Clive Barker - The Damnation Game

Behind Whitehead, the door handle had started to rattle.

"Is that what you want?" Mamoulian demanded. "To go outside?"

"Yes."

"Then go."

Whitehead stepped away from the door as it was flung open with such venom the handle impaled itself in the corridor wall. The old man turned away from Mamoulian to make good his escape, but before he could take a step the light in the corridor was sucked away into the pitch darkness beyond the door, and to his horror Whitehead realized that the hotel had disappeared from beyond the threshold. There were no carpets and mirrors out there; no stairs winding down to the outside world. Only a wilderness he'd walked in half a life ago: a square, a sky shot with trembling stars.

"Go out," the European invited him. "It's been waiting for you all these years. Go on! Go!"

The floor beneath Whitehead's feet seemed to have become slick; he felt himself sliding toward the past. His face was washed by the open air as it glided into the hallway to meet him. It smelled of spring, of the Vistula, which roared to the sea ten minutes' walk from here; it smelled of blossom too. Of course it smelled of blossom. What he'd mistaken for stars were petals, white petals lifted by the breeze and gusted toward him. The sight of the petals was too persuasive to be ignored; he let them lead him back into this glorious night, when for a few shimmering hours the whole world had promised to be his for the taking. Even as he conceded his senses to the night the tree appeared, as phenomenal as he had so often dreamed it, its white head shaking slightly. Somebody lurked in the shade beneath its laden branches; their smallest movement caused a new cascade.

His entranced reason made one final snatch at the reality of the hotel, and he reached to touch the door of the suite, but his hand missed it in the darkness. There was no time to look again. The obscured watcher was emerging from the cover of the branches. Déjà vu suffused Whitehead; except that the first time he'd been here there had only been a glimpse of the man beneath the tree. This time the reluctant sentinel broke cover. Smiling a welcome, Lieutenant Konstantin Vasiliev showed his burned face to the man who'd come visiting from the future. Tonight the lieutenant would not shamble off for a rendezvous with a dead woman; tonight he would embrace the thief, who had grown furrowed and bearded, but whose presence here he'd awaited a lifetime.

"We thought you'd never come," Vasiliev said. He pushed a branch aside and stepped fully into the dead light of this fantastical night. He was proud to show himself, though his hair was entirely burned off, his face black and red, his body full of holes. His trousers were open; his member erect. Perhaps, later, they would go to his mistress together, he and the thief. Drink vodka like old friends. He grinned at Whitehead. "I told them you'd come eventually. I knew you would. To see us again."

Whitehead raised the gun he still had in his hand, and fired at the lieutenant. The illusion was not interrupted by this violence, however, merely reinforced. Shouts-in Russian-echoed from beyond the square.

"Now look what you've done," Vasiliev said. "Now the soldiers will come."

The thief recognized his error. He had never used a gun after a curfew: it was an invitation to arrest. He heard booted feet running, close by.

"We must hurry," the lieutenant insisted, casually spitting out the bullet, which he had caught between his teeth.

"I'm not going with you," Whitehead said.

"But we've waited so long," Vasiliev replied, and shook the branch to cue the next act. The tree raised its limbs like a bride, shrugging off its trousseau of blossom. Within moments the air was thick with a blizzard of petals. As they settled, spilling their radiance onto the ground, the thief began to pick out the familiar faces that waited beneath the branches. People who, down the years, had come to this wasteland, to this tree, and gathered under it with Vasiliev, to rot and weep. Evangeline was among them, the wounds that had been so tastefully concealed as she'd lain in her coffin now freely displayed.

She did not smile, but she stretched her arms out to embrace him, her mouth forming his name-"Jojo"-as she stepped forward. Bill Toy was behind her, in evening dress, as if for the Academy. His ears bled. Beside him, her face opened from lip to brow, was a woman in a nightgown. There were others too, some of whom he recognized, many of whom he didn't. The woman who'd led him to the card-player was there, bare-breasted, as he remembered her. Her smile was as distressing as ever. There were soldiers too, others who'd lost to Mamoulian like Vasiliev. One wore a skirt in addition to his bullet holes. From under its folds a snout appeared. Saul-his carcass ravaged-sniffed his old master, and growled.

"See how long we've waited?" Vasiliev said.

The lost faces were all looking at Whitehead, their mouths open. No

sound emerged.

"I can't help you."

"We want to cease," the lieutenant said.

"Go, then."

"Not without you. He won't die without you."

Finally the thief understood. This place, which he'd glimpsed in the sauna at the Sanctuary, existed within the European. These ghosts were creatures he'd devoured. Evangeline! Even she. They waited, the tattered remains of them, in this no-man's-land between flesh and death, until Mamoulian sickened of existence and lay down and perished. Then they too, presumably, would have their liberty. Until then their faces would make that soundless O at him, a melancholy appeal.

The thief shook his head.

"No," he said.

He would not give up his breath. Not for an orchard of trees, not for a nation of despairing faces. He turned his back on Muranowski Square and its plaintive ghosts. The soldiers were shouting nearby: soon they would arrive. He looked back toward the hotel. The penthouse corridor was still there, across the doorstep of a bombed house: a surreal juxtaposition of ruin and luxury. He crossed the rubble toward it, ignoring the soldiers' orders for him to halt. Vasiliev's cries were loudest, however. "Bastard!" he screeched. The thief blocked his curses and stepped out of the square and back into the heat of the hallway, raising his gun as he did so.

"Old news," he said, "you don't scare me with it." Mamoulian was still standing at the other end of the corridor; the minutes the thief had spent in the square had not elapsed here. "I'm not afraid!" Whitehead shouted. "You hear me, you soulless bastard? I'm not afraid!" He fired again, this time at the European's head. The shot hit his cheek. Blood came. Before Whitehead could fire again, Mamoulian retaliated.

"There are no limits," he said, his voice trembling, "to what I shall do!"

His thought caught the thief by the throat, and twisted. The old man's limbs convulsed; the gun flew out of his hand; his bladder and bowels failed him. Behind him, in the square, the ghosts began to applaud. The tree shook itself with such vehemence that the few blossoms it still carried were swept into the air. Some of them flew toward the door, melting on the threshold of past and present, like snowflakes. Whitehead fell against the wall. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of Evangeline, spitting blood at him. He began to slide down the wall, his body jangled as if in the throes of a grand mal. He let out one word through his rattling jaws. He said:

"No!"

On the bathroom floor Marty heard the denial howled out. He tried to stir himself, but his consciousness was sluggish, and his beaten body ached from scalp to skin. Taking hold of the bath, he hoisted himself to his knees. He'd clearly been forgotten: his part in the proceedings was purely comic relief. He tried to stand, but his lower limbs were traitorous; they buckled beneath him, and he fell again, feeling every bruise on impact.