House of Skin

ALONE IN THE HOUSE OF MIRRORS

Lisa stood silently at the precinct as two technicians—one male and one female—wired her. Her shirt was off and Fenn looked uneasy as they taped the transmitter to her belly and breasts, then she dressed and went out to her car. She drove about in traffic while the police van with the listening equipment trailed a block or two behind and made adjustments at their end. They told her to speak off and on in a normal tone of voice. It was strange talking to no one, so she recited a thesis she’d presented years ago on Erhard and the notion of Self. It was terribly boring and tedious and she never realized to what extent until she had to read it aloud from memory.

Afterwards, they returned to the precinct and the games ended.

It was time to do it for real.

The police van disguised with a Pacific Bell logo on its side parked well up the street and Lisa stopped at the house itself. Fenn was lying in the backseat with a walkie-talkie. He winked at her as she got out and went up the steps cut into the hill. The House of Mirrors brooded above her and for reasons unknown, the sight of it made her heart race and her palms sweat.

She was dressed in a London Fog knee-length raincoat. It was a big, roomy thing that hung on her and disguised the bulge of the gun in her pocket. The door was open and she went into the secret world of gloom. Despite the coolness of a November afternoon, the air was hot and pungent inside. It had an unpleasant, damp smell like the inside of a reptile house. Bits of peeling paint dropped from the walls. There were curled Autumn leaves scattered over the floor. They hadn’t been here on her last visit, which led her to believe that the front door had been left open recently.

She waited and listened for footsteps that would give away Eddy’s approach and heard nothing. The house was quiet and tomblike. Fenn had told her to stay on the ground floor and let Eddy come to her if he was there. It would be safer that way.

She swallowed and drew a deep breath. “Eddy?” she called out. “Are you here? It’s Dr. Lochmere.”

Her voice echoed up the stairwell and died like a memory.

She waited and there was no response. She hadn’t expected one.

“I’m going up,” she whispered.

Fenn was probably writhing, but no matter. She was on her own and she would follow her own instincts. She went up the stairs and moved slowly up the dusty, dank corridor. It was cooler up here for some crazy reason and a sort of frigid clamminess rained in the air. She didn’t bother checking the rooms, instead she went directly to the attic door and started up.

The house was a study in contradictions. The bottom floor was hot and wet, the upstairs cool, and the attic like a freezer. It made no sense. In this damnable place, heat seemed to fall rather than rise. Everything here raged against physical laws. She zipped up her raincoat and hugged herself for warmth. Her breath frosted as it left her lips. A slight, frozen breeze skirted the floors. She tried to empty her mind of imagination, yet the place still seemed to swim with a glaring aura of hate.

The skeletal remains of the animal still rested on the floor. The dust was beginning to insinuate itself once again where it had been stripped clean by that unknown sucking wind.

She stared at the grime-covered mirror. Why had Zero been so obsessed with mirrors? There had to have been some psychological modus operandi to it, but no one had ever discovered what it was.

Her breath was coming quick and she felt an uncanny sense of impending disaster. But it was just her mind playing tricks and she had to keep it in check. But it wasn’t easy; the attic was an envelope of suffering. Negativity and inhumanity oozed from every board and crevice.

She turned to leave and a cold, arctic wind enveloped her. She turned and there seemed to be no cause for it. Her nerves danced on edge, her hands trembled, and it felt like something thick and greasy was lodged in her throat. The building anxiety in the air made her want to collapse in a ball and cry.

“Just a room,” she said aloud as if to verify the fact.

She took a stick of yellow chalk from her pocket and wrote the following on the wall:

She turned and left, moving quickly down the stairs into the corridor and not stopping until the front door was in sight. Only then did she feel somewhat at ease.

“Nobody home,” she whispered to relieve Fenn and the others and herself, she supposed.

She grasped the doorknob and was struck by a sudden claustrophobic sensation that it wouldn’t open at all, but it did. She felt almost as if she were being watched. The air smelled different, just a suggestion of an odor that hadn’t been there before. She left the front door open and followed the scent. Tobacco smoke. In what had once been a sitting room, a cigarette smoldered on the floor.

Fenn?

“Is someone here?” she said in a dead, dry tone.

The wind rattled the eaves outside and the house seemed to shudder. She was rooted to the spot, paranoia raging in her brain. She wanted to put her hand in her pocket and touch the gun, but her fingers were unwilling to move.

A board creaked overhead.

The front door swung shut with a deafening slam.

She ran down the hall and threw it open, her heart slamming in her chest, her breath locked in her lungs.

“Just the wind,” she said and looked down at the floor. The warped frame of the door had scraped a trail there. It was unlikely the wind could have sucked it close.

She shut it and left.

“It’s crazy the way an empty house can prey on your imagination,” she told Fenn later. She didn’t mention the cigarette for fear he wouldn’t let her come back and she knew she had to now.

“Don’t I know it.”

“I almost felt like I was being watched.”

He looked concerned. “Maybe you were.”

“No, I don’t think so. It was just nervous tension, that’s all. I heard a board creak and then the door slammed and I ran. I hadn’t been so scared since I was a kid.”

“Fear’s okay,” he told her. “It’s a good thing. It can save your ass in some situations.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“Trust me, I am.”

She winked at him and wondered who’d left the cigarette. It could’ve been Eddy, but something told her it was someone else entirely.

And that’s what really scared her.