"Where is w.i.l.l.y?" Emily was asking. "I thought he'd be here."

She offered the question to the table, but n.o.body seemed willing to take it up.

"He's gone," Whitehead replied eventually.

"He's such a nice man," the girl said. She dug Dwoskin in the ribs. "Didn't you think he was a nice man?"

Dwoskin was irritated by the interruptions. He had taken to fumbling at the zipper on the back of Stephanie's dress. She made no objection to this public advance. The gla.s.s he held in the other hand was spilling wine into his lap. He either didn't notice or didn't care.

Whitehead caught Marty's eye.

"Entertaining you, are we?" he said.

Marty wiped the nascent smile off his face.

"Don't you approve?" Ottaway asked Marty.

"Not up to me."

"I always got the impression the criminal cla.s.ses were quite puritanical at heart. Is that right?"

Marty looked down from the Fan-Dancer's drink-puffed features and shook his head. The jibe was beneath contempt, as was the jiber.

"If I were you, Marty," Whitehead said from the other end of the table, "I'd break his neck."

Marty shrugged. "Why bother?" he said.

"Seems to me, you're not so dangerous after all," Ottaway went on.

"Who said I was dangerous?"

The smirk the lawyer wore deepened. "I mean. We were expecting an animal act, you know?" Ottaway moved a bottle to get a better look at Marty. "We were promised-" The conversation around the table had ground to a halt, but Ottaway didn't seem to notice. "Still, nothing's quite as advertised, is it?" he said. "I mean, you ask any one of these G.o.dforsaken gentlemen." The table was a still-life; Ottaway's arm swept around to include everyone in his tirade. "We know, don't we? We know how disappointing life can be."

"Shut up," Curtsinger snapped. He stared woozily at Ottaway. "We don't want to hear."

"We may not get another chance, my dear James," Ottaway replied, his courtesy contemptuous. "Don't you think we should all admit the truth? We are in extremis! Oh yes, my friends. We should all get down on our knees and confess!"

"Yes, yes," said Stephanie. She was trying to stand but her legs were of another mind. Her dress, the back unzipped, threatened to slip. "Let's all confess," she said.

Dwoskin pulled her back into her chair.

"We'll be here all night," he said. Emily giggled. Ottaway, undeterred, was still talking.

"Seems to me," he said, "he's probably the only innocent one amongst us." Ottaway pointed at Marty. "I mean, look at him. He doesn't even know what I'm talking about."

The remarks were beginning to irritate Marty. But there'd be precious little satisfaction in threatening the lawyer. In his present state Ottaway would crumble under one blow. His bleary eyes didn't look far from unconsciousness. "You disappoint me," Ottaway murmured, with genuine regret in his voice, "I thought we'd end better than this . . ."

Dwoskin stood up. "I've got a toast," he announced. "I want to toast the women."

"Now there's an idea," Curtsinger said. "But we'll need a fire." Oriana thought this the funniest remark she'd heard all night.

"The women!" Dwoskin declared, raising his gla.s.s. But n.o.body was listening. Emily, who had been lamblike so far, had suddenly taken it into her head to strip off. She'd pushed her chair back and was now unb.u.t.toning her blouse. She wore nothing beneath; her nipples looked rouged, as if in preparation for this unveiling. Curtsinger applauded; Ottaway and Whitehead joined in with a chorus of encouraging remarks.

"What do you think?" Curtsinger asked Marty. "Your type, is she? And they're all her own, aren't they, sweetheart?"

"You want to feel?" Emily offered. She'd discarded her blouse; she was now naked from the waist up. "Come on," she said, taking hold of Marty's hand and pressing it against her breast, working it around and around.

"Oh, yes," said Curtsinger, leering at Marty. "He likes that. I can tell he likes that."

"Of course he does," Marty heard Whitehead say. His gaze, not too focused, slid in the old man's direction. Whitehead met it head-on: the hooded eyes were devoid of humor or arousal. "Go on," he said. "She's all yours. That's what she's here for." Marty heard the words but couldn't make proper sense of them. He pulled his hand off the girl's flesh as if scalded.

"Go to h.e.l.l," he said.

Curtsinger had stood up. "Now don't be a spoilsport," he rebuked Marty, "we only want to see what you're made of."

Down the table, Oriana had started to laugh again, Marty wasn't sure at what. Dwoskin was banging his hand, palm down, on the table. The bottles jumped in rhythm.

"Go on," Whitehead told Marty. They were all looking at him. He turned to face Emily. She was standing a yard away from him, attempting the catch of her skirt. There was something undeniably erotic about her exhibitionism. Marty's trousers felt tight: his head too. Curtsinger had his hands on Marty's shoulders and was trying to slip off his jacket. The tattoo Dwoskin was beating on the table, which Ottaway had now taken up, made Marty's head dance.

Emily had succeeded with the catch, and her skirt was at her feet. Now, without prompting, she pulled off her panties and stood in front of the a.s.sembled company wearing only pearls and high-heeled shoes. Naked, she looked young enough to be jailbait: fourteen, fifteen, at most. Her skin was creamy. Somebody's hand-Oriana's, he thought, was ma.s.saging Marty's erection. He half-turned: it wasn't her at all, but Curtsinger. He pushed the hand away. Emily had stepped toward him and was unb.u.t.toning his shirt from the bottom up. He tried to stand to say something to Whitehead. The words weren't there yet, but he badly wanted to find them: wanted to tell the old man what a cheat he was. More than a cheat: he was sc.u.m; dirty-minded sc.u.m. This was why he'd been invited up here, plied with wine and dirty talk. The old man had wanted to see him naked and rutting.

Marty pushed Curtsinger's hand away a second time: the touch was horribly expert. He looked along the table to Whitehead, who was pouring himself another gla.s.s of wine. Dwoskin's gaze was fixed on Emily's nakedness; Ottaway's on Marty. Both had given up slapping the table. The lawyer's stare said everything: he was sickly pale, sweaty antic.i.p.ation on his face.

"Go on," he said, his breath ragged, "go on, take her. Give us a show to remember. Or haven't you got anything worth displaying?"

Marty heard the sense too late to reply; the naked child was pressing herself against him, and somebody (Curtsinger) was trying to unb.u.t.ton the top of his trousers. He made one last, ungainly lunge at equilibrium.

"Stop this," he murmured, looking at the old man.

"What's the problem?" Whitehead asked lightly..

"Joke over," Marty said. There was a hand in his trousers, reaching for his erection. "Get the f.u.c.k off me!" He shoved Curtsinger back with more force than he'd planned. The big man stumbled and fell against the wall. "What's wrong with you people?" Emily took a step back from him to avoid Marty's flailing arm. The wine was boiling up in his belly and throat. His trousers jutted. He looked, he knew, absurd. Oriana was still laughing: riot just her, Dwoskin too, and Stephanie. Ottaway just stared.

"You never seen a f.u.c.king hard-on before?" he spat at them all.

"Where's your sense of humor?" Ottaway said. "We just want a floor show. Where's the harm?"

Marty jabbed a finger in Whitehead's direction. "I trusted you," he said. It was all he could find to shape his hurt.

"That was an error then, wasn't it?" Dwoskin commented. He spoke as if to an imbecile.

"You f.u.c.king shut up!" Fighting back the urge to break somebody's face-anybody's would do-Marty pulled on his jacket, and with one backsweep of his hand cleared a dozen bottles, most of them full, off the table. Emily screamed as they shattered around her feet, but Marty didn't wait to see how much damage he'd done. He backed off from the table and stumbled toward the door. The key was in the lock; he opened it and stepped into the hallway. Behind him Emily had begun to bawl like a baby just woken from a nightmare; he could hear her all the way down the darkened corridor. He hoped to G.o.d his jittering limbs would bear him up. He wanted out: into the air, into the night. He lurched down the back staircase, hand outstretched against the wall for support, the steps receding beneath his feet. He reached the kitchen having fallen only once, and opened the back door. The night was waiting. Nothing to see him; nothing to know him. He breathed in cold black air, and it burned in his nostrils and lungs. He staggered across the lawn, almost blind, not knowing which direction he was going in, until he thought of the woods. Taking a moment to reorientate himself, he ran toward them, begging their discretion.

46

He ran, the undergrowth dragging at his legs, until he was so deep in the stand of trees he could see neither the house nor its lights. Only then did he stop, his whole body thumping like one vast heart. His head felt loose on his neck; bile gurgled at the back of his throat.

"Jesus. Jesus. Jesus."

For a moment, his gyrating head lost control: his ears whined, his eyes blurred. He was suddenly certain of nothing, not even his physical existence. Panic crawled up from his bowels, raking the tissue of his gut and his stomach as it came.

"Get down," he told it. Only once before had he felt so close to losing his mind-to throwing back his head and screaming-and that had been the first night at Wandsworth, the first of many years of nights locked in a cell twelve by eight. He'd sat on the edge of the mattress and felt what he was feeling now. The blind beast ascending, squeezing adrenaline from his spleen. He'd mastered the terror then, and he could do it again. Brutally, he stuck his fingers as far down his throat as he could reach, and was rewarded with a surge of nausea. The reflex begun, he let his body do the rest, throwing up a system full of undigested wine. It was a filthy, cleansing experience, and he made no effort to control the spasms until there was nothing left to vomit.

His stomach muscles aching from the contractions, he uprooted some ferns and wiped his mouth and chin, then washed his hands in the damp soil and stood up. The rough treatment had done its job; there was a marked improvement in his condition.

He turned his back on his spilled stomach and wandered further away from the house. Though the thatch of leaves and branches was heavy above, some starlight trickled down, enough illumination to give a tenuous solidity to trunk and brush. Walking in the ghost-wood enchanted him. He let the gentle spectacle of light and leafshade heal his wounded vanity. He saw how all his dreams of finding a permanent and trusted place in Whitehead's world had been pretension. He was, and always would be, a marked man.

He walked quietly here, where the trees thickened and the undergrowth, light-starved, thinned. Small animals scuttled ahead of him; night insects whirred in the gra.s.s. He stood still to hear the nocturne better. As he did so he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. He looked toward it, seeking focus through the receding corridor of trunks. It was no trick. There was somebody, gray as the trees, standing thirty or so yards from him-now still, now moving again. Concentrating, he fixed the figure in the matrix of shadow and deeper shadow.

It was a ghost surely. So quiet, so casual. He watched it as a deer might watch a hunter; not certain if he had been seen but unwilling to break cover. Fear ran in his scalp. Not of an open blade; he'd long ago faced those terrors and mastered them. This was the p.r.i.c.kly heat fear of child-hood; the essential fear. And paradoxically, it made him whole. It didn't matter if he were four or thirty-four, he was the same creature at heart.

He'd dreamed of such woods, of such encompa.s.sing night. He touched his terror reverently, frozen to the spot, while the gray figure-too taken with its own business to notice him-watched the earth between the trees.

They stood in that relation, ghost and he, for what seemed like several minutes. Certainly a good time pa.s.sed before he heard a noise that was neither owl, nor rodent, filtering between the trees. It had been there all along, he had just failed to interpret it for what it was: the sound of digging. The rattle of tiny stones, the fall of earth. The child in him said bad: leave it be, leave it all be. But he was too curious to ignore it. He took two experimental steps toward the ghost. It made no sign of seeing or hearing him. Taking courage, he advanced a few more steps, attempting to keep as close to a tree as possible, so that should the ghost look his way he could find cover quickly. In this way he advanced ten yards toward his quarry. Close enough to see the host in enough detail for recognition.

It was Mamoulian.

The European was still staring down at the earth at his feet. Marty slid into hiding behind a trunk and flattened himself there, his back to the scene. There was obviously somebody digging, at Mamoulian's feet; he conceivably had other cohorts in the vicinity. The only safety was in lying doggo and hoping to G.o.d no one had been spying on him as he had spied on the European.

At length the digging stopped; and so, as if on an unspoken cue, did the nocturne. It was bizarre. The whole a.s.sembly, insect and animal alike, seemed to hold its breath, aghast.

Marty slid down the trunk into crawling position, his ears straining for every clue as to what was going on. He chanced a look. Mamoulian was moving off in what Marty guessed to be the direction of the house. Undergrowth obscured his view: he could see nothing of the digger, or the other disciples who were accompanying the European. He heard their pa.s.sage, however; the brush of their dragging steps. Let them go, he thought. He was past protecting Whitehead. That bargain was defunct.

He sat, knees hugged against his chest, and waited until Mamoulian had woven between the trees and disappeared. Then he counted to twenty and stood up. Pins and needles p.r.i.c.ked at his lower legs, and he had to rub the circulation back into them. Only then did he start toward the spot where Mamoulian had lingered.

Even as he approached he recognized the glade, though he had previously come to it from the direction of the house. His late-evening walk had taken him in a semicircle. He was standing now in the place he'd buried the dogs.

The grave was open and empty; the black plastic shrouds had been torn apart, their contents unceremoniously removed. Marty stared into the hole not quite comprehending the joke. What use were dead dogs?

There was a movement in the grave; something shifted beneath the plastic sheets. He stepped back from the edge, his gorge too susceptible for this. A nest of maggots presumably, or perhaps a worm the size of his arm, grown fat on dogmeat; who knew what hid in the earth?

Turning his back on the hole, he walked toward the house, following the trail Mamoulian had taken, until the trees thinned and the starlight brightened. There, on the borderland between wood and lawn, he stayed, until the sounds of the night reestablished themselves around him.

47

Stephanie excused herself from the table, and went out to the bathroom, leaving the hysteria behind her. As she closed the door one of the men-Ottaway, she thought-suggested she come back in and p.i.s.s in a bottle for him. She didn't grace the remark with a reply. However well they paid, she wasn't going to get involved in that kind of activity; it wasn't clean.

The hallway was in semidarkness; the sheen of vases, the richness of the carpet underfoot-all of it spoke wealth, and on previous visits she'd enjoyed the extravagance of the place. But tonight they were so uneasy-Ottaway, Dwoskin, the old man himself-there was an air of desperation in their drinking and their innuendo, and it took any pleasure out of being here. On the other nights they'd all got pleasantly drunk and then there'd been the usual performances, sometimes developing into something more serious with one or two of them. Just as often they were content to watch. And at the end of the night there'd been generous payment. But tonight was different. There was cruelty in it, which she disliked. Money or no money, she wouldn't come here again. It was time she retired anyway; leave it to younger girls, who at least looked less raddled than she did.

She bent close to the bathroom mirror and tried to reapply her eyeliner, but her hand was shaky with drink, and it slipped. She cursed, and dug in her purse for a tissue to clean off the error. As she did so there was a scuffling sound in the hallway. Dwoskin, she guessed. She didn't want the gargoyle touching her again, at least not until she was too paralytic with drink to care. She tiptoed to the door and locked it. The sounds outside had stopped. She went back to the sink and turned on the tap; cold water, to splash on her tired face.

Dwoskin had gone out after Stephanie. He intended to suggest something outrageous for her to perform on him, something gross for this night- of nights.

"Where are you going?" somebody asked him, as he traipsed the hall, or did he just imagine the words? He'd taken a few pills before the party-that always loosened him up-but it tended to put voices in his head, mostly his mother's. Whether somebody had asked the question or not, he chose not to answer; he just wandered down the corridor, calling for Stephanie. The woman was extraordinary, or so his drugged libido had decided. She had superb b.u.t.tocks. He wanted to be smothered by those cheeks; to die under them.

"Stephanie," he demanded. She didn't reappear. "Come on," he rea.s.sured her, "it's only me."

There was a smell in the corridor: just a hint of sewer. He inhaled it. "Foul," he announced, not unappreciatively. The smell was getting stronger, as though its source was close by, and approaching. "Lights," he told himself and peered along the wall looking for a switch.

A few yards down the corridor something started to move toward him. The light was too dim to see properly by, but it was a man, and the man was not alone. There were other shapes, knee-high, mustering in the darkness. The smell was becoming overpowering. Dwoskin's head had started to dance with color; disgraceful images flickered in the air to accompany the smell. It took him a moment to grasp that this air graffiti was not his doing. It was coming from the man ahead of him. Dashes and dots of light flared and whirled away into the air.

"Who are you?" Dwoskin demanded. In answer, the graffiti ignited into a full-blown literature. Not certain if any sound was coming out, the Troll-King began to screech.

Stephanie dropped the eyeliner into the sink as the scream reached her. She didn't recognize the voice. It was high enough to be a woman's, but it was neither Emily nor Oriana.

The shakes suddenly worsened. She held on to the edge of the sink to steady herself as the noises multiplied: howls now, and running feet. Somebody was shouting; all but incoherent orders. It was Ottaway, she thought, but she wasn't going out to check. Whatever was going on beyond the door-pursuit, capture, murder even-she needed none of it. She turned off the light in the bathroom in case it spilled under the door. Somebody ran by, calling on G.o.d: now there was desperation. Feet thudded down the stairs; somebody fell. Doors slammed: screams mounted.

She backed away from the door and sat on the edge of the bath. There, in the darkness, she started to sing "Abide with Me"-or what little she could remember of it-very quietly.

Marty heard the screams too, though he didn't want to. Even at such a distance, they carried a freight of blind panic that made him clammy.

He knelt down in the dirt between the trees and stopped his ears. The earth smelled ripe beneath him, and his mind seethed with unwelcome thoughts of lying faceup in the ground, dead perhaps, but antic.i.p.ating resurrection. Like a sleeper on the verge of waking, nervous of the day.

After a while the din became intermittent. Soon, he told himself, he must open his eyes, stand up and go back to the house to see the hows and the whys of all this commotion. Soon; but not yet.When the noise in the hallway and on the stairs had long stopped, Stephanie crept to the bathroom door, unlocked it and peered out. The corridor was in complete darkness now. The lamps had either been turned off or shattered. But her eyes, accustomed to the blackness of the bathroom, soon pierced the feeble light from the stairwell. The gallery was empty in both directions. There was just a smell in the air like a bad butcher's shop on a hot day.

She slipped off her shoes, and started to the top of the stairs. The contents of a handbag were scattered down the steps, and there was something wet underfoot. She looked down: the carpet was stained: either wine or blood. She hurried on down into the hallway. It was chilly; both front and vestibule doors were wide open. Again, there was no sign of life. The cars had gone from the driveway; the downstairs rooms-library, reception rooms, kitchen-all were forsaken. She rushed back upstairs to collect her belongings from the white room and leave.

As she retraced her steps along the gallery she heard a soft padding behind her. She turned. There was a dog at the top of the stairs; it had presumably followed her up. She could scarcely make it out in the bad light, but she wasn't afraid. "Good boy," she said, glad of its living presence in the abandoned house.

It didn't growl, nor did it wag its tail, it simply hobbled towards her. Only then did she realize her error in welcoming it. The butcher's shop was here, on all fours: she backed off.

"No . . ." she said, "I don't . . . oh, Christ . . . leave me alone."

Still it came; and with every step it took toward her she saw more of its condition. The innards that looped from its underside. The decayed face, all teeth and putrescence. She headed toward the white room, but it covered the distance between them in three strides. Her hands slid on its body as it leaped at her, and to her disgust fur and flesh separated, her grasp skinning the creature's flanks. She fell back; it advanced, head rocking uneasily on its sc.r.a.ppy neck, its jaws closing around her throat and shaking her. She couldn't scream-it was devouring her voice-but her arm thrust up into the cold body and found its spine. Instinct made her grasp the column, muscle dividing in slimy threads, and the beast let her go, arching back as her grip snapped one vertabrae from the next. It let out a prolonged hiss as she dragged her arm out. Her other hand cupped her throat: blood was. .h.i.tting the carpet with thudding sounds: she must get help or bleed to death.

She started to crawl back toward the top of the stairs. Miles away from her, somebody opened a door. Light fell across her. Too numb to feel pain, she looked around. Whitehead was silhouetted in a distant doorway. Between them stood the dog. Somehow, it had got up, or rather its front portion had, and it was dragging itself across the shining carpet toward her, most of its bulk useless now, its head barely raised from the ground. But still moving, as it would move until its resurrector granted it rest.

She raised her arm to signal her presence to Whitehead. If he saw her in the gloom he made no sign.

She had reached the top of the stairs. She had no strength lift in her. Death was coming quickly. Enough, her body said, enough. Her will conceded, and she slumped down, the blood, loosed from her wounded neck, flowing down the stairs as her darkening eyes watched. One step, two steps.

Counting games were a perfect cure for insomnia.

Three steps, four.

She didn't see the fifth step, or any other in the creeping descent.Marty was loath to go back into the house, but whatever had happened there was surely over, and he was getting chilly where he knelt. His expense-account suit was dirtied beyond reclamation; his shirt was stained and torn, his immaculate shoes clay-caked. He looked like a derelict. The thought almost pleased him.