Lucifer's Lottery (14 page)

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

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

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

Hudson’s eyes narrowed. “But I’m a
Christian
. I’m a theologian and student of Christ. I’m about to go to the
seminary
. To be a
priest!
”

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

Hudson gave her remark some thought, even in the “afterglow” of his sin.
So THAT’S it! They want to tempt me, they want to make me break
. Suddenly the madness and sheer impossibly of everything made wild sense.

What greater way could there be to prove his faith? To take this tour and realize these rewards, only to say no in the end? Christ had been tempted, hadn’t he? Only to likewise say no.

Hudson resolved to do the same.

The prospect made him gleeful, but then he heard the faintest bubbling. The contents of the skullcap—the Elixir—was boiling.

“It’s time,” she whispered and stepped away. “Look at the hole in the wall . . . and prepare to meet the Trustee.”

Hudson tensed in his seat, squinting. The teeming night was all that continued to look back at him from the hole. The steam wafting off the skullcap was nearly nonexistent.
How on earth can
—but after a single blink . . .

The hole changed.

In that blink the hole’s ragged boundary of Sheetrock and shingles had metamorphosed into something like ragged flaps of what he would only think of as organ meat. Hudson leaned forward, focused.

My God
. . .

What he looked at now was a room, or at least a room of sorts.
Is that
. . .
No, it couldn’t be
, he thought, because the room’s walls appeared to be composed of sheets of what looked like butcher’s waste (intestines, sinew, bone chips, and fat), which had all somehow been frozen into configuration. Amid all this sat a splintery wooden table on which had been placed . . .

That’s a typewriter!
. Hudson realized, and he could even read the manufacturer: Remington. Atop a shelf in the rear, more odd objects could be seen: a package of Williams shaving soap, a square tin of Mavis talcum powder, and an empty can of Heinz beans. Hudson meant to glance behind him, to question the deaconess, but her hands firmly pressed his temples.

“Don’t take your eyes off the Egress,” she said.

When Hudson refocused on the hole . . . a man stepped into view.

The Trustee
. . .

It was a very gaunt, stoop-shouldered man who looked back at Hudson. “There you are, at last,” he said in a squeaky accent that sounded like New England. He had close-cropped hair shiny with tonic and a vaguely receding
hairline to show a vast forehead, which gave the man an instant air of learnedness. He wore a well-fitting but threadbare and very faded blue suit, a white dress shirt, and narrow tie with light and dark gray stripes. Small, round spectacles. His jaw seemed prominent as though he suffered from a malocclusion. The only thing about him that wasn’t normal was the pallor of his face. It was as white and shiny as snow just beginning to melt but marbled ever so faintly with a bruised blue.

The man sat down at the rickety table. He paused momentarily to frown at the typewriter, then his eyes—which were bright in spite of the death pallor—looked directly at Hudson.

“I presume the Senarial Messenger has apprized you of the fact that we’re subject to a considerable time constraint, the equivalent in your world of six minutes. So we must be concise and, above all, declarative,” the man said. “My name is Howard, and I bear the curious title of this term’s ‘Trustee to the Office of the Senary,’ and I’m speaking to you from a Scrivenry at the Seaton Hall of Automatic Writers. It’s located in a quite malodorous Prefect dubiously known as the Offal District . . .” Abruptly, then, he smirked. “Are you able to hear me, sir?”

Hudson’s mouth hung open for a time, but he eventually managed to say, “Yes . . .”

“Splendid. It’s my infernal pleasure to tell you that you’ve won the Senary—”

“What’s the Senary?” Hudson blurted.

“Denotatively? From the Latin
senarius:
anything of or relating to the number
six
. But here we’re only concerned with its connotation. The Senary is a drawing, in a sense, but those eligible are not random. Aspects of your own . . . resolve present the most pertinent considerations. Let me reiterate, we must be expeditious, and as I have no way of discerning that constant unit of measure known as time,
your colleague will alert you when one minute remains. Do you understand?”

“No.”

“That is immaterial. You’ve been invited to partake in a—”

“A tour of Hell?” Hudson interrupted.

“Quite right. Only a smattering of persons, in all of Human history, have received this lauded opportunity. Indeed, you’re one of a privileged lot. It is guaranteed that no harm will come to your physical body, nor your Auric Substance, should you choose to proceed. You will be returned, intact, to make your final decision. At the end, in other words, you’ll be free to return to your normal life, should you so choose. But I can say to you, sir, that in 6,660 years . . . no Senary winner has ever elected to
not
accept the prize.”

Hudson could think of nothing to say, save for, “I-I-I . . .”

This man, Howard, held up a warning finger. “We mustn’t be frivolous with verbosity, sir—I can only presume that time is growing short, so without further delay, I must show you the Containment Orb.” Then he reached beneath the table and brought something up—something on a stick.

“Huh?” Hudson uttered.

The object on the stick, about the size of a basketball, looked brown, mottled, and, somehow, organic. A twist at the top reminded Hudson of a pumpkin’s clipped stem, and in the middle of the bizarre thing was a half-inch hole. Howard pointed to the hole. “The intake bung is here, as you can perceive—”

“But, what
is
that thing? It looks like a brown
pumpkin
.”

“Hell’s rendering, you might say—in specificity, the
Feotidemonis Vulgaris
, commonly referred to as a Snot-Gourd. It’s been eviscerated completely, of course, and disenchanted by Archlocks, so to serve as your Auric Carrier. And—”
Howard swiveled the peculiar fruit on the stick, to reveal its other side—

“Holy shit!” Hudson profaned.

A semblance of a face existed on the other side of the
thing
. Two eyeballs had been sunk into the pulp; below that, a large, pointed snout as of some oversize rodent had been affixed. Also a pair of fleshy lips, and lastly, two ears, though the ears were maroon and pointed.

First he thought of a nightmare rendition of Mr. Potato Head, but then thought,
A jack-o’-lantern from Hell
, but just as he began his next question, the deaconess tapped him from behind. “Tell the Trustee there’s only one minute left.”

Hudson bumbled, “Uh, uh, I’m supposed to tell you—”

“So I’ve gathered,” Howard said, still holding up the hideous brown fruit with a face. “By now, it’s my hope that you can cogitate the entails of what awaits; hence, I ask you, sir . . . Do you choose to proceed?”

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.

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.”