House of Skin

LITTLE GIRL LOST

Some hours after Lisa had left the House of Mirrors, she had a visitor. She was huddled in her bed, studying Zero’s book, when she heard a key card slip into the door slot and the door was opened. Fenn? No, she knew— somehow—it wasn’t him.

She was right.

It was Cherry Hill.

“No, don’t get up,” Cherry said as she stepped into the bedroom. “Lie quiet and relax. Isn’t that how it used to go? Just lie quiet.”

“Cherry.” Lisa said this and nothing more. There was nothing else to say. Somehow, even before the phone call, she’d suspected this was going to happen. Inside, she was shriveled white because she knew very well the sort of lunatic her visitor was and exactly what she was capable of. Outwardly, she maintained her demeanor—calm, cool, non-threatening. If Cherry sensed fear, she would exploit it.

“You look tired, Dr. Lisa. Have you been getting enough rest?” She laughed. “No, I don’t suppose you have. Still chasing Eddy Zero. Tsk. Tsk.”

“What do you want, Cherry?”

“To talk.”

“How did you get a key card to my suite?”

Cherry sat on the edge of the bed. “That was easy enough. You’d be surprised what a little flirtation can get you, Dr. Lisa.”

Dr. Lisa. Once upon a time, it was Cherry’s pet name for her. It had seemed almost cute once. Now it was oddly disturbing. “So say what you came to say, Cherry. I have work to do.”

“In time.”

“Say what you have to say, Cherry. Then you need to leave.”

Cherry’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t push me, Dr. Lisa. I don’t like being backed into corners. I react in the worst possible ways.”

Lisa sat up. “You’re still a fugitive from justice. Need I remind you of that?”

“If you turn me in, you turn yourself in.” Cherry didn’t seem concerned. She was studying her nails and polishing them against her skirt. “You don’t want that, do you?”

Lisa knew she was right. The police wouldn’t think highly of what she’d done. “I’m willing to take that chance, are you?”

Cherry was filing her nails with a silver emery board now. It was long and quite sharp. “So, call the police, Doctor. Only remember that I’m very dangerous and you never know what might set off a psychotic episode in me.”

Again, Cherry was right. Lisa knew her all too well. She was prone to violent outbursts at the drop of hat. It was important to remember she was dealing with a criminally insane mind. “Say what you came to say, Cherry. I’m listening.”

“That’s better. I always liked you best when you were cooperative.”

Lisa tried to remain calm. She wanted to shout at Cherry, to scream, but that wouldn’t do at all. Her past had come back to haunt her and in Cherry she saw the physical embodiment of that little fact. Watch what you’re doing, she cautioned herself. She didn’t take out that nail file just to do her nails. There’s a warning implied by it.

“I want you to stop, Lisa. I want you to get the hell out of this town right now before it’s too late,” Cherry told her. “If you like living at all, get out before you lose your breath.”

“Is this a threat?”

“Yes.”

“You know where Eddy is, don’t you?”

She smiled, cocking her head to the side. “He’s quite close, I think. Only I stand between the two of you. Only I keep him from doing something very nasty to you. I cared for you once, Lisa. Despite the fact that you used me like a guinea pig, I did care for you. So, please go away.”

Lisa didn’t know what to think. Cherry looked to be near tears. She sensed a certain honesty in them. But it was too late to run now. William Zero was back and his presence paled all other dangers. Cherry and Eddy seemed almost comical in comparison.

“I can’t, Cherry. I have to stop Eddy.”

“I’m sorry, then. I really am.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re going to die.”

“If you know where he is—”

“He’s worked very long and very hard for what’s going to happen next. And he doesn’t want you messing it up. Your appearance here, at this time, is very bad.”

“What is going to happen next?”

Cherry regained her composure. Gone was the sincerity, gone was the humanity, the concern. Her eyes had gone flat and predatory now. They were cold and reptilian. “He’s near and before long he’ll come for you.”

“You’d better leave.”

“Save yourself, Lisa. It’s not too late.”

Cherry left and Lisa wanted to cry, but tears were beyond her now.

That night, for Lisa, there was no sleep. Each time she closed her eyes, she saw him, she saw her personal bogeyman drifting in for a kiss. She could feel his swollen lips pressing against her own, the tongue jutting from his crooked mouth as it licked her face.

Sleep was something she’d always taken for granted, like reality. But when one is shattered, the other stands no possibility of survival. She was sitting in her hotel room, trembling, wondering if even now Dr. Blood-and-Bones was calculating some fresh mode of portal that would carry him into her sanctuary for the love so long denied. Given time, she felt certain he would find a way to her. He was nothing if not patient, if not infinitely clever. He’d been sucked into the abyss some twenty years before and now, according to his little notebook, he had solved the riddle of escape. He could come and go as he pleased, all through the operation of some alien mathematical theorem. And that was no doubt why he wanted the book so badly: those cryptic symbols and configurations were the key. Without them, his door was either permanently open or he was trapped in this sphere of existence. Perhaps both.

Mirrors now made her uneasy. She could barely stand being near one, always fearing a stitched and seamed hand might reach out for her.

But, despite this, her thoughts were centered on the book.

She’d considered more than once of bringing the book and its mysteries to some mathematician or theorist and letting them have a look. Chances were, it would take them time to divine its operations and variables. And to what end? To place dangerous, forbidden knowledge in the hands of misguided intellectuals who might sever the fabric of reality or of time itself? No. The book had to be destroyed. But not until William Zero was exiled back into the Territories.

Reading entries and pouring over the computations with her own limited knowledge of differential equations, she was struck by the fact that there was nothing supernatural whatsoever involved here. Hadn’t she once read that certain spells and conjurations of witchcraft bore an unsettling resemblance to certain operations of theoretical physics? Zero kept referring to the Territories as a world between worlds and that got her to thinking that it was perhaps a loop in time and space between dimensions—this one and the next. Thusly, there was nothing supernatural about any of it. Zero had spent his last twenty years in some quarter where the physical laws of the third dimension were negligible to some degree. This loop, as it were, was probably a neutral ground between dimensions, a place ruled by laws of both dimensions and neither. But none of this set about explaining why pain and perversion were the norm there. Unless it was because it was peopled by individuals like Zero and a host of unfortunates brought for amusement. But it did make her speculate as to what the true origin of Christian hell was.

She was probably making a mistake by not bringing Fenn in on this. But in doing so, other less palatable matters would have to be brought up, such as her affair—if you could call it that—with Zero. She’d never discussed it with anyone and she really doubted that she could even now.

She was keeping the book hidden in her bureau, wrapped in pillow cases. It was degenerating rapidly as it was bound in some type of skin she took to be human. Already, this skin was drying out, loosing its original greasy texture and beginning to flake. The pages were becoming brittle, the edges beginning to crumble. If only it would last until she’d divined its secrets.

For the moment there was nothing to do but wait and think. Time was slipping away and each moment, she knew, Zero was plotting against her, devising some new route to his heart’s desire—her and the book. If she wasn’t careful, he’d get both.

Towards dawn, a rain began to fall and Lisa curled in bed shivering, and shedding some tears of her own.

The world seemed out of control.