Here, he’d been informed, he had great power.
But where was the evidence of such power? He hadn’t
transformed.
He didn’t radiate blazing light from his eyes. He was the same Walter, just standing in a different place.
A different world,
he reminded himself.
Back at Colin’s penthouse, he’d read all of the pages that had been transcribed by the prostitutes, and if there was one thing about Walter it was that his genius I.Q. accommodated quite a capacity for reading as well as data retention. He’d read the entirety of the
Evocations of Lucifuge,
the first book to ever be published in Hell. He’d scrutinized the crucial chapters: “The Unsacred Edicts of Hellspace,” and “Etheresses and Ethereans.”
He knew everything now. He knew all the Rules.
But there was no description whatsoever of the actual powers of an Etherean. How did they manifest themselves? If he was so powerful—the first Etherean in all of history—why wasn’t anyone here to greet him? He expected to be carried off on a throne. Why weren’t the minions of the underworld bowing at his feet?
Graffiti loomed on the urine-streaked alley wall: I WANNA FUCK SHIT UP! and HELL SUCKS. In the darkness, barely seen shapes that could only be rats chittered by, and drug vials cracked under his sneakers. Walter shook his head. “Maybe this
is
Detroit,” he muttered. “I guess Lucifer’s not into urban renewal.” Then Walter peered at more graffiti—FREE MEATBALLS AND BLOODY FACES!—and shook his head again. A final scrawl stared back at him: CANDICE LOVES WALTER.
Morose, he walked off.
The city’s true nature began to reveal itself. Out of the alley, he could indeed see the sky, like dark blood, and the black sickle moon that looked several times larger than the moon that orbited the Living World. Fires crackled beneath sewer grates, and strange faces clearly not human peered at him from dim windows. But Walter wasn’t afraid. Why should he be?
I’m an Etherean.
The details of getting here began to resurface. That place in south St. Pete, The Mound, it was called, some local landmark. The prostitute at Colin’s had given Walter the slip of paper with directions.
It was a Deadpass, and now that he’d read the transcriptions, he knew what that meant. He’d merely walked across The Mound. Everything went black for a moment, and he felt a queer pressure pushing, but after only a few steps, he was here.
Walking through the Deadpass had brought him from one world to another, and here he was. In the city. In the Mephistopolis.
In his pants pocket he kept the polished onyx stone, one of his dead brother’s final instructions. It would debilitate his visible life force. He felt it growing warm in his beige Dockers, and though he didn’t quite understand, he thought it best to do as he was told. He was here for a reason: to see Candice. He couldn’t have her in the Living World, but as an Etherean he would have her here. They would spend eternity with each other, in love.
CANDICE LOVES WALTER ...
Poor Walter ...
Bizarre street signs wavered overhead: CRANIOPAGI AVENUE, HEMIHYPERTROBE ROAD, CHAN-CROID BLVD.
What? No Primrose Lane?
Out on the sidewalk now, the sulphurish streetlamps tinted the asphalt like yellow frost. He was passing another alley when he heard the faint but definite sound ...
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Walter stopped, peeked into the alley.
Some sort of humanoid mongrel, with horns surrounding his head like a crown, and a face stretched out round and tight as a black balloon, stood in the alley with his rotten trousers down. He was snipping warts off his elephantine penis with a pair of toenail clippers.
“Get out of here!” the thing grumbled. “Can’t you see I’m busy!”
Walter got out of there and fast. Around the next corner he stumbled onto a street that seemed to be paved in cobblestones. At first it looked pretty, but when he examined the stones more closely he noticed that they were clear, like transparent bricks, each containing a demonic fetus. Up ahead, a Lycanymph leaned against a mailbox. The drop-door on the mailbox wouldn’t close due to overfilling with body parts. But Walter had read about the Lycanymphs: sultry tramp werewolves that prostituted themselves. She was picking her vulpine nose, pulling out worms.
Man, this place is A LOT grosser than Detroit!
Walter thought, aghast.
The streets seemed strangely devoid of activity, though. “Where is everybody?” he mumbled to himself. A city in Hell? It should be sprawling with damned souls and demons.
“Mutilation Squad came through a few hours ago,” the pretty werewolf told him. Now she was extracting a worm at least a foot long from her nostril. “They hit us twice this week. That’s never happened before.”
Walter averted his eyes from her current activities when he asked, “What’s a Mutilation Squad?”
“Usually a regiment of Ushers and Conscripts. They come in by surprise in Nectoports, kill everything on the street. Funny this time, though.”
“Whuh-what?”
“The last two times they didn’t kill anyone, just carried them all off in nets. Mancer Squads have been doing it too, and the Constabularies. Rumor is they’re taking everyone in alive to use them in the Atrocidome. Some new hocus-pocus going on’s what I heard from a trick a couple days ago. And it really pisses me off ’cos it’s wiping out my business. I lost some of my best johns in their last grab.” She winked at him with a long-lashed agate-like eye. “You wanna date, cutie?”
“Uh-uh, no thank you,” Walter stammered. “I don’t have any money.”
She hissed, showing yellowed fangs. “Then get off my street, you useless dork!”
Walter didn’t care for the comment. “You shouldn’t talk to me like that,” he suggested. “If I weren’t a nice guy, I’d use my powers on you.”
“Powers? What powers?”
“I’m an Etherean,” he told her.
The Lycanymph’s eight pert fur-covered breasts jiggled as she laughed. “There’s no such thing as an Etherean, asshole. It’s a fable. It’s like Santa Claus. And even if the Etherean legend is true, it could never be you.”
“Why not?” Walter challenged.
“You’re a dweeb, not a hero.”
Walter rushed away, crushed. What she’d said couldn’t be true, though, could it? He knew that he was alive, yet in Hell. Only Ethereans could do that. It was the only way a member of the Living World could enter this place.
He turned the next corner—
“Man-Burgers?” a Troll asked. He stood bloody-aproned and stout at his wheeled vending stand. His face could’ve been meatloaf. He skillfully spun a spatula over pallid meat patties cooking on the grill. “Or how about some of these?” he pitched, pointing to three sizzling things that looked like white bratwursts.
“What are those?” Walter inquired. “Sausages?”
“It’s ghalestro pajata, grilled baby ghoul intestines, still filled with the mother’s milk. It’s great, tastes like salty pudding.”
Walter’s stomach clenched.
Next the vendor opened a metal box beside the grill; steam floated out. “This is even better, and it’s only two Eichmann Quarters per order.” Walter saw the ramekinlike containers, crusted around the rims and bubbling with something that could’ve been melted Muenster cheese. “This is Baked Meconium Imperial, my own mama’s recipe.”
Walter was choking but his curiosity wouldn’t let up. “What—what’s meconium—”
“Fetal bowel contents. In this case, a third-trimester Cacodemon fetus. Dee-lish!”
Walter staggered off and threw up on the sidewalk. His vomit glowed as if he’d thrown up on the lens of a flood-lamp. The vendor was laughing, and he heard a scurrying. He leaned against a steam-car parked at the curb, catching his breath, but the scurrying got louder, and now he heard murmuring too.
Stomach still flinching, Walter looked aside. Several young Broodcn—half-breed demon children—congregated with enthusiasm around, of all things, Walter’s vomit.
Walter stared, revolted.
What on earth—
But this
wasn’t
earth, was it? The Brooden were all scooping up Walter’s luminous vomit and racing away with it in their cupped hands, their faces alight. Several got into a fight over the remaining smears.
Then it made sense, and it was proof that he truly was an Etherean as the books had said. Any material object or substance from the Living World was of immense value in Hell. Including vomit.
Especially
an Etherean’s vomit. It was as good as cash here.
You learn something new every day,
he thought, dejected.
“There he is!” piped a nasally voice. Weird bumpy little faces peered at him—the remaining Broodren.
“Look!”
“Yeah, right there!”
“An ETHEREAN!”
This was not the welcome Walter imagined. When they began to give chase, Walter ran off down another alley. The little buggers followed him intently as a pack of rabid terriers, chortling, and Walter knew they were much faster than he. What would they do when they caught him? It wasn’t hard to figure. If his vomit was worth money, wouldn’t his body parts be worth even more?
Those little psychos’ll tear me apart!
Some Etherean. What a joke. He had no
power.
He hadn’t even been in Hell ten minutes, and he was about to get killed.
His heart almost stopped when he looked to the end of the alley.
Something stood there still as a chess piece, in silhouette. Nine feet tall, wide-angled shoulders, and a head like a lump.
A Golem.
Walter had read about them, and all the inhabitants of this place. A Golem was akin to a brainless police officer. They were made of clay from the tidal beds of the River Styx, for the Agency of the Constabulary. They moved slowly but were nearly indestructible.
If Walter turned and ran in the other direction, the chattering Broodren would get him. He could only suspect that this thing in front of him would be much more efficient.. Either way, Walter knew he would die, and it wasn’t that terrible a prospect since he was already a suicidal basketcase.
His teeth chattered. “Please don’t make it hurt much,” he pleaded to the Golem.
The thing approached clumsily but steadily. It did not raise a mitten-like hand to Walter but instead looked down at him with the featureless lump of its face. Walter squeezed his eyes shut and prepared to die.
The thudding of its footsteps rumbled off. Then—Squealing, screams, howls of terror.
Walter turned around and looked. Behind him the Golem was stomping the Broodren, crushing them, pulling them apart.
Walter ran.
Why did it save me? It could’ve killed me in a second but it didn’t.
Then he remembered a little more, some of the last things Colin had told him before he’d redecorated the ceiling of his penthouse with his brains.
The Prince
of Lies
wants
you,
brother ...
Walter had little confidence in the man’s title but still—There was the implication. The power circles in the Mephistopolis
wanted
Walter and that was difficult for him to dismiss since he’d essentially lived his entire life
un
wanted. There’d been promises of great things to come, of power like that of a king. That last straw-blond prostitute, too, had implied as much: that in Hell Walter would be something great, and would reclaim the woman he loved.
So he dreamed on.
He cleared his head and walked, found another smoking intersection. A steam-car, driven by an Imp in a Yankees cap, soared out of the low-hanging fog. A Griffin circled lazily overhead, appraising him, then was off. From distant, lit windows he heard laughter, moans, and shrieks.
The next street sign snagged his attention: CHYME RESERVOIR AVENUE. It rang a bell, then more pieces of memory kindled.
The dream,
he recalled. But it was just a dream, wasn’t it? And he recalled the pretty girl in the punkish clothes who’d been beheaded by the Golems: No-name was her name. A
Dactyl-class sorceress for the court of King Mursil the First,
she’d told him, whatever that meant. And he remembered one more thing: in the dream, the Golems had thrown her head in a garbage can.
A garbage can stood right in front of him.
There better not be a severed head in this garbage can,
Walter thought, looking in.
There was a severed head in the garbage can.
“Hello, Walter,” the head greeted, tilted in the trash. A flesh-colored bug crawled across her face as she aggravatedly twitched her nose to get it off.
“No-name,” Walter whispered down.
Just that moment something occurred to him. No-name was essentially the only girl who’d ever been nice to him.
Just my luck,
he thought now.
She’s a severed head.