “God damn! Don’t sneak up on people like that!”

The female minister stepped forward into the candlelight. Her face appeared either blank or simply content and her blue eyes, which struck Hudson as dull yesterday, seemed narrow and keen now. She wore the same black surplice and white collar.

“How irregular for you to take God’s name in vain,” she said. “You of all people—one who yearns to be a priest.”

He had, hadn’t he? He never did that. “You scared the shit out of me,” he objected. “Now what’s all this about? And furthermore, what are you all about?”

She glanced at the prostitute, who was relighting her pipe.

“What I’m all about, Mr. Hudson,” the deaconess began, “is failure. You, on the other hand, are about success. I envy you—” Her voice hushed. “And I honor you.”

“That makes no sense. I should leave.”

“That is your prerogative, it has been all along. Didn’t I make it clear that you are under no obligation?”

“Yes, but—”

“And now you want answers. First, answers about me.”

“You got that right. A homeless guy living in your church had the same dream as me. I read an article in the paper about a baby’s grave dug up, and it turns out this girl over here is the one who did the digging. And a half hour ago I see the coffin stuck beneath the pews at your church.”

“It’s all part of the science—”

Hudson’s anger roiled. “The science?”

“You’ll understand more should you choose to proceed far enough to speak to the Trustee.”

Hudson opened his mouth to object further, paused, then decided not to.

Her eyes appeared as cool blue embers. “Do you choose to proceed?”

“Yes,” Hudson said.

“Then follow me.” The deaconess touched the prostitute’s shoulder. “Come along. You bring the candles.” Then she raised a plastic bag from which depended an object inside about the size of a softball. “I’ll bring the head.”

CHAPTER THREE

(I)

A hundred Pipe Fitters—mostly half-Demon, half-Human Hybrids—clustered down below about the Main Sub-Inlet. What are they doing? Favius wondered, looking down from his precipitous sentry post on the ramparts. This was the end of the stupendous Pipeway that, Favius knew now, started all the way across the Quarter in the harbor of Rot Port. The Conscript studied the end of the Pipeway’s Inlet, a great circular maw sixty-six feet wide. He marveled at the sheer volume of fluid that the Pipeway would be able to transfer. But still he thought, Why? Why? And what were the Technologists doing down there now? Teams of the Hybrids began scaling the Inlet’s outer rim via ladders made of cured intestines, while others remained in the basin as if in wait . . .

But in only minutes more prison wagons hauled by strange, mutant beasts crossed the basin itself and stopped.

Immediately, Favius thought, Corpulites . . .

From the bared wagons, dozens of unfortunate victims were extracted: naked Hybrids bred especially by the Hexegenic Factories. Naked, yes, and bald, blinded, and bulbously obese. The Corpulites were a particular Organic Materials invention—living beings whose deliberately corrupted gene mechanisms caused grievous obesity. Satchels of fat hung from the arms, legs, bellies, and backs of captives. Horned Scythers were quickly dispatched, wielding great flensing blades, which expertly carved slabs of fat from the shrieking contingent. The blades glimmered, each downward flashing arc dividing still more fat from the living bodies of the Corpulites.

Now Favius’s question had been answered. The fat was then passed up to the Pipe Fitters scaling the Inlet and promptly used to grease the fitting seams.

An immense shadow crawled past the perimeter; Favius was not surprised to see Levitators moving in a huge Y-connector. Magnificent, he thought. The screams of the butchered Corpulites soared like a thick breeze as Scythers continued to slough off the necessary fat, and when the great seam had been sufficiently greased . . .

Incantations boomed from megaphones, retarding the Levitation Spell and hence lowering the Y-joint perfectly into place, after which the Pipe Fitters amassed to lock down the bolts with their spanners.

Favius understood now—the Y-joint split the direction of catastrophic inflow into dual directions, making dispersion more even and efficient.

When the Fitters were done, they disembarked from the site on Balloon Skiffs, onto their next assignment. The Corpulites, however, were not so lucky. Now bereft of all body fat, they were left to bellow and squirm on the Reservoir’s gritty black floor, knowing that eventually they would become one with whatever manner of filth soon filled this place to the brim.

Another great wonder on another day in Hell, the Conscript thought. And I am honored to be a tiny part of it, a tiny part in Lucifer’s plan.

What greater gift could anyone ask?

(II)

So this is it, Krilid thought, half-queasy as he gazed down. It was in the mouth of an illegally duplicated Nectoport that he stood, leaning slightly out. The technology amazed him, and it verified rumors he’d heard for years that certain anti-Luciferic sects had engaged their own White Sorcerers to psychically steal the secrets from Lucifer’s own Bio-Wizards and copy them for their own use. A Nectoport could be thought of as an invisible tunnel that, snakelike, covered great distances in seconds because it existed in a different phase-shift and therefore inverted true space—the ultimate achievement in occult science. The “tunnel” was reportedly capable of extending indefinitely, and all that was ever visible of it was the forward Egress and Observation Port.

But even with the security tether, Krilid found little piece of mind; the tether itself could break (causing a fatal fall), while this very assignment, for all he knew, could be bogus. In Hell, information was like character. One never knew what to trust—indeed, if trust even existed in this infernal sprawl.

Approximately a mile above the very spot in which Conscript Favius stood on his rampart, Krilid hovered. The spotty black clouds hid him fairly well, yet he could take no chances of detection. The clouds were patrolled now by demonic troops in balloons, and there were always the heinous Gremlins who lived and hunted in these clouds, semi-weightless monsters with saw-teeth and mouths that opened vertically beneath globose, black-veined eyes; not to mention untold flying things and Levatopuses, which were like bedbugs only they lived off the sooty waste in the clouds rather than a sleeper’s blood. Krilid’s direct field commander—the Fallen Angel Ezoriel—had provided not only the Nectoport but also a Hand of Glory, whose flame-tipped fingertips imparted a skirt of invisibility, which prevented unwelcome observers from seeing the Port’s floating green rim of light.

Down there, he thought, staring at the Reservoir’s nearly endless basin. Empty now, true, but soon it would be filled with six billion gallons of . . . something . . .

Something, yes. But what?

Krilid was a Hellborn Troll, squat, heavily muscled, but with a smushed head that looked lengthened and lopsided. This anomaly was caused through punishment a long time ago: Krilid had been captured by Municipal Golems, while stealing a box of Ghoul Steaks from a delivery vehicle in Boniface Square. He’d spent the night in a Constabulary jail, and the next day a Torture Detachment had slowly yanked his genitals off with pulleys, and then he’d been treated to the “Head-Bender,” a later-model torture device in which the convict’s head was placed in a specially constricted pipe-vise. Krilid’s skull was pulverized to bits and then remolded, whereupon a Re-Ossification Spell caused the crushed bone to adhere after the fact. The pain was incalculable, such that he prayed they’d kill him and be done with it—Trolls, unlike the Human Damned, were mortal—but the officers of the Constabulary would have none of that. It served Satan far better for the deformed to live, protracting their misery.

And miserable Krilid had been, but he’d also been mad. Being born a Troll is bad enough, he knew, but having to walk the streets with a bent head is even worse.

Krilid wanted revenge. He could kill himself, sure, and then this horrific existence would be behind him, but somehow, now, that wasn’t good enough. And going back to a life of petty crime seemed boring and scary. Those bastards bent my head, damn it, so I’m going to get them back.

That’s when Krilid had joined an anti-Luciferic terrorist cell.

Ezoriel himself had recruited him, and through some manner of clairvoyance had already known of the dismal Troll’s angst, pain, and yearning for revenge. “Serve God, in this place abandoned by God,” the Fallen Angel had told him in a voice that shimmered. His face shimmered, too, like sunlight on a rippling lake, such that its details could not be perceived. “Join the Contumacy and be a part of God’s glory when we overthrow Lucifer and take over. After that, rest assured—we shall convert this canyon of sin, hatred, and blasphemy into a place of hope, a place full of the love of God.”

Krilid didn’t know from God, but Ezoriel’s recruitment speech was just what he’d needed to hear. These people were terrorists who raided, bombed, harassed, and/or destroyed anything or anyone serving the Morning Star. The Troll’s biggest beef was with the Torture Detachment; hence, Ezoriel had granted his first request: to drop Sulphur Bombs on the place from the Nectoport. He’d scored multiple direct hits.

Since then, he’d bombed several targets in the Industrial Zone, had kidnapped a Grand Duke, had taken out several demonic police chiefs with a matchlock muzzle-loader, and had helped blow up the Central Research Grotto at the Klaus Barbie District’s Hexegenic Virus Labyrinth. They used a separate Nectoport to pipe in millions of cubic yards of methane pilfered from the Waste Pits at the city’s largest Pulping Station, then set it off with limelight bombs. Most of the Labyrinth’s service passages had collapsed, while the Central Research Grotto had exploded with such force it had cause a Hellquake that split the District in half. Krilid had partied hard that night at Ezoriel’s fortress, and had even been rewarded with a liter of distilled water.

Now, though?

The Troll wondered as he hovered. His sextant showed him the area that Ezoriel had called the “Target Extraction Point,” and on this mission, the “target” wasn’t a building, nor was it a living target to be assassinated. Instead it was a living target to be “extracted.”

Alive.

If the intel was correct.

Krilid identified a landmark after adjusting the sextant’s gauges to accommodate the coordinates: “Sixty-six cubits out from the Reservoir’s southernmost corner, where you’ll see the Main Sub-Inlet,” Ezoriel had told him.

The landmark—hard as it was to see against the Wandermast Reservoir’s unrelenting black—was a particular pile of bodies from an Emaciation Squad. They’d died on their feet digging out this immense quarry and, via protocol, their twitching, unnourished bodies would be left to shudder there until the Reservoir was filled. When this happened, the landmark would be submerged, he knew, but at least he now had a general idea where to look for the “target” to be “extracted.”

I’m not liking this, Krilid thought.

Was he being set up? The thought occurred to him, but any logical reason didn’t. Ezoriel is said to have never told a lie.

But bad information isn’t a lie, is it?

Perhaps Ezoriel didn’t know for sure. “Unimpeachable authority,” the Fallen Angel had said of his information source. “It cannot be doubted.”

Yeah? Krilid questioned.

Then why had he been sent on this mission totally alone, and in an expensive Nectoport? To attempt an “extraction” in what was certainly one of Hell’s most guarded secret projects?

It almost sounded to Krilid that he’d been sent on a suicide mission but no one had seen fit to tell him that.

(III)

The echoes of the deaconess’s words trailed behind her like a banner as they mounted the dark stairs. “The attic is the best place, for the power of its ambience. The cliché—do you understand? The sheer weight of the idea?”

“No, I don’t understand,” Hudson said, the whore just behind him.

“The same as the house itself, and what happened in the house. The house has become what’s known as a Bleed-Point, while certain things from the history of the house serve as functional Totems. They’re Power Relics.”

Certain things, Hudson wondered. She means the head . . . “What did you mean when you called yourself a failure but I’m a success?”

He could see the woman nod ahead of him. “You’re on one end of the Fulcrum, I’m on the other—the bad end, I’m afraid.”

“The Fulcrum, huh?” Hudson said.

“I was solicited because I was solicitable. My ebbing faith made me ripe for the Machinators. But you? You’re actually the opposite. It’s the desire of the powers I now serve that you make the choice. My rewards are minuscule compared to the rewards you will receive should you accept this incalculable prize.”

Great, Hudson thought.

The stairs raised them into a long, dusty attic. Even after dusk, it was stiflingly hot. The prostitute began lighting candles from a bag she’d carried up, and in the growing light, Hudson saw that the attic was essentially empty, save for a couple of lawn chairs and a couple of boxes. The deaconess went to the back wall, then paced off six steps toward the room’s center. There, she placed one of the chairs.

“This is where you will sit.”

From a darker corner, then, she pulled out—

Whoa! Hudson thought.

—a brand-new pickax.

“And this is how we will access the Trustee.”

“What are you talking about?” Hudson whined.

The deaconess smiled. She removed her Roman collar and started to unbutton her surplice. “Remove your clothes, dear,” she said to the prostitute. “We must show our God-given bodies unclothed, to curry favor from our lord.”

The prostitute smirked. “I want my fuckin’ money first. You said you’d give me another six hundred.”

The bills were produced like a finger-snap, and handed over.

“Curry favor from your lord?” Hudson questioned. “Somehow I don’t think you mean the Lord God.”

“Our Lord Lucifer,” the deaconess said. “Certainly, you’ve already guessed that.”

“Yeah, sure. But the thing I want to know is how did those skinny demons manage to get a hold of your Lord Lucifer’s poop to write sixes on your body?”

The deaconess popped out more buttons. “It’s a process known as Object Transposition, a very new occult science. It’s subdimensional. The Demons—and the excrement itself, by the way—were only corporeal for the duration of the rite. Six minutes. But six minutes were enough.” Then she dropped the surplice to the floor, to stand splendidly nude in the candlelight.

Hudson tried not to gawp at the robust physique. “You seem different today. Yesterday you were all fidgety.”

She went behind the prostitute to untie her faded bikini top. When the garment dropped, buoyant breasts came unloosed, with large, irregular nipples that looked like plops of chewed beef.

“That’s because I’ve acclimated to the entails of the Machination Link. And I’m not resisting it anymore. I’ve accepted it, the beginning of my glorious demise. I’m being machinated, you see—by a trained Channeler and a high-echelon Archlock who operate out of a Telethesy Unit at the De Rais Academy.” She smiled. “Think of it as puppeteering—from Hell. Only now my own soul has amalgamated with the process.”

Hudson stared.

“Oh, and Mr. Hudson? You’ll need to remove your clothes as well.”

Hudson winced. “I’m not taking off my clothes, for God’s sake.”

“For Lucifer’s, not God’s. It’s all part of the protocol, I’m afraid. You must be as naked as Adam when he stalked out of the garden.”

What am I doing? came the thought as he began to strip. At least being nude would make the heat more tolerable. The deaconess and the whore were already shining with sweat.

Now the deaconess was inspecting the prostitute’s heavy breasts, twilling the meaty nipples with her fingers. “Let’s see here now,” she murmured. Milk sprayed out at once. “Yes, good, so full” Then the deaconess tasted a wet fingertip. “Ah. Soiled. Perfect.” Next her hand stroked up and down the recently deflated belly, whose stretch marks now looked like the gouges of a garden claw. An abundant sprawl of black pubic hair jutted nestlike from between the prostitute’s pasty legs. The deaconess ran her fingers through it, fascinated. “So how many babies have come out of here, hmm?”

“Six, seven—fuck, I don’t know,” the prostitute said, disconcerted.

“And you left them all to die?”

“Yeah. Fuck it. The world’s a bunch’a shit anyway. Who wants to bring kids up with all this shit goin’ on? Besides, I make more money when I’m pregnant.”

“Really? How interesting.”

“Sure. Kink tricks, you know? Lotta guys out there go nuts for knocked-up streetwalkers. They pay more. So I pocket the cash, and when it’s time, I pop the kid out in an alley somewhere and walk away.”

“Perfect,” whispered the deaconess.

Hudson felt sick.

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

Hudson and the prostitute jumped at the start. The sound of impact shook the house. When Hudson cleared his confusion, he noticed the deaconess–

WHAM!

—driving the pickax point with gusto into the wall. After a dozenish strikes, she’d managed to tear out a hole about the diameter of a dinner plate, roughly four feet from the floor.

Hudson peered out the hole, which showed the moonlit backyard. Then he refaced the deaconess.

“I ask you once more, Mr. Hudson. Do you wish to proceed?”

Hudson could feel the sweat pouring out of him. He wanted to say no, and he wanted to leave, but instead?

“Yes.”

“I thought you would.” And now she had the plastic bag again, and reached in. Hudson grimaced before she even extracted the contents: the rotten head of a baby.

The small face had dried to a rictus. But then Hudson noticed something even worse. The top of the head was missing.

The deaconess threw the head through the hole in the wall, where it landed, bouncing, in the scrub-laden backyard.

“But I thought—”

“That I needed it for a ritual of some sort?” the gleaming woman finished. The nipples on the high breasts stood out as if she were sexually frantic. “Not the head itself. This. The skullcap.” And from the bag she produced just that: the top of the infant’s skull, which had obviously been sawn off. At once Hudson recalled the smudged coping saw at the church.

She’s really been busy.

“The brain had already putrefied.” She showed him the inside of the empty dome. Then she raised her brow at the prostitute. “I’m afraid the newborn of our friend here wouldn’t do. It hadn’t lived long enough to be touched by Original Sin. It had to be this baby, from this house.”

“And what did you call this house, earlier?” Hudson asked.

“A Bleed-Point,” she said, her bare, flat stomach glistening. Droplets of sweat beaded in her pubic mound like clear little jewels. “Think of it as a sieve.”

“A hole between here and Hell?” Hudson figured but couldn’t believe what he’d said so convincingly and with such nonchalance.

“Yes, but only a semidimensional hole. A viewport, so to speak.”

So if I look through this hole, I see Hell? But when he did it was still just the mangy backyard in view. He paused and narrowed his eyes, to glimpse a raccoon waddling away with what was left of the baby head.

Good Lord . . .

“Come on, I gotta crack it up,” griped the prostitute, scratching at imaginary bugs on her stomach. “When can I go?”

“Be patient,” the deaconess assured; then her eyes returned to Hudson’s. “You’re still under no obligation. You can still leave.”

Hudson churned in place. Haven’t I seen enough? Now he was genuinely beginning to want to get away from all this.

“But why not continue? You can even say no after you’ve taken the tour.”

The tour . . .

She smiled thinly over the exorbitant breasts. “And I can assure you, it’s quite a tour.”

“Let’s continue,” the words clicked in his throat.

“A venturous man, and a wise one . . .”

Really? Hudson wondered. I’m standing naked in a ghetto house with a deaconess and a crack whore for some—some Satanic purpose. What, though? A tour? What could that mean? Foremost, Hudson thought of himself as a Christian. He believed in the power of God, and in his own salvation. So why would he want to go on a tour of Hell?

Maybe . . . seeing Hell will make me a better priest . . . After all, Christ descended into Hell after his Crucifixion, only to reascend on the Third Day, the resurrected Son of God.

The house creaked. The veil of candlelight wavering on the attic walls seemed to darken . . .

“Over here now, my dear,” the deaconess said, positioning the prostitute behind Hudson.

“What the fuck’s this all about?” she protested.

The deaconess touched her shoulder. “It’s about you earning your money, just as Judas earned his.” And then onto Hudson’s bare back she squirted a liberal amount of baby oil from a small bottle. “Rub your hands around, dear, his back, his buttocks, his legs, but in motions like this . . .” The deaconess then put a hand on Hudson’s back, and through the oil made motions that were invariably like sixes.

“Like sixes,” she said. “You do the back, I’ll do the front.”

The prostitute frowned, then proceeded.

More warm oil was applied to Hudson’s chest, and then Deaconess Wilson’s adroit hands began to massage it in. She smiled, rubbing six after six after six over his gleaming skin.

Hudson stood petrified, arms and legs rigid at the luxuriant sensations that seemed to envelop him. Never in his life had he been touched so directly, so intimately by women. This is the ultimate tease, he thought, gritting his teeth. The prostitute’s hands swept slowly about his clenched buttocks, while those of the deaconess smoothed over his nipples, then down across his stomach, then—painstakingly—around his groin and over his inner thighs. The sensations began to crush him, and when he looked down, his arousal was plain.

“He needs to be stimulated till he can’t see straight.” Now the deaconess’s grin looked vulpine, her hands stoking him. “He needs to be titillated till he’s fit to burst. He needs to be bursting with sperm.”

Madness, Hudson thought. Each sixlike motion over his slick skin made Hudson feel as though he were standing on a high wire. Now the deaconess urged herself right up against him. He cringed in place as the large, slippery breasts slid over his skin. The confusion blankened his mind until all he could contemplate was lust even as he strained to resist it. She bowed his head down, placed a nipple in his mouth, and whispered, “Suck . . .”

Hudson did so, uncomprehending. The nipple swelled in his mouth to the size of a bonbon; meanwhile, her hand played over his stomach, then slid to his genitals, which caused him to lurch. Fingers teased him, not overtly, but only traceably.

All right, I can’t let this go on anymore, he determined, but then the woman’s fingers seemed to sense the thought, and began to fondle him more pointedly.

“Harder now,” she told him, and switched nipples.

It seemed the harder he sucked the nipple, the more of his will drifted away. Suddenly, Hudson was lost, lost in unreckonable sensations, lost in this brazen sin of flesh. His erection throbbed against her hot belly as the fingers played further. He was sucking the nipple so obsessively that sometimes he forgot to breathe, which caused him to break, gasp, and then begin sucking again. One of her hands played with the back of his head, as a mother’s might. Hudson had to wrap his arms around her to keep from falling.

The deaconess chuckled in his ear. “They were definitely right when they told me you’d like this.”

They, Hudson thought, but kept sucking.

This went on for minutes and minutes; Hudson was cross-eyed when she pulled her breasts away and then actually looked at her watch.

“You’re . . . timing this?” came the nearly delirious query.

“Oh, yes.”

He managed a frown, even as the voracious sensations rose. “Let me guess. Sixty-six minutes?”

“Of course,” she whispered. “Only thirty-four to go now. Try to enjoy every one of them. The more excited you are, and the more seed you produce, the more positive the conduction.”

“The conduction,” he groaned. His penis felt strained. It felt like a spring about to break.

The desire to climax was excruciating, and his desire for that to happen wiped his mind, even as his unheard thoughts stretched like rubber bands: I can’t-I can’t-I can’t let this happen . . .

The deaconess had leaned briefly away, and returned.

Where did she—

She came back, but seemed intent on her watch. Hudson felt brainless now, his body nothing but an arrangement of frantic sexual nerves beginning to short-circuit. Then—

“Now, now,” she snapped abruptly and took Hudson’s erection into her mouth. Her lips stroked over it at a mad speed; Hudson was reeling—knowing the dreadful sin of it all, knowing that he must pull away and leave this evil place, but before he could—

His climax occurred like an ash can going off. The deaconess mewled as Hudson felt his ejaculation belt into her mouth, and when he was finally finished, he fell over.

The orgasm had beclouded him. The prostitute crawled to a corner, muttering, “Bunch’a nutty bullshit.” When Hudson looked again, the deaconess was spitting his copious ejaculation into the baby’s skullcap. It looked like a mouthful of thin yogurt.

“This really is some fucked-up shit,” the prostitute remarked, but then the deaconess was briskly approaching her.

“Up, up! Quickly.”

“Hey!” the prostitute squealed when the other woman’s hand grabbed her hair and lifted.

“The seed must be covered without delay—”

The deaconess held the top of the baby’s skull beneath one of the prostitute’s sodden breasts, and with her fingers she began to urgently milk the nipple. The white fluid sprayed out at first, then began to dribble. “As much as possible. Help me.”

The prostitute looked disgusted when she girded the breast with her hands and squeezed. The extra pressure trebled the volume of milk coming out. When the lactation began to peter out, the process was switched over to the other breast.

Hudson could only watch, head spinning.

“Good, good,” the deaconess murmured, transfixed. By the time the second breast had been exhausted, the skullcap was over an inch deep with milk.

“Now . . .”

Hudson stared, and so did the prostitute. The deaconess stood firmly with her legs parted. She lowered the skullcap to her crotch.

What’s she going to do?

The prostitute shrieked, and even Hudson yelled aloud in his stupefaction. A tiny glint showed him what the deaconess had produced: a razor blade, which she immediately slipped right up the middle of her clitoris.

Instead of screaming, herself, she moaned in what could only be ecstasy.

“Lady, you’re fuckin’ cracked!” spat the prostitute. Hudson looked away but something kept dragging his eyes back to the event. Two fingers were kneading the split clitoris, squeezing out blood. The blood ran right into the skullcap.

“There,” she announced when she was done. Between the sperm, the milk, and the blood, now the skullcap was over half-full.

“Can I go now?” the prostitute asked.

“Bring me that box,” the deaconess said, “and remove the stand, then, yes, you may be on your way.” She held the skullcap ever so carefully, so not to spill its macabre contents, while the sickened whore dragged a cardboard box to the room’s center, then removed a Sterno stand.

Hudson thought, Why do I think we’re NOT going to be cooking a Chinese pupu platter?

“Set the stand immediately below the hole in the wall, please.”

The prostitute’s pallid breasts depended as she leaned to do so. She glared at the deaconess, half in derision and half in nausea. “Look, I know that I’m one of the most fucked-up people to ever be born but, shit, lady. This shit here? It’s even more fucked up than me.”

“Go with the blessing of the Morning Star,” the deaconess said with a great pumpkin grin. “Take your money and your drugs and your hatred and despair, and give thanks as you revel in your curse. Spread your degradation in the glory of his name, sell your body to the lustful, and indulge yourself in reverence to him. Have more babies to leave to die in gutters, and spread more disease, and continue to let yourself be used as a reservoir of filth and an altar for every offense against God . . .”

The prostitute stared.

“One day, you will receive a wondrous reward . . .”

The prostitute raked up her clothes, then barged out of the room, and thunked down the stairs. A moment later, Hudson heard the front door slam.

The deaconess looked at Hudson. “Do you wish to continue?”

He wanted to say no with all his heart, yet something . . .

Something made him say, “Yes.”

“Good.” She smiled over the skullcap. “Let’s begin . . .”

Hudson sat mute in the chair as he watched her. It didn’t surprise him when she placed the skullcap atop the Sterno stand, though he couldn’t imagine why. From the box she also withdrew the strangest of objects: a foot-long cutting of ordinary garden hose.

A match flared as she bent to light the Sterno.

“Bubble-bubble, toil and trouble?” he misquoted Macbeth.

“These are powerful cabalistic components, Mr. Hudson.” The bleeding between her legs had ceased, leaving her pubic hair matted crimson and the insides of her toned thighs streaked. “What you need to know is that in Hell, ideas are objects, notions are material, symbols are tangible things wielded as tools or burned as fuel, and the waste of lust is the Devil’s favorite tool. Symbols of fecundity and creation when turned to waste become occult energy.”

“Milk, sperm? Come on,” Hudson challenged.

“Yes! What a great spoiler of God’s intent. Mother’s milk but from the teat of a mother who murders her babies. And sperm, sacred by God’s gift of procreation, but sullied when spilled deliberately outside of the womb—a harrowing offense. And now . . . blood . . . The blood of the chaste, virginity upheld to honor the chastity of Christ, and then spoiled for this atrocious ministration to bid the glorious and unholy power of Lucifer.”

Hudson looked perplexed at the skullcap sitting above the flame, and then he looked into the hole in the wall.

Just nighttime outside.

“Don’t get it.”

“You will, once you really see.” Her naked body gleamed, not merely from the profuse sweating but from excitement. The candlelight crawled. “It’s all science, or I should say sorcery, which serves as science in Lucifer’s domain. What we’re doing here is called an Ethereal Viewing. I told you, this house is a Bleed-Point; the horrors that occurred here have bruised the skin between the Living World and Hell. This rite will eventually nick that bruise enough that you’ll actually be able to see the Trustee, and converse with him, too.”

“The Trustee,” Hudson muttered. “A demon?”

“Possibly. I’m not sure. But I won’t be able to see him. Only you.”

“Why?”

Two perfect drops of sweat dripped off the tips of her nipples. “Because you’re the person who’s won the Senary. There’s not much more I need to say to prepare you.” She stood behind him and errantly rubbed his shoulders. “Just sit and wait . . . and reflect on the fact that very few people ever receive an opportunity such as this.”

Hudson jerked his head back. “But why? Why me? And don’t say it’s because I won the Senary!”

“Just be patient.”

“So . . . what? When all that crap in the baby skull starts to boil, the hole in the wall becomes a window to Hell? I’m supposed to believe that?”

Her fingers glided hard over his sweat-slick shoulders, then slid forward to rub his pectorals. “That’s as good a way of putting it as any. Upon boiling, the steam that rises off the Elixir will trigger the Conduction. You’ll have exactly six minutes to listen to the Trustee, ask any questions you have, and then accept or reject the offer. And even if you accept, which I pray you’ll do, you’re under no obligation. Nothing becomes binding unless you say yes upon completion of the tour.”

The tour . . . Those words bothered him more, perhaps, than anything else tonight. There was something potent about them. Even when he thought the words, they seemed to echo as if they were called down from a mountain precipice.

But then more thoughts dripped. “This is a pact with the Devil, you mean.”

“Not a pact. A gift. One thing to keep in mind. The Devil doesn’t need to offer contracts for souls very often these days. Think about that . . .”

Hudson’s eyes narrowed. “But I’m a Christian. I’m a theologian and student of Christ. I’m about to go to the seminary. To be a priest!”

Her voice drifted in delight. “Perhaps what you see will dissuade you. Your reward will be beyond imagination.”

Hudson gave her remark some thought, even in the “afterglow” of his sin. So THAT’S it! They want to tempt me, they want to make me break. Suddenly the madness and sheer impossibly of everything made wild sense.

What greater way could there be to prove his faith? To take this tour and realize these rewards, only to say no in the end? Christ had been tempted, hadn’t he? Only to likewise say no.

Hudson resolved to do the same.

The prospect made him gleeful, but then he heard the faintest bubbling. The contents of the skullcap—the Elixir—was boiling.

“It’s time,” she whispered and stepped away. “Look at the hole in the wall . . . and prepare to meet the Trustee.”

Hudson tensed in his seat, squinting. The teeming night was all that continued to look back at him from the hole. The steam wafting off the skullcap was nearly nonexistent. How on earth can—but after a single blink . . .

The hole changed.

In that blink the hole’s ragged boundary of Sheetrock and shingles had metamorphosed into something like ragged flaps of what he would only think of as organ meat. Hudson leaned forward, focused.

My God . . .

What he looked at now was a room, or at least a room of sorts. Is that . . . No, it couldn’t be, he thought, because the room’s walls appeared to be composed of sheets of what looked like butcher’s waste (intestines, sinew, bone chips, and fat), which had all somehow been frozen into configuration. Amid all this sat a splintery wooden table on which had been placed . . .

That’s a typewriter!. Hudson realized, and he could even read the manufacturer: Remington. Atop a shelf in the rear, more odd objects could be seen: a package of Williams shaving soap, a square tin of Mavis talcum powder, and an empty can of Heinz beans. Hudson meant to glance behind him, to question the deaconess, but her hands firmly pressed his temples.

“Don’t take your eyes off the Egress,” she said.

When Hudson refocused on the hole . . . a man stepped into view.

The Trustee . . .

It was a very gaunt, stoop-shouldered man who looked back at Hudson. “There you are, at last,” he said in a squeaky accent that sounded like New England. He had close-cropped hair shiny with tonic and a vaguely receding hairline to show a vast forehead, which gave the man an instant air of learnedness. He wore a well-fitting but threadbare and very faded blue suit, a white dress shirt, and narrow tie with light and dark gray stripes. Small, round spectacles. His jaw seemed prominent as though he suffered from a malocclusion. The only thing about him that wasn’t normal was the pallor of his face. It was as white and shiny as snow just beginning to melt but marbled ever so faintly with a bruised blue.

The man sat down at the rickety table. He paused momentarily to frown at the typewriter, then his eyes—which were bright in spite of the death pallor—looked directly at Hudson.

“I presume the Senarial Messenger has apprized you of the fact that we’re subject to a considerable time constraint, the equivalent in your world of six minutes. So we must be concise and, above all, declarative,” the man said. “My name is Howard, and I bear the curious title of this term’s ‘Trustee to the Office of the Senary,’ and I’m speaking to you from a Scrivenry at the Seaton Hall of Automatic Writers. It’s located in a quite malodorous Prefect dubiously known as the Offal District . . .” Abruptly, then, he smirked. “Are you able to hear me, sir?”

Hudson’s mouth hung open for a time, but he eventually managed to say, “Yes . . .”

“Splendid. It’s my infernal pleasure to tell you that you’ve won the Senary—”

“What’s the Senary?” Hudson blurted.

“Denotatively? From the Latin senarius: anything of or relating to the number six. But here we’re only concerned with its connotation. The Senary is a drawing, in a sense, but those eligible are not random. Aspects of your own . . . resolve present the most pertinent considerations. Let me reiterate, we must be expeditious, and as I have no way of discerning that constant unit of measure known as time, your colleague will alert you when one minute remains. Do you understand?”

“No.”

“That is immaterial. You’ve been invited to partake in a—”

“A tour of Hell?” Hudson interrupted.

“Quite right. Only a smattering of persons, in all of Human history, have received this lauded opportunity. Indeed, you’re one of a privileged lot. It is guaranteed that no harm will come to your physical body, nor your Auric Substance, should you choose to proceed. You will be returned, intact, to make your final decision. At the end, in other words, you’ll be free to return to your normal life, should you so choose. But I can say to you, sir, that in 6,660 years . . . no Senary winner has ever elected to not accept the prize.”

Hudson could think of nothing to say, save for, “I-I-I . . .”

This man, Howard, held up a warning finger. “We mustn’t be frivolous with verbosity, sir—I can only presume that time is growing short, so without further delay, I must show you the Containment Orb.” Then he reached beneath the table and brought something up—something on a stick.

“Huh?” Hudson uttered.

The object on the stick, about the size of a basketball, looked brown, mottled, and, somehow, organic. A twist at the top reminded Hudson of a pumpkin’s clipped stem, and in the middle of the bizarre thing was a half-inch hole. Howard pointed to the hole. “The intake bung is here, as you can perceive—”

“But, what is that thing? It looks like a brown pumpkin.”

“Hell’s rendering, you might say—in specificity, the Feotidemonis Vulgaris, commonly referred to as a Snot-Gourd. It’s been eviscerated completely, of course, and disenchanted by Archlocks, so to serve as your Auric Carrier. And—” Howard swiveled the peculiar fruit on the stick, to reveal its other side—

“Holy shit!” Hudson profaned.

A semblance of a face existed on the other side of the thing. Two eyeballs had been sunk into the pulp; below that, a large, pointed snout as of some oversize rodent had been affixed. Also a pair of fleshy lips, and lastly, two ears, though the ears were maroon and pointed.

First he thought of a nightmare rendition of Mr. Potato Head, but then thought, A jack-o’-lantern from Hell, but just as he began his next question, the deaconess tapped him from behind. “Tell the Trustee there’s only one minute left.”

Hudson bumbled, “Uh, uh, I’m supposed to tell you—”

“So I’ve gathered,” Howard said, still holding up the hideous brown fruit with a face. “By now, it’s my hope that you can cogitate the entails of what awaits; hence, I ask you, sir . . . Do you choose to proceed?”