House of Skin

BOOK OF HELL

Lisa wasn’t sure why she’d come back to the house. There was curiosity, of course, and lots of it. But she’d thought the fear that had eaten her up since Fenn had dragged her away the last time would be enough to keep her away. Regardless, she was back, sitting in her car just up the street. Watching the house. Waiting, perhaps, for it to rise up and give chase.

She didn’t have the nerve to go in.

She only wanted to study it from afar and see if she could make sense of any of it. But there was no sense to be had and she abandoned such naïve ideas moments after pulling up to the curb.

It hadn’t been easy getting away.

The past two days since the incident at the House of Mirrors had been aggravating ones. Fenn had been with her every moment when he wasn’t on duty, feeding her soup and stroking her hair and lording over her like a big brother. And when he was gone, he seemed to call every thirty minutes to see if she was okay. She was beginning to find his constant doting as hard to take as the return of William Zero.

His heart was in the right place, but his constant vigilance was stifling. There was just too much to be done to be a prisoner of his affections. He knew nothing of what she’d experienced. The transmitter had failed due to mechanical difficulty just as her watch had when the Territories opened up. Her scientific bent of mind told her that two dimensions interfacing must have produced a prodigious amount of electromagnetic energy, forces that contemporary physics were probably ignorant of.

Fenn. Poor, dear, sweet Fenn. He was in love with her, his head filled with dreams of bright and happy domesticity. He saw a future for them. A house. Lives intertwined. Maybe even children. But it would never come to pass. She knew that just as she knew she did not love him. A simple tranquil existence was beyond her. Twisted desires and obscene appetites were wrestling for possession of her soul like dogs fighting over a juicy bone. There was no denying them. If she let him get closer, there would only be heartbreak for him.

If he discovered who she really was it would destroy him.

His attentions were flattering, but stifling and suffocating.

When he went back to the station after spending his lunch with her, she made her move. Even as she drove off into the afternoon traffic, she wondered if she was being followed by some of his men. It was the sort of thing he’d do, blinded by infatuation and burning with protective instincts. She saw no cars that seemed to be tailing her, but then, she doubted that she would have seen them.

She’d been parked for nearly an hour now and only one or two cars had passed. Fenn was probably worrying and ready to send out the Calvary now that she wasn’t there to answer his calls.

If he was half as smart as he pretends to be, he’d know exactly where you went. How you couldn’t keep away.

There was no denying what had happened at the house. She’d seen William Zero and what appeared to be the threshold of the Territories. She knew what purpose the mirrors served—they were doorways of a sort. Such things shouldn’t be and yet they were. Fine. She accepted that man’s knowledge of reality was rather limited. The thing she wanted to know was why Zero had returned. What did he want? Was it his son or was he back to start on a fresh binge of crimes? If that was the case, she would tell Fenn the truth and they would stop him. But could he be stopped? Something that appeared to have been dissected and yet lived? If being taken apart and reassembled hadn’t deadened the life in him, what good would police and bullets do?

The answers to these questions wouldn’t be gathered hiding in a car. She stepped out and kept her hand on the .38 in her pocket. She was going in, God help her. If she didn’t lose her mind this time, then maybe there wasn’t one to lose at all.

She marched up the steps and went in, leaving the door open for a hasty retreat. It was silent within, as she knew it must be. Her mind relived her last visit and she quickly shrugged it aside. She looked around downstairs, unable to go up just yet. Her breath came quick, her skin cool and clammy. She was afraid and it wasn’t a bad thing, it kept her vigilant.

Finally, she climbed the stairs, her heart filling her throat.

It seemed to take an eternity to reach the second floor landing and another to find the attic door. It was closed. Again, she wondered if she’d shut it or someone else had. Not that it mattered. She opened it and started up.

She knew she wasn’t alone long before she reached the top. It was a dread feeling that started in her belly and spread through her limbs. By the time she reached the landing, her legs threatened to collapse beneath her. A stink of death filled her nostrils and she soon saw why: there was a body lying mere feet from her. It reminded her of the animal bodies she’d seen—horribly wasted and stripped of flesh. But this one had been human. Man or woman, she couldn’t say. There was precious little left but ravaged bone and withered bits of clothing. She fought back an urge to vomit. It was something she needed to do, but she couldn’t allow it, not until she’d spoken with the man who did this.

The attic wasn’t swallowed by the Territories as before, perhaps the sunlight feeding in through the broken shutters and the fissures in the roof was keeping it at bay. It occupied only the full-length mirror now, a shifting curtain of black that was hypnotic in its very insane texture and promise. She could hear what it must be like in that awful place—screams, sobbings, cold laughter, a discordant singing of many suffering voices. That and the constant shriek of some demon wind that set her nerves on edge.

“Are you here?” she managed, moving no further into the room, afraid that the hungry vortex would suck her in.

“Yes.” A voice from the darkness beyond the glass.

“Show yourself.”

“Come and find me.” A peal of cruel laughter.

“No.”

She saw him now, walking towards the mirror, polluted mists the color of leaden ash swirling about him. He seemed very far away, despite how near his voice had sounded. It took him scant seconds to reach the attic. The physical laws were apparently quite different in that terrible place. He passed through the glass, the breach of worlds, with a subtle ripping sound as if two blankets charged with static electricity were suddenly separated. The good doctor was no more attractive than before, just a pieced together thing pretending humanity. He was wasted and festering, numerous incisions beginning to bleed now that he’d left the chasm where certain laws were suspended.

“You’ve come to see me, Lisa, and here I am,” he said.

“What,” she began, her lungs devoid of breath, “do you want here?”

Zero took a few steps forward, but no more. Drops of blood struck the floor at his feet. He smiled and she heard sutures, both within and without, popping their dusty seams. His eyes fixed her own. There was a cold and malignant appetite in them, particularly the yellow one which was like the eye of a rabid wolf.

He looked down at the leeched body. “A transient,” he explained, “looking for shelter.”

“You murdered him?”

“I was hungry,” he told her and said no more, as if that was explanation enough. And it was; she had no interest in the details.

Zero shook his head, as if mourning the bones before her or perhaps his own blighted soul. “A pity,” he said.

She felt nothing but hatred for him now, as she supposed she always had since learning of his true calling.

“My love for you never diminished,” he told her. “I kept it here.” He pressed two waxy fingers to his chest. The nails were dirty and ragged as if he’d been digging in the dirt. “I’ve kept it safe.”

Madness tickled her brain at the idea of this monstrosity pining away for her. Was this the reason he’d returned? For her?

“I watched you each time you came to this house. Through the mirror I saw you. Your beauty still takes my breath away. I’d almost forgotten how much I loved you.”

The impulse to retch was almost overpowering. How could such a thing know of love? The idea of this horror from a dissection table loving her was enough to make her sanity bleed and run.

“You… toyed with me that day, didn’t you? You left the cigarette burning downstairs.”

“A reminder. I thought then you’d know I’d come back.”

“Why did you come back?”

“For you, my love.”

No, she couldn’t accept that. She couldn’t accept him loving her or even thinking about her. It made her feel filthy, drained of hope and life. Her head reeled with dizziness and her stomach convulsed with nausea.

Her legs decided to run, but it was too late. He was already on her, Dr. Blood-and-Bones, the butcher of butchers. His left hand seized her arm and his right stroked her cheek with leathery fingers. The sutured, disjointed face closed in on her own, his gashed lips seeking a kiss. His teeth were like yellow nubs. She screamed and fought in his grip.

“There’s plenty of time for romance,” he promised, his breath like old meat.

He was terribly strong, stronger than anyone had the right to be. Her struggles were nearly useless. He dragged her effortlessly towards the chasm, whispering obscenities under his sour breath that she didn’t dare listen to. Her fingers lost their instinctive repulsion of him and saw only survival. They scratched over his mummified face and loosened flaps of skin and broke stitches. He shook his head frantically to keep her nails away, but she kept on, tearing and clawing until he dropped her at his feet with a cry of anger. She was preciously close to the mouth of the chasm and she could feel its pull drawing her over the dusty floor. Her foot was sucked into the mirror and she could feel the Territories crawling in infectious waves. The other side was freezing. She fought free and crawled out of harm’s way.

Dr. Blood-and-Bones was repairing the damage she’d done to his face, nimbly stitching himself back up. “You are full of life,” he said with something like joy. “Just as I remembered.”

Lisa found herself unable to move. The strength had been tapped from her limbs and she could only lay there and wait for his attentions. She recognized the physical and psychological signs, knowing she was either in shock or quite near to it. The sight of the peeled cadaver and the stink of its wormy decay made her stomach heave. The knowledge of what Zero said and what he intended to do completed the process. She vomited and the very action of it freed both her mind and her stillborn limbs.

She stood and faced her tormentor, her fingers pulling the gun from her pocket. It might not kill him, but it would definitely make getting her a difficult proposition.

“Come now, Lisa,” the ghoul said. “You’ve waited just as I have.”

“Get away from me.”

Zero took one defiant step toward her. He was maimed and bleeding from innumerable holes in his ruptured carcass. His desire was evident, it twisted in the air between them.

“Don’t you recall how it was?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, not sure if she was lying or telling the truth, “it was a living hell.”

“Hell?” he spat. “You don’t know what hell is. But you’ll learn soon enough.”

Visions were swimming in her mind. Of the afternoons they’d spent chatting and viewing old movies. Of the secret tryst they’d shared. Of the love she’d freely and desperately given and he’d taken. Of the way he really was and the way she thought he would be. Of the perversions he’d inflicted on her, twisting her susceptible psyche into one that could know no real love, only abuse and debased yearnings.

“You sicken me,” she told him point blank. “You used a naïve teenager, exploiting her at her weakest moment. You made me hate myself.”

He licked his lips with a leprous tongue. “I made you into the woman you are.”

“You made me become what I am. I studied the mind because I was so disgusted by my own. And then I found out about you, who you really were. A weak little man with a mind of filth, a butcher, a mur—”

“An artist.”

“Butcher. Nothing more,” she said. “I hated the memory of you then.”

“And now?”

“Pity. I only feel pity for you. You’re pathetic.”

“In time,” he said, edging closer, “you’ll feel differently.”

And now the time had come, her mind let her know. He was blocking the stairs and the chasm was directly behind her. He was working himself forward, by mere inches, hoping she’d retreat and be swallowed in the black throat of his world. But it wouldn’t happen. She stood her ground and prepared to fire. It wasn’t an easy thing to shoot another, surely not as easy as it appeared on television where bullet-ridden bodies fell with no remorse. This was reality and her sense of morality, of civilization, stayed her finger.

He held his hands out before him, clutching, ready to squeeze the swell of her breasts.

She began to squeeze the trigger. If he didn’t fall, then she’d press the muzzle to her own temple. Better suicide than those withered fingers stroking her flesh.

“Don’t be afraid,” he cooed, standing directly before her. His fingers found the cones of her breasts and pressed into them. She felt a breath of heat rise from memory, but present reality dissolved it into revulsion. “Nice, very nice.”

She pulled the trigger with a jerk of disgust. The explosion was deafening and the impact pushed him away. But he was still smiling like a lecherous zombie.

“Pain,” he said almost tenderly. “Nothing new to me. It seems more real here, more desperate.” He fingered the hole in his belly as if it were a woman’s sex.

“Bastard…” The word slipped free with a hissing sibilance. She hadn’t thought it, it was only a truth set free.

“I used to dream of this moment. But I thought it would never come. As they broke and destroyed me, I never forgot about our times together. Even when they made me like them, I still thought of you.” He looked almost sad for a moment, a glint of despair blazing in his eye like that of a lost child. It died quickly. “I never thought we’d meet again. But the fates want us together, I think. And who are we to deny them?”

He wasn’t lying. She knew that now. It wasn’t a simple threat, an abomination to wave before her bulging eyes. It was true. He had thought of her, dreamed of her. All the while she built up her life and tried to forget, pretend that it hadn’t happened, she was in his thoughts. As his new masters plied their profane crafts to his flesh, he thought of her and what they’d done together. If there’d been anything left in her stomach, this would have purged it.

He reached out for her again.

Her sanity had endured this long and she wouldn’t forfeit it now. She would protect it like a helpless child.

She pulled the trigger again. And then, two more times after that. Zero jerked back like a puppet with clipped strings. His face mangled into a mask of anger. The bullets had bored through him as if he were made of dry wood, spilling blood and decay to his feet. She ran then, slipping out of his grasp and tumbling down the stairs. The gun was still in her hand when she found her feet and kicked through the door.

She stumbled up the hallway, knowing that it was far from over. But if she could just reach the stairs and throw herself down them, surely he wouldn’t follow out into the light where the real world would rend apart a thing like him. But she never made it to the stairs. The wall directly before her began to creak and moan, unlocking itself and rearranging its atoms. Zero was slipping through, oozing forth in a tide of corruption like maggots from rotten pork. He shifted and shuddered and reassembled his mass in time to stop her.

“It won’t be that easy,” he promised. “No more games, my sweet. I saw the note you scribbled on the wall. You left it for me.”

No, no, he didn’t understand at all and she didn’t have the strength to explain.

He came on and she emptied the remaining bullets into his noisome hide and he shrugged them off. The slugs fell from his gaping wounds and dropped to the floor. Lisa screamed and hammered at his face with the butt of the gun to no avail. His fists came down and she collapsed on her back.

“Now, I’ll take what I want,” he assured her in a vile tone.

And she knew what he intended. It was lunacy, sheer and utter, but she could expect nothing less in this hopping ground between two worlds. Through the ages, countless women had been overpowered and raped by men. It was a testament to their resilience that most survived this indignity of indignities. But Lisa knew there would be no surviving this, no possibility her sanity could endure something so totally decadent and loathsome. If Zero had his way with her, life and laughter were things of the past.

A carnal grin played over his mouth. “Just like it used to be,” he told her, advancing. “I’ll show you things you never dreamed of.”

She was lying on the floor and Zero was crouched over her now. She could smell the hideous musk of his sex, feel the bloated bulge in his trousers. Waves of reeking heat came from the cuts and gashes of his skin. It made her positively giddy with disgust. She pushed against him, but he was irresistible. His fingers parted her coat, tore open her blouse and bra, roughly kneading her nipples. She felt something under her hand, a weight in his pocket. As he poured his attentions on her, she dug it out. It was a book.

“That’s not for you,” he said, making a grab for it.

She tucked and rolled, cradling the book in her arms. There was fear in his eyes now. There was no mistaking it.

It was a smallish volume, bound in greasy, pale skin. She had a good idea what kind. There seemed to be diary entries within. That and something like mathematical symbols scrawled over the pages. But it was no math of this world.

He came on, slowly, afraid she’d bolt. “Give the book to me,” he said. “It has no use for you.”

“No.” The answer was flat, decisive. She had power in her hands, but of what sort?

“I want it.”

She grasped a page between her thumb and first finger. It was damp, pungent paper and it seemed to crawl beneath her touch as if it were infested with tiny parasites. She started to tear it.

“NO!” he howled. “Don’t do that! The passage…”

She stepped around him and started down the stairs, her eyes never off him, her fingers ready to shred the rancid pages. He followed her down, but at a safe distance.

“Please,” he begged when she was at the door, “the book. Give it to me.”

She opened the door and said, “No,” and fled into the light. She raced down the steps and into the street. Zero didn’t follow as she suspected he wouldn’t. When she was in the car and the book was lying on the passenger seat, bathed by sunlight, she noticed what was happening to it. A stinking vapor was beginning to rise from it as if it were decomposing. She covered it with her coat and the dissolution ceased.

She raced back to her hotel with her bounty, realizing for the first time in her life she had the upper hand.

But what to do with it?

That was the question.