Lucifer's Lottery

this neighborhood? Vagrants, addicts, or gang members . . .

Yet he didn’t leave.

He turned the flashlight off and walked down a shabby side-hall toward the sound. He paused and, sure enough, in a dark bedroom he detected what could only be the flicker of a cigarette lighter. In addition, he heard an accompanying sound, like someone inhaling with desperation.

I could be killed . . . so why don’t I leave? Hudson had no answer to this logical question, save for, God will protect me. He HAS to. When he took a step forward, the floor creaked.

His heart nearly stopped when a woman’s voice shot out of the dark. “Oh, good, you’re back. I’m in here.” Then the lighter flicked again but this time to light a candle.

In the bloom of light, Hudson couldn’t believe his eyes.

A woman sat on a mattressless box spring, holding a crack pipe. A white woman, with dark lank hair, wearing a bikini top and cutoff shorts. The hostile face glared at him.

“Shit, you’re not her,” she complained. “Who the . . .” But then she squinted. “Wait a minute, I remember you . . .”

Indeed, and Hudson remembered her. It was the pregnant prostitute he’d seen in the Qwik-Mart last night. It didn’t take him long to realize why she looked different.

She was no longer pregnant.

“Yes,” Hudson droned. “At the store. And I see that you’ve had your baby.”

She maintained her glare. The huge breasts hung satcheled in the faded top. Her exposed midriff below the top looked corrugated now, rowed. All she said was, “What the fuck are you doing here? Are you with that woman?”

That woman, Hudson’s brain ticked. “Do you mean . . . a blonde woman in a black gown? A white collar?”

The prostitute idly fingered groovelike stretch marks on her belly. “Yeah, like what a fuckin’ priest wears, but it’s a chick, not a guy.” Then she calmly lit the pipe, inhaled deeply, then collapsed against the wall. Her expression turned to a mask of oblivion.

“What is this woman to you? Deaconess Wilson?” Hudson actually raised his voice.

The prostitute slipped up the stuffed bikini top to cover a great half circle of nipple. “She paid me six fuckin’ hundred bucks, that’s what.”

Hudson was dismayed. And I got 6,000. “So, you’ve won the Senary as well?”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. All I know is what I’m supposed to do.”

“And what was that? What did you do for the six hundred?”

She shrugged. “Dug up a grave. Think I give a shit?”

Hudson stared in the flickering light, thinking of the article. “Was it . . . a child’s grave?”

“Yeah, man. A baby’s. She said the baby was murdered in this house, had its head cut off. Said she needed the head.”

Confusion circled round Hudson like a feisty crow. “But . . . what happened to your baby? You were pregnant last night.”

“I popped the kid out behind the Qwik-Mart,” she said, pressing another piece of crack into the pipe. “Fuckin’ mess. I dropped it in one of those blue bins the recycling trucks pick up; then I split. Couple hours later, I met her.”

“And she—”

“Paid me six hundred bucks to dig up the grave.” She sucked off the pipe and chuckled. “Kind’a weird, you know? An hour after I dump my own baby, this chick pays me to dig up somebody else’s baby. Ain’t that a trip?”

“Yes,” Hudson uttered. “A trip . . .”

“She waited for me in her car. Didn’t even take as long as you’d think, and the coffin was tiny, barely weighed anything. They always say six feet under, right? But this was like two, three. So I put the coffin in the back of her car, and she drives me downtown . . . and gave me six hundred bucks. Said she’d give me another six hundred if I showed up tonight. Said she needed me, said she needed my milk.”

“Your milk? What on earth for?”

She shrugged again, and reloaded the pipe. “Said ’cos I was lactating. You think I care?” She held up a baggie full of pieces of crack. “I mean, look at all this rock, man. And when she lays another six hundred on me tonight? I won’t have to blow another guy for a month. Fuck, I hate it. Crack doesn’t leave a woman with any choice. You have to suck ten dirty dicks a day at least, just to keep up your jones. Think about that, buddy. Ten dicks a day. It’s like letting guys blow their nose in your mouth for money. Every time I see another dick in my face I wanna cut my throat but I know that if I do . . .” She jiggled the bag of crack. “I’ll never be able to get high again.”

Hudson frowned. “Deaconess Wilson told me I won a contest of some sort, and told me to meet her here. Where is she?”

“Right here,” answered a silhouette in the doorway.

Hudson grimaced from the shock. “God damn! Don’t sneak up on people like that!”

The female minister stepped forward into the candlelight. Her face appeared either blank or simply content and her blue eyes, which struck Hudson as dull yesterday, seemed narrow and keen now. She wore the same black surplice and white collar.

“How irregular for you to take God’s name in vain,” she said. “You of all people—one who yearns to be a priest.”

He had, hadn’t he? He never did that. “You scared the shit out of me,” he objected. “Now what’s all this about? And furthermore, what are you all about?”

She glanced at the prostitute, who was relighting her pipe.

“What I’m all about, Mr. Hudson,” the deaconess began, “is failure. You, on the other hand, are about success. I envy you—” Her voice hushed. “And I honor you.”

“That makes no sense. I should leave.”

“That is your prerogative, it has been all along. Didn’t I make it clear that you are under no obligation?”

“Yes, but—”

“And now you want answers. First, answers about me.”

“You got that right. A homeless guy living in your church had the same dream as me. I read an article in the paper about a baby’s grave dug up, and it turns out this girl over here is the one who did the digging. And a half hour ago I see the coffin stuck beneath the pews at your church.”

“It’s all part of the science—”

Hudson’s anger roiled. “The science?”

“You’ll understand more should you choose to proceed far enough to speak to the Trustee.”

Hudson opened his mouth to object further, paused, then decided not to.

Her eyes appeared as cool blue embers. “Do you choose to proceed?”

“Yes,” Hudson said.

“Then follow me.” The deaconess touched the prostitute’s shoulder. “Come along. You bring the candles.” Then she raised a plastic bag from which depended an object inside about the size of a softball. “I’ll bring the head.”

CHAPTER THREE