The Damnation Game

by Clive Barker

  "I need help from you young men."

  "To do what?" Chad asked.

  "To begin the Deluge," Mamoulian replied. A smile, uncertain at first but broadening as the idea caught his imagination, appeared on Chad's face. His features, too often sober with zeal, ignited.

  "Oh, yes," he said. He glanced across at Tom. "Hear what this man's telling us?"

  Tom nodded.

  "You hear, man?"

  "I hear. I hear."

  All his blissful life Chad had waited for this invitation. For the first time he could picture the literal reality behind the destruction he'd threatened on a hundred doorsteps. In his mind waters-red, raging waters-mounted into foam-crested waves and bore down on this pagan city. We are as flotsam in the flood, he said, and the words brought images with them. Men and women-but mostly women-running naked before these curling tides. The water was hot; rains of it fell on their screaming faces, their gleaming, jiggling breasts. This was what the Reverend had promised all along; and here was this man asking them to help make it all possible, to bring this thrashing, foamy Day of Days to consummation. How could they refuse? He felt the urge to thank the man for considering them worthy. The thought fathered the action. His knees bent, and he fell to the floor at Mamoulian's feet.

  "Thank you," he said to the man with the dark suit.

  "You'll help me, then?"

  "Yes..." Chad replied; wasn't this homage sign enough? "Of course." Behind him, Tom murmured his own concession.

  "Thank you," Chad said. "Thank you."

  But when he looked up the man, apparently convinced by their devotion, had already left the room.

  57

  Marty and Carys slept together in his single bed: long, rewarding sleep. If the baby in the room below them cried in the night, they didn't hear it. Nor did they hear the sirens on Kilburn High Road, police and fire engines going to a conflagration in Maida Vale. Dawn through the dirty window didn't wake them either, though the curtains had not been drawn. But once, in the early hours, Marty turned in his sleep and his eyes flickered open to see the first light of day at the glass. Rather than turning away from it, he let it fall on his lids as they flickered down again.

  They had half a day together in the flat before the need began; bathing themselves, drinking coffee, saying very little. Carys washed and bound the wound on Marty's leg; they changed their clothes, ditching those they'd worn the previous night.

  It wasn't until the middle of the afternoon that they started to talk. The dialogue began quite calmly, but Carys' nervousness escalated as she felt hungrier for a fix, and the talk rapidly became a desperate diversion from her jittering belly. She told Marty what life with the European had been like: the humiliations, the deceptions, the sense she had that he knew her father, and her too, better than she guessed. Marty in his turn attempted to paraphrase the story Whitehead had told him on that last night, but she was too distracted to concentrate properly. Her conversation became increasingly agitated.

  "I have to have a fix, Marty."

  "Now?"

  "Pretty soon."

  He'd been waiting for this moment and dreading it. Not because he couldn't find her a supply; he knew he could. But because he'd hoped somehow she'd be able to resist the need when she was with him.

  "I feel really bad," she said.

  "You're all right. You're with me."

  "He'll come, you know."

  "Not now, he won't."

  "He'll be angry, and he'll come."

  Marty's mind went back and back again to his experience in the upstairs room of Caliban Street. What he had seen there, or rather not seen there, had terrified him more profoundly than the dogs or Breer. Those were merely physical dangers. But what had gone on in the room was a danger of another order altogether. He had felt, perhaps for the first time in his life, that his soul-a notion he had hitherto rejected as Christian flim-flam-had been threatened. What he meant by the word he wasn't certain; not, he suspected, what the pope meant. But some part of him more essential than limb or life had been almost eclipsed, and Mamoulian had been responsible. What more could the creature unleash, if pressed? His curiosity was more now than an idle desire to know what was behind the veil: it had become a necessity. How could they hope to arm themselves against this demagogue without some clue to his nature?

  "I don't want to know," Carys said, reading his thoughts. "If he comes, he comes. There's nothing we can do about it."

  "Last night-" he began, about to remind her of how they had won the skirmish. She waved the thought away before it was finished. The strain on her face was unbearable; her need was flaying her.

  "Marty..."

  He looked across at her.

  "... you promised," she said accusingly.

  "I haven't forgotten."

  He'd done the mental arithmetic in his head: not the cost of the drug itself, but of lost pride. He would have to go to Flynn for the heroin; he knew no one else he could trust. They were both fugitives now, from Mamoulian and from the law.

  "I'll have to make a phone call," he said.

  "Make it," she replied.

  She seemed to have physically altered in the last half-hour. Her skin was waxy; her eyes had a desperate gleam in them; the shaking was worsening by the minute.

  "Don't make it easy for him," she said.

  He frowned: "Easy?"

  "He can make me do things I don't want to," she said. Tears had started to run. There was no accompanying sob, just a free-fall from the eyes. "Maybe make me hurt you."

  "It's all right. I'll go now. There's a guy lives with Charmaine, he'll be able to get me stuff, don't worry. You want to come?"

  She hugged herself. "No," she said. "I'll slow you down. Just go."

  He pulled on his jacket, trying not to look at her; the mixture of frailty and appetite scared him. The sweat on her body was fresh; it gathered in the soft passage behind her clavicles; it streamed on her face.

  "Don't let anybody in, OK?"

  She nodded, her eyes searing him.

  When he'd gone she locked the door behind him and went back to sit on the bed. The tears started to come again, freely. Not grief tears, just salt water. Well, perhaps there was some grief in them: for this rediscovered fragility, and for the mats who had gone down the stairs.

  He was responsible for her present discomfort, she thought. He'd been the one to seduce her into thinking she could stand on her own two feet. And where had it brought her; brought them both? To this hothouse cell in the middle of a July afternoon with so much malice ready to close in on them.

  It wasn't love she felt for him. That was too big a burden of feeling to carry. It was at best infatuation, mingled with that sense of impending loss she always tasted when close to somebody, as though every moment in his presence she was internally mourning the time when he would no longer be there.

  Below, the door slammed as he stepped into the street. She lay back on the bed, thinking of the first time they'd made love together. Of how even that most private act had been overlooked by the European. The thought of Mamoulian, once begun, was like a snowball on a steep hill. It rolled, gathering speed and size as it went, until it was monstrous. An avalanche, a whiteout.

  For an instant she doubted that she was simply remembering: the feeling was so clear; so real. Then she had no doubts.

  She stood up, the bedsprings creaking. It wasn't memory at all.

  He was here.

  58

  "Flynn?"

  "Hello." The voice at the other end of the line was gruff with sleep. "Who is this?"

  "It's Marty. Have I woken you up?"

  "What the hell do you want?"

  "I need some help."

  There was a long silence at the other end of the phone.

  "Are you still there?"

  "Yeah. Yeah."

  "I need heroin."

  The gruffness left the voice; incredulity replaced. it.

  "You on it?"

  "I need it for a friend." Mar
ty could sense the smile spreading on Flynn's face. "Can you get me something? Quickly."

  "How much?"

  "I've got a hundred quid."

  "It's not impossible."

  "Soon?"

  "Yeah. If you like. What time is it now?" The thought of easy money had got Flynn's mind oiled and ready to go. "One-fifteen? OK." He paused for calculations. "You come around in about three-quarters of an hour."

  That was efficient; unless, as Marty suspected, Flynn was involved with the market so deeply he had easy access to the stuff: his jacket pocket, for instance.

  "I can't guarantee, of course," he said just to keep the desperation simmering. "But I'll do my best. Can't say fairer than that, can I?"

  "Thanks," Marty replied. "I appreciate this."

  "Just bring the cash, Marty. That's all the appreciation I need."

  The phone went dead. Flynn had a knack of getting the last word in. "Bastard," Marty said to the receiver, and slammed it down. He was shaking slightly; his nerves were frayed. He slipped into a newsstand, picked up a packet of cigarettes, and then got back into the car. It was lunchtime; the traffic in the middle of London would be thick, and it would take the best part of forty-five minutes to get to the old stamping ground. There was no time to go back and check on Carys. Besides, he guessed she wouldn't have thanked him for delaying his purchase. She needed dope more than she needed him.

  The European appeared too suddenly for Carys to hold his insinuating presence at bay. But weak as she felt, she had to fight. And there was something about this assault that was different from others. Was it that he was more desperate in his approach this time? The back of her neck felt physically bruised by his entrance. She rubbed it with a sweating palm.

  I found you, he said in her head.

  She looked around the room for a way to drive him out.

  No use, he told her.

  "Leave us alone."

  You've treated me badly, Carys. I should punish you. But I won't; not if you give me your father. Is that so much to ask? I have a right to him. You know that in your heart of hearts. He belongs to me.

  She knew better than to trust his coaxing tones. If she found Papa, what would he do then? Leave her to live her life? No; he would take her too, the way he'd taken Evangeline and Toy and only he knew how many others; to that tree, to that Nowhere.

  Her eyes came to rest on the small electric cooker in the corner of the room. She got up, her limbs jangling, and walked unsteadily across to it. If the European had caught wind of her plan, then all the better. He was weak, she could sense it. Tired and sad; one eye on the sky for kites, his concentration faltering. But his presence was still distressing enough to muddy her thought processes. Once she reached the cooker she could hardly think of why she was there. She pressed her mind into higher gear. Refusal! That was it. The cooker was refusal! She reached out and turned on one of the two electric rings.

  No, Carys, he told her. This isn't wise.

  His face appeared in her mind's eye. It was vast, and it blotted out the room around her. She shook her head to rid herself of him, but he wouldn't be dislodged. There was a second illusion too, besides his face. She felt arms around her: not a stranglehold, but a sheltering embrace. They rocked her, those arms.

  "I don't belong to you," she said, fighting off the urge to succumb to his cradling. In the back of her head she could hear a song being sung; its rhythm matched the soporific rhythm of the rocking. The words weren't English, but Russian. It was a lullaby, she knew that without understanding the words, and as it ran, and she listened, it seemed all the hurts she'd felt disappeared. She was a babe-in-arms again; in his arms. He was rocking her to sleep to this murmured song.

  Through the lace of approaching sleep she caught sight of a bright pattern. Though she couldn't fix its significance, she remembered that it had been important, this orange spiral that glowed not far from her. But what did it mean? The problem vexed her, and kept the sleep she wanted at bay. So she opened her eyes a little wider to work out what the pattern was, once and for all, and so be done with it.

  The cooker came into focus in front of her, the ring glowing. The air above it shimmered. Now she remembered, and the memory thrust sleepiness away. She stretched out her arm toward the heat.

  Don't do this, the voice in her head advised. You'll only hurt yourself.

  But she knew better. Slumber in his arms was more dangerous than any pain the next few moments would bring. The heat was uncomfortable, though her skin was still inches from its source, and for a desperate moment her willpower faltered.

  You'll be scarred for life, the European said, sensing her equivocation.

  "Let me alone."

  I just don't want to see you hurt, child. I love you too much. The lie was a spur. She found the vital ounce of courage, raised her hand and pressed it, palm down, onto the electric ring.

  The European screamed first; she heard his voice begin to rise in the instant before her own cry began. She pulled her hand off the cooker as the smell of burning hit her. Mamoulian withdrew from her; she felt his retreat. Relief flooded her system. Then the pain overwhelmed her, and a quick dark came down. She didn't fear it, though. It was quite safe, that dark. He wasn't in it.

  "Gone," she said, and collapsed.

  When she came to, less than five minutes later, her first thought was that she was holding a fistful of razors.

  She edged her way across to the bed and put her head on it until she'd fully regained her consciousness. When she had courage enough, she looked at her hand. The design of the rings was burned quite clearly onto her palm, a spiral tattoo. She stood up and went to the sink to run the wound under cold water. The process calmed the pain somewhat; the damage was not as severe as she had thought. Though it had seemed an age, her palm had probably only been in direct contact with the ring for a second or two. She wrapped her hand up in one of Marty's T-shirts. Then she remembered she'd read somewhere that burns were best left to the open air, and she undid her handiwork. Exhausted, she lay on the bed and waited for Marty to bring her a piece of the Island.

  59

  The Reverend Bliss' boys stayed in the downstairs back room of the house on Caliban Street, lost in a reverie of watery death, for well over an hour. In that time Mamoulian had gone in search of Carys, found her and been driven out again. But he had discovered her whereabouts. More than that, he had gleaned that Strauss-the man he had so foolishly ignored at the Sanctuary-had now gone to fetch the girl heroin. It was time, he thought, to stop being so compassionate.

  He felt like a beaten dog: all he wanted to do was to lie down and die. It seemed today-especially since the girl's skillful rejection of him-that he felt every hour of his long, long life in his sinews. He looked down at his hand, which still ached with the burn he'd received through Carys. Perhaps the girl would understand, finally, that all of this was inevitable. That the endgame he was about to enter was more important than her life or Strauss' or Breer's or those of the two idiot Memphisites he'd left dreaming two floors below.

  He went down to the first landing and into Breer's room. The Razor-Eater was recumbent on his mattress in the corner of the room, his neck akimbo, his stomach impaled, gaping up at him like a lunatic fish. At the bottom of the mattress, drawn up close because of Breer's failing eyesight, the television gabbled its inanities.

  "We'll be leaving soon," Mamoulian said.

  "Did you find her?"

  "Yes, I found her. A place called Bright Street. The house-" he seemed to find this thought amusing, "is painted yellow. The second floor, I think."

  "Bright Street," said Breer, dreamily. "Shall we go and find her then?"

  "No; not we."

  Breer turned a little more toward the European; he had braced his broken neck with a makeshift splint, and it made movement difficult. "I want to see her," he said.

  "You shouldn't have let her go in the first place."

  "He came; the one from the house. I told you."

 
"Oh, yes," said Mamoulian. "I have plans for Strauss."

  "Shall I find him for you?" Breer said. The old images of execution sprang into his head, as if fresh from a book of atrocities. One or two of them were sharper than ever, as if they were close to being realized.

  "No need," the European replied. "I have two eager acolytes willing to do that job for me."

  Breer sulked. "What can I do, then?"

  "You can prepare the house for our departure. I want you to burn what few possessions we have. I want it to be as though we never existed, you and I."

  "The end's near, is it?"

  "Now I know where she is, yes."

  "She may run off."

  "She's too weak. She won't be able to move until Strauss brings her drug. And of course he'll never do that."

  "You're going to have him killed?"

  "Him, and anyone who gets in my way from this moment on. I've no energy left for compassion. That's been my error so often: letting the innocent escape. You've got your instructions, Anthony. Be about your business."

  He withdrew from the fetid room, and went downstairs to his new agents. The Americans stood respectfully when he opened the door.

  "Are you ready?" he asked.

  The blond one, who had been the more compliant from the outset, started to express his undying thanks over again, but Mamoulian silenced him. He gave them their orders, and they took them as if he were dispensing sweets.

  "There are knives in the kitchen," he said. "Take them and use them in good health."

  Chad smiled. "You want us to kill the wife too?"

  "The Deluge has no time to be selective."

  "Suppose she hasn't sinned?" Tom said, not sure of why he thought this foolish thought.

  "Oh, she's sinned," the man replied, with glittering eyes, and that was good enough for the Reverend Bliss' boys.

  Upstairs, Breer hoisted himself off his mattress with difficulty, and stumbled into the bathroom to look at himself in the cracked mirror. His injuries had long ago stopped seeping, but he looked terrible.