Flesh Gothic by Edward Lee (18 page)

What am I, the mansion heuseboy? Westmore thought. On
the screen the others were getting up. "Shit, help me," he
urged, flicking the videocom off.

"Huh?"

"We're supposed to be cooking dinner. Gimme a hand,
will you?"

"Sure," Karen said. "I'm going to get another drink
first .. "

She stripped down to her panties and bra, already aglint
with sweat since closing the room's air-conditioning ducts.
Higher temperatures, for whatever reason, seemed to aid
Adrianne's psychic endowment, her "jaunts," as she would
call them. She chose the smallest bedroom she could find
on the fifth floor, preferring a base that was cramped because returning from a jaunt felt less wild: siphoning back
from expansive and often barely definable perimeters into a
relatable containment. I doubt that anyone out there can see me,
she figured with some insecurity. Way up here on the fifth
story? But she did feel self-conscious about her body. Between Cathken and Karen, I'm the last person anyone uvuld
want to peek at. Several lights were on in the bedroom,
which afforded her an unwitting glance at her reflection in the oblong dressing mirror: arms and legs too skinny, small
breasts, an abdomen losing some of its elasticity. She had no
tan, but at least hoped to work on that during her stay. She
groaned at her jutting hip bones. The Lobrogaine provided
an essential advantage to OBE-ing but one side effect was
faster-than-normal fat metabolization; she could eat like a
pig but not gain an ounce. Such was her multisided curse.

That and total abstinence from sexual contact, the only
way she could maintain control ...

The pills she'd left downstairs with Cathleen were strong
barbiturates; the ones that remained in her pocket were her
secret. She sat on the high four-poster bed for several minutes, breathing slowly, absorbing the room into her senses.
As an experiment, she needed to calm herself and fall into
what she thought of as her zone. Then she got up, parted
the veranda drapes, and opened the french doors, unconcerned by her near-nudity. The hot night rushed in, caressing, bidding more perspiration and the tacky calm she
needed. She looked down the vast hill, and saw only dark
woods and a yellow moon rising.

It's time, she thought. She knew she was procrastinating ... and she knew she was afraid. She could sense the
house, too, just like the others, but she hadn't said anything
because she needed the safety of remaining objective for as
long as possible. She turned all the lights off in the room
except the small lamp on the nightstand. The room's
midnight-blue wallpaper with cruciform symbols of various sizes appeared multidimensional; her Christian roots
found solace in them. Next she poured herself a glass of
water from the bedside decanter, and withdrew her other
bottle of pills.

Lobrogaine was a psychoactive by text definition, and
possessed some minor analgesic properties in low doses. FDA had long-since banned it for fear of misuse, because in
unmonitored doses it could produce psychedelic hallucinations and, in some cases, psychosis. The Army's Telethesia
Program had adopted it to accelerate the proficiency of persons with Adrianne's talents, citing the benefits for national
security outweighed the risks. Adrianne had since become
at least psychologically addicted to its morphine-like properties and hence required even more habituating barbiturates to keep functional. "Just remember what you're doing
for your country," her clinician at Fort Meade always reminded her. "Psychics like us are pretty much washed-up in
the regular world, or condemned to freak-shows and tarot
parlors. We save so many lives by using our gifts as we do
here." Adrianne supposed he was right, and she also knew
that she was flushing her own life down the toilet for her
"duty." Now it didn't matter.

She popped one vanilla-colored capsule and lay back on
the bed. When she took the drug she "slipped" out so much
faster to the point now that such slips often occurred against
her will; hence the barbiturates to counteract the effect. She
knew she could go now if she tried but she opted to wait a
half-hour for full absorption. She lay in a cruciform shape
of her own, toes pointed, arms outstretched, breathing deep
and slow. With her eyes closed, her vision was nothing but a
scape of dark grain.

First, she tried some remote-views, easier still. Concentrating on a simple target-thought let her mind's eye start to
draw "snaps." It wasn't like an OBE at all; there was no roving, no sense of movement or disembodiment. She thought
South Atrium, and then saw it, spotted Cathleen watching
television, legs crossed, something clearly on her mind.
Then, Kitchen, and saw Karen and the writer busy preparing
dinner. She saw their lips move as they conversed-Karen seemed upset about something-but couldn't hear what
they were saying. While remote-viewing all she could ever
hear was a drone in her head, and her field of vision differed
from stereoscopic eyesight, instead more akin to viewing
something through a slit. She thought of the several areas
she'd seen outside, then "snapped" onto them: the front culde-sac, the back gardens, some of the woodline. At one
point she thought she saw a small sports car but nowhere
near the parking court; instead it sat as if stowed in the
woods. She could see no one inside. Then, further afield,
Another car? Yes, an old, long sedan with a landau roof, and
some dents. Exhaust from the muffler floated upward, the
engine obviously running. A man and a woman inside but
she couldn't see their faces. Had she remoted off the grounds?
Sometimes that happened. She tried to redirect herself.

She recalled Cathleen's encounter at the graveyard, and
then she saw it: the overgrown perimeter hidden in the
woods, surrounded by a spiked iron-crested fence. She saw
tilted gravestones, some very old, but even in the dark she
managed to read the name on one of them: REGINALD
HILDRETH.

Okay ... Now ... Push, she told herself.

Down.

Deeper and down ...

The "snap" grew murky. She couldn't see.

Doom. Deeper.

She was through the ground, she was seeing inside the
coffin but nothing plainly visual, just cold traceries of a
death-eminence.

She saw a body but no face.

Out, out!

She snapped out, acrawl from claustrophobia. Yeck! She
hated seeing bodies.

One more thing and then she could move on to an OBE;
she remembered her first remote-viewing earlier: the writer
snooping in the office on the third floor. He'd found a safe
hidden in the wall.

Safe, she thought.

And there she was, looking right at it.

Through, through .. .

Reading tag numbers, street names and addresses, and information on documents and computer screens was the ultimate value of remote-viewing, at least for military and
law-enforcement purposes-Adrianne had been trained
well. But today she struck out.

Her vision could detect nothing inside the safe. Just
darkness.

Give it up she advised herself. When she forced her vision
out of the safe-an image like a camera in reverse zoomshe saw one last thing: a framed picture that looked quite
old, an engraving. In her mind she squinted, and the slit of
her viewing field homed in-on an inhuman, empty-eyed
face, then lower, to finely chiseled words: MY SELF AS I
DARE TO REFASHION THE COUNTENANCE OF
MY VISION: BELARIUS.

The words and the engraving meant nothing to her. It
was time to end this now, but the practice had fortified her;
she hadn't remote-viewed in a while, and she was glad to
discover that she hadn't lost her touch; if anything she felt
even more attuned-

-which would be good for what came next.

She opened her eyes on the bed, found herself looking
straight up at fascinatingly detailed tin ceiling tiles. She
brought her hands to her face, then down to her bra'd
breasts, her abdomen, and thighs. Sweat saturated the bra
and panties, and her skin felt glazed. Heat always invigorated her, and heightened her perceptions further.

The Lobrogaine had kicked in, it left her smiling dopily.
Perhaps it was the drug's most paramount side effect--a
greedy satiation much like orgasm-that attracted her most to
it. Was she subconsciously using it to replace genuine sexual
release? The two weren't the same but this was awfully close,
and her dependency made more sense given the fact that she'd
abstained from sex for almost a decade now She couldn't
even masturbate. It was an indulgence she longed for.

But she was too afraid to do it now ...

She relaxed, reclosed her eyes, maintaining her position
of crucifixion. She prayed to herself, God, I know that what I
on is part of You. Release me in the midst of this evil place and
keep me safe ...

Her abdomen tightened and her face seemed to bulge, as
if something bigger than her physical form was exiting her,
which in a sense was true. She was out in an instant.

The best way she could ever think to describe an OBE
was having your eyes and brain inside a transparent helium
balloon. She felt buoyant and barely stable, a row boat on an
ether sea but with a faulty rudder.

She looked down, and saw her body lying still on the
big bed.

Adrianne was apart from her body now, connected to it
only by some aeriform nerve that out-of-body-experients
sometimes called their "soul-tether."

Then she backed away, and was gone, out of the room.

She had no hands now to touch with, no feet to run; instead the urn of her spirit flew.

Through doors, through walls. Through life-size statues
of solid marble. On the third floor, she wisped through the
door of the communications room and found herself hov ering over Nyvysk who tinkered with one of his detection
machines. When she guided herself through his solid body,
he flinched, welping, "Damn, that's cold!" He looked
around, looked up, shaking his shaggy head. "I know you're
there somewhere, Adrianne. But please don't do that!" She
laughed to herself and drifted out of the room, then down,
through the carpet and floor-studs, and the next ceiling. She
rocked the vessel that she could only think of as her head
and saw Cathleen looking in rooms, carrying her tote bag.
When she chose a room and entered, she closed the door
behind her, but Adrianne pushed through its oaken panels.

She hovered and watched, an otherworldly spy, a mystic
candid camera. Cathleen seemed pent up about something,
murmuring, "Oh, God, what is wrong with me?" and then
she lay down on a high-post bedstead plush with a thickquilted mattress. She's insatiable! Adrianne thought when she
saw what the lusty blonde was doing. From her bag she'd
withdrawn some implements: two nipple-clamps and a
frightfully realistic vibrator. In a desperate second, her breasts
were popped out of the swells of her top, her nipples clipped
hard by the clamps, the hem of her sundress dragged up. She
wasted no time in placating herself with the vibrator, teeth
grinding and eyes squeezed shut. Adrianne felt embarrassed
but also infuriated. Cathleen whispered, "Please, please,
please. I just ... can't ... stop ...

The vibrator hummed, delving in and out. If Adrianne had
had a mouth, she surely would've frowned. I've seen about all
of this that I can stand. She was glad she couldn't read minds,
for Cathleen's was likely full of sexual garbage right now, the
images she summoned for her pleasure a kaleidoscope of all
the countless men she'd let herself be used by in the past.

But Adrianne at least was honest enough for this single thought: Oh, u4iat I wouldn't give ... before she zipped out
of the room.

Up through more ceilings and flooring boards, and she
bobbed into the middle of a dimly lit hall on the fifth story.
The chapel stood eerily silent, its hardwood walls utterly
black. There was no crucifix, naturally, but a single underlit
sconce before a black altar whose rear panel was carved with a
simple inverted cross. A black pulpit faced a few rows of black
pews and black kneelers. The environment upset her, so she
backed out but not before spying a cistern whose silver bowl
sat empty. Next to it stood a racked stand containing several
stoppered glass flasks which, in a church, would be full of holy
water. These flasks, however, appeared to be full of semen.

Adrianne exited, revolted. She'd sensed nothing paraactive in the room, nor even residual. The place simply
made her sick.

The Scarlet Room, she thought next, trying to focus. She
hovered before the veneered doors. On the floor, she noticed several of Nyvysk's things, which she instantly recog-
niZd as new-generation gauss screens. They detected
increases in ion activity, a supernatural presence-signature.
But they're not even hooked up, she could see. Why didn't he
put them in the room?

It didn't matter; the tech stuff was his business, and Adrianne didn't have much faith in it anyway. She was just testing the waters right now, having a look around. She floated
through the door.

And stared.

The Scarlet Room was indeed well-named. Everything
was red: the wallpaper, baseboards and half-paneling, the carpet. A variety of rod-back chairs, Edwardian cloak-stands,
gateleg tables-all in red veneer. In the center of the room
stood nothing, which seemed strange. It reminded her of a stage. Why have all that empty space in the middle? she wondered.

She roved around, examining the fine, intricate wallpapering and woodwork. After a moment, though, just when
she was getting bored ... she started to feel sick.

Not physically-for she had no physical body. Instead,
her buoyant spirit felt nauseous. Her vision dimmed.

Was she falling?

A second later, she was somewhere else ...

Something dark yet impossibly light-like accosted her
psychic senses. Her soul felt surrounded now, by humid
heat. A long spell of vertigo unwound, and when she was
able to focus her vision-