by John Everson
The locket that had allowed him to touch Katie.
He snatched it out of her hand, and pulled it over his head. When the cold kiss of metal met his chest, he turned from Emery and looked at Katie.
“I hope you mean this,” he said.
Katie grinned. “Of course I do,” she said. “You’ve been so good to me the past couple weeks, I wanted to give you something special so that you’d know I was serious.”
“Serious about driving me crazy,” he asked.
She took his hand, and a spark shot up his arm as he realized he could feel her grip. With her hand, she pressed his fingers to her chest. Mike’s heart jumped as he felt the swell of her breast beneath his fingers. “Only in a good way,” she said.
Katie stepped backward, toward the bed, and Mike couldn’t help but follow.
“Come here with me,” Katie whispered, drawing him down to the bed of nails with her. Mike melted into her arms. The touch of her on his skin felt like heaven. For days, he had only been able to see her. Every brush of her skin, every kiss, had been like touching the wind. He’d felt a spark now and then, but no substance.
Now she hugged him and he actually felt her body there. Mike didn’t resist; he wrapped his arms around her slight shoulders and pulled her close.
“God I’ve missed you,” he whispered.
“I don’t know why,” Katie said. “I’ve been right here all the time.”
“I’ve missed feeling you,” he said.
“Oh, that,” she said. Katie laughed, and he couldn’t help but smile at the wide grin that she gave. Her teeth were long and white and she looked mischievous and happy. “I wanted you to remember what it was you were fighting for,” she said.
Mike had no answer for that, so he bent down and kissed her. Her tongue answered his with electric energy. In seconds, she had wrapped her legs around him as well, and rolled him over and back on the hard, pointed bed. Somehow their clothes disappeared, one piece at a time, and Mike realized that most of his headache was gone as he moved between the silken skin of her naked thighs and pressed himself into her.
“Oh, I have missed that,” she gasped, as he rolled her beneath him, tilting her head back against the bare nails.
Mike groaned and pulled her tighter. “Then you should have left me with the necklace,” he whispered, as her lips brushed his.
“Shhhh,” she said, and pressed her mouth hard on his lips. When she pulled back, she said, “Soon you won’t need it.”
“Jesus, I hope so,” he gasped and thrust his hips hard against hers.
“Jesus has nothing to do with it,” she answered, and pressed his hips back to the bed.
Then they were quiet, at least with words, and focused on moving together across the bed of nails.
When their motions finally slowed, Katie pushed Mike over and onto his back. “How’s your head now?” she asked, licking a pink tongue across his lips.
Mike smiled. “Better,” he said. “But even sex can’t cure a hangover.”
Katie nodded. “I figured,” she said. “But Emery’s got something that does.”
She motioned behind her, and Mike’s heart skipped a beat as he saw the chunky girl move out of the shadows toward the bed. Once again, he’d forgotten she was there. He shouldn’t care if Katie didn’t, but there was something creepy in having sex in front of a big wallflower girl who just stood…still…against the wall. (Kind of the definition of a wallflower, moron, he said to himself).
Emery dropped three white tablets on the small table next to the bed, and set a bottle of water next to them.
Mike didn’t question it. He knocked back the tablets and slugged down the bottle of water. When he’d swallowed them, Katie wrapped her arms around him and straddled him. She kissed him again and again until he felt almost smothered; the room began to fill with amber shadows.
“I am so exhausted,” he said, stifling a yawn.
Katie smiled. “Then you should sleep for a while. I have work to do downstairs anyway. I’ll be back.”
She got up from the bed, and then, as Mike felt the waves of dark and sleep wash over him, Emery took her place, and reached down to take the necklace back from around his neck. He wanted to protest, but realized that he really couldn’t move. His limbs felt like lead.
“Wait,” he whispered, suddenly feeling helpless and wondering what had become of his arms.
“Shhhh,” Katie said, returning for a moment to push a finger across his lips. Without the necklace, he only felt the hint of a spark.
“You won’t need that again,” she said. “I told you, tonight’s the night. Now…get some sleep so you can really enjoy it.”
He wanted to argue, but dimly he saw Katie walk away, and then Emery, too, disappeared from the range of his vision. He wanted to sit up and see where they were going, but instead, his eyelids slipped closed, and Mike let the heavy cloak of sleep spill over him. He didn’t fight it.
* * *
Lucio went to his room but he couldn’t settle in. Jeanie had helped him put on what was probably the best, most elaborate makeup he’d had all month, but he just didn’t feel like scaring people tonight. It was a weird feeling, but all he wanted was to know what had happened to Argento. The guy had been his best friend for three years now, ever since they’d met at a Terror in the Aisles film night in Chicago where they were showing Suspiria and The Beyond. They’d talked, at first haltingly, about their favorite directors, and quickly realized that they not only loved the same era and style in films, but that they lived close to each other, too.
It was a match made in heaven. Or hell, as Argento would have insisted. They quickly began getting together on the weekends and staging film fests. It was Argento who had introduced Lucio to Lon, who didn’t fixate like they did on Eurosleaze, but still had an amazing library and palate for obscure horror. Lon had actually convinced the two of them to watch some comic horror movies from Australia, which they were skeptical of, but ultimately loved. Lucio would never forget the time they all got together for beer at some log cabin bar near Lon’s place, and the guy had suggested they watch a horror movie about a tire.
“C’mon,” Lon had said. “It’s a killer tire. The audience breaks the barrier of the fourth wall. It’s called Rubber and I know you’re going to love it. Plus, I’ve got bourbon.”
Argento had shaken his head in feigned sadness, but Lucio had grinned. “I’ll watch any movie if bourbon is involved.”
“Be careful what you promise,” Lon said. “I’ve got an Australian movie about killer sheep too.”
“Oh my good lord,” Argento had moaned.
And in the end, they’d all loved Rubber. And had watched dozens of crazy horror films together ever since.
Only…maybe they wouldn’t be doing that anymore now.
Lucio pressed his eyes closed. He needed to take a walk before the house opened. He stepped into the hallway and then remembered that Argento had always checked the lights in the basement before the house opened. He had a bunch of sets going down there, and some of the incandescents seemed to burn out quick. As far as he knew, nobody had really looked at them since Argento had disappeared early this week.
Lucio shrugged and took a walk down the hallway toward the stairs. It was something to do. Something that Argento would have wanted done.
Even with his costume on, Lucio felt the chill as he stepped down the stairs into the basement. The house had been hot most of the time when they’d first come here to decorate and set it up, but now, at the end of October…it was drafty and cold. There was no furnace, so some nights over the past couple weeks, he’d been able to see his breath as he closed up at the end of the night. It wasn’t that bad so far tonight, but the temperature had definitely dropped since the sun went down.
Lucio stepped onto the floor of the basement and stood still, taking stock of the room. His
glance went from one spotlight to the next, and the spaces in between, where perhaps there was supposed to be a light, but wasn’t. The front end of the basement looked good. He walked down what Argento had dubbed the ‘Aisle of Atrocities’, where they had constructed several sets that played off famous horror tales and grinned at the setpiece that took its premise from the story of Countess Báthory. A half-nude woman hung from the ceiling, tied with her wrists and feet behind her back to a hook in the ceiling so that only her belly hung down. Her gut was…gutted. Intestines hung out like a rope, and a steady stream of red dripped into the white porcelain tub below, where another woman luxuriated in the deep red bath.
Argento had outdone himself there – he’d rigged a hidden fish pond pump that took the red water out of the tub back up in the air and into the ‘corpse’ so that it could be a continuous blood fountain.
Something rustled in the blue shadows down the aisle and Lucio walked toward it. The ‘haunters’ of the basement ought to be down here any minute, but he hadn’t seen anyone yet.
Someone flipped on the music soundtrack then and the room was filled with the eerie synthesizer tones of Goblin. Argento had nicked the soundtrack from Suspiria for this area. It worked great in a heavily shadowed basement. Lucio turned toward the back of the room, but didn’t see who had turned on the music.
“Andy?” he called out. “Karen? Is that you?”
Nobody answered. Lucio shrugged and continued his survey of the lights. Something moved amid the hanging chains of the Hellraiser display. He walked across the aisle and saw the shadow of someone standing still there, in front of the tortured body strung up with hooks and chains. They were in front of the lights, so he couldn’t make out the face. But whoever it was wore a dark cape and cowl, and held a long blade in front of their chest. It looked like a classic devil worshipper pose.
“Very funny,” Lucio said. “But you’re in the wrong Atrocity for that outfit.”
The figure didn’t answer, but instead raised the knife with both hands in the air. As it did, the cowl fell back and Lucio saw that it was a woman. She was a big woman, with ratty brown hair. He didn’t recognize her at all.
“Hey, who are you and what are you doing down here?” he demanded.
She didn’t answer, but instead suddenly lunged forward and brought the knife down.
Lucio was caught by surprise and started to jump backward to avoid the attack, but he was too late. The knife plunged right through the false eyeball stem that hung from the rubbery mask he wore.
Lucio felt a white-hot explosion in his eye, and grabbed for his face. But the woman pulled the knife right back out of his skull, and brought it back down in his other eye.
The world became a sea of hideous, bloody black pain.
But only for a moment.
Then Lucio didn’t feel anything anymore.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Bachelor’s Grove had never had so many people trying to get in. Word of the haunted house had spread throughout the south suburbs of Chicago over the past few weeks and everyone wanted a look before it closed for the season. The line of people stretched from the ticket taker on the porch all the way down the gravel road past the cemetery and pond, and out onto Midlothian Turnpike. Both of the forest preserve parking lots that served the attraction just down the road were full, and police were directing and stopping traffic on the turnpike to allow people to cross the busy street safely in the dark.
“This is crazy!” Jeanie said to Lon. She had ducked into the hidden main level Ops room – the converted master bathroom. The cast needed to pee over the course of the night, so they’d cordoned this room off from the rest of the rooms as a refuge. And when this was in use, Lon used the hidden room downstairs for Ops. “We’re never going to get all of these people through the house in one night!”
“Yeah, I know,” Lon said. “Can you let everyone know that they have to speed up their throughput tonight? I don’t want to ruin the impact, but we have to move this line faster.”
“I would, but Lucio has been missing for the past hour, so I’ve been working his room. That’s why I’m here. Have you seen him?”
Lon shook his head and frowned. “Fine time to get lost. Parker is a zombie – he’s downstairs in the basement near the Romero Atrocity. Can you grab him and send him up to the room? We have plenty of people down there tonight and I need you roving to help people out. I need to go back outside and help with crowd management.”
“Sure,” Jeanie said. “But I wish I knew where Lucio was. I spent a ton of time on his makeup tonight. I wanted him to be seen.”
“Yeah,” Lon agreed. “I’m just glad we got some extra haunters for this week. Because we sure need the help tonight.”
He got up and closed the laptop screen where it sat on the sink. “Just four more hours until the witching hour!” he announced.
Jeanie held her guts out for several groups as she tried to move down the hallway to the basement. She had to stay in character, which meant that every few steps she had to stop and mug for a group of visitors. The house was alive with screams and laughter – though mostly screams. Eerie music streamed from every room and groups of people were going room to room just yards apart from each other. They’d never allowed people to stack up this thick before. The ticket takers were already moving people through the house at twice the speed and volume as they had earlier in the week.
She reached the basement finally, and quickly moved to the left side of the room before another group confronted her. She saw Parker lurking to the right of a prop zombie. He stood still as a statue, but she knew the makeup. She stopped and waited, as there was a crowd of people moving toward the exhibit ahead of her.
Parker’s gimmick was to let the group be lulled by the ‘fake’ bodies in the display space and then, just before they moved on to the next display, he came to life. His gray hands touched the shoulders of one of the women, and she shrieked as if she’d been stabbed. Her boyfriend or husband laughed, and she slapped him. “Ass!” she said, but he pulled her down the aisle away from Parker, who was now lurching toward another girl in the group. The girl had her own zombie makeup on and Jeanie grinned as she saw it. Peeling flesh, glistening red blood around her mouth…the girl had done a good job.
Parker held out both hands toward her, as if to hug her. “Friendddd,” he growled.
The girl laughed and swatted his arm away. “Freshhhh!” she said, and quickly ran to rejoin her friends.
Jeanie hurried forward then, before another group turned up behind her.
“Nice one,” she said. “I thought you had a new recruit there for a minute.”
“She just doesn’t appreciate my sensitive side,” Parker moaned.
“You mean the side that has watched Return of the Living Dead thirty times?”
“It’s a deeply moving examination of the youth culture in our society and their need for connection.”
“That and Linnea Quigley lies naked on a gravestone.”
“You just don’t appreciate the deep and life-changing symbolism of that moment,” he said.
“Uh-huh,” Jeanie said. “Hey, Lon asked me to come down and get you. Lucio disappeared somewhere and we need a zombie in his room. He wanted to move you up there.”
Parker shrugged. “I can stagger and beg for brains wherever he wants me.”
“Cool,” she said. Then she nodded toward the exhibit, which had both the standing zombie at the side and another one half crouched in the back. In between was a row of gravestones. Next to one of them, a hand emerged from the fake earth. And nearby, a body lay bloody and disheveled. One hand was draped over a gravestone, as if it were trying to crawl away when the end came.
“Did Lucio add that this week?” she asked, pointing at the bloody body. “I don’t remember that prop there before.”
Parker nodded. “Yeah – he must have brought
it down this afternoon, because it wasn’t there yesterday. Pretty freakin’ awesome though, isn’t it? You almost feel like the blood is fresh and wet.”
Footsteps tramped down the stairs behind them, and Jeanie grinned. “You better take care of this group and then head up,” she said. “I’ll go check on Maggie while I’m down here.”
“She’s by the Wax Museum,” he said.
“Thanks,” Jeanie said and began walking as quickly as she could without attracting attention toward the middle of the basement. Behind her, she heard the chatter of a group, and then the sudden growl and scream as Parker leapt out at them. Jeanie smiled. Damn, she was going to miss this. She was already thinking ahead to next year.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“He’s asleep now?” Katie said.
Emery put her hand on his forehead and drew her fingers lightly across his forehead.
Mike didn’t stir.
She nodded.
Katie pointed at the small dresser. “Take the knife and the glass, and get some of my blood in it.”
“But I can’t cut you, you’re not…” Emery said slowly.
“From my real body,” Katie said. “Go downstairs. I need my blood to be inside him tonight.”
Emery nodded, picked up the implements and climbed up the steps to leave the room.
Katie stood over Mike’s body and smiled. “Soon,” she promised. “You and I will truly be bound together as one, just as you’ve wished for. I hope you’ll still feel the same when it happens.”
* * *
When Emery’s feet returned a few minutes later, and stepped slowly down the ladder, she set a glass down on the tiny nightstand next to the bed. It was about a quarter full of a dark liquid. She set down the blade next to it. The blade was stained.
“Now what?” she asked.
“He needs to drink this from me,” Katie said. “Once he does, I can join with him for a short time, while my blood is mingled with his and running through his veins. Lift his head and feed him my communion.”