Hellhole (17 page)

Max was at once horrified and in total awe. “But the devil's not here anymore, right? So you know how to get rid of him!”

“Well, there's the kicker,” she said with a look of despair. “You
can't
get rid of them. All you can do is keep them happy until they go back to hell. If you don't, they get mad. And if Burg gets mad—”

Max sighed. “I know, I know. He'll kill me.”

“No.” Her hands were shaking. “He won't kill you. He'll kill someone else.”

“What?”

“Think about it, Max. Has he ever threatened you directly? Or just other people, like Audie and your mom?”

“I—” A sour taste gathered on his tongue. “I don't know. I just assumed . . .”

She shook her head. “He won't go after you. He'll go after the ones you love, and then you'll have to live with the guilt. That's your ‘punishment for dealing in devilry,' or so Verm liked to say.”

Max jumped to his feet, ice freezing in his veins. “Then we have to get rid of him.
Now.
”

He ran back into the house, clomping down into the basement with all the grace of an ornery hippo. “You are moving into that trailer,” he informed Burg, who was watching TV. “So pack up your snacks. Tomorrow, you're GONE.”

With a loud
whoosh,
Max felt his feet leave the ground. He didn't realize he was soaring through the air until suddenly he wasn't anymore, crashing into the wall and denting it soundly.

At the same time, despite all the writhing and moaning he was doing, he could hear his mother upstairs, well into the throes of a coughing fit.

He looked up at Burg, who calmly crossed his legs atop the coffee table.

“House,” he said in a firm voice. “Hot tub.”

Max scrambled to his feet and raced upstairs, practically knocking Lore aside in his haste. His mother was doubled over in her bed and holding a tissue to her mouth.

“Mom? Are you okay?”

“Yes, fine.” She gave her chest a tap and looked sheepish. “Yikes. Don't know where that came from. The heat caught up with me, or the humidity—”

“Here.” He grabbed a half-empty glass of water from her nightstand and shoved it into her fingers.

She took a few sips and nodded. “Thanks, hon. I'm fine, really.”

Once he'd determined that she really, definitely, positively was fine, Max left her room. He walked past Lore as if in a daze.

“We have to find a house,” he said, his voice devoid of hope.

Lore began to say something about researching real estate listings, but her voice receded into the background as Max sank into the living room sofa and put his fists to his eyes. A kaleidoscope of colors burst onto his eyelids as he pressed his fingers harder, but all he kept seeing were the splotches of blood on his mom's tissue.

 

Max's stomach gurgled as he approached the parking lot of the Gas Bag, yet another location that struck fear into the heart of his very being. Just like home. Just like school. His life had turned into a giant haunted house, each room holding more potential terror and destruction than the last.

Spotting the top of Stavroula's hair bobbing above the shelves as she restocked the ramen noodles, Max darted behind the counter and threw on his vest. He checked his watch. Only an hour and a half late.

Roula, strangely, did not say anything—though her subsequent sneeze did sound a bit like “headaches and scoundrels.” She peeked out from behind the shelf, gave him a curt nod, and went into her office.

This didn't make Max feel any better. It only put him more on edge. Once the after-work rush of customers subsided, Max opened his crossword puzzle book and stared at the jumble of words swirling before him. They didn't make any sense. The stress of the day had robbed him of his wits, gnawing away one neuron at a time.

My brain is broken,
he thought, staring dumbly at clues he could normally answer in his sleep.
Damaged. Ruined. Uh . . . shit. Only two synonyms?

He closed the crossword puzzle book, dropped it into his backpack, and decided to henceforth tackle only the sorts of tasks his enfeebled mind could accomplish. He counted the pennies in the penny tray. He counted the Slim Jims. He started to read the ingredient list on a pack of mints, but it had too many big words.

When the door jingled open around six, he jumped—but it was only Paul. “Hey, Paul.”

“Hey yourself.” He started to root around the gum display, which Max had to imagine was a terrible idea. There wasn't a gum on earth that wouldn't get caught in those bear-trap braces of his. “I heard you ditched school after lunch and went smoking in the woods out back.”

Oh, crap.
Had people seen him and Lore skip out? “That second part isn't true,” Max said. “Rumors of my juvenile delinquency have been greatly exaggerated.”

“So have mine,” Paul muttered. “Have you talked to your boss yet about hiring me?”

The guilt stung. Max had not talked to Roula, and he did not plan to. He
wanted
to help Paul, but he was on thin ice at work as it was; given the chance, Roula would almost definitely hire someone else, someone who wouldn't keep showing up late, or not at all.

“She's . . . not hiring,” Max said, the words caustic in his mouth. “But—”

He almost gasped as the idea came to him. It was perfect.

“But
I
am!” Max finished.

Paul stared at him, mouth agape as always. “Huh?”

“Maybe you can help me out with something,” Max said, hoping this didn't sound as if he were making it up on the spot, which he absolutely was. “I was digging up on Ugly Hill the other day—”

“Looking for the Super Fossil?”

“If that's what you want to call it, sure. But—”

“Did you find the Super Fossil?”

“No. I ran into a problem. See, I went kind of nuts and ended up digging a big hole. Like, a
really
big hole. So big, a forest ranger caught me and told me that if I didn't fill it back in, they were going to close the area down, and we'll never be able to dig there again.”

Paul made a weird snarfing sound. “Oh no!”

“Right?” Max made an incredulous face, which was easy, because he couldn't believe Paul was buying a word of this. Ugly Hill was not part of a state park and therefore would never be patrolled by a forest ranger. “I've been meaning to get back up there to fill in the hole, but I've been working so much lately, I haven't had the time.”

“
I
have the time!” Paul exclaimed.

“You do! So here's what I'm thinking: You go up there and fill the hole for me, and in return I'll give you a cut of what I earn here at the store. You'd really be helping me out. Actually, not just me.
All
of us.” He paused for dramatic effect. “One small step for man, one giant leap for paleontology.”

Max felt that this would have been a perfect moment for the
Jurassic Park
score to swell up beneath his stirring speech, but Paul had been won over without it. “Deal!” he said, pumping Max's hand. “I'll go tomorrow after school!”

“Awesome. And speaking of school—let's not talk about it there. In fact, let's not speak of this at all unless we're completely alone.” When Paul looked confused, he added, “In case any rival paleontologists are listening in.”

What appeared to be a twinge of understanding passed over Paul's face. “Right,” he said, nodding. “Good thinking.”

He was almost at the door when Max thought of something else. “Oh, and Paul? If you see anything weird up there, let me know.”

Paul hesitated at the door. “What do you mean, weird?”

“Just, like, strange sounds or smells. Anything, really. It's important to document all our findings. You know. For science.”

“For science!”

Paul gave him a strange salute and bounced out of the store.

Max couldn't believe that a positive development had just . . . developed. Who would have thought that he'd find an unwitting savior in Paul the goofball?

Once the giddiness of his success subsided, though, the guilt crept back in. Nothing would happen to the guy, right? He was
filling,
not
digging.

Yeah, he'd be fine. Probably.

Hopefully.

But as the hours wore on, Max felt worse and worse about what he'd done. The risks were too great; there were too many unknowns at play here. Paul was innocent. He didn't deserve to get roped into this.

Next time I see him, I'll tell him the deal's off,
Max resolved.
In fact, I should call him right now.

He looked at the phone but couldn't will his hand to pick it up. Fantasies flew through his head, thoughts of his healthy mom laughing, eating dinner over at the Gregorys' the way they used to.

He'll be fine.

 

At eight o'clock, with two hours left in his shift, Max heard Stavroula's office door click open. She sidled up to the counter and stared him down.

“What is going on with you?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Max answered in a high voice.

“Problems at home? With your mother?”

“No, she's fine. I mean, considering.”

She tapped a lacquered nail on the counter and looked at him. Max swallowed.

“I know about the cat,” she said quietly.

Max went still.

“Security camera.” She pointed at the ceiling. “I see everything.”

A curious combination of feelings began to flush and swirl around inside Max, the human toilet. He counted the emotions as they drifted by: shame, guilt, fear, and that same overwhelming sadness he'd felt at the top of Ugly Hill the night he dug the hole.

And then Max did something he hadn't done since that night when he was fifteen, when his mom got real bad and had to be rushed to the hospital, drifting in and out through the revolving door of uncertain death for an agonizing twelve hours.

He put his head down on the counter and started to cry.

It was too much to deal with. Paul, Mom, Lore, Burg, Audie, this. He couldn't shoulder all of these burdens on his own, couldn't handle the possibility that every move he made was the wrong one, the ax balancing precariously over his head, ready to fall at any moment and destroy him, destroy his mom, destroy every effort he'd made to keep their small, broken family together and give them some semblance of a normal life—

And all because of a stupid plastic cat.

Through his quiet sobs, Max could tell that Stavroula had gone very still. Her hesitation was palpable—he felt her lightly touch his shoulder, then immediately draw back, unsure about what she was supposed to do in this situation.

“Is okay,” she said after a moment, patting him on the head. “Don't cry,
pethaki mou.
”

Max looked up at her, his face tear-streaked and red. “I'm sorry, Roula,” he said haltingly, hiccups jumping between each word. “I'm sorry I stole the cat. It was for my mom. I thought she'd like it, but I couldn't afford it. I just—I made a mistake, and I understand if you need to fire me, but please don't. Please. I need this job. I don't know where else to go.”

At this last admission, one that seemed to sum up the mess his life had become in the past couple of days, another sob escaped from somewhere deep and blubbered out of his mouth. He was a quivering, wretched mess. If this had happened at school, he never would have heard the end of it.

Thankfully, there were no witnesses. Though Max had a feeling that even if there had been, he wouldn't have cared. This thing stirring inside him had been a force of nature, a twisting, feral serpent nipping at his throat. He couldn't have stopped it if he tried.

Stavroula was still rubbing his hair. “I no fire you,” she said. “You work overtime. No other teenagers work overtime. Trust me, I look.”

Max sniffed and raised his head. “Really?” he said. “I'm not fired?”

She gave him a rare smile. It looked strange on her face, like food that had splattered there without her knowledge. “No,” she said. “No, you good boy.”

She said it with such conviction that Max nearly believed her. He'd always thought of himself as a good person, but with everything that had happened lately, he'd started to feel that that wasn't true anymore. Or maybe it had never been true to begin with.

Because just as soon as the relief had rushed in, it rushed out once again, faster than a rip tide.

Because the thought he was now thinking wasn't:
Yes. Yes, I am a good person.

It was:
I must have miscalculated the angle of the security camera.

I won't make that mistake again.

STAVROULA LET HIM OUT OF WORK
right then and there. Immediately he rode over to Just Glue It, parked his bike, and walked into the store. It remained unchanged from the last time he'd been in there to buy modeling plaster, months ago. Maybe a year.