Clive Barker - The Damnation Game

Down at the end of the street an ice-cream van, playing an off-key version of "The Blue Danube," appeared and stopped by the curb to await patrons. Marty glanced toward it. The waltz had already attracted two customers. They drew his attention for a moment: sober-suited young men whose backs were turned to him. One of them boasted bright yellow hair: it shone in the sun. They were taking possession of their ice creams now; money was exchanged. Satisfied, they disappeared around the corner without looking over their shoulders.

Despairing of an answer to his bell-ringing, Marty pushed the door open. It grated across the coconut matting, which bore a threadbare "Welcome. " A pamphlet, stuck halfway through the mailbox, dislodged and fell on the inside, facedown. The sprung mailbox snapped loudly back into place.

"Flynn? Charmaine?"

His voice was an intrusion; it carried up the stairs, where dust motes thronged the sunlight through the half-landing window; it ran into the kitchen, where yesterday's milk was curdling on the board beside the sink.

"Is anybody in?"

Standing in the hallway, he heard a fly. It circled his head, and he waved it off. Unconcerned, it buzzed off down the hallway toward the kitchen, tempted by something. Marty followed it, calling Charmaine's name as he went.

She was waiting for him in the kitchen, as was Flynn. They had both had their throats cut.

Charmaine had sunk down against the washing machine. She sat, one leg bent beneath her, staring at the opposite wall. Flynn had been placed with his head over the sink as though bending to douse his face. The illusion of life was almost successful, even to the splashing sound.

Marty stood in the doorway, while the fly, not as finicky as he, flew around and around the kitchen, ecstatic. Marty just stared. There was nothing to be done: all that was left was to look. They were dead. And Marty knew without the effort of thinking about it that the killers were dressed in gray, and had turned that far corner, ice creams in hand, accompanied by "The Blue Danube."

They'd called Marty the Dancer of Wandsworth-those who'd called him anything at all-because Strauss was the Waltz King. He wondered if he'd ever told Charmaine that, in any of his letters. No, he probably hadn't: and now it was too late. Tears had begun to sting the rims of his eyes. He fought them back. They would interrupt the view, and he hadn't finished looking yet.

The fly who'd brought him here was circling close to his head again.

"The European," he murmured to it. "He sent them."

The fly zigzagged, excitedly. "Of course," it buzzed.

"I'll kill him."

The fly laughed. "You don't have any idea what he is. He could be the Devil himself."

"Fucking fly. What do you know?"

"Don't get so grand with me," the fly replied. "You're a shit-walker, same as I am."

He watched it rove, looking for a place to put its dirty feet. It landed, at last, on Charmaine's face. Atrocious that she didn't raise a lazy hand to swat it away; terrible that she just sprawled there, leg bent, neck slit, and let it crawl on her cheek, up to her eye, down to her nostril, supping here and there, careless.

The fly was right. He was ignorant. If they were to survive, he had to root out Mamoulian's secret life, because that knowledge was power. Carys had been wise all along. There was no closing your eyes and turning your back on the European. The only way to be free of him was to know him; to look at him for as long as courage allowed and see him in every ghastly particular.

He left the lovers in the kitchen and went to look for the heroin. He didn't have to search far. The packet was in the inside of Flynn's jacket, which was casually thrown over the sofa in the front room. Pocketing the fix Marty went to the front door, aware that stepping out of this house into the open sunlight was tantamount to inviting a murder charge. He would be seen and easily recognized: the police would be after him-in hours. But there was no help for it; escaping by the back door would look every bit as suspicious.

At the door he stooped and snatched up the pamphlet that had slid from the letterbox. It bore the smiling face of an evangelist, one Reverend Bliss, who was standing, microphone in hand, raising his eyes to Heaven. "Join the Crowd," the banner proclaimed, "and Feel the Power of God in Operation. Hear the Words! Feel the Spirit!" He pocketed it for future reference.

On his way back to Kilburn he stopped at a telephone box and reported the murders. When they asked him who he was he told them, admitting that he was a parole jumper to boot. When they told him to turn himself in to the nearest police station, he replied that he would, but first he had to attend to some personal business.

As he drove back to Kilburn through streets now littered with the aftermath of the march, his mind turned over every possible lead to Whitehead's whereabouts. Wherever the old man was, there, sooner or later, Mamoulian would be. He could try to get Carys to find her father of course. But he had another request to make of her, one that it might take more than gentle persuasion to get her to concede to. He would have to locate the old man by his own ingenuity.

It was only as he drove back, and caught sight of a signpost to Holborn, that he remembered Mr. Halifax and the strawberries.

Marty smelled Carys as soon as he opened the door, but for a few seconds he mistook the scent for pork cooking. Only when he crossed to the bed did he see the burn on her open hand.

"I'm all right," she told him very coolly.

"He's been here."

She nodded. "But he's gone now."

"Didn't he leave me any messages?" he asked, with a crooked smile.

She sat up. Something was horribly wrong with him. His voice was odd; his face was the color of fishmeat. He stood off from her, as if the merest touch would shatter him. Looking at him made her almost forget the appetite that still consumed her.

"Message," she said, "for you?" She didn't understand. "Why? What's happened?"

"They were dead."

"Who?"

"Flynn. Charmaine. Somebody slit their throats."

His face came within an ace of crumpling up. This was the nadir, surely. They had no further to fall.

"Oh, Marty..."

"He knew I was going back to my house," he said. She looked for accusation in his voice, but there was none. She defended herself nevertheless.

"It couldn't have been me. I don't even know where you live."

"Oh, but he does. I'm sure he makes it his business to know everything."

"Why kill them? I don't see why."

"Mistaken identity."

"Breer knows who you are."

"It wasn't Breer who did it."

"You saw who?"

"I think so. Two kids." He fished for the pamphlet he'd found behind the door. The assassins had delivered it, he guessed. Something about their sober suits, and that glimpsed halo of blond hair, suggested doorstep evangelists, fresh-faced and lethal. Wouldn't the European delight in such a paradox?

"They made an error," he said, slipping off his jacket and starting to unbutton his sweat-soaked shirt. "They just went into the house and murdered the first man and woman they met. Only it wasn't me, it was Flynn. " He pulled his shirt out of his trousers and slung it off. "It's so easy, isn't it? He doesn't care about the law-he thinks he's above all that." Marty was forcibly aware of how ironic this was. He, the ex-con, the despiser of uniforms, cleaving to the notion of law. It wasn't a pretty refuge, but it was the best he'd got at the moment. "What is he, Carys? What makes him so certain he's immune?"

She was staring down at the fervent face of the Reverend Bliss. "Baptism in the Holy Ghost!" he promised, blithely.

"What does it matter what he is?" she said.

"Otherwise it's over."