Layers.
This is the Prologue Layer.
Loudrum: The Deadliest fanfic ever written
by
Hatoralo
Layer 0: Earth
Lana was the only one who was able to watch as the Veterinarian gave Cliff the fatal injection. He flinched strongly and let out his final "Meow" before falling asleep forever.
To say the mood in the Loud house was good would be a lie as gigantic as to say the moon was made of gold.
Lori didn't use her Smartphone to talk but rather to look at cute cat videos, Leni was silently crying along with Lola, Luna was only playing sad lullabies (Replaced "nocturnes" , Luan's jokes were incredibly depressing, Lynn was not in mood for sports. Lincoln had just left the house to be alone, Lisa was in her bunker, possibly crying as well. Even Lily felt the sting of loss while the parents tried to act strong for their kids.
Lana was in garage, working on Vanzilla and improving every aspect and function of the van she could. She changed the oil, reinforced the pressure of the tires, tuned the motor, tightened the screws, cleaned everything at the end. She basically did everything she could to repair and improve even the most meaningless feature of the van.
But the sorrow about Cliff's death was still there.
"Hey."
Lana wasn't even surprised at Lucy's arrival. Every other day, it would have shocked her, but she was just too sad and depressed to be scared by her elder Goth sister today. "Hey, Lucy."
"I contacted Cliff in the afterlife," she stated bluntly.
Lana didn't say anything for the moment before angrily saying: "Don't joke with me right now."
"I don't make jokes about the afterlife and the dark arts," said Lucy seriously. The mood around her was one of gloom, gloomier than usual, but Lana was not surprised. Lucy's fascination with death worried the family sometimes, but she was not somebody who would be happy about seeing somebody dead, especially one close to the family.
Lana remembered how Lucy had organized and run the burial of Cliff and the ceremony around it with grace, dignity and a beautiful eulogy. They all gave money to Lucy, which she used to invest into the best coffin money could buy and Cliff was officially buried in the backyard behind the tool shed. The other animals, Charles, Geo, Walt, Izzy, Seymour, El Diablo, Hops, Gary, Bitey, Brad, Rebecca and Fangs had all been attending to show their respect to their fellow pet and some of them were visibly crying. They had all been rather quiet and orderly these days as well.
"Cliff is not the first pet that died," the plumber reminded the Goth bitterly. "But he was the first that was close to the entire family. My reptiles and amphibians are mostly mine, so when they die, the others don't feel the sting as I do." Lana sighed, looking into the rearview mirror of the van. "But now they all feel it. Knowing that Cliff is happy elsewhere in a good place would be a reliving thought, but something in me is too skeptical about this prospect."
"He is not in a better place," explained Lucy. "He is in Hell."
The heaven was somber, everything looked somber now. Lana wasn't sure if it was because of the revelation Lucy had given her or a very strange change in weather.
Lisa was playing a "Professor Layton" game.
"To reach Hell, we have to dig at a place of great importance to forces of darkness", Lucy told her younger sister. "Luckily for us, a long time ago, as Lucifer led the rebellion in heaven, he landed here, the exact place where our house is standing on now."
Lori was staring out the window.
Lana scratched her head. She looked at Lucy in disbelief. "How can you know that? And if this place is so evil, why didn't we ever see more supernatural things here or Satanists who want to pray and make offerings?"
Luna was eating a sandwich in the kitchen.
"Most Satanists aren't into sacrificing animals or hailing the dark powers," explained Lucy with an exhausted sigh. "They are not actual worshippers of Lucifer, Satan and/or Beelzebub. They are more about freedom of choice. They are about individualism and against conformism. There is nothing about being evil, using dark magic for bad things, blood sacrifice of animals, humans and especially children and summoning demons in any of the satanic churches."
"There's more than one?"
Lucy nodded. "There's The Church of Satan, Luciferianism and the Order of the Nine Angels, among others."
Lynn was sitting on her bed, filling out some homework with a bored expression.
"What about Satanists from movies and video games?"
Lincoln was still outside the house. The streets were empty and silent today.
"Based on the paranoid prosecution ideas of Christians and over major religious groups."
"Back to the point," said Lana finally. "So, what are we supposed to do? Find a way to hell and release Cliff from his torment? Does our house have a door that leads to it?"
Leni was still crying. She had hardly any strength for anything else.
"Not directly," explained the Goth girl. "We need to dig for it. We need to dig into the different layers of hell until we reach the one Cliff resides now."
Discretion is important if you plan to wander into hell. Your family would be an unnecessary distraction during such an operation. They might want to know why you are doing that or this, they may annoy you with questions.
They may even try to stop you because they would see it is as dangerous beyond imagination.
Charles was sniffing around Luna and Luan's room.
"I can break open the floor of the cellar," promised Lana. "But the noise will draw attention to us."
The clouds were passing the windows of the Loud House.
"We could also dig from under the veranda of our house," suggested Lucy. "But then we would have to worry about hiding the soil."
Haiku was meditating in a pentagram at home.
"We can put the soil we don't need into the canalization," suggested Lana. "I may even be able to dig a hole into it."
Luan looked over the props she had for her comedy routines, including several fake knives.
"Good. From there we can dig into the layer of hell Cliff is in."
The House of Loud stood opposing and scary against all other houses this evening.
"In which layer will he be?" asked Lana. "And when we reach that place, how do we find him?"
"It could take some time," said Lucy grimly. "And we could see terrible things. Not every terrible thing that is going on in hell, as mortals, even when we enter hell, we will not see everything."
Lori watched a cute cat video, about to cry as she thought that she saw a kitten corpse for a moment.
"Though we could run into the most terrible stuff. Corpses, scary objects, demons, monsters, seasons of "American Idol." "
One of Luna's guitar strings broke.
Lana couldn't help but laugh at the last one. "Where else?"
"We have to be protected," Lucy said once again in all seriousness. "The forces down there could harm us. I have a book that describes a ritual able to protect us from evil."
Lola stared at the ceiling. It was full of stalagmites.
"A magic book?"
Lucy nodded. "It is the book "Höllenzwang," or to bluntly translate it from German, "Hell Force". It is a true version of it, none of the commercial crap you can buy from any shop hidden in a cellar on an unmarked house in the wilderness."
Lisa watched how a little bug wandered from one end of the room to the other.
"If hell exists, wouldn't we be endangering our immortal souls by descending into it while using the teachings of a heretic book?"
"Just entering hell will not damn us, even when we use a heretical book," assured Lucy. "But we could die there. And if our rap sheet doesn't look good, we will stay there."
Lynn Sr. was cooking something to distract himself. He didn't notice the lonely stick figure swimming in the boiling water of his pot.
"Let us do it," said Lana.
Digging into the canalization was not as big a deal as the two would have thought. Thanks to Lisa (who was too distracted at the moment to care), they had gotten their hands on thermite to burn through the cemented wall of the sewers and digging was a secondary hobby to the plumber and the gravedigger. Reaching the sewers, they prepared a little place to put all the soil in and then started a ritual. Lucy had prepared a pentagram with chalk around and into the area they planned to dig and placed a statue and/or symbol of several major religions in them.
Now Lana had folded her hands to the prayer and closed her eyes while Lucy was holding a book.
She read:
"We stand here, in the soil
We stand here, for the toil
We stand here, for the boil
We stand here, for the spoil
We want to enter the abyss
We want to enter no bliss
We want to enter terrible kiss
We want to enter the worst miss
O god, JHW, Allah
Vishnu, Amaterasu-ōmikami, Buddha
Zeus, Odin and Ra
Protect us from the hazards of Inferna
Protect us from the hazards of Inferna!
Protect us from the hazards of Inferna!
Protect us from the hazards of Inferna!
Protect us from the hazards of Inferna!
Protect us from the hazards of Inferna!
Protect us from the hazards of Inferna!
PROTECT US FROM THE HAZARDS OF INFERNA!
Lana opened her eyes.
The world looked the same.
The girl with the red cap took a closer look at the book called "Höllenzwang." It was a rather normal looking book at first glance from a distance. But at a closer examination, she beheld that the edges on both side had black drawings, resembling flames.
The subtitle on the cover read:
"The 9 Layers of Hell and its inhabitants.
Written by %%%%%%%."
The book was then turned to its first chapter.
Layer one: Krank.
Layer 0: Earth, has ended. Now 8 more layers await.
The air is safe to breath.