The Lamplighters (31 page)

In the trees all around her were natives from the village through which she’d passed. They were strung up like Adam had been, their brown skins stretched out and attached to tree branches like hammocks. Some of them still breathed, driven insane by the physical inversion they were now experiencing as they watched their hearts beat outside of their bodies and saw their colons expel waste onto the leaves and branches above them, defying gravity. Marla looked for the source of all this pain. She found him standing there, dressed in his great fleshcoat, maniac eyes hidden behind those dark goggles. Another of the villagers screamed and died, answered by the terrified pleas and prayers of those others who still lived but who hoped they might expire next. Marla ignored them all, intent now on knowing what was behind those unblinking eyes. She was just inches from him now. She reached out and touched his face, her fingers skittering across the rough surface like a blind woman’s. He stood, dispassionate, as she went about her probing and did not even flinch when she slipped her fingers beneath the bone frame of his goggles and into the slick goo of his eyes.

Visions pierced her brain like shrapnel from a roadside bomb. She saw his work, felt his hands as though they were her own. In that moment she knew his life’s labors, felt the long dark decades of his alchemical work stretching out in front of her. She heard the terrified voices of the natives as he hunted them down, mercilessly, and understood their tongue. To them he was a demon, come here from the western world to corrupt them and steal their skins. They had a name for this white demon.
Skin Taker
. She tasted salt blood as he drank it from the bowl of a skull, helped him distill spinal fluid into a vial, joined him in his reverie upon discovering an albino child naked and cowering in a mud hut, chanting a spell over and over—a spell that would neither protect it from nor deter the intentions of the Skin Taker looming over it. Marla understood the intricate beauty of the Skin Mechanic’s craft, the long dark suffering to which he had willingly subjected himself in return for its secrets. And as night fell in his old Amazonian hunting grounds, she felt the power of the ancient entities to which his workings were offered. Theirs was the lifeblood of youth, every evisceration keeping their dark names alive. Names that whispered through the canopies of this great forest and out across rivers and oceans until they attracted new followers, new disciples of youth and beauty and hot blood. Marla saw them again, pale figures from the West standing naked before the Skin Mechanic. They were begging for his touch. And he blessed them. He was their pastor, their surgeon and their savior.

Chapter Thirty-Four

This island can change you, Marla.

The voice was like warm chocolate, simultaneously stirring Marla from her rainforest dreams and soothing her. Half asleep and numb as a dead thing, she mistook the voice for Jessie’s. She opened her eyes without feeling the lids move and looked around without the sensation of having turned her head, expecting to find herself curled up in bed back at the summerhouse after a long dream. But it couldn’t be Jessie—she was dead. And the summerhouse was out of reach now, a construct and a dream forbidden. Marla had opened her eyes to a reality as stark and threatening as a scalpel blade.

She was in another white chamber, filled with candles and little halogen lamps suspended like eyeballs from snakelike mounts. Tables filled with reflective dishes and tools could be seen lurking in alcoves, threatening little suits of armor and weaponry. And all around her stood the urbane nudists of Meditrine Island, their passive expressions in a limbo land somewhere between boredom and indifference. She tasted the air and found it powdery and clean, without the sense of having opened her mouth or felt the air leave her nostrils. Marla desperately tried to focus. Something stood between the people and the walls of the chamber, like a vast hospital curtain. She unraveled the structure with her eyes, perceiving it to be a network of wire frames woven all around her. Each frame was lined with pale, tautly stretched fabric and decorated with bright ribbons and bows. The white teeth and bright eyes of her strange, smooth audience glimmered in the lights. Marla felt butterflies in her tummy as they each smiled politely at her and turned away to face the curtains.
They didn’t want me to make a speech did they, oh no please anything but that, I’d not know what to say, I’d be so embarrassed I’d simply die
. But she was safe; she felt no mouth with which to speak even if she had the will. So, her mind raced instead.
Oh my God, my Jesus what have they done to me?
She saw Welland again, glancing over his shoulder at her and smiling wryly. His voice returned to her, echoing inside her skull.
Comfy? Good. I started out just like you; as a Lamplighter. I loved it so much I joined The Consortium full time. I’m sure once you take the test you’ll work out just fine.
Marla could see them all now, in a perfect circle looking in on her like she had dozens of eyes, like a fly.
Oh what have they done?

Marla watched them, each and every one, as they stepped forward into the curtain. Her nerve endings screamed, white raw. She
was
the curtain—she knew that now. The taut fabric was that of her own skin, cured and treated and stretched out by way of techniques both ancient and forbidden. The ribbons and bows decorating the intricate frames splaying her unraveled self around the room were her organs and veins. Base tissues and cardiovascular conduits had been reworked into the stuff of miracles, pumping blood and moisture around the living canopy of derma into which the naked beauties had stepped. Marla flinched,
flinched that’s a good one I don’t even have a face anymore
, as each man, woman and child held out their arms and legs in a star formation. Their veins found hers, their hairless bodies fusing with her body until they were one being. The sensation, or rather a million sensations, was mind shattering. Every moment of every life of every person that had joined with her penetrated her consciousness.
My brain? Do I even have a brain now?
And she slipped out of herself.

She was standing inside the bright form of the blonde woman she’d seen wearing the swimmer’s stolen face. Still vaguely Marla, she felt herself palpably inside the other woman’s body looking out through her eyes. The sensation made her feel slightly nauseated but it also tickled like feathers and she heard herself laughing. It wasn’t her voice that laughed—it was an older voice, distant somehow, perhaps not surprising seeing how it was coming from another’s throat, across a stranger’s tongue and out through alien lips. Tentatively, she reached up to touch that new mouth with her new fingertips and finding soft moisture there laughed some more via the voice of her host. She closed her host’s eyes and began to look inward, into the body and mind she had infiltrated. 

Sounds and smells enveloped her like the flesh she was wearing and Marla allowed herself to be carried away by them. She heard the sea and saw lights flashing and opened her eyes to see herself, as this beautiful blonde stranger, on the rocks by the lighthouse. A man was standing outside throwing a ball high into the air and letting it drop, down, down into tiny little hands. Marla fell with it and drew breath sharply, recognizing the little boy instantly. It was Vincent’s boy, but as a true child. Every ounce of terrible perversity was gone from his face and all that remained was wide-eyed innocence. She felt tears trickle warm down her borrowed face as she watched him laugh and shout as he caught the ball and held it triumphant before throwing it back to his father. His father. Yes, Vincent was standing there playing with his son, large as life and several years younger. Her heart ached seeing him this way, so young and in such good health. The clouds in the sky beyond the lighthouse cleared a little and the light of the sun shone through the glass at the top of the towering lighthouse. A bright beam of sunlight framed Vincent and the boy, drenching them in a glow the color of fresh sunflowers. It seemed as though father and son were surrounded by an aura made of their love for one another. But even as she wept, Marla felt her host’s emotions blacken somehow. She was watching Vincent and the boy like a spiteful child might watch a beetle trapped inside a jar. All around her was the bitter feeling of betrayal and the heavy weight of wicked deeds almost dragged her to her knees.

She saw her blonde host, Susanna, worshipping at the feet of the Skin Mechanic and his flock—their naked bodies dazzling her with their impassable youth and impossible beauty. Marla felt herself squirm with despair inside Susanna’s body as she felt her give herself over to these new gods of youth and vigor, tried to warn her of the terrible cost she’d pay. But Marla knew she was watching past events unfold and grew still and quiet as they replayed before her eyes. She saw Vincent’s beautiful little boy given up as a sacrifice to the huge man of skin and bone science. Hearing the poor little boy’s terrible cries as the monster visited unutterable experiments upon his flesh, Marla was desperate to put her hands to her ears and shut them out forever. But they were not her hands, nor her ears, and she had no choice but to endure the howling cries of pain and suffering as the boy was transformed before her into the dreadful, twisted thing she’d encountered in the caves. She saw Vincent, desperate to save him, rescuing the boy and taking to the waves in a little boat. And she watched in mute horror as Vincent was betrayed and dragged back to the island, where he was forced to watch as the Skin Mechanic continued his insane workings on the boy. An experiment, to keep a child young forever. It had succeeded on a physical level only—the body remaining innocent and young, the mind growing old, bitter and corrupt. Dark decades passed before her eyes and she saw how the boy thing had become the Skin Man’s insane apprentice, copying his master’s foul practices on whatever creatures he could find on the island. The birds in the attic of the Big House, his unwitting patients. The Australian boy and Security Operative Anders his graduation projects. He’d tortured and defiled them just as he had been. It was all he knew, all he’d ever know.

In the midst of all this horror, Marla could almost hear Vincent’s mind snap, the frayed edges of his sanity unraveling never to be mended. She looked on helplessly as he climbed the winding stairs of his lighthouse, utterly bereft. The lighthouse was a ruin to Vincent’s despair and Marla could feel every brick, every bolt and every sheet of glass sighing. The construct of Susanna’s flesh, meanwhile, seemed to be pricking at the memories—infinite arousals playing out across every cell of her skin. The veins that pumped blood all around her were rivers of joy, celebrating the perfect flesh that housed them. Marla saw Susanna remain young and beautiful while Vincent grew old and decrepit. She knew now that through their worship of the Skin Taker and his Gods, The Consortium had somehow made Susanna young again, young forever—but her lover and their son had borne the most terrible price for her vanity.

She saw them, The Consortium, for what they really were, dark demons standing elegant in the proud flesh of bright beings. She saw them at work in their high buildings and at play in their mansions. She could taste their terrible desires, that strong hunger which defined them. They were ravenous for youth, sated only for the briefest of moments before becoming prey to their fear of losing their beauty again. Driven on by this endless cycle, they had enslaved themselves to many lifetimes of death and rebirth, each more painful than the last, each leaving them ever more unsatisfied. Marla watched in shame, for she felt a part of it clothed in Susanna’s skin, as countless innocents fed those dreadful desires through the ritual and surgery of the Skin Mechanic. She heard the deep drone of his voice, a litany burning into their brains, promising perfection. They were a cult and their Gods were youth and beauty. To them, this island was
tir na nog
, the land of eternal youth. To Marla, the island was still a living hell—and one they could no more escape from than poor Vincent ever could. They were addicts, hopeless junkies hooked on the dark promises of their Mechanic’s art. And the lengths they’d gone to, just to feel the fleeting benefits of his blade. Their awful history yawned wide before Marla’s horrified eyes. She saw them in their places of power, trawling the world for suitable specimens, treating humanity like fish for the net—each writhing innocent destined for their table at a whim. She watched as they collected DNA samples and cataloged tissue profiles, turning their Master’s work into a silent crusade. She felt the shellshock of these revelations, as their great conspiracies were unpacked before her mind’s eye.

She fell backwards into her drab room in gray London. She watched herself arguing with her landlady, saw her laptop gone from her room, saw her stolen panties laced with her DNA in far dark towers where data was extracted and subtracted and re-tested, leading all the way back to her, Marla Neuborn. She wept hot tears as she felt Welland’s hot breath nearby, his strong pulse. He wanted her eyes, all the better to see with.
My eyes, I’ll never see that way again
. He was pulling her back, they all were. She jolted back into the bright room.

I’m Marla.

Marla was back inside her body now. But she felt those other beings pulling at her mind and body. Her nerves seemed to stretch out into infinity. Too many forms, too many hosts wanting her to fill them just as she’d filled Susanna’s body moments ago. They not only wanted her flesh, but her identity too—everything that made her who she was. Her desires, her memories, her ambitions were all food to them, accessorized by her fleshy presence on this plane. She steeled herself, trying to hold onto a memory, a sensation, however painful. They couldn’t steal her life away from her like this. She had so much potential. She had come to the island to start afresh, it wasn’t fair, she had to try to fight it. Marla felt her mind was about to snap any moment, the same way Vincent’s had. She visualized the notepads she’d been writing in on the porch of the summerhouse. Each day of her life became a page in the pad and she frantically scribbled each event down, however banal. She was desperate to fill the pages—her lifeblood the ink, her will the pen. But they were closing in, breathing down her neck, clamoring over her shoulder. Each time she filled a page they tore it away along with her memories, forcing her to start over, but she couldn’t remember any more. Couldn’t even remember who she was…