Clive Barker - The Damnation Game

Afterward, they dozed together. Sometime in the middle of the night Marty stirred to see Flynn dressing, and shrinking away. Home presumably; wherever home was these days and nights.

He woke just before dawn, disoriented for several seconds until he heard Ursula's steady exhalations at his side. He said goodbye to her as she dozed, and found a cab to take him back to his car. He was back at the Sanctuary by eight-thirty. Exhaustion would hit him eventually, and a hangover too, but he knew his body clock well. There'd be a few hours grace before the debt had to be paid.

Pearl was in the kitchen tidying up after breakfast. They exchanged a few pleasantries, and he sat down to drink three cups of black coffee, one after the other. His mouth tasted foul, and Ursula's perfume, which had smelled ambrosial the previous night, was oversweet this morning. It lingered on his hands and in his hair.

"Good night?" Pearl asked. He nodded without answering. "You'd better get a good breakfast inside you; I won't be able to get you any lunch today."

"Why not?"

"Too busy with the dinner party."

"What dinner party?"

"Bill will tell you. He wants to see you. He's in the library."

Toy looked weary, but not as ill as he had when last they'd met. Maybe he'd seen a doctor in the interim, or taken a holiday.

"You wanted to speak to me?"

"Yes, Marty, Yes. You enjoy your night on the town?"

"Very much. Thank you for making it possible."

"It wasn't my doing; it was Joe. You're well liked, Marty. Lillian tells me even the dogs have taken to you."

Toy crossed to the table, opened the cigarette box, and selected a cigarette. Marty had not seen him smoke before.

"You won't be seeing Mr. Whitehead today; there's going to be a little get-together tonight-"

"Yes, Pearl told me."

"It's nothing special. Mr. Whitehead has dinners for a select few every now and then. The point is, he likes them to be private gatherings, so you won't be required."

This pleased Marty. At least he could go lie down, catch up on some sleep.

"Obviously we'd like you to be in the house, should you be needed for any reason, but I think it's unlikely."

"Thank you, sir."

"I think you can call me Bill in private, Marty; I don't see any need for formality any longer."

"OK."

"I mean..." He stopped to light the cigarette. "... we're all servants here, aren't we? In one way or another."

By the time he'd showered, thought about a run and discounted the idea as masochistic, then lain down to doze, the first signs of the inevitable hangover were on the way. There was no cure that he knew of. The only option was to sleep it off.

He didn't wake until the middle of the afternoon, and only then roused by hunger. There was no sound in the house. Downstairs the kitchen was empty, only the buzz of a fly at the window-the first Marty had seen this season-interrupted the glacial calm. Pearl had obviously finished whatever preparations were required for this evening's dinner party, and gone, perhaps to come back later. He went to the refrigerator and rifled it for something to quieten his growling belly. The sandwich he constructed looked like an unmade bed, with sheets of ham tumbling out from its bread blankets, but it did the job. He put on the coffee percolator and went in search of company.

It was as though everyone had gone from the face of the earth. Wandering through the deserted house the pit of the afternoon swallowed him. The stillness, and the remains of his headache, conspired to make him jittery. He found himself glancing behind him like a man on an ill-lit street. Upstairs was even quieter than down; his footsteps on the carpeted landing were so hushed he might not have had weight at all. Even so, he found himself creeping.

Halfway along the landing-Whitehead's landing-came the cutoff point beyond which he had been instructed not to go. The old man's private suite was this end of the house, as was Carys' bedroom. Which room was it most likely to be? He tried to recreate the outside of the house, to locate the room by a process of elimination, but he lacked the imaginative skill to correlate the exterior with the closed doors of the corridor ahead.

Not all were closed. The third along on his right was slightly ajar: and from inside, now his ears were attuned to the lowest level of audibility, he could hear the sound of movement. Surely it was her. He crossed the invisible threshold into forbidden territory, not thinking of what the punishment for trespass might be, too eager to see her face, maybe to speak to her. He reached the door, and peered through.

Carys was there. She was semirecumbent on the bed, staring into middle distance. Marty was just about to step in to speak to her when somebody else moved in the room, hidden from him by the door. He didn't have to wait for the voice to know that it was Whitehead.

"Why do you treat me so badly?" he was asking her, his voice hushed. "You know how it hurts me when you're like this."

She said nothing: if she even heard him she made no sign of it.

"I don't ask so much of you, do I?" he appealed. Her eyes flickered in his direction. "Well, do I?"

Eventually, she deigned to reply. When she did her voice was so quiet Marty could barely catch the words. "Aren't you ashamed?" she asked him.

"There are worse things, Carys, than having somebody need you; believe me."

"I know," she replied, taking her eyes off him. There was such pain, and such submission in the face of that pain, in those two words: I know. It made Marty suddenly sick with longing for her; to touch her, to try to heal the anonymous hurt. Whitehead crossed the room and came to sit beside her on the edge of the bed. Marty stepped back from the door, fearful of being spotted, but Whitehead's attention was concentrated on the enigma in front of him.

"What do you know?" he asked her. The former gentility had suddenly evaporated. "Are you keeping something from me?"

"Just dreams," she replied. "More and more."

"Of what?"

"You know. The same."

"Your mother?"

Carys nodded, almost invisibly. "And others," she said. Who?"

"They never show themselves."

The old man sighed, and looked away from her. "And in the dreams?" he asked. "What happens?"

"She tries to speak to me. She tries to tell me something."

Whitehead didn't inquire further: he seemed to be out of questions. His shoulders had slumped. Carys looked at him, sensing his defeat.

"Where is she, Papa?" she asked him, leaning forward for the first time and putting an arm around his neck. It was a blatantly manipulative gesture; she offered this intimacy only to get what she wanted from him. How much had she offered, or he taken, in their time together? Her face came close to his; the late-afternoon light enchanted it. "Tell me, Papa," she asked again, "where do you think she is?" and this time Marty grasped the taunt that lay beneath the apparently innocent question. What it signified, he didn't know. What this whole scene, with its talk of coldness and shame, meant, was far from clear. He was glad, in a way, not to know. But this question, that she asked him so mock-lovingly, had been asked-and he had to wait a moment longer, until the old man had answered it. "Where is she, Papa?"

"In dreams," he replied, his face averted from her. "Just in dreams."

She dropped her arm from his shoulder.

"Never lie to me," she charged him icily.

"It's all I can tell you," he replied; his tone was almost pitiable. "If you know more than I do-" He turned and looked at her, his voice urgent. "Do you know something?"

"Oh, Papa," she murmured reproachfully, "more conspiracies?" How many feints and counterfeints were there in this exchange? Marty puzzled. "You don't suspect me now, surely?"