Nightmare Magazine Issue 25, Women Destroy Horror! Special Issue

by Nightmare Magazine

  —I shrugged my shoulders and tried, “Stringy hair and skin like the inside of an English muffin,” not caring how he’d react; true, he may’ve just been referring to divas in general before, but that “my” was far too possessive to be figurative . . .

  “Hmmm . . . warmish, but not very.” He still half-smiled.

  Glancing at his wall-ensconced trophies for inspiration, I ventured, “Bug-eyed, or cross-eyed?” while staring at that Indonesian mask, and was rewarded with “Warmer . . .”

  Wishing that this guy was into harmless quirks like chomping down on ash-breaded apple cores, I laced my fingers in front of my waist before suggesting, “Too skinny . . . like she’d make Kate Moss look like a blimp?”

  “Uuummm, warm—”

  Mentally tallying my “warm” score, I formed a mind-picture that looked teasingly familiar . . . even if it was too impossibly ugly to be seriously considered. He has to be playing another Genius mind-game . . . like that sign outside. I’m just seeing pieces . . . all I have to do is step back a few paces to get it—

  Shifting slightly in that pillow-like chair, I looked around at walls that stared back at me, and asked, “Is it true that this studio is called “Genius” in honor of your I.Q. score when you were a boy in England? I’ve read that in a couple of articles—”

  “Which means more than one person has bollixed it up, doesn’t it?” Westmisley’s smile was a lop-sided smirk, underscoring the peevishness of his voice, as he went on, “It’s yet another reference to the Romans, like Virgil . . . they believed that just as each woman had her Juno, so a man had his Genius. A spirit which gives each person his or her being, a sort of guardian angel, protecting them throughout their lives. Although sometimes said protection is very limited indeed,” Edan mused, as his stub of a finger caressed one cratered cheek, “forcing the person to seek out other forms of protection.”

  “You’re really into ancient cultures, aren’t you,” I asked as brightly and wide-eyed-video-queenly as possible, hoping that he’d dropped the “warmer” game for good. I thought that if I could pull his attention back to himself, to his all-consuming needs, he’d forget that I’d been gauche enough to ask why my services would be needed by him . . . especially after he’d taken such pains to remind me exactly why I couldn’t turn down his offer . . .

  But I’d forgotten that meat shouldn’t think or hope at all.

  “‘Into ancient cultures,’” he echoed softly, each syllable eating into the room’s silence like a drop of acid, leaning forward slightly and adding in that same stinging, biting whisper, “All of us, me, you, that spotty lout with the edible body ornament, my lovely friend Kenneth, every man-jack of us, is the result of ancient culture. Nothing’s new, nothing. No artwork, no song, no work of literature . . . nothing at all. Different configurations, that’s all. Took me a long time to realize that, starting in the sixties, back when all my co-conspirators in artistic challenge were trying to set this bloody sphere of water and mud on its arse. Only then, I was content to haul out what was very old and try to pass it off as new by changing bits of it around. Music as art form, or some self-deluding rot like that.

  “But I wasn’t any more profound than Yoko was with her bare bum—which included my vertical smile, by the way, before I broke free of the whole Fluxus movement. No one realized how far back I’d been digging for my work . . . probably because I didn’t go back far enough. Nothing I’d done was old enough to be new. Which was so frustrating. The kind of frustrating one needs to get out of one’s system in any way, any form . . . When I couldn’t do what I needed to do, I switched gears, went the ‘those-who-can’t-do-teach’ route, only for musicians, ‘can’t do’ becomes ‘can produce’ . . .

  “That gave me credibility, additional power . . . as if I really needed more,” he added, with an icy-toothed grin.

  “Yet I never got over my love of what was old, what was exotic simply because it was old enough to be forgotten. Quite an addiction, actually a bigger rush than the usual hands-on power games I’d played since I was in short pants . . . and if one can do that ferreting into the forgotten times, forgotten places, all on one’s lonesome, quite unlike a curly-headed tot, that rush can be intoxicating. Better than dropping ecstasy or listening to derivative house-techno-thrash gibberish,” he admitted with a self-deprecating wave of his hands.

  “Although this last time around, I quite outdid myself . . . I certainly outstayed my welcome in the Mediterranean, at least as far as that curly-haired, cherubic former tot was concerned . . . But,” he confided with a wink in my too-confused-to-react direction, “the fact that my personal Genius chose that time to go on temporary holiday was outweighed by what I brought back with me—aside from my obvious ‘gift’ from Apollo, of course . . . you do realize that Apollo was the Greek sun god, no?”

  “I’m not dumb,” I whispered. “I’ve been to college—”

  “So have I, so have . . . tons of them. I suppose it was what I learned there that put me in this fix—” again he tapped his lopped-off finger against his flesh, producing a drum-like leathery thonk that turned my stomach and guts to mush—”all those tales Thomas Bullfinch and Edith Hamilton translated from the Greek . . . all those marvelous creatures with unbelievable, fantastic attributes. What I wouldn’t have given to have heard the melody of Pan’s pipes, or the song of the Sirens luring sailors to their doom—can you imagine how captivating, how alluring, their voices must’ve been for men to risk all, forsake all, just to continue listening to that deadly melody under that lethal sun? And think, not one of them lived long enough to find out what sort of throat produced such bewitching arias, alas—”

  Unsuccessfully trying to sit upright in that adiposity-squishy chair, I flicked a strand of hair out of my eyes and said, “But none of them died . . . the Sirens were just a myth, like the Cyclops and the witch who turned men into pigs and dogs, so nobody missed—”

  All he did was smile at that, but the genuine nature of that smile, the eye-crinkling completeness of it, shut me up faster than a back-handed smack across the lips.

  And think, not a one of them lived long enough—

  My agent wasn’t the only man in L.A. who literally spoke in italics . . . but Edan was no closet-queen, like Gerhard, or sweet, gentlemanly Kenny. Westmisley used his verbal italics most sparingly . . . most pointedly—

  And as he continued to smile at me, his vaguely reptilian flesh merrily crinkled around those dancing eyes (my divas dance), I felt that burning pressure on my exposed back and shoulders, as if a steady gaze was being aimed my way, only Kenny’s appellation “shoulder eyes” didn’t cut it at all—what I felt was more like “shoulder daggers”—

  Hundreds of painted, carved and inlaid eyes watched me impassively as I gracelessly clawed my way out of that cupped fleshy palm of a chair, dropping unceremoniously to my knees before I was able to regain my footing and make for that closed pocket door, my hands extended before me like those of the newly-blind, as I tried to walk while peering through cast-down lids and capri-shell lashes, so as not to see those shiny-raw things Edan had so playfully named after collecting them—if, indeed, he’d merely obtained them at all—but just before Westmisley obligingly opened that sealed Lucite door, and it shwicked aside in a rush of sterile, unscented displaced air, I heard his soft, soft whisper behind me.

  “Much waaarmer . . .”

  • • • •

  Edan Westmisley’s latest diva, capriciously dubbed “Cer-een,” made her first and last appearance at a rave held in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Santa Monica a few weeks later. And while the cops blamed what happened on some bad “E” which was passed out that evening and early morning, the fact that all the people who died were men more than told me what had really gone down. From what those who survived had to say to Spin and Circus, or (at much greater length, and in gorier detail) to the tabloids, Edan had actually listened to me that afternoon, in as far as what I’d said about what the singer looked like.
Whoever the lip-syncher was, she’d been far more desperate than I was—word was she was pierced in places no sane person should allow themselves to be pierced, and that her black spiked hair resembled bits of wire shoved in her scalp. Nobody mentioned how well she moved; after she opened her mouth behind the headset microphone, things like writhing and being limber didn’t matter at all. But what went down in that strobe-lit warehouse didn’t derail Westmisley’s latest diva; he merely sidestepped the issue by using that voice as an un-credited sound-bite on other Genius records . . . which is probably what he meant to do all along. Or what he should’ve done, if he hadn’t been consumed by his twisted need for revenge, after his own flesh went nova . . . the price paid for living through what no man before him had survived.

  The press almost found him out after one dance-mix engineer decided to isolate the voice from the rest of a bootleg tape made during the Santa Monica rave, but when his wife found him dead in his home studio, word was she only played so much of the tape before setting fire to it, and the studio itself.

  Even that episode did nothing to stop Edan from blowing his own horn one last time . . . Just as he’d predicted, I was sitting in my over-priced, too-small apartment, watching my expanding waistline in my hall closet mirror and not really caring one iota about my increasing girth, when the Express Mail package came. There wasn’t much in it, just a cassette, some photos in a plain manila envelope, and a self-taped video. No note, no last verbal jab . . . although once I heard that naked, raw voice on the tape, torn free of the lulling, masking over-dubbed music, and thumbed the eight-by-ten inch black-and-white photos out of the envelope, I couldn’t bring myself to watch whatever it was he’d videotaped, for I knew I wasn’t nearly insane enough to live with myself after watching it. The way Edan was, or had become after his last voyage in the land of the Sirens. And before he’d turned the tables on them in memory of every other man they’d managed to kill.

  I’ve since burned the photos, but removing the images from my mind isn’t as easy as licking off a tattoo the hard way. He’d kept them as they originally were for a time, long enough to photograph them. Aside from being small, delicate, they were more or less human looking. Before he flayed them, taping their voices as he did so. But only above the waist; after they finally died, and were preserved with whatever it was he used to render them glassy-hard above, it was obvious from the lone shot of the unwrapped one that he’d taken pains to keep the flesh of the legs and what was between them soft enough to keep enjoying, perhaps in honor of those who’d died before being able to enjoy them.

  After all, word was that the skin cancer didn’t ruin all of his skin . . .

  But, despite my own flabby body and my descent into crotch shots, despite all that Westmisley did to ruin me, I’ve never needed or wanted to personally verify that rumor . . .

  © 1996 by A.R. Morlan.

  Originally published in Lethal Kisses, edited by Ellen Datlow.

  Reprinted by permission of the author.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  A.R. Morlan’s short fiction (under her own name and three pen names) has been published or is forthcoming in over one hundred twenty different magazines, anthologies, and webzines in the United States, Canada, and parts of Europe. Her stories are collected most recently in Of Vampires & Gentlemen: Tales of Erotic Horror, The Fold-O-Rama Wars at the Blue Moon Roach Hotel and Other Colorful Tales of Transformation and Tattoos, The Chimera and the Shadowfox Griefer and Other Curious People, and The Hemingway Kittens and Other Feline Fancies and Fantasies.

  To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight.

  NOVELLA EXCERPT

  Samhain Publishing Presents:

  Linden Manor

  (novella excerpt)

  Catherine Cavendish

  * * *

  Please enjoy the following excerpt of the novella “Linden Manor” by Catherine Cavendish, which appears in the new gothic horror anthology What Waits in the Shadows, coming this month from Samhain Publishing:

  Enter if you dare, four worlds of chilling Gothic horror. Feel the oppressive heat on a plantation in the Old South, where the spirits of the dead do not rest easy. Smell the salt air in a dilapidated coastal restaurant on the Chesapeake Bay, a restaurant with a very deadly past. Explore a British manor house, but remember, what you find may have been looking for you. Hear the pounding surf beyond the stone walls of a looming castle that shouldn’t even exist. But regardless of the setting, no matter what you may think you hear or see, the truly terrifying thing is . . . WHAT WAITS IN THE SHADOWS.

  * * *

  “Come in, my dear. Welcome to Linden Manor.” My new acquaintance led me through her impressive hallway.

  Portraits painted in oils adorned the oak-paneled walls, and all gazed down their aristocratic noses at me. I felt like a servant who had dared to come in through the front door. Didn’t I know my place? I should have been downstairs in the bowels of this great house, hands deep in soapy water, scrubbing dishes.

  Isobel Warrender’s heels clattered across the immaculate black- and white-tiled floor. She moved with an agility far younger than her apparent age, as she swept past the imposing central staircase, into a room at the opposite end from the doorway.

  “Let’s sit in the drawing room. I always find it so much more cozy than the other rooms downstairs. I suppose it’s because it gets the sun more.”

  I smiled and nodded at her, while I took in the sumptuous surroundings. More portraits showed a variety of fashions from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. One dominated them all, a massive picture that hung over the stone fireplace. A young, pretty girl, dressed in twenties flapper style, smiled across the room, and I noticed the mantelpiece was devoid of any cards from the Queen.

  “That picture’s caught your eye, I see. Can you see the likeness? I expect not.” My hostess smiled and attempted to ape the pose in the portrait. It took a second, but then I saw it, in her eyes and the upturn of her lips.

  I pointed at the picture. “That’s you.”

  She giggled and clapped her hands like a child. “Oh, I’m so glad you recognized me. It would have been simply awful if there was nothing of her left!”

  Mrs. Warrender indicated a comfortable-looking Victorian chair positioned to the right of the fireplace. “Now, you sit there. That’s right. And I’ll sit here.” She sat carefully, legs together, in the same pose as Princess Diana in those famous photos at the Taj Mahal. There, any resemblance between the two ended. Where Diana had looked alone and vulnerable, this lady was vibrant and in command.

  “I shall ring for some tea. Would you prefer Indian, China, or Earl Grey?”

  As an inveterate coffee drinker, I hadn’t a clue about tea, but thought it would be rude to request my favorite drink. “I’m happy with whatever you prefer,” I said. Her smile indicated I had given the right answer.

  She reached up and pressed a button. Somewhere in the far recesses of the house I heard a bell ring. A couple of minutes later, the door opened and a gray-haired woman of around sixty entered. She was wearing a black dress and a pristine white apron. For a moment, I thought I had stepped onto the set of Downton Abbey.

  “Ah, there you are, Beryl. We should like to take tea now. Earl Grey. And some of your delicious cake, if you please.”

  “Yes, madam.”

  Beryl hadn’t so much as glanced in my direction and now she had gone again. I wondered why she hadn’t answered the door to me. Maybe her mistress had known she was hard at work baking her “delicious cake” and shouldn’t be disturbed.

  “Now then, Mrs. Carpenter—”

  “Please call me Lesley.”

  Mrs. Warrender nodded but didn’t reciprocate. I would continue using her formal title.

  “It’s that little nursery rhyme, ‘The Scottish Bride,’ that’s brought you here today, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. My great-grandmother used to sing it to me when I was very small. My mother thought it was
far too gruesome for a three-year-old, but Great-Granny had a wicked gleam in her eye.”

  Mrs. Warrender laughed, as if remembering something hilarious. “Oh I remember Millie Hart. Of course, that was before she was married. We had such larks together. Goodness me, the scavenger hunts we went on. We always had one on the longest day—the summer solstice. We had to find a silly collection of things and bring them up to the ancient stone circle on the grounds of this house. I always partnered Millie because she was so resourceful. She could charm anyone into giving us anything we wanted. Even the local police constable lent her his truncheon once. He got into such trouble for it when we lost it!”

  “Did he ever get it back?” I asked.

  Isobel clasped her hands in her lap. “Oh, I expect so. It would have turned up somewhere, I’m sure.” She glanced quickly over to her right. I followed her line of sight, which led me to the far end of the room and the portrait of a young and handsome man.

  The door opened and Beryl entered with a silver tray.

  “Ah, splendid, tea has arrived.”

  Beryl laid the heavy tray down on an occasional table to her mistress’s right.

  “Would you like me to pour, madam?”

  “No, that’s fine, thank you, Beryl. I’ll manage from here.”

  “Will your guest be staying for dinner?”

  “Oh, I really don’t know. Will you, my dear? I believe we’re having roast pork today, apple sauce, stuffing, all the trimmings.”

  It sounded delicious, but who cooks a roast joint for one person? I hesitated, anxious not to overstay my welcome, but then, she had invited me and it had been an age since I had enjoyed a good roast dinner.

  “If you’re sure it’s not too much trouble, I should be delighted,” I said.

  “Good. That’s settled then. There will be two for dinner, Beryl.”

  “Very good, madam, I shall see to it.”