"Please leave, Marty. This isn't a game. It's not all going to be forgiven when we come to the end, you know? It doesn't even stop when you die. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Oh, yes," he said, "I understand." He put his palm on her face. Her breath smelled sour. His too, he thought, but for the whisky.

"I'm not an innocent any longer. I know what's going on. Not all of it, but enough. I've seen things I pray I never see again; I've heard stories . . . Christ, I understand." How could he impress it upon her forcibly enough? "I'm s.h.i.t-scared. I've never been so scared in my life."

"You've got reason," she said coldly.

"Don't you care what happens to you?"

"Not much."

"I'll find you dope," he said. "If that's all that's keeping you here; I'll get it for you."

Did a doubt cross her face? He pressed the point home. "I saw you looking for me at the funeral."

"You were there?"

"Why were you looking if you didn't want me to come?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I thought maybe you'd gone with Papa."

"Dead, you mean?"

She frowned at him. "No. Gone away. Wherever he's gone."

It took a moment for her words to sink in. At last, he said: "You mean he's not dead?"

She shook her head. "I thought you knew. I thought you'd be involved with his getaway."

Of course the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d wasn't dead. Great men didn't just lie down and die offstage. They bided their time through the middle acts-revered, mourned and vilified-before appearing to play some final scene or other. A death scene; a marriage.

"Where is he?" Marty asked.

"I don't know, and neither does Mamoulian. He tried to get me to find him, the way I found Toy; but I can't do it. I've lost focus. I even tried to find you once. It was useless. I could scarcely think my way beyond the front door."

"But you found Toy?"

"That was at the beginning. Now . . . I'm used up. I tell him it hurts. Like something's going to break inside me." Pain, remembered and actual, registered on her face.

"And you still want to stay?"

"It'll be over soon. For all of us."

"Come with me. I've got friends who can help us," he appealed to her, gripping her wrists. "Gentle G.o.d, can't you see I need you? Please. I need you."

"I'm no use. I'm weak."

"Me too. I'm weak too. We deserve each other."

The thought, in its cynicism, seemed to please her. She pondered it a moment before saying, "Maybe we do," very quietly. Her face was a maze of indecision; dope and doubt. Finally she said: "I'll dress."

He hugged her, hard, breathing the staleness of her hair, knowing that this first victory might be his only one, but jubilating nevertheless. She gently broke his embrace and turned to the business of preparing to go. He watched her while she pulled on her jeans, but her self-consciousness made him leave her to it. He stepped onto the landing. Out of her presence, the hum filled his ears; louder now, he thought, than it had been. Switching on his flashlight he climbed the last flight of stairs to Mamoulian's room. With each step he took the whine deepened; it sounded in the boards of the stairs and in the walls-a living presence.

On the top landing there was only one door; the room beyond it apparently spread over the entire top floor. Mamoulian, the natural aristocrat, had taken the choicest s.p.a.ce for himself. The door had been left open. The European feared no intruder. When Marty pushed,- it swung inward a few inches, but his reluctant flashlight beam failed to penetrate more than an arm's length into the darkness beyond. He stood on the threshold like a child hesitating in front of a ghost-train ride.

During his peripheral a.s.sociation with Mamoulian he had come to feel an intense curiosity about the man. There was harm there, no doubt of that, perhaps terrible capacities for violence. But just as Mamoulian's face had appeared beneath Carys', there was probably a face under that of the European. More than one, perhaps. Half a hundred faces, each stranger than the one before, regressing toward some state that was older than Bethlehem. He had to have one peep, didn't he? One look, for old times' sake. Girding his loins, he pushed forward into the living darkness of the room.

"Marty!"

Something flickered in front of him, a bubble burst in his head as Carys called up to him.

"Marty! I'm ready!" The hum in the room seemed to have risen as he entered. Now, as he withdrew, it lowered itself to a moan of disappointment. Don't go, it seemed to sigh. Why go? She can wait. Let her wait. Stay awhile up here and see what's to be seen.

"There's no time," Carys said.

Almost angered to have been summoned away, Marty closed the door on the voice, and went down.

"I don't feel good," she said, when he joined her on the lower landing.

"Is it him? Is he trying to get to you?"

"No. I'm just dizzy. I didn't realize that I'd got so weak."

"There's a car outside," he said, offering a supportive hand. She waved him off.

"There's a parcel of my things," she said. "In the room."

He went back to get it, and was picking it up when she made a small noise of complaint, and stumbled on the stairs.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes," she said. When he appeared on the stairs beside her, pillowcase parcel in hand, she gave him an ashen look. "The house wants me to stay," she whispered.

"We'll take it steady," he said, and went ahead of her, for fear she stumble again. They reached the hallway without further incident.

"We can't go by the front door," she said. "It's double-locked from the outside."

As they made their way back through the hall, they heard the unmistakable sound of the back door opening.

"s.h.i.t," Marty said, under his breath. He let go of Carys' arm and slipped back through the gloom to the front door, and tried to open it. It was, as Carys had warned, double-locked. Panic was rising in him, but in its confusion a still voice, which he knew to be the voice of the room, said: No need to worry. Come up. Be safe in me. Hide in me. He thrust the temptation aside. Carys' face was turned to his: "It's Breer," she breathed. The dog-killer was in the kitchen. Marty could hear him, smell him. Carys tapped at Marty's sleeve, and pointed to a bolted door under the well of the stairs. Cellar, he guessed. Whitefaced in the murk, she pointed down. He nodded.

Breer, about some business, was singing to himself. Strange, to think of him happy, this lumbering slaughterer; content enough with his lot to sing.

Carys had slid the bolt open on the cellar door. Steps, dimly illuminated by the thrown light from the kitchen, led down into the pit. A smell of disinfectant and wood shaving: healthy smells. They crept down the stairs; cringing at each sc.r.a.ped heel, each creaking step. But the Razor-Eater was too busy to hear, it seemed. There was no howl of pursuit. Marty closed the cellar door on them, desperately hoping freer would not notice that the bolts had been drawn, and listened.

In time, the sound of running water; then the clink of cups, a teapot perhaps: the monster was brewing camomile.

Breer's senses were not as acute as they had been. The heat of the summer made him listless and weak. His skin smelled, his hair was falling out, his bowels would scarcely move these days. He needed a holiday, he'd decided. Once the European had found Whitehead, and dispatched him-and that was surely only a matter of days away-he'd go and see the aurora borealis. That would mean leaving his houseguest-he felt her proximity, mere feet away-but by that time she would have lost her appeal anyway. He was more fickle than he used to be, and beauty was transient. In two weeks, three in cool weather, all their charms dispersed.

He sat down at the table and poured a cup of the camomile. Its scent, once a great joy to him, was too subtle for his dogged sinuses, but he drank it for tradition's sake. Later he'd go up to his room and watch the soap operas he loved so much; maybe he'd look in on Carys and watch her while she slept; oblige her, if she woke, to pa.s.s water in his presence. Lost in a reverie of toilet training, he sat and sipped his tea.

Marty had hoped the man would retire to his room with his brew, leaving them access to the back door, but Breer was clearly staying put for awhile.

He reached back in the dark to Carys. She was on the stairs behind him, trembling from head to toe, as was he. Foolishly he'd left his jimmy, his only weapon, somewhere in the house; probably in Carys' room. Should it come to a face-to-face confrontation, he was weaponless. Worse; time was pa.s.sing. How long before Mamoulian came home? His heart sank at the thought. He slid down the stairs, hands on the cold brick of the wall, past Carys and into the body of the cellar itself. Perhaps there was a weapon of some kind down here. Even, hope of hopes, another exit from the house. There was very little light, however. He could see no c.h.i.n.ks to suggest a trapdoor or coalhole. Certain that he was out of direct line with the door, he switched on his flashlight. The cellar was not entirely empty. There was a tarpaulin strung up to divide it, an artificial wall.

He put his hand up to the low roof and guided himself across the cellar step by tentative step, clinging to the pipes on the ceiling for equilibrium. He pulled the tarpaulin aside, and aimed the flashlight beam into the s.p.a.ce beyond. As he did so his stomach leaped up into his mouth. A cry almost came; he stifled it an instant before it escaped.

A yard or two from where he stood was a table. At it sat a young girl. She was staring at him.

He put his fingers to his mouth to hush her before she cried out. But there was no need. She neither moved nor spoke. The glazed look on her face was not mental deficiency. The child was dead, he now understood. There was dust on her.

"Oh, Christ," he said, very quietly.

Carys heard him. She turned, and made her way to the bottom of the steps.

"Marty?" she breathed.

"Stay away," he said, unable to unglue his eyes from the dead girl. There was more than the body to feast his eyes upon. There were the knives and the plate on the table in front of her, with a napkin lovingly shaken out and spread in her lap. The plate, he saw, had meat on it, sliced thinly as if by a master butcher. He moved past the body, trying to slide from under its gaze. As he pa.s.sed the table he brushed the silk napkin; it slid through the divide of the girl's legs.

Two horrors came, brutal twins, one upon the other. The napkin had neatly covered a place on the girl's inner thigh from which the meat on her plate had been carved. In the same moment came another recognition: that he had eaten such meat, at Whitehead's encouragement, in the room at the estate. It had been the tastiest of delicacies; he'd left his plate clean.

Nausea swept up him. He dropped the flashlight as he tried to fight the sickness back, but it was beyond his physical control. The bitter odor of stomach acid filled the cellar. All at once there was no hiding, no help for this insanity but to throw it up and take the consequences.

Overhead, the Razor-Eater raised himself from his tea, pushed back his chair and came out of the kitchen.

"Who?" his thick voice demanded. "Who's down there?"

He crossed unerringly to the cellar door and pulled it open. Dead fluorescent light rolled down the stairs.

"Who's there?" he said again, and now he was coming down in pursuit of the light, his feet thundering on the wooden steps. "What are you doing?" He was shouting, his voice was at hysteria pitch. "You can't come down here!"

Marty looked up, dizzied by breathlessness, to see Carys crossing the cellar toward him: Her eyes alighted on the tableau at the table but she kept admirable control, ignoring the body and reaching for the knife and fork that sat beside the plate. She s.n.a.t.c.hed them both up, catching the tablecloth in her haste. The plate and its flyblown serving spun to the floor; knives cluttered beside it.

Breer had paused at the bottom of the stairs to take in the desecration of his temple. Now, appalled, he came careering toward the infidels, his size lending awesome momentum to the attack. Dwarfed by him, Carys half-turned as he reached for her, roaring. She was eclipsed. Marty couldn't make out who was where. But the confusion lasted only seconds. Then Breer was raising his gray hands as if to push Carys off, his head shaking to and fro. A howl was issuing from him, more of complaint than pain.

Carys ducked his flailing, and slipped sideways out of harm's way. The knife and fork she had held were no longer in her hands. Breer had run straight onto them. He seemed not to be aware of their presence in his gut, however. His concern was for the girl whose body was even now toppling and falling into a rubber-jointed heap on the cellar floor. He rushed to her comfort, ignoring the desecraters in his anguish. Carys caught sight of Marty, his face a greaseball, hauling himself upright by hanging on to the ceiling pipes.

"Move!" she yelled at him. She waited long enough to see that he had responded and then made for the stairs. As she clattered up the steps toward the light, she heard the Razor-Eater behind him, shouting: "No! No!" She glanced over her shoulder. Marty gained the bottom of the stairs just as Breer's hands-manicured, perfumed and lethal-grabbed for him. Marty threw an ill-aimed swipe backward, and Breer lost his hold. It was a moment's grace, however, no more. Marty was only halfway up the stairs before his attacker was back on his heels. The rouged face was smeared as it peered up from the cellar depths, the features so contorted by outrage that they appeared scarcely human.

This time Breer's grasp caught Marty's trousers, the fingers digging deeply into the muscle of his skin. Marty yelped as cloth tore and blood ran. He flung out a hand to Carys, who loaned what strength she had left to the contest, pulling Marty up toward her. Breer, badly balanced, lost his s.n.a.t.c.hed grip, and Marty stumbled up the stairs, pressing Carys ahead of him. She tumbled into the hallway, and Marty followed, with Breer at his back. At the top of the stairs Marty suddenly turned and kicked. His heel struck the Razor-Eater's punctured belly. Breer fell backward, hands clawing the air for support; there was none to be had. His nails managed to rake the brickwork as he toppled and fell heavily down the steps, hitting the stone floor of the cellar with a lazy thud. There, sprawled, he lay still; a painted giant.

Marty slammed the door on him, and bolted it. He felt too squeamish to look at the gouging on his leg, but he could tell by the warmth soaking into sock and shoe that it was bleeding badly.

"Can you . . . you get something . . ." he said, ". . . just to cover it?"

Too breathless to reply, Carys nodded, and rounded the corner into the kitchen. There was a towel on the draining board, but it was too unsavory to be used on an open wound. She started to search for something clean, however primitive. It was time they were gone; Mamoulian would not stay out all night.

In the hallway, Marty listened for any sound from the cellar. He heard none.

Another noise infiltrated, however, one that he'd almost forgotten about. The buzz of the house was back in his head, and that mellow voice was threaded into it, a dreamy undercurrent. Common sense told him to shut it out. But when he listened, trying to sort out its syllables, it seemed the nausea and the pain in his leg subsided.

On the back of a kitchen chair Carys had found one of Mamoulian's dark-gray shirts. The European was fastidious about his laundry. The shirt had been recently laundered; an ideal bandage. She tore it up-though its fine-quality cotton resisted-then soaked a length of it in cold water to clean the wound, and made strips of the rest to bind the leg up. When she was done, she went out into the hallway. But Marty had gone.

55

He had to see. Or if seeing wouldn't do (What was seeing anyway? Mere sensuality) then he would learn a new way of knowing. That was the promise the room whispered in his ear: a new thing to know and a way of knowing it. He pulled himself up the banisters, hand over hand, less and less aware of the pain as he climbed to the buzzing darkness. He wanted so much to take the ghost-train ride. There were dreams in there. he'd never dreamed, would never have a chance to dream again. Blood squelched in his shoe; he laughed at it. A spasm had begun in his leg; he ignored it. The last steps were ahead: he climbed them with steady work. The door was ajar.

He achieved the summit of the stairs and limped toward it.

Though it was totally dark in the cellar, that scarcely concerned the Razor-Eater. It was many weeks since his eyes had worked as well as they'd used to: he'd learned to subst.i.tute touch for sight. He stood up and tried to think clearly. Soon the European would come home. There would be punishment for leaving the house unattended and letting this escape take place. Worse than that, he would not see the girl anymore; no longer be able to watch her pa.s.s water, that fragrant water he preserved for special occasions. He was desolate.

He heard her moving even now in the hallway above him; she was going up the stairs. The rhythm of her tiny feet was familiar to him, he'd listened long nights and days to her padding back and forth in her cell. In his mind's eye the ceiling of the cellar became transparent; he looked up between her legs as she climbed the stairs; that lavish slit gaped. It made him angry to be losing it, and her. She was old, of course, not like the pretty at the table, or the others on the streets, but there had been times when her presence had been the one thing keeping him from insanity.

He went back, stumbling in the pitch, in the direction of his little autocannibal, whose dining had been so rudely interrupted. Before he got to her, his foot kicked at one of the carving knives he'd left on the table should she want to help herself. He went down on all fours and patted the ground until he found it, and then he crawled back up the stairs and started to hack at the wood where the light through the door crack showed the bolts to be.Carys didn't want to go to the top of the house again. There was so much up there she feared. Innuendo rather than fact, but enough to make her weak. Why Marty had gone up-and that was the only place he could have gone-confounded her. Despite his claim to understanding, there was still so much he had to learn.

"Marty?" she'd called, at the foot of the stairs, hoping he'd appear at the top, smiling, and limp down to her without her having to go up and fetch him. But her inquiry was met with silence, and the night wasn't getting any younger. The European might come to the door at any moment.

Unwillingly, she started up the stairs.Marty had never understood until now. He'd been a virgin, living in a world innocent of this deep and exhilarating penetration, not simply of body, of mind too. The air in the room closed around his head as soon as he stepped into it. The plates of his skull seemed to grind against each other; the voice of the room, no longer needing its whispered tones, shouted in his brain. So you came? Of course you came. Welcome to Wonderland. He was dimly aware that it was his own voice that was speaking these words. It had probably been his voice all along. He had been talking to himself like a lunatic. Even though he'd now seen through the trick, the voice came again, lower this time-This is a fine place to find yourself in, don't you think?

At the question, he looked around. There was nothing to see, not even walls. If there were windows in the room, they were hermetically sealed. Not a c.h.i.n.k of the outside world belonged in here.

"I don't see anything," he murmured in reply to the room's boast.

The voice laughed; he laughed with it.

Nothing here to be frightened of, it said. Then, after a smirking pause: Nothing here at all.

And that was right, wasn't it? Nothing at all. It wasn't just darkness that kept him sightless, it was the room itself. He glanced giddily over his shoulder: he could no longer see the door behind him, even though he knew he had left it open when he came in. There should have been at least a glimmer of light from downstairs spilling into the room. But that illumination had been eaten up, as was the beam of his flashlight. A smothering gray fog pressed so close to his eyes that even if he lifted his hand up in front of him he could see nothing.

You're all right here, the room soothed him. No judges here; no bars here.

"Am I blind?" he asked.

No, the room replied. You're seeing truly for the first time.

"I . . . don't . . . like it."

Of course you don't. But you'll learn in time. Living's not for you. Ghosts of ghosts, the living are. You want to lie down; be done with that caper. Nothing's essential, boy.

"I want to leave."