House of Skin (28 page)

There was movement behind him, a shuffling of feet. He turned and stared at the shape shambling out to meet him. He didn’t scream or even gasp, he just swayed on his bit of floor and wondered if he was seeing this at all.

“Nice,” Spider said, “very nice. We like it.”

Pearl made a gagging noise and stumbled to one knee. Spider took a step forward and Pearl stared, his erection gone limp. What was it he was even looking at? A man? A man with skin the color of gray ash, his slashed open throat stitched crudely shut like a second disobedient mouth? His hair like a nest of serpents, braided, beaded, hanging in wild filthy strands that crawled with insect life? Was he even seeing this? And despite the intoxication that swam with a low, maddening hum in his brain, he knew he was. This thing was real, it lived … or had at some point. A stink of rot and pungent sweetness enveloped it in an appalling cloud. And its eyes, black, loveless holes drilled into the tombstone face, held no hint of humanity or compassion. They were miasmic alien dreams suffused with a glaring, ugly hunger.

“My God,” Pearl managed.

When the nightmare spoke, its pitted lips cracked open like sores and a vicious tongue tasted the air. “Where did you find this?” it asked in the voice of a woman. And answered itself in the voice of a child: “Somewhere special, I think.”

Eddy grinned like a cat. This was a special moment and he savored its depravity as one must do with all such moments. The fear, the total hopelessness in Pearl’s rolling eyes gave him a lust that was boundless.

“What in the name of Christ is this?” Pearl cried. His voice was kept from total hysteria by the alcohol that deadened his senses.

“It’s a game,” Eddy said.

“Yes, a game,” the ghoul said, gliding forward. “See all the pretty work?” It opened the ragged overcoat it wore. The exposed, graying torso had been slit from belly to ribs and stitched neatly back up. Patches of fungus clung to the chest. “Would you like to see the secrets inside?”

Pearl said nothing. Tears began to run from his eyes. He looked this way and that and saw no escape route.

Eddy slid a knife from his pocket. “You’re meat,” he said.

Pearl screamed and jumped to his feet. Spider put one cold, stiff hand over his mouth and drew a razor over his throat. Pearl went back to his knees, gulping for air and drawing only blood. Eddy came forward and opened his belly with an expert thrust of his knife.

The blood seemed to be everywhere within moments, spreading over the floor in a glistening pool. An electricity crackled in the air.

Eddy watched as Pearl died. There was a beauty in death, an art in gruesome slaughter and, he supposed, he wasn’t the first to know this. The history of mankind was written in red and described in suffering. It was the only absolute of existence, that death would come and often it wasn’t pleasant.

Spider grasped Pearl’s head and ran his fingers over it. He seemed to be checking it over very closely, as he’d done with others they’d made sacrifice of.

“What now?” Eddy asked.

“A little taste,” Spider told him. “And then some more.”

Eddy watched him, watched the Shadows crawl over and through him. Spider was their vessel now. They had a place to call home and he supposed that’s all they ever really wanted. If it hadn’t been for them and the secrets Cassandra had gleaned from the books, Spider wouldn’t be walking at all now. Regardless, he was a horror to behold.

He placed an arrangement of knives around the body and set to work with a scalpel, opening vertical slashes and humming to himself as he did so. He didn’t remove anything, he seemed only concerned with opening up the skin and exposing the bounty which lay beneath.

Eddy grew bored after a time and gathered up Pearl’s clothes and took them into the other room. He put all the dead man’s belongings in the hearth and soaked them with lighter fluid and watched them burn. He fed logs and shredded newspaper to the flames to keep the blaze going. Soon, there was nothing but ash left of the garments. He lit a cigarette and went back to see how Spider was doing.

Spider was slitting his sutures and opening himself like a book. He squatted over the carved body and looked up as Eddy came in.

“What are you doing?”

Spider grinned. “What do you think I’m doing?” he asked. “Did you think I was going to eat him with my mouth? I have no internals.”

Eddy nodded. He’d watched Cassandra remove Spider’s viscera himself and replace it with the things the books had alluded to: salts, spices, powders, and knotted sacs of herb, cat gut, grave dirt. All the things Spider had stored in his refrigerator. He supposed all things living, and even those pretending to live, had to gather sustenance somehow. And ways had to be invented.

It started with a moaning wind and a shriek of discarnate voices that sent eddies of dust swirling around the cadaver. The floor boards began to rattle, the ceiling seemed to bow and groan. Eddy looked on, fascinated. He could feel it in himself, the hungry pull that emanated from Spider’s body cavity. His own flesh trembled on his bones. And if that’s what it was doing to him, what it did to Pearl’s cadaver was something else entirely. His body trembled and thumped on the floor, the skin shuddering madly as if there were rivers of ants moving just beneath it. It came apart with a sodden ripping, atomizing into a viscid mist that was sucked free and absorbed into Spider’s body. A channel was dug in the torso and its matter vacuumed free, muscle and organ and connective tissue disintegrating into a spray. Eddy studied the proceedings with gaping eyes as blood steamed in the air and meat was boiled into gas. Pearl was effortlessly stripped down to hissing bone and even that shattered and came apart as marrow was ingested. The great sucking wind yanked at the boards beneath and withdrew nails and splinters of wood and only then did it stop.

Spider stood and a variety of things spilled from his fluttering, stormy innards: fingernails and crushed bits of bone and then teeth. There was no meat left on the corpse, even the skeleton had been pitted and dehydrated to withered deadwood.

It had all taken only a few moments.

“Incredible,” Eddy found himself saying.

“Pretty, isn’t it?”

There were laughter and screams that died out as Spider stitched himself back up with nimble fingers. The Shadows were rejoicing now, carrying on with wild abandon as they fought like mad dogs over Pearl’s soul in the vacuous spaces of Spider’s flesh.

Eddy lit another cigarette. “How soon will you need another?”

“Not for a few days.”

“Good. There’s work to be done tonight.”

Spider smiled and desiccated rents in his lips tore open. “Bring the whores back here, so I can help. It wouldn’t be good for me to go out just yet.”

“Right.”

“Don’t leave me out, Eddy. I want to go too, when the time comes. If it wasn’t for me, you’d never have gotten this close. Remember that.”

“Of course.”

Spider didn’t seem reassured. “And remember I can do to you what I did to that,” he warned, pointing at the husk at his feet.

Eddy laughed. “And if you try, I’ll cut you apart and put you back where I found you.”

Spider took a step back.

Eddy went to the doors. “And don’t come out unless I tell you to. You smell really bad.” He closed the doors and locked them and settled down on the sofa for a drink.

It wouldn’t be long now.

* * *

“It was quite a sight,” Eddy told Cassandra when she’d returned from her dinner. “Quite disgusting.”

“All things have to eat, Eddy. It’s a law of nature.”

“Even dead things?” he put to her. “What about you?”

“I have a very healthy appetite.”

“I’d like you to come to the Territories with me,” he told her. “You wouldn’t really be dead there anymore than I’d be alive.”

“Maybe.”

“You and I, Spider, perhaps another.”

“Who?”

He grinned secretly. “You don’t know her. Name’s Lisa Lochmere. A fucking psychiatrist. She played some head games on me once and I’d like to repay the debt. We could have fun with her. She’s in town now, looking for me, so I hear. She’s got a hot, hungry little slit between her legs and all the goodies to go with it.”

Cassandra wasn’t paying any attention. Her hand was busy working him to erection. Her touch still filled him with desire.

“I’ve been thinking about this for some time,” she said. “Let’s go in the bedroom.”

As he sat on the bed, she stood and slipped from her dress. She was beautiful as ever, though somewhat pale. Even the autopsy stitching up her torso was enticing somehow. Eddy buried his face between her breasts. They were cool, but powdered and perfumed just so. Her nipples tasted sweet.

“Death suits you,” he whispered.

She kissed him and freed him from his pants, pushing him back on the bed and mounting him.

“By God,” she said. “You’re warm.”

She rode him fiercely until he came, sucking his warmth and seed up into herself where it lit fireworks inside. It was only then that she rocked and moaned with orgasm.

He closed his eyes and dozed. As he slept, she stroked his hair and cooed a sweet song in his ear. Life was good.

* * *

He woke sometime later and she was still there, holding him like a babe.

“I must’ve nodded off,” he said.

“For several hours,” she informed him.

“I have to go out tonight. A few more and off we’ll go into the Territories.”

“Can I help?”

“No, I’d best do this alone. But there is something you can do.”

“Yes?”

“Do you remember who our enemy is? The nosy one always prying intoother’s affairs?”

“Who could forget?”

“Pay him a visit.”

Cassandra decided she would. If a life had to be taken, then it best be someone who had no reason to live.

“Soames.”

He’d heard his name spoken, hadn’t he? He opened his eyes and looked around. There was someone standing in the doorway. A woman.

He felt he could barely breathe because this was the moment he’d been waiting for.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“My name isn’t important.”

“No, why would it be?” he found himself saying. This woman was his assassin and did he really need to know who she was? The other patients in the ward were sleeping, drugged and still. Nothing would wake them. Not even his screams, if and when they came. Whoever this person was, she was slick. Getting in here like this and choosing a time of night when no one could be woken.

But why did I wake?

Because, he knew, even full of drugs, he rarely slept. His mind was constantly on edge, waiting for this moment.

“What do you want?”

“I’ve come for you.”

“Who sent you? The doctor? Was it the doctor?”

She laughed. “I’m afraid not. Another.”

He wanted to laugh, too, and he didn’t know why. Maybe it was because his life was such a dark and dreary mistake, such a comedy of errors. Only laughter seemed appropriate in this final hour.

“Another, you say.” He laughed again. “Yeah, why not?”

“It’s only fair.”

“So get on with it.”

She stepped forward, no malice in her actions, only necessity. Light was spilling in from the doorway, illuminating her. She was a lovely girl, this one … or was she? He was staring at her and knowing something was dreadfully wrong, but not what. Then he saw. It was her face. The very appearance of it. The flesh was wrong, discolored a bit, and the way it lay over the bones beneath … uneven, pitted. Make-up, he decided. She was wearing latex and paint and putty to conceal her identity.

If nothing more, he’d see that face before she snuffed out his life.

“Let’s see who and what you are,” he said under his breath. She leaned over him, not hearing a word. His hands were free now. They’d taken the restraints off this morning. His fingers hooked into claws and went at her face.

The woman uttered a mild gasp as his fingertips found seams and pulled strips of latex and globs of wax free. Oh, now that was a mistake, wasn’t it? Her skin—what there was of it—was leathery and shredded, sliced and gouged. The mutilated musculature beneath was stretched taut and bloodless over a finely proportioned skull. A living anatomy print.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said. “There’s nothing to be gained.”

“Dead,” he moaned. “You’re dead. Make me as you are. It’s all I’ve wanted. For so long, it’s all I’ve dreamed about.”

“Yes. No more pain. I won’t allow it.”

Her cold hands were on his shoulders now, tightening with grave rictus. He felt bones snap but there was no true pain, only release. Tears were falling from his eyes now and whimpers from his lips.

“It would’ve been easier dying at the hands of a pretty girl,” the skull said, an odor of heavy perfumes and sweet powders masking something terrible beneath.

Soames gaped and never really understood.

“But you chose this,” she cooed in his face, her tattered lips inches from his own, her breath sour and sweet and sickening. “A kiss before dying.”

Her decayed mouth pressed against his own and a strip of flesh ripped free and stayed on his lips. He never screamed; he was way beyond that. She suctioned her mouth over his and sucked the breath from his lungs until his eyes rolled back and his face was blue-tinged. Then it was over.

* * *

It was less than an hour before they found his body. The nurse never thought anything at first. In the dim light, he was a man sleeping in peace. Upon closer examination, his face gave the game away.

The nurse looked him over quickly and sought out her superior to announce a death on the ward.

She did this all very calmly.

For death was nothing new here.

* * *

After Cassandra had fixed her face, she returned to Eddy.

“It’s done,” she said.

“After all this time, he’s at peace.”

Eddy looked content, truly content. It was as if a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders. He closed his eyes and allowed himself the self-indulgence of a satisfied smirk.

“Did he take it well?”

“He didn’t fight. There was no violence. Just an end. He was anxious for it, the poor thing.”