Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go (19 page)

40 · A GATE WITH DESTINY

MILTON AND MARLO
hid behind several deflated hippity-hops and a pair of rocking horses so old they should have been made into rocking glue, and eyed the imposing Gates of Heck. They carefully set down their collection of soul jars and waited.

Milton picked up a jar and pressed his nose against the glass. A speckled black glob rushed at his face, like an angry, man-eating fish.

“A lot of these souls are mostly dark,” Milton said worriedly. “They just seem…mean and heavy. See how they just kind of sink to the bottom? I hope there are enough of the light, rainbow floaty ones to get us to the Surface.”

Marlo looked down the main hallway. “If Virgil doesn't get here soon, it won't really matter.”

A metallic squeak pierced through the background drone of the hallway. Milton and Marlo stared at each other with round, apprehensive eyes.

Through the swirls and eddies of greasy smoke, they could see the glint of some metal…
thing…
wheeling toward them. As Milton and Marlo tried to make peace with the fact that they would probably soon be captured by some new, awful robot thing, they heard a familiar voice call from the murk.

“Look!” Virgil exclaimed as he wheeled the clothing rack toward the gate. Draped over the rack was a huge patchwork of jeans, T-shirts, and hoodies, stitched together into an enormous shirt. Virgil pulled off the extra-extra-extra-large shirt and showed it to Milton and Marlo.

“I got Mr. Dior to make it,” he said with pride. “Then—when he passed out—I sewed up the sleeves and the bottom, so all we have to do is release the souls into the neck, and tie it up with these belts.”

Virgil unraveled a coiled mass of belts tied tightly together, then grinned with satisfaction.

“Wow,” Marlo said with respect. “You really did it. Not that we doubted you or anything, we just thought you'd screw it up somehow. Nice dress, by the way.”

Virgil looked down and blushed.

Milton jabbed Marlo in the ribs. He gave Virgil's hand a hearty shake and patted him on the back. Virgil looked up shyly.

“So far so good,” Milton said, “but we're only halfway there.”

In ten minutes, they had dragged over a bent, tetanus-rich erector-set structure, several plastic shopping carts with busted wheels, and some foul-smelling Stinker Toys to create a sort of barricade by the gates. The three children crouched behind it and took cover.

“I hate this part,” Marlo groused, “Operation Hurry Up, Up, Up and Wait.”

“It's either hiding here until another ‘guest' drops in and the gates open, or somehow getting Principal Bubb's finger key,” Milton whispered.

“I'd like to give
her
the finger,” Marlo muttered.

Milton's backpack wriggled and writhed.

“Your ferret sure is freaking out,” Virgil said as Milton yanked off the agitated sack.

“What is it, little guy?” Milton cooed softly as he lifted the canvas flap.

Inside, “Lucky” was coiled in the corner, hissing and panting. Milton cautiously felt his way into the bag.

“Oww!” he yelped. “He bit me again! He never did that upstairs!”

Milton wrapped his hands in his sleeves and grabbed the frantic ferret quickly. He trapped him in his lap, using his legs as a vise.

“Wow,” Virgil whispered. “It's like he's rabid…Hey, what are those?”

Virgil pointed at two large boils on either side of Lucky's neck. Milton cleared away the matted white fur to get a better look.

“His fur's all weird, too,” Milton commented with concern. “It's all thick and gross.”

He leaned closer to examine the boils. They were big, hard like pebbles, and—
It must be my imagination,
Milton thought—looked like they had tiny faces.

“Whatever they are,” Milton said, “they look like they're coming to a head.”

“His eyes,” Marlo murmured. “Something's wrong with his eyes.”

Milton squinted at his supposed pet. “I don't see any…”

“Move him around again,” Marlo said. “I saw a quick flash of something…
There!
”

The three children looked into the fake ferret's gaze.

“Contact lenses?” Milton mumbled.

“Weird,” Virgil said. “Does he have bad eyesight or something?”

The Fauster children glared at Virgil, then proceeded to ignore him.

“You can only see them when the light hits them just so,” Milton commented.

“He's not going to like this,” Marlo whispered as she rolled up her woolly green sleeve. Gently, she pressed her thumb to the surface of Lucky's eye. The creature winced and licked flecks of foam off its raised lips.

Marlo examined the contact lens stuck to the tip of her thumb. “There's, like, a little clear sensor thing in it,” she said. “And another tiny lens inside…It's like a camera or something.”

Milton subdued the struggling animal and removed the second contact-lens camera.

“Maybe that's why he's been acting so weird,” Virgil remarked.

“Maybe,” Milton said while staring at the lens. “Who knows what that horrible, overbearing beast did to him. Poor guy.”

He scratched Lucky behind the ear. The creature spat back a wet, wicked wheeze in reply.

“Here, buddy,” Milton said while putting the agitated animal into his knapsack. “Hopefully he'll chill out in there. He must be traumatized.”

“And we must be under surveillance,” Marlo added.

Marlo peered over their barricade of broken toys. Across the foul playground and inside the KinderScare, she could see a couple of hungry toddlers nibbling through the licorice bonds of the Boogeypeople who lay, livid, inside the gingerbread coffins.

Her pupils grew large and dark as she stared back at the tiny cameras in her hand. Milton watched his sister's face like a movie he had seen so many times he knew it by heart.

“Oh no,” he muttered. “Not that look, Marlo. What are you planning…I mean, what are you going to do?”

“I'm not sure,” Marlo said truthfully. She smiled a spooky grin at her brother. “I never really know until it happens—you know that. You think and never act, I act and never think. That's why we either work really well together, or really bad.”

“Badly,” Milton corrected.

Marlo grabbed the other contact lens from Milton with a swift swipe. “I can't wait around for some kid upstairs to fall out of his tree house in order for that gate to open. You two stay here. Don't worry about me: I got it covered.”

“
Have
it covered,” Milton mumbled as his sister lumbered away in her Boogeyperson getup.

“Wait!” Virgil called. Milton stifled Virgil's cry with a cupped hand.

“Shhh!” he hissed. “It's no use. Once her mind's set on something, you'd have an easier time convincing rain to fall up.”

Marlo shambled down the hallway leading back toward Bea “Elsa” Bubb's not-so-secret lair. She rounded a bend, then stopped and looked over her fuzzy green shoulder to make sure she was out of Milton's and Virgil's sight. Marlo delicately plucked the contact lenses out of her clammy palm and placed them in her eyes.

“There,” she said while blinking the sting out of her eyes. “Operation Goose Chase is a go.”

41 · GOOSE PIMPLES

FLAMES SHOT DOWN
on Milton and Virgil from the fire sprinklers embedded in the foul playground's low, checkerboard ceiling.

“Marlo,” whispered Milton, cringing as he stared at the fire sprinklers flaring angrily between patches of crumbling asbestos.

Virgil was stricken with terror. His wide, quivering eyes flickered with fire and blue strobe lights. He bolted toward the gates.

“Virgil!” yelled Milton. “Don't”—Virgil touched the gates, setting off another alarm—“touch the gates or you'll set off another alarm.”

“Principal Bubb!” shouted a thin, ropy demon that resembled a twisted pepperoni stick. “Another alarm has gone off, this one at the gates!”

Bea “Elsa” Bubb blinked groggily at the screen in her sleeping cove while removing the curlers from her coarse back hair.

“I got that,” she said, yawning, “when my security screen flashed ‘Gate Alarm.' Instead of playing newscaster, why don't you try doing your job and see what's going on?”

The living meat stick bowed with shame. “Yes, Principal. Of course. I'll see to—”

The demoness flicked a switch and the screen went black.

“Yadda yadda yadda,” she groused as she tightened her whalebone corset. After a series of cracks and creaks, she wriggled into her leather dress, gave her hooves a quick buff, then fished out her surveillance pod from her dwarf-rabbit purse.

“Let me see if my widdle boopsy bottom can shed some light on this.”

She rubbed a button with her claw and the device's screen blinked to life. On the small display, she could see the hallway leading to her lair streaking by, blurred with speed.

“Oh, my badness,” she gasped. “My little devil is racing for his mama. He must be in trouble!”

Principal Bubb jabbed a candy-like button on her communications console.

“Calling all demon guards! Report at once to my secret lair!”

She darted out of her sleeping cove through her not-so-secret egress and hoofed it into the hallway. The corridor was a circus of flame, flashing lights, and noise. Principal Bubb held the surveillance pod in front of her, letting it guide her like a high-tech compass.

“I'm coming, precious!” she called out as she cantered through the hectic passageway. On the tiny screen she could make out a familiar strip of corridor—one that was just beyond her—around a snaking bend past the custodial supply pit.

“Almost there!” Bea “Elsa” Bubb panted. She screwed up her sickly yellow-green eyes at the blurry display. A dark figure appeared on the screen, trotting through a bank of oily clouds.

Principal Bubb waved smoke away from the screen to get a better look. The figure became more distinct: an attractive creature with a fetching figure and a flattering leather dress. It was holding a tiny surveillance pod. It was…
her.

Principal Bubb stopped in her tracks.

“My precious…”

She looked up to see a girl's head sticking out of a Boogeyperson's body. Marlo squeaked to a halt. Her eyes flickered like a red neon sign.

“It's n-nice to see you, t-too,” Marlo stammered. “Must have made a wrong turn.”

Several demon guards marched through the cloud of smoke, stopping on either side of Marlo. The squad squeezed against her like a vice.

Principal Bubb folded her flabby arms together.

“I assume this will be going on my permanent record,” Marlo said with a nervous smirk.

42 · THE BUBB STOPS HERE

THINGS WERE REALLY
starting to heat up at the gates. One by one the Boogeypeople were being freed from their licorice bonds by hungry, shortsighted rug rats. Sirens were blaring. Lights were flashing. And Cerberus, still in ferret form, was thrashing about in Milton's backpack. And, despite the countless distractions and the fact that his heart was beating up in his tonsils, Milton's eyes never wavered from the hallway that his sister had entered moments before.

“They must have grabbed her,” Virgil said sadly.

Milton shook his head. “It's not fair,” he moaned. “We're good kids…
mostly…
we don't deserve this. This whole place was created to make sure kids like us never get a break. And they've had eternity to perfect every defect.”

He stared hopefully at the point he last saw his sister.

“I feel like if I just want to see her bad…
badly…
enough, she'll suddenly appear.”

At that moment, Marlo waddled through the dense whorl of smoke, her arms behind her back. Milton laughed with relief, until he saw a squat, shadowy figure emerge just behind her.

“Sorry, bro,” Marlo murmured sadly. “This wild goose got chased, plucked, and cooked.”

Principal Bubb shoved Marlo forward.

“Back off, Bubb,” Marlo spat, twisting toward her captor.

Milton could see that tightly coiled anaconda cuffs bound his sister's wrists and ankles.

Bea “Elsa” Bubb shoved Marlo toward the gate. Marlo looked apologetically at Milton and Virgil.

“I tried to buy you some time,” she said with a shrug of her shaggy Boogeyperson shoulders.

Milton smiled sadly. “What you should've bought was that stupid oar.”

Marlo grinned back at him, though tears fell down her cheeks. “Why would I buy an oar?” she said with a catch in her throat. “We lived in Kansas, short bus.”

Principal Bubb sighed impatiently.

Milton stared anxiously at the gate, waiting for a new guest to open the portal between this life and the last.

A dozen or so gnarled prune bananas with pitchsporks came running down the hallway from the demon depot. As they rounded the corner, they tumbled like jumbo-sized dominos on the slick, freshly swabbed floor.

Bea “Elsa” Bubb rolled her beady eyes at the impromptu game of Slip 'n' Slide.

“Blackbeard,”
she seethed under her breath. The principal puffed up her chest like an especially ugly blowfish.

“Regardless, Mr. Fauster, you and your hapless accomplices are up the River Styx without a paddle.”

At that moment something small, white, and furry scurried between the nasty goat legs of the ancient demoness.

“Lucky?” Milton exclaimed.

The animal skidded to a halt and, with a squeak, rushed at Milton and hopped into his arms.

“But…aren't you in my…?”

The ferret sniffed the air, then ran over Milton's shoulder and burrowed into his knapsack. The bag writhed, squealed, and hissed. Milton yanked off the knapsack and dropped it on the ground. He unbuckled the straps and two ferocious, screeching tubes of vicious fur tumbled out. End over end, they rolled in savage combat.

“Precious!” Principal Bubb yelped, her curdled eyes wide with alarm.

The two wounded, nappy, disheveled creatures broke their death grip and circled each other, panting and hissing.

“It's like that old
Star Trek
episode,” Milton mumbled, “where the transporter split Kirk into an evil Kirk and a good Kirk, and Spock had to decide which was which.”

“Well,” Virgil replied, “maybe the good one is the ferret with the dice around its neck, and the bad one is the ferret crawling with blisters and growing two extra heads.”

“Cerberus?” Milton uttered softly. “But how?”

It dawned on him that the fuzzy white abomination thrashing between him and the Principal of Darkness was a bargaining chip, something that held the potential to tilt matters in Milton's favor.

Principal Bubb lurched forward. Marlo hopped in front of her. Milton ran at Lucky and Cerberus and scooped them up.

“Lucky!” Milton called as his true pet licked his salty face with abandon.

“Okay, okay. Nice to see you, too,” Milton said soothingly.
“Knapsack.”

Lucky scrambled up and over his master's shoulder and burrowed into the knapsack.

Milton clutched Cerberus by the scruff of his middle neck. He held the shape-shifting creature out, squirming in front of him.

“I think I have something you want,” Milton said to the principal calmly.

Bea “Elsa” Bubb rose from the ground with a labored grunt. Milton studied her face. He could see her holding back spasms of alarm and concern.

“You couldn't hurt a fly,” she said through gritted teeth. “I saw your file. I know who you are. You're nothing.”

Milton looked straight into her rancid yolk eyes. “Virgil, get me a jar,” he said through the side of his mouth. “One with lots of those nasty black bits.”

Virgil grabbed the blackest, stormiest jar he could find and stood next to Milton.

Bea “Elsa” Bubb swallowed. “You wouldn't dare,” she jeered.

Milton gave Virgil a faint nod. Virgil struggled to unscrew the jar's lid, and—after much exertion—was rewarded with a twist. The dark, vicious soul glob lunged to the top, shuddering in angry spasms. Milton swung Cerberus over to the jar.

“If you want ‘precious' back, then open the gates. If not, Cerberus here has a playdate with the little soul piranha.”

Bea “Elsa” Bubb stood as still as a gargoyle on top of an old library. “Fine,” she said with barely contained rage. “Have it your way.”

Virgil's stomach growled.
“Have it your way,”
he murmured with longing.

Principal Bubb strutted over to the majestic Gates of Heck and extended her intricately manicured index claw. She stuck it into the keyhole and gave it a twist.

The sirens stopped suddenly. The Gates of Heck creaked open. Every squeak, every grating rasp echoed in the profound silence.

“There,” Principal Bubb said. The word was like a brick of ice that fell to the ground and shattered the second it was uttered. “You are free to go…You'd be the first.”

Now that Milton had bluffed his way this far, he didn't know what to do.

“The gates are open, Mr. Fauster,” she said. “I've kept my end of the bargain, now it's time to keep yours.”

“Don't!” Marlo yelped.

Milton glanced over his shoulder at Virgil. “Let's get busy with the jars.”

Virgil nodded and tried desperately to unscrew the lids. Milton stepped forward and took a deep breath.

“M-my sister,” he faltered. “Let her…let her go.”

“Oh, Mr. Fauster,” the principal chortled. “We all know that isn't going to happen.”

Marlo hobbled closer to Milton.

“I'm the one that belongs here,” Marlo snuffled. “You were just collateral damage.”

The guards, after several unsuccessful tries, had finally managed to right themselves on the slick floor. Bea “Elsa” Bubb gave them an unspoken order with her eyes.

One of Cerberus's heads nipped the back of Milton's hand.

“Fine!” yelped Milton as he let the wriggling creature drop to the ground. As soon as its half ferret, half dog paws touched the floor, Cerberus darted away.

“Sweetums!!” Principal Bubb gushed as Cerberus leapt into her arms.

Marlo shook her head sadly.

“Oh, Milton…why?”

“I'm a boy of my word,” he said plainly. “It may not mean much here, but it means a lot to me.”

Cerberus licked his true master's face until it was slick with slobber.

“You can keep your words,” the Principal Bubb tittered.

She jabbed the underside of one of her bracelets, sort of a blinking glass bone formed around her wrist studded with jewel-like buttons. The Gates of Heck began to scrape closed.

“Guards!” Principal Bubb shouted.

Suddenly the bell tolled for a new arrival.

Barely after the gates had closed, the majestic entrance once again rumbled open.

“If you've lived a life so bad…,”
sang the lounge lizards as they scrambled onto their dinky stage.

Principal Bubb's fleshy jowls sagged down in surprise. She jabbed her wrist control, but the doors spread wide in creaking disregard.

“I can't override!” she barked desperately. “The main portal is on automatic.”

“Virgil!” Milton yelped. “The jars!”

The enormous boy's face was flushed with exertion.

“It's hard,” he wheezed. “Most of the lids just won't budge, and they're all so heavy.”

“Smash them open,” Milton yelled, “and herd them inside the balloon!”

Virgil nodded and began to shatter jar after jar with a tire-less Tonka truck. The souls wriggled free. Frantically Virgil scooped them into the quilted blimp.

The balloon rippled to life. Yet, after a moment, most of the living lumps clung to the bottom, while precious few billowed to the top.

Virgil peeked inside the balloon.

“The black ones are just trying to bite the sides…Oww!” Virgil yelped after a dark soul glob went for his eye. “The happy colorful ones are soaring…or would if there were just more of them.”

Milton ran to his side and started smashing the dwindling collection of jars.

“
Today,
guards!” barked Principal Bubb.

Three demons charged toward Milton and Virgil. Panicked, Milton thrust his hand in a mostly black jar and grabbed a fistful of the nasty, squirming things. They felt like jiggling, electric snot. He winced with pain as the soul bits pinched, stung, and chomped on his hand with unseen teeth.

With a scream, Milton hurled the wriggling globs at the guards. They swarmed around them like flying jellyfish—with the intent, or so it seemed, of entering them.

Virgil cracked open the last jar, freeing a glistening, multihued soul that rushed into the balloon to join the buoyant flock of similarly sparkling light creatures. They nuzzled and cooed like doves.

The balloon rose higher as Milton siphoned out more of the black globs that, once free, streamed out like fat, angry bits of phlegm. Principal Bubb and her guards danced around in spasmodic terror, swatting the tormenting blobs. The dark whizzing bits swooped inside demonic ears, noses, or mouths, then swiftly rushed out to find new victims.

Milton helped Virgil to cinch off the end of the balloon with the knotted-together belts.

The demons had captured Marlo and were now hoisting her into the air like a small crowd at a rock concert catching a stage diver. She writhed angrily and bit anything that came near her pearly white fangs.

“Marlo!” Milton yelled at the top of his lungs.

“Go!” she screamed hysterically. “I'm toast!”

Milton cringed at the word “toast.” The balloon lurched toward the portal.

“It's now or never!” Virgil grunted as he tried to restrain the floating wardrobe.

Milton saw Damian's head peeking out at the edge of the dancing mass of demons. He locked eyes with Milton, straightened his tie, and parted the crowd like Moses gone bad.

Milton and Virgil maneuvered the restless balloon through the gates, toward the coiling slide.

Damian fought his way through the attacking swarm while Principal Bubb swatted maniacally in all directions. She lost her balance and fell on her plump, bristly butt. “Get them, you useless, dried-up strips of road kill!” she screeched.

Meanwhile, Virgil and Milton were leaping into the air, hoping that their balloon would follow suit.

“It's…no…use,” panted Virgil.

Milton hunkered down in an attempt to achieve more “spring.”

“We just need…to jump higher,” Milton replied, steadfast. “C'mon, put some altitude in your attitude.”

Virgil huffed and puffed and blew his hopes down.

“I don't think my…attitude is ever…going to break the law of…gravity.”

Damian grabbed a pitchspork from an addled demon. He cut a swath through the chaos and stopped just outside the gates.

“There's hardly any sport in this,” Damian said, hoisting the pitchspork over his head and behind his shoulder, ready to launch. “But it's not how you play the game, it's if you win or lose that counts.”

Milton locked eyes with Damian.

Perhaps it was the exhaustion, or the hunger that gnawed his insides, or the itchy wool pajamas. Whatever it was, Milton had been pushed too far. In this moment, a spring of bubbling rage washed away the fear that had clung to Milton like moss on a rock ever since he could remember.

“Then get it over with, you gutless twerp!” Milton shouted.

Damian's pupils widened until his eyes were twinkling lumps of angry coal. His nostrils flared like bellows, fanning the smoldering rage within.