Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck (6 page)

6 · SOUL SURViVOR

“HELLO, MRS. HILDEBRAND,”
Milton said as he entered the library.

The redheaded woman behind the desk flashed a quick, nervous smile before turning to answer a phone that hadn’t rung.

For years, Mrs. Hildebrand and Milton had been partners in numerous antiquarian book searches and heated literary discussions. But now she was treating Milton like everybody else was: like a freak, a zombie, a boy who shouldn’t have come back.

Milton sighed and shambled toward a table that was, unsurprisingly empty by the time he got there. He sat down, sick to his stomach.

He had only meant to visit Damian, not pull out his plug. Actually, to be precise, Damian had pulled out his own plug when he toppled over onto the floor, but
there was no way Milton could rationalize his way to innocence. He
had
been responsible for dispatching Damian—technically anyway. Somehow worse, in Milton’s mind, was that he had set Damian’s sadistic soul loose on his sister, his best friend, Virgil, and even
himself down
below.

Damian in a coma had been perfect. In that cocoon of unconsciousness, he couldn’t cause harm to either the living or the dead. But Milton’s curiosity had killed the catatonic. At least he had proved to himself that Heck was a real place—a real
bad
place that needed to be shut down for good.

Milton knew he should have stayed at Generica General and faced the music, even if that music was the sound of snare drums accompanying a firing squad. But what good could he do Marlo and Virgil locked up in a jail cell? Not only that, but his spells would only get worse. Unless he found a cure—and fast—he could be permanently out of phase.

Milton grabbed a collection of newspapers and splayed them out across the table. For the past week, he had scoured periodicals from all over the world for peculiar phenomena, bits of seemingly unrelated weirdness that could, perhaps, be attributed to Milton’s breakout from eternal darnation.

When his balloon of bad-boy’s clothing had burst somewhere over Des Moines, Iowa, the buoyant, agitated souls that had provided Milton’s lift had scattered
in each and every direction. That meant a dozen or so freed souls desperately looking to move back into their former homes, regardless of their current, dismal conditions.

Perhaps this is what Annubis, the dog god that had plucked out Milton’s soul to be weighed in the Assessment Chamber back in Limbo, had meant about breaking the Prime Defective. Souls weren’t supposed to come back, not like this. It was supernaturally unnatural. And, judging from the series of freakish accounts culled from across the globe, this new twist on “soul searching” was some sticky business indeed.

There was a Viktor Farkas from Budapest who had reunited with his body much like Milton. The only problem was that little Viktor had passed away in the seventeenth century from the plague, and his body wasn’t exactly roadworthy.

Izabella and Zofia Kaczynsk, a pair of twins from Warsaw who’d died in the mid-1930s from choking on the same kielbasa, were currently on a posthumous tour of Polish eateries.

Lastly, there was the case of Penny Selsby an Australian girl killed by her own boomerang, who had been cremated and placed upon the family’s mantel. According to an article in the
Gold Coast Bulletin
titled
“A
Penny Saved Is a Penny Urned,” Miss Selsby’s bronze vase was now menacing her family with its vibrating tirades.

Milton stopped reading. He could feel the prickle of being stared at. He peered over his stack of clippings, and sure enough, there she was: Necia Alvarado, probing Milton with her dark, shining eyes. She had just entered the library, set down her overstuffed bag, and smiled at Milton’s return gaze, waggling her tiny, rodent-like fingers in greeting.

So this is what it feels like to be stalked
, thought Milton as he barely-smiled in polite reciprocation. Necia had always been one of those peripheral people in Milton’s life, sort of like an extra in his ongoing movie, a grade below him. But ever since his return, Necia had gone from supporting player to aspiring lead: In fact, she was in every other scene. It would be one thing if she just came up and talked with him, but she seemed content to simply gawk from afar.
Oh well
, Milton mused,
that’s the -price you pay for being a living, breathing, one-boy sideshow
.

Necia’s smile beamed bright and cold, like the headlights of an oncoming car with some dark secret locked away in the trunk.

Milton looked down at his calculator watch: his “counseling session” was almost over. His parents had insisted he get therapy after his return, so, to humor them, he would take their money and pretend to see his imaginary counselor, Dr. Cerebro (it was the first thing that came out of Milton’s mouth, but luckily his parents weren’t too sharp lately). Lying, taking money,
accidental mercy killing … you could take the boy out of Heck, it seemed, but you couldn’t take the Heck out of the boy. But Milton needed the unsupervised time and monetary resources for his research. Every day, he’d hobble over to the library and scour the Legal Reference section for some way of shutting down Heck for good. But just when he picked up the scent of a new trail—a stray thread to possibly unraveling the supernatural mess down below—he’d succumb to one of his “spells,” shaking his mind blank and forcing him to start from scratch the next day.

Speaking of which, Milton could feel another one coming on, stirring deep in his stomach.

He scooted close to the table, clutching the side until his knuckles were white. A small ad on the border of the
Pitch
, Kansas City’s weekly newspaper, caught his eye:

Sure, the ad was on the back of one of those kooky alternative newspapers, the kind hipsters read while waiting for their pizza or for their new piercing to stop throbbing, but still: It was
something
. Milton had always considered himself a skeptic. But as time went by, he had grown so skeptical that now he even questioned skepticism. Plus, after what he had seen …
down there …
his eyes had been pried open to all sorts of unbelievable things, and there was no way that they could ever shut again.

The subtle energies that hold us together …

Milton read the sentence again … and again … and …

The library began to reel and rock. Milton felt his physical and etheric energies gradually part company as the swirl in his stomach grew thicker and faster, causing a “spiritual” seizure that knocked him out of whack
like a scratch on a CD. But this time, the queasy, spinning flops weren’t strictly due to a shift in “subtle” energies. They gnawed deeper than that. It was guilt that was eating away at him. He closed his eyes and laid his feverish forehead on the cool marble of the desk. Images of his sister and his best friend, Virgil—the two people he had left behind and below—filled his mind. The hushed voices of those nearby cut through the static in his head. But he didn’t care. Though slumped over a table in the Generica Main Library, Milton’s thoughts were miles away. Miles
below
.

7 · MALL OR NOTHiNG

“YES,”
MARLO PURRED
softly to herself as her trusty safety pin coaxed open yet another defenseless lock. She pressed her palms on the warm golden door and lifted it up, squeezing through the gap beneath and creeping cautiously across the Grabbit’s warren.

She was supposed to be back in her bunk, dreaming of shiny, unattainable things like a good little greedy dead girl. Yet, instead, she padded in the darkness, unable to sleep, unable to eat, unable to think of anything but Mallvana—the Happy Shopping Grounds above her blue-haired head—and the confounding cast-iron cottontail that seemed to hold her nervous system hostage.

She was nearly there, beneath the ornate grate that revealed the spectacle above. Flashes of multicolored neon exploded in the dark like fireworks. The light
illuminated the motionless Grabbit’s frozen leer. It was a grin that cleaved its brightly colored rabbit-clown face in two. The eyes that never moved followed her nonetheless. Though the Grabbit was as still as a statue, the air around it crackled with invisible electricity as if—while everyone else in Rapacia slept—it was wide …

Marlo swallowed the thumping lump in her throat. “I—I was looking for a little inspiration,” she stammered, “for my Consumer Math class. I needed to make some observations and take … some notes. You see, I won a bet with Poker—Ms. Tubbs—and get to teach tomorrow’s class—”

“Right. Very good. Nice meter,” Marlo replied. “It’s just that, I never expected to win, so I’m not really sure what to do. I was never that good in school, but I know
I can teach the girls
something
. And I know
where
I want to teach them. I just don’t know
what.”

The Grabbit was still, even for a mostly motionless object. It was odd, Marlo thought as she stood before her mute vice principal in the dark: She felt like she was in the presence of a higher power, something that obliterated her own sense of self, a towering contradiction that held Marlo tight in its unbearable electrical lasso. Finally, the Grabbit’s unsettling voice broke the quietude.

The clouds parted inside Marlo’s head. What she needed to do shone through like the sun she hadn’t seen for weeks. She felt like she could have it all … like she
should
have it all. She wasn’t sure if it was this new opportunity or the deeply disturbing effect of the Grabbit that made her feel this way. Marlo stared at its painted-on eyes and white smear of a grin. The Grabbit was either the least-alive living thing or the most-alive dead thing she had ever encountered. Whatever it was (or wasn’t), it held her firmly in its electromagnetic clutches.

She had found a way to sate her hunger, a way to stuff herself at the ultimate buffet of raw, shameless
materialism. There it was, above her, so close yet so far. Not anymore. Tomorrow she would take her class on a field trip, of sorts. An in-the-trenches test, in the ultimate classroom of consumerism: Mallvana.

“Thank you!” Marlo chirped. “I’ll teach them what I know!”

The Grabbit simply grinned back at her. Marlo shifted anxiously from foot to foot. “So, um … looks like I have a curriculum to write. Have a good night’s …
whatever.”

Marlo squeezed beneath the door and into the hallway. She felt good, but she had a long night ahead of her. She gamboled away to her bunk, whistling “Material Girl,” yet with each progressive step, she grew heavier and hungrier. Marlo felt like she was starving, only not just in her stomach: She felt as if she were starving
everywhere
. She turned toward the Grabbit’s warren, thinking—
hoping
—she heard something. Was it the Grabbit calling after her?

She tiptoed back to the golden gate and peered inside. The warren was deathly still. Then suddenly the Grabbit’s voice—only now somewhat deeper and darker—broke the silence.

Marlo watched the brazen, flickering lights of the mall dance across the Grabbit’s face.

“And more.”