Clive Barker - The Damnation Game

Marty said: "Christ Almighty." Suddenly the lights along the fence were flickering again. Only this time they went out altogether. In the sudden pitch, Saul whined. Marty knew the dog's voice, and shared his apprehension.

"What's happening, boy?" he asked the dog, wishing to God it could reply. And then the dark broke; something lit the scene that was neither electricity nor starlight. The intruder was the source. He'd begun to burn with a faint luminescence. Light was dripping from his fingertips and oozing from the bloody holes in his coat. It enveloped his head in a flickering gray halo that consumed neither flesh nor bone, the light licking out of mouth and eyes and nostrils. Now it began to take on shapes, or seemed to. It was all seems. Phantoms sprang from the flux of light. Marty glimpsed dogs, then a woman, then a face; all, and yet perhaps none of these, a flurry of apparitions that transformed before they congealed. And in the center of these momentary phenomena the intruder's eyes stared on at Marty: clear and cold.

Then, without a comprehensible cue, the entertainment took on a different tone altogether. A look of anguish slid across the fabricator's face; a drool of bloody darkness spilled from his eyes, extinguishing whatever played in the vapor, leaving only bright worms of fire to trace his skull. Then they too went out, and just as suddenly as the illusions had appeared, they were gone, and there was just a torn man standing beside the humming fence.

The lights were coming back on again, their illumination so flat it drained any last vestige of magic. Marty looked at the bland flesh, the empty eyes, the sheer drabness of the figure in front of him and believed none of it

"Tell Joseph," said the intruder.

-it had all been trickery of some kind-

"Tell him what?"

"That I was here."

-but if it was just trickery, why didn't he step forward and apprehend the man?

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Just tell him. "

Marty nodded; he had no courage left in him

"Then, go home."

"Home?"

"Away from here," the intruder said. "Out of harm's way."

He turned from Marty and the dogs, and as he did so the lights faltered and failed for several dozen yards in either direction.

When they came back on again, the magician had gone.

"Is that all he said?"

As ever, Whitehead had his back to Marty as he spoke, and it was Impossible to gauge his response to the account of the night's events. Marty had offered a carefully doctored description of what had actually happened. He'd told Whitehead about his hearing the dogs and about the chase and the brief conversation he'd had with the intruder. What he'd left out was the part that he couldn't explain: the images the man had seemingly conjured from his body. That he made no attempt to describe, or even report. He'd simply told the old man that the lights along the fence had failed and that under the cover of darkness the intruder had made off. It made a lame finale to the encounter but he had no powers to improve on his story. His mind, still juggling the visions of the previous night, was too uncertain of objective truth to contemplate a more elaborate lie.

He hadn't slept for over twenty-four hours now. He'd spent the bulk of the night checking the perimeter, scouring the fence for the place the intruder had breached. There was no break in the wire, however. Either the man had slipped into the grounds when the gates were opened for one of the guests' cars, which was plausible; or else he had scaled the fence, disregarding an electric charge that would have struck most men dead. Having seen the tricks the man was capable of Marty was not about to discount this second scenario. After all, this same man had rendered the alarms inoperative-and somehow drained the lights of power along the stretch of fence. How he'd achieved these feats was anybody's guess. Certainly scant minutes after the man's disappearance the entire system was fully operational again: the alarms working and the cameras functioning all around the boundary.

Once he'd checked the fences thoroughly, he'd gone back into the house and sat in the kitchen to reconstruct every detail of what he'd just experienced. About four in the morning he'd heard the dinner party break up: laughter, the slamming of car doors. He'd made no move to report the break-in then and there. There was, he reasoned, no use in souring Whitehead's evening. He just sat and listened to the noise of people at the other end of the house. Their voices were incoherent smears; as if he were underground, and they above. And while he listened, drained after his adrenaline high, memories of the man at the fence flickered in front of him.

He told none of this to Whitehead. Just the plainest outline of events, and those few words: "Tell him that I was here." It was enough.

"Was he badly hurt?" Whitehead said, not turning from the window.

"He lost a finger, as I said. And he was bleeding pretty badly."

"In pain, would you say?"

Marty hesitated before replying. Pain was not the word he wanted to employ; not pain as he understood it. But if he used some other word, like anguish-something that hinted at the gulfs behind the glacial eyes-he risked trespass into areas he was not prepared to go; especially not with Whitehead. He was certain that if he once let the old man sense any ambivalence, the knives would be out. So he replied:

"Yes. He was in pain."

"And you say he bit the finger off?"

"Yes."

"Maybe you'd look for it later."

"I have. I think one of the dogs must have taken it."

Did Whitehead chuckle to himself? It sounded so.

"Don't you believe me?" Marty said, taking the laughter to be at his expense.

"Of course I believe you. It was only a matter of time before he came."

"You know who he is?"

"Yes."

"Then you can have him arrested."

The private amusement had stopped. The words that followed were colorless.

"This is no conventional trespasser, Strauss, as I'm sure you're aware. The man is a professional assassin of the first rank. He came here with the express purpose of killing me. With your intervention, and that of the dogs, he was prevented. But he will try again-"

"All the more reason to have him found, sir."

"No police force in Europe could locate him."

"-if he's a known assassin-" Marty said, pressing the point. His refusal to let this bone go until he had the marrow from it had begun to irritate the old man. He growled his reply.

"He's known to me. Perhaps to a few others who have encountered him down the years... but that's all."

Whitehead crossed from the window to his desk, unlocked it, and brought out something wrapped in cloth. He laid it on the polished desk-top and unwrapped it. It was a gun.

"You'll carry this with you at all times in future," he told Marty. "Pick it up. It won't bite."

Marty took the gun from the desk. It was cold and heavy.

"Have no hesitation, Strauss. This man is lethal."

Marty passed the gun from hand to hand; it felt ugly.

"Problem?" Whitehead inquired.

Marty chewed on his words before speaking them. "It's only... well, I'm on parole, sir. I'm supposed to be obeying the letter of the law. Now You give me a gun, and tell me to shoot on sight. I mean, I'm sure you're right about him being an assassin, but I don't think he was even armed."

Whitehead's expression, hitherto impartial, changed as Marty spoke. His teeth showed yellow as he snapped his reply.

"You're my property, Strauss. You concern yourself with me, or you get to Hell out of here tomorrow morning. Me!" He jabbed finger at his own chest. "Not yourself. Forget yourself."

Marty swallowed a throatful of possible retorts: none were polite.

"You want to go back to Wandsworth?" the old man said. All signs of anger had disappeared; the yellow teeth were sheathed. "Do you?"