Bed of Nails

by Michael Slade

  “If looks could kill, huh?”

  “How are they doing at your table?”

  “Halo of Flies is outselling Crown of Thorns four to one.”

  “Same with us.”

  “The GOH is pissed.”

  “I’d be too if everyone was saying I should be Wes.”

  “Round two coming up.”

  “Yeah. What time’s the panel?”

  The tide had depleted, so the men walked on.

  Three-quarters of the way along the wide hall, a registration table was set up against the wall. The young woman staffing it sat on a chair facing an open doorway across the corridor. On the board tented outside to lure in traffic were the words, written in big black letters, MORBID MAZE.

  Zinc froze in his tracks.

  “Y’ okay, buddy?”

  Ralph didn’t get an answer.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Zinc shook his head, gaping at the young woman.

  Alex? he thought.

  If the supernatural was going to slip into his life, what better place for it to happen than at a horror convention? Was that the term for this? Doppelgänger? The ghostly counterpart or double of a living person? But what if that “living person” was dead, and it was the ghostly double who was sitting here in the flesh? Would that make Alex the doppelgänger of this woman? It wasn’t just the hair, wayward and blonde. Nor was it the eyes, as blue as lagoons. It was also the way she moved, with a ballerina’s grace. From what Zinc could see from this far away, everything about her was the spitting image of his lost love.

  “Are you with me, Zinc?”

  “Huh?”

  “Snap out of it, buddy. Yeah, she’s good looking. But I don’t see the snakes it takes to turn a man to stone.”

  “Sorry, Ralph. Momentary lapse.”

  “You had me worried. I thought it was a heart attack. If a healthy guy like you drops dead, what hope is there for a fatty like me?”

  You’re right, thought Zinc.

  It is a heart attack.

  Punctured by Cupid’s arrow, Zinc’s scarred heart pounded wildly in his throat as he and the detective narrowed the gap between them and the siren seated at the registration table. The natural pout of her lips. The slightly turned-up nose …

  “Know who she reminds me of?” Ralph said.

  “Who?”

  “A young Kim Basinger in that film with Mickey Rourke. What’s it called? The one where Kim does a striptease to ‘You Can Leave Your Hat On’?”

  According to the tag encased in the square of plastic strung around her neck, Yvette Theron was the woman’s name. With Gothic black the color of choice for most conventioneers’ clothes, she stood out like a lightning bolt cleaving the night. Her top was electric blue and picked up the hue of her eyes.

  “You’re cops?” she said when they walked up.

  “Yes,” replied the Mountie. Zinc flashed his badge, and Ralph did too.

  “We’ve been expecting you.”

  “Oh?” said Stein.

  “First, the head spiked upside down outside Ted Bundy’s house—a house our ghost tour passed on Thursday afternoon. And now, according to the radio, the rest of the body found hanging upside down in Maltby Cemetery, the graveyard in our program. We placed bets on how long it would take you to come looking for suspects here.”

  “This isn’t what I expected.”

  “No?” said Yvette.

  “I thought there’d be rabid fans running about made up like their favorite monsters.”

  “So did one of the networks. They were going to tape the con but chickened out when they heard we aren’t Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, and Marilyn Manson clones.”

  “Biting the heads off chickens?”

  “Bats,” Yvette corrected him. “Ozzy bit the head off a bat onstage in his prime.”

  “Why so staid?” said Zinc.

  “Us, you mean? Except for the locals, for whom it’s cheap, a trip to the con by fans from around the world costs the price of an airline ticket, four nights in this palace, meals, transport, and the program itself, all in Yankee dollars. It’s a fun-loving group. Practical jokes. Gallows humor. Drinking folks under the table. But for that sort of money, the fans who come want juicy discussions with meat on the bone.”

  “Discussions like …?”

  “Take your pick,” Yvette said, reaching for a WHC program and folding it open to the list of today’s panels. She held it out for Zinc to peruse while Ralph read over his shoulder:

  How to Write a Horror Best-seller: Is There a Demon You Can Sell Your Soul To?

  Eros and Thanatos: The Siamese Twins of Erotic Death.

  Eldritch and Blasphemous: The Cthulhu Mythos Spawned by H. P. Lovecraft.

  Feminism and Horror: We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby.

  Urban Horror: New Monsters for a New Millennium.

  Psychological Horror: The Voices in My Head Told Me To.

  Genre Blending: Mixing Horror and Mystery.

  How Far Is Too Far?: The Moral Responsibility of Writers, Filmmakers, and Artists.

  Though Zinc tried to focus on the print, his eyes kept flicking back to Yvette. True, he was face-to-face with a woman in her own right, but the features that his imagination superimposed on hers were those of his lost love, Alexis Hunt. His psychology—and he recognized it himself—was similar to that of the Hollywood director who was devastated by the murder of his Playboy Playmate love by the boyfriend who had “discovered” her and was unhinged by jealousy. In the end, the director married his love’s sister, and the rumor was that he tried to remold her with plastic surgery. The rumor may have been false, but if not, Zinc understood, for that’s what he was doing in his fantasy world.

  Love hurts.

  And lost love cuts like a knife.

  “Your nerves good, Ms. Theron?” the Seattle detective asked.

  “We’re at a horror convention.”

  “It’s a photo of a dead man.”

  “I’ve seen worse. One of the presentations here is ‘What Happens to Dead Bodies?’ An autopsy film.”

  A digital camera was ideal in murder cases like this. By capturing the severed head found spiked outside Ted Bundy’s house on a memory card that was then fed into a computer, the police photographer was able to manipulate that image. The picture had been cropped to eliminate the stake and the sliced-through neck, then digital finagling had removed the ring of nails. In the same way an undertaker cleans up a deceased for viewing, so the tech had softened what began as a hardcore X-rated beheading into a PG one.

  “Recognize him?”

  “No,” said Yvette.

  “He didn’t register at the con on Thursday or Friday?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Would you know?” Ralph asked.

  “Only if he registered while I was at the table. We work in shifts. Tickets are sold all day.”

  “Were you on the ghost tour?”

  “No. I was here.”

  “Is there a list of those who were?”

  “You’d have to ask Mort.”

  “Mort?”

  “Mort Montgomery. Head of the convention.”

  “Where do we find him?”

  “Try Tomb A. That’s the big convention room around the corner. Mort caught the panel that just let out.”

  “The one that caused the hubbub?” interjected Zinc.

  Yvette nodded.

  “Why the buzz?”

  “Our guest of honor is being eclipsed by his rival. That, combined with the Tarot murder that brings you here.”

  “Who’s your guest of honor?”

  “Bret Lister. Know him?”

  “Yes,” said Zinc. “The lawyer-turned-writer.”

  “Bret wrote a couple of psycho-thrillers based on his law practice. His third book has a publication date that coincides with this convention. He registered for the con as an attendee, but when our scheduled guest of honor died suddenly, Bret was asked to step in. He has
the draw of having been committed to an asylum, and his latest book is a roman à clef about the Hanged Man murder.”

  “The death in Vancouver?”

  “Uh-huh. A year and a half ago.”

  “What do the Romans have to do with it?” Ralph asked.

  Yvette raised an eyebrow.

  “That’s a joke,” said Stein.

  “Do you know what a roman à clef is?”

  “No, Ms. Theron. But if I had to guess, I’d say it’s a novel about real events and characters under the guise of fiction. From the French for ‘novel with a key.’”

  “He’s an etymologist,” Zinc explained. “He studies bugs.”

  “Who are you two? Laurel and Hardy?”

  “I’m Laurel,” Ralph said.

  “So I see.”

  “What’s the title of Bret’s new book?” asked the Mountie.

  “Crown of Thorns.”

  “Publisher?”

  “Grave Subjects. It’s a specialty house. Dark fiction.”

  “Crown of Thorns. Sounds religious. Like The Exorcist,” said Ralph.

  “The cop in the novel,” Zinc asked, “what’s he like?” If a roman à clef is about real events and characters, he knew he was probably in this one. Not only was he the investigator involved in the real Hanged Man murder in North Vancouver, but he and Bret Lister had crossed swords in several murder trials before the lawyer flipped out in court and was sent to Colony Farm.

  “To be honest, I haven’t read it. It just came out.”

  “Good timing,” Stein said dryly. “Thanks to the new Hanged Man murder here.”

  “Thus the buzz,” echoed Yvette.

  “You mentioned a rival?” Zinc said. “A writer challenging Bret as guest of honor?”

  “In a strange coincidence—almost a twist of fate—Bret’s isn’t the only novel being published this week about the Hanged Man murder in Vancouver.”

  “Another roman à clef?”

  “Halo of Flies.”

  “Like the Alice Cooper song?”

  Yvette nodded.

  “Publisher?”

  “Penguin.”

  “A major house.”

  “Two books. Same source. Guess who’s playing second fiddle?”

  “Bret Lister.”

  “There’s more. They used to be law partners.”

  “Who’s the rival?” Ralph asked.

  “Wes Grimmer. Know him?” Yvette asked the Mountie.

  “Yes,” Zinc replied.

  Grimmer was the Ripper’s lawyer.

  GOTH QUEEN

  Morbid curiosity hooked its barb through Zinc’s cheek, then tugged the Mountie across the hall toward the art gallery. As the cops had turned away from Yvette and the registration table to head around the corner to catch Mort—“That’s French for ‘dead,’” said Ralph—Montgomery in Tomb A, Zinc happened to glance through the open doors of the gallery and spot the lure.

  “You go, Ralph. I want to check this out.”

  Stein followed Zinc’s gaze. “I’ll bet you do,” he said.

  “I wondered how long it would take you to notice Petra,” teased Yvette.

  “Petra,” warned Ralph. “As in ‘turn to stone.’”

  “Careful,” cautioned Yvette. “I’ll sell you a garland of garlic.”

  “The cross will protect me,” Zinc replied.

  The cross in question was in the painting that lured him in through the doors. The grisly image was displayed on the outer wall of a maze of panels in the center of the ballroom. Fifteen feet of empty floor stretched from the doors to the painting, beside which was a vacant chair so ornate that it could only be a throne. In front of the throne stood a filigreed stool fanned with tarot cards.

  The cross was a Christian crucifix that had been staked upside down on the crest of a Golgotha mound that could be Calvary. The naked man crucified to the wood was the Hanged Man. Both hands were joined behind his body at the small of his back. His left leg was pinned in place behind his right thigh. Instead of being crucified by nails pounded through his hands and feet, he was impaled on countless spikes that jutted toward the viewer as if the cross was a vertical bed of nails. The points that skewered through his flesh were red with dripping blood, and the sky beyond roiled with a deeper red that could be Satan’s wrath. The figure’s brow was pierced by a line of longer nails that protruded from his forehead like a blasphemous crown of thorns.

  The image bore a title card.

  The Antichrist, it read.

  The Mountie noted the artist.

  Petra Zydecker.

  Zinc’s curiosity was piqued by a puzzling detail. The painting was secured to the display panel by corner latches, and through the eyebolt of each was a padlock. Intrigued, Zinc craned his head around to one edge of the canvas, where to his further puzzlement he found that The Antichrist hid another painting.

  Of what?

  Something more profane?

  Or obscene?

  The Mountie’s suspicion switched to an array of smaller paintings that had been arranged like an aura behind the throne. Each depicted a tarot card drawn at random from a deck composed of both the Major and Minor Arcanas. The Queen of Swords sat on a throne similar to this one, with her sword held high in one hand and the head of a man gripped by his hair and dripping blood from his severed neck in the other. The High Priestess was a black voodoo witch, zigzag patterns painted on her face, with a headdress of grass and animal horns. The Fool, as usual, had his back turned to the viewer so a cat could pull down his pants with bared teeth. The Wheel of Fortune was a rounded rack that spun off broken bodies while it snapped healthy ones. The Devil was a goat with a huge erect phallus, and chained about its hoofs was a harem of nude women. The Ace of Wands was a female hand whipping a cat-o’-nine-tails. The Ten of Swords was a naked man sprawled dead in a flood of gore, his chest run through by ten blades …

  And so it went. Card after card. Sex and violence.

  Eros and Thanatos.

  There was an ebb and flow to the Morbid Maze. The gallery must have cleared out for the toxic debate between the guest of honor, Bret Lister, and the spotlight grabber, Wes Grimmer. But having drained their bladders or chugged a beer in the bar, the fans were returning to the gallery for an interlude with the dark seers who exposed their malignant psyches in the maze of panels beyond. To keep ahead of the jabbering crowd, Zinc U’d around one side of the moveable wall backing the throne and entered the labyrinth of horror. Ghastly monsters lurked around each hinged corner, and he felt like Theseus stalking the Minotaur, that mutant with the head of a bull on the body of a man, through the bone-littered tunnels beneath the kingdom of Crete.

  Creepy stuff, thought Zinc.

  Fear. Despair. Superstition. Persecution. Paranoia. Captivity. Pain. Torture. Sex. Sadism. Madness. Death. War …

  Such were the themes.

  One artist was fixated on damsels in jeopardy. His body beautifuls all wore clinging gossamer gowns with slits or tears that revealed garters and nylons above high heels. Each had her mouth open as if caught in a scream, for the perils that threatened her closed in like the jaws of a vise from both in front and behind. In fleeing from one menace, she would be snatched by another—damned if you do and damned if you don’t. A hooded skeleton rowed a boat after a victim who was waist-deep in a lake of blood from which a dozen male hands emerged to claw at her clothes and grope her buxom torso. A horde of green-faced dwarfs with teeth filed to points as sharp as their dual-fisted knives came after a terrified woman about to plunge into a well of filthy, wallowing madmen. White-haired, toothless, dirty old men clutched at another as she climbed a ladder to an attic where hook-handed bald ogres were dissolving bodies in barrels of acid. Those already captured were in worse predicaments. A woman sat with her hands and thighs protruding forward through locked stocks as a buzz saw began to pass across the face of the wooden clamp. And finally, a reluctant bride stood at the altar in the grasp of a hunched giggler with burning eyes and twisted fe
atures, while a blindfolded priest with a noose around his neck joined them together for all time in unholy matrimony.

  Zinc assumed the artist was male, but the signature read “Godiva.”

  “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

  The next artist was obsessed with the mask and the face. The mask was the false face presented to the world, the pie crust of civilization that hides the truth of human nature. The face was spawned by evolution out of primal ooze. Here, Dr. Jekyll faced a mirror reflecting Mr. Hyde, Dorian Gray faced the picture that exposed his debauchery, the Phantom of the Opera faced the false front of the mask torn from his deformed features, and the Masque of Red Death was discarded to show the putrescent flesh beneath.

  Around the next corner, Zinc faced a blackout curtain. On parting the slit down its center, he entered a tent-like area with a canopy shutting out overhead light. The dark room contained just a single painting, but it was so big that the canvas covered the height and length of its wall. The stretch of art was entirely black except for two tiny figures in a spotlight beam. Only by approaching the center of the painting could the Mountie fathom who they were. He smiled as he recognized the naked Adam and Eve, complete with an apple in Adam’s hand and a serpent coiled around the trunk of Eden’s tree.

  Without warning, a burst of black light lit up the canvas. Zinc had tripped a sensor by closing in on the panel, and what the rays brought to life in the black morass that spread beyond the boundaries of his limited vision was a panorama of such brutal bloodletting that he—seasoned cop though he was—recoiled in horror.

  The atrocities faded.

  Did he see what he thought he saw?

  Only by tripping the sensor again could he dispel his doubt.

  Which he did.

  So vast was this slaughterhouse for pagan gods, so all-consuming was this abattoir of hell’s demons, so terrifying was this butcher shop of macabre dread, that it would take a hundred bursts of black light to grasp its full potential. The painting was a visual dare—How much of this can your mind stomach?—with “stomach” being the operative word. It was as if the entire cosmos fed on one food: bloody joints of human meat. And not just humans in the Homo sapiens sense, though there were plenty of those being cut up on butcher blocks—or spiked to hang from celestial hooks, or skewered to roast over cooking pits—but also the hominids who evolved into us: Australopithecus, Homo habilis, and Homo erectus. Flesh-eaters from another dimension joined cannibals from this one, each rendered so that the outstanding features were fangs and demented eyes. One creature was a jumble of scales, warts, wounds, and pustulate mush. Another was quasi-human but had gnashing teeth in those sockets that should have housed sight. Ghouls played with bones stripped of stewing flesh, like the one Zinc glimpsed who decorated each skull with a scalped wig. The roots of Eden’s apple tree squirmed out like a can of worms, and through the dark woods that tangled from them pranced Pan-like fairies fingering flutes made from hollowed ribs. Zinc digested grisly bits of the overwhelming whole until he had seen much too much. Whoever had conceived this mind fuck, painting it must have consumed at least a year, and all that while, this labor of love was feeding off the theme of cannibalism.