Hellbound Hearts

by Paul Kane

  It turned out that Lenny wanted to talk, to make amends somehow. He took a key, went to the store, and brought back plastic bags that made the satisfying clink of glass on glass. One had real food in it, too. Lenny made chicken tacos drizzled with lime, mixed a pitcher to Ron’s specifications, and they sat in the living room. Lenny talked. Some of the time, Ron listened.

  Days passed. Lenny was there a lot, cooking and cleaning and shopping. The house started to smell more like fresh air, cleaning solutions, and cooked food than rotting meat and greasy hamburger wrappers. Ron drank marginally less; with someone around to listen to, oblivion seemed minutely less important. Lenny started speaking to Ron like a friend or a spouse, discussing things they might do together, purchases they could make. Weeks went by before Ron realized that Lenny was living on Ron’s insurance money.

  When he called Lenny on it, Lenny laughed. “Dude, we’re connected by our loss. We’re brothers in pain, compadres of the lonely life. You have every reason on Earth to hate me, but you can’t. Because I’m part of you now. We’re living inside the same skin.”

  “I guess,” Ron said, and had another drink.

  A couple of weeks after that, Lenny suggested that they make the two-hour drive into El Paso. Ron hadn’t been out of the house in months, except to the grocery store and gas station.

  It turned out what Lenny had in mind was a strip club by the interstate. Ron didn’t want to go in. Once he stopped paying the cable bill and televised porn ceased being piped in, he had mostly forgotten about sex. All those writhing bodies had been a blur to him anyway.

  But the grinding, perfume-soaked attention of a voluptuous woman from across the border caused memories of that once-pleasurable activity to stir and swell, along with the usual physical manifestation of same. He could only understand every fifth word she breathed into his ear, but with pillowy breasts in his face and her devoted attention to the bulge in his pants, he decided he didn’t care.

  It was the first time he had truly felt in more than a year.

  “That was nothing,” Lenny said on the way home. “What I’ve heard, you could have a dozen virgins a day and it wouldn’t compare to what you can get if you really want it.”

  “Where? I don’t want to go to some Juárez whorehouse.”

  “It’s more a question of how than where. In Hell, or something like that.”

  “I’ll be there soon enough,” Ron said. “When I die.”

  “Did I say anyone had to die?” “You said Hell.”

  Lenny chuckled. “You got a lot to learn, dude. Don’t worry, I’ll teach you. I’ll hook you up right.”

  The next night, Lenny built a fire and opened a couple of beers. Outside, a ferocious wind sent snowflakes flashing past the window’s glow.

  “Here’s the thing,” Lenny said. “I met this guy, while you were in this house pickling your brain. He was a drunk, too, kind who can’t shut up. We’re in this dive bar in Hatch, and he starts telling me about these santos, and—”

  “Hold up,” Ron said. “What’s a santo?”

  “Dude, you are one ignorant white man,” Lenny said. Gold teeth gleamed in the firelight. “A santo is a religious art object. Sculptures, paintings, any representation of the saints. They’re made by people called santeros. Huge deal here in New Mexico. Collectors pay thousands for good ones.”

  “That’s fascinating,” Ron said, not meaning it. “What do I care?”

  “You care, because the ones this guy told me about are different from the usual kind. Most santos are sacred representations. But these . . . well, the guy got scared, and I had to keep buying him more drinks.”

  The wind died suddenly, as if eavesdropping. Lenny lowered his voice. “These ones are, like, pornographic. Guy had a different word . . . profane. He said they were profane, not sacred.”

  “Better,” Ron said. “Still . . .”

  “Let me finish, dude. He said these santos were carved by this loco old santero who lived by himself in the desert, in the early eighteen hundreds. He had a vision and he just started carving and painting. But this vision didn’t come from God. God would have wanted nothing to do with this crazy bastard. His santos were twisted, insane. Like Saint Francis biting the head off a squirrel instead of feeding it, or Saint Hildegarde tearing open her dress and showing three huge tits, stuff like that.”

  Ron swallowed more beer. “Sounds like fun,” he said. Fun was a concept he was just beginning to revisit. “But what’s it have to do with us?”

  “Here’s the deal,” Lenny said. “These santos are still around. They’re indestructible. If you get seven of them, they can all be put together like a puzzle. And solving this puzzle opens the door to worlds of pleasure you can’t even imagine.”

  “There’s still something I’m missing,” Ron said. “Even if it’s true, what about it? It’s not like we have these santos.”

  “Not all of them,” Lenny replied.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m not done!” Lenny leaned forward. Behind him, the fire snapped and hissed. “The old guy took me home, thought I’d give him head. Instead, I made him show me his santo and tell me where he got it. Then I killed his ass.”

  Ron didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t believe Lenny would intentionally murder someone, or that, having done so, he would confess it, especially to him.

  Lenny shrugged broadly, palms up. “The fuck, right? I already killed your wife and daughter. What’s some old drunk compared to them?”

  The mention of Linda and Hayleigh brought Ron unsteadily to his feet, hands grasping toward Lenny. Lenny misunderstood his sudden rage. “Pervo bastard had it coming,” he said. “Dude made me sick.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “Look, just wait here.” He went into Hayleigh’s room, which he had commandeered when he’d moved in, in the fullness of Ron’s obliteration. He came back carrying a rolled-up cotton shirt. Unrolling it, he revealed a wooden carving fourteen inches tall, its paint chipped and aged.

  There was a certain mastery to the work. Ron knelt beside it, fingered its dulled edges and smoothed patina. It was clearly old, and just as clearly wrong.

  The woman depicted in the carving had the plump, guileless features of a farm wife. She had brown hair pulled off her face and hanging down her back. Her robes were a vivid blue, with gold trim.

  Instead of standing, she crouched, her skirts bunched in her fists, pudgy thigh exposed. Her legs were spread, and from her open vagina slithered what Ron could only call a monster, black-snouted, many-toothed, with two tongues curling in different directions. He wasn’t sure, but it appeared that there were the beginnings of wings on its back, the rest of them buried deep inside the woman.

  “That’s disgusting,” Ron said. His head felt hot, his thoughts fractured. He wanted another drink. He imagined the carver slicing his hands, bleeding onto the wood.

  “You ain’t supposed to like it. This is Saint Pudentia. See the detail the santero put into her quim?”

  “Nice.”

  “Dude, this is our ticket! Before last night I wasn’t sure if you’d ever come back into the world. But I saw you smiling while that stripper humped you. You got to be in the world before you can leave it. You got to feel before you can know pleasure. Right?”

  “I suppose . . .”

  “Suppose, nothing. You got feelings again. I brought you back, but I still owe you, so I’m gonna take you to the next step.”

  “Which is . . . ? ”

  “All the pleasures of Hell, my man. Way I hear it, that crap about fire and pitchforks is bogus. Heaven sucks. Hell’s where the fun people go.”

  “But how would we get there?”

  “I know how to find the rest of the santos, Ron. I’ve been studying this while you’ve been drinking. All it’ll take is money.”

  Ron still felt like his brains had been scrambled, but he was beginning to understand. This was all about Lenny wanting to spend more of his insurance money.

&n
bsp; On the other hand, if he was right, if these santos really did promise some sort of ultimate pleasure, then what was the harm? He didn’t have anything better to do with the money. He had been living in Hell for more than a year anyway. Maybe Lenny was right. The time had come to rejoin the living . . . even if it meant embracing the dead.

  Ron let Lenny worry about finding the santos. He handed over the cash and stayed home, trying not to think about the journey upon which he would soon embark.

  Unless Lenny’s source was a liar as well as a drunk.

  But soon Lenny brought home another santo. St. Tiberius’s face looked like it was melting, the skin hanging around his shoulders in soggy strips, bones and muscles glistening underneath. Lenny’s eyes were haunted, and he refused to tell Ron exactly how it had gone down. “But I got it, man,” he said. “And I know where to go from here. Dude had all the four-one-one.”

  Ron didn’t like the use of the past tense, but he let it go. “I don’t see how this one connects to the other.”

  “Maybe it don’t. There’s seven of ’em, maybe these two don’t connect.”

  Ron couldn’t argue. Maybe none of them connected. Maybe the whole thing was some crazy imagining.

  Lenny kept taking more money, going out, and returning with others. St. Agnes, whose spread fingers were shaped like erect phalluses. St. Nestor, a rare sitting santo, with a giant candle jammed up his rectum, the exposed end flaming. St. Faustina, holding her eyeballs in her hands while tears of green blood tracked down her face. St. Rogatus, his throat split down the middle; he held the wound open with his hands as bats erupted from inside him.

  Lenny brought them home late at night, eyes wild, sometimes trembling with emotion. He wouldn’t tell Ron what he’d been through, but it was clearly unpleasant. A couple of times, he brought back the money—but he had a santo anyway. Ron wondered how much blood he’d spilled for those six treasures.

  Lenny came home one night wearing an excited grin, like that of a child with a secret too big to keep. “I know where it is,” he said. “Number seven. We are there, dude!” He had regaled Ron with tales of what Hell would be like, once they cracked the code. He talked about the women who would service them, anticipating their every desire, however foul. They were not only free of taboos and inhibitions, but they prided themselves on being able to outdo one another in satisfying every possible perversion. Ron cared less about that than about feeling something that would convince him he was still alive.

  “When can you get it?” Ron asked. As the santos had mounted, he had begun to believe. Anticipation, at least, was an emotion only the living knew.

  “Tomorrow,” Lenny replied. “But you gotta come with me. It’s a long drive. And honestly, I might need some backup with this one.”

  They drove into New Mexico’s high country under skies so gray they might have been solid pewter. The evergreen forests and grassy meadows and tiny villages could have been unchanged for the past two hundred years.

  Naciemento looked like the other towns, a place the world had left behind. A scattering of adobe homes, their surrounding walls toppled, roofs caved in, windows smashed, were linked by roads paved so long ago the hardtop crumbled like dry cookie dough. A few failed businesses ranged around a central square, at one end of which a big adobe church squatted like a corpulent toad.

  “You sure this is right? Place looks deserted,” Ron said.

  “It’s supposed to be in the church.”

  Ron parked in the square. The car doors sounded loud in the silence. Lenny met his eye briefly, then led the way to the church doors. He pushed one open, its hinges groaning. A shaft of light from the doorway illuminated the interior. “Where?” Ron whispered.

  “I don’t know. We have to hunt for it.”

  What remained of the pews had been shoved to one side of the nave, scarring the dusty stone floor. Cobwebs big enough to snare Buicks clung to the corners. The altar had been tipped over, its legs knocked off. An ocean of trash made it an island. Wading through it, Ron’s skin crawled as if someone had shaken a bowl of ants down his shirt.

  He was about to suggest leaving when a door scraped open behind them. “God, fuck!” he said, startled, before realizing how inappropriate such an exclamation was. Then again, given their mission here, such considerations were doubtlessly far too late.

  An ancient padre emerged from the darkness, his cassock and surplice filthy and torn. His head was oddly pudgy around nose, mouth, and cheeks, and short stalks of black hair poked from his scalp like burnt straw. “What brings you here?” he asked. His voice sounded muffled, distorted.

  “The santo,” Lenny said. “Where is it?”

  “That is not meant for the likes of you,” the padre said. “Leave this sanctuary.”

  “Not till we get it.”

  The priest grabbed an old candlestick from the floor and came at them surprisingly swiftly, wielding it like a baseball bat. Lenny screeched something, and Ron, heart still racing from the shock of being discovered, reacted. He snatched up a jagged chunk of the altar’s broken leg and thrust it toward the advancing padre. The old man gave a strangled cry as his feet slipped on loose debris and he plunged forward onto the pointed end of Ron’s weapon. The wood punched through rotting fabric and soft flesh as if he were no more substantial than a paper lantern. Blood gushed onto Ron’s hands and he scrabbled backward to avoid the priest’s lifeless body, toppling headlong toward him.

  Ron turned to Lenny, eyes wide with horror. “That was fucking awesome!” Lenny said, grinning madly. “You just did that guy!”

  “I didn’t mean to!” Ron said. “He—”

  “Forget it. You did what you had to, same as me. Now we just gotta find that santo.”

  “But, Lenny, I killed a priest!”

  Lenny was already pawing through the refuse. “A half-dead priest with an empty church. No loss, man. Keep looking!”

  They found it in a sarcophagus, deep in the church’s bowels. It was pushed back into a close-fitting niche in the thick wall, and they couldn’t budge it, so Ron, thinner than Lenny, had to shove aside the wooden lid and crawl inside with a penlight in his mouth. The saint clutched an enormous phallus with both hands, but the phallus was detached from his body, and veins that should have been safely sheathed were instead slithering worms with fanged mouths. It was wedged into the deceased’s rib cage, and Ron had to work it free, trying the whole time not to gag.

  Ron wanted to leave town, but Lenny had brought the other santos and insisted on assembling them on the spot. In the empty plaza, they unwrapped the old sculptures and tried to fit them together: head to head, mouth to genitals, front to back. For all their pornographic detail, they didn’t connect. Ron didn’t see how they could, but when Lenny grew frustrated, Ron took over.

  “I don’t think it works,” he said, tying Nestor upside down, facing Pudentia. “Whoever told you they did was full of shit. You spent my money and ran all over the state and now we fucking killed a priest for nothing!”

  “You’re not the only one killed somebody for these,” Lenny reminded him. As he spoke, Ron heard a bell tolling. It might have been going for a while, just now working into his consciousness.

  “The hell is that?” he asked.

  “Ask not,” another voice rasped. The old padre appeared at the church doors, a ragged hole in his chest. “A little joke,” he said. “It tolls for thee.”

  “I killed you!” Ron shouted, fear and fury behind his words. “You died in there!”

  The priest reached behind his own head. “Another joke,” he said. “I’m full of them.” He released something Ron couldn’t see, and his skin—the skin he was wearing—sloughed off him like a baggy coat, dropping to the ground with a wet thump.

  The being underneath it wasn’t a man, but he was clearly male. He was lean, with paper-white skin stretched snugly across bulging muscles. His only clothes were dark gray pants, stitches holding them to his lower torso in lieu of a belt. A map of scars delineating
rivers and mountains and roads stood in stark relief against his skin. Three thick stitches pinned his upper lip to his nose; similar needlework held lower lip to chin. Beneath his eyes, eye-shaped holes had been cut, also held open with stitches, brass buttons sewn in place as extra eyeballs. The scent of vanilla reached Ron’s nostrils. The sight should have sickened him, but instead he felt a surprising stirring at his groin. What had Lenny called Hell’s emissaries?

  Cenobites, that was it. Lenny had tried to tell Ron all about the Order of the Gash, but Ron, only half believing and probably half drunk, had only half listened.

  “You’re missing one piece,” the Cenobite said. He walked between Ron and Lenny and stood among the santos, his feet brushing two of them. “Now we are complete.”

  The bell tolled one last time, deep and resonant. The gray sky roiled and darkened to near black.

  And inside a glow that seemed to come from the Cenobite himself, the santos moved together, their pieces swiveling and interlocking, sliding into place with satisfyingly final clicks. Pudentia linked to Agnes to Nestor to Rogatus to Faustina to Tiberius to the new one.

  When they finished, the backdrop behind the hideous Cenobite had changed as well. The traditional New Mexican church was gone, and in its place was a vaguely phosphorescent passageway into infinity, with dark, indiscernible shapes darting about inside it.

  “Told you we could do this,” Lenny said.

  Ron’s mouth was so dry it clicked when he spoke. “Y-yeah, you told me. But I don’t see any women, or . . .”

  “Guess I didn’t tell you everything, though. See, I used to live here in Naciemento. I left—we all left—when Padre Escalante summoned this Cenobite—Buttons, we call him—and got himself flayed for his trouble. But I couldn’t resist coming back this one time. See, you fucked my life, dude. You running out in the road like that, distracting me—whole deal always was your fault. I would have missed everyone and kept on going, but you ruined everything. Well, it’s payback time, bitch. You with your hands all over those santos . . . you’ll get your time in Hell. But it might not be exactly what you expected.”