Hellbound Hearts (8 page)

It was only in the delicately carved tiles that the truth evaded him. They remained simply a wonder; a vague promise of hope, of change, of some kind of new life.

He was absorbed in them on the evening that the Boyar burst into his small room, his robes covered with blood, the glint of relieved madness fading from him as the monster left and the man returned.

“Arkady, I fear that you may need assistance . . .” He paused, his
eyes snagging on the box and its contents as Arkady tried to hide them away.

“Give that to me.” The Boyar held out his bloody hand and Arkady found himself passing over his treasured box.

The Boyar stared at it, and then frowned before sitting slowly down on the edge of Arkady's bed. “Ekaterina.” His finger did as Arkady's childish ones had so many years before, and traced out the shape of the word. “The beautiful Ekaterina.”

He looked up, as if seeing Arkady for the first time. “I remember her. She was different from the rest.” One hand waved dismissively toward the door of his bedchamber and the bloody remains of whoever had been unlucky enough to find themselves called in for company that night. “She was . . . special.”

He opened the box, tipping its contents onto the bedclothes, turning each tile over in his fat hands and almost absently placing it next to the one before. “Was she your mother, Arkady?” He didn't look up. “Of course she was. I should have known. A boy with no tongue from the villages. It had to be you.” He shook his head, a soft smile stretching his bloated, too-red cheeks. “Why I did not think about it, I do not know. Too easily distracted, I suppose.”

The Boyar let out a long sigh and looked toward the small window. Despite its being covered with heavy drapes, he seemed to stare out to the stars beyond, the puzzle pieces forgotten.

“Your mother distracted me . . .” He started softly. “She was exquisite. They had washed the blood from her mouth when she was brought to me, but I could smell it on her.”

Somewhere in the distance, Arkady heard the low peal of a church bell ringing out. The lamp against the wall flickered as if a gust of wind had caught it unawares and threatened its existence. For a moment his entire being stilled. Unlike the Boyar, Arkady had not forgotten the puzzle. This was it. The final confession. Something pounded in his chest and he realized that at last, his heart was alive.

“She enjoyed the pain,” the Boyar continued, as if he couldn't hear the terrible chimes that were calling to them both. “Almost as
much as I enjoyed hurting her.” He frowned. “She had no limits. Until her, my tastes had been base,
ordinary
, but she forced me to new levels.”

Arkady wasn't listening. Something was happening with the puzzle and it echoed deep in the core of him. The final tile had shivered into crimson, and with shaking hands, he formed them into their pattern, his heartbeat and the bell and the Boyar's confession rolling into one hum of excitement in his head.

It was complete. The puzzle was finished. The red lines burst into life, glowing as if made from some insane phosphorus. Arkady rose to his feet, and as the wall in front of them cracked and dissolved, the Boyar finally stopped speaking, his mouth dropping open in awe and wonder. Arkady did not look at him. He was no longer important. The pieces clicked, twisting sideways, each a tiny box of its own, and hooks flew out from each one, embedding in Arkady's soft skin. They dug into his flesh, warm blood trickling as they pulled and tore at him, tearing him exquisitely, releasing his true self so long trapped inside. It felt wonderful.

Arkady stared at the doorway that had been the wall, aware that beside him the Boyar had started to scream and jibber and shake. His fear felt good. Hooks found his mouth, and as they ripped it wider over his teeth and jaw, he watched the two figures emerge. Behind them, the darkness hummed with pain and confusion and he felt it tingle in his every cell.

“Have you found your tongue, Arkady, the Confessor?” The being was scarred on every inch of its damaged flesh, its strange clothing sewn through its skin, never to be removed. When it spoke, a scent of vanilla and putridness hung in the air. Arkady sucked it in, relishing it. His eyes widened as thick, black tongues erupted from his torn mouth as if tasting the creature's breath, rippling as they did so like the snakes of the Medusa's hair. More hooks embedded in the back of Arkady's skull, leaving his mouth wide open forever, home for the swirling mass of meat that filled it.

The Confessor
. He rolled the words round in his mutilated mouth, letting all his tongues taste them. It felt right. It felt good.

“You are Cenobite. One of us.”

If Arkady's jaw had not been stretched apart beyond limits, his torn bottom lip pulled over it, it would have dropped at the beauty of the second speaker. Its voice was a soft whisper, and every inch of it appeared tattooed, jeweled pins driven into its skin and skull at regular intersections on the network of grids.

“We have been waiting for you.”

Arkady's hellbound heart split with joy, and stepping forward, he happily left his humanity behind. He was going home.

The Boyar had crumpled to the ground, and the fat man's head shook as he cried and sobbed and begged for mercy.

The door in the wall was closing, and reaching down with his own bloody hand, Arkady pulled the lord forward, the weighty frame as light as a feather. The gloom embraced him and he thought he saw a flash of Ivan's smile somewhere in the shadows of the endless night. No matter. He would hear the Boyar's confession first, and if it didn't come easily, then he would force it. He had all of eternity to introduce the man to the possibilities of pain and pleasure.

And he would enjoy it.

Mick Garris

So it had come to this.

I stood in the relentless suburban London gloom, a Hitchcockian black umbrella protecting me from the gritty drizzle that had already overtaken my socks within my shoes. The location van would meet me in an hour or so, but I had always preferred to arrive on my own beforehand, so that I could scope out the place before the others dove in.

London was once my town. Back in the early nineties, when the British film industry had struggled under virtual collapse, as the world turned a cold shoulder to all that the Brits had to offer on the big screen, as cinemas contracted and toppled across the United Kingdom, I, new and brash and filled with an artistic reach unbound by practicality or even social graces, had crafted a little something called
Double Deception
.

I thought you might remember it: BAFTAs, Golden Globes, even a couple Oscar nomination certificates sit proudly on my mantel in silent honor to my genius. But then, so does a collection of wedding scrapbooks, three of them, tucked away in a lockbox of memories better forgotten.

It's funny how long ago 1992 seems now.

The parties, the laughs, the free ride, the international festivals, the awards, the open checkbooks represented what was surely the best time of my life. Unlike the world that Charles Dickens had so well chronicled,
that
was the best of times, and this was surely the worst. My brilliance had been fêted from coast to coast; the film I had written and directed had become not only a cause célèbre for a downtrodden, downright moribund production industry but its shot in the arm, a reanimation of its corpse.

And here I stood, staring at the weathered face of No. 55 Lodovico Street, a grimy stone edifice in an even grimier neighborhood, on a location scout for—I shudder to even type the words—a horror film. And not just any horror film, mind you, but an
independent
horror film. No vast, cozy studio where any set you could conceive of would be constructed by a talented coterie of skilled artisans; rather, everything was to be shot on location, where walls won't wild, Pinocchio-nosed neighbors gather for a peek inside the windows, and tree trimmers set their chain saws on high until they are paid off into silence. The budget is paltry and the story impoverished. How far the mighty have fallen.

No. 55 Lodovico Street was an address of some infamy: back in the 1980s, it is said that it was some sort of wicked black hole, an Old Dark House that feasted on the blood and flesh of the innocent in order to feed the wicked souls of the guilty ghosts within it . . . or some bullshit like that. It's a tale no doubt concocted by parents to keep their towheaded little monsters on the straight and narrow, a sort of
Candyman
urban legend, with all the British trappings of sexual repression and its revolution of whips, chains, and submission.

Had I retained any of the libido I had used up in the two-decade party that was my life after
Double Deception
, I might have given a shit. But I hadn't, so I didn't.

The hate-bearing, leaden clouds darkened in portent, and tears of coal battered my umbrella with less mercy than before. I knew it was futile to try the door before the location manager arrived with the key members of the film crew, but I reached out and touched the tarnished old doorknob anyway. It turned in my hand, and with an
ominous groan, the heavy old door, weighted down with dozens of layers of surely lead-based paint, crept open.

As I stepped into the dusty, musty hallway of the long-deserted old house, motes danced in the shaft of gray light, drifting apart in a curtain, as if to welcome me inside. When the door closed behind me, seemingly of its own accord, the silence became absolute. When what was surely my own imagination whispered my name, its lips brushing against the edge of my ear, the tiny hairs at the base of my neck tingled. The old stories stirred my imagination, which had, of late, been impoverished. Though my blood was chilled, I took that as a good sign, a greeting.

The bottom floor of the three-level row house was practically devoid of furniture . . . only fitting, since it hadn't been occupied in some twenty years. It seemed a pity that local superstition had kept such prime real estate—well, prime for this neighborhood, anyway—from being put to use, especially in these eccentric financial times. An overstuffed sofa sat under the great window, covered in a gray and dusty sheet. The carpeting had been torn asunder, leaving warped wood flooring fully exposed. The draperies were decayed and torn, letting what light there was into the gloom. I pushed the button for the lights, but the room stayed dark.

The room was actually rather large and the ceilings were high. This bade well for the camera and lighting package we would need to shoot here. Actually, this wouldn't be a bad room to shoot in at all. The great windows offered access to good daylight exposure, and sliding wood doors opened up to reveal a sizable dining room. Though it was bereft of furniture, there was a set of long steel chains in the middle of the floor. The heavy steel was crusted with a dark brown rust. And each chain ended in a gleaming, dangerous-looking hook. And under the pile of chain, stained with coffee or rust or tea or something, a St. Valentine's card. I kicked the heavy metal aside and knelt to open and read the message within. In a palsied, struggled script, written as if by a rightie using his left hand, were the words
With All of my Love, All that you Dream.

I wanted to vomit.

Sentimentality and I were at war. I had no use for the mealy, squishy world of emotion and feeling. I had bared my soul to the world, which first took me to suckle at its breast . . . but then it turned that intimacy against me, tore open my heart, and poured salt deep into the wounds. No, I would never again reveal myself so fully, neither to an audience of a million nor to an audience of one. I had known love, found that it was desire wrapped in deceit, and had given it up for Lent. And Lent was ongoing. Since I no longer needed or desired sex, love was obviously out of the question.

I let the valentine drop to the floor and stood at the base of the stairwell at No. 55 Lodovico Street. As I stood looking up into its heart, I could feel, if not actually hear, its pulse beating in rhythm with my own. Clouds gathered in the darkness at the top of the stairs, threatening a rain that promised a more powerful storm than the one that battered the windows outside.

With a wide lens—perhaps a 14mm, or maybe even a 10—looking up this impressive if weathered stairway, I might be able to capture its growing sense of dread. Especially if I placed the camera right on the floor as it looked up to the next storey, and crept it forward ever so slowly. Yes, this actually might not be such a bad place to shoot, after all. We could spill some blood here . . .

“What have you dreamed?” asked the whisper in my ear.

It woke me. I had no idea how I'd arrived on the third floor, or why I was asleep on its bare, dusty wood-planked floor. I sat up, drenched in a bath of sleep-sweat, my own scent assaulting and insulting my nose. The door was shut, and the windows painted over with a solid coat of black, yet still there was enough illumination to see through the shadows.

Through the murk, all I could see were bare walls and total emptiness. The silence, save for the pounding sea within my head, was complete, and I was shrouded in a loneliness of which I had heretofore believed myself incapable. Solitary and tiny in this vast open space, I could feel the dampness that seemed to breathe from the walls. The air was thick, sultry, close. And it
rippled
around me.

My skin prickled into gooseflesh and I slowly stood, feeling someone's—something's—presence rise with me. It was then that I saw I was not alone.

Standing across the room, a figure, shrouded in darkness, faced me: still, ominous, threatening. My heart pounded violently within my rib cage, and fear—an illogical, entirely unmotivated fear—dropped over me like a blanket. I took a step back . . . and so did the figure. I stood still, and so did this mocking, vile stalker, never turning from me, its eyes hidden in the dark.

“What do you want?” I demanded. But it wouldn't answer.

I took a bold step toward it, and it did the same.