Hottest Blood

by Jeff Gelb

  But he also realized that Ursula was right. It wasn’t pleasure they wanted from her—it was their own death they sought, that moment at the peak of orgasm when the heart stopped beating, the brain quit thinking, and the body was merely a twitching corpse, a rag puppet dancing toward blessed oblivion. It was a universal compulsion that only a few could yet comprehend—Yama’s disciples. Eric Coleman spoke the straight word: Evil was a point of view, not a fact of nature, and murder was Shiva’s greatest gift to his children.

  Again he looked at Dez, and pity roiled his guts like the churning of digestive gears. Clearly the lab tech was shattered by grief. Unlike Morgan and Coleman, he could not grasp what Ursula truly represented. He was sick of life but, in his ignorance, afraid of death—afraid of that which he secretly desired with an intensity like hell thirst.

  Morgan felt the reassuring weight of the snub-nosed police .38 in its chamois holster under his suitcoat. He gripped Lofley gently by the elbow and nudged him toward the unmarked beige sedan at the curb.

  “Let’s take a little drive into the country, Dez,” he said soothingly. “You need to stop thinking so much.”

  The Room Where Love Lives

  Grant Morrison

  It is with great regret that I commence this, the final account of my adventures with Aubrey Valentine. Readers who have followed the exploits of Aubrey Valentine from my first published account, The Bleeding Whispers, through to our most recent, Mystery of the Flayed Mirror, will be familiar with Valentine’s singular skills in the field of occult investigation. I had hoped that our association would continue well into the future but, sadly, events have overtaken my wished and it falls to me, as Valentine’s chronicler, to bear the bad tidings to his many admirers.

  So it is with heavy heart that I have assembled this final tale from the testimony of the Bedlow family, from Valentine’s last statement, and from my own eyewitness account of the Monday Street horror. I can only pray that it will stand as a fitting tribute to the unusual life of the finest man I have ever known and one I was proud to call my friend.

  The house on Monday Street was built late in the reign of Queen Victoria. A solid and imposing townhouse, it looked out across a quiet and tree-lined avenue in the heart of London. Almost as a reflection of the era of its construction, the house, while exhibiting a conservative, classical façade to the outside world, contained within its walls an eccentric profusion of rooms and chambers. Dusty alcoves below stairs gave onto narrow corridors connecting one room with another. There were secret rooms tucked away like forgotten, unopened letters. Faded wallpaper in the basement, the attar of dead flowers, mirrors cataracted with thick dust.

  And the house had passed through several hands before it finally became the property of a Dr. Bedlow and his family.

  While it would not be true to say out story began with Mrs. Bedlow and her daughter, it seems appropriate to begin the narrative with their unfortunate discovery of what we came to know as the Rutting Room.

  Mrs. Bedlow had spent an afternoon shopping, at the close of which she collected her eighteen-year-old daughter, Imogen, from the movies. Imogen’s friend Giselle Barnes was to spend the evening with the Bedlows, and she accompanied them home in the car.

  The girls hurried to Imogen’s room, while Mrs. Bedlow went directly to the kitchen and dumped the contents of her begs onto the table.

  A wedge of sunlight draped itself across table and floor like a flag, and Mrs. Bedlow paused to observe the dust motes moiling in the gauzy light. There was something unusual about the movement of the particles; they seemed to follow some subtle organizing pattern. Like iron filings on paper, the dust motes arranged themselves into spiderweb formations. These then exploded, unable to sustain coherence, and were rearranged into new configurations. She admired this restless choreography for some time before the effect faded and it seemed as though her eyes had been deceiving her from the start.

  She stocked the fridge and cupboards and prepared a snack for the girls. Carrying a small tray, she began to climb the stairs. Now she could feel a movement, a pulsation in the air. She touched the wall and her fingertips registered a deep, thudding concussion. It seemed as though the pipes beneath the skin of paper and plaster were pounding with a slow, metronomic rhythm. She had a brief vision of gas mains, water pipes, and electric cables carrying arterial blood through the substructure of the house. The pulse quickened and Mrs. Bedlow felt her own heartbeat accelerate to match it. Sweat broke across her forehead and she was aware of a spreading dampness at her crotch, an involuntary, exciting, lubrication. She bit her lip and forced herself to the top of the stairs, reeling dizzily.

  “Imogen,” she said, and her voice was hoarse and breathless, preorgasmic. She had spoken her daughter’s name as though it were the name of a lover. She approached the door of Imogen’s room and stopped short.

  The door handle was swelling and contracting slightly, inflating and deflating like a lung. And the sounds that came from beyond the door had no place in a girl’s bedroom.

  Slowly Mrs. Bedlow reached out to touch the keyhole. It was wet, leaking a musky sexual fluid. She raised her fingers to her lips and licked at them. She closed her hand around the warm, pulsing door handle and opened the door.

  The whole room inhaled, drawing her into its suffocating heart. The smell of animals in heat. Smell of stained sheets and stale come and heated flesh.

  “Look at me, Mummy,” said Imogen, giggling.

  She was bent over the bed, moaning and salivating. Giselle Barnes, kneeling, worked her hand between Imogen’s legs. They both turned to look at Mrs. Bedlow, eyes heated to incandescence.

  “Oh, God!” was the best Mrs. Bedlow could manage before the girls descended on her, tearing at her clothes.

  There was a sustained note of shame in Mrs. Bedlow’s voice as she recounted these events to us. That shame, quite clear in her words, was entirely absent in her demeanor. She sat in the kitchen, wearing a loose robe that was parted to reveal her pale body. Her legs were slung over the arms of a chair and she continued to masturbate slowly and compulsively as she talked. Sometimes she paused to wet her fingers in her mouth. She looked up at us with desperate eyes.

  “You must help us,” she sobbed. “We can’t stop it. We can’t stop it, and my daughter’s still up there.” Then she seemed to lose control again, eyes closing. The rhythm of her hand became more insistent as she drifted into memory. “It was so beautiful.” She sighed. “It was like she was trying to get back into my womb, headfirst…”

  Valentine eyed her coldly. I wondered if he ever experienced any human emotion now. I could not remember the last time I had seen him smile. He touched his brow with his bandaged left hand, always a sign that he was thinking deeply. There was silence, broken only by the chopped breathing of Mrs. Bedlow.

  “Where exactly is your husband now, Mrs. Bedlow?” Valentine asked.

  She jerked her head toward the ceiling. “With the girls. With it. He can’t control himself. None of us can. The room just wants us to fuck and fuck until we die.”

  I looked at Valentine as he removed his duffle coat.

  “I must examine the room before I make my decision,” he said.

  Mrs. Bedlow got to her feet. I could see the dreadful exertion in her eyes. She was driven to seek sexual gratification by any means, and it clearly took a massive effort of will for her to restrain urge to assault us.

  “I’m frightened to go near it but I want to so much,” she said. “It was only my husband who managed to push me out of the room on that first day. If he hadn’t, I’d still be there.” Her hand crushed her breast, fingers teasing the swollen nipple. “I’d still be there.”

  “Quite,” said Valentine curtly.

  We climbed the stairs.

  “Can you feel it?” Valentine hissed.

  I nodded. It was impossible not to be aware of the percussive thumping in the stairs below our feet. The room, whatever it was, had anchored itself deeply into the fabric of the hous
e, extending roots into the infrastructure. Its power was unmistakable. My own pounding erection demonstrated that. I tried to imagine what it would be like to stay here night after night, as the Bedlows had done, slowly succumbing to that dreadful carnal hunger. I will never know how Mrs. Bedlow finally summoned the strength of will to contact Valentine and myself.

  Mrs. Bedlow whined and whispered lewd endearments. Again I glanced in Valentine’s direction, but his eyes were fixed on some unguessable horizon. I could not help but wonder how the power of the Rutting Room was affecting him. Since the horrible death of Angela, his young wife, some years ago—as recounted in The Affair of the Highgate Shroud—he had been resolutely celibate, almost sexless indeed. Nothing could fill the gap Angela’s death at the hands of The Mysteries had left in his soul. If anyone could tackle the hideous sexual energies of this monstrous room, it was surely Aubrey Valentine.

  “Here,” said Mrs. Bedlow. She pointed to the door and backed away. Bracing her weight against the far wall, she selected a golf umbrella from the hatstand and slid the handgrip into herself. Weeping madly, bending and unbending her legs, she rode the wooden shaft. Her eyes clouded over. She crooned our names, begging us to join her.

  “Poor Mrs. Bedlow,” I muttered, trying to push away the thoughts that bubbled into my mind.

  Valentine ignored her cries and faced the door.

  “Are you read?” he said. I nodded, unsure, and he motioned for me to stand behind him. He reached out and gripped the door handle. It stiffened in his grip, becoming tumescent. Without further hesitation, he threw the door open and we confronted the room.

  The first thing was the smell: a vast reeking perfume that spoke of reeling, desperate nights and polluted innocence. It was the bleak perfume of all blighted desire. This first olfactory shock was followed by the visual horror. The scene within the room recalled some images from Bosch.

  Giselle Barnes, in the soiled tatters of her dress, was servicing three naked men. Imogen Bedlow giggled and drove a policeman’s baton repeatedly into her own bleeding anus. As we watched, the tableau collapsed and its elements reformed. Now the men were locked in a knot of buggery and fellatio, while the girls sucked and tore at one another.

  Valentine gestured to one of the men. “Bedlow?” he said.

  I nodded.

  Imogen, on all fours, backed up and impaled herself on her father’s penis. The eminent Dr. Bedlow gripped the girl’s shoulders and pulled her back roughly. At one point he managed to turn his head to face us. There were tears in his eyes. “God help me,” he cried, and before he could say anymore, one of the other men mounted him from the rear.

  “It’s monstrous,” I said. It was monstrous, but I could not deny the black excitement I felt.

  “But look there,” said Valentine, pointing upward. The walls of the room were shifting through strange geometric patterns. I felt I was watching some nightmarish four-dimensional origami at work on the architecture of the place. The patterns opened the walls, gaped, and were sealed.

  And at that moment the door slammed shut in Valentine’s fce. He produced a kitchen towel from his pocket and wiped his brow.

  “Who are the other men?” he said calmly.

  Mrs. Bedlow looked up from the floor. “Giselle’s father,” she said. “And a policeman. They were all trapped there.” Then, unable to retain restraint, she withdrew the umbrella handle and rubbed her wet thighs with her hands, baying “Fuck me!” again and again and again.

  Valentine strode toward her and, with one precise movement, rendered her unconscious. Then he slung her over his shoulder and we left the house.

  We were in our room at the YMCA and Mrs. Bedlow sat drinking instant coffee. Soberly dressed now, there was scarcely anything about her that recalled the nymphomania of several hours previously. Nevertheless, she appeared to be in deep shock. The heat had gone from her eyes, leaving a glassy blankness.

  “What are we going to do about my daughter?” she said.

  “When was your last period?” Valentine asked.

  Mrs. Bedlow looked up from her mug, frowning. “Months,” she said. “I thought it was another baby…”

  “I doubt very much that you’re pregnant, Mrs. Bedlow. I believe the room induced in you and your daughter and the Barnes girl a state of super-receptivity. It made you like itself, a fucking machine, unable to orgasm or to replicate. Coitus for its own sake.”

  She began to sob, and I reached out to take the coffee mug from her numb fingers.

  “What is it, Mr. Valentine?” she said. “What is it? What’s it doing to my daughter?”

  Valentine ignored the question, perhaps not daring to tell her the truth.

  “What do you know of the history of the house, Mrs. Bedlow?”

  She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “Not much. Before we moved in, it belonged to some old women. Her son said something about it being a kind of private hospital before that. A clinic or something. That’s all I know. If there was anything else…”

  “Stop!” Valentine said abruptly. I could see he was onto something. “Monday Street. Of course! I knew I recognized the name.” He turned to face me. “There’s a book in my large suitcase,” he said. “Cults of the Pandemonium. Would you be so kind as to fetch it for me?”

  I threw open the battered valise and rummaged through a debris of dog-eared paperbacks, quickly locating Cults of the Pandemonium. Its luridly colored cover depicted a gorgeous naked hermaphrodite dancing, while a shadowy figure beat upon a tomtom. I tossed the book to Valentine and he flipped through its pages.

  “I should have known!” he said. His eyes scanned a page. “Erich Horney. My God. Horney was a disciple of Wilhelm Reich. He worked at the Organon Institute in Maine in the late ’40s, before splitting with Reich in 1952.”

  We listened intently as Valentine summarized a brief biography of the aptly named Horney. He had adapted many of Wilhelm Reich’s sexual theories and taken them in unusual and, some thought, unethical directions.

  “His dream was to create something which he called the Horney Chamber,” Valentine explained. “This seems to have been a more extravagant version of Reich’s orgone accumulator. Basically, Horney intended to create a room which could harness sexual energy, which he believed was an expression of the fundamental forces of the universe.” As he spoke, Valentine paced up and down the room.

  “He claimed to have succeeded in building a prototype in 1965, but development was hampered by the fact that the room’s mechanisms could only be properly activated by an act of ‘indefinitely long’ sexual intercourse. Nevertheless, by judiciously employing four porno actors, Horney claimed that his chamber was able to absorb and redirect sufficient sexual energy to power the flight of a small gargoyle-like homunculus.

  “His ultimate ambition was to create a room which could have sex with itself, thus producing an unlimited supply of power. A perpetual-motion sex engine.”

  Valentine threw down the book and looked directly at us. His face was flushed with excitement.

  “Horney was certified insane in September 1974 and was taken into the private care of a Dr. Monteuil, who owned a small convalescent clinic on Monday Street.”

  “Good Lord!” I exclaimed, unable to think of anything else to say.

  “And the room?” Mrs. Bedlow said. “My daughter’s room?”

  “I think we can safely assume that a fully functioning Horney Chamber was built, Mrs. Bedlow. Perhaps Horney died before he could put the room into operation ad it has waited all these years for a trigger. Something to turn the starting handle, as it were.”

  He paused and lifted his bandaged hand to his brow.

  “Does your daughter have a boyfriend, Mrs. Bedlow?” he asked.

  She nodded, realizing the implications. “It’s not what you’d call serious,” she said. “They met on a school trip to Belgium. They exchange letters…”

  “There we have it,” Valentine said gravely. “Those nocturnal adolescent yearnings: our trigger.”r />
  “But what can we do?” Mrs. Bedlow said. “How can we stop it?”

  Valentine sat down facing her and took her hands. He fixed her eyes with his own.

  “I haven’t told you everything, Mrs. Bedlow,” he said.

  I felt a tremor trip down my spine. The sky outside our room seemed to thicken. Shadows curdled in the haunted corners of our anonymous room.

  “There are certain powers and dominions in our universe,” Valentine said. “I can say only that they come from outside and that they are inimical to humanity. Sometimes we catch glimpses of their manifestations on this plane of being. They travel in many shapes, all hideous. They come howling through our blackest dreams, feeding on our fears and doubts.

  “We call them The Mysteries, and I have dedicated my life to fighting them. They destroyed the only woman I have ever cared for, and now they have taken possession of the activated Horney Chamber. They will try to use its energies to create a window, through which they can enter our world en masse.”

  “But my daughter…” Mrs. Bedlow began. Valentine silenced her with a gesture.

  “Your daughter, your husband, and the others are nothing more than raw material to The Mysteries,” he said. “They will use them to destruction in order to power the room. When they have exhausted all the possible combinations of the human frame, The Mysteries will push them beyond the limits of flesh. They will become expressions of pure desire, without stable form.”

  Mrs. Bedlow was sobbing uncontrollably now, and she managed to say only six words: “What are we going to do?”

  Valentine stood up.

  “You’re going to stay here, well away from the house,” he said, and then looked at me. “We are going to take the fight to The Mysteries.”