Flesh Gothic by Edward Lee (42 page)

Westmore stepped closer. "Succeeded at what?"

"When the Rive opens, all becomes here as it is there. All
becomes flesh. Hildreth was Belarius' disciple. He arranged
everything, has been planning this for years. But the tether
of my spirit is pulling me now I can't stay-"

"Don't go yet!" Westmore shouted. "We need to know
more!"

Were the lights in the room wavering?

"The house is getting stronger," Adrianne said through
Cathleen's mouth. "Which means the things in the house
are getting stronger."

They stared back at her.

"Hildreth is getting stronger ..."

There was the faintest crackling sound. Then Cathleen's
long bright-blonde hair lifted up as if by massive static.

She toppled to the floor.

"My God," Karen said.

When Westmore and Mack went to pick Cathleen up,
she shrieked, flailed her arms at them. "Get away, get away!"
and with the outburst Westmore and Mack were thrown
back. The chairs around the conference table fell over, the
gauss-sensors blew ten feet across the floor, and several
paintings dropped off the wall to the floor.

"Cathleen!" Westmore shouted at her. "It's us! Relax!
You're okay!"

When Cathleen's eyes snapped open the screen on the
television imploded.

"Jesus!" Mack exclaimed. "What's that all about?"

"She was coming back from the trance, and she was confused." Westmore helped Cathleen to the couch. "I guess
she lost control of her telekinetic abilities."

"Like in the office, when Hildreth was talking through
her," Karen ventured.

..Y

Cathleen's eyes were fluttering open; she brought a hand
to her forehead when she looked around the room. "Oh,
God. I didn't hurt anybody, did I?"

"No, we're all fine. Are you?"

Cathleen laved back, staring. "Adrian= found me ..

"Yes. Do you remember what she said?"

A pause, and then Cathleen said, "Yes;' and then she
looked fearfully to the dock. "Two and a half hours:'

"Did Adrianne say anything else to you, before she began
communicating to us?"

"I ... think so." Cathleen frowned. "Damn it, I can't
remember."

Westmore sat down and fit a cigarette. Mack and Karen
both poured themselves strong drinks.

"What do we do now?" Karen asked.

"Wait," Cathleen said. "For the Rive to open."

"It'll happen in the Scarlet Room. So that's where we're
going," Westmore made the decision. "Right now."

Clements had slipped into the office during his search. He
shook his head when he saw Willis' body behind the desk.
Poor stupid sap ... But true nausea swept over him when he
errantly glanced at a lit computer monitor and saw-

Holy mother of Cod, those sick, sick peces of slat!

It was Debbie, leaning groggily up on a table after having
her vagina closed by tiny chrome rings.

I can't wait to kip Hildreth, my God, I just CAN'T
FUCKIN' WAIT!

Staying in the office would be fruitless, and so would examining more DVD's for evidence of Debbie. He'd seen all
he needed to. At least it wasn't a snuff film, those sick fuckers ...

Clements spun, drew one of his guns.

Was that a chuckle he heard?

Clements smiled. "If that's you, Hildreth-come and get
me." He left the office, without a trace of fear, and began to
check the rest of the house.

Connie was stringing, but it wasn't too bad now. She'd
gone a week without crack-the longest since she'd first
put the pipe to her lips. She was edgy, nervous, "crackbugs"
crawling on her skin. But Clements had been right: a lot of
the physical addiction was going away, leaving her only to
deal with the psychological. She knew she'd be able to do it
if he didn't abandon her.

She'd never known a man like him. He doesn't want anything, not like the johns, not like every other asshole out there with
a big line of bullshit ...

Connie knew she shouldn't take her blessings for
granted. This was her last chance.

The nightsounds irritated her-crickets and spring peepers. It seemed too loud. And in spite of the night's humid
heat, the moonlight on her face felt cold.

She cast her eyes to the mansion; her gut twisted.

Please be careful in there, she thought.

She kept patting her pocket, to make sure the cell phone
was still there. Clements and the others probably wouldn't
be out for several hours. She wandered off the toad a bit,
then began walking around the woodline without really
thinking about it. Before she knew it, she was a third of the
way around the outer grounds and found herself entering a
path that descended into the trees.

Where the- Oh, shit ...

She'd wandered back to the cemetery without even realizing it. What is wrong with you, Connie? A week without sack
has made you scatterbrained ...

The last place she wanted to be was the cemetery. She remembered what they'd found last night. The bum's dead
body in the coffin had been bad enough, but in the other
hole? Those rotten ... THINGS. Connie didn't care what
anyone said. They sure as shit didn't look human to her.

So what was she doing?

Instead of walking out of the graveyard, she walked
around the gate, to the hole with the things. Could a dead
human really look like that? Like big plastic bags full of butter,
she thought, queasy. She didn't know what morbid curiosity caused her to do this but she did it just the same.

She turned on her flashlight and shined it down into the
hole.

And stared.

The hole was empty.

And she would've doubted that anyone heard her scream
as she turned around and found a naked woman standing
right in front of her. The woman looked like she could've
crawled out of a grave herself: gray skin sucked down tight
over veins, ribs showing, belly sucked in. Her pubic bone
jutted like someone with anorexia, and her eyes were so
dark and sunken they could've been pits.

"You should've gotten in that car and driven away," the
woman said but by now decomposition had degraded her
voice to a liquefied rasp. The woods sucked up Connie's
next shriek and then the corpse standing before her-in life
a locksmith named Vanni but in death a marionette of the
abyss-shoved Connie into the empty hole.

The corpse looked down, a bony silhouette before the
moonlight, and then another figure was standing next to it,
tall, erect, poised.

Connie screamed once more when she realized it was
Reginald Hildreth, and she screamed even harder when the
four Adiposians began to climb down into the hole, faceless
in their glee, lard-colored genitals inflamed.

By 4:30, Clements had searched a good deal of the mansion's upper floors. He encountered no one, nor any trace
of Debbie or Hildreth. If anything, the house seemed drab,
incapable of whatever event it was that Westmore expected.
At one point, he ducked into one of the parlors, at the
sound of voices. Peeking through the door's gap, he spied
Westmore and the others moving up the stairs at the end of
the hall, probably on their way to this Scarlet Room where
Hildreth had butchered most of the victims on April 3rd.

He stood still, watched them disappear, and continued.
Clements still didn't want to be seen, not yet, and not unless
it was absolutely necessary.

He'd already checked the Scarlet Room, one of the first
places he'd searched. A red room-that was all. Nothing of
interest, nor suspicion. Just some insane rich guy's obsession,
Clements thought. What the fuck does that psychopath expel? It didn't matter, though. Clements knew deep down that
Hildreth was in this house somewhere ...

When he was done checking all the rooms on the third
floor, he ducked back into the office and withdrew his cell
phone. Better check up on Connie ... He dialed, waited,
waited some more.

Christ. Why isn't she answering?

He could go back outside but he didn't want to chance
that. Might not be able to get back in. Maybe the house frame
was obstructing the cell's line of reception.

That's what the problem is, he made the mistake of thinking.

Clements made one more mistake before leaving the office-not a mistake as much as an oversight.

He didn't notice that Willis' body was no longer behind
the desk.

Westmore parted the drapes and peered out the high, gunslit window for no real reason. The night stared back at
him, tinged by moonlight that seemed brighter than it
should be. Damn, I'm tired, he thought. He turned back
around to see that Karen and Mack had already fallen asleep
on two red-velvet couches. Cathleen sat at the red-veneered
table in the room's rear. She could barely keep her head up.

"What time is it?"

"Quarter of five," Westmore said, looking at his watch.
The Scarlet Room stood around them in its church-like appointment. But the room felt dead.

"Why is it," Westmore began, "that the one room in the
house that should feel the creepiest-and looks the most satanic-doesn't feel that way at all?"

"Wait till 6 a.m.," Cathleen said. "Charges can change
drastically."

"Do you believe all this stuff about the apogee?"

"I don't know" She rubbed sleep out of her eyes. "I
guess we should, though. We've seen too much already."

You can say that again, Westmore thought. "What should
we do if-" but the rest of his sentence trailed off. Cathleen
had fallen asleep.

Westmore didn't want to fall asleep himself, in spite of his
exhaustion. Was he too afraid of what he might wake up to?
I just don't want to miss the stroke of 6 a.m., he assured himself.

The others were all sound asleep now. Coffee would be a
good idea, so he left the Scarlet Room, closed the doors quietly behind him. There was a coffee machine in the office,
so he trudged down to the third floor. Only then did he
wonder about Clements. If he'd found anything, he
would've called. I wonder where he is by now?

In the office he walked around the desk to turn on the
coffee machine but stalled.

Willis' body was gone.

Westmore was uncomprehending. Who the hell
would ... He was sure Willis was dead. None of the group
could've moved the body because he'd been with them.
Had Clements moved it?

Why would he?

Why would anyone?

Impulse took him quickly down the stairs, into the South
Atrium-

Nyvysk's body was gone.

He dashed to the kitchen and flung open the walk-in
refrigerator.

Adrianne's body was gone.

This is supremely fucked up.

Next he ran back to the foyer, ran up the steps to the second floor, turned at the landing to proceed to the third.

And all the lights went out in the house.

He stood now in total dark. The house ticked around
him, and he felt a prickly static on his arms. Then-

smack!

Something cracked him on the head from behind. Westmore collapsed on the landing.

Unconsciousness dragged his eyes closed. Before he
passed out altogether, though, he saw the faintest light at the
top of the stairs-light that was somehow dark-and in that
light stood the image of Reginald Hildreth.

He was smiling.

Clements dialed Connie again, waited and waited. There
was no answer. DAMN IT! Where is she?

When the lights went out, he was shrouded by confusion
more than fear. Was it a simple power outage, or had someone turned the power off deliberately? Suddenly Clements
felt inept and lost.

He didn't know the layout of the house at all. His flashlight beam took him down another strange hall, with grim
statues and strange faces in portraits scowling after him. He
knew he should go find Connie, but

It was getting close to six o'clock.

He followed another long hall. Two double doors. When
he entered ...

The room's murk was so dense it seemed to reduce the
brightness of the flashlight by half. Where am I? Clements
thought, stupefied. What is this?

Nude, wax-white bodies had been suspended upsidedown in the center of the room. They'd all been beheaded.

Barely able to think, Clements came forward. A numb instinct caused him to draw his gun, a large semi-automatic
pistol. A round nearly went off when he stumbled, and
when he looked down to see what he'd stumbled on-

He moaned, sick to his stomach.

It was Connie's head that he'd stumbled on, and when his
eyes dragged up to the first hanging body, there could be no
mistake. It was Connie's thin and very pale corpse which
hung there.

A sweep of the flashlight showed him more heads on the
floor: Nyvysk, Willis, Adrianne Saundland, and their own
stripped bodies hanging in vicinity. Madness, Clements
thought. Hildreth is still alive. He did this.

At least there was one relief. None of the bodies was
Debbie's.

The farthest wall back seemed to shimmer scarlet. Buckets sat on the floor; it was clear what had been done.

He drained all their blood ... into those buckets. Then threw
the blood on the wall.

Next came a click! and an ear-splitting BANG!

Clements fell to the floor. Pain shot across his head: the
bullet had grazed his temple.

But he wasn't afraid.

He was elated.

"Okay, Hildreth!" he shouted. "Let's go!"

And then he opened fire.

Westmore's consciousness surfaced through a throbbing
black fog. A steady pain beat in his skull-with a sound.

A bell.

No, a chime.

He leaned up on the stairs when it occurred to him what
the chimes were.

The clock!

The pendulum clock in the foyer. It was sounding 6 a.m.
The

He struggled up, against a strange gravity, then ran up the
stairs, crossing one landing to the next. His shoes felt like
bricks when he stomped down the hall and threw open the
doors to the Scarlet Room.