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Virginia didn't answer.
"You hear me, in there? This is Sheriff Baker. The place is surrounded, so come on out, or you're dead."
Virginia sat on the bed and weighed up the alternatives. They wouldn't execute her for what she'd done,
the way they had Sadie. But she'd be in prison for a long time, and she was tired of regimes. If she wasn't
mad now, incarceration would push her to the brink and over. Better to finish here, she thought. She put the
warm .38 under her chin, tilting it to make sure the shot would take off the top of her skull.
"Is that wise?" Sadie inquired, as Virginia's finger tightened.
"They'll lock me away," she replied. "I couldn't face that."
"True," said Sadie. "They'll put you behind bars for a while. But it won't be for long."
"You must be joking. I just shot my husband in cold blood."
"You didn't mean to," Sadie said brightly, "you were aiming at Buck."
"Was I?" Virginia said. "I wonder."
"You can plead insanity, the way I should have done. Just make up the most outrageous story you can
and stick to it." Virginia shook her head; she'd never been much of a liar. "And when you're set free," Sadie
went on, "you'll be notorious. That's worth living for, isn't it?"
Virginia hadn't thought of that. The ghost of a smile illuminated her face. From outside, Sheriff Baker
repeated his demand that she throw her weapon through the door and come out with her hands high.
"You've got ten seconds, lady," he said, "and I mean ten."
"I can't face the humiliation," Virginia murmured. "I can't."
Sadie shrugged. "Pity," she said. "The rain's clearing. There's a moon.
"A moon? Really?"
Baker had started counting.
"You have to make up your mind," Sadie said. "They'll shoot you given half the chance. And gladly."
Baker had reached eight. Virginia stood up.
"Stop," she called through the door.
Baker stopped counting. Virginia threw out the gun. It landed in the mud.
"Good," said Sadie. "I'm so pleased."
"I can't go alone," Virginia replied.
"No need."
A sizeable audience had gathered in the lot: Earl and Laura May of course, Milton Cade, Dwayne and his
girl, Sheriff Baker and his deputy, an assortment of motel guests. They stood in respectful silence, staring at
Virginia Gyer with mingled expressions of bewilderment and awe.
"Put your hands up where I can see them!" Baker said. Virginia did as she was instructed.
"Look," said Sadie, pointing.
The moon was up, wide and white.
"Why'd you kill him?" Dwayne's girl asked.
"The Devil made me do it," Virginia replied, gazing up at the moon and putting on the craziest smile she
could muster.
DOWN, SATAN!
CIRCUMSTANCES HAD made Gregorius rich beyond all calculation. He owned fleets and palaces;
stallions;
cities Indeed he owned so much that to those who were finally charged with enumerating his possessions-
when the events of this story reached their monstrous conclusion-it sometimes seemed it might be quicker
to list the items Gregorius did not own.
Rich he was, but far from happy. He had been raised a Catholic, and in his early years-before his dizzying
rise to fortune-he'd found succor in his faith. But he'd neglected it, and it was only at the age of fifty-five,
with the world at his feet, that he woke one night and found himself Godless.
It was a bitter blow, but he immediately took steps to make good his loss. He went to Rome and spoke
with the Supreme Pontiff; he prayed night and day; he founded seminaries and leper colonies. God,
however, declined to show so much as His toenail. Gregorius, it seemed, was forsaken.
Almost despairing, he took it into his head that he could only win his way back into the arms of his
Maker if he put his soul into the direst jeopardy. The notion had some merit. Suppose, he thought, I could
contrive a meeting with Satan, the Archfiend. Seeing me in extremis, would not God be obliged to step in and
deliver me back into the fold?
It was a fine plot, but how was he to realize it? The Devil did not just come at a call, even for a tycoon
such as Gregorius, and his researches soon proved that all the traditional methods of summoning the Lord
of Vermin-the defiling of the Blessed Sacrament, the sacrificing of babes-were no more effective than his
good works had been at provoking Yahweh. It was only after a year of deliberation that he finally fell upon
his master plan. He would arrange to have built a hell on earth-a modern inferno so monstrous that the
Tempter would be tempted, and come to roost there like a cuckoo in a usurped nest.
He searched high and low for an architect and found, languishing in a madhouse outside Florence, a man
called Leopardo, whose plans for Mussolini's palaces had a lunatic grandeur that suited Gregorius's project
perfectly. Leopardo was taken from his cell-a fetid, wretched old man-and given his dreams again. His genius
for the prodigious had not deserted him.
In order to fuel his invention the great libraries of the world were scoured for descriptions of hells both
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