Flesh Gothic by Edward Lee (17 page)

She shrugged, flat on her back and eyes closed. "Nyvysk
doesn't claim to be psychic. He just does tech stuff. And
exorcisms."

"You're pulling my leg."

"Wish I was. We hired a research consultant to background all of these people before Vivica hired them. I got
to sneak a peek at the bios. Nyvysk is an ex-priest who did
exorcisms for over twenty years. He went all over the
world."

"Ex-priest? Why the ex?"

"Sex stuff. A lot of sex stuff with all of them. I'm sure
you'll get all of their full stories soon."

Westmore was dumbfounded. Sac stuff ... He didn't
even want to know Then he looked glumly at the DVD's
that awaited his attention. Sex DVD's. Hours and hours of it.

"It's almost time for dinner," Karen said, rousing herself
from the desk. "Let's go downstairs and see if the freakshow
has calmed down.'

Westmore followed her out, his puzzlement churning. As
they moved down the dark hall, it seemed that the faces in
the oil portraits and statues were different from earlier, but
he knew this was just imagination.

"I guess Nyvysk already went downstairs," Karen said,
and pointed to the door of the communications room. It
stood closed.

"No," Westmore said, stopping mid-stride. "I hear him
talking in there." He stood at the door, and very faintly
could hear voices.

"Quit eavesdropping, and let's go," Karen urged. She
grabbed his arm and pulled him away. "I'm starving!"

But as Westmore was tugged toward the stairs, he
thought, I wonder who he's talking to, because he was sure he
heard more than one voice in the room.

Nyvysk felt no shock, no overt impact, just something subdy awful deeper in his heart. He had eight V/A digital
recorders running through the intercom microphones in
random rooms, which he chose only for their likelihood
that the other members of the group wouldn't enter, mostly
rooms on the fifth story. EVP was always a reliable gauge,
and the easiest to implement, even though the exact science
was confusing as many different aspects of electronic-voice
phenomena existed. Many's the time he'd sat in rooms himself with recorders running, often for hours, and heard absolutely nothing. Later, he'd play the tapes back through
sequential equalizers and hear an array of voices. Who
knew why? It simply worked.

And it was working now.

And he recognized one of the voices.

Positive meter-spikes had alerted him for EVP in three
rooms: the Chapel, a bedroom suite, and Hildreth's so-called
Scarlet Room.

On the Chapel disc, he heard this:

"Yes. Oh, yes." A male voice.

Then a female voice, very distant. "Look at them fuck.
Let's do that."

The male voice: "No, I mostly just love the blood. I like
to see it..."

Next, the bedroom, a bending, warbling utterance of
varying sonic densities, what sounded like a woman: "Oh
my God, stick it in, stick the k n i f e a l l the w a y in ... "

Certainly these recordings could be a trick. No one had
been in the rooms during the times the voices had registered; he knew this because he had the room cameras on the
display monitors, but he supposed someone could easily be
hiding in the rooms, out of the cameras' view. Or hidden
speakers could be playing the prerecorded voice back. It
would appear authentic but still-a trick. Nyvysk, however,
doubted that this was the case here. He could feel it.

The third monitor spike had occurred in the Scarlet
Room.

"Alexander," the wan voice slipped through. A Middleeastern accent. "Are you ... there?"

Nyvysk sat motionless. Listened.

"I know you're there. Someone told me."

The voice was male yet gentle, even impassioned. It
sounded lost but somehow hopeful.

"I know you remember me, and I remember you. I remember the look in your eyes ... on that day."

Nyvysk's sensibilities struggled with logic and the simple
responsibility of his job. Still, his illogic forced him to ask,
What ... day?

"I could see your love. I wished you'd come with me-I
know you wanted to. If you had, I'd still be alive. I went
home through an alley by the street market, and got murdered by thieves. But we did well that day, didn't we,
Alexander?"

A roll of dead air. Nyvysk could hear himself blink.

"Alexander? Didn't we?"

Dread crept up his skin, while his eyes welled with tears.

"We cured her, Alexander. The woman speaking the
devil's words in Zraetic. That day so long ago, in Nineveh."

Nyvysk knew who it was, even before those details. The
boy named Saeed, who'd exorcized a possessed woman near
the ancient Library of Ashurbanipal.

The boy he'd fallen in love with, and had thought about
every day for nearly the last twenty years.

Nyvysk left the recorders on and left the mom.

"So where is everybody?" Westmore asked.

Karen glanced about the sumptuous kitchen. "Yeah, and
where's dinner?"

Westmore was relieved by one thing: the kitchen was the
only area of the house that did not conform to the rest of
the mansion's ubiquitous Gothic motif. It more resembled a
kitchen in a high-end restaurant, with multiple ranges,
ovens, roasters, and a large reverse-air grill. The pantry was
as large as a two-car garage, and there was a walk-in refrigerator and freezer.

But where was everyone? The dining room was empty
and so was the atrium.

"Did everybody leave?" Karen asked.

Just as Westmore would start calling for people on the
videocom, the kitchen doors pushed open. It was Mack,
looking a bit harried.

"What's wrong?" Westmore asked.

"Nothing, really. Minor crisis with the rest of the crew."

"Where are they?" Karen asked.

"In the library, kind of having a pow-wow"

This didn't sound right to Westmore. "Did something
happen? It sure as hell sounds like it."

"I'm not sure," Mack said.

"And what about dinner?" Karen complained, starting
another drink.

"Well, we were kind of hoping you guys could cook dinner. We'll be about an hour."

Karen groaned.

I can't cook for dick, Westmore thought. But- "We'll
whip something up. And then you're going to tell me
what's going on, right?"

"Sure, when I find out myself." Mack was rushing back
out. "Oh, oh, there's New Zealand lobster tails in the
freezer," and then he was gone.

"I don't know how to cook lobster tails, but I guess I'm
about to find out," Westmore said.

"You're supposed to be Vivica's chronicler. It almost
sounds like they don't want you to know what's going on.
Shouldn't you be in there, too?"

"Yeah, but I've got a better idea; discretion might have
some advantages, especially with this crowd. I don't know
what to make of anybody yet." The library, Westmore
thought. He punched up the floor index on the videocom,
then hit the right wing and room button. Voices etched
through the speaker.

"The psychometry of the room was dizzying," Willis'
voice asserted. "It was like my psyche was seized by the
revenant-environment."

"Was there visual?" a woman asked.

"Yes, a long stream. I'm pretty sure it was active, and I'm
positive it wasn't hypnagogic or pompic."

The other woman again. "Are you sure you didn't touch
anyone before you went in?"

"Who's that?" Westmore asked. "It doesn't sound like
Adrianne."

"It's Cathleen Godwin," Karen said, "the one who claims
she was assaulted outside. She's the one you haven't met
yet." She pushed the video button. "There."

Westmore had forgotten. The display screen was now a
tiny television, and he could see them all sitting solemnly
around a long William and Mary trestle table. A blonde in a
soft-green sundress was the one Westmore hadn't met yet.
She listened and talked with her fingers steepled, her eyes
either grim or very focused.

Nyvysk sat at the table's head. "All right, so Willis and
Cathleen have already had positive contacts. And so have l."

"What?" Adrianne said, sitting further away across from
Mack. "Gauss? Imagery?"

"EVP, from three different targets."

There was a long silence.

Nyvysk continued. "It looks like we've found a charged
house."

"Don't jump to conclusions," Adrianne said, chin in
hand.

"Three out of four? With us?" Willis remarked. "It's hard
to be skeptical with a percentage like that."

"What about you, Adrianne?" Cathleen asked in a way that sounded like a challenge. "Are you going to sit around
the whole time you're here, or put that bottle of pills away
for a couple of hours and help us out?"

Adrianne didn't seem affected by the slight. "I did some
RV-ing already."

"And?" Nyvysk asked.

"Nothing. Just that writer guy. I don't know if I like him."

Westmore frowned, could hear Karen chuckling behind
him. "See what eavesdropping can do sometimes?"

"There's no reason for her to dislike me, for God's sake,"
he complained. "I don't even know her."

"These are some of the most psychic people in the country. They're also the most paranoid."

"Great."

"I don't trust that blonde," Cathleen said. "She's a floozy,
and I swear she was shit-faced before she even walked in."

"What did that bitch say?" Karen exclaimed. "I'm gonna
tell her to stuff her implants up her-" Karen impulsively
reached for the intercom button, but Westmore snatched
her hand away.

"Don't do that," he said. "We'll give ourselves away. I
don't know about you but I kind of like the idea of them
not knowing we're listening." Now it was Westmore's turn
for a laugh. "See what eavesdropping can do sometimes?"

"That tramp ... " Karen went to pour herself another
drink from the small kitchen bar. "I'd like to slap her silly."

Nyvysk maintained his place as moderator. "Let's stick to
business; we're here to do a job, and I agree with Willis.
This house is a charged target. But what were you saying,
Adrianne? What did you see in your RV?"

"The writer. He was upstairs, and he found a safe hidden
in a wall, but he doesn't know the combination."

Mack, in the screen, looked dismayed.. "How did you
know that?"

"Trust me

"That's a good question," Westmore said to Karen. "No
one's been in Hildreth's office-Christ, we just left there a
few minutes ago."

"I told you, this is a freaky bunch:'

"And what the hell did Nyvysk mean? Something about
an RV? I got a funny feeling they're not talking about recreational vehicles."

"It stands for remote-viewing. According to her bio and
resume, Adrianne can see things from a distance. She can sit
in a room and focus, and then see things in other rooms."

.Bullshit," Westmore said.

"How'd she know about the safe?"

"I don't know. Maybe Mack told her in confidence and
that whole thing was a con game to convince the others
she's for real. Or maybe-maybe she did the exact same
thing we're doing. Watching on the videcom without our
knowledge."

"Hildreth's office isn't wired. No intercom, no camera."

Westmore shook his head. "Look, I know I can be
gullible sometimes but not that gullible. I'm not convinced."

"I'm not necessarily convinced either, I'm just telling you
what's in her bio. She claims she can do the remoteviewing thing, and also some other, freakier things."

"I don't even want to know ..." Westmore was trying to
keep hold of his journalistic roots, blade and white roots. He
wasn't ready to even consider anything beyond that yet.

"I don't even know what she's doing here," Cathleen said
at the table. "I think she's just jealous of me. Frowned at me
when I met her at Vivica Hildreth's."

"She's talking about me again!" Karen railed. "Jealous?
Why would I be jealous of that over-the-hill whore!" ,

"Calm down," Westmore said, amused.

"I've got no problem with her," Adrianne said. "But she
drinks too much, that's for sure. When I was RV-ing, I saw
her at the liquor cabinet twice."

"That bitch!" Karen exclaimed again.

"She's a drunk and a half." Cathleen again. "But somebody answer my question. Why's she even here?"

"To snoop for Vivica, I'm sure," Mack contributed.
"Karen doesn't act like it, but she loves to snoop ... "

"Prick! Turncoat son-of-a-bitch! Who's he to talk? He's
the biggest brown-nose I ever met in my life!"

Westmore just shook his head, listening.

"We're getting off track," Nyvysk suggested. "Forget
about the others. It's us. The four of us. No offense, Mack,
but in this situation you're an outsider, too. The four of us
need to make a conclusion. Three of us have."

Every head at the library table turned to Adrianne.

"I will. Tonight," she said, as if fatigued or dreading
whatever it was she vowed to do. "After midnight's always
better." She rose from the long table. "I'm going up now
to get ready. I have to be by myself, so I'll use one of the
bedrooms."

"Aren't you going to eat?" Cathleen asked. "The writer
and the drunk girl are fixing dinner-"

"That bitch!" Karen fumed, wobbling with drink in
hand.

"No, no, I never eat beforehand." Adrianne set a bottle of
pills in front of Cathleen. "Watch those for me, will you?
And I'm sorry about what happened to-you earlier."

Then she walked shakily, out of the library, leaving them
all, especially Cathleen, to their own contemplations.

"She'll be all right," Nyvysk assured. "She's been doing
this for decades."

Doing WHAT? Westmore thought, irritated.

"I'm not really hungry myself, come to think of it,"
Nyvysk said, and rose. "I'm going to start hooking up some
thermal units upstairs, and charge the gauss meters. Tell the
writer to leave something for me in the fridge."