Devil in the Dollhouse (sandman slim) Read online

  One of the soldiers cracks a handful of glow sticks. I grab a couple and lead the way deeper inside the Breach. More soldiers are stumbling in but the roadkill is just a few seconds behind us now.

  There’s no way I’m running upstairs and getting trapped on the roof. I start down a wide grand staircase, heading for the front door. With any luck we can wait for most of the roadkill to come in upstairs and flank them by going out front and down the other side of the hill into Lucifer’s traitor town. The only kink in this plan is if some of Henoch’s freak beasts show up, but I haven’t seen or heard a peep from them and it sure doesn’t smell like anything has been living here in a long time.

  We never make it to the front door.

  We hit a series of hallways on the main floor. They twist and turn in on themselves and it doesn’t take long to lose track of which way it is to the front door. I stop to get my bearings. Geryon is behind me. He’s pale, holding his side like he’s about to cough up his lungs. There aren’t more than six soldiers behind us anymore. We’re at a crossroads. All four hallways look exactly the same and then it hits me. We’re not in normal hallways. The main floor of Henoch Breach is a labyrinth.

  “Why have we stopped?” asks Geryon.

  “We’re lost. I’m trying to figure if I can get us back to where we started.”

  “Is that a good idea?”

  The screams from behind us make his point for him.

  “I remember someone once told me that in a maze the trick is to keep turning left and eventually you’ll get out.”

  “Is that true?” Geryon asks.

  “I don’t know. I never tried. And maybe it’s the way to get to the center and not out.”

  Geryon slumps. Puts his head in his hands. None of the soldiers have weapons anymore. They’re ripped and bitten and bloody, and they’re all staring at me like lost kids at the zoo. I say the first thing that pops into my head.

  “Try the doors. Maybe there’s a window or a place to hide and figure a way out.”

  That gets them moving. We head in different directions down all four corridors from the crossroads, rattling and kicking at doorknobs. They’re all locked but there’s nothing else to do. We keep trying one door after another. Finally one opens.

  “Here,” I shout. “I found one.”

  I push open the door with the glow stick held high. The room is empty. On the far wall is a barred window. I head for it. Three steps in I hear a crack and the floor gives way beneath me. The last thing I see is Geryon’s shocked, scared, stupid face as I fall.

  M artin Denny wakes me up. It’s “Quiet Village,” all birdcalls and tropical piano chords. Someone is pulling me from the floor and setting me on a bar stool. Carlos the bartender is the first thing I can make out clearly. Then plastic hula girl. Palm trees. I’m in the Bamboo House of Dolls.

  “Maybe you’ve had enough for tonight?” Carlos says and turns to someone on my right.

  “What do you think? Too much or just enough to take advantage of?” comes a female voice.

  I turn and Candy is right beside. She kisses me. My head hurts and I’m as dizzy as the Teacup Ride at Disneyland.

  Candy does a mock frown.

  “Uh-oh. Too much, it looks like. Maybe we need to get you home.”

  “Home?” is all I can get out.

  Vidocq comes over. Puts an arm around my shoulder.

  “You remember home. The lovely Chateau Marmont. It’s just a few steps away. Come. We’ll take you from all this, le merdier. You’ll never have to see it again.”

  “Never again.”

  They pull me to my feet. Candy, Vidocq, Allegra, and Kasabian. Kasabian has arms and legs. A complete body. He wags his finger in my face.

  “You never did know when enough was enough.”

  I look at Candy and my heart breaks all over again, just like it did when I lost Alice.

  “I’m sorry to say but I know exactly when enough is enough.”

  I pull the black blade from the waistband at my back and slice Kasabian’s head off. It rolls across the floor like a sweaty basketball. I whirl and stab Vidocq in the eye. Pull out the blade and shank him in the heart. Then I do the same to Allegra and Carlos.

  “Stark. What are you doing?”

  They’re screaming and they don’t stop until they’re in pieces on the floor.

  I turn and look at Candy. She backs away, her hand held up to me. Bumps into the jukebox and freezes.

  “It’s me, baby. What are you doing?”

  I’m dizzy and nauseated.

  “Doing just what you said. Getting myself away from le merdier.”

  I flick out the na’at but I can’t go for her. I lunge and put the blade into the jukebox. Denny sputters and dies. I turn and hack the bar in half. Swing again and slice through the bar stools. Vault the bar and start in on the bottles. I take out a row of booze with each swipe of the na’at until I’m ankle deep in the stuff. Back over the bar, I push a candle over. The booze goes up in one big whoosh.

  I’m feeling it now. That old arena feeling, where nothing feels better than something breaking under the na’at or my hands. Candy backs against the far wall. I stab it over her head, pulling out big chunks of plaster. I hack at the windows and floor. I slice apart the pillars by the door and the whole thing collapses. The decorations over the bar are burning and patches of the ceiling glow cherry red. Once it catches we all go down together.

  “Right, Henoch?” I yell.

  I hack at the beams in the walls. They start to sag. I hack at the floor until it starts to buckle beneath us. The ceiling catches. The air is sucked out of my lungs as all the oxygen in the room cooks off. I look at Candy. I pull out the black blade to throw through a window. She knows a flashover is coming.

  “Enough.”

  She screams it over the sounds of the flames. I don’t have to throw the knife. The window cracks. The air explodes, enveloping us in flames as thick as molasses. Then stops. The room goes black.

  “Enough.”

  It’s not Candy’s voice. It’s a man’s.

  “What in Lucifer’s name is wrong with you?”

  Light slowly comes up. I’m standing in a dimly lit stone room with an old man. Splintered pillars and support columns lean haphazardly against the walls and across the floor.

  “You mean my name, don’t you, Grandpa? I’m Lucifer.”

  Henoch Breach has wet rheumy eyes set in a sagging face. Scraggly white whiskers that might be the remains of a dead beard. His teeth are black and crooked, like fallen dominoes. He’s dressed in robes that probably looked regal about a thousand years ago. Now they look like a gaudy bath mat in a Tijuana flophouse. He looks around the room.

  “Look what you’ve done to my home.”

  “What was I supposed to do? No one told me there was a ring inside the house. Only this one wasn’t suffering. Did you really think the ‘it’s all been a dream’ gaff was going to work? Does anyone ever fall for it?”

  He laughs and it breaks down into a wet cough. He finds a chair in the wreckage, rights it, and sits down. His voice is surprisingly deep and strong.

  “You’d be surprised. Offer mortals or angels what they really want and the first thing they’ll give up is doubt.”

  “Not me. Not down here. Doubt is my best friend. Doubt that I’m stuck here. Doubt someone like you is going to off me.”

  “I have no interest in offing you any more than you have in offing me.”

  “You just murdered a hundred of my troops.”

  He shakes his head.

  “They’re not your troops. They’re Lucifer’s troops and you’re not him. You might have the title. You might be hiding that you wear his armor under that coat but you’re no more Lucifer than the other one.”

  “How do you know, Henoch?”

  “I’m not Henoch, you young fool. There is no Henoch. I’m Lucifer. The first Lucifer.”

  On any other day I might not believe something like that. Today is different thou
gh.

  “If you’re the real Lucifer then the guy I know as Lucifer is Henoch?”

  He leans his elbows on his knees and shakes his head.

  “I told you. There is no one named Henoch. Henoch is the town. I’m Maleephas. And before you ask any stupid questions, yes, I said I was Lucifer. Remember that the Lucifer you know was once Samael. Just as you…”

  “Stark.”

  “As you, Stark, are now Lucifer.”

  I hear something from above. I can’t tell if it’s screams or someone singing “Close To You.”

  “What’s happening to my people?”

  “I assume they’re being slaughtered just as anyone who comes here is slaughtered.”

  “Why? What’s so special about this place that everyone has to die if they come near it?”

  Maleephas shrugs.

  “You’ll have to ask Samael. He built it. He made the city. He constructed the road. He made the rings you passed through and the Vorosdok that attacked your men. If you’ve been in Hell for any length of time you’ve probably noticed that he’s quite clever and has a good sense of suffering.”

  Is this another illusion? Am I talking to myself or does the roadkill have hallucinogenic saliva and they’ve bitten me and are tearing me apart?

  “Why would Samael do any of that?”

  Maleephas stands and crooks a finger for me to follow him.

  We go down a corridor with windows that look out over the front of the Breach. Roadkill and dead soldiers are spread out in all directions.

  “Don’t feel badly,” says Maleephas. “This is his doing. Not yours.”

  “Why? Why would he build this? Why are you here?”

  He opens his arms wide, turning in a circle. He laughs with more strength than I thought he had in him.

  “Because this is Hell. The first Hell. The first after the fall. The one we made together and he took and then abandoned.”

  Maleephas looks out the window. A few last roadkill wander up the hill. A lot of them are missing heads, arms or legs.

  “What stories do they tell about me now? That Henoch Breach is a rebel Hellion’s hold? What do they say about this Hellion?”

  “That he’s crazy. That he slaughters travelers along his road. That he fucks snakes and rats and makes monster babies that do his dirty work for him.”

  He grips the bars and presses his face to them.

  “At least I’m colorful in this version. These myths about the place, they change over time. Very few in Hell recall what really happened in the early days. Remember what I said about offering beings what they really want? Why would they want to remember that this world began with a betrayal as thorough as the one in Heaven?”

  “You’re saying that you and Samael were bosom buddies and he turned on you. Why? Why would he care about taking over this shithole?”

  “For one thing he likes power.”

  “So do you, if you were Lucifer.”

  “Touche. The difference is that I had doubts about the argument with Father. He didn’t. When a group of us tried to go back, well, you see the result.”

  The little gears clank in my brain. I look out the window.

  “The roadkill that attacked my men. They’re Hellions, aren’t they?”

  Maleephas nods.

  “The ones who wanted to return with me so we could throw ourselves at God’s feet, hoping to receive his infinite mercy. What they received was what you saw in the grove. I received this prison.”

  I take out a Malediction. Light it and offer it to him. He takes it and sniffs, hands it back to me.

  “It smells awful. Is that what you do in Pandemonium these days? Pollute yourselves with that?”

  “We have all kinds of pollution. You should try Aqua Regia. Or there might be some unicorn salad left in the truck if you want to try it.”

  He shakes his head.

  “Such a stupid world we made together. It was going to rival Heaven but it turned into more ruin.”

  “You know what’s funny?” I say. “Guess where Samael is these days.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve lost my appetite for games.”

  “He’s back in Heaven. He had doubts about the argument too. At least the part about the war. He’s back upstairs trying to make it up to the old man.”

  A smile spreads across Maleephas’s face. He leans against the wall and chuckles.

  “And it only took how many eons and another fool to play Lucifer.”

  I puff the Malediction and think.

  “Maybe it’s not as bad as you think. I thought Samael was playing me for a chump when he blew town and left me this job. Maybe meeting you is what’s it’s all been about. Maybe he couldn’t face you or maybe he knew you wouldn’t want to see him. Maybe I’m here to blow up the myth. Let you out and remind everyone what really happened here.”

  He turns his eyes toward me.

  “Do you think he’s really that compassionate?”

  The Malediction burns my throat in a good way.

  “Weirder things have happened.”

  Maleephas comes over to me, using his hand to fan away the smoke. He whispers.

  “You know what I think? I think he did send you. But not for the kind of compassion you mean.”

  I feel the knife slip under the bottom of the armor. Maleephas drives it in two, three times, twisting the blade and holding it in place.

  “I think he sent you here as a sacrifice. He’s gone and is giving Hell back to me. I’ll burn Pandemonium to the ground. Henoch will be the new Hell and this will be Maleephas Lucifer’s palace.”

  He pulls out the blade and pushes it back up under the sleeve of his robe. I fall to my knees. He kicks me. It is a small thing but already bleeding and stabbed, it still hurts.

  “If it truly is so easy for Father to forgive Samael, then he was right and I was wrong. We’ll prove them both wrong by creating a brand new Underworld. The hills outside of Henoch are rich in gold and silver. We’ll build an entire city of precious metals, so bright it will blind the archangels and over time they’ll come to worship us.”

  “Fuck you, Mally puss. You’re as dumb as the twerps that fall for your picture show. You’ve started believing your own fantasies.”

  He stands over me.

  “Whatever Samael’s intentions, I’m about to become Lucifer again. The armor protects you but not from everything. This athame is quite potent, even against Lucifer.”

  “I know. I stabbed him with one myself.”

  He brightens.

  “Did it hurt?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m so glad to hear that.”

  “One thing,” I say and swing out with the black blade. I never put it away, just held it back against my arm like a polite, stupid son of a bitch. The knife catches Maleephas just above the right ankle. He falls over backward, leaving his foot behind and spouting black blood all over the floor.

  I grab a set of the window bars and pull myself up. As soon as I’m upright, Maleephas throws his knife. I’m too hurt to get out of the way. The blade kicks up a spark when it hits Lucifer’s armor and bounces into the ceiling. I extend the na’at into a spear and return the old man’s favor by pegging him to the floor through the gut.

  “You’re not Lucifer. I am,” he says.

  “The difference between us is I don’t want the job. Normally I’d offer it to you but that little trick with the knife was annoying, so all you get is a big steaming plate of fuck-all.”

  “What are you going to do to me?”

  He looks scared, which is pretty funny because I can barely stand up. Just to keep up appearances I drop the Malediction by his head and crush it out with my boot, letting my heel graze the side of his face.

  “Maybe I’ll just leave you there like a butterfly stuck in a display case. Bring bus tours out to see you. Print maps to the star’s home and put your face on mugs and T-shirts. How does that sound?”

  “Kill me. If you have any mortal mercy left in you, kill
me. Or are you fully Lucifer now? Should I worship you and beg your indulgence? Please, great and awful Beast of the Abyss, give me the gift of oblivion.”

  “Shut up. I’m not going to kill you. But I’m burning this place to the ground. I’m leaving you and your knife here. You can crawl away into a hole in Henoch. You can burn here or you can kill yourself. It doesn’t mean jack to me. But I’m not doing Samael’s dirty work or yours.”

  I pull the na’at from his stomach. Maleephas groans and rolls onto his side. I cut through the bars over the window with the black blade and crawl outside. It hurts so much I almost faint when I drop to the ground. I cut a long strip of cloth from my coat and press it against the wound in my belly. I couldn’t fight off a Vorosdok kitten right now but I don’t think I’ll have to. The few pieces of roadkill still alive are laid out on the ground like a truck ran over them. I think when I put the na’at into Maleephas the Vorosdok went down with him.

  It’s quicker down the hill than it was up. Not running for your life through an army of brainless Hellion zombies will do that. When I reach the nearest Unimog, I pull enough bodies out of the cab that I can get into the driver’s seat and start the engine. I head up the hill, steering the truck over every Vorosdok body I can see. I stop the truck outside Henoch Breach’s front doors and a couple of corpses get to their feet. I pull the na’at. The dead men are Geryon and Elephant Man.

  “Playing possum? How did you get outside?”

  Geryon shakes his head.

  “I have no idea. After you disappeared, we ran down corridors at random. I don’t know what happened to the others. I think we were just lucky.”

  “Well, get your lucky asses over here. Take a couple of jerry cans of gas and toss them into the Breach.”

  Geryon frowns.

  “Why?”

  “Because I met him. Maleephas. I know the whole story.”

  Geryon walks over to me. I hand him one of the heavy cans.

  “You met him? He’s still here?”

  “Who do you think gave me this?”

  I lean back so he can see my wound.

  “Since you knew he was there, that means you know the story you told me is total horseshit.”

  He shakes his head.

  “No, it isn’t. It’s a myth. You have no idea how ugly the early days were here. We needed to forget all this and when we did, we needed something to replace it.”