Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go (3 page)

4 · LAIR OF THE LIAR

MILTON, MARLO, AND
Bea “Elsa” Bubb plunged into a dark, high-tech lair of security screens, blinking computers, and a long electronic Netherworld Soul Exchange (NSE) ticker scrolling gibberish and numbers.

Principal Bubb rose from her chair and clacked toward an immense filing cabinet adorned with padlocks. She extended a long rigid nail cut into intricate notches and fit it inside one of the locks. With a twist she opened the lock and pulled out two files from the drawer.

The two files were not created equal. In fact, if both were placed on the scales of justice, one would have catapulted the other straight up to the Galactic Order Department headquarters.

Bea “Elsa” Bubb tossed the files on her desk, plopped back down into her seat, and opened the first, which was crammed with papers.

“Marlo Fauster,” she said, flipping through the countless infractions. “An open-and-shut case.”

Marlo grinned with pride.

Principal Bubb opened the other file. It was empty save for a Post-it note.

“And Milton Fauster.” She chuckled. “This is pathetic.”

Written on the Post-it were the following words:

         

one act of petty larceny

just before departure.

         

Bea “Elsa” Bubb's snicker trailed away. This was the sorriest excuse for a sin she had ever seen. It struck her as some kind of a mistake, except that making a mistake here was a mistake never made. Heck had run as a faultlessly foul machine for longer than anyone could remember…before memory, even. Principal Bubb wasn't about to let some ghastly goody-goody undo all she had worked so hard to uphold down here.

Milton was quivering with righteous anger. “I didn't do it! My sister's the evil one! Just ask anybody!”

Cerberus, coiled beneath Bea “Elsa” Bubb's hooves like a furry, three-headed cobra, looked up at Milton's outburst. The ancient demoness put Operation Cover-up into motion.

“The devil's in the details,” she said coolly, opening her top drawer and pulling out a large remote control. It was a real beauty, with more blinking buttons than a blinking-button factory. She waved it at a wall of screens, and the cavern exploded with noise and light. Marlo and Milton covered their ears as grainy video footage streamed across the massive screens.

         

Marlo, as seen from a department store security camera, examines several large bottles of perfume: Siren's Song (“Drive Him to His Doom”), Aroma Borealis, and Scentless Tragedy. She scoots like a crab down the counter, fingering tubes of lipstick and mascara. Suddenly Marlo yells and points toward the other side of the store. The heavily made-up shop girl pivots her head in the same direction. In the blink of an eye Marlo grabs a fistful of expensive cosmetics and drops them off the edge of the screen into a makeup bag. The motion freezes while the camera zooms in on Milton's blurry self, cradling the bag and staring obliviously off into space.

         

Bea “Elsa” Bubb snapped off the TVs. Milton put his head in his hands and moaned. “I don't get it,” he said. “One little crime puts me away with Miss Demeanor over here…”

Bea “Elsa” Bubb folded her arms together and glared at Milton.

“The Big Guy Upstairs doesn't grade on a curve,” she said. “While you may have frittered away the majority of your young life being a good little sheep up on the Stage, as you can plainly see now, it was all for naught.

“Your last sin is typically your greatest,” Principal Bubb continued. “Your act of thievery—whether intentional or not—counted so heavily because it was your very last, with no chance to redeem yourself before your sticky end.”

She shifted her weight from one buttock to another, and possibly a third. “Up there, it's all about first impressions. Here, it's all about your last.”

The lumpy lizard-like demoness put her hooves up on her desk. “Do you have any idea how many souls are upstairs in the penthouse?”

Marlo and Milton traded a glance.

“Go on. Hazard a guess,” Principal Bubb dared.

Marlo finally wrenched her mouth free of the sticky Gummo Badger candy.

“A million?” Marlo ventured, her lips feeling like they had been injected with Novocain. “A
billion
?”

Bea “Elsa” Bubb's eyes crinkled with cold amusement. “Not even warm…and it's always warm here. Try
seventeen.
”

Marlo's and Milton's jaws practically dropped to the stone floor.

“Yes,” she continued. “Of all the humans throughout history, only seventeen made the cut.”

Marlo leaned forward with a look of utter disbelief. “George Washington?”

“Ah, yes, who could never tell a lie,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb spat back. “But he seemed to have no problem owning slaves and leading thousands to war.”

“Joan of Arc?” Milton chimed in.

“French,” she answered.

“Mother Theresa?” Marlo asked.

“She once had the gall to take a day off after contracting dysentery.”

Milton shook his head. “Of all the things that don't make sense here, that makes the least.”

Principal Bubb sneered. “I don't expect your just-dead brains to understand the nuances of our afterlife system. Your heads are still warm with how things
were.
But you'll have plenty of time to understand how things work, believe me.

“Suffice it to say that there is a just reward for all creatures, great and not so great. Mother Theresa is enjoying a perfectly acceptable hereafter. It's just that the deluxe afterlife suite with all the divine trimmings is reserved for a select few. Her accommodations in Sixth Heaven are comfortable and near beatific, merely without the lavish frills and exclusive privileges, and with only limited access to the main grounds. But the buffet, I hear, is to die for.”

She settled back into her plush velveteen rabbit–upholstered chair, scooted closer to her desk, and pulled out two long pieces of parchment paper from her top drawer.

“As much as I'm enjoying our little chat,” Principal Bubb said coolly, “we must get back to business.”

She placed two lengthy contracts before them. “I just need your grubby signatures here and here,” she said as her claws scraped the paper.

Milton leaned over the contract, scrutinizing it through his one good lens.

by and between Heck, a branch of the Galactic Order Department, itself an independent offshoot of the Cosmic Omnipotence and Regulation Entity, hereinafter, whether singular or plural, masculine, feminine, neuter, terrestrial, extraterrestrial, and/or interdimensional, designated as “Soul Holder,” which expression shall include Soul Holder's executors, administrators, assigns, and successors in interest, and Milton Fauster, hereinafter, designated as “Soul Relinquisher,” witnesseth this legally binding covenant.

Milton's eyes were as glazed as doughnuts.

Principal Bubb handed them two long, black glistening pens.

Milton and Marlo gulped as one and reluctantly took the strangely soft pens. The instant their fingers wrapped around them, two small serpent heads emerged from either end. One end of each sunk its fangs into the forearms of the siblings. Milton and Marlo screamed as the pens drew blood. The heads at the far end of each “pen” grinned widely and reached toward the contract, signing Milton's and Marlo's names in bright, wet crimson.

As soon as the signatures were drawn, the snakes uncoiled and slithered out of the children's hands and back into Principal Bubb's top drawer. Clutching their throbbing arms, Milton and Marlo sniffed back tears. Bea “Elsa” Bubb took the contracts and with a wave of her claw, conjured two copies out of thin air. The principal clacked over to her file cabinet and tucked all four documents away.

“There…signed, sealed, and delivered,” she said with a cackle. “You are now officially mine in every possible way—and a few impossible ways—for all eternity, or until you turn eighteen, blah blah blah…”

Milton and Marlo wept silently.

“Now, now,” she said as she sat back down in her chair. “I can't stand to see young people cry…So go away. We're done here.”

Milton and Marlo stared at each other through blurry eyes, baffled. Principal Bubb, ignoring the two children as if they had suddenly ceased to exist, pulled a dark chocolate, double-fudge, triple-nougat, quadruple-caramel, peanut-butter candy bar from her bottom drawer and took a massive bite. Gooey strands of pure deliciousness hung from her fangs. Despite their newfound distrust of Heck candy, the two siblings gasped with unconcealed desire. Dying sure gave one a hearty appetite.

“Hungry?” she asked with mock sweetness, like a diet soda. “Go to the cafeterium down the hall, stuff your repugnant little faces, and await your official disorientation.”

Cerberus yapped and leapt back into her lap. One of his heads (the least hideous one) licked Bea's pointy, leathery ear.

“What's that, sweetums?” she cooed. Cerberus whimpered softly. “Oh, that's right! It's time for our show!”

Bea “Elsa” Bubb jiggled the remote and brought all of the screens back to life. Each featured the same image: a pitchfork against a backdrop of fiery brimstone. Beneath, in drippy red letters, read
URN
:
THE UNDERWORLD RETRIBUTION NETWORK
. The image dissolved in a curtain of pure flame.

The show's announcer bellowed with a voice like a rusty foghorn: “Here he is, the Dark Angel you love to hate (and hate to admit you love), Mephistopheles, the Lord of Darkness, call him what thou wilt, just don't call him late to Revelation…Ladies, gentlemen, and lesser demons, give it up for Luuuuuuuucifer!!”

Milton and Marlo looked at each other and shrugged. Milton noticed an exit nestled between two banks of filing cabinets. He smacked his sister on the shoulder (which was easy considering he was still mad at her), and the two siblings crept across Principal Bubb's lair, leaving her to ogle with glazed goo-goo eyes the supremely evil object of her affection, that devilishly handsome hunk of Hades: the Big Guy Downstairs.

5 · THE NOT-SO-GREAT ESCAPE

MILTON AND MARLO
walked cautiously down the hallway that would, in theory, lead them to the cafeterium. The winding, uneven passageway smelled like a hospital, full of that ammonia, rubbing alcohol, and sickness reek that stung your eyes and sunk your spirits.

Yet instead of a place to eat, Milton and Marlo emerged into a cluttered, indoor playground—a
FOUL PLAYGROUND
, if the faltering neon sign was to be believed.

Warped hula hoops, two-wheeled tricycles, deflated basketballs, not-so-Hot Wheels, well-mannered Bratz, way-too Raggedy Anns, powerless Game Boys, ex-Xboxes, and an astounding collection of Russian poetry lay scattered across the dingy gray carpet. Pressed close above was a crumbling checkerboard of asbestos tiles and glaring fluorescent light fixtures.

Milton and Marlo passed through waves of depressed children. It was like they had stumbled upon a Disneyland for the doomed, the unhappiest place on earth, though they were miles below earth…or to the side of it…or wherever. Milton still wasn't sure if he was anywhere at all. All he knew was that he, or the person he used to be, or the person he thought he used to be, was hungry. Did he still have a stomach? Did he really need to eat? Or was appetite simply some ingrained habit, like his compulsive nail biting and unrelenting need to brush exactly one hundred times after each meal?

“Unholy moly.” Marlo snickered. “Get a load of that!”

With her shiny black fingernail Marlo pointed toward a group of large shaggy creatures lumbering into the foul playground and scooping up the younger children in their arms. The toddlers wriggled and screamed. The creatures were obviously, to Milton's eleven-year-old eyes, simply people in costumes—thick greenish fur that looked like glowing, overgrown tree moss, spiny orange horns, one big red glowing eye, and rows of plastic yellow teeth. They weren't even particularly scary costumes, but they were frightening enough to soil the Underoos of Heck's younger unfortunates.

Marlo chuckled. “What's that getup supposed to be, anyway? A Boogeyman or something?”

One of the costumed creatures stopped and removed its head.

“That's Boogey
person,
” hissed a hideous, decomposing demon with goopy yellow eyes, a moist snout, and lipsticked lips covered with cold sores.

The creature resecured its head and shambled after its fellow Boogeypeople.

Milton and Marlo quivered with fear.

“Wow,” Marlo managed between chattering teeth. “Lucky for the runts those super-freaky gross things are in disguise…Now where the heck are we? I'm so hungry I could eat a horse with a side of ponies.”

The Boogeypeople dragged the terrified toddlers to a large room with glass walls on the edge of the foul playground. Above the sliding glass door was a rusty sign caked with peeling lead paint:
KINDERSCARE
:
WHERE LITTLE KIDS GET BIG NIGHTMARES
. Inside there was a haggard teacher, with claw marks on her face and a few jagged bites taken out of her midsection, putting several weeping tykes down for their naps in coffins made of gingerbread. The teacher limped to the door and flipped over a sign that read:
BEWARE
:
KID NAPPING IN PROGRESS
.

Marlo stared at the sign while rubbing her chin. Milton tugged on her singed velvet skirt.

“Look, over here.”

Milton led his sister to an illuminated map beyond the KinderScare facility and the Unwelcome Area, just inside the Gates of Heck.

“Hmmm…” Marlo muttered as she traced her finger from the blinking red You Are Here dot on the map to the cafeterium, an oval blob that connected to a room labeled “Disorientation Center.” “That's weird,” she continued. “Everything below the Disorientation Center is grayed out.” Indeed, the semicircle—half of the subterranean campus of Limbo—was “censored” with an obnoxious little label plastered over the gray: “Wouldn't You Like to Know?!”

Behind the KinderScare facility was the infirmary and, just beyond, a bright square indicating Bea “Elsa” Bubb's office. Behind it was a long rectangle marked “Principal Bubb's Secret Lair.”

Marlo straightened suddenly. “I've got an idea.”

Milton's phantom stomach stopped, dropped, and rolled. “Don't you think that maybe you've had enough brilliant ideas for one day?” Milton posed as tactfully as possible. “Perhaps we should just relax and, you know, assess our situation. How about that?”

“What?” Marlo glowered, her china doll–like face creased with a sour look of someone at least three times her age. “You don't think I can get us out of here? That just because I'm not a little book maggot like you, I don't have the smarts to plot an escape? Me, who managed to steal the entire window display at Dullard's not once but
five
times without being caught?”

Milton sighed. He was doomed.

“Didn't one of your great ideas put us here in the first place?” he asked.

Marlo looked over her shoulder toward the KinderScare facility.

“Like I could have known a marshmallow bear would pack that much explosive power. There should really be a law against—”

“Against shoplifting and fooling your little brother into becoming an accessory?” Milton interjected.

Marlo leaned down to Milton and pinched his cheek. Then she smoothed out her dress and placed her hand between his shoulder blades, where Milton more than likely would have sprouted wings some day if his sister hadn't screwed up his life everlasting.

“Really, it's a good plan,” Marlo stated with conviction. “Besides, if it doesn't work, what are they going to do, extra-double-with-chocolate-jimmies-sprinkled-on-top punish us?”

They made their way toward KinderScare and peered through a window made blurry with filthy handprints and goopy snot smears. Rows of fussy porcelain knickknacks and potpourri bowls sat on mantelpieces lining the peeling walls—walls that were covered with patches of mildew.

Most of the toddlers were pretending to be asleep in their frosted gingerbread coffins. Some were clutching each other, screaming as Boogeypeople read them alternating selections from Edgar Allan Poe's “The Tell-Tale Heart” and Danielle Steel's
Toxic Bachelors.
A small group of sickly preschoolers with dark circles under their eyes trembled in a corner, trying to kick their addiction to phonics.

“Remember,” Marlo said, glancing over her shoulder as she approached the KinderScare facility, “follow my lead.”

Milton could only imagine where that lead would lead to.

Marlo burst into the room. The Boogeypeople on duty looked at the door, like owls at the sight of a scurrying rodent.

Marlo noticed a sullen child with a mop of matted black hair. The eyes were wrong, she thought, but it would have to do.

“My precious baby!” Marlo squealed hysterically as she rushed toward the child. “Your loving mother is here to right the terrible wrong that has been done to us!”

She scooped the wriggling child into her arms.

“You not my mama,” the child protested in a grating whine that even a
real
mother would have had trouble loving.

Marlo covered the little brat's mouth and squeezed the child tightly to her chest while Milton hovered in the doorway.

“There, there, my little miracle,” she cooed as the child—who smelled like cooked cabbage—struggled in her arms. “It's all right to be confused. No child should have to go through what you went through, my sweet bundle of angel giggles.”

The Boogeyperson in charge took off its shaggy green head, exposing the wretched beast within. Children screamed and backed away desperately.

“What is going on here?” the reptilian demon hissed.

Marlo held up her head defiantly. “I am here for my baby. Nothing can come between a mother and her son—”

“Daughter,” the creature countered. Behind the creature, a small sandy-haired boy sidled toward a locked chest.

“Whatever,” Marlo continued. “I'm highly distraught. The point is that family ties can never be severed.”

Milton, still in the doorway, silently wished that they could at least be stretched.

The Boogeyperson scrutinized Marlo. Without even turning its disgusting head, it swatted the sandy-haired boy away from the chest.

“I told you, Julius,” the creature said, “you cannot have your things. They are only there in the chest to torment you.”

“B-b-b-ut,” the boy stuttered with flecks of spittle on his cracked lips, his eyes wild, “m-m-my flash cards…m-m-my…
phonics…
”

“Go play Duck, Duck, Noose with the other children,” the Boogeyperson said, never taking its hot, beady eyes off Marlo. “Aren't you a little young to be someone's mother?”

Marlo looked back at Milton expectantly. He drew a weary breath and shambled into KinderScare.

“Um,” stammered Milton, “she—my sister—is rather old for her age. She comes from a broken home and has made a lot of really stupid decisions in her life.
Incredibly stupid.
I mean, it's surprising to think a human brain was actually involved in some of the idiotic things—”

“Thank you, dear brother,” Marlo said with a cold glare. “I think the Boogeyman gets the point.”

“Boogey
person
!” the creature spat.

“Ou smell funny,” the fidgety child mumbled from behind Marlo's hand. “Like a s'more.”

“You're so cute I could just squeeze the life out of you,” Marlo said.

Another Boogeyperson joined its supervisor, removing its head to a second chorus of young shrieks.

“So how did your ‘bundle of angel giggles' get here, anyhow?” the demonic day-care worker asked skeptically.

Marlo smoothed down the child's hair as it tried to swat her hand away. “Um…running around a swimming pool…on a full stomach…with scissors.”

Marlo cradled the squirming child in her arms and slowly backed away toward the front door.

“And, after drowning my sorrows with a fistful of Pop Rocks and a pint of extra-fizzy ginger ale, I ended up here, on a rescue mission to save my baby.”

Marlo trotted quickly out the door, straight to the Gates of Heck, with Milton and the Boogeypeople close behind.

“Put me down, koo-koo pants!” the child whined like a dentist's drill.

Soon the foul playground was full of children, demons, and Boogeypeople alike, all gawking at Marlo as she raised the twisting tot above her head.

“Attention, freaky creatures of Heck!” Marlo bellowed. The growing throng of agitated onlookers pressed Milton close to his sister. “Open this gate so me and my son—”

“Daughter!” yelled several Boogeypeople.

“Whatever! Open this gate now or else I will be forced to do something…something really bad. Something only a grief-crazed mother would do…”

The demons pressed closer. The surrounding mob and the queasy feeling in Milton's stomach gave him a profound sense of déjà vu, as if he were right back up at the mall. But could you really have déjà vu for something that had only just happened?

Marlo's eyes grew wide. “Help me out here,” she murmured from the corner of her mouth.

“I will if you admit you have a knack for hatching really stupid plans…”

“Sure…”

“…and I'm complimenting you by even considering them ‘plans'…”

“All right already!”

Milton swallowed and stepped forward.

“Demons, caregivers, despondent children…I beseech thee. Do not judge my emotionally unstable sister by her actions. Judge her instead by the savage injustice of her situation.”

The agitated horde of demons calmed somewhat.

“Imagine, if you will, that the one thing that meant anything to you at all was suddenly taken from you in a senseless tragedy. Imagine the lengths you would go to retrieve that which was stolen from you.”

A Boogeyperson wiped a tear from its eye.

“So please,” Milton said with a dramatic sweep of his arms. “Let us go free before a tortured mother is forced to do the unspeakable…hurt the very thing she loves the most in this and all worlds.”

Unbeknownst to the Fausters, a fuzzy white head poked out of Milton's backpack. Lucky sniffed yet another outraged mob and had his own furry bout of déjà vu. He bared his teeth.

The crowd backed away a step. Milton and Marlo gaped at each other.

“Wow, runt,” Marlo whispered. “You certainly have a way with words. I should have exploited that more fully when we were alive.”

Just then a bell tolled, and the Gates of Heck slowly creaked open. Puffs of smoke gusted into the Unwelcome Area. The child in Marlo's arms took the opportunity to bite her captor's hand, struggle to the floor, and wriggle away.

“Oww!” Marlo yelped, clutching her torn lace sleeve. “You ungrateful little son of a—!”