My first impression of Gravejaw House was that I had somehow fallen out of Hell and landed smack dab in the middle of Shoreline Park, the abandoned and thoroughly dilapidated amusement park back home in San Judas. The commissar’s fortress, rising like a bizarre tumor from the crest of the hill, looked less like a castle than a pile of giant toy blocks left behind by some bored and colossal infant. It was hard to tell under the red lantern-light of Hell, but the leaning walls and the bottoms of the crooked towers seemed to be painted in broad multicolored stripes and whorls and other odd patterns. The entrance road wound through vast, chaotic gardens, which seemed to consist mostly of partially skeletonized corpses planted waist-deep in dry, stony ground, tangled in vines and prickling thorns so that it was hard to tell where the foliage left off and the muscle fibers and slickly gleaming nerves began. When I saw one of them twitch and its ragged mouth form a soundless cry for help, I was reminded that nothing in Hell really dies.
“Ah,” said Niloch, watching my face. “Do you like it? It is so hard in these rustic areas to know what to do with servants when they become too decrepit to work. I could have sold them for scrap, but I wouldn’t have got much. This way they continue to serve.”
“Wonderful,” I said, which was as much as I could manage without throwing up. The worst part was that all the shrub people struggled to turn as we passed, trying to catch the commissar’s attention, their mouths gaping and eyes (where eyes still remained) bulging as they struggled to make their ruined bodies plead for them. Not that Niloch would have cared.
“Did you see this one?” he asked. “My old butler.” He pointed to a thing I wouldn’t have noticed, since it was one of the few ornaments not moving. There was only the barest hint of a face and limbs. “He dropped an entire jeroboam of maiden’s tears.” The shrub was bent beneath the weight of a stone dish the size of a truck tire. “I told him when he catches enough to make up for what he spilled, I’ll put him back to work.” The unlikely chance of any maidens happening by and crying into that huge stone bowl, let alone enough of them to fill it, seemed to make Niloch very cheerful. As I went past I saw that I had been wrong, and the shrub was moving, trembling so slightly beneath the great weight of stone that there might have been a breeze, but no breeze was blowing.
We reached the front gate, a pair of crude demon-statues with a length of iron grille between them, which swung open at our approach. Beyond it lay a couple dozen yards of curious, bumpy pathway and then the big, black door.
“Are you barefoot?” Niloch asked me. Several of his servants had come spilling out the gate, scurrying out on either side of the path to help the commissar dismount from his strange insectoid horse. “Of course you are, your enemies have taken your clothes. But that is good, good! The house needs to know where you’ve been so it can prepare the proper hospitality.” He pointed one of his strange, bony fingers, and the spiraling horns on his arm rattled a little. “Go on, friend Snakestaff, walk forward. On the path.”
I did. It was gray as old meat, and it felt like it as well, spongy and giving beneath my soles. I didn’t like it much, but it wasn’t the worst feeling in the world, at least not until I was halfway, at which point I felt the bottoms of my feet getting moist. Within a few more steps I was sloshing ankle deep in fluid. The path seemed almost to cling to my feet each time I put them down. The whole thing reminded me of something but I couldn’t quite figure out what, until just before I stepped off onto the front porch.
A tongue. I was walking on a huge tongue. I all but leaped from the end in my hurry to get off it. When I turned back I could see the furrow down the middle, the little bumps that had allowed it to taste me, the shine of the saliva that was even now draining back into the coarse pores. It was all I could do to stay upright.
Niloch’s slaves had taken off his boots, and as he walked up the path behind me, his cloud of horny extensions shaking gently around him, he muttered little endearments at the thing: “Oh, yes, my hungry beauty. Ah, you like that? Goodness, you do! I trod on that one—it squealed like a puppy. Is it sweet? Yes, between my toes.”
I turned away. The toes in question were like armor-plated worms wriggling against the soft, gray flesh of the tongue, and Niloch kept stopping to let the path enjoy them. No sane person should have to see that.
Niloch gestured for me to go inside. It was too late to run, so I stepped forward. The entry hall was a chaos of monstrous angles and pools of shadow. Things scuttled past that I didn’t want to look at too closely.
“Why so dark?” Niloch asked, with just a hint of impending mayhem, and several slaves, small creatures like burned apes, leaped forward to begin spinning wheels set into the wall. Translucent spheres mounted on the wall began to glow, driving many of the smallest crawlers back into hiding.
“What do you think?” the commissar asked. Slaves were removing his armor. I turned away, not eager to see more of Niloch’s horrible form. “My lanterns are as good as anything in the Red City, you must admit. There is a gas that seeps from beneath this hill that feeds flame. It is why I made my home here. Long after the last lamp is extinguished, lights blaze in Gravejaw House. They can be seen for miles and miles!”
His slaves stepped away. Niloch now wore something like a camel’s saddle blanket, a shapeless black thing that could have been a housedress, covered with splotches that might have been a pattern or just Niloch’s breakfast mess, the whole thing stretched over his protrusions like a very ugly parade float waiting to be unveiled.
“Now come, my dearest,” he said. “You will dine with me, charming Snakestaff, oh, most certainly. After the poor fare of a slave ship you will be pleased to see what my kitchen can provide!”
I was ushered into a long, low hall. The huge table was solid stone pitted with holes that I only realized later were actually drains. A pair of battered-looking slaves hurried me to my seat, little more than a stone lump beside the table. Niloch had a more elaborate chair, a kind of trestle under a canopy of wrought-iron antlers that duplicated the curls of horn hidden by his caftan. Strange creatures clung to the wall, things like inside-out lizards and globby things as shapeless as amoebas. Some were servants, as it turned out, and some were on the dinner menu, but they all came when Niloch called.
With help from his slaves, the commissar clambered up onto the trestle and bestrode it like a saddle, so that he was a good twice my height. He seemed to enjoy that, his sideways jaws positively clacking with good cheer. “Ah, yes,” he called, “so good to be home! And now, feed us! Bring us out all the finest delicacies! Your master is back and we have a guest!”
I won’t tell you much about the meal. You’re welcome. Everything was still alive, and I wouldn’t have eaten any of them by choice even if they weren’t. As it was, though, I had to smile and pretend to enjoy the feeling of scrabbly little legs in my mouth, or the whimpers of something that didn’t enjoy being chewed. Dessert? Dessert was alive too, even after it had been doused in something and lit on fire. Niloch insisted I try it before it stopped shrieking.
The only thing that saved me was the demon body I was wearing, which apparently had literally more stomach for this sort of thing than I did. I managed to get a few things down but knew I would spend the rest of my life, however short, trying to forget this meal.
“Now, my good fellow,” Niloch said when the last plate of quivering ruin had been cleared away, “you must tell me of your travels after this unfortunate kidnapping.” He gestured for the nearest slave to pour something lumpy as gravy into my cup. “You must have seen some wonderful sights in Abaddon. Did you visit the Fountain of Pus? Travelers come from many levels above and below just to see it! Lovely!”