“ARGLBRGL!” the creature bellowed.
Donny rolled over, covered the back of his head with a pillow, and pulled it tight on both sides. “No. No way. Just no.”
“BRGLGRGL?” asked the thing. The imp, Donny remembered. It had all really happened. And that woman, or girl, who found him in the fire, what was her name? Right. Angela. This thing, this imp from the underworld, was her pet or whatever. It was real, all of it, every crazy bit of it. Even the worms! Thousands of slimy worms the size of baseball bats, him sliding into the middle of the wriggling mass, certain he’d be gnawed to the bone.
If it wasn’t real, he’d lost his mind for good. He didn’t know which option he preferred.
“GRBRGLGRG!” cried the imp, hopping in place.
“Riiight.” Donny crawled to the other side of the bed and opened the curtains there. He was greeted by a small, dark-haired, wide-eyed face and a piercing shriek. “Eeeeee!”
His legs kicked wildly and propelled him to the top of the bed, where he pressed his back against the wall on the other side of the curtain and clutched the pillow to his chest. He stared back and forth between the imp and the new face, a young Asian girl of maybe seven or eight, who had screeched from pure excitement upon seeing him.
“Who . . . What?” he said, gasping. His chest heaved and his heart thumped. A full spoken sentence seemed beyond him for the moment.
“I’m Tizzy!” shouted the new face.
“Tizzy,” Donny echoed thickly.
“You’re mortal, like me!” she said, with a wave of her hands.
“ARGLBRGL!” shouted the imp.
And then he heard Angela. “Is he awake? That took long enough.” The voice got stronger and clearer as she entered the room. “Rise and shine, Cricket!”
The curtain was flung completely open beside the imp. Angela stood there, smiling down. She had changed into a bright yellow dress with a matching broad-brimmed hat and a single yellow glove on her left hand. In her other hand, she held a big plastic shopping bag that bulged with goods.
“Doctor Grumpypants said you had a panic attack, and that you might be suffering from mental shock,” Angela said. She sat on the edge of his bed. “I told him it was a bunch of hooey. But anyhow, how do you feel?” She knuckled him on the shoulder.
Donny hugged the pillow tighter. “Like I had a panic attack and I’m suffering from mental shock.”
“Oh, get a grip,” Angela said. “So you had to hide in an abandoned building for some reason and nearly burned to death and then ended up in Hell. And then . . . what, do you have a fear of worms or something?”
Donny glared into space. “I do not have a fear of worms. I have a fear of thousands of giant monster worms and getting completely covered by them.”
“Can I touch you again?” asked Tizzy. She reached out and put her hand on his arm.
Donny twisted away from her. “Did you say again? When was the first time?”
Tizzy clasped her hands behind her back and bit her bottom lip. “Um, a couple of times when you were asleep.”
“And sedated,” Angela added.
“I stared at you a lot too,” Tizzy said. “But I only touched your arms. And your feet. And your face. No big deal.” She reached out again. This time Donny didn’t twist away, but he watched anxiously as she rested her hand on his arm, by the elbow. She closed her eyes and sighed. “See? You’re a little warm. Just a little, like me.”
“Ohhh-kay,” Donny said.
“We’re always excited to have a new mortal among us,” Angela said. “Tizzy didn’t believe you were one until she felt your skin. Denizens like me are hot. The dead are cold. And mortals—”
“Nice and warm,” Tizzy said, hugging herself.
Angela shrugged. “Tepid, if you ask me. But, Donny!” She clapped her hands and grinned widely. “It’s time to face your new world. Unless your mind is permanently damaged, and then I don’t know what we’ll do with you.”
“I’m fine,” Donny said, but he found it hard to unclutch the pillow. “I think.”
Angela tugged the sheet the rest of the way off of him. Donny noticed that his clothes had been changed—he was in black silk pajamas. His face flushed as the implications sunk in. “Uh. What happened to my clothes? How did I get into these?”
“Don’t be so modest,” Angela said. “Your clothes stank of smoke. And you were covered in worm slime. So we cleaned you up and got some jammies on you.”
“We who?”
“ARGLBRGL!”
“Yes, Arglbrgl and I,” Angela said.
Donny inhaled loudly. “You stripped me?” He shoved his face into the pillow.
Angela waved a hand. “You’d think that after everything you’ve been through, that would be the least of your issues. Now, come on. You’ve slept for nearly a day. I’m sure you have to eat. I’m sure you have to pee, too.”
“Can I come along?” Tizzy said breathlessly. “For the eating part, I mean.”
“Of course,” Angela replied. Tizzy made a little squeaking sound.
“I got you some stuff I thought you might need,” Angela said. She tossed the bag onto the bed next to Donny. He put the pillow aside, sat up, and peered into the bag. Inside, at least on the top of the pile, he saw a bottle of baby shampoo, bubble-gum-flavored toothpaste, shaving cream and an electric razor, Band-Aids, deodorant, a twelve-pack of toothbrushes, mouthwash, cologne, talcum powder, bars of soap, baby wipes, contact lens solution, and gummy bear vitamins. It looked like she’d robbed a pharmacy.
“How’d I do?” she asked.
“Uh. Great.” He didn’t want to tell her that he didn’t actually shave yet, or wear contact lenses, among other things.
“There was some guesswork involved,” she added.
“It’s perfect. Thanks a lot.” He closed the bag, but not before spotting a king-size bottle of antiflatulence pills.
Angela slapped his knee. “Up and at ’em!”
“Right,” he said. He swung his feet down and felt the warm stone floor. She had been right about one thing, at least. “Where’s the bathroom?”
CHAPTER 6
I guess a normal bathroom is too much to ask for,” Donny muttered to himself.
It was lit by what looked like an old streetlamp that stood in the corner, the globe filled with swirling, luminous gas. There was a modern toilet, but when he lifted the lid, he saw a shaft that ended hundreds of feet below in a distant inferno. The warm air gusting up while he used the toilet made for an interesting experience.
The brass fixture in the sink dispensed water that was too hot to touch. Fortunately, there was a regular water cooler next to the sink, and he mixed the two together to wash his hands and splash his face. He filled a paper cup from the cooler, and it felt good on his parched lips and tongue.
When he came out into the bedroom, the others were gone. He found a pile of new clothes on a bureau—jeans, shorts, underwear, shirts, jackets, socks, and sneakers. The house key and money he’d carried in his pockets were there too. He found the shirt and jeans that fit best and put them on, then stared into the mirror. “Too crazy,” he said quietly. His face looked pale and twitchy. What had the doctor told him about relaxing? He inhaled through his nose, nice and slow, held it, and let it out through his mouth even slower. It did seem to help. He did it two more times and then stepped out into the corridor, where the others waited.
Angela apparently had a hundred ways to smile, most of them mischievous, and she gave him a toothy one. “Shall we?” she said, and led the way. The corridor ended in a large, high-ceilinged room with windows of stained glass, marble floors, a grand fireplace, and expensive antique furniture. One wall was practically covered with clocks, each with their hour hands set to a different time, and a sign underneath indicating a city: Washington DC, Buenos Aires, Reykjavik, London, Rome, Istanbul, Moscow, Islam
abad, Mumbai, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, Seoul, Sydney, Kiritimati, Honolulu, San Francisco, Calgary, Mexico City, and more in between.
Extraordinary paintings lined the walls, with portraits of people, terrible beasts, gods and angels, landscapes of ruined cities, and depictions of great battles on land and sea. In niches and corners stood life-size marble statues straight out of Athens or Rome. Donny had spent enough time in fine art museums—his father loved to take him to museums of all kinds, and New York was full of them—to get a sense that these were the works of masters.
“Nice art,” Donny said.
“Some beauties, right?” Angela said over her shoulder, without breaking her stride. “By some of the greatest artists in the world. I’ve even got a few that were done down here, postmortem.”
“What? After they were dead?”
“Isn’t that what postmortem means? We don’t get loads of world-class artists down here, but when we do, we might as well let them be productive.”
“GRGLBRGL,” added the imp.
“Exactly,” Angela said.
A winding staircase led to more rooms on an upper floor. Donny barely had time to examine the space any further before Angela heaved open the tall front door and they stepped outside.
“Oh,” Donny said. When they emerged, he understood where he’d been: inside the gigantic pillar that Angela had called her home. The rooms had been carved from the rock, and the front door opened upon the road that spiraled around the titanic formation. He looked up and saw the stained-glass windows embedded in the stone. Angela’s mansion was close to the bottom of Pillar Obscura, but still high enough to offer a breathtaking view from the railing on the other side of the path.
“Do you need a moment?” Angela asked. She eyed him warily.
“Why does he need a moment?” Tizzy asked.
“He has to adjust, dear. It’s quite a shock, coming here for the first time. Yesterday he couldn’t have imagined that all this existed. But he’ll be fine.”
Donny walked to the balcony, leaned out to look at the riotous blend of architecture below, and took a deep breath. Will I be fine? he asked himself. Really? The jury was out on that question. He did a little experiment. He raised his right hand and held it level, to see if it was shaking. And it was, but only a little.
A small hand reached out and clasped it. “You look okay to me,” Tizzy said, smiling. “Come on, I’m hungry!”
• • •
They followed Angela again, nearly running to keep up with her energetic stride. They circled around the ramp until it reached the bottom and leveled onto a main thoroughfare.
Donny stared at the roof of jagged stone. It might have been a mile from there to the ground. The clouds of fire reminded him of the silky mantles of propane lanterns. Winged creatures flew among them. How large they were, it was impossible to say. They glided and swooped far above, and they had broad wings like bats, and narrow tails.
They passed a humanoid figure in a pair of farmer’s overalls. He was covered with skin like an alligator’s, and a forest of horns grew from his skull. He smiled and nodded as he passed, and Donny made a valiant effort to smile back. The figure’s demonic look prompted an unsettling question. “Uh, Angela? Can I ask you something?”
“Fire away.”
“I hope I don’t sound stupid asking.”
“So what if you do? Go for it.”
“Well . . . I never expected to come here. To the underworld, I mean. But if I did . . . there’s something I thought would be here. Something terrible and scary. You know what I mean?”
“Nope.”
“I mean . . . you know. The Big D.”
She angled her head to one side. “Diarrhea?”
“No! You know what I’m talking about. Who I’m talking about. The guy in charge of all this.” He almost didn’t want to say it, and he found himself leaning close to her and whispering, “The prince of darkness, or whatever. The Devil.”
“Oh, Lucifer!” she said quite loudly. It made Donny shrink back and hold his breath.
“Don’t worry about him,” Angela said. She waved her hand. “He’s gone.”
“He’s . . . dead?” Donny asked. That possibility hadn’t even occurred to him.
“Maybe. All we know for sure is, he’s not here. Some think he just got sick and tired of it all. It gets boring, you know, doing the same thing over and over for thousands of years. You can still see his perch above the Pit of Fire. He sat there since the dawn of human souls, overseeing the suffering. And then one day he simply wasn’t there. He didn’t say anything about leaving. In fact, he hadn’t said anything for decades at that point. I personally never spoke to him.”
“You actually saw him?” Shivers ran down Donny’s arms. “How long ago was this?”
“Oh gosh. About a hundred years since he disappeared, actually.”
Something about the roundness of that figure launched another wave of shivers. “Well . . . where do you think he went?”
“You want theories? Sure. Theory number one: he died. I mean, he was literally as old as heck. So he went off, crawled under a rock, and expired.
“Theory number two: there are passages in Sulfur that lead deep underground into lands unknown. We call them the Depths. They aren’t safe to explore—anyone who goes down too far tends to not come back. A lot of denizens think Lucifer wandered down there. For some peace and quiet or to mull things over or who knows why.
“Theory number three: he went to your world. And he’s been wandering on Earth ever since.”
“Earth is scary,” said Tizzy.
Donny felt a lump form in his throat. “What would he be doing up there?”
“Whatever he wants, kiddo. Checking you people out. Stirring up trouble. Taking a breather. There are other guesses about where he went, but the only thing that matters is, he left. When that happened, it wasn’t clear who should be in charge, so the most powerful archdemons formed a council. And the rest is history.”
They came to a ruined section of the city, which looked like it had been firebombed years before. What might have once been classical architecture was now just a heap of shattered marble and stone. Close to the street there was a row of fallen columns. Only one was partially upright, cracked in half with the base still standing. A feeble-looking creature squatted on the broken top. Another imp, Donny figured. From what he’d seen, most of them looked like gargoyles but without the wings. Their height and bulk varied wildly, along with the color of their reptilian or amphibious hides, and they might have any combination of spikes, horns, lumps, fins, boney plates, or fleshy whiskers. The one feature they shared was a short tail ending in an arrowhead.
This imp was old, pale, and blotchy, with milky, unfocused eyes. He seemed to hear them approach, because his ragged ear bent in their direction. He straightened a little, raised his head, and croaked out words like a talking bullfrog: “When eight sleeps, it is forever.”
Angela called to it, “Hello, Sooth!”
Sooth turned their way as they passed, and said it again: “When eight sleeps, it is forever.”
“What does that mean?” Donny asked quietly.
“Sooth is funny,” Tizzy said. She had a musical way of speaking, her words going up and down the scale. “He’ll only say that one thing, all day long, to everybody who goes by.”
“Sometimes you can figure it out, sometimes you can’t,” Angela said. “Right, Sooth?”
“When eight sleeps, it is forever.”
“You know what that means?” Donny asked.
“Duh,” Angela replied. “Think about it.”
Donny looked over his shoulder at the decrepit imp. Sooth had settled back down now that they had passed. They walked on and passed others along the way. There were imps of all sizes, and some creatures that seemed mostly human. Like before, they greeted
Angela and stared at Donny, except for the oddballs that they encountered, like a plump little monster chewing on the corner of a building.
“I think I’ll have pancakes,” Tizzy said, squeezing Donny’s hand. “Or waffles.”
It sounded good, Donny had to admit. His stomach grumbled at the thought. But he had no idea where they’d find a place to get breakfast down here. And then he saw it, just ahead, tucked between something that looked like the Lincoln Memorial and something that looked like Stonehenge.
It was an actual old-fashioned diner, that kind that resembled a silver train car. Inside was a long white counter lined with red stools, and a row of booths along the windows. There was nobody inside except for the burly woman behind the counter. She wore a checked blue dress with a white apron and was reading a yellowed paperback detective novel. When the door opened, she put the book aside and wiped the countertop with a dishrag.
“Hungry guests, Cookie,” Angela sang out.
“Good to see ya, Angela. What’ll it be?”
“Pancakes!” shouted Tizzy.
Cookie smiled at Tizzy then jerked her head in Donny’s direction. “That the new mortal?”
Angela tousled Donny’s hair, which didn’t annoy him as much as it should have. “Indeed.”
Cookie slung the dishrag over her shoulder. “Got a note from Doc. He said I got to feed the boy healthy.” She looked and talked like she’d stepped out of one of the black-and-white gangster movies that Donny’s father liked to watch.
“After today, go right ahead,” Angela told her. “For now he could use a treat.”
“You’re the boss,” Cookie said. She winked at Donny. “Pancakes okay with you, sweetie?”
“Sure.”
“Blueberry? Banana nut? Chocolate chip?”
“Chocolate chip!” shouted Tizzy.
“BLRGL, BLRGL!”
Donny would have said banana nut, but he didn’t want to make things more complicated. “Chocolate chip sounds great,” he said. He could hear his voice quaver as he spoke.
They took the middle booth. Angela sat on one side, and Arglbrgl hopped up beside her. Donny sat opposite, alone for a moment while Tizzy ran to a jukebox at the other end of the diner and punched its buttons. The jukebox was from another era, with an arm that plucked a shiny black record from a stack and played some tune from the fifties that Donny had heard but couldn’t name.
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