The Lamplighters (30 page)

Chapter Thirty-Two

A siren song of waves lulled Marla to and fro like a boat cut adrift from its moorings and set loose upon the ocean. She heard them in the submarine depths of her dreams as she floated above the ground through the trees. The Skin Man was carrying her over his shoulder like a rag doll. Oh but he was a behemoth, barrel-chested and thick, sturdy as a tree trunk. If you’d seen them crashing through the trees together you’d be sure to mistake them for something out of a fairytale.
La belle et la bete
. The giant bestial fiend in his greatcoat of skin and the girl fragile and pale in her tatters. But his cold glassy eyes were not party to fairytales, they were filled with the thousand flayed edges of nightmares past and yet to come. On through the woods he trudged—each step a commitment to the darker, higher purpose that drove the engine of his being, each breath a hymn to this eviscerated night. Marla stirred slightly in her fitful sleep, murmuring something of the horrors she’d witnessed under her breath as the Skin Man climbed a steep incline, gravel and dirt fleeing from beneath his feet. He turned onto a path, visible only to his owl-like eyes in the vague moonlight, and cut through a network of tall trees and bushes. Breaking cover, he paused for a moment to draw breath and looked up at the huge white edifice in front of him. It gleamed huge and white as an iceberg—the most beautiful house on the island, unknown to any but him and his brethren. He strode on, his path now lit by an avenue of flaming torches. The torchlight danced across Marla’s face, giving her the aspect of a sleeping child curled up in front of a dreamtime fire.

Inside the house, the Homecoming was in full sway. The group from the jetty had made light work of warming up the house and had put on quite a spread. At first glance, the scene looked like any well-to-do gathering of wealthy families. Mothers stood gossiping by the picture window while children ran between their ankles, their play punctuated by joyful exclamations of “
Tag! You’re it.
” Fathers talked business over the dips, keeping a safe distance from the kitchen door lest they were dragged inside to help with the finger food. Some gathered on the veranda, watching the garden sprinklers, which seemed to be applauding these beautiful rich people with their clockwork display of water jets. Their rhythmic sound was like little chuckles of approval at the urbane normalcy of the proceedings. But the scene was far from normal. Each and every member had shed their clothes—men, women and children included—revealing bodies of such sheer perfection they’d make even the finest cosmetic surgeon weep tears of blood. They socialized casually, their skin smooth and flawless, not a pair of spectacles or piece of jewelry among them, and not one of them batted an eyelid when the huge, lumbering Skin Mechanic made his way up the garden path carrying a delirious Marla Neuborn over his shoulder. In fact, they let him through as though he were a waiter, here to pass around the
hors d’oeuvres
from a silver tray.

Perhaps he was.

Marla’s mind was cloudy. She was still a boat, adrift on the ocean, but something had changed. The sea was becoming unbearably choppy and the clouds were rolling back now. Someone was changing the sky for a new one. Her eyelids fluttered uncontrollably and she began to experience a lunatic flicker book slide show of white walls and white ceilings and luminescent faces peering blithely down at her. Marla wanted to remain as a boat, her back supported by salt water, her face kissed by a fine spray of sea mist. She clenched her eyelids shut tight and fancied she heard joyous laughter from somewhere beyond the field of her consciousness. The dull sensation of heavy hands lifting her crept into her lucid dreaming and she felt her entire body tilt suddenly. The sea was no longer at her back. The waves had solidified into cold steel. Her shoulder blades flinched at the metal chill of her new resting place and somewhere behind her eyes the lights were switched on. Their glare came crashing into her eyes, filling them with the harsh truth of her predicament. She was not adrift, there was no blanket of mist and no sirens sang their lullaby—there was only hard steel and bright artificial light and the sudden, naked horror of being watched by dozens of pairs of eyes.

Marla looked at them. Scores of beautiful translucent faces with big doe eyes and skin so unearthly smooth. Each was stark naked, their bodies hairless and
sexless
somehow, despite bearing the genitalia identifying them as male or female. They eyed her patiently, with soulless tolerance as they might look upon an expensive meal that had taken an age to prepare. She swallowed painfully, her throat craving moisture, but she found only gritty dryness.

Someone moved through the gathering, carrying a gleaming silver tray laden with tall flute glasses. Marla heard the unmistakable fizz of champagne, felt the tempered excitement of the revelers, as the glasses were passed around. Then, a tall man stepped forward and raised his glass. He looked easily as old as a grandfather but had skin as smooth as a newly born grandchild. His evenly tanned features were topped with a well-groomed mane of white hair. He was like a wave, effulgent. His teeth were brilliantly white as he smiled, wide, and then addressed his fellows.

“To this wonderful bounty that nature brings.”

Clink.

“To hearth and home.”

Clink.

“And to our genius benefactor, our very own Skin Mechanic.”

Clink. Applause. Glug, glug, glug.

“Now if you’d all like to freshen up before the ceremony, a warming pool awaits.”

Marla listened to the excited chatter as the people filed out of the white room, distant as a dream. She heard a loud metallic clank and felt the trolley to which she was strapped move slightly beneath her. Then a dark form moved over her and she was being wheeled briskly away by the swarthy Skin Man. A mechanic, the glamorous old guy had called him.
A mechanic of what?
Unwanted images of Adam’s intestines unpacked themselves in Marla’s mind, spooling into memories of the boy-thing’s charnel attic littered with dead animals. A breeze passed over Marla as she was wheeled into another, larger space and she caught the rank intensity of the man’s fleshy oilskins for the first time. The smell was one of pickled anchovies and syrup and innards, the most complex and overwhelming scent. Her body wanted to gag, but perversely her nostrils wanted to inhale—provoked by this utterly unique olfactory blend. She heard splashing and laughter a little way off. The ceiling above her had given way to a high glass roof, beyond which twinkled a canopy of tiny stars in a dark purple night sky. The trolley came to a halt and Marla watched as the Skin Mechanic moved silently around her, making adjustments to the metal frame. He pulled a lever and Marla felt the gurney tilt forward, her feet swinging down toward the floor. Held fast by her bonds, the gurney continued to tilt until she was almost in a standing position, then it stopped suddenly with a slight rocking motion and she took in her new surroundings.

She was in a large pool house, constructed almost entirely from glass windows that gave uninhibited views of opulent gardens as far as the eye could see. The floor and columns were made from fine white marble. Flames flickered in stone founts and low-level spotlights illuminated the huge swimming pool that dominated the space. The gossamer-skinned families were at play in and around the pool, some swimming and splashing, others reclining on the pale marble poolside. Marla felt a spasm of revulsion as she saw the dark crimson stains smeared on the white surfaces where the people lay. The pool was a bloodbath—a dark, sticky gumbo of blood and entrails and flesh—and they were all swimming in it, even the children. She looked on in disbelief as she watched two young lovers playfully splashing fluid and guts at each other. The female of the couple pushed herself up in the water before gleefully pushing her beau beneath the surface of butcher’s filth. A child swam past them, swimming back crawl, his little legs kicking through what appeared to be yards of tangled intestine. An eyeball whizzed across the vile scene and dozens of tiny hands reached out to catch it, a tiny volleyball. Marla gagged and vomited the last dregs of stomach bile down her front. Her stomach juices bubbled at her breast, mingling with the corruption of the boy-thing.

Then, a hush fell across the room. One by one, the swimmers clambered out of the pool, their games over for the moment. Their eyes and teeth were even more dazzling white now they blazed at her from dark bloody faces. She tried to close her eyes as they approached her quietly, but mortal terror conspired to keep her lids open. First in line was a beautiful woman, her blonde hair streaked with grue, her fingernails dripping livid with the stuff of others. Marla gasped at her sudden touch and looked up, confused, to see the woman was wearing the familiar face of the Australian swimmer. Wearing it indeed, for his face was now just a flap of flesh draped across the woman’s features like a mask. The woman tore the mask away, a sick joke. She began to stroke Marla’s skin, leaving blood trails on her breasts and belly. Marla looked up at her assailant’s eyes, expecting to see wickedness there but found only reverence. One after another they approached her with the same respectful eyes and smeared blood and filth all over her skin as casually as though it were sun block or massage oil. The smallest of the children attended to her legs and feet, the tallest adults to her cranium, face and shoulders. Marla licked her lips involuntarily and tasted the salt metal of blood there. Her throat raged acid and she tried to find her voice.

“Why… Why are you doing this? Plea…”

No more words would come. And why should they? Mere words could make no sense of the
Grand Guignol
playing out before Marla’s eyes.

“Hush.”

Startled at his voice, Marla then recognized one of the blood-smeared figures standing respectfully in front of her. It was Welland.
Call me Bill.
He looked so at home there in the pool house, naked and covered in blood, just as he had in his office and sharp suit. His shark white teeth glinted from out his mask of congealing plasma. For a moment, Marla thought he might answer her question, answer her prayers, tell her this was all a joke and she could wake up now because the flight was leaving and the gate was closing, so run. But he told her none of those things, just smiled agreeably to his friends and said quietly, “She’s ready.”

Stratum basale

A needle was all it took to subdue Marla, to keep her very much within sight but out for the count so he could do his work. Her eyes had fluttered slightly when he’d inserted the sharp sting, the only movement in her body and a natural reaction to the invasion being visited upon her. The needle was half in her vein, half out in the sterile air of the chamber where he labored beneath the all-revealing white beam of an overhead lamp. A tube ran from the needle, extending up to a drip feed bag filled with clear liquid. The liquid was formed of a chemical compound developed over ages—an alchemical blend of rare medicinal herbs, worth a fortune on the black market, and everyday pharmaceuticals transformed by the arcane processes he’d subjected them to. This was but a small fragment of his art. He took everyday medicine and augmented it with aeons of forbidden knowledge, turning science into magic and magic into medicine. Adjusting the gurney, the Skin Mechanic gazed at Marla’s neckline, her perfection reflected in the domes of his goggles. This really was a fine specimen, perhaps one of the finest he’d ever seen. They were right to send her at this stage of her life, when her derma was just so. And he’d been right to discipline himself, to quell the voices demanding he take her and make good work of her when he’d first laid eyes on her. She’d seen him through the summerhouse window that night; and he’d smelled her blood and panic. He recalled the sanguine odor of the alcohol in her bloodstream, a pollutant his chemicals were even now putting to rights. He’d tolerated the stench—it was, after all, a preservative of sorts for the wondrous specimen of flesh that now lay prone before him. Yes, it had been correct to wait. The others had been fit only for the stock pool, but this girl was worthy of the highest table. He exhaled a slow, long, hot breath and turned to his implements, hoping her innards were as delectable as the skin that sheathed them. The sharp things on the table shimmered beneath the lights. Many of his instruments didn’t even have names. Sometimes the sound of an implement was enough to name it and the act of repetition, slicing through flesh or sawing into bone, enough to learn its name forever. He selected a cylindrical, claw-like thing and made the first cut into her mysteries.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Hiding beneath their lids, Marla’s eyes made rapid movements. She was dreaming again, of a hot room that smelled of disinfectant and of huge fingers inside of her most secret self. The fingers were scooping into the matter behind her ribcage like hot spoons into ice cream. In her dream she could open her eyes and breathe steadily, looking up into the face of the man above her. He was a sanguine giant, as big as a wrestler with huge hands as steady as a tiller’s working their surgeon’s work. She tried to will her dream-state self to rise up off her back so she could get a better look at him. Her body felt distant and she had to scream at every nerve ending just to raise her head closer to his. He stood over her like a waiting storm, those cold, glass goggle eyes regarding her dispassionately. 

Then his face was gone, dissipating into cloudburst. The man had evaporated into the ether, and so had the clinical white walls of the room, the conditioned air giving way to the fragrant breeze of a forest. Above her, tropical birds flapped and squawked in the tops of great palm trees, all around her a curtain of verdant green rainforest so huge it faded to black at the extremes of her vision. Hearing a wet flapping sound she looked down and was embarrassed to see her guts dangling at her toes. She was indifferent to her nakedness but the exposure of her organs, her secret self, made her face blush. Carefully, so as not to have the whole steaming mess topple out of her, Marla reached down and cradled her innards holding them like she might hold an infant. She teased them back into the warm cave of her abdomen, pulling the soft flesh of her belly around them like a sling. Birds sang and distant waterfalls thundered. This place was primal, ancient and alive, far from men and their constructs, their stucco houses of steel and glass. Still holding herself, she began to walk through the massive trees until she came to a ridge overlooking a primitive village in clearing. A single plume of smoke billowed from the center of the village, a fire around which were dotted about a dozen huts, circular in shape with banana leaf roofs. She recalled the decaying grandeur of the Big House and found herself smiling at the simplicity of these huts—yearning, even, for the basic lives that must be unfolding in and around them. Naked children, their lovely skin the color of coconut shells, were playing in the shade of the huts. She longed to join their games and half-ran, half-stumbled down the ridge to the edge of the village. Before she could reach them, to bask in their laughter, the children were gone. Ashes lay where moments ago there had been a fire. The sky darkened with clouds and a great wind howled, threatening rainstorms. A piercing scream rang out from deep within the trees bordering the village and Marla moved instinctively in the direction the sound was coming from. The scream had been so despairing, so helpless that she felt all the joy had been screamed out of the world. Rain now lashed at her back, freezing her flesh to the bone, and she plummeted through the trees in search of the helpless screamer who must now surely be dead to have uttered such a sound. The foliage was becoming so dense it was almost impassable, and Marla had to fight her way through leaves as big as doors. She crashed through a great spider’s web, disturbing a colony of huge tarantulas, angry black and orange stripes scurrying frighteningly close to her naked body. But Marla was not afraid of them; her only concern was to locate the source of that haunting scream. Then, as she stumbled into another clearing, she found it.