House of Skin

THROUGH THE GATES OF HELL

If a man was truly dedicated and had a bit of money to flash about, there was no one he couldn’t find in time. And if you weren’t a cop or didn’t act like one, so much the better. Gulliver decided he knew how Eddy thought and once you had that going for you, the rest was only a matter of legwork and asking the right questions to the right people. That and biding your time.

His theory would’ve worked in time. It was logical, he knew, from start to finish. Once again he began frequenting the various leather bars and gay clubs. And much to his surprise, he was propositioned by dozens of men and a few women. It just went to show that you can’t find love; it has to find you. And all the thankless, frustrating hours he’d spent doing just that. Had it been any other time, he would’ve been flattered, but he found himself only irritated. He saw only business and that business was locating Eddy Zero.

In the few days since he’d returned from the hospital, he’d done nothing but scheme and plot. After he’d forced himself out of hiding and taken the offensive, he felt much better. It was a pleasant change of pace being the hunter and not the hunted. He asked a lot of questions and flashed a picture of his quarry around that he’d clipped from the newspaper. But that was only part of his strategy. Eddy was going to show up at some tavern or stroke parlor and Gulliver was going to be there when he did. He spent his days hanging around dozens and dozens of these places, making discreet inquiries and showing the photo about. Sooner or later, he would’ve spotted Eddy.

But as it turned out, Eddy—crafty devil that he was—spotted him first.

Gulliver was urinating in the men’s room of a place called Sonny’s and reading the graffiti on the wall. He heard someone come in and thought nothing of it. Not until the stranger came up right behind him and slid the gun from his coat with the ease of a pickpocket.

“Everyone in the place knows you’re carrying,” Eddy told him, prodding Gulliver in the back with his own little .22 pistol.

Gulliver hadn’t finished pissing, but his penis had shriveled up on him and that was the end of it. “Eddy?” he asked.

“Who else?” Eddy said, not letting him turn around. “So tell me now, why is it you’re looking for me? I was going to let you go after our last little run-in. I thought to myself: Well, the impotent little fag knows I mean business, he’ll back off like a good boy now, climb back into his hole and keep his nose clean… but you couldn’t do that, could you, Gully?”

Gulliver was trembling, words of defense simply weren’t available. “I…” he began and decided there was no use in pleading a case that didn’t exist.

“I’ve seen you off and on for the past two days,” Eddy told him. “Didn’t you know? You walked right past me more than once.”

Gulliver felt weak inside, his guts gone to stew. He chanced a sideward glance into the mirrors over the sink and knew Eddy was right. He had seen him and more than once. Eddy’s little disguise was perfect. Gulliver hadn’t thought Eddy would try anything quite so dramatic. He’d thought the man’s inflated ego would necessitate going as himself. Even if he had been looking for a disguise, he doubted he would’ve spotted him. The pea coat and longshoreman’s cap and sunglasses were perfect. As was the long black mustache and sideburns he sported. He looked exactly like one of hundreds of men fresh off the docks. In a port city like Frisco, the bars and clubs were always full of that type.

“Clever, ain’t I?” Eddy giggled.

“What now?” Gulliver asked. “Are you going to kill me?”

“I don’t know. I was thinking of raping you in the old naval tradition, but you’d probably like that too much, wouldn’t you?”

“Asshole,” Gulliver grumbled.

“Walk with me,” Eddy said, giving him a shove towards the door. “And don’t cry for help, Gully, or I’ll shoot you in the head. I don’t give a fuck how many people see me do it.”

Gulliver zipped himself and did as he was told. Eddy pocketed the gun and out they went. Gulliver started towards the bar room, but Eddy told him otherwise. “I think we’ll go out the back way. I wouldn’t want to lose you to another man.” They went down a short hall and through a door marked private that led into a stock room. Then they were in the alley.

“Where?” Gulliver asked.

“Just walk. I’ll point you home, don’t worry.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

Eddy sighed. “No, not me.”

Gulliver wasn’t exactly relieved.

Eddy steered him to a bleak, crumbling neighborhood not far from the Excelsior District. Crowds of nasty youths littered the sidewalks. Whores and criminal types of both sexes skulked in doorways and cul-de-sacs. It was a fearsome, depraved little stretch of real estate. It took them well over an hour to reach it and all the while Eddy spoke of things Gulliver refused to hear.

They went into a ramshackle house with a slouched roof, boarded-over windows, and a yard strewn with refuse and stunted trees. Eddy pushed him inside and turned on the lights. It stunk of dampness and old meat in there.

“Take off your coat,” Eddy told him, shedding his own.

Gulliver did as he was told. He was too tired to fight. This had been coming for a long time and he was accepting it now. If only it would be quick.

“Now the rest of your things.”

“You want me to strip?”

“That’s right. Hurry on, now.”

Eddy watched him, grinning the whole time. He took a certain interest in watching someone remove their clothes. There was something immensely exciting about it all.

“Well, what now?” Gulliver asked him. He sounded irritated, almost impatient with it all. “If you’re going to kill me, why don’t you just get it over with.”

“I said I wasn’t going to kill you,” Eddy insisted. He crossed the room and opened a set of doors. “In here.”

It was totally black in the room when Eddy closed the doors. Not a sliver of light found its way in.

“There,” he said, turning on a lamp.

It wasn’t much but it was something. Still, the room was dim and depressing. A dampness hung in the air, a stink of rotting wood and something worse.

“If you’re not going to kill me, then what’s the point of this?” Gulliver chanced. He was naked and defenseless. He didn’t believe for one moment that he wasn’t going to die. Nothing good could come of this.

“You’ll see.”

Gulliver heard a shiver of motion behind him. He turned and a figure clawed out of the shadows, something out of a nightmare.

“What the hell…” he managed, and saw the glimmer of a knife in the things gnarled paw. He had no time for recognition, only for pain. The knife slashed out at him and opened a gash in his chest. He went down with a cry and held his hand out in protection but the blade danced again and freed him of two fingers, leaving a third dangling by a grizzled thread. Blood flowed from the wound in his chest and spurted from the stumps of his fingers. A screaming, sobbing sound spilled wetly from his mouth in a mist of red.

“You said…” he began and then his attacker was close again and he realized for the first time who this night haunter was.

Eddy had done more than steal Spider’s body, he had breathed a sort of life into it. Spider was a desiccated and withered thing, stitched and stapled, a living wraith. “Gulliver,” he said, his shredded lips mocking a smile. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Gulliver stared and saw the dead man walk and had no trouble believing it. Nothing was impossible, he’d long knew, where Eddy Zero and Spider were concerned. He saw and accepted and concerned himself only with the blood that was vacating his body in red rivers. He knew enough about first aid to know that his wounds weren’t fatal. If he received attention and soon, he’d live to tell the tale.

“I said I wouldn’t kill you,” Eddy told him, “and I won’t. Spider will take care of that. Won’t you, my gutted lovely?”

“Fuck you,” Spider said.

What was this? Dissension among the damned? Spider was surely no innocent in all of this, yet was he beginning to learn what sort of abusive monster he was being used by? It was something.

“Kill him,” Eddy said softly. “Get it over with.”

“There’s no hurry,” Spider insisted. “I’ve got all night.”

“I want it done.”

“In my own way,” Spider insisted.

“Now.”

“Who fucking left you in charge?”

Gulliver watched the two demons arguing over his life. It was, all in all, the worst possible situation he could’ve imagined himself in. Nothing was even remotely comparable.

“Do you have to make a fucking drama out of everything?” Eddy asked.

Spider ran a skeletal hand through his filthy, braided locks. He brushed a few beetles loose and stepped on them. “That’s your problem, Eddy. You’re in too much of a damn hurry all the time. Moments like this have to be savored. Do you think the Sisters would have paid us any mind had we rushed through our other works? Quick and brutal killers with no imagination are a dime a dozen.”

“I can’t wait all night.”

“So go on.”

“Shit,” Eddy said and left, slamming the doors.

Spider laughed with a sound like ripping paper. “He’s in for a nasty surprise, you know, in the Territories. They’ll destroy him. He thinks he’s wise and experienced because he killed a few whores. He’s a veritable babe in the woods, a punk.”

“Please,” Gulliver gasped. “Let me go. He’ll never know. I won’t say a thing, I won’t—”

Spider polished his knife against his coat, ignoring him. “Without me, that boy would never be nothing but a cheap, murderous hood. Oh, he’ll learn, though.”

Gulliver began crawling towards the door.

“When they get him,” Spider continued, “he’ll sing a different tune.”

Gulliver was reaching for the door knob. Spider walked up behind him and dragged him back. “Dying is such a good thing, Gulliver. I’m sure you’ll appreciate it. Death frees one of the excesses of life.” He fingered the blade of his knife. “It’s only now that I can truly realize what fools living men are. Rushing about, accumulating money, building little secure lives that will fall to ash with Death’s inevitable breath. Such a waste. You’ll understand, I think. In time.”

Gulliver was weeping now, from his eyes, from his wounds. Desperation and hopelessness were raining from him. Spider almost felt sorry for him.

“I’ll be quick and humane,” he promised. “But first we’ll chat. I think you deserve to know everything we’ve done, you little fag, and everything we’re going to do.”

Eddy returned about an hour or so later. He’d spent his time drinking at a bar a few streets over. The alcohol had relaxed him to the point where he felt human again. Sometimes, all this work and preparation just wore a body down. He went into Spider’s lair and almost tripped over Gulliver.

“Please,” Gulliver said.

Eddy ignored him. “I told you to take care of him.”

“I didn’t feel like it.”

Eddy lit a cigarette and sat on the floor. “I risk my freedom bringing that bastard here and you don’t even want him?”

“I didn’t say that. Just not right now.”

“See if you get anything else,” Eddy threatened. “You can do your own fucking hunting from now on. I’m sick of it.”

“Quit pouting,” Spider said.

“Oh, I’m pouting now?”

“You are.”

Eddy sighed. “I should’ve left your ass in the morgue.”

Gulliver tried to crawl towards him. He was growing pale from the loss of blood and his voice was weak as he begged for mercy.

“You’re losing sight of what we’re doing, Eddy. This complaining is only complicating things. Our aim is to get into the Territories, not to live a life of ease and splendor,” Spider explained like an impatient father. “Everything we’ve done has been dangerous, has involved risks. It won’t be long now. Just do what has to be done and quit acting like a spoiled child.”

“Fuck you.”

“You know what you need?” Spider said. “You need death. It’ll free you of all your petty worries and wants. You’ll see only what matters.”

Eddy laughed. “You think I want to be a stinking decayed carcass like you? Hiding in the shadows, eating dead things? Guess again.”

Spider glared at him with bleached, lifeless eyes. “You see only the external of the matter,” he said, anger rising in him. “A body is just a shell, my boy. When we get to where we’re going, I’ll find a better one.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

Spider broke into a bout of ghoulish laughter. It sculpted his raw and wrecked face into a thing of true horror, splitting and snapping as dried muscle and ligament strained beneath the mummified skin. “Maybe yours will do.”

“Try it.”

“In time.”

Gulliver was sobbing now. But like a whining dog, he was ignored by both.

“This all better be worth it,” Eddy said in a whisper.

“It will be.”

“I’ll get one more whore, maybe two, then I’m done. This is all getting a little boring.”

There was a strange, almost magnetic humming in the air, a vague and vibrant electricity. A glow of sickly phosphorescence flickered from the other room. A reflection of mirrored light. A sound of weeping and distant screaming. They both knew what it meant.

“Boring?” said Haggis Sardonicus in a silvery voice that sounded like fine surgical cutlery scraped over bone. She stepped into the room with a blast of freezing air and a few dust devils of whirling bone ash. “Boring? Did you hear what he said, Sister?”

Haggis Umbilicus remained indifferent. She/it floated there, a swollen flesh sack, a dozen peeled hides stitched together, blackened and overlapping, sliding over each other with the sound of nails scratching on windowpanes. Hundreds of carrion-fattened meatflies lit from her blowhole mouth each time she exhaled. Her single bleary eye watched from beneath coiling tangles of wormy red hair greased with human fat. Her flesh was constantly in motion, a flyblown circus of unspeakable rhythm.

If she had an opinion, she did not voice it.

Eddy felt ice water in his bowels. “I didn’t mean it like that, I only meant—”

Haggis Sardonicus drifted towards him, the stink of a thousand bloody seductions seeping from her breathing pores and overwhelming him like a noxious gas. His cock filled with life and demanded to be put to proper use. There was no denying the sensual, ominous charm she possessed. It got beneath his skin, a mutiny of sensations both carnal and repellent. Eddy knew she smelled his musk, wanting it, but her seductions ended only in death and he wasn’t ready for that yet. Physically, she was caught in her transitional phase where she was neither huge and porcine fat or skeletal and machinelike. She stood before him, heaving and voluptuous, her pores gasping like tiny mouths. Her breasts were huge and round and shining with oil, swollen with milk. As he stared at them, droplets dripped from her dark nipples, which were like hazelnuts, yet sharp as pins. Even the minute suturing on them made him tremble with carnal appetite. He wanted to slide his cock between them and tit-fuck her violently until cream gushed from them.

She seemed to know it, too. Her coppery, metallic eyes gleamed with lust, her teeth pressed against her full, juicy lips were red-stained and hungry. She reached long pink fingers down between her legs to the hairless vulva that was engorged and throbbing. It was like a juicy rind of star fruit, fizzing and fermenting with dark human wine. It would be petal soft against his lips, sweet on his tongue.

“I understand your impatience,” she told him. She took his hand and her touch was like ice, yet her fingers were so hot they steamed. She pulled his trembling hand to one heaving, glistening breast and held it there, her bloated, undulating flesh seeming to suck the heat from his skin. Her nipple was smooth as onyx between his shaking fingers.

“The end is near,” she told him in a motherly tone. “We’re nearly satisfied with all that you’ve done. But it can’t end now, you can’t let it.”

He tried to pull his hand away, but it was affixed to her. Her flesh was hot wax and his hand was sinking into her magma. “No,” he promised, “we’ll do whatever it takes.”

She released him. “Very good.”

“It will be soon?” Spider asked.

Haggis Sardonicus nodded. “Very.”

“There’s a woman who says she wants to come,” Eddy said.

“Her name?”

“Lisa Lochmere.”

“It’s unfamiliar.”

Eddy rubbed his cold hand against his leg, trying to put warmth back into it. “She hasn’t done anything to get your attention, she’s—”

“… an innocent?” Sister Sardonicus said with an appetite that was frightening.

“Yes, but she’s eager.”

“Why not? We’ll see that she’s kept amused.” She looked over at Gulliver’s trembling form. “Ah, you’ve brought him back for us. How very kind. He is so pretty.”

She went over to his quivering form. Only the loss of blood and his weakened state saved him from the true horror of what was about to happen. Sister Sardonicus stood before him in her transitional phase, legs spread wide so he could see her sex which was starving for him. At first, he smelled jasmine, wild roses, and jungle orchids. This made him dreamy and relaxed, but soon there was another smell, of rank carcasses and decomposition. He let out a cry when he saw the gash between her legs, which was like an infected mouth filled with fly eggs hatching like popping bubbles. She pulled his face in closer so he could taste her. Flies crawled over him, silverfish and squirming blood flukes filled his mouth.

By this time, he was insane, of course, and quite oblivious to everything.

He stared at her vulva, a red exotic jewel, pulsating and swelling, until the gash beneath it became crimson-dripping jaws that seized his head and cracked it like the shell of a peanut, sucking free his scalp and peeling his skin. By then, Sister Umbilicus had moved in like a black tornado, vacuuming Gulliver’s corpse right down to the lattice of bones beneath.

Sometime later, the Sisters departed.

As Spider picked at the bones, Eddy felt his desire for Haggis Sardonicus begin to wilt.

“Cassandra.”

I’m here, Eddy, she thought, and I will be until you are no more. I’ll watch over you and protect you until that time comes. Until your end.

“I didn’t hear you come in.”

She wanted to laugh. The dead are nothing if not stealthy. Poor, sweet, demented Eddy. Taking life with no remorse, fashioning a private world of insanity and nightmare that even now threatened to crush him. Such a poor, pitiable, deranged little thing.

“I’m glad you’ve come,” he said. “I feel… safe when you’re here. I suppose that sounds ridiculous coming from someone like me.” He was standing before an oval mirror leaning in the corner. He fingered its surface.

“Of course not. Our histories are knotted together.”

“They are, aren’t they?”

You have no idea, she thought, sitting by him on the sofa. “Where’s Spider?”

“In his hole.”

“Poor thing.”

“You pity that?”

“Yes.” I pity him no less than I pity you and your twisted ambitions, she wanted to tell him. But I won’t stand in the way. The place you’re going is where you belong, God help you.

“He’s one of your own, I suppose.”

“In a way.”

“Where have you been?”

“Here and there. Miss me?”

“Always.”

“Tell me what happens now, Eddy.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

He grinned. “The Sisters came tonight. We go soon.”

“And it’s what you want?”

“Of course it is,” he snapped. “What else is there for me? I’ve worked too hard and too long to accept anything else. It’s my destiny.”

“I suppose it is.”

“I have no choice now. If I stay, what kind of life will I have? They’ll hunt me down and stick me in some hospital.”

“There’s always death.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you’re dead, they couldn’t follow.”

“Kill myself?”

“Why not? Death sets one free.”

“I couldn’t kill myself.”

“I could do it for you.”

“Murder me?”

She laughed. “Don’t be so dramatic. Death is death, regardless of how you obtain it. I’ll do for you what you did for me.”

“No.”

“Are you afraid?”

“No.”

“Yes, I think you are. Don’t be. I’ve been there. I can show you the way.”

“It’s out of the question.”

Too bad, she thought. Death frees the mind and body of all its illnesses. “It’s up to you.”

“The Territories. That’s where I’m going.”

She smiled, trying to show some enthusiasm for his choice. There was none to be had. Eddy didn’t notice: he was totally consumed by his ambitions. That and madness.

“To my father,” he said.

God help you, she thought.