Clive Barker - Books Of Blood Vol 6

There were voices in the hallway; and with Suckling's appearance the debate seemed to become more heated. Ballard went to the door, and listened, but his drug-dulled mind could make little sense of the argument. He prayed that Cripps would keep to his word, and not allow them to peer at him. He didn't want to be a beast like Mironenko. It wasn't freedom, was it, to be so terrible? It was merely a different kind of tyranny. But then he didn't want to be the first of Cripps' heroic new order either. He belonged to nobody, he realised; not even himself. He was hopelessly lost. And yet hadn't Mironenko said at that first meeting that the man who did not believe himself lost, was lost? Perhaps better that - better to exist in the twilight between one state and another, to prosper as best he could by doubt and ambiguity - than to suffer the certainties of the tower.

The debate below was gaining in momentum. Ballard opened the door so as to hear better. It was Suckling's voice that met him. The tone was waspish, but no less threatening for that.

'It's over ...' he was telling Cripps '... don't you understand plain English?' Cripps made an attempt to protest, but Suckling cut him short. 'Either you come in a gentlemanly fashion or Gideon and Sheppard carry you out. Which is it to be?'

'What is this?' Cripps demanded. 'You're nobody, Suckling. You're comic relief.'

'That was yesterday,' the man replied. 'There've been some changes made. Every dog has his day, isn't that right? You should know that better than anybody. I'd get a coat if I were you. It's raining.'

There was a short silence, then Cripps said:

'All right. I'll come.'

'Good man,' said Suckling sweetly. 'Gideon, go check upstairs.'

'I'm alone,' said Cripps.

'I believe you,' said Suckling. Then to Gideon, 'Do it anyway.'

Ballard heard somebody move across the hallway, and then a sudden flurry of movement. Cripps was either making an escape-bid or attacking Suckling, one of the two. Suckling shouted out; there was a scuffle. Then, cutting through the confusion, a single shot.

Cripps cried out, then came the sound of him falling.

Now Suckling's voice, thick with fury. 'Stupid,' he said. 'Stupid.'

Cripps groaned something which Ballard didn't catch. Had he asked to be dispatched, perhaps, for Suckling told him: 'No. You're going back to London. Sheppard, stop him bleeding. Gideon; upstairs.'

Baliard backed away from the head of the stairs as Gideon began his ascent. He felt sluggish and inept. There was no way out of this trap. They would corner him and exterminate him. He was a beast; a mad dog in a maze. If he'd only killed Suckling when he'd had the strength to do so. But then what good would that have done? The world was full of men like Suckling, men biding their time until they could show their true colours; vile, soft, secret men. And suddenly the beast seemed to move in Baliard, and he thought of the park and the fog and the smile on the face of Mironenko, and he felt a surge of grief for something he'd never had: the life of a monster.

Gideon was almost at the top of the stairs. Though it could only delay the inevitable by moments, Baliard slipped along the landing and opened the first door he found. It was the bathroom. There was a bolt on the door, which he slipped into place.

The sound of running water filled the room. A piece of guttering had broken, and was delivering a torrent of rain-water onto the window-sill. The sound, and the chill of the bathroom, brought the night of delusions back. He remembered the pain and blood; remembered the shower - water beating on his skull, cleansing him of the taming pain. At the thought, four words came to his lips unbidden.

'I do not believe.'

He had been heard.

'There's somebody up here,' Gideon called. The man approached the door, and beat on it. 'Open up!'

Baliard heard him quite clearly, but didn't reply. His throat was burning, and the roar of rotors was growing louder again. He put his back to the door and despaired.

Suckling was up the stairs and at the door in seconds. 'Who's in there?' he demanded to know. 'Answer me! Who's in there?' Getting no response, he ordered that Cripps be brought upstairs. There was more commotion as the order was obeyed.

'For the last time -' Suckling said.

The pressure was building in Ballard's skull. This time it seemed the din had lethal intentions; his eyes ached, as if about to be blown from their sockets. He caught sight of something in the mirror above the sink; something with gleaming eyes, and again, the words came - 'I do not believe' - but this time his throat, hot with other business, could barely pronounce them.

'Ballard,' said Suckling. There was triumph in the word. 'My God, we've got Ballard as well. This is our lucky day.'

No, thought the man in the mirror. There was nobody of that name here. Nobody of any name at all, in fact, for weren't names the first act of faith, the first board in the box you buried freedom in? The thing he was becoming would not be named; nor boxed; nor buried. Never again.

For a moment he lost sight of the bathroom, and found himself hovering above the grave they had made him dig, and in the depths the box danced as its contents fought its premature burial. He could hear the wood splintering - or was it the sound of the door being broken down?

The box-lid flew off. A rain of nails fell on the heads of the burial party. The noise in his head, as if knowing that its torments had proved fruitless, suddenly fled, and with it the delusion. He was back in the bathroom, facing the open door. The men who stared through at him had the faces of fools. Slack, and stupefied with shock - seeing the way he was wrought. Seeing the snout of him, the hair of him, the golden eye and the yellow tooth of him. Their horror elated him.

'Kill it!' said Suckling, and pushed Gideon into the breach. The man already had his gun from his pocket and was levelling it, but his trigger-finger was too slow. The beast snatched his hand and pulped the flesh around the steel. Gideon screamed, and stumbled away down the stairs, ignoring Suckling's shouts.

As the beast raised his hand to sniff the blood on his palm there was a flash of fire, and he felt the blow to his shoulder. Sheppard had no chance to fire a second shot however before his prey was through the door and upon him. Forsaking his gun, he made a futile bid for the stairs, but the beast's hand unsealed the back of his head in one easy stroke. The gunman toppled forward, the narrow landing filling with the smell of him. Forgetting his other enemies, the beast fell upon the offal and ate.

Somebody said: 'Ballard.'

The beast swallowed down the dead man's eyes in one gulp, like prime oysters.

Again, those syllables. ''Ballard.' He would have gone on with his meal, but that the sound of weeping pricked his ears. Dead to himself he was, but not to grief. He dropped the meat from his fingers and looked back along the landing.

The man who was crying only wept from one eye; the other gazed on, oddly untouched. But the pain in the living eye was profound indeed. It was despair, the beast knew; such suffering was too close to him for the sweetness of transformation to have erased it entirely. The weeping man was locked in the arms of another man, who had his gun placed against the side of his prisoner's head.

'If you make another move,' the captor said, Til blow his head off. Do you understand me?'

The beast wiped his mouth.

'Tell him, Cripps! He's your baby. Make him understand.'

The one-eyed man tried to speak, but words defeated him. Blood from the wound in his abdomen seeped between his fingers.

'Neither of you need die,' the captor said. The beast didn't like the music of his voice; it was shrill and deceitful. 'London would much prefer to have you alive. So why don't you tell him, Cripps? Tell him I mean him no harm.'