by Bryan Smith
Jack hit the ground and sent out a prayer to whatever ancient deity was in charge of warding off stray bullets. As the cars swerved in the street and blew by the Sundowner Inn, several rounds ripped into the fender of a nearby powder blue Cadillac and blew out the vehicle's windshield. When the sounds of gunfire and squealing tires at last began to recede, Jack breathed a sigh of immense relief and got to his feet. He brushed himself off and went into the motel's front office.
A fat man with a shiny bald pate sat on a stool behind the desk. His attention was riveted to a pornographic movie playing on a wall-mounted television. The image on the screen showed a bottle-blonde woman with enormous, gravity-defying breasts getting intimate with a vibrator.
Jack and the front desk clerk were the only people in the small, grimy lobby. Jack stepped over a stain of some unknown, disturbing texture, braced his hands against the edge of the desk, and said, “So! This is hell, eh?”
The desk clerk still didn't look at him. “Yep.”
Jack grimaced. “I was hoping you'd say something else, like maybe, 'Why, no, sir, and, say, what kind of drugs are you on today?' You know, something with a quality of reassurance about it, something to indicate that, against all available evidence, something unspeakably horrible hasn't happened to me. By the way, I think I just saw Jimmy Cagney and some of his friends go by. Bit reckless with firearms, those boys.”
The clerk spun slowly around on the stool, which squeaked like a stool bearing the pressure of a man weighing in excess of four-hundred pounds. Which was precisely the sort of stool it happened to be at that point in time. The clerk's face had a surprisingly pleasing aspect to it. It was cheerful-looking, almost handsome, with fresh, rosy cheeks. Then the man sneered at Jack and hooked a piece of wet, yellow snot out of his left nostril. He squinted and inspected the booger a moment before proceeding to smear the foul thing on the desk's already well-besnotted surface.
Jack managed not to throw up. Barely. He backed away from the desk.
The man smirked at Jack's suddenly ill pallor. “I reckon you're new in town.” He laughed. His accent was pure deep south redneck. “Figured you was last night when your sorry ass stumbled through the door. You got the stench of the freshly damned on you right thick.”
Jack frowned. “So...help me here...I, what, must have...died?”
The man hocked up something in his throat and spat it at a waste bucket several feet from the stool. The wad of phlegm splashed against the side of the bucket. “Aim's off.” His disappointment sounded genuine. “Yeah, you're dead. And no shit, Sherlock. What are you, a dee-tective?”
“Uh...”
The big man chuckled. “You gotta pay for another night if you don't check out in an hour.”
Jack wondered where else in hell he might spend the night, realized he would not arrive at an answer to that horrifying and perplexing question within the next hour, and made his decision. “I'll stay another night.”
“You gonna put that on the same card as last night?”
Jack pondered the implications of that question a moment. “Huh. Um...those work down here?”
The clerk rooted around some more in the same nostril with a plump pinkie finger. “Ya got a lot to learn, newbie. Any active account you had in life is mirrored in the Bank of Hell when you get here. As long as you make your payments on time, you'll be able to use 'em.”
“Well...” Jack shook his head. He still clung to the hope none of this was real. Maybe one of his drinks last night had been dosed. It had happened before, so it could happen again. But, no, nothing about his current predicament was at all like his previous experience with dope. He wasn't hallucinating. And he wasn't having a bad dream. This was his real, waking life. Or death, rather.
In hell.
Jack palmed sweat from his forehead. “Goddamn.”
The desk clerk laughed. “Ain't that a fact? God has damned us all, the bastard. Aw, hell, man, you'll get used to it after a bit. It ain't so bad, really. It's not like they made us believe back on earth when I was little and we'd get all dressed up and go to church on Sundays. It's more like what I'd hear sometimes, that hell is whatever you hate most in life. Me, I slaved twenty-some years behind the front desk of a little motel in Alabama and hated every miserable goddamn day of it. And now it's what I'm stuck with forever. I couldn't go apply for some different job somewhere else in hell.” He laughed again, but this time there was a note of sadness in it. “No sir, I'm stuck here front-deskin' it for all eternity.”
Jack thought back to the way he'd awakened this morning and was struck almost dumb with horror. He wanted to scream. The notion that he was now doomed to spend forever waking up hungover and disoriented was just too awful. He pictured every day playing out the same damn way. Stumbling his way through the wreckage of the night before and not realizing where he was, or what was happening, until it smacked him in the face. It'd be like living that movie Groundhog Day.
Only in hell.
Jack choked back strangled laughter.
Damnation Day.
The new blockbuster starring Jack fucking Grimm.
The desk clerk peered at him with something close to actual concern. “Listen, it's best not to dwell on it. What's done is done. You can still do some of the things you like to do. You can go out to a bar and get drunk. You could pay that whore out at the bus stop to do any kinky thing you want. Lots of shit like that. You just can't change the basic facts of your fucked-up existence.”
Jack decided he'd try to come to terms with this insanity later. He still had avenues of investigation to pursue. Maybe nothing that mattered anymore, but he had to try—there was simply nothing else to do. “Listen, when I came in here last night, was I alone?”
“You don't remember?”
Jack sneered. “Look, I had a fucking blackout. No, I don't remember. Was I alone? Was there a girl with me?”
The desk clerk flinched at his tone. “Don't get all nasty with me, asshole. Unless you had some whore waitin' for you outside, you was alone. Now, I got me a goddamn cinematic masterpiece to watch, shitbrain. I'm done answerin' your dumbass questions.”
The man spun around on the squeaky stool and stared up at the screen again. Jack glanced at the image of the moaning fake blonde. Another woman, a Latino, had just joined the on-screen action.
Jack sighed. “Look...I'm sorry. I'm just very upset. Which is a contender for largest understatement since the dawn of time. Just one more question. I tried to make a phone call. I fucked up. There was a voice, a recording...I...she...”
The desk clerk spun around again. There was a knowing smirk on his face. “That's the voice of Lust, son. You'll never see her. No one ever sees her. But that voice—just thinking about it gives me a big ol' stiffy—that voice is everywhere. It's on every recording in hell. Whether you hear a man's or a woman's voice depends on whether you like pussy or bein' poked in the ass. Most people can't get enough of it when they first get here, but that changes. You get to feeling like that voice is always teasing you, promising you the hottest, wickedest, freakiest circus sex you've ever desired. And then you realize you ain't ever gonna get it.”
Jack wanted to hear that voice again more than just about anything else, maybe more than he wanted to solve the mystery of the anonymous girl and how he'd come to be in hell, but he recognized at once the truth of what this man had told him.
“Just out of curiosity, how the hell did you come to be in hell?”
The clerk's eyes filled with tears. “On the last night of my life, I killed that whore out there at the bus stop. Slit her throat ear to ear. Then I went home and blew my brains out with my daddy's shotgun.”
Jack turned to leave. He couldn't get through the door fast enough.
“Hold up, son!” the desk clerk/whore killer called out to him. “You forgot something.”
With great reluctance, Jack turned around. “Yeah?”
The clerk tossed a pack of matches over the counter. Jack snatched the pack out of mi
dair and looked at the name printed in black letters against a red background: THE DEAD END.
Jack looked at the big man. “What's this?”
“You dropped that matchbook here last night. The Dead End's a bar few blocks east of here. A shitty little dive. I gather that's where you drank yourself sick before stumbling through my door.”
Jack glanced at the matchbook again.
THE DEAD END.
Huh. Nice name. Nothing ominous about it at all.
He remembered nothing about it. Of course.
He looked at the clerk. “Run that card number. I've got work to do.”
And drinking to do, but he kept that thought to himself.
Then he was gone.
5.
THE DEAD END was identical to innumerable hole-in-the-wall dives Jack had patronized throughout the checkered course of his long history as a barfly. There were just two small rooms. The front room featured a bar on one side and a row of dingy booths on the other. The back room was a gaming area, with dartboards, two pool tables, and several stools lined up against the back wall. The very dim, almost inaudible sound of a baby crying emanated from somewhere indiscernible. Other than that, nothing about the place struck him as odd or ominous. Even the clientele seemed nondescript by the usual dive bar standards. Until he slid onto a stool at the bar and got a better look at the man seated to his right.
Jack gasped.
The man (though Jack was suddenly sure that 'man' wasn't the proper word to describe this creature) grinned at him. The whatever-it-was possessed just two arms and two legs, and he had two five-fingered hands with opposable thumbs. But that was the extent of the thing's resemblance to a human male.
The creature wore a uniform, a crisp outfit featuring a black blazer, flared black trousers, and black boots polished to a high gloss. On the left shoulder was an armband with an insignia depicting a gruesome beast. Jack noted that the beast bore a faint resemblance to the creature wearing the uniform.
Whatever-it-was chuckled. “What's the matter, pal? You look like you've never seen a hellhound before.”
Exerting what he considered an absolutely heroic level of willpower, Jack forced himself to remain still. He even managed to affect a half-convincing aura of nonchalance. “I'm new.”
The thing laughed. “Of course. The newly damned always get all gakked out the first time they run into a member of the Hellpack. It's a good thing you saw me like this first instead of in full-hound mode.”
The creature had a slightly elongated chin and a wide mouth vaguely like a dog's snout. A lot of very sharp teeth were visible any time he opened his mouth. Faint wisps of steam wafted from his freakishly large and ridged nostrils when he laughed. His skin had a dark, leathery texture. Yellow eyes glowed in a decidedly creepy way beneath a protruding brow. Overall, he looked very much like a werewolf caught in mid-transformation. Some years had passed since Jack had last tangled with a lycan, but he remembered only too well what deadly foes they could be. Faint traceries of three parallel scars slanting across his back served as permanent reminders of the danger such creatures presented.
Jack struggled to swallow the lump in his throat. “So...you're a...werewolf?”
The creature sneered. “Don't you listen? I told you, I'm a hellhound. Werewolves are pussies.”
Jack fought the urge to bolt out of the bar. It felt like he was on the verge of royally pissing off Mr. Werewolves-Are-Pussies and that could be nothing but bad news. Instead of bolting, he forced a grin. Scared though he was, he remained in a desperately untenable situation. He took a moment to remind himself that he was in fucking hell. He wouldn't get anywhere by coming off like a coward. “I don't know, friend. I've gone a round or two with the lycans in my time. Sounds like bravado to me.” The fake grin became natural, widening slightly. “No. Wait. Bullshit. That’s the word I’m looking for. It sounds like bullshit.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you seriously mocking a member of the Hellpack?'
Jack screwed up his face and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, scratching his chin as he pretended to give the question deep consideration. He flashed another grin. “I'm saying you look only about half as badass as the last lycan I put down with a silver fucking bullet. In a one-on-one to-the-death cage match, you against any random lycan off the street, I'll take the pussy werewolf every time.”
Jack tensed for the attack he knew had to be coming. And he strove to maintain his facade of fearlessness while simultaneously scrambling for any hint of an advantage he might gain in the event of violence. Could be it was just about time to take out his gun and put a round or two between those creepy yellow eyes. Of course, at that point all hell (literally!) would break loose, but it was looking more and more like the only move left to him.
But a strange thing happened.
The creature did not seem offended. At all. He was grinning again. And though Jack's gut told him he had to be mistaken, there seemed something almost good-natured in the expression—despite those rows of disconcertingly sharp teeth. “See, you're making the classic mistake of judging a book by its cover. This is the off-duty look, friend. Hence, my presence in this shithole. Now, if you were to encounter me out on patrol, you'd see something more like this.”
The hellhound's head enlarged and shifted at a startling speed. The part of his face that resembled a snout became an actual snout, replete with a long, lolling black tongue, rows of sharp teeth significantly larger and sharper than their original, very scary size, and huge, flaring nostrils that billowed a foul-smelling, eye-watering blast of hot gas with every breath. The shape of his head changed, became almost conical, and his ears lengthened and grew fur. More fur sprouted from every pore of his skin.
Jack fell off his stool and landed on his back.
The hellhound slid off its stool and loomed over Jack. Jack's heart thudded. In life, Jack had not been a coward. He had never backed away from physical danger, had never dropped a case in the face of any threat—and he'd had some gonad-shriveling threats leveled his way in his career.
On the other hand, Jack had never faced imminent doom at the hands, or teeth, of a hellhound.
Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the threat, or perceived threat, disappeared. The hellhound reversed the transformation, reverting in an instant to its previous appearance. It smiled down at Jack. “Neat trick, eh? Like to see a lycan exert that kind of control. Those clumsy fuckers are powerless to stop the change once it comes over them.” A throaty chuckle. “Sorry to frighten you, friend, but you'll see that and worse every day in hell.”
He knelt slightly and extended a hand to Jack. “Name's Lucien, by the way.”
Jack thought, Of course it is, you scary bastard.
He hesitated a moment, then grasped the extended hand. “I'm Jack. Jack Grimm.”
Lucien hauled Jack to his feet and they returned to their respective stools. “So, Jack. Can I assume from this encounter that you don't remember our previous meeting last night?”
Jack groaned.
Well, that explained the hellhound's easy jocularity. No doubt they'd become fast friends over many drinks. It was the kind of friendship you had to renew all over again at least once or twice before it could settle into something almost real.
He put a hand to his forehead. “Yeah. I don't remember.”
What else is new?
Again, he heard the sound of a distraught infant. The pitiful wail hadn't ceased since the moment he'd stepped through The Dead End's entrance, but it was so faint, so much like background noise in a movie, that it mostly remained submerged beneath the din of conversation.
Lucien's eyes narrowed as he peered closely at Jack. “I thought as much, which was the reason for the bit of dramatics there. I wanted to impress the image on you while you're still sober. Speaking of that dreaded state, you look like you could use a drink.”
Jack's head drooped as he folded his arms over the edge of the bar. “I'm tired
. I've had the life, or death, whatever, scared out of me by a servant of Satan. I'm in hell. Yes, I could use a drink. I could use several thousand drinks, in fact.”
Lucien nodded. “Well, let's start with just the one, okay? What'll you have?”
“Boilermaker.”
The hellhound signaled the barkeep.
6.
Jack felt better with the boilermaker inside him, more relaxed, less anxious. He didn’t feel quite so much like leaping out of his own skin anymore. But he knew the feeling wouldn’t last long with just the beer and the one shot of whiskey working its way into his bloodstream. To keep the bad feelings away, or to at least find a way to deal with them minus the all-consuming fear, he would need to imbibe several more drinks in rapid succession. To that end, he raised his hand to signal the barkeep for another of the same.
The barkeep--barmaid, actually--was a slim, sexy girl wearing black leather hiphuggers and a tiny, midriff-exposing black top that displayed her scrumptious flat stomach and ample cleavage to wondrous effect. Her hair was a dyed jet-black in a punkish shag cut and her skin was snow-pale. She had the come-fuck-me face of a porn queen, with bright red lipstick on pouting lips and expertly-applied eyeliner that emphasized her bedroom-blue eyes.
She smiled. “’Nother boilermaker?”
Jack nodded. “Will you marry me?”
“No.”
“Damn.”
She dumped a shot of whiskey into a pint glass and filled the glass with beer. She set the glass on a napkin in front of Jack and slinked away to the other end of the bar. Jack watched her go with his mouth hanging slightly open.
Lucien laughed. “Hot, isn’t she? But you don’t want her.”
Jack managed to wrest his gaze away from the exotic barmaid. He looked at Lucien with incredulity. “Is that so? Do you mind explaining that? Because I think I do want her. Maybe more than I’ve ever wanted any woman.”