House of Skin (44 page)

Eddy began to tremble, his features contorting and running. He became Cherry, then himself, then Cherry, then himself once again.

This brought fresh applause from his admirers and they danced about him in a circle as his flesh played its mutinous tricks. The Shadows got in on the act, invading the dead women and finding new homes.

“What a spectacle,” Zero tittered. “What an absolute delight.”

He didn’t seem to mind that his son was a shapeshifter. He didn’t seem to mind at all. “Don’t fret, my dear,” he told Cherry, “there’s always room for a lovely creature like you.”

Cherry gave way to Eddy and took a doddering step back. His/her circle of friends let Zero through.

“Time to go, boy. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“Yes …”

Zero grinned. “Excellent, blood of my blood. But you can’t go like this, now can you?” he cackled. “You’ll have to go into the chasm as I did—in pieces.”

Haggis Sardonicus grinned with mirth. “Now comes the time of the rending and the remaking,” she said.

Her sister made a slithering sound of acquiescence.

They set to work on Eddy immediately, peeling his skin free with their fingernails which were like surgical blades. As he screamed, his hide was separated from muscle and connective tissues, organs and bones removed. He was dissected, dismembered, taken carefully apart, what was inside him neatly stacked in orderly piles. But the real horror, the real agony came when his nervous system was plucked free. The Sisters enjoyed this part the most, plucking his nerve endings like the strings of a lyre and picking at his ganglia until they reverberated with a white-hot humming agony as if they’d been scraped with a cello bow.

Though he couldn’t possibly be alive, he shrieked and begged for mercy … even though his lungs and mouth were on opposite side of the room from one another.

“You can go now,” Dr. Blood-and-Bones told Lisa. “There’s nothing more for you here.”

She stood her ground, unable to move or even think of doing so. Like a child with her eye to a keyhole, she could do nothing but watch the carnage taking place before her. The whores Eddy had strung up as offerings were beginning to dance and shudder on their ropes, their fleshless faces attempting grins that were mere muscular contractions. The first fell, then the second. They crawled in Lisa’s direction and she ran, Cassandra coming behind her but most casually.

She made it down to the second floor landing before darkness welled up in her brain and she lost consciousness. She might’ve been out for a minute or a day when she woke and she came to slowly, like a dreamer awakening. Cassandra was stroking her hair.

“It’s over now, Lisa. But you’d better run and fast,” she said.

Lisa scrambled to her feet and made it downstairs.

The house was beginning to come apart completely. Great rents and slits were gashed in its floors and walls, darkness pooling up from them like blood. She made a frantic run into the parlor, but most of it was gone.

Fenn was dead, she kept reminding herself. He’s dead and he wasn’t even himself this whole time no more than Eddy is himself or I’m myself and—

“I told you to leave.”

She turned and Zero was blocking her escape route. He snatched her by the wrist and forced a wormy kiss on her lips. He shoved his book into her hand.

“Take this,” he said. “I don’t need it now. Call me anytime. You know I’ll be home. I’m
always
home.”

Cassandra looked at him and said, “You’re terribly dramatic, aren’t you?”

He laughed. “Would you like to come along, my pet?”

“Not likely.”

He shrugged. “Pity.”

Lisa fought from his grip and they fled through the door and into the night.

“We better get clear,” Cassandra said.

A sudden, horrendous explosion threw them down the steps and onto the sidewalk. The house seemed to fold in on itself, becoming insubstantial and finally vaporizing into a black mist that faded in the wind. Nothing remained but a smoking, blackened area to mark its passing into another world. Lisa thought she heard a peel of laughter from somewhere distant.

But maybe not.

“Let’s go,” Cassandra said. “I haven’t much time.” She led Lisa to her car and gave her a few minutes to collect herself. “Can you drive?”

She nodded. She knew she was in a state somewhere near shock, but it would pass. Cassandra slid a cigarette between her lips and lit it. Lisa took great drags and began to cough. “My God,” she whimpered, “my God.”

When the tears had subsided, she drove them away.

“You know where I have to go, don’t you?” Cassandra asked.

Lisa did. Somehow she knew exactly where she had to go.

“We’ll be a long time in making sense of this,” Cassandra said. “But, time will pass as it always does, and reflection will soothe our souls.”

Lisa looked at her in disbelief.

“It will. In time, even the most horrible of events makes a certain sense.”

“Fenn’s dead. I don’t know how that makes sense.”

“He was tied up in this, too. His identity would’ve surfaced eventually. You didn’t kill him. The knowledge of who and what he really was did. Remember: he was Stadtler. He was a monster like Zero. And now you’ve put your past to rest. In the process you’ve healed a wound in this city that’s been open for far too long.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“I am. In time you’ll really believe that. The guilt will ease.”

Lisa slowed and pulled through the gates of the cemetery. “Good-bye,” she said.

Cassandra got out of the car. “Till we meet again,” she called out as Lisa drove off.

Lisa was alone again.

Just like at the beginning.

She cradled Zero’s book in her arms and went back to the hotel. She’d wanted to write about father and son, but now she had a more important task in life: keeping the book out of the hands of the unwary and driven. Maybe in time it would fall to dust, but until then she was its guardian. She had only tears now and black memories that would haunt her to the grave. She was alive and that was something. The whimsical turn of the wheel of fortune had spared her. She would watch and wait now, guard against their return. Because they would open the chasm again. It was only a matter of time.

But it wouldn’t be tonight and that was enough for now.

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