Hellhole

  Max was in such a good mood, he reached out and arranged the bills into a little dinosaur-shaped wad. “Here,” he said. “To the Super Fossil.”

  “To the Super Fossil!”

  And Max, no longer able to contain his gratitude, lunged over the counter to hug him.

  Not five minutes after that, Lloyd Cobbler walked in.

  “Oh! Hey!” Burg-Lloyd said as Max stared at him. “Didn’t realize you still worked here. Shouldn’t you have gotten fired, like, days ago?”

  Max’s previous jubilation all but disappeared. “What are you doing here?”

  “Just came to load up on some supplies. Look the other way, would you?”

  Reluctantly, Max pretended to bend down to tie his shoe. When he straightened up, all the Slim Jims were gone.

  Max concentrated hard on not looking up at the security camera. “How’s the house?”

  “EPIC. You would not believe what that hot tub can do. I already had to clean out the filters twice.”

  “Well, there’s a lot of information I didn’t need.”

  They stood awkwardly for a moment.

  “So I guess this is goodbye, huh?” Burg said.

  Max wanted to grab him by the throat and pull him in close, but he settled for giving him a dark look. “Except my mom’s heart still isn’t fixed,” he spat. “When are you going to pencil that in?”

  “Soon, I promise. Did I forget to mention that devils are notorious procrastinators?”

  “Burg, I swear to God—”

  “Kid, don’t sweat it. I’m a man of my word! You helped me out, and . . .” He trailed off and looked at the floor, his voice taking on a more contemplative tone. “You really did help me out.”

  He rubbed his sculpted chin. “I want you to know that I’m grateful for all the things you did for me. I know they weren’t easy for a simple-minded mortal like you, and sometimes I wish things could be different . . .” He looked out the window, then back at Max. “But they aren’t. So thank you. Is what I’m trying to say.”

  “You’re welcome. Just fix my mom, all right?”

  Burg smiled harder. “Already on it.” Energized, he exited the store, dropping a couple of Slim Jims.

  Max watched him go, then picked up his old friend the crossword puzzle book.

  He finished ten in three hours, a new record.

  He biked home through empty streets. He didn’t even see another human being, except for Mario the pizza man. It seemed as if every single citizen in Eastville was at the game, crammed to the gills inside O’Connell Stadium.

  Except, of course, for the Kilgores. “Hey, Mom?” he asked, pushing her bedroom door open. “Do you feel pretty?”

  “Oh so pretty!” she cried, screeching when he held up the West Side Story DVD.

  Max opened the pizza box, and she sniffed after it like a coke fiend. “Ooh, that prancing bucktoothed guy is gonna die so hard. So hard. How opposed are you to rewinding it and replaying it so we may enjoy his demise in a never-ending loop?”

  Max snickered. “Whatever you want, Mom.”

  The only thing Max’s mom loved more than mocking romantic movies was mocking romantic movie musicals. Jazz hands really got her goat.

  “I think she looks like a guppy,” she said as they watched. “And he’s a singing woodland creature with a bad Jersey accent.”

  When Tony finally bit the big one, they both started laughing so hard they cried. Or crying so hard they laughed. It was somewhat difficult, this time, to figure out which was which.

  Exhausted from too much chuckle-sobbing and pizza, Max sank back into the armchair and watched, amused, as his mom had her rewinding fun. “Alive chipmunk boy, dead chipmunk boy,” she chanted. “Alive chipmunk boy, dead chipmunk boy.”

  Max smiled and let his drowsy head fall to the side. Just before he fell asleep, his eyes landed on the glittery plastic cat, the one that had started this whole mess. It smiled back at him, still hideous.

  The night before, Max had enjoyed a deep, dreamless slumber. He’d completely blacked out, dead to the world, waking up hours later with no recollection of what had transpired in his subconscious, if anything at all. Blissfully unmemorable.

  The same could not be said of Friday night.

  He tossed and turned, hurling his body around the small armchair, yet unable to fully wake up. He was fuzzily aware of his surroundings, part of him insistent that he should get up and go to his own room, but the nightmares kept pulling him back under: swirling blurs of the bloodstained floor—of O’Connell’s bloated, waterlogged face looking up from the bottom of the lake, screaming futilely for help—of gunshots pounding, exploding, relentless—police sirens, a whole squadron arriving to arrest Max—Lore being led away in handcuffs—Max shouting for her to be let go—Burg’s grinning face, burning red as fire—more sirens—more sirens—

  Max woke up in a haze, bewildered. That noise—it was real. Continuous, shrill, steady. Loud. Max looked down.

  The transplant beeper.

  “Mom,” Max said in a shaky voice. “Wake up.”

  OK Place

  THE AMBULANCE ARRIVED AT THE HOSPITAL in a dazzling array of lights. “I can’t believe it,” his mother kept saying as the attendant wheeled her through the emergency room doors. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Mom. Believe it already.” Max squeezed her hand as they bustled through the halls, his shoulder bumping into people left and right. He was so focused on her, he became completely ignorant of his surroundings; for some horrible, irrational reason, he felt as if she’d die if he took his eyes off her.

  Stupid movie, he thought. Stupid chipmunk Tony.

  They arrived at the cardiac ward and were whisked into something called a family room, a big, welcoming den with ample seating that Max, being a very small family indeed, would never be able to fill. The transplant coordinator plunked down a stack of paperwork on a table in front of Max’s mother and instructed her to start filling it out. The doctor would be in shortly to go over the procedure.

  Max’s mother sighed. “This might take a while, hon,” she told him. “Why don’t you run down to the cafeteria and get a snack or something?”

  “No, I’m fine,” Max said, taking a seat across from her. He was so nervous, anything he ate would get puked back up anyway.

  It seemed like hours later, but the doctor finally arrived to explain everything, going into what Max thought was way too much detail about the rib cracking and the heart stopping and—

  At some point he stopped listening, retreating into himself and wondering how on earth they’d arrived at this moment. Was this Burg’s work? It had to be. The timing was too perfect for it to be a coincidence. But it hadn’t gone exactly the way Max had anticipated. He’d expected . . . well, he didn’t really know what he’d expected. Maybe he thought the heart would simply heal itself? It sounded silly, now that he thought about it. And Burg had said that he’d only replaced that ficus plant, not revived it—

  “Max?” his mother was saying. “Are you coming?”

  He snapped back to attention. “Coming where?”

  “We’re taking her into prep,” the doctor said. “You can either come with us as far as the OR and hang out in the waiting room there, or stay here. If I may be so bold, I recommend you keep this room. Sofa versus hard plastic chairs, no contest.”

  Max started to get up. “But I want to come—”

  “Max, stay,” his mom said. “You baby-sat me enough for several lifetimes. I’ll be fine. Get some rest, okay? It’s a long surgery. And who knows how long it’ll take for the staff to subdue me once I’ve got my unstoppable new ticker. I can’t promise I won’t punch through a wall or two.”

  “Well . . . okay. If that’s what you want.”

  Her hands curled nervously around the arms of the wheelchair. “Come here, hon.”

  He bent down to hug her. And as she lifted her thin arms into his embrace, as he felt the ribs poking through the skin on her back, it dawned on him—
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  He regretted nothing.

  He’d bought the health of his mother by lying, stealing, and covering up the murder of another human being. They weren’t the right things to do, but they sure as hell weren’t the wrong ones either.

  “I love you, Mom,” he said, trying to keep his voice from wobbling. “I’ll see you soon.”

  “Love you too, Maxter.”

  The doctor wheeled her out of the room and closed the door behind him. Max stared at it for a moment; then, restless and uncomfortable with being so alone, he sank into the sofa.

  And waited.

  “Sweetheart?”

  Max curled into a tight ball at the woman’s touch. Lore’s face jumped into his head. He smirked, picturing her ponytail swirling like a lasso.

  “Max?”

  He opened his eyes. It wasn’t Lore. It was a nurse dressed all in green, shaking him awake.

  She was smiling.

  Max’s mom was covered in so many bandages and tubes and wires, he couldn’t be sure there was a person under there.

  He rushed to her side. “Mom?”

  “It’ll still be a while before she wakes up,” the nurse explained. “I just wanted to bring you to Recovery as soon as she was out of surgery. You two seem so close.”

  He gave her a weak smile. “We are.” He pointed to the tube going down his mom’s throat. “Will she be able to talk?”

  “Not until we take the ventilator out. But I can grab a pad of paper for her to write on, if you like.”

  Max imagined that his mom still had some choice words for Chipmunk Tony. “That’d be great, thanks.”

  He squeezed her fingers again—and it was then that he noticed that the ash mark had disappeared from his hand. He brought it up to his face, rubbing his thumb over his skin.

  It was gone. Really gone.

  “What happened there?” the nurse asked, pointing at his hand.

  “Excuse me?”

  “All those scratches?”

  “Oh,” Max said with a weak laugh. “That. I have a really mean cat.”

  The nurse clucked her tongue. “Better keep him away from your mom. That bacteria’s no good for immunocompromised patients.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Max. “I’ll . . .”

  He trailed off. Bacteria. Why was that ringing a bell? A very loud, insistent bell?

  “What kind of bacteria?” he asked.

  She put her hand on her hips, thinking. “Bartonella henselae, I think? The one that causes cat scratch fever. It’s what makes the cuts go all red and puffy so quickly.”

  Max’s bones felt as if they were trying to leap out of his body. Bartonella henselae. He knew where he’d seen that before. He knew where he’d read that before.

  As his brain raged on, Max watched the nurse leave. She merged effortlessly into the never-stopping stream of people rushing down the hallway—doctors, nurses, family members, Wall—

  “Wall!” he called out.

  Wall overshot the room, then retraced his steps, slowly peeking through the door. “Max?”

  “Wow, did word get out that fast?” Max said, getting up, shoving the bacteria thing to the back of his brain for the moment. “I didn’t even tell anyone.”

  But Wall didn’t look happy to see him. His face was drawn and pale. “What are you doing here?”

  “My mom,” he said. “A donor heart opened up. She got the transplant.”

  Wall stared at the tubes.

  Max gave him a playful shove. “It’s a good thing, Wall!”

  He shook his head. “Yeah, I mean—” He frowned. “It is a good thing.”

  “So let’s celebrate! The nurse says it’ll still be a while before she wakes up. Care to join me in the cafeteria for a couple of juice boxes?”

  Wall didn’t seem as though he was hearing him correctly. He just kept staring at Max’s mother, his giant hands shaking.

  Max frowned. “Wall? What’s wrong?”

  As he moved in closer, he noticed that Wall’s eyes were bloodshot. And there were dark stains on his football uniform.

  Why, Max slowly wondered, is he still wearing his uniform?

  “Wall. What’s going on?”

  He looked down at Max, his eyes watery and scared.

  “You haven’t heard?”

  666–15

  THE ELEVATOR DINGED. GROUND FLOOR. Max didn’t want to know what he’d see when the doors opened, but he forced himself to step over the threshold and into the waiting area of the emergency room.

  It was packed.

  His stomach clenched shut like a bear trap. Eastville was not a big city; there was no reason for its hospital to be this crowded this late at night.

  Clumps of people were sitting on the hard plastic chairs, some of them huddled together and crying, others pressing gauze into bleeding wounds. Every time a doctor came out of the emergency room, faces turned upward, hopeful, then darkened when no news was given. Red streaks painted the floor. Gurneys lined the sides of the corridors. Some of them held moaning patients. Some of them were covered with white sheets.

  Max stared at one such gurney, at the small hand poking out from beneath the cloth, the skin covered in something sticky. Cotton candy.

  He tore his eyes away, dragging his gaze back into the waiting room. It landed on two people sitting in the corner. Tense in their chairs, they stared straight at the door to the emergency room, nothing else. Principal Gregory threaded a wrinkled Kleenex through her fingers, while her husband’s hands gripped the armrests.

  The room spun. Max reeled, reaching out to grab the wall, unable to go any farther. “What—”

  “The bleachers at the football stadium.” Wall’s voice was gravel. “They collapsed.”

  Max took in each word, one at a time, his throat closing as he realized where his mother’s new heart had come from. From whom, he didn’t know—didn’t want to know, would never want to know. Wall was still talking, something about “Fourteen dead . . . dozens wounded . . . Audie critical . . .” but all Max understood was: The bleachers. Football stadium. Collapsed.

  Just knocked a few screws loose.

  Max ran.

  He’d arrived at the hospital via ambulance, which left him without a bike. So he had no choice but to sprint. The only sounds breaking the air were of his sneakers pounding against the pavement, his ragged breaths, and the continuous wail of sirens echoing in the hills.

  When he arrived at his destination, he didn’t need a crowbar. He could have torn the door off his hinges.

  But it was unlocked. As if he were expected.

  Thick, smoky air stung his nostrils as he stormed into the foyer. A fire roared in the fireplace. Glasses of alcohol dotted various surfaces and end tables, and seated on the plaid sofa, staring into the flames and sipping a brandy, was Burg.

  Max stalked up to him. He wanted to rip those horns right out of the guy’s skull. He wanted to tear him limb from limb. He wanted to grab a rifle off the wall and shoot him in the gut, throw him over the balcony into the lake, and watch him drown, slowly.

  But all he said was, “Why?”

  Burg looked at him. Multiple emotions were at war on his face; Max could tell that he was struggling to control them, to banish the kinder, more human ones. Eventually a sneer wormed its way to the surface and stayed there, his eyes gone cold.

  “Your mother needed a new heart.” Burg took a sip of the brandy. “I got her one. Shouldn’t matter how I did it.”

  “You killed innocent people!” Max shouted.

  “So did you.”

  Max slapped a hand over his mouth; he felt sick, sicker than he ever had before, as if his guts were instantaneously rotting.

  “I warned you,” Burg said quietly. “I told you not to get greedy. I warned you not to go down this road. It’s not a nice road, Max.”

  Max let out a whimper. “But I trusted you.”

  “That was your first mistake.”

  “I did everything you asked.”

  “
Second mistake.”

  Max forced himself to look Burg in the eye. “How could you do this to me?”

  Burg’s face tensed. He held Max’s gaze, then looked back into the fire.

  “A devil doesn’t change his horns,” he said softly.

  Max sank to the floor. His knobby knees came down hard, pounding like hammers on the bloodstained wood floor. After that, there was nothing but his muffled sobs, the crackling of the fire, and silence.

  Until something caught Max’s eye. A crumpled-up wad of money sitting next to Burg’s brandy.

  “Where did you get that?” he asked, standing up to get a better look at the bills. Except they weren’t in a clump—they were in the shape of a dinosaur.

  Burg picked up the glass without answering.

  “No,” said Max. “No, I gave that to Paul—”

  The blood drained out of Max’s face as it dawned on him. The buzzing in his ears when Paul told him he’d been fired. How they only ever talked about it in private after school, or at the Gas Bag—never in public. And that the real Paul never would have bought gum, not with all those braces.

  “You were Paul.”

  Burg calmly sipped his drink.

  “And let me guess,” Max said, his voice hollow. “You didn’t fill the hole.”

  “Sorry, did you say ‘fill’?” Burg said, tipping the remains of the brandy down his throat. “I heard ‘dig.’”

  Just then Max noticed a glint of something outside, a tiny ball of yellow light floating on the balcony.

  A lit cigarette.

  Max stared into the darkness. The light began to move to the right, traveling toward the hot tub, until it was no longer in view.

  He approached the sliding glass door, his brain recycling bits and pieces of what Burg had said to him over the past week and spitting them up in random splotches . . . any act of evil can bring up a devil . . . the big ones exert the strongest pull . . . murders are very popular . . . the Moneygrubbers have been trying to figure out a way to stay up here for centuries . . .