House of Skin (35 page)

Spider laughed with a sound like ripping paper. “He’s in for a nasty surprise, you know, in the Territories. They’ll destroy him. He thinks he’s wise and experienced because he killed a few whores. He’s a veritable babe in the woods, a punk.”

“Please,” Gulliver gasped. “Let me go. He’ll never know. I won’t say a thing, I won’t—”

Spider polished his knife against his coat, ignoring him. “Without me, that boy would never be nothing but a cheap, murderous hood. Oh, he’ll learn, though.”

Gulliver began crawling towards the door.

“When they get him,” Spider continued, “he’ll sing a different tune.”

Gulliver was reaching for the door knob. Spider walked up behind him and dragged him back. “Dying is such a good thing, Gulliver. I’m sure you’ll appreciate it. Death frees one of the excesses of life.” He fingered the blade of his knife. “It’s only now that I can truly realize what fools living men are. Rushing about, accumulating money, building little secure lives that will fall to ash with Death’s inevitable breath. Such a waste. You’ll understand, I think. In time.”

Gulliver was weeping now, from his eyes, from his wounds. Desperation and hopelessness were raining from him. Spider almost felt sorry for him.

“I’ll be quick and humane,” he promised. “But first we’ll chat. I think you deserve to know everything we’ve done, you little fag, and everything we’re going to do.”

* * *

Eddy returned about an hour or so later. He’d spent his time drinking at a bar a few streets over. The alcohol had relaxed him to the point where he felt human again. Sometimes, all this work and preparation just wore a body down. He went into Spider’s lair and almost tripped over Gulliver.

“Please,”
Gulliver said.

Eddy ignored him. “I told you to take care of him.”

“I didn’t feel like it.”

Eddy lit a cigarette and sat on the floor. “I risk my freedom bringing that bastard here and you don’t even want him?”

“I didn’t say that. Just not right now.”

“See if you get anything else,” Eddy threatened. “You can do your own fucking hunting from now on. I’m sick of it.”

“Quit pouting,” Spider said.

“Oh, I’m pouting now?”

“You are.”

Eddy sighed. “I should’ve left your ass in the morgue.”

Gulliver tried to crawl towards him. He was growing pale from the loss of blood and his voice was weak as he begged for mercy.

“You’re losing sight of what we’re doing, Eddy. This complaining is only complicating things. Our aim is to get into the Territories, not to live a life of ease and splendor,” Spider explained like an impatient father. “Everything we’ve done has been dangerous, has involved risks. It won’t be long now. Just do what has to be done and quit acting like a spoiled child.”

“Fuck you.”

“You know what you need?” Spider said. “You need death. It’ll free you of all your petty worries and wants. You’ll see only what matters.”

Eddy laughed. “You think I want to be a stinking decayed carcass like you? Hiding in the shadows, eating dead things? Guess again.”

Spider glared at him with bleached, lifeless eyes. “You see only the external of the matter,” he said, anger rising in him. “A body is just a shell, my boy. When we get to where we’re going, I’ll find a better one.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

Spider broke into a bout of ghoulish laughter. It sculpted his raw and wrecked face into a thing of true horror, splitting and snapping as dried muscle and ligament strained beneath the mummified skin. “Maybe yours will do.”

“Try it.”

“In time.”

Gulliver was sobbing now. But like a whining dog, he was ignored by both.

“This all better be worth it,” Eddy said in a whisper.

“It will be.”

“I’ll get one more whore, maybe two, then I’m done. This is all getting a little boring.”

There was a strange, almost magnetic humming in the air, a vague and vibrant electricity. A glow of sickly phosphorescence flickered from the other room. A reflection of mirrored light. A sound of weeping and distant screaming. They both knew what it meant.

“Boring?” said Haggis Sardonicus in a silvery voice that sounded like fine surgical cutlery scraped over bone. She stepped into the room with a blast of freezing air and a few dust devils of whirling bone ash.
“Boring?
Did you hear what he said, Sister?”

Haggis Umbilicus remained indifferent. She/it floated there, a swollen flesh sack, a dozen peeled hides stitched together, blackened and overlapping, sliding over each other with the sound of nails scratching on windowpanes. Hundreds of carrion-fattened meatflies lit from her blowhole mouth each time she exhaled. Her single bleary eye watched from beneath coiling tangles of wormy red hair greased with human fat. Her flesh was constantly in motion, a flyblown circus of unspeakable rhythm.

If she had an opinion, she did not voice it.

Eddy felt ice water in his bowels. “I didn’t mean it like that, I only meant—”

Haggis Sardonicus drifted towards him, the stink of a thousand bloody seductions seeping from her breathing pores and overwhelming him like a noxious gas. His cock filled with life and demanded to be put to proper use. There was no denying the sensual, ominous charm she possessed. It got beneath his skin, a mutiny of sensations both carnal and repellent. Eddy knew she smelled his musk, wanting it, but her seductions ended only in death and he wasn’t ready for that yet. Physically, she was caught in her transitional phase where she was neither huge and porcine fat or skeletal and machinelike. She stood before him, heaving and voluptuous, her pores gasping like tiny mouths. Her breasts were huge and round and shining with oil, swollen with milk. As he stared at them, droplets dripped from her dark nipples, which were like hazelnuts, yet sharp as pins. Even the minute suturing on them made him tremble with carnal appetite. He wanted to slide his cock between them and tit-fuck her violently until cream gushed from them.

She seemed to know it, too. Her coppery, metallic eyes gleamed with lust, her teeth pressed against her full, juicy lips were red-stained and hungry. She reached long pink fingers down between her legs to the hairless vulva that was engorged and throbbing. It was like a juicy rind of star fruit, fizzing and fermenting with dark human wine. It would be petal soft against his lips, sweet on his tongue.

“I understand your impatience,” she told him. She took his hand and her touch was like ice, yet her fingers were so hot they steamed. She pulled his trembling hand to one heaving, glistening breast and held it there, her bloated, undulating flesh seeming to suck the heat from his skin. Her nipple was smooth as onyx between his shaking fingers.

“The end is near,” she told him in a motherly tone. “We’re nearly satisfied with all that you’ve done. But it can’t end now, you can’t let it.”

He tried to pull his hand away, but it was affixed to her. Her flesh was hot wax and his hand was sinking into her magma. “No,” he promised, “we’ll do whatever it takes.”

She released him. “Very good.”

“It will be soon?” Spider asked.

Haggis Sardonicus nodded. “Very.”

“There’s a woman who says she wants to come,” Eddy said.

“Her name?”

“Lisa Lochmere.”

“It’s unfamiliar.”

Eddy rubbed his cold hand against his leg, trying to put warmth back into it. “She hasn’t done anything to get your attention, she’s—”

“ … an innocent?” Sister Sardonicus said with an appetite that was frightening.

“Yes, but she’s eager.”

“Why not? We’ll see that she’s kept amused.” She looked over at Gulliver’s trembling form. “Ah, you’ve brought him back for us. How very kind. He is so pretty.”

She went over to his quivering form. Only the loss of blood and his weakened state saved him from the true horror of what was about to happen. Sister Sardonicus stood before him in her transitional phase, legs spread wide so he could see her sex which was starving for him. At first, he smelled jasmine, wild roses, and jungle orchids. This made him dreamy and relaxed, but soon there was another smell, of rank carcasses and decomposition. He let out a cry when he saw the gash between her legs, which was like an infected mouth filled with fly eggs hatching like popping bubbles. She pulled his face in closer so he could taste her. Flies crawled over him, silverfish and squirming blood flukes filled his mouth.

By this time, he was insane, of course, and quite oblivious to everything.

He stared at her vulva, a red exotic jewel, pulsating and swelling, until the gash beneath it became crimson-dripping jaws that seized his head and cracked it like the shell of a peanut, sucking free his scalp and peeling his skin. By then, Sister Umbilicus had moved in like a black tornado, vacuuming Gulliver’s corpse right down to the lattice of bones beneath.

Sometime later, the Sisters departed.

As Spider picked at the bones, Eddy felt his desire for Haggis Sardonicus begin to wilt.

* * *

“Cassandra.”

I’m here, Eddy, she thought, and I will be until you are no more. I’ll watch over you and protect you until that time comes. Until your end.

“I didn’t hear you come in.”

She wanted to laugh. The dead are nothing if not stealthy. Poor, sweet, demented Eddy. Taking life with no remorse, fashioning a private world of insanity and nightmare that even now threatened to crush him. Such a poor, pitiable, deranged little thing.

“I’m glad you’ve come,” he said. “I feel … safe when you’re here. I suppose that sounds ridiculous coming from someone like me.” He was standing before an oval mirror leaning in the corner. He fingered its surface.

“Of course not. Our histories are knotted together.”

“They are, aren’t they?”

You have no idea, she thought, sitting by him on the sofa. “Where’s Spider?”

“In his hole.”

“Poor thing.”

“You pity that?”

“Yes.” I pity him no less than I pity you and your twisted ambitions, she wanted to tell him.
But I won’t stand in the way. The place you’re going is where you belong, God help you.

“He’s one of your own, I suppose.”

“In a way.”

“Where have you been?”

“Here and there. Miss me?”

“Always.”

“Tell me what happens now, Eddy.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

He grinned. “The Sisters came tonight. We go soon.”

“And it’s what you want?”

“Of course it is,” he snapped. “What else is there for me? I’ve worked too hard and too long to accept anything else. It’s my destiny.”

“I suppose it is.”

“I have no choice now. If I stay, what kind of life will I have? They’ll hunt me down and stick me in some hospital.”

“There’s always death.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you’re dead, they couldn’t follow.”

“Kill myself?”

“Why not? Death sets one free.”

“I couldn’t kill myself.”

“I could do it for you.”

“Murder me?”

She laughed. “Don’t be so dramatic. Death is death, regardless of how you obtain it. I’ll do for you what you did for me.”

“No.”

“Are you afraid?”

“No.”

“Yes, I think you are. Don’t be. I’ve been there. I can show you the way.”

“It’s out of the question.”

Too bad, she thought. Death frees the mind and body of all its illnesses. “It’s up to you.”

“The Territories. That’s where I’m going.”

She smiled, trying to show some enthusiasm for his choice. There was none to be had. Eddy didn’t notice: he was totally consumed by his ambitions. That and madness.

“To my father,” he said.

God help you, she thought.

Dear Eddy,

I think these letters are at an end. This is the final installment. I’ll say what’s left to say and we’ll leave it at that.

After we killed that cop, half of the state was organized against us. I assumed they were, anyway. The only problem with our law enforcement agencies is their lack of organization, their lack of cooperation with one another. Had things been different with them, they would have have pieced together our trail and followed.

Thank God for their ineptitude.

We had places to go.

Do you remember where we went next?

We drove the car down to the end of that dirt road and left on foot. Hand in hand, we set out through the woods together. Through fields and thickets. It was nearly dawn and the rain had subsided.

“Where to?” you asked.

I led on and we bounded up a hill. The grass was yellow and wilted. I turned and kissed you. I saw love in your eyes. You saw it in mine. There was a stone wall and we climbed over it. The air was cool, still. Overhead, the dark sky was heavy with bloated clouds pregnant with rain. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

It was perfect.

A cemetery.

I don’t remember the name of it. I’d been there many times before and still the name eludes me. My family was buried there. In the damp, black earth they were waiting for me. I thought I could almost hear them weeping. I brought you to the back of the cemetery. Where the graves are old, the weeds long, the trees crooked and thick-limbed. You picked up a bouquet of wilted flowers along the way and gave them to me. I loved you so much then it hurt.

I led you to the vault.

It was overgrown with skeletal creepers. We had to hack our way through. The door was open, it was always open. I used to go there to be alone, to think, when I was a girl before the trouble started. It was as I remembered it. Frozen in time.

Our honeymoon cottage.

It was cold inside. A rush of dry, October wind greeted us. Your hand was in mine. My heart belonged to you. There were dead autumn leaves carpeting the floor and they crunched underfoot.

“Here?” you said.

“Yes.”

I started to laugh and I couldn’t seem to stop.

You were trembling.

When you closed the door behind us, it made a scratching sound. Sweet, dread music on this day of days. Tarnished bronze plaques were set into the cracked, mildewed walls. This was our place. There was a rotting bier and you broke it into kindling, lighting a fire with it. Flames licked orange and yellow. Huge, grotesque shadows played over the walls. We made love then amongst the dead and dreaming. There were ancient, mummified flowers and you threw their petals into the air. They drifted lazily down over my shuddering nakedness.