Flesh Gothic by Edward Lee (30 page)

"And there's the mansion's biggest mystery."

"Oh, the safe?" Westmore said. "Yeah. God knows when
we'll get it open."

"Didn't the lock company say they were sending someone else?"

"Sure, but not for a few days. And they were the only
company in the book. It's just weird that the woman they
sent left without saying anything, and evidently she quit the
company."

"You think something in the house scared her out?"

Westmore raised a brow. "By now it wouldn't surprise
me. Nothing would in this place."

On the floor, then, Willis noticed a painting7 a young
brunette in a flowing bustle dress, pointing outward. At
once, Willis' gut clenched. It was the woman he'd seen after
touching the hairbrush. "What's this painting?" he asked
with some reservation.

"Weirdest thing. It was hanging on the wall, over the safe, and under it was another painting-er, not a painting
but this engraving." Westmore flipped it back and showed
him. "Evidently that's an engraving of Belarius."

Willis looked at the small, distorted face, obviously quite
old. But that didn't interest him nearly as much as the
painting of the woman. "What's she pointing to?"

Westmore pointed himself, to the second engraving on
the opposite wall.

"The Revelation of John the Divine," Willis read the inscription. He chuckled at the cliche. "Did you try dialing
six-six-six on the safe combination?"

"Yeah. Didn't work," Westmore said. He noticed Willis
staring back at the painting of the girl. "Her name's Debbie
Rodenbaugh. She worked for Hildreth. I guess he had a
thing for her, to have this period painting done of her."

"Is she one of the women who got murdered?" Willis
asked.

"No. No body was recovered, and she's missing. I'm dying to know where she is."

Willis cleared his throat, uneasy. "I just saw her-in a
flash, I mean. When I touch charged objects, I sometimes get
a visual flash of the last person affiliated with the object."

"What?" Westmore seemed alarmed. "You saw her in a
vision?"

"Something like that. It's called a target-vision. I see the
past of objects I touch. And I saw her-back in one of the
other rooms."

Westmore's eyes turned distant. "So you think she is
dead ..

"Oh, no, I didn't say that. People like me are called tactionists," Willis explained. "Somebody who sees ghosts sees
spirits of the dead-but that's not me. I have no medium
talents. If I see someone after I touch something, it doesn't necessarily mean they're dead. The flash I had of her was
very obscure. . ." He didn't say anything more.

Karen walked into the room, something inquisitive in her
eyes, and a gin and tonic in her hand. "Dinner time, guys."

Westmore looked at the clock in his laptop. "Dinner? It's
almost eleven."

"Fine. Call it a pre-midnight snack." The jeans, and bare,
flat, and very tan midriff below her knotted blouse made
Willis avert his eyes; otherwise he'd be caught staring.
"What's on the menu?"

"Cheeseburgers," she said. "I'm starting them right
now.

"I think I'll pass-" After some of his target-visions
tonight, Willis didn't have much of an appetite.

"Me, too," Westmore said, turning off his computer.
"Can [ borrow your car? I need to go to my local bar for a
little while."

Willis was puzzled. "But I've heard you don't drink at
all."

"He doesn't," Karen said. "He goes to bars to not drink.
It's some screwed up writer thing."

"I go to bars to clear my head," Westmore explained.
"It's a long story." His eyes shot to Karen. "So? Can I borrow your car?"

"You don't even have a license."

Westmore sighed. "You know I'm not going to be drinking. If I wreck your car, I'll buy you a brand new one with
Vivica's money."

She threw him her keys.

"Thanks. You're a great sport."

"I know"

"See you guys later," Westmore bid and walked out.

She looked at Willis. "The bastard thinks I can't make a
good cheeseburger."

"I'm sure you'll make fantastic cheeseburgers," Willis
replied. "In fact, I've changed my mind. Fire one up for me,
please. Well-done."

"You should see the top-grade ground sirloin that's in the
fridge. Sure you don't want it tare?"

I've seen enough raw meat tonight in my visions. "Well-done,
if you don't mind."

"You got it."

"I'll be down in ten minutes."

"Cool." She smiled, turned, and left.

The lustful shame reared in Willis' heart when Karen
closed the door behind her. He went immediately to the
DVD player and television, slotted the first disc he found. At
once he was entranced by the images, however unrealistic
and overdone they may have been. He clicked through to
each new scene, to see each new girl. God, he thought remotely. All that bare skin. All those swollen breasts, splayed
legs, and lewd grins. The women were beautiful ...

Just stop, he thought. This is pathetic. What could he do
here, anyway? Masturbate in secret, like an adolescent hiding in a closet? With my luck someone would walk in. Wouldn't
that be a hoot?

The next scene showed two girls with Rodeo Drive bodies prancing into an office, dressed as maids. They began to
clean the office with vacuums and dust wands, bending over
liberally. Soon the scene deteriorated into lesbian frolic, in
the middle of which the supposed Office Boss walked in,
one of Hildreth's cocaine-tweaked studs. The rest went
without saying but the reason Willis kept watching was because something about the scene nagged him. Then he realized what it was.

The office in the scene was vividly familiar.

It was the same office he was standing in right now.

That's what I call filming on location.

A chill crept up Willis' spine; it was simply the notion.
The actors on screen, in the room Willis stood in now, were
all dead. It's like I'm watching their ghosts, he thought and
turned off the television.

He stopped before the door, again noticing the safe in the
wall. I'm really not up to anymore of this skit tonight, he
thought, but took off his glove anyway. He wondered what
he would see. Certainly not the combination-tactionism
didn't work that way. But ... What the hell ...

Willis touched the knob on the safe.

When he looked over his shoulder, he saw her, sitting at the
desk. The attractive girl in the utility clothes named Vanni.
She was looking at a small box on the desk, reading numbers
off an LCD screen and writing them down on a piece of paper. It made sense, of course, that he should see her; she was
the last person to touch the safe. The vision shifted, then,
through something like looking through scratched glass, and
suddenly they were in another room--the mirror-walled
workout room he'd seen down the hall the first day. Bliss
strained her face, her nakedness raving as she was made love to
on a harness that spread her bare legs wide in mid-air. It was
Mack who was having some pretty ravenous sex with her.
That asshole, Willis thought, and before he could think much
more, the vision snapped again, and they were back in the office...

The room felt cold now.

The machine on the desk was gone, and so were the rest
of Vanni's locksmithing tools. She remained naked standing
before him. Hollow-eyed. Deep lines in her face.

She's dead, Willis realized.

Her skin was ashen gray, the large, puckered nipples
bruise-purple.

She pointed to the safe.

"They killed me before I could get it all," she said, her
breath fogged in the frigid cold.

"Who's they?"

"Those things from the temple ..." She walked over to
the safe and idly ran her finger across its face. Several days of
death left her slat-ribbed, bony now She was beginning to
desiccate. "But it's easy ..."

"The combination?" he guessed.

"You people are supposed to be smart. It's a basic
number-letter switch, an acrostic from canonic Gematria."
She seemed to frown at him. "The oldest cipher in the
world."

Willis didn't quite get it.

Her gut seemed to be sucking in by the minute, the lines
in her ribs deepening, veins in her neck and arms growing
more pronounced. "Touch me," she said. "Are you afraid?"

"I'm not the least bit afraid," Willis said, and meant it.
"And I can't touch you because there's nothing to touch.
Your physical body doesn't exist. You're a revenant. I see
revenants every day."

Her gray breasts rose and fell. Was she breathing? "So
you're certain we're all the same?"

"Yes: '

She grabbed his throat and threw him to the floor. Willis
couldn't react it happened so fast. His feet flew out from
under him, and his teeth clacked shut when his back was
slammed to the floor. When his vision cleared, she was
straddling him, her bare groin splayed over his stomach, one
dead hand still clamping his throat down. Willis couldn't
think, and could barely breathe.

"Touch this," Vanni croaked. "Touch my heart and see. I
have something to show you that's very important."

Willis mustered some resistance but to little effect. When
he reached up to shove at her face, her free hand snatched
his wrist. Her crotch ground against him. It was his right
hand she'd snared, after which she slowly dragged it to her
left breast, pressed it against her. He could feel veins pulsing
and a heartbeat. An instant after his skin touched her, the vision sucked him down.

"Look, look. And see ..

A chasm below a scarlet sky. A temple standing bathed in
an impossible black moonlight ...

A temple of flesh.

And a man standing before the skin-and-muscle columns
on either side of the temple's doors-doors with visible
veins that beat in an exact synchronicity with Vanni's heart.

"Do you see it?" the voice ground overhead.

Willis didn't respond, so her hand clamped his throat
tighter, cutting off his breath and threatening to vise apart
the bones in his neck. Eventually he nodded.

"That's what I have to go back to," he was told. "But my
instructions were to show it to you first."

"Instructions from who?" Willis managed to choke out
the words. "From Belarius?"

"No. From the man standing before the temple doors . .

Willis looked back into the vision and recognized the
man. Hildreth.

The hellish vista blacked out. For moments, Willis could
see nothing ... but he could feel. Cold lips sucked his
tongue out of his mouth, to be met by an even colder
tongue. A bony hand caressed his crotch, fingers fervent.

Then Willis opened his eyes and found himself on the
floor of the office.

Alone.

Westmore sat downstairs in barely lit darkness, at the dock
bar of his favorite hangout-on the wagon and off. The
place was called the Sloppy Heron, a massive waterfront tavern on stilts. A pier extended just behind him; he could hear
water lapping against the boats moored there. Upstairs, the
main bar was too crowded tonight-spring-breakers. It was
a packed house full of twenty-one-year-olds guaranteeing
poor performance on their mid-terms thanks to seasonal
drink discounts. Several bras had already landed in the water before Westmore's eyes. He didn't need the scene-I'm
too old and-I hope to God-too mature. Down here was
quiet, just a few others sitting over beers and watching
sports highlights.

Nice and quiet, he thought.

He was clearing his head, and there was much to clear.
Too many things had happened at the mansion for him to
calculate, and there were too many more things that he
didn't know. Psychic. Jesus. Gauss meters and EVP and infra
red ghosts. I'm just a fuckin' newspaper writer. But the more he
focused on the things he could relate to-missing persons,
questionable graves, mysterious matriarchs-he found himself even more confused. At one point, he looked down the
dark bar where several patrons started to groan. "You heard
it first here," a sportscaster on TV announced. "The New
York Yankees have just signed a record-breaking contract
with superstar Alex A-Rod Rodriguez, which will give the
Bronx Bombers one of the very best infields in the history
of the game.. " Westmore didn't know from sports but
was amused when one of the patrons walked out onto the
pier and threw up in the water. Then his cell phone rang.

"Finally got some poop on your man," came the voice on the other end. It was Tom McGuire, his friend from the
paper who was a freelance research consultant. Westmore'd
hired him on the side to run a few names on Nexus/Lexus
and some other research sites.

"That was fast, Tom. Thanks."

"Don't thank me yet. There's not much poop. I got stuff
on the girl and Hildreth, but it ain't much. Some of it's interesting but there's nothing fishy."

Actually, Westmore was hoping for something fishy. "I'm
ready."

"Deborah Rodenbaugh, Florida native, 18 years old.
Comes from a no-big-deal middle-class family that's clean
as a whistle. She was an honors student in high school, got a
big history scholarship that a bunch of local papers covered.
Sounds great, but then comes the downer. Her parents were
murdered a little over a year ago, right after she graduated
from St. Petersburg High."

This perked Westmore up. "Murdered? Murder isn't
fishy?"

"It was a random break-in, it happens all the time, everywhere. Crackheads bust into a place, the family wakes up, so
the crackheads get spooked and kill everybody. Cleaned the
house out for valuables, wallets, some appliances, stole the
car, and drove away. Treasure Island PD finds the car ditched
near the bus stop the next day. The police have it down as a
routine drug-related homicide still under investigation.
Which is their rubber-stamp way of saying it's unsolved and
probably never will be solved 'cos like I said, there's a couple
hundred murders like that in Florida every year. It ain't just
the Sunshine State, it's the Cocaine State. This shit happens,
man. "