“Right now,” she cried. The skull grinned hideously. “This is it—I want it right now!”
Something happened under his hands. The flesh faded out of his palms, and he felt a hard ridging where before there had been only softness.
He looked down.
His hands were pressed against the naked staves of her ribs. The tips of his fingers curled loosely into a space between them.
“Now!” She howled at him, the words echoing in the empty vault of her skull. “Do it the way you said you would—please . . .”
He snatched his hands from the curved bones and lurched erect He felt a pull at his body and looked down to discover the ultimate horror.
The bleached white mass of a pelvis held his flesh in a grip of skeletal bone.
He screamed.
“Now—do it now—this is the moment—I want to die!”
Death.
She was death, lying there on the bed. She was a grinning skeleton, white against the red. Her flesh was gone—her breasts and belly and buttocks and thighs, her hands and arms and feet, her features, all the pulsing organs of her body—everything was gone, melted away.
Life was gone. And death leered up at him.
She screamed again.
“Die—die—don't wait—do it now—make me die!”
He staggered back. Her hip grated against his flesh, and then he was free. He moved away from the bed, stunned and quaking, as the figure of the skeleton slowly pushed itself erect.
“Don’t go away, Morton.” The naked teeth clacked. “Do what you promised. Don’t leave me now.”
His hand came out, felt the smooth surface of a bureau, closed around the tangle of his clothes. His shoes and socks were still on his feet.
“Come back,” the skull said. The bony fingers flexed at him. The torso moved with a sound like pebbles clattering down a pipe.
His voice boiled up out of his throat, searing his lungs and mouth with the heat of mind-rotting terror.
“No—stay away—not death—"
“Please,” it said.
“Not death—pain, torture, lust, red—red—but not death!”
The cold bones brushed his. flesh, and he whirled, howling, clutching his clothes to his body as he bolted through the door and into the darkness beyond.
* * *
Bill and Small checked the basement first. The door leading down was behind the stairs on the first floor. The basement was empty.
With Bill leading the way, they climbed to the second floor. It took Small a moment or two to catch up to the young man, and Bill used the lime to glance in the unoccupied rooms. He saw nothing. By the time Small heaved his bulk up to die landing, Bill was ready to move on to the third floor.
“What about those?” wheezed Small, gesturing at the two closed doors.
“That’s the two couples,” said Bill. “Lil and the blonde, and that guy who came up here earlier with his girl. There’s nothing on this floor.”
“Now what?”
“The third floor,” said Bill. “Come on.”
Small shook his head. “I'm sorry, young man—but I’m afraid you must proceed without me.
Bill frowned at him. “How come? What’s wrong?” He stepped closer. “You don’t look so good.”
“It’s nothing,” said Small, flapping a hand. “I’m simply not used to all this exercise. This is the second time this evening I’ve climbed those stairs, and the effort is taking its toll.”
“Do you feel sick?”
“Oh, no—nothing like that. I’m merely fatigued. I’ll wait here for you.”
Bill glanced around. “I tell you—why don’t you go into one of the empty bedrooms and lie down for a while?”
Small nodded. “Perhaps I will. Go ahead, now. If you find anything interesting, call down to me. I should be all right in a few minutes.”
“Okay, Mr. Small.” Bill grinned and patted him on the arm. “I’ll see you.”
Small watched him move down the hall to the base of the stairs, and flash his light upward. He climbed out of sight.
Burton Small remained where he was for several seconds, leaning against the wall between the two closed doors. His hand pressed against his chest, trying to quell the lurching throb of his heart.
Now why, he wondered, should the old ticker be pounding like this? He simply couldn’t understand it.
He was about to turn and head for one of the bedrooms when a startling sound attracted his attention. It came from beyond the door to his left.
A man was screaming.
To Small’s right, the other door opened, and the red-headed girl stepped into the corridor. She was naked. Small noted the contours of her body with pleasure, but his attention was drawn away by the noise of a second scream from behind the closed door.
The girl’s eyes were wide with fright. “What is it?”
Small managed a smile. “I haven’t the faintest idea, my dear. Apparently, something is going on in there we don’t know about.”
“He’s a sadist,” said the girl. “I heard him beating her before—through the wall.”
“Indeed?” Small looked again at the door. “But that’s not a woman screaming.”
“It’s him,” said the girl. “What could be . . .”
The door burst suddenly open. Out of it came one of the most startling apparitions Small had ever seen. The young man was entirely naked, except for his shoes and socks and the ball of clothing he clutched frantically to his chest. His face was contorted in naked fear, and his eyes bugged so terribly from the sockets that Small could almost swear they would drop out altogether in a moment and roll like marbles across the floor.
From the fellow’s throat issued a thin whistle of breath—a strangled keening, like that of a trapped animal.
Before anyone could move toward him, the fellow whirled and stumbled down the steps into the darkness of the lower floor.
Small’s heart was thundering in his chest as he moved forward slowly and looked into the room. The girl—Julie, if he remembered correctly—was standing a few feet inside the door. She was quite naked, and more beautiful than Small expected, except for the angry splotches which covered her flesh.
It took a few moments for her to notice Small. When she did, her lips began to tremble.
“He wouldn’t,” she said.
Small stepped through the door. “He wouldn’t what?”
“He stopped,” she said. “He stopped, too soon. He wouldn’t give me what I wanted.”
Small peered at her closely. The pupils of her eyes were dilated into tiny spots of black. Her mouth was twisted, her body was tense as a coiled spring, and her arms were still extended out to him.
She’s mad, he thought. And right behind that thought, came another, more staggering realization.
I’ve never done it with a madwoman before. That’s something completely new.
New . . .
He groped behind him, found the knob, and pushed the door shut.
* * *
On the third floor, all the rooms were locked.
Bill went from one end of the hall to the other, trying every lock, leaning his shoulder against the wood paneling. The doors refused to budge.
What’s behind them? he wondered. Are they locked simply because they’re not used for anything, or because the secret of all this business is in there?
He considered for a few moments whether he should ram them and break them open. It would be easy enough to knock the doors from their hinges, and discover what was on the other side.
But did he really want to know what was in those rooms?
He thought about it, and decided he didn’t He’d probably spend the rest of his life wondering about it, but at the particular moment the only thing he really wanted was to get out—to leave this crazy place, leave these lesbians and voluptuaries and whatever the hell the others called themselves, leave this house forever and return to the comparative sanity of New York.
He went quickly d
own the hall to the stairs and descended to the second floor.
Lil was standing facing him. She was nude.
He stopped short at the base of the stairs and stared at her. Illogically, the first thing he noticed was that she wasn’t a natural red-head.
“Bill.”
He came down the hall, and halted within a few paces of her. “Where’s Small?” he asked. “You know—the fat man.”
“In there.” Lil gestured at a closed door. “The other fellow left He went crazy, or something.”
“Doesn’t surprise me at all,” said Bill.
She nodded. “You’re right. This place is crazy. Everybody here is crazy. Except you . . .”
“Oh, don’t let me off the hook. I’m crazier than anyone for coming here in the first place.”
“Shut up and listen to me,” she snapped. “You’re not crazy, and neither is the girl in there.” She nodded toward the open door behind her.
“The blonder
“Her name is Ginny,” said Lil. “She’s very frightened—and mixed-up. But she’s not crazy. She has no business being here.”
“So?”
Lil took a deep breath. “I’m a lesbian, Bill. I’ve been a lesbian all my life, and nothing’s going to change it. I’m sorry, but that’s the way things are.”
Bill nodded. “I made a mistake. You can’t win them all.”
“But Ginny—” Lil paused and wet her lips. “She isn’t a dyke. She isn’t anything. She’s a virgin.”
Bill’s eyes widened. “A virgin? Are you sure?”
“Yes. She doesn’t know what it’s all about. She came here looking for answers, not sex.”
“Oh,” said Bill softly.
“I couldn’t do it.”
“Make love to her, you mean?”
“Ruin her,” said Lil. “I was all set to do it, and then—” She dosed her eyes. “—and then I realized how cruel that would be. And I just couldn’t As bad as I am, I could never be that cruel.”
“Lil . . .”
“Let me talk. She’s still in there. She doesn’t know anything’s happened. I want you to stay out here until I get dressed. And after I leave, I want you to go in there and take care of her.”
“Take care of her? How?”
“I don’t know. How would I know about things like that? She needs somebody to explain the world to her—the real world, not this—this hell we’re all in. She needs a nice normal person to take her by the hand and lead her to where she belongs.” Lil paused. “She needs a man.”
Bill started to speak, but Lil turned and went quickly into the room. He stood there in the hall, staring after her, his mind whirling with thoughts.
* * *
Burton Small gave it everything he had.
But nothing seemed to be enough for the girl.
“Harder,” she screamed. “Harder. Make it hurt. Hurt me.”
Every ounce of energy he could muster poured into the effort of satisfying the twitching madwoman beneath him. A flood of new sensations washed over him.
Is this The Climax? he wondered—making love to an insane woman, a woman whose lusts can never be satisfied because they’re nothing but fantasies of her tormented mind? Is this the ultimate moment—spending all your manhood on futility?
For a few seconds, he was convinced of it.
And then, deep inside him, a feeling of awesome pleasure began to grow.
What’s this. What’s happening? Something’s happening to me—what is it?
The feeling was a warmth and a chill combined. It flowered and spread to encompass every fiber of his being. The strength of it was beyond thought, beyond pleasure or lust, beyond anything mortal flesh could endure.
Now, he thought. Now comes the ultimate moment. Everything I’ve done in my life has been nothing but preparation for this.
Madam Fury was right. Until you had tasted it, you didn’t know what pleasure could be.
Afterwards, there was nothing left.
Burton Small’s obese frame shuddered and lurched in a spasm of exquisite sensation, and The Climax took him.
“More—more—” breathed the girl. “Please don’t stop-make it happen for me—make me die—I want to die . . .”
Burton Small didn’t hear her.
Within the cage of his ribs, the tired muscle of his heart had ceased its beating forever.
CHAPTER 15
HALFWAY THROUGH THE Monday papers, Charlie the cab-man found Burton Small’s obituary.
He sat numbly in his office, staring at the name he knew so well, and at the words beneath it which stated so matter-of-factly the details of death.
According to the obit, Small’s body had been found in the street, not far from the intersection of Bliss Place and Eugene Street on Staten Island. The preliminary findings of the Medical Examiner seemed to indicate the cause of death had been due to a heart attack. Pending word from his relations, the paper said, the body of the deceased was resting in the morgue.
Charlie leaned back in his chair and blinked his eyes several times. He was glad no one was present to see the moisture in them.
Mr. Small was gone. The great man was dead. Charlie felt as if he had lost his father.
Wherever you are, Mr. Small, he thought—I hope it was a good one. I hope it was worth it. You had a right to go out the way you wanted. I just hope you found what you were looking for.
He tossed the paper aside and sat for quite a while, looking at nothing.
Elsewhere in town, readers of the Monday papers bypassed Burton Small’s obit with scarcely a glance. Their attentions were grabbed by a far more interesting story.
At six A.M. Sunday morning, an unidentified girl had been seen leaping from the rail of the Staten Island ferry. Witnesses described her as screaming, “I want to die . . .” on the way down. Rescue efforts had been pointless, since a crewman on the lower deck had seen the girl sucked into the blades of the ferry’s engine. He described quite vividly the manner in which her body had ceased to exist down there in the reddening foam.
The readers shuddered, and kept reading.
In the basement of a building far uptown, a man was sitting crouched in a chair. His eyes were blank, his face was void of expression, his hands were clenched fiercely on his lap.
Ted Morton was seeing skulls and bones. He would be seeing them for the rest of his life. None of the tenants in the building would ever quite understand just what had happened to make their friendly normal superintendent so withdrawn.
Far away to the south, in a section of Brooklyn known as Brighton Beach, a blonde girl named Ginny was sprawled on a bed, naked. Her face glowed with pleasure.
Above her, also naked, was a young man named Bill.
He held her breasts tenderly in his hands, and poised his hips in the velvet V of her thighs. She looked up at him as if she couldn’t quite believe he existed.
He kissed her lingeringly on the lips, then on the tip of each breast.
Then his hips began to move, slowly at first, but with ever-increasing speed, until both their bodies surged and blended and exploded with pleasure.
It was the fifth time they had done it together since leaving the house on Staten Island.
It wouldn’t be the last
* * *
“I was afraid only once,” said the woman. “When that young man came up to the third floor. If he’d broken in the door—If he’d even heard the cameras . . .”
The man shrugged. “He didn’t, though.” He paused to puff his cigarette. “I tell you—I was a lot more scared over that business with the fat man. Filling a house with people and taking movies of them making it through the ceiling is one thing—but getting rid of a dead body is quite another.”
“Well,” said the woman. “It all worked out. According to the papers, the police haven’t connected him with this place. They won’t either.”
“When will the films be ready?”
“Thursday,” she said. “I’m really looking forward to s
eeing them.”
“Yes,” said the man. “So am I.”
The woman grinned at him. “You owe me a thousand dollars,” she said.
He smiled ruefully. “I know it. Go buy a fur coat—put it on one of the accounts. Your devoted husband always pays his debts.”
“The money’s only part of it,” said the woman. “I want to hear you admit I was right.”
“I give up.” He raised his hands. “You were right. You can’t blame me for not believing it would work out that way.”
“Listen,” said the woman, leaning toward him. “I know people. I know just how they think. And I knew if we got a pack like that into this house with the idea planted in their heads that sexual games were afoot . . .”
“It would end up being an orgy. Absolutely right. I concede defeat. Go spend your thousand dollars.”
The woman sat back and smiled to herself. “What fun she said dreamily. “I wonder if we’ll ever concoct anything as beautiful again.”
The man laughed. “We won’t concoct anything. You will. Give the pleasure of this a chance to wear off, and you’ll come up with something new.”
“Yes—I suppose I will.”
“Madam Fury never runs out of ideas,” said the man.
Madam Fury, she thought. She liked the name. It described so much that was important about her. The name had been nothing but a spur of the moment inspiration when she had been designing the cards for this escapade, but the more she thought about it the more anxious she became to use it again.
And again.
Madam Fury smiled.
THE END
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