Flesh Gothic by Edward Lee (41 page)

Another track of footprints could clearly be seen now
Had they been there before?

They were bare footprints, smaller, and-

Obviously a woman %s, Westmore realized.

His eyes followed the prints, down the final short corridor, to the hidden exit door.

When Westmore came back into the mansion's proper area,
his suspicions were pinwheeling. Who knows about the hidden
exit door?

Probably none of the group, but Mack and Karen? They
were a good bet.

Were those Karen's footprints?

There was no way to tell, but he knew something else a
moment later-

A scream ripped down the stairs with the tenor of a referee's whistle.

And it most assuredly was Karen's.

He sprinted up the steps---two flights, he sensed-then
another scream ripped down the dark hall.

The office, he knew, and then ran there.

The others-minus Cathleen--stood behind the desk,
Nyvysk standing behind Karen. She looked fractured, the
others pale by what they gazed down at.

"What?" Westmore asked.

"Karen found Willis," someone said.

The tactionist's body had been stuffed in the leg-well of
the desk.

"Christ. What happened to him?"

"Strangled, it appears," Nyvysk said. "See the ligature
mark around his neck?"

The image glaring up at Westmore seemed alien. Willis'
face was blue marbled with pink, eyes bugged.

"We don't know for sure about Adrianne, but I don't
think anyone'll argue that this is murder. Jesus."

"Murder," Nyvysk added, "or a cursory sacrifice."

"So that means the 'charge' of the house is strengthened?" Westmore asked. "Am I getting that right?"

"You're getting it quite right."

"Shit on all that," Mack said. "Who was the last person
to see Willis alive?"

Nobody answered.

After an indeterminate silence, Nyvysk posed, "Wasn't
the safe open yesterday?"

They all looked to the wall. I think it was, Westmore
thought. I left it open when I found the slip of paper ...

Now it was closed again.

Westmore tested the latch-handle.

Locked.

He dialed in the 9-digit acrostic, turned the latch, and
opened the safe.

The safe contained a single, rather unremarkable object
Patrick Willis' belt.

The hairs on the back of Nyvysk's neck stood up stiff as
bared wire-threads when he lugged the gauss-meters and
their carrying cases into the South Atrium, then began to
plug them into the wall socket to charge them back up. For formality, he aimed them outward at different angles and
plugged them into the processor connected to the television. Can't hurt to take some readings down here, too.

But he couldn't really focus.

His neck was tingling.

It was that sensation they'd all been getting over the past
day: the charge of the house gradually stepping up. There
could be no mistake. Adrianne's death only contributed to
it, as had Willis', not to mention the girl from the lock company who was clearly dead too, wherever her body might be.

Accumulating revenant momentum ... He looked at the
gauss meters and realized the metaphor. The mansion is
charging its OWN batteries,Jbr a massive discharge that Hildreth
planned a long time ago-perhaps YEARS ago. Whatever the
event is, he lit the fuse on April 3rd. And that fuse burns down to
the powder keg in-he glanced at the clock: 1:15 a.m.-

In less than five hours.

He'd brought the gauss-meters down from the Scarlet
Room to recharge their portable power-packs. Where should
I try them next? he wondered. The Scarlet Room should be
generating the best revenant images ... yet it hadn't so far.
After all those murders, the place should be teeming. But the
readings he'd gotten thus far had been no more intense than
other, more typical perimeters of the mansion. They'll aarler-
ate, more than likely, he thought as he finished plugging in the
packs. As the mansion gets closer to whatever it's gaining toward.

It was gaining toward something-that was for sure.
Now the hairs on his arms were standing up too. Even the
fillings in his teeth, somehow, buzzed.

"Nyvysk," he heard the voice.

An excited whisper.

He'd barely heard it, to the extent that he thought it must
just be in his head. Then:

"My love...

Now the voice filled the room, and he knew who it was.

Saeed ...

It did seem to be emanating from the intercom, but when
he walked over, it came from another direction.

"We can be together as life never permitted ..."

Nyvysk turned around again.

He didn't have time to see much, but he heard one more
thing.

"Come to me in this beautiful death..

It's time, Westmore thought.

Ten
minutes
before
two.

He retraced his steps through the passageways and when
he got to the small library, he noticed the footprints were
still there. Bare, female footprints leading out but not back
in. Not my imagination, he thought.

But the footprints could've been old, couldn't they? They
could've been left by one of the starlets back before the
murders. I didn't think of that ...

But he wasn't necessarily convinced, either.

When he opened the hidden door, his heart lurched. A
figure was facing him.

"Hope I didn't make ya shit your pants." It was
Clements, with a sly smile on his face, and a small backpack
on. He looked at his watch. "You're right on time:'

Dann him. Westmore relaxed. "What's in the backpack?"

"Flashlights, tools, guns.'

No thermos of coffee? "Where's Connie?"

"Outside, with the car." Clements checked the magazine in an inordinately large pistol, then stuck it back under his
shirt. "She's got one of my other cell phones-I'll call her
up when we find Debbie, then she'll bring the car up and
take you both back to my house."

Westmore scratched his head. "Where will you be?"

"Here. Looking for Hildreth-if we don't find him first.
One way or another, he goes down tonight."

Westmore didn't argue. Clements followed him back
through the bowels of the mansion. "Where is everybody?
I don't want to be seen unless there's no way around it."

"Everybody's downstairs except Cathleen," Westmore
explained. Then he gulped. "But Adrianne Saundland and
Patrick Willis are dead."

"How'd that happen?"

"We don't know for sure. But it's clear Willis was murdered, and Adrianne may have been too."

Clements shook his head. "Probably Hildreth. Still think
nothing's going on here?"

"Oh, I know something's going on here," and then Westmore explained the apogee that would occur at 6 a.m.

'What a fuckin' psycho satanic freakshow," Clements
said with a chuckle.

"What are you going to do if you run into Cathleen?"

"I'll take her out to the car."

"What if she doesn't want to go?"

"Then IT take her out to the car at gunpoint and lock her
in the trunk. I ain't fuckin' around."

"Yeah, I guess you're not." They'd taken the channel of
stairs back to the third floor. The curtain hung before them.
"Here we are. What's the game plan?"

"You go do your thing, act normal," Clements said. "I'm
going to start upstairs, room to room, and work my way
down."

"I already did that-"

"Great, and I'm gonna do it again. Debbie's here, I know
it. Put your cell on vibrate. If I find her, or. any shit goes
down, I'll call. You do the same. Here-" He pulled up his
shirt to get one of his pistols. "Take this."

Westmore showed him the gun Mack had given him. "I
already got one."

"Smart man. I'm gonna go find Debbie now See ya
later." Clements opened the curtain.

"Be careful," Westmore said as an afterthought.

"I don't need to be careful. HilJrrth is the one who needs
to do that," and then he was past the curtain and gone.

Westmore felt prickly as he went downstairs. It made
him wonder about what the others had mentioned so many
times: the charge of the house, and the likelihood that it was
increasing. What exactly did that mean? And how would
the nature of this charge affect the house by 6 a.m.?

But these ponderings ceased when he stepped into the
South Atrium. Karen and Mack were there. Westmore's
cigarette fell out of his mouth when he looked down.

"He's dead," Karen said, a crack in her voice.

Mack was on his knees, before Nyvysk, who lay sprawled
in the corner.

"What happened!"

"I don't know, we just walked in and he was lying there,"
Mack answered.

"There aren't any wounds," Karen added. "And no
blood"

"His heart's not beating, I can tell you that."

Westmore knelt, and felt for a pulse himself. Nothing.
The body was still warm. "This had to have happened
within the hour." When he looked around the long room, he noticed the gauss scanners pointing at them. "Are those
things on?"

"I don't even know what those thing are," Mack said.

"They measure ion-fluctuations in the air," Westmore
said absently.

"Those things we saw on the screen the other day?"
Karen inquired.

"This was one of them. It looks like he was charging their
batteries and doing some readings at the same time." Westmore walked toward the processor on the conference table.

"I don't get it," Mack said.

"One of the scanners is pointing right into the corner . .

Westmore flicked some switches on the processor. He
was fudging it but eventually he got the machine to rewind.
Then he played it back.

On the large television before the couch they watched.
The frame showed the corner of the room-empty at this
point-in normal light. Suddenly, Nyvysk backed up into
it, eyes wide and grim. In a moment, he was backed up into
the corner, as if retreating from something.

"It looks like he's afraid," Karen said, a hand to her face.

"Afraid of what?" Mack said.

"Maybe this'll show us." Westmore hit another switch,
which overlayed the ion-scan. The screen turned black,
except-

The area in which Nyvysk stood glittered with luminous, dandelion-yellow dots. The dots were arranged to a
vaguely human shape.

"Those sparkles are Nyvysk?" Karen asked.

"Yeah, or I should say they're a recording of the ions in
the air that are changing their electrical charges by his physical body being there-"

"And what's that?" Mack asked next, with some alarm.

Another arrangement of lit dots entered the frame, also
human-shaped.

The shape slowly approached Nyvysk, then seemed to
embrace him.

And the shape that was Nyvysk collapsed.

Westmore hit the normal-light button again. They saw
Nyvysk lying dead in the corner, but they also saw-

"What the hell is that?" Mack asked.

A churning shape. It was black like a shadow yet it
seemed to have some barely formed substance in it.

Karen trembled. "It looks like one of the things that
raped me. A discorporate, Cathleen called it. But that one on
the screen is darker; it looks more solid, more shape to it."

"Then Nyvysk was right about what's happening in the
house," Westmore said. "The charge. It's getting steadily
stronger, and I guess it'll be at its peak at 6 a.m."

"The apogee," Mack said.

"Yeah."

All three of them looked at the clock. It was past 3 a.m.
now.

"That thing that killed Nyvysk," Mack asked. "Was that
Hildreth?"

"I don't think so. Hildreth was taller, wasn't he? I think
whatever killed Nyvysk was something from his past
that's lure now."

Mack seemed more ill-at-ease than ever. "I'm not in it
for this. Me and Karen-we just work for Vivica now. We're
not signed up for shit like this. If the things in this houseghosts or whatever-can kill people that easily ... "

"It could happen to us," Karen finished with a fret.

"Maybe, but I don't think so," Westmore said. He eyed
the ornate liquor cabinet across the room. Shit, I could use a drink now. "The mansion seems to be targeting the people
it's in tune with ---psyrkic people."

"Adrienne and Willis," Mack said.

"But Nyvysk wasn't psychic," Karen said.

"No, but he was a priest who used to perform exorcisms,"
Westmore said. "Or maybe I'm totally wrong and we're all
screwed. But I'm sticking around till 6 a.m. You two want
to leave, go ahead. I wouldn't blame you."

"Let's stay, stick together," Mack suggested.

Karen seemed Its enthusiastic but willing. "At least let's
find Cathleen."

But when the doors clicked open, and they all turned,
they saw that Cathleen had found them.

She walked silently into the room, her dress clinging by
profuse sweat to her body's contours. Her mouth was open,
her eyes wide as she looked back at them.

"Cathleen," Westmore began. "What-"

"I'm not Cathleen ..."

"It's one of those trances again:' Mack said.

"She's possessed," Karen whispered.

Not possessed, Westmore remembered. "She's a medium.
Someone else is speaking through her."

"Hildreth," someone said.

Cathleen moved closer. "No. He can't touch me now" As
she moved, she seemed unstable, exhausted yet determined
to do something. "At 6 a.m. Hildreth reopens the Rive."

"The what?" Mack asked.

"The doors of the Chirice Flaesc will open. But they
won't open in Hell. They'll open here."

"What happens then?" Westmore asked shakily.

"Then what went in on April 3rd will come back out,
six-hundred and sixty-six hours after she entered on the
night of the slaughter."

"You mean Deborah Rodenbaugh, don't you?"

Cathleen nodded tranquilly. "The virgin, yes. The ultimate homage, the perfect innocence defiled. It's all a symbol, since time immemorial. Belarius will be done with her,
and unless you stop him, he will have succeeded."