Donny's Inferno (8 page)

The shreek seemed surprised to see her there. It screeched at her as it went by, such an awful sound that Donny jammed his fingers in his ears. The cry was answered by others hidden in the clouds.

“Wish I had my sword with me,” Angela grumbled. “I'd have shut him up in a hurry.” She looked out at the ­bottoms of the fiery clouds. In the distance, above the Council Dome, smaller gargs were driven out of the clouds by the larger, fiercer shreeks. “I can't even tell how many there are.”

“Is this unusual? Aren't they always here?”

She scrunched her mouth. “No. Not since the war. They were allies with the Merciless. They would carry barrels of fire and drop them on us. When the Merciless were forced into the Depths, the shreeks followed. We'd see one or two every once in a while, but nothing like this. I guess they're back.”

Donny saw another poor garg drop lifelessly from the cloud. “They're horrible.”

“Ugh,” Angela said. She shook her head. “Let's get out of here.”

•  •  •

Going down the spiral path was easier with gravity on their side. The commotion above had died down now that the gargs had been driven away. The shreeks were quiet and stayed hidden in the clouds.

Without the noise, Donny was able to think again, and he realized there was an important question he'd never asked. “Angela?”

“Mmm?”

“How did you know what you would do with the souls once they weren't going to be in the pit?”

“Cricket, that's enough history for one day. I want to get my mind off this stuff that's been happening. It feels like everything's going here in a hand basket.” She put her arm around Donny's shoulder and jostled him. “Are you ready for some fun?”

Donny gulped. He wondered what Angela's definition of
fun
might be. “Um. I guess so?”

“Swell! We'll pack some things and leave tomorrow.”

“Where are we going?”

“Topside, of course.”

“What are we going to do?”

Her smile widened. “We're gonna catch a monster.”

CHAPTER 14

D
onny's eyes fluttered open. He lifted his head and saw the canopy all around. At least this time he knew where he was when he woke up. He parted the material on both sides, half expecting to find Tizzy peering at him, but the room was empty. There was a clock on the table beside his bed. It was four a.m. Sulfur time.

All night he'd dreamed about the astounding things he'd seen since arriving. It was almost too much to absorb, and the sheer volume and intensity of the memories had woken him in a dizzy state. Amid those confused thoughts, a word floated up:
infinite
. Why, he wondered, had that popped into his head? It was connected to something. Then he realized what it was. That strange old imp named Sooth had said that puzzling phrase over and over:
When eight sleeps, it is forever.

“Eight sleeps,” Donny muttered. He closed his eyes and pictured the word
eight
sleeping, and then the number 8 sleeping. And then he started to laugh. “Oh,” he said, grinning. “I get it.” He turned over again, laughed into his pillow, and dozed off once more.

CHAPTER 15

W
ake up,” said a musical voice. Little hands bounced Donny's shoulders into the mattress.

“Hi, Tizzy,” he said through a yawn.

She fired words like machine-gun bullets. “Angela says you're lazy and you sleep too much and you have to go have breakfast with me right now because you're going somewhere with her later.”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess we are.”

She bit her bottom lip. “Are you going home?”

Donny laughed. “No. Not home. She has something else she wants me to do.”

“Are you from New York?”

“Yes.”

“Is that Gotham?”

“Well, some people call it that.”

“Do you know Batman?”

Donny looked at her and tried to figure out if she was clowning around. She stared back with wide eyes. “Batman isn't a real person, Tizzy,” he said.

“I know that.” She looked over her shoulder, then leaned closer and whispered, “It's his secret identity.”

“That's not what I mean,” he said. “I mean . . .” He took another look at those wide, dark, unblinking eyes. She was holding her breath. “I mean, no. I've never met Batman. Maybe someday, though.”

She nodded and then rubbed her stomach. “I want scrambled eggs and bacon! Cookie makes them into a smiley face.”

“Sounds good,” Donny said. “I'll meet you downstairs in a little while.”

•  •  •

After he washed and dressed, he found Tizzy in the main room below, slapping her knees and clapping her hands to amuse herself. “I'm hungry,” she said when she saw him.

Echo waited by the door. “Hello, Echo,” Donny said.

“Hello,” the giant imp replied.

“Where's Angela?” Donny asked Tizzy.

“She said go and eat, and she'll meet you here later,” Tizzy told him. “And she said Echo has to go with us, but it's not because weird stuff is happening and she's worried.”

“Okay,” Donny said. He watched Echo pick up the
lethal club that leaned against the door. “Echo, are you coming along so you can protect me?”

“Protect,” Echo said. He rested the weapon on his shoulder.

“Thanks,” Donny told him. He didn't want to wander around alone, or just with Tizzy, with Butch in the vicinity.

They went through the tall doors, down the steps and the ramp, and took the same road toward the strangely out-of-place diner. When they approached the shattered building and the broken column where Sooth had been perched, Donny looked for the old gray imp. He planned to call out the answer to yesterday's riddle, and wanted to hear if Sooth had a new one. But the little imp wasn't in his usual place.

Tizzy noticed too. “I wonder where Sooth is.”

Donny was about to answer, but instead he gasped as a hand clamped on his elbow. He looked down and saw Sooth staring wildly up. “After the light comes the fall,” he said in that froggy voice.

“Right,” Donny said. “Hey, I figured out the last one. The number eight looks like the symbol for infinity when it's sideways.”

“After the light comes the fall,” Sooth repeated, louder this time. He squeezed Donny's arm until it was nearly painful and his breath wheezed through his nose.

“Why aren't you up there?” Tizzy asked. She pointed at the broken column.

Sooth let go of Donny's arm and repeated the riddle again, reaching for Tizzy. She backed away. “After the light comes the fall,” he croaked at her. The ancient imp turned to Echo next. “After the light comes the fall!”

“Are you feeling all right?” Donny asked. But Sooth wasn't paying attention to them anymore. Someone else was walking down the street. Donny was pretty sure it was another one of the council members who he had seen outside the dome. Sooth stumbled toward the newcomer and repeated the riddle again, louder still.

“He's acting funny,” Tizzy said.

“Funny,” Echo said.

They went on to the diner, and Donny turned the phrase over in his mind. He wondered if it could be solved as easily as the last one.

After the light comes the fall.

CHAPTER 16

Y
ou're back,” Angela called down when they'd returned from the diner. It sounded like she was in one of the rooms upstairs.

“Sooth was acting weird!” shouted Tizzy.

“Isn't he always? Donny, come up here, will you?” When Donny went upstairs, he saw the door to her room open, and rapped his knuckles on it.

“Come in, Cricket,” she sang out from within. Donny stepped inside, and almost whistled in admiration when he looked around the room. The ceiling was twenty feet tall, and the frame of her bed reached almost as high. Murals of cherubic angels covered the walls. But the most curious feature of the room was that the bed, the shelves, the bureaus, and the tables were littered with stuffed animals of all sizes: teddy bears, dogs, cats, lions, giraffes,
pandas, and more, as if she'd cleaned out an aisle at the toy store.

“Almost time to go,” she said. She stepped out of a smaller connected room that must have been a huge walk-in closet. Donny saw clothes inside, hanging in long rows, with hundreds of shoes in racks and dozens of hats on shelves above. Angela was dressed in a black shirt with silver embroidery, a jacket with tails, and dark jeans with leather boots that came to her knees. The matching glove on just one hand was an eccentric touch, but even with that she'd blend in easily on the streets of New York.

“You should grab some money,” she said. As she put on a glittering necklace, she gestured with one elbow to a table in the corner.

“Are you kidding me?” Donny asked. The table was littered with piles of money. He stepped up to it, his mouth hanging open. There were stacks of bills, euros, and other currencies he could not identify. “You just leave this sitting here?”

“Who's going to steal it? It's not like anyone can use it down here,” she said. “Go on, grab some good old ­American buckaroos.”

“This is crazy,” Donny said. He picked up a bundle that was an inch thick. On top was a hundred-dollar bill. He riffled through the stack. They were all hundred-dollar bills. “This isn't real, is it?”

“Of course it's real.”

“But . . . how much is there?”

“I haven't the slightest. Loads.”

“But . . .” Donny's head wobbled. “How did you get this?”

She stepped up beside him and shoved some of the bundles into a purse. “You know all those people who arrive here by barge every day? The wicked dead? There are plenty of rich ones among them, with a lot of ill-gotten gains. If we ever run low on money, we ask the new arrivals to tell us where the loot is hidden. They're so eager to help! The embezzlers, the bank robbers, the tax cheats, the drug lords, the grafters, the white-collar weasels . . . They all figure that, if they give it up, maybe we'll go easy on them.”

“Do you?”

“You're so funny.” She thrust another stack into his hands. “Come on, fill those pockets. New York is expensive, you know.”

Donny stared at the pile of bills again. He shook his head and stuffed one of the bundles into his pocket. “Hey, did you find out what happened with the clouds?” he asked.

“The strangest thing. There's a natural vent for the Fire of Illumination over yonder—no need for refining at all; it just comes out that way. The imps who run that operation keep the vent capped. While it was unattended, the machinery collapsed into the vent, and a huge amount leaked out. Now the skies will be bright for days. No nighttime at all.”

Donny looked at the intense shaft of light that came through the window. “Was it really an accident?”

“That's a good question,” Angela said.

“Is it weird that first the fire got stolen, and now this?”

“That's an even better question. Go on downstairs, I'll be right behind you.”

•  •  •

Donny was halfway down the steps when a metallic clang rang out three times from the front door. 

“Can you get that, Cricket?” Angela called from above. 

Donny went to the front door, turned the lock, and pulled it open. An odd sight was on the doorstep. It was an imp about his size, in a housedress with a flower print. She—if it was a she—had a pair of old-fashioned round spectacles, a huge paisley carpet bag slung over one elbow, and an umbrella that seemed entirely unnecessary in ­Sulfur. Topping it all off was an obviously fake granny wig.

“Is that Nanny?” Angela shouted. 

Donny stared. This ridiculous creature
looked
like a nanny, more or less. Or at least like a bipedal toad dressed up like somebody's idea of a British storybook nanny.

“I Nanny,” the imp finally said, settling the question. She handed Donny the umbrella and brushed past him and into the room. 

“I guess it's Nanny,” Donny called back to Angela.

Tizzy bolted into the room with her arms flung over her head. “Nanny!”

“Tizzy breakfast?” asked Nanny.

Tizzy screeched to a stop. “Yes, I had breakfast.”

“Tizzy nap?” asked Nanny.

“I'm too old for naps,” Tizzy said with her fists on her hips.

“Tizzy Candy Land?”

“Yay, let's play!” The two of them headed for the cabinet in a corner of the room that was stuffed with books and board games.

Angela came down the stairs. “Isn't she just the perfect nanny?”

“Uh. Sure,” Donny said.

“Well, maybe not perfect. She can barely talk, and she can be surly at times. But back in the day you should have seen her changing diapers.”

“Stinky diapers,” said Nanny.

“Gross,” said Tizzy.

“She keeps an eye on Tizzy when I'm gone,” said Angela. “Speaking of which, away we go.”

CHAPTER 17

T
hey left Sulfur the way Donny had first entered, up the tall stone steps and through the passageway guarded by the enormous armor-clad figure. “Any requests, ­Grunyon?” Angela asked as the thing opened the door.

Grunyon tipped his head to one side and thought about it. His voice rang from inside his helmet. “Crystal Pepsi?”

Angela rolled her eyes. “They haven't made that since the nineties, sweetheart.”

“Oh, right. Vanilla extract, then?”

Angela's head rocked back a little, but then she grinned and double-pointed. “Vanilla extract. You got it.”

They stepped through the door. The last time Donny was here, he had been sick from smoke, disoriented, and on the brink of hysteria. Now, as the door slammed shut behind them, he looked with clear eyes at the passage curving out of
sight. Around the bend, a dim orange light flickered. “So, this is the way up?”

She raised her eyebrows at him. “It's not literally
up
, you know. I mean, people on Earth used to think the underworld was down. Obviously, or you wouldn't have named it the
under-world
. Coincidentally, all of us down here used to think that the mortal realm was up. But then you guys invented a little thing called science, and the evidence seemed to rule that out.”

“But you don't know for sure?”

“Nobody's ever gone to the roof of Sulfur and started drilling up, if that's what you're asking. Look, I don't think you appreciate just how inquisitive you mortals are. You people need explanations for
everything
. How did the universe begin? What's on the other side of the moon? Where did the dinosaurs go? Why was
Two and a Half Men
on TV for so long? Here in Sulfur, most of us aren't that nosy. The only thing we're curious about is human nature.”

“Well, if you're not up and we're not down, where is Sulfur?”

“Darned if I know. One time we had this evil dead astrophysicist down here. I asked him that very question, and he could only guess. He prattled on about parallel universes, quantum physics, alternate dimensions, wormholes, a planet with the same mass as Earth but with an unusual layer of open space between its surface and its core, blah blah blah.”

Donny's brain was aching, and he clutched his forehead. “Okay. So we don't take an elevator or anything like that. How do we get to Earth then?”

“Follow me.”

When they rounded the bend, Donny saw the source of the light. Where the passage ended, there was a wall of ruby-red flame. It rippled upward like an inverted waterfall.

A small figure, hooded and cloaked, no bigger than a toddler, sat on a tiny chair beside the fire, maybe sleeping. Leaning against the chair was something that looked like a medieval weapon, a short club with nasty spikes at its round head. “That's Porta, the keeper,” Angela whispered. “Don't do anything to annoy her. She gets her dander up in a hurry.”

When they were still several paces away, the keeper moved. The cloaked head rose up, and a snout poked out and sniffed the air. It was long and narrow and reminded Donny of a baboon snout, but with scales instead of fur. The keeper reached down with arms that were far too long for her tiny body, and wrapped her hand around the shaft of the weapon.

“Yes, Porta, it's a mortal,” Angela told her. “The same one I brought down not long ago.” She spoke to Donny over her shoulder. “Show her my mark.”

Donny frowned a little—he still wasn't happy about this apparently permanent mark on his palm—but he
raised his hand and displayed the winged
O
. That seemed to placate the keeper, who settled back on her seat.

Porta raised one of her sinewy arms and made a sweeping gesture across the wall of flame. The fire transformed quickly, with a large round section that bulged from the center. It looked as if an oversize beach ball were pushing in from the other side. Shapes appeared on the bulge, and Donny recognized the continents of Earth surrounded by the dimmer orange of the oceans. The wall of flame had become a giant globe, gently spinning. There were tiny pinholes, whiter and brighter than the rest of the flame, scattered across the nations.

“See the dots?” Angela said. “That's everywhere we can go.”

It looked as if they could travel practically anywhere. Europe rolled by, with those intense points everywhere. Then came the ocean. “But there are dots in the middle of the Atlantic,” he said. “There aren't any islands there.”

“Boats,” she told him, and then she spoke to Porta. “Manhattan, please,” Angela said.

The keeper nodded then flicked a hand as if to spin the globe. It turned faster. With her spidery fingers she made a beckoning motion, and it pulled the features of the globe closer. Soon Donny could see the east coast of the United States. She drew the globe nearer again, and there was the familiar shape of the island of Manhattan.

Porta turned to look at Angela. Inside the hood, Donny
caught a glimpse of glazed white eyes, and he tried not to shudder. The keeper simply stared at Angela, her head bent to one side.

“Right, more specific,” Angela said. “Greenwich Village, please.”

The keeper looked at the flames for a moment, and then turned back to Angela and shook her head.

“Not available? Let me see—I think that's Midtown West? Well, we have some shopping to do anyway. I ­haven't gone that way in a while.”

The keeper nodded. She nudged the globe until the pinpoint she wanted was centered. Then she held both hands up, forming a diamond of space between her thumbs and fingers. In the middle of the globe, the flames darkened in a diamond shape like the one she had formed. As she drew her hands apart, the shape stretched wider and taller, and it darkened until it was almost black. The flames within the shape burned out and left behind a flimsy, wavering parchment.

“Thank you, Porta!” Angela said. She took Donny's hand and led him into the dark shape. It was merely the thinnest layer of ash, and it disintegrated as she passed through it. Donny felt a blast of heat on both sides for a moment as they stepped into what looked like a basement utility room.

Donny turned to look behind him and saw Porta in the space they had left, waving the flames back together to seal
the opening. Then all he saw was ordinary fire.
I guess we're in Manhattan,
he thought. In a basement in the city, someone had kept a fire burning. It looked like a large version of a gas fireplace, with brick all around and flames shooting from metal tubes connected to a propane tank nearby. A vent was above the fire, and a fan whirred noisily.

There was a man in the room, dressed in a sleeveless T-shirt and plaid flannel shorts, oblivious to their presence. He sat at a folding card table covered mostly by a jigsaw puzzle that had his full attention. On a second chair there was a pizza box. He had a pepperoni slice in his hand and chewed noisily while he stared down at the puzzle. A large messy pile of brown glass bottles was in the corner.

“Incoming!” Angela bellowed through cupped hands.

The man shrieked and shot up from his chair, upending the table. Jigsaw pieces rained onto the floor. The pizza landed with a splat, sauce side down.

He clutched his chest with one hand. “I nearly wet my pants.”

“There are products for that,” Angela said.

“You scared me, that's all. I never know when you're coming.”

“Well, here I am. Thanks for the fire.”

“Anytime,” the man muttered. It sounded like “no time” was his actual preference.

“Toodles,” Angela said. She tugged Donny behind her.

“Er, thanks a lot,” Donny added. “And sorry about the puzzle.”

The man watched them go with his fingers on his wrist, checking his pulse. They left through a door that latched behind them. Cement stairs took them up into the lobby of a rundown apartment building. They stepped outside onto the bustling streets of midtown Manhattan in the middle of a bright summer day. Donny took a deep breath. There was that familiar scent of New York, an urban odor that assaulted the nose like no other. It wasn't altogether pleasant, with its whiffs of garbage, motor oil, hot-dog carts, automobile exhaust, pizza grease, dog pee, and stale air wafting from the subways. But it smelled like home.

“I can't believe we're back,” he said.

“Remember, I can take you just about anywhere. We could go to Paris just to get French fries.”

“People just keep all those fires going for you? Why?”

“Gee whiz, let me think. Because we pay them?”

“Aren't you afraid somebody will, you know, tell the world about you?”

“Ha! Would you take that chance and double-cross me, knowing what you know?”

Donny thought about that. “I would not.”

“Of course you wouldn't. It's unwise to get on our bad side.” Angela took a phone from her pocketbook and turned it on. She pulled out another, hit the power button, and handed it to him. “Here,” she said.

“You're giving me a phone?”

“Yup. You shouldn't use your own phone, I assume. Being a missing person.”

“Oh, right.” He had lost his phone the night of the fire anyway, dropping his bag while his father had chased him. His heart sank a little.
A missing person.
That was exactly what he was. Suddenly the idea of popping up in New York didn't seem so smart, and he instinctively looked up and down the street. Was anyone looking for him? He jolted a little as the phone rang out in his hand.

“Hey, it's ringing.”

“Maybe you should answer it.”

He raised it to his ear. “Hello?”

He heard Angela's voice beside him and through the phone. “It's me, you nitwit. I'm making sure it works.”

“Oh. Yeah. It works.” Donny laughed and ended the call.

“Come on,” she said, and she was three steps away before he took one.