House of Skin (4 page)

According to the law, Eddy wasn’t insane. Insane individuals do not plot, do not plan like she knew Eddy did. But the law was wrong. He’d told her many things he hadn’t dared whisper to the senior members of the Coalinga staff … and only when not being recorded. He was no fool. He planned to find his father one day, he’d said. The infamous Dr. Blood-and-Bones. And the only way he could do that, Eddy was certain, was to follow in dear old dad’s footsteps.

A few months after Eddy had gone, Lisa resigned from Coalinga and found a job as a prison psychiatrist. The pay was poor, but she made her own decisions as to the sanity of certain individuals and her advice was usually followed. And that in itself made it all worth while.

But she was never happy. She quit the prison a year later.

There was no explanation for what followed. At least, none she wanted to think about. Suffice to say, she’d pulled herself up from the darkness and tried to forget.

There was little else she could do. Her own ambition had caused her to do things that completely went against the codes of her profession.

And she never stopped thinking about Eddy and what he was doing.

Pure psychopaths are a rare thing. Most psychiatrists would cut off a limb for a chance to work with one and she was no different. There was a book in Eddy. The son of a serial killer suffering from advanced multiple personality disorder who wanted to recreate dad’s crimes. My God, it was positively unique. It could’ve been a big book, but it would be nothing unless she could find Eddy.

And she had every intention of doing just that.

She hired a private investigator. It took him several months to locate Eddy. He moved around a great deal. He found him in Chicago first, then in Detroit, and finally in San Francisco. And there the trail went cold.

But that wouldn’t be the end of it.

He’d last been seen in San Fran and this is where she began her hunt.

For Eddy and perhaps for his father as well. If there was an answer to the madness that ate away at her life these many years, it lay with those two men.

Can a man love a city?

Can he reach out and embrace it like a woman, make love to it and be loved by it? I’d lived in San Francisco for less than half of my life and it was only in those last precious years that I fell in love with it. And it fell in love with me. Together, we shared things in the dreaming, hot night. We whispered to one another of woes and hopes and nightmares.

I knew the charmless concrete and pavement like a lover’s body. I knew its boulevards and avenues and dead ends and cul-de-sacs. I knew where to find life in the city. And death.

I loved it. But did it truly love me?

Or did it just tempt me, stealing away my innocence with whispers of love, allusions of a midnight seduction? Was it just a taker? A user? A cold and loveless thing that made away with my sanity in the dead of night?

There was no way to know.

No way at all.

But if nothing else, the city showed me itself like it had to no other. It was open to me, with me, showing me its depravity and lust and hatred of anything approaching order. After all, it was little more than a confused tumble of crowded streets and monolithic buildings parading as an orderly, modern city. And in its black, hungry heart, it hated those who had built it originally and those that resurrected it after the 1906 earthquake, breathing an ugly semblance of life into its diseased carcass. So if you happened to be one practicing certain atrocities upon its unwelcome tenants, the city would show you new and obscene vistas of pain.

Because it loved agony.

And it lived on human suffering.

It took me under its wing, under the guise of a lover, and by the time I was hopelessly infatuated with its decadent ways and profane means, it revealed to me that I was little more than a tool to it, an instrument to act out its criminal appetites.

But none of that bothered me by then.

Love of steel and stone, exploited humanity and nameless perversion had captured my heart. For that was the city. I loved it and I wanted to be used.

And was.

The city had dreams and so did I. And together we merged, flesh and concrete, thought and hopelessness.

We were lovers, host and parasite, needing and taking and giving no quarter.

We were one.

During the next few weeks after Cassandra’s death, Eddy was busy. He searched and inquired and always the Shadows were nearby, hiding in alley and corner, throwing out bits of the puzzle to him.

But they were vague clues, always terribly so, but he took them like a starving man gladly takes a few meager crusts of bread.

The police had found Cassandra’s body, led there by unknown means. The papers spoke endlessly of it, approaching the crime from every conceivable angle. They theorized that some new and vicious maniac was on the loose. After a week, then two, and no more murders, the subject became tired and any further discussion was relegated to the back pages. A two-week old murder, regardless of how brutal, was soon forgotten by the public as fresh crimes reared their grim heads.

Yet, the murder and its mysterious qualities—the unknown victim, the unknown assailant—had captured the imagination of a certain sector of the populace. They waited for the faceless killer to strike again, for surely he would. Eddy picked up bits of gossip in coffee houses and taverns. Tales concerning the killer’s identity, previous crimes, and fresher atrocities the police were covering up. Some even suggested that Dr. Blood-and-Bones had returned from hiding to vent his hunger. If nothing else, Eddy realized, the public at large had a wonderful sense of drama where dreadful crimes were concerned. Horror stories never go out of fashion and the bloodier, the better.

And while these tales were told and quietly grew tiresome, he prowled the midnight streets of the city with the Shadows in tow, looking for signs of his father. It was an aimless search, but Eddy let his senses guide him. That and the Shadows that constantly led him into darker and more depraved sectors of the city.

He haunted the very worst neighborhoods by night—Bayview, the Tenderloin, Market Street, the Western Addition, Chinatown, all the places the wary avoided after dark, probing ever deeper into the diseased, gangrenous carcass of San Francisco. At ground level in the urban graveyard, the city looked like a defoliated forest, a jungle poisoned black to its hoary roots, nothing left but dead trees and stumps which were the crowded, crumbling buildings and rotting hovels around him. And everywhere he asked the same question: Did anyone know William Zero or even hear of him? Most said they didn’t; a few said the name was familiar. But as to whether that was because of personal knowledge or a memory of the crimes twenty years past, it was hard to tell.

Eddy continued his search and became more frustrated than ever.

At a bondage house on Geary Boulevard, he met a man named Gulliver. He was a former Evangelical minister who had gone the way of sin. But he seemed happy. After a few drinks, Eddy asked the inevitable question.

“Zero,” Gulliver said, mulling it over.

“Yes.”

“William Zero?”

“That’s right.”

Gulliver looked thoughtful. “Now why is that name so damn familiar? I think I knew someone by that name. Parishioner? Could that be it? Or was it since then?”

Eddy waited.

“Can’t place him.”

“Maybe you read about him?”

“Zero … could be … I’m not sure.”

“He was in the newspapers some time ago.”

“Oh, I think I remember now. Politician wasn’t he? Yes, you’d be surprised how many of our leading citizens come down here for fun and games. Councilman, was he?”

“No, you’re thinking of someone else. This Zero was no one like that.”

“You’re sure? I seem to remember one of the mayor’s aides. Had a fetish for lacey underthings and hot water bottles, I believe.”

“No, that’s not him.”

Gulliver shrugged. “Sorry, love. Wish I could help.”

Eddy fell into a somber mood. Maybe this was all just some insane quest and he was every bit as crazy as the doctors claimed. He’d done some things in his time. Brutal, vicious things. But until Cassandra, he’d never killed anyone.

“What did you think of that murder, Eddy? Nasty stuff, eh?”

Nasty? Yes, he supposed it was. To someone who didn’t understand. “I guess.”

“Cut the poor girl up like meat, I hear. No blood left in the body. Fucking vampire on the loose.” Gulliver took a good belt from his Beefeater and tonic. “Not that it surprises me. The types we get down here … though blood’s not usually what they want to suck.”

Eddy smiled.

“But we were talking about this Zero character. Why are you after him?”

“He was my dad. He disappeared in this town a long time ago.”

“Too bad. A boy needs his dad. Not that mine has any use for me anymore.” Gulliver was laughing. “Did I tell you my old man’s a minister, too? Very straight-laced. That was my problem. I didn’t like it straight. Not that I mind lace …”

“I don’t suppose I’ll find him.”

“Don’t give up hope,” Gulliver said, putting an arm around him. “There’s always hope.”

“Sure.”

“If you want to find him, you have to do what the cops do, love. You have to
become
him. You have to think like he does and act like him and then you’ll know where he went and why. Simple.”

Eddy leered at him, his eyes terribly dark and vacant.

Gulliver removed his arm. “Sorry. Didn’t mean anything by that. Just a friendly gesture.”

Eddy grinned and slipped on a pair of mirrored sunglasses. “And would I be here if such things bothered me?”

Gulliver shrugged, sipping his drink. It was amateur night and a couple of transsexuals were up on stage doing a B & D version of
Romeo and Juliet,
switching genders and roles at the drop of a hat. It was all quite amusing, if not somewhat confusing.

“About your father. What did he do to get in the newspapers?”

“Killed a few people.”

“Terrible. Just killed them?”

“The citizens in general found the way he did it quite shocking.”

Gulliver smiled. He wasn’t sure if he liked this Eddy or not. “I know a guy who’s into shit like that. An acquaintance, really. Strange boy. Maybe he could help you out.”

“When could I meet him? It would be worth a try.”

Gulliver checked his watch. “Sun should be set by now. He’ll be up. We could go over there now, if you like.”

“Let’s, then.”

Gulliver finished his drink and off they went.

* * *

They walked for some blocks, hand in hand. Eddy insisted upon it. Normally, Gulliver would’ve been intoxicated at the idea of escorting around a handsome young thing like Eddy. But that wasn’t the case now. Despite his mysterious, dark boyish looks and lithe body, Eddy was somehow menacing. There was an aura of dread about him, a quiet and lethal desperation.

They traveled down deserted avenues, avoiding crazed homeless people who threw bottles at them and shrieked. They could hear sobs and moans and curses from the darkness around them. A pregnant whore offered them a good time. Faces leered from doorways. People injected drugs on stoops and stairways. They stepped around a man who was pissing on the sidewalk.

“When we get there, you’re on your own,” Gulliver said. “I like you and all, but this guy—Spider, they call him—is one weird freak. He’s spooky.”

“Just show me the way.” Eddy seemed anxious.

Gulliver wanted to tell him to be careful around Spider, but he was beginning to think they were two of kind. He didn’t like the idea.

They went into an alley and Gulliver stopped before a peeling door festooned with graffiti. “This is it,” he said, knocking lightly on the door. He tried the latch and it was open.

“The lair of the spider, eh?” Eddy cackled.

Gulliver tried to smile. Too bad. Eddy was so attractive. His long dark hair and fine, almost feminine features. Lovely. His skin was flawless, his lips full. With the mirrored sunglasses, motorcycle jacket, and baggy black jeans he was indeed an object of mystery and desire in Gulliver’s eyes.

“Eddy,” Gulliver said. “This Spider … he’s crazy. I think he might be dangerous.”

“Don’t worry.”

“I can’t help it.”

“Ssshhh,” Eddy told him. “It’s all right.”

“But …”

“You’re trembling.”

Gulliver knew he was. He felt a terrible, uncanny cabalism taking shape around him, a diabolic chemistry as if bringing together Spider and Eddy in this city was like bringing together the ingredients of a high explosive near flame. Eddy held his hands. Gulliver felt himself calming by the inch, practically swooning, as he felt Eddy’s long, almost feminine fingers in his own. So perfect, so tapering, the skin so smooth.

Eddy went in and Gulliver closed the door behind him, shaking again. Then he got the hell out of there before some explosion ripped open the guts of the neighborhood.

* * *

Eddy found himself in a dark corridor studded with doorways. He could hear movement somewhere, but he couldn’t pinpoint it. Then he heard a voice.

“The pain,” it said. “Oh, God, the pain …”

Eddy followed the sound of the voice down the corridor and into a room. A single naked bulb was suspended from the ceiling. There were candles everywhere, but only a few were lit. There was a sagging bed shoved in the corner and debris everywhere. Books were stacked on the floor. A thin man wearing a dark, dingy overcoat with no shirt beneath was crouched on his knees. His hair was long, separated into a variety of braids. He wore rings, bracelets, and all manner of beads around his throat.

Eddy stood before him. “Gulliver sent me,” he said, hoping that would explain all.

The man looked up at him. Blood ran from the corners of his mouth. His torso was crowded with tattoos. He held a razor in one hand and as Eddy watched he cut a slit in his gums and spat blood onto the floor.

“Are you Spider?” Eddy inquired. “Gulliver said you’d be here.”