Howard waits for you to settle down, a bemused smile subtly set into his sallow face. “It’s curious to observe the extent of your acclimation, Mr. Hudson.”
“What’s that?”
“Your slowly increasing tendency to use profanity—”
I did it again, you realize. This place is a bad influence on me, and it’s no surprise.
After all, it’s Hell.
You look back up at the bizarre edifice you’ve been escorted to, just as Howard announces:
“Mr. Hudson, it is my doubtless pleasure and unreserved honor to introduce to you the new personal abode of the Prince of Darkness . . . Manse Lucifer.”
By now, you’ve already noticed the most distinguishing characteristic of the colossal manse. Its walls are not constructed of brick, block, cement slab, nor wood, nor stucco.
They’re built with female Human heads.
The heads face outward and—to no surprise—they’re all still very much alive. They’ve been laid like mason work, with mortar meticulously packed around each. Millions of heads, no doubt, have been used to construct the mansion’s outer walls and immense mansard-style roof.
“The walls are double layered,” Howard points out, “so that living female faces form the walls inside, as well—God knows what they’re forced to witness. All the interior floors, too, are made from the heads, including buttresses and load-bearing walls.”
A house of heads inside and out, you can only think. A MANSION of living female heads . . .
You sense yourself lowering, then perceive that Howard has set your “stick” into a slab of sidewalk filled with bone and tooth fragments. He’s slipping something from his pocket. “As you can imagine, an equally spectacular interior exists.” Howard, next, holds a small stack of dim photographs before your face.
“Good old-fashioned photographs,” you remark. “I’m surprised you have stuff like that in Hell.”
“Not photographs, hectographs. Hell’s version of the tintypes of my early days. A process of gold nitrate merged with tin salt. Hectographs are, again, only a luxury for the very wealthy here . . .”
Your eyes hold wide on each macabre snapshot.
“The Atrium,” Howard defines.
You are shown an impossible room walled with heads. Columns that ought to be Doric or Corinthian stand at each side of the arched entrance; these, too, are constructed of heads. On one wall hangs a painting of Demons peering in on the Last Supper while platters of chopped infants and goblets of blood wait on the long table to be consumed; on another hangs the Messiah being crucified upside down in Hell.
Next, “Lucifer’s master bed chamber . . .”
Not only are the walls made from heads but so is the high poster bed, yet each head of the mattress has its tongue permanently protruded via studs through the lips. Mirrors shaped like inverted crosses ring the room.
Next, “Lucifer’s Great Hall . . .”
Columned peristyles stretch down the long, vault-ceilinged room fitted with scroll-backed couches and chairs upholstered in Human skin. The banquet table—which you assume must be sixty-six feet long—occupies the center, with higher-backed skeletal chairs around it. The faces in the floor, ceiling, and walls, here, appear more appalled than in other rooms, and you can only suspect the reason has something to do with what they are forced to watch the Prince of Darkness and his guests dine on.
Next, “And Lucifer’s Grand Courtyard . . .”
Nauseating topiary has been meticulously clipped into the configuration of the number six. Noxious rosebushes bear heads of not petals but vaginas, while an ivy of severed penises crawls up a glimmering silver lattice. Human heads only comprise the outer walls and curtilage, but then you see their evidence in one more place: the circular swimming pool that exists at the center of the “six.” The entire pool is lined with them, and the pool appears to be filled with urine ever so faintly tinted with blood.
Next, “Ah, and Lucifer’s throne in the Central Nave . . .”
Not only is the room floored and walled with heads but the great throne itself is composed of them as well. The throne bears a similarity to a Victorian bishop’s chair, with even side-stiles, head backs, and armrests made of heads. The heads forming the center of the seat seem understandably more weary than the rest. To the right sits an ornate grandfather clock, whose pendulum chains are no doubt arteries of more unfortunates; its face has no hands. To the left hangs a painting of a glorious conqueror in a shining breastplate engraved with sixes. He wields a sweep-bladed cutlass while he stands over the headless corpse of, apparently, Christ. The sword-wielder’s face seems to glow to the point that detail cannot be discerned.
“And lastly, Lucifer’s commode-chamber, which you in your modern parlance would call a bathroom . . .”
The head-formed walls here are circular, presumably so that all may watch the Morning Star’s elimination. A beautifully cut mosaic of amethysts make up the actual toilet bowl but the rim of the seat is made of more Human heads. The oddest adornment here, though, is a gilded, flat-topped stand, and on top of it sits a lone Human head on its side. The head is not connected or mortared to anything; it’s just sitting there. You squint at it. It’s that of a blonde woman, slightly chubby-faced, with an expression of utter revulsion.
“What’s with the single head on the stand?” you ask.
“Surely you’ve noticed a disheartening absence of toilet paper, Mr. Hudson,” Howard says. “The unfortunate blonde belle’s face serves the purpose . . .”
Your facsimile for a stomach sinks, then sinks further when you suspect you’ve seen the face before in some entertainment magazine but you can’t quite recall her name.
Howard puts the hectographs away and rehoists your head-stick. “The main house has obviously been completed, but constant additions are in perpetual progress.” He points down an empty street—Mephisto Avenue—as a queue of clattering steam-trucks and monster-drawn wagons approach, all manned by various demonic workmen. Several wagons are heaped high with heads while others haul sacks of occult cement. At a certain point near the house, two hooded Bio-Wizards depart from the mansion’s entrance. They touch a pair of crooked wands together, then draw them apart to a distance wide enough to permit passage of the construction crew. After said passage, the Wizards reverse the odd procedure, and return to the entrance.
“What was that all about?”
“They were opening and closing the mansion’s impenetrable defense perimeter. Nothing may gain entrance without proper clearance.”
“Perimeter? I don’t see any perimeter.”
“It’s a Hex, Mr. Hudson. It’s called an Exsanguination Bridle. Ah, and how convenient! Watch what befalls this gaggle of very unwise insurgent ruffians and ne’er-do-wells . . .”
You look up and see a spectacular white Gryphon flying urgently toward one of the mansion’s towers. Saddled to its back are several very determined-looking Imps and Humans, each hefting a keg of explosives. But when the Gryphon’s swift wings take it past a certain point—
FFFFFFFFFFWAP!
—white feathers fly as the beast and its riders are immediately stricken by an energy that causes their blood to fire out of their bodies through every orifice. Then the bodies, and a rain of blood, hit the street. The kegs burst harmlessly, poofing billows of something akin to gunpowder.
“Wow,” you say, impressed. “That’s some security system.”
“The very latest Senarial Science. And anyone who is granted entrance is thoroughly screened by Prism Veils operated by Warlocks with the Psychical Detection Regiments. They’re able to read any and all negative or anti-Luciferic thoughts.”