Fibble: The Fourth Circle of Heck (34 page)

“He was working with Vice Principal Barnum, apparently, trying to bring about the end of the world.”

“The end of the world?” Gabriel gasped. “Do I look like a cherub? I wasn’t reborn yesterday.…”

Marlo stepped up.

“No, it’s true … I had been hearing all of these crazy songs in Fibble through the PA,” Marlo blurted breathlessly. “These songs about the Apocalypse and how Satan or someone was plotting to trick mankind into thinking it was the end of the world and then shuttling everybody off to another planet—”

“Songs?” Gabriel said with a look of divine bafflement across his face.
“By who?”

“Some guy named the Truthador,” Marlo explained.

Just then, through the north fog wall in the distance, sped a pirate sloop on mag wheels, masts furled tight and a satellite dish lashed to the bow. Painted on the side of its varnished wood hull in red letters were the words:

THE TRUTH OR BUST!

The sloop rolled to a stop in front of Gabriel’s chariot. A rope ladder was cast out to the cracked mud ground by unseen hands. Then suddenly, popping out of the forehatch, was a slim, dark-haired angel with bright gray-green eyes and an electric harp slung across his chest.

“Sariel?”
Gabriel said, thunderstruck—an unusual reaction for him, as angels tend to spend the majority of their time
above
cloud cover.

Sariel, aka the Truthador, leapt off the sloop and onto the cracked mud plates of the Broken Promised Land. He swung his harp onto his back, stretched his wings, and popped his chewing gum.

Gabriel stepped up to the four-wheeled pirate ship.

“I thought you were … 
up there
?” the distinguished archangel said, pointing to the sky.

Sariel gazed past Gabriel at the splendid, silver showers of truth springing forth like hope eternal.

“Heavah cool,” he replied, with a pop of gum for punctuation. “Like Vegas, only more real … anyway,
nice to see you too
, Gabe. So, like, right after our last quarterly meeting of archangels—remember, when you and Uriel ducked out early?”

Gabriel gave a quick, nervous nod.

“Yes … go on …,” he replied evasively.

“So Michael called an emergency meeting, saying that Satan was up to no good … or down to
yes bad …
something like that. And that it was time for
drastic measures
, which meant working on an undercover assignment so secret we couldn’t even discuss it with the Big Guy Upstairs.…”

“Or me, apparently,” Gabriel interjected testily.

“Yeah, Michael said that you and Uriel were too close to
Him
, and it would compromise the operation.”

“But keeping something like this from the Big Guy Upstairs is, to put it lightly,
really bad—
”

“That’s what Michael said … but he also said it was for the greater good.…”

Michael
, Milton thought.
There’s that name again. The angel from Revelation
.

“Michael said, Michael said,”
Gabriel replied with a nettled shiver of his wings. “Did
you
and the other archangels have anything to say about all of this?!”

Sariel uncapped a water bottle tucked into a holster on his side.

“Well,” he said hesitantly, pausing to take a swig of water, “you know how righteously persistent Michael can be.”

Gabriel smoothed back a wayward tuft of silver hair.

“Yes, indeed I do … but what else would we expect from someone whose name, in Hebrew, means ‘who is like God’? So near-perfect in his near-perfection.”

Near-perfection
. The phrase clung to Milton’s mind like Velcro as the crowd of bedraggled, displaced teachers and students converged around him.

“So the other archangels and I were sent to the far corners of creation to keep our heavenly peepers open for … 
something,
” Sariel continued. “We just weren’t sure
what
. And, as I wandered the dreary Wastelands, I, like, realized I totally couldn’t contact anyone on my halo,” he added, pointing to the dim bronze ring atop his head. “Luckily that’s when I hooked up with
me mates
.…”

Two pirates poked their scarred, matted heads out from the sloop hatch to listen.

“The broadcasting buccaneers of ARGH—Ahoy Rogues, Guerillas, and Hearties!—radio,” Sariel explained with a grin. “They’d been picking up all sorts of odd transmissions on freaky transdimensional frequencies about some shady surreal estate deal. After sifting through the intel, all grubby fingers pointed to some powerful creature, most likely Satan, selling out the human race. But, disconnected from my heavenly counterparts, and bound by the ANGEL Act—”

“Angelic Nonintervention with the Galaxy’s Evolving Lifeforms,” Gabriel interjected.

“I thought, while I can’t just blunder into this with shaky accusations, I
could
subtly influence things—let the corruption take its course while cryptically commenting on it through song—hoping that someone embedded in the underworld would take action and expose this plot. And, since I was in the area, I thought I’d aim my whole Truthador shtick at Heck. In particular …”

Sariel leveled his blue-green gaze at Marlo.

“Milton Fauster.”

“Me?” Milton chirped, before remembering whose body he was currently in. “I mean … my geeky brother?”

Gabriel swallowed nervously as his deep brown eyes quickly darted to Marlo—now Milton.

“What do you know of Milton Fauster and why he’s here?!” the refined angel exclaimed, unsettled.

Sariel shrugged.

“Chill, Gaby baby. Simply that he’s different. Not defined by the label of who he
supposedly
is. Not like the other kids down here. Plus, after what he did in Limbo, I thought maybe he’d be smart enough to figure out what was going on—”

Milton and Marlo clutched onto each other through a shared, sideways glance.

“—and do something about it from the inside,” Sariel continued. “And apparently I was right. Though—wow—I never thought the kid would hook up with the Phantoms of the Dispossessed and wash away the
wickedness with truth, or join forces with his sis. I thought she was too far gone down the River Styx, according to my intel.”

Marlo smiled sadly.

“Me too,” she said softly.

Gabriel rubbed his chin in contemplation.

“This is all very interesting, Sariel,” the archangel said, “but what I’m concerned about is this surreal estate deal: selling the Earth to … 
aliens
?”

“Yeah,” the young—scarcely older than twenty-one millennia—angel replied. “Even though it seems like the Fauster kids helped to prevent a phony Armageddon up on the Surface, we still might have shiploads of ETs coming, expecting to move in. And they won’t be too happy with all the humans squatting in their new home—”

“Squatters,” Milton muttered. “Squatter’s rights … 
adverse possession
.”

Gabriel absentmindedly polished the triangular G.O.D. badge pinned to his lapel.

“What was that, young lady?” the archangel inquired.

“Something I keep hearing about … squatter’s rights and adverse possession …”

Gabriel rubbed his temples, keeping his heavenly headache at bay.

“I’m afraid I have no clue what you’re on about—”

“It’s a HECKUVA problem,” Principal Bubb interjected, unthinkingly thinking aloud.

“It certainly
is
, Principal Bubb,” Gabriel replied with irritation. “Now if you don’t mind, we need to figure out a way to solve this mess—”

“No,
HECKUVA,
” she clarified. “The elements of adverse possession: Hostile, Exclusive, Continuous, Known, Uninterrupted, Visible, and Actual. “See, the
H
stands for ‘hostile,’ as in trespassing. The
E
is for—”

“Excellent!” Gabriel exclaimed. “I see what you’re getting at—”

“It actually stands for ‘Exclusive,’ ” the Principal of Darkness muttered.

“You’re saying that a squatter—or the human race, in this case—can acquire title by remaining on the property,” Gabriel said. “
The Earth
. Which is exactly what they’ve done for more than twenty centuries, making the planet legally
theirs!”

Gabriel patted Bea “Elsa” Bubb on the small hump on her back, before abruptly removing his hand with thinly veiled disgust.

“I must go to the Surface, immediately, and broker a meeting with these aliens when they land!” the archangel pronounced as he discreetly wiped his hand off on his luminous white suit. “I never thought, Principal Bubb, that the key to thwarting an evil plot would be found in your despicable claws. No offense.”

“None taken,” the principal replied, baffled at the sudden rush of events.

“And, considering that Satan is obviously behind this,
there might be an … opportunity for you,” Gabriel said as he hopped onto the hood of his Plymouth Valiant.

“People and assorted creatures!” the archangel shouted to the crowd in his lilting British accent. “A transport will be along shortly to take you somewhere fitting.”

Jack wandered over to the archangel as the divine creature climbed off the hood and opened the door to his chariot.

“What about us?” the lanky leader of the PODs asked. “I mean,
neigho
pops on us being taken anywhere. We’ve been lampin’ to find somewhere fitting on our lonesomes for, like,
ages
.”

Gabriel furrowed his immaculate brow, not understanding Jack’s words but divining his meaning nonetheless.

“Your people,
the PODs
, are always searching for truth, is that right?” Gabriel posed.

Jack nodded.

“You got it, pops.”

Gabriel smiled and extended his arms and wings majestically to either side.

“Then I can think of no better place for you restless phantoms to rest than … 
right here
!” he said, his golden halo bobbing atop his impeccably trimmed, salt-and-pepper hair.

The Phantoms of the Dispossessed gazed at each other with shock and wonder.

“Solid!” Jack whooped. “This can be, like, our Margins! Where nomads and know-mads make their rightful home at the very edge of wrong, and puzzling jigsaw spirits become one glorious whole!”

Milton and Marlo went to join the throng of children and teachers milling about the edge of the immaculate sea of truth.

“Not so fast,” Principal Bubb growled as she seized each Fauster by the arm. “
We’ve
got some unfinished business.”

THE GROTESQUE HEADMISTRESS
of Heck dragged Milton and Marlo to her waiting stagecoach.

“You did it … you really did it!” Milton called out to Jack through his sister’s crooked grin as Principal Bubb’s claws pinched into his shoulders. “You made it to the Margins!”

Jack waved. “Stay cool, Popsicle!” he shouted. “Whatever you do, don’t get caught up in this scene, dig? It’s just a lot of dust and drag and means nothing in the end!”

Zane bobbed up from the teeming mass of children as the teachers led them away. Marlo elbowed her brother.

“Wave at him and smile my prettiest smile,”
she whispered.

Milton rolled his eyes, sighed, and waved at Zane,
beaming a feigned, toothy smile that—judging from Zane’s dimpled return grin—was convincingly warm, at least from a distance.

Principal Bubb threw the Fausters to the ground with a ferocious disdain. “Get those terrible children into the stagecoach!” she shrieked. The bat-faced demon guards prodded Milton and Marlo inside with their pitchsporks.

Breaking free of the other students, Colby brushed his stringy hair from his face and peered into the stagecoach.

“Wolf!” the boy cried, his trembling arm pointing.

Mr. Nixon pulled the boy back into the mob.

“Like anyone is going to believe you,”
the ex-president said, shaking his doughy head. Milton tumbled into the coach.

“Annubis?” he asked as he was prodded into his seat. “What are you doing here?”

Principal Bubb smiled as she, with great difficulty, hoisted her bulk into the stagecoach.

“How do you think I found my way here?” she sneered. “To the scene of your latest crime-against-all-that-is-indecent.”

Milton’s jaw dropped with the shock of betrayal.

“How
could
you?” he gasped.

Annubis shrugged his sleek shoulders.

“She would have found out sooner or later,” he explained.

Marlo scowled at the dog god.
“Bad doggie,”
she hissed.

Annubis, despite his regal bearing as an ancient demigod, still found himself cringing slightly at this deeply cutting canine rebuke.

“Don’t be too hard on him,” Principal Bubb said with a sneer. “Even though he led me to you, he’s still got a date with a rolled-up newspaper, for his unauthorized excursion to the Furafter.”

Annubis straightened his tunic and held his long, elegant nose up high with a dignified air.

“Speaking of newspaper,” he said as he pulled out the latest copy of
GYP
from underneath his belt, “I believe I have information regarding something you’ve lost …”

He held out the full-page
HAVE YOU SEEN ME?
ad at the back of the paper.