Flesh Gothic by Edward Lee (36 page)

"Ah, well, that sounds very interesting, Faye." She seems
pretty coherent to me, he thought. He'd expected a babbling
in-patient, drooling, staring off. The room was plain. White
walls, white floor, white ceiling. White bed. "I'd like to talk
to you if you don't mind."

"There's another woman here who can fly puppies," she
replied. "She has a special license to do it. She flies puppies
like they're planes."

Westmore's brow grew a serious ridge. "Ah, interesting."

"We have to watch the football game because the future
of the world depends on it, and on Slim Jims and wind
chimes, the chimes with stars like my mother used to make
for craft shows. Oh, and toilet paper. Don't forget! I'm talking the future of the world."

Westmore nodded, remembering what Wells had told him about word salad and incoherence. "Oh, sure, I know.
Slim Jims especially. Debbie Rodenbaugh likes Slim Jims."

"No, she doesn't, you liar," Faye Mullins grinned dopily
back at him. "She never eats pork or beef!"

"Oh, that's right. But she likes wind chimes. She told me.

Faye's voice lowered in tenor. "She only likes the kind
with stars "

"Stars, yes. I like them too." Then Westmore thought,
Stars. Astronomy ... "Did she like lunar apogees?"

Faye's face lurched forward on the obese, tube-like neck.
"Huh?"

"The moon, the sun, stuff like that? Certain points of an
orbit? You ever take astronomy in school?"

A pallid stare. Some silence. "I think you're trying to
trick me."

"I won't trick you. I'm an honest person, Faye. I'm not
like the men at the mansion."

Her stare focused. "What men? The Adiposians? They're
not men."

Westmore was thrown for a loop. Keep her talking! "No, I
mean the men who did bad things to you. The men who
raped you."

"They didn't really rape me," she said. Her coherence
was sharpening. "They'd make me use my mouth on them
a lot." She blinked. "Is that rape?"

"If they made you do it against your will, yes, it is."

A fat chuckle. "Oh, it was against my will, all right.
They'd make me do it to get them more excited for what
came later in the Scarlet Room. The rituals. They'd hold
guns to my head to make me do it, and knives. Yeah, I
guess that is rape. But what I meant is they never had sex
with me."

"Intercourse, you mean."

"Yeah, nobody ever wanted to 'cos they all said I was too
fat and ugly. One of them, Jaz, he was the meanest. He'd always call me 'Wood-killer."' Suddenly she tossed her head
back and forth, mimicking: "'I wouldn't fuck you if you
were the last piece of ass on earth,' he'd say. Then he'd
make me smoke crack or shoot up."

Westmore tried not to envision the details of the evil that
went on in the mansion. Just a bunch of evil peopk .. .

"But he's in hell now, and I'm glad," she went on. "And so
is Three-Balls and Hildreth. They can't hurt me anymore."

"No, no, they can't."

What next? He had to keep her talking or she'd probably
lapse back into her gobbledegook. "Faye, do you know
where Debbie Rodenbaugh is?"

Then she said the strangest thing, which Westmore recognized, a quote:

"`Let that hath understanding ..."'

Westmore finished in his mind, --count the number of
the beast.' I've read the Book of Revelation, Faye. And that
line's pretty hokey if you ask me. The combination of the
safe is a variation of six hundred and sixty-six."

"So you opened ... the safe?" she asked with hesitation.

"Sure. I found the piece of paper inside that has the secret on it."

She shot a dirty, nail-bitten finger at him. "You're trying
to trick me! You're lying."

"About what?"

"You didn't open the safe. You're just acting like you
did--to trick me into saying something I shouldn't."

Westmore took out his wallet. "Faye, if you think I'm lying about the safe, look. Here's the slip of paper we found in
it." He passed it to her. "Do you know what those numbers
mean?"

She looked astonished at the paper, then-

"Faye, no!"

--she ate it.

Westmore's shoulders dipped in frustration. "That wasn't
very cool, Faye. That paper may have had important information on it. I needed it."

A broader, dopy grin. "Well, now it's in my stomach. If
you want it bad enough, you can come and get it."

Westmore feigned aggravation-of course, he'd previously saved all the information on the paper in his computer. "That was a lousy thing to do. Why don't you just tell
me what that paper meant? Why are you afraid to tell me?"

"Because something's going to happen at the house ..."

"Yeah? What?"

"None of your beeswax."

"Does it have to do with the numbers on that paper?"

"Look at my kitty," she said next and jerked up the hem
of her gown.

Westmore dragged his eyes away, appalled. Faye's vagina
looked mutilated.

Oh, Christ ...

He had to grit his teeth to continue talking to her. "Who
did that to you? The men at the mansion?"

"It felt good."

Westmore sighed. "Faye, I have to leave soon. Why don't
you do me a favor and tell me what's going to happen?"

Now she was masturbating, her tongue stuck out one
corner of her mouth. "They're gonna open the Rive."

"When?" Westmore asked, trying to hide his desperation.

"It's on the piece of paper." She patted her stomach and
grinned.

"It's all about Belarius, isn't it?"

Faye burst into a high-pitched shriek, shot off the bed,
and lunged at him.

Holy CRAP!

She was all over him in an instant, slapping at his face,
poking fingers at his eyes. The shriek rose: "You're not allowed to say his name! You're NOT ALLOWED!"

Her mouth snapped open and closed before his face, teeth
clacking. Another half inch and she'd have taken off the tip
of his nose. Her bulk slammed against him; it was all Westmore could do to protect himself.

"He is the Sexus Cyning! He is the Lord of the Flesh, and
you will bow down to him in his holy temple!"

She had Westmore's throat now, thumbs digging in, trying to thrust him to his knees. "Pay homage to him by giving succor to me with your mouth!"

She jerked up the front of her gown, and it was all in
Westmore's face at once. Even in his strife, he managed to
think, That's one thing thatAIN'Tgonna happen, honey ...

She was wedging his neck back by fistfuls of hair. She
meant to clamp his face between her sagging thighs
when-

nd

She fell backwards as if jerked, her back slapping the floor
like a side of raw beef.

Wells and two of his men had subdued her. When Westmore's vision cleared, he saw that they'd used some kind of
stun gun to get her off him.

"Come on, Faye," Wells said. "You know what happens
when you act like this."

Her face looked swollen from pain, eyes puffed.

"We're going to get the bed-net -"

"No, please!" She was sobbing, physically and mentally
dilapidated in her schizophrenia.

"Then be good, and calm down." Wells' men urged her to lie down. When she did, she wrung her hands, staring up
at the ceiling.

"You ready?" Wells asked.

"Yeah," Westmore said, still a bit winded. What a day. And
it's just started. He turned at the door. "Good-bye, Faye.
Thank you for talking to me."

"Watch out for the Adiposians," she suddenly snapped
her gaze around and said. Her eyes were filled with portentous dread.

"The what?"

"They're going to open the Rive again ..."

Westmore shook his head. "Explain that to me, please."

Now, a huge insane grin. "They're gonna turn that house
into a great big mouth that's gonna eat you. It's gonna suck
you all down and swallow you."

Westmore grabbed a coffee and cigarette in the security
break room.

"I told you, man," Wells said. "Totally nuts."

"But coherent at times. It was a strange mix."

"Some of them are like that. It ain't dual personality.
Chemicals in their brains switch on and off. One minute
they make sense and you can get something out of them,
the next they're living in fantasyland but believe it's real.
Like with her-all that occult shit."

Westmore didn't look forward to the next question.
"What, uh, what happened to her genitals?"

"Ten to one it's self-inflicted. Sexual self-mutilation.
Happens a lot with psych patients. That's how they kill the
pain of their abuse or some shit. You should see some of the
things mental patients do to their works, especially dope
burn-outs."

No, Westmore thought. That's one thing I should NOT see.
He felt horribly sorry for her. Forced into drug-addiction,
sexually degraded time and time again. And God knew
what her childhood had been like. "Will she ever recover?"

"Naw. Receptors in her brain are burned out. She'll be
schizo the rest of her life."

"Thanks for your time," Westmore said, and walked out
feeling about as bleak as he'd ever felt.

"Has somebody here mentioned a term," Westmore asked
behind the bank of monitors in the communications room.
"Apidosians, or adiposians?"

Nyvysk looked up from his tinkering, with interest.
"Adrianne and Cathleen claim to have seen them-in their
jaunts. Where did you hear the term?"

Westmore lied. He didn't want anyone to know that he
knew about Faye Mullins. "I heard somebody here mention
it, can't remember who."

"Well, they're thought to sexually molest women-and
men-in a discorporate, or subcorporeal, state. The
revenant rapes of Cathleen, Adrianne, and Karen, for instance. Which would make sense."

"Not to me. What are they? Demons?"

"Actually, no. They're significantly less than demons. It's
more of a Hex-Entity, if you follow older sources which
may or may not be reliable. An Adiposian is one of many
such entities. They're soulless but not spiritless, if that's not
too confusing. According to the Morakis Compendiums of
the 1500s, Adiposians are fashioned in Hell from rendered fat, and then animated by spells. Supposedly. They're sentinels, so to speak, guardians."

"Of what?"

"Adiposians specifically? They're the guardians of certain
domains, or prefectures, in Hell. Domains supposedly granted
to hierarchal sexual demons."

"Like Belarius," Westmore said more than asked.

"Exactly. Think of sacks of congealed bacon grease
shaped into a humanish form. They have no faces save for
mouths. They have tongues. And they have genitals. They
can be generated as male or female. Supposedly. Since
they're soulless, they can easily pass from the physical
boundaries of Hell to our world, as discorporates. Deniere's
Index of Demonographies, from 1618, claims that sex with a
discorporate Adiposian is an opium-like experience. And
anyone raped by a physical Adiposian in Hell will experience an eternal climax. Supposedly."

"Supposedly," Westmore said.

"Of course. Who can know for sure?"

Not me, that's sure as shit. But Westmore remembered the
other odd reference from the psychiatric ward, yet one he'd
heard here too. "What's a Rive? I've heard you use that
term. A doorway or something? A doorway to hell?"

Nyvysk seemed piqued by the question. "In a sense.
Every religion and counter-religion has something like
that. Christians believe that one day a Rive will open in the
sky and through it will pass all whose names are in the Book
of Life-in other words, those worthy of Heaven. Ancient
Egyptians believed that death itself was the Rive through
which they'd access the afterlife."

"And satanists?"

"Some believe that a threshold to Hell can be opened by certain rites, incantations, and gestures of sacrifice. That's
probably what Hildreth thought he was doing on the night
of April 3rd. Trying to open that threshold."

Westmore looked at him. "Do you-"

"Do I believe that such Rives genuinely exist?" He
looked right back. "No, of course not ... And, yes, of
course."

"Great."

Nyvysk smiled. "It's founded in myths and legends that
go back to cave man days. Later, as mankind learned to leave
a record of himself, those myths were written down. Grimoires and compendiums and more occult tomes than you
can shake a stick at-from just after Christ's death, through
the Middle Ages, and even on into the early 20th Centurythese sources areJWI of references to Rives, portals, doors to
the underworld, and the mystical secrets needed to open
them. In my opinion? Do you want to know the truth?"

"Yes," Westmore said.

"It's mostly poop, Mr. Westmore." Another subtle smile
as Nyvysk adjusted a sensor panel. "Ultimately faith is the
Rive. I believe in all I need to believe in. I believe in
Heaven and Hell. Do you?"

"Man, I don't know"

Nyvysk's smile was gone. "I suspect you will by the time
we're all through here."

Westmore worked in the office most of the rest of the day,
forgetting to even come down for a meal. He scarcely saw
anyone else in the group for more than a few moments.
When he'd passed Karen in the hall, she'd merely smiled
and nodded, walking on in some buried distress. It was obvious she'd forgotten-probably because she'd been too
drunk-their wee-hour kiss and sleeping together last night. It had been strictly platonic yet arousing in some exotic way. She'd left his bed before he'd wakened, leaving
only the scent of her hair all over him.

At one point, out the window, he spotted Cathleen
strolling barefoot toward the opening in the trees which led
to the graveyard. She wore only a white bikini and sarong.
She stood at the opening for a moment, hair up in the
breeze, the sarong flowing--then suddenly turned and
strode away almost at a trot. Bad memories, Westmore
thought. But it only reminded him that he'd be entering
the same graveyard--tonight-with Clements.