Ghastly set the camcorder down. The image on the TV was a black and white sidelong view of Calvin sitting in the chair.
“Let me show you something,” said Mr. Ghastly. “Follow me.”
Calvin followed Ghastly to a door at the far end of the room, what Calvin had supposed led to the alley, though now that he thought about it that was impossible. They were beneath the pub, which was street level, so it must have been some kind of storage closet. When Ghastly opened the door, Calvin was mistaken, and shocked.
On the other side of the door was another room. Considering the size of the space the rest of the Museum of Death took up, this room must have been so deep that it was beneath the building on the other side of the back alley to the pub. That or it was some kind of magic portal. Ghastly himself seemed to be steeped in something unworldly.
Calvin followed him into the room. He grimaced at what he saw. He hid it well, but almost puked right there on the floor. Had Calvin done that, Ghastly would have slaughtered him on the premises, he was sure of it. Puking was not the kind of response a Gorehoound would have. Not at all.
“Not going to be sick, are you?” said Ghastly.
Calvin shook his head.
“Good. I want you to understand what you are up against. I want you to understand how serious a decision you made when you signed a contract with me.”
Before them was a wall standing a good twelve feet high—which made no sense considering the eight or nine foot ceilings in the museum—that was plastered with a mess of faces. Calvin stared at the gruesome sight in silence. He heard Ghastly’s voice but didn’t register what he was saying, for what Calvin bore witness to was insane, perhaps even impossible. Each face was hanging by a single nail through an X in the forehead. The strange thing was that, aside from the blood that had dried almost black, they all seemed fresh. The flesh hadn’t dried up and wrinkled the way dead flesh does over time. The faces retained structure as if they had been cut away from the head with a bone saw, skull-face and all. They reminded Calvin of a grotesque version of those cheap Halloween masks for children that cover just the face with a string that wraps around the back of the head. The masks were lined up perfectly and though there was no room for more, Calvin had a good idea that this particular wall could stretch higher if Ghastly so desired, and dwell in the deepest depths is he so wished.
“This,” said Ghastly, “is the Wall of Suicide.”
This statement brought Calvin out of the daze he’d been drawn into. “Wall of Suicide?”
Ghastly nodded. “This is where those who cannot handle my training go. The Gorehounds are a group of special individuals who are given special opportunities in life and death. Very few attempt to join us and even fewer make it all the way. Hazel will make it, but you I am concerned about. You see,” Ghastly stepped up to Calvin and tapped his forehead with one elongated, bony finger, “you have it in here, what I am looking for, but you also have an incredible sense of doubt. The kind of doubt that will destroy you when faced with the final challenge. This is where those who fail the final challenge go.”
“Why?”
“Once you go down the road to becoming a Gorehound you cannot go back to civilian life. We have survived amongst normal people for decades, hiding in the cracks I’ve created here and there, but someone who knows as much as one of my trainees could potentially harm the institution that is the Gorehounds, and I cannot have that.”
Calvin’s mind was cramped with so many questions that they stacked up like cordwood. “So these are all the people who failed?”
“No. Just in this region. There are six museums around the world, just like this one. All of them have a Wall of Suicide.”
“What if I decide not to go through with the final challenge?”
Ghastly raised his eyebrows and gestured to the wall. “You go up here on my wall.”
“Wait a minute.” Calvin took a step back. A rising tide of panic surged. He did everything he could to settle it and not make a fool out of himself. “So I have no choice then? I either become a Gorehound or I die?”
A bubbling tar chuckle leaked from Ghastly’s mouth. “If you don’t become a Gorehound your body dies, but your soul belongs to me, hence the Wall of Suicide.”
Calvin’s eyes climbed up and down the wall, examining several of the faces and tracing the contours and cracks and dried crusts of blood. A shock of revulsion cascaded through his body when he saw the face of one man twitch his lips as if trying to scratch the bottom of his nose with the bristles of his moustache. One of his eyes opened enough to show capillaries in a milky, jaundiced orb.
“Oh fuck, they’re still alive.”
“No. Not quite. The bodies are dead, but the soul, well, the soul lives on with me. No one really knows what happens after death, but I know more than anyone. No one can say with surety that there is a Heaven or Hell, whether there is one god or many, but I have found out that suicide is something that damns the eternal soul to this world. It’s really too much to explain to you now, but I have been at this for a long time. I can tell you with certainty that those who have committed suicide have not moved on to whatever lies beyond like all other souls do. I have also found that there is power in the soul, and I have found out how to harness that power.”
“But you’re not religious, right? Isn’t suicide as a mortal sin something religious people believe?”
Ghastly nodded. “There is always a little bit of truth in legend, and from where I stand that’s all the Bible is. A legend. A grand story. I’ve spent many years studying the dead, digging up corpses and sifting through sweetly rotten grave dirt for the answers, and over the years I have found them. The root that connects life and death is the soul. It’s what makes people and even animals cognizant on this side of the realms. I don’t expect you to understand, and don’t even ask, but that’s what I have discovered. That’s why I formed the Gorehounds. I’m not looking to take over the world or anything like that. I just want to share what I have found with likeminded individuals.
“I want you to understand something, Calvin, something even Hazel does not know. To be a Gorehound is to be forever. What I have to share with you is something so many people would sell their soul to know, but oh so few have the intestinal fortitude to actually seek out.”
Mr. Ghastly gestured to the faces. More of them were shifting, noses twitching, eyes fluttering. Some mouths gaped while other remained tightlipped. “These souls have enough power to fuel many lives. The body grows old and rots and dies, but this kind of power source is like an elixir. Countess Bathory thought she could retain her beauty and even practice immortality by bathing in the blood of virgins. She was close, but the soul isn’t in the blood, and it’s not so easy to harness.”
Ghastly grumbled and gestured for Calvin to retreat from the cramped suicide closet. Once they were back in the room with the coffin, Ghastly closed the door. Calvin sat down in the chair where he had been sitting when Ghastly appeared out of nowhere, filming him with a damn camcorder. It felt like an M-80 had exploded in his head.
“What I came here to tell you is that you have two options. If you manage to pass my tests, you will live out the rest of your life in my little tribe of misfits and we will teach you how to harness the power of the soul, to feed upon it, to ride it.”
Calvin had so much on his mind that he couldn’t respond if he wanted to. Felt like he was caught up in a whirlwind of insanity. The idea that he was now on some crazy ride into a world he never could have imagined was too much to process. What he had just seen was even worse. The idea that he could suffer the same damning fate was horrifying.