House Infernal by Edward Lee (39 page)

She didn't argue. They bid their farewell to the manager and then were back in Berns' unmarked.

"What a difference a split second makes, huh?" Berns
remarked from behind the wheel. "I'm the one who
should be thanking you. If you hadn't remembered seeing
the diagram on the wall, none of that would've happened and Dougie would still be at-large. A half hour ago I didn't
have a case anymore 'cos my only two suspects were dead.
Now, thanks to your memory, the case is solved."

Venetia hadn't thought of it that way, but it did make her
feel better. I almost peed myself but at least it was all for something beneficial. "So you feel the case is genuinely solved?"

"Sure. There's no reason to think that there are any
more accomplices to the March murders. Too much corroboration from Freddie and Maitland. But we'll grill
Dougie big-time, too." Berns paused in reflection. "It
doesn't really matter to the case but ... I'd really like to
know what it was all about. The diagram, the Eosphorous
stuff, those instructions in whatever language they were
in.-Just-to know."

"Probably just three messed-up people living a delusion," Venetia suggested.

"Yeah," he conceded. "Hey, do you mind if I stop by the
substation real quick before I take you back? I'll just be a
couple minutes."

"That's fine," she said, almost half asleep now in the seat.

"Once they bring Dougie back from the hospital, I have
to make damn sure I have a suicide watch on him."

"You really think he's suicidal?"

"Yeah, because Freddie and Sue didn't seem suicidal but
they knocked themselves off anyway. They even told me
they would. I can't have the same happening to Dougie."

Suicide cult. The words thumped in her head. A Satanic
one ... It all seemed unreal, or so distant as to have no
meaning, like reading of such things in the papers and
just thinking, Oh, how strange.

But here it was, right in her face.

A phantom sensation from the knife-point continued to
prick her neck, and she shuddered when she recalled the
feel of Dougie's hand mauling her breast and crotch.

Berns parked in front of the Wammsport substation.
"I'll be back in five minutes," he promised.

"Mmmm," she said. She was closing her eyes. I'll just
take a nap while he's inside....

The half-sleep felt luxurious after being terrorized at the store. Thank you, God.... But it was true, she could
have been killed, easily. She saw calm blackness behind
her eyes. Her window was open, and she could feel a gentle breeze caress her face.

But then the strangest image flitted into her head: a
wristwatch-was it hers?-but the hands were spinning
backward, then forward, the day and date doing the
same, until it got to the point where each second was a
time hours off of the second previous.

Another image smacked: her naked body sprawled unconscious as a cloaked figure hunched between her
legs... .

Bile flooded her stomach-

Then the tinny voice crackled and whined like an oldtime radio transmission: "You must find the Pith! You must
find the bones! Venetia! Venetia! There's nothing you can do to
stop the pouring of the blood!"

Venetia gasped like someone just saved from drowning.

"You must find the Pith! You must find the bones! Do you
hear me? Do you hear me? This isn't a dream! You must bring
one of the-"

She roused with a silent shriek on her lips, and at once
found tears dribbling down her cheeks. "Oh, my God,
what is wrong with me?" she squealed. Her fists churned in
her lap. I must have a tumor in my brain or something. What
else could cause such vibrant hallucinations over and over?
When Venetia opened her fists-

What...

A piece of paper lay crumpled in one of them.

Someone put this in my hand ... while I was asleep.

Groggy, still teary-eyed, she squinted at the crabbed
scrawl:

Embrace your strength, as I have not. In my cowardice, I
am no longer worthy to serve God. Take heed not to be
sacrificed by mistake. Only you can rightly enter the Pith.

"This is crazy!" she muttered and jumped out of the car.
The note blew away. Someone's messing with my head! The main drag paralleled the docks. A block down she saw a
bum hobbling across the street. Him! she realized. Father
Whitewood!

"Wait!" she shouted, tramping down the sidewalk.
Passersby gaped at her flight. "Father Whitewood! Damn
it, would you wait!"

The man straightened, a smudged face peering at her
from the hood of the greasy raincoat. He stopped, fist
tremoring as if challenging himself, and for a moment it
looked as though he would turn and come toward her.

"Damn it to hell!" Venetia swore.

Instead, this bum-the former prior of St. John's Prior
House-got onto a bus and rode away.

"Come back!"

In the bus's rear window, the withered face gazed back
at her; then the old man made the sign of the cross.

"It's going to be very soon," Alexander said, holding a
weird brass crescent to the sky.

Ruth didn't even know what "it" was yet. "How soon?"

"Well, since there's no time here-" He shrugged,
keeping his eye lined up on the device. "I'll only be able
to tell from this. Don't worry, I'll know."

Ruth frowned. She sat next to him on a bench of long
bones at the end of another alley. "What is that thing
anyway?"

"Know what a sextant is?"

"Fuck no."

The monster-armed priest shook his head. "It's like a
sextant, Ruth, a thing boaters used to use to chart courses
by looking at the stars. This is a Moon-Sextant, though."
He displayed it: a crescent of brass which-now that she
thought about it-was shaped exactly like the black sickle
moon that hung in the sky. "You line it up so the points
are parallel to the ground and check the distance between
the moon's points and the sextant's points. Here the
moon never changes phase but it does change pitch. That's the closest you get to measuring time in Hell. The reading
you snagged off Aldezhor was seven-point-seven. There's
a gauge on this thing. Right now we're at seven-pointthree. I'll just have to keep checking once we're inside."

Ruth scratched her armpit, wishing for a shower. "Inside where?"

"There," the priest said. His Annelok arm pointed
toward a massive building several blocks away. "That's
Fortress Boniface."

"It's so ... bright," she said, shielding her eyes. Like
everything in the District, it was made of those funny red
bricks that had a weird glow, but this structure was the
brightest. Each brick burned like fuzzy red neon against
the darker scarlet sky.

"The blood bricks are Hexed very potently," Alexander
explained. "Hence, the glow. It's one of the most important buildings in Hell and likewise one of the biggest targets for anti-Satanic terrorists."

"Like us?" she said.

"Like us, Ruth. The Hexing makes the bricks even
stronger, so no one can break through them. The only
way in is through the front door."

Ruth laughed. "And you think they're gonna open it
for us?"

"Not for us, Ruth. For you."

"I'm not going in there by my-fucking-self!"

"I'll be right behind you." The priest winked.

This is so fucked-up, she thought. "Damn it, I broke another nail!" Then she gasped. From the ramparts of the
fortress, she saw hoppers dumping charred and mangled
bodies over the side. "Did you see that shit?"

"Unfortunately, yes. Before any interstitial rite, they
murder scores of people. It's called a precursory oblation."

Ruth squinted. "Huh?"

"A demonstrative sacrifice that's not functionally related to the ritual," the priest said.

"I don't know what the fuck you're talking about," she
mumbled for the millionth time.

"They torture, then kill people for an extra effect. Like
icing on cake. I'll bet they're slaughtering a thousand people a day in there: burning, threshing, crushing," the
priest morbidly continued. "Remember, only the Human
Damned have souls, Ruth, but even the Hellbom have a
Deathforce."

"Deathforce? Do I want to know what that is?"

"You need to know. Deathforce can be likened to psychic energy-in Hell, it's in every living thing, Human
and Demon alike. And when you kill Humans, Demons,
Hybrids, etc. en masse, the Deathforce is released all at
once. It keeps the air charged with positive Satanic energy. It makes their rituals work better, the same way gas
treatment makes your car work better. Get it?"

Fuck, she thought. "I guess so..." She paled again, as
another hopper emptied more bodies over the fortress
ramparts.

"When they're done, they dump the bodies over the
side to be scavenged by the local populace," he finished.

It was ghastly. This entire world seemed to exist on horror and despair. Why did I have to be such a shitty person in
life? she lamented. If I weren't, I wouldn't even be here.

Alexander unsheathed an impressive knife from the
Satanic Navy belt: a sharp blade on one side, a saw on the
other. "This should do the trick."

Ruth found herself unsettled by the image of a priest
grinning at a knife. Her voice rattled, "What's the knife
for?"

The priest seemed to contemplate his response. "It's
like a lot of things, Ruth. There's good news and there's
bad news. The good news is, we're on the last leg of our
mission."

Ruth felt petrified. "What's, uh, what's the bad news?"

"We've got some dirty work to do first. It won't be
p y"

Oh, like anything in this fuckin' city is, she thought.

"And she should be coming down this street real
soon," Alexander added.

"She? Who? Your intelligence source?"

"No, no, Ruth. It's someone awful." He handed her one
of the Hectographs. "This is who we're waiting for."

Pretty hot broad, Ruth thought when her eyes went first to
the woman's body. Tall, buxom, long legs, and perfect hips.

"Shit, she's wearing a Hand-Bra and Tongue-Skirt just
like mine."

"Um-huh. It denotes great wealth."

Only then did Ruth look at the woman's face. "Oh,
make me gag! Did you see this bitch's face?"

"Urn-hmm. No Cosmo cover for her, huh? It's the face of
a lower-order Demon called a Putridox. Probably the
most revolting visage in the Mephistopolis."

Ruth almost threw up looking at it. The face looked like
a splat of cottage cheese pocked with yellow spots. No
nose, but eyes and a mouth that were vertical instead of
horizontal. The eyes themselves looked like wads of
smoker's phlegm. "This is one fugly bitch, man. I'm
gonna have nightmares...."

.She is a nightmare, Ruth. Her name is Voluptua, and
she's very important."

Ruth couldn't look anymore. "How could someone
with a face like that be important?"

"She's the personal concubine of Exalted Duke Boniface," the priest said.

When he flashed a quick Hectograph of Boniface, Ruth
shuddered at the image of the inhuman salt-mask.

"Voluptua is the one who's going to get us into the
fortress."

Hmm, Ruth thought. She looked back at the picture of
the woman and noticed an oddity. "Why's she wearing a
scarf? It's hot as shit here."

Did Alexander seemed disturbed by his next thought?
"You'll see," was all he said.

All the while, something bugged her about the picture,
and finally it snapped. "Hey, this ho's body looks a lot
like mine."

Alexander handed her another Hectograph. "Here's one of her naked, Ruth. Let me know when that steel-trap
brain of yours starts to click."

Ruth was about to respond to the obvious sarcasm but-

The next picture showed Voluptua standing bucknaked on the Fortress ramparts, the horrendous whitelumpen face grinning as Ushers loaded a hopper with
corpses.

Every physical feature of the woman's body bore a striking resemblance to Ruth's. They were nearly identical:
breasts, nipples, navel, hip contours, and leg curves. She
even trims her pubies the same way I do, Ruth thought.

"Her body looks so much like yours," the priest said,
"she could pass for you."

Or me for her. That's when Ruth's steel-trap brain finally
clicked. "You're shitting me, man! You want me to stand
in for her?"

"Yes," Alexander said rather grimly. "You look just like
her. Even naked, your bodily features are so similar you
could fool those closest to her-including Boniface."

Ruth frowned so hard it hurt. "I might have the same
body but-hello!-I don't have the monster face to go
with it!"

"Don't worry about it, Ruth. It'll all work out."

Ruth couldn't believe it. "You're fuckin' shitting me,
right? That's the big plan? We came all this way and did
all this stuff for that? What kind of shit do you have for
brains?"

"Quiet! Here she comes now," the priest whispered.
"Come on, into the alley."

Ruth ducked in with him. She'd glimpsed a figure
down the street. What is he gonna do? she wondered.
Alexander stood with his back against the alley, the knife
in his Usher hand, and his Annelok arm coiled.

A tapping came down the bright red street. High heels,
Ruth edged an eye out of the alley... .

"How close?" Alexander whispered.

"Thirty feet," Ruth said. Voluptua sashayed down the
sidewalk, blond hair flowing around her appalling visage. The Tongue-Skirt shined, the wolf-hands firmly cupping
the breasts so similar to Ruth's. And when she passed-

Snap!

Alexander's Annelok arm shot out, caught the woman
around the neck, and hauled her into the alley.

Ruth stood back, appalled. The woman flailed on the
ground, gagging. The priest muscled her down with surprising cruelty, his Demonic knees pinning her shoulders.
All the while, the Annelok arm constricted like a boa.

Voluptua's lumpy white face began to turn blue, and
the vertical eyes bugged. "Unhand me! I'm from the
Court of Boniface!"