She buried her thoughts of The Cold Man and dialed the number. As the call went through, the connections clicking and whirring across the miles between them, she reached for the television remote and dialed down the volume on the news channel she’d been watching.
The clicking stopped. A connection was made. Kirsty dialed the last of the volume to silence and waited for contact to be made.
It was a recording that replied, not life.
VI
“HELLO, YOU’VE REACHED THE offices of Dr. Joseph Lansing. If you wish to leave a message…”
Why not, this time? If she was going to die at the hands of The Cold Man anyway, what did it matter if she left Lansing a message or not? Certainly an innocent message, telling Lansing that she’d called, could cause no furor.
“Dr. Lansing? I know I’m late calling you back—” (Shit! Why had she said that? Well, it was done now.) “—and—and I just—and—” (What should she say now? Her wits always seemed to fail her when the abyss of the answering machine stared back at her.) “—I guess there’s nothing more I can really—”
“Kirsty! Where have you been?”
“I’m sorry! I—”
“I have to make this very quick.”
“I’m listening.”
“It’s the Pinhead.”
That name. It was exactly what she didn’t want to hear. It was a stone in her stomach.
“What about him?”
“I know where he is.”
“Okay.” Kirsty kept her silence a moment. Then: “What’s that got to do with me?”
“I need you to help me deal with him.”
“Why me?” Kirsty said. “And come to that, why you?”
“Because if not, the world will end.”
Lansing’s voice was a monotone. Not for a moment did Kirsty doubt he knew what he was talking about. But the urgency, which had been in his voice at the beginning of the conversation, had given way to something else. She wasn’t quite sure what it was, but she listened for it when next he spoke.
“They’re listening to us,” he said. “Probably they’ve been on to us all along. After all, I hear you had an encounter with something this afternoon.”
He knew about the Runner. How?
“Where did you hear about him?”
“It’s in the air, Kirsty. The final act is about to be performed by the one who stays to watch the curtain fall. Somebody who can afford to buy the theatre and tear it down. Leave it empty ground.”
It was a strange little metaphor. But Kirsty was not even mildly tempted to ask him what the fuck he meant by it.
“I can’t give you explanations,” he said. “It would be too dangerous. You either have to trust me, or not.”
“And if not?”
“You tell me.”
“Alright. Just one question then, if I help you to deal with him, does that mean I get my life back?”
“Life or death,” he said. “You’ll get one or the other.”
Curiously, this wasn’t such a bad option. She’d reached the end of her rope. Better to play in the Final Act, even though she didn’t yet know the words, than to meander on in the hope that sooner or later somebody would kill the lights.
“That sounds about right. What do you need?”
“Have you ever heard of Devil’s Island?”
“After Lodovico Street,” Kirsty said, “I researched everything with the word devil in it. Of course I know. The Devil’s Island. One of the worst prisons in the history of human cruelty. A French penal colony off the coast of French Guiana. What about it?”
“That’s where he is.”
“And?”
“Do you have enough money to purchase a ticket there?”
“You want me to fly to an island the size of my bed because The Cold Man is waiting for me there?”
“Interesting association of words,” Lansing said. “Your bed and The Cold Man.”
“Don’t even,” she warned.
“Just an observation.”
“Say I go? What then?”
“Keep his attention long enough to bring this sad story to a happy end.”
“You’re kidding.”
“About?”
“That there’s a happy ending?”
“We have to believe it’s still possible. It’s very remote perhaps, but still…”
“Yes,” she said. “I know. That’s all I’m going to get with so little time.”
“You and I both know that to him you are the Grand Note in the Final Chorus. If anybody can hold him there to listen for a few more seconds while the stars align, it’s you.”
When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.
—Tecumseh
Part 2
I
IT TOOK KIRSTY THE better part of forty hours to get from her room in London to the Devil’s Island.
She got a cab to take her out to Heathrow, where she caught an Air France flight to Paris. The London flight brought her into Charles de Gaulle Airport, while her flight to French Guiana left from Orly. That meant another cab ride, this time from one airport to the other. At Orly she checked in for the longest leg of her journey, which was the nine-hour trip between continents. Kirsty had a plastic glass of red wine with the meal that was served about a third of the way into the flight. It was better wine than she’d expected, and the when the stewardess came round to offer her a refill she happily accepted.
“Am I going to regret this?” she said.
“It’s supposed to be good for you. Isn’t that what they’re saying these days? And if you want to sleep for a while just let me know and I’ll bring you an extra couple of pillows. We’ve got plenty; the flight’s barely half-full.”
The wine worked well as a soporific. She felt the tensions in her body ease away, her eyelids so heavy she could not have kept them open if she’d wanted to. She lost her hold on the world of solid things, and at last gave into a dreamless sleep.
II
THE SHIP APPROACHED THE island from the open ocean, and there weighed anchor. When it did so, the ship’s solitary passenger disembarked, transferring to a smaller vessel: a black boat which had room only for two oarsmen, and its passenger. She arrived on the island late afternoon on a Sunday.
III
“IT’S VERY GOOD YOU came today,” Madame Rembert, who owned the two-bedroom hotel, which offered the island’s only accommodation, explained to Kirsty. “Yesterday, I was on the mainland, at a funeral. I run the premises on my own, which is not easy for a woman of eighty-one…” She left this information as bait dangling in the hot, whispering air. Kirsty allowed herself a little smile in disbelief that she had come all this way, only to meet a woman who had the same tricks for winning a compliment as her own mother. She concealed the smile, and went for the bait.
“Eighty-one? I find that hard to believe. You don’t look a day over seventy.”
Madame Rembert was briefly radiant. “I have so much to offer a man, even now. But the men here? Ha! They’re either dead or insane.”
“May I ask—”
“Why I’m here?” she said. Then she called to someone. “Walter.”
A small grayish man, with deep grooves running the length of his face, presented himself. He was instructed to take Kirsty’s bag to her room, and to pour two glasses of sherry to be served on the veranda.
“Walk with me,” she said to Kirsty.
As she spoke, she walked out of the door of the little room that served as the hotel’s office, and waved her hand at the scenery, or what passed for it. It was little more than a green wall, in truth. The jungle would have overtaken Madame Rembert’s little hotel long ago had it not been for the men who had been working up and down the perimeter for the hour and half Kirsty had been here. As they went about their busines
s, Kirsty exited the office, following after Madame Rembert, and headed left down the narrow walkway, in the direction she’d seen the old woman walk. The ancient, warped boards beneath her feet creaked as she progressed.
As the men went about their business, Kirsty stole a glance at the small collection of bizarre, almost child-like paintings of the jungle that lined the wall. They were curious things: landscapes depicting abstracted versions of the jungle and its birds. They seemed to pull the eye toward them, as though images or messages hidden deep beneath the paint yearned to break free. Kirsty shook them from her mind and turned a corner. There she saw Madame Rembert sitting on the veranda, sipping sherry, watching the silent men shuffle up and down the edge of the property, keeping the jungle ever at a distance.
“Twenty yards,” Madame Rembert said.
“What is?”
“The distance between the hotel and that.” She raised a trembling hand in the direction of the jungle: the canopy of the trees, heavy with foliage, bowing to meet the knotted shrubs, which were overrun with plants and vines. Green, green, and more green. And where it wasn’t green, black and flat.
“That wall.” She sipped at her sherry as though this were a Sunday afternoon in some bourgeois suburb of Paris, not the sweltering wilds of the densest jungle in the world.
“It doesn’t look very welcoming,” Kirsty said.
“It isn’t. I presume you came here out of some kind of curiosity about a place that has seen too much sorrow and too much death. It won’t take you but a day to get your fill of it. That’s all there is to see.”
“There are other houses, though. I saw them down by the harbor.”
“There are a few, yes. But fewer and fewer are occupied every year. The people who lived there have all died, and nobody claims the homes. Why would they?”
“Isn’t that bad for business?”
“You think I give a damn about business? My husband Claude’s buried here. That’s the only reason I remain.”
“What about the hotel?”
“Damn the hotel. I stay to be with Claude, until it’s over and somebody puts me down the same hole. I wouldn’t ever want him to be alone, you understand?”
“I suppose…”
Madame Rembert looked at Kirsty with the eyes of a born interrogator. “Could you leave the remains of somebody you loved here? Knowing what this island is?”
Kirsty paused, holding Madame Rembert’s gaze as long as she could before looking back at the green wall. “I don’t know what the island is yet,” she said. Her reply didn’t impress Madame Rembert much.
“Please, girl. You are not here to look at some old prison. You are here because you know more about the Devil than most. Isn’t that right?”
“Maybe.”
“If you want to play silly games, I will leave you to it,” Madame Rembert said, starting to push herself up out of the creaking wicker chair in which she sat.
“You’re right. And I don’t want to play games any more than you do. I’m sorry. I’m uneasy, that’s all.”
“You have reason to be.”
“Oh?” Kirsty returned her scrutiny to the old lady. Kirsty watched Madame Rembert enjoy her sham of indecision before she finally lowered herself back onto her weary creaking throne.
“You know what’s best. I don’t need to tell you,” she said softly.
“Are you saying I shouldn’t be here?”
“You see? You know without need of being told. If you wish, I will have Walter bring down your bag and I’ll have him take you back down to the harbor and find you a boat to take you back to the mainland.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now; of course, now. This is not a game.”
“I know. I’ve seen.”
“I know what you’ve seen. Your reputation precedes you,” Madame Rembert said. “What happened in Lodovico Street became something repeated in bad times.”
“How do you know about Lodovico Street?”
“It is my business to know these touchstones. Events like that when a law is defied—when Hell’s law is defied—the defier becomes a powerful figure. I think of my Claude, who lived in the shadow of Hell for most of his life…how the knowledge of people like you existing in the world would’ve given him comfort. Even if you were not worthy of the gift you had been given. Even if you were just another…”
The words trailed away.
“Another?”
“…Sinner,” Madame Rembert said very quietly.
“People seriously overuse that word,” Kirsty said. She then turned her back on the woman and stepped back into the house. In the short time she’d been sitting outside with Madame Rembert the tropical night had fallen all too suddenly. Outside there’d been enough light left in the sky to keep things bright. In Madame Rembert’s office, where the lamps were unlit, it was very dark now, and getting darker by the second. Kirsty stood on the threshold.
“Is there somebody else here?” she asked the darkness.
“It’s just me,” said a voice out of the shadows. “Walter.”
He stepped into the only patch of light left in the room. His face was severe.
“What is it, Walter?” Rembert asked from outside without so much as looking his way.
“Something is here,” Walter almost whispered and went to the small desk where the sign-in ledger was laid. He brought a key out of his pocket, and with an arthritic creak, went down onto his haunches and fumbled to get the key into a lock. Only then did he speak.
“Will you turn the lamp on, please?”
Now it was Kirsty who did the fumbling. By the time she found the lamp and the switch in the gloom, Walter had already opened the desk drawer and was bringing a metallic box, which rattled loudly when he set it on the desk. As he did so, he called to his employer, his voice now artificially loud to cover the noise of whatever he was doing. There was no answer from Madame. Walter glanced up at Kirsty, who glanced down at his handiwork. He had brought an antiquated gun out of the metal box and with nervous, ill-practiced fingers was attempting to put bullets into its chambers.
“Will you find out what Madame’s doing, s’il vous plait?”
Kirsty went to the window and peered out, looking for Madame. The old lady’s wicker chair was empty, however. The embroidered cushion on which she’d been sitting had been pulled off the chair in Rembert’s haste to be up, and was lying on the steps that led down onto the poorly kempt lawn. As for Madame, Kirsty saw that she was walking slowly but intently towards the wall of trees, which was now completely shrouded in darkness.
“Well?” Walter said.
“She’s going towards the trees. I think she’s seen somebody.”
“Shit, it’s all happening,” Walter said very quietly. He was still struggling to get the bullets into the gun, his frustration evident.
Kirsty’s gaze went without her instruction to the wall behind the desk, where hung the largest of Claude Rembert’s colorful portraits of the jungle. The true subject of this picture was not, however, the jungle or the golden birds, which had been featured so prominently in his other paintings. In the center of the poorly stretched canvas was a house, quite unlike anything that Kirsty had seen in her researches. It looked almost American Colonial in its style, the facade featuring six gold and black pillars, which supported an elaborate entryway. Located in the center, between the pillars, was a great door, its yawning mouth half open, but offering no glimpse of the interior of the estate. The mouth of a chimney rising high into the sky belched red cinders, the smoke rising higher and finally disappearing into the night sky.
There were never perfect moments to ask important questions, Kirsty knew. She also knew with sickening certainty that the house in Claude’s masterwork was somehow an important part of her life. She couldn’t shake the feeling that the paintings were screaming messages at her that she failed to grasp.
“The house,” Kirsty said. “With the pillars.”
“Burned down years ago,” Walter replied co
ldly. “It had a huge furnace. It exploded.” He glanced up at her, daring her to press any further. She knew it would get her nowhere. Instead she said:
“Can I help load the gun?”
“I’m almost done,” Walter said. “See if you can find anything to use as a weapon in the cupboard over there.”
“Alright,” Kirsty said and she moved toward the cabinet, turning her back on Walter for the last time in her life.
IV
GENEVIEVE REMBERT HAD BEEN a very beautiful woman. And sometimes, sitting at her little dressing table some mornings, if the light was kind, she saw a very distant memory of that beauty she once held. And she was very sad for the life that would never be hers to live again, nor the happiness to be had.
She thought of her changing reflection as she walked towards the wall of jungle that marked the boundary of her corner of the world. She knew that the man who had made her look more beautiful than even her bones could remember was there deep in the darkness beyond that boundary. It made her a little afraid to think of that.
Claude had been dead for fourteen years and, born as she was of a melancholy mother, her thoughts turned more often than she liked to the grave—to his grave—and to what lay within it. Her imagination, which had been troublingly active from childhood, had no problem conjuring the way his face, would have been destroyed by the grave. She did not relish the idea of meeting that face somewhere in the darkness ahead of her. But she had always known that this night would come.
So she was here, and there was no help for it but to live a little longer and hope that the reunion was a joyous one. Perhaps, she thought, it would be best if she did as she had done on the day that she and Claude had first met, and initiate the conversation. She halted four or five strides from the trees and stared into the blackness.
Hellraiser- The Toll Page 3
