The Dreadful Doctor Faust by K. H. Koehler

by K. H. Koehler Books

  “I remade you in my image,” he answered simply. His voice was course, unconcerned with her observation.

  She felt a jab of annoyance. “I should be dead.”

  “Yet you live.”

  For the first time she heard his careful, burring voice and lilting inflection and linked it to an image instead of absolute darkness. She thought of splintered, moonless nights full of counts and barons moving restlessly in desiccated castles. Coaches roaring through mirror-wet London streets. Men in top hats, pinching snuff from ornate boxes.

  “How?” she asked.

  “Magic. Science. Which is only magic in its second skin.” Slowly he spread her arms out to either side to admire her. Her body flushed, her blood shining like claret through the glasslike skin of her body. “Your face…your arms…all of it was rubbish. Hospital garbage,” he said. This time his voice was tinged with interest, or, perhaps, only amusement. “Your legs I was able to repair with some little work. The breasts are your own and were and are perfect. They were not ruined.”

  He hesitated. “What did he do to you? What did he do with your eyes, I wonder, when he carved them from your face?”

  Now she trembled. He talked like she was a mannequin to be fused back together at a moment’s whim. “Who?”

  “The man who deconstructed you.”

  “How do you know it was a man?”

  “A woman would not have carved out your uterus.” He paused thoughtfully. “A man destroyed you because a man hated women.”

  Louise stared stunned at her Christlike image hanging suspended there, surrounded by the Doctor’s dusty, lost-era darkness. “Did you fix that too?”

  “Arms and womb and face and eyes. I told you. I remade you. I made you a complete woman.”

  “A real little boy,” she cursed.

  “Stop talking like a child. I made you a woman.” He released her wrists to stroke back her hair. It crackled through his ringed fingers. “I have gowns, corsets, antique combs…”

  “I told you,” she shouted, trembling with hate. “Fuck you. Fuck your magic.”

  He released her. “You try my patience, little girl.” His face was impassive behind the mask of bandages, his voice as scouring as the desert. “Go away. I tire of you.”

  “Yes.”

  Without looking, he laid the back of his fingers against her cheek, softly.

  And she knew, in that moment, that she could no more escape him and his world without walls than Adam could escape his lonely, jealous Lord amidst the tanglewoods of the serpent-infested garden.

  NOW

  1

  The moment she stepped into the studio boutique in downtown Chelsea someone placed a dry martini in her hand and asked her to sign the guest list. With a flourish, she wrote, Saleisha Fontana.

  The gallery was brimming with people drinking martinis and admiring the new exhibit by Bastion Lee. This was the Bastion Lee, formerly the “mad artist,” photographer and fashion designer. The only son of a British fashion model and an Italian duke with a tragic past, Bastion held the celluloid world in thrall. Saleisha had heard through a friend of a friend that Bastion had recently inherited an outrageous sum of money from a favorite aunt and had plans to retire to his summer castle in Tuscany. This exhibit would be his last.

  Even though she had never met him, Saleisha knew she had to be here to see him off.

  The gallery had six enlarged photographs on the walls. All were part of his Reinvention Collection. In each a classical portrait was transported through Bastion’s lens to the present day. A desolate woman in London cradled an umbrella in imitation of Monet’s Donna Parasole, a fey, naked young man (rumored to be Bastion’s lover) clutched a long streamer of bedclothes over one shoulder like Botticelli’s Venus, and so on and so forth. The centerpiece of it all was a photojournalist being pulled into a crowd of Taliban extremists not unlike something from one of Bosch’s nightmarish circles of hell.

  But Saleisha, like everyone else, was not there to see, but to be seen. Amidst the patrons and art critics she spotted Tyra Banks, Robert Pattinson, Lady GaGa, Orlando Bloom and Elton John. Vivaldi rained down from invisible speakers set high into the ceiling.

  The photo-artist-slash-fashion-designer himself, Bastion Lee stood poised in the center of the gallery, being interviewed and photographed for Vanity Fair, People Magazine, E! News, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

  Saleisha analyzed each of the photographs. It wasn’t that she was much interested in Bastion’s art, but she was determined to break the stereotype of the modern It girl. Such a girl was smart, sophisticated and wickedly ambitious. A Janice Dickinson in Prada high heels. She was nothing like that little mouse Louise that she had roomed with back in the East Village, in the time before Clinique found her.

  A willowy girl with a rain of long, straight black hair brushed past Saleisha. She turned instinctively to see which celebrity it was.

  She was disappointed.

  The girl was as tall as a French model, her body slender and elongated in a mothy black affair of some foreign design, but she was far too manly to be anything but a budding actress or the daughter of royalty. Still, Saleisha instinctively checked the girl’s high-necked Eurotrash rag against her own Cleopatra-inspired sheath. There was a gold asp encircling Saleisha’s waist, and the neckline dived dramatically to her navel to show off to good effect the fantastic work that Angelina Jolie’s plastic surgeon had done.

  The horsey girl with the hair had nothing like that going for her. She was as flat as Clara Bow.

  Saleisha felt pressure at her waist.

  “Cara! Amore mio!” It was Bastion Lee himself. He was as small and slim as a young girl. His hair was jet black and slightly curling. His eyes were the most amazing shade of blue, like Caribbean waters under a storm. He wore a leather suit top to bottom, six earrings, and the faintest priestly eyeliner around his eyes. He was fantastically beautiful. “Can it be…Saleisha?” he asked familiarly, even though they were meeting for the very first time.

  Saleisha put on only a brief show of resistance as he pulled her into the swarm of photographers and journalists. He stood behind her and kissed her neck like a latter-day vampire as flashbulbs went off like stars burning up in a galaxy two thousand years ago. Guests looked on jealously. Saleisha blushed but turned poetically to accommodate each greedy bite of the flashbulb.

  “You absolutely must model for me!” Bastion gasped.

  “But I couldn’t.”

  “I insist!” he said, kissing her fingers. “Ti amo, my beautiful girl!”

  Saleisha was right. This was the party of the year. Suddenly she could see an amazing future unraveling before her. Magazine layouts, her own fashion line, she and Bastion Lee walking side-by-side along the Tiber as the paparazzi followed ten steps behind, snapping off their pictures. “Oh all right, darling,” she conceded, making it sound like a weary chore.

  “Mille grazie. Please meet me in there,” he whispered smoothly, indicating a door marked Private across the gallery “And do not be nervous. You are simply invincible, darling!”

  Saleisha smiled obligingly. She was certainly not nervous. She was the chosen of Bastion Lee. She was the new It girl. Soon, she would be as immortal as the art hanging on these walls.

  2

  After Saleisha Fontana, widely regarded as America’s next top model, had left the gallery, Bastion Lee returned to his private dressing room where the girl in the black Victorian gown waited.

  Louise stood almost lifelessly beside a glass dressing table. On the table stood an enormous vase of white lilies driving their yellow tongues toward the ceiling. And beside the vase lay a scalpel wickedly gleaming.

  Away from the photographers, the interviewers, the lights, Bastion’s face grew old as it often did when he shot some tragedy. He had done shots of Buddhist monks being drilled down in the Tibet Protests, and had taken some of the first photographs of Hurricane Katrina and Haiti. But he did not exhibit such human suffering except amo
ng his closest friends. Only Below did they understand his art. The only real thing to be found in his gallery tonight was the death of the reporter during the War on Terrorism.

  A mistake, perhaps.

  He put the key to the gallery in Louise’s large, thin hands. “How is the Doctor?” he asked.

  “Alive,” she answered simply.

  “Always,” he smirked.

  She was one of them, one of the inner circle—and, according to rumors he had heard, the Doctor’s special one—and yet she seemed stunned by his presence. She was surprised by his humor, his familiarity, his awareness of the hidden worlds around them.

  Bastion inclined his head. “The Doctor has many agents, cara. Not all of them live Below. Not all are society’s castoffs.”

  She clutched the key.

  His eyes softened, shone. “Tesoro,” he said. “My broken treasure.” And he kissed deeply her hands that were not her own.

  3

  The gallery was long and endlessly dark.

  The moment the door clicked shut behind Saleisha, something changed. The shadows stirred. Breathed.

  She turned and touched a light switch. But nothing happened; the darkness mocked her. She immediately took the doorknob in hand and turned it, but it was firmly locked. She knew she could pound against the door, but that would make a scene. Besides, there was probably a rear exit.

  Saleisha turned back and looked deeply into Bastion Lee’s lair. She stood upon a plain of white fur like that of an arctic wolf’s. It seemed to stretch unto infinity. On the snowy plain was a scattering of black leather furnishings and high-end Nokia cameras on tripods like alien machines obtusely watching her. Over the walls were giant grainy photographs of Bastion’s girls—girls on beds of forest litter, girls perched atop mountain ledges, and girls sprawled on desert sand and looking like princesses from old Egypt. And between the photographs were mannequins adorned with the new Bastion Lee collection.

  She was privileged. She was seeing what nobody else saw until the very last moment.

  She walked down the gallery, carefully studying every picture, every detail. Soon she came upon a small collection of light-muted images, all of the same girl in a series of unique Victorian outfits. Bastion Lee’s most recent It girl, she supposed.

  It was the girl in the black hair and long dress that she had seen earlier in the gallery. She couldn’t believe she was one of Bastion’s. Her hips were boyish, her breasts as negligible as Louise’s had been. Her clothes were a nightmare of stuffy brocade fabrics.

  Saleisha paused, fully expecting to feel a twinge of guilt over Louise, but nothing happened. It was survival of the fittest, she reminded herself. Eat or be eaten.

  Not very long ago she and Louise had attended a party rather similar to this one, supposedly thrown by Kate Spade, though they never had a chance to meet their host because a pair of male scouts were circling the room, looking both derisive and somehow delicious at the same time. She and Louise always went to parties together. Two girls were better at picking out the cons and porno guys. But in the end they both knew it was every girl for herself.

  Saleisha spent all evening chatting up one of the scouts. She had to work hard, after all. Louise was a head taller than she, the big horse. She was always noticed first. But despite everything, all her hard work, an invitation for a downtown studio shoot arrived the following week addressed to Louise.

  It was insane. Everything about Louise made Saliesha crazy. She was big and bony and as flat-chested as a boy. She spoke with a cloying Midwestern twang and acted like an inbreed.

  Saleisha had grown up here. This was her town, her fucking birthright.

  The day the letter arrived, it was Louise’s late night at the trampy little stripper club where she worked the poles. She would not find the letter until the following morning. Somehow, Saleisha found herself standing over the 50-year-old toilet of their desolate little coldwater flat, ripping the letter to pieces and flushing them all smoothly away. Things should have ended there, she knew, but each time a call arrived for Louise, or some dude from the club showed up on their doorstep, hopelessly in love with “Luscious Lou,” a little more of Saleisha was flushed away like that invitation. One night she snapped—a combination of cheap drink, the overdue rent, a bad break-up with her man, everything…

  The point is, it all came out.

  Louise should have screamed or grappled her, something normal. Instead, she just looked at Saleisha with those big, stupid cow eyes pouring over with shock and horror. Then she wordlessly locked herself away in the bathroom for two whole hours.

  That worried Saleisha. She was afraid she’d find Luscious Lou floating face-down in the tub. But as it turned out, the Cornflake Girl didn’t even have the guts to off herself. When she emerged, her dirty blonde hair was dyed an inky black and she was dressed in a vampy black mourning dress and dog collar. It was a big departure from the frayed blue ribbons of the Dorothy costume and ruby platforms she usually wore at the club. In the black she looked even more like a tramp than usual. Saying not a word, she went off to work as if nothing had happened.

  Louise was a freak.

  And that was the last time Saleisha had seen her. What became of her was anyone’s guess. But it was fortuitous, because soon after, scouts started noticing her, instead of horsey Louise looming over everyone else in a room. In the end it all worked out just fine. In a way, she owed her success to stupid Louise.

  Motion caught the tail of Saleisha’s eye.

  She turned to carefully study the wall of mannequins opposite her. She tasted the martini behind her tongue. She remembered being a kid, watching that old Kolchak episode with the mannequins, the squirm of gleeful fear. But that was fake, and silly. Things like that didn’t happen in the real world. They certainly didn’t happen in Saleisha’s world.

  Yet, in spite of all this, a dummy turned its head to appraise her.

  Saleisha took a half-step back. She cursed under her breath. It was Bastion Lee’s girl. The big one in the black gown. Was she playing a joke?

  “What‘s going on?” she said, glaring at everything, trying to find details in the dark. “Who are you?”

  The girl did not answer. Instead, she moved obliquely into the aisle, her gestures light and stepping like a Bolshevik dancer. Her face was pale like paper, her hair black. In one long, white hand she carried a shimmering instrument Saleisha immediately recognized as a scalpel.

  Finally, Saleisha experienced concern. I will turn, she told herself. I will run. I’m not some stupid bitch in a horror movie. I am not butchering fodder…

  But in the end she just stood there, watching the girl close the distance between them. Her eyes were smeary tarns in the dark—deep, but unreal. Painted doll’s eyes. The girl reached out her white hand as if to grant Saleisha a sisterly touch…and then cut her sharply across the cheek with the scalpel.

  Saleisha slapped her face as if killing a bug. Blood bloomed between her fingers. The world slowed. Reality readjusted itself to accommodate this unlikely madness. Saleisha finally turned to flee, but her stiletto caught in the carpeting and her ankle turned, crippling her with spikes of pain.

  She went down on the furry floor, scrambling. Meanwhile, the girl began to dance in a circle around her. The girl swirled weightlessly; the laws of physics and gravity held no sway over her. Under the long black gown she had long, white legs that ended in small pointed shoes with coned heels, rather old-fashioned. Saleisha tried to scuffle away, but the girl twirled if she were suspended on wires, the girl encircled her, and the scalpel flicked out again.

  Saleisha felt no pain, yet vines of blood flowered across the wintery plain of the carpet. Saleisha’s flesh and hair licked downward into her eyes. With a groan, she reached out and ripped at the dancing, taunting legs with her bloodred fingernails, a primal desire to pass on her pain and terror.

  But the legs continued to move, relentless and undeterred by Saleisha’s attack, and each time they swung back into her line
of sight, the wounds that she had inflicted on the seamless white legs seemed more inconsequential. The girl danced on to the music that only she could hear, unfeeling, robotic. Obviously, there was no stopping her.

  It never occurred to Saleisha to cry out for help, even at the end. She was being assaulted by another woman. There was no real danger here, just a pulsating rage, a desire to destroy the source of her pain and humiliation. And she couldn’t understand the trick with the wounds. Years later, she decided it was the wonder of this dark miracle that kept her down more than anything else. Like Pandora, curiosity was her undoing.

  The dancer continued to twirl, slashing at Saleisha like a beautiful, maniacal music box girl. Blood and saline frothed across the carpet.