“You know that isn’t going to happen. Ever.”
“That’s what you say,” Billy countered with more giggles.
There were murmurings from the legions of monstrosities behind the boy.
“The newbies,” Theo said again.
A nasty smile spread across the little boy’s angelic face. “There are no newbies here.”
Theo sighed. Nothing was ever easy.
“We are legion,” Billy continued. “We are all one.”
“One big, happy family?” Theo suggested.
“Yes,” Billy agreed. “That’s it.”
“I want them,” Theo said simply.
The demons massed upon the rock above moved closer together.
“No.”
“No?”
“You heard me,” the boy said with a snarl. “No.”
“Don’t disappoint me, Billy,” Theo said. “You knew I’d be in here to talk after what happened outside.”
“Talk?” Billy scoffed.
The demons behind him began to laugh. It was a horrible, horrible sound.
“I had hoped that this would be easier, that our understanding of one another would allow us to get past this with a modicum of pain, but deep down, I always knew you fuckers are completely stupid.”
“Oh, are we?”
“So fucking stupid.”
“We do so hate to disappoint,” Billy growled.
“Then give them to me,” she said. “Let me take what I can from them, then they can go back to your loving family”
“And as I said to you before—no.”
“See?” she said. “Stupid with a capital S.”
And with those words, her body began to glow even brighter, the sigils radiating a light that burned hotter than a thousand suns. Theo walked to the bottom of the rock formation and sank her white-hot fingertips into stone.
“I’m coming up,” she warned. “And I hope you’re a little smarter when I get there.”
She began to climb.
• • •
Nicole thought the kid was cute, but her father was something else altogether. He gave off asshole vibes in waves.
“Where you from?” the man asked, eyeing her suspiciously.
They were still in the kitchen, sitting around the marble-topped island. Stephen had set out drinks and little bags of pretzels, which were awesome. But now Stephen was gone, which gave the kid’s father a chance to start asking questions.
Nicole did not like answering questions. “Around,” she said, reaching up to pet the ghostly cat draped about her neck.
Griffin just stared at her, obviously not caring for her answer.
Cassie had saved a single pretzel, nibbling on it so very slowly as her eyes slid from her father to Nicole.
“How old are you?” he finally asked her.
“Old enough to not have to answer questions from someone that I barely know,” Nicole replied.
“Nineteen,” Cassie said in between nibbles.
Nicole gave the little girl the stink eye.
“Sorry,” she said, going back to nibbling.
Ghost animals were beginning to flock to her, her discomfort making them nervous.
Griffin shifted in his chair. She could tell that he wasn’t used to having people talk back to him.
“Where are your parents?” he grilled. “Do they even know where you are? I’m sure John and Theo wouldn’t mind if you reached out to them and . . .”
“I wouldn’t talk to my parents if they were sitting as close as you are,” Nicole snapped, suddenly tempted to have the ghost squirrels tear the meat off his face. Instead, she studied him, the nasty red scars around his neck disappearing below his shirt. They looked like burn scars, and she was about to start her own twenty questions, but decided against it.
“But would they feel the same about you?” Griffin then asked, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms.
The ghost squirrels were ready, and she almost caved, but . . .
Nicole slid off the chair, leaving the kitchen. She had no idea where she was going; she just had to get out of there before she became responsible for her actions.
“Where you goin’?” Cassie called after her.
“I need a little space,” Nicole said.
“Me too!” Cassie called out, and Nicole heard the sound of the little girl’s chair sliding across the tile floor, and she actually paused to wait.
“You’re staying right here,” Nicole heard Griffin say to his daughter.
“But I need some space, too!” Cassie said unhappily to her dad.
“The space you have right now is fine,” she heard Griffin say sternly.
Before things could escalate with the child, Nicole called out.
“I won’t be long, Cass,” Nicole said. “Just give me a sec to chill, then we can hang out when I get back.”
The sounds of protest had gone quiet as she walked toward the front door, child catastrophe averted. The Stephen guy had gone home to his husband, and she chanced a quick peek into his office space. It was amazingly neat and tidy, and she was tempted to send some of the more mischievous ghost animals in to mess stuff up, but that would just be mean seeing as he’d given her a drink and some awesome pretzels.
Nicole pulled open the door and stepped outside, breathing in the crisp air of fall in New England. She’d always wanted to travel east, and here she was. The atmosphere of her surroundings was already doing its job, calming her down after the forty-questions marathon from baldy McJerkface in the kitchen.
She walked down the three stone steps to the walkway, ghostly birds fluttering about her. Now Daisy was interested, standing up and balancing upon her shoulders to bat at the birds as they flew past.
In the distance, she could hear the faint sound of cars driving past the property, but despite that, it was still remarkably quiet. She stepped off the path and started to walk around to the back. Daisy suddenly leapt from her neck, drifting down to the leaf-covered ground.
“Where the hell are you going?” she asked the cat, which was suddenly gone, zigzagging crazily across the grass away from her.
“Hey!” Nicole called. “Get back here!”
Nicole followed, walking the perimeter of the old house. The place was big, really big, and she wondered how many rooms it actually had and if the one that she would take could be as far away from Scar Man as possible.
She was behind the house now, searching for signs of her cat. It was even more quiet back there, the tiny ghosts of woodland creatures fluttering about her like falling leaves in the breeze, but her cat wasn’t among them.
“Any of you guys see a black-and-white cat?” she asked them.
They didn’t answer, most of them too excited by her presence, by the energy that she gave off, which gave them some semblance of substance.
Some semblance of life.
There was quite a bit of land out in back, a sparsely wooded area that seemed to go on for quite some distance without any interruptions, but then she noticed something odd, something that seemed out of place out there in the woods.
At first she noticed the metal fence, black wrought iron leaning awkwardly in some places, encircling fingers of stone sticking up from weed-covered ground.
It was a tiny cemetery.
And there was somebody standing amongst the headstones, an old lady holding a cat in her arms.
Her cat.
Nicole quickened her pace, fascinated by the idea that whoever this woman was, she and Daisy could . . .
And then she knew, feeling instantly stupid that she hadn’t figured it out immediately. The woman was a ghost, too.
“Hello?” Nicole said, approaching the metal fence around the old graveyard cautiously, not wanting to scare the ghostly old woman away.
&
nbsp; The old woman turned toward her, Daisy cradled in her arms, her long, old-lady fingers scratching behind the black-and-white cat’s ears. Nicole could hear that Daisy was purring like an idling eighteen-wheeler.
“Hello, dear,” the ghostly woman said with a pleasant smile. “And what might your name be?”
Nicole was about to answer when she saw them, more ghostly beings lining up behind the old woman who was stroking her cat.
Ghostly people were never her thing, it had always been only animals.
Until now, it seemed.
“Nicole,” she answered the old woman.
“What a pretty name, and girl to match,” the ghost said. “I’m John’s grandmother . . .
“And you can call me Nana.”
11
Fritz brought the car up the driveway of the Carroll Funeral Home, the lights of the vehicle temporarily wiping away the darkness that had enshrouded the weathered sign.
“Is this it?” the Cardinal asked impatiently, leaning up from the backseat, where it had decided to sit alone, not wanting to mingle with the lowly human assigned to assist it.
“It is,” Fritz answered with the respect due a demon assigned to such an important task, even if the Cardinal was of the lower depths.
“How do you know?” it quizzed. “How can you be certain?”
Fritz remembered that communication that he’d received, the fleshy subhuman thing that had crawled up from the drainpipe while he had slept, creeping into his bedroom to lie with him, its amorphous form flowing upon him, entering his every orifice, his every pore, and delivering a message to him from the infernal realm itself.
He felt the thing again as if it were happening, its cold, wet body sliding effortlessly inside him, over him, as he slept.
Dreaming of drowning.
“I received a message—a vision,” Fritz told the Cardinal. “It showed me where to find you and where we need to go.”
The Cardinal sniffed loudly as Fritz brought the vehicle to a stop in front of a back loading area, where he imagined the hearses dropped off bodies to be prepared for burial.
“A place of the dead,” the Cardinal said. “It stinks of sorrow and decay. It reminds me of home.”
Fritz wanted to know what the Cardinal knew, he wanted to ask the demon lord of Hell’s glory, to describe its magnificence in every detail, but it was not his place.
There was a part of him that hoped they could somehow bond, that the two of them might become . . . friends . . . if something like that was even possible between the likes of him and a Lord of Hell.
One could dream.
Fritz turned the engine off and sat, staring out the window. He wasn’t sure what he should do, if he should perhaps beep the car horn, or maybe exit the vehicle to knock upon the back door to let whoever might be inside know that they had arrived.
The Cardinal, still clad in the garb of the nursing home, pushed the back door open and stepped out of the car.
“Hear me, keeper of the dead!” the Cardinal’s voice impressively boomed. “A lord of the lower regions announces its presence to you. Hear him, and allow him entrance.”
The Cardinal stood before the back of the funeral home, waiting, but nothing happened.
Fritz got out of the car and approached the back door, prepared to knock upon it, when . . .
The sound of a lock being disengaged followed by a chain being removed filled the quiet night air.
The door opened with a soft creak, and a figure emerged, voice booming.
“A keeper of the dead acknowledges your arrival,” said a fat old man as he stepped outside. He was likely the funeral-home owner, David Carroll, dressed in a black suit, a black tie, and a white shirt stained with reminders of what looked to be many past meals. “Enter this place knowing that your arrival has been anticipated lo these many years.”
Carroll looked at Fritz and, obviously not seeing what he was looking for, turned his glasses-covered eyes to the old woman in the stained, nursing-home pajamas standing alongside the car.
“My lord,” Carroll said, shuffling closer, his gaze averted. “Your arrival had been foretold to me by the voices of the dead.”
Fritz recalled a part of the vision he had received when visited, corpses sitting up from their slabs, mouths opening so incredibly wide to allow the glory of their message to emerge.
The Cardinal stepped closer to the old man, laying a hand upon the man’s balding head.
“I am here,” the Cardinal said. “And I am ready to lay my eyes upon it.”
Fritz watched as Carroll smiled.
He wasn’t sure exactly what the Cardinal was ready to see, but the old funeral-home owner certainly did.
“Excellent,” the old man said, having great difficulty trying not to smile. “It’s been awaiting your arrival as well.”
The Cardinal nodded, removing its hand from atop Carroll’s head.
“Come, come,” the undertaker said, his scuffed black shoes shuffling along the gravel that covered the ground out back. “Enter my humble abode and place of business, enter this place where the dead are welcomed.”
The funeral director began to laugh, then to cough uncontrollably, before getting a handle on it and spitting something he had coughed up from his own lower regions onto the ground.
Fritz waited for the Cardinal, who still walked awkwardly, not yet used to the mechanics of a human body. He reached to take the demon’s elbow, to help it into the house.
The Cardinal recoiled, snatching the elbow away. “Do you think yourself fit to lay hands upon a Lower Lord?” he asked, glaring.
“I meant no offense,” Fritz said, averting his eyes.
He could feel the Cardinal’s gaze, hot and intense upon him. “It’s because of the body that I wear, isn’t it?” the demon asked with a snarl. “The shell of an old crone.”
“You looked unsteady,” Fritz answered honestly. “I just wanted to be of assistance.”
The Cardinal growled its response.
So much for being friends, Fritz thought, as the funeral director hailed them from inside.
The Cardinal heeded the call, turning away and walking inside, Fritz following in its wake.
• • •
David Carroll had dreamed of this day since he was a little boy. He’d always had a fascination with the dead, with the beauty of decay.
The rot spoke to him and told him of his purpose.
It was to be glorious, aiding in the completion of a task that would eventually transform the world.
It was all laid out for him, the education he would pursue, the skills he would acquire, the trade he would perfect, the business he would open. He would become a pillar of the community.
Trusted by one and all.
And that was how he would fulfill his special purpose. How he would acquire the materials needed to create what the rot had been whispering to him about since he was old enough to truly comprehend.
One word spoken in gusts of fetid air expelled from the bloated internal organs swollen in the summer heat. Over and over again throughout his development.
Map, the rot said to him.
Map.
It had taken him close to sixty years to complete the vision that had been given to him: bits and pieces of the dead, expertly excised from the bodies of so many. The missing flesh taken from areas of the body unseen by friends and family.
Unnoticed.
Pieces taken, stitched together to form a canvas where, if all had been done properly, the map would appear.
If all had been done properly.
David Carroll was a wreck, he’d waited most of his adult life for this moment, perhaps the tiniest part of him believing that it would never happen.
That the Cardinal would ever appear.
But here he—she?—was.
And he thought that he very well might die from the anxiety.
The Cardinal looked around the room in which they stood, a storage room for the odds and ends needed to run a successful funeral business. The workroom, where the dead were prepared, was in the back.
As was the map room.
“Welcome to my humble abode,” David said, unsure of whether or not he should continue to avert his gaze.
The other man, the Cardinal’s driver, came into the basement area behind the Lord of Hell.
“I’m sure you’re both exhausted from your drive,” David said. “Perhaps some refreshments in the Serenity Room upstairs and maybe a chance for you to clean up a bit and rest before . . .”
“The map,” the Cardinal said, dark eyes darting about the basement space. “Where is it?”
“Oh,” David said, startled by the Cardinal’s impatience. “Are you sure you wouldn’t . . .”
David glanced over to see the Cardinal’s driver shaking his head and making a cutting motion across his throat.
The Cardinal turned its dark eyes to him.
“You wish to keep me from my task?” it questioned. David could have sworn that he saw sparks of fire leaping from the demon lord’s gaze.
“Oh no, my liege,” David said. “I would never dream of . . .”
“The map,” the Cardinal said, bearing down on him. “Take me to it—now.”
“Of course,” David said, moving toward the back of the storage area, to where a large metal door stood. “It’s right back here,” he said, reaching into the pocket of his black pants and withdrawing his keys.
Fumbling with multiple sets, he found the key he was looking for and opened the door. The smell of formaldehyde wafted out as he motioned them to enter.
The Cardinal was first, still studying its surroundings as it gazed about.
There were bodies waiting for embalming lying upon the table. There had been a bit of a rush this week, with a fatal pileup on Interstate 3 that had claimed the lives of some locals.
“The meat,” the Cardinal said, fingers motioning to the bodies lying naked upon the stretchers.
“Yes?” David said, ready to answer his demon lord.