Devil House(62)

Behold the third chamber, form without knowable function, shape without evident purpose, symmetrical waves flowing down each wall from ceiling to floor, dazzling to the eye, not painted but carved, like ancient symbols from cave walls in the deserts of the West or on the surfaces of planets as yet unconquered; yet bearing, if the onlooking eye survives the maze, along the ascending lines of several peaking points, a name, in pencil, David Hell-son, distributed six times throughout this labyrinth of jagged and increasingly frayed waves, and a final time in careful capital letters upon the plastic protector of the television monitor. Behold the hypnotic sway of David Hell-son’s chamber on the eye, how he beckons from within, a deceitful oasis from the arcade’s horrors; yet behold the pornographic tape still playing in the booth, casting its light onto the design around it and emitting its distorted squall into the blue air, a garden of bleached perversion handpicked by Derrick for its purpose before leaving for aye. “The worst tape in the store,” he’d said, assigning it to the booth with a grimace.

Behold the fourth chamber, the witch booth, upon which the luxury of spray paint has been bestowed! Alex is no apprentice, but has known one or two in his travels, seen them bestow their hurried work onto the sliding back doors of parked semitrailers in rest stop lots. From them he has borrowed a quavering line, an easy slope to his turns; the witch is bloated and her breasts sag. Over them hang the strands of her long, white hair, crossing each other in loose braids all the way down to her spindly ankles. On the floor of the chamber, stray symbols— stars and planets and letters from imagined alphabets. Her eyes are red X’s within black circles; from her place on the back wall of the booth, she surveys her domain’s original graffiti, lewd offers and phone numbers. Alex with the natural touch. Some things are scarier when you leave them as they are.

Behold, then, her mate, lord of the fifth chamber, namesake of the wizard booth! A new hand announces its presence herein, meticulous and excessive; she means to distinguish herself, to leave her mark in the moons and stars of the wizard’s robes. Behold the terrible demons in the skies around him, mouths agape with sorrow, drifting among white outcroppings of stardust that threaten to bury them but from whose caked, clotted smears they yet emerge, in eternal servitude to their lord, whose beard teems with six-legged insects. See, scrawled in cribbed, hasty felt-tip, the word Satan, inserted here and there amid the tableau, clumsy, awkward, effective. Note the slashes in the cushions, grouped in twos and threes like the marks of a nesting animal that hopes to return to its lair. Behold the work of Lady Angela, fair knight among knights, game for the hunt, there when you need her, tight-lipped when pressed for confession.

Behold the sixth chamber, repository of congealing paint left in supply closet cans, the very face of disorder: paint poured onto the vinyl seat, paint smeared on the screen, pools of spilled paint on the floor, their surfaces muddily reflecting the blackness of the ceiling above, and words, yet more words scratched into it while still wet, seeming now ready to recede into the lakes that gave them voice: HURT, alone on one wall; 7 alone in the screen, a clue, a sign, the tail of the red herring. Behold this obscure and unreadable signal to the coming invaders, curling question marks splashed onto the ceiling, a dozen of them at least, jumbled, mocking, senseless.

Behold, finally, the seventh chamber, the glass house, the room that gives the castle a name by which to be remembered: for someone has succeeded in shattering the screen, and affixing broken shards to the walls of the booth with glue, and nesting more of them in dug-out crevices here and there, so that everywhere one looks, one sees a partial reflection: enough to direct the eye toward the ceiling, where, behold, in marker, a portrait of a man in profile, five-o’clock shadow dotting his jawline, a swarm of flies around his balding head, a jagged line where his neck terminates suggesting rough decapitation; and, indeed, this caption beneath him telling the tale: ANOTHER ENEMEY OF THE HOPELESS ONES. Framing all, on the back wall, written sidewise, in evident haste, unadorned, a farewell to the onlooking eye:

look in the mirror and what do you see?

Bloody Barry, five of his friends, and me

those who knew us knew us well

those who didn’t SERVE IN HELL

And finally, on the single surface remaining, the inner door, Seth’s masterstroke of misdirection: the jewel in the crown, the christening of the shrine, in dripping script, the menacing starkness of its expression ready-made for the local camera crews, and, later, the nationals.

NOBL NIGHTS R WE

SOLO IV

“What do I even say,” Derrick said when he emerged back through the entrance, shaking his head, a huge smile on his face. “It’s … Seth. Alex. Ang. Man, you did it. You guys really did it.” In Seth’s heart, the glee of Derrick’s speechless awe clashed with the finality of the moment; the work was done. They would not return.

“I knew you would love it!” he said. “Did you see the mirror chamber, all that Son of Sam shit?”

“I saw it,” Derrick said. “Man, I saw it. When those people come back and see all this, there won’t be anything but a big puddle of piss underneath them.” For a brief moment, an ugly vision of interlopers in business dress pissing down their legs made everybody smile at once, a welcome break from the gathering feeling of departure.

“Let me go get my stuff,” Alex said. It hardly takes any time at all for a person to get used to packing up and moving along every night; he’d met plenty of people out there younger than him who’d been at it for years. Some of them get proud about it during bullshit sessions late at night, claiming not to know where their families live or to remember their last fixed address; many of these are probably telling the truth, except when it comes to saying how they feel about it.