Now was the first time he contemplated exactly what he had done. It was a deep contemplation. After a lifetime of SERVING God with my whole heart, I’ve now ABANDONED him . . .
He felt a state of exuberance well up from the core of his being with such power that he thought his eyes must surely be alight.
“Yeah, I’m takin’ the bus to the John’s Pass Bridge to sleep,” Forbes jabbered some more. He reached into his horrific mouth with two fingers and pulled out a rotten tooth.
“What’s that, Forbes? The bridge?”
“Yeah, it ain’t bad, ya just gotta be careful of the fire ants. But there’s no way I’m sleepin’ in the deaconess’s church no more.”
“Yes, I remember you telling me. Bad dreams.”
“But I sure miss her.” His flinty brow furrowed. “Somethin’ happened to her, somethin’ fucked her up.” Now Forbes looked beseeching. “You seen her tonight?”
Hudson stared down at him. “Do you really want to know, Forbes?”
“Well . . . sure. You seen her?”
“Yes. About ten minutes ago—or, more than likely, six minutes ago—I saw her commit suicide in a house across the street—the Larken House.”
Forbes’s pose stiffened. “No way, man!”
“I’m afraid so. She killed herself as a means of executing a contract I had just signed.”
“Fuck! A contract?”
“I sold my soul to the Devil tonight, Forbes. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”
“Shit yeah, man! The Devil? Really?”
“Yes,” Hudson calmly stated. “The Devil. I’m protected by the Devil. I am now a disciple of the Devil.”
“Aw, you’re full’a shit,” Then—
SCHULP
Hudson never saw the knife in Forbes’s mangy hand, until that same hand was already pulling it out of Hudson’s lower abdomen.
Holy—You gotta be—
Shock—and also outrage—made Hudson’s face feel twice its size. Blood like hot soup poured through his fingers; he also smelled his own waste as the knife had clearly punctured intestines. He began to convulse as he slumped to the other corner of the shelter.
“Fuckin’ people always tellin’ me bullshit ’cos they just think I’m a retarded bum, man,” Forbes complained. “Well, fuck them and fuck you.”
“Forbes,” Hudson croaked. “Call an ambu—”
“Here’s your fuckin’ protection, fucker.” The bum stuck the knife in again, several more times.
What Hudson felt more than the pain was simply outrage.
“I could use some new clothes, ya shit,” Forbes said, but he just stared and stared when he opened one of the suitcases. He scratched his beard, begetting dandruff. Then:
“What a fuckin’ great day!” He slapped the case closed. “Thank you, God!”
Hudson watched through hemorrhaged eyes as Forbes grabbed the suitcases and ambled away in the dark.
What a rip-off . . .
Each time Hudson coughed, blood sprayed into the air and more innards uncoiled in his hands. He died exactly six minutes later.
(V)
What stepped out of the lake next was a man in a leather strap-skirt studded with brass plates. He wore shin guards, a fat buckled belt, and one arm was covered with metal bands that reminded Dorris however obliquely of a Roman gladiator. He even held a sword, and as he strode up to her, dripping, muscles tensing, she noticed first that the skin of his chest existed as faces stitched together, while his own face . . .
God Almighty . . .
Dorris saw that the severed faces of babies had been grafted onto the man’s own face as effectively as patches stitched onto a shirt.
Dorris stared at the impossible man.
The tip of the sword touched her throat. His voice sounded sonorous and grating like rocks clacking together. “What place is this? Answer me and you may be allowed to live . . .”
Tremoring, Dorris replied, “It’s-it’s . . . Lake Misquamicus . . .”
“This is . . . the Living World, then?”
“It’s-it’s—Fluff-Fluff-Florida . . .” The man must be an alien. “Florida, on the planet Earth.”
“God’s green Earth, then?”
Dorris drooled as she nodded. Her eyes had yet to blink.
“State your name, your function, and your origin.”
“My name is Dorris Markle. I ruh-ruh-run the bait shop and boat rentals, and I’m from Ocala, Florida . . .”
The grafted face surveyed her. This man—or this semiman—had muscles bugling over more muscles, and when they moved, the severed faces stitched over them seemed to sigh.
The sword point lowered, and the stony voice gurgled, “My name is Conscript First Class Favius, formerly of the Third Augustan Legion and currently of Grand Duke Cyamal’s Exalted Security Brigade. I am from Hell.”
He turned to the three nine-foot-tall clay men, pointed his sword, and barked, “Golems of Rampart South! Single file, follow me.” And then they walked away and disappeared into the woods.
Dorris, in a trance of revulsion and disbelief, stared after them for several minutes. When things began to howl from the atrocious scarlet water, Dorris snapped, and ran and ran and ran.
EPILOGUE
Was it a dream?
You hear a THUNK! as in the sound of a cleaver striking a cutting board, and then comes the impression of rising—up a circular staircase?—and you hear footsteps. Then—open air.
Finally your eyelids prize apart.
“ ‘Let not thy hand be stretched out to receive, and shut when thou shouldest pay,’ ” comes a high-pitched, New England accent.
Your vision re-forms and then you know that—
This is no dream.
You are back at the Privilato castle, and the first thing you see is the grand courtyard and inner wards.
It’s Howard who looks back at you; he seems elated, but there’s also a tinge of scorn in his eyes. “It’s a line from the Bible,” his voice piped, “which I foolhardily never believed in. The Book of Ecclesiasticus, parablizing the sin of greed. I’d have been wiser to have heeded that book, rather than in obsessing over the creation of my own.”
“You promised me I’d die when I’m sixty-six! You promised me supernatural protection!” you wail at him.
“I, personally, forged no such promise, Mr. Hudson. It was, instead—as you’re well aware—Lucifer’s promise.”
“I sold my soul for a price!” you scream.
“Consider the author of the terms,” Howard lamented. “It’s so very regrettable: that resonant and universal power known as avarice. You were a very, very easy victim, Mr. Hudson. But, honestly! Why do you think they call him the Lord of Lies, the Great Deceiver?”
“This is bullshit!” But then only now do you realize something crucial, because when you try to look around, your head will not obey the commands of your brain. “What-what—”
“—happened to you?” Howard finishes. “It’s elementary. You died, you went to Hell, and immediately upon the commencement of your eternal Damnation, you were decapitated.” Howard, then, holds up a mirror that reflects back your severed head, which has been neatly propped upright within a stone sconce. “And, as you have hopefully cogitated, we are back at the Chatêau-Gaillard—”
“My castle!” you spit in outrage, “where I’m supposed to spend eternity living in luxury as a Privilato! But I can’t be a Privilato with my fuckin’ HEAD cut off!”