The Phantom Hothouse

THE PHANTOM HOTHOUSE

Edward Stasheff

Gravel crunched under Tyler’s bicycle as he skidded to a halt in the empty country road. Dropping the bike onto the shoulder, Tyler hooked his thumbs into his belt loops next to a buckle big enough to surf on, then looked up at the moonlit house and shivered. He couldn’t tell if it was from cold, excitement, or fear—or maybe all three.

The house was the embodiment of ruined splendor, a grand southern mansion decayed away to a skeletal stack of wood and rust. The huge house sagged in the moonlight, leaning to one side. Even the pillars in front were crooked, barely holding up a massive balcony that was slowly crumbling into the porch. It was amazing the house was still standing.

And, Tyler had to admit, it looked a hell of a lot more eerie at night. Peeling paint and rotting boards didn’t seem half so ominous in the light of day. The shattered windows especially creeped him out, the broken glass sparkling in the moonlight like teeth.

But it wasn’t frightening enough to scare him off his mission. Hell no. Would he go in there for fun? No way. On a dare? Forget it. But to get laid? You bet!

Tyler heard the crunch of gravel off in the distance, and looked down the road to see Luis biking toward him, legs pumping, black trench coat flapping behind him as he panted and wheezed. When the pudgy teen finally arrived, gasping as he dismounted and leaned his bike against the NO TRESSPASSING sign, Tyler gave him no time to catch his breath.

“ ’Bout time ya got here, boy!” Tyler whipped off his battered cowboy hat and smacked Luis with it. “Where the hell ya been, Lou, it’s almost midnight!”

Luis didn’t answer. He pushed his glasses back up his nose with one finger, eyes transfixed on the rotting house, his brow slightly furrowed. “This the place?”

Considering it was the only building in sight for miles, Tyler thought that was an amazingly stupid question. “Ain’t no other empty houses on Cherry Lane!” He smacked Luis with his hat one more time for good measure before slapping it back on his head.

Luis burst into nervous giggles. “A whorehouse on Cherry Lane!” he snickered. “That’s funny!”

Dear God, what a dork! Tyler thought with a roll of his eyes. No wonder he can’t get laid! True, Tyler had never been laid either… but at least he wasn’t as pathetic as Luis.

The two boys made an unlikely team. Tyler was a tall, scrawny Anglo redneck in a checkered shirt and cowboy boots. Luis was a short, chubby Latin goth wearing all black and an extremely dorky book bag. Yet they had allied together in the quest that unites all high school boys: to lose their virginity.

“Is it, y’know, safe to go in there?” Luis asked.

“You bet,” Tyler lied smoothly. “Reckon we just gotta watch where we step is all.”

“You sure?” Luis asked doubtfully. “Damn shack looks like it’s ’bout to collapse. How long it been abandoned? We talkin’ a decade or a century?”

“Oh, nearabout sixty years,” Tyler answered.

“So after cops shut it down, why’d they just leave it empty?” Luis wondered aloud. “Big fancy house like that, ya figger someone woulda bought it.”

“Well,” Tyler shrugged, “not too many folk wanna buy a place where people died, I guess.”

“Died?!” Luis exclaimed, turning at Tyler with wide eyes. “You never said nothing ’bout no one dying in there!”

“Well, a course someone died!” Tyler returned, exasperated. For a nerd, Luis wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. “It’s haunted, ain’t it? Ghosts always haunt places where bad shit happened! You don’t never hear of Mother Teresa hauntin’ a church or nothin’, do ya?”

Luis shook his head slowly, watching the house. “A death means there’s some seriously bad mojo in there, man. We talkin’ died like a heart attack, or like… murdered?”

“Dunno.” Tyler shrugged, irritated at Luis’s endless questions. “Not sure anyone does, really. My granddaddy says folk back then kinda hushed it all up, y’know? But one of the girls died, so I figger it wasn’t ’zactly old age or nothin’. One of the johns bought the farm, too, but I don’t know how. Mighta been an accident, maybe suicide, maybe murder.” Tyler chuckled suddenly. “A course, if he was an old feller, maybe his heart just tuckered out from all the lovin’! I tell ya, that’s how I wanna go out!”

Luis didn’t laugh. He scowled at Tyler. “Any death leaves bad energy,” he stammered nervously. “Suicide’s worse. Murder leaves the blackest of all.” He looked back at the ruined mansion. “I dunno, man. Ain’t sure this is a good idea. I thought you just wanted me to, like, do a séance or somethin’, y’know? Contact spirits of folk who lived in the whorehouse, not… resurrect someone who died.”

“Well, what’s the difference?” Tyler demanded, patience wearing thin again. “Do it really matter?”

“ ’Course it does!” Luis snapped, and it was his turn to roll his eyes. “If folk only lived there, we’re just raisin’ their memories,” Luis explained tensely, “but if someone died, then we’re raising their soul.”

“Yeah, so?” Tyler said. “Ain’t that the point?”

Luis looked down and absently kicked at a roofing shingle that had blown off into the weeds. “Well, yeah, but… it’s way more dangerous, man. A condemned house and angry ghosts? Ain’t really sure it’s worth the risk…”

“Aw, c’mon, Lou!” Tyler pleaded, trying not to sound angry. “What’s the worst that could happen? We do the spell an’ nothing happens, then we just go home is all.”

“No,” Luis objected, “the worst that could happen is the house collapses on us.”

“Hell, I’m willin’ to risk a little danger for some red-hot pussy, ain’t you?”

Luis shrugged, still staring into the weeds. “Dunno, man… maybe…”

Tyler contemplated the chubby coward next to him, thinking. He knew what would encourage Luis: the same thing that inspired all men.

“Look, Lou,” Tyler said, “you know what this place was, back in its heyday?”

“Uh… a whorehouse?” Luis answered.

“Not any whorehouse. The best whorehouse around! Ya know what that means?”

Luis’s eyebrows knitted and he shook his head.

“That means they got the classiest, sexiest, most beautiful girls in all of Texas! An’ if we can raise them ghosts, we get to fuck ’em!”

Luis’s eyes widened. “You sure?”

“You ever been fucked, Lou?” Tyler asked, ignoring Luis’s question.

“Uh…” Luis looked down, reluctant to answer, but that was a reply in itself.

“Well, you do this, an’ yer gonna get a chance to score with the kind of chicks you ain’t never even dreamed of! Girls way outta yer league! Hotter than that cheerleader Annie! An’ trust me, you won’t never get another shot at women like that!”

A grin slowly spread across Luis’s face. Tyler noticed he was flushed and breathing harder, but doubted it was due to the bike ride.

“Now, ain’t that worth a little risk?” Tyler pressed, sounding as reasonable as he could.

“Yeah!” Luis nodded enthusiastically. Suddenly his face fell. “Wait a minute… ghosts? Won’t that be like fucking air?”

“Nope!” Tyler grinned. “Good as the real thing! That’s what ol’ Rodger MacFarlane said, and he got lucky with one of them ghost girls out here once!”

Luis narrowed his eyes. “Didn’t ol’ Rodger also say he was kidnapped by aliens?” he asked doubtfully. “Him and his friend Jack Daniels?”

“Might be one or two nut jobs what made shit up, sure,” Tyler conceded with a shrug, “but granddad says there’s roundabout half a dozen guys what said they seen them ghost hookers. All ’round this time a year, too, right when the shit hit the fan sixty years ago in 1948. Can’t all be crazy, can they?”

Luis shrugged, silently implying he neither agreed nor disagreed, but wasn’t convinced.

“Look, tonight is sixty years to the day when it all went down,” Tyler continued his appeal. “I looked it up. Not only that, but it’s Friday the 13^th, and we got a full moon. I figger if them ghost girls don’t show now, they never will.”

Luis looked back at the moonlit mansion with hungry eyes but a somber face. He stroked his dark but wispy adolescent goatee thoughtfully. “Well… worth a shot, I s’pose…” Yet he made no move toward the broken house.

It seemed strange for a self-proclaimed sorcerer like Luis to be this skeptical about ghosts, so Tyler figured that wasn’t the real reason Lou was hesitating. Tyler shifted tactics slightly. “I can’t do this without ya, Lou. You ain’t turnin’ yellow on me now, are ya?”

“No, I ain’t scared,” Luis countered automatically, “just… careful, is all. Think I might be outta my league here, man.”

“I thought ya said you could do magic!”

“I can do magic!” Luis snapped defensively. “Just… y’know… luck spells before a test an’ stuff, not… raising the dead!"

Tyler threw his hands up in exasperation. “Well, hell, if ya can’t do it, ya can’t do it! If you wanna bike all the way out here just to quit an’ go home a virgin, be my guest! Just make up yer damn mind before I freeze my butt off!”

For a moment, Lou wore a pained looked of agonized indecision. Then he took a deep breath. “Awright. Let’s do this. Can’t hurt to try.”

That was good enough for Tyler. He set out toward the house before Luis could change his mind, and Lou followed. The house was set a ways back from the road, and the boys had a short hike through the overgrown grass, scrub, and rocks to the sagging porch. The porch's sun-bleached boards creaked ominously under the boys’ weight, but it held. That was a good sign. The front door had been kicked off its rusting hinges long ago, and was now merely propped up against the door frame in a pathetic effort to keep people out. When Luis attempted to move it, it fell backwards with a loud crash that echoed around the empty fields. Luis jumped like he’d been shot. Tyler winced. Sure hope Lou don’t get spooked an’ run off, he thought. Damn fool’s more nervous than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs!

Tyler swaggered into the darkness of the house, showing more confidence than he felt, and Luis obediently followed him. Barely enough silver moonlight leaked through the broken windows to illuminate the boys’ path. Warped wooden boards sprouting rusty nails peeled up from the floor, forming traps for intruders. That did, however, make the solid boards fairly easy to find. Fallen roofing shingles, molding rugs, broken glass, and brown withered leaves cluttered their path as the boys picked their way across the debris-strewn parlor floor. An old piano, too big to fit through the front door, had been left inside decades ago, polished Victorian splendor abandoned to the brutality of weather and time, covered in half a century of blowing desert dust. The boys made their way slowly around it, then down a hallway lined with empty bedrooms.

It wasn’t easy to find a place to set up the spell. Luis needed a lot of room, preferably on a floor that wouldn’t give way. They finally found a place in the kitchen at the back of the house, where linoleum tiles had shielded the wooden floorboards from the worst of the wind and the rain. A back kitchen door was still on its hinges, but the lock had been ripped from the frame long ago. It swung idly in the light March breeze. A rickety staircase ran from the kitchen to a second floor. After helping Luis kick debris out of the center of the floor, Tyler found a halfway sturdy wall to lean against, and sat back to watch Luis work. The teenage wizard pulled out a big sack of table salt and began pouring it onto the floor in a huge circle.

“So where’d you learn all this magic stuff, anyway?” Tyler asked. “You got a voodoo grandpa down in Mexico or somethin’?”

“Um, well… the internet, mostly,” Luis replied sheepishly, drawing a salt pentangle within the circle. “Some books. And TV. Charmed, mainly.”

Tyler rolled his eyes. Great. He’d only included the little punk in his plans because he thought Luis was a shaman-in-training or something. Now it turned out he was just a goth geek who’d watched too many horror movies. His “spell” probably wouldn’t do a damn thing, and Tyler would be freezing his butt off in a condemned house for nothing.

Worse still, Tyler’s simple question had sent Luis into lecture mode, and now he was yammering on and on about sympathetic magic and the principle of association of objects and blah blah blah who cares. Tyler didn’t care how the spell worked, only if it worked. Around the time Luis had set down the half-empty salt bag, Tyler had stopped paying attention, daydreaming about enormous breasts and leaving his brain on autopilot to occasionally nod or agree with Lou.

“—does work, we only got an hour between midnight and one, so—,” Luis continued, lighting candles and placing them at each point of the pentangle.

“Yup,” Tyler nodded. He sure hoped there would be redheads.

Now Luis was lighting a cone of stinky incense in the center of the circle. Tyler wrinkled his nose. The incense smelled like an under-washed and over-perfumed grandma.

“—sure you don’t eat or drink anything, or make promises, or take gifts, or the ghosts can suck your—”

“Uh-huh.” Tyler sure hoped the ghosts would suck him.

“—be safe inside the salt circle if anything bad happens, so just—”

“Mmm-Hmm.” Do you have to worry about condoms and STDs with ghosts?

“This is important, Tyler! Are you listening to me?”

“Hmm? Wha?” Tyler looked up at an irritated Luis. “Oh, yeah, sure. Salt. Midnight. Promises. Nipples.”

Luis narrowed his eyes and looked skeptical, but didn’t push the issue. “So, you bring the knife?” he asked, switching topics.

“Yup.” Tyler nodded, reaching to his belt and pulling out an old US Marine knife. “S’long as I’m home before dawn, Pa’ll never notice it’s gone. Jus’ be careful with it, okay?”

“Has your Dad killed with it?” Luis asked, gingerly holding the knife. “It’s important that it’s taken a life.”

“Hell naw!” Tyler exclaimed. “My pa ain’t no murderer! It’s grandpa’s. Said he killed some Japs with it back in the islands during World War II.” Tyler scowled slightly. “Purtty darn sure he ain’t lying. He don’t like to talk ’bout it much.”

“Awright,” Luis said, setting the knife down in the center of the pentangle. “That’s something masculine symbolizing death. Now we just need something feminine symbolizing life and rebirth.”

Tyler couldn’t hide his revulsion when Luis pulled out a ziplock bag containing something long, fuzzy, and stained a rusty brown. He thought he knew what it was, but wished he didn’t. And he especially didn’t want to know where Luis got it—he didn’t have any sisters.

“Okay, I think we’re ready,” Luis said, dumping out the contents of the bag next to the knife. “Step inside the pentangle.” Tyler did, careful not to disturb the salt pattern. Luis picked up the knife and pricked his thumb with a grimace and a hiss of pain. He set the knife down, then reached out and squeezed a drop of blood onto the salt circle. Tyler wondered which movie Luis had learned this spell from. Luis turned back to Tyler and held out his palms. “Ready?”

Tyler stared at Luis’s chubby hands with black nail polish. “De we have to hold hands?” he whined.

“Yeah, we’ve got to complete the Circle of Life.”

“Okay, whatever,” Tyler sighed, gripping Luis’s cold, sweaty hands. “Now what?”

“I do the spell. Just close your eyes and try to clear your mind. That shouldn’t be too hard,” Luis added with a snicker.

Tyler let the insult slide. It’d all be worth it if he got laid. Tyler closed his eyes, but just couldn’t clear his mind. He was too excited. Visions of hooker bums danced in his head.

Luis started chanting something in a foreign language. Tyler guessed it was Latin, and suspected it was bastardized lyrics from Luis’s favorite metal band, Anger Dei. Finally Lou stopped chanting and let go of Tyler’s hands. Tyler opened his eyes and looked around.

There were no transparent floating women. In fact, nothing looked different at all. The two boys stood in the pentangle for a while in uncomfortable silence, waiting for something, anything, to happen.

Tyler spoke first. “Doesn’t look like it worked.”

“No,” Luis agreed, sounding both disappointed and embarrassed at the same time. “I don’t see anything. Doesn’t feel any different.”

Tyler hid his disappointment with difficulty as he slipped the Marine knife back into its sheath on his belt. He always knew it had been a long shot; the kind of crazy-ass scheme only a pathetic high school virgin could dream up, desperate to get laid before graduating in a few months. Still… well, hope can make people do crazy things.

“Sorry, man,” Luis mumbled. “Told ya this was beyond me.”

“Ah, ya gave it yer best shot,” Tyler shrugged.

“Yeah, I did,” Luis said, perking up slightly at the hint of approval, and apparently relieved Tyler wasn’t angry at him for failing. “So, whadaya wanna do now? I got a little whisky, if ya wanna—”

“Naw, s’okay,” Tyler sighed, really not wanting to bond with this kid who was obviously desperate for friends. He was already hoping Luis wouldn’t mention this to anyone at school. Talk about humiliating. He could already hear the jeers of the jocks and the sneers of the cheerleaders. “We should prolly get home. Too cold fer anything else. See ya in class on Monday?”

“Um… okay,” Luis agreed. Thankfully, the lardy latino had enough social savvy to realize when he was being dismissed.

The boys picked their way back across the rotting floorboards to the front door. They filed out the door and onto the blistered porch.

“We can always try again next year,” Luis suggested hopefully. “I’ll have a lot more time to research it.”

“Yeah, sure, okay,” Tyler said. But in truth, his belief in ghosts was quickly fading, and his faith in Luis’s so-called “powers” was completely gone. He’d been a fool to even try this. “Safe ride home, y’hear?”

“Yup,” Luis said.

The second they stepped off the porch, their shadows stretched before them as a warm golden light blossomed behind them. Both boys spun around, thinking the same thing: Oh, shit! Cops!

Tyler froze. He blinked. The corroding wreck was gone. The southern mansion stood in all its restored splendor before them, cracked and peeling paint now smooth and clean, warped and cracked boards once again strong and solid. The front door was back in place. The shattered window glass was whole again, and through it they saw backlit red lace curtains and graceful silhouettes moving behind it. Music and girlish giggles drifted from the house.

Tyler turned to look at Luis, who stared back at him, stunned. Then they both grinned.

“Told ya I could do it!” Luis declared, standing a little taller.

“Never doubted ya, pardner!” Tyler smiled. Actually, it was Lou who whined that he couldn’t do the spell, but this wasn’t the time to point that out. “Lets go get laid!” As always, Tyler went first, Luis following behind as they mounted the porch stairs. They paused to read the engraved brass plaque on the door.

“Cherry Lane Ladies Bridge and Social Club?” Luis read, slightly puzzled.

“Well, can’t ’zactly hang out a sign sayin’ ‘Whorehouse’ for the cops to read, Lou,” Tyler said he as rang the doorbell and a soft three-toned chime echoed inside. The feminine chatter floating through the door dropped a notch. They heard footsteps, and the door swung open right as a grandfather clock inside chimed midnight.

A tall, matronly woman stood before them. The lines in her face betrayed her age, despite the heroic efforts of heavy makeup. Her hair was still a vibrant chestnut brown, though—probably dyed. She wore a flowery blue housedress with a pleated skirt, and great round breasts thrust out front and center like cannons, pressing the seams of her bodice to their limit, and a low-cut neckline left just enough to the imagination to leave a man wanting more. The dress looked like something out of an old movie—although Tyler was fairly sure the skirt was way shorter than modesty would have demanded back in those days. She had long, shapely legs muted by flesh-toned silk stockings—and, of course, red high heels. What else would a hooker wear? Tyler only knew two types of women who wore red shoes in Texas, and she didn’t look like a Spanish dancer.

Between her age and air of authority, Tyler assumed she must be the Madam of the whorehouse—although, considering her outfit, Tyler figured she was for sale too, for any clients who preferred the mature housewife look.

Her face lit up in a brilliant smile when she saw Tyler. “Well, hello, young Mr. Cartwright!” June Cleavage drawled in the long vowels of the Southern aristocracy. “So nice to see you again. Not exactly a surprise, mind you,” she said with a wink, “but a pleasure just the same. Come to call on Carlotta again, I assume?”

Mr. Cartwright? Tyler thought, shooting a quick puzzled look at Luis.

“They’re stuck in time,” Luis whispered. “Just play along.”

The woman turned to look down at Luis and her smile faltered. “Is this man bothering you, Mr. Cartwright? I’m sure Rick wouldn’t mind escort—”

“What, Lou?” Tyler furrowed his brow. “Naw, s'okay. He’s with me.”

“I’m, uh, a business associate,” Luis improvised, “from, uh, Columbia.”

“Oh… I see,” she said, sounding at once surprised and puzzled, yet still polite. “Well… we don’t normally work with his kind here, but…”

His kind? Mexican? Goth? Dork? Fat? Tyler glanced at Luis, who sucked in his breath with a look of panic.

“…since he’s the guest of one of our most esteemed patrons,” the woman continued, “I’m sure we can make an exception…” she stared Tyler in the eye and her voiced hardened, “just this once.”

Lou let out a tiny sigh of relief.

“Well, do come in, Mr. Cartwright,” the lady said, stepping back to let them enter.

“Just great!” Luis muttered under his breath as they followed the Madam inside. “A gringo-only club!” It was yet another aspect of Texan history neither of them had considered.

Cartwright, huh? Tyler wondered if it was any relation to the old planter family that all but ran their small town. That sure would make for some interesting gossip.

The first thing Tyler saw inside the door was not a woman but a man. Or more precisely, a small gorilla squeezed into a suit—Rick, presumably. He had a long shaggy blond hairdo, like one of the Duke cousins. Instantly he cleared his throat loudly and clamped a hand on Luis’s shoulder. Lou gave him a startled look.

“Excuse me, sir,” he rumbled, shaking his shaggy blond head, “but I’m afraid you’ll have to—”

“It’s okay,” Tyler said, “Lou’s a business associate from Brazil.”

The bouncer looked up at Tyler and apparently recognized him. He looked back at Luis, also wearing that slightly surprised, puzzled expression.

The Madam narrowed her eyes. “I thought you said Columbia.”

Tyler shrugged and looked at Luis. He could talk his way out of this one—either way, Tyler was getting laid.

“It’s… sort of a multi-national corporation,” Luis lied smoothly, although the color drained from his face. “The, uh, Pan-American Coffee Company.”

The Madam studied Luis’s face for a second. Her eyes remained skeptical, but she called off the bouncer. “It’s quite alright, Rick,” the Madam said, “he’s with Mr. Cartwright.”

“Right,” Rick said, releasing Luis and nodding to Tyler. “Sorry, sir.”

“It is customary,” the Madam said to Luis is a firm voice, “to make a donation to the Cherry Lane Ladies’ Club if you enjoy our hospitality.” Tyler noticed another bouncer had appeared behind the Madam, a linebacker who was apparently blissfully unaware that pompadours had died with Elvis. The doorway was getting awfully crowded.

“Oh. Right.” Luis fumbled for his wallet. “How much is, uh, customary?” he asked, and his eyes bulged slightly as he paid her the insanely low price of twenty dollars. Then Tyler remembered his grandma complaining that a loaf of bread used to cost a dime, and it made more sense. With a simple wave of the Madam's hand, the bouncers backed off and resumed their posts in the corners of the room.

“Why didn’t she ask you to pay up front?” Luis whispered.

“ ’Cause I’m white, you idjit!” Tyler whispered back.

“But if you don’t pay for it,” Luis continued, sounding worried, “then it’s a—”

Both boys fell instantly silent as they finally got a good look at the parlor room, and whoa… all their work had been worth it. This brothel must have been open for a long time, and kept its retro décor as a status symbol of its history and stability. It had electric instead of gaslight, and a silent radio sat in one corner, but there the modernization ended. It looked like the classiest hothouse he’d ever seen in a Western movie, then kicked up a few notches. Music was coming from the piano, returned to its varnished elegance, against the wall. A young man in an old-fashioned seersucker suit sat with his back to them, hammering away at the keys in a light and cheerful, yet slightly sensual honky-tonk tune. A slight haze lingered in the air from the girls’ cigarettes, adding to the dreamy, surreal atmosphere.

Thick oriental rugs covered the floor. Red velvet curtains adorned the windows. The walls were covered with tasteful paintings of 19^th century women in various states of undress—Burlesque dancers, French maids, Greek goddesses, even a photo of Josephine Baker wearing nothing but bananas and a smile. Lining the walls were rich, overstuffed couches with more buttons than Texas had mosquitoes.

And on those couches… the girls. Oh, dear God, the girls! Each one of them was a perfect, beautiful sexpot. The room was a rainbow of every skin tone and hair color known to man—black and white and brown, yellow and red, blondes and redheads and every shade of brunette from amber to mahogany. Each young, firm body was lean and supple, with slim waists, full hips, and long, sleekly muscled legs glowing with the sheen of silk stockings. Each girl was stacked like a Vegas poker deck, perfectly round and perky. In France, they say the perfect breast fills a wine glass—in Texas, apparently, it clogs a toilet.

Their outdated fashion caught Tyler off guard for a moment before he remembered the brothel had closed sixty years ago. These sensual women must have been at the forefront of fashion back in the 1940s, but to him it looked as if every pinup girl painted on the nose of a WWII bomber had jumped off the aluminum and into the parlor.

Not that it was a problem. No sir! Beauty is beauty, and it only added an exotic flair to already sexy women. They all had long hair, pouring down their shoulders in loose, luxurious curls, or done up with ribbons and bows, pinned back from the face. Their skin was flawless, with dark painted eyes and full red lips.

They lounged about not in lingerie, but outfits somewhere between casual and costume. Although tight and revealing, they were just professional enough to convince a passing policeman that they really were a ladies social club, just off work from the hospital, office, diner, schoolroom, farm, ranch… even, apparently, the convent. But the outfits weren’t quite right, the necklines a little too low, blouses a bit too tight, hemlines too short to be official. Every skirt was hiked up, the trailing straps of garter belts clipped to silk stockings just barely peeking out from beneath the pleats and ruffles—Tyler figured pantyhose must not have been invented yet. One tanned blonde even wore a Women’s Auxiliary Air Force uniform Tyler was fairly sure wouldn’t be found in any wartime photo. Their clothing, although not as lewd or titillating as modern porn, were still somehow more erotic, portraying sweet innocence… but hinting that something naughty lay restrained just underneath. Tyler felt like a little boy who couldn’t wait to unwrap his Christmas presents.

There was no way Tyler could possibly choose just one. Dammit, only one hour… if only he had all night, he’d take them all or die trying.

Luckily, he didn’t have to choose. The moment the stepped into the girls’ sightline, a short Hispanic bombshell jumped to her feet. If this was Carlotta, Mr. Cartwright’s regular, then he had damn good taste. Her skin was the color of dark honey; her hair not quite black, but a deep brown streaked with lighter shades, bleached by the Texas sun. Like most of the girls, she wore it waved and curled, pinned back from her face, and it poured like a waterfall of chocolate down her shoulders and back. She was dressed like a traditional Spanish dancer, wearing a black velvet choker around her neck, long black gloves that rose above her elbows, and a red carnation in her hair. A red blouse trimmed with ruffles of black lace fell off both shoulders and well down the firm curves of her breasts. The blouse’s lower half was tailored tightly around her impossibly small waist and tied off just above her navel, baring a golden strip of belly over narrow hips. The black and red ruffled skirt was hiked up at an angle, revealing one creamy thigh in a black lace-topped stocking and ending in a red stiletto heel.

Carlotta fairly ran to Tyler. For an instant he thought she was going to throw herself into his arms, but she restrained herself at the last minute and offered a gloved hand instead. “Good evening, Alfred,” she said. Her English was good, but not without accent… probably an illegal alien. Grinning like an idiot, Tyler awkwardly bowed and kissed her hand, not sure if this was the right thing to do. He was rewarded with a charming giggle.

She did a double take when she saw Luis, and a hint of worry touched her smile. “Ah, señor,” she said, turning back to Tyler, “I am rubbing off on you! Now you have developed an appetite for…” she arched an eyebrow, “Mexican peppers, si?”

“Huh?” Tyler and Luis exchanged puzzled glances. Then it hit them what she was talking about, and they simultaneously exploded into protests. “Oh! No, we’re not together, we—”

“No!” Luis agreed, shaking his head enthusiastically, “Absolutely not!”

“Lou’s just a pal is all,” Tyler finished.

A tiny look of relief touched Carlotta’s face. “Oh! So he is just your guest, come to visit a lady friend of his?” Tyler nodded. “Of course,” she smiled warmly at Luis, “let me see if your friend is here.” She turned back to the roomful of young women. “Does anyone here know Señor Lou?”

Except for the piano, the room was silent. Luis was not exactly a prime specimen of manhood. The girls sat perfectly still, shooting each other quick, nervous sideways glances, waiting for someone else to speak up. The silence stretched out uncomfortably. A panicked expression was building on Luis’s face again. Suddenly, a tall, voluptuous black woman in a waitress uniform stood and flashed Luis a dazzling white smile.

“Oh, Lou!” she said. “Sorry, Lou, didn’t recognize you with the beard!” If all diner waitresses dressed like she did, Tyler thought, fancy restaurants would go out of business. Her shirt was unbuttoned until a hint of the black lace underneath peeked out, and her smooth grandeur of her breasts strained against the turquoise cotton, spilling over slightly into a cleavage men could drown in. The African American Amazon strode over to Luis slowly, flexing her long legs and rolling her hips, then leaned forward to the shorter Luis (giving him one hell of a view) and offered him a manicured hand. “We met at the Duke Ellington concert, right?”

Luis’s eyes tried their hardest to become dinner platters. His mouth opened and closed wordlessly for a second, then he swallowed heavily. “Uh, yeah, she’ll do!” he said in a high, giddy voice. When the smile in the girl’s eyes faltered for a split second, Luis backpedaled furiously. “I mean, uh… thank you, very much!” He took the woman’s hand and pumped it. “I’m honored, Miss…?”

“Oh, you!” she gave him a playful shove in the shoulder. “You said you had a bad memory, but I ain’t thought it was that bad! Becky, remember?”

“Oh! Right! Becky!” Luis said, playing along.

“Well, take your coat off!” Becky said, and began helping him out of his trench. “It’s awful hot in here. You don’t want to work up a sweat, do you?” Her voice dropped an octave, and Tyler overheard a lush whisper. “Net yet, at least.” Luis’s stammered response devolved into an incoherent giggle.

“Can I get you a drink?” Becky asked casually as she hung his trench coat in a closet.

The leer slid off Luis’s face in an instant, and he shook his head firmly. “No. No thanks. I’m not thirsty. Or hungry, either.”

Becky’s face fell for an instant, but she rebounded instantly. “Well, you just gotta hear the new album I bought, Lou!” she said with another brilliant smile. “I got a record player back in my room, we can listen to it there.” She took his hand with a wink, and began playfully tugging him toward the hallway. “You like Billie Holiday, right?”

Luis stammered that he just loved Blues, and let her lead him out of the room and down the hall, sporting a grin that would have put the Cheshire Cat to shame.

“Get you a drink, señor?” Carlotta asked, the lean muscles of her legs flexing under her skin as she walked toward a tall bar that ran along one wall. “Martini as usual, yes?” The bartender, chest and shoulders just visible over the high bar, was already mixing one up. He had long hippie hair, a beard, and an earring, and Tyler wondered how he got hired in such a classy joint.

Suddenly Tyler remembered the look on Luis’s face when he was offered a drink, and something he had said tingled at the back of Tyler’s memory. “Naw, no thanks, ma’am,” Tyler said. “I wanna remember every second of tonight clear as ice.”

Carlotta froze in mid-strike and looked back at Tyler, beaming at him with a delighted grin and sparkling eyes, as if Tyler had just said the most romantic thing she’d ever heard. “Ah, si, si, of course,” she said slowly in a deep voice, striding toward him. She seized his hand and began pulling him toward the hallway, not even bothering to make up an excuse to take him to her bedroom.

She pulled him past the closed bedroom doors (Blues music drifted from one of them) and into the kitchen. Tyler was startled to see the salt circle and pentangle still lying on the floor. Carlotta didn’t seem to notice it, though, and Tyler wasn’t too surprised when her foot passed through Luis’s book bag as if it weren’t there. He stepped around it as Carlotta led him to the stairway at the back—her bedroom must be on the second floor—and pulled him up several steps before stopping. Carlotta peeked around the corner to make sure no one was watching, then turned back to Tyler, gently laid her gloved hands on his shoulders, and pushed him back against the stairwell wall. She leaned forward and pressed her body up against him.

“Oh, G-god!” Tyler whispered, heart pounding, feeling the delicious curves of her body through their clothes as she stood on tiptoe and blinked up at him. Her eyes were a deep drown sprinkled with hazel, framed with dark shadow and thick black liner that trailed out from the corners of her eyes in an almost feline look. The air was filled with her flowery perfume.

“Tonight is the night,” she whispered softly. “You’ve come so many times before, but I wasn’t sure you’d come tonight.”

“Oh, darlin’,” Tyler grinned, “I’m coming tonight, awright! Buncha times, if I’m lucky.”

She laughed softly at his joke. “I love you so much for doing this, Alfred,” she breathed.

Tyler’s brain barely registered that as an odd thing for a hooker to say before she brushed his lips with hers, and sensation crowded out all other thought from his brain. He parted his lips to let her in, and she covered his mouth with hers, fingers tightening on his chest as she kissed him deeper. Sure, he'd been kissed before… but never by an expert. Her lips were soft, her mouth hot, her tongue firm, and she could do things with it Tyler didn't know were possible. He groaned and kissed her—back hard, urgent, demanding, and clumsy as hell. Suddenly she pulled away, playfully biting his lip as she did, leaving Tyler aching for more.

Carlotta released her grip on his chest, sliding her hands lightly down his chest and along the sides of his body, and Tyler shivered from the stimulation. She gasped suddenly, and her face lit up in joyous surprise. “You brought it, just like you promised!” She smiled, and Tyler could feel her caressing the handle of the Marine knife at his belt.

“Uh… yeah,” Tyler panted, slightly puzzled. “You need it fer something’?”

“Oh yes,” Carlotta purred. Had Tyler been thinking clearly, an alarm might have gone off in his mind. But his brain was so mired in sex that he assumed she was planning use it for some sort of sex toy. Tyler wondered just how kinky this Mr. Alfred Cartwright liked to get, and wondered if he could handle it on his first time. Carlotta reached up on tiptoe to kiss him again. This second kiss was shorter, but fierce and passionate, not sweet and coy like the first. Tyler’s blood surged, and he suddenly remembered he had hands. He brought his arms up behind her and caressed her warm shoulders. Oh God, a woman’s skin was so smooth, so soft…

She shivered suddenly and pulled back with a squeak.

“What?”

She looked up at him through long dark lashes. “Your hands are cold!”

“Oh! Sorry,” Tyler said, yanking his hands away.

“No, no, it’s all right, you just surprised me!” Carlotta said, taking his long bony hands in her own small gloved ones. “Besides, cold fingers are useful…” A smug smile spread over her face as she placed his palms against the sides of her waist—so firm, yet so unbelievably soft—and slowly drew them up, across her belly, under the cups of her breasts, and then…

Tyler gasped as Carlotta slid his hands onto the supple curve of her breasts—finally, after a lifetime of waiting, he got to touch some, and they filled his hands perfectly. Carlotta grinned wickedly, tip of her tongue held between her teeth, as she watched his face. She brought his cold fingers to rest over the tips of her breasts and slowly moved them over the thin cotton. Tyler felt them harden under his fingers, and thought his heart might explode. Her grin dropped into an open-mouthed gasp and she shivered again, but from arousal this time, not cold. “Your hands are still cold,” she whispered in his ear as she leaned forward. “I’ll put them somewhere warmer, si?” She planted soft kisses and nibbles along his neck, and Tyler was so overwhelmed by the feeling that he didn’t even notice she’d taken his right hand off her breast until she placed it on her silk-covered knee. She slowly drew it up along the silk, over the patterned lace top, along the strap of her garter belt, then up onto the smooth skin of her thigh. Tyler was beyond words or even moaning, making only incoherent gasping sounds, his brain overwhelmed by the double sensation of both Carlotta’s silken thigh and her teeth nibbling on his ear. Suddenly, his hand brushed lace again, and—Dear God, she was right, she was warm there! Now only a thin layer of gauzy lace stood between his fingers and the prize all virgin boys sought.

Carlotta’s lips slipped off his earlobe as she gasped again. She moaned softly, then said something in rapid Spanish. “Oh, te amo, Alfredo!” she moaned into his ear. “Do you love me, too?”

The question caught Tyler off guard—but, hey, whatever it took to get laid, right? “Of course I do!” he answered automatically. He hadn’t realized she’d taken her hand off his until her fingers brushed at his crotch, feeling for him through his jeans, and he just about jumped out of his skin.

“Are you ready, my lover?” Carlotta purred, squeezing the bulge firmly through the denim. “It feels like it!”

You bet he was. He was so hard and stiff he could have broken a cinderblock with it, Cock-Fu style. But Tyler couldn’t even manage that simple monosyllable word, so he just nodded his head vigorously instead.

“Good,” she said, leaning back to look at him, “because I have something special planned for you tonight!” She gave him a slow wink and an open-mouthed grin, running her tongue suggestively over her teeth. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, she stepped away, and Tyler found himself groping air, surprised and confused.

Carlotta laughed when she saw his face. “Not on the stairs, silly boy!” she said, laughing. She jerked her head at the top of the stairs and beckoned him with one finger and a coy smile. “The bed is much softer!” She turned and mounted the stairs, hips swaying back and forth as she slowly climbed. She glanced over her shoulder and giggled.

She’s doing it on purpose, Tyler thought. Carlotta's eyes danced with mischief; this girl liked to tease, and she was good at it. He reached out to pinch her retreating butt, but she increased her pace with a laugh, staying just out of his reach. Tyler laughed too, and the next thing he knew he was running up the stairs after her, chasing her into a candlelit bedroom.

* * *

“That… was… awesome!” Tyler gasped.

He lay on Carlotta's bed naked as a jaybird and covered in sweat, recovering from pleasure so intense it verged on pain. He had completely lost track of time—it must have been less than an hour, but the evening seemed to have lasted forever in a blur of candlelight and lace and naked bodies, the musky scent of sex, sweat, and perfume, and the sounds of breathy panting, feminine cries, and the slap of skin. Carlotta was silk and honey and fire, a master of her craft. She knew every sensitive spot on a man’s body, every millimeter of skin that was especially sensitive, and knew how to hit several simultaneously. She'd taken Tyler to heights of ecstasy he didn't ever know were possible… and then, when she was done, she did it all again. Absently, Tyler wondered… after being initiated into sex by a pro pulling out all her best tricks, would all sex after tonight be a letdown by comparison?

Carlotta snuggled up against him as her breathing returned to normal, naked except for garters and stockings—which, somehow, was even sexier than her being completely naked. The silky warmth of her body curled around his, one silk-clad leg draped across his hips. Tyler had an arm around her shoulders, holding her close while and they rested and recovered, quiet and peaceful.

A window was opposite the door to her small bedroom, illuminating the clothing strewn across the floor and bathing Carlotta in silver-blue moonlight, glistening off her eyes and lipstick and outlining her body in sliver from behind. The golden candlelight in the room made her skin glow bronze, firm and flawless. She was a goddess. Tyler could understand how this Alfred guy had fallen for her all those years ago. Once again, Tyler wished he had more than just an hour to spend with her. How much time was left, anyway?

He brushed her sweaty hair away from her face, and Carlotta looked at him with those gorgeous brown eyes. She propped herself up on one elbow, leaned over, and gave Tyler a long, deep, passionate kiss, her soft hair brushing across his bare chest. When she finally broke away, she looked at him with melancholy eyes. “I will love you forever,” she murmured softly. It was a promise. She looked at him expectantly, clearly wanting to hear him say it back.

…and that made Tyler a little uncomfortable. Still, he needed to tell her something, so he said the first thing that popped into his mind. “Well, thank you kindly, ma’am,” he drawled. “That was hotter’n a billygoat's butt in a pepper patch.”

“Oh, we’re not done yet,” she whispered. “It's time now. Are you ready, my lover?”

A third time!? Tyler thought, eyes bulging slightly. He wasn’t sure if he was up for it, but he was definitely going to try. “Whenever you are, baby!”

Carlotta gave him a warm and sad smile. Slowly she climbed back on top of Tyler, gracefully and sinuous like a cat on the hunt, and straddled him, resting her weight down across his hips. Then she leaned over the bed and reached down to pick something off the floor. Tyler heard the clink of his belt, then Carlotta sat back up with his grandfather’s war knife. Tyler looked up at her and wondered what kind of kinky game she had in mind, and if he was up for it. He couldn’t have that much time left, anyway.

“Here,” Carlotta said, holding the knife out to him with both hands. “You go first. Just like we agreed.”

“Uh… okay.” Tyler took the knife.

Carlotta’s eyes sparkled. “You are a very brave man, Alfredo. That’s why I love you.”

“Umm… what am I supposed to do with this?” Tyler asked.

“Here,” she said, pointing to the inside of her wrist. “Like this,” she drew her finger up her forearm. “It will be faster. A minute at worst, then it will all be over.”

Tyler blinked at her, uncomprehending. She wanted him to slit his wrist?

“W-what?!” he sputtered. “Why would I do that?”

Carlotta’s eyes clouded with confusion. “B-because it was your idea!” she said, perplexed. “I wanted to use poison, but you said this was more romantic.”

“Romantic?!” Tyler burst out. This wasn’t a whorehouse, this was a madhouse! “How the hell is that romantic?!”

“You… you said when you were in Japan during the war,” she answered, more confused than ever, “this was how the geisha girls and their lovers killed themselves when they couldn’t be together.”

“Killed themselves!” Tyler exclaimed, sitting up. Suddenly, the legend of the whorehouse clicked in his brain.

A girl had died.

So did one of the johns.

No one knew how. It was hushed up.

Was this how it happened? Joint suicide? Or murder? What exactly did Carlotta have in store for him? Apprehension began to build in his chest.

“Sorry, babe, but I ain’t killin’ myself,” Tyler said with growing fear. “Look, I’m sorry, but… I been hoodwinkin’ ya. I ain’t Alfred, I’m someone else. You got the wrong guy.”

Carlotta’s eyes grew wider, confusion mixed with pain. “Of course it’s you, Alfred!” she said with a weak chuckle. “Stop playing games!” Tyler was relieved when she took the knife back and stared at it doubtfully. “You want me to go first? Is that it?”

“Hey, do what ya gotta do, gal. I’m outa here.” Tyler struggled to get up, but Carlotta was still straddling him, and she wasn’t moving. Tyler didn’t want to get rough with her—not while she still had that knife, at least.

“You're… you’re leaving me?!” she wailed in disbelief. The confusion in her eyes had been replaced with shock and pain. “H-how could you do this to me, Alfred?” she sniffed as her hand moved to her belly. “First you give me this baby, and—”

“BABY?!” Tyler gasped, freezing. Oh, this was bad, very bad.

“—we can’t be together in this world, so you said… you s-said…” she stammered as tears formed in her eyes, “we could be together in the next one.”

“W-why can’t we be together?” Tyler asked. Maybe he could talk his way out of this. “We could get married, right?” He was willing to say anything at this point just to get the hell out of that room.

“No, we can’t!” she snapped, a hint of anger creeping into her voice.

“Well, why not?”

“It’s against the law!”

Tyler stared at her. Texas, 1948. Segregation. Oh shit.

“We could… move north?” Tyler suggested weakly.

“You said your father wouldn’t understand!” Carlotta was yelling now. “You said he would find us and force you to leave me and the baby! That he wouldn’t want the scandal! That he wanted you to take his place in the government, but you didn’t want to!”

Tyler eyed the knife in her hand nervously. The picture was beginning to come together in Tyler’s mind, and it was ugly. A shell-shocked aristocrat returned from the war and knocked up a Mexican whore in segregated Texas… and the only option left to a Southern gentleman was to die with honor. Semper Fi.

Dammit, Tyler thought, why did I have to pick the one psycho ghost out of a whole roomful?

And then suddenly he remembered—he didn’t choose her, she chose him, seeing not Tyler but Alfred. And she was so hot, Tyler didn’t think twice. He cursed himself for a fool.

“Look, honey, I…” Tyler gulped hard, trying to stay calm. Panicking wouldn’t help. “What we got here is a classic case of mistaken identity,” he said, trying hard to sound reasonable though all the fear. “I’m not Alfred, I just look like him. That baby ain’t mine.”

Carlotta’s body went stiff and still, and eyes widened and grew hard. Tyler knew instantly that he’d said the wrong thing.

“Usted es un mentiroso y un cobarde!!” she screamed at him, eyes filled with rage. “You are a liar and a coward!”

Tyler panicked. He struggled to get up from beneath her and out the door—but with a sudden burst of angry strength, Carlotta slammed a hand into his chest and knocked back down into the mattress. “If you are not man enough to do this,” she shrieked, raising the knife in the air, “then I will!!” The knife swung down.

Tyler flung his arms up defensively. The knife missed his chest, slicing down his arm instead. Tyler screamed.

“You said you loved me!” Carlotta shrieked, brining the knife back up. “You liar!!”

Amid all the struggling and shouting, Tyler heard some muffled commotion downstairs.

“Tyler?” someone called out downstairs.

Luis.

“HELP!!” Tyler screamed. “HELP ME, LOU!!”

Carlotta wrestled him with her free hand, trying to pull his arms out of the way for a clear stab at his chest. “How could you, Alfred!?” she sobbed, her face wet with tears of betrayal and rage. “I loved you!” She seized his wrist and yanked it out of the way.

“I’M NOT ALFRED!!”

The knife flashed down.

Tyler deflected it at the last second; it missed the center of his chest, but cut into the side of his body in a blast of stinging pain.

But Carlotta was off balance now, leaning out over the bed. Tyler bucked his hip to the side fiercely, and she tumbled off the bed with a scream of rage. Tyler jumped from the bed and struggled with the locked bedroom door, one hand gripping his burning wound. He could hear Carlotta scrambling to her feet behind him.

“You tricked me!” Carlotta screamed.

“Tyler!” Luis’s muffled yell from downstairs. “What’s going on!?”

Tyler flung the door open and flew down the stairs buck-naked.

“You used me!” He could hear Carlotta’s feet on the stairs behind him.

Tyler wheeled around the corner into the kitchen. He blew right past the salt circle and headed for the front door. He wanted to get out of this damn house. A bedroom door flew open as Tyler sprinted down the hall. He almost collided with Luis as he staggered out wearing only boxer shorts and unlaced boots.

“Tyler!” Luis yelled, sprinting down the hall. “I’m coming!”

“I’m right here, Lou!” Tyler called after him. But Luis ignored him, dashing up the stairs, and Tyler heard him collide with Carlotta. Tyler blinked. What was the crazy punk kid up to? Leave him, Tyler’s brain urged him. You got a crazy Mexican whore with a knife and a grudge hot on your ass, so get the hell out of here!

Tyler turned and ran back into the parlor, staggering in pain. The piano and chatter of the girls ceased as he burst naked into the room. Rick the bouncer stepped to block the door.

“Where you think you’re goin’?”

“I’m hurt!” Tyler screamed. “She’s crazy! She’s got a knife! She—”

“Aw, why’d you stop the piano, Al?” one of the girls asked, sounding bored. “That was my favorite song!”

Al? Alfred? Tyler turned to look at the piano player with dread. The musician turned around on his stool, and Tyler screamed in terror. Blood streamed down the man’s chest from a dozen festering stab wounds.

“Give it up, boy,” he said wearily in a genteel Southern accent. “You’re here to stay now. Just accept it.”

“Tyler!” Luis called from upstairs. “Open the door, dammit!”

“You can’t leave, pal,” Rick said, unbuttoning and removing the suit jacket that hid his own mangled, bloody belly. “No matter how hard you try. Don’t make us get rough.”

“Oh, I dunno,” the other bouncer said, rolling his sleeves up butchered arms, preparing for a fight. “Been over ten years since we had any action. Wouldn’t mind a little punch-up, myself.”

Tyler was beyond screaming, paralyzed with bewilderment and terror. In the background, he could hear Luis kicking at Carlotta’s bedroom door.

“Sixty years,” the Madam shook her head in amusement, “and Carlotta’s still reeling them in.”

“Damn, she’s good!” a redhead sighed, smoking a lazy cigarette. “Wonder what her secret is?” The other girls murmured their agreement.

Tyler stood frozen, mute, struggling to understand. This couldn’t be happening.

“Don’t worry, man!” the hippie bartender smiled, stepping out from behind the bar with two shot glasses. Blood and intestines poured out his shirt from huge slash across his stomach. “You’ll get used to it. Ain’t so bad here. Booze is free.” He slammed back a shot of whisky and held the other out to Tyler. “The Madam’ll find something for you to do. Helps pass the time.” Distantly, Tyler heard a crash upstairs as Luis kicked down Carlotta's door.

Something new clicked in Tyler’s brain, something he hadn’t noticed before. The bartender’s long hippie hair, Rick’s shaggy seventies hairdo, the other bouncer’s Elvis-style pompadour… all of them died after the whorehouse was shut down in 1948.

A blood-curdling scream from upstairs pulled him back to the present. He turned back toward the kitchen at the end of the hallway, and saw Luis burst out of the stairwell, still screaming. Lou leapt over the salt circle into the center of the pentangle with agility incompatible with his weight.

The salt circle! Tyler would be safe there. He stumbled down the hall, his wounds screaming. He limped into the kitchen and jumped over the salt line. With a flash of light and a split second of searing pain, Tyler collided with something invisible and solid in midair. He tumbled to the ground in agony.

“OW! What the hell, Lou, what'd you do?” Tyler yelled.

But Luis stood in the middle of the pentangle, quaking with terror, not even looking at Tyler. He clutched the bag of salt in one hand and held a handful of it in the other, arm cocked back, ready to throw. “Oh shit oh shit oh shit!” Luis chanted. “Whatumunna do? Whatumunna do?!”

“Let me in, Lou!” Tyler staggered to his feet. “Let me in!!” He reached toward Luis. There was another flash of light. Tyler screamed as his arm went numb with burning pain. What the hell is going on?!

“Five more minutes,” Luis chanted. “Just five more minutes. Five minutes.”

“Lou! LOU!” Tyler screamed. Luis ignored him. Tyler waved his arms wildly, calling Lou’s name, desperately trying to get his attention. Tyler was mere inches away, but Luis stared right through him. Nothing made sense. Why couldn’t he enter the salt circle? Why couldn’t Luis see or hear him? And what had Luis seen upstairs that made him scream like a girl?

Suddenly Luis’s eyes widened in fear and alarm. “Get back!” he screamed. “Get back!!”

Tyler spun around in panic at where Luis was staring. One by one, the girls and staff of the whorehouse idled their way into the kitchen. Tyler backed away from them, slipping in his own spilled blood, until he bumped into the opposite wall behind him by the stairs, cornered.

Thankfully, the ghosts seemed to have temporarily lost interest in Tyler, suddenly preoccupied with Luis. They gave the salt circle a wide berth, but slowly spread out around it, enclosed Luis in a ring of sex and gore. The Madam, as always, seemed to be calling the shots.

“Don’t come any closer!” Luis shrieked at them.

“I’ll take care of this little twerp!” the Elvis-haired bouncer grinned, striding forward and cracking his knuckles.

“No!” the Madam yelled. “Don’t—!”

It was too late. There was a flash of light, and the bouncer flew back, twitching and screaming on the floor. Cold shock washed over Tyler.

“I said don’t come any closer!” Luis roared. He swept his arm out in a wide curve, flinging an arc of salt at the ghosts. It didn’t go very far—it was only powder, after all—but the ghosts instantly jumped back to avoid it.

“Oh, you want some more?” Luis bellowed with an insane bravado Tyler never suspected the kid had. Luis plunged his hand into the salt bag and ripped out another handful. “I got a whole bag here! What about you, dead boy?” Luis yelled at Rick the bouncer, emboldened by the ghosts’ fear of the salt. “You want some of this, too? Come ’n get it!”

The girls merely watched, lounging about smoking cigarettes. They seemed only mildly interested, as if the standoff were only slightly more interesting than watching paint dry. Rick, on the other hand, bristled at the challenge and stepped forward.

“Don’t,” the Madam ordered him, laying a restraining arm across his chest. “It’s pointless. We’ve lost this one. Now, this boy,” she said turning to Tyler, “still needs to be disciplined, I think.”

At her command, the two bloody bouncers turned and stalked toward Tyler. He looked around in wild desperation. He was trapped. There was no escape.

Well, there was one way out—the stairs—but Tyler knew what was waiting for him up there. He was trapped between zombie thugs and a psycho, knife-wielding whore.

Still, he had a better chance one-on-one than two-on-one. Tyler turned and scrambled up the stairs. He glanced into Carlotta’s bedroom, and saw her lying still on the bed. He turned down the hall, praying one of the doors would be unlocked. Suddenly he froze in his tracks.

That wasn’t Carlotta on the bed.

It was a man.

Almost against his will, Tyler turned back, stepped into the bedroom, and crossed to the bed, looking down silently at the prone form. It couldn’t be… it wasn’t possible… how??

Tyler recognized his own face, frozen in a mask of agony and horror, the eyes open but unseeing. He lay on his back, limbs sprawled across sheets drenched with blood slowly trickling onto the floor. Grandpa’s military knife stuck out from the side of his body, buried to the hilt in his flesh. Stunned, Tyler slowly took his hand from the wound in his side and examined it for the first time. It was deeper than he had thought—much deeper.

Tyler went numb. His mind seemed to click off. This was too surreal. He no longer felt pain or fear. What was there to be afraid of? He was dead—it couldn’t get any worse than that. But if Tyler was the body on the bed … then who the hell am I? What am I?

“I told you.”

Tyler turned to see Carlotta in a far corner of the room, where she had been standing still and silent. She glared at him with a sneering frown, breathing deep with anger. Blood dripped from her arms and fingers, streaking down her legs, forming two small pools at her feet. She still wore only garters and hose, her hair disheveled. Ten minutes ago, Tyler thought her candlelit naked body looked heavenly. Now it looked demonic. She spread her arms and walked toward Tyler. He saw deep oozing gashes crisscrossing up and down her forearms.

“I told you we would be together forever,” she spat, stopping in front of him. “I said you would never leave me.” Suddenly Carlotta slapped him, hard. Tyler’s head snapped to the side. “Never lie to me again, you bastard!”

Tyler turned back to her, holding his stinging cheek. “I… I don’t understand,” he mumbled, looking back at his own corpse. “How…”

“I killed him,” Carlotta said simply.

“But how?” Tyler snapped in mounting frustration. “Why is Lou still alive when I’m dead? Why didn’t you kill him instead?”

Carlotta shook her head. “He is not part of our world.”

“But neither am I!” Tyler didn’t understand any of this.

“You made yourself part of our world when you let us in,” Carlotta explained, her voice full of scorn. “He was not so stupid.”

“But I didn’t!” Tyler protested. Luis’s half-remembered warning drifted back to him, and he ran down the checklist. “I didn’t, uh, eat or drink anything, or…take any gifts, or, uh…”

“Are you sure about that, lover?” Carlotta interrupted. Her lips parted in a wide, vicious grin. “Did you pay? Or did I give you the gift of my love?”

Tyler just stared at her dumfounded, at a loss for words. He had figured he'd just pay afterward… but by then it was too late. And, dammit, she'd probably known that!

Carlotta saw the realization dawn on his face. She began to laugh, a mocking chuckle that grew into a hysterical cackle. Tyler turned away from the insane blood-spattered whore, staggering out the door and down the stairs to the kitchen, Carlotta’s laughter following him the whole way.

Luis was still in the salt circle in his boots and boxers, handful of salt ready to hurl, looking simultaneously heroic and ridiculous. He was still throwing defiant challenges at the ghosts, glancing at his watch every few seconds. There was something Tyler had to know, one question left that only Luis could answer.

The grandfather clock in the parlor began ringing one o’clock. Luis yelled and punched the air in triumph, the joy of escaping death, as he and the salt circle slowly began to disappear.

“Lou?” Tyler called.

Fading away, Luis turned to look at him and did a double-take. “Tyler? But… you’re…”

“Dead.” Tyler nodded. If Lou could suddenly see and hear him again now, even though the real Tyler lay dead upstairs, then that could only mean one thing.

“Then… you’re a…” Luis stammered, increasingly transparent as the chimes continued.

“Ghost,” Tyler said.

“I’m sorry, man.” Luis shook his head sadly. “I tried to warn y—”

The chimes stopped, and Luis was gone.

For a moment, no one moved, silent. Then the girls began drifting back toward the parlor, giggling and chatting, to wait one year or a hundred for the next customer. The Madam, flanked by her bouncers, strode up to Tyler.

“Well then, boy,” she said, “finally figured it out, did you?”

Tyler nodded, mute.

“As long as you’re here, you might as well make yourself useful,” she said in her no-nonsense tone. She dismissed the bouncers with a nod, then turned to open a broom closet. “You can start by cleaning up the mess in Carlotta’s bedroom,” she continued, handing him a pair of coveralls and a shovel. “There should still be some room left in the basement, I think… for now.” She swept from the room. The kitchen was empty except for Alfred and Tyler.

Alfred turned and gave Tyler a sad smile. “Tried to leave her, didn’t you, son?”

“Yeah,” Tyler confessed, looking down.

“Well, our own faults, I s’pose,” Alfred sighed, lighting a cigarette. “We should have listened to what the great William Shakespeare had to say about the fury of a woman scorned.”

Tyler just stared at him blankly, not understanding.

“Hell, son,” Alfred explained, cigarette smoke drifting from the stab wounds in his chest. “He said it was hell.”

THE END