Lord of the Feast, page 1
Tim Waggoner
Lord of the Feast
FLAME TREE PRESS
London & New York
*
This one’s for two amazing men: Joe Lansdale and Michael Knost. I skipped a panel I was supposed to be on at StokerCon to have coffee with them, and it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Chapter One
Now
Give in. You know you want to.
Kate is lying on a rough stone floor, and she presses her hands to her ears to shut out the cold, mocking voice, although she knows it won’t do any good. You can’t shut out what’s inside you. The world around her is a riot of noise and motion, and her mind struggles to make sense of what’s happening. She catches only fleeting impressions – a maelstrom of wraith-like forms swirling around her, Ethan chanting in an alien language. Even with her ears covered, the foul words stab into them like ice picks. She draws in a shuddering gasp of air so frigid it sears her lungs, and she’s grateful for the pain. It centers her, focuses her. Above her, on the ceiling…no, where the ceiling should be is…is…. She doesn’t want to think about that, doesn’t want to look up and see, afraid that if she does, she’ll lose what’s left of her mind.
There’s no need to fear. The Gyre loves all – especially you.
“Go fuck yourself,” she says, maybe out loud, maybe not. Inside her head, the voice laughs.
You first.
Her vision swims with tears of terror, pain, and sorrow, and through them, she sees Lee kneeling on the floor, head bowed, wrists and ankles bound with leather restraints, a ball gag in their mouth. Great-Aunt Caprice stands next to Lee, and she grips their curly black hair and yanks their head up, forcing them to watch the completion of the rite. I’m so sorry, love, Kate thinks. Lee doesn’t look at her, stares blankly forward, and Kate wonders how much of their mind is left. An older man, bearded and disheveled, kneels next to a rusted shopping cart, hands clasped in front of him as if he is praying, on his face an expression of almost childlike wonder.
Ethan stands in the center of the chamber, wild eyed, brown hair blowing in a sourceless wind. In his hands he grips the Liber Pravitas Itineribus – The Book of Depravity: cover fashioned from fragments of fused bone, pages formed from desiccated, discolored flesh, letters written using the dark blood of the greatest sinners to ever walk the face of the Earth. On the floor in front of Ethan is a collection of unclothed body parts. Arms, legs, torso, head. Each part comes from a separate individual. Men, women, different races, different ages…and the parts look fresh, as if harvested within the hour. There’s no blood at the junctures where cuts were made to separate the pieces from their original bodies. The top of the skull has been removed, exposing only emptiness within. The parts begin to move with life of their own, writhing as Ethan reads from the book, his mouth speaking blasphemous words, each syllable causing micro-tears in reality. The wraith-things swirl around him like a miniature ethereal cyclone, making him difficult to see, and Kate can’t read the expression on his face. Does he feel joyful? Apprehensive? Triumphant? Maybe all three, she decides. He is, after all, creating a god.
The longer Ethan reads aloud, the more damage reality takes. The air is brittle now, sharp, burning, and breathing feels like inhaling white-hot metal razors. The wraith-cyclone bends away from Ethan, arcs toward the collection of body parts, separating as it rushes toward them. The wraiths vanish as they enter the pieces of the god-to-be, and Kate knows that it’s game over for her, for Lee, for everyone.
You can make sure Lee survives this, the voice in Kate’s head says. And you know how.
She does, and she’s tempted, sweet Oblivion how she’s tempted. All she has to do is think one simple word – all she has to do is surrender – and she could save Lee, save the world, maybe even the whole damn universe. Her mouth starts to form the first letter of Yes, but before she can say it, or even fully think it, she sucks her lower lip between her teeth and bites down hard. Warm-wet floods her mouth, and the pain – sharp, piercing – is so welcome she laughs with delight, spraying the air red.
You think that’s funny? The voice shouts in her head, furious. Try laughing at this, bitch.
Agony tears through her skull, more intense than anything she’s ever experienced or imagined. It feels like something with large sharp claws is inside her head, furiously trying to dig its way out. The pain is so great, it drives her to her knees. She grits her teeth, presses her hands to her head and pushes inward as hard as she can, as if trying to squash the pain, make it smaller, contain it, but this only makes it hurt worse.
LET…. ME…. OUT!
No!
As she lies there, an endless series of explosions going off in her head, she hears Caprice laughing.
And laughing….
And laughing….
Then Kate hears the Lord’s first footsteps, and she knows the rite is complete. The Lord is whole – or nearly so – and it’s coming for her, for what’s inside her. She would rise to her feet and run, but she’s in too much agony to twitch a finger, let alone stand.
The voice inside her head giggles like a mad child as the Lord draws closer.
Chapter Two
Then
Caprice Linton’s office was luxurious to the point of decadence – which was exactly the way she liked it: coffered ceiling, built-in shelving and cabinetry, custom-built executive desk, wood flooring, all obscenely expensive, of course. No windows, though. Caprice sometimes needed to do things in here that she didn’t want the world witnessing. Misshapen globs of light hung from the ceiling on thin metal rods. The globs pulsed slowly, as if they were breathing, and they made soft humming sounds that Caprice found relaxing – as long as they were fed regularly, that is. If a meal was so much as fifteen minutes late, they’d scream like infants being torn limb from limb. The walls were painted a rich red – the precise color of arterial spray – and the shelves were filled with skeletons of small creatures that had no counterparts on Earth. Caprice loved collecting the remains of exotic animals, and they didn’t come more exotic than these. From time to time, the skeletons’ empty eye sockets would glow with pinpricks of light, and when this happened, Clarice turned off the chandelier so she could admire the illumination of the spirits trapped inside the skeletons.
She sat at the desk in a high-backed black leather chair, laptop open in front of her, going over outstanding accounts, as she did every month. She’d send a reminder to those clients who had yet to settle their bills, and if they had not done so within two weeks after receipt, they’d lose their privileges at the House of Red Tears. If they still had not paid after an additional two weeks, she’d send one of the freelance operatives she contracted with to have a ‘talk’ with them. And if the bastards still didn’t cough up the cash after that, they would be brought back to the House, not as guests this time, but as playthings. Everyone paid in the end, one way or another.
Caprice was sixty-four, but she looked a good decade younger. She kept her blond hair cut short, and she wore a white business jacket, blouse, skirt, and high-heeled shoes. She always dressed in white, regardless of what she was doing. She prided herself on being able to perform the messiest tasks without getting so much as a speck of dirt – or drop of blood – on her. She never wore makeup, saw it as a meaningless affectation. Her eyes were a striking crystalline blue, and her thin lips were perpetually pressed together, as if she were in a permanent state of disapproval. Those lips compressed even more tightly when there was a single sharp knock at the door. Only one person ever knocked like that, and she almost shouted for him to fuck off. Once she started a task, she wanted to keeping working at it until it was finished. She loathed being interrupted. Ten years ago, the most important project she’d ever been part of had been interrupted and left unfinished, and it still galled her now, a decade later.
“Come in,” she called out.
With a single exception, none of the doors in the House of Red Tears had locks – including her office. The door opened smoothly on freshly oiled hinges, and Axton entered. He was fifty-nine, with a round face, silver-black hair, and thick black mustache. His chin came to a point, a feature Caprice disliked. She wished he’d grow a beard to cover it, had even suggested it once or twice, but he’d never done so. At Clarice’s insistence, he also dressed entirely in white – white suit, white shirt, white tie, white slacks, white shoes. She noted that his shoes were speckled red, and she sighed softly. The man could be a real slob sometimes. Good thing he has a huge cock, she thought. And can still get it up.
“I hate to bother you, Ms. Linton.”
“Bullshit. You live to bother me.”
Axton didn’t dispute this.
“I’ve just finished making my daily check on the Repository. I believe we have some new activity.”
Caprice felt a zing of excitement at Axton’s words, but she forced herself to respond calmly. “When you say activity….”
Axton – who normally was the epitome of emotionless composure – allowed himself a small smile. “I think this may well be the moment we’ve been waiting for.”
Caprice drew in a breath and closed her eyes. After ten long years, could it finally be happening? We’ve had false alarms before, she cautioned herself, and this might well be another. Still, her pulse quickened, and she experienced the first faint stirrings of what might have been hope.
She opened her eyes, closed her laptop, and
stood.
“Let’s go find Ethan.”
* * *
Ethan stood in front of a long metal table set against a tiled wall. Upon its surface rested a number of implements – gleaming stainless-steel surgical tools, an assortment of knives (carving and hunting), glass containers filled with pins, needles, and nails (various sizes and lengths), tools such as handsaws, pliers, and hammers, drills, hatchets and axes, and several chainsaws, smaller ones with eight-inch blades up to monsters of twenty inches, depending on how much meat and bone you wanted to cut and how fast you wanted to do it. There were lengths of rope – hemp, nylon, and satin – as well as scarves of different types and sizes, and garottes made with regular wire or, if you were looking for something with more bite to it, barbed wire. No guns, though. Caprice used to supply them, but then one of her clients decided to continue the party after he finished with his plaything and rampaged through the house, shooting anyone unlucky enough to find themselves in his path. Since then, guns were strictly forbidden in the House of Red Tears – at least for clients. There were bottles of chemicals on the table, acids and poisons mostly, along with plastic containers filled with common household cleaners. There were plastic goggles to keep fluids from getting in your eyes, rolls of silver duct tape for clients who preferred their playthings to remain silent, and a stack of towels and cleansing wipes, should clients feel the need to tidy up during their session. The only fire-related equipment on the table was a lone gas-fueled blowtorch. Over the years, a number of the House’s clients had petitioned Ethan’s grandmother to include cans of gasoline and kerosene in the rooms’ setup, but she always refused. The last thing I need is for some lunatic to burn down the place, she’d say. A sensible precaution, Ethan thought, but he could see how some clients would find it a disappointment. There was nothing quite like burning another human alive. The sound of bubbling skin and fat, the screams, the smell of cooking flesh….
Like all the client rooms in the House of Red Tears, the floor, walls, and ceiling were covered with white tile. Recessed lights in the ceiling could be set to whatever level of illumination a client preferred. Some liked to work in near-blinding light while others preferred dim shadow. A metal cabinet contained space for clients to store their clothes, should they wish to disrobe before getting to work. Caprice wanted Ethan to follow in her footsteps and learn how to kill without getting any mess on himself, so he always kept his clothes on when playing. The cabinet also contained leather aprons and rubber gloves, along with an assortment of masks, whips, dildos, and restraints. Ethan never bothered with the masks. He thought they were childish and more than a little cowardly. As far as he was concerned, if you were going to kill someone, you should be willing to show your face to them. Each room had three workstations: a steel autopsy table with gutters to catch and funnel blood, a steel chair with leather restraints, and a steel X-cross with manacles for wrists and ankles. There was a large drain in the middle of the floor, a hose attached to one wall, and a sink and a shower in the corner for clients to clean themselves when they were finished. The walls were soundproofed as well, but sometimes you could still hear cries of agony coming from adjoining rooms when someone was assigned a really good screamer.
Ethan picked up a hatchet, considered it, then put it back down. He sighed, picked up a wickedly sharp filleting knife, turned away from the table, and started walking toward the chair. An elderly man sat there, naked, arms and legs bound, duct tape covering his mouth. He was bearded and so skinny you could see the outline of his bones, a skeleton wrapped in parchment-thin flesh. His eyes were wide with terror as Ethan approached.
Ethan stopped within reach of the man and regarded him for a moment. Caprice wanted Ethan to take over the business when she retired, and so she’d started teaching him the trade when he was a child, not long after he’d come to live with her. At first, she’d bring him into rooms to finish off playthings that clients, for one reason or another, had left alive when their session was concluded. These days, he cleaned rooms and restocked equipment, but every once in a while, he got a plaything of his own to practice on. Unlike the majority of his grandmother’s clients, Ethan didn’t have a specific type of plaything that he favored, and he didn’t get a sexual charge from torturing and killing humans, so he was happy to take whatever leftovers Caprice gave him. The best specimens should go to paying clients anyway; that was just smart business.
“Sorry, but I’m not really into this today,” Ethan said to the man. “It’s not you, it’s me. I know that sounds like a lame excuse, but it’s true. Don’t get me wrong. I like killing people well enough. But it just feels…empty unless there’s meaning to it, you know? Some kind of reason for doing it.”
Ethan searched the man’s eyes for any indication that he understood, but he saw only fear. The man’s gaze kept darting to the knife Ethan held, and beads of sweat gathered on his forehead.
Ethan’s grandmother procured playthings for the House of Red Tears from a variety of suppliers. All the people in the world who disappeared every year had to go somewhere, and more than a few of them ended up here. Sometimes Ethan wondered if anyone really vanished, or if there were hundreds of places like the House of Red Tears located across the world, all in need of a constant supply of material. As an extra touch, Caprice made sure that each of the playthings she bought came with biographical data for those clients who preferred to know some personal details about their toys.
The old man’s name was Luke Riley, retired high-school history teacher from Racine, Wisconsin, divorced, with two adult children and three grandchildren. He was a type 2 diabetic, had sleep apnea, and he’d started running marathons in his thirties, but had to quit when his knees couldn’t take anymore punishment. He’d had a hip replacement in October, and while the incision had healed nicely, it was still quite visible.
Ethan wondered what Luke thought of him. Twenty-two, shaggy brown hair, meager mustache and beard, thin, medium height, wearing a long-sleeved olive-green top, jeans, and sneakers. His most striking feature – so he’d been told – was eyes so dark they looked almost black. He supposed Luke didn’t find him particularly intimidating, and he could see why some clients liked to wear masks when they played. They wanted to make themselves into monsters to intensify their playthings’ terror. It was a little late for him to don a mask now, though. Maybe next time.
Ethan looked at Luke’s scar. He’d never seen an artificial hip before. It might be interesting to open Luke up and take a look at it. But no. If he wanted to, he could find a video of the medical procedure on YouTube to watch. It would be easier and less messy.
“Unfortunately, I can’t let you go, and since no clients want you….” Ethan gave an apologetic shrug.
Luke made muffled sounds of alarm behind the tape and shook his head rapidly back and forth. As he did so, Ethan swiped the filleting knife through the air and laid open the man’s left carotid. He took a quick step back – just as his grandmother had taught him – and watched as Luke’s blood jetted out. The old man thrashed in the chair, struggling uselessly against the restraints, but his exertions quickly grew weaker as his blood pressure dropped. Soon the jet of blood become a trickling fountain, then stopped altogether. Luke went still, eyes wide and unblinking.
It was so easy to kill people when you knew how, Ethan thought. Not much more difficult than flipping an off switch on a machine, really.
He looked up. A shiny-smooth obsidian half-globe protruded from the ceiling, roughly the size of a basketball…well, half a basketball. Clients, if they noticed it at all, assumed it contained a hidden security camera. They were wrong.
“Hope you have a good trip, Luke,” Ethan said.
He walked to the sink, rinsed off the filleting knife, then returned it to the table and cleaned it with an alcohol wipe. He then headed for the door. He was happy to keep his regular clothes on when killing, but when it came to clean-up, he always donned coveralls. Each floor of the House had a maintenance/janitorial office, and Ethan kept a pair of coveralls in each one, his name stitched on the front to keep any of the regular staff from stealing them. He intended to get his coveralls, along with a bucket, mop, and some bleach, and return to clean up the mess left by Luke’s dying. He’d also have to call someone down in the crematorium to come up and get Luke’s body. He scowled as he stepped into the hallway. He liked the idea of running the entire House one day, but he was sick of all the scutwork Caprice had him doing. How much longer was she going to make him clean up blood, organs, piss, and shit?
