Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck (18 page)

29 · POPPiNG OFF

MILTON WAS TRANSFIXED
by Damian’s peaceful expression. It wasn’t “peaceful” in the sense that it would bring peace to others. Far from it. It was more like he was at peace with how uncomfortable everyone else was around him.

Milton looked around the basement and its maze of crates. There didn’t seem to be another way out. Crawling out through a roaring furnace wasn’t an option, unless Milton wanted to escape as smoke. What was that weird conveyor belt about, anyway? He noticed a little motorized trolley thing leading to the furnace, which had a bunch of controls on the front. The Barry M. Deepe Funeral Parlor must be very fussy about maintaining a specific temperature, he thought as he surveyed the temperature gauge, the needle of which hovered at a toasty seven-hundred degrees Celsius.

Milton heard voices from outside the door.

“Put some hustle in your disco, Dominic.”

“Don’t be dissing my disco, Marco.”

His heart in his throat and a slick coat of cold sweat trickling down his back, Milton searched for a place to hide. A few crates away from Damian’s coffin was the Get Butter Soon costume he had left in the hospital parking lot and that—obviously—had been scooped up by Necia in some weird “saving-his-butt-while-simultaneously-blackmailing-said-butt” way. The crate that it was leaning against was open. Milton removed the lid and climbed inside. It was full of unpopped popcorn. Milton scooted his way down into the quicksand of kernels until just his face peeked above the surface. He gently reached for the lid and slid it closed.

Milton heard a series of wet, explosive coughs.

“Hey, what was that … a coffin fit? Get it?”

“Yeah, I got it, Marco,” Dominic replied in a low grunt. “It’s this embalming fluid they use. I’m allergic to the stuff in a big way. They’ll probably have to cremate
me
, for fear of me sneezing and coughing at my own wake!”

Milton could hear the men wheeling in some more crates, then carelessly depositing them with thumps, scrapes, and crashes. A rush of footsteps spilled into the room.

“Holy and merciful God,” the Guiding Knight declared with breathless grandiosity, “who answerest prayer and … where
is
that little runt?”

“I
so know
I saw him go in here, Guiding Dude,” Warder Chango said.

“I think you’ve been in the sun too long and your brain has wiped out,” Sentinel Shane added with disgust. “Why does a surfer even
live
in Kansas?”

The Guiding Knight cleared his throat and addressed the two mortuary workers. “Have you two …
gentlemen …
seen a boy?”

“Yes,” Dominic answered, “I’ve seen a boy before. This morning, in fact, right before I came to work. He asked me for his allowance.”

Marco and Dominic burst into laughter.

Milton breathed a sigh of relief from inside the crate. More footsteps followed.

“Where is he?” Necia whined. “I’ve got to cross the bridge and guide us to tomorrow before bedtime, or else I’ll get in trouble.”

Milton had never encountered anyone so eager to be ritualistically murdered. If Necia and the other KOOKs had any clue as to how incredibly boring and irritating death was, they might enjoy their lives more—while they could.

“Brothers and sisters,” the Guiding Knight said, “let us not be dismayed, for our heavenly father has promised to strengthen and uphold us by the right hand of his power—”

There was a prolonged pause.

“—so let’s look somewhere else.”

The KOOKs murmured to one another and filed out of the furnace room. After a moment, Milton could hear more shuffling.

“Well, Marco,” Dominic said, “this job can be dirty and hard, but it’s never dull.”

“You said it, Disco Man,” Marco replied.

“I swear, you take your old lady out dancing one night and you get a reputation,” Dominic said. “Which reminds me, I got to get a move on, or I’ll get an earful.”

“Yep, and that dead kid’s tightwad stepdad wants more popcorn. Always with the popcorn. Says it was the deceased’s favorite. Personally, I just think he’s saving his change for a new car. I mean, look at this casket.”

“We don’t have time to pop the rest … unless—”

“Unless what?”

Milton could hear footsteps coming closer.

“Help me with this,” Dominic said.

After the shuffle of more footsteps and the squeal of an old dolly, Milton was suddenly tilted sharply to one side and wheeled across the room.

“Hey, Disco Inferno,” Marco said. “Not a bad idea.”

Milton wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but since he was in a crate of unpopped popcorn, he assumed he was going up to the kitchen. Next, he was hoisted up and placed on something mechanical, maybe a dumbwaiter. Once he was in the kitchen,
Milton plotted, he could burst out of the crate and make good his escape. Relief washed over him. And to think he had almost been, you know,
killed
. And what a stupid way to go: at the hands of some dorky death cult. Milton clutched the gift tightly. Well, at least he had managed to steal back the present and avoid getting into hot water.

Milton started to perspire. Maybe he had a fever. He hadn’t been sleeping or eating much lately, after all. The second he got home, he’d have a nice, cool bottle of E-Cola—maybe two, phew, he was hot—and something to settle his stomach, perhaps some Jiffy Pop.

Jiffy Pop
.

Then it hit Milton, but—unfortunately—by then, it was far too late. His crate, his temporary refuge, had traveled the length of the conveyor belt until it was pitched into the furnace—or, in funeral-home-speak, the crematory. Milton’s last thought was of something his British uncle Benny had told him during one of his visits, about how when an old English guy died, his friends would comically refer to his passing as “popping his clogs.” And here was Milton, popping a lot more than his clogs, in an event that he would later refer to as getting
Redenbachered
.

30 · MAKiNG UP iS
HARD TO DO

BEA “ELSA” BUBB
preened in front of the cracked vanity in the bathroom of her not-so-secret lair. She took a grimy powder puff and tapped it in a marble bowl full of ground pony bones. Next, she thumped the puff across her face until she was the eye of a seething powder hurricane.

“Doesn’t Mommy look pwetty for her big day?” she chirped as she nuzzled Cerberus’s left head, the neediest of the three.

“You don’t have to answer that without a lawyer present,” Lilith quipped from the doorway.

Bea “Elsa” Bubb turned suddenly. Cerberus growled and twisted loose from the principal’s grasp.

The two females stared at one another, exchanging the same contemptuous gaze.

“Well?” the principal said finally. “Why are you here?”

Lilith smirked. “I hate to intrude upon your beauty regimen,” she replied. “Badness knows you need it. But intrude I must. I need you to go to Rapacia now and prepare the staging area for my arrival.”

“And you can’t prepare it yourself because … ?” Principal Bubb grumbled.

“Someone of my stature can’t be too careful,” Lilith replied. “I could be a target.”

Bea “Elsa” Bubb snorted. “Why would anyone view you as a target?” she asked. “I mean, someone who didn’t personally know you, of course?”

Lilith put her hand on her waist so that her arm formed a sharp, bony triangle. A curtain of blond hair fell into her face as she glowered down on Bea “Elsa” Bubb, leaving exposed a fierce green eye.

“As you well know, I am indispensable to the Big Guy Downstairs,” she said with brittle hostility. “I possess a wealth of information vital to the underworld, not to mention a diverse modeling portfolio!”

Lilith took a deep breath. Bea “Elsa” Bubb could see the creature’s ribs poking through her tailored business suit.

“Bottom line,” she said calmly, “the Big Guy
Downstairs can’t afford to take any chances now, and if I were to come to harm, it would look bad.”

“Fine,”
Bea “Elsa” Bubb said wearily. “I’ll do my part. For
him
. Not for you.”

She looked at Lilith’s gleaming hooves, then down at her own drab, cracked ones. She rubbed them together quickly, buffing them clean.

“What if there are new arrivals?” the principal asked. “Who will—”

“I
will,” Lilith said as she turned to leave. “Before I leave. How hard can it be?”

“But you’ll need to assess them and tell them where to—”

“Go. You.
Now,”
Lilith interrupted, glowering at the principal. “You don’t have time to dilly or even dally, for that matter.”

Bea “Elsa” Bubb stopped herself. After all, why should she help Lilith?

The devil’s advocate glanced at the expensive watch that hung limply on her golden, skeletal wrist. “Your clock is slow,” she said, gesturing toward the clock on the wall as she strutted out the door, her tail swishing and sparking behind her.

“It’s Limbo, you idiot,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb muttered as she swept a collection of toiletries into her old leather bag. “The clocks are all stopped.”

She knelt down and gave Cerberus’s right head a
scratch. It turned away, punishing its owner for her impending departure. This was, in Bea “Elsa” Bubb’s mind, the problem head.

“Aww, sweetums,” she said, undeterred. “Don’t be that way. Mommy has some business to do, making sure that Rapacia is safe for that bad, bad lady so that she’ll be around to thoroughly embarrass when I deliver the diamonds that will be stolen from right under her snooty nose job and fix whatever damage she’ll undoubtedly do here.”

Bea “Elsa” Bubb teetered upright and gave herself one last once-over in the mirror. She cracked a smile at her reflection. The mirror cracked in kind.

Milton tumbled off the miles-long corkscrew slide and into the kiddie pool full of Ping-Pong balls and garbage. Again.

The lizards performed the sole song of their repertoire, hopping about in their gold lamé suits, on the stage just outside the Gates of Heck.

Milton felt like he was learning a new video game and had just been knocked back to Level One, forced to play the whole thing over again.

The iron gate, festooned with sugared spikes and barbed licorice, squeaked open. Apart from a few somewhat interested toddlers with squirming fingers wedged in their runny noses, no one seemed to even notice Heck’s only two-time visitor.

Two other boys plunged down the slide and into the kiddie pool behind him, unfortunately triggering another performance of the official “Unwelcome to Heck” song.

The boys—one, a stocky boy with a bandaged eye, and the other, a gangly Asian boy with a smoldering hand shy an index finger and pinky—had that newbie glaze of disbelief, as if it were all a dream.

If only
, Milton thought.

Milton and the boys loitered in silence for several minutes by the you must be this short to enter heck sign before a demon guard gathered them, prodding them into the oppressive and depressing Foul Play Ground.

“Welcome to Limbo,” the guard sneered, marching the boys along the filthy plastic runner. “Sorry for the wait.”

What is going on?
Milton wondered.
Where is Principal Bubb?

The demon guard shoved him and the two other
boys down a hallway and into a room that was frighteningly familiar yet wonderfully devoid of its owner. Here was Milton, once again, in Principal Bubb’s not-so-secret lair. Only instead of the lumpy creature he had been dreading to reunite with, he was presented before a slender, sharply dressed woman appraising herself approvingly in front of a full-length mirror. She pouted and posed, hands on her negligible hips, pointing her dainty hooves girlishly. Her smile dimmed as her nose wrinkled at a sudden, disagreeable odor.

The woman turned sharply.

“Excuse the intrusion,” the demon guard said meekly. “I was expecting Principal Bubb.”

A cold swarm of prickles ran up and down Milton’s spine at the sound of the principal’s name.

The woman sighed and returned to her reflection, applying a fresh coat of Beriberi to her pursed lips.

“Then I’m sure you’re pleasantly surprised,” she said. “Blob isn’t here right now, so I’m in charge for the next”—she looked down at her watch—“five minutes. So if you’re going to disturb me, then be quick about it.”

The demon shifted his weight nervously from hoof to hoof. “Right. Sorry. It’s just that I have several new arrivals that just passed through the gates.”

“Oh,” the woman murmured absentmindedly as she preened. “So
that
was what all the noise was about.”

Milton was stupefied. Had Limbo changed hands,
or claws, or whatever? Who was this woman who commanded so much fear and deference, yet seemed to know Jack-squat about running an infernal boarding school for postmortem minors? Though the woman was pretty and smelled good, Milton suspected she was like a carnivorous flower that lured insects close with its bright colors and beguiling fragrance before chomping down on them and digesting them slowly.

The woman turned and appraised Milton and the two other young prisoners. Her body shuddered.

“Ugh … those dreary, pathetic faces,” she said with revulsion. “They positively
reek
of the Surface. The hopelessness, the inefficiency the blatant disregard for authority …”

“Yes,” the demon continued, rubbing a scar on his dull gray cheek. “Usually—actually, always—Principal Bubb personally greets the arrivals, and has them assessed, processed, and sent to the circle of Heck best suited for—”

The woman spun around. “No wonder this place is in the state it’s in!” she barked. “It’s smothered by process! We need a leaner, meaner machine down here, led by someone with enough guts to make knee-jerk decisions, unencumbered by proven methods and procedures.”

Wow
, Milton thought.
This woman is like a boa constrictor eating her own tail:
totally full of herself.

“Um … okay,” the demon said after a pause. “So what should I do with …”

“Send them off to Sadia on the next stagecoach,” she said coolly.

Milton felt as if the air had been knocked out of him.

The demon’s face crinkled in surprise. “Without even looking at their files?” he croaked.

The woman smiled, exposing every one of her pearly, pointy teeth. “Look, they are down here in Heck: where the bad kids go,” she clarified. “If they didn’t want to end up in the worst, mostly beastly circle imaginable, then they should have thought about that up on the Stage.” She clapped her hands in three sharp swipes. “See,” she added. “Swift, efficient injustice delivered in record time. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a ceremony to monopolize.”

“But that’s not fair!”
Milton cried out. “We’re supposed to have our souls weighed and assessed first! I demand to see—
oww!”

The demon guard had clopped Milton hard on the ear. Aghast, the woman eyed Milton as if he were a piece of dog poop suddenly gifted with the power of speech. She prodded the demon guard with burning eyes.

“Do something about …
that,”
she said, waving her finger at Milton.

The demon blinked his dull eyes. “Of course,” he replied before riffling through a bulging gunnysack strapped across his shoulder. He pulled out a filthy kerchief.
“Ah,”
he hissed as he stuffed it into Milton’s mouth. “Just your size.”

The kerchief tasted like a hobo’s boxer shorts.

The demon seized the boys and pitched them into the hallway.

“I’ve got plenty of spring left in my spork, troublemaker!” he roared. The demon’s voice—now a wicked, commanding baritone—exploded and reverberated through the hallway like a clap of thunder. The woman tucked her purse underneath her arm and strode into the hall behind them. Milton could hear her mumble to herself.

“Is someone making popcorn?” the woman murmured.

The demon pitched Milton forward.

“All right, you miserable wretches!” he barked as he herded the boys away. “Next stop: Sadia!”