Devil Sent the Rain - D. J. Butler Page 0,17

“Whatever this place is,” the guitarist said, “bad things happened here.” He looked right at Adrian as he said it.

Adrian swallowed, his throat dry and scratchy. “Let’s get out.”

Mouser stood up and balled her fists on her hips. Her pajamas were covered in red roses. “By Jupiter, this is a queer Hell that aims only to bore me.”

That didn’t sound like Mouser; Adrian stared, but saw only the club gopher’s face over rose-printed pajamas.

“Careful who you go calling queer,” Mike said.

“Sorry our conversation isn’t snappy enough for you,” Adrian added.

“This smacks of addle-pated Roundhead theology!” she snorted. “What atonement can there be in listening to the yammering of idiots?”

“And that, sister,” Eddie agreed, “is exactly why I stopped going to church.”

“Church?” Mouser harrumphed. “And what gyrating African debauch were you accustomed to call church?”

“Excuse me?” Eddie glared at her.

A loud creak sounded upstairs, and with it, the ceiling of the basement bowed in slightly.

Adrian pulled himself away from Mouser and her bizarre words and poked his head out the bedroom door. He’d passed the cellar on the way down without taking in much, so now he looked more closely. The stairs, sagging against the wall, fell down into a small hall, in which squatted an icebox. Over the icebox hung another uvula-light, this one dim and dark.

At the foot of the staircase was another room, a storage room that had once held the furnace, and beyond the icebox was a third chamber. In real life his uncle had kept animals in there, for experimentation and organ harvesting. Adrian had lain awake at night listening to the terrified clucking of doomed chickens. He stared at the door now and wondered what horrible thing could be there in this twisted version of reality.

“I think you’re all really here,” he said slowly, “and I think here is inside my dream, somehow, and I think it’s my fault.”

“And the idiots yammer yet.” Mouser folded her arms and grimaced.

Adrian turned on the woman. “Who are you?” he asked.

“I ain’t gonna waste time trying to prove anybody’s who they say they are,” Eddie snapped. “I’m here, dammit, and I wanna be in Chicago. What are the exits?”

“The stairs.” Adrian stepped aside and pointed. Eddie looked.

THUMP!

Warm streams of stinking liquid dripped from the ceiling at the noise. Adrian felt a little sick.

“Dollars to donuts that’s Semyaz and his bodies, stomping around,” Eddie muttered.

“I ought to have known Hell’s coin would be Flemish!” Mouser snapped. “Heretics…! What is a donut?”

Mike stared at her and chuckled. “I guess getting your head bit off really did a number on you.”

Eddie shrugged the comment off. “She might be a figment.” Then he looked back at her quizzically. “Or she might be someone else. Jim?” he asked cautiously, looking into Mouser’s eyes.

“I do not know a Jim!” she snapped back. “If you are to torture me for love, get on with it!”

“She should write lyrics,” Mike grinned.

“Right.” Eddie returned to his task. “Time to search this place for other exits.”

Adrian shook his head. “I’m telling you, I grew up in this house. The stairs is it.”

Eddie cocked an eyebrow at him. “You grew up in a house made out of flesh?”

“Ah … not exactly.”

“That’s right,” Eddie nodded slowly. “Not exactly. Now let’s find another way up and out.”

“Okay.” Adrian took a deep breath, slowly, so he didn’t seem agitated. “Just … be careful. There’s bad stuff creeping around in my dreams.”

“That’s okay,” Eddie told him. “In your dreams, I still know karate.”

“What about this?” Mike pointed at the coal chute.

“Cemented shut,” Adrian said. His uncle hadn’t wanted him sneaking out at night, when he had first moved in and had still been small enough to shimmy through the hole.

“Check it,” Eddie ordered.

Mike lifted the opening over the chute, which was limp and fleshy like a flap of skin. Inside was a gnarled bud of meatiness squeezing tightly shut, resembling the inner curl of a clenched fist. “Uh …” Mike said, at a loss.

Eddie shook his head. “Check it,” he repeated.

Mike grimaced and hesitated.

Mouser laughed. “What pusillanimous devils ye be!”

Mike raised his eyebrows and pointed at the coal chute. “You do it,” he told her.

Mouser promptly sloshed across the dank bedroom, moving doggedly but without haste, like someone resigned to taking orders. Flaring her nostrils in small defiance, she shoved her arm in the chute, up to the elbow.

“Chicken,” Eddie said to Mike.

Mike shrugged. “She practically volunteered.”

“What do you feel?” Adrian asked. For his part, he felt like throwing up. Strangely, he didn’t