Clive Barker - The Great and Secret Show

She started down to the ground floor, clinging to the banister, her pace slowing as breathlessness and stiff joints took their toll. The band had finished playing but somebody was still at the piano, which comforted her. Rather than waste energy shouting from the stairs she waited until she was at the bottom to buttonhole somebody. The front door was open. Rochelle was standing on the step. A party of half a dozen, Merv Turner and his wife, Gilbert Kind and his girlfriend of the moment, plus two women she didn't recognize, were making their farewells. Turner saw her coming, and a look of distaste came over his fat face. He returned his gaze to Rochelle, speeding up his departure speech.

"...so sad," Eve caught him saying. "But very moving. Thank you so much for sharing this with us."

"Yes—" his wife began, but was cut off before she could offer platitudes of her own by Turner, who, glancing back at Eve, hurried away into the open air.

"Merv—" his wife said, clearly irritated.

"No time!" Turner replied. "It's been wonderful, Rochelle. Hurry up, Gil. The limos are waiting. We're going on ahead."

"No, wait," said the girlfriend. "Oh, shit, Gilbert, he's going without us."

"Please excuse us," Kind said to Rochelle.

"Wait!" Eve called after him. "Gilbert, wait/"

Her call was too loud to be ignored, though to judge by the look on Kind's face when he turned back to her he'd have preferred it that way. He put a less than radiant smile over his feelings and opened his arms, not in welcome but in a shrug.

"Isn't it always the way?" he called to her. "We didn't get to talk, Eve. So sorry. So sorry. Next time." He took hold of the girlfriend's arm. "We'll call you," he said. "Won't we, hon?" He blew her a kiss. "You look wonderful!" he said, and hurried after Turner.

The two women followed, not even concerning themselves to make their goodbyes to Rochelle. She didn't seem to care. If common sense hadn't already told Eve that Rochelle was in league with the monster on the upper floor, she saw evidence of it now. As soon as the guests had gone from the door she rolled her eyes up in an all too recognizable fashion, her muscles relaxing so that she lay against the door jamb as though barely able to stand upright. No help to be had there, Eve thought, and headed through to the lounge.

Again, the only illumination came from outside the house, the garish colors of the Carnivalia. The light was bright enough for Eve to see that in the half hour she'd been detained by Lamar the party had wound down almost to a dead stop. Fully half of the guests had gone, sensing perhaps the change that had come over the gathering as more and more people had been touched by the evil on the upper floor. Another group was in the act of departing as she got to the door, bustle and loud talk covering their anxiety. She knew none of them, but wasn't about to let that stop her. She took hold of a young man's arm.

"You've got to help me," she said.

She knew the face from the billboards on Sunset. The boy was Rick Lobo. His prettiness had made him a sudden star, though his love scenes looked like lesbianism.

"What's wrong?" he said.

"There's something upstairs," she said. "It's got a friend of mine—"

The face was only capable of a smile and a sultry pout; with those responses inappropriate, all it could do was look blankly back at her.

"Please come," she said.

"She's drunk," somebody in Lobo's party said, not caring to conceal the accusation.

Eve looked the way of the speaker. The whole pack of brats was young. None of them over twenty-five. And most, she guessed, well high. But untouched by the Jaff.

"I'm not drunk," Eve said. "Please listen—"

"Come on, Rick," a girl in the party said.

"Do you want to come with us?" Lobo asked.

"Rick!" the girl said.

"No. I want you to come upstairs—"

The girl laughed. "Bet you do," she said. "Come on, Rickv."

"I have to go. Sorry," Lobo said. "You should go too. This party's a bummer."

The boy's incomprehension was solid as a brick wall, but Eve wasn't about to let go.

"Trust me," she said. "I'm not drunk. There's something horrible happening here." She threw a glance towards the rest of them. "You all feel it," she said, feeling like a cut-rate Cassandra but knowing no other way to put it. "There's something going on here—"

"Yeah," said the girl. "There is. We're leaving."

Her words had touched a nerve in Lobo, however.

"You should come with us," he said, "it's getting weird in here."

"She doesn't want to go," said a voice on the stairs. Sam Sagansky made the descent. "I'll look after her, Ricky, don't you worry."

Lobo was clearly happy to be relieved of the responsibility. He let Eve's arm go.

"Mr. Sagansky'll look after you," he said.

"No—" Eve insisted, but the group was already heading towards the door, the same anxiety fuelling their hurried exit as had fuelled that of the Turner party. Eve saw Rochelle lift herself up from her languor to accept the proffered thanks. Any attempt to follow after them was blocked by Sam. All Eve could do was seek some help in the room behind her.

The pickings looked slim. Of the remaining thirty or so guests most seemed beyond helping themselves, never mind her. The pianist was providing a soporific medley of songs for dancing in the dark, and four couples were doing just that, draped about each other as they shuffled around on the same spot. The rest of the room's occupants seemed to be drugged or drunk or touched with the Jaff's torpor, some sitting, many lying on the furniture, barely aware of their surroundings. The anorexic Belinda Kristol was among them, her wasted frame no possible use in this jeopardy. On the sofa beside her, his head in her lap, was the son of Buddy's agent, equally wasted.

Eve glanced back towards the door. Sagansky was following her. She scanned the room in desperation, looking for the best hope of a bad hand and decided upon the pianist. She wove between the dancers, her panic getting the better of her again.

"Stop playing," she said when she reached him.

"Want something different?" he said, looking around at her. His gaze was blurred by drink but at least his eyes didn't roll up.

"Yeah, something loud. Really loud," she said. "And fast. Let's get the party going, shall we?"

"Little late for that," he said.

"What's your name?"

"Doug Frankl."

"OK, Doug. You keep playing..." She looked back towards Sagansky, who was standing beyond the dancers, watching her. "...I need your help, Doug."

"And I need a drink," he slurred. "Any chance of getting one for me?"

"In a moment. First, you see that man on the other side of the room?"

"Yeah, I know him. Everyone knows him. He's a fuck-head."

"He just tried to assault me."

"He did?" Doug said, frowning up at Eve. "That's disgusting."

"And my partner...Mr. Grillo...is at the top of the house..."

"That's really disgusting," Doug said again. "You're old enough to be his mother."

"Thanks, Doug."

"That's really disgusting."

Eve leaned in towards her unlikely knight. "I need your help, " she whispered. "And I need it now. "

"Got to keep playing," Doug said.

"You can come back and play when we've got a drink for you and Mr. Grillo for me."

"I really need a drink."

"You do. I can see that. And you deserve one. Playing like this. You deserve a drink."

"I do. I really do."

She reached over, put her hands around Frankl's wrists, and lifted his hands from the keys. He didn't protest. Though the music stopped the dancers continued to shuffle.

"Get up, Doug," she whispered.

He struggled to his feet, kicking over the piano stool as he did so.

"Which way for the drinks?" he said. He was further gone than she'd thought. His playing must have been on remote control because he could barely take a step ahead of him. But he was company at least. She took his arm, hoping Sagansky would interpret Doug as the supporting strength rather than the other way about. "This way," she murmured to him, and led them both around the perimeter of the dance floor towards the door. From the corner of her eye she saw Sagansky moving in their direction, and attempted to pick up their pace, but he came between them and the door.