by Edward Lee
The girl went on, "There's a door on the side of the house that faces that mad."
"A door?" Westmore thought about it. "I don't think so. I didn't see a door there."
"There's a door," she repeated. "It's part of the outside wall. You can only open it from the inside."
"A hidden access," Westmore deduced.
"And what else, Connie?" Clements reminded her. "Why's that door important?"
"Because it's not connected to the alarm system," she revealed. "I know it's not because I heard Hildreth and some of the men mention that it wasn't."
A secret door, Westmore thought. Unmonitored. "Okay. And you want me to find that door?"
"That's right," Clements said and lit another cigarette.
"Are there any clues you could give me?" Westmore asked the girl. "I'll be looking for it from the inside."
"The room that the door opens to is a small library," Connie said. "Not the main library; it's smaller. Lots of old books. And you get to that room through a curtain upstairs."
Instantly, then, Westmore knew. He'd found it earlier when he'd been looking around the house. One of the passages led to it. "I know exactly where it is."
"Good," Clements said. "You find the door, you open it, you let me in."
?"
"So I can search the house for Debbie Rodenbaugh. Is that too much for your college-graduate brain to handle? I believe she's still alive. I believe Hildreth's got her captive in that house somewhere. I want to find her ... and take her out."
Westmore stared back at him in the dark bar.
"Who else do you have to trust?" Clements asked, polished off his beer. "You can trust me, or you can trust those whackadoo psychics."
"I'll admit, they're a weird bunch, but they're good people," Westmore said.
"Jesus Christ, they can't wipe their own asses without having a vision or seeing a spirit. You think there's ghosts in that house because you hear voices on some tape? Shit, I heard one the other night off one of the discs I took out of there. It's one of Hildreth's people-probably that Mack fucker whispering spook noises. And that shit Nyvysk shows you on his TV screens? Shit, any good movie lab can do stuff like that-and Vivica has the dough to pull it off." Clements grabbed Westmore's arm. "And do you really think those women were raped by spirits? Gimme a break. It's either a con job or they're having fuckin' hallucinations. Those chicks think they can talk to the dead and leave their bodies-they're whacked out of their minds. They spend more time on a psychiatrist's couch than they do walking the street."
Westmore kept thinking on it. "I don't know"
"You're gonna trust them, or me? Nyvysk can fuck round with his low-light cameras and TV's and ion shit all he wants. I'm gonna find out what's going on the oldfashioned way. With my balls and my brains," Clements said. "Did you ever see any ghosts?" he asked Connie.
She sat uncomfortably, pushed some hair out of her eyes. "No, but it is a creepy place."
"Did you ever get raped by a ghost?"
Her eyes flicked down. "No, not by ghosts. .
"Hear that?"
But Westmore kept looking at her. She was familiar in some unpleasant way ... "I know I've seen you before," he said to her.
"I usually stroll 34th Street at night."
"No, no, not like that. I mean-" Then it hit him. The movies, he thought with a plummeting stomach. "I found a bunch of DVD's at the mansion, and I saw you in one of them, being raped by a bunch of men. Some of them looked like bums. And there were-" Westmore gulped, remembering the extremity of some of the movies. "There were other things."
The girl just nodded and looked away.
"That's the kind of thing Hildreth had people do to these girls," Clements said. "Rape movies, animal movies-for shit's sake. And you're working for the guy's fucking wife who knew all about it and never did anything. And now you're gonna trust Vivica over me?"
Westmore's moment of truth was fast approaching. If he's wrong, IT never get the rest of the money Vivica promised, and IT get sued for every penny she's given me so far, he realized. If he's wrong ...
"All right. I'll help you."
"Thank God," Clements sighed. "Couple nights from now, you leave that door open for me at a specific time." He gave Westmore a card. "Here's my cell number. Call me tomorrow and we'll work out the details."
Westmore pocketed the card, nodding and still bewildered. "Okay, but I need your help with something tomorrow night."
"Name it."
Westmore couldn't believe what he was about to say, but it was something he'd been thinking about since the day he'd entered the house. "Before I believe Hildreth might still be alive, I need to see the proof."
"Yeah?"
"And you're right, I'm just a fuckin' writer. I'm not a ditch digger. I need you to help me dig up his grave."
Clements shrugged. "Piece of cake. What time tomorrow night?"
"Midnight. If I find this hidden door of yours, I'll leave the mansion at midnight and walk straight to the dirt road. Meet me there. Bring a couple of shovels."
"You got it."
"And if I'm not there, that means I didn't find the door." Westmore paused. "Or I changed my mind."
"You won't change your mind," Clements assured. "You ain't stupid. You and me, Westmore. We'll find out what's really going on in that freakshow mansion. At least we already have an idea."
"What's that?" Westmore asked.
"You know." Clements pulled a bag out of his pocket, dropped it in front of Westmore.
"I don't believe in the devil, but I believe that Hildreth does. That's the whole show he's got going in there."
Westmore picked something out of the bag. a small, black inverted cross on a silver ring. The image rang a bell. Didn't I read something in the autopsy reports ...
"Hildreth's party favors," Clements said. "That's some madhouse, ain't it? All the female victims were wearing those things when they were butchered on the night of April 3rd, all this weirdo body-piercing shit. The girls had those things on their nipples, cuts, and bellybuttons."
"Where'd you get these?"
"The county deputy medical examiner is my best friend from the Navy. He did the autopsies."
Westmore shook his head. "Is there anybody in a position of power around here that isn't either a relative or your best friend? You probably know the county executive."
Clements laughed. "You kidding me? I play cards with him every Friday night. I was best man at his fuckin' wedding. I also went to the police academy with the first responder to the mansion. He saw the bodies in place. All of Hildreth's porn girls were wearing those." He tapped the bag of crosses. "Upside-down crosses are a sign of the devil. That's what Hildreth was pushing: full-tilt, to-the-max satanism. He was like one of those cult leaders you read about, gets a bunch of kids all fucked up on drugs and orgies, and brainwashes them." He put the bag back in his pocket. "And that's what April 3rd was all about-a satanic sacrifice. The asshole thought he was summoning the devil."
Not the devil, Westmore thought. Belarius.
Westmore followed Clements and Connie to the parking lot. Clements had his arm around the girl; they were obviously more than just friends. "So we're on for tomorrow night," Clements verified. "I'll be at the access road at midnight."
"All right." Westmore looked out on the water, thinking. "You know more about the house and Hildreth than I do. What else should I know?"
"Be careful around that Mack fucker, and the girl, what'shername, the ex-porn star who drinks more than a platoon of fuckin' Russian sailors."
"Karen"
"Yeah. Don't trust either of them."
"I'm pretty sure I trust Karen. She's harmless."
"She was under Hildreth's thumb, and she works for Vivica. Don't trust her. She's a mouthpiece to the queen witch:'
Westmore squinted a confusion. "What if you're wrong about all this? What if Vivica didn't know anything? Maybe she's just a lonely middle-aged woman investigating her husband's death."
<
br /> "Yeah, and what if I had a square asshole? Could I shit a television? Don't trust anybody. Whatever happened there on April 3rd is still happening. Everything's moving toward something, something that's gonna happen soon. That place is about to boil over, and if we're in it when it does, we want to be ready. The more information we have, the stronger we are. Oh, one other thing. You know about Faye Mullins, right?"
The name jogged his memory. The owvu sghtgid in the Hd- lou'een DVD ... "Karen mentioned her. The groundskeeper or something. A janitor."
"She's the only survivor of April 3rd," Clements specified. "She was in the house when it all went down."
" What?"
"You heard me right. I guess the only reason Hildreth didn't kill her was he must not have known she was there. I tried talking to her but she's a headcase now You might have better luck."
Westmore was mildly alarmed. "Vivica never told me there was a survivor that night."
"There's probably a whole lot Vivica didn't tell you. Faye Mullins is the only living witness."
"Where is she?"
"The Danelleton Clinic, about a half hour from here. It's one of those $20,000-per-week private psych clinics. Go talk to her."
Westmore was doubtful. "A private-care clinic like that? They won't let anybody in there except next-of-kin."
"Go there tomorrow around, say, two. I can pull some strings and get you in."
"How?"
"The head of security at the clinic is my nephew. Trust me.
Westmore sighed. "Yeah, it looks like I'm going to do that.11
"And I'll see you tomorrow night. Midnight."
"You're gonna be there, right?"
Clements laughed. "With shovels and guns."
He's not kidding ...
Clements got into a big, beat-up Olds 98 with a landau roof. The girl walked around to the other side, but before she got in, she looked across the roof with a wide, emptyeyed stare. For a second, she shivered.
"Be careful in that house," she said very quietly.
"I will," Westmore said.
Clements rolled down his window. "We're gonna get Debbie Rodenbaugh out of that psycho place. And after we do, I'm gonna find Hildreth and blow his brains into the next zip code. Him and anybody on his side." Clements winked. "I'm gonna kill all of those evil, slimy, sick pieces of shit, and I'm gonna love every minute of it." Westmore watched them drive away.
Chapter Twelve
I
The pendulum clock in the foyer struck one a.m. when Westmore re-entered the mansion. He'd called ahead and Mack had disabled the alarm to let him in.
Something, right off the bat, felt odd.
Mack reclosed the door and reset the alarm.
"Something wrong? The house feels ... weird."
"You could say something's wrong," Mack verified. "Willis had another one of his spells. He and Nyvysk are in the atrium."
Westmore followed him down the main hall. "Where are Cathleen and Adrianne?"
"They're both doing their things."
Westmore guessed that meant Adrianne was OBE-ing and Cathleen had put herself in a trance, trying to contact something in the house.
The atrium stood dead quiet. Nyvysk and Willis sat at the long conference table, Willis wearing his gloves and looking shell-shocked.
"What happened?" Westmore asked.
"Willis had another target-vision," Nyvysk told him.
"When?"
"Right after you left the office upstairs," Willis said.
"Another one of Debbie Rodenbaugh?"
"No, it was the woman who tried to open the safe. Vanni. It wasn't a passive vision-it was active. I believe it was her revenant communicating with me, but it was ... different. Either that or it was a temporal-lobe hallucination."
"Tell him what triggered the vision," Nyvysk said.
"The safe. I touched the knob on the safe and had multiple flashes."
Westmore's eyes shot wider. "Did you-"
"I didn't see what was in the safe," Willis said in a drone. "I saw Vanni. At first the vision was passive; I saw her as she was when she was trying to open the safe, but then it changed. She was dead, she was a corpse talking to me. And I had a transitive contact."
"What's that mean?"
Willis groaned, obviously wearied.
"It means the vision-or whatever it was-physically touched Willis," Nyvysk explained.
"Which is essentially impossible," Willis finished. "Which is why I'm thinking it must be hallucinotic."
"The psychological factor," Nyvysk speculated. "A serious consideration in a house like this, especially after being here almost a week."
"A place like this can put a whack on anybody's head is what you're saying?" Westmore inquired.
"I hope to God that's the case," Willis said.
Westmore leaned forward, attentive. "But Vanni talked to you? What did she say?"
"A number of things. She showed me a vision herself. She said Hildreth had told her to. Then I saw the Chirice Flaesc, that Nyvysk has already explained-which is just more reason for me to hope it was a hallucination inspired by suggestion."
"What did it look like?"
"A temple of flesh."
"The domain of the Sexus Cyning-Belarius," Nyvysk augmented.
Willis rubbed his face. "It was alive. It was flesh and blood, and it was growing."
"Adrianne and Karen saw the same thing," Westmore recalled. "What else did you see?"
"Hildreth." Willis laxed back, exhausted. "Then the target-vision changed. Vanni implied that the combination to the safe was Gematric."
"What's that mean?" Westmore asked.
"Part of the system of the Kabalistic alphabet," Nyvysk informed. "She said it was acrostic, but I'm not familiar with the word."
"And neither am I," Willis said. "Let's find a dictionary-
"We don't need a fuckin' dictionary!" Westmore blurted and had already sprung up, racing out of the room.
He ran down the main hall, then vaulted up the stairs to the third floor. By the time he got to the office he was winded yet shaking with excitement. He looked at the safe, then looked at the engraving across from it. Couldn't be, he thought.
A moment later, Willis and Nyvysk jogged into the room. "What is it, for God's sake?" Nyvysk said.
"Do you know the combination?" Willis asked.
"Acrostic," Westmore said. "I majored in English in college-acrostic is a term sometimes used in symbolic poetry. In the old days, people would write poetry with hidden meanings-ciphers-"
"Vanni said this was the oldest cipher in the world," Willis remembered.
"She's probably right," Westmore said. "In old poetry, sometimes a letter would be used to indicate its numerical equivalent." He looked back anxiously at the safe. "I heard her say it was a nine-number combination ..." Then he held his hand up, a bid for silence, and calculated on his fingers, counting to himself. Then he grabbed a pen and scribbled something on the desk blotter.
"What is it?" Nyvysk raised his voice.
"It's that," Westmore pointed to the engraving of St. John writing the Revelation.
"What? 666?" Nyvysk questioned. "We already tried that."
"Not acrostically," Westmore said and rushed to the safe. "S equals 19, 1 equals 9, X equals 24," he said and starting dialing the combination.
"The same three numbers three times in a row?" Nyvysk said. "Nine numbers in all?"
Westmore dialed the three numbers three times, then-
click
-he opened the safe.
The room hushed. W e s t m o r e put his hand in the s a f e - t h e n f e l t ripped off . "Jesus! There's nothing in it ..."
A pause.
"Wait."
He slid his hand along the bottom, felt something tiny. A piece of paler ... He pulled it out.
"What is it?" Nyvysk asked.
Westmore felt let down. "It looks like another cipher." The slip of paper, the size of an index card, read:
INPU
T REQUEST: FEED
STRAT APOGEE
RESPONSE: 06000430
ASSIGNMENT POINT: 00000403
What is this pile of aap? Westmore thought. He couldn't have been more disappointed. But what did I expel? Hildreth's Journal? A pad with the devil, signed in Wood for shit's sake?
Nyvysk seemed more hopeful. "Even random numbers are something to go on. And I do know what apogee means-"
"Geometry," Willis said. "The highest point, the highest angle of a geometric configuration."
"And from astronomy," Nyvysk tacked on. "As in a lunar apogee-the moon's farthest orbital point."
He's right. It is something to go on. "I think I'll fool around online for a while, see what I can find out," Westmore said. Then, under his breath, he repeated, "The moon's farthest point."
They turned to leave-
"Not just the moon," a voice slipped through the air.
"Cathleen," Nyvysk said, eyes narrowed at her.
Willis stepped forward. "Are you all right? You look-"
"I'm fine..." She sauntered into the room, looking around, and the eyes of the three men followed her, concerned. Cathleen was obviously not fine. She wore a black nightgown, nothing more, and she seemed diffuse, distracted, in spite of a catty grin. Oh, wow, Westmore thought. She's ALL fucked uP
The front of her throat, her bosom, and her face glittered faintly, from shining red and blue dust.
Nyvysk spoke up first. "Cathleen, what's that on your face?"
"Pontica dust," she said, still straying about the room. "It summons eager spirits. It shines through the planes of the dead, and they see it. Like a beacon."
When she passed Willis, her finger coyly slid across his chest, then to Westmore's.
"You been drinkin'?" Westmore asked.
A glare cracked through the sultry smile. "I don't contaminate my body with such things. I never have. The body is the conductant of the soul. I will not taint myself."
Willis spoke up louder, as if to an old person. "Cathleen, are you in a trance?"
Now she'd stopped, to look at the open safe. Her eyes flicked down to the painting of Deborah Rodenbaugh.
She sighed.
"There, people. There is the ultimate untainted body and spirit."
"Debbie Rodenbaugh? What do you know about her?" Westmore shot the startled question. "Why is she untainted?"