In This Skin (35 page)

    ”We'll need to bring her out of the booth so we can dress the wound,”Robyn said, businesslike. ”Will she come if you ask her?”

    ”I don't know. I'll try.”He looked at the circular eyes that gazed dimly back at him. ”Mariah? Mariah, can you hear me?”

    A tiny nod. The mouth pulsed from gray to pink. Color was leaving it, blood loss taking a lethal toll.

    ”Let me help you.”He leaned forward into the booth, reaching out his hands. But to willingly touch those cold gray tentacles that served as arms? He didn't know if he could.

    ”Here, let me,”Ellery said. The appearance didn't faze him. Gently he took one of the tapering limbs and helped her to her feet. She walked unsteadily, while still pushing the rag against the bullet wound, trying to stem the cruel outflow of blood.

    Mariah's knees buckled and all three caught her to prevent her from falling. They laid her on her back. Benedict searched her face again, looking for some residue of a familiar nose or jawline of the woman he'd loved. But nothing. Her entire body had been reconfigured, reshaped, remolded into this thing he saw now with the misshapen head and petal-like eruption of a mouth. Even the flesh had been transformed from smooth skin that once shone with youth and health to this sickening covering of gray membrane, speckled by deep black pores that oozed mucous. What's more, there was no human warmth. She felt cold to the touch. To make physical contact with her evoked memories of handling raw fish from the refrigerator.

    What sick, evil force has done this to Mariah, he asked himself. How has she become monsterized?

    It was an ugly word that you'd never find in any dictionary, but it applied only too well to the woman he'd once shared a bed with. She had been monsterized. She had been wrought into the shape of a monster. But had that force reshaped her mind? ”Give me as much light as you can,”Robyn told them. ”Ellery, pass the bandage pack. Thanks.”

    By flashlight Robyn worked to save Mariah. She wadded the wound, so the raw puncture in the strangely flat chest was plugged. Then she helped Mariah to sit, so she could wrap the bandage around her torso to hold the wadding in place. The image of a part-wrapped mummy figure was oddly apt with the Egyptian tomb paintings covering the walls.

    Then Robyn said something that Benedict had wanted to suggest, only had evaded because it might test her loyalties. But Robyn knew what they had to do. ”We've got to look for somewhere to hide Mariah. Noel can't find her, or even know she's here. Not yet.”

    Ellery nodded. ”Th-the stage.”

    ”There's a hiding place near there.”

    ”Beneath… there-there's… uhm.” The words were jamming tight again.

    ”Sherrr… show you.”

    Benedict glanced at the door to the stairwell. Noel might burst through any minute with the gun in his itchy fingers. Benedict knew the man would fire the moment he saw what he believed to be the monster that molested Robyn. Love can be savage beyond belief.

    

    

    With the wound bound, and Robyn and Ellery helping Mariah, they made good progress. Benedict lit the way as they crossed the dance floor.

    Robyn glanced at Benedict. The man's face bled pain and shock. What must it be like to search for the person you loved, only to find them transformed into the most repellant thing you've ever seen in your life? The pulsating mouth that stood out from the creature's face was as large as an apple. It flushed red then bleached to gray, no doubt being colored by tiny capillaries that carried its now diminished blood supply. The rhythm of the color change must match the beat of its heart… her heart, Robyn corrected. Close up, the mouth reminded her of stomach-churning moments of TV-it looked like a beating heart exposed during surgery, yet it resembled mollusks in the depths of the sea: pulsing, undulating, expanding, contracting, aspirating. And it evoked a melee of images of fast-motion photography of a bud blossoming into a rose, with pink lip after lip unfolding, peeling back before the whole process flipped into reverse to contract down to that fruit-sized lump.

    ”Where now, Ellery?”Benedict asked.

    ”Stage… n-no. Not up. Down… lower.”

    Robyn looked at where Ellery pointed with his free hand as he supported Mariah. Benedict played the light on the vertical timber panels that formed the front elevation of the stage. They reached little more than waist high before they met the boards that formed the horizontal plane of the stage itself. Then he saw what Ellery pointed at. Recessed in the timber was a D-ring. Benedict pulled it and a low hatch opened on hinges to form a dwarfish doorway into the underside of the stage.

    Robyn glanced back at the lobby to make sure Noel hadn't woken and followed them down here, then she turned to regard the bulging eyes of what had once been a human being. The eyes were dull, the breathing shallow, breathless-sounding. Mariah was very weak. What's more, the bullet was still inside her chest. It would require surgery to remove it. Already Robyn's mind spun possibilities of what to do next.

    Call nine-one-one? Or find a veterinary surgeon? She hated the seemingly flippant thought. But perhaps medical help should come from someone versed in non-human anatomies? ”Here. Careful,”Ellery whispered. ”There are s-steps down.”

    Robyn expected the void beneath the stage to be only around four feet high. But the ground had been excavated when the Luxor was built. Stage boards formed a roof above a large vault some seven feet high that ran the breadth and length of the stage. Over the years it had become a dump for scenery flats, cables, redundant (or broken) spotlights, miscellaneous tables, chairs. Even an electric guitar with a broken neck haunted this dusty, forgotten place.

    Forgotten, that is, with the exception of Ellery. ”Bed… we can m-make her…”He nodded at pieces of furniture that included a mattress and plush velvet drapes folded on a shelf. Robyn saw the drapes would serve as blankets to cover the cold-as-fish Mariah. But was this her natural body temperature? ”We can't keep her here for long,”Benedict said with distaste at the surroundings. ”She'll need expert care.”

    ”I agree. But we've got to figure out who to call.”

    ”After all,”Ellery told them with sudden clarity. ”Mariah is just like us. She's here for a purpose.”

    

    

    When the clock on the dash pulsed 3:30 a.m., Logan decided they'd waited long enough for that stutter monkey Eh-Eh-Ellery to leave the Luxor of his own accord. Even though Logan had convinced himself that Ellery was in the place, there was a powerful suggestion that someone else was in there, too, bearing in mind the car parked nearby. Maybe both were naked, making out onstage with a ooohoooh-ah! Logan laughed. The image was even funnier because to kill the boredom he'd just shared a spliff or three with Joe.

    ”What's so funny?”Joe asked, chuckling.

    ”I'm just figuring I could nail the pair of lovebirds with one shot right through the ass.”

    ”Uh?”

    ”It doesn't matter. Come on.”

    ”Where we going?”

    ”Looks as if Stutter Boy ain't coming out. We'd best go find him before it gets light.”

    ”You really gonna do this thing, Logan?”

    ”Sure.”

    ”Ya gonna kill him?”

    ”That guy's going to be so dead he'll wish he'd never been born.”

    Both crumbled into spluttering laughter. Joe wafted dope smoke from his face as he rocked backward and forward in the car.

    ”And if there's anyone else in that crap heap…”Logan gestured drunkenly at the Luxor. ”They're gonna get themselves so dead they'll wish they'd never been born either!”

    Smoking dope made the joke even funnier the second time around. Roaring with laughter, they rocked the car and slapped the dashboard.

    ”Come on old buddy, bang-bang time.”Rather than Joe," Logan addressed this to the machine gun. ”Time to sing for your supper.” He hauled himself out of the car. Above him, stars painted blurry trails of silver in the sky. Wow, that was good smoke. He was still feeling that spiffy-spliffy cosmic buzz.

    ”Shit, man. I'm stoned.”Joe made it out of the car, then fell to his knees. ”Absolooot-tilly stoned.”

    ”Get up on your fucking feet, man. Work to be done, you know?”

    ”I'll be all right.”

    ”Ya'll be all right, or my boot's gonna connect with your asshole… ya asshole.”

    Both laughed again. Then Logan pulled a snub-nosed revolver from the pocket of his combat jacket. ”You take this.”

    ”I don't know about any guns, man.”

    ”You take this.”

    ”Aw shit.” Chuckling, Joe took the revolver from Logan. He eyed the submachine gun in Logan's other hand. ”Hey, yours is bigger than mine.”

    ”Yeah. 'Cause I'm the boss man.”

    ”Lead on, boss man.”

    ”Wait… wait. Flashlights.”Logan pulled a couple of flashlights from the trunk. ”Here. You take the smaller one.”

    ”Aw, size matters, man.”

    They walked across the nighttime parking lot. There was no traffic nearby. A silence settled on the place as deep as that you'd find in a tomb full of stiffs. Even though hundreds of crows formed a lumpy black thatch on the roof, they didn't move. It looked as if the suckers were waiting for something to happen.

    Weaving a little across the blacktop, they made it to the Luxor. They had to walk around the building twice before they found the entrance through the loose panel on the stage door. The beer and dope had started to wear off now. The stars refocused into tight little points of light instead of those smeary trails. Walking in a straight line became easier. Although they both grinned at each other, then grinned goofily at the guns in their hands.

    Logan slipped the panel aside. His flashlight revealed the hole in the door and the maw of the Luxor's interior beyond.

    ”After you, my dear Joe.”

    Joe chuckled his tipsy laugh. ”No, after you, my dear Logan.”

    ”No, after you, my dear Joe.”

    ”After you, dear boy”

    ”No, after you, good sir''

    The imitation of drunken English lords being overly polite tickled their funny bones again.

    Then sobriety kicked in hard.

    ”After you, my dear Logan.”

    ”No.”Logan pushed the gun muzzle onto the tip of Joe's nose. ”After you, old buddy. I insist.”

    The fuzzy warmth vanished in an instant. Joe's eyes sharpened into an expression of fear.

    ”I don't want you yellering out on me, Joe. We're gonna go in there and blow those motherfuckers away D 'ya hear?”

    Joe heard good. Scared, he nodded, then ducked through the broken door into the Luxor. Logan followed. Man, this is what Logan'd waited for.

    Bang-bang time.

    

    

    At the same time as Logan followed Joe into the Luxor through the hole in the stage door, hefting the submachine gun pregnant with thirty rounds of 9mm ammunition, Robyn, Ellery and Benedict worked beneath the stage. From bits of furniture, mattress and a dustsheet they rigged a bed for Mariah. Benedict watched as Ellery and Robyn carefully covered the gray form with velvet drapes. It was hard to tell if Mariah was in pain. There was no human expression on that face. The mouth still pulsed from red to white, the lips curled then uncurled with that alien rhythm. At least now she appeared to be resting more easily. The breathing didn't seem so labored. Only a troubling question haunted Benedict: Why didn't Mariah speak again? She'd spoken one sentence when she'd asked him for help.

    What stopped her from speaking now? The gunshot wound? Or had her mind been monsterized as much as her body? Apart from that moment of lucidity when she could articulate her need for assistance, perhaps she'd abandoned human speech? ”We'll have to leave her now,”Robyn told them. ”If Noel wakes up he's going to come looking for us.”

    Benedict said: ”First thing in the morning I'm going to bring back help.”

    ”Who?”

    He gave a grim smile. ”That, I haven't figured out yet.” He glanced at Ellery. Ellery had told them that Mariah was here for a purpose. Maybe he was figuring that whatever they planned didn't matter a hoot anyway.

    Other forces were at work, dark and powerful forces with plans of their own.

    ”Don't w-worry,” Ellery said to Benedict. ”She will be safe here.”

    Benedict nodded silently; however, he was reluctant to leave her alone in this cobweb smeared void beneath the stage. He crouched down beside Mariah as she lay on the mattress.

    ”Rest here. Don't worry, Mariah. I'll come back. Then I'm going to help you.”

    She gazed up into his eyes. He looked into the twin glistening eyeballs that seemed to float in the gloom above a mouth that pulsated like a disembodied heart. Had she understood?

    ”We'll leave a flashlight,” he told her. ”I'll put it down here beside you.”

    But can a monsterized woman with tentacles instead of arms operate a flashlight? Look at her, dressed in rags. She can't even change her clothes…

    Robyn crouched down to reassure her, too, telling her they'd make sure she got well soon, and not to be afraid.

    Smoothly, yet with the speed of a cobra striking at its prey, Mariah lashed a tentacle out at Robyn. Benedict's blood froze, expecting that glistening limb to coil around Robyn's neck with crushing force.

    Instead, with sinuous grace the pointed tip of the tentacle touched Robyn's stomach with a controlled gentleness. For a moment the tentacle rested just below Robyn's navel area, then quickly withdrew.

    Benedict, Robyn and Ellery traded glances, sharing, he guessed, the same thought. It was Ellery who put that thought into words, with barely a stammer.