The Damnation Game (22 page)

He staggered out of the bedroom and onto the landing. To his surprise they were not waiting for him there.

At the top of the stairs he hesitated. He was not a brave man; nor was he foolish. Tomorrow he could mourn her: but for tonight she was simply gone from him, and there was nothing to be done but preserve himself from whoever’d done this. Whoever! Why didn’t he admit the name to himself? Mamoulian was responsible: it had his signature. And he was not alone. The European would never have laid his purged hands on human flesh the way someone had on Yvonne; his squeamishness was legendary. But it was he who’d given her that half-life to live after the murder was done. Only Mamoulian was capable of that service.

And he would be waiting below now, wouldn’t he, in the undersea world at the bottom of the stairs? Waiting, as he’d waited so long, for Toy to traipse down to join him.

“Go to Hell,” Toy whispered to the dark below, and walked (the urge was to run, but common sense counseled otherwise) along the landing toward the spare bedroom. With every step he anticipated some move from the enemy, but none came. Not until he reached the door of the bedroom anyway.

Then, as he turned the handle, he heard Yvonne’s voice behind him:

“Willy …” The word was better formed than before.

For the briefest moment he felt his sanity in doubt. Was it possible that if he turned now she would be standing at the bedroom door as disfigured as memory suggested; or was that all a fever-dream?

“Where are you going?” she demanded to know.

Downstairs, somebody moved.

“Come back to bed.”

Without turning to refuse her invitation, Toy pushed the door of the spare bedroom open, and as he did so he heard somebody start up the stairs behind him. The footsteps were heavy; their owner eager.

There was no key in the lock to delay his pursuer, and no time to drag furniture in front of the door. Toy crossed the lightless bedroom in three strides, threw open the French windows, and stepped onto the small wrought-iron balcony. It grunted beneath his weight. He suspected it would not hold for long.

Below him, the garden was in darkness, but he had a fair idea of where the flower beds lay, and where the paving stones. Without hesitation—the footsteps loud at his back—he clambered over the balcony. His joints complained at this exertion, and more so when he lowered himself over the other side until he was hanging by his hands, suspended by a grip that was every second in danger of giving out.

A din in the room he’d left drew his glance; his pursuer, a bloated thug with bloody hands and the eyes of something rabid, was in the room—was crossing now toward the windows, growling his displeasure. Toy rocked his body as best he could, praying to miss the paving he knew was directly beneath his bare feet and land in the soft earth of the herbaceous border.

There was little chance to fine-tune the maneuver. He let go of the balustrade as the obesity reached the balcony, and for what seemed a long time fell backward through space, the window diminishing above him, until he landed, with no more injury than a bruising, among the geraniums Yvonne had planted only the week before.

He got to his feet badly winded but intact, and ran down the moonlit garden to the back gate. It was padlocked, but he managed to climb over it with ease—adrenaline firing his muscles. There was no sound of further pursuit, and when he glanced back he could see the fat man was still at the French windows, watching his escape as though lacking the initiative to follow. Sick with a sudden excitement, he sprinted away down the narrow passage that led along the backs of all the gardens, caring only to put distance between himself and the house.

It was only when he reached the street, its lamps starting to go out now as dawn edged up over the city, that he realized he was stark naked.

Chapter 31

M
arty had gone to bed a happy man. Though there was still much here he didn’t understand, much which the old man—despite his promises of explanations—seemed pleased to keep obscured, finally none of that was his business. If Papa chose to have secrets, so be it. Marty had been hired to look after him, and it appeared that he was fulfilling that obligation to his employer’s satisfaction. The results were there in the intimacies the old man had shared with him, and in the thousand pounds beneath his pillow.

Euphoria prevented sleep: Marty’s heart seemed to be beating at twice its usual rate. He got up, slipped on his bathrobe, and tried a selection of videos to take his mind off the day’s events, but the boxing tapes depressed him; the pornography too. He wandered downstairs to the library, found a dog-eared space opera, then slipped back to his room, making a detour to the kitchen for a beer.

Carys was in his room when he got back, dressed in jeans and a sweater, barefoot. She looked frayed, older than her nineteen years. The smile she offered him was too stage-managed to convince.

“You don’t mind?” she said. “Only I heard you walking about.”

“Don’t you ever sleep?”

“Not often.”

“Want some beer?”

“No thanks.”

“Sit down,” he said, throwing a pile of clothes off the single chair for her. She deposited herself on the bed, however, leaving the chair for Marty.

“I have to talk to you,” she said.

Marty laid down the book he’d chosen. On the cover a naked woman, her skin a fluorescent green, emerged from an egg on a twin-sunned planet.

Carys said:

“Do you know what’s going on?”

“Going on? What do you mean?”

“Haven’t you felt anything odd in the house?”

“Like what?”

Her mouth had found its favorite shape; corners turned down in exasperation.

“I don’t know … it’s difficult to describe.”

“Try.”

She hesitated, like a diver at the edge of a high board, then took the plunge.

“Do you know what a sensitive is?”

He shook his head.

“It’s someone who can pick up waves. Thought waves.”

“Mind reading.”

“In a way.”

He gave her a noncommittal look. “Is it something you can do?” he said.

“Not do. I don’t do anything. It’s more like it’s done to me.”

Marty leaned back in the chair, flummoxed.

“It’s as though everything gets sticky. I can’t shake it off. I hear people talking without them moving their lips. Most of it’s meaningless: just rubbish.”

“And it’s what they’re thinking?”

“Yes.”

He couldn’t find much to say in response, except that he doubted her, and that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She’d come for reassurance, hadn’t she?

“That’s not all,” she said. “I see shapes sometimes, around people’s bodies. Vague shapes … like a kind of light.”

Marty thought of the man at the fence; of how he’d bled light, or seemed to. He didn’t interrupt her, however.

“The point is, I feel things other people don’t. I don’t think it’s particularly clever of me, or anything like that. I just do it. And the last few weeks I’ve felt something in the house. I get odd thoughts in my head, out of nowhere; I dream … horrible things.” She halted, aware that her description was getting vaguer, and she risked what little credibility this monologue had if she went on.

“The lights you see?” Marty said, backtracking.

“Yes.”

“I saw something like them.”

She leaned forward.

“When?”

“The man who broke in. I thought I saw light coming from him. From his wounds, I suppose, and his eyes and his mouth.” Even as he finished the sentence he was shrugging it off as if fearful of contagion. “I don’t know,” he said. “I was drunk.”

“But you saw something.”

“—Yes,” he conceded, without pleasure.

She got up and crossed to the window. Like father like daughter, he thought: window freaks, both of them. As she stared out across the lawn—Marty never drew the curtains—he had ample opportunity to look at her.

“Something …” she said, “… something.”

The grace of her crooked leg, the displaced weight of her buttocks; her face, reflected in the cold glass, so intent on this mystery: all enthralled him.

“That’s why he doesn’t talk to me any longer,” she said.

“Papa?”

“He knows I can feel what he’s thinking: and he’s frightened.”

The observation was a cul-de-sac: she started tapping her foot with irritation, her breath ghosting the window intermittently. Then, out of the blue, she said:

“Did you know you had a breast fixation?”

“What?”

“You look at them all the time.”

“Do I Hell!”

“And you’re a liar.”

He stood up, not knowing what he intended to do or say until the words were out. At last, smothered in confusion, only the truth seemed appropriate.

“I like looking at you.”

He touched her shoulder. At this point, if they chose, the game could stop; tenderness was a breath away. They could take the opportunity or let it be: resume the repartee, or discard it. The moment lay between them, awaiting instructions.

“Babe,” she said. “Don’t shake.”

He moved a half-step closer and kissed the back of her neck. She turned and returned the kiss, her hand moving up his spine to cup the back of his head, as if to sense the weight of his skull.

“At last,” she said, when they broke. “I was beginning to think you were too much of a gentleman.” They tumbled onto the bed, and she rolled over to straddle his hips. Without hesitation she reached to fumble with the belt of his bathrobe. He was half-hard beneath her, and uncomfortably trapped. Self-conscious, too. She pulled the bathrobe open, and ran her palms across his chest. His body was solid without being heavy; silk hair spread out from his sternum and down the central groove of his abdomen, coarsening as it descended. She sat up a little to release the robe from his groin. His cock, freed, flipped from four to noon. She stroked its underside: it responded in gulps.

“Pretty,” she said.

He was getting used to her approbation now. Her calm was infectious. He half-sat up, perching on his elbows to get a better look at her poised above him. She was intent on his erection, putting her index finger into her mouth and transferring a film of saliva to his cock, running fingertips up and down in fluid, lazy motions. He squirmed with pleasure. A rash of heat had appeared on his chest, further signal, if any were needed, of his arousal. His cheeks burned too.

“Kiss me,” he asked.

She leaned forward and met his mouth. They collapsed back onto the bed. His hands felt for the bottom of her sweater, and started to ease it up, but she stopped him.

“No,” she murmured into his mouth.

“… want to see you …” he said.

She sat back up. He was looking up at her, perplexed.

“Not so fast,” she said, and raised the sweater far enough to expose her belly and breasts to him, without taking the garment off. Marty took in her body like a blind man granted sight: the dusting of gooseflesh, the unexpected fullness of her. His hands toured where his eyes went, pressing her bright skin, describing spirals on her nipples, watching the weight of her breasts ride on her rib cage. Mouth now followed eye and hand: he wanted to bathe her with his tongue. She pulled his head against her. Through the mesh of his hair his scalp gleamed a baby pink. She craned to kiss it but couldn’t reach, and slid her hand down instead to take hold of his cock. “Be careful,” he murmured as she stroked. There was wetness in her palm; she relinquished her hold.

Gently, he coaxed her over and they fell side by side across the bed. She pushed the robe off his neck, while his fingers worked at the button at the top of her jeans. She made no attempt to assist, liking the look of concentration he wore. It would be so good to be completely naked with him: skin to skin. But this wasn’t the time to risk that. Suppose he saw the bruises and the needle marks, and rejected her. It would be unbearable.

He had successfully undone the button and unzipped the fly, and now his hands were in her jeans, sliding under the top of her panties. There was urgency in him, and much as she loved to watch his intent, she aided the undressing now, raising her hips from the bed and sliding the jeans and panties down, exposing her body from nipples to knee. He moved over her, leaving a trail of saliva to mark his way, licking at her navel, and lower now, face flushed, his tongue in her, not expert exactly, but eager to learn, nuzzling out the places that pleased her by the sound of her sighs.

He slid the jeans lower, and when she didn’t resist, all the way off. Her panties followed, and she closed her eyes, blotting out everything but his exploration. In his eagerness he displayed the instincts of a cannibal; nothing her body fed him would be rejected; he pressed as deep as anatomy allowed.

Something itched at the back of her neck, but she ignored it, too concerned with this other sport. He looked up from her groin, with doubt on his face.

“Go on,” she said.

She wriggled up the bed, inviting him into her. The doubt on his face persisted.

“What’s wrong?”

“No protection,” he said.

“Forget it.”

He needed no second invitation. Her position, not lying beneath him but half-sitting, allowed her to watch his sweet display, pressing the root of his cock until the head darkened and glossed, before entering her slowly, almost reverentially. Now he relinquished hold of himself, and put his hands on the bed to either side of her, his back arched, a crescent within a crescent, as his body weight carried him in. His lips parted, and his tongue emerged to lap at her eyes.

She moved to meet him, pressing her hips up to his. He sighed: frowned.

Oh, Jesus
, she thought,
he’s come
. But his eyes opened again still raging, and his strokes, after the initial threat of mistiming, were even and slow.

Again, her neck irritated her; it felt more than an itch. It was a bite, a drill hole. She tried to ignore it, but the sensation only intensified as her body gave way to the moment. Marty was too intent on their locked anatomies to register her discomfort. His breath was jagged, hot on her face. She tried to move, hoping the ache was just the tension of this position.