“She’s beautiful,” Hazel said.
Calvin, speechless, found it difficult to see the beauty in these unusual specimens. The title painted outside of the entrance to this chamber was apt: Freak Show.
The music hypnotically drummed into Calvin’s ears. He watched the absurd trio do their little dance and soon enough he found himself swaying slightly. Hazel was swaying to the beat as well, and so were the others who had wandered into the room, however few they were. Notes from the flute drifted like some ethereal fluid, dripping into Calvin’s ears and saturating his mind like acid being absorbed into blotter paper.
Calvin felt something cold in his hand. It was Hazel’s hand and it was deathly pale. Almost had a bluish hue like a corpse on a rolling slab in a morgue. A glance at her face showed him that she was dead. Nothing horrible, no violent trauma, but dead nonetheless. It was clear in the sunken cheeks and lack of color. Her eyes were hollow and milky, staring at the gruesome trio of macabre musicians the way a corpse would stare out of a coffin at a viewing, had no one closed her eyes.
Sneaky minor notes filtered through Calvin’s brain, soothing him from the terror he felt at the icy grip Hazel’s corpse had on his hand. He took a deep breath and watched the freaks sway like cadaver marionettes.
There was no way for Calvin to know just how much time he spent in the Freak Show. It wasn’t until he was back in the central chamber sucking down another Helldahyde that he was in control of his faculties. He couldn’t even remember getting the second drink.
“Stuff climbed right on top of me,” he said to no one in particular.
Hazel, standing beside him, responded. “Yeah? Maybe I should have one of those.”
Calvin took a drink and had a good look around. He watched the smattering of people wandering from one chamber to the next. His best guess was that there were maybe twenty sickos like himself, and he wondered if they had all been lured here with a mysterious little flyer the way he had.
Hazel introduced herself to another woman who was wearing a conservative skirt and blouse. One look at her outside of this dingy sewer and you wouldn’t guess she was into this kind of shit. Calvin would have tagged her for a Christian who’d never done anything more adventurous in bed than missionary and preferred a good PG-13 romantic comedy. Calvin wondered if maybe she had wild tattoos of serpentine dragons with skeletal heads hiding beneath the ultra conservative façade.
Hazel and the woman walked into the Death’s Door room. The blue light filtering out of that room flickered like an old reel-to-reel projector, the kind that Calvin remembered in school back when he was a kid. As he watched the light dance upon glimmering concrete just outside the chamber, he became absorbed. He could swim in those dancing beams like a fly caught in a puddle. He could drown in it. He could find death in it.
A deep and somewhat slurry voice said, “Only fifteen minutes left. Use them wisely.”
The sickly sweet and equally pungent smell of Helldahyde breath was left in the bar tender’s wake. He continued on, whispering the same warning to each and every patron like some creeping ghoul sucking souls from unsuspecting ears.
Calvin slipped into the room. A film was being projected on the side of a wall where a large sheet had been stretched to create a screen. The room was darker than the others, only illuminated by the brightness of the film, which was pretty dark in both contrast and content.
Calvin took a deep breath and then he watched in silence. It wasn’t Death’s Door, at least not the Death’s Door that was sitting in his VCR right now back at his apartment. In the same vein, but certainly not the same movie. Some of the clips were your typical police video footage and yet there were other clips that had a certain morbid sensibility. Those bits of footage startled Calvin, for reasons he didn’t yet understand. He’d watched enough of this stuff, so why did this particular film make him feel so uneasy?
“Now watch this,” Ghastly’s voice said over the projected images. “Absorb this into your sponge-like brains.”
The images were even more disturbing than before in that they seemed to be filmed at that very moment the killer took the life of his victim, scenes that were rarely recorded, and were even more rarely witnessed by those outside of the police and FBI. Some of the footage was so horrendous, so vile and raw that it could be nothing less than snuff.
“Did you like that?” asked Mr. Ghastly.
The six watchers nodded in unison.
“Good! Now take a look at this.”
More images, equally depraved, danced upon the screen. Glancing at the half a dozen people in the room, all watching in silence as if in some kind of celluloid trance, Calvin realized that he was the only one who had any clear reservations. Hazel was wearing that sick grin she’d sported as they watched the Freak Show. The conservative looking woman appeared to be in awe, as did many of the others. Some of them—particularly a bald man with facial skin that sagged like melted cheese—just stood there all stoic like they’d not only seen worse, but may have participated in such atrocities.
The film stopped suddenly. Calvin felt a jolt and almost yelped. The projector wheel spun slapping the tape at the end of the reel.
Slap. Slap. Slap. Slap.
There were nervous laughs in the dark chamber, but Calvin couldn’t make out any of the people standing around him.
Slap. Slap. Slap. Slap.
People began shuffling out of the room. Calvin stood there, still a bit dazed and overwhelmed by everything he had experienced in the past hour or so. He was ready to go home, ready to lie down in bed and wake up with the sun shining through the window, but home seemed so far away. A world away.
A death away.
A solitary light came on. It was enough to dimly illuminate the room, which helped Calvin gain his bearings. He was the last one out. He could see through the doorway that everyone else was being ushered through the door that led to the large tunnel he had walked through to get to this place.
On his way out of the Death’s Door chamber Calvin saw a couple of flyers tacked to the wall with a strip of masking tape. He couldn’t make out the words in the murk, but it had some kind of macabre Uncle Sam with an old school coroner’s top hat. Compulsory instinct commanded Calvin to grab a flyer. He only glanced at it before neatly folding and placing it in his pocket.
Chapter Eight
Coming out of the dimly lit drainage tunnel into the dark of predawn wasn’t very encouraging considering the weird shit Calvin had just experienced. Back when he used to go to the Museum of Death he would walk out of the place after spending hours inside gazing over corpses and violence and death and the brightness of a San Diego day would act as a sort of balm for his soul. Witness too many death scenes and one becomes quite aware of his mortality.
Calvin looked around considering whether he should try to hitch a ride, but he was one of the last ones out of the Hall of Hell and the last of the headlights were pulling out of the parking lot onto Wintergardens Boulevard. Where the hell did all the cars come from?
Then a voice spoke in Calvin’s ear, startling him. “Cal,” said the voice. He turned around, but no one was there.
From across the parking lot, behind the rear of the Ralphs building, someone appeared, tall and silhouetted in darkness. A solitary lamp on a tall pole shined a soft yellow light behind the man.
“I’ll give you a lift,” Mr. Ghastly said as if his mouth was pressed up against Calvin’s ear. Calvin jerked his head to make sure the strange man had not somehow snuck up on him.
“Follow me,” Ghaslty’s deep voice droned, at which point the man stepped behind the Ralphs building.