Clive Barker - The Damnation Game

"What have you got to say?" Mamoulian asked.

"He's not dead," Luther replied. There: it wasn't so difficult to do, was it? "It was all set up. Only two or three people knew: I was one of them."

"Why you?"

Luther wasn't certain on this point. "I suppose he trusted me," he said, shrugging.

"Ah."

"Besides, somebody had to find the body, and I was the most believable candidate. He just wanted to make a clean getaway. Start again where he'd never be found."

"And where was that?"

Luther shook his head. "I don't know, man. Anywhere, I suppose, where nobody knows his face. He never told me."

"He must have hinted."

"No."

Breer took heart at Luther's reticence; his look brightened.

"Now come on," Mamoulian coaxed. "You've given me the motherlode; where's the harm in telling me the rest?"

"There is no more."

"Why make pain for yourself?"

"He never told me, man!" Breer took a step up the stairs; and another; and another.

"He must have given you some idea," Mamoulian said. "Think! Think! You said he trusted you."

"Not that much! Hey, keep him off me, will you?"

The skewers glittered.

"For Christ's sake keep him off me!"

There were many pities. The first was that one human being was capable of such smiling brutality to another. The second that Luther had known nothing. His fund of information had been, as he'd claimed, strictly limited. But by the time the European was certain of Luther's ignorance the man was past recall. Well; that wasn't strictly true. Resurrection was perfectly plausible. But Mamoulian had better things to do with his waning stamina; and besides, letting the man remain dead was the one way he could compensate for the suffering the chauffeur had vainly endured.

"Joseph. Joseph. Joseph," Mamoulian chided. And the dark flowed on.

Having secured himself all he needed for a long vigil at the house on Caliban Street-reading material, food, drink-Marty returned there and watched through most of the night, with a bottle of Chivas Regal and the car radio for company. Just before dawn he deserted his watch and drove drunkenly back to his room, sleeping through until almost noon. When he woke his head felt the size of a balloon, and as stalely inflated; but there was purpose in the day ahead. No dreams of Kansas now; just the fact of the house and Carys locked up in it.

After a breakfast of hamburgers he returned to the street, parking far enough away to be inconspicuous, yet close enough to see the comings and goings. He spent the next three days-in which the temperature rose from the high seventies into the middle eighties-in the same location. Sometimes he'd catch a few minutes of cramped sleep in the car; more often he returned to Kilburn to snatch an hour or two. The furnace of the street became familiar to him in all its moods. He saw it just before dawn, flickering into solidity. He saw it in midmorning, young wives out with children, business in their walk; in the gaudy afternoon too; and in the evening, when the sugar-pink light of a declining sun made brick and slate exult. The private and public lives of the Calibanese unfolded to him. A spastic child at Number Sixty-seven, whose anger was a secret vice. The woman at Number Eighty-one who welcomed a man to the house daily at twelve-forty-five. Her husband, a policeman to judge by shirt and tie, was welcomed home each night with a ration of doorstep ardor in direct proportion to the time wife and lover had spent together at lunchtime. More too: a dozen, two dozen stories, interlocking, dividing again.

As to the house itself, he saw occasional activity there, but not once did he glimpse Carys. The blinds at the middle windows were kept drawn throughout the day and only lifted in the late afternoon, when the strongest of the sun was past. The single top-story window looked to be permanently shuttered from inside.

Marty concluded that there were only two people in the house besides Carys. One, of course, was the European. The other was the butcher that they'd almost faced back at the Sanctuary; the dog-killer. He came and went once, sometimes twice, daily; usually about some trivial business. An unpalatable sight, with his cosmeticized features, his hobbled walk, the sly looks he gave the children as they played.

In those three days Mamoulian didn't leave the house; at least Marty didn't see him leave. He might appear fleetingly at the downstairs window, glancing out down the sunlit street; but that, infrequently. And as long as he was in the house Marty knew better than to attempt a rescue. No amount of courage-and he did not possess that attribute in limitless supply-would arm him against the powers the European wielded. No; he must sit it out and wait for a safer opportunity to present itself.

On the fifth day of his surveillance, with the heat still rising, luck came his way. About eight-fifty in the evening, as dusk invaded the street, a taxi drew up outside the house, and Mamoulian, dressed for the casino, got into it. Almost an hour later the other man appeared at the front door, his face a blur in the deepening night, but hungry somehow. Marty watched him lock the door, then glance up and down the pavement before setting off. He waited until the shambling figure disappeared around the corner of Caliban Street before he got out of the car. Determined not to risk the least error in this-his first, and probably only, chance at rescue-he went to the corner to check that the butcher was not simply taking a late-evening constitutional. But the man's bulk was unmistakable as he headed toward the city, hugging the shadows as he went. Only when he was completely out of sight did Marty go back to the house.

All the windows were locked, back and front; there were no visible lights. Perhaps-the doubt niggled-she was not even in the house; perhaps she'd gone out while he was dozing in the car. He prayed not; and praying, forced open the back door with a jimmy he'd bought for that very purpose. That and a flashlight: the standbys of any self-respecting burglar.

Inside, the atmosphere was sterile. He began a room-by-room search of the ground floor, determined to be as systematic as possible. This was no time for unprofessional behavior: no shouting, no rushing about; just a cautious, efficient investigation. The rooms were all empty, of people and of furniture. A few items, discarded by the previous occupants of the house, emphasized rather than alleviated the sense of desolation. He ascended a flight.

On the second floor he found Breer's room. It stank; an unwholesome mingling of perfume and rancid meat. In the corner a large-screened black-and-white television had been left on, its sound turned down to a sibilant whisper; some sort of quiz show was playing. The quizmaster howled soundlessly in mock despair at a contestant's defeat. The fluttering, metallic light fell on the few articles of furniture in the room: a bed with a bare mattress and several stained cushions; a mirror propped on a chair, the seat of which was littered with cosmetics and toilet waters. On the walls were photographs torn from a book of war atrocities. He did no more than glimpse at them, but their details, even in the doubtful light, were appalling. He closed the door on the squalor and tried the next. It was the toilet. Beside that, the bathroom. The fourth and last door on this floor was tucked around a half-corridor, and it was locked. He turned the handle once, twice, back and forth, and then pressed his ear to the wood, listening for some clue from within.

"Carys?"

There was no reply: no sound of occupancy either.

"Carys? It's Marty. Can you hear me?" He rattled the handle again, more fiercely. "It's Marty."

Impatience overtook him. She was there, just beyond the door-he was suddenly seized by the absolute conviction of her presence. He kicked the door, more out of frustration than anything; then, raising his heel to the lock, he booted it with all his strength. The wood began to splinter beneath his assault. Half a dozen further blows and the lock cracked; he put his shoulder to the door and forced it open.