Flesh Gothic by Edward Lee Read online

  "A french astrologist. A lot of the rooms here are named-one of Hildreth's many eccentricities, and a pretty tacky one, if you ask me. Clairvoyants, augurs, mesmerists, alchemists, sorcerers. It gets worse as you get to the higher floors. The biggest bedroom is called the Loudun Suite, named for the possessed nuns. The chapel turret on the fifth floor is the De Rais Chapel. You've probably heard of him."

  "Satanism, the occult. So you think Hildreth was really into that stuff?"

  "Yes," Willis said.

  "Well, I don't believe in any of it, but I'm not so closeminded to say that I disbelieve it either. I only believe what I can see."

  Willis nodded. He was exhausted. "Then consider yourself blessed, and thank God that you can't see what we can," he said and walked away.

  III

  Some study, Westmore thought. They were all the same: over the top. Each one seemed a nice, quiet place to work, with exorbitant furniture and beautiful appointments. Until he looked at the bookshelves. He looked at one book after another, frowning at the titles.

  The Synod of the Aorists, The Red Confession, The Secret Utterance of Joseph of Arimathea, and on and on. Westmore had never heard of any of them, in spite of a respectable education. Another peaked bookshelf offered worse selections, perhaps flagging more of the real Hildreth: The Grimoires of the Black Blood, Modern Teratology and Other Biological Accidents, The Field Investigator's Photographic Guide to Gunshot Wounds, Stab Wounds, and Traumatic Rape. One glance at the photoplates of the latter sent him reeling, and in another, an untitled large-formatted book in a red leather binding, nearly made him throw up: old black-and-white pictures of men having sex with handicapped and deformed women.

  "Fuck the study," he said aloud, thoroughly disgusted. Hildreth uws one sick puppy. He left in long strides, mentally gagging at the images. "Shit . . ." At the end of the hall he noticed some oddly placed drapes that couldn't possibly be covering a window; he looked behind them and noticed a narrow stairwell, so he took them up. I've only been here an hour and I'm already sick of this nutty place and that pack of weirdos downstairs. But his bad mood, he knew, was only a sign of his professional confusion. He was being paid to write an account of the coming week and he still didn't know how to go about it.

  The third floor seemed darker and more cramped, less space in the hallway. Darker portraits of obscure men and women glowered from meticulous frames. Tasseled drapes adorned narrow stained-glass windows that allowed very little light to pass. The atmosphere, which Westmore at first found interesting in its novelty, now aggravated him.

  "Mr. Westmore. Come in here a moment. You might want to see this."

  Westmore hadn't even noticed Nyvysk in the corridor's dimness. From that distance he looked like a tall, shaggy shadow, and as a silhouette from the stained-glass at the end of the hall, he looked momentarily menacing. Westmore followed him into a room blossoming in white fluorescent light.

  "Man, this is some shift away from the Gothic," he said.

  "Yes, clashes with everything else, but perhaps that's a sign of more of Hildreth's falsehood; he kept his materialisms secret."

  The room was full of computers and monitors, and all manner of audio-visual equipment. A central console allowed one to observe multiple camera displays, plus audio transmissions from the intercom. But the small room was made more cramped by a flank of packing boxes stacked behind them. "What's all that?" Westmore asked.

  "That's my equipment," Nyvysk explained. "From a technical standpoint, this mansion is a dream; every room is wired for camera and audio. All of my detection devices can be piggybacked into any room I want, through the wiring that already exists. And the digital camera system is ideal; I can connect some of my sensors to them from this central location."

  Westmore was already confused. "Sensors? Detection equipment? To detect what? You're going to try to take pictures of ghosts?"

  "I'm going to try to make photographic and audio read ings of various atmospheric signatures of presences that may be thought of as ghosts."

  Westmore frowned. "Like what? Temperature?"

  "Drastic fluctuations of temperature, yes, barometric discrepancies, gauss readings for divergences in trace radiation levels and electromagnetic field configurations, ion-field conversity. One of the simplest detection measures is one of the most useful: electronic-voice phenomena. I'll be able to monitor most of these things from this room. I'll be able to pinpoint times and locations of high activity, even when I'm not here." Then he pointed to a rank of digital recorders.

  "Oh," Westmore said. Everything he'd been told was almost instantly over his journalist- and English-major head. "When are you going to start taking readings?"

  "I already have."

  I can't wait to see what happens here, Westmore thought. "Knock yourself out. I'm gonna go find a place where I can write."

  "See you at dinner," Nyvysk said, busy reaching into a panel access with a screwdriver.

  Westmore left, confounded as ever, and getting used to that state of mind. Back in the dark hall he checked more ornate doors only to find that most of them weren't to bedrooms or parlors but to offices, supply rooms, and utility rooms. Westmore guessed that these served as T&T's administrative facilities. A larger door was more declarative; STUDIO A, its plaque read. The walls must've been knocked out of the rest of the rooms on the floor from this point on. Several sets could be seen, with various fake backdrops; another set was a bedroom, another a living room, all equipped with lights. Oh, Christ, he thought when further back he discovered a padded GYN table on which rested a sceneclapper that read GABRIELLE'S GONZO GANGBANG (SCENE IV, DAY TWO). I guess that one wasn't a print, Westmore concluded. She got butchered before she could make it to Day Three. Supply shelves housed dozens of different types of vibrators and other sexual aides, rubber phalluses that looked distressingly real, and bottles of lubricant. Westmore's nose crinkled; the place stank. "I don't think I'll be using this smut-hole for a workroom," he muttered and left. He felt dirty just being there ... and knowing what the room's original purpose had been. Maybe he'd go back to the big library downstairs, even though he didn't like the idea of being in such close proximity to the others-and he didn't want them snooping either. He sighed with relief, though, when he opened the last door on the wing and found a plush office with a big teak desk, a quality leather armchair, and french doors leading to a sunny veranda. This narks ...

  He set his laptop up on the desk, adjusted the light, absorbed the creative atmosphere, finding it acceptable. He turned the computer on and started a new file entitled VIVICA HILDRETH JOB, and when he was ready to start, he did what most writers do on the first day of a writing job: he turned the computer off and decided not to write. IT start tomorrow, he decided and got up to look around. He went out of the veranda and smoked a solitary cigarette, enjoying the sunlit view of the woodline and the estate's west end. At a great distance he thought he saw a woman coming out of the woods, staggering a bit. Maybe that's the other woman, but he couldn't remember what Nyvysk had said her name was. He squinted until she disappeared and decided that she was indeed staggering, as if fatigued.

  Back in. the office, he browsed around more. He didn't need to mind his own business now; Hildreth was dead and so was his company and his employees. He looked through some file cabinets, eyed tax records and supply invoices. Nothing of much interest there, but maybe later a closer look at the books would produce some information Vivica might find useful. He had to keep reminding himself that he was working for her and not necessarily with the others. I guess I'm her paid spy ...

  A little framed picture on the desk displayed a picture of Karen and Hildreth, both smiling at the mansion's entrance pillars. I guess this used to be Karen's office, he reasoned. He looked in the desk drawers and found them relatively uncluttered, but in a multidrawered Windsor highboy he found stacks and stacks of adult DVD's, all T&T productions, and only then, on the desk blotter, did he notice yet another DVD--classily entitled GOO-GUZZLING GOGO
GIRLS-that Karen had used as a coffee coaster. Now that's what I call respect for the company's product.

  He opened a plain door next to the highboy, expecting a closet, but found another, even posher office. Oddly windowless and full of half-burned-down candles. Behind the desk occupying much of the paneled wall hung a grandly framed oil portrait of Vivica Hildreth, posing in a period depiction: hair in a jeweled bun, fan in one hand, dressed in a Victorian bustle dress and a sashed bodice. The image was jarring, after meeting her for real in the pop-trash fashion she'd worn at her penthouse. Westmore opened the desk's drawers and immediately found-

  Oh, terrific.

  -a small revolver.

  Not that big a deal, really, especially not in Florida where handguns were not taboo; it just shocked him, that first sight of a gun sitting there. He picked it up, sniffed it, and only detected machine oil. Probably never beenfired. But Hildreth's weapon of choice had already been made clear: an ax.

  You've got to be shitting me, he thought next when he pulled the drawer out further and found a banded stack of $100 bills. Most people have paper clips and staples in their desk. Hildreth's got ten grand. Maybe it was a test-because he knew the room had a camera in it somewhere. But Westmore's corruptions had never involved dishonesty anyway-just alcohol. He put the money in his pocket, knowing he'd turn it over to Mack immediately, and report the discovery to Vivica.

  The top drawer on the other side of the desk was empty save for one item: a small framed picture face down. Westmore flipped it over and found himself looking at what must be a high school yearbook picture.

  Pretty girl, he thought at once. The ultimate girl-nextdoor, big white smile, big innocent eyes, a sweep of shining brunette hair. Did Hildreth have a daughter? But, no. Karen had told him he and Vivica were childless.

  So who's this?

  It seemed that his work was being cut out for him on its own. He left the picture and searched more drawers, these at the other side of the room in a Chippendale roll-top, just as the door opened.

  "Everything all right in here?"

  It was Mack, leaning in.

  "Yeah, I was-"

  "Nyvysk said you were looking for a place to write, and it looks like you picked the right place. This was Hildreth's office."

  "Yeah, I kind of figured. Any objections to me using it?"

  "None at all. Feel free to use the computers or anything else you want, and lemme know if you need anything."

  "Thanks-" Then Westmore remembered. "Oh, wait. I did find this. I guess you should secure it or turn it over to Vivica." He passed Mack the band of bills.

  Mack laughed. "Not surprising. That's pocket change to Hildreth."

  The comment spurred Westmore. "How did he become so successful?"

  "Mainly international bond merchandising, global municipal bonds, stuff like that."

  "A Wall Street wizard?"

  "That or he ripped a lot of people off. He never talked much about it. He made a billion dollars by the time he was fifty"

  "Who managed his personal accounts? Karen?"

  Mack laughed harder. "No, no, she just kept the books for T&T, small-time. T&T wasn't a business to him, it was a hobby. IT be the first to tell you, Hildreth was a perv."

  "The proverbial dirty old man?"

  "The proverbial rich dirty old man, I guess. But he was also a very, very smart guy. It's hard to really peg him quickly. Somebody could write a whole book about the man, and it couldn't possibly tell the whole story." The security man paused. "For all I know, that's what you're doing."

  Westmore shook his head. "I'm just writing up a chronology for Vivica, an account of what goes on with all these-"

  "Psychic whackjobs?"

  "I guess that term could apply."

  Mack leaned against the doorframe. "You believe in any of that stuff?"

  "I don't know," Westmore said.

  "Me either. I guess we'll see. Well, I gotta run, see ya later."

  "Sure-oh, and Mack? One more question."

  "Yeah?"

  "Did Hildreth have any kids, with Vivica, or anyone else?"

  "No way. He couldn't stand kids. He was a real curmudgeon when it came to children."

  "He have any relatives with kids?"

  "Nope. Hildreth was an only child."

  Mack rushed off after that, obviously in a hurry, but Westmore felt satisfied by his answers and good nature. Oh, shit, I should've given him the gun, too, he remembered. If these "psychics" were whackjobs, a pistol sitting around might not be a good thing, but then he knew he was overcautious. Best to just leave it there, and it was best, he knew, not to make judgments about any of the others at least before he'd gotten to know them.

  Instead, he went back to snooping.

  He thought of Poe's "Purloined Letter" when he saw it right there in front of him. The broad, leather-cornered blotter on Hildreth's desk. It was an April calendar, the sort that was intended for people to jot notes on, appointments on certain dates, etc. But there was no writing on this one"Wait a minute," he muttered, squinting.

  -save for one pen-mark and a scribble.

  A red X on the box for April 3rd.

  A shudder trickled up his spine. The date of the murders ...

  None of this was very telling, yet it seemed utterly macabre. It definitely wasn't spur-of-the-moment, Westmore realized. He knew he was going to kill those people on April 3rd. He even wrote it down.

  More to contemplate. I justgot here, he reminded himself. He had a tendency to project questions faster than he could think. Be a journalist. Accrue facts, and assimilate them when you've got enough to make a conclusion. And he knew this: he had very little in the way of facts just yet.

  He browsed around, opening another highboy cabinet. No. money this time, just several stacks of DVD's, a hundred perhaps. He flipped through a handful, expecting to see more vivid, sexual cover photography but instead found dates for the past year handwritten on each disk's label. At first he was surprised the police hadn't confiscated these, along with the gun in the desk and the money and much else, but then he recalled what Vivica had mentioned. She'd paid a lot of money to jink Hildreth's death-report, and had probably paid a lot more to the proper sources to ensure that the house wasn't searched. He dreaded what lay ahead, though, an obvious task: I'm gonna have to sit and watch all these DVD's, at least scan over them. It didn't matter how attractive the women were; porn was essentially the same thing over and over again. Gee, I can't unit, he thought and dragged the stacks out, then promptly dropped one. "What a putz!" he yelled at himself. The discs lay like a dropped deck of cards. But when he got down to his knees and began picking them up, one caught his eye.

  The was no date but scribbled on it was HALLOWEEN PARTY.

  This one might be VERY interesting ...

  He made a mental note to watch that one first, then, before he could get back up, he noticed something else.

  Four indentations in the carpet, right next to the highboy, which seemed to match the length and width of the highboy's legs. It was too obvious when he took a second glance.

  Someone moved the highboy from there to there. Recently.

  When Westmore tried to muscle the large piece of furni ture aside, his exertion reminded him of one reason he'd chosen to be a writer instead of a manual laborer; he wasn't exactly a physical specimen. His long hair dangled annoyingly in his face as he shoved and shoved, thinking God damn! This big piece of skit weighs more than a fucking piano! But after some sweat and what would undoubtedly result in a sore back tomorrow, he managed to nudge the highboy back to its original position, and that's when he saw-

  The plot thickens, he thought.

  What the highboy had been covering was an oil portrait of the girl whose picture he'd found in the desk, the brighteyed brunette. "All right, Hildreth, you're intriguing me now," Westmore talked to himself. He looked closely at the painting, which was obviously very new yet admirable in the way its dark swirls and brushstrokes duplicated High Rena
issance style. A pastoral scene at night, trees edging around a cemetery. The girl looked contemplative in a broad ruffled blue dress with white-lace cuffs and neckline.

  And she was pointing straight ahead which, from where he stood, made it look like she was pointing straight at Westmore.

  Interesting, he thought. And weird, like everything else in this house ...

  Then he considered something.

  Did the artist craft the painting to appear as though she were pointing at anyone looking at it, or did he-

  Westmore did an about-face. With no one standing there, she was pointing to the other side of the paneled room, and there, exactly in line with her painting was another picture in an identical frame.

  He walked over. This one wasn't a painting, it was an engraving; it looked old, the work's single subject more like Michelangelo than Raphael. Hunched over an angled table was an old man with flowing long hair and beard; he was writing on a scroll of paper with a stylus pen, and somehow the engraver had captured the most unique contradiction of expressions-in the eyes--a look of dread but also a look of rapture. In the corner the artist had left his name (which appeared to be Albrecht or Albrekt) and a shocking date: 1610. Words in Italian had been etched across the bottom, and a clearly much more recent translation could be found on a small gold plate.

  ST. JOHN THE DIVINE SCRIBES THE HOLY REVELATION AT PATMOS, CIRCA A.D. 90.

  Westmore squinted closer, and noticed the intricately engraved stippling which spelled the word REVELATIO at the top of the scroll, and just below it: CAPIT 13.

  Chapter Thirteen of the Book of Revelation, Westmore thought with a frown. It was a benchmark for hokey Christianmysticism and apocalyptic study, and-

  And for these freaks into the occult and devil worships Chapter Thirteen is the "Biggie," Westmore knew, where John reveals the cryptic number of the Beast: 666.

  It was all hokum; Westmore was confident of that, and he also felt confident that it divulged more of the real Hildreth-a crackpot.

  Somebody should've told John that the real number of the beast is George Steinbrenner's phone number, he joked and went back to the desk. He took out the snapshot of the brunette again, then held it up right next to her painting. Now it was easier to see that whoever Hildreth had hired to do the painting had used this photograph as a model for the face. The artist's name was in the corner, very small, with a date: about a year ago. For no reason he pressed a finger against the paint and of course found it dry.