Elizabeth Hand - Black Light

He was still as death, but not dead. His breath came in shallow gasps, and though his eyes were closed they twitched beneath their lids, the way a dog’s eyes move when it dreams of pursuit. His skin was dappled dark green and blue-violet, with here and there a starburst of red where the flesh was broken. There were darker spots beneath his ribs, small crescents where the skin had been flayed into petals of pink and scarlet, and in places the veins showed through, vibrating ever so slightly as though something swam beneath them. A glistening rope ran from his groin up to his breast; his cock had shrunk, and was curled between his legs like another soft brown seed. Gazing at him I felt neither pity nor remorse nor even horror. It seemed natural to me, that he should lie there thus. If he had been cast upon the forest floor rather than this room, you would not have noticed him at all: he would have been nothing but dead leaves and pallid fungus, acorn mast and a slug coiled in the roots of a tree.

“There.” My voice sounded ragged; I wondered if I had been shouting. Only a few candles still burned. The incense had been reduced to ashes upon the floor. “No more illusions, now.”

I walked unsteadily to the wall, where the faded velvet drapes hung. One by one I yanked them down, letting each fall and turning to the next without bothering to see what mundane things they had hidden, moldering plaster or cheap rec-room paneling, doors that led nowhere or windows staring out onto the village where all of Bolerium’s other guests now slept, restlessly or peacefully as they deserved. “All gone, all gone.”

I glanced at the bound man. He was motionless, his face drawn into a grimace. Silently I turned back to the wall.

There were faces there. Terra-cotta masks and gargoyles carved in stone, doors in the shape of mouths and eyes—the walls were covered with them. Yet it did not seem that they were walls anymore, but a pitted surface of stone alive with animals. Hundreds of animals; thousands. From one end of the room to the other they raced and capered and fought—bison and mastodons, birds like huge penguins or auks, ibex and antelope and bears with teeth like claws, hares and snakes and squirrels and bulls.

And everywhere, deer. Dappled fawns and red deer, reindeer with arching horns and does whose bodies were waves and hugest of all a stag like an oak tree, the great Irish elk megaloceros, its legs mountains and its horns a thundercloud, flanks pierced by a hundred spears so that its blood rained down into the open mouths of tiny figures scratched below. Men, or creatures like men—two-legged forms with human heads, though their legs were furred and their feet ended in hooves. They held sticks or axes or S-shaped twigs, and some were obviously women, heavy-hipped and with pendulous breasts, with snakes for hair and faces like birds. I walked slowly, tracing the figures, and where I touched the stone the impressions of my hands remained, as though someone trapped within the rock pressed against it with her palms.

When I reached the center of the wall I stopped. There was the same figure I had seen at the Nursery years before: the owl-eyed man with a tail and paws instead of hands. Surrounding it was a series of simple images.

The first was drawn in charcoal. It showed a figure almost like a seahorse, its two legs bound together so that they seemed like one, its body represented by sketchy lines evocative of fur. Its ears were long and pointed, as was its nose, and two horns projected from its head.

The second drawing was like the first, although its execution was more graceful. A line-drawing like those on Balthazar’s vase paintings, showing a slender man, his body curved, his hooved feet close together and his horned head thrown back as he danced.

The third and final image was not a drawing at all, but a photograph: a black-and-white film still of a man lying bound and gagged on a four-poster bed. Another man stood above him, holding a whip; the man on the bed stared at him wild-eyed. In the background I could just make out a small white face like a spot on the negative, a girl with tousled hair and blank staring eyes.

“You have to do it right,” a matter-of-fact voice said from behind me. I turned.

“Ralph,” I said dully.

“That’s right.” He stepped toward me—still wearing his ridiculous shiny blue jacket, though it was now torn and stained, his shirt pleached with filth. He stopped near the platform and looked down, grimacing, then back at me. “Looks like you enjoyed yourself, Lit. Looks like you had a bit of fun.”

“Shut up. Don’t come near me—”

“You?” He laughed, a sharp sound like an injured dog. “You think I’d want to get anywhere near you ? Christ, look at you!”

He pointed at me. “You look like a fucking animal! You look like you killed him with your teeth —”

“He’s not dead,” I said. There was a thunder in my ears. “He’s—maybe we should call an ambulance.”

“An ambulance?” Ralph shook his head. “No, sweetie pie. The only way out of this is through it. Here—”

He held out his hand. In it was a small bone knife with a broken blade. “Finish what you started.”

“No—” I started to back away. “No, I won’t, you’re crazy—”

“You have to.” He grabbed my wrist, shoved the knife into my palm. “You can’t leave him like that.”

“Then you kill him!”

“I can’t, Lit. If anyone other than you kills him, it won’t be the apotheosis of a god. It’ll be the murder of Axel Kern.” He forced my fingers around the handle. “He’s almost free now—help him, Lit. It’s what you were born for. It’s why you’re here. It’s why we’re all here…”

He pushed me toward the body, his hand clasped around mine so that the jagged blade was poised above the man’s chest. “Kill him.”

I pushed back but it was no good, he was too strong. Slowly the blade drew closer to the bruised body. I could hear his breathing, so rapid it must stop, suddenly, like a clock; and Ralph’s breathing, too, a slower, measured panting. It sickened me, but I could not keep myself from twisting my head to look at him, as I tried one last time to pull the blade free.

“No—you— don’t ,” he gasped. “You little bitch—”

His face was contorted, eyes bloodshot. He smiled, horribly, and said, “Poor little puppet…”

And at those words something broke inside me. If before my rage had felt like another living thing bashing against the inside of my chest, now it burst free. With a shout I kicked, my boot driving into Ralph’s stomach. He gave a strangled cry and went flying backward. The bone knife spun from my hand as I straightened and watched Ralph crash into the wall beneath the cave painting of the horned god.

“YOU!” I shouted, and the entire room shook. “YOU!”

I pointed at him. My arm felt as though an iron bar were rammed inside it. Before me the room swam. The wall with its gallery of ancient figures began to blur and fade. “YOU—ARE— NOTHING !”

As though I truly was a lightning rod, a jolt of radiance streamed from me, leaped from shoulder to arm and from my fingers across the shadowy space that separated me from Ralph Casson. With a scream he flattened himself against the wall, one hand in front of his face. Then, as though an immense hand had struck him, he receded into the wall—into it and becoming part of it, his arms curving upward, his face growing hugely elongated: eyes exploding into chasms, mouth swelling and then splitting in two, so that his lower jaw formed a great jagged threshold and his upper jaw a lintel. In between yawned a dazzling black space, and from that space echoed a scream that went on and on and on, fading at last into a low, ominous buzz.