Crimson Psyche (11 page)

She let the flashlight drop into her hand. “Shut up, Ethel.
Yes!
Am I awesome, or what?”

The door creaked open.

Maxie stuck her head into the crack, then stepped inside, gesturing at me to follow. I pulled the door closed behind me.

We’d gone to hell.

In the total blackness, glow-in-the-dark paint depicted demonic scenes, with rivers of blood, and zombies feasting on the bodies of the previously living. The ghoulish displays had been demolished and the remnants of their wood and glass littered the floor.

My eyes adjusted to the darkness and I noticed there was a path under my feet dusted with glowing sparkles. Remembering the last time I’d been in a funhouse as a kid, when I’d slammed into an invisible glass on my quest for an exit door, I put my hands out in front of me.

“Hey! We don’t know each other well enough for you to touch me there, Doc.” Maxie chuckled softly. “Let’s go.” She clasped my hand. “The sounds are coming from this direction.”

She was right, the noise was definitely getting louder. A solid wall of chatter punctuated by shrieks, screams and laughter had a musical backdrop provided by Black Sabbath. The sound levels increased as we approached, moving ahead slowly until we reached a set of saloon-type doors.

Maxie pushed one side of the door and we sank to our hands and knees before crawling through onto a mezzanine floor. There were large gaps in the wooden barrier between where we were and thin air, so we stretched out on our stomachs, our heads poking beyond the balcony just enough to explore the source of the noise, which turned out to be a wild party. Maxie slipped a compact camera from her pocket and began clicking.

Torches were spread throughout the room and together with flame-filled steel barrels in the corner they provided soft respite from the prevailing darkness. The music burst from a large CD player perched on top of some wooden crates.

The building had four sets of double-doors at the entrance, and all were gaping, either because they’d been propped open with rocks, or the doors themselves were missing. In spite of the ventilation, the air inside the building was thick with smoke from the various fires plus all the cigarettes and joints adding to the mix. The sour stench of body odor floated like the bottom note of a nauseating perfume. My eyes stung and my lungs ached as I breathed the acrid air. Maxie didn’t seem at all bothered by the toxic atmosphere.

It was a rave.

There had to be at least a hundred people in the performance space and most of the revelers were dressed as their favorite movie or television monsters. In some cases, they wore nothing but tattoos. Maxie was going to be disappointed. This event wasn’t likely to provoke enough twisted behavior for one of her ridiculous articles. Raves were pretty run-of-the-mill these days — just drugs, sex, alcohol, and not one mutated alien baby head to be found anywhere.

I yawned and blinked my eyes to clear away the tears caused by the smoke, and started thinking about how great it would be to go home — and then the crowd went berserk. The dancers slammed into each other. The noise level exploded as everyone started yelling at the tops of their voices and pounding on whatever was at hand. The volume was almost painful. Vicious fights broke out between couples who, moments before, had been acting extremely friendly.

“What the hell?” I said to Maxie, who paused in her picture-taking long enough to shrug.

As if by some invisible signal, a circular opening formed in the middle of the frantic dancers and two robed figures pulled a struggling, scantily clad female into the center. She fought in vain to free herself as the spectators began chanting, “Kill her! Kill her!”

A third robed person pushed through the mob, heading straight for the woman, a long knife poised in the air. Without a second’s hesitation, he drove the blade into her chest. Blood blossomed from the wound.

I gasped, rose to my knees and reached into my pocket to find my cell phone. My heart pounded and my hands shook. The amusement park was on the outskirts of town, so who knew how long it would take the police to arrive? As I watched, the woman fell and the robed attacker continued stabbing her as she flailed on the floor. Her thin dress was saturated with her blood. I palmed my phone, ready to dial 9-1-1, when Maxie grabbed it out of my hand.

I was shocked to see her smiling. “You’re such a Girl Scout. Get down before they see you. Everything’s okay — I’ve seen this before. Just watch.” She pushed on my shoulder until I lay flat on the floor again, then returned my phone. “Put this back in your pocket. You won’t need it.”

The revelers in the circle stopped chanting and began cheering as the knife wielder stood and raised his blood-covered blade into the air, accepting the adulation of the onlookers. Then he reached a hand down to the woman on the floor and she grasped it, letting herself be pulled into a standing position. They took a bow and melted into the throng.

What the hell had just happened? Adrenaline flooded my body and my brain spun in stunned confusion.

Maxie shouted into my ear, “Adolescent party tricks — fake knife and packets of red paint taped to her body. Watch, there’ll be more. The children aren’t very original tonight.”

That had been a
performance
. I was so relieved I felt light-headed. Maxie could have warned me before I had a full-on panic attack. But why hadn’t my intuition given me a heads-up about the pretense? I’d been really off since we arrived. Hell, I’d been off all day.

I’d just taken a long deep breath to release the lingering tension in my body when a large hairy thing crashed through the dancers, scattering them like paper dolls.

On closer inspection, the beastie was a big guy in a shaggy bear suit, with the head replaced by a wolfish rubber mask, a sort-of low-rent lupine Bigfoot.

“Oh, eek! It’s a werewolf,” Maxie deadpanned in a high voice.

The creature lunged toward a shirtless skinny guy and raked its claws down the young man’s chest, leaving dripping blood trails on the white skin.

Maxie leaned in. “Good luck getting rid of all that red stuff. There’s tattoo ink stored in the fake claws.”

I glanced at her and said, loud enough for her to hear, “You know a lot about all this insanity.”

She grinned, pointed at the hairy guy and made the universal gesture for crazy, twirling her finger next to her head.

The “werewolf” growled, reached down and grabbed his victim’s neck, tearing away a portion underneath his chin.

The attendees roared, thrusting their fists up in manic glee.

Were-foot stood over his victim, pounding his chest. The throat-less man remained prone for a few seconds, then jumped to his feet and executed a graceful bow.

They wrapped their arms companionably around each other’s shoulders and were swallowed up by the herd.

A movement drew my attention and for the first time I noticed a tall man standing on a raised area in the midst of the crazed revelers. He wore dark, loose-fitting genie-style pants, and his impressive bare chest was partially hidden by unusually long hair, black, or very dark brown. He had an air of authority, standing there with legs spread, hands fisted on his hips as if he were surveying his kingdom. After observing the dancers for a few moments, he raised his arms up and the crowd parted, making way for a cluster of black-robed figures to carry in the wooden box I’d seen earlier.

I nudged Maxie and whispered, “Who’s the genie guy with the long hair? Is he the leader of this cult? Have you seen him before?”

She lowered her camera and focused on the tall man. “I don’t know who he is. Never laid eyes on him before,” she said, grinning, “but I wouldn’t mind finding out. If he’s a genie, I’d be happy to rub his bottle anytime.”

I almost laughed out loud before catching myself. “That makes two of us.” I was too far away from the intriguing man to see if he really was as attractive as he appeared, but he certainly had...
something
.

A couple of the robed participants moved to either side of the wooden box and lifted the lid. “This must be the vampire-staking portion of the evening’s entertainment,” I said.

“It’s about time. If nothing interesting happens soon, we can head out. This has got to be the most boring pseudo-supernatural event I’ve ever attended. Sorry for dragging you out to such a feeble waste of time. Maybe we can go find a margarita.”

The moment the top was off the box, the inhabitant started flailing his arms and legs, trying to sit up. The noise of the celebrants diminished a few decibels, as if they’d all quieted to listen to the prisoner screaming obscenities. He didn’t disappoint.

Four collaborators lifted the struggling captive, a large, naked fellow, out of the box. Each holding an arm or leg, they carried him up onto the platform where the long-haired man waited. The noise level began to rise again as the audience swarmed closer for a better view.

The victim’s limbs were stretched out to form an
X
as the robed lackeys lowered him to the platform’s surface. They held the struggling man in place as the leader bent over, picked up four huge spikes and a fat hammer, and held them aloft. His dark hair streamed down the front of his body.

“My children!” he called, and the masses quieted, to hear his voice. “We have gathered here tonight to slay a traitorous vampire: a renegade who has been banished from his coven for disobedience and betrayal. A bloodsucker who will not follow the will of his Master. I ask you now — shall he live or die?” The man’s deep, commanding voice cut through the chaotic sounds in the room with an intimacy that made me squirm with discomfort. Something about his voice troubled me, but I couldn’t get a fix on why.

Then, like a scene from an old movie of the spectators at the Roman coliseum giving the thumbs-up or thumbs-down to determine a gladiator’s fate, the ravers in the funhouse screamed their approval while gesturing downwards.

Wow. Role-players really take their performances seriously.

“So be it,” the leader proclaimed as he handed three of the thick spikes to a new helper who’d stepped onto the platform. He held up the remaining stake and the hammer, then leaned down and pounded it into the wrist of the man on the floor. The captive screamed and flailed, giving an amazingly authentic performance. Fake blood spurted from the wound as the man in the genie pants pounded the spike in deeper.

The group cheered.

I leaned into Maxie, and bumped her shoulder and mouthed, “What the hell?”

She lowered her camera, gazed in my direction, and shook her head. “These people need to get a life,” she shouted into my ear.

I’ve never been much of a horror movie fan — not being able to release the ghastly images from my brain after the end of the film definitely put a crimp in my enjoyment of cinematic carnage. So, why the hell was I forcing myself to watch this slasher parody?

The leader stretched out his hand, palm up, and his assistant placed another of the thick spikes there. Stepping over the victim’s head, the torturer thrust it into the man’s other wrist, and pounded until it appeared thoroughly wedged into his skin and bones.

The man screamed. More fake blood spewed from the new hole and spread out in a dark circle from the wound. His pain sounded so legitimate that I had to put my hands over my ears at one point and remind myself I was watching theater. I couldn’t figure out how they made the wounds so real. Maybe this production wasn’t as amateur as I’d assumed.

Maxie laughed. “What a bunch of losers.”

A high-pitched wail drew my attention back to the stage as spikes were pounded into the victim’s ankles. His terrified shrieks echoed throughout the building and a familiar smell wafted into my nostrils. My head jerked up and I lifted my nose into the air, sniffing.
Blood.
My stomach tightened. I didn’t have any trouble recognizing the smell because I’d been swimming in it since I met the vampires.

Why am I smelling blood?

The fake version shouldn’t have an odor — unless... had they used some kind of animal blood? One of my vampire wannabe clients had mentioned using pig blood from his grandfather’s butcher shop in some of his rituals. He said they actually drank it.
Yuck.

It was hard to hear the man’s screams over the uproar of the audience, but I thought he was genuinely suffering — in fact, his performance was
terrifying
. A miserable thought occurred to me and my gorge rose. I’d recently worked with a client who belonged to a BDSM group. He enjoyed being physically abused — experiencing pain was the only way he knew to feel alive, and the only way he could have an orgasm. I wondered if the man on the stage was like my client. Had he signed up for this torture? Or was he the best actor I’d ever seen? If he was mentally ill enough to allow himself to be tortured, shouldn’t I do something?

The observers were jumping up and down now, too excited to contain themselves. They’d cheered as each spike pierced the skin and more of the oozing liquid spread onto the platform. There was so much of the dark substance pooling around the man’s naked body now that it began to drip off the edges and slide down onto the floor. Some, more adventurous, leaped over to the oozing fluid, slid their hands through it and smeared it on their faces before licking the remains from their fingers.

The leader stood, planted his bare foot on the victim’s stomach and stared down at the bloodied man impaled on the platform. The man’s screams had diminished in volume. Had he passed out for real, or was he still acting?

“Shall we complete the ceremony?”

The crowd thundered an affirmative, and became even more agitated.

“Who wants to take on the sacred role of my lovely assistant tonight? My vampiric Vanna White?” The leader scanned the room, pointed at someone I couldn’t see and said, “You —
you are chosen
!”

The room went silent, and I realized someone must have switched off the music, because it no longer blared. From within the mass of bodies, a light-haired, full-figured woman dressed in a flowing white wedding gown made her way to the platform. Like some absurd military escort, all four of the guys who’d secured the man left the raised area and walked down to surround the woman. Was this a take-off of
Bride of Dracula
?