The Mammoth Book of Body Horror

by Marie O'Regan

  And: “Oh,” Devize said, behind him, to no one in particular, “that box.”

  This was Freihoeven’s second storage unit, three whole hallways deeper inside the facility than their first. Though Sy had overseen its rental, it’d been long-distance; before today, he’d never had occasion to step inside its echoing metal shell. Beneath their feet, the concrete floor sent up enough dust to hang visible, stinging in the nose.

  The cabinet was a one-slot variation on the Davenport brothers’ original 1854 model, only slightly less compact than your average Ikea dresser. Dark, burnished wood with plain brass fittings. A small window with a scrim, confessional-style. Inside, Sy assumed, there’d be a coffin-like space for the medium to sit, perhaps even a system of restraining straps – first tied down in public, doors wide, then locked away, with one of the seance-goers being given the key.

  He walked around it, feeling for joins, and found none. Which didn’t prove anything, necessarily . . . but des Esseintes had had a good reputation, as he recalled, given the hotbed of fakery most 1800s Spiritualism grew out of. Like Devize, she’d worked under the care of her mother, whose chaperone-like presence served to fend off fetishists – until her demise, upon which des Esseintes’ main patron became her husband, forcing her to retire. A year later des Esseintes was also dead, predictably, in childbirth.

  As he rounded the cabinet’s left wing, a dry kissing noise and flashbulb-pop made Sy start. Once again, he found Devize so close he almost collided with her. “Wouldn’t’ve thought they’d let him have this, after what happened,” she remarked, shaking her first shot out and squinting at the result. “But then again, I guess that’s what the acquisitions budget’s for.”

  “People were pretty generous this year, at the fundraiser.”

  “I can see that. Sorry I had to miss it.”

  “We, uh, missed you, obviously. But—”

  “Oh, I’m sure the demo went off like a charm; Abbott’s building a nice little roster of alternates. I vetted most of them. Who was it – Jodice Glouwer, Suzy Shang? Janis Mol?”

  “Miss Glouwer’s hard to reach, these days.”

  “Janis, then – that’s good. She needs the work.”

  Two more shots in quick succession, seemingly intentionally angled to give Sy a headache. He moved off, looked away, studying the wall; she brushed past, still clicking and shaking. A fistful of slimy-faced, sharp-smelling squares already fanned out between her fingers, like cards from some weird deck. Indicating them, he asked, “Anything interesting?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet.” Another shot. “‘The Thanatoscopeon’, that’s what she called it; called herself a ‘thanatoscope’, and mediumship as a concept ‘thanatoscopry’. Loved to concoct those pseudo-Greek words, back when.” And one more, for an even eight. “Kate-Mary was one of the first Ontario mediums to allow photography at her meetings.”

  Sy nodded. “I catalogued a bunch of reproductions, like thirty different variants. Those plates done in Peterborough, where she’s making hands out of ectoplasm . . .”

  “I saw that – Gala had copies of the whole trading pack, used them as teaching aids. Creepy.”

  “Because she was making ectoplasmic hands?”

  “Because those hands were feeling her up, in public, and somebody else was making a plate of it. Think about how long that would take.”

  Sy tried not to, and immediately found himself thinking of the fact that he’d already seen Devize in much the same position, instead: spinning what looked like wads of dirty string from nose, mouth, ears and eyes, her head thrown back, hair lifting slightly on some invisible current. Remembering it with her in proximity was weirdly embarrassing, as though he’d seen her naked – not least because he sort of had, considering how sheer those lab-conditions leotards tended to be, and the fact that you couldn’t let subjects wear underwear, for fear they’d try to pack quick-set packages of glue, wax or paraffin in their bras.

  “Ektos, ‘outside’, plus plasma, ‘something formed or molded’,” Devize said, squinting down at the Polaroids. “People used to think it came from the spirit world, but it’s all just made out of whatever’s handy – bits and pieces of the medium herself. Almost always herself. Water, dander, skin cells, fat . . . the stuff you don’t want, mainly, which makes it easier to let it go. There’s a reason the Freihoeven’s main stock-in-trade tends to be a rotating list of little girls with eating disorders.”

  As with so much she said, Sy didn’t know how to answer that, or if it really required answering. So he kept quiet, and waited.

  “She was legendary, Kate-Mary. Every other aspiring medium’s pin-up. My dad’s great-grandmother . . .” Devize shook her head wonderingly. “If Spiritualists had groupies, she’d’ve been following Kate-Mary round the country, trying to plaster-cast her soul; that’s what Gala says.” Then added, slightly softer, correcting herself, “Said.”

  Well, yeah.

  Sy’d placed the obituary himself, at Abbott’s instigation: Geillis Carraclough Devize, 1944–2007, in her home, after a long illness. He wasn’t sure whether the illness in question was supposed to be alcoholism, agoraphobia or hoarding, though granted, it could’ve been a Venn Diagram convergence of the three. All he knew was that his brief visit to Gala Devize’s erstwhile home to pick up “fresh” clothes for her momentarily dazed daughter had been both frustrating and disgusting. The minute she’d checked herself back into the Clarke, Abbott had called in a cleaning service and 1-866-GOT-JUNK?; Sy could only hope she wouldn’t be too wrenched when she finally went “home” to discover all the moldy, staple-gunned velvet had been removed from the bathroom walls, the food-encrusted plates from every kitchen surface (including the tops of cabinets), and the teetering six-foot stacks of newspapers from the living room, where they’d created a maze whose narrow passages were prone to sudden collapse.

  I’m sorry, were you saving that crushed-flat mummified cat for later? Because – we really did have to get rid of it, even though it didn’t smell anymore. Not like the year-old litter-tray, weirdly enough . . .

  Then again, maybe she wouldn’t even notice. She had other things on her mind, after all.

  Oh, but: Let’s not talk about me, Mr Horse-Kicker—

  (stop thinking about her, idiot)

  (stop acting like she can’t HEAR you, when you do)

  That scratch at the mind’s eye again, that cornea-scarring rub. Though he didn’t want to look her way long enough to confirm this, he suspected she might actually be smiling.

  “What do you know about spirit guides?” she asked him, out loud.

  Okay, technical terms: Sy could do that. “Not much. Uh – des Esseintes had one, called it ‘Semblance’.” He used the French pronunciation. “‘My other self’.”

  “Yes, and that’s telling, isn’t it? Non-Spiritualists always think these guides are things from the outside that attach themselves to the medium, parasite-style: surviving intelligences, Seekers from Beyond, demons. And I’m not saying that doesn’t happen, but . . . there’s other stuff. Things you can stumble into doing by accident, ’specially if you’re not well trained.”

  “Which she wasn’t?”

  “Early days, so – not really, no. Nobody was. Most people just heard about the Fox Sisters, thought, Hey, that sounds cool, and made it up as they went along.” She held one of the Polaroids up to the light, squinting again. “Don’t suppose Abbott told you the rest of the story, though, about this thing.”

  “Lardner and Honeycutt?” “Crime scene”, riiight. He shook his head, embarrassed.

  “Mmm.” Those vague eyes switched back to him, suddenly shrewd. “How old are you, again? Well, okay: maybe you weren’t paying attention to local news; I’m sure Abbott keeps you busy. Or maybe Abbott just didn’t tell you because he likes to play it that way – to make only one person the control in any given situation.” She paused, took yet another picture, the Polaroid’s wheeze a short, sharp sigh. “But then again, you probably knew that already
. You don’t seem stupid.”

  “. . . Thanks.”

  “So, anyhow. Melinda Lardner and Guy Honeycutt were married, blended family. She had a daughter from a previous marriage, Loewen, people called her Lo. Fourteen when they bought the Thanatoscopeon. Guy was in antiques, brokered sales under the counter, so I think the idea was to pony up and pass it on, but they got stiffed and it went in the garage, along with a bunch of other ‘sure sell’ items. Melinda and Guy weren’t getting along too well by that point – she was back in school doing law, plus one of her professors. Also, Guy liked coke. Lo spent a lot of time looking for somewhere quiet, and her primary hiding-place was—” she nodded boxwards “—that.”

  “I wouldn’t think it’d be too—”

  “Oh, it’s uncomfortable as all hell, but it does lock from the inside. And it’s dark. And there’s other benefits, too, if you’re in serious need of a friend.”

  “. . . Kate-Mary’s guide?”

  “I think that’s what it thinks it is, yes.”

  Ghost stories told without any visible proof in a series of almost-empty rooms; that was all his career boiled down to, really. The vocabulary alone was ridiculous. But . . . looking at her, then back at the cabinet’s dark expanse, both their reflections crawling deformed and luminous-numinous across it, like orbs . . .

  “Okay,” he said, carefully. “So – what is it really?”

  The hint of a smile became something more, almost gleeful. “So glad you asked.”

  Glenda Fisk had told her it was something all mediums did, and she had no reason to doubt that. A mnemonic device, Miss Devize, that’s all – just far more palpable. You take a splinter of your own core, your innate substance, and split it off, the same way you use your own detritus to render the spirit flesh; deeper, of course, though. And thus, far more lasting.

  “You use it to get over that conceptual hump,” Devize said flatly. “To convince yourself you actually can do what you’re already afraid you can. Glenda helped me with mine, that first night in the Folly – budded it off me like an amoeba, whole and entire. It didn’t even hurt, and it was . . .”

  Amazing. A miracle, pitch-black and shiny as Labrea pit-tar.

  “So it’s a doppelganger?” Sy asked.

  She shook her head. “More like a fetch, I guess. What the witch sends out to do her will? A tool, perfect for companionship, for utility; something that loves you and wants what you want, because that’s all it’s ever known. People see it here and there, think it’s you, and in a way – it sort of is. Thinks it is, like I said.”

  “But . . . it’s not.”

  “Not even close.”

  She looked back down, that same weird smile playing around her lips, stretching them even wider, till a narrow rim of teeth began to show. And slowly, so slowly he barely knew when it had happened, Sy realized that crawly feeling at the back of his neck was less the standard oh-crap-she’s-listening-in than a genuine coolish dew, the sweat-sting of inescapable understanding: Something has changed, and not for the better. But—

  —is she . . . unlikely as it seems, could she really be . . .

  (happy about all this?)

  (whatever all this was)

  “So, yeah,” Devize went on, as though neither of them had noticed, “Glenda and I had a whole lot of fun with our respective shadow-selves for a day or two, doing the things skinny little ghost-whisperer girls do. But then . . . the house kicked in, and it ate them alive, like everything else. Everybody. And afterwards, I just never bothered doing it again.”

  Never had to, really. No shortage of real ghosts vying for the position.

  “We only have one trick, when you boil it all down,” she said, as if to herself. “It’s a doozy, though: just open up and invite things in, and half the time, we don’t even ask for names beforehand. Which does tend to make it pretty hard to get them out again, afterwards . . .”

  An image growing at the corner of his eye – tumoresque, neoplastic – before wiping itself away, an unset photo-image: Carra Devize done inside-out and backwards, a reflection in black marble, grey-skinned with long black hair and cold white eyes. Blank eyes, their sclerae static-touched, whose flickery pupils shone whiter than teeth.

  Sy made a painful noise at this fresh intrusion, an aural wince, and was surprised – yet again – when Devize grimaced back, as though in sympathy. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m projecting, aren’t I?”

  “. . . maybe a little.”

  “Okay, well. Let’s move things on a bit.”

  She stepped forward, past him, and snapped the cabinet open.

  Inside, as out, Kate-Mary des Esseintes’ Thanatoscopeon was dark indeed; darker by far than the single light-source merited, a concentrated snarl of nothing much cooked to sludge from years on years of waiting followed by the briefest possible burst of hunger slaked, loneliness assuaged. Devize – Carra – thrust both hands inside, up to the bandaged wrists, and didn’t even flinch as words the colour of haematomas came crawling up her arms, her cleavage and neck, to bruise her very face like slaps: NO, NOT THIS NOT FOR YOU, NEVER YOU, KEEP OUT KEEP OUT KEEP OUT.

  “Poor Lo Lardner,” she said, ignoring the unseen hecklers doodling on her flesh, each scratch a rotten fruit chucked straight from the choir invisible’s peanut gallery. “Melinda’d been down the anorexia path herself, so she thought she knew what was best; Guy went along to get along, why not? Didn’t cost him anything but money. And the clinic, they were all good people, but – how could they possibly know the truth? That half her bodyweight, more than half, kept being sucked out every night, siphoned off to make fake flesh for something she didn’t know enough to say, ‘No,’ to?”

  A full red hand-print, palm plus five fingers, rocked her jaw to the left, then the right. But Carra kept on talking.

  “Oh, it told her it loved her, and she liked that, because nobody else did it much anymore . . . told her it would punish her parents for their neglect, that all she had to do was break out and run home, and they’d always be together. And, hell, maybe it wasn’t even a lie, because that’s where the cops found her, sure enough: inside this thing, all curled up with her arms round herself like she was giving herself a hug, shrunk down to the size of an Inca mummy. All desiccated.”

  The slaps looked more like punches now, and Sy felt himself jolt with each impact, braced to – what? Jump to her aid, throw a few jabs himself? Like he’d be really able to do anything to – whatever-it-was—

  (You could try, Goddamnit, considering. At the very least.)

  But: in the same instant the thought formed, Carra was already glancing back, one blackening eye crinkled, odd half-smile a genuine grin. “Oh, Sy,” she said, her tinny head-cold voice gone suddenly lush with deep, true warmth. “That’s really nice.”

  Not necessary, though.

  “And, yes, I am happy, for once. Because usually I can’t do a damn thing but say ‘Yup, haunted!’, no matter how much power I supposedly have – how high I measure on Abbott’s stupid scales. But this . . . I can do something about this. This, I can handle.”

  (That’s why it’s afraid of me.)

  The box was vibrating now, base thrumming on the locker’s concrete floor, kicking spume. Its scrim ruffled back and forth like a rattler’s tail, doors straining to slam, an eight-foot, velvet-lined mahogany pitcher plant. Yet—

  “No,” she told it, “of course you don’t want someone like me, somebody who actually knows what they’re doing. But that’s okay.” Voice dropping further, breathy-rough, almost verging into a growl, to add: “I don’t much want you, either.”

  Later, examining her dropped fan of Polaroids – slick and stinking, their negative-on-positive images degrading even as he watched, cured in a strange mixture of developing agent and ectoplasm – Sy would finally see what she probably saw, at that moment: what she’d been looking at all along, with it very much looking back. A face like a mask, whose underside could be glimpsed through the empty sockets of its eyes, peering from benea
th the cabinet’s glossy skin, like some albino goldfish studying passers-by through its aquarium walls. In the final one, taken from a particularly vertiginous angle, Carra had managed to catch her own reflection – the thing, spore or seed of Kate-Mary’s experiment, with its head fake-lovingly bent to hers, mask-wings twined in her mass of colourless hair, trying desperately to whisper in her ear.

  To convince her, perhaps: I am not so bad, after all; mistakes were made, but even so, I deserve to exist, surely. I could change. Lost and lonely, left behind – how can I be blamed? I am . . . just like you.

  “Oh, Semblance,” she told it, shaking her head. “But there’s nothing for you here, is there? Not now they’re both dead. And you—”

  You need to be gone.

  Both hands in the box, sunk deep and shaking, some vile current coursing through her like a grand mal seizure; Sy saw Carra fold back and stepped in to catch her, instinctively. Braced himself against any sort of spillage, inadvertent or otherwise. But all he felt was bony flesh muffled under multiple layers, the sadly light weight of a woman whose substance was gnawed at by every passing phantom, someone probably usually too distracted to eat much even under normal circumstances, unless reminded. One good thing about the Clarke, he supposed; they sort of had an investment in keeping residents alive, even if it meant the occasional bout of tubal feedings. Skinny little girls with eating disorders, and the invisible friends who love them . . .

  “What can I do?” he asked out loud, no longer worrying about sounding – let alone feeling – stupid. Only to watch Carra shudder on, head jerking slightly, eyes ticcing upturned beneath their lids in a REM-state frenzy until more words came crawling up past her cuffs: different font this time, different script. An almost Palmer-method scrawl, thankfully easy to read, that answered—

  NOTHING THANK YOU SORRY JUST LET IT PASS.

  THANKS FOR ASKING.