Simon Green - Casino Infernale

Rows of portraits lined both walls, painted in any number of styles; mostly head-and-shoulder portraits of the famous names who’d visited Monkton Manse, back in the twenties. None of them were smiling. And in many of them, the paint seemed to have . . . slipped, or melted, so that the famous faces seemed strange and monstrous. Perhaps that was how they’d looked after one too many parties in this awful place. There’s no hell so savage as the one we make for ourselves.

“This isn’t how I remembered the house,” said Molly. Her voice sounded small, and lost. “I remember it as being full of light, and life, and laughter. I don’t remember any of this.”

“You want me to take you out of here?” I said.

“Hell with that!” she said immediately. “I never ran from a fight in my life, and I’m not about to start now. Though whether it’s a fight with this house, or my memories . . . this is weird, Shaman. I don’t remember anything of this.”

We pressed on. The portraits changed, to show all the pretty people doing things of an increasingly nasty nature . . . including sex with things that weren’t in any way people. After a while I stopped looking. You can’t keep on being shocked; it wears you out. I couldn’t shake off a vague but definite feeling of being watched by nearby, unseen eyes. Molly stopped abruptly, and I stopped with her. She looked up at the heavy brass chandeliers overhead, still stuffed with the stumps of old candles. She snapped her fingers smartly, and all the candle stubs burst alight at once, shedding a comforting butter-yellow light down the length of the hallway. The light pressed back the shadows, but couldn’t dispel them. Or do much to improve the general uncomfortable atmosphere.

Molly cried out suddenly, and pointed a shaking hand at a mirror mounted on the left-hand wall. I moved quickly forward to stand between her and whatever had alarmed her, and it was a measure of how unnerved she was that she let me do it. I glared about me, but couldn’t see anything immediately threatening. I looked at Molly, and she pointed again at the mirror on the wall. I strode over to stand before it, Molly sticking close to my side. I was becoming increasingly worried about Molly. This wasn’t like her. I studied the mirror carefully, ready to smash it to bits if necessary and to hell with the seven years bad luck, but nothing looked back at us except our own reflections.

It doesn’t matter whether I’m being Eddie Drood or Shaman Bond, I always look like an ordinary, everyday kind of guy. Just another face in the crowd—no one you’d look at twice. Average height, average weight, the kind of nondescript features you’d forget in a moment. Best kind of look for a secret agent. It takes a lot of training, and a lot of practice, to look this forgettable, like no one in particular.

Molly looked like a china doll with big bosoms, bobbed black hair, dark eyes in a sharply defined face, and a rosebud mouth red as sin itself. Normally, Molly took pride in appearing arrogant and assured enough to stare Medusa in the eye, and ask who the hell the Gorgon thought she was looking at. Molly Metcalf was a fighter and a brawler, ready to take on the whole damned world at a moment’s notice. Only . . . not here, not in this place that wasn’t at all what she remembered. Her face was pale and her eyes were wide, and in the mirror’s reflection she looked like a frightened little girl. I didn’t like that.

What had really happened to Molly here, all those years ago?

“What is it?” I said quietly. “What did you see in the mirror?”

“A face,” she said, forcing the words out. “A great white face. Not human. Looking at me.”

“Nothing there now but us,” I said, carefully. “It’s not like you to be . . . jumpy, Molly.”

“No,” she said. “It isn’t.” She stood up a little straighter, gathering some of her old arrogance around her like familiar armour. “Eddie . . . yes, I know, I should say Shaman, but there’s no one else here, I can tell. . . . Can you see ghosts, through your armoured mask?”

“Sure,” I said. “I can See pretty much anything when I’m in my armour. If there’s anything to be seen. You think there’s ghosts here?”

“There’s something here,” Molly said flatly. “Do me a favour. Armour up and take a good look around. Tell me what this place looks like when it’s caught with its underwear down.”

I called my armour out of my torc again, and it slipped over me from head to toe in a moment, like a second skin. I could see myself in the mirror, looking like an old-fashioned knight in armour, gleaming gold and glorious. My face mask was blank and featureless, not even any eyeholes; the better to scare the crap out of my enemies. But from inside, I could See everything. I always feel stronger, faster, sharper, when I’m in my armour. I can hear a mouse fart, or the wind change direction, and I can see infrared and ultraviolet. I can also See all kinds of things that are fortunately hidden from the everyday people of the everyday world. If people could See what they really share this world with, they’d shit themselves.

But when I looked carefully up and down the hallway, I couldn’t See a single thing out of the ordinary. No ghostly figures, no stone tape memories repeating old actions in sealed loops, like an insect caught in amber. Nothing moved in the shadows or walked through the walls, and all I could hear were the slow shifting sounds of an old house settling itself. I armoured down, looked at Molly, and shook my head helplessly.

“For a place where so many really bad things have happened, it’s actually very quiet here,” I said. “I still don’t care for the feel of the place, but I think that’s more down to atmosphere, history, and rising damp, than to anything supernatural.”

“Then why is this house affecting me so badly?” said Molly. “All I have are good memories of my time here before. I actually looked forward to coming back here again!”

“I think we need to phone home,” I said. “Check in with the man in charge; see if perhaps there’s something he didn’t get around to telling us about Monkton Manse.”

I moved over to a nearby side table, reached into my pocket, and retrieved my computer laptop from my pocket dimension. I keep all kinds of useful items there. I wiped a thick coating of dust from the tabletop with my coat sleeve, and then set down the laptop and fired it up. I sent my armour back down my arm again, and delicate golden filaments surged into the laptop. Which is a bit like introducing nitrous oxide into the engine of a family car. The laptop danced about for a moment, like I’d goosed it when it wasn’t looking, and then settled down, its screen glowing bright. I tapped in the necessary start-up commands with two fingers. One of these days I’m going to have to learn to type properly.

“You really think you can reach anyone with that?” said Molly. “In the middle of a mystical null zone?”

“I’d bet Drood armour against any kind of null zone, any day,” I said cheerfully. “The whole point of strange matter is that it trumps magic and science. . . . There! We have contact!”

A pleasant, smiling face appeared on the screen, nodding politely to Molly and me. It wasn’t real; just a simulacrum set in place to take messages. The face looked just human enough to be subtly disturbing when it started to speak. The mouth movements were too stylised, and the eyes were just dead.

“Hello. You have reached the Department of the Uncanny. Please state your name, and the office you wish to be connected with.”

“This is Eddie Drood, on Trammell Island,” I said. “Put me through to the Regent.”

“Please wait. Please be patient. Your call is important to us.”