House of Skin (15 page)

Soames made it to the stairs. Zero was going to kill her now and he knew it. He could hear a muted whimpering, but it wasn’t from Gina. It was coming from a door opposite him. The terrible sound of a man crying …

Soames woke up.

Just the same dream he had off and on for two decades now. A replay of that fateful night.

Tormented and beyond hope, he pressed his face into his pillow and wept.

Gulliver also felt like weeping.

He was sitting in an interrogation room at Southern Station. Fenn had brought him in here and left. That was twenty minutes ago. What was the bastard up to? Maybe he didn’t want to know. If he’d just minded his own goddamn business, none of this would’ve happened. Why the hell had he bothered following Spider anyway? What had he hoped to prove? And why did he bother tracking down Lochmere? All mistakes. All terrible mistakes.

The door opened and Fenn came back in. He had a yellow legal pad and a pen. Gulliver hated the sight of him. Thin, muscular, with cold gray eyes and a hardened, emotionless face. He’d known too many like him before.

“Okay, Gulliver. Let’s talk turkey. Shall we?”

Gulliver nodded.

“First off, I’m still not convinced with what you’ve told me. Why did you follow them?”

“Curiosity.”

“That doesn’t bite with me. Just curiosity? Did you wanna watch? Maybe see what real men do with women?”

Gulliver had been waiting for that. His reply was all set. “Yes, that’s it exactly. And now I know. Real men butcher women.”

“I don’t need your mouth.”

“Then don’t give me any.”

“All right. How did you learn about Dr. Lochmere?”

“Simple. She’s been at every club in town asking questions. Just about everyone knows about her.”

Fenn wrinkled his brow. “That’s bad. If you can hear about her, so can Eddy.”

“Most likely.”

“Now, how about your full name?” Fenn said.

“Gulliver.”

“Real name.”

“Francais Simmons.”

“Good. Now address, social security number. Anything pertinent.”

Gulliver gave him what he wanted.

“Great,” Fenn said. He drew some photos out of an envelope and slid them over to Gulliver. “Is that the man you know as Eddy Zero?”

Gulliver studied them for a time. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Is it or isn’t it?”

“Yes … I think so. His hair’s longer now.”

“I’ll be back,” Fenn said, going to the door. He paused before it and turned. “Why Gulliver?”

Gulliver shrugged. “I liked that book when I was a kid.
Gulliver’s Travels.
I’ve been on some travels of my own since then.”

Fenn laughed. “I’ll just bet you have.”

Asshole.
Now Fenn was going to leave and check him out on his laptop and when he returned, then the fun would start. Fenn would have a good time then. Gulliver cursed under his breath. How the hell had he gotten himself mixed up in this? It was crazy. Fenn would return in a few minutes with Gulliver’s police record. There’d be no stopping him then. Just another bigoted, right wing homophobic asshole whose old school world was falling apart around him. They were all alike, these cops. Their innate ignorance and intolerance was a symbol of office.

Fenn came back with a stack of computer printouts. He sat down. There was no avoiding the shit-eating grin on his face.

“All right, Francais … or should I say pastor?”

“Fuck you.”

Fenn laughed. “It looks like you’ve been a naughty boy in the past. Shoplifting. Check kiting. Male prostitution. And here’s a good one. Soliciting minors for sexual—”

“That one wasn’t proved. It was sheer bullshit. A couple of dumbass cops tried to pin that one on me because I was convenient. You know how cops are. They don’t breed ’em for smarts.”

“So you say. It doesn’t matter. The whole purpose of pulling your file was just to find out what sort of man I’m dealing with.”

“And are you satisfied?”

“Very. I take it you don’t like cops?”

Gulliver grunted. “What’s to like?”

“We protect you, mister.”

“Is that what you do? I’ve never heard it put that way before.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

“I mean I’m trying to cooperate and you’re treating me like the criminal.”

“No, I’m just trying to get the facts straight.”

“I’ve told you everything six times now. If you don’t have it straight by now, you have a serious learning disability.”

“You need to watch that mouth, princess.”

Gulliver shook his head. “Why are you cops all the same? Why are you all such homophobic bigots? Is it the training? Surely, the department couldn’t possibly put together such a collection of inbred assholes merely just by chance. You’re so damn predictable. All of you.”

“Aren’t we both,” Fenn said. “I tell you what, Gulliver. I won’t be an asshole if you won’t be. We’ll treat each other with mutual respect. Trading insults is only gonna slow things down. No more name calling. Your sexual preference is your own business.”

“Fine with me. Only, get it straight: I’m not a homosexual, I’m bisexual. There’s a difference.”

Fenn wrote those items down. “Okay. Now you met Eddy and he asked about his father? If you knew him?”

“Right. I said I didn’t. I said I knew a guy who might …”

Gulliver went through it all again. Two, three more times.

“I guess that’s it then, Gulliver. There’s only one more thing I want to ask you.”

“Shoot.”

“What’s your opinion of Lisa Lochmere?”

“My opinion? I don’t know. She seems okay. A little tense, wound a little tight. Why?”

“I’m curious.”

Gulliver thought it over. “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”

“Is it obvious?”

“Yes.”

“Keep it to yourself, if you would. Now what’s your opinion.”

“I haven’t known her long, but I’d say she’s mysterious. That neither of us really know what she’s about,” he said. “She has a secretive side. A secret agenda, I’d guess. She’s someone with skeletons in her closet.”

Fenn nodded. He’d pretty much had his own thoughts just put into words, Gulliver figured.

“All right. A couple of my colleagues want to question you now.”

Fenn left and two other cops came in. One black and heavy, the other thin and white.

“I’m Detective Moore,” the black said. “And this is Gaines. This won’t take long.”

“Now,” Gaines said, “tell us everything and don’t leave nothing out,
princess
…”

Dear Eddy,

Sometimes I dream about you.

Don’t ask me why, because I know you would if you were here. Let’s just accept the fact that I do. I dream of many things, but I tend to think even the dreams that aren’t about you, are about you. In a symbolic sense, if nothing else.

There’s one dream I have all the time.

It began during those long days and nights in D-ward, when I had nothing but dreams to sustain me, to break up the monotony of months and years.

In the dream we’re at Coalinga. Together we walk hand in hand through the courtyard. You’re so handsome, my breath dies in my lungs and my heart refuses to beat. Barbara Cartland aside, I feel like a nubile little girl on her first date. We walk the denuded lawn and the wind smells of dead flowers and rain. Your lips touch mine and I hear thunder
…
somewhere. Maybe in my own head.

I feel two things then: enlightenment and misery. Enlightenment because I realize I love you and I always have, and that you love me. Together our hearts beat in a single rhythm, our feet travel the same darkened paths. Yes, enlightenment in the purest sense. And misery
…
dread, gnawing misery because I know there are those who would separate us, would take you from me and lock me away forever in that cold dungeon they call D-ward. A place of nightmares. A pit of loneliness and gloom where all the weeks pass in a mindbending blur of sedatives and starched straightcoats and darkness. Misery like nothing else.

You tell me not to worry and we walk on through the gates and into the world. We pass through a field of yellowed grasses and we come to another gate. A cemetery lies beyond. Crumbling headstones jut from the uneven ground, their epitaphs rendered gray and meaningless from time and weather. This is our place. I know it. Where it begins and ends.

You choose a crypt covered in dead creepers and wilted wreaths. There’s a smell of October wind in the air: death, certainly, but the spice of resurrection, too. We go in. Together, hand in trembling hand, we read the names of the dead from their tarnished markers set into the damp, breathing walls.

You lay me down on a marble slab and cover me in dead roses.

We make love then.

In that place of cold and insects and tunneling vermin.

As you love me your face changes. It becomes that of my father and a hundred abusive lovers in-between. Then it wilts and runs like wax and it’s only you.

Your tongue tastes of dirt and death.

“You belong to me,” I say. “Only me.”

And I hear a great bell tolling and peals of laughter. Rats scratch in the walls of our honeymoon nest, spiders spin webs and court eternity.

Then I hear the sound of running feet. They are loud footfalls, deafening. Hundreds of marching feet clad in Nazi jackboots. The iron gate to our little cottage is thrown open and men in white uniforms pull you from me.

And you are gone.

I cry and scream. My nails rake their faces, my teeth tear at their throats. All to no avail.

And then I’m back in my cold, bleak room with the rusting bars and iron mesh over the windows. I see a bloated orange moon in the sky and black, scudding clouds. The wind calls my name and tree boughs creak.

And I start to scream, knowing I love you.

Knowing true love never dies.

It only waits in dark places.

As I do.

Yours,

Cherry

The night Cassandra came back from the dead was unexceptional in every way: no moaning wind or blowing leaves, not so much as a stray raindrop or a distant clap of thunder. It was a warm and dry night, moonless, the stars bright, the breeze negligible. It was the sort of night lovers walk hand in hand down shadowy lanes and make love in vacant, grassy lots or beside country streams. The atmosphere was light and in no way ominous or remotely threatening.

This was the night she chose, or was chosen for her.

Her body was found in what was known by some as the House of Mirrors. A derelict looking for a place to sleep had wandered in as they did from time to time. He’d called the police, of course, but not before he’d looted through her pockets and taken everything of any possible value, including her ID.

Then she became Jane Doe. Dead, lost, but not unaware.

The following days were abysmal. The medical examiner and his attendant flunkies were the first to extricate her from the locker she was kept in. Before them, only cops came to visit and a few despondent souls looking for missing loved ones. The former group was insufferable. They’d stand about, gazing down with barren eyes, telling dirty jokes or studying her wounds and usually at the same time. One or two of them made comments about her breasts and legs. The latter group always looked shell-shocked. Their eyes were hollow, their hearts heavy, their voices weak. If they were grateful that the wrecked and flayed face they looked down upon didn’t belong to their lost sheep, you could never tell. They came in numb and were led away in the same state.

Cassandra watched them come, watched them go, her mind racing around in the bleak corridors of her decaying brain. She wasn’t sure why the lights never went out completely, but they didn’t. Awareness still flickered in that skull of hers, relentless and undying, a dim but steadily burning light.

The medical examiner’s name was Dr. Roget. The name reminded her of cheap champagne. So did he: a raw stink of liquor came off his sour breath. He and his flunkies took their time cutting and probing her secrets. Biopsies were taken, fluid samples sucked free, wounds measured for depth and angle of infliction. Her scalp was peeled and her skull was opened like a can of peas, its bounty dropped into a dish and weighed, sliced, and picked at. Her organs and tissues were likewise examined with total indifference. She was no longer a human being in their eyes, just a cadaver, a carcass to be folded, spindled, and mutilated. They did a good job of it. She was disgusted by the process at first, then amused, and finally bored. It only proved that one could get used to just about anything in due time.

When Dr. Roget had finished his little report on the deceased, he sewed her back up again. It was anything but a neat job. Cassandra had known little about autopsies before her own, but she came away with an extensive knowledge. A tailor or a butcher could’ve zipped her back up; it took no anatomical knowledge or specialized skill. Roget hummed a showtune beneath his breath—
Hello, Dolly? Oklahoma?—
and stuffed her organs back in their slots and if they didn’t fit, he shrugged and packed them in any available recess that would accommodate them. He didn’t even bother trying to fit the brain back in its housing. He dropped it in her body cavity and started stitching, a cigarette dangling from his lips. A bit of ash fell in, but who was complaining? When he was done, she was sewn from crotch to throat in a great Y-pattern, closing out the post.

Roget dropped his rubber gloves in a medical waste vat and said, “Another day, another dollar.”

The flunkies covered her back up and rolled her gurney back into the meat locker. She was slid into her own cubicle.

“Next stop, worm city, baby,” one of them said and closed the hatch.

Cassandra was alone for some time after that. Days? Weeks? Months? It was hard to say. The dead lack any definite sense of time. The next thing she knew, she was sprawled on a slab in a funeral home. Two morticians, both men in their twenties, attended to her final needs. She was embalmed and then meticulously washed before a cheap casket was selected. She was a charity case, so the state wasn’t about to pay for anything regal.