Flesh Gothic by Edward Lee (40 page)

Gross, he thought of what he saw. I am NOT into this
S&M stuff.

A naked woman lay spread-legged on a table. He couldn't see her face but she didn't appear to be one of Hildreth's typical porn models. No implants, no stunning tan.
She appeared young.

Somebody else was performing a genital piercing of the
most extreme sort. A half-inch at a time, the folds of her
vagina were being closed by chrome rings. Each ring being
crimped caused the woman to flinch. When the procedure
was complete, it looked as if her sex had been closed by silver stitches.

This is no porn tape. What is this skit?

On screen, for just a moment, the woman leaned up and
showed her face. Shaken, red around the eyes.

It was that young woman Westmore was so concerned
with, the girl in the period-piece painting. What was her name?

Oh, yrnh. Debbie Rodenbargh.

Had Westmore seen this? Maybe not. Maybe I better go tell
him. It could be his last act in the mansion before he walked
out of it forever.

"It's a chastity belt," a voice rose up behind him.
"They're symbolizing her virginity. Belarius likes symbols
of homage."

Willis spun at the voice.

Stared.

It was Vanni, the locksmith woman.

She looked worse now than the first time he'd seen her
revenant. Thinner, grayer, her gut sucked in, like a corpse in
a death camp.

"I wasn't afraid of you last time, and I'm not afraid of you
this time. You're a vision. You're a dead image."

By now her once-full breasts sat deflated in their emaciation, nipples so gray they were almost black.

"A revenant? A discorporation?"

"Yes."

She stepped forward. bony-hipped, legs like gray sticks.
"Are you sure?"

"Positive," Willis said.

"But you only see revenants through the things you
touch, right?"

`Yes."

A black smile. "Your gloves are still on."

Willis' eyes went wide. He looked at his hands.

She was right.

Fingers like hooks snapped up and grabbed his throat.
Willis tried to shout but couldn't--the pressure choked off
his voice. He was dragged to the floor in a blur of frenetic,
dead-gray motion. Fingertips dug deeper, as if to twist his
Adam's apple out of his throat like a cork.

"The house is releasing some of its stored energy," the
thing that used to be Vanni said. "It's almost time. Hildreth
is going to open the Rive again."

Willis flailed helplessly, gagging. The rippled flaps of
breasts swayed before his dimming eyes. Drool fell into his
mouth.

"There'll be so much for you to touch in Hell ..."

His belt was whisked out of the loops on his pants and
expertly wrapped around his neck. It was tightened inch by
inch until his face turned beet-red and he died, convulsing
on the floor.

"Isn't now the time to call the police?" Cathleen asked She
sat despondent on the same lounge chair that had occupied
Adrianne's body before she'd jumped--or been thrownoff the roof.

"I don't know, I don't know," Westmore fairly babbled.
"It's the legal thing to do, but I think by now we all know
that something else is going to happen soon."

"It's a mistake to call the police just yet," Nyvysk asserted.
Moonlight paled his face. "And I don't think we should tell
Vivica yet, either. It's not logical, I know. But Westmore's
right. We can't bring Adrianne back. And something is going to happen here; our job is to find out what it is. The police will seal the house if we call them now"

Mack was looking over the side. "We can't just leave her
body there."

"No, we can't. We'll bring it in. We'll put it in one of the
walk-in refrigerators in the kitchen. I don't know."

They're more concerned about what Hildreth has planned than
they are about legal protocol. But then he stopped and thought.
And... so am I.

"I knew Adrianne well," Nyvysk went on. "She's a fairly
dedicated Christian; she's not concerned about proper burial and such things. She, like myself, believes that her spirit
will live forever. I'm content that she's in heaven. She
would want us to keep investigating the state of the mansion."

"Yeah, and what if you're wrong?" Karen sniped. "How
do you know what she'd want? She's dead."

"She's only dead physically. If it were me, I'd want the rest
of the group to go on with our mission," Nyvysk finished.

"I don't know why I agree but I do," Westmore offered.
"But we should bring the body in. Mack and I can do that."
He glanced at Nyvysk, Karen, and Cathleen. "Why don't
you three go look for Willis?"

"Good idea," Nyvysk agreed.

"Yeah, and what if Willis is the one who killed Adrianne?" Mack suggested with an edge to his voice.

"I'm optimistic that he's not," Nyvysk said. "We'll find
him, then I'll spend the rest of the evening graphing the
gauss readings. They've been steadily increasing in certain
areas throughout the day."

Cathleen appeared concerned. "Why didn't you tell us
that earlier?"

"I didn't want to alarm anyone.. :'

Karen seemed testy-or afraid. "You mean those ion
things? Why would that alarm anyone?"

"it may mean that the revenant charge in the house is
changing, getting stronger," Cathleen answered her.

Nyvysk nodded. "For the next step in whatever exactly
Hildreth planned."

"Fine." Westmore tried to keep his thoughts in line.
"You guys go do what you're gonna do. Mack and I'll bring
in Adrianne's body. Let's do it now, keep busy."

When Westmore and Mack left the roof Nyvysk said to
Karen, "I need a word with Cathleen, in private, if you don't
mind."

"Great!" Karen snapped. "Somebody in the house might
be a killer and you two want to keep secrets from me!"

"Relax," Cathleen said. "We'll be down in a minute:'

Karen left in a huff.

"Something's bothering you?" Nyvysk said when Karen
had left.

"You and Karen go look for Willis, all right? I want to do
something else."

Now the moon cut Nyvysk's large frame into sharp silhouette. "I understand. And good luck."

Cathleen sighed and watched him walk away.

She wondered if she'd ever see him again.

Westmore felt choked up when they'd gone outside and
wrapped Adrianne's naked body in a blanket. At least the
bugs hadn't gotten to it yet. Mack turned the alarm back on
when they came back in, then helped Westmore stow the
body in the walk-in.

"You don't trust me at all, do you?" Mack asked.

Westmore closed the walk-in door. "No."

"You think I killed her?"

"No-er, I don't think so. I'm not trusting anybody
now," Westmore said and lit a cigarette.

"All right, here. See this-"

Westmore went rigid when Mack produced a small pistol
from his pocket. It was smaller than the one he'd seen upstairs in the office drawer.

How long had he been carrying it?

He handed it over to Westmore, grip-first. "Now you can
protect everybody from big bad me."

"It was nothing personal." Westmore took the gun. It was
an interesting gesture, at least. "I don't expect you to trust
me anymore than I trust you-or pretty much anybody."

"Somebody you might want to keep an eye on is Karen,"
Mack said next.

"Why's that?"

"Just take my word for it."

"I don't believe for a minute that Karen threw Adrianne
off the roof, Mack."

"Why not? She's psycho. She's stone-cold crazy, and
Willis is an eight-ball, too. Don't you understand the deal
with all these people? They're all half-insane. You don't
know what they're capable of."

Westmore just shook his head. "You want to know who
I'm most suspicious of?"

"You mean it's not me?"

Westmore saw little harm in telling him what he'd seen.
He was curious about Mack's reaction. "Vivica told me
she's never been in the house before."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. But I just saw her on a porn disc getting boned
dog-style on the foyer stairs." Westmore kept his gaze open
on Mack's eyes. "By you."

"So what? She's a nymphomaniac, and so was every
chick in the place," Mack said. "More people have probably
gotten it on in this house than any house in fuckin' history.
Hildreth let her do whatever she wanted."

"And what she wanted to do was you. Mack the stud"

"Hey, I'm not gonna apologize because women tend to
have a thing for me. Sounds like you're jealous."

Oh, Jesus. "Why would she tell me she's never been in
the house?"

"I got no idea, man:'

Westmore wasn't sure what he'd been getting at, not that
it really mattered. Mack's reaction had seemed normal.
"And speaking of Vivica . . ." He slipped out his cell phone,
to see it she'd returned his call during the commotion on
the roof. Still nothing from her ... But there was a message.

Westmore played back the voicemail ...

"It's me again," Tom said. "I ran those numbers you gave
me..."

Westmore took out the same numbers that he'd copied
off the file in his computer.

INPUT REQUEST: FEED

STRAT APOGEE

RESPONSE: 06000430

ASSIGNMENT POINT: 00000403

"Strat apogee means straticulated-it's a type of orbital
apogee. The assignment point is a time and date; it's how astronomers log them, all in a line like that. The first four zeros is a time-midnight-and the zero-four, zero-three is
April third."

April third. Midnight, the thought immediately clicked.
The night of the slaughter ...

"That's the assignment point--or the starting point,"
Tom went on in the message. "It looks like Hildreth was
running a math problem and this was the question. The response is the answer, and that's a time and date, too. Zerosix-zero-zero is a time-six a.m. Zero-four, three-zero the
date: April 30th. Look on your calendar, paisan. That's tomorrow morning. And what exactly happens tomorrow
morning at six is this: There's a star called M39 that will be
at its apogee for the first time in recorded history. To an astronomer it's a big deal. This star hasn't been this close to the
earth since we were apes."

Tomorrow morning, the thought churned in Westmore's
head. Whatever it is that Hildreth planned is happening thenand just then the clock tolled midnight. In six hours ...

"One other thing," Tom's message continued. "This guy
Hildreth, you mentioned he was into occult stuff? Well, to
somebody like that, April 30 is important. It's an occult festival day called the Eve of Beltane--the day before May
Day. Pagans thousands of years ago would perform rituals
on the Eve of Beltane, as a gesture of worship to the gods of
the underworld-demons, what have you. They believed
that these demons would bless them on that day because on
Beltane Eve, the borders between hell and earth are the
thinnest, or some shit like that."

There was a long pause on the line, pages flipping as Tom
had obviously been checking notes. "So there you have it,
my friend. I'll send you my bill. Have a good one-or, I
should say...' Tom chuckled on the recording. "Have a
happy Eve of Beltane."

The message ended.

Westmore's mental gears were spinning. Here, at least,
was most of the puzzle Vivica had hired him to solve. "It's
in six hours," he muttered.

"What?" Mack asked.

"On April 3rd, Hildreth butchered everyone in this
house as the first part of a rite. The last part of that rite begins in six hours ..."

Cathleen glittered again. She lay naked on the same
lounge chair that Adrianne had used when she'd gone into
the last OBE of her life. Her resolve outweighed her
fear-or she hoped it did. Whoever had killed Adrianne
could easily do the same thing to her, from the same exact
place.

But it truly was time. It was time to find out.

The moonlight on her bare skin made the pontica dust
seem to effervesce along with her sweat. Mentally, she lowered her heart-rate, respiration, and blood-pressure--just as
she could move objects with her mind, she could do the
same with her own metabolism, a trait not uncommon
among skilled mentalists. The calmness of the night began
to caress her, tracing her skin, hardening her nipples. The
stone dust felt radiant and hot, and soon so did the rest of
her.

She urged herself down, down ...

Yes, it was time to end all of this madness at the house,
but she knew she couldn't do that without answers.

And she wondered who would find her first once she'd
entered theta-sleep ...

Adrianne? Or Hildreth?

Westmore and Mack branched off in an effort to search for
Willis. Do I really think he killed Adrianne? he asked himself.
He supposed he didn't-she'd probably jumped. She ux s
unstable to begin with-then the mansion became too much-for her.
These were fragile people.

But still ...

He thought of a worst-case scenario, regarding Willis. If
somebody'd killed him ... Where's the best place to hide the
body?

The passages?

He'd have to travel those passages in two hours anyway,
to let Clements in. He found the curtain and entered, suddenly very glad he had Mack's pistol in his pocket. He
cruised the entire network of narrow corridors, impressed
that he wasn't terribly scared. The tulip-shaped wall light lit
the way, however dimly. What if he turned a corner and
found someone standing there, staring at him?

Shut up, he told himself.

When he got to the small library at the end, he'd found
nothing suspicious-or at least nothing suspicious as far as
secret passages went. It was dusty back here, ill-used. The
only footprints in the sheen of dust on the floor were clearly
his own.

I better get back to the others, he surmised. This is a waste of
time.

He turned to leave but stopped.

Something on the floor.

Westmore stared down.