Lucifer's Lottery - Edward Lee [52]
Howard chuckles. “Save for the revolting B.O., it’s actually one of the more sedate Districts. You’ll be happy to know, however, that we’re merely passing through.”
The last row of houses, you notice, are actually sweating. As you pass the District gates, more glaze-eyed denizens straggle in and head to the pillories.
Now the road rises through a yellow fog so thick, you can’t make out the endless scarlet sky. “So now it’s the . . .”
“The Humanus Viaduct. It begins at a lofty elevation and provides a spectacular view. Lucifer wants you to be fully aware of the immensity of the Mephistopolis . . .”
Lucifer wants me . . . Your thoughts stall.
“He hopes that you’ll want to return.”
Now your monstrous lips actually laugh. “Fat chance of that! So far I’ve seen a town made of guts and a town made of skin! What, he thinks I want to move in?”
“The immensity, Mr. Hudson, and in that immensity you’ll consider the value to someone of your very privileged status.”
“I still don’t understand what you—”
Howard holds up a pale hand. “Later, Mr. Hudson. There’s still much more for you to envisage . . .”
The car chugs ever upward, and in the fog, you can swear you catch glimpses of horrid, stretched faces showing fangs in vertical mouths.
“Gremlins,” Howard specifies. “Wretched little things. They live in fog, swamp gas, and clouds, and even are said to have cities in the higher noctilucent formations.”
You spy more fangs snapping in a split second. “But-but-but—”
“Nothing can do us harm, so you needn’t fear, Mr. Hudson.” Past the buxom driver’s shoulder, Howard points to a trinket of some kind dangling from the rearview mirror: a small metal Kewpie of a robed man holding a staff in one hand and an upside-down baby in the other. The pewtery detail implies that the baby’s throat has been slit, and its blood is trickling into a bucket. “We’re protected by the St. Exsanguinatius Medallion. It’s quite a potent Totem.”
Great, you think.
The car lumbers on, and Howard slouches back and begins to idly hum a tune, which seems aggravatingly familiar. In time, the name comes to you: “Yes, We Have No Bananas.”
Finally, the fog expels the steam-car onto a high, rough-hewn mountain pass. You yell out loud when you peer over the side and see less than an inch of the cliff-road’s surface sticking out past the outer side of the tire. “There’s no safety rails!” you shout.
Howard frowns. “That would hardly be logical in Hell, Mr. Hudson. Now, if you’ll put your consternation aside, I’ll welcome you to one of our attractions here: Corpus Peak. Corpus Peak is a man-made—er, pardon me—a Demon-made mountain. It is composed, in fact, of exactly one billion Demon corpses . . .”
When the words finally register, you grind your teeth and peer once again over the side, and in a few moments it’s the image that begins to register, however grimly. The vast side of the “mountain” sweeps down hundreds of feet, and in it, you notice the rigor-mortis’d cadavers of Demons.
“A-a-a mountain of dead Demons?”
“That’s correct. The first billion Hellborn, in fact, to die under Lucifer’s initial scourge when he took over. All manner of demonic species: Imps, Trolls, Gargoyles, Griffins, Ghouls, Incubi, Succubi—everything. The Morning Star wanted his first monument to be symbolic. ‘Serve me or die.’ He liked it so much that he ordered the highest echelon Bio-Wizards to put a Pristinization Hex on the entire mountain. The corpses, in other words, will never decompose.”
You keep staring at the twisted faces and limbs of the mountainside. Kind of makes the Hoover Dam look like Tinkertoys.
“And below,” Howard adds, “the abyssal river Styx.”
Only then do you let your vision span out, to a ghastly, twisting waterway of black ooze marbled with something red. “What is it called?”
“The Styx!” Howard exclaims. “It’s the most renowned river in all of mythology! Surely you’ve read Homer!”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right. I forgot about that one. But I was thinking of the rock band.” You try to shrug. “Never got into them.”
The noxious river is so distant you can