Page 5 of Hearts of Stone

“The tour…?” Daniel asked dreamily, then he seemed to come back to himself. “Oh shit, yeah, the tour.” He bumped hips with me, his eyes gleaming. “Luther Whiteley? He was kinky as fuck. Some of my friends in the community say that if you’re into medical kink, this shit is the bomb. C’mon.” He grinned. “You might not be up for a demon lover, but I am.” As we walked towards the therapy rooms, he mimed speaking into a microphone. “Paging Dr Whiteley. Paging Dr Whiteley. A thorough cavity search is required in examination room one.”

The guide shot us a dark look.

“If you come through here, we can look at what Luther Whiteley actually got up to during his days as owner of the asylum.”

Chapter 4

“Holy Hellraiser, Batman…” Daniel breathed as we entered one of the therapy rooms. He stared at the cluster of ‘therapeutic’ devices with frank fascination tinged with revulsion. I was just going with disgust.

Whoever the hell Luther Whitely was, he was a damn perv.

I peered at a particularly vicious hook. I wasn’t completely sure where it was supposed to go, but none of the places would be good. The metal point was rusted and corroded now, but on the point I saw something had dried on the end. I jerked back, turning to Daniel and muttering, “Is that human flesh?”

“Maybe. What I’m trying to work out is what the hell would you do with it?” Daniel asked, snapping a few shots. “I’ll put some pics up on some of the extreme BDSM forums I’m on, but, fuck!” His fingers formed a similar shape. “Like this?” He hooked his finger into the hollow of his clavicle. “Or like this?” He hooked it into his cheek. “Though I have seen videos of people using hooks to suspend themselves from the ceiling, but they’re blunt ones that are inserted in their—”

“Are you quite finished?” the guide asked, and it was then we realised we had a little audience. People were listening to ourfrantically whispered chatter, not hers. “Now, as I was saying, letting Luther Whiteley run a mental asylum was neither wise nor therapeutically sound. Left to his own devices, with a captive audience, he performed… experiments of a sort that would not have been supported by mental health professionals of his time, let alone now, but…”

She sighed.

“Knowledge of mental illness was nowhere near as advanced as it is now,” she continued. “Society was very good at identifying those who differed from the norm, but few had a sound awareness of how to treat someone suffering from severe mental illness successfully. Bear in mind, that every single person who was confined to Z Ward had committed a crime that shocked the entire city. Violent murders.” Her eyes scanned the crowd. “Brutal rapes. Horrifying rampages on the streets. Some would even be classified as serial killers by contemporary psychiatrists.”

Her eyes slid over the cluster of contraptions, although I wasn’t sure I wanted to know how they worked.

“But what happened here…” Her voice dropped an octave. “Even by contemporary standards, no one could suggest what Luther was doing as therapeutic. He didn’t seek to heal the damaged minds of these criminals, but to tear them apart.”

The guide seemed to come into her own, swelling up to her full height and staring at each one of us, but her grave demeanour gave way when one of the other members of the group muttered, “Wooo…” She frowned, then turned towards the next room.

“And through here you’ll see some of the adjoining cells. These are where Luther kept the inmates whose treatment he was focussing on, for easy access. Some other tour members have reported feeling cold spots in the corner of the cells, and others have heard the disembodied screams of those poor souls.”

“But why the gargoyles?” I asked, turning my torch towards the open doorway, but the darkness was too impenetrable to reveal them again. “Why would they install gargoylesinsidea mental asylum?”

The guide’s lips thinned.

“Who can say? Perhaps it was a primitive impulse, to try and dispel the dark energies Luther’s experiments raised.” I fought the urge to raise an eyebrow at her pat answer. “But if you come through here…”

The rest of the tour was kind of a let down. Just cell after cell to peer inside. I didn’t feel any cold spots, although some people on the tour shivered theatrically, nor did I hear anything other than the skitter of possums on the roof. Other people whispered fiercely amongst themselves, until we came to the last room.

“I’m pretty sure I felt something…” Daniel started to say as we entered a massive room, but when he stopped in the doorway, so did I. “Oh my god, Daddy…”

As his voice trailed away, it was replaced with a ringing in my ears, one that got higher pitched as I stepped forward. Everyone else hung back. Perhaps it was the rusting fetters, hanging from the ceiling, shifting slightly in an unseen breeze, that kept them from entering.

Or maybe it was him.

He was massive, standing on a plinth in the centre of the room, the bars over a skylight sending moonlight cascading over his massive form.

“Ah, yes…” The guide came to stand beside me. “You’ve found Luther’s crown jewel.”

“He doesn’t look like a jewel,” Daniel said, appearing on my other side. “He looks like a MILF. A monster I’d like to—”

I jabbed my elbow into his ribs, hearing the breath rush out of him, but not letting that stop me. I moved towards the huge creature, standing tall on the lump of rough hewn stone he’dbeen carved on. The other two had been all crouched over, full of coiled power. But this one? He stood about six and half feet tall, his massive wings curled around him, but not enough to hide that barrel chest. He was a picture of masculine power, the artist depicting him not as a beast, but an exemplar of perfect human musculature. That’s what had my hand reaching out, ready to touch.

The guide had something to say about that. I could hear her voice getting louder and louder, but it didn’t stop me. There was something about him that drew me closer. Like a child reaching out to touch flickering flames, or the need to step closer to a cliff edge, I took another step then another, before my hand touched stone.

Stone that was silky smooth. Stone that had been chilled by the night air, not errant ghosts. I felt the cords of muscles in his arms, then, as my fingers swept upwards, the veins that wrapped around them. He was hard, completely impervious to my touch, unable to reciprocate the caress or knock it away, and somehow that was alluring. He was a gargoyle, a beautiful, inanimate sculpture, but that’s not how he felt. Maybe it was from my body heat, maybe from the latent warmth soaked in from the sun when it was still up, but it felt like the stone of his arm lost its chill under my touch. Why? I was about to find out.

“Holy fucking shitballs…!” Daniel yelped and so did others, their voices growing louder and louder, but I paid them no mind.

I stepped into the shadow of the massive sculpture and felt like a tiny, vulnerable thing in his presence. But that wasn’t a scary thing in this context. For some reason I was soothed by it. I stepped closer, into the gap between his wings, almost able to hear them rustle. I wanted to throw my arms around his thick waist and bury my face in that perfect chest. Somehow I knew those wings would go around me, that they’d form a wall between me and the world, and at that moment, I didn’t wantanything more. And when I tilted my head up, I saw the gargoyle was staring down at me.

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