House Infernal by Edward Lee

by Edward Lee

  Her pretty feet are but dark fog, her cunt a night-smile. In her excitement, black milk oozes from her ebon bosom.

  She is the Guide, and only she can lead the Privileged through the labyrinth below the fortress, to the heart of Satan's endeavor: the Lower Chancel.

  Venetia stared astonished at the blasphemous scrawl. What is this doing in a Catholic prior house? she asked, but then immediately recalled the secret nature of the man who built it. Tessorio ... I'll bet he wrote this.

  More:

  The breeze, over the scarlet night, continues to sigh. Chatterings from the overseers of the dead? Or messages from her world, from her black haven in the Mephistopolis?

  Oh, how long to join her!

  For surely the Slut-Mother, the Guide to the Pith, will lead me through the Fortress Gates to my lord Boniface.

  That name-Boniface-struck a black chord in Venetia's mind. The worst of the anti-Popes, a murderer and blasphemer ... Clearly, Tessorio had a fixation with Boniface: the unlikely portrait that Dan found in the attic, along with that macabre sketch. Tessorio had hidden this odd scribbling amid the books, which begged Venetia to consider: I wonder what else he might've stashed around here.

  Between two old volumes (Visual Thinking and Preter- Naturality & The Human Mind) she discovered another sheet of paper, filled with more handwriting that was undoubtedly Tessorio's. But it wasn't from a tablet; the scrawl had been written on the back of a yellowed store receipt. It read:

  Begin fast at 6 am on Oct. 30, be sure to bleed yourself. At midnight, begin channeling incantation.

  Channeling? Incantations? This was even stranger than the first sheet ... until she gave it more thought. All right, the guy was a nut. He worshiped the Devil as a means of rebelling against the Church. He probably drank a lot and took drugs in secret. And he believed in crap like this.

  And fasting? Bleeding oneself? This was all part of corny ritualism from the Middle Ages. She also knew they were techniques involved in inducing trances.

  She flipped the paper and read the receipt. It was from a place called Hull's General Store, dated October 26,1964.

  Four days before the thirtieth, and the morning before Halloween.

  Tessorio seemed to be preparing for something. Fast ing? Bleeding? A ritual? Venetia wondered with a smile. A meeting of the coven when at midnight Halloween has arrived. Venetia knew there was no way she might even partly believe in such things; nevertheless, she had to ask herself, What was this ritual for? Did it involve "channeling," a means of receiving information from the dead?

  She pushed it from her mind.

  "Dinner'll be ready soon, and tonight, it'll be a superb dinner." The voice startled her. It was Father Driscoll, emerging from his downstairs office. He rubbed his hands together dramatically. "God bless your father for such generosity."

  "It smells like Mrs. Newlwyn is broiling some lobsters."

  "Yes---God bless him."

  Venetia smiled at the priest's overstatement. "You sound like you've never had lobster."

  "On my pay?" Driscoll laughed.

  Venetia walked over to join him, yet without thinking she asked, "When did the actual building of the prior house begin?"

  "November 1964, I believe." He walked by her side toward the kitchen. "Oh, yeah, now I'm sure that was it. I remember reading it in my prospectus. Construction began on November first, in fact. All Saints Day."

  The day after Halloween, Venetia thought.

  (I)

  Berns dreamed of counterclockwise spirals, and he dreamed of buckets of blood. The daymare lolled on through his head such that some aspect of his sleeping psyche feared he'd dropped into a vortex of mad dreams from which he would never rouse. The dream was silent, Daliesque, running with stark images and blocked out shades of black. Colors seemed to bleed.

  Behind closed, quivering eyes he was shown rather than saw rough hands gripping knives that slid through pale throats to the bone. Nude bodies shuddered as racing hearts emptied their lifeblood through the knife slits. All the while, Berns thought in the grimmest consternation: Where is the blood? What are they doing with the blood?

  Words droned in the background like a chant, but in some language he'd never heard. "Exos spiratum, Lux Ferre, in aeternum . . . ," then things even less intelligible.

  And the final image, crisply erotic, obscene: a woman's flat abdomen quivering on a table as a tattooist's humming needle inscribed the design in threadlike waves of crimson-the decorated rectangle with the spiral inside and arrows pointing inward from three corners, and then the dream quaked in an eruption of screams. Berns now saw himself standing naked beside a torrential waterfall of blood. When he looked down at himself, he saw the same tattoo on his own abdomen....

  Berns woke up at the desk, his face glazed in sweat. Had he shouted in his sleep? Someone was knocking on the office door, loud.

  "Come in."

  The county booking sergeant looked suspicious. "You all right, Captain?"

  "Yeah. Why?"

  "I was knocking ... for a while."

  Berns admitted it. "I fell asleep. Haven't gotten any down time for a couple days."

  "Sure, sir. But I wanted to let you know that you got a call-"

  An instant image snapped in Berns' mind: the glowing face backed by bright blond hair. "Is it Venetia Barlow?" he asked without thinking.

  "Who?" Another suspicious frown. "It's a sergeant from Lubec, Maine. Says its urgent. Line one."

  "Thanks," Berns grumbled. "Berns here," he said into the phone. A flash of vertigo stalled him: the notion of the strange tattoo on his own stomach as though Berns himself were a member of Freddie Johnson's murder club. "Sergeant Lee?"

  "Yes, sir," came the voice over the line. Lee's tone sounded hesitant. "I-"

  "Something wrong, Sarge?"

  A sputter. "I'll just have out with it. I fucked-up, Captain."

  Berns' mental gears were just grinding up. "The judge wouldn't delay Johnson's arraignment?"

  "Oh, no, he signed right off on that. Won't matter now, though. Freddie Johnson is dead."

  Berns went rigid at the desk. "How the hell ... Don't tell me he killed himself."

  "He killed himself, Captain. Just like he said he would. Last night I put a drunk in the lockup two cells down from Freddie's. He's a regular, you know? Harmless. Once a month he downs a bottle of Black Velvet and out go his lights. The guy was passed out all night and all day today...."

  "And?"

  Lee gulped through a pause. "I guess he came to andwell, Freddie talked the guy out of his belt and he slid it across.,'

  Shit. Berns wanted to clunk his head against the desk. But as his emotions simmered, Freddie Johnson's words came back to him.

  When the party's over, it's over...

  Susan Maitland had said the same thing, and again, Berns thought, Suicide pact. Only problem is, Freddie Johnson wasn't suicidal.

  "I'm really sorry, Captain," Lee said. "With anyone else I wouldn't think twice about taking a guy's belt and shoelaces, but like I said-"

  "The guy was the town rummy, you've probably known him for years, and he's never been any trouble."

  "Yes, sir. I'll assume all responsibility"

  There was no reason to stew over it. "Forget it, and look at the bright side. One less scumbag in the world is a good thing. Probably saved the taxpayers a hundred grand in custody and court costs. We already busted an accomplice-Freddie's sometime squeeze. The state's interrogating her now-we'll probably get more out of her than Freddie anyway."

  "Good," Lee said. "Now I don't feel so bad. But I do have something for you that might be helpful. We went over Freddie's room again like you asked and found some stuff. He hid it pretty well."

  "He probably thought you'd stop looking when you found that forty grand in cash."

  "Exactly what 7I thought, but ... well, it's some weird shit we found."

  Berns wasn't surprised. "Like what? Oh, let me guess. An ashtray?"

  "No, but-" Lee
paused, as if subtly bothered. "We found this weird glass bowl-made of black glass-and it had some burned stuff in the bottom. And a can of Sterno."

  "And the stuff in the bowl wasn't cigarette tar or pot?"

  "No way. We're sending it to the state lab but I'm pretty sure we already now what it is-tree sap."

  "Tree sap?"

  "That's right, Captain."

  "How do you know?"

  "Freddie had cut off some branches from a scarlet sumac tree, brought them into the room, and had them hanging over a plate. He was collecting the sap. Then I see this sticky burned stuff in the black bowl-"

  "And figure it's got to be the same thing," Berns finished, but just didn't get it. Susan Maitland had referred to her ashtray as a thurible, which Berns had quickly looked up in the dictionary. A vessel or censer in which incense is burned, especially during rituals, he recalled.

  "That's fucking weird," Berns said.

  "Oh, no, Captain. That's not the weird part. It's everything else we found. One of those lined yellow notepads. The top pages had all kinds of off-the-wall stuff written on them, all in Johnson's handwriting."

  "What did he write?"

  "Well, the first sheet was a drawing of that bizarre design that he also had for a tattoo."

  Berns felt a stab of queasiness, remembering his dream.

  Lee continued, "And the rest? Well, just wait till you see it."

  "Writing?" Berns blinked. "Instructions of some kind?"

  "I don't know what it is, Captain. Something in some foreign language I guess. Looks like Johnson's handwriting, but-"

  "A redneck crabber with no education probably doesn't know any foreign languages."

  "Right."

  Berns stared at the wall, thinking. Maitland said Freddie had copied some instructions and left them for her and the other accomplice. This stuff that Lee found must be the original copy.

  But if they were instructions for ritual murderers, what use could they be now? The murders already occurred, last March at the St. John's Prior House... .-

  "Do me a favor, Sarge. Before you book those papers as evidence, I need you to scan them and e-mail the file down here."

  "I've already sent my guy to the county to use their scanner," Lee said.

  "Thanks."

  Lee's voice seemed to drift for a moment. "You want to know what bugs me the most, Captain? Don't know why, but it just does. When I found Freddie hanging in his cell..."

  "Yeah?"

  "He was stone-cold dead but he still had that same happy-go-lucky grin on his face, gold tooth flashing and all."

  "I believe it. You heard him, though. He wanted to be dead. 'When the party's over, it's over,' he said."

  Lee uttered a dark chuckle. "Well that redneck scumbag ain't partying now."

  "Or maybe-he is. In Hell," Berns said and rang off.

  The office seemed queerly smaller after he hung up; he felt encroached upon. Tree sap, he thought, and lit a cigarette. What the hell was he doing burning tree sap in a glass bowl?

  Chapter Twelve

  (I)

  "What is that? Trees?"

  "Druid Oak. They use them for the sap," Alexander said as the chain gang of various Demons and Human Damned dragged the tree down the noxious street. "They're taking it there." He pointed to a wide gray building of uneven bricks, topped by a smoking chimney. At once Ruth's eyes began to water.

  "In Hell, they use Druid Oak and Eldritch Pines. The counterpart in the Living World are sumac trees and shrubs, cashew trees, staghorns. It's because the sap is similar-it's poisonous to varying degrees. Bet your eyes are watering now, huh?"

  Ruth frowned, nodding.

  "Remember the Goethe Hall? It's like I was telling you in Sewageton," the priest went on, thumping forward on his monstrous legs. "Every District has its own hall of automatic-writers."

  The sign on this building read THE MOZART HALL of AUTOMATIC-WRITERS.

  "Let's go and look in the window," Alexander urged.

  Inside were a hundred tables, and at each sat several scriveners writing manically on pads of parchment. The room was smoky like a pool hall, and at its center was a great stone fireplace. An iron cauldron rested above the flames; within, Ruth could see bubbling sap. The bubbles broke, releasing the occult fumes to be breathed by all. Golems guarded each door, their faces of lifeless clay somehow sentient. Eventually Ruth noted that all of the scriveners were chained to their chairs.

  "The smoke from the sap is a trance-inducer. The scriveners breath it, and with the help of a variety of Transpondence Spells and amplified Hex Fluxes, they are able to maintain psychic contact with counterparts on Earth, who are breathing similar fumes."

  Ruth felt as confused as she was bored. "And whatever these people here write down-"

  "Is simultaneously written down by a Human counterpart in the Living World, mostly cult members and genuine Satanists."

  "But what are they writing?"

  "Incantation instructions, spell sequences, archival material," the priest said.

  "Okay, that's all very fuckin' interesting," Ruth told him, "but I don't really give a shit. I'm starving. Let's get something to eat."

  Alexander frowned disapproval. "Ruth, this is important. You need to understand these details. It just so happens that our entire mission exists because an automatic-writer in Hell has been delivering instructions to cult members near the place where Venetia is right now. One of them was the very same man who built the St. John's Prior House a long time ago, and he was a Vatican architect."

  Ruth tried to act interested. "Like a long distance phone service..."

  "That's right, Ruth. A communication line between the Living World and Hell."

  She followed the sturdy-legged priest, her mind trying to comprehend all the things she was learning. Leatherwinged birds roved in the bloodred sky. In this collapsing subdistrict, Ruth noticed more homeless bums and Demons, and more prostitutes. A shapely Lycanymph with champagne blond fur tapped by on high heels and grumbled at Ruth.

  "Hairy bitch," Ruth sniped. "She's just jealous of my bod, like that purple asshole at the lingerie shop."

  "Keep your voice down," the priest warned. "Don't start trouble. This isn't the place for it."

  Ruth grimaced at a severed face in the gutter, then sped up when the face grimaced back. "What's so special about this place?"

  "Coleridge Avenue. It's a big dope hub."

  "They have drugs here?" she asked with a spark of enthusiasm.

  "They sure do, and they're a thousand times more addictive than the stuff in the Living World. One bang and you're gone for eternity. It used to be Zap was the biggest drug in Hell; the junkies would inject it straight into their brains by shoving needles up their nostrils, but that's old hat now. Look."

  Ruth tracked his gaze, to a state shop that read SCALPING ANNEX. Hollow-eyed Human Damned stood in a long line at one door, while more trudged out of a second door, only these latter persons left minus their scalps.

  "Scalping? Fuck! They're scalped as punishment for doing drugs?"

  "No, no," Alexander explained. "They're selling their scalps for drug money. Right now the big drug on the street is L A-that's Lovecraftic Acid. It's so addictive that they don't even bother keeping the Retox Centers open anymore. Nobody ever gets off L A. They start by smoking it, then shoot it, and eventually they sell their scalps to expose the outer-cranial blood vessels. One drop of L A on an open blood vessel gets you the best high." Then he pointed to another shop across the street, from which a smiling She-Demon in a shaggy fur coat emerged.

  "Naturally, every Scalping Center has a cloak maker's nearby. Efficiency in commerce."

  ALEXANDRA ROMANOV'S-FURS FOR A SELECT CLIENTELE, the sign read.

  Ruth didn't have to wonder what became of the scalps once they were sold.

  "And there's a long-term L A addict," the priest pointed out next. "The stuffs wears you out. Lucifer particularly likes it when Humans become addicted, because then their misery is
eternal."

  Ruth gasped when she saw the ramshackle thing sitting in the alley. It was a man, or at least she thought so, his scalp long gone. When he looked at Ruth he did so with empty sockets, so he'd clearly sold his eyeballs, too. Even his heart was gone, sold for more drugs. Sparrow-sized mosquitoes crawled over him, siphoning blood, and from the holes where his ears used to be, thin red-tipped tentacles squirmed. When he opened his mouth to scream, another, longer, tentacle wormed out.

  "Let's get out of here!" Ruth pleaded.

  "Relax. We're almost there."

  "There as in where?"

  "The fringes of Boniface Square-the upscale restaurant block." The priest shot her a smile. "Time for you to get to work."

  Ruth groaned to herself. I can hardly wait.

  (u)

  After dinner, Venetia found herself back in the atrium scouring the bookshelves. Father Driscoll had responded to her comment at the table about finding strange notes stashed between some books, possibly written by Amano Tessorio, like this: "It undoubtedly was," Driscoll had told her over a chunk of lobster tail shiny with butter. "Tessorio hid lots of notes and scribblings in the books."

  "Why would he do that?" she'd asked.

  Driscoll shrugged: "Because he was a weirdo closetSatanist who was probably half-insane from tertiary syphilis."

  His response had made her feel naive, but it also left her curiosity inflamed. What else might the former Vatican architect have left secreted in the prior house?

  At first, the endeavor seemed ludicrous (there were thousands of books in the atrium, perhaps tens of thousands) but within fifteen minutes-

  I don't believe it!

  Stuck between two books of essays by Thomas Merton, she found another yellowed sheet. It read: Ablissa, Eylla, Azusis, Belith, Gesmary, Tzaella.

  Names, obviously. Were they Biblical? How bizarre, she thought. Then: Another one! but she could only smile at herself when she discovered an ad clipping from an old newspaper, which read: COME ONE, COME ALL! TO HOLY TRINITY CHURCH FOR THE ANNUAL WAMMSPORT CLAM BAKE! SATURDAY, juLY 14Th, 1975!