Authors: Edward Lee
“Monsters?”
“Yeah, man. Like, just skin-covered bones and horns in their heads. Had teeth like nails made of glass. They hadda bunch of candles burnin’ in a circle and layin’ inside the circle was Deaconess Wilson with no clothes on, man.” Now Forbes looked sickened in the recollection. “They started writin’ on her, man. They’re
writin
’ on her, with
shit
, but it wasn’t just any ole shit—it was
Satan’s
shit. Somehow I knew that in the dream.”
Hudson was getting unnerved. He didn’t believe in shared delusions or shared nightmares. But . . .
Forbes started toward the front door, but kept talking. “And last night, shit. I dreamed I seen the deaconess walkin’ around here buck naked with her big tits and bush stickin’ out, but ya know what she was carryin’?”
“Whuh-what?” Hudson grated.
“A coffin, man.” He kept walking, his voice echoic in the nave. “But it was a
little
coffin. Like a
baby’s
. So, shit on that, ya know? I ain’t sleepin’ here no more ’cos this place gives me fucked-up dreams.” Rotten sneakers scuffed as the bum pushed open the front door and left.
Jesus
, Hudson thought in the fading light.
He had every intention of following the man out, but for some reason his steps took him not toward the door but to
the left, along the sides of the pews. He shined his flashlight beneath one, caught a breath in his chest, then knelt.
A shovel had been stashed there. Hudson fingered the earth on the blade and found it—
Fresh
. . .
There was also a pair of work gloves on the floor that appeared soiled but recently purchased.
What the hell is this?
Stashed under the last pew in the farthest corner was a coffin.
A
little
coffin. Like a baby’s.
The sun had sunk quickly, like something trying to escape. Hudson looked up and down the street to find it oddly vacant. The drab housefront peered back at him as if with disdain.
The Larken House
, he thought.
A MURDER house
.
Of course, Hudson didn’t believe that a
house
could influence people by the things that had happened in it.
A HOUSE can’t have power
. . . But maybe
belief
was the power. Could a person’s
conception
of terrible events create the influence?
Hudson wasn’t sure why he would even consider such a thing. It simply occurred to him.
He traversed the weed-cracked front path, surprised by his boldness, and opened the screen door.
No way the door’s unlocked
, he predicted. That would be senseless.
The oddest door knocker faced him. It had been mounted on the old door’s center stile, an oval of tarnished bronze depicting a morose half-formed face. Just two eyes, no mouth, no other features. The notion made Hudson shiver:
I knock on the door and Larken answers
. . .
“Here goes,” he muttered, then thought a tiny prayer,
God, protect me
. He grabbed the knob and turned it.
The door opened.
An unqualified odor assailed him when he entered. Not
garbage or excrement or urine but just something faintly . . .
foul
. Hudson snapped on his flashlight, panned it around the empty living room. His stomach sunk when he discerned brown footprints tracked over the threadbare carpet.
Old blood
, he reasoned.
From the murder night
. The compulsion to leave couldn’t have been more pronounced but,
I have to stay
, he ordered himself.
I have to find out what this is all about
. He followed the footprints to a begrimed kitchen and was sickened worse when he saw great brown shapes of more dried blood all over the linoleum floor. The footprints proceeded to the microwave.
Larken must’ve killed his wife and the baby in here
. He eyed the kitchen table and gulped. In the corner stood a chair directly under a water pipe.
And that’s where he hanged himself
. . .
Then Hudson froze at a sound: a quick
snap
!
A cigarette lighter?
That’s what it reminded him of. His heart hammered. This was crazy and he knew it. An abandoned house in
this
neighborhood?
Vagrants, addicts, or gang members
. . .
Yet he didn’t leave.
He turned the flashlight off and walked down a shabby side-hall toward the sound. He paused and, sure enough, in a dark bedroom he detected what could only be the flicker of a cigarette lighter. In addition, he heard an accompanying sound, like someone inhaling with desperation.
I could be killed
. . .
so why don’t I leave?
Hudson had no answer to this logical question, save for,
God will protect me. He HAS to
. When he took a step forward, the floor creaked.
His heart nearly stopped when a woman’s voice shot out of the dark. “Oh, good, you’re back. I’m in here.” Then the lighter flicked again but this time to light a candle.
In the bloom of light, Hudson couldn’t believe his eyes.
A woman sat on a mattressless box spring, holding a crack pipe. A white woman, with dark lank hair, wearing
a bikini top and cutoff shorts. The hostile face glared at him.
“Shit, you’re not her,” she complained. “Who the . . .” But then she squinted. “Wait a minute, I remember you . . .”
Indeed, and Hudson remembered her. It was the pregnant prostitute he’d seen in the Qwik-Mart last night. It didn’t take him long to realize why she looked different.
She was no longer pregnant.
“Yes,” Hudson droned. “At the store. And I see that you’ve had your baby.”
She maintained her glare. The huge breasts hung satcheled in the faded top. Her exposed midriff below the top looked corrugated now, rowed. All she said was, “What the fuck are
you
doing here? Are you with that woman?”
That woman
, Hudson’s brain ticked. “Do you mean . . . a blonde woman in a black gown? A white collar?”
The prostitute idly fingered groovelike stretch marks on her belly. “Yeah, like what a fuckin’ priest wears, but it’s a chick, not a guy.” Then she calmly lit the pipe, inhaled deeply, then collapsed against the wall. Her expression turned to a mask of oblivion.
“What is this woman to you? Deaconess Wilson?” Hudson actually raised his voice.
The prostitute slipped up the stuffed bikini top to cover a great half circle of nipple. “She paid me six fuckin’ hundred bucks, that’s what.”
Hudson was dismayed.
And I got 6,000
. “So, you’ve won the Senary as well?”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. All I know is what I’m supposed to do.”
“And what was that? What
did
you do for the six hundred?”
She shrugged. “Dug up a grave. Think I give a shit?”
Hudson stared in the flickering light, thinking of the article. “Was it . . . a child’s grave?”
“Yeah, man. A baby’s. She said the baby was murdered in this house, had its head cut off. Said she needed the head.”
Confusion circled round Hudson like a feisty crow. “But . . . what happened to
your
baby? You were pregnant last night.”
“I popped the kid out behind the Qwik-Mart,” she said, pressing another piece of crack into the pipe. “Fuckin’ mess. I dropped it in one of those blue bins the recycling trucks pick up; then I split. Couple hours later, I met
her
.”
“And she—”
“Paid me six hundred bucks to dig up the grave.” She sucked off the pipe and chuckled. “Kind’a weird, you know? An hour after I dump my own baby, this chick pays me to dig up somebody
else’s
baby. Ain’t that a trip?”
“Yes,” Hudson uttered. “A trip . . .”
“She waited for me in her car. Didn’t even take as long as you’d think, and the coffin was tiny, barely weighed anything. They always say six feet under, right? But this was like two, three. So I put the coffin in the back of her car, and she drives me downtown . . . and gave me six hundred bucks. Said she’d give me another six hundred if I showed up tonight. Said she needed me, said she needed my milk.”
“Your
milk?
What on earth for?”
She shrugged again, and reloaded the pipe. “Said ’cos I was lactating. You think I care?” She held up a baggie full of pieces of crack. “I mean,
look
at all this rock, man. And when she lays another six hundred on me tonight? I won’t have to blow another guy for a month. Fuck, I hate it. Crack doesn’t leave a woman with any choice. You have to suck ten dirty dicks a day at least, just to keep up your jones. Think about that, buddy. Ten dicks a day. It’s like letting guys blow their nose in your mouth for money. Every time I see another dick in my face I wanna cut my throat but I know that if I do . . .” She jiggled the bag of crack. “I’ll never be able to get high again.”
Hudson frowned. “Deaconess Wilson told me I won a contest of some sort, and told me to meet her here. Where is she?”
“Right here,” answered a silhouette in the doorway.
Hudson grimaced from the shock. “God
damn!
Don’t sneak up on people like that!”
The female minister stepped forward into the candlelight. Her face appeared either blank or simply content and her blue eyes, which struck Hudson as dull yesterday, seemed narrow and keen now. She wore the same black surplice and white collar.
“How irregular for you to take God’s name in vain,” she said. “You of all people—one who yearns to be a priest.”
He had, hadn’t he? He
never
did that. “You scared the shit out of me,” he objected. “Now what’s all this about? And furthermore, what are
you
all about?”
She glanced at the prostitute, who was relighting her pipe.
“What I’m all about, Mr. Hudson,” the deaconess began, “is failure. You, on the other hand, are about success. I envy you—” Her voice hushed. “And I honor you.”
“That makes no sense. I should leave.”
“That is your prerogative, it has been all along. Didn’t I make it clear that you are under no obligation?”
“Yes, but—”
“And now you want answers. First, answers about me.”
“You got that right. A homeless guy living in your church had the same dream as me. I read an article in the paper about a baby’s grave dug up, and it turns out this girl over here is the one who did the digging. And a half hour ago I see the coffin stuck beneath the pews at
your
church.”
“It’s all part of the science—”
Hudson’s anger roiled. “The
science?
”
“You’ll understand more should you choose to proceed far enough to speak to the Trustee.”
Hudson opened his mouth to object further, paused, then decided not to.
Her eyes appeared as cool blue embers. “Do you choose to proceed?”
“Yes,” Hudson said.
“Then follow me.” The deaconess touched the prostitute’s shoulder. “Come along. You bring the candles.” Then she raised a plastic bag from which depended an object inside about the size of a softball. “I’ll bring the head.”
A hundred Pipe Fitters—mostly half-Demon, half-Human Hybrids—clustered down below about the Main Sub-Inlet.
What are they doing?
Favius wondered, looking down from his precipitous sentry post on the ramparts. This was the end of the stupendous Pipeway that, Favius knew now, started all the way across the Quarter in the harbor of Rot Port. The Conscript studied the end of the Pipeway’s Inlet, a great circular maw sixty-six feet wide. He marveled at the sheer
volume
of fluid that the Pipeway would be able to transfer. But still he thought,
Why? Why?
And what were the Technologists
doing
down there now? Teams of the Hybrids began scaling the Inlet’s outer rim via ladders made of cured intestines, while others remained in the basin as if in wait . . .
But in only minutes more prison wagons hauled by strange, mutant beasts crossed the basin itself and stopped.
Immediately, Favius thought,
Corpulites
. . .
From the bared wagons, dozens of unfortunate victims were extracted: naked Hybrids bred especially by the Hexegenic Factories. Naked, yes, and bald, blinded, and bulbously obese. The Corpulites were a particular Organic Materials invention—living beings whose deliberately corrupted gene mechanisms caused grievous obesity. Satchels of fat hung
from the arms, legs, bellies, and backs of captives. Horned Scythers were quickly dispatched, wielding great flensing blades, which expertly carved slabs of fat from the shrieking contingent. The blades glimmered, each downward flashing arc dividing still more fat from the living bodies of the Corpulites.
Now Favius’s question had been answered. The fat was then passed up to the Pipe Fitters scaling the Inlet and promptly used to grease the fitting seams.
An immense shadow crawled past the perimeter; Favius was not surprised to see Levitators moving in a huge Y-connector.
Magnificent
, he thought. The screams of the butchered Corpulites soared like a thick breeze as Scythers continued to slough off the necessary fat, and when the great seam had been sufficiently greased . . .
Incantations boomed from megaphones, retarding the Levitation Spell and hence lowering the Y-joint perfectly into place, after which the Pipe Fitters amassed to lock down the bolts with their spanners.
Favius understood now—the Y-joint split the direction of catastrophic inflow into dual directions, making dispersion more even and efficient.
When the Fitters were done, they disembarked from the site on Balloon Skiffs, onto their next assignment. The Corpulites, however, were not so lucky. Now bereft of all body fat, they were left to bellow and squirm on the Reservoir’s gritty black floor, knowing that eventually they would become one with whatever manner of filth soon filled this place to the brim.
Another great wonder on another day in Hell
, the Conscript thought.
And I am honored to be a tiny part of it, a tiny part in Lucifer’s plan
.