In This Skin

by Simon Clark

  ***

  When the clock on the dash pulsed 3:30 a.m., Logan decided they'd waited long enough for that stutter monkey Eh-Eh-Ellery to leave the Luxor of his own accord. Even though Logan had convinced himself that Ellery was in the place, there was a powerful suggestion that someone else was in there, too, bearing in mind the car parked nearby. Maybe both were naked, making out onstage with a ooohoooh-ah! Logan laughed. The image was even funnier because to kill the boredom he'd just shared a spliff or three with Joe.

  ”What's so funny?”Joe asked, chuckling.

  ”I'm just figuring I could nail the pair of lovebirds with one shot right through the ass.”

  ”Uh?”

  ”It doesn't matter. Come on.”

  ”Where we going?”

  ”Looks as if Stutter Boy ain't coming out. We'd best go find him before it gets light.”

  ”You really gonna do this thing, Logan?”

  ”Sure.”

  ”Ya gonna kill him?”

  ”That guy's going to be so dead he'll wish he'd never been born.”

  Both crumbled into spluttering laughter. Joe wafted dope smoke from his face as he rocked backward and forward in the car.

  ”And if there's anyone else in that crap heap…”Logan gestured drunkenly at the Luxor. ”They're gonna get themselves so dead they'll wish they'd never been born either!”

  Smoking dope made the joke even funnier the second time around. Roaring with laughter, they rocked the car and slapped the dashboard.

  ”Come on old buddy, bang-bang time.”Rather than Joe," Logan addressed this to the machine gun. ”Time to sing for your supper.” He hauled himself out of the car. Above him, stars painted blurry trails of silver in the sky. Wow, that was good smoke. He was still feeling that spiffy-spliffy cosmic buzz.

  ”Shit, man. I'm stoned.”Joe made it out of the car, then fell to his knees. ”Absolooot-tilly stoned.”

  ”Get up on your fucking feet, man. Work to be done, you know?”

  ”I'll be all right.”

  ”Ya'll be all right, or my boot's gonna connect with your asshole… ya asshole.”

  Both laughed again. Then Logan pulled a snub-nosed revolver from the pocket of his combat jacket. ”You take this.”

  ”I don't know about any guns, man.”

  ”You take this.”

  ”Aw shit.” Chuckling, Joe took the revolver from Logan. He eyed the submachine gun in Logan's other hand. ”Hey, yours is bigger than mine.”

  ”Yeah. 'Cause I'm the boss man.”

  ”Lead on, boss man.”

  ”Wait… wait. Flashlights.”Logan pulled a couple of flashlights from the trunk. ”Here. You take the smaller one.”

  ”Aw, size matters, man.”

  They walked across the nighttime parking lot. There was no traffic nearby. A silence settled on the place as deep as that you'd find in a tomb full of stiffs. Even though hundreds of crows formed a lumpy black thatch on the roof, they didn't move. It looked as if the suckers were waiting for something to happen.

  Weaving a little across the blacktop, they made it to the Luxor. They had to walk around the building twice before they found the entrance through the loose panel on the stage door. The beer and dope had started to wear off now. The stars refocused into tight little points of light instead of those smeary trails. Walking in a straight line became easier. Although they both grinned at each other, then grinned goofily at the guns in their hands.

  Logan slipped the panel aside. His flashlight revealed the hole in the door and the maw of the Luxor's interior beyond.

  ”After you, my dear Joe.”

  Joe chuckled his tipsy laugh. ”No, after you, my dear Logan.”

  ”No, after you, my dear Joe.”

  ”After you, dear boy”

  ”No, after you, good sir''

  The imitation of drunken English lords being overly polite tickled their funny bones again.

  Then sobriety kicked in hard.

  ”After you, my dear Logan.”

  ”No.”Logan pushed the gun muzzle onto the tip of Joe's nose. ”After you, old buddy. I insist.”

  The fuzzy warmth vanished in an instant. Joe's eyes sharpened into an expression of fear.

  ”I don't want you yellering out on me, Joe. We're gonna go in there and blow those motherfuckers away D 'ya hear?”

  Joe heard good. Scared, he nodded, then ducked through the broken door into the Luxor. Logan followed. Man, this is what Logan'd waited for.

  Bang-bang time.

  ***

  At the same time as Logan followed Joe into the Luxor through the hole in the stage door, hefting the submachine gun pregnant with thirty rounds of 9mm ammunition, Robyn, Ellery and Benedict worked beneath the stage. From bits of furniture, mattress and a dustsheet they rigged a bed for Mariah. Benedict watched as Ellery and Robyn carefully covered the gray form with velvet drapes. It was hard to tell if Mariah was in pain. There was no human expression on that face. The mouth still pulsed from red to white, the lips curled then uncurled with that alien rhythm. At least now she appeared to be resting more easily. The breathing didn't seem so labored. Only a troubling question haunted Benedict: Why didn't Mariah speak again? She'd spoken one sentence when she'd asked him for help.

  What stopped her from speaking now? The gunshot wound? Or had her mind been monsterized as much as her body? Apart from that moment of lucidity when she could articulate her need for assistance, perhaps she'd abandoned human speech? ”We'll have to leave her now,”Robyn told them. ”If Noel wakes up he's going to come looking for us.”

  Benedict said: ”First thing in the morning I'm going to bring back help.”

  ”Who?”

  He gave a grim smile. ”That, I haven't figured out yet.” He glanced at Ellery. Ellery had told them that Mariah was here for a purpose. Maybe he was figuring that whatever they planned didn't matter a hoot anyway.

  Other forces were at work, dark and powerful forces with plans of their own.

  ”Don't w-worry,” Ellery said to Benedict. ”She will be safe here.”

  Benedict nodded silently; however, he was reluctant to leave her alone in this cobweb smeared void beneath the stage. He crouched down beside Mariah as she lay on the mattress.

  ”Rest here. Don't worry, Mariah. I'll come back. Then I'm going to help you.”

  She gazed up into his eyes. He looked into the twin glistening eyeballs that seemed to float in the gloom above a mouth that pulsated like a disembodied heart. Had she understood?

  ”We'll leave a flashlight,” he told her. ”I'll put it down here beside you.”

  But can a monsterized woman with tentacles instead of arms operate a flashlight? Look at her, dressed in rags. She can't even change her clothes…

  Robyn crouched down to reassure her, too, telling her they'd make sure she got well soon, and not to be afraid.

  Smoothly, yet with the speed of a cobra striking at its prey, Mariah lashed a tentacle out at Robyn. Benedict's blood froze, expecting that glistening limb to coil around Robyn's neck with crushing force.

  Instead, with sinuous grace the pointed tip of the tentacle touched Robyn's stomach with a controlled gentleness. For a moment the tentacle rested just below Robyn's navel area, then quickly withdrew.

  Benedict, Robyn and Ellery traded glances, sharing, he guessed, the same thought. It was Ellery who put that thought into words, with barely a stammer.

  ”Mariah knows you are having a child.”Then he repeated what he'd said earlier. ”She is here for a purpose.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Noel was waiting for them.

  No he's not, Robyn corrected herself, he's seeing for the first time what Benedict and I have seen.

  They emerged from the void beneath the stage through the dwarf door;

  Ellery eased it shut so as not to disturb Mariah resting on the bed.

  Noel didn't see. Noel didn't hear. Noel sat in the armchair and stared in the direction of the stage, but not at it. From the expression of wo
nder on his face, he was seeing marvelous things.

  This was the same expression Thomas wore when the risen Christ invited him to touch the wound in His side made by the centurion's spear. Noel's face blazed, transformed by the expression of a man who gazed on a miracle.

  He breathed: ”It's happening…”

  Robyn walked forward with Benedict and Ellery flanking her. Her eyes followed Noel's line of sight. Ellery shone his torch to reveal a pearl-white area of light five feet wide and almost eight high. Hanging like a cotton bedsheet from a line on a windless day, it rose vertically from the floor. Mist spilled from the front of it. And a moment later Robyn shivered as she moved from the warm dry atmosphere of the Luxor into an envelope of chill moist air that smelled of autumnal woodland. A river of cooler air was spilling from the white shape that manifested itself on the Luxor dance floor. Noel stared at it-into it-seeing wonderful things.

  ”It's happening again,” Benedict said, hushed. ”The doorway has reopened.”

  ”It-it won't stay open long,” Ellery told them.

  They walked to stand beside Noel as he sat in the chair, gazing with rapt attention. The revolver rested on the arm of the chair, temporarily forgotten. He'd obviously woken and come looking for them, but something far more potent had attracted his attention.

  Robyn's heart rammed against her breastbone. It was like looking through a partially misted windowpane. But here and there through the fogged patches she could see huge trees reaching up toward a bone-white sky.

  Branches and trunks presented a mass of contorted gray limbs that erupted from a mass of fallen leaves. Above the tree line she could see distant hills that formed a wall of black between the trees and sky. And on one hillside perched a town. The town glowed as if it had been fashioned from the same stuff as a shining full moon. It burned with its own light, as if every stone and dome and tower radiated a silver glow. Above it, even though they were so far away as to be at the limits of visibility, birds circled in the sky above the citadel. Robyn had the impression of huge creatures that could soar for days on outstretched wings.

  The scene began to be overlaid by a dappling of denser fog patches.

  ”It's going.”Noel sounded disappointed. ”I can't see the city on the hill.”

  ”Incredible,”Benedict whispered. ”Incredible. It's more than a window into another world. It's a doorway. Can you feel the air flowing through? You can smell fallen leaves and the plants. It has an odor of mushroom and herbs.”

  Robyn moved forward with Benedict. It was more than curiosity. They were being drawn to that misty divide between this world and The Place, as Ellery had dubbed it. Benedict set down the light. He wanted to look closer before it vanished. He needed this opportunity to peer into another world; maybe he feared he'd never get another chance. Benedict was just a pace in front of Robyn. Ellery remained beside Noel, who still sat in the seat, gazing as if hypnotized.

  ”It's closing fast,”Benedict told them. The gray light filtering through the vertical oblong of mist had dimmed. The fogging effect had all but obscured the view of the forest. ”You know, this doorway doesn't have physical form or color. The misting effect is simply the warm air of the Luxor hitting the cold air of the forest. Water vapor is condensing into mist. See? It's even wetting the dance floor all around it.”He glanced back at Robyn with a delighted grin. ”Amazing. It's making it rain inside the Luxor.”He turned back to look through the opaque wall of white vapor.

  That was the moment a figure lunged through. Robyn had the impression of a gargoyle face, of an open mouth filled with thick brown teeth. Above that, two red eyes blazed. A pair of muscular arms thrust outward from the vapor, seized Benedict and dragged him back into the mist, where he vanished in a rippling swirl of whites and grays.

  Robyn heard no shouts. Nothing. Then… she was next.

  ***

  Robyn recoiled from the boiling mass of white. For within three seconds of Benedict West being dragged bodily into the mist, men burst out of it-Only not men. Creatures. One stood eight feet tall, spindly limbed as a giraffe, its thin neck topped by a small head that was almost monkeylike. Behind that came a shorter figure with thick powerful arms.

  It possessed an elongated face that was flat as a mule's and set with a pair of eyes that couldn't have been much larger than a rat's. Another figure lumbered through with the bulk of a pro wrestler. The naked body was a bluish white, patterned with a crosshatching of black lines that gave the skin the appearance of being tattooed with a net design. Robyn turned away to try to escape them. They snarled with fury and lust. The eager hands of the creature with the net-pattern flesh grabbed her, ripping the neck of her T-shirt so it all but tore the garment off one shoulder. Her feet slid under and she fell onto the floor. Noel tried to rise, grabbing the gun as he did so, but the spindle-limbed beast lashed out a bony arm and sent him rolling back over the armchair, knocking Ellery to the floor at the same time.

  Robyn looked up at the creature that pushed her savagely down to the boards of the dance floor. Its arms were so long it barely needed to stoop. Through the net pattern of its face it glared down at her. Even from here she could feel the force of the creature's breath blasting into hers. God, it stank of rotting things. With one thick fingered hand pushing down against her chest so firmly she might have been nailed to the dance floor, the second hand moved to her bare shoulder. There between thumb and forefinger it pinched the skin. What it saw through its red eyes pleased it. It gave a satisfied snort. Then the fingers hooked inside the T-shirt and ripped it free of her body.

  ***

  Logan believed he was free of the dope he'd smoked with Joe. Only that couldn't be, because his senses were fucked. When he reached the stage, toting the big motherfucker submachine gun, loaded with head-bustin' hollow-nosed slugs, its black body matching the feathery sheen of the motherfucking crows that swarmed like a disease all over the fucking roof, he thought: I'll be fucked.

  The fuck word was going to keep treading through his head for a whole while longer, too. In the light cast by a medley of flashlights, he saw the freakiest dance in the world sans music. Three monster guys leapt all over three regular dudes who lay on the floor… writhing on the floor… trying to avoid the monster guys.

  ”Fuck,” Logan said.

  ”Fuck,” Joe echoed.

  A naked monster guy was busily ripping the clothes off a long-legged woman, who lay flat on her back as it held her down with one hand, while a dude with arms and legs thin as bamboo canes beat up on two guys on the ground (fuck, it had to be the dope still monkeying around with the beer he'd drunk to create this wacky eyeball distortion).

  One thing Logan's eyes didn't lie about was the ID of one of the regular guys, the guy who'd punched him down in front of his buddies. Now that was total humiliation. Just seeing the stutter monkey Ellery Hann gyrating with Giraffe Boy sent his blood scalding through him.

  ”Fuck!” he yelled, pulled back the submachine gun bolt, aimed… knock out the big guys first, came the voice of common sense. The big guys might be mean dudes with guns. With them knocked out, then you can take your time making Eh-Eh-Ellery squeal for a while before you shut the fucking stutter for good.

  Squinting through the sight, he brought the bead onto the face of the blue-white net boy merrily ripping away the girl's clothes.

  Just a little squeeze, Logan. Don't empty the magazine.

  The machine gun made its own kind of stutter. Three rounds flew from the barrel like shooting stars, flying with an accuracy that even surprised Logan. They gracefully entered the blue-white man's face, bursting his head in a glorious sunburst of red. It slumped over the girl, legs twitching, butt jerking, like it was doing a post-mortem kind of fuck thing to the half-naked woman.

  ”Fuck!” Logan shouted. ”Joe! You going to leave me doing all the shooting?”

  Joe loosed off a couple of boozy rounds from his revolver. The bullets knocked white marks in the wall by the doors but were as wide as a country mile fr
om hitting any of the guys on the dance floor.

  ”Fuck!” Logan snapped at Joe's crappola performance. Logan aimed again at the guy with the cane legs and arms and grapefruit-sized head.

  Squeeze the trigger. Nice and easy does it.

  The weapon kicked back in his hands. He'd intended to hose everyone down with what ammo was left in the 'zine. Only it shot off two rounds before jamming. ”FUCK!”

  Even so, it was enough to topple the tall stick man. He broke off trying to flail at Ellery with his whippy arms, turned back to the stage, noticing the gunmen for the first time, then looked down at his bony chest. Two boreholes sunk by the 9-mm slugs pumped a gusher of blood. The thin man stared at Logan in surprise, then dropped down onto the floor, its mouth making like a goldfish as it chewed on air, trying to draw it down into its ruined lungs.

  ”Here.” Logan thrust the jammed submachine gun out for Joe to take. ”Give me yours.” He held out his hand for Joe's pistol.

  Logan hadn't finished with Ellery Hann yet.

  CHAPTER 29

  Robyn saved them. She didn't realize at the time. It was only later that it came home to her. After she'd struggled from under the corpse of the blue-white creature, its head now sickeningly deflated after being hollowed out by the machine gun rounds, she'd grabbed a flashlight to see who was doing the shooting (her first thought had been: Cops!). By chance she grabbed the heavy-duty flashlight with the pistol grip. She'd aimed at the stage, thumbed the trigger button. Its dazzling white light had blasted the stage and the two guys who'd come to the rescue. Only they didn't look like rescuers. They wore torn denims, one a combat jacket; their hair hadn't encountered shampoo in weeks. From the way they stood groggily off balance, she guessed they were a little bit stoned, too.