Flesh Gothic by Edward Lee

by Edward Lee

  "Ghosts," Westmore said. "Leftover spirits of dead people."

  "Exactly. That's what we're looking at now"

  Westmore looked more closely at the screen. "It's just black. Nothing there."

  11 "Wait ...

  Westmore kept looking and eventually wisps of something luminous, like dandelion-yellow glitter, moved across the screen. "So you're telling me that that-"

  "-is a revenant. A ghost."

  Westmore frowned. "What if a live human being walked into the room?"

  "Then you'd see a similar effect."

  "All right. How do you know that's not Cathleen or somebody?"

  "Look."

  Westmore's eyes widened. Now the black screen was full of the luminous wisps. That's a lot of ... something all of a sudden.

  "Here's the room in normal light, from a patch through the video camera" Nyvysk flicked a switch, and the room stood devoid of any persons.

  It was the Scarlet Room.

  When Nyvysk put the black screen back on, more ion activity could be seen, off and on.

  Then it all dissipated back to total blackness.

  "I've recorded some interesting ion signatures in there today, but actually nothing spectacular. Perhaps later tonight, the activity will become more frenetic."

  "Oh, sure, it's interesting," Westmore agreed. "But any skeptic could look at that and say it could easily be fake. It could be manufactured with a simple digital editor on a computer." Westmore smiled. "Just like crop circles and pictures of fairies and paper plates for UFO's. They would think that you manufactured it. Same thing with the EVP's."

  "Of course they would, and of course I could easily do something like that," Nyvysk admitted. "But I didn't. I'm not looking for credibility. I'd like nothing more for this house ... to just be a house."

  Now Nyvysk smiled. "I've seen a lot worse."

  "Proof of demons?"

  "Oh, yes. In Toledo, I helped a monsignor exorcize a ninety-year-old woman and transpose a demon named Zezphon into the body of a mule. The mule lost all its hair at once, turned dark-red, and ran mad through the town square, excreting all of its internal organs through its anus."

  Charming, Westmore thought.

  "This is an active-element infrared thermograph," Nyvysk said next. He clicked something on the computer and suddenly Westmore was looking at a murky-green screen. Nyvysk went on: "A human being entering this room would generate an orange outline." Then he hit the intercom switch and said, "Okay, Karen. Go on in."

  On the screen, a fluctuating orange shape, in a human outline, flittered across.

  "That's Karen in the room?" Westmore asked.

  "Yes. It's the Jean Brohou Parlor."

  Where the hookers were killed, Westmore remembered. Hung upside-down. Beheaded over buckets.

  "The infrared element picks up confined heat signatures," the older man was saying. "But what would the presence of a discorporate entity register?"

  "I don't know"

  Another click, and the screen reversed. Karen disappeared, but now Westmore could see gray-blue shapes-on the floor. They were moving.

  "Humans give off heat from their bodies. Spirits are the opposite. They're cold. Those shapes are-"

  "Ghosts on the floor," Westmore said.

  "If you will."

  Westmore watched in a macabre captivation. Eventually two of the gray shapes rose-human shapes-dragging two other shapes off the floor and suspending them upside down. The motions which followed were obvious: the two standing outlines slowly cut off the heads of the hanging figures. Blue blobs-the heads-were cast aside.

  "Think there are real people in there play-acting?" Nyvysk clicked back to the green screen, showing Karen's outline standing there. Then he cut the IR system, reverting back to the normal video camera. A very normal Karen stood there plainly. No one else was in the ornate parlor with her. She seemed bored, so she walked to the bar and poured herself a drink.

  That's definitely not a ghost, Westmore concluded.

  "Let me show you something else. We have many tools, as I explained the other day. Manometers and aneroid barometers measure divergences in air pressure, slidetomographs can sometimes detect incipient presences in walls, cement foundations, etc., resonance imagers similar to those used by clinicians can even detect revenant presences in living beings, as in possession, hygrometers measure variations in humidity. But the quickest and most effective way to tell if a house is charged? A simple thermometer."

  "What?" Westmore said dumbly. "How do you take a ghost's temperature?"

  "Not the ghost, the room that the ghost is in. I don't like the term `ghosts' but we'll use it for simplicity's sake. Most types of ghosts will lower the temperature of the area of space they occupy, sometimes to an exact configuration of their spirit-body, sometimes just a spot-because they have no bodies. Other ghosts will raise the temperature of that area of space. Psychotic ghosts, in particular. Still oth ers can raise or lower the temperature of that space, often instantly."

  Spirits 101, Westmore thought.

  "Karen?" Nyvysk said back into the intercom. "I'm turning off the active IR. Turn your probe-stick on and just start walking slowly around the room. Up and down motions."

  "Okay." Karen put her drink down and picked up a metal bar with four nodes on it. A handle sprouted from the middle of the bar.

  "That's normal video," Nyvysk said. He pointed to another screen, totally black. "That's the feedback screen for the probe. It's four bimetallic platinum thermometers. The readings are sent down to me with a radio-wave booster.

  Westmore's eyes peeled on the black screen. Suddenly he saw four blue dots that moved forward, to and fro. At one point, Nyvysk said, "Stop, right there," and they saw the dots moving up and down, changing hues. Some glowed minutely red, yellow, or orange for split seconds. "Right there. Up and down, faster."

  "You'd be surprised how often men have said that to me," Karen mouthed over the intercom.

  Westmore kept watching: a kaleidoscope of neon-like streaks, most of which were varying hues of blue.

  "I'm recording this for a collective playback," Nyvysk told him, then back to Karen, "Thank you, Karen. Turn it off and come back down."

  Nyvysk clicked more tabs, but when the footage played back, each sweep of the dots and streaks froze on the screen while further sweeps accumulated as well. Soon, a shape was forming.

  "See?" Nyvysk said. "Now you know the process. Keep watching and eventually an almost solid image will form. I'll be back in a few minutes. Have to make some iced-tea."

  "So this is-"

  "It's a revenant," Nyvysk said without much concern. "A surviving discorporation-the spirit of a dead person."

  Nyvysk walked off.

  Westmore lit a cigarette and kept watching as more of the gleaming image adhered to the screen. Alternately, he clicked around the house through Nyvysk's patches into the mansion's normal video outputs. He saw Mack walking down a hall on the third floor, Willis wearing his perennial gloves as he read through some old tomes in the study Adrianne sprawled on a high poster bed in one of the suites.

  Karen walked in and placed the thermometer bar on the table. "What's that? It looks like a painting with fluorescent finger paint."

  "It's you. Waving that thermometer thing in the parlor."

  "You're ... kidding ... " She leaned over to study the screen. Now the image was much more precise. A tall, lean, and very human figure. "What is that?"

  "I think it's Reginald Hildreth," Westmore said.

  II

  A theta-trance, the "theta" coming from the Greek word for death: thanatos. Such a trance-almost always selfimposed-would allow the spiritual remnants of decedents to share thoughts and visions with a living medium.

  If said medium was good.

  Cathleen was, or at least had been, known as very good, and she knew why. She could tune her sexual aura like a radio wave. That aura functioned as a beacon. Her mind was an antenna to the dead.

  As full
y trance-inductive, Cathleen had an array of options. Each location was different, each surviving circumstance unique. But she didn't have the nerve to go back to the cemetery, especially at night, and the Scarlet Room was simply too scary. Instead, she chose a sitting room on the fifth floor, which was right next to the Scarlet Room and had a stone balcony which faced the graveyard.

  It was close enough.

  There was no bed in the room; it was more of an anteroom for Victorian ladies to freshen up, Cathleen guessed. Beautifully furnished, crocket moldings, hand-carved corner finials, all surrounding an expansive vanity. A long arched-backed day-couch on mahogany scroll feet stretched across the rear window The room was half-paneled, with rosette imprints adorning brandy-colored wallpaper.

  Cathleen dragged the day-couch across the plush carpet, and stopped before the French doors, whereupon she stepped out on the balcony and let the warm night rush into the room.

  Mental priming was always necessary; she had to acquaint herself with her position. The night seemed to hover. She could sense the five stories of height without having to see the ground below; in fact, for a moment before her eyes adjusted, she imagined that there was no ground below. Eventually, she could see the opening in the woods that led to the graveyard, and she thought intensely about what had happened to her there several days ago. A chill of dread shot up her back, but deeper down came a shameful glow of excitement that made her nipples harden to pebbles beneath her tank top.

  Then she simply removed the tank top and cast it aside, as if to offer her breasts to the eyes of the night.

  A warm breeze touched her hair. She looked over her shoulder to gauge the position of the couch, then agreed with herself: If someone--or something-were standing in the clearing tQ the cemetery, they could look up here and see the couch. They could see me ...

  That's what she wanted.

  Only the dimmest lamps lit the room from behind. The day-couch sat in wait for her, for it was on those velvet, buttoned cushions that she would lay when she put herself into theta-sleep.

  But she still wasn't quite ready.

  She went back into the sitting room, stepped out of her jeans and panties, then walked to the bath.

  A spectacular claw-and-ball-footed bathtub sat beneath a curtain ring. The tub itself was made of stainless brass and the tulle curtain glittered from pockets of semi-precious gems. Cathleen turned on the shining faucet and began to fill the tub with cool water. She added High John shreds, jasmine and poppy oil, and lavender extract; she wanted the scent on her clean skin, which was said to arouse male revenants, particularly those guilty of sexual crimes when alive. At the side of the tub she also placed a tiny vial of pulverized pontica stone-a stunning aqua and vermillionwhich she would rub over her skin after the bath. She wasn't sure if this actually enhanced trance-reception, but it was a long accepted practice through the ages, so she always did it just in case.

  The water was lukewarm. Perfect, she thought. She must clean herself first, then go out to the couch and induce the trance. She lowered herself down into the strangely fragrant water and at once felt ... luxuriously lewd. She was already priming herself in her mind, by exciting her body.

  Her eyes closed. The water licked her body from all around. She thought only of dense, pure physical passion, of lust unrepentant and unreserved. Beneath the water her hands stroked upward, over her thighs, over her sex, up her belly, around her breasts. When her fingertips pinched her nipples, she moaned. She pinched and twirled the little nubs of flesh till she squirmed from the delicious discomfort, harder still till she ground her teeth, and her feet churned under the water. The impulse was almost irresistible, then: to bring her hand to her sex and masturbate, to get herself off right now. But she didn't. She wouldn't let herself.

  Her lust was the summons, and she was summoning them right now, or at least she hoped.

  When she couldn't stand it anymore, she stood up in the tub. Her desires agonized her now, but that's how it needed to be. It was time to go to the couch and induce the trance, and when she pulled the ornate shower curtain back-

  Her breath locked in her chest, like a hot stone. She couldn't even scream.

  Three things stood around the tub: gaseous black shadows, like clouds of soot. But they were alive. They had no eyes yet they looked at her just the same, their auras even blacker than their subcorporeal bodies. Cathleen could tell what charged those auras: the most driven, demented lust.

  Discorporates, she realized in her speechless terror. The things from the cemetery ...

  They were on her at once, their pad-like hands felt like globs of hot lard. But when she shoved out at them to push them away, her own hands disappeared into the black fog of their bodies. She was up-ended in a split-second, held upside-down by her ankles, then her head and chest were lowered into the water.

  The fat hands gripped her body as surely as metal clamps; Cathleen couldn't push up, couldn't even flail in defense. Her face pressed helplessly against the bottom of the tub and she could feel one of them taking her from behind. She was methodically penetrated and humped. Her brain began to fizz out, her lungs expanding. When she was about to lose her air and inhale her first breath of water-

  She was yanked out.

  "Let her get a few breaths first," a voice ordered. "Then do it again."

  Cathleen was too panicked to think, just a basic instinct to drag in a lungful of air and close her eyes, as she was plunged back down into the water. Now it was another one of them taking her--they were taking turns, using her body as well as her horror. By the third plunge, she was beginning to simply give up.

  Heartbeats away from dying, she was yanked up again, but this time they didn't re-submerge her. She hacked out splats of water as she was carried aloft out of the bathroom. Her vision was so dimmed by oxygen depletion that she could barely see at all when she opened her eyes. Her drenched body was dropped on the couch before the open French doors.

  One of the things was pointing to her.

  What are they doing? she thought.

  Another had the tiny bottle of pontica dust. It was emptied onto her face and bosom and dropped to the floor.

  Now they were all pointing at her.

  Her heart was still racing, her lungs frantically expanding and contracting, but once some semblance of reason returned to her, she knew what they wanted her to do.

  They WANT me to do it, she realized. They WANT me to induce a trance ...

  Cathleen let herself go lax on the couch, her bare breasts glittering blue and red from the dust.

  She began to put herself into theta-sleep ...

  III

  Cod, I know that what I am is part of You. Rekase me in the midst of this evil place and keep me safe ...

  Adrianne let the Lobtogaine seep into her brain, then her nerves. She'd secured herself in the suite she'd used the other day-the room where she'd been molested while outof-body. The drug's lull took her, a wicked treat like the most selfish sex, then her bare stomach and legs tightened, and her face began to swell and give off heat, and that was when Adrianne slipped out of her prone body ...

  She floated upward, a balloon of consciousness and sight. What she was now-a contained spiritual entity-moved forward with a thought, and she was soaring through the ether of the plane she now existed in. She passed through doors and walls. She didn't even have to first go to the Scarlet Room to get to where she wanted to go. Perhaps she wasn't even going there at all. Perhaps she was being taken.

  The Temple of Flesh, the Chirice Flaesc ...

  This citadel for the thing called Belarius throbbed before her beneath the black moon hanging in a blood-red sky. Veins in the structure's columns and walls of living, skincovered meat beat faster as her presence was detected. Adiposians stood like sentinels of rendered fat, guarding the temple's colonnade. Their eyeless faces looked up when Adrianne hovered closer, and so did the structure's adjunct, the Fallen Angel called Jaemessyn, a being with a stunning humanish body but demonic arms and
legs grafted on by some infernal surgeon. His face seemed grand yet hideously blank, until he looked up at her and gave away an expression like approval in his large, supernaturally blue eyes.

  "The traveler returns to us," the light-like voice bid to her. He'd been previously occupied, slowly strangling a female imp who hung limp as an empty coat in his grasp. The five penises that were the fingers of his other hand throbbed erect as they stroked the naked breasts and belly of his victim. That's when Jaemessyn noticed Adrianne; the She-Imp wasn't quite dead when he cast it to the floor like a handful of garbage.

  "We're glad you've returned," he said. "And the Lord of this place is pleased."

  I want to see the Lord of this place, she said back to him in a thought.

  "And you shall. I promised you last time, and I never break my word."

  The monstrous hand opened toward the temple's closed double-doors. In the door's seam,Adrianne detected fluttering, dark light. The doors began to slide open with a wet fleshy smacking sound.

  "Welcome," Jaemessyn said. "I know you want to see the Sexus Cyning."

  Belarius, Adrianne remembered. Hell's monarch of lust .. .

  She floated in with no fear. Bodiless, they couldn't hurt her. Only her psyche was vulnerable, and Adrianne had a strong psyche.

  The configuration inside reminded her of the De Rais Chapel back at the mansion, only everything here was forged of living meat: the pews, the nave, the altar and presbytery. All that flesh surrounding her shined from profuse sweat, networks of veins standing out, filled with hot blood. Severed hands in organic sconces flicked from fingertips lit like wicks. Throughout, the airless temple smelled like fresh, raw meat.

  Her spirit-vision glanced about; there was no sign of the temple's overlord. However, at the structure's deepest recess-

  "And there's someone else you want to see," the Fallen Angel added.

  -she noticed someone lying prone on the high altar of flesh.

  It was human, not demonic. It was a man.

  Hildreth, she recognized at once.