An emaciated man and a woman came into the room, both looking at Ronnie like she somehow whetted their collective appetite.
The skinny man asked Lance, “She almost ready?”
Lance nodded. “A damn fine likeness, don’t you think?”
Skinny Guy nodded.
“How’d things go in there?” asked Lance.
Skinny Guy replied, “Pretty good. Kind of weird there for a minute, but that’s how these things are. Your makeup was masterful, as always.”
Lance nodded, applying the final touches to the woman with a tiny makeup brush. Ronnie hadn’t had a good look at her. Lance had blocked her view.
The woman who’d come from behind the partition approached Ronnie and Ronnie didn’t like the look in her eyes. She half expected the woman to smack her around a bit or maybe scratch out her eyes. Instead, she said, “I’m going to undo your restraints, but don’t get cute with me. You are going to lay down here on this gurney and then I am going to restrain you again. You would be smart to do as I say and question nothing. Do you understand?”
Ronnie understood, and though the idea of being restrained on a steel gurney gave her a deeper feeling of terror and anxiety than that she already harbored, she nodded.
The woman unclasped Ronnie’s hands and feet. She wasn’t rough, but rather gentle. Ronnie was only allowed to rub her red, swollen wrists for a moment before being forced to lay on top of the gurney. It occurred to her that this may be her last chance at making an escape, but she was outnumbered three to one, not to mention the man with the impossibly deep voice on the other side of the partition. Even if she managed to subdue the woman with a punch to her nose, Lance and the skinny guy would be on her before she had a chance to think of her next move.
One thing that returned to Ronnie’s mind as she’d sat there in that room for a week was that she had to get out for the sake of her baby. It wasn’t her own life that she was worried about, not anymore. It was the unborn life in her womb. Lance knew this and used it against her, proclaiming that he would put a fist in her gut if she tried to escape.
After lying on the gurney, the woman began to strap Ronnie’s arms and legs down with bands of leather that had buckles like tiny belts. She then strapped Ronnie’s head with a similar leather strap.
“Wait, what are you doing?” asked Ronnie.
“Don’t worry,” said the woman. “It’ll all be over very soon.”
Ronnie’s eyes popped. It’ll all be over soon? What?
The opportunity to try an escape had passed. Ronnie thought that maybe she should have done something, but with so many people in the room she felt helpless. Even if they had to take her down, going out that way was probably better than whatever they had in mind now that she was completely restrained. This sort of thing just couldn’t end well.
Lance stepped back dramatically from the woman he’d been working on, the way an artist does after the final brush stroke applied to a masterpiece.
“She’s a vision of perfection,” he said.
Skinny Guy nodded approval. “You outdid yourself.”
“It takes a lot of work to achieve a perfect replica,” said Lance. He turned to face Ronnie. “But we’ve had ourselves a good time, haven’t we, Ronnie?”
From Ronnie’s new position on the gurney her vision was compromised. She strained to see Lance and his subject.
“Do you have a mirror,” said the woman Lance had been working on. “I’m dying to see what I look like.”
Lance nodded and grabbed a handheld mirror from his workshop table. He took the mirror and placed it beside Ronnie’s head, flat on the gurney. “Come over here,” he said.
The woman crossed the room and came to stand over Ronnie, looking down. Their eyes met and Ronnie froze. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
The woman looked into the mirror beside Ronnie’s head and gasped. “Holy shit. I… I can’t believe it.”
Calvin removed the makeup and latex in silence. Spindle and the woman had gone into another room Calvin had not been aware of. That’s where Hazel was. No one said anything to Calvin about it, but he connected the dots. She had already gone through the tests and was being made up to look like some unfortunate woman.
Mr. Ghastly watched Calvin in silence. It was hard to ascertain his mood, considering that he always had a grim demeanor, but Calvin was sure that Ghastly was sizing him up more than ever. Had anyone gone through with riding the dead and still managed a position on the Wall of Suicide? Did that threat still hang over his head in some way?
Using a rag and some pink facial crème, Calvin wiped greasepaint from his face. He felt like a clown or better an actor in a heavy makeup role such as Freddy Kruger or Pinhead. Every time he glanced in the mirror he saw Mr. Ghastly standing behind him, glaring.
Calvin had expected Ghastly to ask him about the experience, but he’d remained silent, perhaps sensing that Calvin was distressed. He walked up behind Calvin and said, “You can join us in the other room when you’re finished. If you want to watch Hazel ride the dead.”
Calvin looked at Ghastly through the mirror. They held a stare that was teetering on the venomous. Ghastly turned away and left through a door at the corner of the room.
Calvin swallowed hard and resumed removing makeup.
The experience should have been liberating. He was supposed to be accepted into the Gorehounds and life was supposed to be great in death obsession. What were they going to do, kill people for fun? He’d done that and he felt horrible about it. He watched himself in the mirror and it felt as if he had been under some kind of spell for a month now, living life in a state of fugue or somnambulism. Thinking back, he had very few memories of what had transpired. He remembered seeing dead people walking, and of course he remembered Ronnie walking out on him. The morning he woke up with Celia’s corpse on the floor was perhaps the worst moment of his life, but somehow he had moved forward. He’d looked at a Polaroid picture and clung to it like it was some kind of talisman. The photo had power. The VHS tapes he’d been watching religiously were powerful as well. And what he did with Hazel… He couldn’t help but wonder if she had power all along, that perhaps since she was clearly the frontrunner in the whole training experience they had gone through, she had somehow possessed some of the power Ghastly had been using to lull Calvin into doing the things he’d done. How else was he to explain the thrill he felt while killing Danny in the museum?
Now the thrill was gone. It was as if without the Polaroid and the movies and Hazel, the enchantment had worn off and he had to go through all of this madness with a sane mind. Only the insane would take pleasure in the stuff the Gorehounds busied themselves with.
Calvin studied himself in the mirror. Stubborn makeup remained in his small sideburns and around the eyes, but he was finished with the pink goop he’d been given to remove the stuff. His hair was mussed and he looked like he’d aged ten years in a week. His eyes burned, perhaps from lack of sleep or maybe from rubbing them vigorously. He was hungry, but food was the last thing he wanted. He grabbed a bottle of water that had been pulled from a mini fridge in the room and placed on the table. He took a drink, thought about running and realized that they would catch up to him. Mr. Ghastly had ways of finding him no matter where he ran.
The Wall of Suicide burned in his mind. More and more it seemed like he had a space on that wall. The Gorehounds wasn’t freedom, but polished slavery for the sick and demented. Maybe Spindle and the butcher woman and Hazel would live long and brutally prosperous lives with the group of fiends, but this wasn’t for Calvin.