House Infernal by Edward Lee

by Edward Lee

  "You are the greatest Lithomancer to ever walk the Mephistopolis," the Exalted Duke gasped.

  Willirmoz bowed. 'As the cussed blood travels its course, my horrendous lord, the more enriched the Pith will grow. We should adjourn to the Lower Chancel posthaste."

  Boniface was practically vibrating with joy. "For this, my whore must be by my side to witness my greatness. Summon her at once."

  Willirmoz' remarked, "The Barbican Guards have just now begun to admit her."

  "Excellent. Order her to join us in the Lower Chancel."

  "It will be done, great putrescent prince." The High Priest led Boniface toward the stone steps at which Pasiphae-the Night-Mother and Guide of the Labyrinthwaited to escort them deep into the charnel warrens below.

  (N)

  The thirty-foot-tall fortress walls and the iron portcullistopped by a raw of punctured skulls-rose as gears clattered and chains chimed. A line of leech-skinned Ushers guarded one side of the great stone entry, while a line of Golems guarded the other side. Vile faces glared at Ruth.

  "Man, this is so fucked-up," she whispered beneath the Putridox face.

  "Go, Ruth!" Alexander whispered back from his sphere of invisibility. "Don't just stand there! They'll think something's wrong."

  Something is wrong. Way wrong, Ruth thought as she stepped through the entry. The monstrous severed face pulled over her own sucked down hot against her skin. Ruth could tell that aspects of the face were still alive.

  "Act like you own the place," the priest said from behind her.

  She tried to seem arrogant as she sashayed down the walk. The Ushers and Golems bowed as she passed. When the portcullis slammed shut behind her, it was all she could do to not scream. A homed Conscript, in a helm fashioned from some warped Demonic skull, stood at attention and said, "Oh, great Voluptua, Chief Soubrette of our master Boniface-proceed at once to the Lower Chancel."

  Ruth nodded briskly and walked on.

  A few steps later, Alexander rejoiced, "We're in!"

  "Yeah, but what now?"

  "Just walk all the way around the courtyard. In the northwest corner, you'll see a stone arch. There'll be a woman waiting for you-er, well, not really a woman."

  Ruth faltered, trying to appear elegant as she walked in the Bone-Sandals. "If she's not really a woman, then what the fuck is she?"

  "A Primordess-a living subjectivity, Ruth-an unholy notion made flesh. Her name is Pasiphae, and her body is composed of primordial ooze-the black ichor of the earth."

  "Oh, I can't wait to meet her," Ruth grumbled, turning into a neon scarlet courtyard that seemed hazy with mist.

  "Remember the Greek fable of Theseus and the Minotaur?"

  Ruth frowned. "No."

  Alexander sputtered behind his umbrella of invisibility. "Good God, Ruth. Didn't you pay attention to anything in school?"

  Ruth didn't bother answering.

  "Pasiphae is the Guide of the Labyrinth. Only she knows her way through the city's subterranean byways. That's how the location of the Lower Chancel remains a secret, so it can't be infiltrated. Don't screw up."

  "I'm glad you have such fuckin' confidence in me." Ruth felt the urge to complain further, but now her eyes were riveted to the macabre spectacle in the courtyard.

  The number of Golems, Ushers, and Conscripts standing guard must have topped a hundred. From one comer she saw a great brown gutter shaped into a spiral that must've encircled thirty yards, and from three other corners puddles of rank blood seemed to be lengthening toward the center of the spiral.

  "It looks like a giant version of those diagrams we've seen all over town," " she observed.

  "The Involution. This is it. It might be the most effective transpositionary Power Dolmen in the history of occult science. Once the blood from each corner reaches the center of the spiral, a kind of doorway opens."

  Ruth didn't like the sound of that. "A doorway between here-"

  "And the prior house where Venetia is. But it's more like one of those revolving doors you see at big-city hotels. While someone goes in, someone else comes out."

  The great courtyard stank of sweetness merged with rot, while the blood-bricks of the Fortress' walls seemed to hum within their mysterious neon. Ruth looked again and saw that the blood in each corner was moving slowly but resolutely toward the center, each puddle inching along the same way a snail moves.

  Piles of corpses rimmed the yard.

  Most disturbing of all, however, was the perfect silence that hung over the entire fortress.

  Ruth forced her eyes away.

  "One other thing about this Pasiphae woman...," the priest spoke up.

  "Yeah?"

  "She's a lusty type, and she's rumored to have something going on with Voluptua on the side."

  "Chicks who dig chicks," Ruth muttered. "You sure they're not from Florida?"

  "I'm serious, Ruth. You're not contemplating the ramifications of my statement." The priest's bodiless voice seemed hesitant. "You might have to-you know ... make out with her."

  Ruth gagged. "Bullshit, brother! I already had to swap tongue with that pus-lady in Rot-Port! Now I've got to suck face with primal ooze?"

  "Primordial ooze, Ruth," Alexander corrected.

  "With a chick who's made from the black ick of the earth?"

  "The black ichor, Ruth."

  Ruth turned to face him ... but of course saw nothing. "I oughta haul this monster face off and walk out of here."

  "The Ushers would turn you into puree in two minutes. Now keep walking and don't make a scene. Otherwise we're both history."

  Ruth fumed and continued to the next comer of the fortress. The fucker waits till now to tell me that....

  Next she thought she heard something like fabric tearing behind her. "What's that noise?"

  "Nothing."

  "It's not nothing. I just heard it. You tearing something back there?"

  "Focus on your task, Ruth."

  More aggravation. He treats me like a kid. But then she saw the stone arch, and something like a shiny shadow in the entry.

  "That's her," Alexander whispered. "Act like you know her. And no talking from here on."

  "But I don't know what to do!" she whispered back.

  "Just follow Pasiphae-and shut up!"

  She tried to steel herself. Conning people was nothing new to a grifter like Ruth. But could she con a denizen of Hell?

  Pasiphae's grin seemed longing when her eyes met Ruth's. The Night-Mother's body looked like a cheerleader who'd been dipped in crude oil.

  Make it good! Ruth urged herself.

  She stepped right up to the blackly shining Pasiphae ... and ran a finger adoringly down her cheek.

  Pasiphae kissed her on the lips, then gently took Ruth's hand and took her down into the labyrinth.

  (V)

  They found the woman in some weeds behind a strip mall with a Laundromat, pizza parlor, and a seedy bar. She lay naked save for the few scraps of clothes Dougie had left; the sodium lights made her skin look yellow. Berns guessed midthirties; she had a decent body-Why would Dougie pick a dog if he didn't have to?-and pretty nougat brown hair. But her face ...

  She'd been shot in the head, and then her face had been further pulped by a nearby cinder block. Dougie Jones had also pulverized the fingertips with the same block.

  "Bashed her face in just for kicks," Moxey, the state deputy chief, remarked.

  "No, Dougie's smarter than that," Berns said. "No ID on the body, and no face or fingerprints? He wants to bide time. If we don't know who she is, we don't know the make and model of the car he jacked. A DNA probe'll take days, and she probably won't have it on file anyway. All we can do now is hope somebody reports her missing."

  "And by then he'll have switched cars anyway," " Moxey said, sneering, "if this guy's as smart as you think."

  A squad of uniforms were around front asking proprietors and customers if they'd seen someone matching Dougie's description drive off at around the time of his phon
e call to Berns.

  Eventually some evidence section men bagged the body and carried it off. "At least the damn phone company didn't shuck and jive about giving us the location of the phone," " Moxey commented. "The turnoff to the interstate is just down the road. Jones could be in Ohio by now."

  This guy's useless, Berns thought. They walked back around to the front of the stores, where more cops and detectives milled about, eerie shapes in the throbbing red and blue light. The medical examiner's van sat with its back door yawning open. "My hunch is Dougie only wants us to think that."

  "What, that he left the state?"

  "Sure."

  Moxey's irate expression compressed. "There's the body." He pointed to the van. "There's the pay phone he called you from." He pointed to the phone. "And there's the exit ramp to the highway." He pointed down the road. "But you don't think he left the area? Come on, man, it's right in front of your face."

  Berns sat down on a bench in front of the pizza parlor. His exhaustion made him feel hypnotized. "Freddie Johnson gave me the same jive-swore that his accomplices had left the state just like he did. Then I get the same bit from Sue Maitland. It's the only thing they lied about."

  Moxey's collar was digging into his neck. "So you think Jones is still in town? Bullshit. I can't redirect a manhunt when all these facts are right in front of us."

  Berns sighed. "Then you're making a mistake."

  "I'm the one calling the shots here, Captain," Moxey snapped.

  "Fine. Call them." Berns didn't want to argue. "Jones escaped on my watch, so it's my fuck-up. But I know these people-you don't. I talked to all of them. They acted like there was still something going on-something important to them. Dougie's still in town but he went out of his way to make us think he's not. That's what I'm seeing here."

  Moxey's cheeks pinkened with suppressed irritation. "All right, we'll do it your way ... and I'll probably wind up losing my job."

  Berns laughed good-naturedly. "I'll be right behind you."

  Moxey ground his teeth as he radioed in: "Central Commo, this is D.C. Moxey. Order all available units into Wammsport."

  "Smart move," Berns said. The pizza smelled good but after seeing the Jane Doe's face, forget it.

  Moxey glared down. "All right, Captain Berns. Any ideas where Jones might be right now? Like exactly?"

  Berns stood up and looked out into the dim night. "Yeah, I've got an idea...."

  (VI)

  Venetia had never seen anything so macabre in her life. The blood Dougie had dumped in the southeast comer seemed to convulse the instant it hit the floor, while the spoiled puddles in the other comers did the same.

  Then the faintest crimson mist began to rise.

  She felt it at once, a sensation-like static-prickly off her skin. Several strands of her hair rose as if levitating, and in her belly she noticed a distinct, unpleasant buzz.

  Dougie's grin was exuberant. "Feel it?"

  "Yes," she croaked.

  "Freddie was right about everything, even the timing. The Involution is charging now, the power's building." He came forward with the pistol. "We'll have to go soon." He grinned. "But not just yet ..

  Venetia could imagine what was next on his agenda. She stepped back into the shadows beneath the stair-hall, hoping she'd gotten herself closer to where she'd seen the razor. His hands were on her at once, spinning her around. Nauseousness rose when he bent her over the end of a couch that had been shoved aside; then he pulled her dress up and her panties down. He grabbed her ponytail and shoved down.

  "I thought you needed a virgin," she choked.

  "Oh, I do, but I'll be giving it to you in the back door, if you know what I mean. Your virginity won't be busted."

  Oh my God ...

  She could hear him unzipping his pants, then felt the tip of the gun barrel stroke her bare buttocks. She could only hope that the excitement of anal rape would distract him enough for her to grab the razor, turn, and cut him. "Now that's what I call a great ass."

  His hands parted her buttocks ... and she let her right hand creep to the corner of the windowsill....

  The razor wasn't there anymore.

  She heard him expectorate, winced when she felt where it landed, but when she expected this invasion of her body to commence-

  Nothing happened.

  She heard a -gasp.

  What ...

  Venetia turned, bolted upright. Dougie stood behind her, shivering, his back arched. His hands seemed desperate, at his throat as blood gushed between his fingers.

  When Dougie collapsed, she saw another figure right behind him.

  Venetia froze in place.

  The figure reached down, took Dougie's pistol-

  Bam!

  Venetia shrieked at the concussion. Dougie's shuddering ceased as half of his head fragmented.

  Now the figure pointed to the -atrium....

  Venetia followed with her gaze. The blood in the southeast comer was beginning to slowly follow the inlaid spiral, while the puddles in the other three corners were lengthening toward the center.

  "The Involution is charging," a solemn voice informed her. The figure stepped into the light-Father Whitewood. "Follow me, child. It's time to go to the Lower Chancel...."

  "It's your destiny-a gift from God on High," he told her, taking her across the moonlit backyard. "You are truly, truly blessed."

  Venetia followed, mainly because she felt compelled to, by something in her heart. She oddly felt no fear, just searing curiosity. "I thought they wanted to sacrifice me."

  "No, no, child," Whitewood said. "Their success depends entirely on your staying alive ... as does our success. They both hinge on the same thing."

  "What?"

  "Your successful entrance into the Pith. But we infiltrated their motives long ago. We thought it best to let Tessorio's sect commence with everything, and turn the tables on them without them ever knowing. A Trojan Horse. You."

  "I don't understand, Father."

  The old man smiled in the dim moonlight. "You don't need to. You need only have faith in the Lord God, your Protector and Redeemer."

  I do, Venetia thought.

  "It was Driscoll's job to re-bless the prior house after my cowardice caused me to abandon my post. The building's defenses are down since the murders. A respite home for reassigned priests was simply the cover story. It's not a prior house and never was. It's a tomb."

  "A tomb for who?"

  Whitewood's tired voice creaked like old timbers. "For six angels who were debauched by Lucifer's confederates. They were raped and impregnated, and then via Satan's latest sorcerial sciences, sent here, to this house."

  "Why here?"

  Whitewood touched her shoulder. "Have patience and strength." Then he took her into the storage shed in the middle of the yard. What could possibly be here? Venetia thought, but then saw the oblong floor panel taken up, and the black maw leading down.

  Stairs.

  Whitewood snapped on a flashlight.

  "Ann McGowen said that a ghost kept telling her to go to the basement-but there is no basement at the prior house," Venetia told him. "So this is what she meant."

  The old man nodded. He led the way to the catacomb beneath the house.

  "It leads straight back to the point directly beneath the center of the Involution," Whitewood informed. "There's a similar catacomb in Hell. Both lead to the Pith."

  Venetia's curiosity pulled her along. The walkway was reinforced with cinder blocks but was very narrow. Whitewood continued, "One of the few upper hands the Lux Ferre has over God is the timelessness of Hell. He means to bring something from Hell into the world, and then take something from the world back to Hell. The sorcery merges two points at once. That's what will happen when the Involutions here and there are charged. For a few moments both Piths will occupy the same space. No one in the Living World has ever witnessed what you are about to."

  Venetia shuffled along behind him; his crisp silhouette led the way. "What
were you saying ... about timelessness?"

  "It's the most perplexing element of all-which is perfect logic from our enemy's standpoint. See, when the two Piths become one, some of that same timelessness will carry over to here. That's how it works. Here time is a constant, there it is nonexistent-therefore, when time's con stancy on Earth mingles with the timelessness of Hell, time turns into a disproportion, and is therefore manipulable. You will see twenty years pass in one second, and in that second, you'll witness everything that occurred. Lucifer's sorcery will then be mincing time up into bits and mixing the bits around like dice in a cup."

  "But what's his motive?" she asked.

  "His motive is to transfer something hideous into our realm, and then take something blessed from us into his domain. It's something that he could forge into a great weapon." The old man slowed and looked back at her.

  "This something is me, isn't it?"

  "Yes."

  They scuffled through the catacomb; spiderwebs snagged at Venetia's face. When she looked again, she saw that Whitewood was holding the pistol forward.

  "What's ... that for, Father?"

  A hollow pause. "There may be a detractor waiting for us. Just remember to take one of the bones and hide it on your person."

  At once Venetia remembered the insane voice. "But that's what I don't understand! What bones?"

  "Shhh. We're here."

  The Lower Chancel bloomed before them, a crude circular room walled by more blocks. Something glowed faintly--something with a red tinge-in the center. It looked like an irregular slab of stone.

  "The Pith," Whitewood said. "When the blood in the atrium has fully wound its course to the center of the Involution, the Pith will be fully charged, and then ... they will arrive."

  "They...," Venetia murmured. "These angels you mentioned?"

  The old man nodded, then led Venetia into a small anteroom to the right. His flashlight froze on something in the corner.

  Venetia's mouth fell open.

  "When they arrived, they knew that mutual death was their only resort," Whitewood's voice echoed in the chamber.

  There they hung by their necks, the entire group of them. They hadn't decomposed as humans would, but had instead become mummified, their skin browning like leather. Hanging behind them, off bony webworks, were their once grand wings. Venetia could tell, by the remnants of their genitals, that they were all female.