by Edward Lee
"The Vox Untervelt, yes. If you keep in mind that it's impossible to fully understand the un-understandable, then you'll get it. Remember, every minute of someone's life is like a card in a deck. Yesterday, for instance, when we talked to Venetia Barlow on the Vox Untervelt, she hadn't even been born yet."
Ruth slapped her hands to her ears. "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about! You're making my head hurt with all this crazy shit!"
Alexander put his Annelok arm around Ruth's shoulder and led her onward. "Come on, Ruth, don't worry about it. Just do what I say and everything will work out."
"Good, just don't talk anymore of that whack-job theory of irrelativity shit, okay?"
"Okay." His giant feet plodded on. "Just as long as you understand that everything we're doing has already happened-"
Ruth groaned.
"-and ultimately our mission revolves around changing the future by interfering with the past."
"Fuck it, man," Ruth sputtered. I give up....
"So now, back to something more comprehensible, " the priest seemed relieved to say. The snakelike Annelok arm unrolled and pointed. "Can you see the next District there?"
A steam car full of rowdy Ghouls hooted at her when she stood on her tiptoes.
"Great legs, baby!"
Blow yourself, asshole. She was looking into the distance ... and saw what seemed to be a long brick wall several blocks down. "The wall?"
"Yes. That's the outer verge of the Boniface District. The reason it's red is because the entire District is made of blood bricks, and it just so happens that that's where we're going."
"For my job?"
"Exactly"
Fuck, she thought. She didn't feel very good about this, especially after hearing all of his mumbo jumbo about the Devil shuffling time like a deck of cards. Past the next intersection, she saw a billboard that had no advertisements on it, but just a strange shape:
"What the fuck is that?"
Alexander gave her a poker face. "Ruth, do you really have to say the F-word every time you talk?"
"Huh?"
"Can't you just say 'What's that?' or 'What the heck is that?' or 'What in tarnations is that?"'
Ruth smiled. "Okay. What the fuckin' heck in fuckin' tarnations is fuckin' that?"
Alexander shuffled on. "You're hopeless. But to answer your profane question, that design on the billboard is the Involution."
"Lucifer's lucky shape?" she asked.
"Yes. You'll see those billboards all over the Boniface District. It's all non-Euclidean geometry, Ruth, though I don't guess you know what that means."
"You fuckin' guessed right," she laughed.
"Remember," he emphasized, "in the Living World, there's science, and in Hell, there's sorcery. Here symbols have power. That's why that spiral-the Involution-is so powerful."
Ruth squinted at his words. "What's it symbolize?"
"When Lucifer was ejected from Heaven," the priest explained, "he fell from the east, in a counterclockwise spiral ... which formed the number six."
(II)
An intriguing day, at the very least. Venetia pondered its complexities in the shower, yet her thoughts kept dicing up, and she guessed the reason why was, I think I'm kind of drunk.... The one beer she'd had at the bar had snuck up on her now, buzzing her senses. I really am a lightweight-drunk off one beer. But it was Dan who worried her. A closet smoker and binge drinker? It seemed so. But now Venetia's own weaknesses began to intrude on more serious thoughts: she'd actually been jealous seeing Ann McGowen put her hands on him at the bar. Doesn't make sense! she insisted to herself while drying off. She'd be lying to herself in denying a physical attraction to him, but she also knew the attraction was moot; it was born of her instincts, not her spiritual self.
Just stop thinking about it.
The strong beer buzzed her so potently that she almost stumbled heading back to her room. Mrs. Newlwyn, crossing the atrium, looked up at Venetia's misstep, then acted as though she hadn't noticed.
"It's late. You should be asleep."
"I know, Mrs. Newlwyn," Venetia replied, and grabbed the stair-hall rail to steady herself. "The day got away from me."
"Evidently it got away from Betta as well. Have you seen her?"
"No, I haven't."
"She may have gone out for a walk...."
Yeah, a walk right into the woods, where John is waiting. "Well, it is a clear night," she babbled.
"Pleasant dreams, dear," the tall woman said though her typical stiff smile.
"Good night."
Jeez! I almost fell flat on my face! Venetia thought when she got back to her room. Going from the warm stair-hall to her cool room shocked her; she even felt mildly dizzy. Had Mrs. Newlwyn noticed her tipsiness? Venetia let her towel fall to the floor, then lay back nude on the bed. That's better. She wondered if beds really spun, or if that was just a cliche. I'm never going to drink again, she vowed, taking deep breaths.
The AC unit hummed, and the cool air gusted and made her nipples constrict and instantly cooled the metal key between her breasts. Then an image rammed into her head quite uninvited: Dan's mouth on her nipple, sucking-
Stop!
But as soon as she banished the image, it was replaced by a more vivid one. Now it was Ann McGowen sucking her nipple, while her hand caressed Venetia's other breast-
These are useless, stupid fantasies, so stop!
And then the images alternated, until Venetia began to shiver. First Dan, then Ann, like that, back and forth, their warm nudity pressing against hers. Eventually, they were both upon her at once, Ann's nipples in her face, which Venetia desperately inclined her head to suck, and Dan's mouth laving her sex, his strong hands parting her thighs. Her hips flinched when fingers delved in, and then she felt awash in obscure pleasures.
Venetia moaned at the brink of climax. "That's it, baby," a rich, female voice intoned. Venetia's mouthed sucked the proffered nipple like a pacifier. "Just lie back and come. Let Lottie get you off, then you can do me," and then a wet, clicking chuckle resounded.
After a delayed reaction, Venetia thought, Lottie? and then she opened her eyes and pushed the bare bosom out of her face. Her heart slammed once, then seemed to stop; it was no longer Ann McGowen and Dan who tended to her-it was Sister Patricia Stevenson and Lottie Jessel, both naked and pale as cream as they grinned at her, both bearing the great knife slits in their throats and the zipperlike lines of black stitches from their autopsy incisions.
Venetia screamed but no sound came out. The Patriciacorpse was trying to mount Venetia's face, her dead blue nipples puckered, while the shriveled sixty-year-old corpse of Lottie Jessel reapplied her blue lips to Venetia's sex.
"Have you gone to the basement yet?" one of them asked in a death rattle.
Venetia awoke, cringing. Oh my God, that was disgusting! She leaned up, sweating in spite of the room's cool air. I fell asleep and didn't even realize it.... Revolted, she jumped off the bed, donned her robe, and slipped out of the room.
She needed to get out. Maybe I should ask for a different room, she considered, skimming down the stairs. But that would sound inane. Father Driscoll would think she believed the room was haunted. It was just a bad dream, she convinced herself, but then-
She remembered. What Ann McGowen had told her in the seedy bathroom. It walks around at night and poisons our dream....
Weren't Venetia's dreams poisoned as well?
She stopped halfway across the atrium. She didn't know where she was going, but Ann had said something else too, something about the ghost of Tessorio urging her to go to the basement.
Consider the source. A drunk prostitute, a drug addict. She was making it up, a scary story to frighten "Little Bo Peep." Nevertheless, she spent the next half hour looking for a basement door but found none.
Outside?
Venetia was exhausted but admittedly too freaked by the dream to go back to her room. Without forethought, then, she was unlocking the back door with
her key, then walking outside....
A hot, starry night awaited her, with its nearly deafening chorus of crickets-the night seemed to throb. As her bare feet took her around the perimeter of the house, all the while she was looking down for a sign of some foundation-level windows, or a pair of slightly angled doors lying on the ground that would surely open to moldy steps leading down into a basement.
Thirty fruitless minutes later, she realized, there was no basement in this house. What an idiot 1 am.
She headed back to the kitchen door. A breeze puffed her hair but it was hot; she was already clammy again. The moon blurred in her eyes. At least the nighttime excursion had let her walk off some of the beer buzz.
She stopped just before the door. Had she heard a branch crack?
Her eyes darted toward the back of the property.
And she saw a shape, a white shape move between the trees.
Venetia laughed at herself. Could this be the ghost of Amano Tessorio?
Or was it just Betta, on another secret rendezvous with John?
She knew it was the latter, for she spied the movement in the same area as the cove.
Go to bed. Her search for the nonexistent basement had left her even more fatigued. But-
She slipped over to the wood line. I am such a snoop. What is wrong with me? She knew what she would see, so why was she doing this?
But no argument with herself sufficed. Venetia very carefully traipsed around the rim of the woods to the opening.
At once she heard rustling, then a moan.
Dan's a closet smoker and drinker, she half-jested. Am I a closet voyeur? She didn't think so; nevertheless, she admitted a subtle thrill. The secret onlooker. Moonlight dappled into the dell; white squiggles floated on the pond and just before it-
Venetia pressed her cheek against a tree, hiding half her face to watch with one eye. Betta-in her open white blouse-knelt before John, whose back faced Venetia. His bare buttocks flexed; it was clear what she was doing. John groaned, muttering, "Baby," then after another moment of this oral prelude, fell to his own knees to he between Betta's legs. What took place was much more frenetic than "lovemaking"; it was primitive, animalistic, but even at this distance, Venetia could see the wanton passion in Betta's eyes. John thrust into her for a time, then stopped just as Betta's back was arching; then he was slithering down between her legs to pursue some oral titillations of his own.
Betta squirmed in the leaves, moaning, but otherwise unable to voice words of approval. Words were hardly necessary anyway. Betta continued to writhe along with her pleasure, while Venetia-
Her mind remained dead silent as she watched, but her hands began to trace her own body's curves through the robe. Hot sensations-that she knew were forbidden for a celibate-began to linger around her groin. All the while her vision strained through the moonlit darkness....
Betta convulsed now, her gasps leaving no doubt that she was climaxing. "Like this now, baby," John's voice floated through darkness, and he was turning her around to hands and knees, and quickly reentering her. Betta's hair hung in the leaves as she let herself be taken, John's buttocks pumping and Betta's hanging breasts jumping with each thrust.
Venetia's eyes closed to slits. Her own hands had long since slipped beneath the robe to stroke her bare flesh, fingers pinching her nipples till she nearly squealed, her other hand cosseting her sex. The hot night-and its carnal sights-seemed to suck the sweat from her pores. Now the flood of pleasure wound through her nerves like twisting wires; she could feel the blood vessels beating in her breasts, could feel her nipples gorge, could feel-
She knew she was close to an orgasm, yet she also knew she mustn't let that happen. More of Ann McGowen's hostile words haunted her as her hands betrayed themselves: What kind of God would give His flock desire and then demand that they repress it?
Then her own words screamed, I can't do this! It's a sin!
And she stopped just before climaxing.
She stood paralyzed behind the tree, her heart beating so loud she was surprised Betta and John didn't heard it. When she looked back at them, they were finished. They were standing in each other's arms, kissing.
Then they parted.
Venetia froze. They're going to see me! What am I going to say?
John whispered some endearment and disappeared down the trail that would take him to town. Betta watched after him, a white ghost in the dark. Was she caressing herself while she watched? Eventually Betta turned around to nearly face the tree Venetia hid behind, and-yes--she very openly ran her hands up and down her bare flesh. Another gasp when her fingers slipped lower to tease her sex, as though she were trying to handle her post-orgasmic afterglow.
Then she left the clearing and headed back to the house.
At once the sweat of Venetia's excitement changed to the sweat of her shame. Forgive me, God, came her feeble prayer.
When she turned, her foot rubbed something. She looked down and saw-A gas can?
Yes. It sat at the base of some trees, but when she picked it up, she knew it was empty. One of John's. Probably for the mower, she thought. But why leave it here? She sniffed the end of the nozzle, expecting the aroma of gasoline, but smelled nothing. Why'd he leave a brand-new gas can in the woods? Then the answer became obvious. He'd probably meant to take it to the shed but got a little sidetracked....
Venetia shuffled back to the prior house. She felt dirty. Some aspiring nun I turned out to be. Masturbating in the woods. It didn't matter that she hadn't finished. Lust in the heart is the same thing as adultery-Christ said so.
She lingered outside in the moonlight, giving Betta plenty of time to get to bed. What Venetia had witnessed only rubbed her face in what she was probably never going to have: mutual attraction and passion that led to sex. God's testing me, that's it, she tried to joke to herself, but it didn't seem funny to her. Eventually the night's cacophony of crickets drove her back into the house.
Inside she paused at the stairwell-she could hear the shower going upstairs. Damn it-Betta must be taking a shower. She didn't want to risk being seen so she waited in a chair beneath the stair-hall. She tried to focus on more halfhearted prayers, but fragments of Betta and John kept barging in, or her little fantasy of Ann McGowen and Dan. Forgive me, God, she thought again.
Was she jealous of Betta and John's passion for each other? She knew she had to be in some way. Jesus, I'm a human being, I can't help it! she tried to argue. It was intriguing, though, the dichotomy. Around others, John was shy and introverted. But in the woods, she thought, he's a sexual animal, and so is Betta. Could there really be that much wrong with it? Each of their inadequacies had brought them together. I'll bet they even love each other, she surmised, but again she felt that she was arguing with God. What's wrong with that, if they love each other?
Maybe nothing.
At any rate, Venetia knew that her next confession would be very interesting.
She could still hear the shower. Hurry up, Betta. Soon, she was slumping in the chair, more exhaustion piling up. She tried to focus on paintings around the atrium, but they only turned to blurs. Her eyelids began to droop.
"Venetia! Venetia!" the tinny voice shrilled in her head. "Don't fall asleep! It's Father Alexander, talking to you over the Vox Unterwelt! Please! Listen! And don't fall asleep!"
The pain seemed to lance through her ears. Not again! Venetia doubled over out of the chair, to kneelshuddering-with her head to the old throw rug.
A wave of something crackled through the terrifying words, like bad reception. Between the pain and the interference, she could only make out bits and pieces of the manic voice:
"-talking to you from Hell. Do you remember my voice from yesterday?"
"Yes," she croaked.
"This isn't a dream, this is for real!" and then another wave of distortion. "-are six of them," and then "-were Unanointed by an Exalted Duke in Hell whose name is Boniface-"
The name snagged her through the pain.
But the voice grew louder. She knew she'd pass out. She could feel tears pouring from her eyes into the carpet.
"-of them, and it's almost time for them to be-" but she couldn't make out the next string of words, just something that sounded like "transposed," and "electrocution," or "revolution," but then the crunching staticlike waves cleared and the shrill words continued,
"-Ablissa, Eylla, Azusis, Belith, Gesmary, Tzaella. Those are their names. And one of them-"
The next wave made Venetia feel as though her head had just been driven over by a truck.
"No! Please! Don't fall asleep!"
But it wasn't sleep that threatened her; it was paininduced wakefulness.
"-six angels!" Then static. "-six coffins!" More static, then, "-six bones!" The mad voice spun around her head, and she thought the last thing she heard was this: "-bones! Remember the bones! Venetia, for God's sake, remember to take one of-
The voice ceased as abruptly as an ax-strike.
Venetia rolled over to lie flat on her back. "Thank God," " she muttered, for the phalanx of pain, like metal barbs in her brain, disappeared. Her heart raced. Calm down, it's over. She dragged herself up, pulled her robe together. The shower could no longer be heard, so she straggled to the stairs. Behind her, the long expanse of the atrium stood in total silence.
Maybe I'm going crazy, she thought. Maybe my sexual repression is making me mentally ill. But any further thoughts snapped out of her mind. She was halfway up the stairs when a rigor of fear locked her joints up. Did her heart actually cease to beat?
At the top of the landing, a black-cloaked figure stood looking down. Within the hood was just shadow...
It's not there. It's not real....
Then the figure began to stride quickly down the stairs, arms outstretched for Venetia's throat, and that's when she fainted and toppled to the bottom of the stairs.
Chapter Fourteen
(I)
Alexander sighed and put the Vox Untervelt back under his shirt. Was he having his first genuine doubts about this mission? Come on, God, help me out, he thought.
But could God even hear him from the Mephistopolis?