House of Skin (3 page)

“Eddy?”

They rushed towards her voice with him in tow.

“Please …” he whispered.

(you want answers we need something in return
…
)

A knife was pressed into his hand.

* * *

Cassandra was coming up the steps now.

She’d heard something from above—voices, whispers—she wasn’t sure. It could’ve just been Eddy talking to himself again. Yet, she didn’t think so. And in this awful place, she would take no chances. Her head was bright, her nerves at peace. Heroin could do such things for you. She felt she could take on the world and best it without so much as panting.

“Eddy? What are you doing up there?”

No answer. Did he need help?

“You all right?” She was standing at the top of the steps now.

Eddy was coming at her, rushing at her like the wind, enveloped in a mist of starving blackness. And he was coming for her … with a knife.

She tried to cry out, but the blade had already opened her throat and she went down, tumbling down the steps and landing in a bleeding heap. She stared up at the monster coming for her with eyes mirroring confusion and no little amusement.

I’m cut,
she found herself thinking.
I’m fucking cut.

Her head was so fogged with narcotic delights, she couldn’t be sure of anything. Maybe it was a game. If it hadn’t been for the spreading wetness at her throat, she might have believed it.

“I’m sorry,” Eddy said. “I’m so sorry.”

Cassandra’s lips opened and closed, but no words came forth, only blood.

Eddy took the knife up again and let it dance over her flesh, watching her secrets, red and ripe, spill out over the floor in a wash of death until he was drenched in her wine. He grew hard at the feel and the smell of the blood. His heart was hammering, his breath gasping from his lungs.

He let out a scream.

“
They
made me do it,” he explained to her staring face as the shadows soared and screamed about him.
“
They wouldn’t tell me anymore without sacrifice. You understand that, don’t you, my love? They’re so hungry, my God, they’re ravenous. But with blood … oh, then they’ll talk, then they’ll tell me …”

Cassandra didn’t seem to mind.

Her lips were silent, her thoughts quiet, her pain and addiction finally at an end. She lay there, wrapped in a cloak of red dreams, cooling slowly to nothingness.

Eddy kissed her wet lips and ran his fingers over her like he used to as the red milk of death pooled around them. He eased her into stillness and soothed her life away as she’d done so many times with his worries and frustrations. Even in death, he supposed, she understood, she knew and still loved him the way only real lovers can. Never really dying, never really fading away.

But there was no more time for talk or sweet nothings or tender postmortem embraces. The shadows were starving. They demanded to be fed.

In a frenzy, Eddy gave them what they desired, hacking at Cassandra and bathing in her blood, swimming in it like a hungry fluke, orchestrating her mutilation like a conductor with a red dripping baton until the cold meat concerto was complete, until he was collapsed on top of her, welded to her with drying blood and entrails.

The shadows wove around him, heavy, drunken, and sated. There were no more screams or laughter or demands. They were bloated now, their death-bellies full of the seed of life.

Eddy lay over the violated corpse of Cassandra, muttering prayers and remembering something that he was certain was not his own memory: a clown.
A clown? I never knew any clowns.
But the memory persisted. A clown that came into his room at night, an obscene thing in yellow silk pantaloons and an orange ruffled shirt with pom-poms down the front. The clown’s face was painted white, the eyes black holes, the mouth thick-lipped and smeared with red lipstick. It danced around the room before it covered him with its weight as he was doing to Cassandra now. The clown’s breath stank of whiskey. Its fingers were cold. It smelled of sweat and filth and pig semen.

No, no, no, no, not that—

He shook it from his head. It seemed real, yet it was not his memory. And if it wasn’t his that meant it belonged to—

Don’t think it. Don’t ever think it.

He sighed. The memory was gone.

The shadows. They would help him find his father, they would lead him there, they would take him home like a lost child by the hand. Together they would travel those same dark and enlightening roads as his father had and ultimately, they would be with him, in soul, spirit, and flesh.

“So tell me,” he urged them later when Cassandra’s corpse was cool, drying, and sticky. “Tell me what I need to know.”

The shadows encircled him sluggishly, ready to tell tales and point the way. They began to speak and Eddy Zero, the boy who’d sprang from the loins of a deranged and delusive man, listened and learned. They told stories in voices like the wind, the stars.

When they were finished, the stink of old blood permeating the air, they fell back and began to dream.

And out on the street before that desolate and disturbed house, a wicked and depraved laughter fell like rain on the walks.

“AHA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA—”

And whether it came from Eddy or the crumbling pipes of that sullen house, it was anyone’s guess.

* * *

It had to start somewhere, so it started here. Like winter starts with a few flakes of snow or spring with a few drops of rain, it began. Eddy knew the way, he knew the dark byways he would travel, through what gutters and boneyards and theaters of suffering his search would take him.

And he went willingly.

In the days of his youth, James Stadtler sought out the underbelly of society. He kept the company of criminals, perverts, fetishists, and prostitutes. All those who had sampled life’s darker pleasures and lived to tell the tale. It was in this way he met Zero and Grimes. They were both older than he—professional men, it turned out—and equally as jaded by the experiences life and ready cash had brought them. There had to be a better way.

And together, they would find it.

* * *

He met them quite by accident in a Chinatown brothel. They had just finished with their evening’s amusement and were hanging about the bar, drinking and talking in low tones. Stadtler paid them little mind. He was waiting for his oriental flower and wouldn’t leave until he sampled her wares.

They sidled up next to him and sat quietly for a time.

“Haven’t seen you here before,” one said. “Name’s Grimes. This is my associate Dr. Zero.”

“What of it?” Stadtler said.

“And you’re …”

“Stadtler. Jim Stadtler. Again, what of it?”

The two men looked to each other and laughed. Grimes was short and stout, balding with twinkling blue eyes. Zero was tall and thin, dark-eyed, with an immaculately trimmed beard. They both wore business suits and overcoats.

“Is there something funny about that?” Stadtler asked.

“We find your manner … refreshing,” Zero told him.

“Do you?”

“Oh yes.”

Grimes ordered more drinks for them all. Stadtler didn’t mind; he barely had enough money to cover his whore, let alone all the booze he was sucking down. If these two queers wanted to pay, so be it. He’d gladly talk with them if they covered expenses.

“Do you have any favorites here?” Grimes asked.

“The Asian women,” he told them. “Particularly Lee Chang. I’ve been through the rest. Whites, blacks, Indians. I’m tired of them all. Even Lee is getting boring. But what else is there?”

“Yes, what else?” Grimes said.

He and Zero exchanged another of their secretive looks.

Stadtler was waiting for the inevitable proposition he was certain was coming. Hopefully, they’d buy him more drinks before he had to turn them down. He figured Grimes was at least fifty; Zero somewhere in his forties. It was a novel approach they’d developed, he thought, hanging around whorehouses and trying to pick up men. It all seemed rather absurd when there were dozens of places males of all ages could be had for a price or for free.

“We know of your plight,” Zero assured him. “There isn’t a house of pleasure in this damn town we haven’t milked dry for entertainment.”

Grimes nodded. “A man reaches a point where he needs something new.”

Here it comes, Stadtler thought.

“Before you bother going any farther,” he said, “I should tell you I’m not interested.”

“In what?” Grimes asked. He looked slyly amused.

“This isn’t a proposition,” Zero said.

“Isn’t it?”

“If it was a young man we wanted, sir, the city’s full of better pickings than you, I dare say.”

Stadtler felt terribly foolish. He’d as much as insulted them and all on the part of an over-inflated ego. “My apologies,” he said. “I thought—”

“Think nothing of it.”

“What do you do for a living?” Grimes inquired, ordering more drinks.

“Private security,” Stadtler said. “You’re a doctor, I take it?”

Zero smiled. “I hold that degree, but I’m not in practice. I sometimes lecture in anatomy at UCSF.”

“If it pleases him,” Grimes said.

Stadtler studied Zero. His clothes were tailored, his nails manicured. Everything about him spoke of money. A man, apparently, who only worked when it pleased him. A dream life.

“And you?” he said to Grimes.

“I teach mathematical theory at the university.”

“And you get together from time to time to enjoy certain pleasures?”

“Weekly.”

Zero added, “But it seems there’s less and less to be had. Our little circle of two is growing tiresome. We need fresh blood.”

“New thoughts on the nature of experience.”

“And you want me to join?”

“Maybe.”

“And what do we call our little group?” Stadtler asked.

Grimes and Zero locked eyes again.

“The Templar Society,” Zero said.

“As in the knights of history?”

“As in the way they were
reputed
to be,” he explained, “not as they truly were.”

“Interesting.”

A silence passed between the three as each debated this possible partnership.

“I’m game, if you still want me,” Stadtler said.

“What do you think?” Grimes asked.

“He’ll do nicely.”

Stadtler smiled. “A toast, then? To the Society of three?”

They swallowed down their drinks and Grimes ordered more. Stadtler was getting drunk and it seemed appropriate to celebrate.

“But first,” Zero said, “will your profession stop you from indulging in anything considered immoral?”

“Or illegal?” Grimes wondered.

Stadtler thought about what he was getting into. He didn’t give a damn. “Of course not. I’m game for anything.”

They drank again and began talking about the women they’d had and what they’d bullied them into doing. They laughed and joked and confided like old friends. And through it all, Stadtler couldn’t help feeling that it was the beginning of the end somehow.

* * *

“I’m glad you waited,” Lee Chang said, coming up behind Stadtler and licking his ear. She was dressed out in silk and lace, her legs long and sensuous, her breasts high and full. Her eyes promised a thousand ecstasies.

“At last,” Stadtler moaned, running his hand between her legs. “These are my friends. They’ll be joining us tonight.”

Zero and Grimes looked pleased.

Lee licked her lips with lecherous delight. “I’ll do my best to amuse them.”

The foursome went up the stairs to the chambers above.

* * *

And this is how it all came together.

They met more often in the weeks that passed, the games taking on a new and practiced urgency.

And by that time, there was no looking back.

The thing that bothered Lisa the worst was that she’d let Eddy Zero slip through her hands. It hadn’t been her decision, of course; she’d been a junior member of staff at Coalinga State Hospital. The others—doctors Quillan, Reeves, Staidmyer—had the final decision. And after some five years, they’d decided to let Eddy go. Whether they actually believed his lies of being cured or it had more to do with overcrowding or budget cuts, she was never sure. Probably all three.

“We have to release him,” Dr. Staidmyer told her one evening.

“With all due respect, sir, you can’t be serious.”

His face reddened. He didn’t like being challenged. “And why not, Dr. Lochmere?”

“Eddy Zero is dangerous. You know that as well as I. He’s a textbook sexual psychopath.”

Staidmyer had smiled curtly, as if she, barely out of internship and a woman to boot, couldn’t possibly know what she was talking about. “I disagree completely. He’s compulsive, yes, but hardly a maniac.”

“He has a history of psychosexual deviation. He raped two women.”

“And has been rehabilitated.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am. Before he came here, he was repressed and hateful, but he’s come around nicely. I can’t possibly keep him here any longer.”

Lisa just stood there, feeling helpless and awkward in the male-dominated hierarchy of Coalinga.
Rehabilitated? He isn’t goddamn rehabilitated. He’s still a dangerous felon! If you think he’s come around nicely, give him a few hours alone with your wife.
Of course, she didn’t say any of that because it wouldn’t have been professional and they liked their shrinks professional at Coalinga, a.k.a. Hotel California.

Regardless, that was that. Eddy Zero slipped through her hands. Oh, she could’ve told Staidmyer things only she knew. Like how Eddy admitted to her that Staidmyer and the rest were doddering old fools, how he’d lied to them, worked them like putty in his fingers. Made them believe they’d affected a cure on him. But she remained silent. She could’ve told them how he tried to rape her with an orderly just outside the door. But they’d made their decision.

And Eddy slipped away.
But she never forgot.

She never would.

The possibility that he was out there, even now, stalking innocents, is what really bothered her. Because of three naïve men who called themselves psychiatrists, a monster had been unleashed on the world. Maybe at the time of his release he’d been little more than a twisted sexual predator with aspirations of psychotic mania, but she knew that would change. A man who fed on suffering like he did could only grow more evil with time.