Hellhole

  “That you knew every answer to.”

  Max paused in his escape attempts. “Wait, that last one was right? Everyone really dies?”

  “Duh, hoss. It’s Hamlet. ‘To thine own self be true.’”

  Max simply didn’t know what to do with this previously unknown Shakespeare-quoting version of Wall. So he patted his arm—an arm that was easily as wide around as Max’s torso—and said, “Indeed! Forsooth!” as he tottered away.

  Mercifully, Lore was waiting for him outside at the bike rack. “Hey!” she said, holding up a small, milky sphere. “Look, I got the frog’s eye. It’s hard and bounces like a marble!”

  “Burg can talk to me,” he told her, breathless.

  She put the eye into her skirt pocket. “Beings with mouths tend to be able to do that.”

  “In my head,” he said as they walked their bikes out of the parking lot. “He can communicate telepathically.”

  “Trippy.”

  “Don’t you get it? This is bad. He can hear what I’m doing. He can hear who I’m talking to. He’s a lot smarter than we thought he was! He knows Shakespeare!”

  “Shakespeare?” At this, Lore raised her eyebrows. “Wait. Was that you who burped in Rizzo’s face last period?”

  “How did you hear about that already?”

  “About two seconds after the bell, Josh Clark announced to the hallway that ‘something is belchy in the state of Denmark.’”

  “Inspired. Listen, this means we need to be a lot more careful about what we say to each other now. If he’s listening in, he can hear our plans—”

  “Our plans to what, find him a house? Do exactly what he’s asking you to do? There’s no harm in him hearing any of that.”

  “Yeah, but what about—OH!” He smacked himself in the head. “That’s how he knew you were talking about slipping him a Mickey!”

  “You were the one who said that. I would never say something so lame.” She reached out and rapped a fist against his head. “Is he listening in right now?”

  Max tried to remain still. “I don’t know. I still hear a humming noise, but I can’t tell whether that’s him or just my lingering panic attack.”

  “Well, just look, then.”

  She held up a printout from the local newspaper’s website. An obituary, dated two days earlier, accompanied by an outdated photo of an old, bloated man.

  Edwin O’Connell.

  “Survived only by his son,” Lore said mischievously. “I called the funeral home director and found out that the house has been willed to him, but you were right, he and his father had a big falling-out. The son lives in New York City and doesn’t even want the thing! He’s just going to let it sit there and rot!”

  Max felt a curious stirring of emotions. “It can’t be that easy,” he said slowly. “What if he comes back? What if he sends someone to check on it? What if—” He tensed up. “What if you-know-who killed him in order to get it?”

  “Oh, don’t drag Voldemort into this.”

  “I mean Burg!”

  “I know who you mean. And so what if he did? The guy was old. And now we have a house.” With that, she took off on her bike, leaving Max with no choice but to chase her.

  “Wait!” he shouted, pedaling furiously to catch up. “What if he had a butler? What if—”

  “Sorry, can’t hear you!” Lore cut him off, speeding ahead of him. “Ear poison!”

  Lore’s prediction that the house was a “rustic dealy” was correct; Max thought there had to be a lonesome Alp over in Switzerland that was missing its ski lodge. The exterior was made of a deep auburn wood, and the roof soared up in a series of triangular gables with wide eaves. Exposed logs jutted from the corners, though it was impossible to tell whether they were functional or strictly for decoration, and a matching garage sat at the end of the gravel driveway. A dusty old wreath made of twigs and dried berries hung on the front door, the frame of which was now being industriously chipped away by the talented Mr. Russell Crowebar.

  “This is a bad idea,” Max said, wringing his hands and scoping out what had once been the front yard. The forest had long since conquered and seized the land for itself, covering the overgrown grass with fallen trees and pine needles. There were no signs of people—Max and Lore had knocked, peeked in the window, and made sure they hadn’t been followed—but Max still felt jumpy, cringing at the deafening screeches of the overhead birds, bristling at every small noise the woodland creatures seemed intent on making.

  “Would you please stop it?” Lore hissed. “You’re breaking my concentration.”

  “How much concentration do you need to pry a door open?”

  “Burgling is an art. It takes finesse, it takes skill—” She threw the weight of her pelvis into the exposed part of Russell Crowebar, forcing the door open. She made a sweeping gesture at the house. “And it takes a hefty set of birthing hips. Now get in.”

  The ski lodge theme continued through the foyer and into the living room, which was so massive Max was sure it could comfortably accommodate his entire house. Thick, exposed wood beams soared up to the two-story-high ceiling, forming a latticework of trellises. Taxidermied animal heads were everywhere—several bucks, birds, a couple of moose, even a bear—all of them dwarfed by the one above the fireplace: a giant buck to rule them all, its antlers almost comically gigantic.

  The cobblestone fireplace took up one wall, while another featured a sliding glass door set into a floor-to-ceiling window, providing a stunning view of the lake. A large liquor cabinet sat in the corner. Intricate Oriental rugs covered the hardwood floors, and handsome furniture upholstered with plaid fabric—

  “Ahhh!” Max freaked out. “Furniture!”

  Lore remained calm. “Yeah, sofas can be really terrifying. Don’t get too close to that rocking chair, it’ll tear your face off.”

  “It’s just—all the other houses were empty. It feels like someone still lives here.”

  “With all your bloodcurdling screams about the furniture? They’d already be trying to shoot us with their obviously extensive collection of firearms.” She nodded at a walled gun rack.

  “True,” Max said, looking up into the glass eyes of the bear.

  Lore poked at one of the stuffed owls. “This one looks a little like you.”

  “Could you please focus?” Max was feeling queasy, and not because he’d just been compared to a bird for the billionth time in his life. “What do we do now?”

  “We pay our respects to Deerzilla,” she said, saluting the big-antlered deer, “then make sure the stove works.” She headed through a doorway. “Whoa, this kitchen is bigger than the Food Network! The whole network!”

  “Great,” Max said weakly.

  “It has two ovens!” she shouted back. “Wait, no—three!”

  “Great.”

  “There might be more. I’m investigating.”

  Max crossed to the massive window and rested his forehead against the glass door. Just outside, overlooking the lake from about fifty feet above it, was a gorgeous, sprawling deck. Stained a cherrywood color, it stretched out in both directions, farther than Max could see.

  Though he could see one thing, something flapping against the wood out to the right. He opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. It was a green tarp that had come unfastened. Crouching down, he lifted the corner and peered beneath it.

  He gasped.

  He spun around and bolted back inside the house, finding Lore doing jumping jacks inside the pantry.

  “I’m doing jumping jacks inside the pantry,” she said. “It’s so big I can do jumping—”

  “Lore!”

  She stopped and took in his sweating, splotchy, heaving face. “What?”

  A grin replaced the splotches. “This place has a hot tub.”

  Lore grinned back at him. “You’re shitting me.”

  Max shook his head in awe. “This is the one, Lore,” he said, the wonder in his voice growing until he was shouting. “This is the h
ouse! We did it!” He punched a fist into the air. “Now Burg’ll cure my mom!”

  Lore’s smile disappeared.

  “What?” she said.

  Max faltered. “Uh—that was the deal I made with Burg,” he said. “I find him a house, he cures my mom.”

  Her eyes went wide. “Wait—the house wasn’t part of his initial demand? It was part of a deal?”

  Max was confused. “Well, yeah,” he said. “Sort of an upgrade-type situation.”

  Lore stomped over to Max, grabbed him by the ear, and dragged him into the kitchen. “Explain. Explain exactly what transpired between you, the exact wording. Why you glossed over it in the first place is beyond me—”

  “You were enjoying your quiche,” Max said, cringing in pain. “I didn’t want to bother you with tiny details.”

  “MAX. SPILL IT.”

  She let him go, and he put his hands out. “Okay, technically, when Burg first arrived, what he demanded was ‘shelter.’ I offered him a tent, which technically qualified. But then he kept whining about it, and I got the idea that if maybe I offered to find him a real house, I could ask for something in exchange.”

  “Let me get this straight.” Lore was starting to pace. “This whole house-hunting deal, the torture you’ve put yourself through over the past couple of days, was optional?”

  “Hey,” Max said, getting mad, “in my book, a chance to make my mom better isn’t optional. It’s mandatory.”

  She stopped pacing and looked up at the ceiling, bouncing on the balls of her feet, as if she were full of some unknown burst of energy but trying desperately to hold it in.

  Max didn’t know what to do. He stood uselessly in front of her, his large hands floundering at his side, helpless. “Lore, what’s the big deal?” he asked. “Okay, maybe I made a reckless bargain, but what was the harm in it? If I didn’t find the house, he’d have to be happy with the tent. The deal would be null and void, he wouldn’t cure my mom, and I’d be no better off than I was before.”

  “That’s not how it works!”

  She stormed out of the house and slammed the door, rattling the antlers of Deerzilla.

  Max followed, bursting outside. The day had gotten moldy; it was the sort of heat that got caught in one’s throat, that settled on the skin and didn’t go away. He wiped his forehead and started down the driveway. A swampy sort of smell wafted over from the lake, biting sourly into his nostrils.

  He found her near the mailbox, struggling to untangle her bike from the bush she’d left it under. Though her face was down, he could tell it was red and splotchy. She wasn’t crying, though it seemed that she was on the verge.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She looked up. “I gotta go.”

  “Okay.” Now Max really was concerned. There was something going on behind Lore’s eyes, some pain he’d never seen in her before. Or in anyone, really. “Um, why are you so upset?”

  With one final, useless tug, Lore let out a frustrated grunt and gave up on the bike. She paced out a wild path into the yard, then reeled back toward him, her hand pressed tightly against her forehead. “I just am. I’m an upset kind of person. It’s my default setting. Okay?”

  “Well, you’re usually a lot more sedate than this. Not as”—he waved his hands about—“emotiony.”

  “You want to know what’s wrong?” She put a fist over her mouth as if to stop herself, but then pushed on. “I made a deal with my devil too. I got greedy too. Then he got even greedier. And you know what happened when I couldn’t deliver? He killed my best friend.”

  Max felt his legs go all wobbly.

  “What?” he whispered.

  When Lore spoke, it was in clipped sentences, as if each one hurt more than the last. “Verm’s first demand was shelter, just like Burg’s. I found him the trailer, and he was fine with that. But then he proposed a deal: offered me five million dollars to keep him in a perpetual drugged-out bliss. Christ, it sounds so stupid, right?” She looked away, tears squished into the corners of her eyes. “Nice round number like that, and I’m just the dumb, broke kid who’s willing to do anything to get her and her family out of their dumb, broke life.”

  She blinked hard. “At first it was just beer, a case a night. Problem was, he kept drinking it as fast as I could steal it. Then he wanted worse stuff—pot, painkillers, harder drugs. It got to be too much. And the day I told him I was quitting, that the deal was off—”

  She bit her lip and started bouncing on the balls of her feet again. “Noah was scuba-diving on vacation with his parents in Costa Rica. Something went wrong with his tank. A freak accident, they said.”

  Max’s throat felt as if it had collapsed in on itself.

  Was that why she was so sad all the time?

  For once, Max was put into the position of The Person Who Didn’t Know What To Say In The Face of Grief, as opposed to being The Person Who Deserves All Of The Pity. Having been on the receiving end of this kind of conversation countless times because of his mom, he should have had something cued up, ready to go, ready to make her feel better.

  But he knew, from being that person, that nothing anyone said ever made him feel better. So he said the same useless thing people always said. “I’m so sorry.”

  Her face screwed up in an effort not to cry. “Thanks.”

  Her eyes hardened once again. “But Verm did it, I know he did.” She sniffed with violence. “So it was back to the substance stealing for me, more than before, because who knew who he’d go after next? My parents?”

  Max couldn’t gulp air fast enough. “No. No, Burg’s not like that.”

  “Don’t do that, Max. Don’t underestimate him. That’s what I did at first too. It’s a big mistake.”

  “Okay, then what’s your plan? It’s not like I can politely ask Burg to leave and never come back. How did you get rid of yours?”

  “I told you, I don’t know. He was gunning so hard for all this stuff, wearing me into the ground, then one day he was just . . . gone.” She bit her lip. “That’s why I didn’t want to help you at first. I thought he was back, and . . .” She shivered. “I couldn’t do that again. I couldn’t.”

  “Well, maybe Burg will just disappear too.”

  “No.” She jabbed a finger into his chest. “You can’t count on that—it could have been a fluke, for all we know. Verm said devils get to come up to the surface only once a century, and from the way Burg is acting, he’s planning on prolonging it for as long as he can. There’s no guarantee that you’ll be as lucky. So cancel the deal.”

  Max felt as if he were drowning. He glanced at the house, then back to Lore. “I . . . can’t,” he heard himself say.

  “Why?”

  He felt the hope draining out of him. It sank through to his feet, onto the ground, and filtered out into the front lawn. Weakened, Max let it drag him down with it, collapsing his butt onto the ground.

  “My mom’s gonna die anyway,” he whispered, his head in his hands. “Whether he kills her or her rotten heart does. It’s just a question of when. So if I’ve got nothing to lose, why not ask for a cure?”

  “Do you really need me to list the reasons?” Lore angrily brushed the hair out of her face. “Because he’s evil! You can’t trust him! He’s too unpredictable!”

  “That’s just Burg being Burg. He’s infuriating, but he isn’t that heartless.”

  “Really, Max? Satan ‘isn’t that heartless’?”

  Max had no idea why he felt the need to defend Burg, but the need was there just the same. “Hey, we found the house. Now he’ll cure my mom. He’ll have to.”

  “News flash, Max: he doesn’t have to do anything.”

  “I just—I really think you’re overreacting.”

  “And you are completely underreacting!”

  He shook his head. “Sorry, but I’ve gotta do this. I’ve gotta try.”

  She started to back away slowly, almost as if she were scared of him. “Then that’s on you,” she said. “Whatever ha
ppens, that’s on you.”

  She dived into the shrub for her bike, wrestled it out, and looked back at him one more time before pedaling off.

  “You know, Max,” she said, her eyes hard, “for a supposedly upright citizen, you’re pretty good at being bad.”

  That Girl

  MAX BIKED HOME ALONE. He stomped up the driveway. He stomped through the kitchen. He quietly stomped to his mother’s room to check in on her. He was about to stomp into the basement when he glanced toward the bathroom and noticed a certain pantless demon standing in front of the mirror, squirting a tube of toothpaste into his mouth.

  “What are you doing in here?” Max said, irritated.

  “I had to take a whiz, then I got hungry.”

  “You’re not supposed to eat toothpaste.”

  “Really? Then why do they make it so zesty?”

  “Okay, fine. Whatever.” Max rubbed his eyes.

  Burg squinted at him. “What’s the matter, Shove? You look paler and sicker and grosser than usual.”

  “Thanks.”

  Burg slung an arm around Max’s shoulder and pulled him out into the hallway and down into the basement. “Why don’t you step into Dr. Cluttermuck’s office and tell him all about what’s bothering you.” He gave him a push, causing Max to fall onto the sofa.

  “Well, for one thing, you got me shitfaced last night, and now I can’t consume any food or drink without wanting to hurl.”

  “You’re welcome. But I can tell that’s not what has your knickers, unnecessary as they may be, in a twist.”

  Max stayed silent.

  Burg poked him. “Is it about school? Work? Your awful hair? A girl?”

  Max tried not to react, but his eyebrow betrayed him.

  “A girl?” Burg poked him harder.

  Max relented. He didn’t want to talk about this to anyone, especially not the one who was making his life a living . . . well, hell. But if anyone knew anything about the cruel games people could play on one another, he couldn’t have found a better expert than a bona fide devil.