Black Light (40 page)

Blood, not wine. When I squeezed the nipple another bright bead flowed out. I licked it as the bound man moaned. Then I turned away.

There was an unused length of rope on the bed, caught in a tangle of paisley cloth. I took the rope and made knots at one end—one, two, three of them—then stumbled to my feet again.

On the bed the man looked like one of the slain deer you saw during hunting season, neatly trussed and heaved upon the back of a pickup truck. His head was thrown back, his eyes squeezed shut, his mouth twisted. I wondered fleetingly if he felt anguish, or ecstasy, or both.

“I was never yours,” I said. Then I raised the knout, and with all my strength brought it down upon him.

I struck him, without mercy, again and again and again, and after a while without even feeling the rope in my hands. It rose and fell, the man at my feet moaned and cried out and screamed, and still I did not stop. Once he gave a long wail, a cry that ended with a groan and his bound feet twitching spasmodically against the mattress. My arm went up and down. My wrist ached, and my shoulder. My legs itched where something spattered them.

After a long time the pain in my arm eased and I felt only numb. The shadows of the room around me seemed to fade, and there was a faint musky smell, like fox-grapes, like raw honey. I saw nothing but an umbrous shape before me, a stain on the wall. I was conscious of only two things, the rise and fall of the rope in my hand, the muted sound when it struck. I felt like one of the figures in Balthazar Warnick’s folio, girls with hands eternally lifted to the heavens, flails in their slender fingers or the shorn leg of a fawn.

But after a long time weariness overcame me; not even weariness so much as a sense that something was finished. I stopped, panting, let the rope slide from my hand. It felt wet as a strand of seaweed. When I looked at my palm it was creased with red. There was red on my legs as well, and my feet. I shook my head groggily and stared at the man beneath me.

He was still as death, but not dead. His breath came in shallow gasps, and though his eyes were closed they twitched beneath their lids, the way a dog’s eyes move when it dreams of pursuit. His skin was dappled dark green and blue-violet, with here and there a starburst of red where the flesh was broken. There were darker spots beneath his ribs, small crescents where the skin had been flayed into petals of pink and scarlet, and in places the veins showed through, vibrating ever so slightly as though something swam beneath them. A glistening rope ran from his groin up to his breast; his cock had shrunk, and was curled between his legs like another soft brown seed. Gazing at him I felt neither pity nor remorse nor even horror. It seemed natural to me, that he should lie there thus. If he had been cast upon the forest floor rather than this room, you would not have noticed him at all: he would have been nothing but dead leaves and pallid fungus, acorn mast and a slug coiled in the roots of a tree.

“There.” My voice sounded ragged; I wondered if I had been shouting. Only a few candles still burned. The incense had been reduced to ashes upon the floor. “No more illusions, now.”

I walked unsteadily to the wall, where the faded velvet drapes hung. One by one I yanked them down, letting each fall and turning to the next without bothering to see what mundane things they had hidden, moldering plaster or cheap rec-room paneling, doors that led nowhere or windows staring out onto the village where all of Bolerium’s other guests now slept, restlessly or peacefully as they deserved. “All gone, all gone.”

I glanced at the bound man. He was motionless, his face drawn into a grimace. Silently I turned back to the wall.

There were faces there. Terra-cotta masks and gargoyles carved in stone, doors in the shape of mouths and eyes—the walls were covered with them. Yet it did not seem that they were walls anymore, but a pitted surface of stone alive with animals. Hundreds of animals; thousands. From one end of the room to the other they raced and capered and fought—bison and mastodons, birds like huge penguins or auks, ibex and antelope and bears with teeth like claws, hares and snakes and squirrels and bulls.

And everywhere, deer. Dappled fawns and red deer, reindeer with arching horns and does whose bodies were waves and hugest of all a stag like an oak tree, the great Irish elk
megaloceros,
its legs mountains and its horns a thundercloud, flanks pierced by a hundred spears so that its blood rained down into the open mouths of tiny figures scratched below. Men, or creatures like men—two-legged forms with human heads, though their legs were furred and their feet ended in hooves. They held sticks or axes or S-shaped twigs, and some were obviously women, heavy-hipped and with pendulous breasts, with snakes for hair and faces like birds. I walked slowly, tracing the figures, and where I touched the stone the impressions of my hands remained, as though someone trapped within the rock pressed against it with her palms.

When I reached the center of the wall I stopped. There was the same figure I had seen at the Nursery years before: the owl-eyed man with a tail and paws instead of hands. Surrounding it was a series of simple images.

The first was drawn in charcoal. It showed a figure almost like a seahorse, its two legs bound together so that they seemed like one, its body represented by sketchy lines evocative of fur. Its ears were long and pointed, as was its nose, and two horns projected from its head.

The second drawing was like the first, although its execution was more graceful. A line-drawing like those on Balthazar’s vase paintings, showing a slender man, his body curved, his hooved feet close together and his horned head thrown back as he danced.

The third and final image was not a drawing at all, but a photograph: a black-and-white film still of a man lying bound and gagged on a four-poster bed. Another man stood above him, holding a whip; the man on the bed stared at him wild-eyed. In the background I could just make out a small white face like a spot on the negative, a girl with tousled hair and blank staring eyes.

“You have to do it right,” a matter-of-fact voice said from behind me. I turned.

“Ralph,” I said dully.

“That’s right.” He stepped toward me—still wearing his ridiculous shiny blue jacket, though it was now torn and stained, his shirt pleached with filth. He stopped near the platform and looked down, grimacing, then back at me. “Looks like you enjoyed yourself, Lit. Looks like you had a bit of fun.”

“Shut up. Don’t come near me—”

“You?” He laughed, a sharp sound like an injured dog. “You think I’d want to get anywhere near
you
? Christ, look at you!”

He pointed at me. “You look like a fucking animal! You look like you killed him with your
teeth
—”

“He’s not dead,” I said. There was a thunder in my ears. “He’s—maybe we should call an ambulance.”

“An ambulance?” Ralph shook his head. “No, sweetie pie. The only way out of this is through it. Here—”

He held out his hand. In it was a small bone knife with a broken blade. “Finish what you started.”

“No—” I started to back away. “No, I won’t, you’re crazy—”

“You have to.” He grabbed my wrist, shoved the knife into my palm. “You can’t leave him like that.”

“Then
you
kill him!”

“I can’t, Lit. If anyone other than you kills him, it won’t be the apotheosis of a god. It’ll be the murder of Axel Kern.” He forced my fingers around the handle. “He’s almost free now—help him, Lit. It’s what you were born for. It’s why you’re here. It’s why we’re all here…”

He pushed me toward the body, his hand clasped around mine so that the jagged blade was poised above the man’s chest. “Kill him.”

I pushed back but it was no good, he was too strong. Slowly the blade drew closer to the bruised body. I could hear his breathing, so rapid it must stop, suddenly, like a clock; and Ralph’s breathing, too, a slower, measured panting. It sickened me, but I could not keep myself from twisting my head to look at him, as I tried one last time to pull the blade free.

“No—you—
don’t
,” he gasped. “You little bitch—”

His face was contorted, eyes bloodshot. He smiled, horribly, and said, “Poor little puppet…”

And at those words something broke inside me. If before my rage had felt like another living thing bashing against the inside of my chest, now it burst free. With a shout I kicked, my boot driving into Ralph’s stomach. He gave a strangled cry and went flying backward. The bone knife spun from my hand as I straightened and watched Ralph crash into the wall beneath the cave painting of the horned god.

“YOU!” I shouted, and the entire room shook. “YOU!”

I pointed at him. My arm felt as though an iron bar were rammed inside it. Before me the room swam. The wall with its gallery of ancient figures began to blur and fade. “YOU—ARE—
NOTHING
!”

As though I truly
was
a lightning rod, a jolt of radiance streamed from me, leaped from shoulder to arm and from my fingers across the shadowy space that separated me from Ralph Casson. With a scream he flattened himself against the wall, one hand in front of his face. Then, as though an immense hand had struck him, he receded
into
the wall—into it and becoming part of it, his arms curving upward, his face growing hugely elongated: eyes exploding into chasms, mouth swelling and then splitting in two, so that his lower jaw formed a great jagged threshold and his upper jaw a lintel. In between yawned a dazzling black space, and from that space echoed a scream that went on and on and on, fading at last into a low, ominous buzz.

Panting, I stared at the portal—the prison—I had made. Then I turned and crossed to where Axel Kern lay upon the bed. He was motionless save for his shallow breathing, a trickle of blood down his breast. On his brow the crown of ivy and grape-leaves trembled, as though stirred by the wind. Slowly I knelt beside him, lowered my head until my lips brushed his; then stretched so that my body covered him. For a long time I lay like that, listening to the faint
shushing
of his heart, the rustle of wind in the leaves. Finally I drew back, my hand lingering upon his cheek; stood and for one last time looked down upon him.

He did not look peaceful, or asleep. He did not look like anything I had ever seen, except perhaps for the body of my friend lying blue beneath black light in another upstairs room. I stared at the bound man, his arms bruised and chained with ivy, the pulpy shapes of crushed grapes and figs beneath his cheek, the smear of honey on his thigh.

And as I looked it was like before, when his figure had appeared to blur and burn before me. Once more I felt that shiver of apprehension, a prickling along my arms and neck and it seemed that something would break through. There was a mystery there, a secret bound like the man in vines and blood, fire and seed.

But it was not
my
mystery. Not now, anyhow; not yet. As Precious Bane had done to me, I blew a kiss at the bed. Then I gathered my clothes and dressed.

“Very nice,” someone murmured. “Your portal. The irony will be lost on Ralph, of course, but not on me.”

I turned, pulling on my boot, and saw Balthazar Warnick standing in front of the door. A real door, an ordinary door, that opened onto a hall where wind sent rainy gusts of brown leaves spiraling into the night.

“You—you saw—” I stammered.

He smiled, a small rueful small, and stepped toward me. Then he stopped, frowning, and bent to pick up something.

It was the bone knife. He turned it over in his hands, carefully slipped it into the inside pocket of his wool greatcoat. “I’ll take this,” he said. “For safekeeping.” He looked at the man on the bed. “And I will take care of that as well.”

He glanced at the bottles strewn everywhere, the scattered opium cakes and bloodstained ropes. After a minute he turned back to me. In a low voice he asked, “Lit—will you change your mind? Will you come with us? Now, or—well, soon?”

I shook my head. “No.” Then, trying not to sound so harsh, “No, thank you.”

“Then go,” he commanded.
“Now.”

But as I hurried toward the door he stopped me. “Wait. Take this—”

He took my right hand and prised it open, slid something onto the middle finger. I blinked. It was a ring, shaped precisely like the grotesque image of Ralph Casson’s face that now served as a portal.

“So you’ll always have a way out,” said Balthazar Warnick softly. “Or back.”

For a long moment his sea-blue eyes held mine. Finally I pulled away.

“Thank you,” I whispered. “G’bye—”

I walked like a seasick passenger into the hall. It was dark, but through the windows a chilly light gleamed. Behind the watchful shadow that was Muscanth Mountain, dawn was gathering. I staggered down the corridor, found a stairwell and nearly fell down it, my boots sliding on the runners. When I reached the bottom I lurched into another corridor, and another, until at last I made my way to the great hall. There were bottles and ashtrays everywhere, candle stubs and light bulbs, torn clothing and record albums, the detritus of a dozen parties; but no people. I walked through the room and went onto the patio.

“Oh, man…”

It was covered with terra-cotta masks. All broken, so that as I crossed to the lawn I stepped through a wasteland of crushed mouths and hollow cheeks, beatific smiles turned to death’s-heads where they had been trodden into the flagstones. At the very edge of the patio one lay, more intact than the others, eyes slanted beneath a crown of grapes. It shattered beneath my boot as I left the patio and walked downhill. It was still raining, fine icy needles that made my skin feel numb, but that was okay. Numb was okay. Numb was good.

I reached the drive and started down. I shoved my hands into my pockets and something pricked my thumb. I swore, fumbled in the pocket until I found something sharp.

I pulled it out—the baggie full of pot seeds and manicure scissors I’d discovered in the bathroom, right before Jamie found me and gave me his clothes. I held the scissors up, wiping rain from my eyes; then tugged thoughtfully at my hair.

“Huh,” I said. “Well, nothing makes a girl feel better than a new ’do.”