Tim Pratt - Sympathy for the Devil

“I keep forgetting. Sorry about that.”

“Who are you?”

Instead of answering, he reached down and squeezed the dog’s nose. Its flames went out too. “Mel Shaveetz. And this is Posafega.”

“You were on fire!”

“Yeah well, that happens where we come from.”

“And where’s that?”

“Hell.”

“You mean you’re dead?”

“Couldn’t put on this kind of light show if I were alive. Did you think I was one of those monks who burn themselves alive?”

“You and the dog are dead?”

“No, I am. Pose is just a hound from Hell. He’s my roommate.”

“A Hellhound!”

“That’s right.”

“How come I didn’t get burned when he was standing on my back?”

“Because you’re not dead.”

“It just looks like a big wolfhound to me.”

Mel shrugged. “Nobody ever said what breed Hellhounds had to be. You want to come in the house and have a beer?”

“Which house do you mean? I know everyone who lives around here.”

He pointed to a brown and white saltbox across the street. “You’re looking at it-number eighty-eight.”

“Eighty-eight? I know who lives in eighty-eight and it isn’t you. Chris and Terry Rolfe live there.”

He looked away and tried to make his eyes busy. “Yeah well, not anymore. They moved.”

I remembered what our refrigerator movers had said about seeing piles of people’s belongings left out on the street. And I remembered the Brothers saying that was because the dead were being moved back to earth from Hell.

“I went to school with Chris Rolfe. He’s lived in this town as long as I have. I’d know if he was planning to leave.”

“Look, you want that beer or not?”

I wanted to check out the inside of that house. I didn’t believe for a minute what he was saying about Rolfe. As far as I knew, that house still belonged to a living guy I saw at least once a week for the past twenty years.

We walked slowly up to the front door, Posafega keeping us company all the way. Not only was that dog big, it was also seriously ugly. Its hair looked like stuffing out of an eighty-year-old mattress. Its face was thin enough to open a letter. The animal was so big that if it stood on its hind legs and had a good hook shot, it could have played pro basketball. So that was a Hellhound. I said the word inside my mouth to myself-Hellhound.

Just as we were walking in the door, I smelled smoke. Sure enough, Mel was beginning to go up in flames again. “Hey man, you’re on fire.”

“Yeah well, I’ll fix it when we get inside.” He kept moving while his flames kept rising. The big dog’s, too.

Remember I said we loved the movie Back to the Future? Well my wife and I are just overall big movie fans so it isn’t the only video we own. And that’s where my next problem arrived. I wasn’t about to pass up the chance to see the inside of a dead man’s house and look around for Chris Rolfe. Plus the invitation was offered on a silver platter. But when I think about it now, maybe going in there wasn’t the best idea I ever had. Because here’s what happened next: opening the front door, Mel and flame-dog marched in, no big deal. A lot more carefully I followed but only got a few feet into the place before I froze and my jaw dropped below sea level.

I recognized what I saw immediately because I’d seen it so often before and had always wished I could go there. Now I was. The inside of Mel’s house, the house that used to belong to Chris Rolfe, was now Rick’s American Bar from the movie Casablanca.

While my brain tried to swallow that fact, Mel sat down at the white piano and began playing the movie’s theme son, “As Time Goes By.” He wasn’t bad either. Then he began to sing it but I was walking around the room so I didn’t pay much attention. The dog plumped down on the floor and went to sleep. I was in such shock that I didn’t realize until later that both of them lost their flames as soon as we got into the house. Like once they were home they were normal again. Although my idea of normal that day had taken a vacation to another planet.

As far as I could see every detail in the room was perfect, right down to the ashtrays on the table and full bottles behind the bar. The room was empty except for us, which gave it a whole different feeling from what it was like in the movie. Other than that though, this definitely was Rick’s place. If Humphrey Bogart had walked in at that minute I would not have been one bit surprised.

Mel finished playing with a big right-hand display-DONG!-and afterwards everything was very quiet in there. Naturally I was tempted to say real coolly, “Play it again, Sam,” but I didn’t.

Instead I asked, “What is all this?”

“It’s Rick’s. Don’t you know Casablanca? The movie?

“Yes I know Casablanca! That wasn’t my question. How come you live in this house now and it looks like a movie set instead of someone’s living room?”

“Before we come back, they ask us what kind of décor we would like where we live. We get to choose.”

“Choose what?”

“The décor! What’d I just tell you?”

“I’m very confused, Mel.”

He took a deep breath like I was the stupidest being he’d ever met and my dumbness was using up his air supply. “Before we come back here, to Earth, they ask what kind of décor we’d like in the house they assign us. We get to choose. I said Rick’s American Bar from the movie because that was the coolest place on Earth.”

“How long ago did you die?”

“Last Friday.”

“How?”

“I drowned in Aqaba, scuba diving. I stepped on a poisonous sea urchin and had an allergic reaction. Pretty pathetic way to go.”

“And you went to Hell?”

“Straight to. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.”

“But you’re back here a week later?”

“Not by choice, pal. Not by choice.” The doorbell rang. Mel held up one finger for quiet. “Let me just get that. What kind of beer do you want? I’ve got everything here. There’s even a good Polish one. Zee-veetch or some name like that.”

He left the room and the animal followed. I wondered if it was some kind of satanic chaperone. What kind of visitors did the dead have? That thought grew so fast and so horror-movie-ugly in my head that in the minute or so it took Mel to return, I was almost hyperventilating. What kind of visitors DID the dead have? Good God, what if they were-

“It’s for you.”

I opened my mouth, closed it, opened again. “Me? No one knows I’m here.”

“Yeah, well, obviously they do. They say they want to talk to you. Two goofy-looking guys with shaggy haircuts.”

“Brooks and Zin Zan!”

“Whatever.” Mel shrugged.

I started out but stopped short when I thought of something. “Were-were you on fire when they saw you?”

“Sure. Anytime I step out of this house I start to burn. One of the many drawbacks of being back on Earth again.” He sounded angry about it, put out.

“Did you like it in Hell?”

“I can’t say much about it because that’s against the rules, you being alive and all.” He looked left and right, as if some enemy might be listening. “But I will tell you this-ever think maybe that Hell stuff you’ve always heard is a bunch of crap? Maybe it’s given all that bad press because they want to keep people OUT of there? That if people really knew what it was like, an awful lot of them might kill themselves to get there sooner?”

The dog started growling. It was not a sound you ever want to hear. Worse, it was staring at Mel while it snarled. That monster’s lip was curled up and twitching like it was going to attack any second.

“Shut up, Pose. How about that cat you told the other day? Don’t you think I was listening?”