Hudson blinked. No obligation, his thoughts raced. Guaranteed that no harm can come to me, that I’ll be returned intact . . .

And my opportunity to be the first in history to say no to their faces . . .

“I ask once more, sir. Do you choose to proceed?”

“Yes!” Hudson whispered.

Howard seemed to smile, however thinly. “A wise choice. I look forward to our coming discourse. Tell the Senarial Messenger I’m at the ready.” Then Howard stood up and came round the table. He turned the Snot-Gourd back around and held the side with the hole in it up to the hole in the wall . . .

The deaconess looked longingly at Hudson. “Do you have . . . any idea how privileged you are?”

A tour . . . of Hell. He wiped his face off in his hands. “I don’t even know how to answer that. Oh, and the guy says he’s ready.”

“Can you still see the Auric Carrier?”

Hudson looked back up. In the opening, the appalling fruit remained, showing the hole cut in it. “Yeah. It’s a . . . messed-up pumpkin, and there’s a hole in it. He called it a Snot-Gourd.”

“Hmm, all right . . .”

“But he’s blocking the hole in the wall with it. Don’t I crawl through the hole?”

“Oh, no. Via this ritual, nothing solid can move from here to there, and vice versa.”

“Then how—”

“Remember, nothing solid. Be careful; make sure the end of the hose doesn’t actually touch the intake opening in the gourd. Try to keep it a few millimeters away—”

Hudson shot her a funky look. “What?”

“It’s your breath that will be transferred from here to there,” the deaconess explained. “On this side, it’s just breath, but on that side . . .” And before Hudson could even plead for more information, the deaconess got him out of the seat and urged him closer to the wall. In her hand now she held the short length of garden hose, one end of which she moved toward his mouth.

His eyes flicked to the bubbling skullcap. “No way I’m drinking that crap!”

“Of course not. You breathe it—the fumes.”

When Hudson’s lips parted to object further, she placed the hose in his mouth.

“It’s time, Mr. Hudson. I’ll be waiting for you when you come back.” She pressed his shoulders with her hand, to gesture him to lean over. She held the other end of the hose into the faint steam coming off the Elixir. “Now. Count to six, then inhale once very deeply and hold it . . .”

Hudson’s lips tightened around the hose. I can’t believe I’m going to do this . . . And then in his mind he counted to six and took a hard suck on the hose.

The warm air tasted meaty in his mouth. The fumes made his lungs feel glittery.

“Keep holding it,” he was instructed; then the other end of the hose was placed in his hand. “Now, once you’ve lined the end up . . . exhale as hard as you can.”

Hudson’s cheeks bloated. Very carefully he manipulated the end of the hose to fit over the hole in the gourd—

—and exhaled.

Hudson’s soul left his body, and he collapsed to the floor.







PART TWO


GRAND TOUR







CHAPTER FOUR


(I)

Perfect, Gerold thought, and that’s exactly how it looked. He’d tied the hangman’s noose as though he were an expert, and when Gerold appraised it on the balcony of his second-story apartment—at three A.M.—he felt a comforting satisfaction. He secured the other end to his balcony rail.

Suddenly the moment was in his face.

How do I feel?

The warm night seemed to throb from without: insects issuing their endless chorus. The moon hovered, light like white icing.

I feel great.

In that instant, then, he realized that this was a great night to die, and Gerold was not only okay with that, he was ecstatic.

He’d bussed earlier to Home Depot for the rope after working his shift at the air-conditioning company where he processed calls and kept the books. “Can I have tomorrow off?” he’d asked the boss when his shift was done, only because he didn’t want to leave them hanging.

He himself would be the one hanging.

“In this economy?” the boss laughed. “Sure you can have tomorrow off.”

No more struggles, no more buses passing him by for the inconvenience of lowering their wheelchair ramp, no more pretty girls passing him on the street as though he didn’t exist.

His gaze stretched out into the moon-tinged darkness. Yes! A great night to die!

Someone in the morning, probably walking their dog, would see him hanging. Gerold knew he’d have a smile on his face.

He placed the noose about his neck and tightened it down. He felt no reservations. But when he put his hands on the rail, to haul himself up and fling himself off . . .

“Hey! You up there!”

Gerold was appalled when he looked down.

“Don’t do it!”

“Aw, shit, man!” Gerold yelled. Just down below, some old guy with a splotch on his head like that guy from Russia was walking his Jack Russell. “Nobody walks their damn dog at three in the morning!”

The dog yelped up at him, tail stump wagging. The old man had his cell phone out. “I’m calling the cops—”

“No, please, man! Gimme a break!”

“Don’t do it!”

In seconds, it seemed, he could hear sirens.

Quick! Now! Gerold grabbed the rail, his muscles flexing.

“What’s going on up there?” said the old biddy from the balcony below. She looked up, curlers in her hair. Across the way, lights snapped on in various apartments. Figures appeared on balconies.

“That young man above you is trying to hang himself!”

Gerold had himself half propped up on the rail, when he heard pounding at his front door.

You’ve got to be shitting me . . . He knew he didn’t have time now—the door exploded open and hard footfalls thunked toward him.

Disgusted, Gerold lowered himself back in the chair, and took off the noose. This is so FUCKIN’ embarrassing! Why can’t people mind their own business? He unraveled the noose and untied the other end just as two police officers barged out onto the balcony and jerked the chair away from the rail.

“It’s all right, buddy,” one of them said. The other cop, a sergeant with a pitted face, grumbled, “So much for a quiet shift.”

“Look, it’s not what you think,” Gerold bumbled. “I was just . . .”

“Come on. We’ll get you taken care of.”

Another siren approached, an ambulance, no doubt.

“Life ain’t that bad, pal.”

As Gerold was rolled backward into the apartment, he saw that a crowd of spectators had gathered down below. Shit, shit, shit, shit! he thought, and then they took him down and out.

His face turned red. Were fifty people in pajamas and nightgowns congregated outside? It looked it.

Can’t even fucking kill yourself without other people butting in, he thought, humiliated. He’d probably be in the papers tomorrow. His boss would see it, his landlord, the neighbors. They’d all think he was nuts. As they put him in the ambulance, he could see the headlines: DISTURBED VET TRIES TO KILL SELF BUT POLICE INTERVENE.

In the back of the ambulance, two EMTs said nothing as he was driven away. They were eating doughnuts.

I guess I just can’t do anything right, Gerold thought, feeling like the perfect ass.


They took him straight to the local hospital, where a silent intern took his vital signs; then another intern wheeled him to an elevator and took him up. The first thing he saw upstairs when the doors opened was a sign: PSYCHIATRIC UNIT. He felt like a putz as a drab-faced admittance nurse rolled him down stark halls. Eventually an abrupt turn took him past blue-painted metal doors with chicken wire windows. Faces appeared in some of them. Voices bled from others. “Abandon hope, ye who enter here,” someone said, and another: “Where’s my cake?”

A dark-haired woman in a white lab coat eyed him from behind a desk when he was wheeled into an office. She looked tired and displeased. Probably on call, Gerold figured.

“Well, well, well.” Her eyes were bloodshot when they scanned a computer screen on her desk, no doubt his records sent over from VA. “Gerold, I’m Dr. Willet. My, what an inconvenience you are.”

Gerold was outraged. “Sorry about the inconvenience.”

“Suicide is the coward’s way out. There are patients in the quadriplegic ward who would sell their souls to be you.”

“I know that,” Gerold said. He wanted to spit. “I’d trade places with any of them. The fact is, I’m sick of living. I feel I have the right to kill myself.”

The woman scowled. “Oh, but you don’t. Life is a gift, Gerold, and suicide is a crime. It’s a form of homicide, and you can be prosecuted for it.”

“Come on,” he scoffed.

“Not in this day and age, of course. Everyone’s a victim, hmm?” She had large, fake eyelashes that looked whorish. “You’re sick of living? Tell that to the people in the Sao Paulo ghettos, or Paraguay, or Chad. You’re young, capable, and have a lot to contribute in spite of your disability. But, no. You’d rather kill yourself because you can’t hack a little hardship. Tell the people in Sao Paulo or Paraguay or Chad about your hardship. Tell the people in the quad wards how miserable your life is.”

I can’t believe this! “You really know how to make a guy feel good.”

“You should feel ridiculous, Gerold. You’re wasting tax dollars and wasting time, when you should be contributing.”

Gerold winced. “What, is this some new kind of behaviorist psychiatry?”

“You don’t need a psychiatrist, you need a kick in the ass.”

Wow, Gerold thought. I picked the WRONG NIGHT to try to off myself.

“There’s nothing wrong with you mentally—I could tell that the second you rolled in here.” The frown on her face kept sharpening as she continued looking at his records on the screen. “There are better ways to get attention—”

“Listen, lady! I don’t want attention! I want to be dead! I’m sick of this!” Gerold bellowed. “It’s my business.”

“Well then next time, do it right. We’ve got people here who need genuine care. We don’t have the time or money to screw around with whiny pains in the ass like you.”

Gerold was flabbergasted.

“I hope they bill you for the 911 call, the police time, the EMT time, the fuel—everything,” she said. Disgusted, she tapped a bit on her keyboard. “Tomorrow morning you’ll be transferred to the VA hospital. Nurse!”

The drab nurse returned, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

“Take this upstanding gentlemen and pillar of the community to the precaution wing and get him a bed.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

When Dr. Willet came out from around her desk, she didn’t do it on her feet. She did it in a wheelchair.

Her body was gone from the waist down.

Oh, my God, Gerold thought.

“I’d be sick to my stomach if I had one. You’re a disgrace, Gerold. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” For the first time, the doctor smiled. “Now get the hell out of my office.”

Gerold wished he could shrink into nonexistence when the nurse wheeled him away.


(II)

Your name is Hudson Hudson and you’ve just won the Senary. Your soul has been turned into gas and squeezed into Hell through a hole in the wall.

And here you are . . .

Regaining consciousness reminds you of the time you got your wisdom teeth pulled at the dentist’s. You’re a balloon underwater that has just risen to break the surface. First, senses, then awareness, then memory. The only difference is, that time you awoke into your physical body, but now . . .

I don’t have one, comes the oddly calm realization.

There’s a faint noise, something reverberant like water dripping in a subterranean grotto. Your eyes open in increments but only register scarlet murk, just as another sensation registers: rocking back and forth and up and down as if in a car with too much suspension. Your vision struggles for detail as the dripping fades, to be replaced by a steady metallic clattering along with a hiss.

Then your vision snaps into perfect, even surreal, focus.

The macabre lips on the Snot-Gourd scream.

You’re in a vehicle of some kind, which idles down a street whose surface is chunks of wet bone, split ankles and elbows, and other odds and ends of meaty gristle. “How’s that for your first glimpse of the Offal District?” comes the familiar New England accent. “My own reaction was much the same, but of course, that’s why they call it the Offal District. It’s constructed primarily with surplus scraps from the Pulping Stations: less-edible organs, joints, bits of bone.”

You look up and scream again when you realize exactly what you’re looking at: a very black sickle moon hanging in a scarlet sky.

The attempt to move your arms and legs comes reflexively; then you remember, My body’s back in the house with the deaconess, but my consciousness . . . is in the pumpkin . . .

Your cue ball–size eyes blink. I’m in Hell . . .

“The Senarial Sciences here are impressively successful,” Howard tells you, sitting off to the left. He cranes around and looks into your eyes as if looking into a fishbowl. “I trust your senses are in proper working order?”

“I . . . think so,” you reply through the brutish, demonic lips.

“Your Auric Carrier is quite the top of the line.” Now Howard is cleaning his round spectacles with his shirttail. “You have the mouth of a Howler-Demon, the eyes of an Ocularus, the nose of a Blood-Mole, and the ears of a City Imp. Each represents a superlative. It is with only the greatest acuity that we wish you to perceive everything.”

“But, but—”

“Just relax, sir—if that possibility exists—and give your psyche time to acclimatize to the new environs, as well as the new vessel for your soul. There’s no rush—answers to all your questions will be furnished. Just relax . . . and behold.”

You try to nod. Relax? Good Lord . . . First, you focus on your immediate surroundings. You appear to be sitting in the elevated rear seat of a long automobile—that is, not actually sitting since you no longer possess a rump; instead your Auric Carrier has been mounted on a stick in this queer backseat. The clattering vehicle reminds you of pictures you’ve seen of cars from the 1920s, spoke-wheeled and long-hooded monstrosities like Duesenbergs and Packards. Yet no hood actually forms the vehicle’s front end; instead there’s a long iron cylinder showing bolts at its seams, and a petite pipe where one would expect a hood ornament. It’s from this valve that steam hisses out.

Howard talks as if he can detect your thoughts. “It’s a steam-car, the latest design, an Archimedes Model 6. It burns sulphur, not coal—Hell never enjoyed a Carboniferous Period.” The car rocks over more chunks of butcher’s waste. “The sulphur heats the blood and other organic waste in the boiler; steam is produced and, hence, mobility. Nothing like the motors of my day, I’m afraid, though I never liked them. Awful, soot- and smoke-belching contraptions. But this suffices more than, say, a buggy drawn by an Emaciation Squad.”

You don’t understand how your head—the Snot-Gourd—can turn upon the command of your will—I’m just a fruit on a stick!—nevertheless, it does, and now that you’re getting used to it you find the courage to look upon the more distant surroundings with greater scrutiny.

The street stinks, and then you spot a globed pole that names the street: GUT-CAN LANE. Mottled storefronts whose bricks contain swirls of innards pass on either side. You notice more signs:

SCYTHER’S

PAYCHECKS NOT CASHED

THYMUS GRINDER’S

TOE-CHEESE COLLECTOR

A chalkboard before a café boasts the day’s specials: BROILED BOWEL WITH CHIVES and BEER-BATTERED SHIT-FISH.

When the steam-car clamorously turns through a red light—Abattoir Boulevard—you detect buildings that appear residential, like festering, squat town houses whose walls are impossibly raised as preformed sheets of innards.

“I don’t believe this place,” you finally say. “Everything’s made of . . . guts.”

“Construction techniques differ greatly here from the Living World; where you utilize chemistry, physics, electrical engineering, we utilize Alchemy, Sorcerial Technology, Agonitical Engineering.”

“But how can they make guts and bone chunks . . . hold together?”

“Gorgonization, Mr. Hudson,” Howard replies and points past the vehicle’s rim. “Your masons pour cement into molds and allow it to dry, ours pour slaughterhouse residuum and Gorgonize it with Hex-Clones of the Medusa’s head.”

You see what you can only guess are demonic construction workers emptying hoppers of butcher’s waste into various sheet and brick molds. After which several cloaked figures with purplish auras walk slowly past the molds bearing severed heads on stakes. Each severed head has living snakes for hair. The horned construction workers are careful to look away from the process. Hoods are then placed over the Gorgon heads; then the molds are lifted, revealing solid bricks and wallboards fully hardened.

Impossible, you think. And everything here is made of it . . .

“Fascinating, eh?” Howard remarks as the car rattles on. “At any rate, untold Districts exist in Hell, to compose an endless city called the Mephistopolis. Lucifer prefers diversity to uniformity; therefore each District, Prefect, or Zone features its own decorative motif. You’ll see more as we venture on.”

Beyond, though, you have the impression of losing your breath when you see what sits beneath the bloodred sky. It’s a panorama of evil, leaning skyscrapers that stretch on as far as you can see.

“Hell is a city,” Howard explains, “which I didn’t find all that surprising myself. Why would it be? More and more the Living World is becoming metropolitan, so why shouldn’t Hell follow suit? Progress is relative, and so is evolvement, I suppose. Lucifer has seen to it that Hell progresses in step with Human civilization. It’s only the direction of the steps that are antithetical. It provides for a rich environment, and more so in this District than most others.” And then Howard’s nose crinkles at an awful smell that reminds you of the Dumpster at the restaurant where you used to shuck oysters. “It’s just that the smell is appalling, not to mention the clamor—a babel of filth and noise, a breeding pot of cheapness and vulgarity. This horror-imbrued place reminds me of New York City in 1924. Ugh! I hope you’ve never had the misfortune of visiting there, Mr. Hudson.”

You try to frown again but then think of something. “Hey. How do you know my name? I didn’t tell it to you back when we were doing the hole-in-the-wall thing.”

“An Osmotic Incantation apprised me of everything about you. Every aspect. It’s necessary, and part of my duties in this little side job of mine as the Trustee for the Office of the Senary.”

“Side job? But didn’t you say something about being a writer? That you worked in the Hall of Writers?”

“The Seaton Hall of Automatic Writers,” Howard corrects. “One of many, but my facility devotes itself entirely to the writing of fiction. This is my forte; my job, since my Damnation, is to produce copy—novels, novellas, stories—which a select group of Wizards known as Trance Channelers then communicate to fiction writers in the Living World via the process of Automatic Writing and Slate Chalking. It’s Lucifer’s way of influencing worldly art forms so, quite wisely, he picks the most qualified of the Human Damned for the task.”

A writer, you think, in Hell? “So . . . before you came here, you were a writer, too?”

“Indeed I was, sir, a writer of weird tales, and it’s been conveyed to me that my work has since risen to considerable acclaim. Just my luck, eh? Posthumous acclaim—now I know how Poe felt.”

“When did you die?”

“March 15, 1937—the Ides. Fitting that I should expire on the celebration day of the Mother Goddess Cybele. I penned a tale concerning that once but—drat!—my memory fails me. Something about rats . . . The Rats in the . . . House? The Rats in the . . . Tower?” Howard shakes his pale head. “Such are the pitfalls of Damnation. You’re not allowed to remember anything gratifying. But it was some ballyhoo called Bright’s disease that killed me—shrunk my kidneys down to walnuts—oh, and cancer of the colon. Too much coffee and soda crackers, I can only presume. It’s no wonder ‘The Evil Clergyman’ wasn’t very good.” As Howard straightens his tie, he appraises the orb of your head with something hopeful in his eyes. “Are you a reader, sir? Perhaps you’ve heard of me—my name is Howard Phillips Lovecraft.”

You strain your memory, picturing a beaten paperback with a foamy green face and glass shards pushing through the head. “Oh, yeah! You’re the guy who wrote ‘The Shuttered Room!’ Wow, I loved that story!”

Howard’s bluish white pallor turns pink as he stares, vibrating in his spring-loaded seat. Then he hangs his head over the side of the open-topped vehicle and throws up.

“Are you, are you all right?” you ask.

Howard regains his composure, slumping. “Sir, I can tell you with incontrovertible authority that I most certainly did not write ‘The Shuttered Room.’ ”

“Oh, sorry. You know, I could’ve sworn that your name was on it.”

Questions upon questions still bubble up in your gourd-head, but they all stall with every glimpse you take of the nefarious street. Panels of guts raised like Sheetrock, cinder blocks of such butcher’s waste formed walls, sidewalks, and even entire buildings. You turn away as you drive past.

“And in the event that you’re wondering,” Howard mentions, “you’re able to traverse the Snot-Gourd by means of a Psychic-Servo motor. Your impulses engage the gears.”

You hadn’t thought about that, nor about how the steam-car itself is even being maneuvered. “Is it some kind of black magic that’s driving the car?”

“Not at all, and my apologies for failing to introduce you to our driver.” Howard leans forward and pulls back a webbed canopy before them, which reveals a hidden driver’s compartment whose bow tie–shaped steering wheel is surrounded by knobbed levers. Seated just behind the wheel is—

Holy SMOKES! you think.

—a stunningly beautiful nude woman. Hourglass curves rise up to grapefruit-size breasts, which offer nipples distending like overlarge Hershey’s Kisses. By any sexist standard, she’s perfect in every way . . . save for one anomaly.

She’s made of clay.

“She has no name,” Howard explains. “She’s a Golemess. Dis-Enchanted riverbed clay is what she’s made of. Her male counterpart—Golems—are quite larger, while these female versions are manufactured more petitely, and to be sexually provocative.”

The wet grayish clay shines—indeed—as if a centerfold has been airbrushed. Her hair, however—on her head as well as between her fabulously toned legs—bears sculptor’s marks.

A Golemess, huh? you think. That’s a pretty attractive piece of clay . . .

“Quite a comely monster,” Howard says, “though my detractors could hardly conceive of me making such an observation, I suppose. They said I was homosexual, for goodness sake, in spite of my having married a woman! Regrettably, though, love is quite temporary, and I’ll admit, her pocketbook was impressive to a poor artist such as myself. But, more dread luck—barely a year after we were wed, she was dismissed from her lucrative position! We had to move into an absolutely pestilent rooming house in Brooklyn; one could scarcely distinguish between the tenants and the rodents! And forty dollars a month the slum barons charged!”

You hardly hear Howard’s odd aside of petulance, in favor of scrutinizing the Golemess’s astonishing features. She was what Randal would probably call a “brick shithouse,” and . . .

You could literally build one out of her.

“Pardon my digression,” Howard says. “It’s just that I have so much rancor now—a sin, of course: wrath—but still . . .” Howard seems dejected. “I can scarcely believe that Seabury Quinn was the name of the day while I foundered on considerably lower tiers. Gad! Have you ever read his work? Let’s hope not. As for the Golemess, you may be wondering if it’s sexually functional, which I can happily or unhappily asseverate. Quite a lot in Hell is, for reasons that need not be expounded upon. The common veils of empiricism are no less prevalent here than in the Living World. So, too, are the notions of invidiousness. I was an atheist but hardly a bad sort, yet here I am. The circumstances which led to my Damnation are barely even explicable. You, on the other hand, are in quite another circumstance, hmm?”

Your pumpkin-face frowns; at least you are getting the knack of it now. But you barely understand your fussy tour guide. “Because I’m going to the seminary, to become a priest?”

Howard grimaces over a bump and another waft of organic stench. “Miasmal! Ah, but to respond to your legitimate query, you, Mr. Hudson, are more than just a priest-to-be, you’re one who is spiritually well-placed on the—how shall I phrase it?—the plus side of the Fulcrum . . .”

Your furry brow arches. The Fulcrum . . . The deaconess had said something similar, hadn’t she?

The steam-car, at last, pulls off the chunky pavement as the Golemess turns the wheel. A sign floats past: TOLL BOOTH AHEAD. You can’t keep your thoughts straight.

“I just don’t get it. The Fulcrum?”

“Think of the apothecarist’s triple-beam balance,” Howard tells you, “where the weights on one side are godly acts, and on the other side, ungodly acts. Very recently, I’m told, you have tipped the scale to 100 percent Salvation.”

“Howard, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“In spite of your capacity for sin—which all men and women possess—you’ve managed to clear the balance, from 99 percent, to 100. It is that achievement which has enabled you to win the Senary. You’ve tried with much diligence to lead a life that acknowledges God in the utmost, and when you do sin, you’re truly sorry and you make every effort to repent. It’s your own volition, Mr. Hudson, your own—and I emphasize—your own free will. That notion alone—free will—provides the summation of it all.”

The steam of your soul feels hot in confusion. “Free will? A triple-beam balance? Ninety-nine to 100 percent?”

“Your excursion several nights ago? The Scriptures state quite interestingly that ‘a whore is a deep ditch.’ ”

The line rings a bell in your bizarre head. Those two hookers at the Lounge the other night . . . “You don’t mean—”

“You had decided in your heart that you would partake in the delights of two ladies of the night? You even willingly ventured to procure the necessary funds, yet, at the last moment you decided to bestow those funds upon someone else, someone in grievous need . . .”

The redneck woman with the two kids at the Dollar General! you remember.

“And what you hitherto purveyed was what God perceived as the ultimate act of charity, so said St. Luke, ‘Whosoever has two coats must share with one who has none . . . ’ ”

Your jaw, however awkwardly, drops. “I gave the money to the poor woman instead of the two bar whores . . .”

“Indeed,” Howard says, half smiling. “And that gesture suffices. Allow me to convey it this way: if you were to die right now, your soul would ascend to the Kingdom of Heaven in a most instantaneous manner, where you would live in the Glory of God, forever.”

You feel a vast echo in your psyche.

When Howard taps the shapely clay shoulder of the Golemess, the steam-car stops, and he looks right at you, probably for effect.

“Lucifer wants that 100 percent, Mr. Hudson, and he’s willing to pay exorbitantly for it . . .”

Your head seems to quiver. “I—”

“Of course, it’s much to take in, and it’s our good fortune that our previous time constraint no longer exists, so put your multitudinous questions aside for a bit, and enjoy the ride . . .”

You take the advice as the car clatters on, though you have to admit, there’s not much to enjoy. You seem to be leaving the Offal District through an archway in a great fortresslike wall of hardened organic waste via blocks the size of minibuses. Next comes a road of crushed sulphur, which grinds grittily beneath the car’s narrow tires. “Here a toll, there a toll, everywhere a toll,” Howard complains as they idle up to a shack whose single occupant is a man with a face axed down the middle.

“Toll,” the attendant somehow utters.

Howard hands him a canvas sack that contains something the size of a melon. The toll-taker peeks in, nods, then waves them on.

“What was in the bag?” you have to ask.

“The gonad of an immature Spermatagoyle. They sell them to wealthy culinarists and executive chefs who carefully extract the seminiferous tubules. It’s a favorite dish of Grand Dukes, Barons, and the higher Nobiliary, for it’s the closest thing you’ll ever get to spaghetti in Hell.” Howard’s brow raises. “But I suppose you’re a bit of a culinarist yourself. It’s my understanding that you are an oysterman, yes?”

“I used to shuck oysters in a tourist trap,” you append.

“Ah, the fruits of the sea. I grew up in a veritable nexus of shellfish and crustaceans. Oysters as large as your open hand, and lobsters the size of infants.” Then Howard’s face seems to corrugate in aggravation. “And wouldn’t you know it? My iodine allergy prevented me from being able to eat any of it!

Poor guy, you think.

“And though you excelled in university,” Howard states the dim truth, “you might be interested to know that it was understandably forecast that I would surely do the same at Brown University, but—curse Pegana—my shattered nerves—thanks to a mother off her rocker—foreclosed the possibility of my even graduating high school. Lo, I would never be a university man . . .”

This guy really gets off track, you think. “Where are we going?”

“The Humanus Viaduct, which runs from the Dermas District to Corpus Peak, crossing the Styx.”

DERMABURG, reads a skin-toned sign that floats by.

Howard gestures the sign. “This District is made of—as you may have ascertained—skin.” And as Howard speaks the words, your Ocularus eyes remain peeled on the new surroundings. Row houses and squat buildings line the fleshy street, all covered by variously colored cuttings of skin. Some seem papered with dermal sheets as impeccable as the skin of the deaconess, while other edifices suffer from acne and other outbreaks. The car, then, turns right at a perspiry intersection. You glimpse the sign: FASCIA BLVD.

“A whole town made of skin?”

“These days, the majority of it is Hexegenically Engineered, save for the loftier real estate here, south of town, where natural epidermis is procured. Oh, there’s a City Flensing Crew now . . .”

You notice the activities on one corner, where a troop of beastly, slug-skinned things with horns, talons, and terrifying musculatures prepare themselves around a row of Humans pilloried nude. Cuts are made at the back of each victim’s neck, taloned fingers slide in, and then the entire “body suit” of epidermis is sloughed off, leaving the victim skinless from the neck down.

You wince as the beasts go right down the line.

“The attendants are called Ushers, a longtime pure-breed that serve as government workers and police,” Howard explains. “Human skin is much more valuable.”

“Ushers,” you murmur. “So they . . . peel the skin off and then—”

“Stretch it over wall frames.” Then Howard points again.

At the opposing corner, workmen congregate at a corner unit (more of the hunched, implike creatures) to evidently build an addition. But when two of them raise a wall frame, you see that long, banded-together bones comprise each strut rather than two-by-fours. After the frame has been erected, other workmen stretch skin over it.

As for the pilloried “victims,” you see that they’re actually willing participants; when released—skinless now—an Usher hands them some money, then sends them on their way.

“Lucifer prefers Hell’s denizens to choose to sell their skin, rather than merely taking it,” Howard says.

“They sell their own skin?”

“For narcotics. The Department of Addictions has devised delights that make de Quincey’s opiates and Poe’s liquor seem paltry. Few can rehabilitate themselves, but when they do, they’re forced into a Retoxification Center.”

You watch the skinless queues trudge to a nearby fleshy alley, where an overcoated Imp in sunglasses waits to sell them various bags of cryptic powders. When one Human woman—who’d been attractive before her flensing—failed to produce sufficient funds, the Imp said, “A blow job or an ovary. You know the prices, lady,” and then he parts his overcoat to sport a large maroon penis covered with barnacles. “To hell with that,” she says, then sits down, crosses her ankles behind her neck, and sticks a hand into her sex.

You don’t watch the rest.

The Golemess turns onto another road called Scleraderma Street, where some of the structures have hair growing on their roofs; others have collapsed to ramshackle piles from some dermatological disease; one has broken out into shingles, another is covered with warts.

And on another corner, you glimpse another sign: SKINAPLEX.

“What’s that?”

“The motion picture show? They’re rather similar here as in the Living World. And perhaps you’ll be satisfied to know that Fritz Lang and D. W. Griffith are still honing their art.”

Now you can see the marquee, complete with blinking lights: TRIPLE FEATURE! THE SIX COMMANDMENTS—WITHERING HEIGHTS—ALL DOGS GO TO HELL.

“Can we get out of here?” you plead. “I’ve had enough of skin-town.”

Howard chuckles. “Save for the revolting B.O., it’s actually one of the more sedate Districts. You’ll be happy to know, however, that we’re merely passing through.”

The last row of houses, you notice, are actually sweating. As you pass the District gates, more glaze-eyed denizens straggle in and head to the pillories.

Now the road rises through a yellow fog so thick, you can’t make out the endless scarlet sky. “So now it’s the . . .”

“The Humanus Viaduct. It begins at a lofty elevation and provides a spectacular view. Lucifer wants you to be fully aware of the immensity of the Mephistopolis . . .”

Lucifer wants me . . . Your thoughts stall.

“He hopes that you’ll want to return.”

Now your monstrous lips actually laugh. “Fat chance of that! So far I’ve seen a town made of guts and a town made of skin! What, he thinks I want to move in?”

“The immensity, Mr. Hudson, and in that immensity you’ll consider the value to someone of your very privileged status.”

“I still don’t understand what you—”

Howard holds up a pale hand. “Later, Mr. Hudson. There’s still much more for you to envisage . . .”

The car chugs ever upward, and in the fog, you can swear you catch glimpses of horrid, stretched faces showing fangs in vertical mouths.

“Gremlins,” Howard specifies. “Wretched little things. They live in fog, swamp gas, and clouds, and even are said to have cities in the higher noctilucent formations.”

You spy more fangs snapping in a split second. “But-but-but—”

“Nothing can do us harm, so you needn’t fear, Mr. Hudson.” Past the buxom driver’s shoulder, Howard points to a trinket of some kind dangling from the rearview mirror: a small metal Kewpie of a robed man holding a staff in one hand and an upside-down baby in the other. The pewtery detail implies that the baby’s throat has been slit, and its blood is trickling into a bucket. “We’re protected by the St. Exsanguinatius Medallion. It’s quite a potent Totem.”

Great, you think.

The car lumbers on, and Howard slouches back and begins to idly hum a tune, which seems aggravatingly familiar. In time, the name comes to you: “Yes, We Have No Bananas.”

Finally, the fog expels the steam-car onto a high, rough-hewn mountain pass. You yell out loud when you peer over the side and see less than an inch of the cliff-road’s surface sticking out past the outer side of the tire. “There’s no safety rails!” you shout.

Howard frowns. “That would hardly be logical in Hell, Mr. Hudson. Now, if you’ll put your consternation aside, I’ll welcome you to one of our attractions here: Corpus Peak. Corpus Peak is a man-made—er, pardon me—a Demon-made mountain. It is composed, in fact, of exactly one billion Demon corpses . . .”

When the words finally register, you grind your teeth and peer once again over the side, and in a few moments it’s the image that begins to register, however grimly. The vast side of the “mountain” sweeps down hundreds of feet, and in it, you notice the rigor-mortis’d cadavers of Demons.

“A-a-a mountain of dead Demons?”

“That’s correct. The first billion Hellborn, in fact, to die under Lucifer’s initial scourge when he took over. All manner of demonic species: Imps, Trolls, Gargoyles, Griffins, Ghouls, Incubi, Succubi—everything. The Morning Star wanted his first monument to be symbolic. ‘Serve me or die.’ He liked it so much that he ordered the highest echelon Bio-Wizards to put a Pristinization Hex on the entire mountain. The corpses, in other words, will never decompose.”

You keep staring at the twisted faces and limbs of the mountainside. Kind of makes the Hoover Dam look like Tinkertoys.

“And below,” Howard adds, “the abyssal river Styx.”

Only then do you let your vision span out, to a ghastly, twisting waterway of black ooze marbled with something red. “What is it called?”

“The Styx!” Howard exclaims. “It’s the most renowned river in all of mythology! Surely you’ve read Homer!”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. I forgot about that one. But I was thinking of the rock band.” You try to shrug. “Never got into them.”

The noxious river is so distant you can’t see details but you can make out tiny things like boats floating on the putrid surface as well as swarming, dark shapes beneath. Every so often, some colossal thing breaks the surface, swallows a boat in its pestiferous maw, then resubmerges.

You’re grateful for the distraction of still another sign: THE DEPARTMENT OF PASSES AND BYWAYS UNWELCOMES YOU TO THE HUMANUS VIADUCT. You envisioned yourself gulping when you get a good look at this “bridge,” which stretches miles from the top of the corpse-mountain, across the appalling river, to a polygonal black structure sitting atop another mountain (this one of pinkish rock). The sights are spectacular in their own horrific way, yet your thoughts can only dread what must be to come.

The bridge—this Humanus Viaduct—is scarcely ten feet wide and consists of objects like railroad ties lashed together, one after another—countless thousands of them—which all comprise the spans of the bridge. A meager rope-rail can be seen stretching on either side.

“We’re not driving the car over that, are we!” you object.

“Why, of course, we are,” Howard says. “The view is thrilling, and it’s crucial that you be thrilled.”

“No way, man! That bridge looks like something in a damn Tarzan movie! It’ll never hold us!”

“Mr. Hudson, please, don’t worry yourself. Naturally the Viaduct has been charged by various Levitation Spells.”

You try to feel reassured. You can see the rickety bridge sway in a sudden hot gust, and as the car rises to the gatehouse, your vantage point rises as well. Now you can see the surface of the links.

And all at once, you don’t need to be told why it’s called the Humanus Viaduct.

Atop the links of railroad ties exist a virtual carpet of naked human beings, who have all been lashed together as well. All these people—like the ties, thousands upon thousands—form the actual driving surface of the bridge.

You can only stare when you rattle through the gatehouse and pull in. The Golemess robotically shifts the vehicle into a lower gear; then you lurch forward.

“We’re driving on people, for God’s sake!” In a panic you look down. “And they’re still alive!”

“Indeed, they are. Hell exists, in general, as a domain of all conceivable horror, where every ideology functions as an offense against God. But in particular, it’s a domain of punishment. Hence, the ‘human asphalt’ beneath us.”

They chug onward, narrow tires rolling over bellies, throats, faces, and shins. You watch the faces grimace and wail. “How come they don’t die?”

“They’re the Human Damned—who cannot die. That is why they call it Damnation; it’s eternal. Only Demons and Hybrids can die here, for they have no souls. But as for the Human Damned, their bodies are nearly as eternal as their spirits. When your soul is delivered to Hell, you receive what we call a Spirit Body that’s identical to the body you lived in on Earth. Only total destruction can ‘kill’ a Spirit Body, in which case the soul is spirited into the Hellborn life form with the closest propinquity. It could slip into something as large as an Abhorasaur, something as commonplace as an Imp, or something as minuscule as a Pus-Aphid.”

Men bellow, women shriek, as the steam-car rocks on. Rib cages crack and sink inward, bones snap.

Yet in spite of the horror you’re witnessing, more questions spin in your mind. “Great, but I don’t have a ‘Spirit Body.’ I have a pumpkin—”

“A Snot-Gourd.”

“Okay, so what happens if this Snot-Gourd gets destroyed?”

“An astute question but immaterial. Should your Auric Carrier be subject to mishap, your Etheric Tether would simply drag your soul back to your physical body at the Larken House. But I say immaterial since you are not, as yet, one of the Human Damned.”

As yet, you consider. I’m not Damned . . . but they WANT me to be?

The Viaduct sways back and forth as the car lumbers ahead. In the middle—with already several miles behind them—the bridge dips so severely that you feel certain it will break from the vehicle’s weight. Levitation Spell, my ass. But soon enough, you begin to ascend again, that queer black shape drawing closer. You think of a pyramid with a flat top.

“So what’s with the pyramid-looking thing? A rest stop, I hope.”

“A pyramid? Really, Mr. Hudson, you must’ve studied your geometry with the same zeal you studied Homer. It’s not a pyramid, it’s a trisoctahedron: a quadrilateral polygon bearing no parallel sides, also referred to as a trapezohedron. Lucifer is very much enamored of polygons, because in Hell, geometry is thoroughly non-Euclidian. Planes and the angles at which they exist serve as a heady occult brew. I wrote of such stuff and wonder now from whence the ideas arrived.” Howard seems to be trying to recollect something. “Gad, I do hope my Shining Trapezohedron in ‘Haunter of the Dark’ was born of my own creativity and not that of some sheepshank scrivener in Hell.” Suddenly a look of utter dread comes to his marbled face. “What a cosmic outrage that would be.”

You still don’t know what he’s talking about, but in an attempt to divert your attention from the staggering height, you offer, “Maybe it was Lucifer’s idea, and he’s the one who piped it into your head.”

“Impossible,” Howard quickly replies. “Fallen Angels, though essentially immortal, are completely estranged from creativity and imagination. Every idea, every occult equation and sorcerial theorem, every ghastly erection of architecture, and even every invention of social disorder—it all comes from a single source: the Human Damned.”

This is getting too deep for me, you consider. Your pumpkin-head reels—or it would have, if it could. Now you think of ski lifts carrying skiers to the peaks, only there’s no snow here, just craggy rock pink as the inside of a cheek. As you near the black polygon, you discern that it’s about the size of Randal’s Qwik-Mart. Just when it appears that the steam-car would drive directly into the polished black side of the thing, an opening forms: a lopsided triangle that stretches from the size of a Dorito to an aperture sizeable enough to admit the car.

Well, that was nifty . . . I guess. Relief washes over your psyche; the Humanus Viaduct is at last behind you. But now what?

“Welcome to the Cahooey Turnstile,” Howard says, “a superior mode of entertaining your tour. The process saves us from driving for untold thousands of miles.”

“What do you mean, turnstile?” you counter. “You mean like in a subway?”

“Think, instead, of an occult revolving door.”

A revolving door . . . to where?

The aperture closes silently behind, leaving you to peer around the unevenly walled room of smooth black planes. It looks like something born of science fiction, save for the sputtering torches that light the chamber. Then—

Whoa!

A shadow moves. When the Golemess shuts down the steam-car, you see the hulking shape approach: a sinewy Demon with meat cleavers for hands and a helmet fashioned from the jaws of some outrageous beast. Below the forward rim of teeth like Indian arrowheads, two tiny eyes bulge, and there are two rimmed holes for nostrils but no mouth. No ears can be seen either but only plugs of lead that seem to fill two holes where the ears should be. Some manner of cured hide covered with plates make up the Demon’s armor. Reddish brown muscles throb when it regards the car.

“What the HELL is that?”

Howard answers. “The Keeper of the Turnstile, Mr. Hudson—an Imperial Truncator, of the genus Bellicosus Silere. It can’t hear or speak; it can only observe and act. The Imperial Conditioning is self-evident; note the spread jaws of a Ghor-Hound which suffice for the helm.”

You notice it, all right, but don’t like the way it approaches the car.

“Should the Truncator entertain even a single anti-Luciferic thought? Those jaws slam shut and bite off the top of its head.”

Hard-core, you think. “And its his job is to—”

“Anyone or thing who enters the Turnstile without authority,” Howard says, “will be diced into bits, tittles, and orts.”

Just as the sentinel’s cleaverlike hands raise, the Golemess lithely leaves the car and shows it a sheet of yellowed parchment.

The guard nods, steps back, yet oddly beckons the Golemess with one of its hooks. In the torchlight, you wince at the stark beauty of the clay-made creature, the flawless curves, the high, tumescent breasts and jutting gray-plug nipples. The Golemess follows the Demon to a cozy corner, and drops to its knees.

“What’s that all about?”

“It’s customary for authorized guests to give succor to the sentinel,” Howard says with some relief. “Another toll, so to speak. I can only thank the Fates that this particular Truncator is of the heterosexual variety.”

You get the gist as you watch the Golemess unbutton a front flap on the Demon’s armor, revealing its penis, if it could be called that.

“You gotta be kidding me!” you exclaim. “That’s it’s-it’s-it’s—”

Howard sees fit to not respond.

The limp shaft of the Truncator’s penis looks like six red arteries grouped together, perhaps as thin as six-foot-long lengths of aquarium tube. You wince worse at the scrotum, which looks more like a cluster of Concord grapes, but even more appalling is the Demon’s glans: a pink, lopsided sphere of shining flesh at the end of the corded shaft, tennis ball–size, with not one but half a dozen urethral ducts.

You look away when the Golemess begins to . . . render oral “succor.”

Howard grabs the stick on which your head is affixed and climbs out of the car.

“So . . . what now?”

“Time to charge the Turnstile,” Howard says. “It’s quite a fascinating apparatus which harnesses cabalistic energy lines that exist in the Hex-Flux—Hell’s version of electromagnetics—and effects what we refer to as Spatial Displacement—one of Lucifer’s favorite cosmological sciences.” And with that—which you understand none of—Howard approaches a black-plane wall. There, you see a circle of engraved notches; at each notch there’s a small geometric etching.

“So this is a revolving door through space and time?”

“Just space,” Howard corrects. “There is no time in Hell. The use of this facility will give you the opportunity to see a variety of the Mephistopolis’s landmarks, which we hope will impress you.”

Impress me, you ponder, enough to stay? Is that what he’s talking about?

Howard touches one of the etchings, then—

A great, nearly electronic hum fills the black room.

How do you like that jazz? you think.

The configuration increases in size until it’s as large as a typical doorway. Yet a sheet of black static is all you see beyond the threshold. That’s all you see, but what you hear is something else altogether:

Screams.

“Shall we go, Mr. Hudson?” Howard asks, holding your head-stick like an umbrella.

You feel stunned, half by curiosity and half by dread. “What about the Golemess? Shouldn’t she go with us?”

Howard veers the stick aside, to show you the corner. “As you can observe, Mr. Hudson. The Golemess is . . . detained.”

“Oh.”

Howard smiles and adjusts his spectacles. He steps through the uneven doorway of black static and takes you through . . .

Even though you don’t have a stomach, a nauseating sensation rises up. Stepping through the egress feels like stepping off a high window ledge; you expect a deadly impact but none arrives. Instead you hear a crackling that sounds more organic than electric. Fear seals your eyes and you scream, plummeting . . .

“We haven’t fallen even a millimeter, Mr. Hudson,” Howard chuckles. “It’s merely the nature of the concentrated Flux we’ve just traversed.”

Your head feels overly buoyant when you open your eyes. You leave them open only long enough to see that you are on a cacophonic street clogged with monsters, steam-cars, and carriages drawn by horned horses that look leprous. Flies the size of finches buzz around sundry corpse-piles on corners, a sign stuck in each pile: RECYCLE BY FEDERAL ORDER. You notice the sidewalk as well as the walls of most buildings are made of roughly crushed bones and teeth hardened within pale mortar. One storefront window boasts TORSOS: HUMAN & HELLBORN—ON SALE, and another window has been streaked on the inside with blood: OUT OF BUSINESS.

The sheer noise prevents you from ordering your thoughts: the clang of metal, the sound of hammer to stone, shouts—“Come back with my ears, you Imp fuck!”—vehicular horns that sound more like the brays of tortured animals.

“Pandemonium in sound and vision,” Howard says, wending down the stained sidewalk with your head-stick in his hand. “Take the opportunity to look around.”

This is the mistake.

As far as “looking around” goes, there’s nothing to see save for horror and revulsion. In no time, you find that when you dare look at something, your psyche is arrested by some adrenaline-packed inner scream—perhaps the sound of your soul rebelling at the wrongness of this place.

A city, a city, you keep thinking in a panic. Hell is a city . . .

You can only look for a second at a time, in grueling snatches that demand an alternating surcease. Each “snatch” shows you something either horrific or impossible:

—blood-streaked skyscrapers rising higher than any building on Earth, each leaning this way or that. When one collapses in the distance, before the churning bloodred sky, hundreds leap off corroded balconies with wizened shrieks—

—street gutters gushing with lumpy muck over which dilapidated Demons and Humans—obviously homeless—hunt for tidbits, while packs of cackling Broodren—Hell’s children—stalk through the sidewalk horde hunting for the elderly or the defenseless to quickly eviscerate so to make off with their organs—

—Arachni-Watchers, like spiders the size of box turtles, crawling up walls and across high ledges. A cluster of eyeballs form the body, ever watching from all directions for citizen behavior in violation of current Luciferic Laws. Psychic nerve sacs at the body’s core immediately transmit real-time hectographs of infractions to the nearest Constabulary Stations—

—streets, gutters, and alleyways aswarm with indigenous vermin such as Bapho-Rats, Caco-Roaches, Brick-Mites, and Corpusculars, all hunting for the unsuspecting to infect, to ensile with larva, or to eat—

—shapely She-Demons—some brown, some black, some spotted—chatting inanely behind a salon window as trained Trolls paint their horns and administer pedicures with their teeth—

—sewer grates belching flame, while beneath the iron grills faces strain, screaming, charred fingers wriggling in the gaps. Over some grates more Broodren roast severed feet on sticks—

—hot-air balloons floating in and out of soot-colored clouds overhead, each suspending iron-bolted baskets from which dog-faced Conscripts dump buckets of infectious waste, molten gold, or Gargoylic Acid onto the masses below. The skin of the warped balloons reads SATANIC NOBLE GAS FLEET—

—more storefront windows passing by. LIVE SEX WITH THE DEAD SHOW! LIVE PULPING SHOW! LIVE EYE-SUCKING SHOW! LIVE HALVING SHOW! When you peer into this latter window, you glimpse destitute Demons and half-breeds being drawn slowly across tables fitted with band saws, while spectators applaud from rows of theaterlike chairs—

—and Broodren, Broodren, and more Broodren—the hooligans of the Abyss—shifting stealthily through the throng with eyes bright and fangs sharp, absconding with whatever they can tear away from passersby: purses, wallets, skin, pudenda. One Broodren runs off with half of a Troll’s face, only to be palmed flat into the sidewalk by a vigilant Golem—

—and a final dizzying scan of the noxious city’s skyline: a sea of smoke, sinking rooftops, and screams; endless rot-encrusted buildings atilt; mile after mile of crackling power lines dipping from rusted towers decorated by corpses hanging from gibbets; evil winged things gliding through the mephitic air, forever and ever—

—and ever and ever . . .

. . . and then the “snatches” end.

“Of course, acclimation takes a while,” Howard mentions. “But you’ll scarcely take in anything with your eyes closed most of the time.”

You’re too afraid to take in another glimpse; it’s all too tumultuous because you know that every impossibility here is utterly real. You open your eyes, then, to slits, careful . . .

“Here’s something you’ll find interesting . . .” Howard approaches a business establishment with a saloon-style swing-door as an entrance. The sign reads: LOODY’S MAM-MIFERON TAPROOM.

“Taproom!” you exclaim. “Beer?”

“Regrettably not, Mr. Hudson. Kegs of lager aren’t on the offering, just kegs—so to speak—of milk.”

“Milk?”

“Mammiferons . . .”

You enter the narrow bar. Various Demons and Humans sit about slate tables sipping from crude metal cups.

Howard points to the craggy brick wall behind the bar top. There is, indeed, a row of “taps” as one would expect in a beer hall but . . .

Are those . . . BREASTS? you ask yourself.

“Mammiferons,” Howard repeats. “They’re Hexegenically manufactured; particularized genes are spliced and then enspelled, for the desired result.”

All you can do is stare.

Six carriages of flesh hang along the wall, each sporting two bulbous breasts as large as basketballs. Veins pulse beneath the stretched, translucent skin. At first you think they must be torsos of preposterously endowed Human women but then you recall what Howard said about their “manufacture.” Betwixt each pair of breasts there seems to be an organic “chute” of some sort, and each rimmed chute yawns open as if in wait of something.

“It’s a wall of boobs!” you have no choice but to yell.

“The Mammiferons exist to produce milk in these more upscale taprooms.”

The metal gird that surrounds each enormous nipple reminds you of the connector on a car battery, and affixed to the top of each gird is a tap.

You watch as a shockingly attractive werewolf yanks down on a tap and fills a cup for a demonic customer.

“The barkeeps are Lycanymphs,” Howard elucidates. “Erotopathic female werewolves, oh, and look.” He points to one of the organic chutes between one of the pairs . . .

The bar’s janitor—some manner of ridge-browed Troll—lackadaisically drops a shovelful of sloppy refuse into the chute. The chute closes, pauses, then gulps.

“They’re brainless,” Howard goes on. “You can think of Mammiferons as living beverage dispensers. Miss?” he asks of the furred attendant. “A cup of the vintage, if you will.”

The voluptuous She-Wolf holds a metal cup beneath one of the massive teats, works the tap, and fills it up with slimy off-white milk.

“All we need do is feed them garbage and they produce milk for eons . . .” Howard smiles at the cup. “I must have some sustenance, lest exhaustion supervene the necessary ambling to come.” Howard drinks the cup of dense milk. “Such a treat!”

Yet all you can do is gawp at the row of preposterous, sodden breasts on the wall.

Hell really is a screwed-up place . . .

The feisty werewolf pours more drafts from the papillic taps.

“Howard?” you ask. “Can we get out of here? This is too much for me.”

“As you wish.” Howard takes you back out to the hectic street, and turns. “This is the ‘artsy’ District, though the insinuation, like all else in Hell, is quite false. It’s all petulantly commercial, I’m afraid.”

You pass some sort of café that reminds you of Starbucks, but the cups of coffee look more like cups of mud. Trendy Hellborns yak pretentiously, batting their eyes. When you pass what appears to be a bookstore, Howard exclaims, “Drat!” and then you spot the window sign that announces BOOK SIGNING TONIGHT! EDGAR ALLAN POE WILL AUTOGRAPH YOUR COPY OF HIS LATEST RELEASE, THE RISE OF THE HOUSE OF USHER!

“I can’t abide to miss a signing,” Howard laments. “But duty does indeed call.”

Marquees of lights blink around the next corner, and suddenly your inhuman ears pick up a punchy beat behind a low, crooning voice that sings, “Hardheaded shovel, stone-cold ground, six feet under’s where I’ll be found, so don’t you, step on my blue-suede shroud . . .”

“Hey, that voice is very familiar!” you insist and when your head-stick passes the little honky-tonk’s front door, you glimpse a flaming stage before a packed house. On the stage itself a man in a pompous white suit fringed with silver locomotes about, jerking his pelvis. He’s got heavy black sideburns and horns in his head.

No! you think. It can’t be!

Or . . . can it?

“Six for the money, six for the show, six for Lord Lucifer—go, cat, go!”

No!

“I’m not attuned to that particular genre of music,” Howard says, “though the singer seems to be very popular here. However, Mozart plays with regularity, and so does Paganini. In fact, the former’s latest opera, Gloria de Satonus is marvelous.” But then Howard seems to catch himself in an oversight. “Oh, I suspect we’ll be rephasing soon; I haven’t been counting—”

“Counting what?

“My steps. The Turnstile is programmed to rephase our location every 666 steps—”

“I never would’ve guessed,” you groan.

“Don’t scoff, Mr. Hudson. The Imperfect Number is quite a powerful force of Nether-Energy. As God proclaimed seven to be the perfect number, he unwittingly empowered the imperfection of one digit lower. Lucifer embraces it. In fact, when God cast his Once Favorite off the Twelfth Gate of Heaven, Lucifer, the Morning Star, plummeted in the configuration of the number six. Through that number, in one manner or other, all occult science is activated—the Senarial Science. You’re about to behold more examples.”

You suddenly grimace as the crackling black fuzz of the Turnstile shreds the sights before you. You feel the pressure drop, and again that feeling of falling recurs to the point that you wail, when—

PUNITARY FILLING STATION #5096—HUMANS ONLY, the next sign reads. NEXT LEFT.

You shake off the vertigo to find yourself being walked into a compound supervised by figures in policelike garb. Every six of the figures is joined by a hooded monk with an aura of luminous black mist. “The Constabularies are the federal police,” Howard says. “They’re mostly Human-Demon Hybrids who undergo extensive training and Spirit Manipulation. And the hooded gents are Bio-Wizards, in the event of, shall we say, civil disobedience.”

As usual, you’re duly confused. “That sign said filling station, but I don’t see any cars. They have gas here?”

Howard ruefully shakes his head no, and carries you farther . . .

“It’s a Human filling station, Mr. Hudson. Another demonstration of Lucifer’s execration for the Human Damned.” Then Howard gestures a prison wagon being drawn in by more unnameable horned beasts. Within the wagon’s iron bars, you can’t help but see the group of naked Humans. They’re either pleading for mercy, or down on their knees in desperate prayer.

“This Cove tends to Humans who have the audacity to continue to pray to God. It should go without saying: Lucifer does not approve of such behavior . . .” Now Howard points upward to a high water tower but when you look at it, you do a double take.

The tower reads, URINE ONLY.

“Every urinal in the District empties into that collection tank. It’s 66,666 gallons, by the way.”

You’re already getting sick in the contemplation; then your eyes follow several pipes leading from the tower’s base to six objects that appear almost identical to gasoline pumps in the Living World.

Six at a time, then, Humans from the prison wagon—male and female alike—are strapped to gurneys and rolled before the pumps.

You feel your spirit paling as you watch . . .

Equally identical nozzles are brandished by Imp attendants. “Fill ’em up!” a Constable shouts, and then the Imps part the jaws of the Humans and insert the nozzles down their throats. The handles are depressed, and bells begin to ring for each gallon dispensed.

The Human prisoners are promptly filled.

“Next!” shouts the Constable. “Keep ’em moving!”

“Exactly six gallons are pumped into each captive,” Howard adds.

The gurneys are moved off, to be replaced by more. Of the Humans already filled, their abdomens bloat. More Imps move now, holding objects that look like blowtorches but when the triggers are pulled, mist, not flame, shoots out. The mist is applied across the mouths and anuses and urethras of the captives, and before your own eyes, their lips and excretory orifices are impossibly sealed shut.

Howard explains further, in his piping accent, “You see, Lucifer wants them filled. And what they’re filled with—the urine of Hell—must remain contained; hence, the Flesh Welders. A gasified pontica dust provides the occult mist, which seals them shut. This way, the urine can never be voided.”

Gagging, you watch more. The captives, now swollen as if pregnant, are roughed off the gurneys and shooed out of the camp, their mouths and crotches “welded” shut forever.

Then your eyes steal back to the hideous pumps where the next deposition of unfortunates are being filled. Each gallon dings a bell, abdomen’s quickly distend; then they’re sealed with the welder and moved on. A stolid efficiency.

“Why?” you rail. “This makes no sense! Why are they FILLING PEOPLE WITH PISS!”

Howard shrugs off your alarm. “Because the very notion pleases Lucifer. He quite simply thrills at the idea—he likes for his detractors to be filled. Wombs, bellies, bowels. By your abhorrence, I take it that you’d prefer not to witness the Excrement Pumps at the next compound?”

“Get me out of here!” you shriek.

“Fill ’em up!” the Constab yells again, and as Howard hastens you out, that steady ding-ding-ding of the pumps follows . . .

A mental fog veils your vision as Howard lopes away. You pass several Agonicity Transformers, which each contain a Human dangling from a trestle by his or her wrists. Wires threaded through tiny holes drilled in their skulls coil upward to sizzling capacitors. Constabs heave pitchers of boiling water on each “power element,” and the resultant rush of agony fires the pain center of the brain, which is then converted to occult energy and dumped into the local power grid. “Power without surcease,” you think you hear Howard comment, “made possible by the immortality of the Human Damned. It’s curious to ponder, eh? When God made the Human soul immortal, did he ever even conceive that some of those he condemned to Damnation would be utilized by his Nemesis as inexhaustible generators? Likely not!” More small compounds pass by and you can’t help but notice the signs: BONE MELTERS, FACE RIVETERS, BROODREN KILN, PENECTOMIST. The compounds are interestingly arranged throughout the Reservation, each intersected by quaint walkways, and it’s along these walkways that you notice chatty groups of well-dressed Demons and Hierarchals traipsing along. They stop by each compound and peer in with dark smiles, some fanning themselves, others looking more closely with objects like opera glasses. Finally your curiosity pushes past your loathing, and you propose: “All these Demons on the walkways . . . They don’t work here, do they? They look more like—”

“Spectators?” Howard says. “Indeed. Because they are. Punishment Reservations such as the State Punitaries prioritize not only punishment but also commerce. The societal upper crust is urged to patronize these areas. They pay admittance. In Hell, punishment exists as sport, and such places as this serve equally as amusement parks.”

“Oooo’s” and “Ahhhh’s” resound around the next bend where the sign reads: ROASTERY—BETS TAKEN. Several Coves stretch out in a line, while revolting spectators clamor to buy tickets printed with various numbers from small huts before each exhibit. Roastery? you wonder but can already smell something. “Step right up, folks,” a ghoulish barker announces before the first Cove. “Let’s watch and see which one of these despicable anti-Satanic insurgents can last the longest with a head-cooking.” Then you notice three grim-faced Imps lashed to iron chairs facing the audience. Horned attendants busy themselves at a large circular oven in which a considerable pile of small stones are heated till they are red-hot. Chain mail sacks are then filled with the stones and carried over with tongs. Atop the head of each Imp a sack is lain, sitting much like a hot water bottle. Spectators watch in hushed fascination as each Imp’s face billows and then they begin to let rip with soul-searing howls. Eventually, of course, their heads cook, but the one who screams the longest is the winner. Bets are taken more excitedly at the next Cove where demonic mouths are filled with the scorching stones and held shut by unfeeling Golems. Worse was the last Cove, where three stunningly attractive Succubi have been hung upside down by their ankles, legs widely spread, and vaginas opened with retractors. It was into their vaginal barrels that more of the red-hot stones are deposited. For efficiency’s sake, a Golem with something akin to a bore cleaner for a cannon stands by and packs down each allotment of rocks. The first Succubi’s eyes immediately pop out from the jolt of pain, and the second heaves so hard her bones are heard snapping. The third merely shudders and screams, smoke jetting from her mouth. When the screams treble in intensity, nearby glass shatters.

“The winner!” revels the attendant.

“This is what rich people in Hell do for fun?” you object. “They bet to see which one lives the longest? Good Lord!”

Howard winces at the name. “I will add, Mr. Hudson, that the art of wagering was invented by Humans . . .”

“Then why aren’t Human beings tortured here, too?”

“These particular Coves function to judicially torture only the Hellborn, Mr. Hudson. All of the victims here have been convicted of terrorist activity or traitorous thoughts via a Psychical Sciences Center. But soon enough it’ll be my pleasure to introduce you to a facility for very select Humans only.”

You finally put the Roastery behind you, the revel of bettors fading in the background. “I don’t want to see anymore,” you say, drained. “None of it makes sense. Head-cooking? Filling monsters’ vaginas with hot rocks? Pumping piss into people? It’s hideous.”

“Well, certainly you understand that this is the intention in the Mephistopolis, Mr. Hudson. Notions expressly not hideous are conspicuously bereft.” Howard carries you through a gate exit manned by Ushers. Beyond this gatehouse steam-trucks empty hoppers of dead Hellborn onto conveyor belts that carry the piles into a warehouse marked, MUNICIPAL PULPING STATION #95,605.

Your vaporous mind feels like dead meat as the Turnstile’s black magic sizzles before your eyes, and next—

“Perhaps you’ll be pleased by the present change of scenery,” Howard remarks. “Welcome to Shylock Square, a government-accredited Shopping District for Hell’s most privileged and monetarily endowed. And the thoroughfare we’re traversing now is the most recent addition.”

When the black static dissipates you espy a street not unlike those in the Living World—save for the scarlet sky and black moon above—which is lined by fancy shops, cafés, and the like. Well-dressed She-Demons and creatures in business suits window-shop along the crowded lane. The street sign at the corner reads HELMSLEY BLVD.

“It can be likened to the Fifth Avenue of Hell,” Howard adds. “Here you will see the city’s most posh, most elite, and most upper crust—indeed, demimondes extraordinaire . . .”

Window signs pass by: DEMONSWEAR BY MARQUETTE, FINE HUMAN LEATHER, THE HARRY TRUMAN HAT SHOP—ONLY THE FINEST MERCURY USED, CUSTOM PORTRAITS BY GUSTAV DORE. It takes a moment for your vertigo to drift off; then you peer into a window stenciled HAND-COUCH MASSAGE and see a shapely, greenish-skinned She-Demon stretched nude on a couch made of severed hands. The hands meticulously knead every muscle in her body while a servant Imp stands by with a tray of refreshments. ELITE APPAREL FOR DEMONIC WOMEN reads the next window, and hanging on Human mannequins made of salt are an array of Tongue-Skirts, Lip-Sweaters, and Hand-Bras, and next—MATTRESS RETAILERS—PROCRUSTEAN BEDS—where an unfortunate female Troll, knob-faced and high-breasted, is forced to demonstrate before a group of more chatty She-Demons. Blades slam down to sever the creature’s feet the instant she lay down; and next—COSMETIC AND DENTAL TERATOLOGY—where an attractive Human Concubine sits tensed in a chair while a Warlock extracts her teeth and replaces them with baby toes.

“And this is how rich people in Hell live it up?” you ask, revolted.

Howard seems surprised by the tenor of your remark. “Mr. Hudson, the clients on this selfsame street are among the most favored and most advantaged in the city. Barons and Blood Princes, Dukes and Archdukes, Viceroys and Chevaliers, and their superlative concubines—She-Demons and Fellatitrines, Erototesses and Succubi, Sex-Imps and Vulvatagoyles. The men possessed with the most power are always followed by women with the most desirability. What they merely wear, Mr. Hudson, bespeaks their sheer social status.” And that’s when you take closer note of just what some of these ritzy monsters are wearing—

Good God!

One curvaceous She-Demon taps down the sidewalk in Bone-Sandals, wearing a bra whose cups are Gryphon faces, while the monstrous woman’s hot pants seem to be composed of stitched-together eyeballs. The eyeballs look at you when she prances by. Hand-Bras and Tongue-Skirts are prevalent as well but then a vivacious bluish-skinned Succubus turns the corner dressed in an entire bodysuit of tongues. You groan when you see that each and every tongue is alive. Through another window you steal a glance at a sleek and perfect-bosomed Imp as she tries on a teddy made of shellacked bat wings, while yet another Succubus tries on a negligee made from various scalps. In a Surgical Salon next door, a fussy She-Imp appraises her own round rump in a mirror and complains to an attendant, “My ass is too big. I want hers!” and then points to one of several Human women standing on display. A man in a white smock says, “A fine choice, miss,” and promptly slices both buttocks off the Human who is held down on a cutting board by a Golem. The smocked man—presumably the cosmetic surgeon—hefts each buttock in his hands and says, “Come along to the surgery suite, miss. I’ll have these transplanted in a jiffy.” And if that’s not enough, your senses stall when a bell rings and then a crystalline door opens—fancily labeled COSMETIC GRAFTING—and out steps a petitely horned and very lusty She-Demon. Onto every square inch of her skin a nipple has been grafted. She seems delighted with the service and enthuses to Howard, “Oh, my husband, the Grand Duke Desalvo, has such a fetish for nipples, I just know he’ll love this!”

“Charming,” Howard compliments, then back to you, he continues, “Indeed, Mr. Hudson. Hell’s most exclusive are what you are beholding now. No indulgence, no luxury is deprived of this select group. In fact, there is only one class of inhabitant more favored, and that would be the members of the Privilato Class.”

You offer Howard a funky look. “The Privilat—”

“And, look! There’s one now!” Howard says and excitedly points upward.

An odd groaning sound ensues and fifty feet above the street, you notice something that can only be described as a wavering hole in the sky, approximately ten feet in diameter. A bizarre, fluidlike green light rims the hole and within stands a long-haired Human man wearing clothes fashioned entirely from sparkling jewels. His face appears ordinary, yet it is set in the widest grin, and then you see that even his teeth are exorbitant jewels. On his forehead is a fancy Gothic mark: the letter P. Hmm, you think. What’s with that guy? But what you notice even more profoundly are the man’s companions, six of the most beautiful naked women you’ve ever seen.

“No wonder the guy’s smiling,” you mention, your own lust sparked. “Check out the drop-dead gorgeous women he’s with.”

“And they’ll be with him in aeternum, Mr. Hudson, or until he wearies of them in which case they’ll be replaced by more. The women are known as Soubrettes—the very pinnacle of sexual servitor. Inhuman Growth Hormones are occultized and injected, to augment their most desirable body parts, and they’re trained quite exhaustively in the Sexual Arts. The technology they’re flying about town in is called a Nectoport.”

You stare incredulous at the spectacle—literally a hole in the sky, or a portal that’s moving. The oozing green light about the rim throbs. “What the . . . hell is it?”

“Hell’s answer to flying carpets, you could say,” Howard chuckles. “Did you know that I read The Thousand and One Nights when I was but a lad of eight years? Oh . . . of course you wouldn’t know that. Nevertheless, a Nectoport is quite obviously a mode of transportation . . . as well as a very exclusive one. With only very rare exceptions, they’re only to be operated by either the Constabulary, the Satanic Military, or the highest members of the Governmental Demonocracy.”

“Oh, so that guy with all the hot Demon girls is in the government or army?”

“I said, Mr. Hudson, only very rare exceptions. Nectoports are able to constrict great distances by reprocessing psychic energy from the Torturian Complexes. Sorcerers trained at the De Rais Labs devised the unique method. It’s possible for a Nectoport to travel a thousand miles of Hell’s terrain without the occupants ever really leaving their debarkation point. Do you comprehend me?”

“No,” you emphatically state.

“It’s neither here nor there. But to elucidate, the Privilatos are entitled to unlimited Nectoport usage, due to their staggering rank.”

You shake your gourd-head in more confusion. “Okay, so the guy’s not in the government, he’s not a cop, and he’s not in the military but he’s superprivileged?”

“Precisely.”

“Okay. Why?

Howard beams through his pallored face. “Mr. Hudson, I’m absolutely delighted that you’ve made the inquiry . . .”

As Howard talks, your eyes flick to the Nectoport. The crush of sexy Soubrettes are cooing in the Privilato’s ear, feeling him up with deft hands.

“—the gentleman’s name is Dowski Swikaj, formerly a friar from Guzow, Poland—”

But as Howard goes on to answer your question, you continue to stare upward. The Nectoport hovers closer now, and the razor-sharp vision afforded you by your Ocularus eyes scrutinize each of the jeweled man’s nude consorts. Several are Human, and their sexual enhancements are obvious, as though every aspect of what men find desirable in women has been accelerated tenfold, while the others, however demonic, are just as outrageously desirous in spite of genes that make them technically monsters. One, an auburn-haired Fellatitrine, has four full breasts on each side of her supple physique, yet each nipple is a puckered mouth, while the mouth on her orb-eyed face is a hairless and perfectly cloven vagina. Next to her stands a sultry Vulvatagoyle, with skin the hue of chalk but shining to a gleam as if lacquered. Wide hips and a flawless flat belly entice further staring, and then you notice the veritable cluster of vaginas packed between her coltish legs. Each vagina seems to be that of another life form, and they all throb in excitement. Her navel, too, is a vulva—more petite—while another vagina exists in each armpit, and yet another where her anus should be. Lastly, a lissome Lycanymph—even more stunning than the barkeep at the Taproom—coddles the Privilato. She’s covered with the finest red hair beneath which a perfect Human physique can be seen. Gorged teats the size of baby pacifiers stick out from marvelously sloped breasts, and she grins fang-mouthed as her furred hands slip beneath her master’s sparkling trousers.

An uproar rises from the street as the Nectoport lowers to the bone-hewn pavement. It’s landing, you think. The Privilato stands hands on hips within the Port’s green-glowing oval, looking upon the ritzy crowd of uptown Demons in a way that reminds you of an old picture of Mussolini looking down into the town square from a stone balcony. The crowd in the street hoots and hollers, the females in particular nearly apoplectic with enthusiasm. “Privilato!” a corroded chorus rises. “Privilato!”

“Oh, dear.” Howard frowns. “He and his entourage are coming out.” And then he takes you back to an alley. “I’m just not attuned to boisterous crowds, never have been. Indeed, New York was stifling enough but this—this elephantiasis of nonhumanity exceeds my demarcation of tolerance.”

You barely hear him, squinting at the loud rabble. For some reason you can’t figure, this jeweled man—this Privilato—intrigues you. The glowing rim of the Nectoport’s aperture dilates, and before the Privilato can step out—

“Holy smokes,” you mutter.

“All Privilatos, too, enjoy a full-time detachment of bodyguards. Note the Conscripts from the lauded Diocletian Brigade.”

From the Nectoport, two formations of said Conscripts dispatch. Some wield swords, others brandish mallets whose heads are the size of fifty-five-gallon drums. Plated suits of Hexed armor adorn each troop, while their shell-like helms possess only slits to look through. The crowd’s uproar turns chaotic; then a horn blares, and one of the Conscripts raises a large, hollowed-out horn to his mouth like a loudspeaker. “Attention, all elite of Hell. A Privilato wishes to debark. Do not encroach upon the exclusion perimeter.” And then more Conscripts run lengths of barbed chain from the Nectoport’s mouth to the door of one of the shops on the street.

“The Privilato is about to step into your midst! Bow down and pay reverence to our esteemed favorite of Lucifer!” blasts the horn.

Most of the crowd falls to its knees, though many females in the audience can’t control themselves when the Privilato finally emerges onto the street. One shapely She-Demon in a gown of bone-needle mesh leans over the barbed cordon, reaching out with a manicured hand. “Privilato! I’m honored by your presence! Please! Let me touch you!” But once she inclines herself over the chain—

SWOOSH!

—a great curved sword flashes and cuts her in half at the waist.

But the crowd continues to surge forward. You actually groan to yourself when two more Conscripts unroll a red carpet before the Privilato’s jeweled feet.

Talk about the high life . . .

“Back! Back!” warns the loudspeaker. “Disperse now and let the Privilato enjoy a refreshment in peace!”

The Privilato comes forth, his robust concubines trailing behind. The crowd roars louder, which only doubles your perplexion. You look at the jeweled man and notice that, save for the jewels, there is nothing extraordinary about him. His long hair sifts around a bland, unenlivened face. His eyes look dull. Nevertheless he offers the crowd a smile and when he waves at them the uproar rises further.

Finally you object: “This guy’s acting like Kid Rock. What’s the big deal?”

Howard doesn’t answer but instead shoulders through the crowd toward the storefront. “You’ll be interested in seeing this, Mr. Hudson. One of Hell’s greatest delicacies. We’ll have to settle for watching through the window, of course.”

Hell’s greatest delicacy?

“Behold the ultimate indulgence, Mr. Hudson. One snifter carries a monetary value of one million Hellnotes,” Howard sputters. “And to think I fed myself for thirty cents a day on Heinz beans and old cheese from the Mayflower Store.”

The sign on the window reads: FETAL APERTIFS.

Now the crowd watches in awe as the Privilato approaches, his busty consorts in tow.

“Let me blow you!” comes the crude plea from a vampiric admirer.

The Soubrettes grimace at her, then one—the Vulvatagoyle—expectorates yeast onto the haughty fanged woman.

When one surgically enhanced Imp jumps the cordon and begs to put her hands on the jeweled man—

WHAM!

—a Conscript brings down his mallet and squashes her against the street.

“Back! Back!”

Even Howard seems awed when the glittering Privilato and his entourage pass by and enter the classy shop.

“The guy looks like a long-haired Liberace,” you complain. “Why is he so important? And what the hell is a Fetal Aperitif?”

“Something I’ve never partaken in—I’m not privileged enough, though I did have cotton candy once at Coney Island.” Then Howard smiles at you in the oddest manner. “Mongrel fetuses exist as quite a resource in Hell, Mr. Hudson. Akin to ore, akin to cash crops.”

The notion—the mere way he said it—makes you queasy.

“Economic diversification, by any other classification.”

“Baby farms?” you practically gag.

“Yes! Well put, sir, well put. Like choice grapes selected for the finest wineries, choice fetuses are harvested for this four-star aperitif bar.” Howard’s finger directs your gaze to the rearmost anteroom of the establishment, where you see a great tub made from wooden slats.

No no no no no, you think.

Worker Demons empty bushel baskets full of fetuses into the tub . . .

“I was always amused by the French cliché,” Howard goes on. “The idea that our shifty enemies in the Indian Wars would pile grapes into tubs and crush them barefoot . . .”

When the tub has been filled with squirming newborn Demons, a nine-foot-tall Golem steps in and begins to ponderously walk on them. Eventually the contents of the tub are crushed, and a tap drains the precious liquid into kegs that are then rolled aside to ferment.

Howard looks forlorn. “It’s supposedly delectable, not that I’ll ever receive the opportunity to sample it, not on my pitiful stipend. Lucifer has seen to it that the poverty which mocked me in life will continue to do so in death . . .”

Inside, the Privilato eyes trays of bizarre food placed before him by licentious servers. Wicked versions of shrimp and lobster (lobsters, of course, with horns), braised roasts of shimmering meat, steaming vegetables in arcane sauces. In spite of its alienness, it all looks delicious.

“You see, Mr. Hudson, the elite in Hell gorge on delicacies the likes of which would sink the banquets of Lucullus to tameness, and the wine? Splendid enough to green Bacchus with envy.”

You watch now as the Privilato raises a tiny glass of the evil wine and shoots it back neat. The occult rush sets a wide smile on his face, and he looks past the table, right through the window . . .

At you.

The Privilato nods.

You’re sure that if you actually had hands you would grab Howard by the collar and shake him. “Why are you showing me this stuff? And what’s the big deal with that guy in there? He’s got the best-looking girls in Hell for groupies, he flies around in a Nectoport, and he gets to drink wine that costs a million bucks a glass. Why?”

“Because,” Howard answers, “and I’ll iterate, the gentleman’s name is Dowski Swikaj, formerly a friar from Guzow, Poland.”

“Yeah?” you yell. “So what!”

“In the frightful year of 1342 AD, Mr. Swikaj won the Senary . . .”







CHAPTER FIVE


(I)

The great, even gouge in the Hellscape that was the Vander-mast Reservoir gave rise to the most abominable stenches, though one well-accustomed to the most evil odors—as Conscript Favius—grew used to them. Stomach-prolapsing smells were as commonplace here as screams. Yet fastidious and well-trained infernal soldiers such as Favius learned to use the sense of smell to their advantage. For instance, when something smelled suddenly different . . .

Something could be wrong.

Favius called the rampart under his command to its highest alert state, which entailed observation teams of lower-ranked Conscripts readying weapons, while the Golem Squads went from static to marching patrols. The thuds of the unliving things’ clay feet resounded like thunder; and, meanwhile, Favius’s nostrils flared as the cryptic new odor heightened in potency. What in Satan’s name is happening? he thought, his halberd ready in one massive hand, the sword ready in the other. Within minutes, he could see all the nearest ramparts of the reservation coming to alert as well.

It was a vicious stench that suddenly whelmed the place. An insurgent gas attack? he wondered. This would not kill Human Damned Conscripts such as himself, nor Golems, of course, but everything else? Yes.

However . . .

No insurgent sightings had been reported, and this far out in the Hellscape? Their supply lines would become exhausted before they’d even traversed one one-hundredths of the distance from the city to the Reservoir . . .

What, then?

When the hectophone at the sentry post began to glow, Favius knew who it was.

“Conscript First Class Favius reporting, Grand Sergeant, at your command!” he answered the severed Gargoyle head that had been modified for this purpose. The thing’s frozen-open maw sufficed for the earpiece; its ear was what Favius spoke into. Occultized Electrocity signals served as the frequency through which such long-distance communication was achieved.

When the dead Gargoyle’s mouth moved, it was the voice of Grand Sergeant Buyoux that Favius, in turn, heard.

“Conscript Favius. Why is the entire reservation on emergency alert? Answer quickly.”

“An anomaly, your Wretched Eminence—a stench, uncharacteristic and quite sudden. I took it unto myself to call my rampart to alert.”

“Yes, you have. And it seems that every rampart in the enter site has done so as well.”

Favius began to sweat. Buyoux’s voice was unreadable. “I did not want to take a chance, my Despicable Commander. If I am in error, I will report for punishment at once.”

A long pause, then a laugh. “Vigilance is everything, Conscript—it’s what wins wars and conquers nations. I commend you for your quick thinking.”

“Thank you, Grand Sergeant!” Favius shouted in relief.

“But you’ll be gratified to know that the anomaly you detected is in no manner a threat.”

“Thank Great Satan, sir!”

“Yes . . . Call off your alert and have your troops stand down, but first . . . prepare to rejoice and don your Abyss-Glasses. Train them on the great portals of the recently installed Y-connectors of your Main Sub-Inlet.”

Mystified, Favius did so, focusing the supernatural viewers on the closest of the dual, sixty-six-foot-wide connector portals.

His massive, sculpted muscles froze.

There, exuding however traceably at the bottom of the pipe, was a trickle of befouled scarlet liquid. It didn’t take Favius long to calculate what the inbound effluent was:

Bloodwater, his thoughts whispered. Just the slightest trickle, yes, but it can only mean . . .

“There, faithful Conscript, is the cause of the strange odor you noticed.” Buyoux’s enthusiasm could be decrypted by his own conscious silence. “And we’ve just received confirmation. They’re priming the pumps in the Rot-Port Harbor, and that stench? It’s the stench of the Gulf itself, channeled all the way out here . . .”

“Praise Lucifer,” Favius’s eons-roughened voice rattled in disbelief.

“It’s happening even sooner than we’d prayed for, friend Favius,” his commander rejoiced. “And in short order . . . that paltry trickle of Bloodwater will gush.”

Tears nearly came to Favius’s soiled eyes. “All glory be to Satan,” he hitched.

“Stand your troops down, Conscript, and yourself, too. You all deserve a short recess. Good work.”

“I am honored by your praise, Grand Sergeant!”

“No, Favius. It is I who am honored to command you.” And then the hectophone’s vicious mouth went limp.

Favius set the hideous phone back in its cradle, then called off the alert. He smiled—something he rarely did—when he gazed out over the empty Vandermast Reservoir, and then envisioned it full to the brim with six billion gallons of the detestable Gulf of Cagliostro . . .


(II)

Archlock Curwen, the Supreme Master Builder, felt a nearly sexual exhilaration as he watched sixty-six Mongrels drop simultaneously into the Central Cauldron. The sulphur-fire beneath the great iron vessel roared; its contents—liver oil from a single Dentata-Serpent—crackled and boiled at a thousand degrees. All those filthy Mongrels dying at the same time, and at temperatures so high, caused the things to scream in unison, and for many of them the pain was so heinous that chunks of their lungs flew out of their mouths with the screams. The rush in the Hell-Flux trebled then, bringing to the air a heady, gaseous brew that enlivened all who inhaled it. Furthermore, it amped up the power in the constantly running Electrocity Generators, whose storage cells were crucial to giving the Demonculus otherworldly life.

Curwen sighed at the tingle of pleasure.

He was on rounds now, on the field itself, as the various Occult Engineering crews busied themselves in the gas balloons above. Those Curwen could see from down here were but floating specks, while most couldn’t be seen at all for their sheer altitude.

Sweet, he thought in his shimmering surplice. This is MY project, entrusted to ME by the Morning Star himself. I will not fail.

Fanged and leprous-skinned Metastabeasts—a team of six, of course—hauled Curwen’s Hex-Armored carriage about the field. The foul sky’s eternal bloodred light coruscated high above; its dread illumination covered half the entire field in the shadow of the spiring Demonculus. But when another shadow approached, the Conscripts and Ushers of Curwen’s bodyguard regiment parted.

It was a shadow shaped like a man—but a man with horns—that strode down the divide created by the bodyguards. The field fell silent.

Aldehzor, Curwen knew at once, Lucifer’s Grand Messenger. It was this shadow-shape’s duty to deliver all-important ciphers from the Morning Star himself. Only a precious few of Hell’s Hierarchals were on the list to receive Aldehzor.

The carriage door was opened; the semisolid figure came in and sat down. When the door was closed again, the ranks of bodyguards stepped backward, turned, and readied their weapons, forming a wall of monsters to protect the two occupants.

“Exalted Aldehzor,” Curwen greeted.

The shadow nodded. “Supreme Master Builder.” The eyeless black face peered upward through a window. “Your progress is exceptional. I’m impressed, and I’m sure our lord will be, too, once I’ve reported back to him.” Aldehzor’s voice existed much as his physical being: indeterminate. He came from a pre-Adamic line known as Incorporeals—he was a living shadow who disguised his movements by slipping into the bodies of passersby, wearing them as camouflage. He was simply a silhouette with no discernible details save for his basic outline—a horned, wedge-shaped head atop a Humanlike body. No eyes could be seen within the wedge. If anything his voice bubbled like the ichors of Hell’s deepest trenches. “And as you might suspect, I have a message for you.”

Archlock Curwen struggled not to betray his unease. With Aldehzor, messages were either good or bad. Was a terrorist attack imminent? Had a flaw been discovered in the Demonculus’s cabalistic programming?

Am I being usurped? the Master Builder wondered in restrained dread.

“I am ready for your message, Aldehzor.”

“It has been calculated that there exists a minor chance of a power shortage here.”

Curwen sat stiff. “We’ve always known that. A minor chance.”

“Any chance is unacceptable,” the hideous voice intoned. “However, in his genius, Lucifer has devised a solution.”

“Pray tell . . .”

“Much is astir in the Mephistopolis, Archlock.” The wretched voice burbled on. “Plans and projects that even one as exalted as yourself have no clue . . .”

Curwen stared. Was the Grand Messenger trying to insult him? To belittle his status? Aldehzor’s jealousy of the exalted Human Damned was well-known. He WISHES he could be me, he felt sure, but wasn’t comfortable voicing it.

The ink-blot face looked back at him. “Your own constant sacrifices in the Cauldrons won’t be enough. I’m alarmed that your own engineers weren’t able to verify that.” A protracted pause. “However, my own alarm was apparently not perceived by our lord. For some reason he holds you in the highest favor, higher than any of the Human Damned.”

“Are you trying to intimidate me, Aldehzor?”

A wet, slopping chuckle. “Certainly not, Supreme Master Builder. I honor you. Surely you’ve heard of a crucial endeavor at the Vandermast Reservoir?”

“I’ve heard bits and pieces. Some mode of transposition, perhaps even a Spatial Merge, it’s been guessed.”

“Yes, but a permanent one.”

Astonishment caused Curwen’s guard to fall. “Permanent, you say? But that is . . . impossible.”

“Once upon a time, yes—if time existed. The Bio-Wizards at the De Rais Laboratories cracked the code.”

“But a permanent transposition would require multiple millions of Hellspawn and Humans to die simultaneously.”

The black shadow nodded. “Sixty-six million, to be exact. And a solution has been devised. It’s quite simple, actually. Those millions will die, all in the same instant. This shall bring the amperage of the Hell-Flux to immeasurably high levels. That much occult energy will be more than enough to effect the Merge. And the reserves will be transferred to you and your . . . Demonculus.”

Curwen felt light-headed. True, the possibility of insufficient power had already been cited, but with this?

It’s more power than has ever been generated in Hell, in all of its history . . .

“How,” the Master Builder demanded next. “How can this be, that multiple millions shall die simultaneously?”

Did the warped shadow actually shrug? “The Municipal Mutilation Squads throughout the entire Mephistopolis will do it—”

“But that’s not feasible at all! How could they all be calibrated to strike at the same moment?

“By psychic command.”

Curwen stalled.

“The De Rais Labs have recently invented the process,” the shadow added. “So, in spite of your own miscalculation, you needn’t worry yourself. Indeed, we are in the hands of a great lord, are we not?”

“We are,” Curwen croaked.

“You’re a brave one, Supreme Master Builder, and I must say”—Aldehzor’s invisible gaze strayed upward again, at the immense Demonculus—“that you have my utmost admiration.”

“Why?” Curwen nearly spat.

“To sacrifice forever your Hell-given Spirit Body in order to become . . . that thing?

“You refer to the Demonculus with vehemence, dear Messenger. It is the greatest entity to ever be manufactured here, and it is the Demonculus you’d do better to admire, not I. I am blessed like no other in this opportunity to serve Great Satan. Be he forever praised.” Curwen’s silver teeth flashed bladelike with his smile. “It almost sounds as though you’re afraid of the Demonculus’s success; for when, through me, it rids the Mephistopolis of all opposition . . . whatever shall you do to stay in our lord’s good graces?”

Aldehzor seemed to hiss.

Yes. What use will there be for a messenger with no messages to deliver?

The veiled joust was over—Curwen had won.

“Be prepared,” came Aldehzor’s whisper like the smoke off a ball of pitch. “What you long for will come soon.”

Curwen stared the Incorporeal down.

“In the name of all things unutterable, hail the Prince of Lies,” the Grand Messenger said and got out of the carriage.

Curse ye, and be gone with you, Curwen thought, and then when he saw another sixty-six Mongrels dropped at once into the Cauldron he nearly swooned as if opiated. Their screams were like the sweetest of songs to his ears.


(III)

The hollow sound in your head follows you as the Turnstile’s evil formulae are triggered and you and your guide are pressed yet again through the gauze of distance-collapsing sorcery. When the vertigo passes, you jerk your gaze to Howard.

“So that’s it? The winners of the Senary get to become Privilatos?”

“Ah, I see your observations have at last heightened the acuity of your powers of deductive reckoning. I gratefully affirm.”

You frown.

“However, our chancing upon Mr. Swikaj and his comely harem came quite by happenstance. We’re on our way to behold further facets of the abyss that should deliver a more formidable impact.”

Shylock Square is long behind you now, though curious occult graft work is still visible among passersby. One stunning woman in hot pants and a bra of the finest leaden fabric has no face at all but only smooth white skin and a belly button where her nose would be. Her face has been transplanted upon her abdomen, and when that fact finally registers, you notice that she is smiling at you. A buff man, Human save for elaborate horns, walks confidently into an enterprise called CRIPPENDALE’S; he’s wearing a vest of penises, and onto his earlobes have been sewn scrotums. Lastly, a slyly smiling She-Imp passes, her majora replaced by what appears to be a baby’s buttocks.

“I can perceive that you’re finally acclimating,” Howard remarks. “Your revulsion appears to be growing staid—quite a good sign.”

Finally you’re able to blurt, “You want me to accept the Senary, which means I’ll become a Privilato after I fucking die. Is that it?”

“Yes,” Howard says, his already long face lengthening further; his distaste obvious. “However, if I may conjecture, profanity does not suit you at all. It’s quite inappropriate and wholly uncharacteristic of a studious and devout man such as yourself.”

You fix on what Howard just said. Profanity? Yes, I cussed, didn’t I? I said “fucking die,” instead of die. The speculation unwinds like a coil of string. “I never swear,” you tell your guide. “Sure, a damn or a hell or an ass on occasion, but never . . . the F-word or the S-word.”

Howard is frowning. “It’s uncomplimentary, sir. It bespeaks ruffianism and roysterishness. Better to maintain an air of the dignified, even in so undignified a habitat as this.”

Trivial as the matter seems, it bothers you. I must hang out with Randal too much . . .

“But, yes, you’ve unveiled the intrigue at last,” Howard goes on. “It is indeed the motive of the master of this domain that you accept the Senary and rise to Privilato status upon your earthly demise.” Howard scrutinizes your impossible face. “And now you are weighing that possibility against the possibility of an eternity in Heaven, are you not?”

You stare. Am I? Yeah . . . of course I am . . .

“But you needn’t choose just yet. Let’s take in more sights before we arrive at the clincher.”

“The clincher? I can’t imagine.”

Does Howard smile? “No, I’m certain beyond all cogitation that you cannot. No one can . . .”

Your senses reel as you cross a footbridge over a mucus-filled creek. Several destitute Trolls nod as they stand on the rail, fishing. One Troll has eyeballs in his bait can, the other, tongues yanked from their seats.

But your hideous eyes go wide when you notice several twitchy Human women crossing the footbridge . . .

“More addicts,” Howard notes, “regrettable, but no more so than the seemingly illimitable Human capacity to ‘chase the dragon,’ as they say. Clearly beyond the bridge there’s a public Flenser’s in business.”

But you simply continue staring, for these women seem to have had all of the flesh cut from their arms and legs, while their heads and naked torsos remain intact. It is horrendous to behold, yet also, somehow, perversely fascinating.

“Street parlance refers to such types as ‘Bone-Limbers.’ ”

The implication collides with your psyche. “Like those people selling their skin for dope. Those two sold the meat on their arms and legs?”

Howard nods. “Every scrap, and mind you, a skilled Flenser can finish the task in moments—they’re quite deft of knife. And believe me, the potency of the narcotics of Hell are more than formidable. Human males tend to sell nearly every fiber of flesh from head to toe; women, however, are far less likely to follow suit as that instance could make the prospect of prostitution pitiably moot . . .”

With skeleton arms and skeleton legs, then, the pair of addicts cross the bridge, oblivion in their eyes and ruined smiles.

Yes, sir, you think. This is one big-time fucked-up place. But there you go again, so errantly thinking in terms adorned with profanity. You wince in your confusion.

In the distance, hulking Conscripts stand guard around a narrow black building that must be a mile long. MATERNITY BARRACKS, a high sign reads. Even from the distance you can hear the wails of infants . . .

You open your demonic mouth to speak but pause and don’t bother. You agreed to come here and see.

And now you will be shown.

Macabre, cancerous horses whinny as a prison wagon (identical to those you saw at the Punitary) stops before a guarded entrance. Now you stare hard.

“It’s loaded up with . . . really good-looking women,” you mutter.

“The acme of Human female stock, Mr. Hudson,” Howard augments. “The best in all of Hell—indeed—the proverbial cream of the crop. They’re hunted down with the zeal of children at an Easter egg hunt.”

Naturally, you don’t understand. So far you’ve seen unbelievable life forms, most hideous but some attractive, and Human women have comprised a fare share of the latter. This wagon, however, beggars superlative description. It is full to bursting with Human women who are among the most attractive you’ve ever seen anywhere.

“They could be runway models,” you utter.

“It’s part of the new Luciferic Initiative, and Lucifer—however plodding he can sometimes be—has grown fond of efficiency. Two birds with one stone, so to speak. You see, the inhabitants of these queer barracks make up the very finest, most attractive Human women in all of Hell. And in their stay, they will serve dual purposes.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you drone as you approach, and now you watch the sinisterly helmed Conscripts haul the women out of the wagon. They’re all gagged, shackled, and stark naked. In single file, then, they’re led at trident-point into the barracks.

“There must be forty or fifty women packed into that wagon,” you exclaim.

“Sixty-six, to be precise,” Howard redresses. “And there are exactly sixty-six Impoundment Wings in this Maternity Barrack.”

The number staggers you, but then you ask, “What do you mean, dual purposes?”

“Pardon me while I get us in-processed,” Howard says aside.

The two gate guards—a pair of pugnacious, phlegm-eyed creatures in scaled armor—stand at a spiked iron gate.

“I’m with the Office of the Senary,” Howard relays and holds up his palm. It’s the first time that you’ve noticed it: a luminous six branded into his palm.

The sentries bow and step back; then the spiked gate rises. But before Howard escorts you in, the chain gang of sixty-six outrageously beautiful woman are led in first. Hopeless eyes stare back at you as they’re hauled onward.

“Ah, and here comes the most recent Impoundment Block to expire,” Howard points out.

Another chain gang of women are being led in the opposite direction, preparing to exit. This consignment, however, differs from the first group in two ways.

One, they’re emaciated, haggard, and bone-thin, and—

Two, they’re headless.

“Out with the old in with the new as they say,” Howard explains. “The production cycle of these unfortunates has expired, while it’s only about to begin for the group we just saw entering . . .”

“Production cycle,” you say more than ask. The headless women are worn out (as if having one’s head removed wouldn’t wear one out enough), and then you suddenly have an idea why. Their bellies hang like limp sacks streaked with stretch marks, their breasts but emptied flaps of skin.

“This particular barrack, by the way, is the major supplier of fetuses to the aperitif bar we visited upon earlier.” Howard leads on down the reeking corridor of sheet iron. “The women, once beheaded, are taken to a Decapitant Camp. You’ll recall the Luciferic Initiative I referred to earlier? It’s officially titled the Beheadment Initiative—the law of the land now. Human women deemed attractive enough for Preeminent classification must all be beheaded, and the process functions twofold. It’s a constituent of their punishment, and while the wares of their wombs supply the lucrative gourmand market, their heads provide an exclusive construction component.”

Again, you scarcely hear Howard, your attentions fixed instead on the troop of headless women shuffling out of the complex. Moments later, several hunched Imps in laborers’ garb exit the complex as well, each pushing wheelbarrows full of Human female heads. As the barrows pass, the eyes on the heads all hold wide on you.

“Why, why, why?” you plead.

“It’s elementary, Mr. Hudson. Lucifer loathes the Human Damned, but this unadulterated hatred burns exponentially hotter for the Human Female Damned.” Howard pauses at a trapdoorlike window in the iron wall. “This may afford you an acceptable view . . .”

He raises the square metal viewing port and holds your gourd-head up to look.

Beyond the Barracks stretches a region of barren land that must encompass several square miles. The parcel is circumscribed completely by a high fence laced with barbs and within they trod aimlessly in a vast circle: tens of thousands of headless women.

“The idea enthralls Lucifer, that they walk headless for eternity, while their heads live on elsewhere and with equal permanence.”

You’re too appalled to even react now, but you have the creeping impression that there are worse things waiting to be seen . . .

“The Beheadment Initiative?” you question, dazed from the sight. “A law that all beautiful women come here to be decapitated and . . .”

“All beautiful Human women, Mr. Hudson. Lucifer is quite nonchalant about Hellborn females. His utter hatred for Human women in particular is plainly explicated. You see, it was a Human female who destroyed his original abode, the 666-story Mephisto Building. This cunning female—whose name it is forbidden to speak or even think—undermined Lucifer’s most powerful defenses and turned his monumental edifice of evil into a pile of rubble, and she did so with white magic, not black.”

You gulp. “So now he takes it out on every drop-dead gorgeous woman in Hell?”

“Yes, and to quite an effect. Remember when I inferred: two birds with one stone.” Howard smiles. “Be patient, Mr. Hudson, and you’ll learn more in due time.”

Metal pots along the corridor sputter with burning pitch. You watch the shadow of your own hideous head bob as Howard leads you down a labyrinth of squalling hallways and, at last, into—

“This is the initial processing point. The consignment we just saw entering? Here’s where they come first,” Howard explains.

You peer in through the ragged metal doorway . . .

All sixty-six women have been laid on a wide conveyor belt, with hip and neck girds to keep them in place. Midway along the belt stand two Imps in white lab coats. One wields a pair of scissors the size of hedge clippers and perfunctorily cuts off a woman’s head while the other places the severed head between the woman’s legs for further transport. At the next work station two more demonic surgeons slip metal tubes into each of the woman’s breasts and the breasts—amid a wailing motor noise—quickly deflate.

“As you can see, first the heads are removed and then vacuum-powered cannulae are inserted into the breasts, to draw out the valuable mammary glands, which are sold to Surgical Salons for implanting—”

They chop off their heads and liposuck their tits, the grueling fact sinks in.

“—after which they’re conveyored to the next available Impoundment Block,” Howard finishes and reembarks down the corridor.

Every so often, as you’re taken deeper into this nefarious network, wheelbarrows full of mongrel newborns are rolled briskly past by more Imp and Troll laborers. You don’t have to ask where they’re going.

“And here,” Howard announces after a long spell of walking, “is a typical Block in full swing . . .”

Your now-numb eyes look in to behold the spectacle: a long, low-ceilinged room containing exactly sixty-six gynecological beds, complete with stirrups. Each bed is occupied by a squirming, decapitated woman, legs forced apart and ankles locked in the stirrups. Most of the occupants display varying stages of pregnancy, and the few who don’t are being vigorously copulated with by a variety of sexually enhanced Demons, Trolls, and Imps. Many possess genitals like veined batons of meat, while others brandish odd, ridged tubules of flesh with nozzlelike coronas. Several even have penises with faces on the end.

“Each Impoundee is subjected to fornication on a fastidious level, until pregnancy shows. Then they merely wait out their term until the process begins again. And as for their heads, well, I’m sure by now you’ve taken proper note . . .”

You have. The severed head of each “Impoundee” is evident, placed atop a pole set back several yards between the subject’s spread legs.

“It simply wouldn’t do to merely use their bodies as production vessels; it’s very important to Lucifer that the conscious head of each woman be forced to watch the entire process; in fact, our Master delights in that particular effect. Not only is each woman forced to watch herself be raped by monsters, she is forced to watch herself give birth to monsters. Over and over and over again.”

“How long . . . do they have . . . to stay here?”

“For sixty-six full terms,” Howard enlightens.

One woman, bloated as if to pop, shudders on her table, while her accommodating head screams in agony. The belly quakes, then collapses; a basket on the floor catches the squalling newborn and afterbirth. Not a minute passes before the viscid monster-fathered infant is tossed into a wheelbarrow, and not another minute before a heavily genitaled Sex-Demon steps up to begin the fornication period anew. Meanwhile, the head of a woman several beds down is shrieking like a machine with bad bearings, the medicine ball–size belly tremoring. When a lab-coated Imp with goggles comes to inspect, he calls out, “Womb-Press, rack forty-nine,” and then instantly a great piston-backed droning is heard. Overhead, on a geared rail, the oddest device clatters along: like an inverted metal salad bowl stemmed by a greased screw. Eventually the “bowl” positions itself directly over the squirming woman’s great, bloated belly. Oh, my God, you think when its function finally occurs to you. The screw begins to turn, lowering the bowl until it presses tight against the monster-filled belly.

Lower. Lower. Lower.

You close your eyes for you cannot watch the entire process, but you do hear the escalating shrieks and then the finality of the great SPLAT!

When your eyes reopen, the dizzy, headless woman is no longer pregnant, and already the demonic newborn is being spirited away in a barrow.

“Take me the fuck out of here!” you yell.

Howard rolls his eyes, scratching at some tiny red pocks on his face that appear to be ingrown hairs. “Really, Mr. Hudson—was the profanity necessary? And, truly, I regret your distress, but it’s necessary that you recognize the systematics that exist here. You must perceive Lucifer’s ultimate ideal of pursuing an order of faith antithetical to God.”

“Fuck that shit,” you cuss again, and now even you are shocked by the sudden use of the vulgar. “This sucks. None of this makes any sense—”

“Excellent! You’re beginning to comprehend!” Howard enthuses, taking you out.

“It doesn’t make any sense at all for Lucifer to go to all this effort to do all this evil stuff!”

Howard continues to beam. “Exactly! Because, antithetically speaking, the absence of logic is the perfect logic in a domain that must exist contrary to God!”

Your confoundment dizzies you when Howard finally wends you back outside into the creeping scarlet daylight, and as you move away from the Barracks, the wails of newborn Demons and the shrieks of women in labor follow you like an atrocious banner.

Still, details bother you, and now that the shock of your witness is past, you slowly observe, “They use their babies for the ‘gourmand market,’ and they use their mammary glands for demonic implants, and once they’ve had sixty-six babies, their headless bodies are sentenced to eternity in the Decapitant Camp. Have I got it right so far?”

“Quite,” Howard confirms.

“So . . . what happens to their heads? Earlier, didn’t you say something about—”

“An exclusive construction component!” Howard continues to be pleased by your attentiveness, but then—

The black static veil crackles and surges and—

Here we go again . . .

—you psychically plummet into the next stop on the tour . . .

“This, Mr. Hudson, is the second bird from the stone,” Howard intones.

You stare out, mortified, mystified, and transfixed all at once . . .







PART THREE


MANSE LUCIFIER







CHAPTER SIX


(I)

Krilid rubbed fatigue from his oblong eyes. He waited, sitting on the luminous rim of the Nectoport’s mouth within the sooty cloud he’d found at the prearranged coordinates. He still felt himself psychically recovering from the sheer vision of the Vandermast Reservoir. Just a great big empty black hole in the ground, he tried to convince himself. Why should the sight of the place fill him with such dread?

They haven’t told me everything. When will they? This isn’t fair . . .

He was serving God now, after all, but could God hear prayers from Hell? No salvation would be in store for him upon his Hellbound death, so . . .

Do I really need this?

But when he wiped his brow, which the Head-Bending had transformed into a warped cone, he remembered his true motives.

One way or another, I’ll make them pay for what they did to me, and if I die trying? So what?

When one was unfortunate enough to be born in Hell, there was not another Hell to follow in afterlife. Only the sweetness of nonexistence . . .

Krilid made a mental note not to forget that. His mood improved at once.

BAM!

More reflex than the awareness of danger flung his runneled hand up to fire the sulphur pistol. Blackish glop and curls of tentacles flew all about, some of the glop slapping him in the face. Frowning, he wiped it off on his sleeve. Great . . .

He’d almost sensed rather than seen the repulsive Levatopus that had crawled out of the clouds. Had he been a second late, the gravity-defying encephalopod might have wrapped about his head and driven its beak through his skull, to suck his brain.

Like a candle, he’d blown out his Hand of Glory—it would be needed later, and evidently there was a shortage of them. “Frugality of resources,” Ezoriel had phrased it. “Not one of God’s gifts to us may ever be used unwisely. Gifts taken for granted offend the Lord.” Krilid figured that was the Fallen Angel’s way of saying the Contumacy itself as well as all the other Anti-Luciferic Units were sucking wind and shit out of supplies.

His Troll’s belly squirmed; he was famished, and worse, thirsty. He smirked to himself for not retrieving the pieces of the Levatopus before they’d floated away. He could’ve squeezed the juices out of them, which were better than nothing. But then a bleak joy kindled in his nine-chambered heart at the familiar humming and then the verifying sound—

Sssssssssssssssss-ONK!

—and then a terrifying CLAP! cracked in the air along with several blindingly bright flashes like a camera flash, only the light was a gooey green.

The open mouth of another Nectoport now hovered just before Krilid’s.

The grand figure moved forward, and the lightlike voice: “Grace be unto you, Krilid.”

“And you, too, Ezoriel.”

Try as he might, the more Krilid stared at the Fallen Angel’s face, the more impossible it was to actually see. He could see the tall, chiseled body and its toned muscles, plus the straps of armor, and even the burned stubs of Ezoriel’s long-gone wings sticking out over his shoulders. Just never the face.

The perfect Human hand reached over into Krilid’s Observation Port, proffering a small vial. “Fresh, distilled water for you, Krilid. I regret the paltry volume, but . . .”

Krilid’s eyes nearly popped out of his warped head from the delight. “Aw, wow, Ezoriel! Thanks!” He took the vial and gulped it down.

“Only seven ounces,” the Angel’s voice sparkled, “but just as Lucifer finds such nefarious function in the number of his name—six—blessed fortune is found in the perfect number, seven.”

Guess that means it’s good luck. Krilid nearly felt drunk from the immaculate water. “God, that’s good.”

“God—oh, yes. His gifts are great.” A pause in the auralike voice, then a sniffing sound. “You expended a round?”

“Yeah. Levatopus. The clouds are crawling with the things.”

“I believe it’s their egg-laying season. But have no fear. God protects those who serve him.” Next, the Angel’s unseen eyes seemed to veer toward the Hand of Glory. “Ah, you haven’t forgotten the necessity to be austere with your implements. God smiles upon such disciplines.”

Does he? Krilid wondered. Does he really? Does God even give a shit about me? “Sure, Ezoriel, but you know, I could use some more rounds for the pistol and rifles.”

Again, the Angel’s hand crossed the Port and handed Krilid exactly one gold bullet.

Krilid laughed. “Oh, don’t empty out the entire arsenal just for me!”

“I’m sorry I can’t provide more, my brave Troll. But we mustn’t be selfish, correct? We have many operations ongoing.”

Jeez. One lousy bullet to replace the one I just popped.

Ezoriel seemed suddenly concerned. “And . . . how many rounds have you expended from your rifle?”

“Oh, the seventy-seven calibers? None.”

“Blessing to you!” Ezoriel exclaimed. “You’re as conscientious as you are sure of eye!”

“But you haven’t even told me yet who you want me to snipe,” Krilid began his next complaint.

“That’s because you don’t yet have a need to know—”

“And you haven’t told me anything about this extraction target I’m supposed to pick up, or when it will happen.”

“Again, your need to know is not yet at hand. Krilid, Christ knew well in advance that he would be betrayed, apprehended, and crucified, yet he never told the Apostles. Why? Because they did not have a need to know. Had they been forewarned, God’s plan might’ve been tainted. Trust me, my brave friend. All will be made known when the time has come.”

Krilid frowned. “And who told you that? No, let me guess! Your unimpeachable authority?”

“You sound cynical, Krilid. Remember, cynicism is spiritual death—”

“But I’m a Troll. I don’t even have a spirit.”

“That’s hardly the point.”

“I don’t know anything about your information source. Sorry, but that gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

A humming pause. “Surely you don’t think I’m lying to you—”

“No,” Krilid blurted. “But maybe they’re lying to you. Come on, I hear stories every day about Lucifer’s counterintel systems. He’s got whole complexes of Wizards and Channelers filling the Hell-Flux with phony transmissions. How do you know—”

“How do I know I haven’t been duped myself by such a trick?” the Fallen Angel challenged. “Hear me. I know because God told me.”

Krilid was hard-pressed not to laugh. “Oh, God did, huh? God—what?—he called you up on a hectophone personally and told you the intel was on the level?”

“He did it spiritually, Krilid. Calm your worries—believe me, I understand them—”

“You want to know the truth, Ezoriel? Half the time I feel like I’m on a suicide mission. Otherwise there’d be a hundred more insurgents in the Nectoport with me. For a mission like this? But, no, just little old me and no one else. Almost like someone said, ‘Well, if the intel turns out to be bad, then it’s better to lose just one guy than a whole company.’ ”

When Ezoriel laughed, there came a sensation like one’s reaction to sudden lightning.

“It’s not that funny—”

“Krilid, please. You worry too much. Best to think only of God’s glory and the entails of your mission. You’re in God’s hands; therefore . . . you’ll do fine.”

Yeah . . .

“So your reconnaissance at the Reservoir went well,” the higher being said rather than asked.

“Sure. I mean, I found the landmark and the pickup point. But the Reservoir’s still empty. Once it’s filled, it’ll be harder to relocate the extraction point—”

“Just use your sextant, and you’ll have no trouble—”

More gripes came to the Troll. “And I don’t know when they’re going to fill it, or with what. I feel like I’m standing at home plate in a headball game but I’m blindfolded . . .”

More illuminating chuckles issued from the Fallen Angel. “I’m happy to impart to you, Krilid, that I have been permitted to answer those questions now, as your particular need to know has been sparked.”

Krilid sat up stiff, keenly and suddenly attentive.

Ezoriel’s voice seemed to lower to a glittering whisper. “The time will be very soon. And just exactly what the massive Reservoir will be filled with . . . is this: six billion gallons of the Gulf of Cagliostro . . .”

“What!”

“It’s true,” Ezoriel said. “That Pipeway is impressive—hundreds of miles long and quite a feat for Lucifer’s Engineers. Oh, we might’ve been able to bomb it but then . . .” The refulgent Angel seemed to smile. “Powers far more lofty than I insisted that that not happen . . .”

Krilid refrained from sarcastic comment.

“All things for a purpose, yes? It’s all part of God’s plan, and we are tiny yet essential pieces of that plan. Expendable? Yes. But loved by God as well, even in our Damnation.”

Oh, that makes me feel MUCH better, Krilid’s thoughts sputtered.

“Have faith, in this place of the faithless.”

“Fine, fine,” Krilid interjected, “but . . . why does Lucifer want to fill that ridiculous Reservoir with six billion gallons of disgusting Bloodwater from the Gulf?”

Ezoriel’s undetectable gaze fixed on Krilid.

“All right, I get it,” Krilid droned. “I don’t have a need to know yet. You’re afraid if I get captured, I’ll spill the beans.”

The illumined presence seemed to nod. “God’s work calls me to depart. The coordinates for your next reconnaissance will be delivered telepathically very soon.” The Angel raised a finger. “Rest assured that, just as Daniel had no fear of the lion’s pit, you need not have fear of what awaits you.” Ezoriel passed Krilid a small cloth sack. “Until we meet again . . . go with God.” And then—

Sssssssssssssssss-ONK!

—the Fallen Angel’s Nectoport was gone.

Krilid opened the sack and withdrew—

“Oh, wow! What a great guy!”

—a big chunk of Ghor-Hound sausage.


(II)

What an ass I am, Gerold thought. A male intern who looked like he hadn’t slept in days wheeled him through the hospital lobby and out into blazing sun. Once outside, the stubbled assistant lit a cigarette and frowned right at Gerold.

“What?” Gerold asked.

“I’m supposed to be off now, that’s what,” the guy said. “I’ve been up thirty-six hours but now I’ve got to do this.”

“Sorry.” Gerold felt sheepish. “So . . . where am I going?”

“VA.” The guy rubbed his sandpapery chin. “You’re what we call a ‘punt.’ ”

“A . . . what?”

“A punt. We’re punting you. It’s tax dollars paying for this stunt of yours—”

Gerold’s well-developed arms tensed. “It’s wasn’t a stunt—”

“Yeah, it was. We get ‘em all the time. Look, I’m sorry you can’t walk but—shit. My brother can’t walk either—he got hit by a drunk. And you know what? He’s never pulled a stunt like this. Clogging up a busy hospital with bullshit is no way to vent your need for attention.”

Gerold winced. “You’re worse than that lady upstairs! I wasn’t trying to get attention! I was just trying to kill myself, but I fucked up!” His tempered sizzled. “And I wish to God I hadn’t.”

“You and me both . . .”

Gerold rolled his eyes.

“Anyway, we’re punting you.” The guy tapped ashes disgustedly. “See, we gotta file for the damn money we burned on you last night. We have to send in a bill, and then wait months for the provider to pay—”

“I didn’t burn any money,” Gerold spat.

“Sure, you did. Every square inch of this place costs money, pal. And us having to give you a bed in the precaution ward last night is a big ticket, probably a couple of grand—”

“Bullshit.”

“Yeah, see, you don’t even give a shit. Typical. You think everything should be free while guys like me gotta work our asses off catering to you. The fact is, caregivers—like me—love to help people in need. It’s our duty. But what we hate is having to help people who pretend to be fucked up in the head.”

“This is some real compassionate care, man . . .”

“Fuck off. Let VA have your ass. You can burn their tax dollars.”

“I was fuckin’ fighting for my country!” Gerold bellowed.

The guy expectorated loudly. “You were fighting for a bunch of political war pigs, man. If you want to be a patriot, you protest the war, you don’t fight in it.”

Gerold groaned. “Your political views are your business, but I sure as shit—”

“What?” snapped the intern. “You don’t want to hear it, G.I. Joe? Well, tough.”

Gerold dared to laugh. “I’d love to see you on a bivouac. You wouldn’t last a day, you’d be cryin’ like a baby, cryin’ for your mother with your thumb in your mouth.”

The intern lurched forward, gnashed his teeth, then pulled back.

“Yeah, go ahead, tough guy,” Gerold said. “Punch a guy in a wheelchair. Shit, I’d still kick your ass.”

“In your dreams.”

The hits just keep on comin’, Gerold thought. “We’re sitting out here in the hot sun for what reason?”

“Waiting for your transport, and I have to go with you,” the intern seethed. “I have to check you in.”

“Tell you what,” Gerold posed. “Go on home for your much-needed beauty sleep, and I’ll check myself in.”

“Right. You’d just go somewhere and pretend you’re trying to kill yourself again, to get more attention.”

Gerold would’ve paid any price just to be able to stand up for one second and clean this guy’s clock.

“Aw, shit!” the guy spat, and looked at his watch.

“What? That time of the month again?”

“Fuck off. I forgot your out-pross papers.” He pointed right in Gerold’s face. “Listen, dick, I have to go back inside and get your papers. I’ll only be five minutes, and when I’m back you better still be here. Don’t even think about eloping.”

“Eloping?” Gerold stretched the word. “That’s what they call it?”

“Yeah, you’re an elopement risk. Says so right in your records. Elopement is when a pseudo–mental patient tries to escape from the people trying to help his sorry ass.”

“Where am I gonna go in five minutes, man!” Gerold yelled.

The finger kept pointing. “Just know this. If you do try to flee, I’ll find you, and you’ll be real sorry.”

“What, you’re threatening me?”

The stubbled face grinned. “Yeah. So what’re you gonna do about it, Hot Wheels?”

Gerold laughed hard now. “That’s what I like about interns. It puts the good ones into the system.”

The intern gave him the finger, then turned and headed back toward the building.

Gerold could only shake his head, chuckling morosely. This has been the worst twenty-four hours of my life. Wouldn’t it be nice if just once the Fates would let something GOOD happen to me?

A second after the automatic doors closed behind the intern, a city bus pulled up at the shelter not ten yards from where Gerold sat. “Yo, yo! Hold up!” Gerold launched himself forward with such force his wheels nearly left the pavement. Immediately the wheelchair lift began to beep, the ramp lowering.

“Come on in,” the uncharacteristically friendly driver invited. In no time, Gerold was on the ramp, going up. Come on! Come on! he fretted. “Is this a time point?” he asked. “I got a connection.”

“It is but I’m running late,” the driver said and belted Gerold’s chair into the cubby. “We gotta leave right now.”

All right! Gerold sat hunched, peeking with half an eye out the window. He just knew that before the bus pulled away, that intern would be running after them.

The bus pulled away.

No sign of the intern.

Go! Go! his thoughts pleaded, and he rocked back and forth with his fingers crossed.

The bus made the turn, roared onto the main road, and was on its way.

Gerold stared desperately behind until the hospital disappeared. He went slack in his chair. Thank you, Fates.

The bus was empty and deliciously cool.

“So what’s your connection?” the driver said.

“Uh, the 52.” Gerold picked the first bus route that came to mind.

“Oh, hell, we’ll be at the terminal at least ten minutes before that one leaves.”

“Great. Thanks.”

Gerold smiled, rocking over the gentle bumps in the road. But a glance down showed him a crumpled newspaper. He snatched it up.

It was the Tampa Bay Times, the local popified daily. His eyes idled over the “hip” articles and blaring ads for lingerie and singles clubs. It was a girl in a bikini holding a long fish that snagged more of his attention.

Gerold read the half-page ad—its headline: FUN & SUN AT BEAUTIFUL LAKE MISQUAMICUS!—to learn of a quaint, out-of-the-way camping and fishing resort several counties north of here. Jet Skis, parasailing, freshwater fishing, and, of special note, “Catch your own crawdads! Lake Misquamicus crawdads are the biggest in the state! We have delicious freshwater clams too!” Gerold really liked crawdads . . .

“Excuse me, driver? Now that I think of it, I won’t need to go to the terminal. Just drop me off on Ninth Avenue.”

“Sure. You taking a Greyhound somewhere?”

“Yeah,” Gerold said, still eyeing the ad and its accompanying bikini-clad model. “I’m heading up to . . . Lake Misquamicus.”

The driver nodded. “Good choice. They’ve got great fishing there and crawdadding. They stock the lake every year, and the place isn’t all full of tourists.”

“Cool,” Gerold said. Suddenly he felt wonderful, and he was genuinely looking forward to some fresh-cooked crawdads. They seemed a perfect last meal.


(III)

. . . and you’re not sure what you’re looking at, but when your supernatural vision sharpens—

“It’s like a mansion, except it’s got to be over five hundred feet on each side . . .”

“Sixty hundred and sixty-six,” Howard redresses, “if you’re interested in exactitude, and six floors each precisely sixty-six feet in height. Six belfries and six towers per side, six spires and crockets per tower. Six windows per dormer section, sixty-six chimneys, sixty-six occuli, and six hundred and sixty-six crest spikes along each of sixty-six cornices, not to belabor the evidence of sixty-six—”

“Enough of the fucking sixes! Please!” you wail. “I’m SICK of the fucking sixes!”

Howard waits for you to settle down, a bemused smile subtly set into his sallow face. “It’s curious to observe the extent of your acclimation, Mr. Hudson.”

“What’s that?”

“Your slowly increasing tendency to use profanity—”

I did it again, you realize. This place is a bad influence on me, and it’s no surprise.

After all, it’s Hell.

You look back up at the bizarre edifice you’ve been escorted to, just as Howard announces:

“Mr. Hudson, it is my doubtless pleasure and unreserved honor to introduce to you the new personal abode of the Prince of Darkness . . . Manse Lucifer.”

By now, you’ve already noticed the most distinguishing characteristic of the colossal manse. Its walls are not constructed of brick, block, cement slab, nor wood, nor stucco.

They’re built with female Human heads.

The heads face outward and—to no surprise—they’re all still very much alive. They’ve been laid like mason work, with mortar meticulously packed around each. Millions of heads, no doubt, have been used to construct the mansion’s outer walls and immense mansard-style roof.

“The walls are double layered,” Howard points out, “so that living female faces form the walls inside, as well—God knows what they’re forced to witness. All the interior floors, too, are made from the heads, including buttresses and load-bearing walls.”

A house of heads inside and out, you can only think. A MANSION of living female heads . . .

You sense yourself lowering, then perceive that Howard has set your “stick” into a slab of sidewalk filled with bone and tooth fragments. He’s slipping something from his pocket. “As you can imagine, an equally spectacular interior exists.” Howard, next, holds a small stack of dim photographs before your face.

“Good old-fashioned photographs,” you remark. “I’m surprised you have stuff like that in Hell.”

“Not photographs, hectographs. Hell’s version of the tintypes of my early days. A process of gold nitrate merged with tin salt. Hectographs are, again, only a luxury for the very wealthy here . . .”

Your eyes hold wide on each macabre snapshot.

“The Atrium,” Howard defines.

You are shown an impossible room walled with heads. Columns that ought to be Doric or Corinthian stand at each side of the arched entrance; these, too, are constructed of heads. On one wall hangs a painting of Demons peering in on the Last Supper while platters of chopped infants and goblets of blood wait on the long table to be consumed; on another hangs the Messiah being crucified upside down in Hell.

Next, “Lucifer’s master bed chamber . . .”

Not only are the walls made from heads but so is the high poster bed, yet each head of the mattress has its tongue permanently protruded via studs through the lips. Mirrors shaped like inverted crosses ring the room.

Next, “Lucifer’s Great Hall . . .”

Columned peristyles stretch down the long, vault-ceilinged room fitted with scroll-backed couches and chairs upholstered in Human skin. The banquet table—which you assume must be sixty-six feet long—occupies the center, with higher-backed skeletal chairs around it. The faces in the floor, ceiling, and walls, here, appear more appalled than in other rooms, and you can only suspect the reason has something to do with what they are forced to watch the Prince of Darkness and his guests dine on.

Next, “And Lucifer’s Grand Courtyard . . .”

Nauseating topiary has been meticulously clipped into the configuration of the number six. Noxious rosebushes bear heads of not petals but vaginas, while an ivy of severed penises crawls up a glimmering silver lattice. Human heads only comprise the outer walls and curtilage, but then you see their evidence in one more place: the circular swimming pool that exists at the center of the “six.” The entire pool is lined with them, and the pool appears to be filled with urine ever so faintly tinted with blood.

Next, “Ah, and Lucifer’s throne in the Central Nave . . .”

Not only is the room floored and walled with heads but the great throne itself is composed of them as well. The throne bears a similarity to a Victorian bishop’s chair, with even side-stiles, head backs, and armrests made of heads. The heads forming the center of the seat seem understandably more weary than the rest. To the right sits an ornate grandfather clock, whose pendulum chains are no doubt arteries of more unfortunates; its face has no hands. To the left hangs a painting of a glorious conqueror in a shining breastplate engraved with sixes. He wields a sweep-bladed cutlass while he stands over the headless corpse of, apparently, Christ. The sword-wielder’s face seems to glow to the point that detail cannot be discerned.

“And lastly, Lucifer’s commode-chamber, which you in your modern parlance would call a bathroom . . .”

The head-formed walls here are circular, presumably so that all may watch the Morning Star’s elimination. A beautifully cut mosaic of amethysts make up the actual toilet bowl but the rim of the seat is made of more Human heads. The oddest adornment here, though, is a gilded, flat-topped stand, and on top of it sits a lone Human head on its side. The head is not connected or mortared to anything; it’s just sitting there. You squint at it. It’s that of a blonde woman, slightly chubby-faced, with an expression of utter revulsion.

“What’s with the single head on the stand?” you ask.

“Surely you’ve noticed a disheartening absence of toilet paper, Mr. Hudson,” Howard says. “The unfortunate blonde belle’s face serves the purpose . . .”

Your facsimile for a stomach sinks, then sinks further when you suspect you’ve seen the face before in some entertainment magazine but you can’t quite recall her name.

Howard puts the hectographs away and rehoists your head-stick. “The main house has obviously been completed, but constant additions are in perpetual progress.” He points down an empty street—Mephisto Avenue—as a queue of clattering steam-trucks and monster-drawn wagons approach, all manned by various demonic workmen. Several wagons are heaped high with heads while others haul sacks of occult cement. At a certain point near the house, two hooded Bio-Wizards depart from the mansion’s entrance. They touch a pair of crooked wands together, then draw them apart to a distance wide enough to permit passage of the construction crew. After said passage, the Wizards reverse the odd procedure, and return to the entrance.

“What was that all about?”

“They were opening and closing the mansion’s impenetrable defense perimeter. Nothing may gain entrance without proper clearance.”

“Perimeter? I don’t see any perimeter.”

“It’s a Hex, Mr. Hudson. It’s called an Exsanguination Bridle. Ah, and how convenient! Watch what befalls this gaggle of very unwise insurgent ruffians and ne’er-do-wells . . .”

You look up and see a spectacular white Gryphon flying urgently toward one of the mansion’s towers. Saddled to its back are several very determined-looking Imps and Humans, each hefting a keg of explosives. But when the Gryphon’s swift wings take it past a certain point—

FFFFFFFFFFWAP!

—white feathers fly as the beast and its riders are immediately stricken by an energy that causes their blood to fire out of their bodies through every orifice. Then the bodies, and a rain of blood, hit the street. The kegs burst harmlessly, poofing billows of something akin to gunpowder.

“Wow,” you say, impressed. “That’s some security system.”

“The very latest Senarial Science. And anyone who is granted entrance is thoroughly screened by Prism Veils operated by Warlocks with the Psychical Detection Regiments. They’re able to read any and all negative or anti-Luciferic thoughts.”

Then you look back at the obscene house; even in the utter evil of its design, you have to be impressed. But your confusion couldn’t be more intense. “So this is the clincher? This is the final sight that’s supposed to make me accept the Senary—a house of heads?

Howard unreels a high, nasally laugh. “Goodness no, Mr. Hudson. This is the final sight that’s intended to fully evolve your awareness of the totality of Lucifer’s power and forethought. The clincher shall arrive later . . .” Howard pauses, then adds, “But the tour is nearly at an end. I dare say a minor respite is in order . . . before our final debarkation.”

You’re taking a final glance at the ghastly manse, at the innumerable living heads facing you, all those lips mouthing silent horrors, and all those eyes shock-wide by the excruciating particulars of their Damnation; and the millions more heads that comprise this entire incalculable place when the black static sizzles yet again and then—

Coolness.

Quiet.

Your gourd-head clears, and you find yourself back in the bedimmed Turnstile. It’s uneven, flat black walls emit the faintest indescribable luminescence.

“Ah,” Howard utters. He sits down on a squat, companulated protrusion made of the same material of the Turnstile itself. He loosens his frayed gray tie and smiles at you.

“Just as sleep is nature’s balm, I daresay quietude is its sedative.”

Your stick has been leaned against a corner whose angles are precisely sixty-six degrees. Within the polygon’s inner vault, you’re finally able to relax. The only sound you’re aware of arrives as the most distant hum, which is somehow organic, not electronic. That and an occasional tick of the steam-car’s cooling engine.

Howard unwraps a napkin and removes a cookie of some sort. “I’d offer you a Uneeda biscuit but, lo, your Auric Carrier doesn’t allow you to consume food.”

“Thanks just the same . . .” You try to collect your thoughts but aren’t sure how to; you’re not even sure what to think. But you know that Howard is merely giving you time to either consider or recover from all the detestable things you’ve seen.

You jerk your gaze at a sudden sound: a grunt, a shuffle. Torchlight sputters from a farther corner, and then a shadow lengthens.

The Imperial Truncator—the watchman of this place—shuffles nonchalantly across the black floor, his cleaver-hands swinging, the Ghor-Hound helmet high on his head.

“I forgot all about him,” you remark, but then: “Hey! What happened to the—”

“Ah, yes. Our lithe chauffeur, the Golemess . . .” Howard squints; then his shoulders slump. “Ostensibly not so lithe any longer.”

Now another, less lively shuffle, and from the same corner the Golemess appears. She seems winded, wearied now, and when she trudges into more torchlight, you see why.

She’s pregnant.

“The dude with the meat cleavers for hands got her pregnant!” you exclaim. The gray clay belly looks stuffed, the breasts doubled in volume, presumably full of Golem milk now.

“I was unaware that our Golemess came equipped with fertility features. No doubt before her clay was Hexegenated, the Master Sculptors at the Edward Kelly Institute of Inanimate Enchantment implanted her with a reproductive tract and ovarian process. This is another Luciferic Law that’s gradually activating: the Public Gravidity Initiative. Lucifer desires that anything female—even things unalive—be fertile. More progeny, more fodder for the machinations of the Mephistopolis. God invented reproduction via Human passion, to bring forth more Children of God to one day enjoy the Firmament of Heaven. Lucifer, therefore, perverts God’s endeavor, to reduce femalekind to repositories of lust, and bring forth more meat and building material.”

You stare at the huge stomach as the fatigued Golemess lumbers to the steam-car. “But what . . . what’s going to come out?”

“Immaterial,” Howard answers. “It’s purpose is served, and the Initiative is duly discharged.”

Meat, you recite Howard’s information. Building material.

“And now, Mr. Hudson,” Howard intones. “You’ve had this moment of respite. I’m curious as to the constitution of your thoughts.”

Your hideous head swivels to meet his gaze. “I’m thinking that everything here is illogical—”

“Which serves as the perfect logic within the confines of an antithetical demesne.”

“—including my being here.” You blink. “What, I win this Senary because I’ve tipped some scale of sin, some fulcrum. It makes more sense to go after some guy who’s a hundred percent. A cardinal, a bishop . . .”

“Perhaps in your own purview of logic. Just as popes don’t question God, we don’t question Satan.”

You smirk. “Okay, fine. But in that case, your methods are terrible.”

“Really?” Howard seems intrigued. “Be kind enough to articulate your impression.”

You recite them thus far. “I’m a good enough person that if I died right now, I’d go to Heaven, right?”

“Beyond doubt.”

“But Lucifer wants me to give that up so that when I die, I come here instead. He wants me to make that choice, right?”

“Precisely.”

“He wants me to give up Heaven, in favor of Hell, right?”

“Indubitably.”

Your eyes lock open. “WELL THEN WHY WOULD I DO THAT? HELL SUCKS!”

Your outburst bounces off the vault’s obsidian walls like bullets ricocheting. The Golemess flinches. Even the Imperial Truncator jolts from the start.

“My, Mr. Hudson,” Howard says after his own shock. “That’s . . . quite an ejaculation . . .”

“You guys must be out of your minds!” you continue to rail at the senselessness of it all. “This place is the biggest pile of shit I’ve ever seen! Bridges made of people? Taverns where the kegs are bare boobs with beer taps on the nipples, and bars that serve wine made from fermented babies? Towns made of guts and towns made of skin? And the guy who runs the whole shebang lives in a mansion made of heads! Who the FUCK would want to live here?”

“Please, Mr. Hudson,” Howard urges. “At least try to mind your cursing.” A long, crackly pause. “But certainly, sir, you can comprehend the unending bliss of one who enjoys Privilato status?”

“The Privilato? That asshole in the jewelly jacket?” You roll your demonic eyes. “He’s a putz with a posse of hot chicks who wouldn’t give a shit about him if he wasn’t a Privilato in the first place. Big deal. He drives around town in a flying hole in the sky and gets a red carpet wherever he goes. You gotta do better than that, man.”

“Ah, well, I see that you are underestimating the entireness of the Mephistopolis for those few granted privilege.” Howard raises a finger. “Allow me to query. Seeing that the lion’s share of your sins—however meager that may be—fall primarily into the lust category . . . if you could revel in the carnal pleasures of any woman in the world, who would that be?”

The question, absurd as it is, percolates in your mind. Angelina Jolie? Paris Hilton? Jessica Alba? Just as you think you’ve been stumped, the answers appears. “Well, I’m kind of old-school, but I’d still have to say Pamela Anderson.”

Howard nods. “Bear in mind, of course, that since Mademoiselle Anderson is still a member of the Living World, it defies possibility for me to be familiar with her. However, I can assure you beyond all dubiety that the women awaiting you as a Privilato will be possessed of a desirability no less than sixty-six times that of your coveted Ms. Anderson.”

You try to picture that in your mind. Women . . . sixty-six times HOTTER than Pam Anderson . . .

Wow.

But still . . . the proposition is folly and you know it. “Doesn’t matter if they’re sixty-six thousand times hotter, Howard. This place is still Hell, and Hell sucks. Not to mention, I’m celibate. Next week I’m going to the seminary to become a priest.”

“Then what could possibly explain your recent intent with those slatternettes?”

“Slattern—what?

“The prostitutes the other night. You fully intended to proposition them, for a sex act. You trumpeting the piety of celibacy and the pursuit of the priesthood seems . . . hypocritical.”

If you had a finger, you would point in his face. “Hey, I almost propositioned them. Part of me . . . wanted to know what sex was like before I officially gave it up for a life of godly servitude.”

Did Howard frown as if unconvinced?

“Sex out of wedlock is a sin, and priests—as well as priests-to-be—regard sin as an enemy of the soul. I don’t consider agreeing to take this tour to be a sin, and I don’t think God does either. It will strengthen me in my purpose; it will verify my faith and make me a better priest.”

“Oh, please extrapolate, Mr. Hudson! How can one being temporarily in the midst of Hell make one a better priest?”

“Simple,” you explain. “It’s an opportunity that no other priest but Christ himself has received. By seeing Hell firsthand? I’ll be able to prepare Christians more effectively. This will make me work even harder to save souls, and the more souls I save, the fewer Lucifer will get his hands on. It’s a victory for God.” You grin at Howard. “Glory be to God.”

Howard seems disappointedly quelled. “Your mind appears to be made up in quite an intractable fashion.”

“It is.”

“Then explain your seeming turn toward profanity. Is it not true that to profane is to offend God?”

“Oh, God doesn’t give a shit about that,” you feel sure. “I never cuss on Earth. The only reason I’ve started to here is just due to the environment, I guess.”

“Hmmm . . .”

“And my mind is made up,” you reiterate without hesitation. “So get me out of this fucked-up pumpkin so I can go back to my life like you promised.”

“As you wish, if you’re sure.”

“Sure I’m sure, and this little tour of yours is the reason I’m sure. It proved to me that Lucifer’s a grade-A moron. He’s a nitwit. All that power and all these resources and technologies, and look what he does with it. He could turn Hell into a great place, and you want to know why he doesn’t?”

“I know why, Mr. Hudson,” Howard admits. “Because of his pride.”

“Right. He’s obsessed with being evil and disgusting and cruel because God’s the opposite of that, and Lucifer’s pissed off at God for throwing him out of Heaven. He’s like a little kid having a tantrum because mommy spanked him. I don’t want anything to do with this place, or him. Lucifer’s a dick.”

Howard’s brow rises in a defeated surprise. “Why not let me at least encourage you to take the final leg of the tour.”

“No reason to. My mind’s made up.”

“Then what harm can there be?”

You huff. “Well, what’s the final leg? Believe me, I don’t need to see any more piss pumps, baby factories, or Decapitant Camps.”

“The final leg is the Privilato Chateau that you would occupy if you accept the Senary. At least go and behold all the pleasures you’ll be missing.”

You pause. Well . . . Suddenly it begins to sound interesting again. But, “No. Why tempt myself to do the wrong thing when I’ve already decided to do the right thing?”

“Right and wrong are relative, Mr. Hudson, and in Hell they’re interchangeable. Consider the obvious imperative: in Hell there is no sin. You find trepidation in the prospect of temptation? So did Jesus during his forty days in the wilderness. Why not test your resolve as he did? You may think that you’re doing that now, but isn’t your faith only proven after you’ve witnessed the entire tour? Need I remind you that Christ took a similar tour after he died on Calvary?”

“I know that,” you say.

“Lucifer offered Jesus Privilato status, by the way, and he obviously turned it down. See all that Christ saw; face the same temptations he faced, in which case, if you still decide to turn the Senary down, you will have done what Christ did as well.”

“My thoughts exactly,” you tell him. I’ll become an even better Christian by seeing every temptation and STILL turning them all down . . .

You think a moment more, then say, “All right.”

Howard stands up. He seems relieved.

“Still think you can get me to change my mind?” you ask, a bit prideful yourself now.

“Irrelative time will tell,” Howard says. He pats sweat off his brow with a handkerchief embroidered, HPL. This guy’s really sweating bullets, you think.

Howard picks up your head-stick and approaches the circle of geometric etchings in the black wall. “And the tour goes on,” he murmurs.

For a reason you can’t define—and just before the Turnstile powers up—you look behind you and see the Golemess lying back on the floor, her knees pulled back to her sleek shoulders. Her back arches. Evil water breaks and gushes; then the enormous belly tremors, hitches, and collapses as it disgorges a slick Mongrel fetus with an accordioned face and arms where its legs should be. Puff-eyed, the demonic thing bawls as nublike horns appear on its bald head. It’s almost cute.

Almost.

The Golemess labors to her feet. Her elegant clay hands scoop the fetus up. The last thing you see before the Turnstile’s black static shifts you into another phase is the new mother calmly sliding her newborn into the fuel hatch of the steam-car’s boiler housing. Just as calmly she pushes the hatch shut . . .

. . . and you fall through that now-familiar combustion of morbid energy amid the crackling vertigo of scintillescent black static, and just as the Mongrel baby was pushed forth from the Golemess’s womb, you and Howard are pushed through space and some wicked substitute for time until . . .







CHAPTER SEVEN


(I)

The pallid censer smoke thinned from a rising, abyssal breeze, but even this far out in the Quarter Favius thought he could hear drifts of screams from the immeasurable city too far away to see. It brought delight to his horrid heart: the relief of the visual monotony, because for decades or centuries, the Great Emptiness Quarter and the Reservoir pit itself existed only in foul, glittery blackness.

But now?

So beautiful . . .

A new color to the terrain had been introduced: bloodred.

The bottom of the Reservoir was almost covered—not very deep yet—but covered all the same by the great scarlet gush from the sixty-six-foot-wide Main Sub-Inlets. Favius crudely thought the inflow into the Reservoir could be likened to a toilet slowly filling, only the toilet was the Reservoir itself and its tank was the Gulf of Cagliostro untold miles away. The Pipeway was running at full capacity now, the enormous pumping stations back in the Mephistopolis—at the harbor of Rot-Port—running at full tilt. Favius looked out across the impossible red vista, which churned and foamed from the force of the inflow. This close to the southern Main Sub-Inlet, the violent gush was almost deafening.

It’s finally happening, he thought. Had he been capable of the act, he might’ve cried in sheer joy.

The Conscripts under his command watched the outer perimeters, high and low, with great vigilance, always on guard for signs of an anti-Luciferic attack. Platoons of Golems marched along the ramparts, their horrid clay faces blank, the sounds of their massive feet thundering on the basalt causeway. And all the while, the sub-inlet gushed and gushed.

Exactly how long it would take to fill the pit to its six-billion-gallon prerequisite, the Legionnaire could not reckon, as time itself was unreckonable. Instead of counting seconds, minutes, and hours, then, he reasoned he could count depth. By the looks of the progress now, most of the pit had been filled to a depth of at least one foot . . .

Only sixty-five more to go.

Next, he stared directly at the sub-inlet’s great Y-connector, and in the waterfall-like expulsion of noxious fluid he knew he could see solid objects as well: detritus from the sea, scraps of old boats long since sunken by nauseating nautical creatures or artillery from vessels of the Satanic Navy. Corpses, too, were rife amid the inflow, but closer scrutiny showed him living creatures as well, siphoned all the way from the Gulf to here, via the Pipeway. Next, a school of Slime-Sharks burst through, followed by several twenty-foot-wide Gulf Nettles, their milky orb-heads oscillating above even longer barbed tentacles. An excited breath caught in the sentry’s chest when, in an instant, an immature Gorge-Worm was siphoned through—nearly a quarter of a mile long. Thousands of Conscripts surrounding the pit cheered at this astonishing evidence. The massive, gilled parasite churned in the shallow Blood-water, sidewinding like a snake in a shallow pool.

It was spectacular to behold.

The inflow continued to roar. Above, Dentata-Vultures and Caco-Bats flew mad circles over the Reservoir, inflamed by the Bloodwater’s meaty stench. Every so often, they shot straight down into the stew to snatch a buoyant delicacy on which to feed. When one of Favius’s Squad Leader’s—a Conscript Third Class named Terrod—approached, his armored hand extended to point into the rising gush.

“Commander! Praise Satan for this blessing!”

“Glory be to he who was cast out,” Favius replied.

“My heart sings for this great success, Commander, but we are all mystified—”

“As to what?” Favius’s voice grated.

“As to the purpose of this wondrous undertaking.”

“Keep your spirit on your duty, Terrod. Compared to Lucifer and his Hierarchals, we are unworthy to even contemplate such things.”

“Yes, Commander!”

“We exist to receive our orders, which we obey to the death. Just as Judas betrayed Christ, I’m certain that we are but sheep against the greatness of the Morning Star, and therefore incapable of understanding his most unholy plans. It is not for us to muse upon, but only to know that lowly as we are, we are a small part of great black wonders.”

“I sing praises to his wretched name, Commander.” The lower Conscript looked back out of the scarlet churning. “It’s just such a glorious sight that I am beside myself!”

“As am I as well as all of us, good soldier.”

“And—look!” Terrod pointed with urgency. “What might those be, Commander?”

Favius peered through his visor. “Hmmm . . .”

“They appear to be kegs or casks of some kind—”

“Ah, yes,” Favius said, smiling when he recognized what the half dozen floating objects were. They bobbed like corks in the roiling mire. “Jail-Kegs, Terrod. Clearly much flotsam from the Gulf is finding its way here via the Pipeway. A delightful sight, indeed.”

“Jail-Kegs, Commander?”

“For sure. Lucifer’s Department of Injustice has recently embarked on cost-cutting measures. Rather than go to the expense incarcerating Human convicts in prisons, it is now deemed more preferable and efficient to confine them to the Kegs. Surely a Jail-Keg costs less than a physical prison cell.”

“Of course, Commander!”

Favius nodded, still eyeing the adrift casks. “They merely seal the convicts in the Kegs and dump them into the sea, where they can float sightless and immobile forever.”

“An ingenious punishment, sir!”

“Oh, yes—the very idea of it enthralls me.” But when the scream-tinged breeze suddenly picked up, Favius raised a concerned glance to the sky. The black clouds seemed aswirl—and seemed to be turning a pallid green—moving in involutionary patterns; in other words, in sixlike configurations.

“Those cloud movements bother me, Commander,” Terrod said.

“Yes. We must take no chances. Return to your post. A storm may be coming. Bring the rampart to the ready and brace for emergency conditions.”

“Yes, Commander!” Terrod exclaimed and jogged back to his command point, his armor clattering.

The next gust of fetid wind gave Favius a hard shove. He stared up. Yes, a storm is coming, all right—a formidable one . . .

But even when confronted with the threat, he gazed out yet again over the detestable churning inflow of Blood-water and noticed, now, that the level had risen to at least two feet.

Only sixty-four to go, Favius thought.


(II)

This high in the Regimental Balloon Skiff—over 600 feet—not Curwen nor any of his crew could hear the steady sacrifices below on the field. It was the massive putrid wall of the Demonculus’s chest they faced. So close to the creature’s body, the Master Builder could spy details of the miraculous pseudoflesh that composed the thing: like of tar, wet fungus, and putrefactive grave waste all enmeshed together. Curwen could even detect finger ends and teeth in the dread claylike composite, and remnant cartilage from ears long gone to rot, even gallstones and toenails. A dead colossus, Curwen thought, awaiting a glorious Unlife . . .

Indeed. Awaiting a heart.

Smaller ancillary noble-gas balloons had been rigged to the eyehooks of the titan’s chest plate, which had been previously unscrewed and detached by horned Journeymen. Then the plate was allowed to rise high enough to clear the Occultized area of space it had covered.

“We’re ready, Master Builder,” guttered the sloplike voice of the Project Teratologist. He—or it—was a part-Human, part-Ghoul Crossbreed whose brain volume had been doubled with Hexegenically cultured stem cells. This supplement of gray matter was contained by a clear silicon bolus nailed into the Crossbreed’s skull. Another physical addendum existed in the servant’s hands, which were transplants taken quite abruptly from unwitting Human surgeons who’d recently been Condemned.

“Proceed,” Curwen permitted.

“Bring the Auger to bear!”

A pair of goggled Imps advanced, carrying upon their shoulders the aforementioned implement, a Hexed and Incantated manual Auger, which looked like a giant corkscrew. The laborers carefully aligned the tool’s sharpened tip to the X inscribed in the massive thing’s chest. Amid grunts and great exertion, the Imps turned the Auger slowly counterclockwise, each turn sinking the screw deeper into the Demonculus’s chest. As the screw bore in, loops of reeking pseudoflesh shimmied out.

“Take care,” cautioned the Ghoul. “Steady . . . You mustn’t miscalculate even by half an inch.”

Sweating the most minute error, the Imps continued with their task. Three complete turns, then four.

Five. Then—

“Six!” shouted the Teratologist. “Stop! Right there on that mark! Perfect!”

“Yes,” Curwen’s voice creaked. The psychic patina of his Wizard’s vision told him beyond doubt. It is. Perfect.” You and your Journeymen have done fine work.”

“Thank you, Master Builder.”

“Extract the Auger.”

Chains were hooked into each end of the Auger’s handle, then rung through pullies fixed to the Skiff’s mast. The Imps grabbed the chain ends and planted their webbed feet.

“On the count of six!” ordered the Teratologist, and when he counted down—

“Pull!”

The Imps’ corded muscles tightened, and they gritted their fangs when in unison they pulled back on the chains.

“Yes!”

The Auger was smoothly extracted from the monster’s chest. It clanked against the Skiff deck.

Curwen rushed to the newly formed cavity.

“Great Lucifer! The Hexes are working pristinely!”

Indeed. The Auger’s removal left a roughly six-inch tunnel in the Demonculus’s chest. The tunnel’s walls as well as the all-important mounting seat at its terminus glittered with Anti-Light, a sign that the Animation Spells were regenerating.

A great day in Hell, Curwen thought, stepping back with steepled fingers as he appraised the work. His leaden surplice sparkled. “These newest Occult Sciences truly boggle the mind,” he muttered more to himself.

The Ghoul nodded, grinning with black teeth. “And I needn’t remind you, Master Builder, that these wondrous sciences were theorized and then executed by you.”

“Yes, indeed, but all by the grace of the Morning Star . . .”

“Bring the chest plate back down,” ordered the Teratologist, “and re-cover the cavity. The Diviners have predicted inclement weather in multiple Districts. We can’t risk damaging the cavity . . .”

Curwen watched as the great iron plate was pulled back down and rebolted to the Demonculus’s chest.

“All I can muse upon, Master Builder,” remarked the Ghoul, “is when? When might this miracle occur?”

The gravity-defying Skiff began to lower. Curwen’s black and yellow eyes strayed out over the smoking District trademarked by a million severed heads on pikes.

“Soon,” Curwen whispered. “Sooner than you or any of us may think . . .”


(III)

—you are there.

Your head spins like a proverbial top as your senses first alight and you think you hear . . .

A deep, incessant throb, like crickets in a vast field only much more intense. Before you can even contemplate the nature of the sound, it brings an immediate smile to your face.

It’s then that your vision turns crisp; you find that you are indeed standing in a vast, sweeping field of verdant grass a yard high.

It’s beautiful.

And the sounds throb on.

“Cicadas,” you dreamily mutter. “The seventeen-year kind. It’s one of my earliest childhood memories—that sound. It’s always been my favorite sound . . .”

“The powers that be are aware of that,” Howard tells you, your head-stick in hand as he walks along through the gorgeous, blight-free grass. The scent of the grass is intoxicating. “As a Privilato, everything you are endeared to, everything that brings you jubilancy and exultation will be heaped upon you to the very best of our abilities. And, mind you, forever.”

Then Howard turns and you see the castle.

“Noticing a familiarity?” Howard asked.

The castle’s great buff-colored blocks gleam atop the grass-swept hill, with five massive bastions rimmed with turrets, merlons, and arrow slits, a moat surrounding all. And come to think of it:

It DOES look familiar, you recall.

“You were quite an aficionado of the Middle Ages when you were in middle school—”

Then the memory sweeps into your head. “Château-Gaillard . . .”

“Correct, the famed bastion of Richard the Lionheart, in Les Andelys, France. Of course, the real one is a ruin now, but Lucifer’s Architects have constructed this duplicate, down to every excruciating detail. It appears as it did, in every conceivable way, in 1192 AD. In your early teens, castles, knights, and the like had a tendency to fascinate you.”

And he’s right; you remember now.

“While the interior has been modified to a scheme you’re sure to be delighted in,” Howard added.

Incredible, you think. As Howard approaches the drawbridge you notice eleven other magnificent castles on eleven other hills in the dim distance. “Who lives in those?”

“Your neighbors. The other men—er, I should say, ten men and one woman who’ve won the Senary since it began in 4652 BC.”

“Ten men but just one woman?” you question.

“Yes. Women seem to be more concrete about their notions of sin versus redemption. Our only female winner is a quite attractive Judean named Arcela, a concubine of a Roman governor. You’re certain to make her acquaintance, along with all the winners.” But then Howard clears his throat. “That is, if you decide to accept your winnings.”

“But I’ve already decided not to,” you remind your guide. “This castle looks like really cool digs . . . but it’s not worth my soul.”

“Of course, of course, but . . . wait till you view the interior.”

Your gourd-head sways along on the stick as Howard carries it across the magnificent drawbridge and through a barbican and iron portcullis. Next, up a stone spiral staircase, and suddenly the air feels cool as if climate-controlled. Through a spectacular archway, you’re startled by a brilliant shine, then—

“Oh, wow,” you utter.

“This is the Hall of Gold.”

You’re standing in a long room completely walled in pure gold.

“Stunning, eh? The decorative effect seems to awe Humans. Six hundred and sixty-six tons of gold have been used to wall this room,” Howard tells you as he walks on, through another arch, “while six hundred and sixty-six tons of diamonds wall this one—the foyer.”

The sight is dizzying. You’re now in the middle of another chamber walled similarly with diamonds. The effect is impossible to describe. “This really is beautiful,” you admit.

“I should say so!”

“But it’s still not worth my soul. Come on, be serious. I get to spend eternity in a neat castle full of gold and diamonds? Big deal. I’m still in Hell.”

“Um-hmm,” Howard consents. “But you haven’t met your house staff—sixty-six of them, by the way.” Howard snaps his fingers, and then a diamond panel raises, and through it saunter dozens of beautiful women—Humans and Demons alike.

The drove of smiling women don’t make a sound as they enter, stand in rank, and bow.

Yes, the most gorgeous Human women you’ve ever seen, but now you must confess that some of the Hybrids and Demons are even more gorgeous. Fellatitrines, Vulvatagoyles, Succubi. Lycanymphs and Mammaresses, and even a Golemess that puts your sultry chauffeur to shame.

“The sins of the flesh, Mr. Hudson, but not a bad thing in a domain where sin does not exist,” Howard’s voice echoes in the glittering hall.

You gulp. “Yeah, but I couldn’t get it on with all these women in a hundred years.”

“But of course you could, and a hundred after that and a hundred after that. Forever. And when you weary of these, more will be afforded you.”

Now you stare at them. That’s an awful lot of . . . sex . . .

“But now, we’re off to your bedchamber, where your very personal harem awaits.” And then Howard takes you up more steps, down a torch-studded corridor, and into a long room adorned with all manner of jewels and precious metals.

“Holy shit!” you yell.

Howard frowns.

You’re staring at the bed. “I’ll bet you didn’t get that at Mattress Discounters.”

The bed is circular, twenty feet in diameter, but the mattress itself is somehow a mass of Human breasts.

“The Breast-Beds are Hexegenically manufactured, for Privilatos only,” Howard informs. “I was never possessed of much of a sexual drive—much to my wife’s ire, and I’d bet my precious Remington she was committing infidelities in Cleveland.” Howard paused amid the digression. “Er, anyway, even I must admit, I wouldn’t mind stretching out on such a Breast-Bed.”

A bed made of tits, you tell yourself. And not just any tits—GREAT tits.

“But didn’t you also say something about—”

“Your personal harem,” Howard went on. “Oh, yes.” Again, Howard snaps his fingers.

A door clicks open and in walks a very perfect and very buck-naked—

“It’s Pam Anderson!” you wail.

And so it is. The woman curtsies for you, then stands in a displaying pose.

“She’s even better-looking than she was in Barb Wire,” you observe, but then your eyes bulge when five more identical Pam Andersons enter the bedroom and stand in formation.

Your gaze snaps to Howard. “Six Pam Andersons? All for me?”

“All for you, Mr. Hudson, should of course you accept the Senary.”

You stare at the impossible line of spectacular women. “But how did you . . .”

“They’re products of quite an impressive occult invention, called Hex-Cloning,” Howard explains. “They look—and feel—exactly like the genuine woman in the Living World you so desire, but they’ll do anything you tell them. Anytime you want.”

You gulp again, looking at those six pairs of legendary breasts . . .

“And I suspect you’ll enjoy the next prospect: the Bath,” Howard says and takes you into what you guess is the bathroom.

Solid gold toilet. Solid gold sink. A claw-foot tub made of still more gold sits on the immaculate floor.

“Pretty nice bathroom,” you say.

“You’re welcome to partake in baths with pure water, or, if you prefer . . .” Howard snaps his fingers one more time.

Several large-bosomed and sultry She-Demons enter next, their bodies nearly as provocative as the half dozen counterfeit Pam Andersons in the bedroom, only these women have petite horns and various colored skin.

“What’s the big deal with these chicks?”

“They’re your Bath Girls, in the event that you don’t want to take a normal bath.”

You blink at Howard. “Huh?”

“Girls?” Howard addresses them. “Be so good as to show Mr. Hudson your surgical augmentation.”

All at once, then, the She-Demons open their mouths and stick out their tongues.

“Woe-boy!” you exclaim.

Each woman extrudes a tongue the size of a beef liver.

“Their tongues are huge!

“Of course, they need to be. They’re Bath Girls. Only Privilatos, Exalted Dukes, and District Emirs are afforded this very expensive luxury—along with Satan himself, of course. Their sole purpose is to administer to you what’s known as a tongue-bath.”

You stare at the women’s tongues as much as you stare at the consideration. Tongue-baths . . .

“Anytime you so desire,” Howard says. “For eternity. It’s my understanding that the sensation is most stimulating.”

I’ll bet it is . . . I’ve got all these hot chicks here, that I can get it on with anytime I want . . . IF I accept the Senary . . . But then the reality sets in. “Look, I’ve never even had sex before but I’ve been told that a guy can only do it so many times before he gets worn out.”

“Ah, yes, refraction, the bane of all masculinity, but let us convene now on the north bulwark, and I will show you yet one more otherworldly benefit of Privilato status.”

The Bath Girls all wriggle their giant wet tongues as Howard moves you out of the chamber and onto a lofty balcony. From here you see the entire castle grounds, the inner wards, various stone buildings, intermediate towers. Birds that appear to be normal—falcons, doves, sparrows—sweep across the sky; while the sky is normal, too. Blue, with wisps of white clouds.

“How can . . .” you begin.

“Hallucinosis Transformers at the fringe of each Privilato estate provide the preferred environment,” Howard answers. “Should you so desire, Mr. Hudson, your sky will always look exactly like the sky in the Living World.”

“Incredible,” you mutter, but then you think of something. “There’s an awful lot of—what?—supernatural technology here—”

“The proper term is Occult Science or Systematic Magic.”

“Fine, but it’s still the opposite of science in the Living World, right?”

“Quite right. It’s antithetical. As I explained previously. The subjective on Earth is objective here. The blacks and whites of the Living World is the all-crucial gray area in Hell. The hard science of God’s green earth is magic in Lucifer’s kingdom.”

“All right!” you exclaim, “but that’s my point. If Lucifer can do all of this with Occult Science, then what has God done in Heaven with Godly Science?”

Howard seems taken by your observation. “I am quite regrettably unqualified to render an answer but I must speculate . . . It must be rather dull when compared to all of this.”

Really? You stew on the words. I’ll have no way of knowing, will I?

“But to return to our former topic—there,”—Howard points over the parapet—“the Satanic Chapel. You will have to attend Black Mass on occasion, but I would think that little to ask in view of what you’ll be receiving, hmm?”

The black church sits in the corner, past the courtyard proper, almost quaintly were it not for the high upside-down cross erected on its steeple. Several bosomy nuns busy themselves about the small building.

“I mean your previous question regarding, um, sexual refraction,” Howard goes on, “and your potential concern about the prospect of being ‘worn out’ by the bevy of sexually available women at your disposal.”

“Huh?”

“Privilato status entitles you to your very own personal aphrodisial farm. Note the garden, Mr. Hudson.”

You see the area of space, a great square of flower beds tended to by sultry women in white cloaks and hoods. Only their breasts can be seen through apertures in the cloaks.

“The women are Bio-Sorceresses, and they will suffice for your groundskeeping staff. Every Privilato gets his own rod of Orgia Extremus Root. The Bio-Sorceresses are occult chemists who pick the root at harvest time, extract the Inhuman Growth Hormones from it, and then further process a priceless Gonadotropic Elixir that not only abolishes sexual refraction between climaxes, but allows for massive orgasms that last for not seconds but the equivalent of a full hour.”

Your demonic mouth hangs open at the information.

“It should go without discourse that Privilatos spend most of their time engaged in one manner or other of licentious congress.”

Hour-long orgasms, you think.

“And for such occasions when you do long for diversity of a nonsexual mode . . . there, in the corner opposite.”

You follow Howard’s finger to said corner, and see a troop of well-weaponed Conscripts surrounding one of those glowing green holes you saw the Privilato disembarking before he took his entourage into the Fetal Aperitifs bar.

“The Conscripts of the famed Diocletian Brigade will serve as your bodyguards when you wish to travel, and for traveling, you have at your constant disposal your very own Nectoport,” Howard says.

For when I want to go out on the town, you think.

You must admit now . . . the possibility is sounding better and better.

“But wouldn’t I need money?”

“Ah. The filthy lucre!” Howard takes you back inside, through one stunning hall after another, and down myriad jeweled corridors. Eventually, he turns into another room.

Jesus!

The room’s ceiling causes you to look involuntarily up.

“The Unholy Coffer-Vault,” Howard says.

The room must be a hundred feet high and hundreds deep. It is filled with pallet after pallet of banded paper money.

“There must be a billion dollars here!”

“Six billion, Mr. Hudson, though not dollars. Hellnotes.” Howard’s focus drifts off. “I once wrote a longish tale entitled ‘Dreams in the Witch-House.’ I thought it was most abysmal, but a friend submitted it and got for me the unheard sum of $140. I’ve often wondered what that would be worth in Hellnotes.”

As usual, you don’t hear Howard; your attention, instead, has been highjacked by the airplane-hangar-size vault of cash.

That’s A LOT of MONEY!

“You also need to be apprized, sir, that once you’ve expended the entirety of this vault, Satan’s Treasurers will simply fill it up again.”

Now you’re getting dizzy looking at all of it . . .

“In spite of all of Hell’s horrors, there’s quite a bit for a wealthy man to do,” Howard goads on. “Especially one who will know wealth for eternity . . .”

“Take me out of here,” you say suddenly. “I’ve got to think . . .”

Howard smiles.







CHAPTER EIGHT


(I)

When Krilid received the coordinates for his next familiarization surveillance, he squinted hard through the accommodating headache. He had headaches all the time simply as an aftereffect from the Head-Bending job the Satanic police had treated him to; the telepathic orders from Ezoriel’s mental antennae array only felt worse. As the illegal Nectoport soared high and fast through clouds like coal dust, the Troll rested his head in his clawed hands and felt it literally throb.

There was no aspirin in Hell.

But he had to hand it to the Contumacy’s skill in stealing and then replicating Lucifer’s leading-edge Sorceries. Krilid need only receive the coordinates and then think once very hard, and he was on his way.

A nebulous intelligence memo had slammed into his head along with the coordinates. When the headache passed, he thought, This might be very interesting . . .

If the intelligence wasn’t counterfeit.

Krilid had revivified the Hand of Glory only when he finally began to descend toward the next assignment. He liked the idea of nobody being able to see him while he could see entire Districts of Hell with any given glance. Now, miles below, he could see the staggering Pol Pot District and its smoking crematories, its killing fields, and its almost endless landscaping of heads on pikes. Didn’t know this burg was so big, he thought, but then his gaze fixed on a break in the District’s layout, an irregularly shaped construction site of some kind. At this altitude, it was tiny of course, but as the cloaked Nectoport slipped lower . . .

I don’t believe what I’m seeing. They really did it.

The thing stood immobile in the middle of the fortified site, a thing taller than any skyscraper in the District. The wedged, neck-less head sat propped upon dark shoulders straining with inanimate muscles. The monster’s arms—which had to be 200 feet long—hung just as muscularly at its sides; and the corded legs shined blackly in the sky’s scarlet light. Krilid took the Nectoport lower, to encroach upon the Demonculus’s face and—

Aw, shit . . .

He nearly vomited at the sight at the pitted muck that had been sculpted to comprise the most revolting and indescribable visage.

Krilid retook to the clouds, his stomach in queasy turmoil. That face’ll take a LOT of getting used to, he reminded himself.

But only if he succeeded, and the odds of that seemed to be shrinking very quickly. But he knew this full well: If the Master Builder brings that thing to life, there’ll be a world of hurt coming down the pike for Ezoriel and the Contumacy . . .

Krilid hovered next, to focus his Monocular, actually laughing to himself now that he was considering his odds of success. I don’t stand a chance in Hellpun intended. There were Noble Gas Skiffs floating all over the place, full of Conscripts and Warlocks armed to the hilt with every weapon in the Satanic Arsenal. All I have is this Nectoport, a pistol, and a couple of muzzle-loading long rifles, and then he laughed again.

He thought: I’m a pawn in a chess game that Ezoriel KNOWS can’t be won . . .

The field, hundreds of feet below, was impenetrably walled with Hexed Blood-Bricks and full of ranks of more soldiers, not to mention marching formations of Ushers, Golems, and Flamma-Troopers.

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