Clive Barker - The Damnation Game

"They don't like fear," said Whitehead. "Isn't that right, Lillian?"

"That's right. If they smell it on you, they know they've got you. Then they're merciless. You have to stand up to them."

Marty approached the dog. It looked up at him testily: he stared back.

"Don't try and outstare him," Lillian advised. "It makes the dog aggressive. Just let him get your scent, so he knows you."

Saul sniffed at Marty's legs and crotch through the mesh, much to Marty's discomfort. Then, apparently satisfied, he wandered away.

"Good enough," said Lillian. "Next time, no wire. And in a while, you'll be handling him." She was taking some pleasure in Marty's unease, he was sure of it. But he said nothing; just let her lead the way into the largest of the sheds.

"Now you must meet Bella," she said.

Inside the kennels the smell of disinfectant, stale urine and dogs was overpowering. Lillian's entrance was greeted with another sustained round of barking and wire-pawing. The shed had a walkway down the center, with cages off to the right and left. Two of these held a single dog, both bitches, one considerably smaller than the other. Lillian rolled off the details as they passed each cage-the dogs' names, and their place on the incestuous family tree. Marty attended to all she was saying, and immediately forgot it again. His mind was otherwise occupied. It wasn't just the intimate presence of the dogs that unnerved him, but the suffocating familiarity of this interior. The walkway; the cells with their concrete floors, their blankets, their bare bulbs: it was like home from home. And now he began to see the dogs in a new light; saw another meaning in Job's baleful glance as he looked up from his ablutions; understood, better than Lillian or Whitehead ever could, how these prisoners must view him and his species.

He stopped to look into one of the cages: not out of any particular interest, but to focus on something other than the anxiety he felt in this claustrophobic hut.

"What's this one called?" he asked.

The, dog in the cage was at the door; another sizable male, though not on the scale of Saul.

"That's Laurousse," Lillian replied.

The dog looked friendlier than the others, and Marty overcame his nerves and went down on his haunches in the narrow corridor, extending a tentative hand toward the cage.

"He'll be fine with you," she said.

Marty put his fingers to the mesh. Laurousse sniffed them inquisitively; his nose was damp and cold.

"Good dog," Marty said. "Laurousse."

The dog began to wag its tail, happy to be named by this sweating stranger.

"Good dog."

Down here, closer to the blankets and the straw, the smell of excrement and fur was even stronger. But the dog was delighted that Marty had come down to its level, and was attempting to lick his fingers through the wire. Marty felt the fear in him dispelled by the dog's enthusiasm: far from meaning him harm, it showed unalloyed pleasure.

Only now did he become aware of Whitehead's scrutiny. The old man was standing a few feet off to his left, his bulk entirely blocking the narrow passage between the cages, watching intently. Marty stood up self-consciously, leaving the dog to whine and wag below him, and followed Lillian further down the line of cages. The dog-keeper was singing the praises of another member of the tribe. Marty tuned in to her conversation:

"-and this is Bella," she announced. Her voice had softened; there was a dreamy quality in it that he hadn't caught before. When Marty reached the cage into which she was pointing, he saw why.

Bella half-lay and half-sat in the mesh shadows at the end of her cage, arranged like a black-snouted Madonna on a bed of blankets and straw, with blind pups suckling at her teats. Setting eyes on her, Marty's reservations about the dogs evaporated.

"Six pups," Lillian announced as proudly as if they were her own, "all strong and healthy."

More than strong and healthy, they were beautiful; fat balls of contentment nestling against each other in the luxury of their mother's lap. It seemed inconceivable that creatures so vulnerable could grow into iron-gray lords like Saul, or suspicious rebels like Job.

Bella, sensing a newcomer among her congregation, pricked up her ears. Her head was superbly proportioned, tones of sable and gold mingling in her coat to glamorous effect, her brown eyes vigilant but soft in the half-light. She was so finished; so completely herself. The only response to her presence-and one that Marty willingly granted-was awe.

Lillian peered though the wire, introducing Marty to this mother of mothers.

"This is Mr. Strauss, Bella," she said. "You'll see him now and again; he's a friend."

There was no baby-talk condescension in Lillian's voice. She spoke to the dog as to an equal, and despite Marty's initial uncertainty about the woman, he found himself warming to her. Love wasn't an easy thing to come by, he knew that to his cost. Whatever shape it came in, it made sense to respect it. Lillian loved this dog-her grace, her dignity. It was a love he could approve of, if not entirely understand.

Bella sniffed the air, and seemed satisfied that she had the measure of Marty. Lillian reluctantly turned from the cage to Strauss.

"She might even take to you, given time. She's a great seductress, you know. A great seductress."

Behind them, Whitehead grunted at this sentimental nonsense.

"Shall we look over the grounds?" he suggested impatiently. "I think we're done here."

"Come back when you've settled in," Lillian said; her manner had defrosted noticeably since Marty had shown some appreciation of her charges, "and I'll put them through their paces for you."

"Thanks. I will."

"I wanted you to see the dogs," Whitehead said as they left the enclosures behind, and started at a brisk pace across the lawn to the perimeter fence. That was only part of the reason for the visit, though; Marty knew that damn well. Whitehead had intended the experience as a salutary reminder of what Marty had left behind him. There, but for the grace of Joseph Whitehead, he would go again. Well, the lesson was learned. He'd jump through hoops of fire for the old man rather than go back into the custody of corridors and cells. There wasn't even a Bella there; no sublime and secret mother locked away in the heart of Wandsworth. Just lost men like himself.

The day was warming: the sun was up, a pale lemon balloon drifting above the rookery, and the frost was melting from the lawns. For the first time Marty began to get some sense of the scale of the estate. Distances opened up to either side of them: he could see water, a lake, or river perhaps, shining beyond a bank of trees. On the west side of the house there were rows of cypresses, suggesting walkways, fountains perhaps; to the other side, a banked garden surrounded by a low stone wall. It would take him weeks to get the layout of the place.

They had reached the double fence that ran right around the estate. A good ten feet high, both fences were topped by sharpened steel struts that curved out toward the would-be intruder. These were in turn crowned with spirals of barbed wire. The whole construction hummed, almost imperceptibly, with an electric charge. Whitehead regarded it with evident satisfaction.

"Impressive, eh?"

Marty nodded. Again, the sight woke echoes.

"It offers a measure of security," Whitehead said.

He turned left at the fence, and began to walk its length, the conversation-if that it could be called-coming from him in the form of a series of non sequiturs, as if he were too impatient with the elliptical structure of normal exchanges to bear with it. He simply threw statements, or clusters of remarks, down, and expected Marty to make whatever sense he could of them.

"It's not a perfect system: fences, dogs, cameras. You saw the screens in the kitchen?"