by Edward Lee
Adrianne exited, revolted. She'd sensed nothing paraactive in the room, nor even residual. The place simply made her sick.
The Scarlet Room, she thought next, trying to focus. She hovered before the veneered doors. On the floor, she noticed several of Nyvysk's things, which she instantly recog- niZd as new-generation gauss screens. They detected increases in ion activity, a supernatural presence-signature. But they're not even hooked up, she could see. Why didn't he put them in the room?
It didn't matter; the tech stuff was his business, and Adrianne didn't have much faith in it anyway. She was just testing the waters right now, having a look around. She floated through the door.
And stared.
The Scarlet Room was indeed well-named. Everything was red: the wallpaper, baseboards and half-paneling, the carpet. A variety of rod-back chairs, Edwardian cloak-stands, gateleg tables-all in red veneer. In the center of the room stood nothing, which seemed strange. It reminded her of a stage. Why have all that empty space in the middle? she wondered.
She roved around, examining the fine, intricate wallpapering and woodwork. After a moment, though, just when she was getting bored ... she started to feel sick.
Not physically-for she had no physical body. Instead, her buoyant spirit felt nauseous. Her vision dimmed.
Was she falling?
A second later, she was somewhere else ...
Something dark yet impossibly light-like accosted her psychic senses. Her soul felt surrounded now, by humid heat. A long spell of vertigo unwound, and when she was able to focus her vision-
What in the name of Christ is that?
Figures moved before what could only be described as a temple, but instead of pillars and stone, the temple was constructed of ... flesh.
Fluted columns sided a wide, corniced archway, where each stone was a block of some flesh-like substance. Steps rose to a closed entrance; Adrianne could tell it was a doorway because she could see a seam between two high panels, and some indescribable wavering in the seam. Was it light?
A colonnade with thinner pillars sat recessed behind the main archway, these columns too composed of palpable flesh. Figures stood between the columns.
Adrianne was aghast when she looked more closely. Wide jointed but thin-limbed things looked back at her through faces with no eyes or noses. Bald-lumpen heads sat tilted on plops of shoulders, and the faces had only mouths rimmed by narrow lips the color of garden slugs. They were naked, and seemed teeming in sweat or oil, the flesh that composed their bodies semitranslucent. Malformed genitals hung like flaps of pale meat at their groins.
"A traveler," came a voice from aside. The voice radiated, like raving light in this dark place. "Meet the sentinels of the Chirice Plaesc."
Adrianne shrieked psychically, turned her spirit about. Facing her now was something different from the repugnant creatures that prowled the colonnade.
It was a man, or something akin to a man, for he had a face, a stunning, handsome face with burning eyes like melted emeralds and a smile that burned similarly. He wore a tunic over sculpted muscles, but Adrianne felt instantly queasy when she realized the tunic was fashioned from veined skin that appeared identical to the skin that covered the entire, hideous temple.
"You're enlightening," he said next, stepping with interest past the column. "We have so few travelers here."
Who are you? Adrianne asked with her mind.
"Jaemessyn, " he said, the strange word rolling from his mouth.
And, and-what did you call this place?
"The Chirice Flaesc." The eyes smoldered at her. Adrianne shuddered when he extended a hand-no normal hand at all. She saw now that the limbs attached to his magnificent torso were dissimilar-they weren't human. They were tunneled and darkly splotched, heavily sinewed. More revolting were the hands themselves: each finger was a stout, tumid penis.
He gestured the figures in the colonnade. "And these are the Adiposians. They guard this temple ... and wait."
"Wait for what?".
"For the very rare chances, to venture out and taste the Living World---the world of your God. But this ... is the world of mine."
Adrianne tried to focus on Jaemessyn's face but found it difficult. She sought more detail. Each strain of her out-of body vision, though, caused an annoying series of shifts, like trying to look at something through jerking blinds.
Several of the things-Adiposians, he'd called thempeered facelessly out at her, from behind the flesh-columns. The one that stood closest stepped out, and Adrianne gasped, sickened, to see the vaguely featured genitals, like a sausage skin filled with lard, grow aroused.
How can it see me? she asked Jaemessyn. I have no body to see, and that thing has no eyes.
"It senses your desire," the penis-fingered being told her. "That's what this place-and our Lord-thrives on. Desire. All the desire of history. And you are ... drenched with it."
Adrianne gasped again, and actually hovered higher at the start, when a set of skeletal wings spread behind Jaemessyn's back, a complex webwork of bones. "No, I'm not a demon, as you can see. I'm one of the righteous Fallen."
The bones of the wings were pitted and charred black.
"The Adiposians aren't demons, either. They're crafted, by our Warlocks. They're soulless; they're made from rendered fat and shaped, then animated by spells, to serve, to protect, and to rape. All in the name of my Lord. And like yourself, they're venturers. A soul in Hell can't ever leave, but what of something that has no soul? They can venture out, I cannot."
And they can go ... to my world?
"Yes, that delicious sphere of sin and failure. Once every eon or so, someone on your side is smart enough to open a Rive, and a few Adiposians depart. They don't last long over there, but long enough to send some visions back. To be suckled by the lord of the temple."
If Adrianne had possessed a throat, it would've been parched when she asked, What's your lord's name?
"You're not worthy to hear his unholy name. But he is Lucifer's third-favorite, and he is known as the Sexus Cyning. This is his church, where he is revered. And this ... is how we revere him ..."
A muffled peal resounded then. Was a bell ringing behind the closed doors to this temple of skin? Was it a clock?
The Fallen Angel stepped back behind the column where, set into the temple's main sidewall there appeared to be a tall narrow panel. Veins throbbed beneath the panel's sheen of skin. Jaemessyn whispered something and the panel opened. What hung there, in the coffin-shaped depression, was a woman, or some facsimile thereof: a thin, voluptuously curved but horned demonness with caninelike fangs and skin pink with rash. Elegant, long-fingered hands twisted against wire bonds which tacked her wrists together. "One of our courtesans," the Fallen Angel said, producing a pair. of iron pliers. "They can be irascible, though." The demonness jerked on her mount as Jaemessyn manually extracted the longest of her fangs. Blood much thinner than human blood poured down her nude body, some of it actually flying off her convulsing belly in crimson pups. Adrianne couldn't help but notice large breasts that were each almost entirely nipple. Then the Fallen Angel lifted her out of her containment, from barbed hooks, and threw her down at the feet of the Adiposians.
The slug-rimmed mouths gaped-mouths with no teeth but only broad, foaming tongues. The gelatinous things fell on the female, and began ...
"Watch," Jaemessyn said. "This is what we do here."
Adrianne watched ... the unwatchable. Her spirit floated dizzily; during an OBE, she couldn't close her eyes because her vision was lidless. Jaemessyn supervised as the female was primordially raped on the temple's peristyle. I can't stay here, Adrianne thought, dismal. It was time to end the OBE, go back to her physical body where her mind would be safe. She willed herself to move off, to return, but...
"Not yet," Jaemessyn said.
Adrianne couldn't move.
"Behold the wonders that take place here in the Chirice Flaesc." Jaemessyn's luminous voice crackled. "Stay and watch awhile. Let
these beauteous images be branded into your mind ... Something to take back and tell your friends."
Adrianne squirmed as she hovered. The demonness was mauled in place, Ripped over, contorted about, to afford the sex organs of her attackers every conceivable purchase of coitus and sodomy. Eyes the size of peaches and clear as glass bulged forth as she was taken and taken again.
But the creature had never screamed, and when the things were done with their rut they left her calmly limp and gratified in spite of the ravenous degradation. Then the ten stout penises of Jaemessyn's hands lifted her up by her throat and squeezed, squeezed, squeezed some more, until her back arched backward in midair, and-
CRACK!
-her neck broke.
The body dangled flaccid now in Jaemessyn's grasp, but when he set her back up on the hook,Adrianne noticed her face: a serene and very sated smile.
Ecstasy in eternal death.
The Fallen Angel's gaze moved back up to Adrianne. "Go now, traveler. Go back to your domain and speak of what you've witnessed here."
Again, Adrianne tried to move off, to flee, but couldn't.
"And if you have the will to meet my Lord-and I think you do-then visit me again"-he pointed to the arch- way-"and I will open those doors for you. You're not ready now, you haven't gone far enough. But I think-I really think you soon will."
Adrianne stared back at the flawed but grand being.
"I know that my Lord would love to meet you."
Adrianne soared away, her ethereal exit followed like a flapping banner by the darkest scream. That scream still filled her head when her soul-tether constricted and dropped her spirit back into her physical body with an effect like a rock being dropped into a lake.
She felt dead as she lay on the bed. For minutes she could barely move, could only stare upward. The bedroom's darkness seemed to churn at first, like something alive. Her heart was racing-Calm, calm, calm, she ordered herself-and her hands shook. When the rush of adrenalin began to dissipate, subtle pains became apparent. Her nipples felt chewed on, her stomach and thighs bitten. And something worse:
Her sex ached.
When she pressed her hands down against the mattress, they flinched back. The bed was drenched. Most experients perspired heavily during a jaunt, and Adrianne was no exception. But this?
I couldn't possibly have sweated this much ... could I? she wondered, patting more of the mattress. It squished, as wet as if whole buckets of warm water had been dumped on it, and on her. Or perhaps something else had.
When she finally leaned up and looked down at herself, she thought very dismally: Oh, no ...
She lay nude on the wide bed. She wasn't positive but she was almost certain that she'd been wearing her bra and panties when she'd begun.
Chapter Eight
I
"Here comes somebody," Clements said, eyes pressed to the binoculars. "Who the hell ..."
"It looks like another van," the girl said. She squinted more out of boredom than interest. "Maybe it's another workman."
"No, not now Vivica had the place cleaned up before any of that crowd arrived. You saw them, the fumigators, the disposal crew There were more last week. Painters, paperhangers, carpet-layers. I don't know who the hell this is. And at this hour?"
The girl squinted through the windshield and shrugged.
The girl called herself Teary but she'd eventually told Clements her real name: Connie. Twenty-five years old but looked thirty-five. She'd been addicted to crack since she was fifteen, when she first started turning tricks. It had been her mother and step-father who'd hooked her and put her on the street. Clements' attraction to such girls was pretty concrete-something about the look and the attitude, the late-night car-rides, prowling around alleys and looking for that image in his headlights. They were all the same, except, evidently, this one. He was starting to actually like her.
He'd paid her again just to drive out here with him, for a closer look at the hidden access-road, which was where they sat parked now Since that first night he'd picked her up, he hadn't laid a hand on her.
"It's a locksmith," he said, finally getting a glimpse of the van when it turned into the mansion's front floodlights.
"Guess they need something open," Connie remarked. But she looked out the open passenger window instead as if studying the forest might take her mind off how badly she needed to light her pipe. She brushed a straggle of hair off her brow. "When are you gonna tell me what you're doing out here? You just sit here, watching. Hildreth is dead. Everyone who was there that night is dead. There's nobody in that house right now who had anything to do with Hildreth-"
"Actually there is. A woman named Karen Lovell, who did all the paperwork for T&T Enterprises, and a guy named Mack Colmes, who works for Hildreth's wife-"
"Okay, great, but neither of them were in the house on the night of the murders. So what are you doing out here? I know it's got something to do with that girl in the picture-"
"Debbie Rodenbaugh, yes."
"She sure as shit ain't in there, and you said she wasn't one of the bodies. She probably split when all the shit went down. What good is sitting out here going to do?"
"I'm ... not sure," Clements admitted.
Connie squinted out of her withdrawal for enough time to really look at Clements. "She's not the daughter of a client, I don't believe it-"
"It's true." Clements shrugged. "Her parents hired me over a year ago to keep tabs on her once she started working for Hildreth-"
She chuckled. "Yeah, and junkies never lie. I think I know what it is. She's some young chick you had the hots for, fell in love with-"
Now Clements laughed to himself. "No, nothing like that at all. I never even met Debbie Rodenbaugh."
"I don't get any of this. You rich or something?"
"Not really. I have a pension from the Navy and retirement from the police department. I've been a private investigator for two years--something to do."
"I ain't complaining," she said, scratching her knees. "This is three nights in a row you're paying more than I'd make on the street, and you don't even want any action." She sighed and looked at him again. "You're such a nice guy, which is weird. Most johns are pricks."
Clements' brow rose.
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said, half-heartedly. "You're offended if I call you a john?"
"No," he answered. How could he be? He'd picked up countless hundreds of prostitutes in his life.
"Lotta time tricks and cops call me a whore, and you know what? It doesn't piss me off because I know that's what I am."
The comment barbed him. It was tragic how she had no positive concept of herself and never saw anything beyond this in her future. "I'm a john-I admit it. A bigtimejohn."
"Then how come you never buy any action from me? I know you trick all the time with the other girls on the street."
"Let's talk about something else."
"Okay. What time is it?
"About ten o'clock."
"Your time's up then, right?"
Clements nodded.
"So why don't you take me back now? Unless you wanna pay me to sit here with you for another hour and not even give you head. Don't get me wrong, it's fine with me if you do. I've never said this to a john in my life but I'm starting to feel like I'm ripping you off."
Clements laughed at that one. Of course, he knew how strange this situation must seem to her. "How about tomorrow? Same thing. I need to come back out here, and I want you to come too."
She frowned. "What time?"
"Around noon-"
"Noon! I get up at noon, man."
"I'll pay you five hundred bucks-"
"You're so fuckin' weird ... But, yeah, of course."
"Great. I guess it's time for us to go home-"
He put the binoculars under his seat. He leaned back.
"Well?" she said.
He sat a moment longer and lit a cigarette.
"You just said it was time to get out of here," Connie objected.
"What gives now?"
"How much.. . ," Clements faltered, "for you to go home with me?"
She twirled in her seat, almost astonished, put her hand on his leg. "I was wondering when you'd finally come around. You must know some other john who's had me, right? And he told you I was good?"
"No, I don't know any other johns." Her hand on his leg confused him. "And I don't even know if that's why I want you to go home with me."
She was shaking her head again but before she could speak, Clements put his arm around her and kissed her. She didn't retract at first; after a moment, though, she put her hand against his chest and pushed him back.
In the moonlight, her face looked very sad. "What are you doing?" she whispered. "Nobody kisses us, ever."
What could I possibly be thinking? "I like you," he groaned.
"We're just meat. We're things johns fuck or get head from-that's all. Nobody ever likes us."
Clements pulled her close to him, and her arms slipped around his shoulders, and then they kissed for a long time.
He wanted to fall into her right now, forget about everything else: Hildreth, the mansion, Debbie, the murders. It felt so good, in fact, to just be with Connie and clear his mind of all those other things.
He'd worry about those other things tomorrow, when he'd sneak into the Hildreth Mansion.
II
Westmore didn't like the mood of the house when he and Karen cooked dinner. Something felt wrong, too much silence, something. "Are we just going through the motions here?" he asked Karen, who had just finished preparing a make-shift cob salad. "Dinner's ready but no one's around."
"I don't know. This place screws with people's moods." She listlessly lit a cigarette, sitting bored now on the kitchen's expansive butcher-block table. "And don't forget the mentalities of the others."
"What do you mean?"
"They're all half-nuts. They're a bunch of paranoid, scared-shitless psychics. "
"Oh, that," Westmore said. "At least the dinner we busted our butts making looks good." He picked up the tray of grilled lobster tails and put it in the oven to keep them warm.
