Flesh Gothic by Edward Lee (14 page)

"Poor Mack's probably getting sick of being the tour
guide," Karen said amusedly. "You're the fifth person he's
had to show around today."

"Oh, it's no trouble," Mack said, showing them down
the windowless Buguet Walk. "I like showing people
around ... as long as I don't think too much about what
happened here."

Westmore followed them in an awed daze through the
museum-like mansion. Mack Colmes had been the first one
that Karen had introduced him to: young, enthusiastic.
Seemed like a perfectly nice guy. Mack stopped a moment
and repeated his instructions on how to use the videocoms
and house map, which set well with Westmore because he
couldn't see himself not getting lost in this immense, dark
place. Next, they pushed open the door to the South Atrium, a huge chamber full of odd brightness and a sickly
green-velour wallpaper. He looked at the room's structure,
its frieze-work, carved wall moldings and paneling, and
spire-like medieval bookcases and thought, Yeah, this place
has the wrond Gothic nailed. Then he squinted at the obviously
out-of-place office cubicles situated about the room's
nexus. And more peculiarity: a mousy but not unattractive
woman lay asleep on an antique couch watching what appeared to be Emeril Live.

"That's Adrianne," Mack pointed to her. "She's out of it
right now, as you can tell. Sleeps a lot. And that's Nyvysk ... "

A large bearded man with hair longer than Westmore's
had just exited one of the cubicles, walked right up with a
preoccupied smile. "You must be the writer," he presumed
and shook hands. "I'm Nyvysk, the technician of the group."

The man shadowed Westmore. "Westmore. Pleased to
meet you." Seems pretty squared away, he thought.

"Nyvysk is also a demonologist," Karen said.

Westmore was about to laugh at the joke but he could see
by the bigger man's face that it was no joking matter.
"Wow, there's a loaded one."

"Let me hazard a guess," Nyvysk said, his smile more
puzzling now "You're a journalist and therefore an atheist.
You don't believe in demons"

Now Westmore did laugh. "I have no idea how to answer
that!,

"Good. Perhaps you'll find some answers, during your
stay here. I see you've brought some things. Ready to check
into your bedroom suite?"

"Sure," Westmore said. He was about to turn for the doors,
presuming the bedrooms would be upstairs, but Nyvysk, with
his maintained smile, intervened, "Right over here."

He took him to one of the makeshift cubicles. "Looks like my office at the Times," Westmore observed. "This is
the bedroom?"

"We'll all be sleeping here, in this atrium. Safety in
numbers."

Westmore looked past the curtain of his "suite." A single
bed and a locker. He set his bags down. He sighed, imagining a plush Gothic bedchamber with drape-canopies, thick
carpets, and curtains billowing from opened veranda doors.
"I guess this'll do."

"Charges change at night," Nyvysk said, "especially in a
house full of people who attract charges. Exterior forces are
more eager to be active when such people are separated and
in their most vulnerable state: sleep."

Westmore hadn't a clue. "Charges?"

"Have you ever been to a charged location?"

Westmore came back out of the cubicle. "Well, I've been
overcharged on my Visa at certain locations, particularly when
I've been drunk, but beyond that I don't know what you're
talking about."

"Certain places have a charge, Mr. Westmore. Positive,
negative, grounded, and ... other. We believe that the Hildreth Mansion is probably one such location."

"Actually, Nyvysk, we do not necessarily believe anything
of the sort." It was the woman on the couch, Adrianne,
who'd just roused from her sleep. She introduced herself to
Westmore with a meek smile and nod, then furthered her
complaint. "We don't know anything about this house yet;
we've made no conclusions. Don't delude this man right
off the bat." She looked at Westmore, then very strangely
asked, "So you're not a Christian?"

"I never said I was an atheist," Westmore answered.

"Well, hypothetically," Nyvysk said, "if this mansion is
charged, the exterior forces I mentioned earlier have a ten dency to manipulate agnostics and atheists. Faith can be a
weapon. Lack of faith can affect the opposite. Adrianne and
I, for instance, are the only true Christians. The other paranormalists here are multi-denominational. So, if in fact you
don't have any religious beliefs ... I suspect you will by the
time you leave this house."

Adrianne rolled her drooping eyes. "Oh, would you stop!
He's so overdramatic. He's supposed to be a scientist but
he's always pushing people his way."

"We'll see."

Westmore was at a confusing loss. "So there are two
other, uh-"

"Paranormalists," Nyvysk said. "You'll meet them by
dinner time. Cathleen's exploring the grounds, which, by
the way, I'd recommend that you avoid after dark."

"There he goes again," Adrianne complained, then settled
back to the scroll couch. She was hugging a velvet pillow.

Karen grabbed his arm. "I second that motion. Don't go
outside after dark."

"I'm not saying I'm an atheist, but I am saying that I don't
believe in ghosts," Westmore asserted. "As far as I'm concerned, this place is just a big, overdone house."

Karen had wandered to the TV, not listening, while Adrianne remained dull-eyed on the couch. Nyvysk just kept
smiling.

"As for the accommodations; the bearded man continued, "we only ask that you sleep in this room with the rest
of us. I noticed your laptop, so feel free to choose any other
room in the house for an office. The rest of us will base
ourselves in here for the most part. Anytime I'm not here,
you'll probably be able to find me in the security and communications room upstairs."

"Works for me," Westmore said. He turned to Mack. "Any objections if I just kind of snoop around, check the
place out?"

"Feel free," Mack invited. "And there's a big bathroom
and shower next to the kitchen any time you want to get
cleaned up, or use any bathroom you want-they're all over
the place."

"Just not at night," Nyvysk insisted.

Westmore smiled. "Understood. See you all later."

As he was heading out, hard-pressed not to shake his
head, he heard Karen say, "Where's Willis?"

"He said he was going to the room where the prostitutes
were murdered, didn't he?" Nyvysk said.

"Yeah, a couple hours ago," Adrianne said.

Westmore pushed through the palatial double doors back
to the main hall, and he could hear Nyvysk saying into the
videocom: "Willis? Willis? Where are you?"

Willis was on his knees, dry-heaving, in the jean Brohou
Parlor on the second floor, blind from his visions and sickened unto death. He was too insensible by what he'd seen
to register anything in his mind that might even be considered rational or reactive. Just Get out ... Got to get out of
this mom ... He heard a long, ear-rupturing scream, then a
sound like something cutting through gristle.

Then a splattering gush of some thick liquid.

He couldn't breathe; instead he gasped, knees and palms
squishing through thick, drenched carpets, death-rattles gurgling behind him. He'd thrown up spontaneously upon entering and now, as his stomach continued to spasm, there
was nothing left to come out. Escape was his only instinct but he'd mistakenly closed the door when he'd come in. He
reached up, gagging, fingers desperate for the brass doorlatch, and for a moment he thought he might actually die
before he could open it.

Dark, amorphous things looked down on him, leaning
closer. When he reached out to push them back, his hand
pushed into something that wasn't solid flesh; it was only
semi-palpable, like a gas so thick with soot one could feel
something. He noticed facial features-or the lack
thereof-no noses, eyes, or ears, just great wet mouths full
of roving tongues ...

When he finally did manage to touch the latch, he shuddered and saw another man's hand open the door, a naked
short-haired man with streaks of blood on his arms and
legs. He carried a bucket out of the room, and a second
nude man carried two such buckets. Then a third man left,
just as naked, who paused at the open door and looked
down at the helpless Willis with a grin.

Willis knew that the man was Reginald Hildreth.

When he fell over, his hand shot out to break his fall and
landed on a woman's severed head. Was the mouth still
moving? Willis didn't want to know

Then he vaulted forward and tumbled out of the parlor.

A man in the hall ran forward: "Shit! Are you okay?"

Willis reeled, disoriented and still sick. He wasn't in control of what he was saying-"Jesus, don't go in there, don't
go in there!"-and then he yelled and shrugged away when
the other man grabbed him in an attempt to help him up:
"Don't touch me!"

"All right, all right ... " The man stood aside. He looked
late-30s, had long and rather straggly dark hair. Willis struggled to regain his breath and recompose but he wasn't quite
there yet.

"What happened?" the other man asked.

The images still flooded Willis' mind. "Heads, bodies.
Blood all o v e r the place ... "

The other man looked in the room, then came back out.
"Man, there's nothing in there except a bunch of great furniture and an expensive carpet that looks thrown up on."

Calm down, calm ... Willis took more breaths. Passive
revenantial activity. It's nothing. But it had been so strong. And
now that he thought of it he had to consider that maybe the
images had been active rather than passive. That last man
leaving-Hildreth-had looked down at him.

"Want me to call Mack? Maybe you need a doctor."

"No, no." Oh, shit. What did I say?

"What were you saying? Something about bodies,
blood?"

Willis only needed another minute before he'd regain
coherence. A few more breaths, then, and a sigh. "I'm all
right. Forget about anything I said. I was-I was in what
you can think of as a state of shock."

"Here, lemme help you up."

Willis pulled his gloves out of his back pocket and slipped
them on, then stuck out his hand. The other man helped
him to his feet, whereupon he leaned against the banister.

"I'm Richard Westmore. You're Willis?"

Willis nodded.

"Why the gloves? You a germiphobe, something like
that?"

Willis smiled, wiped his mouth and brow with a handkerchief. "Long story, I'll tell you later. I guess you're the
fifth member of the actual assignment. The writer?"

"Yeah. Downstairs, they told me we'd all be sleeping in
the atrium, but Nyvysk said I could pick my own work„
room.

"Whatever you do, don't choose that room," Willis advised, pointing wearily to the jean Brohou Parlor.

Westmore laughed. "It's a damn nice room, but since you
threw up in it, I guess it's ruled out."

"There are several studies in the house, and a big library
on the first floor. I'm sure one of those would work better
for you."

Westmore leaned back, then jerked a thumb toward the
parlor door. "What did you really see in there?"

"Nothing that you can see ... "

"Psychic stuff, huh?"

"It's much more complicated than that. You'll figure it
out as we go along."

Westmore seemed to catch on that it was a bad topic for
the moment. "So what's with all the names?" He looked at
the parlor's brass plaque. "Who's Jean Brohou?"

"A french astrologist. A lot of the rooms here are
named-one of Hildreth's many eccentricities, and a pretty
tacky one, if you ask me. Clairvoyants, augurs, mesmerists,
alchemists, sorcerers. It gets worse as you get to the higher
floors. The biggest bedroom is called the Loudun Suite,
named for the possessed nuns. The chapel turret on the fifth
floor is the De Rais Chapel. You've probably heard of him."

"Satanism, the occult. So you think Hildreth was really
into that stuff?"

"Yes," Willis said.

"Well, I don't believe in any of it, but I'm not so closeminded to say that I disbelieve it either. I only believe what
I can see."

Willis nodded. He was exhausted. "Then consider yourself blessed, and thank God that you can't see what we can,"
he said and walked away.

Some study, Westmore thought. They were all the same: over
the top. Each one seemed a nice, quiet place to work, with
exorbitant furniture and beautiful appointments. Until he
looked at the bookshelves. He looked at one book after another, frowning at the titles.

The Synod of the Aorists, The Red Confession, The Secret Utterance of Joseph of Arimathea, and on and on. Westmore had
never heard of any of them, in spite of a respectable education. Another peaked bookshelf offered worse selections,
perhaps flagging more of the real Hildreth: The Grimoires
of the Black Blood, Modern Teratology and Other Biological Accidents, The Field Investigator's Photographic Guide to Gunshot
Wounds, Stab Wounds, and Traumatic Rape. One glance at the
photoplates of the latter sent him reeling, and in another,
an untitled large-formatted book in a red leather binding,
nearly made him throw up: old black-and-white pictures
of men having sex with handicapped and deformed
women.

"Fuck the study," he said aloud, thoroughly disgusted.
Hildreth uws one sick puppy. He left in long strides, mentally
gagging at the images. "Shit . . ." At the end of the hall he
noticed some oddly placed drapes that couldn't possibly be
covering a window; he looked behind them and noticed a
narrow stairwell, so he took them up. I've only been here an
hour and I'm already sick of this nutty place and that pack of
weirdos downstairs. But his bad mood, he knew, was only a
sign of his professional confusion. He was being paid to
write an account of the coming week and he still didn't
know how to go about it.