Lucifer's Lottery

“No, really—”

“Yeah, you white guys’re all cheap motherfuckers. Awright, twenty bucks for a blow.”

Only now did Hudson fully realize how out of place he was. “I’m . . . not interested. I’m just trying to find an address.”

The gleam of her white teeth matched that of her skin. “Shee-it. You lookin’ for the Larken House, I know. Lotta folks always lookin’ for it. 24651, right?”

Hudson was astonished. “Well, yes.”

“Folks been walkin’ by it since it happened.”

“Since . . . what happened?”

“Don’t’choo watch the news?” She adjusted her tube top. “Couple, three months ago, a brother named Larken, work construction, he cut off his ole lady’s head when he found out the baby she had a couple months ’fore that were from a other dude. Cut her head off in the house, then walk right down this street and stick it on the antenna of the dude’s car ’cos, see, he hadda old car that had one’a them old-fashioned antennas on it. Then Larken come back the house and cut the baby’s head off, and he microwave it. Some say he fuck the headless wife on the kitchen table, too, but I dunno. Then he hang hisself. Said he had his cock out when he step off the chair.” She looked at him. “Fucked-up house, man.”

Hudson felt perplexed. “So that’s why people walk by it? Because it’s . . . infamous?”

“Yeah, man. ’Cos, sometime, they say, you kin see Larken in there, hangin’ by his neck. Sometimes you hear the baby cryin’.”

A HAUNTED house. Terrific, Hudson thought. “Most of these houses don’t seem to have addresses, even the ones that are obviously lived in.”

“Shee-it, sure. They take the numbers off so the pigs get confused,” she said. “You gimme twenty dollars’n I show you where the house is.”

“I’d be much obliged.” Hudson slipped a twenty from his pocket and gave it to her.

She grinned, stuffing the bill into her top, and pointed to the small, boarded-up house right in front of him.

“That’s it? For real?”

“Fo’ real, man.”

At first Hudson thought he was being taken but when he peered over the door, he noticed a black metal number six but also the ghosts of numbers that had fallen, or been taken off, a two and a four to the left, and a five and a one to the right.

“Thank you,” he said but the girl was already walking away.

Hudson peered at the squat house. It looked in better repair than many of the others on the street, even with its windows boarded over. Clapboard siding, fairly faded, portico over gravel where a garage should be, one level save for an awned attic. Screen door with a ripped screen.

What should I do, now that I’m here? he quizzed himself. Was he really going to break into a house where murders had occurred? And what if there were homeless people inside, or addicts? Am I REALLY going to do this?

But then he thought: The Senary . . .

The instructions, however, mentioned after sundown. Hudson still had about an hour, he thought. I’ll get something to eat and think this over.

He jaywalked to a Zappy’s Chicken Shack. Six patrons stood in line, and five of them appeared to be African American prostitutes. When his turn came, a Hispanic woman with half of one ear missing asked if she could help him.

Hudson ordered the Number Six special: three wings, a biscuit, and a drink. There’s that number six again, he reckoned. Just as he would sit down with his food, one of the prostitutes, a scarily thin woman with huge eyes and pigtails, slipped beside him and whispered, “Gimme a wing.” Hudson did; then she whispered lower, “Why’n’cha lemme put some sizzle in your swizzle, man, like I’ll lay some bigtown xtralicious super gobble game on you for, like, twenty-five bucks.”

What, is that the patented line around here? Hudson politely informed her that he had no interest in her proposal, and edged quickly out of the restaurant.

God, these are good! he thought, scarfing his remaining wings and biscuit as he walked down the street.

He still had time to kill, but he didn’t want to get killed himself as sundown approached. He walked down Central a ways, trying to look inconspicuous and knowing he wasn’t doing a very good job. Sirens rose and fell in the distance, and then he jumped a bit at either a faraway gunshot or backfire. Hurry up, sundown, he thought, and patted his wallet to make sure it was still there, then the other pocket where he’d slipped a slim flashlight. At the corner a dark hulk loomed, and then a shadow covered Hudson: the shadow of a cross cast by the sinking sun. A church, he noticed next of the drab, pilelike edifice. For no apparent reason he stopped to study it. The sign read: GRACE UNITARIAN CHURCH OF ST. PETERSBURG, but a smaller sign in magic marker added, CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

This is the deaconess’s church!

An old building of streaked gray stone. High, double-lancet windows framed mosaics of stained glass that looked black, and drought had killed most of the ivy that crawled up the walls. Hudson was surprised to find the large front door unlocked, and even more surprised by his lack of hesitancy in entering. Fading sun tinted the nave with reddish light; as he approached, his nostrils flared at a smell like urine and something more revolting. He passed empty pews, crossed the chancel. Several apsidal rooms arched behind the altar, two empty but on the floor of one he found, oddly, a coping saw. Hudson ran his fingers along the thin blade and found it tacky. Could it be blood? No, no, that’s ridiculous, he felt sure. It was probably tar or something, resin, maybe. Nevertheless, the saw irked him and he stepped quickly out.

Tires crunching over gravel alerted him; he hustled to a rear window in the dressing room where, in fading light, he saw a black car pulling out.

What would I have done if it was pulling IN?

And who might be driving it?

Probably just smoochers, he resolved. Or, in this area? A drug deal.

A draped baptistery stood to his right. Did he hear something? Hudson put an eye to the gap in the scarlet drapes, and seized up.

“Yeah, yeah,” a man with his pants down huffed. He was in his fifties, graying hair on the sides of a bald pate, and he wore a dress shirt and tie. His cheeks billowed at the obvious activity at his groin. He stood before another man who was on his knees—a fetid, homeless man. Hudson could swear he saw flies buzzing around the bum’s horrifically sweat-stained ball cap. Six inches of dirty beard jutted from his chin as his head bobbed frenetically back and forth.

Hudson pulled the curtain back. “This is a church, for God’s sake!”

The corpulent client’s face turned sheet white. “Shit! Shit shit shit!” he shrieked. He yanked his overlarge slacks up and barreled out of the baptistery, stumbled down the nave, and banged through the front door.

The homeless man raged. “You fucker, man!” Spittle flew from his chapped lips. “That was my trick, man! He was gonna pay me twenty bucks! I ought to kill you, man!”

Hudson stepped back, not nearly as afraid as he’d expect himself to be. “Relax.” He kept his cool. “I was just looking around. Here.” He handed the bum a twenty-dollar bill.

The bum turned instantly joyous. “Cool, thanks. Gimme another twenty and I’ll do you, too.”

“No. No, thanks,” Hudson said, realizing now that the man’s beard was one of the scariest things he’d ever seen. “Who are you?”

“Forbes,” said the bum.

“Forbes? So . . . Forbes, this is where you . . . do . . . business? A church?”

When the bum scratched his beard, dandruff fell like salt from a shaker. “Aw, Deaconess Wilson, she’s cool. Let’s me sleep here at night as long as I’m out by five in the morning.” Now he lifted the liner out of the baptismal font and drank the water in it. “I feel bad ’cos, see, she sleeps upstairs and sometimes I sneak up there and watch her take showers and shit. She’s got the best boobs—”

I know, Hudson thought.