Flesh Gothic by Edward Lee (21 page)

Willis seemed not to even hear him, and Cathleen simply
shrugged. "We've heard them before," she said, eating more
salad and potatoes. "It really isn't a big deal."

"It provides a necessary scientific authentication," Nyvysk
said. "Helpful because it establishes more quickly that the
mansion is charged and we're not all wasting our time."

"And I'd recommend that you not bother listening to any
of the tapes," Willis said. He was fiddling with his fork, still
wearing his jersey gloves.

"Why?" Westmore asked.

"Because sometimes the voices tell you things you don't
want to hear."

The response made Westmore feel excited and suddenly
apprehensive at the same time.

"I'd like to hear the ghosts," Karen finally spoke up, spinning her ice cubes in her glass.

"Later tonight," Nyvysk promised. "Let me finish setting up."

Westmore tried to eat but scarcely tasted the food, wondering about all of this. The room's odd, low-key vibe hung
over the table like a very low ceiling.

"Where's Mack?" Karen asked if only to break the silence.

"I think he took a plate of food up to the locksmith."

"What's the status on the wall safe?" Nyvysk asked.

"She says she might be able to open it, might not."

"She?" Karen questioned. "The locksmith is a woman?"

"Yeah." Just ask Mack, Westmore thought in jest. "She
said it might take all night."

Nyvysk pinched his chin through his beard. "I'm very
interested in what might be in that safe."

"It's nothing alive or dead, that's about all I can tell you,"
Adrianne said, drifting wanly into the room. She'd obviously just showered, her ink-black bob wet and haphazardly
combed. She clutched a white bathrobe around herself. "I
remote-viewed and OBE'd into the safe. Couldn't see
what's inside, but it's nothing with a life- or death-force."

"You were expecting a severed head?" Cathleen asked.

"In this house?" Willis contributed, "I probably would
expect that."

"How was your jaunt?" Nyvysk asked her.

"Valuable, but.. ."

Everyone peered at her.

"I RV'd first, to the cemetery, found Hildreth's tombstone, then looked in his grave-"

Westmore recalled Karen's earlier explanation of remoteviewing, didn't know if he believed any of it, and didn't ask
for details. But he was very interested in the grave simply
because of Vivica's secret-that Hildreth's body was never
actually recovered. "Was there a body in the grave?" he
asked.

"Yes, a solid cold spot."

"Was it-"

"I couldn't see the face."

Yes, Westmore was very interested. Mental note: find a
shovel.

"Oh, and there's an abandoned car out there in the
woods," Adrianne added, brushing wet spikes of hair off her
brow "I'm not sure where but I know it's on the grounds
because I could see the mansion in the background. And
there's another car with people in it, two people, I think."

"On the property?" Westmore asked, slightly alarmed.
"Right now?"

"As of about an hour ago, at least. A big sedan. It looked
old."

"The house is elaborately alarmed," Nyvysk said, sensing
Westmore's concern. "I wouldn't worry about it. We don't
want to be calling police-they'd want to snoop around inside, and we can't have that kind of interference."

Karen leaned forward, elbows on the table and clearly
bored. "It's probably just some kids parking in the woods,
getting it on."

Westmore supposed he could go with that ... but he still
wanted to see. And the abandoned vehicle? I gotta get the tag
number run ...

"But there's something else, isn't there,Adrianne?" Nyvysk
prodded. "You're obviously distraught about something."

She nodded, pulled the collar of her robe closer. "I'm
pretty sure that I was molested, too. Like Cathleen:'

Cathleen stiffened up in her seat. "At the cemetery?"

"No," Adrianne said, a grimness in her tone. "In the
house. "

Everyone stiffened up at that.

"Another pan-planar rape?" Nyvysk asked, eyes open
on her.

"I don't know if it was para-planar, discarnated, revenant."
Her head drooped. Her hands shook a little, and when she
looked imploringly to Cathleen, her unspoken need was realized. Cathleen passed her the bottle of pills, which Westmore understood were barbiturates. Adrianne took one
with some water and continued, "I based myself in one of
the suites, then I OBE'd pretty successfully. I roved to the
Scarlet Room, but I'm not sure what happened after that. I
may have been misdirected, because when I started to receive some direct sensory-responses, it felt like I was pulled
off. As if 1 was guided to the target instead of me guiding
myself"

"You were commandeered?" Nyvysk asked.

"Something like that, maybe."

"What did the location look like?"

More grimness mixed with confusion. "It must've been
hallucinotic-I think I was in Hell."

Westmore listened, still skeptical but captivated.

"I need to think about it more to remember everything
that happened," Adrianne went on. "After a jaunt I always
need a little time for-"

"Memory refraction," Nyvsyk said.

"But when the OBE was terminated, my body was in a
different position on the bed, and I was naked. I almost
never OBE naked, usually just underwear."

Now Nyvysk was jotting notes down in a pad. "Usually?
This is very important."

"I'm ninety-percent sure I had a bra and panties on when
I started. That's the best estimation I can give."

Cathleen asked, "Was there any-"

"No semen. I was drenched but I'm not even sure it was
sweat. It may have been something mesoplasmic or residual.
It was gross-it almost smelled like urine. Light bruising,
and I'm still pretty sore."

Westmore could barely comprehend what she meant; the
only thing more shocking than what Adrianne reported was
the attitude of the others. T7tey're not batting an eye at what
she's saying ...

"How many of them molested you?" Cathleen asked
next. "Mine was multiple."

"I don't know," Adrianne expressed, "I have no idea. I
wasn't there. Only my body was there, and I really don't like
the idea of that. That's never happened before." She took a
sip of water from an etched goblet. "Somebody playing
around with m y body when I'm not e v e n in it ..."

"An element of transposition?" Willis guessed. "Something came out when you went in?"

"An interplanar agency crawling back here on your
tether while you were elsewhere?" Nyvysk added.

"I never heard of that happening to anyone in my field,
and it's never happened to me," Adrianne dispelled them.
"It must've been something that was already here. OBE-ing
tends to activate discorporate activity, so do vulnerabili-
ties-discorporates can smell it a mile away. Same as when
it happened to Cathleen-she was in a divination trance."

Westmore slammed his open hand down on the table so
hard the silverware clattered. He stood up, tempering his
outrage. "Sorry, folks, but I've had enough. I do a pretty
good job of keeping an open mind and always considering
every side of every story but this is past the line."

"Mr. Westmore?" Nyvysk looked up. "Is there a problem?"

Westmore snorted. "A problem? Yeah, we got two
women here who claimed to have been raped, and everybody's sitting around trying to figure out what kind of ghost
did it. I guess I'm just old-fashioned, huh? I guess I'm just
not hip to this stuff. Did any of you people consider for
even a second that these girls may have been raped by, uh,
you know--a rapist?" He frowned at Adrianne. "For shit's
sake, you just got done telling us that you saw an intruder
on the property!"

"Relax," Cathleen said.

Willis lit a cigarette. "You don't know about this stuff.
It's confusing at first."

"If we'd been molested by real men," Adrianne explained, "there'd be physical evidence. There'd be semen."

"Ever heard of rubbers?"

"It's not the same," Cathleen said.

Nyvysk was getting annoyed. "Really, Mr. Westmore,
you must leave this to us. We understand your reaction, but
what you must understand is that we have to remain focused. We respect that you're here as an observer only. We're
here for another reason. We can't have any interference
from you."

"Fine. I won't interfere," Westmore said. "You know
what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna get a flashlight, go outside,
and LOOK FOR THE RAPIST!"

"That's highly inadvisable," Nyvysk told hips. "There are
things about this place that you simply don't understand."

Westmore stormed off.

When the atrium doors slammed behind him, the others
all looked at each other.

"There's one in a every crowd," Nyvysk remarked, and
they all began to laugh.

Jeez Louise! Make my life easier, why don't you! At least they
were paying. Vanni couldn't believe the money Mack had
laid on her. Car doors and disk-tumbler deadbolts comprised ninety-percent of her work, and she was good at it.
She could open most locks in not much longer than it took
to open with the key. But this safe?

A tough job.

She went to the manufacturer's website and found the
model number of the safe. The general specs were listed, including information about the combination, and that's
when the job just got harder. It was a rare nine-number
combination series, which meant that even if she could get
the safe open, it would take three times longer.

The food that Mack had brought her earlier was great
she hadn't had lobster in a while-and then he'd plugged in
the office coffee pot and started it for her. She opened her
bag and pulled out the Stiles GMR (gravity-motion reader).
It was simply a box with a meter on it, and this she plugged
into the wall. Two other wires plugged into the front of the
box. At the end of one wire was a heavy, cylindrical magnet;
at the end of the other was a square counter-magnet which
she taped to the left of the safe's combination mount. The
magnet and counter-magnet created a simple magnetic flux
which the meter measured. When a tumbler moved into se quence alignment, the device could detect that movement.
In all, GMR's worked about half the time, and it could take
several hours per pin. And I've got NINE pins here, Vanni reminded herself. She opened her pad and began.

An hour and a half later she'd gotten a total of five pins.

How do you like that? This might not take as long as I thought.
Only jour more to go ...

She left the GMR on and got up. She called her sister,
who was watching the kids, and let her know she wouldn't
be home for awhile, then poured some coffee. As she sipped
she noticed the two paintings on the floor leaning against
the wall. A young girl in a billowing dress, a painting like a
romance cover. Then the odd engraving. Weird, she
thought. But it was a weird place. Someone must've spent millions on this joint-multiple millions. Must cost ten grand a month
just for the power bill. Five floors? All those rooms?

Without thinking about it, she left the office and found
herself walking down the hall. More weird paintings hung
on the walls, and for some reason she was grateful it was too
dark to make out much detail. There was absolutely no
sound. I guess they don't mind me looking around, she hoped.
She didn't even know who "they" were, but it didn't matter. When you had kids and an ex-husband who'd fled to
Thailand to avoid child-support, money was pretty much all
that mattered.

Christ, I haven't even been on a date in six months ... She
worked at the bank during the week, and took night calls
and weekends with the locksmith. So as for romantic
prospects, where was the time? There was certainly no
shortage of interested men. She had a healthy self-image,
and when she looked in the mirror she not only knew that
she was looking at a motivated, responsible woman, she
knew she was looking at an attractive one. She'd get a lot of calls to construction sites, where foremen lost keys to houses
being built. No, no shortage of interest there. Lots of whistles, lots of long looks. And from all those tough, brawny
hardhats? Sometimes she fantasized about frenzied quickies
in pickup trucks, just some rough, horny, and very nameless
man hauling her boots and pants off and simply doing her
without a word. Yes, sometimes Vanni thought about things
like that-and a lot more-and she guessed that all women
did, to themselves. But they were just fantasies. The reality
was the workaday world: feeding the kids, paying the rent.
Sometimes it just didn't seem very exciting.

A brass plate on a door read: THE LADY OF KADESH
SITTING ROOM. Yeah, this place really is too much, Vanni
thought, not even knowing that the Lady of Kadesh was
purportedly history's first prostitute. Lots of the rooms were
named. Why? The door was open a crack so she saw no
harm in entering.

"Some sitting room," she muttered to herself. It was a
gymnasium! Padded bench presses, racks, and cabled pulleys
filled the center of the room, but ...

Wow ... This is outrageous ...

Large oil paintings hung on all the walls. Unlike those in
the halls, though, these depicted explicit scenes of sex. Orgies, mostly, in-

Vanni looked closer.

Orgies in the midst of demons. One stunningly realistic
portrait showed a wide-eyed blonde wearing a crown of
thorns, lips parted in bliss, face glazed by what could only be
semen. Scaled demon-hands with red nails cradled her
breasts. Another depicted group sex in the chancel of a
cathedral, partially disrobed priests and nuns the participants. Another group-scene blazed, naked celebrants with scarlet eyes demonstrating more sexual positions than Vanni
knew existed, all in a flaming grotto while horned monsters
looked on.

Vanni turned away. She could never imagine such artwork. And in a gym?

Crary.

Beside a cabinet stood a small liquor bar topped by racks
of glasses. This is the weirdest gym I've ever seen, she thought.
Booze? Porn? Next she examined the gym equipment and
found it all equally perplexing. In fact ...