by The Blumhouse Book of Nightmares- The Haunted City (retail) (epub)
One day I ask her, “You don’t seem nearly as stressed as I do. How do you deal with it? The ones you can’t help.”
She stares hard at me, lost in a tugging thought. She has the need to say something but is unsure how. Finally, she smirks.
“I masturbate—a lot.”
We hold a look and I am overcome by a vicious wave of envy. I open my mouth to explore her revelation, but Evelyn quickly laughs it off and goes into a bullshit diatribe about relieving stress with yuppie yoga and yerba maté tea. I zone out and so does she.
My thoughts linger on her original answer. My envy wanes, and a new thought emerges: Evelyn Harchee is hiding something. She has a secret.
7
The bodies are piling up in random locations all over the city: alleys, rooftops, dumpsters. Each one bloated and destroyed from the sepsis stemming from that man-made, infected rift, target center in their chest. The consensus opinion is that this can’t be the work of one person. There is something else going on in my city, some greater evil, a murderous movement, a vast epidemic of death that has no origin or name—just the signature of some larger apparatus at work. There is never a lead, only an infected body left behind. We are not battling a lone evil entity, we are at war with something massive and coordinated, singular in its intent: death without detection. Rumors run rampant. Some saying that a gateway to hell has opened, releasing demon soldiers bent on extracting our souls through this filthy incision. I wish I had a better theory. I keep asking myself one question over and over: What does this powerful group need from us, the weary citizens of NYC, who have no defense against them?
My late-night talks with Evelyn are no longer enough to keep my dreams at bay. The innocent horde is catching up with me, gaining on me. I’m running through the muck of a perpetually hazy existence, my mind fogged out by Vicodins. Desperate for a crack in the case, I break into Evelyn’s apartment while she’s working—violating her just like the unknown evil—hoping my instinct that she has a secret was correct.
I search everywhere. Every closet. Under beds. In each drawer. I rifle through all of Evelyn’s personal accoutrements. I find nothing that speaks to the case, just the stuff, the shit, the things one accumulates over years on this planet—knickknacks, books, photos, et cetera, fucking et cetera. Nothing raises my eyebrows until I find a box under her bed full of sex toys, dildos of varying sizes, vibrators of varying textures, and other paraphernalia that I cannot easily identify. Rubbery nubbins peppered with spiked prongs, stainless-steel speculum-like spreaders, drainage tube contraptions that resemble excised bladders. I am not shocked; it’s the size of the stash that draws me in. There are three large bins, each filled to the brim. I stare at it all, analyzing the various instruments of penetration and oscillation. Is this her secret? John Doe had a mild sex addiction; are these clues? Or maybe I am merely curious and envious of my friend’s voracious self-pleasuring appetite. I conjure images of Evelyn using the tools intimately, lubricating and inserting steel and rubber into her misty vaginal gulley. I am trespassing. I am titillated. I immediately feel great shame and guilt. I force myself to fight against my own yearnings, against the opening chasms of desire. I need to refocus and find the police angle here, yet I can’t see how this applies to my job. I must leave now. I see my own treachery and deception. I am overwhelmed and sickened by my subterfuge. I have deceived a friend, ogled her inner life, and I am tantalized.
I have also proven to myself and everyone else that I am inept and have no game against this grand evil at play in our city. The pressure is mounting. My knees are buckling under the weight of the city. New York demands answers. I have none.
—
The eleventh corpse is a sixteen-year-old woman (girl) named Theresa Lam. She is the youngest victim yet. She immediately joins the midnight crying choir, yearning for my help, hell-bent on my demise. I am sprinting now under the bright blazing signs of Broadway. Sweat gathers heavy on my brow as my lungs expand and constrict like a bellows. I have never run this fast. It’s a dash to the finish: tired feet pounding the proverbial pavement, but the innocents are overtaking me. I want to help them but I can’t. I have no help to give. I’ve let them down. LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE! The Vicodin are doing shit, nada, but I still swallow them like sour fucking Jelly Bellys.
I knock hard on Evelyn’s door at three in the morning and fall into her arms, weeping. She holds me tight, comforting me as best she can, which is not enough this time.
I have lost the race. She sees defeat on my face. It’s an expression she’s seen before in her own mirror. She leans in close to me, whispering, “I can help you.”
Something about how she said that makes me fight through the milky fog, trying to see her.
“You have to trust me. Complete trust. No questions. Can you do that?”
8
I’m blindfolded in the back of a van, sitting next to Evelyn, eyes also curtained. We are not being held against our will. We are here voluntarily, and the blindfolds are a precaution. Evelyn explains that the procedure we are about to witness is illegal and has led to several deaths around the city. She has no idea that I am the leading investigator of these deaths. Yet I haven’t told anyone where I am going. I can’t take any chances that we could be discovered. I am going down this bunny hole alone, hoping for answers, hoping to stop the pain, the immeasurable fucking pain.
Before we left she unbuttoned her shirt and unveiled the scar on her chest as if I had never seen it before. It’s still healing, raw red and ragged. Yet Evelyn displays no shame. She caresses it in a way that sends a chill up my spine. She’s fond of it, petting it as one would a purring, long-haired movie-villain lap cat. She explains that something was done to her—“on the inside”—that changed her very existence and made life bearable. She is taking me to witness this procedure.
She wants me to know that what I am about to see will be disturbing, but she can tell me from firsthand experience that it is the most beautiful thing that can happen to a person. She is of the enlightened.
“The great risk is worth the infinite reward…”
I can’t see through the blindfold but my eyes are wide. We drive on. My mind on overdrive. Were my instincts only half right? Evelyn has a secret. But she’s not speaking of some unfathomable evil perpetrating crimes that generate infinite pain and fear and death.
She speaks only of epiphany, revelation.
Where is she taking me?
9
I don’t know where I am. I believe I am underground, the air bearing the sweet earthy stink of the subterranean. A male voice rises in the darkness, telling us to remove our blindfolds. The voice is warm, inviting. I do so and see a tall man standing in front of me wearing a ski mask. We are inside a small white room with chipped paint and exposed pipes. He hands us our own ski masks and instructs us to put them on. Evelyn nods. “It’s okay. Don’t be afraid.” We put on our masks. We are faceless now. We are led down another corridor toward a door. The door is opened. We are led inside another room.
This room is much larger. The size of a gymnasium. There’s a small stage in the center of it, on which a makeshift operating room has been assembled, replete with a bed, medical machinery, and a table laden with surgical tools (scalpel, suction, buzz saw, etc.). A small movie screen hangs next to the operating table, displaying nothing.
Ringing this stage are chairs filled with several dozen men and women wearing ski masks. Evelyn and I are seated in the back of this audience.
Powerful lights on high stands are set in the corners of this expansive room, lending bright white light, creating a shadowless interior. There is nothing that can’t be seen under this hot fluorescence. There is no mystery here. Only our faces go unseen.
My heart pounds at jackhammer speed. Evelyn clutches my hand.
“You’ll be fine.”
Another door opens. Four people enter and step up on the stage. Three of them wear surgical gowns and rubber gloves. The fourth, a very thin man, wears a hosp
ital robe. Their faces are concealed by ski masks, like us. The slight man in the hospital robe takes center stage and addresses us, the enshrouded crowd.
“I am here voluntarily. I understand the risks of the procedure. No one is forcing me to do this.”
He removes his robe, dropping it to the floor. He is nude, his genitals adangle. He lies on the table. I am shaking. I peer at Evelyn, who glows with anticipation. She is licking her lips with a moist tongue.
Two of the people wearing surgical gowns secure the nude patient to the bed with ropes and chains and straps. They are prepping needles, whispering to him, giving him injections and manipulating medical equipment around him. They are performing the duties of surgical nurses.
On stage, the third person, her long white-gray hair protruding from under her black mask, approaches the medical-instrument table and examines the buzz saw. She holds herself with authority. She is the leader of this small surgical troupe. I can only assume she’s the surgeon.
The crowd around me is hauntingly quiet, and the silence of the arena is broken only by the clatter of medical equipment and the soft whispers of the nurses prepping the slender patient. Finally, after securing him to the bed, one of the nurses nods to the female surgeon. They are ready. The masked surgeon picks up the buzz saw and addresses the audience.
“We have all heard the stories of infection and subsequent death after the procedure. Not at this facility. We are not charlatans who act impetuously, using old, unsanitary equipment, or hacks who don’t know what they’re doing. We take proper precautions. Our equipment is clean and we’ve never had any fatalities. Yes, the risk is there—but the reward is unfathomable. Let us begin…”
I don’t know what’s happening, but I am trembling. Evelyn continues to clutch my hand.
“What’s going on, Evelyn?”
She doesn’t respond, eyes forward and riveted on the stage. What unfolds next is a series of concussive, mind-shattering images and sounds that shake the foundations of my existence. Surrounded by masked figures and intense phosphorescent coronas of light, I stare unblinking at the makeshift operating room. An image appears on the movie screen. It is an extremely close shot of the patient’s bare chest, a live feed of the procedure for all to see.
On stage, the patient is hooked up to life-support systems, a gas mask administers some anesthetic, thrusting him into unconsciousness. The magisterial surgeon slices his center open with a scalpel, then takes the buzz saw to his exposed, bloodied chest plate. Spinning steel blades cut through hard bone, earsplitting grinding sounds resonate and throb in my brain—sounds I’ll never forget, images I’ll never shake, displayed in all their explicitly ensanguined details on the screen.
Something is happening to the crowd around me. Masked audience members begin to undulate; a collective sexual arousal unfolds inside this mysterious space. I can smell it as they undress (including Evelyn, who unbuttons her blouse and jeans), revealing ruby red scars on their chests. They grope at themselves and at one another—the air reeking with the marked crowd’s sexual perspiration.
The surgeon proceeds to fold back skin and bone, exposing the patient’s viscera.
“What are they doing to him?” I am growing frantic. “What’s happening, Evelyn? What is going on?”
Evelyn finally speaks; moans and groans surround and accentuate each whispered breathy word, her hands having found their way down into her pants.
“They found something—doctors, somewhere, found it—inside of us—deep inside—in our chests, beneath our hearts—on the aorta—a muscle—a tissue—cartilage—I don’t know what it’s called. They discovered that this small area was an erogenous zone—the most powerful on or inside of us—by far. Hidden until now. It is so sensitive that it can bring sexual satisfaction we never knew existed. You can’t believe what it feels like. Oh my god. You don’t know. You won’t believe. You need to understand. So hard to explain. It lasts for days. Days and days of the most intense, unimaginable cumming, over and over. This spot, this divine spot, can be accessed only through surgery—like this, like what’s about to happen, and like I had, here. The procedure.”
She grabs my hand, placing it inside her shirt, on her raised scar. Her heart is beating out of her chest. Her scar squirms under my hand like a tense, scared snake in a wrangler’s sack—or perhaps I am imagining it. Perhaps it is just her heaving chest that makes it worm.
“It is the greatest pleasure—and once this spot is awakened—it never sleeps again—all future stimulation—fucking, licking, touching, sucking—gives you pleasure that lasts for days. You only need one procedure—it’s my escape, I get lost, I never want to be found. It is what you need…”
I am speechless. Overwhelmed. Scared. This is not at all what I thought it was. I was so wrong. Evelyn and I look back on stage, at the screen. We watch as the surgeon’s hands enter the open chest cavity. My mind is on overdrive, trying to assess—this is the patient’s newly discovered sexual orifice, being penetrated by sinewy, latexed fingers—as the surgeon, his lover, will soon administer the arousing rhythm to his aortic pleasure spot.
People howl all around me. On the screen, the surgeon’s gloved and bloodied hands are gliding past the beating, veiny heart, searching for the concealed erogenous zone.
She announces, “I’ve found it.”
There’s a collective gasp from the audience and a surge of manic activity. Masked, scarred people fondle one another, administering oral sex voraciously. The surgeon’s hands penetrate deeper into this man’s open chest cavity—his life source just millimeters from her fingers. She is massaging the thick-walled underbelly of the aorta—rhythmically, quickly, with sensual care and focused energy—when the slender patient suddenly bucks furiously on the table—consciousness crashing through the anesthetic. He awakens in a frenzied burst—wide eyes rolling back in his head, he emits a scream that I once perceived as pain. Now that I know what it is, I see its source: it’s pleasure—immeasurable pleasure.
I was so fucking wrong.
My eyes are taking inventory of everything now—a sensory overload of medical equipment, blood, flesh, bone, the throbbing human heart, the surgeon fingering the aorta and moaning over the open wound. A rampage of smells and flesh and light all around me rises and the orchestra of sexual wails deafens me. The audience orgy reaches a fever pitch, mounds of nude bodies writhing as sexual union commences. The room has become a concertina of unveiled pudenda spilling mucosa that baptizes lips and fingers. On stage, the patient howls in abounding arousal. His sharp tongue darts from spit-glistened lips like a reptile’s, trying to lick something, anything.
It’s all happening fast now.
Everything is exposed here, in this arena. The human body is on display in all its manifestations—the exterior and interior. There are no longer barriers, as skin and bone have been unsealed, revealing the mucus-membraned penetralia in all its glory and ugliness—all its mysteries unveiled on that screen and under these bright lights. There is no distinction between the repulsive and the seductive here—dripping blood, sawed bone, exposed cartilage and rubbery tendon, mingling with the curvature and contours of breasts, hips, bare skin, and moistening genitalia.
I jump up, eyes lanced by light, mind blown to pieces. I am running, falling over chairs, but no one pays attention. I push through doors and sprint up stairs until I find an exit. Empty warehouses surround me and I am still running, my underwear and jeans soaked through; I have never run faster. I am escaping.
I must call this in. I could stop the murders right here and now. I could crack this fucking case wide open.
But I am lost inside these screams, these screams of pleasure. I still hear them echoing through my mind and reverberating like aftershocks in the asphalt.
They envelop me wholly.
I am gone.
10
There are two new files on my desk. Two dead bodies, chests riddled with sepsis, have been found in the last forty-eight hours. I pretend to read the f
iles. It’s been a week since I witnessed the procedure. I can think of nothing else now.
I have told no one.
The midnight choir still sings and beckons, the victims still give chase.
I sit unmoving, incapacitated by everything and everyone.
11
I lie here—hands bound, legs restrained, hooked up to rudimentary machines that barely hold my life, these tubes, these things. I can see my insides—my ventricles, my pulmonary veins, my new aortic genitalia. Places we should never lay our eyes on—our innermost secrets—exposed for all to see. I am naked.
I am bucking and screaming like a freak banshee in a sea of pure pleasure, deep below the surface of my once torturous existence, here transformed into bliss. They were right. They were right. They were so right. I want to stay, untouched by anyone or anything. Let me stay. Let me stay here. Let me stay here forever, cumming over and over and over again.
There is only chaos around me. A flurry of furious movement. The orgiastic audience runs wild as a slew of cops give chase. I was followed here. My brethren sensed I was hiding something. Like me, once, they were only partially right. My arthritic captain hovers over me, dumbfounded. His shock is not that he can see me wholly in and out. His shock is that I am howling incomprehensibly and convulsing spasmodically as if possessed by a rabid demon seeking escape from my soul. He still believes, as I did, that I am moaning in fear, in pain.
He has no idea.
I may die from this procedure. Infection will most likely take hold deep inside me and tear me to shreds. But I simply don’t give a fuck. About. Anything. Anyone. Anymore. The midnight parade’s been canceled. The citizen choir is muted, no longer crying for my help. For the first time in forever, I am not being chased.
