Flesh Gothic by Edward Lee

by Edward Lee

  But something seemed odd..

  The painting didn't move, as any painting would if hung in the traditional fashion: string and a nail in the wall.

  He pressed the corner of the frame. When he tried to lift the painting off the wall, it didn't budge at all at first. He exerted more strength, felt it give, then pulled harder, and it began more or less to slide away from the wall. Somebody mounted this with pegs, he saw when he looked behind the picture's frame. And he saw something else, too. What the hell is that?

  A few more tugs backward, and the painting came away from the wall, to reveal-

  Another painting in a frame.

  It was set back several inches into the wall, obviously via some custom woodworking. Westmore tilted the desk lamp to shine directly into the large, square indentation, then saw that what hung there wasn't a painting but another engraving that, if anything, looked older than the other one. Its frame was actually box-cased and covered in Plexiglas.

  Westmore examined the work. Instead of a decidedly old St. John wielding a stylus pen, the subject of this engraving was another engraver, younger with short, curly hair, a largish nose, eyes intently slit as he manipulated the burin of an engraving plate: the likeness of a monstrous face. West more noticed the autograph. Albrecht-Same as the other one-and the date: 1599.

  Words in German this time traced along the bottom. Westmore didn't know any German, but a convenient plate translated: MY SELF AS I DARE TO REFASHION THE COUNTENANCE OF MY VISION: BELARIUS.

  So Albrecht engraved his own self-portrait, Westmore thought. And Belarius? He squinted further. That ugly-as-shit face that he's engraving. A picture in a picture.

  And all meaningless to him. He could only presume that Hildreth had hidden the engraving because it was valuable, but why hide the painting of the brunette? Thus far, she was the best thing he had to go on, even though he believed that she wasn't Hildreth's daughter.

  So who was she?

  "It's a start," he mumbled, not altogether unhappy with the day's discoveries.

  Then: I u ender ...

  Excitement gripped his heart when he pulled on the engraving and felt it give in stops just as the painting had. But when he lifted it away-

  "Oh, Christ. Not more DVD's!"

  Another short stack of discs sat in the compartment which existed behind the engraving. Westmore groaned and withdrew them, then noticed something else.

  A seam in the black-velvet backboard, as well as a tiny silk ribbon whose purpose was instantly recognized.

  They're doors .. .

  He pulled the ribbon and the black board separated, rC- vealing a wall-safe of serious quality. A picture in a picture ... and a big-ass safe in a fuckin' call.

  Brushed stainless steel gleamed back at him. From the center protruded a brass combination knob sided by a steel latch-handle. Perhaps it was the most basic human impulse but Westmore instantly burned to know what was inside, imagining gems and stacks of cash.

  But what else might be in there?

  Now all I need is the combination ...

  "I'm hot aware of any safes," Vivica Hildreth was telling him a minute later over her cell phone.

  "It's hidden behind a painting and an engraving, up in his office on the third floor," Westmore clarified. "You're sure you've never seen it?"

  "I've never been in the mansion, Mr. Westmore, which I told you when we met."

  "Oh, yeah, that's right. But did he ever mention a safe?"

  "No."

  "Well, I'd really like to know what's in that safe, and I'm sure you do too. Would Mack know the combination?"

  "He must not know about the safe, either, and I'm sure that Karen doesn't. They would've mentioned it."

  Skit ...

  Vivica didn't seem like the excitable type, but the long pause over the line verified her concern.

  "I'll ask Mack."

  Now her voice flirted with anger. "Ask Mack and Karen."

  "But you just said they didn't know-"

  "I don't care what I said. Ask them, and if they don't know the combination, break into it."

  Westmore stifled a laugh, eyeing the safe. "You don't understand, this isn't a piggy bank. This is a serious safe. I'd have to-"

  "Do anything necessary to get that safe open. I authorize any expense. Tell Mack. And tell Mack to call me; he's supposed to call me several times a day."

  "I'll tell him. He was just here." Westmore was going to mention the ten grand but instantly nullified the idea. Let's wait and see, instead. See how long it takes him to tell her about it. Did he think Mack would keep quiet and pocket the money? It seemed the fastest way to gauge his character, especially given Vivica's sudden outpouring of neglect. "I'll find him right now."

  "You do that. You tell that cocky punk to take his hand out of his pants long enough to do his job."

  Ooo-eee, is she pissed! "Yes, ma'am."

  Another hissing pause. "I want to know what's in that goddamn safe, Mr. Westmore. I'm trusting you to find out. "

  "Understood."

  click

  What a sane that wns ... Then he groaned; he'd forgotten to ask her if she knew anything about the brunette in the snapshot, and given her mood, he wasn't about to call her back now

  Instead, he hailed Mack on the videocom, found him in the South Atrium. "Hey, Mack. You know the combination to Hildreth's safe?"

  "There is no safe."

  "I'm standing here looking at it."

  "In the office?"

  "That's right."

  "I never knew he had a safe. Kind of ticks me off. I thought he trusted me."

  ..All that aside, there's a safe, and Vivica wants it open."

  "You told her about it?"

  Westmore smirked. "Of course. And she wants it open, any expense, she said. She also wants you to call her."

  "Shit. Was she pissed?"

  "I'd say that's an accurate description."

  "Shit. Okay, okay, take care of the safe."

  "How?"

  "Call a locksmith, and I'll take care of her."

  "Okay. Oh, and could you ask Karen if she knows about the safe?"

  But Mack had already hung up.

  "Ask Karen about what safe?"

  Westmore spun, startled. "Don't sneak up on me like that."

  "Why?" Karen asked in the doorway. "Nervous? Squeamish?"

  "In a mansion where over a dozen people were butchered only a few weeks ago? Yeah, maybe just a tad."

  "I didn't know Hildreth had a safe in here," she stated and drifted in, still wearing the tight leather jeans. The image of her figure sculpted by the jeans and gray tube-top distracted Westmore nearly to the point of annoyance. She had a drink in her hand, twirling the ice. She was looking at the safe.

  "Who's that girl?" he asked, and stuck a finger at the painting.

  "I don't know," but she didn't seem to look very hard.

  "How about this girl?" He showed her the snapshot.

  "It's the same girl," she noticed. "I've never met her." She kept peering at the safe. "That pisses me off he didn't tell me about the safe."

  "Mack said the same thing. Maybe you guys weren't as 'in' as you thought."

  "I never thought I was in," she said, as if the remark insulted her. "It's a good thing you don't drink. You should see the liquor bar downstairs." She held her glass up. "This is twenty-four-year-old Glenlivit."

  Westmore ground his teeth. Thanks a lot, God ...

  Karen picked it up at once: "So this painting was behind the cabinet, then you moved the cabinet away?"

  "Yeah."

  "And she's pointing to-" She turned. "St. Johnnie writing the Book of Revelation. That would be too easy, wouldn't it?"

  Westmore just got the gist and felt immediately stupid. He rushed over, grabbed the safe's knob.

  Karen watched, bemused, reciting, "'And the Kings of the earth drank the wine of her wrath and her fornication-"'

  "What?"

  "Just dial the number."

&nbs
p; He dialed in 6-6-6 on the combination.

  Nothing.

  Then 13-18, and variations of those numerals.

  Nothing. "You're right, that is too easy." Next he called the nearest locksmith in the phonebook, noticed Karen dully examining the second engraving, the self-portrait.

  "Is it wired?" a rocky-voiced man on the line asked.

  "I ... don't know"

  "Any lights on it?"

  "No."

  "Does it have a keypunch or any kind of buttons on the door?"

  " Nope.

  "Then it ain't wired, and if it ain't wired, we can open I'll be there in the morning."

  Westmore frowned. "How about tonight? Your ad says twenty-four-hour service."

  "Extra charge for that."

  "We'll pay. I need it opened as soon as possible."

  "Okay. I'll have one of my people stop by, say ten p.m.?"

  "Perfect! Thank you."

  "What's this?" She'd picked up the engraving.

  "That was behind the painting of the girl. Kooky, huh?"

  "There's always been a lot of kookiness in this house." She sat up on the desk, thighs parted. "Looks like we're getting a fair dose today."

  "What? The safe?"

  "No, I mean downstairs. They were getting on my nerves so I split, started looking around for you." She finished the scotch, then leaned back on her hands. The pose was nearly lewd, and Westmore guessed she was doing it on purpose, to rile him up.

  He looked away, flipping through the stack of DVD's. "Something happened downstairs?"

  "You might say that. Willis saw something on the second floor and about keeled over-"

  "He did keel over, and he threw up. In one of the parlors. I helped him up."

  Now she was wagging her feet back and forth, as a toddler might, sitting on a ledge. "That's the thing about him that bothers me. I think he's for real."

  "What about the others?"

  "I don't know. I've read about the geeky chick. And there's something about her that seems genuine."

  "Maybe she's just a genuine drug addict."

  "Maybe. And Cathleen got raped."

  Westmore dropped the stack. "WHAT?"

  "Says she was touched sexually by a 'subcarnated spiritual agency' which I guess means a ghost."

  "For God's sake .. " Westmore lit another cigarette, lusting more after Karen's empty scotch glass than her parted legs. "You think she's a genuine psychic?"

  "I doubt it. She seems like a phony, but-Christ-what a body. Makes me jealous ... like Vivica. Some things just aren't fair." Now she lay back flat on the desk, sighing. "And don't worry, I'm not coming on to you by lying down like this. I'm just ... really tired."

  "I understand."

  "And you're the only person in this kook-house I feel comfortable around."

  I guess that's a compliment. Westmore did what he always did when he was uncomfortable. He changed the subject. "And Nyvysk? Real or phony?"

  She shrugged, flat on her back and eyes closed. "Nyvysk doesn't claim to be psychic. He just does tech stuff. And exorcisms."

  "You're pulling my leg."

  "Wish I was. We hired a research consultant to background all of these people before Vivica hired them. I got to sneak a peek at the bios. Nyvysk is an ex-priest who did exorcisms for over twenty years. He went all over the world."

  "Ex-priest? Why the ex?"

  "Sex stuff. A lot of sex stuff with all of them. I'm sure you'll get all of their full stories soon."

  Westmore was dumbfounded. Sac stuff ... He didn't even want to know Then he looked glumly at the DVD's that awaited his attention. Sex DVD's. Hours and hours of it.

  "It's almost time for dinner," Karen said, rousing herself from the desk. "Let's go downstairs and see if the freakshow has calmed down.'

  Westmore followed her out, his puzzlement churning. As they moved down the dark hall, it seemed that the faces in the oil portraits and statues were different from earlier, but he knew this was just imagination.

  "I guess Nyvysk already went downstairs," Karen said, and pointed to the door of the communications room. It stood closed.

  "No," Westmore said, stopping mid-stride. "I hear him talking in there." He stood at the door, and very faintly could hear voices.

  "Quit eavesdropping, and let's go," Karen urged. She grabbed his arm and pulled him away. "I'm starving!"

  But as Westmore was tugged toward the stairs, he thought, I wonder who he's talking to, because he was sure he heard more than one voice in the room.

  Chapter Seven

  I

  Nyvysk felt no shock, no overt impact, just something subdy awful deeper in his heart. He had eight V/A digital recorders running through the intercom microphones in random rooms, which he chose only for their likelihood that the other members of the group wouldn't enter, mostly rooms on the fifth story. EVP was always a reliable gauge, and the easiest to implement, even though the exact science was confusing as many different aspects of electronic-voice phenomena existed. Many's the time he'd sat in rooms himself with recorders running, often for hours, and heard absolutely nothing. Later, he'd play the tapes back through sequential equalizers and hear an array of voices. Who knew why? It simply worked.

  And it was working now.

  And he recognized one of the voices.

  Positive meter-spikes had alerted him for EVP in three rooms: the Chapel, a bedroom suite, and Hildreth's so-called Scarlet Room.

  On the Chapel disc, he heard this:

  "Yes. Oh, yes." A male voice.

  Then a female voice, very distant. "Look at them fuck. Let's do that."

  The male voice: "No, I mostly just love the blood. I like to see it..."

  Next, the bedroom, a bending, warbling utterance of varying sonic densities, what sounded like a woman: "Oh my God, stick it in, stick the k n i f e a l l the w a y in ... "

  Certainly these recordings could be a trick. No one had been in the rooms during the times the voices had registered; he knew this because he had the room cameras on the display monitors, but he supposed someone could easily be hiding in the rooms, out of the cameras' view. Or hidden speakers could be playing the prerecorded voice back. It would appear authentic but still-a trick. Nyvysk, however, doubted that this was the case here. He could feel it.

  The third monitor spike had occurred in the Scarlet Room.

  "Alexander," the wan voice slipped through. A Middleeastern accent. "Are you ... there?"

  Nyvysk sat motionless. Listened.

  "I know you're there. Someone told me."

  The voice was male yet gentle, even impassioned. It sounded lost but somehow hopeful.

  "I know you remember me, and I remember you. I remember the look in your eyes ... on that day."

  Nyvysk's sensibilities struggled with logic and the simple responsibility of his job. Still, his illogic forced him to ask, What ... day?

  "I could see your love. I wished you'd come with me-I know you wanted to. If you had, I'd still be alive. I went home through an alley by the street market, and got murdered by thieves. But we did well that day, didn't we, Alexander?"

  A roll of dead air. Nyvysk could hear himself blink.

  "Alexander? Didn't we?"

  Dread crept up his skin, while his eyes welled with tears.

  "We cured her, Alexander. The woman speaking the devil's words in Zraetic. That day so long ago, in Nineveh."

  Nyvysk knew who it was, even before those details. The boy named Saeed, who'd exorcized a possessed woman near the ancient Library of Ashurbanipal.

  The boy he'd fallen in love with, and had thought about every day for nearly the last twenty years.

  Nyvysk left the recorders on and left the mom.

  II

  "So where is everybody?" Westmore asked.

  Karen glanced about the sumptuous kitchen. "Yeah, and where's dinner?"

  Westmore was relieved by one thing: the kitchen was the only area of the house that did not conform to the rest of the mansion's ubiqui
tous Gothic motif. It more resembled a kitchen in a high-end restaurant, with multiple ranges, ovens, roasters, and a large reverse-air grill. The pantry was as large as a two-car garage, and there was a walk-in refrigerator and freezer.

  But where was everyone? The dining room was empty and so was the atrium.

  "Did everybody leave?" Karen asked.

  Just as Westmore would start calling for people on the videocom, the kitchen doors pushed open. It was Mack, looking a bit harried.

  "What's wrong?" Westmore asked.

  "Nothing, really. Minor crisis with the rest of the crew."

  "Where are they?" Karen asked.

  "In the library, kind of having a pow-wow"

  This didn't sound right to Westmore. "Did something happen? It sure as hell sounds like it."

  "I'm not sure," Mack said.

  "And what about dinner?" Karen complained, starting another drink.

  "Well, we were kind of hoping you guys could cook dinner. We'll be about an hour."

  Karen groaned.

  I can't cook for dick, Westmore thought. But- "We'll whip something up. And then you're going to tell me what's going on, right?"

  "Sure, when I find out myself." Mack was rushing back out. "Oh, oh, there's New Zealand lobster tails in the freezer," and then he was gone.

  "I don't know how to cook lobster tails, but I guess I'm about to find out," Westmore said.

  "You're supposed to be Vivica's chronicler. It almost sounds like they don't want you to know what's going on. Shouldn't you be in there, too?"

  "Yeah, but I've got a better idea; discretion might have some advantages, especially with this crowd. I don't know what to make of anybody yet." The library, Westmore thought. He punched up the floor index on the videocom, then hit the right wing and room button. Voices etched through the speaker.

  "The psychometry of the room was dizzying," Willis' voice asserted. "It was like my psyche was seized by the revenant-environment."