Richard Kadrey: The Kill Society

“Do you mean, did Death leave him or that he believes Death left him?”

“How did he get onto the mountain, Mimir?”

She opens a canvas Safeway shopping bag (Have I mentioned recently that they bootleg a lot of our stuff in Hell? They steal cable, too. Don’t tell anyone.) and lays a whole spook show on the table. At the center is a bowl made from the skull of a Hellion with three horns that make three perfect little legs for it. She pours in powders, a few drops of a potion, a seed pod, and a lot of other crap I can’t identify. As she grinds it all together, I wish Vidocq was here. I bet Vidocq wishes he was here. The alchemist in him would be going nuts right now. He’d know what kind of moonshine Popcorn Sutton here is brewing. All I know is that I don’t want to drink it when she’s done. Things might get tense soon.

When she’s finished, I put my hands on the table, ready to push back and try to knock Daja off balance before she can shoot me.

But Mimir doesn’t come up with the glass. She pulls a match from her bag and lights the mess in the bowl. Just as it starts to stink, she unhooks her respirator from the oxygen tank and puts the tube over the Dumpster fire she’s started.

I start to say something stupid, but Traven’s hand closes on my arm in a goddamn death grip.

Mimir sucks in the smoke and suddenly I want another Malediction. Her eyes roll back in her head. She begins to shake. She mumbles something unintelligible, like she’s chanting or speaking in tongues. It’s your basic oracle carny act. I’ve seen a million of them. They always look like they’re about to have an aneurysm. If they didn’t, the rubes wouldn’t think they were getting their money’s worth.

After a long moment, Mimir pulls out the tube and puts a lid on the skull bowl. She blows a long trail of smoke from out of the tube, clearing her wheezing lungs, and hooks her respirator back to the oxygen tank. She takes several long, deep breaths.

“What did you see?” says the Magistrate. He looks at me. “Is he telling the truth, Mimir?”

I get ready again to bash Daja.

Mimir takes one more long breath and nods her head.

“He is not a spy?”

“He is not,” she rasps.

I hear a rustle of leather behind me and the quiet click of a small hammer being lowered onto a small gun. Daja was playing me all along. She knew what I’d do if things went bad. I was ready for her to pull her pistol, but she had a little pocket gun—a Derringer or something—on me the whole time. Suddenly I hate and like her even more all at the same time.

“How did he make his way up the mountain?” says the Magistrate.

“Death placed him there,” says Mimir.

“Why?”

“Death’s reasons are his own. To look too closely is to risk having his gaze fall upon you.”

“I understand,” the Magistrate says.

He pats Mimir’s shoulder as her breathing returns to its normal wheeze.

“I have one more question for you,” he says, and looks at me. “The gentleman that Death so graciously brought us calls himself Mr. ZaSu Pitts. Is that, in fact, who he is? And if not, who is he really?”

I tense again. This time Daja pulls her big pistol. The barrel brushes my ear. It tickles, which pisses me off. I don’t want to go to Tartarus giggling.

Traven looks at me and I look back at him. I’m stuck between a witch, a dime-store desert prophet, and a gunslinger who wants me extremely dead. And I can’t even reach my cigarettes.

Mimir takes the bowl and tosses the burning herbs outside. She comes back to the table and, lucky me, begins mixing a whole new brew that this time is going to reveal that not only am I a big fat liar, but so is Traven. I wonder if I should tell the Magistrate who I am. But that would make us liars. We’re fucked either way. Better keep quiet and play this out.

When she gets her hoodoo herbs piled up nice and high, Mimir sets them on fire. A dull yellow smoke drifts from the bowl, filling the camper with a smell like boiling cabbage in scorched motor oil. I start to say something when the contents of the bowl flare up, sucking the smoke back inside. An orange flame rises from the bowl, kicking up sparks. When it’s about a foot high, the flame begins to turn until it’s a miniature tornado, twisting and writhing above the upturned skull.

I say, “If you’re trying to make fondue, you’re doing it wrong.”

Mimir waves a hand in my direction. I stare at her.

“What do you want? Applause?”

“She wants you to put your hand in the fire, asshole,” says Daja.

“Yeah. That’s not happening.”

“I am afraid you must,” says the Magistrate.

I look at Traven.

“What do you say, Father?”

“You were brought here for a reason,” he says. “Do as they say.”

I shake my head. “You people have a shitty way of treating guests. I’m never staying at this hotel again.” But I put out my left hand. The heat hits me at the edge of the bowl. I hesitate.

“Daja. If he does not put his hand into the flame, please shoot the father.”

I hear her pull back the hammer on the pistol.

I push my hand forward.

“Mr. Pitts,” says the Magistrate. “I believe that you are right-handed. Please use that hand.”

I look at him.

“Is Magistrate your real name? Why don’t we both put our hands in the fire?”

Daja grabs my shoulder.

I put out my right hand.

“At least I’m not going to die in Fresno.”

And in I shove my mitt into the tornado.

I’ve been burned before. I’ve been shot, stabbed, poisoned, beaten, chewed on, and called rude names. I want to say that because of my vast experience in getting my ass handed to me that the fire is no big deal. But that would be a lie. This fire is a big deal. A huge deal. A giant, flaming, goddamn, piece-of-shit, agonizing, I-want-to-rip-my-own-head-off deal.

I lower my head. Close my eyes and grit my teeth. I’m sweating like a hog tap-dancing in a sauna. I want to scream the paint off the fucking walls. But I don’t make a sound. If I’m going to end up Captain Hook at the end of this, at least they won’t get that little piece of satisfaction.

I open my eyes. The flames are more intense than before and have changed color from a deep orange to a pale blue.

I lock eyes with Mimir. She nods and waves her hand again. I start to pull my hand back, going slow because I’m not looking forward to the sight of my charred stump. The moment I move, the Magistrate leans across the table, grabs my wrist, and shoves my hand back into the flames.

I’m close enough that I could lunge across the table and shove his smug face into the tornado until his eyes burn out. But Daja has the gun on Traven. I really want to do something, but I don’t know what. The pain is really getting to me and I think about Candy and everything I’ve lost and left behind, and it’s all so goddamn sad it’s like a Roy Orbison song, so I do the only logical thing.

I start singing “In Dreams.”

The Magistrate’s face shifts to somewhere between pissed and puzzled. But I keep singing, staring into the fire. Mimir sees an opening and snatches the bowl off the table. She douses the fire and slams the bowl down hard. The Magistrate lets go of my wrist and sits down, staring at Mimir. Fuck ’em both. I pull back my hand and look it over. Not a scorch mark or even a blister. The Magistrate’s oracle has some good hoodoo.

Mimir slaps the table. “If you wish to keep my services, do not interfere with my work again,” she shouts at the Magistrate.

He holds up his hands.

“My apologies, Mimir. It will not happen again,” he says. “But what did the flame tell you?”

The oracle gets up and dumps everything outside again. When she sits down she looks at me.