Flesh Gothic by Edward Lee

by Edward Lee

  "I guess there's no reason why we shouldn't eat," Karen said, getting some plates. The plates were shiny-black. "The others can get theirs when they're ready."

  It sounded like a good idea to Westmore. He was about to get a plate for himself when the doorbell rang, a bright clanging bell.

  Karen and Westmore looked at each other. "Who's that at this hour?" Karen said.

  "Vivica?"

  "She never comes here..."

  The bell rang again.

  "Who knows where Mack is?" Westmore took off his cooking apron. "I guess I better answer it."

  He strode to the foyer, still addled by the mansion's damped silence, and unbolted the doors to find a robust, attractive brunette in a blue jumpsuit standing on the stone stoop. She held a clipboard close to a sizeable bosom and gripped a black toolbag in the other hand.

  "I'm here about the safe," the woman said in a tired but seductive voice.

  Her sexy curves and contours-contrasted by the slovenly work clothes and clunky boots-sidetracked Westmore. In the cul-de-sac sat a van: PINELLAS LOCK & KEY. "Oh, the locksmith," he finally snapped to. "It was a guy I talked to on the phone."

  "That was my boss. I was coming back from another job when he dispatched me." A patch on her top read: Vanni. She either seemed peeved by the late call, or just disturbed by the ambience of the house; she didn't look happysomething else to contrast the stunning body and very feminine face and hair. Westmore let her in and when he turned after dosing the door, he saw her staring up along the curving stairwell. At once, she shuddered.

  "The a/c too cold for you?" Westmore asked.

  "No, I'm fine. What a strange place. It's gorgeous but ... well, strange, I guess."

  "I suppose it is." Did she know about the murders? Whether she did or not, he could tell at once that she didn't want to be here. But he was curious about the safe. "The office is on the third floor. Sorry, there's no elevator."

  "That's fine, I need the exercise."

  She didn't need any exercise, not in Westmore's view. He followed her up the stairwell, gritting his teeth at the shape of her rump as she rose. This is all I need, another bombshell walking around this joint. By now, between the porn and all the attractive women his vision had been inundated withit was all starting to get on his nerves. Oh, great, he complained more to himself when they got to the office. Plump breasts strained against the jumpsuit top. Of course she's not wearing a bnt. Westmore admired attractive women as much as the next guy, but this was getting to be too much.

  "You said the safe's not wired, right?"

  "It's not wired." He let them in, first, to Karen's former office, then to Hildreth's office behind it.

  "Good, 'cos if it's not wired, I can open it," she assured.

  "Your boss said the same thing."

  He took her around to the oddly placed space behind where the cabinet had been, which reminded him of the strange way Hildreth had hidden the safe: pictures beneath pictures, old engravings, and the pastoral oil painting of the young, dark-haired women whose snapshot he'd also found in the desk. "There it is," he said, and pointed to the safe.

  Vanni looked right at it, slumped, and said, "I can't open it."

  Westmore was bewildered. "But you just said-"

  "Sir, that's a custom Sec-Lock safe. Same company that makes bank vaults. I couldn't get into that with dynamite"

  "What? Dynamite?" Suddenly Mack was in the room, his youth clearly perked by the sight of the attractive locksmith. "I heard the bell and saw the lock van outside. Hi, I'm Mack."

  "Vann." She shook Mack's hand with little interest.

  "She can't open it," Westmore said. "It's a special kind of safe."

  She looked back at it. "I'll bet that thing cost twenty or thirty thousand dollars. And guess why it costs that much? So no one can crack it."

  "There must be some way," Mack said, idling about the office. He appeared more interested in the safe-cracker than the safe.

  "Can't you use a stethoscope, like on TV?" Westmore suggested.

  Vanni frowned hard. "That's a myth. The pins on the combination don't make noise anyway, and they're magpins, not gravity pins. It's biradial, the most advanced pintumbler system made. Nothing will drill through it, and if we tried to cut through it, the temperature would go so high that anything inside would be burned."

  "So it's impossible?"

  "Maybe."

  "Maybe means maybe you can open it," Mack said.

  She set her bag down. "Yeah, maybe. It could take all night, and there's no guarantee."

  "We need this safe open," Westmore stated.

  "And we don't care if it takes all night," Mack added.

  She turned to them both. "I'll be honest with you, guys. I got two kids and a mortgage, I need the money in a big way, and I charge a hundred bucks an hour for special jobs like this. You want to pay me that kind of money for no guarantee, then great. I'll do my best. But I'd feel almost like I was stealing from you. You could have the manufacturer open it for a lot cheaper. It might take a week for verifications but you'd save yourselves hundreds of dollars."

  Mack whipped out the $10,000 stack Westmore had given him earlier, peeled off a thousand, and gave it to her. "Go to it. If it turns out you need more, that shouldn't be a problem."

  Vanni tried to subdue her disbelief. In her eyes, though, she looked overjoyed. "I- Okay." She glanced to the CRT behind the desk. "I'll need to use your computer to go online. I need to get the basic specs of the box and try to find out how many numbers the combination might have. Probably either three, five, or nine."

  "We'll leave you to it, then," Westmore said. He turned to Mack, "Let's go back down while she's working. Dinner's ready."

  But Mack was hovering over Vanni where she sat. "Can I get you something to drink?"

  "Uh, sure, thanks. A Coke would be fine."

  He touched her shoulder. "How about something to eat? I think we're having lobster for dinner. I could bring you up some."

  "Well, if it's no trouble, yeah. Thanks."

  Westmore withheld his amusement when he and Mack left the office and proceeded down. "So, what? You're putting the make on the safe girl?"

  "Are you kidding? That body on her could start a riot in a seminary. I don't know about you, man, but I haven't had any action in a week. I sure as hell don't want to mess with any of those weird chicks downstairs."

  Westmore couldn't believe his audaciousness. "The woman came here to open a safe-she's not a date."

  Mack chuckled, eyes thinned with male arrogance. "She's hot, and she's hot for me. We'll see where it goes from there."

  Westmore lit a cigarette. "Oh, so she's hot for you, huh? And you know this ... how?"

  "It's in the eyes, man, the eyes." Mack slapped him on the back, as a linebacker might slap the quarterback after a sack. "Hey, no hard feelings. I can't help it that she was scoping me out instead of you. But I'll bet you could score with Karen."

  Westmore had to laugh. "I didn't come here to scone, Mack ... "

  Back downstairs, Nyvysk, Willis, Cathleen, and Karen had already set dinner on the study table in the atrium.

  "It's happened to me before-not a big deal," Cathleen was saying over her plate. She looked disheveled and tired. "Just not with this intensity. God, it was just so predse."

  "What was precise?" Westmore asked, sitting down next to Karen.

  Nyvysk filled him in. "It's been a trying day for some of us, Mr. Westmore. Earlier, Cathleen suffered what we call a transitive paramental contact-or a pan-planar rape. Willis, whom you assisted after his ordeal in the parlor, experienced what he describes as the most intense taction transference of his career. And I experienced positive EVP activity-all within the last several hours."

  Westmore's mind held onto the first mention: "Paraplanar. From another plane of existence is what you're say ing? You were raped by something from another plane?" he asked Cathleen.

  She finished chewing some lobster, and answered: "I thought it was
Hildreth-because when I began my divinations I was right in front of his grave. But when I came to ... I was outside of the graveyard fence."

  "You're saying you were raped by Hildreth's spirit?"

  "Yes ... or ... I think so. I'm not sure"

  Westmore rolled his eyes. He retraced his steps to something more objective. "You found Hildreth's grave?"

  "Yes," she said. "There's a clearing in the woods right behind the house."

  "I'd like you to show me where it is later, if you're up to it."

  "Oh, I'm fine. I'm used to transitive contacts."

  Westmore wasn't even sure what a "transitive contact" was; still, he was surprised by the casualness of her regard to an apparent trauma. For a girl who was just sexually assaulted, she's taking it well. Cathleen was eating voraciously, finishing the entire lobster tail and knocking out her salad and potatoes.

  Willis, on the other hand, looked starving yet didn't seem to notice that there was food in front of him. He sat slouched at the table, circles under his eyes, depleted. "Well, I'm not fine. This house is definitely charged. We all know that by now"

  "I agree," Nyvysk said.

  "What exactly does that mean?" Westmore inquired.

  "That's our way of saying haunted," Nyvysk offered. "It's a technical reference. A bunch of people sitting in a house, for example, each emit a trace electromagnetic field. Anything alive, including plants. Detection equipment, such as ion sensors, thermographs, and radiometers, can detect the presence of that field. Even though you can't see it, it's there, it's measurable and therefore verified. Now, if you take all the plants and people out of that house, and there's still evidence of that electromagnetic energy-you've got a charged house. People with psychic acuities such as Cathleen and Willis, have their own sensors, if you will, in their minds. They can feel and see aspects of that charge."

  "What about you?" Westmore asked.

  "I don't have those same sensitivities. That's why I have my equipment, to provide another avenue of verification."

  "No, no, I mean what you said a minute ago," Westmore backed up. "You said you experienced something too."

  Nyvysk diddled at his food too. "Positive EVP activity. Audio recordings."

  "Of ghosts, you mean."

  ,.Yes„

  Westmore looked at him. "And you actually have these recordings?"

  "Oh, yes. I've been getting readings all day."

  No one else at the table seemed alarmed, which bothered Westmore. "I want to hear them." Westmore looked around at the others, dismayed. "Excuse me, folks, but this sounds like kind of a big deal to me. Doesn't anybody else want to hear these tapes?"

  Willis seemed not to even hear him, and Cathleen simply shrugged. "We've heard them before," she said, eating more salad and potatoes. "It really isn't a big deal."

  "It provides a necessary scientific authentication," Nyvysk said. "Helpful because it establishes more quickly that the mansion is charged and we're not all wasting our time."

  "And I'd recommend that you not bother listening to any of the tapes," Willis said. He was fiddling with his fork, still wearing his jersey gloves.

  "Why?" Westmore asked.

  "Because sometimes the voices tell you things you don't want to hear."

  The response made Westmore feel excited and suddenly apprehensive at the same time.

  "I'd like to hear the ghosts," Karen finally spoke up, spinning her ice cubes in her glass.

  "Later tonight," Nyvysk promised. "Let me finish setting up."

  Westmore tried to eat but scarcely tasted the food, wondering about all of this. The room's odd, low-key vibe hung over the table like a very low ceiling.

  "Where's Mack?" Karen asked if only to break the silence.

  "I think he took a plate of food up to the locksmith."

  "What's the status on the wall safe?" Nyvysk asked.

  "She says she might be able to open it, might not."

  "She?" Karen questioned. "The locksmith is a woman?"

  "Yeah." Just ask Mack, Westmore thought in jest. "She said it might take all night."

  Nyvysk pinched his chin through his beard. "I'm very interested in what might be in that safe."

  "It's nothing alive or dead, that's about all I can tell you," Adrianne said, drifting wanly into the room. She'd obviously just showered, her ink-black bob wet and haphazardly combed. She clutched a white bathrobe around herself. "I remote-viewed and OBE'd into the safe. Couldn't see what's inside, but it's nothing with a life- or death-force."

  "You were expecting a severed head?" Cathleen asked.

  "In this house?" Willis contributed, "I probably would expect that."

  "How was your jaunt?" Nyvysk asked her.

  "Valuable, but.. ."

  Everyone peered at her.

  "I RV'd first, to the cemetery, found Hildreth's tombstone, then looked in his grave-"

  Westmore recalled Karen's earlier explanation of remoteviewing, didn't know if he believed any of it, and didn't ask for details. But he was very interested in the grave simply because of Vivica's secret-that Hildreth's body was never actually recovered. "Was there a body in the grave?" he asked.

  "Yes, a solid cold spot."

  "Was it-"

  "I couldn't see the face."

  Yes, Westmore was very interested. Mental note: find a shovel.

  "Oh, and there's an abandoned car out there in the woods," Adrianne added, brushing wet spikes of hair off her brow "I'm not sure where but I know it's on the grounds because I could see the mansion in the background. And there's another car with people in it, two people, I think."

  "On the property?" Westmore asked, slightly alarmed. "Right now?"

  "As of about an hour ago, at least. A big sedan. It looked old."

  "The house is elaborately alarmed," Nyvysk said, sensing Westmore's concern. "I wouldn't worry about it. We don't want to be calling police-they'd want to snoop around inside, and we can't have that kind of interference."

  Karen leaned forward, elbows on the table and clearly bored. "It's probably just some kids parking in the woods, getting it on."

  Westmore supposed he could go with that ... but he still wanted to see. And the abandoned vehicle? I gotta get the tag number run ...

  "But there's something else, isn't there,Adrianne?" Nyvysk prodded. "You're obviously distraught about something."

  She nodded, pulled the collar of her robe closer. "I'm pretty sure that I was molested, too. Like Cathleen:'

  Cathleen stiffened up in her seat. "At the cemetery?"

  "No," Adrianne said, a grimness in her tone. "In the house. "

  Everyone stiffened up at that.

  "Another pan-planar rape?" Nyvysk asked, eyes open on her.

  "I don't know if it was para-planar, discarnated, revenant." Her head drooped. Her hands shook a little, and when she looked imploringly to Cathleen, her unspoken need was realized. Cathleen passed her the bottle of pills, which Westmore understood were barbiturates. Adrianne took one with some water and continued, "I based myself in one of the suites, then I OBE'd pretty successfully. I roved to the Scarlet Room, but I'm not sure what happened after that. I may have been misdirected, because when I started to receive some direct sensory-responses, it felt like I was pulled off. As if 1 was guided to the target instead of me guiding myself"

  "You were commandeered?" Nyvysk asked.

  "Something like that, maybe."

  "What did the location look like?"

  More grimness mixed with confusion. "It must've been hallucinotic-I think I was in Hell."

  Westmore listened, still skeptical but captivated.

  "I need to think about it more to remember everything that happened," Adrianne went on. "After a jaunt I always need a little time for-"

  "Memory refraction," Nyvsyk said.

  "But when the OBE was terminated, my body was in a different position on the bed, and I was naked. I almost never OBE naked, usually just underwear."

  Now Nyvysk was jotting notes d
own in a pad. "Usually? This is very important."

  "I'm ninety-percent sure I had a bra and panties on when I started. That's the best estimation I can give."

  Cathleen asked, "Was there any-"

  "No semen. I was drenched but I'm not even sure it was sweat. It may have been something mesoplasmic or residual. It was gross-it almost smelled like urine. Light bruising, and I'm still pretty sore."

  Westmore could barely comprehend what she meant; the only thing more shocking than what Adrianne reported was the attitude of the others. T7tey're not batting an eye at what she's saying ...

  "How many of them molested you?" Cathleen asked next. "Mine was multiple."

  "I don't know," Adrianne expressed, "I have no idea. I wasn't there. Only my body was there, and I really don't like the idea of that. That's never happened before." She took a sip of water from an etched goblet. "Somebody playing around with m y body when I'm not e v e n in it ..."

  "An element of transposition?" Willis guessed. "Something came out when you went in?"

  "An interplanar agency crawling back here on your tether while you were elsewhere?" Nyvysk added.

  "I never heard of that happening to anyone in my field, and it's never happened to me," Adrianne dispelled them. "It must've been something that was already here. OBE-ing tends to activate discorporate activity, so do vulnerabili- ties-discorporates can smell it a mile away. Same as when it happened to Cathleen-she was in a divination trance."

  Westmore slammed his open hand down on the table so hard the silverware clattered. He stood up, tempering his outrage. "Sorry, folks, but I've had enough. I do a pretty good job of keeping an open mind and always considering every side of every story but this is past the line."

  "Mr. Westmore?" Nyvysk looked up. "Is there a problem?"

  Westmore snorted. "A problem? Yeah, we got two women here who claimed to have been raped, and everybody's sitting around trying to figure out what kind of ghost did it. I guess I'm just old-fashioned, huh? I guess I'm just not hip to this stuff. Did any of you people consider for even a second that these girls may have been raped by, uh, you know--a rapist?" He frowned at Adrianne. "For shit's sake, you just got done telling us that you saw an intruder on the property!"

  "Relax," Cathleen said.