Fibble: The Fourth Circle of Heck (26 page)

Annubis sniffed the air. The fog tickled his nose and smelled faintly of menthol. He could detect the acrid stench of animal fear wafting from the crates, but not the dark, uncomplicated musk of the headless/heartless demons. Annubis peered into the vat. Beneath the flitting eddy of sparks was a dull film of translucent sludge.

The demons must have tumbled in
, Annubis thought,
and were energetically undone. Their soul residue is so weak … barely there at all
.

Milton and Marlo lay on the concrete floor under a small pile of fallen crates. Lucky rippled forward like a Slinky sheathed in a fuzzy white sock. He licked Milton’s face. Milton opened his eyes, reaching out of habit for the glasses he no longer needed, seeing the world through his sister’s sharp, kleptomaniac’s eyes.

“We’re …?” he mumbled before sitting up with a start.
“The bomb!”

Marlo stirred sluggishly awake.

“The bomb?”
she mumbled. “No one says that anymore.…”

She bolted up.

“The truth bomb!”

Annubis strode toward the Fausters and knelt down before them.

“You saved us … me and my family,” the noble dog god relayed as he placed his paws on the Fausters’ shoulders. “For that I am eternally grateful. And, as I am a several-thousand-year-old demigod, the phrase ‘eternally grateful’ really means something.…”

Milton wrapped his arms around Annubis and hugged him tight. Annubis felt solid.
Real
. And—as Milton wasn’t exactly himself, awash in a raging river of lies—holding on to the dog god felt like clutching a life preserver. Reassuring and hopeful. Annubis patted Milton’s head.

“Ah, Milton … that’s right,” he said with his curled dog smile. “I almost forgot I had switched your souls.”

He turned to address Marlo.

“Tell me about the device you used to thwart our nullification,” Annubis said. “It had a peculiar explosive power, seeming to vanquish only those in need of vanquishing.”

“Nullification?” Milton asked. “You mean, that vat would have neutralized you?”

“Yes,” Annubis replied somberly, looking back at his family. “But about this bomb—”

“
Truth
bomb,” Marlo replied as she rubbed an aching lump on her forehead. “I got it from a doctor back in Fibble. A big duck. He made it using liquid truth and little white lice, that—when smooshed together—make a big explosion.”

Annubis rubbed his bristly chin in contemplation.

“A volatile blend of fact and fission,” he said with a nod. “Lobbed in the nick of time, too.”

Someone moaned from behind the vat. Virginia Woof bounded toward the slow, pained groan. After several seconds of delighted yaps, an old man rose to his sandaled feet.

“Mr. Noah,” Annubis muttered as he stood tall, straightening his tunic and smoothing down his ruffled fur.

Milton and Marlo helped each other to their feet and stared, slack-jawed, at the ancient man with the flowing white beard and robe as he scritched the terrier in his arms.

“Mr. Noah … as in
the
Noah?” Milton asked as he tucked his sister’s unruly blue hair behind his ears.

“A robe, huh?” Marlo replied with a smirk. “I guess I always expected him to be wearing
floods …
get it? You know, cropped pants that aren’t quite capris? Because of the ark and—”

Milton nudged Marlo hard in the side.

“Show some respect,” he whispered as the Fausters followed Annubis to the Nullification Tub. “Especially since he’ll think you’re
me.
”

Annibus extended his paw-hand to Noah, who—after setting Virginia Woof gently down to the ground—shook the dog god’s hand warmly, his restraints hanging, shredded, from his wrists.

“Mr. Noah,” Annubis said with reverence. “My name is Annubis. Can you tell me what happened here?”

Noah scratched the thick hair coursing out of the rag cinched around his head. Milton had never seen a face with so many lines carved upon it before. It looked like a street map of New York etched on skin. The ancient man smiled a toothless grin at Milton.

“Never seen a nine-hundred-fifty-year-old man before, little girl?” Noah laughed.

He cleared his ancient throat, unearthing a ball of phlegm so old that it may have been of archaeological import.

“I had noticed that some creatures—dogs, mostly—had begun to disappear from the Really Big Farm. And the Scarecrows had been acting … odd. Listless and distracted … I thought they had, perhaps, gone raven mad!”

Noah looked at Milton’s, Marlo’s, and Annubis’s faces for signs of mirth, yet there was none to be found.

“So I investigated the Kennels—a place I abhor and would eliminate if I could convince the Powers That Be Evil otherwise,” he continued. “I only use it when trying to rehabilitate difficult animals before releasing them into the Really Big Farm. And that’s exactly what I was doing when I discovered, back here, this dreadful vat, those hulking, horrible titans, and the man with the shiny necklace. The necklace that controls the Scarecrows.”

“What man?” Milton asked.

Noah pointed to a fallen row of crates to the side of the Nullification Tub.

“
That
man.”

A smooth white hand, one that had never performed a moment of honest work in its life, twitched beneath two crates: one holding a sandy-colored dingo, and the other a feral Chartreux. Annubis walked over to the mound of crates and pushed them aside with his foot, freeing the man beneath.

“Mr. de Hory!” Milton exclaimed as he saw the man’s dapper, disdainful face. Annubis snatched the dazzling pewter necklace and turned to Milton.

“You know this man?” the dog god asked as Mr. de Hory came to, the man’s dark eyes fixing upon the faltering holographic soul model projecting weakly just beyond him. The fuzzy, multicolored light sculpture winked on and off in the air by a large wooden crate marked
DO NOT OPEN: EVER
.

Milton shrugged as he watched the man creep forward, painfully, on his hands and knees.

“Sort of … I saw him on TV.”

A group of black cats slowly oozed around the bend, followed by Napoleon Bone-apart. The blithe Italian greyhound nudged his See ’n Say.

“The cat says … 
meow
!”

Milton and Marlo stared at one another. Marlo reached to pinch Milton, hard, on the side of the arm.

“Oww!” he yelped. “Why did you do that?”

Marlo shrugged.

“I wanted to see if I was dreaming … this is all too weird.”

Milton watched as the mist wafted up the steep wall of crates.

“This place is beyond awful,” he murmured. “Just leaving all these pets here, forgotten, seems like the worst kind of abuse. And what are they being punished for, anyhow? Because they weren’t as domesticated as their owners expected? Like that’s
their
fault?”

Lucky coiled up Milton’s leg and shot into his arms. Milton stroked his ferret as, eyes wet, he gazed upon the countless, caged animals.

“We’ve got to do something,”
he continued.

Annubis shook his head sadly while the cats skulked closer, slinking from shadow to shadow.

“There just isn’t enough time in eternity to open all of these cages ourselves—”

The spirals of luminous silver mist whirled about the crate doors like tiny hurricanes. Suddenly, with an explosive clatter, the doors of
every
crate sprang open.

Most of the animals vaulted instinctually out of their cages, while the smarter ones carefully climbed down to the floor. Many, however, had been caged for so long that they had forgotten what freedom even looked like.

The black cats hissed, arching their backs so that they
were spiky black croquet hoops of aggravation. Milton and Marlo stepped back from the crate walls as furry creatures spilled forth like a mewling, yapping waterfall.

“But—” Milton said before his sister interjected.

“The truth,” Marlo offered in a spooky hush as animals wriggled past her ankles,
“shall set you free.”

Annubis’s cryptic dog smile vanished as he saw the wooden sides of the huge crate marked
DO NOT OPEN: EVER
collapse. Inside was a rectangular green igloo adorned with yellow quartz cat’s-eye gems and etchings of ancient, pampered felines wrapped in gauze tunics cleaning themselves.

Noah shuddered.

“Pandora’s Cat Box,”
the old, old man gasped.

“Pandora’s Cat Box?” Annubis repeated. “But that’s only a myth.”

“Apparently not,” Noah replied. “This place has often served as a dumping ground for unwanted artifacts too terrible even for museums. But I never thought that it would house this … this
vessel
containing all of the plagues, pestilence, burdensome worry, and unrest that cats have never known. Locked away in an era when felines were revered as gods incarnate … what lies within is potentially cataclysmic.”

Filled with curiosity—despite its potentially deadly effect on cats—Chairman Meow, Frankenpuss, and a dozen other felines padded cautiously to the crate. Milton eyed the box with unease.

“Where did it come from?” Milton asked, now knee-deep in squirming, thrashing animals.

“Egypt, by way of Katmandu,” Annubis replied. “It is said that the ancient Egyptian cat gods partook in the burdens of the world, then, um,
passed
them into this cat box so that their feline progeny would be free of all worry, woe, and the onus of obligation.”

Marlo scratched at her brother’s forearms, which were ready to hatch a litter of cat-allergy-induced hives.

“Are we safe?” she asked, her gaze glued to the centuries-old box packed tight with despair and disease.

“Yes,” Noah said tentatively as more cats circled the box, their vague interest blossoming into obsession. “As long as what is within—”

Frankenpuss stuck his blocky, calico head into the box. Chairman Meow, Hannibal Lickter, and thirteen other cats soon followed suit. Clawed Yereyesout gave the box a few dainty sniffs, rubbing his side against it indifferently, before—suddenly—he and the other cats bolted inside.

“
—stays
within,” Noah added miserably. “If only I had a spray bottle.
That
would dampen their enthusiasm.”

The sound of furious scratching echoed from the box. Out darted the cats, their ears pinned back to their head, frisky in that “I just did something terrible in there like you wouldn’t believe and it’s your problem now” cat way.

“Bad kitties!” Annubis yelled. “Pandora’s Cat Box is not for … 
that
!”

The box trembled, its eerie green glow throbbing and pulsing, ever quicker. The last of the cats emerged, pupils dilated, tails twitching.

Some of the freed pets in the higher crates took brash leaps downward. They struck the sea of animals below with squeals of pain.

“This is getting out of control,” Annubis said as a surge of animals nearly swept his daughter away.

“Paw-paw!” she yelped as Annubis grabbed hold of her arm. The scrabbling swells of pets grew higher, to the dog god’s thighs.

Pandora’s Cat Box quaked, hissing like a neglected teakettle.

Noah stood atop a mound of vacated crates.

“Two at a time! Two at a time!” he shrieked through cupped hands above the din.

Milton struggled to stay on his feet as cats, dogs, rabbits, guinea pigs, and assorted other animals clawed their way past his hips.

“That will take too long,” he muttered against the tumult of yelps and growls. “I think it’s going to be every pet for itself.”

Milton saw Mr. de Hory struggle to his feet and teeter toward his shimmering soul simulation.

“Mr. de Hory!” Milton called out. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

The man cinched his white scarf tight around his neck, then picked up his laser pens with unruffled determination.

“Theez place is mine … 
adverse possession,
” the faux artist proclaimed. “Squatter’s rights, I believe you say. Eet is perfect studio in which to create perfect forgery.”

Mr. de Hory peered through his cracked eyeglasses and set to work amidst the riot of fur and fear.

“Art eez long and life eez short and I vill only leave when I have made my ultimate artistic statement!”

Suddenly, Pandora’s Cat Box—a brimming heap of utter nastiness—erupted in a green, fiery ball of burning cat litter, smoldering feces, and swirling, noxious vapor.

“And his ‘ultimate artistic statement’ will be ‘Oh the excruciating pain!’ ” Annubis said, gripping Mr. de Hory’s crow-controlling necklace in one paw-hand and grabbing Milton by the other. “We can’t help it if that fraud is willing to die
—again
—for his sick, shady art. We must go … 
now
!”

“It’s Van Glorious!”
one of the REPEAT protesters squealed, dropping her sign so that she could better pat her burning cheeks in star-worship. Van—his smile beaming like an artificial sun—stepped before the camera and pried the microphone from a stunned Barbra Seville.

“Thank you, Barbra,” Van said smoothly, like hot buttered rum poured over a silk tie. “I love what you do …”

He turned to the protesters, pressed his hands together, and bowed before them with overtheatrical reverence.

“… and I love what
you
do,” he continued. “It’s … 
important
. Making sure that even the dead animals no one cares about anymore get their fair shake.”

Barbra tilted her microphone, now in the possession of Van, to her mouth.

“So Mr. Glorious—”

“Please,”
Van replied as if mortally wounded, which he knew a thing or two about. “It’s
Van
. That Mr. Glorious stuff is for my lawyers.”

Barbra giggled, despite herself, before regaining her journalistic composure.

“Okay then … 
Van,
” she continued. “So you’ve always been an animal rights supporter?”

He nodded emphatically.

“Yep. Even as a kid we only ate meat from animals that died of old age, or who formally agreed—with an attorney present—to be our dinner.”

“But—?”

“Oh yeah, we ate it all—snout to tail—out of respect, you know? Nowadays I’m all about the tofu: Tofutti, Tofurky … I even do kung-tofu in my next action flick … I’m messing with you. But look, get a shot of my
shoes … they’re made out of one hundred percent fruit leather.…”