Clive Barker - The Damnation Game

Carys heard him. She turned, and made her way to the bottom of the steps.

"Marty?" she breathed.

"Stay away," he said, unable to unglue his eyes from the dead girl. There was more than the body to feast his eyes upon. There were the knives and the plate on the table in front of her, with a napkin lovingly shaken out and spread in her lap. The plate, he saw, had meat on it, sliced thinly as if by a master butcher. He moved past the body, trying to slide from under its gaze. As he passed the table he brushed the silk napkin; it slid through the divide of the girl's legs.

Two horrors came, brutal twins, one upon the other. The napkin had neatly covered a place on the girl's inner thigh from which the meat on her plate had been carved. In the same moment came another recognition: that he had eaten such meat, at Whitehead's encouragement, in the room at the estate. It had been the tastiest of delicacies; he'd left his plate clean.

Nausea swept up him. He dropped the flashlight as he tried to fight the sickness back, but it was beyond his physical control. The bitter odor of stomach acid filled the cellar. All at once there was no hiding, no help for this insanity but to throw it up and take the consequences.

Overhead, the Razor-Eater raised himself from his tea, pushed back his chair and came out of the kitchen.

"Who?" his thick voice demanded. "Who's down there?"

He crossed unerringly to the cellar door and pulled it open. Dead fluorescent light rolled down the stairs.

"Who's there?" he said again, and now he was coming down in pursuit of the light, his feet thundering on the wooden steps. "What are you doing?" He was shouting, his voice was at hysteria pitch. "You can't come down here!"

Marty looked up, dizzied by breathlessness, to see Carys crossing the cellar toward him: Her eyes alighted on the tableau at the table but she kept admirable control, ignoring the body and reaching for the knife and fork that sat beside the plate. She snatched them both up, catching the tablecloth in her haste. The plate and its flyblown serving spun to the floor; knives cluttered beside it.

Breer had paused at the bottom of the stairs to take in the desecration of his temple. Now, appalled, he came careering toward the infidels, his size lending awesome momentum to the attack. Dwarfed by him, Carys half-turned as he reached for her, roaring. She was eclipsed. Marty couldn't make out who was where. But the confusion lasted only seconds. Then Breer was raising his gray hands as if to push Carys off, his head shaking to and fro. A howl was issuing from him, more of complaint than pain.

Carys ducked his flailing, and slipped sideways out of harm's way. The knife and fork she had held were no longer in her hands. Breer had run straight onto them. He seemed not to be aware of their presence in his gut, however. His concern was for the girl whose body was even now toppling and falling into a rubber-jointed heap on the cellar floor. He rushed to her comfort, ignoring the desecraters in his anguish. Carys caught sight of Marty, his face a greaseball, hauling himself upright by hanging on to the ceiling pipes.

"Move!" she yelled at him. She waited long enough to see that he had responded and then made for the stairs. As she clattered up the steps toward the light, she heard the Razor-Eater behind him, shouting: "No! No!" She glanced over her shoulder. Marty gained the bottom of the stairs just as Breer's hands-manicured, perfumed and lethal-grabbed for him. Marty threw an ill-aimed swipe backward, and Breer lost his hold. It was a moment's grace, however, no more. Marty was only halfway up the stairs before his attacker was back on his heels. The rouged face was smeared as it peered up from the cellar depths, the features so contorted by outrage that they appeared scarcely human.

This time Breer's grasp caught Marty's trousers, the fingers digging deeply into the muscle of his skin. Marty yelped as cloth tore and blood ran. He flung out a hand to Carys, who loaned what strength she had left to the contest, pulling Marty up toward her. Breer, badly balanced, lost his snatched grip, and Marty stumbled up the stairs, pressing Carys ahead of him. She tumbled into the hallway, and Marty followed, with Breer at his back. At the top of the stairs Marty suddenly turned and kicked. His heel struck the Razor-Eater's punctured belly. Breer fell backward, hands clawing the air for support; there was none to be had. His nails managed to rake the brickwork as he toppled and fell heavily down the steps, hitting the stone floor of the cellar with a lazy thud. There, sprawled, he lay still; a painted giant.

Marty slammed the door on him, and bolted it. He felt too squeamish to look at the gouging on his leg, but he could tell by the warmth soaking into sock and shoe that it was bleeding badly.

"Can you... you get something..." he said, "... just to cover it?"

Too breathless to reply, Carys nodded, and rounded the corner into the kitchen. There was a towel on the draining board, but it was too unsavory to be used on an open wound. She started to search for something clean, however primitive. It was time they were gone; Mamoulian would not stay out all night.

In the hallway, Marty listened for any sound from the cellar. He heard none.

Another noise infiltrated, however, one that he'd almost forgotten about. The buzz of the house was back in his head, and that mellow voice was threaded into it, a dreamy undercurrent. Common sense told him to shut it out. But when he listened, trying to sort out its syllables, it seemed the nausea and the pain in his leg subsided.

On the back of a kitchen chair Carys had found one of Mamoulian's dark-gray shirts. The European was fastidious about his laundry. The shirt had been recently laundered; an ideal bandage. She tore it up-though its fine-quality cotton resisted-then soaked a length of it in cold water to clean the wound, and made strips of the rest to bind the leg up. When she was done, she went out into the hallway. But Marty had gone.

He had to see. Or if seeing wouldn't do (What was seeing anyway? Mere sensuality) then he would learn a new way of knowing. That was the promise the room whispered in his ear: a new thing to know and a way of knowing it. He pulled himself up the banisters, hand over hand, less and less aware of the pain as he climbed to the buzzing darkness. He wanted so much to take the ghost-train ride. There were dreams in there. he'd never dreamed, would never have a chance to dream again. Blood squelched in his shoe; he laughed at it. A spasm had begun in his leg; he ignored it. The last steps were ahead: he climbed them with steady work. The door was ajar.

He achieved the summit of the stairs and limped toward it.

Though it was totally dark in the cellar, that scarcely concerned the Razor-Eater. It was many weeks since his eyes had worked as well as they'd used to: he'd learned to substitute touch for sight. He stood up and tried to think clearly. Soon the European would come home. There would be punishment for leaving the house unattended and letting this escape take place. Worse than that, he would not see the girl anymore; no longer be able to watch her pass water, that fragrant water he preserved for special occasions. He was desolate.

He heard her moving even now in the hallway above him; she was going up the stairs. The rhythm of her tiny feet was familiar to him, he'd listened long nights and days to her padding back and forth in her cell. In his mind's eye the ceiling of the cellar became transparent; he looked up between her legs as she climbed the stairs; that lavish slit gaped. It made him angry to be losing it, and her. She was old, of course, not like the pretty at the table, or the others on the streets, but there had been times when her presence had been the one thing keeping him from insanity.