Flesh Gothic by Edward Lee (4 page)

What could he do? He needed the money.

He shook the tiny Express-Mail package once, heard the
links of the tiny bracelet rattle a little. He contemplated taking it out of its velvet sack again just to look at it-but rejected the idea at once and just peered inside. It was an
attractive bracelet, a silver chain dotted with tiny amethysts.
A crystologist would assert that amethyst and silver would
protect the wearer from evil. Sure didn't work for her, Willis
thought, holding the sack. Sure didn't protect Jane Scharr
from anything. When he'd first held it, the day he'd gotten
the package at his squalid L.A. apartment, he'd almost fallen
on the floor. He'd seen image-fragments of muscular men,
their naked bodies glistening as they calmly cut the throats
of several women to then drain their blood into buckets. Candles flickering as an orgy ensued, then a tall, lean, and
somehow distinguished-looking man axing the sexual participants down, burying the blade one swipe after the next
into backs, heads, and groins. And there, in the corner of a
room that seemed to be sweating blood, was Jane Scharr aka
Janey Jism, oblivious as her drug-glazed eyes looked up
from the female crotch she had her face buried in just in
time to catch the blade between the eyes. Then, in silent
thunks, her hands and feet were summarily chopped off.
Her body was lifted up twitching and tossed onto a pile of
still more hacked bodies. Meanwhile, the woman she'd
been orally indulging picked up her severed hand and used
it to masturbate ...

That had been enough for Willis.

And here he was now, on his way to see more, simply because he needed the money.

What a whore I am, he thought to the window.

California long behind him now; the states were blurring
by. He hoped the bus would arrive before sundown.

The intercom crackled, the cheery driver's voice announcing, "You can start packin' your gear, folks. Ninth
Street North, St. Petersburg, Florida is just down the pike.
We'll be Pullin' into the station in about fifteen."

Thank God, he thought.

`°Cuse me, sir," a huge, destitute woman said by surprise.
"We're almost to St. Pete and I'se broke. Could'ja spare a
dollar'n a quarter for bus fare, please? Got my daughter to
see," and then she touched his hand.

Willis flinched back, almost shouted. That single touch,
that single taction, shot a bolt of utter, silent blackness into
his spirit, the feeling in a mother's heart when the police tell
her that her son, as he was walking home from high school,
had just been shot in the head in a drive-by shooting. And it was more than the feeling, it was a glimpse too: a head
erupting, vaulting brains into the air-

"Don't touch me, don't touch me!" he exclaimed and
jerked back as far away from her as he could.

"Good Lord, all I'se asked was-"

Willis slammed it out of him; he'd learned to recover
quickly. "It's okay, it's okay, I'm sorry," he blurted and feigned
a smile. "It's-it's just that you startled me. Here," and then he
gave her a twenty-dollar bill.

Her broad face looked astonished in its confusion. "Why,
thank you much, sir. God bless ya."

Willis sighed and closed his eyes. "God bless you too."

"We're rich," Straker said with no enthusiasm.

"Rich? Are you kiddin' me?" Walton said back in a
light North Carolina drawl. "Sure this was a great chunk
of change-"

"A hundred grand for three weeks' work, split two ways?
Yeah, I'd call that a chunk of change."

"Still can't believe the nutty bitch paid us that much.
We'll have to pay taxes on it, though, 'cos I'm sure she reported it."

"Yeah. Shit."

For two men who just earned $100,000 in a few weeks,
Walton and Straker didn't seem to have much enthusiasm.
They both sat on the front step of the great house, exhausted, dejected, and ... something else.

"It almost wasn't worth it," Straker said next. "If I had it
to do over again, I just might say fuck fifty grand and go to
the bar."

"I know"

Early morning seemed entirely inappropriate for the scenario; they should've finished the job at midnight-a proper
regard for effect. Dragging their tools back out to the truck
under the full moon, then driving away into the humid
night.

Their appearances couldn't have been more inappropriate, either: two decidedly grim-faced men wearing goatees,
Walton in a black cowboy hat, Straker in a ball cap with an
upside-down Buccaneers insignia. Straker smoked, Walton
pinched himself a dip of Skoal. And there they sat on the
front step of this grand house. So what might seem inappropriate about their appearances? Two guys just getting off
a job, one in a ball cap, one in a cowboy hat?

Because they were still wearing their shiny yellow hazmat
suits, hoods pulled down, gas-masks and Scot Air-Paks resting at their polypropylene boots.

"I guess the stink was the worst part," Straker mused,
smoking. "That first day?"

Walton spat some juice. "Naw, it was just the feel of the
place that bugged me. Or maybe it was just psychological,
knowin' what happened there."

"I mean... who'd have thought, something like that? All
those people..."

"Guys takin' the carpets out said it was close to twenty.
Didn't know exactly how but ... shit, there were ax-marks
all over that room."

"And then there's all that porn shit," Straker added. He
wanted to get out of there but he was simply too tired to
get up just then.

"I guess that's what ya do when you're that rich-buy a
porn company and move it into your house. Fill the place
with hot chicks-"

"And then kill them," Straker finished the perplexity.
"And you wanna know something? There were times when
I was inside, I'd walk into a room, and all of a sudden I'd
feel-"

"Like you're in a graveyard and someone's watchin' ya ... "

"Yeah, that happened all the time, but that's not what I
mean. There was a bunch of times when all of a sudden I'd
feel horny."

Walton chuckled. "Shit, you're always horny."

"I'm serious, man. I'd be standing there scraping dried
blood and guts off the floor in a room where a bunch of
people were murdered, and I'd pop a woody."

"Yeah, well I guess you must be sick in the head."

"I was disgusted, nauseated, I got maggots squirming on
the floor and all I wanna do is stick my head out the window
and hurl ... but I've also got a fuckin' boner and a half."

Walton shook his head, adjusting the brim of his black
cowboy hat. "Let's go to the bar, you need a drink."

They both groaned as they stood, grabbed their gear, and
trudged to the van full of wet-vacs and chemicals. The side
of the van read:

WALTON'S CRITICAL CLEAN-UP
(CRIME SCENES, FIRES, DELAYED DISCOVERY)
WE'RE BONDED!

Another big van pulled into the front courtyard, and out
tromped several men dressed in similar protective gear.

"Who're these guys?" Straker asked.

"Fumigators... " Walton turned to the lead man. "Have
fun, boys.

"Is it bad?" the guy asked, gas-mask in hand. "The lady
sure as shit paid enough."

"It's bad," Walton answered, "and it's all yours."

Neither Walton nor Straker said anything when they got
into the truck. Walton turned on some twangy Country &
Western tune, put the truck into gear, and pulled away.

The only thing Straker was happy about was that the
bodies had been removed before they'd been hired. But part
of his mind tried to sort through the possibilities. What really happened in there?

In his rear-view he could see the immense mansion
shrink and then disappear around the first bend. It would
never fully disappear-he would discover in the years to
come-it would never ever be gone from his memories.

"Wait a minute," he said. "What happened to the guy?"

Walton spat again. "What guy?"

"The rich guy, Hildreth?"

"Shit, I ... I don't know"

Adrianne Saundlund looked blearily at the faces filing by.
Please, DON'T sit here, she thought. She always flew with
carriers that offered first-available seating, for her luck was
generally bad; she'd always get that stinker sitting next to
her, or the mother with the squalling baby. At least this way
she had a chance, always arriving early to get a seat with the
first boarding group. Then she'd plunk down at the first
window and would try to look as unpleasant as possible so as
to urge potential seat-takers to sit somewhere else. Adrianne
didn't want to be near anybody. She didn't really like people.

She preferred window seats because looking into the sky
reminded her of her own style of flying-out of her body.

The whine of the backup turbine calmed her along with the barbiturates she'd become addicted to. Adrianne just
wanted to be calm...

She flipped idly through this month's copy of Paranormal
News, and stopped at a picture of a pleasant, librarianish-
looking woman with autumn-leaf eyes and a faltering
smile, a choppy bob of ink-black hair. A distant, knowing
yet distrustful expression. The article read "Remote Controlling by Adrianne Saundlund: Techniques and Philosophies of Remote-Viewing." Adrianne was forty but she
thought, Shit, IT have to get them to use a new picture. That one
makes me look like I'm fifty. She wrote the bi-monthly column plus a small amount of freelancing for other magazines
in the field for side money and to keep her abreast of the
business. Her Army disability pension paid her bills.

And look at this floozy. She's forty and looks thirty. A twinge
of jealousy then, when she turned a few pages and saw another column by someone a bit more famous than her. She
should've gotten smaller implants, she criticized this other
woman's flawless bosom. Shining hair the color of beach
sand seemed to sweep around, arctic-blue eyes peering intensely back at her, as if enjoying a secret delight. This column read: "Para-Erotic by Cathleen Godwin: Sexual Desire
& The World of Psi." Adrianne looked at the photo of the
woman's face for another second, then suddenly put the
magazine down and shot a glance upward. The same face
was looking right at her from the aisle.

"Hello, Adrianne. Do you mind if I- Oh, I'm sure you
don't mind," the voluptuous woman said and plopped
down in the next seat, a cased laptop on her knees.

"Hi, Cathleen." Damn! "I guess this is a coincidence, if
there is such a thing with people like us."

Cathleen Godwin appeared fatigued but not unhappy to
see Adrianne. They weren't enemies really, or rivals, just dis tant; paranormalists rarely trusted each other. When she sat
down a gentle waft of herby soap scents hovered over to
Adrianne.

More trace resentment itched. She turn looks elegant when she
dresses like shit, Adrianne thought. Cathleen wore a t-blouse
with flowers and stars that was so faded it must've been ten
years old, and just-as-faded jeans.

"I don't have to be psychic to know where you're going,"
the blonde woman bid. "Let me see... Tampa International, then a cab to downtown St. Petersburg. You got an
investigation offer from a woman named-"

"Vivica Hildreth," Adrianne verified. She was genuinely
surprised, and now even more jealous. Not that Adrianne
cared, but she knew that other psi-investigators would be
there, some of them men, which meant that Cathleen
would be slutting around as always, displaying herself. Adrianne wished she could condemn the woman as a tease but
she knew Cathleen Godwin was much, much more than
that. "Or maybe I'm just going for a suntan," she said as an
afterthought.

"We're two of the top-ten psychics in the country, Adrianne, both on a plane to the same place on the same day, to
a house that's verifiably charged."

"How do you know it's charged? You've been there?"

"No, but come on. How many people was it, sixteen, seventeen, all butchered in the same room by a satanist?"

"She didn't say he was a satanist. She just said he was eccentric."

"Oh, sure, I'd say that qualifies as eccentrics ritual
murder, almost like a transposition rite."

Adrianne smiled very thinly. "I don't believe in transposition rites."

"No, but you believe in God." Cathleen sighed, lazing back in the seat. "I guess we all do in one way or another.
People in our business."

Guilt, Adrianne thought. It brought a secret satisfaction.
Shame. She knows her life is a festival of Christian sin...

"And then the guy disappears, almost as if the rite succeeded. Almost like he opened an egress and went in."

There was some fire in Adrianne's objection. "He didn't
disappear," she said, flipping through the front pocket of her
own carry-on. "He committed suicide after the fact. The
body was recovered from the house and autopsied. He
hanged himself."

Cathleen just kept looking straight ahead, eyes closed.
"There was only one obituary in the very back of the local
paper. You found that?"

She flapped her a photocopy. "I have this, and I have the
police report and the preliminary of the post."

Cathleen took the sheet, looked at it with little interest,
and passed it back. "Don't be naive."

"How do you know?" Adrianne exclaimed, this time almost to the point that her voice could be overheard.

Cathleen sighed wearily, still with her eyes closed.
"Adrianne... "

"What? You've had a contact?"

"Relax. You're always so hyper... "

Adrianne fumed in silence. Damn her. She probably didn't
have a contact but just wants me to think she did. It infuriated
her, but the only thing that infuriated her more was how
this stunning, beautiful woman could bring out all her inadequacies at once.

"Let's just wait till we get there. Maybe you're right.
Maybe the whole thing's a sham, and if that's true ... so
what? We're just doing a job. People pay us to do a job because they believe in us. If we knew in advance that this was just some kooky woman with a ton of money and that this
Hildreth house was uncharged, totally cold, and totally ordinary, what would we do?"