Hellhole (6 page)

He hated when she brought up the glue factory. “Okay. Uh, I'm just going back downstairs to . . . play some video games with Audie. Yeah. So if you hear anything weird, that's . . . what we're up to.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You're not doing drugs, are you?”

“What? No!”

“Sorry. I'm contractually bound to ask.” She picked up the TV remote as some screaming reality show contestants began to throw mud at each other. “Have fun. Tell Audie I said hi.”

Audie.
Max sprinted back down the hallway and headed for the front door. When he opened it, a piece of paper taped to the door fluttered in his face.

“Sorry to refuse your most generous Xbox offer,” it said in Audie's handwriting. “But Mom made me go clothes shopping instead. Pray for my poor, doomed soul.”

He flipped up the doormat—the key was still there.
Okay. So she was never here. Good.

He grabbed the key, then a fireplace poker on his way through the living room. Pausing at the top of the basement stairs, he took his cell phone out of his pocket.

“I'm calling 911!” he shouted down.

“No, you're not!” the man yelled back.

Instantly, the Beige Wonder went dead. Max stared at it, his eyes doubling in size. He ran back into the living room to click on the cordless but found only dead air, no dial tone.

He planted himself at the doorway again. “How are you doing this?”

“Stop yelling and get down here. We'll have a nice, reasonable chat.”

Squeezing the poker, Max slowly made his way down the stairs. The man hadn't moved—he was still on the couch, still playing
Madden
.

Somehow, with his eyes glued to the screen, he sensed Max's intent to harm. “Go ahead,” he scoffed. “Do your worst.”

Max's worst wasn't very terrible at all, but years of shoveling had at least given him some decent upper-body strength, despite a poor showing in other areas. And there were laws about self-defense and protecting one's own home, right? So he gave it a shot, hurling the poker straight at the man's torso, where, amazingly, it hit its target.

It even stuck. The poker sank several inches into the man's beer gut, and yet . . . he didn't flinch. He didn't
bleed.
A second later he took one hand off the controller to casually pull the rod out, but in doing so, he gave up a touchdown and lost the game.

“Damn it!” he shouted, hurling the controller to the floor. “See what you made me do?”

Max watched, aghast, as the yawning stomach wound got smaller and smaller until it disappeared. “Sorry . . . ?” Max stuttered, unsure whether apologizing to the man who'd broken into his house was sound etiquette.

Unfazed, the man began licking the Cheetos dust off his fingers one at a time. “No worries. I get that a lot.”

Now unarmed, Max settled into what he thought, based on countless movies and television shows, was a fighting stance. “Listen—”

“Relax, kid, will ya? I'm not going to hurt you.” He reached for the Cheetos bag, then, remembering that it was empty, frowned. “You got anything else? Combos?”

“No.”

“Cheez-Its?”

“No.”

“Meth?”

“What?” Max shouted, horrified. “No!”

“Ugh,” the man groaned. “No one
ever
has meth.”

Max shook his head. Maybe
he
was on meth. Had Stavroula slipped some into his Hot Pocket?

The man was now picking his teeth with the fireplace poker. Max backed up against the wall, hoping to be camouflaged by the horrid wood paneling. “Who
are
you?”

“Hmm?” The man paused in his dental work to shoot Max a disinterested glance. “Oh. I'm Satan.”

Max blinked. “You're . . . Satan.”

“Well, I'm
a
Satan. There are six hundred and sixty-six of us, not that anyone's counting. But you people always seem to want to lump us together into one all-powerful, malevolent being, so I like to give my audience what it wants.” He started to sink into a deep bow, but he burped in the middle of it and the moment was ruined. “The name is Burgundy Cluttermuck, devil-at-large. I do bachelorette parties and retirement galas, but
no
more
children's birthdays.” He sucked in some air through his teeth. “Too much screaming.”

Max could no longer feel his extremities. “Burgundy Cluttermuck?”

“Please, call me Burg,” he said with a smile, his beard widening. It wasn't a well-trimmed beard, but rather the feral, unkempt kind that resulted from a weeklong bender, with Cheetos debris sprinkled throughout. His forehead was tall, his brow cavemanlike. His hair probably had things living in it. And his horns, while white and polished and slightly iridescent, ended in ragged, cracked tips.

In short, he didn't look like the devil. He looked like the kind of early-forties, thrice-divorced alcoholic who owned a grungy car wash and had to become a sperm donor to pay rent.

Max swallowed. “I'm not—”

“—sure you need a devil in your life? Well, can't help you out there, kid. You brought this on yourself.”

Max racked his brain. There
had
to be people on this terrible earth who were far, far more evil than he was. Unless it was because he'd stolen that cat—but it was just a stupid plastic
cat,
for chrissakes!

“This has to be a mistake,” he said.

“No mistake. You must have done something to deserve me. What'd you do, kill a guy?”

“I stole a bobblehead!”

“Huh. Well, we can't all be Mansons.”

Max shook his head, then shook harder. “No. It
must
have been someone else.”

“Pretty sure it's you. You're the one with the shovel, right?”

Max froze.
Ugly Hill.
“Yeah, but—”

“You even kind of look like a shovel. All skinny in the middle, big head, wide feet. May I call you Shovel?”

“My name is Max.”

“Revolutionary new tactic, Shovel, if I may brag so myself. Can't wait to share it with the guys below.” Burg polished his horns. “See, any act of evil can bring up a devil, but the big ones exert the strongest pull; murders are very popular, because they require the least amount of effort on our part. But the smaller ones can work too, with a little advance planning. So I got myself into position close to the surface—loaded myself into the gun, so to speak, which you then fired by stealing. Since you so graciously dug a hole for me, popping out was a cinch.”

“But I didn't
mean
to!”

“Too damn bad. What's done is done. I'm on an extended vacation now, homeslice, and you're my brand-new pool boy.”

Max started to feel dizzy. He put his hand on the wall to steady himself.

Burg pointed to the streak of ash on Max's hand. “See, there's your proof right there, Shovel. I'm
allll
yours. It's like you went down to the pound and picked me out and—oh!” He clapped with glee. “I'm a rescue!”

“You are not a rescue,” Max said, trying to keep his voice even. “You are not
mine.
I'm sorry I opened up your . . . hole . . . but I swear it was an accident, and what I really need right now is for you to go back to wherever it is you came from!”

“Hell.”

“Well, go back to hell, then. Please.”

“Too late for that.” Burg lifted his sweatshirt to scratch his belly. “You've been marked. That means that until you find me some shelter of my own, you're responsible for sharing yours.”

“I never agreed to that!”

Burg shrugged. “Your hand begs to differ. Now!” He rubbed his palms together and started to stroll around the room. “I'll require a hot tub—obviously—and a walk-in closet, three spiral staircases, a full-size meat locker, a bumper car racetrack, a sex dungeon, and a llama. Those last two are unrelated.”

“I can't get you a house with all that stuff,” Max sputtered. “I can't get you a house at all!”

Burg flung himself back onto the sofa. “Well, I'm not leaving this couch until you do, so you'd better find me some pillows and sheets while you're at it. Egyptian cotton. Twelve hundred thread count.”

Max was pacing now, frantically trying to come up with a solution. “Look, there has to be some way around this. I can't keep a devil in my basement.”

Burg burped again and picked up the remote, switching the television from Xbox to cable. “Tough titties, Shovel. You know the saying, ‘You can't fight city hall'? Well, hell is a lot worse. Lot less forgiving. OH MY STARS AND GARTERS!”

Max had another heart attack. “What?”

“I LOVE THIS SHOW.” Burg scooted up to the edge of the sofa and eagerly leaned forward. “Oh bitch, you did
not
just squeeze that other bitch's husband's ass. Shove a martini glass down her throat!”

The rich housewife flipped a table and wobbled away, only to trip over a teacup poodle and face-plant onto the floor. Burg hooted with laughter. “That's what you get! Time for a new nose!”

“You know this show?” Max asked. “You get cable in hell?”

Burg looked at him as if he were the dumbest kid in the world. “Uh, yeah. It's
hell.
”

Max decided that if there were ever a time for him to grow a spine, now would be good. “As I was saying,” he said, his squeaky voice already undermining his attempts at bravado, “you can't stay here.”

“Can and will. Stab her with your stiletto! Go for the jugular!”

“And what if I say no?” Max shouted over him, puffing out his chest. “What if I refuse?”

As the show went to commercial, Burg finally looked at him. “Oh, I'll kill your family,” he said in a casual voice. “Destroy everything you hold dear. Deliver hellfire and brimstone, etcetera and miscellany, so on and so forth.”

Max tried to emit a skeptical scoff, but a tightness was creeping into his stomach. “Kill my family? Yeah, right.”

Burg's eyes sparkled, as if he'd been waiting for Max to challenge him. He put his thumb and forefinger into the shape of a gun and fired it at the big ficus plant. “Bang.”

Max watched, mouth agape, as the tree flopped to the floor. Within a second its leaves withered and turned brown, like one that had been dead for months.

The tightness in Max's stomach got worse, forming into a hard ball. “Shit,” he whispered under his breath, nausea rolling over him in waves. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“Now,” said Burg, sitting back and hurling his legs up onto the coffee table, “it pained me to do that, as it was one of the lovelier ficuses I've seen in some time. But you wanted proof, so there you have it. Now find me a house.”

Max pondered. He thought he'd read a book about this once. Or seen a movie. Possibly a musical.

“Am I allowed to bargain?” he asked.

Burg slowly tore his gaze away from the television. “Huh,” he said, his apathy replaced by a look of intrigue. “Didn't think you had it in you, little Faust.”

“Well? Am I?”

“Some people would consider the whole ‘you find me a house and I refrain from slaughtering your loved ones' thing a pretty good deal as it is, you know. I wouldn't get too greedy, if I were you.” He balled up the empty Cheetos bag and hurled it at him.

Max caught it, frowning. “Hey, where did you get all these snacks? We didn't have any in the house.” He picked up one of the empty boxes on the table. “Devil Dogs?”

Burg snickered. “Couldn't resist. Been a while since I got my plunder on.”

Max squeezed the box. “You stole these?”

“Yes. Fun fact: Your local grocery store doesn't have any security cameras.”

“You just sauntered right in and took them?”

“Well, I could have burst through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man, but I wouldn't want to cause a scene, would I? Seems like word travels fast in this shithole town of yours.”

“What is the matter with you? You can't just go around stealing whatever you want!” Max shouted in a spectacular display of hypocrisy. “I suppose you expect my gift of a house to be stolen too?”

“Yep,” Burg said with no trace of sarcasm. He turned back to the television. “I can only utilize things obtained through ill-gotten means. Like this cable you're pirating, for instance.”

Max bristled. That had been his mom's doing, and he'd always been uncomfortable with it. But the cable company hadn't caught on for years—how could this guy tell after an hour? “But the TV and Xbox aren't stolen!” Max countered. “I paid good money on Craigslist for those!”

“Well, whoever you bought them from didn't.”

“So? That shouldn't count!”

Burgundy held up his hand and tilted it back and forth. “We devils love dealing in gray areas. It's kind of our thing.”

Max clenched his fists to his sides and stormed out of the den into the unfinished area of the basement, the part used by his mom for storage and by him as a workshop for his dinosaur-related geekery. He needed to think.

“There has to be a way out of this,” he quietly said to himself. “How many
Law and Order
reruns have you watched with Mom? You just need to get him on a technicality, find a crack in his—”

He stopped as his eyes fell on a dusty green lump in the corner.

“Yes,”
he whispered, doing that making-a-fist-and-pulling-the-elbow-downward move that is supposed to symbolize victory but only made him look like an eight-year-old.

When he returned to the den, Burg was talking to the television again. “You used
frozen
scallops?” he shouted at the hapless chef on the screen. “Are you
trying
to lose?”

“Ahem,” Max said.

Burg turned to look at him. “What do you want?”

Max tossed the green nylon bag to the floor, where it landed with a metallic clang. “I found you a home.”