At the end of the hall Calvin arrived at a staircase. Candles led the way and Calvin obliged, taking one step at a time. At the top of the stairs was another similar hallway, this one lined with doors.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” said a male voice. The hair rose on Calvin’s back. It felt as if the temperature dropped ten degrees. “Come in here, won’t you?”
The man stood inside one of the rooms just beyond a grime-smeared door. The man, tall and lanky, hid in the shadows. Something about him was off kilter, but Calvin couldn’t put his finger on what it was. He supposed everything about this place was designed to appear that way. It was a part of the test.
The man stuck his hand out and gestured with a long-nailed pointer finger for Calvin to follow him into the room. “Right this way,” said the voice. It was the very opposite of Mr. Ghastly’s voice, high in pitch, yet troubling, like a little guy who does hits for the mob. There was something about his attire that was off, and still Calvin couldn’t figure out what it was.
As the man turned to walk back into the room, the candlelight shivered over his bare ass and Calvin gasped when he finally realized what was so strange about the man’s appearance.
I’m not following a naked man into that room! What the fuck is this?
Calvin had no time to think. It was either go or retreat, and retreat meant something worse than death. If the man in the room made a move on him he would... What would he do? What if the man was a sadist or a dominatrix? What if the room was set up as a torture dungeon? What then?
Calvin shook his head to clear the shit from his mind and moved forward. It was getting to him, and that’s what they wanted. They were using shock value with the amazing, realistic effects during the mock snuff video (you know that was real, dammit!), and this was just another shocking test, probably a real fucked up one too. Fuck the video. He and Hazel had done worse than that. What the fuck did they think Calvin was made of anyway?
He followed the naked spindle of a man into the room and was taken aback. Calvin’s stomach sank at the sight of what appeared to be a dead woman lying provocatively—as if anything about a dead woman could be provocative—on an old chaise sofa. Calvin’s mind froze in that moment. It had to be a fake, an elaborate dummy with a professional effects makeup job, but the odor that attacked his nostrils told no lies. Were these people crazy enough to conceal a dead animal for the effect of a death stench to match an immaculate dummy corpse?
No. Dead animals smell different. The odor in the room had to be human death. It was something Calvin had never smelled before. It was horrid, overwhelming and seemed to nestle in his sinuses causing his eyes to water.
The spindle man grinned. He was dirty, particularly his pelvic area and flaccid penis. In the dreary shadows of the candlelit room Calvin couldn’t tell what the filth was, though he didn’t have to look any further than the corpse on the leather chaise, particularly the way it lay on its side with one hand positioned beneath the head as if the cadaver was attempting to be comfortable in its death, comfortable after what the spindle man had done to it.
“So, Calvin,” said the naked man, “why don’t you come in here and make yourself comfortable.”
Calvin wanted to scream. To run. To…
It’s fake! They’re fucking with you. Don’t puss out. They want to make sure you’re worth your salt. Mr. Spindle isn’t a fucking necrophiliac, he’s just a Gorehound with morbid sensibilities. He’s just a part of an elaborate bout of hazing.
Calvin tried to breathe through his mouth as not to inhale the putrid stench, as well as avert his eyes from staring at Mr. Spindle’s filthy, gore-coated family jewels.
“What do you think as you walk in here, Calvin?” asked Mr. Spindle. “What are your first impressions?”
Calvin’s mouth opened as if to say something, but nothing came out before Mr. Spindle rose his voice and said, “Do you think I’ve been fucking her?”
Both men’s eyes darted toward the corpse. It was an old one, the lips rotted away displaying yellowed teeth, the body waxen. Calvin’s stomach lurched again as he drew in a deep nose-full of foulness. The corpse looked and smelled far too real to be a fake.
“What do you want to do to her?” asked Mr. Spindle. “Do you want to fuck her?”
Calvin shook his head slowly, contemplating, once again, what the hell he had gotten himself into. It was becoming increasingly difficult to convince himself that the Gorehounds weren’t fucking with him for their own pleasure.
“No?” said Spindle. “I didn’t think so. We’re far and few between, those of us who enjoy such delicacies. You really shouldn’t knock it till you try it, though.”
The glint in Mr. Spindle’s eyes left Calvin feeling cold inside. It was bad enough that the man stood there in the nude, filth-ridden with gangrenous human matter, but worse that he had the look of carnality in his eyes.
“Touch her,” said Spindle, his voice breathy with passion.
“I… I don’t want to.”
“This is a test, after all, and I am your instructor. I want you to touch her. I’m not asking that much of you. You do want to be a Gorehound, don’t you?”
No.
“Yes.”
Calvin knelt before the decayed body, putrescence radiating like waves over hot asphalt. His gut churned, acid coating his esophagus as he choked back the urge to vomit.
His hand moved cautiously, trembling fingers reaching for the dead woman’s mottled flesh, green and black and disgusting. He may have experienced the taking of someone’s life, but this was plain out sick.
“Don’t be shy,” said Mr. Spindle. “She certainly isn’t.”
Calvin drew in a deep breath and exhaled through his nose as his fingers made gooey contact with her thigh. It wasn’t anything like he thought it would be, and there was no way of telling whether she was a fake or not. She was cold, and when he removed his fingers her gore lightly coated them as if she were melting, and Calvin supposed she was. In death, we all slowly melt away from the bones.
“That was nothing,” said Spindle. He knelt beside Calvin. His hand glided over her thigh and into the vortex where her legs met her torso. Spindle chuckled and this time Calvin spun around quickly and spewed onto the floor.
Spindle laughed.
“You give her a complex vomiting like that,” said Mr. Spindle before drawing his hand away from the defiled cadaver, his fingers decorated with clots of decay. “I make the decision whether you move on or not, and merely touching my dear Jenny with fingertips will certainly not suffice.”
Calvin wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt. More than ever he wanted to be out this dump. He wanted fresh air, a bottle of water—sanity! Regret consumed him—regret for what he’d done to Celia, the man Hazel brought to the Museum of Death, what he’d done to Ronnie. He regretted ever going back to that forsaken museum and meeting up with Mr. Ghastly in the first place. Most of all he regretted going to the Hall of Hell. Had he ignored the invite he never would have become involved in all of this.
“I’ll give you a choice,” said Mr. Spindle. “You can either lick Jenny’s deliciousness off of my fingers, or you can give her a kiss. Which one will it be?”
Heart beating double time, Calvin said, “I don’t think I want to be a Gorehound any longer. I don’t think I’m cut out for this.”