Clive Barker - The Damnation Game

He said her name, but she made no sign of waking. Getting up out of bed he crossed the room toward her, but as he made his move the air around them seemed to bleed darkness. Her chattering took on a more urge pitch, and he sensed the darkness solidifying. His face and chest began itch; his eyes stung.

Again he called her name, shouting now. There was no response. Shadows had begun to flit across her, though there was no light in the room that could have cast them. He stared at her gabbling face: the shadows resembled those cast by light through blossom-laden boughs, as though she were standing in the shade of a tree.

Above him, something sighed. He looked up. The ceiling had disappeared. In its place a spreading tracery of branches, growing even as he watched. Her words were at its root, he had no doubt of it, and it grew stronger and more intricate with every syllable she spoke. The boughs rippled as they swelled, sprouting twigs that in seconds grew heavy with foliage. But despite its health, the tree was corrupted in every bud. Its leaves were black, and shone not with sap but with the sweat of putrescence. Vermin scuttled up and down the branches; fetid blossoms fell like snow, leaving the fruit exposed.

Such terrible fruit! A sheaf of knives, tied up in a ribbon like a gift for an assassin. A child's head hung up by its plaited hair. One branch was looped with human intestine; from another a cage depended, in which a bird was burning alive. Mementos all; keepsakes of past atrocities. And was the collector here, among his souvenirs?

Something moved in the turbulent darkness above Marty, and it was no rat. He could hear whispers exchanged. There were human beings up there, resting in the rot. And they were climbing down to have him join them.

He reached through the boiling air and took hold of Carys' arm. It felt mushy, as though the flesh was about to come away in his hand. Beneath her lids, she rolled her eyes like a stage lunatic; her mouth still shaping the words that conjured the tree.

"Stop," he said, but she only chattered on.

He took hold of her with both hands and shouted for her to shut up, shaking her as he did so. Above them, the boughs creaked; a litter of twigs fell down on him.

"Wake up, damn you," he told her. "Carys! This is Marty; me, Marty! Wake up, for Christ's sake."

He felt something in his hair, and glanced up to see a woman spitting a pearl-thread of saliva down upon him. It spattered on his face, ice-cold. Panic mounting, he started to yell at Carys to make her stop, and when that failed he slapped her hard across the face. For an instant the flow of conjuring was interrupted. The tree and its inhabitants complained with growls. He slapped her again, harder. The fever behind her lids had begun to abate, he saw. He called to her again, and shook her. Her mouth lolled open; the tics and terrible intentionality left her face. The tree trembled.

"Please..." he begged her, "wake up."

The black leaves shrank upon themselves; the fevered limbs lost their ambition.

She opened her eyes.

Murmuring its chagrin, the rot rotted and went away into nothingness.

The mark of his hand was still ripening on her cheek, but she was apparently unaware of his blows. Her voice was blurred by sleep as she said:

"What's wrong?"

He held her tight, not having any answer he felt brave enough to voice. He only said:

"You were dreaming."

She looked at him, puzzled. "I don't remember,", she said; and then, becoming aware of his trembling hands: "What's happened?"

"A nightmare," he said.

"Why am I out of bed?"

"I was trying to wake you."

She stared at him. "I don't want to be woken," she said. "I'm tired enough as it is." She disengaged herself. "I want to go back to bed."

He let her return to the crumpled sheets and lie down. She was asleep again before he had crossed to her. He did not join her, but sat up until dawn, watching her sleep, and trying to keep the memories at bay.

"I'm going back to the hotel," he told her in the middle of the next day; this very day. He'd hoped she might have some explanation for the events of the previous night-frail hope!-that she might tell him it was some stray illusion that she had managed at last to spit out. But she had no such reassurances to offer. When he asked her if she remembered anything of the preceding night she replied that she dreamed nothing these nights, and was glad of it. Nothing. He repeated the word like a death sentence, thinking of the empty room in Caliban Street; of how nothing was the essence of his fear.

Seeing his distress, she reached across to him and touched his face.-His skin was hot. It was raining outside, but the room was clammy.

"The European's dead," she told him.

"I have to see for myself."

"There's no need, babe."

"If he's dead and gone, why do you talk in your sleep?"

"Do I?"

"Talk; and make illusions."

"Maybe I'm writing a book," she said. The attempt at levity was stillborn. "We've got plenty of problems without going back there."

That was true; there was much to decide. How to tell this story, for one; and how to be believed for another. How to give themselves into the hands of the law and not be accused of murders known and unknown. There was a fortune waiting for Carys somewhere; she was her father's sole beneficiary. That too was a reality that had to be faced.

"Mamoulian's dead," she told him. "Can't we forget about him for a while? When they find the bodies we'll tell the whole story. But not yet. I want to rest for a few days."

"You made something appear last night. Here, in this room. I saw it."

"Why are you so certain it's me?" she retorted. "Why should I be the one who's still obsessed? Are you sure it isn't you who's keeping this alive?"

"Me?"

"Not able to let it go."

"Nothing would make me happier!"

"Then forget it, damn you! Let it be, Marty! He's gone. Dead and gone! And that's the end of it!"

She left him to turn the accusation over in his head. Maybe it was him; maybe he'd just dreamed the tree, and was blaming her for his own paranoia. But in her absence his doubts conspired. How could he trust her? If the European was alive-somehow, somewhere-couldn't he put those arguments into her mouth, to keep Marty from interfering? He spent the time she was out in an agony of indecision, not knowing a way forward that wasn't tainted with suspicion, but lacking the strength to face the hotel again, and so prove the matter one way or the other.

Then, in the late afternoon, she'd returned. They'd said nothing, or very little, and after a while she'd gone back to bed, complaining of an aching head. After half an hour sharing the room with her sleeping presence, hearing only her even breath (no chatter this time), he'd gone out for whisky and a paper, scanning it for news of discovery or pursuit. There was nothing. World events dominated; where there were not cyclones or wars there were cartoons and racing results. He headed back to the flat prepared to forget his doubts, to tell her that she'd been right all along, only to find the bedroom locked and from the inside her voice-softened by sleep-stumbling toward a new coherence.

He broke in and tried to wake her, but this time neither shaking nor slaps made any impression upon her possessed slumber.

And he was almost there now. He wasn't dressed for the cold that was creeping on, and he shivered as he crossed the desolation to the Hotel Pandemonium. Autumn was making its presence felt early this year, not even waiting for the beginning of September to chill the air. In the weeks since he'd last stood on this spot the summer had given in to rain and wind. He was not unhappy with its desertion. Summer heat in small rooms would never have benign associations for him again.