Lucifer's Lottery - Edward Lee [115]
God Almighty . . .
Dorris saw that the severed faces of babies had been grafted onto the man’s own face as effectively as patches stitched onto a shirt.
Dorris stared at the impossible man.
The tip of the sword touched her throat. His voice sounded sonorous and grating like rocks clacking together. “What place is this? Answer me and you may be allowed to live . . .”
Tremoring, Dorris replied, “It’s-it’s . . . Lake Misquamicus . . .”
“This is . . . the Living World, then?”
“It’s-it’s—Fluff-Fluff-Florida . . .” The man must be an alien. “Florida, on the planet Earth.”
“God’s green Earth, then?”
Dorris drooled as she nodded. Her eyes had yet to blink.
“State your name, your function, and your origin.”
“My name is Dorris Markle. I ruh-ruh-run the bait shop and boat rentals, and I’m from Ocala, Florida . . .”
The grafted face surveyed her. This man—or this semiman—had muscles bugling over more muscles, and when they moved, the severed faces stitched over them seemed to sigh.
The sword point lowered, and the stony voice gurgled, “My name is Conscript First Class Favius, formerly of the Third Augustan Legion and currently of Grand Duke Cyamal’s Exalted Security Brigade. I am from Hell.”
He turned to the three nine-foot-tall clay men, pointed his sword, and barked, “Golems of Rampart South! Single file, follow me.” And then they walked away and disappeared into the woods.
Dorris, in a trance of revulsion and disbelief, stared after them for several minutes. When things began to howl from the atrocious scarlet water, Dorris snapped, and ran and ran and ran.
EPILOGUE
Was it a dream?
You hear a THUNK! as in the sound of a cleaver striking a cutting board, and then comes the impression of rising—up a circular staircase?—and you hear footsteps. Then—open air.
Finally your eyelids prize apart.
“ ‘Let not thy hand be stretched out to receive, and shut when thou shouldest pay,’ ” comes a high-pitched, New England accent.
Your vision re-forms and then you know that—
This is no dream.
You are back at the Privilato castle, and the first thing you see is the grand courtyard and inner wards.
It’s Howard who looks back at you; he seems elated, but there’s also a tinge of scorn in his eyes. “It’s a line from the Bible,” his voice piped, “which I foolhardily never believed in. The Book of Ecclesiasticus, parablizing the sin of greed. I’d have been wiser to have heeded that book, rather than in obsessing over the creation of my own.”
“You promised me I’d die when I’m sixty-six! You promised me supernatural protection!” you wail at him.
“I, personally, forged no such promise, Mr. Hudson. It was, instead—as you’re well aware—Lucifer’s promise.”
“I sold my soul for a price!” you scream.
“Consider the author of the terms,” Howard lamented. “It’s so very regrettable: that resonant and universal power known as avarice. You were a very, very easy victim, Mr. Hudson. But, honestly! Why do you think they call him the Lord of Lies, the Great Deceiver?”
“This is bullshit!” But then only now do you realize something crucial, because when you try to look around, your head will not obey the commands of your brain. “What-what—”
“—happened to you?” Howard finishes. “It’s elementary. You died, you went to Hell, and immediately upon the commencement of your eternal Damnation, you were decapitated.” Howard, then, holds up a mirror that reflects back your severed head, which has been neatly propped upright within a stone sconce. “And, as you have hopefully cogitated, we are back at the Chatêau-Gaillard—”
“My castle!” you spit in outrage, “where I’m supposed to spend eternity living in luxury as a Privilato! But I can’t be a Privilato with my fuckin’ HEAD cut off!”
Howard’s voice, in spite of its elevated pitch, seems to turn foreboding. “Not your castle, Mr. Hudson. Mine.”
Only now do your eyes lower to scan the rest of Howard’s form. He’s no longer dressed in the shabby 1920s-style shirt and slacks . . .
He’s wearing a surplice of multifaceted jewels of every color conceivable and inconceivable. An ornate P has been mysteriously