That much is right. We are severely on the rocks. Kasabian squirreled away a few grand from a payoff I got from the Dark Eternal when I put down some pain--in--the--ass zombies. But we blew the last of that fixing up Max Overdrive so we could live here and reopen the store. The special video section is bringing in cash, but barely enough to pay for beer and utilities.
“Okay. Cash is a good incentive, but seriously, Hell is kind of off--limits for me right now.”
“What about Samael? Would he do it if you asked nice?”
“You think you’re going to bribe Samael with money? He’s a fucking angel. He doesn’t carry a lot of pocket change.”
Kasabian picks up the paper. Taps it on the counter to straighten the edges.
“Maybe Muninn would be happier to see you than you think. Hell isn’t looking too pretty right now.”
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing, that’s the problem. All the public--works projects, fixing the place up after you broke it . . .”
“That wasn’t my fault. Samael fucked it up when he was still Lucifer. I just let it get a little worse when I was running the place.”
“Whatever you say, man. Well, it’s all stopped. They’re not even pretending to put the place back together again.”
“That doesn’t sound like Muninn.”
“You so sure he’s still in charge?”
“I’d know if anything changed.”
“How?”
“I just would.”
“Okay, Cassandra, there’s something else. Did it rain much when you were down there?”
“No. I don’t remember it raining at all.”
“Well, it is now. Raining cats and dogs and little imps with pitchforks. I mean, there’s doomed. There’s screwed. And there’s monsoons--in--Hell fucked. And we’re at fucked o’clock.”
Suddenly I want a cigarette. I take out the Maledictions. I go to the back door and open it, blowing the smoke outside. Candy doesn’t like me stinking the place up with cigarettes that smell like a tire fire.
“I don’t get it. Could the Angra be doing it?”
“Who cares? It’s happening and whoever’s in charge down there can’t stop it. What makes you think I can?”
“You were the Devil,” says Kasabian.
It’s true. I got stuck with Lucifer’s job for three miserable months. And what do you know? I wasn’t good at being a bureaucrat or a diplomat. I fucked Hell up worse than it was when I got there, and barely made it out with my hide intact.
“You know God,” Kasabian says. “Get him off his backside. Or better yet, hide us in your magic room. You’ve always said that nothing can get in there. It’s the perfect fallout shelter.”
I puff the Malediction, cupping it in my hand so the rain doesn’t put it out.
“So your solution to the end of the universe is to hide for the next billion years in the Room of Thirteen Doors? A room with nothing in it and nowhere to go.”
“Okay. It doesn’t sound great when you say it like that. But we could fill it up with food and water and movies. Everything we need.”
“There’s no electric outlets in the Room, and more important, no toilets. Get the picture?”
Kasabian comes over to the door and sticks his fat face into the rain, looking up into the black sky like maybe if he stares long enough God will part the clouds and give him a thumbs--up.
“If we can’t hide, then fix this shit. My business is going to fall apart when -people realize they don’t need me to find their relatives because they’re going to be Downtown soon enough themselves.”
He wipes the rain off his face with his sleeve and heads to the back of the shop where his rooms are.
“If anyone wants me I’ll be having a Béla Tarr festival in my boudoir.”
“Bullshit. You don’t watch gloomy Hungarians when you’re depressed. You’ll be watching porn all night.”
He gives me the finger without turning around and closes the door to his Batcave. I head upstairs.
Yeah, we’re broke now, but it was money well spent. We got Max Overdrive up and running again, at least on a small scale. And we fixed the place up so it’s less like a crash pad for a crazy person and a dead man and more like a place where actual -people might live.
Kasabian has the ground floor, in three small rooms built behind the video racks. Candy and I have the upstairs. Three rooms like he has, with a little kitchen area. When we were building the place, all I insisted on was a bed with an extra--strong frame, the largest flat screen humanly possible, and a dishwasher. I would have been happy eating off paper plates with plastic forks for the rest of my life, but Candy said I should stop pretending that the world is a squat and that I’m just passing through. I’ve stuck around for almost a year, so maybe she’s right. After losing room ser-vice and our cushy life at the Chateau Marmont, there was nowhere else for us to go but Max Overdrive. I don’t think Candy ever lived anywhere very long before Doc Kinski took her in. She doesn’t talk about her life before that. If playing Ozzie and Harriet makes her happy, then it’s all right with me. But I’m still not folding fucking pillowcases. Good thing for everyone there’s a laundry down the block.
Why has she been moody and off her feed lately? Today wasn’t the first time she’s been mad enough to snap. What if she feels like she got in too deep with the domestic bliss stuff? She dumped me once before, back when I disappeared for three months in Hell. Wouldn’t it be a hoot if after getting sheets and plates and all kinds of kitchen trinkets, she decides she can’t handle it? It wouldn’t exactly surprise me. Most of my luck revolves around breaking things. If every day was car chases and sawing -people’s heads off, I’d be the Pope of Lucky Town.
CANDY COMES HOME about an hour later. I have Spirited Away going on the big screen. Her favorite movie when she’s feeling down. She sticks her head around the door and raps on it with her knuckles.
“Knock, knock,” she says. “I brought a peace offering. Burritos from Bamboo House of Dolls.”
“Then you may enter.”
“Thank you, sir.”
She puts the burritos on the table. She left her jacket downstairs, but her jeans are soaked through. She’s even given up her Chuck Taylor sneakers for shin--high rubber boots with skulls and stars. She takes them off and tosses them in the tub, then comes over and flops down next to me on the secondhand sofa.
“What are we watching?”
“If you don’t remember it, Allegra needs to check you for a brain tumor.”
She pushes up against me and gives me a little elbow in the ribs.
“I’m sorry. Was that your side, Mr. Sarcastic?”
“You’re dripping on the linoleum and getting the couch wet, wino.”
Candy unbuckles and slips off her jeans, leaving them in a heap on the floor. She sits beside me and shivers. Pulls my arm around her. My left arm. She doesn’t mind the prosthetic. I think she kind of likes it. I pull her closer.
I say, “So, Allegra fixed you up?”
Her head moves against me as she nods.
“She said it was probably the stress of getting the new place together and doing stuff with you and the Vigil, knowing no one at the Vigil wants me there.”
“Fuck ’em,” I say. “They’re paying me to be there. They’re getting you for free. If you don’t want to come in you don’t have to. Take it easy and settle into the place.”
She looks up at me.
“And let you have all the fun? Besides, what would I do here while you’re gone? We only get a few customers, and unlike Kasabian, I can only jerk off so many times a day.”
“What do other domestic ladies do? You could take up needlepoint or do crossword puzzles. Maybe get into Valium and martinis.”
“I like the sound of the last part. But seriously, Allegra has all the help she needs at the clinic and I like being Robin to your Batman. That and my Duo--Sonic are about the only things I give a shit about right now.”
I gave Candy a cherry--red electric guitar a few weeks back. She got herself a little used Roland CUBE amp and bashes away every moment she can. She only knows about three chords, but she plays them with great conviction. Sometimes Fairuza, a Ludere who works with Allegra at the clinic, jams with her on drums. They’re talking about starting a band, calling it the Bad Touch Sugar Cookies because it sounds like one of the idoru bands they like. Supposedly, Fairuza’s old band once opened for Shonen Knife at the Whiskey. I think Candy about dumped me for her when she heard that, but I have a better movie collection, so she stayed.
I take a blanket off the back of the couch and wrap it around Candy and we watch the rest of the movie. After that, I write the report I promised Wells, and e--mail it to him. I still can’t figure out what the mess in Hobaica’s demented head meant. Tooth flowers. Seas of fire. Hacked--up bodies. It’s like a Texas Chain Saw wet dream. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all. Maybe I just left him on ice too long and Hobaica’s soul was all screwed up from his brain getting frozen and oxygen deprived. Anyway, it’s not my job to figure out. That’s for the bag of Shonin bones.
Later, Candy reheats the burritos and we eat them while watching Hausu, a funny Japanese haunted--house flick. Candy cackles the whole way through it. I don’t pay much attention. She goes downstairs when we’re done eating.
I’m still wondering if I should take a chance and go see Mr. Muninn in Hell. Maybe it would be smarter to check in with Samael first. He’s living in the palace with Muninn and would know if it’s all right for me to go down. Your holy roller types are talking about God sending a new flood to cleanse the world. I’ve got news for them. God’s got his hands full right now. The parts of him that aren’t already dead.
A rhythmic thumping and buzz comes up through the floor, from the storeroom we soundproofed with egg cartons and blankets. Candy and Fairuza are thrashing through a ragged version of “Rock ’n’ Roll High School” because what else is there to do at the end of the world?
A FEW GLASSES of Aqua Regia later, I remember something I promised to do. I put on a hoodie and one of my frock coats and dig around under the bed for a dusty sack of bones that I took out of Kill City, a cursed shopping mall at the beach in Santa Monica. There was a pack of ghosts in the basement that wanted me dead, but we cut a deal. They let me go and I promised I’d bury their bones in the ground outside the mall. With fixing up Max Overdrive and starting back with the Vigil, I’d put it off a dozen times. All this talk of the apocalypse, I think maybe I should do it now just in case. I don’t want to die having lied to a bunch of poor slobs buried under a thousand tons of concrete, corn dogs, and panty hose.
I put a little LED flashlight in my pocket and step through a shadow. Go through the Room of Thirteen Doors and come out under the Hollywood sign in the hills overlooking L.A. From up here, through the air that’s been washed clean by the rain, the city is beautiful. L.A. always looks best in the dark, when it’s just lights and the ugly hulks of the buildings have been softened to vague night shapes. Even from up here, I can see the traffic snarling the main streets and spilling out onto the Hollywood Freeway. -People are leaving town and they don’t even know why. They’re running just to run. Some animal part of their brain knows something bad is coming and they want to get as far from it as possible. Who can blame them? But if the Angra come stomping back to the world, there won’t be anywhere too remote to hide. In the meantime, they run like lemmings.
Idiot that I am, I didn’t bring a shovel, so I have to dig with my hands. I put the bones in the ground between the H and the O in HOLLYWOOD. I don’t know if being in soil will help those ghosts rest easier, but I’ll sleep better knowing I’m not just another liar in a city built on slick pitchmen who’d sell you their mother’s kidneys if it got them salesman of the month.
It’s dark up here and there isn’t a shadow in sight. I turn on the LED flashlight and bury one end in the ground. I get in front of the beam and step into my own shadow, soaked and cold, heading home.
Later, Candy comes upstairs. Her T--shirt is soaked through with sweat.
“Having a little drink?”
“I went out. I’m trying to get the chill out of my bones.”
She takes off her shirt and tosses it on the back of a chair. She comes over and straddles me on the couch, presses her warm body into mine.
“Better?” she says.
“Much.”
She leans down and kisses me. I set my glass on the floor. She pushes me down on my back and starts pulling my pants off.
I should have insisted we get a sturdier couch. We break one of the legs and have to prop up the end on a pile of ancient VHS tapes from the bargain bin downstairs. Broken furniture rescued by forgotten movies. The place is starting to feel like home after all.
THE FLAYED HEART is all over my dreams. Grinding teeth. Pulped bodies in flames. Zhuyigdanatha is in the freezing locker where I found Hobaica. Fire licks the meat--hooked body parts in the flesh cathedral. Chars the sides of beef. Fills the locker with a dense, oily smoke that settles on the walls and floor like a slick skin. Hot blood bubbles from the broiling meat. It pools on the locker floor like wounds. I double up in pain, maybe just in my dream or maybe for real.
I’m stuck somewhere dark. Bound to a wall underground in Kill City. Besides ghosts, the place is full of addled Lurkers and Sub Rosa families so far down the food chain they haven’t seen daylight in years. Ferox, the head of the Shoggot clan, is there with his giggling relatives. They’ve filed their teeth to points and let maggots clean the places where they’ve carved up their own bodies. Ferox wants to see what makes a being like me tick. He shoves a scalpel low into my belly and drags the blade north. He wants to open me up. Pull me apart like those bodies falling into the abyss of the Flayed Heart’s gullet. I’ve never felt anything like this, even in Hell. It’s not just the pain. It’s the idea of being gutted like a trout and left a hollow husk. After all I’ve been through, here I am, dying at the hands of a freak in the basement of a goddamn department store. I cramp again. This time I’m sure it’s real.
The dream changes. I’m back in Vigil headquarters. Their first one, down south of L.A. Aelita is there. She’s an angel. One of God’s most hard--core. Pure Old Testament rage. She runs the Vigil with Wells. Only she’s crazy, or maybe I make her crazy. The knowledge of my existence does. I’m Abomination. Nephilim. I shouldn’t exist and yet God lets me live. She does Ferox’s trick. Pig--sticks me with a flaming angelic sword. Kills me good. My first death. But I got over it and stabbed her right back. Still, I can feel her sticking me more than I can feel any satisfaction in getting revenge.
My stomach burns like it’s filled with fire and metal.
All these scars. The road map of my life. My armor. Sometimes being hard to kill isn’t exactly a blessing. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s my punishment for being born a freak. I don’t think even God knows at this point. He’s broken up enough these days I don’t know if I’d trust any answers he gave me.
Aelita declared war on God before she died. Wanted nothing more than to murder him. Here I am with her former friends trying to do the same thing to the Angra Om Ya. Who’s right and who’s wrong doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe God did trick the old gods out of this universe and steal it for himself. But here’s the scary question: which God is worse? The Angra, who might be competent, but want to wipe us out, or our God, who isn’t good at his job, but if not benign, is at least indifferent to us? Parental neglect is starting to look pretty good right now, isn’t it?
Maybe the Angra are entirely in the right to want back in, but if they’re coming back means wiping us out, then fuck ’em. This isn’t Metaphysics 101. This is self--defense. Anyway, what else am I going to do? Where else am I going to go? Hell is boring and Heaven sounds like a Disneyland fireworks parade forever.
My Shoggot scar burns and I feel mountain--size teeth crunching my bones.
But why be a Gloomy Gus about Armageddon? I survived Hell and Hollywood and the 1989 remake of Godzilla. I can survive this. The pain in my gut eases up.
Besides, I still have the Mithras and the Singularity. I can burn the universe to the ground or I can start it over brand--new. True, I’ll be toast, but when I make that last big fuckup at least Wells won’t be anywhere around to say “I told you so.”
IN THE MORNING, Candy is feeling sick again.
“What’s it feel like?”
She shrugs.
“Anxious. My stomach hurts like I haven’t eaten for days. I have a headache like there’s thunder in my head.”
“You’re not . . .”
“Pregnant?”
She gives me a soft kick.
“Allegra’s a doctor, asshole. That’s the first thing she checked. Besides, the pregnancy thing isn’t really an issue for Jades. We only make babies when we want and that’s only when we’re told.”