Clive Barker - The Damnation Game

"No. He volunteered the information. He didn't want to see you curl up and die."

"I'm not going to die!" the old man -snapped. "Mamoulian's the one who'll die. You'll see. He's running out of time. All I have to do is wait. Here's as good a place as any. I'm very comfortable. Except for Carys. I miss her. Why don't you send her to me, Marty? Now that would be most welcome."

"You'll never see her again."

Whitehead sighed. "Oh, yes," he said, "she'll be back when she's tired of you. When she needs someone who really appreciates her stony heart. You'll see. Well... thank you for calling. Goodnight, Marty."

"Wait."

"I said goodnight."

"... I've got questions..." Marty began.

"Questions, questions..." the voice was already receding. Marty pressed closer to the door to offer his final sliver of bait. "We found out who the European is; what he is!" But there was no reply. He'd lost Whitehead's attention. It was fruitless anyway, he knew. There was no wisdom to be got here; just a drunken old man replaying his old power games. Somewhere deep inside the penthouse suite a door closed. All contact between the two men was summarily severed.

Marty descended the two flights of stairs back to the open fire door, and left the building by the route he'd entered. After the smell of dead fire inside, even the highway-tainted air smelled light and new.

He stood for several minutes on the escape and watched the traffic passing along the highway, his attention pleasantly diverted by the spectacle of lane-hopping commuters. Below, two dogs fought among the refuse, bored with rape. None of them cared, drivers or dogs, about the fall of potentates: why should he? Whitehead, like the hotel, was a lost cause. He'd done his best to salvage the old man and failed. Now he and Carys would slip away into a new life, and let Whitehead make whatever arrangements for cessation he chose. Let him slit his wrists in a stupor of remorse, or choke on vomit in his sleep: Marty was past caring.

He climbed down the escape and scrambled onto the table, then crossed the wasteland to the car, glancing back only once to see if Whitehead was watching. Needless to say, the upper windows were blank.

When they got to Caliban Street the girl was still so high on her delayed fix it was difficult to communicate through her chemically elated senses. The European left the evangelists to do the cleaning up and burning he'd instructed Breer to do, and escorted Carys to the room on the top floor. There he set about persuading her to find her father, and quickly. At first the drug in her just smiled at him. His frustration began to curdle into anger. When she started to laugh at his threats-that slow, rootless laughter that was so like the pilgrim's laugh, as if she knew some joke about him that she wasn't telling-his control snapped and he unleashed a nightmare of such unrestrained viciousness upon her its crudity disgusted him almost as much as it terrorized her.

She watched in disbelief as the same tide of muck that he'd conjured in the bathroom dribbled and then gushed from her own body. "Take it away," she told him, but he only increased the pitch of the illusion, until her lap squirmed with monstrosities. Abruptly, her drug bubble burst. A gleam of insanity crept into her eyes as she cowered in the corner of the room, while the things came from her every orifice, struggling to work their way out, then clinging to her with whatever limbs his invention had supplied. She was within a hairbreadth of madness, but he'd gone too far to withdraw the assault now, repelled though he was by its depravity.

"Find the pilgrim," he told her, "and all this vanishes."

"Yes, yes, yes," she pleaded, "whatever you want."

He stood and watched while she obeyed his demands, flinging herself into that same fugue state she'd achieved when pursuing Toy. It took her longer to find the pilgrim, however, so long that the European began to suspect she'd canceled all link with her body, and left it to his devices rather than reenter it. But she finally returned. She had found him at a hotel no less than half an hour's drive from Caliban Street. Mamoulian was not surprised. It was not in the nature of foxes to travel far from their natural habitat; Whitehead had simply gone to ground.

Wrung out by the journey and the fear that had propelled her, Carys was half-carried down the stairs by Chad and Tom and out to the waiting car. The European made one farewell circuit of the house, to see that any sign of his presence there had been removed. The girl in the cellar, and Breer's detritus, could not be cleared at such short notice, but that was a nicety. Let those who came after construe what they liked from the atrocity photographs on the wall and the bottles of perfume so lovingly arranged. All that mattered was that evidence of his, the European's, existence here-or indeed anywhere-be thoroughly effaced. Soon he would be rumor again; gossip among the haunted people.

"Time to go," he said as he locked the door. "The Deluge is almost upon us."

Now, as they drove, Carys was beginning to find some strength. Balmy air through the front window caressed her face. She opened her eyes fractionally, and cast them in the direction of the European. He was not looking her way; he was staring out of the window, that aristocratic profile of his made blander than ever by fatigue.

She wondered how her father would fare in the approaching endgame. He was old, but Mamoulian was vastly older; was age, in this confrontation, an advantage or a disadvantage? Suppose-the thought occurred to her for the first time-they were equally matched? Suppose the game they were playing ended without defeat or victory on either side? Just a twentieth-century conclusion-all ambiguities. She didn't want that: she wanted finality.

Whichever way it went she knew there was small chance of her survival in the coming Deluge. Only Marty could tip the balance in her favor, and where was he now? If he returned to Kilburn and found it deserted, mightn't he assume she'd left him of her own accord? She couldn't predict the way he'd jump; that he was capable of the blackmail with the heroin had come as a shock. One desperate maneuver remained a possibility: to think her way to him and tell him where she was, and why. There were risks in such a gambit. Catching stray thoughts from him was one thing-it was no more than a parlor trick-but attempting to push her way into his head and communicate with him consciously, mind to mind, would require more mental muscle. Even assuming she had the strength to do it, what would the consequences of such an intrusion be for Marty? She pondered the dilemma in a daze of anxiety, knowing the minutes were ticking by, and soon it would be too late for any escape attempt, however desperate.

Marty was driving south toward Cricklewood when a pain began at the nape of his neck. It spread rapidly up and over his skull, escalating within two minutes to a headache of unparalleled proportions. His instinct was to pick up speed and get back to Kilburn as quickly as possible, but the Finchley Road was heavily trafficked, and all he could do was edge along with the flow, the pain worsening every ten yards. His consciousness-increasingly preoccupied with the upward spiral of pain-focused on smaller and yet smaller bits of information, his perception narrowing to a pinprick. Ahead of the Citroën the road was a blur. He was almost blinded, and a collision with a refrigerated meat truck was only prevented by the skill of the other driver. He realized that driving any further could be fatal, so he edged out of the traffic as best he could-horns blaring front and behind-and parked, inelegantly, at the side of the road, then stumbled out of the car to get some air. Completely disoriented, he stepped straight into the middle of the traffic. The lights of the oncoming vehicles were a wall of strobing colors. He felt his knees about to buckle and only prevented himself from collapsing in front of the traffic by hanging on to the open car door and hauling himself around the front of the Citroën to the comparative safety of the pavement.