Inferno

by Ellen Datlow

  In his ear, a single insect buzzed. A moment later, sharp pain flared on his cheek. He made a sound—almost a chuckle, more nearly a pant. Oliver’s eyes sprang open. Before them, tiny pale dots like those following a particularly bright camera flash, dotted the gloomy air. He touched the wound on his cheek, already feeling the welt of a sting rising there. Covering this blossoming bump was a bit of fluid, thick and sticky to the touch. He searched his clothing and the floor for the body of the attacking bee, but found nothing. When he returned his attention to the vault’s gloom, the pale dots were gone.

  He shook his head in wonderment. Then, Oliver pulled the handkerchief from his pocket.

  Go wash your hands, boy.

  In the suite he shared with his wife, Oliver stared at the red welt just below his right eye and wondered on the coincidence that he should have been thinking about bees moments before being stung. The notion amused him. Indeed, he felt so good that he didn’t care about the sour looks Amanda cast at him, as she dressed for dinner.

  “What did you do to your face?” she asked, suddenly beside him at the mirror. She held a diamond teardrop to her ear and jiggled it to catch the light.

  “Bee sting.”

  “There are no bees this time of year,” Amanda said, dismissing his claim outright. She shoved against him to get a better look at herself, and Oliver walked away.

  “Let’s just hope that thing heals before Friday,” she said.

  “Friday?” he asked.

  “Idiot,” Amanda whispered just loud enough for Oliver to hear. “We’re celebrating our find. I’m expecting everyone to attend. It’ll be the usual crowd, and some new faces. I’ve invited that Joe Hopkins because he found the place, and I want the auction director to attend.”

  “What auction?”

  “Well, we’re not keeping those crates for posterity, Oliver. The auction house is having them removed and appraised. We’ll find out exactly what they’re worth, and I don’t want you out there drinking all of the good stuff before they come, so you’ll have to find another place to sulk until they’re done.”

  The gardener’s son led him through the trees and the shrubs. Sweat painted Kyle’s back in a glistening sheen that Oliver wanted to touch. A trickle of perspiration ran along the boy’s spine as he pushed aside branches and stomped forward; it pooled at the elastic band of his shorts, absorbed, turning the fabric at his waist from powder blue to navy. Oliver followed obediently. Something was different about Kyle that day; he seemed on edge, as if having Oliver along was an annoyance, even though he had extended the invitation. At the tool shed, far to the back of the property, the gardener’s son stopped and put his hands on his hips.

  In here.

  The shed smelled of old grass and gasoline, dirt and paint. The fan of a willow branch curtained a small window high on the east wall.

  A hand touched Oliver’s face, and his breath came in tight, painful gasps. The gardener’s son unfastened Oliver’s belt and unsnapped his trousers. A rough hand slid over his belly, under the waistband of his boxers … .

  Breathing deeply against a wave of emotion, Oliver lifted the oddly shaped bottle, stared at the amber glass. Something about the drink. Some incredible element of the alcohol. It sharpened his fantasies, gave them a life, made them tangible and teasing.

  All but lost in this consideration, Oliver was startled by the sound of someone calling his name. He corked the bottle, set it on the crate and stepped outside, where he met Abe, the groundsman.

  “You needed me, sir?” Abe asked.

  Oliver told him about the crates he wanted moved. As he spoke the instructions, Abe’s wrinkled old face clouded with worry.

  “Mrs. Bennet said …”

  “She doesn’t pay you,” Oliver said. “There are two crates. I’ll show you the ones I want. Take them up to the second floor. Room 206.”

  He would be moving into that room for a few days. Amanda wouldn’t mind; she never did.

  Likely, she was courting a new lover. Amanda’s mood toward him always soured when someone else was fucking her. Probably because her parade of men served to remind her that she’d settled for too little in marriage. They both had, and though Oliver considered leaving many times, the idea of being so completely alone was disturbing. Amanda took care of things—finances, social engagements, what clothes he should buy and when he should wear them. Such distractions were a burden, and he was content to leave them in her hands. Of greater importance, a companion, even one so incongruous to his needs, defined his place in the world and gave him a sense of belonging.

  Why he should, in that moment, realize that being needed was wholly different from being necessary, he couldn’t say.

  Oliver closed the door to Room 206 and walked along the crimson carpet to the staircase. He paused on the landing, peering over the lobby’s expanse. The crystal chandelier caught his eye. More than ever it looked to him like a giant beehive, made of gleaming clear gems rather than the fragile gray parchment of traditional nests. What wonderful creatures might create such a place? he wondered. This fanciful thought took hold in his mind, and his imagination filled the lobby with a swarm. Like soaring shards of glass, the bees flitted and danced in the air, climbed over the crystals of the fixture, disappeared inside to be warmed by two dozen low-watt bulbs.

  The fantasy was all very beautiful to Oliver, who reached out a hand to grasp the carved banister. The people below, oblivious to his imagined swarm, chatted and wandered, read tourism pamphlets, while the air around them lit with a thousand specks of twinkling light.

  “Mr. Bennett?”

  Oliver started, and his magnificent swarm vanished. He turned away from the lobby and found Joe Hopkins smiling at him.

  The foreman was a fit man in his mid-thirties with a brush of black hair framing strong and handsome features. Today he was not in his customary jeans and chambray shirt, instead wearing khakis and a black knit shirt beneath his leather jacket. Oliver returned the man’s smile and nodded his head.

  “Mr. Hopkins,” he said.

  “Surveying the kingdom?”

  “Just gathering a bit of wool,” Oliver replied. “What can I do for you?”

  “Well, I thought you might be interested in the history of that wine cellar we dug up in your backyard.”

  Truth be told, his interest in the chamber had declined considerably. Amanda saw to that by having the hotel’s publicist push the story to every reporter in town, making a spectacle of the place. It wasn’t his anymore, not in any sense that mattered. Now that the crates of liqueur he wanted were stacked in his room, the speakeasy cellar was merely a curiosity. Still, he didn’t want to seem impolite, and he found Hopkins pleasant enough. He leaned back against the banister and said, “What did you find?”

  “We were right about the whole prohibition thing. It was a hooch hut, sure enough,” Hopkins said, grinning at his turn of a phrase. Oliver couldn’t help but notice the thick muscles in the foreman’s neck, pronounced and corded when he smiled. “Davis Cortland had the place built so his guests wouldn’t have to go dry, had it buried deep.”

  “Are you saying they had to dig their way down every time they wanted a cocktail?”

  “Didn’t have to dig. There was a tunnel connecting that vault to the basement of the hotel. If we’d excavated the east side of the thing, we would’ve found it. Anyway, Cortland had the whole place sealed up before he went to sell the hotel. Bricked up the basement and the vault. Apparently, he didn’t mention it to the buyer, and the place was forgotten.”

  “And how did you find out about this?”

  “They keep the Cortland family genealogy at the library. It’s all on their computer system, so I just plugged in a couple of key words and Davis Cortland’s journal popped up.” Hopkins paused and ran a hand through his hair. “Near the end there, old man Cortland was in pretty bad shape.”

  “How so?” Oliver asked.

  “Well, both his sons died within about a month of one another. Bot
h accidents. Cortland snapped. He found God in his own way, and he became convinced that his cellar, that’s what he called the place, was cursed. Actually, he called it damned, but I guess it’s about the same thing. Just craziness. He said that the boys were corrupted, led into sin by a low woman. That’s what he called her anyway.”

  “Interesting,” Oliver said. But he already projected the fallout of this discovery, and disappointment pushed in. Surely local journalists would dig up the same information, maybe more. As such, it was just something else to lament, another precious cache forcibly shared with the world and therefore meaningless.

  Though he didn’t exactly wish to remove himself from Hopkins’s presence, he grew agitated with the conversation. But the foreman kept talking, telling Oliver about the Cortland family, and the patriarch’s burgeoning madness—selling the hotel and starting a fundamentalist church in the family home, denouncing the decadent and opulent lifestyle his hotel once represented. Only when the conversation returned to the matter of Cortland’s sons, Reginald and Michael, did Oliver’s interest pique.

  “I guess I can see how the old guy saw divine punishment in it. I mean, it’s a pretty bizarre coincidence … for it to happen twice, in two different parts of the hotel.”

  “Both boys died the same way?” Oliver asked.

  Hopkins nodded his head. “They were stung to death.”

  A tingle of excitement flared in Oliver’s midsection. “They must have been delicate boys to die that way,” he said. “Were they allergic?”

  “Couldn’t say. Cortland gave the impression that both were stung numerous times. They probably upset a couple of hives.”

  “Remarkable,” Oliver said.

  “It’s all really fascinating,” Hopkins continued. “When Mrs. Bennett asked me to check into the property history I was dreading it. I’m not much of a bookworm, but I got so damned curious, I kept digging.”

  Of course Amanda was behind this. “I see.”

  “Uh oh,” Hopkins replied quickly. “The look on your face is telling me I should have kept my mouth shut.”

  “Not at all,” Oliver said. He reached out and patted the foreman’s shoulder. “Just a difference of opinion between my wife and me. I find her outlook unfortunate and a little sad. Amanda doesn’t see a thing’s value until she’s envied for having it.”

  “And you like to keep things quieter?”

  “Simply put … I like my secrets.”

  The day of his wife’s party, Oliver sat at the window in his room and watched movers, under the vigilant eye of a slender man in tweed, remove the crates from the brick vault. The man in tweed, Amanda’s assessor, made notes on a clipboard, and pointed and shouted. He read the labels on the crates, made more notes, pointed again.

  Oliver closed the curtains, then drew the heavy shades as well. He went to the cases in the corner and pulled a bottle free. It was half empty. The last in the crate. He still had the second crate, though. Eight more bottles. They could last him another week, maybe two if he was conservative. Nonetheless, a flash of desperation, as if his supply had already run dry, tightened his chest. He fought to shake off this panic and studied the yellowish contents inside the glass.

  Soon the ballroom below would fill with a miserable throng of the city’s privileged. Oliver would have to smile and make small talk, pretend to care about exotic vacations and the tax benefits of buying bigger, more opulent homes.

  Remembering what Joe told him about the Cortland family, he imagined little had changed over the years. They, too, probably held these kinds of affairs and likely spoke the same conversations. Oh, inflation changed the numbers being bandied about and trends changed the fashions, but Oliver couldn’t imagine those long-ago conversations being any more interesting.

  He opened the bottle and took a deep drink from the sweet fluid, immediately feeling its effects on his tongue. Oliver put the bottle on the nightstand and removed his clothes before stretching out on the bed.

  He hoped to enjoy a brief period of bliss before putting on the host’s mantle and indulging Amanda’s need to be celebrated. He traveled through his memories, looking for a salacious moment on which to focus his attention, but his mind refused him. It kept coming back to the name Cortland. Oliver took another drink and stared at the ceiling, which was already shifting ever so slightly with his burgeoning intoxication.

  Cortland had two sons. Both died from bee stings. The loss drove him mad. Joe had told him these things, but Oliver didn’t want to remember them. He wanted to feel something good before being submerged in Amanda’s fête.

  But already he felt himself slipping away. He reached out and nearly knocked the bottle over. Once he had it firmly in hand, he brought it to his lips and sipped.

  The room around him shifted, dissolved. Oliver replaced the bottle, struggled against the fantasy blossoming in his head, but failed. Instead of flesh and sweat and passion, he imagined …

  A small dirty room, the walls and ceiling stained by cigarette smoke and dust. Water marks from faulty pipes spread over the plaster like monstrous amoebas. A bed was pushed against the far wall; it was the only surface in the room to be properly finished, with a delicate, floral-print paper. And on the bed, two boys in their late teens, tanned and lightly muscled, lay naked. One smoked a cigarette. The other looked toward the door. There, just crossing the threshold, a petite woman, naked and lovely, with short-cropped hair—a flapper’s bob—cast a glance over her smooth white shoulder. Around her, a swarm of pearl-colored bees swarmed, filling the room with their buzz.

  Oliver pictured all of this easily, the details painted in washed-out colors. He was disappointed to have entered the scene in the post-coital moments, having the heat of sex denied him, but something about this room, this place, felt so comforting he managed his displeasure and allowed himself to sink deeper into the fantasy.

  Her name was Evelyn, he knew. Her small body moved gracefully amid her swarm, which cast a scrim of vague shadows, making the skin on her back and the supple curve of her buttocks appear to writhe and slide. Oliver followed her over the threshold and into another gloomy room, dominated by a single fixture.

  It hung from the ceiling like a plump child, wrapped in a dirty shroud. The hive was enormous and the color of pastry dough. Opalescent bees by the hundreds crawled over its surface. Others flitted around the orifice at its base. On the floor beneath the nest, one of the oddly shaped bottles rested. A large metal funnel jutted from its neck. Honey dripped from the hole above, hit the funnel with a dull plunk, and slid down.

  Evelyn slowly lifted her arms, disturbing the bees around her. With a gentle wave, she sent them to join their kin at the hive. In these few moments, Oliver felt the woman’s control, her absolute command of the insects. He also felt her joy at adding numbers to their ranks. She walked to the hive, touched its surface with her fingertips, then bent low to retrieve the bottle. Evelyn pulled the funnel from its mouth, set it gently on the ground, before taking the bottle away. At an unmarked crate, previously unnoticed by Oliver (how could he notice anything but the wonderful hive?) she again bent down, lifted a cork, and popped it into the neck, driving it deep with a blow from her palm. She placed the bottle, which would later receive its cap of wax, in the crate and lifted an empty one from the floor beside it. This she placed beneath the dripping cavity and plugged it with the funnel.

  Evelyn turned, a gentle smile pushing up the corners of her mouth. She ran her hands over her breasts and down her torso before lifting them to her hair, which she patted down.

  Back in the room, the young man had finished his cigarette. He lay on his side, spooned by his companion, eyes filled with pleasure and dream. The second man’s arm draped over the first, his palm gently caressing the belly of his brother.

  For just as he knew the woman’s identity, Oliver understood these two attractive boys were named Cortland. Reginald Cortland, the younger brother, looked content in the arms of his older sibling, Michael. Together, they tried to coa
x Evelyn back into the bed, but she was happy to stand apart, gazing at them.

  A moment later, the dream changed. It happened so quickly, Oliver felt like he was dropping from a window.

  Two broad men with flat features and stubble on their chins stomped into the room. They held short metal pipes in their gloved hands. The thugs observed the boys with disgust while the naked brothers yelped, then rolled away. They leapt from the bed, seeking their clothing. Another man entered the room. He was tall and straight-backed, wearing a fine woolen overcoat. His mustache was waxed neatly above his lips. He, too, looked with disgust at the young men scrabbling to dress, but fury was also in his features.

  Evelyn protested, demanding the men leave her home, refusing to cover herself, even when one of the thugs slapped her harshly with the back of his hand and called her “whore.”

  Was Oliver the only one aware of the buzzing, growing louder in the next room? How could these thick men not hear it? It was nearly as loud as an approaching motorcycle.

  The dignified man (Davis Cortland, he knew) ushered his sons out of the room and through the house. Behind him, his men cried out.

  Cortland looked back and saw the air filled with what appeared to be snow, but his men cowered under it, slapped at it with fat palms. They screamed when any of the flakes touched them. And Evelyn, the beautiful Evelyn, stood at the center of this storm, looking serene as the men dropped at her feet.

  The scene tripped again. The sensation of falling was worse this time, and Oliver nearly fell out of his dream.

  He sat in the back of a great sedan, looking through the window at a house being consumed by flame. Oliver felt despair and horror, knowing Evelyn was still inside, trapped with her swarm between walls of fire. Davis Cortland stood outside the car, hands crossed over his crotch, watching the house burn.