House of Skin (30 page)

He wasn’t lying. She knew that now. It wasn’t a simple threat, an abomination to wave before her bulging eyes. It was true. He had thought of her, dreamed of her. All the while she built up her life and tried to forget, pretend that it hadn’t happened, she was in his thoughts. As his new masters plied their profane crafts to his flesh, he thought of her and what they’d done together. If there’d been anything left in her stomach, this would have purged it.

He reached out for her again.

Her sanity had endured this long and she wouldn’t forfeit it now. She would protect it like a helpless child.

She pulled the trigger again. And then, two more times after that. Zero jerked back like a puppet with clipped strings. His face mangled into a mask of anger. The bullets had bored through him as if he were made of dry wood, spilling blood and decay to his feet. She ran then, slipping out of his grasp and tumbling down the stairs. The gun was still in her hand when she found her feet and kicked through the door.

She stumbled up the hallway, knowing that it was far from over. But if she could just reach the stairs and throw herself down them, surely he wouldn’t follow out into the light where the real world would rend apart a thing like him. But she never made it to the stairs. The wall directly before her began to creak and moan, unlocking itself and rearranging its atoms. Zero was slipping through, oozing forth in a tide of corruption like maggots from rotten pork. He shifted and shuddered and reassembled his mass in time to stop her.

“It won’t be that easy,” he promised. “No more games, my sweet. I saw the note you scribbled on the wall. You left it for me.”

No, no, he didn’t understand at all and she didn’t have the strength to explain.

He came on and she emptied the remaining bullets into his noisome hide and he shrugged them off. The slugs fell from his gaping wounds and dropped to the floor. Lisa screamed and hammered at his face with the butt of the gun to no avail. His fists came down and she collapsed on her back.

“Now, I’ll take what I want,” he assured her in a vile tone.

And she knew what he intended. It was lunacy, sheer and utter, but she could expect nothing less in this hopping ground between two worlds. Through the ages, countless women had been overpowered and raped by men. It was a testament to their resilience that most survived this indignity of indignities. But Lisa knew there would be no surviving this, no possibility her sanity could endure something so totally decadent and loathsome. If Zero had his way with her, life and laughter were things of the past.

A carnal grin played over his mouth. “Just like it used to be,” he told her, advancing. “I’ll show you things you never dreamed of.”

She was lying on the floor and Zero was crouched over her now. She could smell the hideous musk of his sex, feel the bloated bulge in his trousers. Waves of reeking heat came from the cuts and gashes of his skin. It made her positively giddy with disgust. She pushed against him, but he was irresistible. His fingers parted her coat, tore open her blouse and bra, roughly kneading her nipples. She felt something under her hand, a weight in his pocket. As he poured his attentions on her, she dug it out. It was a book.

“That’s not for you,” he said, making a grab for it.

She tucked and rolled, cradling the book in her arms. There was fear in his eyes now. There was no mistaking it.

It was a smallish volume, bound in greasy, pale skin. She had a good idea what kind. There seemed to be diary entries within. That and something like mathematical symbols scrawled over the pages. But it was no math of this world.

He came on, slowly, afraid she’d bolt. “Give the book to me,” he said. “It has no use for you.”

“No.” The answer was flat, decisive. She had power in her hands, but of what sort?

“I want it.”

She grasped a page between her thumb and first finger. It was damp, pungent paper and it seemed to crawl beneath her touch as if it were infested with tiny parasites. She started to tear it.

“NO!” he howled. “Don’t do that! The passage …”

She stepped around him and started down the stairs, her eyes never off him, her fingers ready to shred the rancid pages. He followed her down, but at a safe distance.

“Please,” he begged when she was at the door, “the book. Give it to me.”

She opened the door and said, “No,” and fled into the light. She raced down the steps and into the street. Zero didn’t follow as she suspected he wouldn’t. When she was in the car and the book was lying on the passenger seat, bathed by sunlight, she noticed what was happening to it. A stinking vapor was beginning to rise from it as if it were decomposing. She covered it with her coat and the dissolution ceased.

She raced back to her hotel with her bounty, realizing for the first time in her life she had the upper hand.

But what to do with it?

That was the question.

Dear Eddy,

I don’t suppose we should’ve killed that cop.

But what choice did we have? Our romance would have ended there and then had we tried to talk our way out of it. You know how cops are. Always asking questions, nosing into things that don’t concern them.

He bled all over me after I cut his throat. I didn’t mind the blood so much, but it got all over the seats. That was the bad thing. I remember we dumped him in the parking lot and danced together as the rain washed us clean.

“We’d better go,” you finally said.

I knew you were right. He’d probably radioed in our plates and the dispatcher was waiting for a reply.

We got back out on the highway and I knew our time was limited now. Soon, they’d be hunting us. They were already after me. Now they’ d be after you, too. Oh, how the bastards would have loved to get us back in a hospital where they could pick at the locks of our skulls for secrets. But they’d get none. Because they weren’t going to get us. I decided that there and then as we cruised up the highway and I studied your pale face as we drove. We didn’t talk much, you and I. We didn’t need to. Communication wasn’t a spoken thing for us, but something far beyond that, an exchange of thoughts and ideas. That’s the way it is with real lovers, you know. They just know what the other thinks and feels.

And our love was pure.

Completely.

Those bastards wouldn’t get us. I’d decided I’d kill you first and then myself if necessary.

“Let’s stop,” I said.

You nodded and pulled off the highway into a country lane. The trees were huge and the rain was coming down in sheets. You drove in until we were invisible from the highway.

I remember looking at the map I found in the glove compartment. I knew in a moment where we had to go.

It was perfect. We didn’t leave then, though.

“Let’s do it here,” I said.

And you loved me while the rain pounded on the roof.

Beautiful.

Yours,

Cherry

When Stadtler woke, he was in darkness.

It took him some time to orient himself and remember exactly what had happened. His head was throbbing. Zero had drugged him. He knew that much. And now he was chained-up in one of the rooms upstairs. He was about to become a guinea pig. Zero wanted to cleanse his mind of identity and memory. But why? None of it made sense.

Stadtler was a reasoning man.

He wouldn’t beg.

He wouldn’t be broken.

Every cage had a hole and he’d find it and press himself through.

But how long might that take to find said hole? Hours? Weeks? Months? And in the meantime, what of his sanity? Would it begin to come apart? Like a house of cards would it slowly weaken and finally collapse, unable to endure its own uneasy weight?

Alone.

He was alone and would be for some time. He’d never really been alone before with just his thoughts and memories for companionship. Few people ever were, he figured. There’s always the sounds of life nearby: the blaring of a TV, the passing of a car, voices shouting in the distance, birds singing in the trees … but where he was there was nothing but silence and utter darkness. No sensory input, no distractions whatsoever. Only silence and thinking and nothing to get in the way of either.

Stadtler began to panic.

He was naked and chained to the floor. He began to pull at his leash, straining against it with all his might while his tongue betrayed him and began to shout and curse. He hammered at the mirrors on the wall and called Zero’s name until his throat was hoarse.

Stop it, he told himself, this is exactly what he wants you to do.

But he couldn’t help himself. He’d seen the indignities Gina had suffered first hand. The cloying, terrible loneliness; the barbarity of living like a caged animal; the scraps of food tossed to her as if she were a mad dog. And although he’d told himself he would never, under the same circumstances, lower himself to begging or crying, he was doing just that now.

And the most infuriating part of it all was that Zero was watching it all. And soon, the bastard would flip the switch and the light overhead—a single bulb painted red—would begin to flash on and off without end. Then there’d be days of darkness. Then would come the starvation, days upon days of it. And when a few scraps of meat were tossed to him, they would be full of psychotropic drugs that would further unhinge his already weakening mind. Gina had refused the meat at first … but eventually hunger had gotten the best of her as it would get the best of him.

Everything carefully calculated to break his will.

To wipe his mind clean.

After a week or so of nothing but the bulb flashing, Zero would begin playing the first recording. It was nothing but dead air recorded from the radio. Mindless static. And that would be played softly for days, gradually the volume would be increased until … until … until—

Until I go mad.

Stadtler couldn’t accept the possibility of that. He started fighting at the chains anew and bashing at the walls with his fists and finally his head until the mirrors shattered and he fell broken and bloody to the floor.

And lost consciousness.

And time dragged on and on and on.

Some hours after Lisa had left the House of Mirrors, she had a visitor. She was huddled in her bed, studying Zero’s book, when she heard a key card slip into the door slot and the door was opened. Fenn? No, she knew— somehow—it wasn’t him.

She was right.

It was Cherry Hill.

“No, don’t get up,” Cherry said as she stepped into the bedroom. “Lie quiet and relax. Isn’t that how it used to go? Just lie quiet.”

“Cherry.” Lisa said this and nothing more. There was nothing else to say. Somehow, even before the phone call, she’d suspected this was going to happen. Inside, she was shriveled white because she knew very well the sort of lunatic her visitor was and exactly what she was capable of. Outwardly, she maintained her demeanor—calm, cool, non-threatening. If Cherry sensed fear, she would exploit it.

“You look tired, Dr. Lisa. Have you been getting enough rest?” She laughed. “No, I don’t suppose you have. Still chasing Eddy Zero. Tsk. Tsk.”

“What do you want, Cherry?”

“To talk.”

“How did you get a key card to my suite?”

Cherry sat on the edge of the bed. “That was easy enough. You’d be surprised what a little flirtation can get you, Dr. Lisa.”

Dr. Lisa.
Once upon a time, it was Cherry’s pet name for her. It had seemed almost cute once. Now it was oddly disturbing. “So say what you came to say, Cherry. I have work to do.”

“In time.”

“Say what you have to say, Cherry. Then you need to leave.”

Cherry’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t push me, Dr. Lisa. I don’t like being backed into corners. I react in the worst possible ways.”

Lisa sat up. “You’re still a fugitive from justice. Need I remind you of that?”

“If you turn me in, you turn yourself in.” Cherry didn’t seem concerned. She was studying her nails and polishing them against her skirt. “You don’t want that, do you?”

Lisa knew she was right. The police wouldn’t think highly of what she’d done. “I’m willing to take that chance, are you?”

Cherry was filing her nails with a silver emery board now. It was long and quite sharp. “So, call the police, Doctor. Only remember that I’m very dangerous and you never know what might set off a psychotic episode in me.”

Again, Cherry was right. Lisa knew her all too well. She was prone to violent outbursts at the drop of hat. It was important to remember she was dealing with a criminally insane mind. “Say what you came to say, Cherry. I’m listening.”

“That’s better. I always liked you best when you were cooperative.”

Lisa tried to remain calm. She wanted to shout at Cherry, to scream, but that wouldn’t do at all. Her past had come back to haunt her and in Cherry she saw the physical embodiment of that little fact. Watch what you’re doing, she cautioned herself. She didn’t take out that nail file just to do her nails. There’s a warning implied by it.

“I want you to stop, Lisa. I want you to get the hell out of this town right now before it’s too late,” Cherry told her. “If you like living at all, get out before you lose your breath.”

“Is this a threat?”

“Yes.”

“You know where Eddy is, don’t you?”

She smiled, cocking her head to the side. “He’s quite close, I think. Only I stand between the two of you. Only I keep him from doing something very nasty to you. I cared for you once, Lisa. Despite the fact that you used me like a guinea pig, I did care for you. So, please go away.”

Lisa didn’t know what to think. Cherry looked to be near tears. She sensed a certain honesty in them. But it was too late to run now. William Zero was back and his presence paled all other dangers. Cherry and Eddy seemed almost comical in comparison.

“I can’t, Cherry. I have to stop Eddy.”

“I’m sorry, then. I really am.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re going to die.”

“If you know where he is—”