by Edward Lee
“Look at this,” he said. He’d pulled out a sheet of paper, which she looked at but didn’t really see. She was still kneading his crotch with her hand, trying to divert him.
“What is it?”
“It’s a property tax assessment waiver. They don’t have to pay any property tax for the land this place sits on.”
Penelope didn’t care, coming to the simplest conclusion. “Of course they don’t. The state doesn’t make itself pay land tax. State of Maryland owns this land.”
“No, they sure as shit don’t,” he said, indicating the sheet of paper. “This right here says that the Halman Map Library sits on one and a half acres of land that are owned by the Catholic Diocese of Washington, D.C.”
The Catholic— “Huh?” Penelope said. Then she inspected the paper more thoroughly and saw that it was true.
“Things just keep gettin’ fishier and fishier,” Gary said. He closed the file cabinet and turned to the door. Now he was looking out the chicken-wire window down the hall. He could see the chain-link gate. “What’s behind that?’ he asked.
“The storage area, and the other guard room, where the Ahrens guards work—I told you,” she whined more frustration. “I’m not authorized to go past the gate, and even if I was, I couldn’t because I don’t have a key to the padlock on it.”
“I’m checkin’ it out—”
“Gary, are you dense? It’s locked.”
“Quit yackin’ and open your eyes.”
Penelope frowned, squinting through the little window. She didn’t frown long. The padlock on the gate was unlocked.
“That’s some top-notch bunch’a guards they got down here, huh?”
“They must’ve forgotten to relock the gate when their shift started.”
“Come on—”
“Gary, no! They could come out any minute!”
“Yeah, and if they do all you gotta say is ‘Hey, fellas, I’m just showin’ my boyfriend around, oh, and by the way, you left your gate unlocked but don’t worry, I won’t tell the boss.’ That’s what you say if any of ’em come out.” Gary could not be dissuaded; he was opening the door and walking out. Penelope fumed but at this point all she could do was go along with it.
He quietly opened the gate. They both stepped through. At the furthest end of the hall stood a door that read MAP ROOM. Next to it was a door that read GUARD ROOM. Beside Gary and Penelope stood another windowed door that read BOILER ROOM. She and Gary slipped into it.
“Boiler room, huh?” he said now as the next weirdness of the night presented itself. Penelope looked around in dismay. There were no boilers in evidence.
But there was a gun locker.
Four black rifles stood in the steel rack, secured by a chain threaded through their trigger guards. On the floor, also chained and locked, were ten olive-drab metal boxes, which each read in stenciled letters: 200 CARTRIDGES, MSC LOT 1-M62-4, 5.56MM.
More sarcasm from Gary: “Yeah, I’d say that Ahrens is definitely an armed guard company. Four top of the line automatic assault rifles and two thousand rounds of ammo. You know, to guard against all the folks who wanna bust in here to steal maps.”
This was weird. Now Penelope’s raging lust was sufficiently diverted. She’d seen the other guards with sidearms a few times, but what could explain the need for automatic weapons down here? In a map library?
“Like I was sayin’ before, same as when I was in the Army,” Gary went on. “Fake door signs, fake civvie security guards. They want people to think this is a map library so no one’ll bother breaking in. It’s cover, it’s a front. There ain’t no maps down here. It’s gotta be something military.”
“So they’re really Army MPs posing as civilian security guards?” Penelope asked.
“Not Army, not with weapons like that,” he said, pointing to the gun rack. “Those are SA-80s. If these guards were U.S. Army they’d have M-16s. Only people I know of who use SA-80s as general issue are the Brits and the Swiss Guards, and—” Gary stalled, his eyes widening. On the black polycarbonate stock of one of the rifles, he noticed tiny letters: PROPERTY OF 2/37th COMPANY VICTOR, SWISS GUARDS.
“These guys are Swiss guards, and that’s about the most fucked-up thing I ever heard.”
“Gary, who are the Swiss Guards?” Penelope nearly shouted over the mounting confusion.
“It’s a special military detachment of the Vatican.”
“And we just found out that the library sits on land owned by—”
“The Catholic church,” Gary finished.
Yeah, Penelope finally agreed. But what really was going on down here? What was really being kept in this place?
Penelope would never discern an answer, but that was scarcely the point. The room began to vibrate, then the cement walls began to crack. Suddenly the floor was shaking so violently, Penelope could barely stand. Ceiling tiles fell on them as Gary shouted, “Earthquake! Get out!”
They stumbled frantically back out into the main hall, then were retching when they found it full of the most evil-smelling smoke. The smoke seemed green in the overheard emergency lights, and though she wasn’t sure, Penelope thought she saw figures in the smoke. Squat figures, like things huddled down. Then she heard shouts, small-arms fire, and a long steady noise that could only be described as cackling.
“The elevator won’t work!” Gary shouted, holding her hand. “Where’s the stairs?”
Penelope turned, yanked him toward the direction she believed the stairs to be in, then—
SWACK!
She’d run right into a wall, face-first, then fell back flat on her back. Gary groped through smoke to help her up. All Penelope knew was that the wall she’d run into ... hadn’t been there earlier. It seemed to angle out of the main corridor, leaning forward, and after she regained her senses, she looked at it, ran her hand against it. It seemed composed of chunky cement, only the cement was discolored and—
“What is—” she began.
“What the fuck is this?” Gary shouted, the foul smoke gusting from his mouth. He’d noticed it too. “This wall wasn’t here five minutes ago!”
“It must be some kind of fire wall,” Penelope could only guess.
Gary winced. “This ain’t no fire wall. It’s cement, and it’s got ...” He stalled again, touching the rough surface. By now, Penelope could see it too. Mixed into the “cement” were chunks of bones—joints, ribs, fingertips, all human. Lots of teeth too, some glittery with gold and silver fillings. She looked farther down the wall, then, and screamed.
“Holy shit!” Gary yelled.
A man’s head and shoulders hung out of the strange wall, as if he’d been fused into it. He convulsed, still alive, his face twisted in agony. He seemed to be muttering something in Latin or Italian. Then he screamed himself and began to vomit up blood. There was nothing they could do to help him. The last thing Penelope noticed, though, was the shirt he wore, a blue tunic with epaulets, and an embroidered patch that read AHRENS SECURITY.
More cackling issued from the thickening smoke, along with more gunshots. She could see brief white muzzle-flashes in the distance, and some of the squat shapes she’d seen seemed to fall down after the shots. She caught glimpses of larger figures too, but could they possibly be human? Humans, with bloodred eyes the size of tennis balls. Humans with fangs like broken glass? With horns sprouting from their heads?
Two of the Ahrens guards ran out of the boiler room, each wielding a locked and loaded rifle. More things seemed to be encroaching down the hall, and when the guards determinedly opened fire, the things seemed to mewl. Misshapen heads flew to pieces, clawed hands flew up, plumes of blood sprayed this way and that, only the blood wasn’t red. Some was black. Some was pea-green. The sound of the machine-gun fire deafened Penelope to the point that she couldn’t even hear her own screams. She shrieked harder and grabbed on to Gary when something the size of an eagle whizzed by just over her head. The smoke churned in the creature’s wake; when it flew over one of the Ahren
s guards, the thing’s claws lowered, and took off the guard’s head. Penelope only had a split-second to look more closely. It was no eagle—not that an eagle could even find its way down here. It was something more like an immense bat.
The second guard smacked another mag into his rifle and resumed firing. Hot brass flew out of the bolt in a steady stream. Gary pulled Penelope aside but not before she saw who or what the guard was firing at: a tall perfectly still figure in a white cloak and drooping hood. This would be one of the higher echelon Warlocks from the College of Spells and Discantations, not that Penelope could ever be aware of that. The bullets that spewed toward the white figure seemed to slow down and dissolve in mid-air. Two other similar figures—but these cloaked in black—were burning the first guard’s severed head over an ornate agate bowl full of red-hot coals. They watched intently, examining the shapes of the smoke that eddied from the dead guard’s eye sockets and open mouth. These two figures were Hierarchs in Lucifer’s Synod of Smoke-Diviners.
Gary was nearly paralyzed now by all he’d seen. “We-we-we ... gotta get out’a here,” was all he could stammer.
Some trick of reason alighted in Penelope. “This way! The door to the exit stairs is this way.”
As she led him away, strange things seemed to crunch beneath Penelope’s shoes... and she didn’t want to know what they were. The smoke cleared a bit further down the hall; she thought she saw a rat scurry by, only this rat was the size of a house cat, and its pink feet looked too much like the hands of a human infant. The thing squealed when Gary kicked it out of the way.
“The door!” she yelled. “I don’t see the door!”
“We’ll find it.” Gary was determined. He was feeling along the wall, then shouted, “Over here! I found it!”
Penelope looked over at him, and gasped. He had his hand on the wrought-iron latch of a heavy wooden door set into an arched doorframe made from bloodstained granite bricks. The keystone on the transom was an oblong skull with horns branching from the forehead long and sharp as a bull’s.
“Come on!” Gary yelled, waving her over.
Penelope shuddered. “Gary, that’s not. The door. To the stairs.”
But he didn’t hear her; he’d already opened the door, was preparing to go in.
He didn’t go in. Instead, something came out.
A Tentaculus was a more recent hybridization from the Academy of Teratology, a lower-grade segmented demon also known as a Mephistius Annelida. It stood upright on two thin legs, sported two equally thin arms and an elongated abdomen, all the color and enslimed texture of an earthworm, only it stood six feet tall. Instead of a head on its shoulders, though, it bore an additional three-foot trunk. The end of the trunk was a mouth rimmed by hooklike teeth, and it was this mouth that immediately attached itself to Gary’s mouth. Unable to scream, he shuddered in place as the trunk expeditiously sucked all of his internal organs out, then transferred them into its own gut. Penelope watched in revulsion; the thing’s own abdomen suddenly swelled with its new, fresh meal. Gary collapsed, significantly lighter than he had been moments before. The Tentaculus burped, then the door slammed shut.
Penelope ran, screams wheeling behind her. She didn’t really know where she might be running; it was simply that running seemed the only logical reaction. Even through the stinking smoke, she could see that the basement had changed, and she suspected that the entire building had, as if parts of it had merged with something else, something evil. Behind her, the machine-gun fire ceased, replaced by more screams. Penelope instinctively took a final glance behind her, saw that the remaining guard was being mauled by misshapen Trolls. She didn’t hang around to watch his death in detail, but she did notice something else. The imposing white-cloaked figure was advancing down the hall while another taller figure appeared behind him: a man, the most handsome man she’d ever seen in her life. Lean, muscular but graceful, this man seemed to drift forward, a mist of light—a halo—encircling his head. More light flowed from his piercing eyes. He was fully naked, and for the briefest moment he glanced at Penelope through the smoke and smiled—the most stunning smile she could ever imagine.
“Hello, Penelope,” he said to her, but his voice was more like light than sound.
Penelope stared, riveted.
“My name is Zeihl.”
Penelope couldn’t take her eyes off the magnificent man.
“Tonight you will see something that has never before occurred in history,” the light-voice shone on. “Tonight you will witness the death of an Immortal. To my master, I sacrifice myself for his glory. Consider yourself privileged ...”
More of the smoke cleared, revealing large, heavily shelled insects scurrying about on the floor but they were like no insects she’d ever seen on earth. The library’s main storage room had been ruptured open, revealing something within that looked like a bank vault. The huge, multi-bolted steel door had been melted down by an expertly incantated Heat Spell. A high-tech vault like that in a place like this? Penelope knew now beyond all doubt that Gary had been correct. This whole place was a front. They didn’t need a vault like that to store maps in. So what were they really storing here?
Penelope would never know. Fear and partial insanity compelled her to run. She disappeared into another gust of smoke which stank worse than the putrefactive gas of a mass grave. But perhaps luck was on her side now: she collided with a door, and when she looked up bloody-nosed, she noticed the sign that would save her life. EXIT STAIRS. Thank God! She yanked open the door and shot up the steps.
Then screamed.
A green-faced demon-boy sat on the first landing; he grinned down at her through decayed fangs, quivering as he inserted a long hypodermic needle into a nostril. He was a Zap addict, Hell’s version of a junkie. Once he’d worked the needle up into his brain, he depressed the plunger, sighed, and collapsed in bliss. Zap was the drug of choice in the Mephistopolis, an occult heroin made from infernal herbs boiled in Grand Duke urine, after which it was cooked down to paste at the Distillation Vats.
Her gut clenching, Penelope stepped over the boy, was about to dash up the rest of the steps, but screamed at the top of her lungs when she saw what was coming down the stairwell. The Fecaman was aptly named; it was a man-shaped creature composed of bewitched demonic waste. Two lidless eyes were set in the mush-brown face; two shit hands groped forward. Clumsy as it appeared, it grabbed her with surprising spryness, embracing her at once and pulling its face of excrement to hers. “Kiss-kiss,” it gurgled at her, “Kiss-kiss...” She didn’t have time to throw up before the thing’s hole for a mouth opened over hers. Convulsing, she seamed her lips but that didn’t matter. The tongue—a tumid turd—worked its way into her mouth, wriggling. Penelope gagged, almost mindless in her revulsion. The basest instinct caused her to clack her teeth shut, severing the fecal tongue, whereupon she spat it out and bellowed another scream. The Fecaman screamed along with her, bug-eyed, and she skirted around the abomination, and flew the rest of the way up the steps.
Upstairs, she fell into the lobby. There was much less smoke up here, and she could see more evidence of the impossible change that had occurred, the lobby’s familiar appearance mutated into something else. Strange walls seemed blended with the lobby’s normal walls. Segments of the polished tile floor had been overrun by something that almost looked like a street gutter, only the gutter was befouled with body parts and nameless waste. She even noticed a storm drain in this otherworldly gutter; sulphurous flames licked out between the grates, and ... did she see a face down there, agonized and peering out? Heart racing, she turned toward the front glass doors, but they were all blown out. She dashed through them, out into the night, expecting to see the library’s parking lot, and the long grassy hill which extended down from it, but that’s not quite what she saw. She saw the parking lot, all right, and her little GMC Metro parked in her usual spot, but the parking lot was upheaved, as if some seismic plate had thrust up through the asphalt. Other things had thrust up, too�
��impossible things: huge brick and iron buildings, oddly windowed skyscrapers that spired so high she couldn’t see their end. Living gargoyles traversed the overhead ledges, looking down. A city street surrounded the library, but it was a street from another world. She even saw a street sign leaning over at one corner. The sign read DAHMER BLVD.
Her feet carried her mindlessly down the street. She saw her manic reflection in the various shop windows as she ran. MEATS one window read. SPECIALS TODAY: GHOUL, TROLL. The word HUMAN was also there but it had an X through it. Fried demon heads hung upside-down from hooks in the window. Inside, a man with one half of his face sliced off calmly cranked a sausage grinder, his butcher’s apron soiled by off-colored blood. The next window read RAPE CLINIC, which Penelope assumed was some sort of crisis center; the assumption only lasted for a moment after she looked in and spied demons in nice suits standing in line as a chained She-Imp was raped en masse on the floor by an array of slavering, hunch-backed creatures. More signs could be seen along the smoking block, the windows lit with the strangest lights: HEX-CLONES, LICENSED ALOMANCER SERVICES, BLOOD ALCHEMIST. The last window on the corner read SKIN-CUTTERS but Penelope didn’t look in.
She still didn’t know where she was running to but she ran just the same. Her mind didn’t ever bother trying to calculate what had squashed this evil place into the same space that the map library occupied. Yet the question kept occurring to her: Where does it end? When she turned the next corner, her answer awaited.
Another smoking city street stretched forward but only for half a block. Then it ended very abruptly. Past its limits she could see the quiet moonlit hill that descended away from the library. She was about to run out but—
“Help me,” a voice beseeched her. “Please ...”