House Infernal by Edward Lee (32 page)

Venetia almost shrieked, the woman moved so fast.
Ann was suddenly squashing her against the wall, licking
her neck, and whispering. "Yeah? Yeah? And what about
desire?"

Venetia shuddered, afraid to the point that she was
petrified.

Ann kept her pinned against the wall with surprising
strength, her hands sliding up under Venetia's blouse to
knead her breasts through the bra.

"Stop!" Venetia gasped.

But the woman just licked her neck more intently. "You
tell me, you little tease-what kind of God would give His
flock desire and then demand that they repress it? Hmm?"

Venetia finally snapped out of the rigor and tried to
push the woman off, but when she did so, Ann's assault
only intensified.

"Hmm, honey? What kind of God does that?" Then she
licked right across Venetia's pressed lips, trying to force in
her tongue. Now Ann's fingers had pushed up the bra
cups. Venetia squealed when the intruding fingertips
damped down on her nipple and pinched.

Powerless, Venetia gagged, "Stop it or IT scream."

"No, you won't," and then Ann slipped one hand up
Venetia's skirt, then down her panties....

Venetia tried to scream but found her throat locked up.
She grabbed Ann's wrists and with all her strength,
fought to keep the marauding hands at bay.

"You're strong for a little girl." But the woman didn't
back off. "I'll make a deal with you, and remember that
lying is a sin." The drunken eyes bored into her. "You
look me in the eye and swear to God on High that you
don't want to fuck Dan. You tell me that you're not sexually attracted to him, tell me that you have absolutely no
lust for him and never have. You swear, bitch. You swear to
God. And if you do that, I'll go back to that fuckin' house
with you, and I'll put my habit and cross back on."

Venetia met the woman's glare ... and wilted. She
didn't say anything.

Ann backed away, rescued her cigarette from the sink.
"What the hell did you come in here for?"

Venetia wiped a tear from her eye. "I ... wanted to ask
you something. Mrs. Newlwyn said that the murders
aren't the only reason you and Diane left the prior
house."

A mocking laugh. "Mrs. Newlwyn, that big dyke? And
how do you like that horny nutball daughter of hers?"

Venetia's heart was still racing. "She said the place is
haunted. Is it?"

Ann blew another plume of smoke. "Gimme twenty
dollars and I'll tell you."

I should just leave, Venetia thought, but instead, she gave
the coarse woman a twenty-dollar bill.

"Yeah, Bo-Peep, it sure as shit is."

"And you've seen the ghost?"

For the first time, the drunken woman turned stolid.
"Yeah. Three times. Diane saw it too, and so has Mrs.
Newlwyn and her kid. On the stair-hall, in the atrium,
and sometimes outside."

"Who is it?"

Ann's eyes thinned. She cocked a hip. "You really want
to know, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Tessorio. Who did you think? He was really a Satanist,
did you know that? And I mean a real one." She leaned
closer. "He built that place for a reason, and it had nothing
to do with God. It's some kind of plan."

A plan? "What are you talking about?"

"That's what Whitewood told me, and I believe it. And I
can tell you this-he knew more than he was telling about
that place, and I'll bet whoever replaced him does, too."

Venetia tried to assess the remark but felt bewildered.

"I never really believed in ghosts until I took that assignment. But I do now." In stages, Ann McGowen's hard
veneer began to crack; her lower lip trembled. "It walks
around at night and poisons our dreams...."

Now Venetia felt pinned against the wall by something
intangible.

"And there's a voice.... You'll hear it."

Venetia gulped, then admitted, "I already have."

"It's Tessorio," Ann said, but now her resolve was
crumbling. "He tried to coerce us to go into the basement.
He wanted us to do something there. But now? He'll want
you to do it."

Venetia felt staggered. "I didn't know there was a basement...."

"There isn't." Then Ann McGowen banged out of the
restroom.

Night had fully fallen by the time they left the bar. Venetia tried to lighten the mood by jesting, "Gee, I can't wait
to never go there again."

Dan nodded. Instead of going back to the car, he insisted they sit down on the docks. "Trust me, you'll like
it ... the sound of the riggings slapping the mast posts."

They sat down on opposing benches off a short pier.
The sound was dreamy: the weird chime of all those sail
ropes striking the masts of the hundreds of boats in the
marina.

"It's hypnotic," she said.

"Yeah."

The big adrenaline rush from the bathroom had dissipated. She let a sea breeze sift her hair. "Shouldn't we be
getting back? Why did you want to sit here?"

"Atmosphere,' he said, and to Venetia's shock he produced a cigarette and lit it.

She gaped. "First you chug four beers in an hour, and
now ... you smoke?"

He flapped a dismissive hand, exhaling through a satisfied smile. "Relax, Mom. I smoke one a month. And we
were in there more than an hour."

"Not much more."

"A couple beers and one cigarette a month is a pretty
lame vice."

An excuse, she thought, but then realized she was being
judgmental again, which she guessed was as bad a sin.

He chuckled smoke, eyeing her. "But for the life of me, I
can't imagine what your vices are."

Venetia could think of no reply. She didn't tell him anything that Ann had done or said in the ladies' room, and
now that the edgy confrontation was over, she began to
manage the events of the night fairly well. Addiction, bad
luck, and bad environment are just more aspects of the real
world. It's just the Devil's way of trying to separate us from
God, she reasoned, hoping she really believed it. Some of
us succumb, some don't.

But she felt bad for Dan. "I'm sorry for your friends, especially Ann."

"Shit happens," he sputtered, looking at the cigarette
tip. "And they weren't really friends-I'd just see them
every now and then. The one I saw the most was Father
Whitewood."

The comment rekindled a snippet of the bathroom conversation. Whitewood. And what else had Ann said?

He knew more than he was telling about that place, and I'll
bet whoever replaced him does, too....

"How long has Father Driscoll worked for the New
Hampshire Diocese?" she asked.

Dan seemed more focused on smoking than anything
else. "Huh? Oh, not long. He's done a lot of different
things for the Church, all over the world."

"How does he ... seem to you?"

"Seem?"

Venetia wasn't sure what she was asking. "He strikes me
as keeping a lot to himself. Do you get that impression?"

"Of course, 'cos I know a little bit more about him than
most." Dan let a plume of smoke spew from his nostrils and
be carried away. "Driscoll has sort of a cryptic reputation"

"Why?"

'Because he took sequestered classes in Rome and
Avignon."

Venetia squinted at the response. "I've never heard of
'sequestered' lasses."

Did Dan smile in the dark? "It means they're secret,
stuff the Vatican doesn't want the world to know it's still
teaching."

Venetia studied the answer. In a sense he'd just corroborated her own query, hadn't he? Maybe Driscoll really is
hiding something.

A clatter resounded at the front of the pier; when she
looked she noticed a dock bum rummaging through a
garbage can.

"I guess we should be good Catholics and buy him a
sandwich."

But Dan had already stood up, and he seemed to look
astonished at the vagabond. "Wait ... here," he insisted.

What's he-To Venetia it seemed that Dan recognized
the bum.

She watched him stride down the pier. Now this is odd,
Venetia thought. She couldn't hear with any detail, but
Dan was talking to the raddled man, who stood stoopshouldered in a greasy black rain jacket and ratty sneakers. The jacket's hood was up, leaving only a shadowed
oval for a face.

When Dan handed over some money, Venetia thought
she heard the bum say, "God bless you, Dan. And be
safe."

Then the bum shambled off, bowed and limping.

"Let's get back to the prior house," Dan suggested
when he returned.

"You know that man," she said.

Dan spewed the last of his cigarette smoke and flicked
the butt. "Yeah, I sure do. Or I should say I used to know
him. He's not the same guy anymore."

"Who is it? Not a relative I hope."

"Nope." He dug out the keys and headed for the car.
"It's Father Russell Whitewood, the priest who ran the
prior house for the last twenty years."

Ruth noticed smoke rising from sewer grates along the
road-Spirochete Avenue-but when she looked closer
she also saw fingers wriggling in the gaps. Eww ...
"How much longer?"

"We're taking a shortcut," the priest told her, thundering ahead. "This is Satan Park."

"Oh, that sounds like a place I want to go," she complained.

"Don't be frightened by the name. Satan doesn't live
there anymore. He can't."

"Why not? He runs this whole fucked-up city, doesn't
he? You'd think he could live anywhere he wanted."

"Not here. It's an eyesore to him now. It reminds him of
his greatest humiliation." The priest glanced back at her.
"But with any luck, our mission will succeed ... and he'll
never be able to live it down."

Alexander's big, gnarly Ushers' feet splashed through
a pool of blood, some of which speckled Ruth's face.

"Hey!"

"Oh, sorry.,,

Ruth wiped the blood off on the sleeve of her pink Yuck
soo T-shirt. Fucker... "I thought we were going to this
restaurant so I can land a job and wait on this Aldezhor
dude."

"He's no dude, Ruth. He's a powerful Grand Duke, with
machination powers. But we're cutting through Satan's
Park because ... I want to show you something."

Ruth wasn't enthused. I'm sure it'll be fucked-up, like
everything else around here. She paused to look at a very
large ant on a tree-then she shrieked when she noted a
human face on the insect. When the face stuck its tongue
out at her, she swatted it with her flip-flop.

"Quit fooling around and listen." Alexander frowned
back at her.

Ruth wasn't sure but it seemed that just ahead, the scarlet sky wasn't quite as scarlet, and-

Is that ... fresh air I smell?

"Do you know what the theory of relativity is, Ruth?"

Her not very evolved intellect cogitated. "Oh, yeah,
some law that was discovered by that Einstein guy. He
was, like, the smartest guy in the world, but then he got
tired of being an egghead and opened a chain of sandwich shops with his brother."

Alexander groaned. "In a nutshell, Ruth, the theory of
relativity proves the existence of the propagation of space
and time: the only thing in the universe that can never
stop is the passage of time."

Ruth was scrutinizing her fingernails. "Do they have
nail polish in Hell?"

"Oh, for God's sake, Ruth. Listen. This is important. In
Hell, it's the opposite. Time is not a constant. What we
have in the Mephistopolis is the theory of irrelativity.
What this means is that in certain circumstances, things
that have already happened have not yet occurred."

"Gimme a break!" she yelled. "Why do you think I
dropped out in seventh grade?"

" I don't expect you to understand completely because
the theory is designed to not be understandable. But we
know enough about it now to use it to our advantage. It's just something I want you to think about while our journey continues."

Ruth guessed her period was on. "I'm sick of listening
to bullshit! And you know what? I'd say there's a really
good chance that I'm not going to spend a whole fuck of a
lot of time thinking about the fuckin' theory of irrelativity,
because shit that's already happened stays in the past!"

Alexander stopped and raised his brows at her. "Ruth,
that's great! You get it! I've already told you, everything is
opposite here. So how does that apply to what you just
said?"

Ruth whined; her brain hurt. "I don't know! Shit in the
future is already behind us?"

"Yes! Well, that is, some of it. You can never tell what
exactly-because time, in Hell, in inconstant. You're getting it!"

fuck this shit, man, she thought. I just want some fuckin'
nail polish 'cos my nails look like shit.

"And if time is no longer a reliable unit of measure, and
if everything is opposite here, explain that." The priest
pointed upward with a fat taloned finger.

Holy shit ...

Just moments ago, Ruth had noticed a lessening in the
sky's hue of crimson; now she shielded her eyes-against
sunlight in a modest but irrefutable aperture of blue sky.

"Sunlight! Like on earth!"

"Yes, Ruth. And if everything is opposite here ... how
can this be?"

Ruth's eyes sparkled at the glorious site. Real sunlight
was bathing her face. "I guess, I guess," she tried to answer, "uh, something got ... fucked-up?"

Alexander's fro"-Indicated his disapproval of her
choice of words, but he said, "That's good enough. Something happened here once that contaminated the constant
environment of the Mephistopolis, but remember that,
here, contamination means purification."

"So what happened?"

"Look down now..."

Ruth had been too busy looking at the circle of beauti ful blue sky that she hadn't even noticed what the impossible sunlight was shining on. Her eyes dragged down-

"The fuck is that?"

She was looking at a pile of rubble the size of the largest
pyramid in Egypt.

"It used to be Lucifer's home, the tallest skyscraper in
history. It was a 666-floor building called the Mephisto
Building."