by Clive Barker
“Away. As far as I can get.”
“You promised to stay.” “I promised to listen. I have listened. And I don’t want any of this bloody place.”
Marty began to open the door. Whitehead addressed his back.
“You think the European’ll let you be? You’ve seen him in the flesh, you’ve seen what he can do. He’ll have to silence you sooner or later. Have you thought of that?”
“I’ll take the risk.”
“You’re safe here.”
“Safe?” Marty repeated incredulously. “You can’t be serious. Safe? You really are pathetic, you know that?”
“If you go—” Whitehead warned.
“What?” Marty turned on him, spitting contempt. “What will you do, old man?”
“I’ll have them after you in two minutes flat; you’re skipping parole.”
“And if they find me, I’ll tell them everything. About the heroin, about her out there in the hall. Every dirty thing I can dig up to tell them. I don’t give a monkey’s toss for your fucking threats, you hear?”
Whitehead nodded. “So. Stalemate.”
“Looks like it,” Marty replied, and stepped out into the corridor without looking back.
There was a morbid surprise awaiting him: the pups had found Bella. They had not been spared Mamoulian’s resurrecting hand, though they could not have served any practical purpose. Too small, too blind. They lay in the shadow of her empty belly, their mouths seeking teats that had long since gone. One of them was missing, he noted. Had it been the sixth child he’d seen move in the grave, either buried too deeply, or too profoundly degenerated, to follow where the rest went?
Bella raised her neck as he sidled past. What was left of her head swung in his general direction. Marty looked away, disgusted; but a rhythmical thumping made him glance back.
She had forgiven him his previous violence apparently. Content now, with her adoring litter in her lap, she stared, eyeless, at him, while her wretched tail beat gently on the carpet.
In the room where Marty had left him Whitehead sat slumped with exhaustion.
Though it had been difficult to tell the story at first, it had become easier with the telling, and he was glad to have been unburdened of it. So many times he’d wanted to tell Evangeline. But she had signaled, in her elegant, subtle way, that if there were indeed secrets he had from her, she didn’t want to know them. All those years, living with Mamoulian in their home, she had never directly asked Whitehead why, as though she’d known the answer would be no answer at all, merely another question.
Thinking about her brought so many sorrows to his throat; they brimmed in him. The European had killed her, he had no doubt of that. He or his agents had been on the road with her; her death had not been chance. Had it been chance he would have known. His unfailing instinct would have sensed its rightness, however terrible his grief. But there had been no such sense, only the recognition of his oblique complicity in her death. She had been killed as revenge upon him. One of many such acts, but easily the worst.
And had the European taken her, after death? Had he slipped into the mausoleum and touched her into life, the way he had the dogs? The thought was repugnant, but Whitehead entertained it nevertheless, determined to think the worst for fear that if he didn’t Mamoulian might still find terrors to shake him with.
“You won’t,” he said aloud to the room of glass. Won’t: frighten me, intimidate me, destroy me. There were ways and means. He could escape still, and hide at the ends of the earth. Find a place where he could forget the story of his life.
There was something he hadn’t told; a fraction of the tale, scarcely pivotal but of more than passing interest, that he’d withheld from Strauss as he would withhold it from any interrogator. Perhaps it was unspeakable. Or perhaps it touched so centrally, so profoundly, upon the ambiguities that had pursued him through the wastelands of his life that to speak it was to reveal the color of his soul.
He pondered this last secret now, and in a strange way the thought of it warmed him:
He had left the game, that first and only game with the European, and scrambled through the half-choked door into Muranowski Square. No stars were burning; only the bonfire at his back.
As he’d stood in the gloom, reorienting himself, the chill creeping up through the soles of his boots, the lipless woman had appeared in front of him. She’d beckoned. He assumed she intended to lead him back the way he’d come, and so followed. She’d had other intentions however. She’d led him away from the Square to a house with barricaded windows, and—ever curious—he’d pursued her into it, certain that tonight of all nights no harm could possibly come to him.
In the entrails of the house was a tiny room whose walls were draped with pirated swaths of cloth, some rags, others dusty lengths of velvet that had once framed majestic windows. Here, in this makeshift boudoir, there was one piece of furniture only. A bed, upon which the dead Lieutenant Vasiliev—whom he had so recently seen in Mamoulian’s gaming room—was making love. And as the thief stepped through the door, and the lipless woman stood aside, Konstantin had looked up from his labors, his body continuing to press into the woman who lay beneath him on a mattress strewn with Russian and German and Polish flags.
The thief stood, disbelieving, wanting to tell Vasiliev that he was performing the act incorrectly, that he’d mistaken one hole for another, and it was no natural orifice he was using so brutally, but a wound.
The lieutenant wouldn’t have listened of course. He grinned as he worked, the red pole rooting and dislodging, rooting and dislodging. The corpse he was pleasuring rocked beneath him, unimpressed by her paramour’s attentions.
How long had the thief watched? The act showed no sign of consummation. At last the lipless woman had murmured “Enough?” in his ear, and he had turned a little way to her while she had put her hand on the front of his trousers. She seemed not at all surprised that he was aroused, though in all the years since he had never understood how such a thing was possible. He had long ago accepted that the dead could be woken. But that he had felt heat in their presence—that was another crime altogether, more terrible to him than the first.
There is no Hell, the old man thought, putting the boudoir and its charred Casanova out of his mind. Or else Hell is a room and a bed and appetite everlasting, and I’ve been there and seen its rapture and, if the worst comes to the worst, I will endure it.
From The History of the Devil
A JOYLESS LIGHT FALLS THROUGH LEAVES. ENTER GEORG KEIPENHAUER, A YOUNG SOLDIER, WITH A BABY WRAPPED IN A BLOOD-ANDnar DIRT-STAINED CLOTH, AND—FROM THE MURK BETWEEN THE TREES-THE DEVIL. WITH A BOOK AND PEN. GUNS CAN BE HEARD, NOT FAR OFF.
KEIPENHAUER: Are you Russian? There’s a curfew—
THE DEVIL: I’m sorry?
KEIPENHAUER: Get back to your house. You want your head blown off?
THE DEVIL: I’m not a local man.
KEIPENHAUER: This is forbidden territory.
THE DEVIL: I’m a historian.
KEIPENHAUER: Just keep out of this forest.
THE DEVIL: What’s your name?
KEIPENHAUER: Why?
THE DEVIL: Answer me.
KEIPENHAUER: (Almost mesmerized) Georg Keipenhauer.
THE DEVIL: I need some assistance from you.
KEIPENHAUER: I’ve no time. This child—THE DEVIL: Dead?
KEIPENHAUER: Not quite. I found her among—why am I telling you this?
THE DEVIL: Could you just direct me to the mass graves? That is where you brought her from?
KEIPENHAUER: (Nods) They pile them up. Some of them are still breathing.
THE DEVIL: There have been atrocities, then? I thought I’d finished: but there’s no rest for the wicked.
KEIPENHAUER: Finished?
THE DEVIL: I’ve taken it upon myself these last three years to chronicle the names of the casualties in Europe, especially the Jews. I’ve just come up from Dachau, thinking the work was done, and what do I find?
/> KEIPENHAUER: Why?
THE DEVIL: Why what?
KEIPENHAUER: Why chronicle the dead?
THE DEVIL: We’ve committed genocide, you and I, Germany: the least we can do is make an account. So I’ve been asking the dead their names before they go to dirt.
KEIPENHAUER: All the names?
THE DEVIL: As many as I can find.
KEIPENHAUER: You write them down?
THE DEVIL: Here.
KEIPENHAUER: Such a small book.
THE DEVIL: I have a neat hand. Germany, why do you look so unhappy? All the engineers of Hell couldn’t conceive of this. I’m humbled. The
teacher, taught. You’ve set the standard for a coming generation. KEIPENHAUER: It wasn’t me—
THE DEVIL: It never is, Germany, that’s the trick of it. How shall we ever stop it, when we can’t find the culprit? Owning up to evil takes the courage of an innocent: an unresolvable state of affairs. Do you want to give me the child?
KEIPENHAUER: What for?
THE DEVIL: Aren’t you withdrawing? I heard artillery close. You don’t want to be weighed down —
KEIPENHAUER: No, I’ll take her.
THE DEVIL: What’s her name?
KEIPENHAUER: I don’t know.
THE DEVIL: For the records.
KEIPENHAUER: She isn’t dead.
THE DEVIL: (Reaching) Give her to me.
KEIPENHAUER: (Refusing) She’s not dead.
THE DEVIL: A little gestural, isn’t it, looking after a single baby when somebody’s laid her whole country to waste? Give her to me. You must save your spotless skin, Georg. No doubt you have a family of your own. Children, grandchildren. Give me the child and no bullet will touch you.
KEIPENHAUER: She’s so small.
THE DEVIL: Dispossessed, Georg. She doesn’t want life. She’ll only resent you for it. Oh, everything’s confusion isn’t it? You don’t know which way to turn. But between us we are architects of the solution. The world’s ending, Georg. This is wise. There’s no light to go by. There’s only the engine demanding ceaselessly, ceaselessly demanding to continue. Relinquish the mite. No harm. Let her go. (He takes the baby) There. There. Which way are the graves?
KEIPENHAUER: Back along the path, to your left. Two hundred yards.
THE DEVIL: Thank you. You have my deepest respect and admiration. I’ll always remember you. Please excuse me; I must take her into history. EXIT THE DEVIL.
KEIPENHAUER: I let her go: to my shame I let him take the living child and bury her. Criminals I’ve known, always apparent; brutal men. I’ve showered with them. They were flesh enough. But this bland evil, so reasonable, so understanding. I never knew it. But it’s The Devil himself.
From The Books of Blood, Vol. I “
In the Hills, the Cities”
It wasn’t until the first week of the Yugoslavian trip that Mick discovered what a political bigot he’d chosen as a lover. Certainly, he’d been warned. One of the queens at the Baths had told him Judd was to the right of Attila the Hun, but the man had been one of Judd’s ex-affairs, and Mick had presumed there was more spite than perception in the character assassination.
If only he’d listened. Then he wouldn’t be driving along an interminable road in a Volkswagen that suddenly seemed the size of a coffin, listening to Judd’s views on Soviet expansionism. Jesus, he was so boring. He didn’t converse, he lectured, and endlessly. In Italy the sermon had been on the way the Communists had exploited the peasant vote. Now, in Yugoslavia, Judd had really warmed to this theme, and Mick was just about ready to take a hammer to his self-opinionated head.
It wasn’t that he disagreed with everything Judd said. Some of the arguments (the ones Mick understood) seemed quite sensible. But then, what did he know? He was a dance teacher. Judd was a journalist, a professional pundit. He felt, like most journalists Mick had encountered, that he was obliged to have an opinion on everything under the sun. Especially politics; that was the best trough to wallow in. You could get your snout, eyes, head, and front hooves in that mess of muck and have a fine old time splashing around. It was an inexhaustible subject to devour, a swill with a little of everything in it, because everything, according to Judd, was political. The arts were political. Sex was political. Religion, commerce, gardening, eating, drinking, and farting—all political.
Jesus, it was mind-blowingly boring; killingly, love-deadeningly boring. Worse still, Judd didn’t seem to notice how bored Mick had become, or if he noticed, he didn’t care. He just rambled on, his arguments getting windier and windier, his sentences lengthening with every mile they drove.
Judd, Mick had decided, was a selfish bastard, and as soon as their honeymoon was over he’d part with the guy.
It was not until their trip, that endless, motiveless caravan through the graveyards of mid-European culture, that Judd realized what a political lightweight he had in Mick. The guy showed precious little interest in the economics or the politics of the countries they passed through. He registered indifference to the full facts behind the Italian situation, and yawned, yes, yawned when he tried (and failed) to debate the Russian threat to world peace. He had to face the bitter truth: Mick was a queen; there was no other word for him; all right, perhaps he didn’t mince or wear jewelry to excess, but he was a queen nevertheless, happy to wallow in a dreamworld of early Renaissance frescoes and Yugoslavian icons. The complexities, the contradictions, even the agonies that made those cultures blossom and wither were just tiresome to him. His mind was no deeper than his looks; he was a well-groomed nobody.
Some honeymoon.
The road south from Belgrade to Novi Pazar was, by Yugoslavian standards, a good one. There were fewer potholes than on many of the roads they’d traveled, and it was relatively straight. The town of Novi Pazar lay in the valley of the River Raska, south of the city named after the river. It wasn’t an area particularly popular with the tourists. Despite the good road it was still inaccessible, and lacked sophisticated amenities; but Mick was determined to see the monastery at Sopocani, to the west of the town, and after some bitter argument, he’d won.
The journey had proved uninspiring. On either side of the road the cultivated fields looked parched and dusty. The summer had been unusually hot, and droughts were affecting many of the villages. Crops had failed, and livestock had been prematurely slaughtered to prevent them dying of malnutrition. There was a defeated look about the few faces they glimpsed at the roadside. Even the children had dour expressions; brows as heavy as the stale heat that hung over the valley.
Now, with the cards on the table after a row at Belgrade, they drove in silence most of the time; but the straight road, like most straight roads, invited dispute. When the driving was easy, the mind rooted for something to keep it engaged. What better than a fight?
“Why the hell do you want to see this damn monastery?” Judd demanded. It was an unmistakable invitation.
“We’ve come all this way …,” Mick tried to keep the tone conversational. He wasn’t in the mood for an argument.
“More fucking Virgins, is it?”
Keeping his voice as even as he could, Mick picked up the Guide and read aloud from it: “there, some of the greatest works of Serbian painting can still be seen and enjoyed, including what many commentators agree to be the enduring masterpiece of the Raska school: The Donnition of the Virgin.”
Silence.
Then Judd: “I’m up to here with churches.”
“It’s a masterpiece.”
“They’re all masterpieces according to that bloody book.”
Mick felt his control slipping.
“Two and a half hours at most—”
“I told you, I don’t want to see another church; the smell of the places makes me sick. Stale incense, old sweat, and lies …”
“It’s a short detour; then we can get back on to the road and you can give me another lecture on farming subsidies in the Sandzak.”
“I’m just trying to get some decent conversation
going instead of this endless tripe about Serbian fucking masterpieces—”
“Stop the car!”
“What?”
“Stop the car!”
Judd pulled the Volkswagen onto the side of the road. Mick got out.
The road was hot, but there was a slight breeze. He took a deep breath, and wandered into the middle of the road. Empty of traffic and of pedestrians in both directions. In every direction, empty. The hills shimmered in the heat off the fields. There were wild poppies growing in the ditches. Mick crossed the road, squatted on his haunches, and picked one.
Behind him he heard the VW’s door slam.
“What did you stop us for?” Judd said. His voice was edgy, still hoping for that argument, begging for it.
Mick stood up, playing with the poppy. It was close to seeding, late in the season. The petals fell from the receptacle as soon as he touched them, little splashes of red fluttering down on to the gray tarmac.
“I asked you a question,” Judd said again.
Mick looked around. Judd was standing the far side of the car, his brows a knitted line of burgeoning anger. But handsome; oh yes; a face that made women weep with frustration that he was gay. A heavy black mustache (perfectly trimmed) and eyes you could watch forever, and never see the same light in them twice. Why in God’s name, thought Mick, does a man as fine as that have to be such an insensitive little shit?
Judd returned the look of contemptuous appraisal, staring at the pouting pretty boy across the road. It made him want to puke, seeing the little act Mick was performing for his benefit. It might just have been plausible in a sixteen-year-old virgin. In a twenty-five-year-old, it lacked credibility.
Mick dropped the flower, and untucked his T-shirt from his jeans. A tight stomach, then a slim, smooth chest were revealed as he pulled it off. His hair was ruffled when his head reappeared, and his face wore a broad grin. Judd looked at the torso. Neat, not too muscular. An appendix scar peering over his faded jeans. A gold chain, small but catching the sun, dipped in the hollow of his throat. Without meaning to, he returned Mick’s grin, and a kind of peace was made between them.