The Damnation Game

by Clive Barker

  "Void."

  It was just a dead word when she spoke it aloud: it didn't begin to describe the place she'd discovered; its emptiness more immaculate, the terrors it awoke more atrocious, the hope of salvation in its deeps more fragile than in any place she had ever guessed at. It was a legendary Nowhere, beside which every other dark was blindingly bright, every other despair she had endured a mere flirtation with the pit, not the pit itself.

  Its architect had been there too. She remembered something of his mild physiognomy, which had convinced her not a jot. See how extraordinary this emptiness is, he had boasted; how pure, how absolute? A world of marvels can't compare, can never hope to compare, with such sublime nothingness.

  And when she awoke the boasts remained. It was as if the vision were true, while the reality she now occupied was a fiction. As if color and shape and substance were pretty distractions designed to paste over the fact of this emptiness he had shown her. Now she waited, scarcely aware of time passing, occasionally stroking the sheet or feeling the weave of the carpet under her bare feet, waiting in despair for the moment it all peeled back and the void appeared again to devour her.

  Well, she thought, I'll go to the sunshine island. If ever she deserved to play there awhile, she deserved it now, having suffered so much. But something soured the thought. Wasn't the island a fiction too? If she went there now, wasn't she weaker next time the architect came, void in hand? Her heart started to beat very loudly in her ears. Who was there to help her? Nobody who understood. Just Pearl, with her accusing eyes and her sly contempt; and Whitehead, content to feed her H as long as it kept her compliant; and Marty, her runner, sweet in his way, but so naively pragmatic she could never begin to explain the complexities of the dimensions she lived in. He was a one-world man; he would look at her bewildered, trying to understand, and failing.

  No; she had no guides, no signposts. It would be better if she went back the way she knew. Back to the island.

  It was a chemical lie, and it killed with time; but life killed in time, didn't it? And if dying was all there was, didn't it make sense to go to it happy rather than fester in a dirty hole of a world where the void whispered at every corner? So when Pearl came upstairs with her H, she took it, thanked her politely, and went to the island, dancing.

  28

  Fear could make the world go round if its wheels were efficiently oiled. Marty had seen the system in practice at Wandsworth: a hierarchy built upon fear. It was violent, unstable and unjust, but perfectly workable.

  Seeing Whitehead, the calm, still center of his universe, so changed by fear, so sweaty, so full of panic, had come as an unwelcome shock. Marty had no personal feelings for the old man-or none that he was aware of-but he'd seen Whitehead's species of integrity at work, and had profited by it. Now, he felt, the stability he had come to enjoy was threatened with extinction. Already the old man was clearly withholding information-perhaps pivotal to Marty's understanding of the situation-about the intruder and his motives. In place of Whitehead's previous plain talking, there was innuendo and threats. That was his prerogative, of course. But it left Marty with a guessing game on his hands.

  One point was unarguable: whatever Whitehead claimed, the man at the fence had been no conventional hired killer. Several inexplicable things had happened at the fence. The lights had waxed and waned as if on cue; the cameras had mysteriously failed when the man had appeared. The dogs had registered this riddle too. Why else had they shown such a confusion of anger and apprehension? And there remained the illusions-those air-burning pictures. No sleight of hand, however elaborate, could explain them satisfactorily. If Whitehead knew this "assassin" as well as he claimed, then he must know the man's skills too: he was simply too afraid to talk about them.

  Marty spent the day asking the discreetest of questions around the house but it rapidly became apparent that Whitehead had said nothing of the events to Pearl, Lillian or Luther. This was odd. Surely now was the very time to make everyone more vigilant? The only person to suggest he had any knowledge of the night's events was Bill Toy, but when Marty raised the subject he was evasive.

  "I realize you've been put in a difficult situation, Marty, but so are we all at the moment."

  "I just feel I could do the job better-"

  "-if you knew the facts."

  "Yes."

  "Well, I think you have to concede that Joe knows best." He made a rueful face. "We should all have that tattooed on our hands, don't you think? Joe Knows Best. I wish I could tell more. I wish I knew more. I think it's probably easiest for all concerned if you let the matter drop."

  "He gave me a gun, Bill."

  "I know."

  "And he told me to use it."

  Toy nodded; he looked pained by all of this, even regretful.

  "These are bad times, Marty. We're all... all having to do a lot of things we don't want to, believe me."

  Marty did believe him; he trusted Toy sufficiently to know that if there'd been anything he could say on the subject, it would have been said. It was entirely possible that Toy didn't even know who had broken the seal on the Sanctuary. If it was some private confrontation between Whitehead and the stranger, then maybe a full explanation could only come from the old man himself, and that would clearly not be forthcoming.

  Marty had one final interviewee. Carys.

  He hadn't seen her since he'd trespassed on the upper landing the day before. What he'd seen between Carys and her father had unsettled him, and there was, he knew, a childish urge in him to punish her by withholding his company. Now he felt obliged to seek her out, however uncomfortable the meeting might prove.

  He found her that afternoon, loitering in the vicinity of the dovecote. She was wrapped up in a fur coat that looked as if it had been bought at a thrift shop; it was several sizes too big for her, and moth-eaten. As it was, she seemed overdressed. The weather was warm even if the wind was gusty, and the clouds that passed across a Wedgwood-blue sky carried little threat: too small, too white. They were April clouds, containing at worst a light shower.

  "Carys."

  She fixed him with eyes so ringed with tiredness his first thought was that they were bruised. In her hand she had a bundle, rather than a bunch, of flowers, many still buds.

  "Smell," she said, proffering them.

  He sniffed at them. They were practically scentless: they just smelled of eagerness and earth.

  "Can't smell much."

  "Good," she said. "I thought I was losing my senses."

  She let the bundle drop to the ground, impatient with them.

  "You don't mind if I interrupt, do you?"

  She shook her head. "Interrupt all you like," she replied. The strangeness of her manner struck him more forcibly than ever; she always spoke as though she had some private joke on her mind. He longed to join in the game, to learn her secret language, but she seemed so sealed up, an anchorite behind a wall of sly smiles.

  "I suppose you heard the dogs last night," he said.

  "I don't remember," she replied, frowning. "Maybe."

  "Did anybody say anything to you about it?"

  "Why should they?"

  "I don't know. I just thought-"

  She put him out of his discomfort with a fierce little nod of her head.

  "Yes, if you want to know. Pearl told me there's been an intruder. And you scared him off, is that right? You and the dogs."

  "Me and the dogs."

  "And which of you bit off his finger?"

  Had Pearl told her about the finger too, or was it the old man who'd vouchsafed that vicious detail? Had they been together today, in her room? He canceled the scene before it flared up in his head.

  "Did Pearl tell you that?" he said.

  "I haven't seen the old man," she replied, "if that's what you're driving at.

  His thought encapsulated; it was eerie. She even used his phraseology. "The old man," she called him, not "Papa."

  "Shall we walk down to the lake?" she suggested,
not really seeming to care one way or the other.

  "Sure."

  "You were right about the dovecote, you know," she said. "It's ugly when it's empty like this. I never thought of it like that before." The image of the deserted dovecote genuinely seemed to unnerve her. She shivered, even in the thick coat.

  "Did you run today?" she asked.

  "No. I was too tired."

  "Was it that bad?"

  "Was what that bad?"

  "Last night."

  He didn't know how to begin to answer. Yes, of course, it had been bad, but even if he trusted her enough to describe the illusion he'd seen-and he was by no means sure he did-his vocabulary was woefully inadequate.

  Carys paused as they came in sight of the lake. Small white flowers starred the grass beneath their feet, Marty didn't know their names. She studied them as she said:

  "Is it just another prison, Marty?"

  "What?"

  "Being here."

  She had her father's skill with non sequiturs. He hadn't anticipated the question at all, and it threw him. Nobody had really asked him how he'd felt since arriving. Certainly not beyond a superficial inquiry as to his comfort. Perhaps consequently he hadn't really bothered to ask himself. His answer-when it came-came haltingly.

  "Yes... I suppose it's still a prison, I hadn't really thought... I mean, I can't just up and leave anytime I want to, can I? But it doesn't compare... with, Wandsworth"-again, his vocabulary failed him-"this is just another world."

  He wanted to say he loved the trees, the size of the sky, the white florets they stepped through as they walked, but he knew such utterances would sound leaden out of his mouth. He hadn't got the knack of that kind of talk: not like Flynn, who could babble instant poetry as though it were a second tongue. Irish blood, he used to claim, to explain this loquacity. All Marty could say was: "I can run here."

  She murmured something he failed to catch; perhaps just assent. Whatever, his answer seemed to satisfy her, and he could feel the anger he'd started out with, the resentment at her clever talk and her secret life with Papa, dissolving.

  "Do you play tennis?" she asked, again out of nowhere.

  "No; I never have."

  "Like to learn?" she suggested, half-looking around at him and grinning. "I could teach you. When the weather gets warmer."

  She looked too frail for any strenuous exercise; living on the edge all the time seemed to weary her, though on the edge of what he didn't know.

  "You teach me: I'll play," he said, happy with the bargain.

  "That's a deal?" she asked.

  "A deal."

  -and her eyes, he thought, are so dark; ambiguous eyes that dodge and skim sometimes, and sometimes, when you least expect it, look at you with such directness you're sure she's stripping your soul.

  -and he isn't handsome, she thought; he's too used to be that, and he runs to keep himself fit because if he stopped he'd get flabby. He's probably a narcissist: I bet he stands in front of the mirror every night and looks at himself and wishes he was still a pretty-boy instead of being solid and somber.

  She caught a thought from him, her mind reaching up, easily up, above her head (this was the way she pictured it, at least) and snatching it out of the air. She did it all the time-to Pearl, to her father-often forgetting that other people lacked the skill to pry with such casualness.

  The thought she had snatched was: I would have to learn to be gentle; that, or something like it. He was afraid she'd bruise, for Christ's sake. That was why he was all dammed up when he was with her, so circuitous in his dealings.

  "I'm not going to break," she said, and a patch of skin at his neck blushed.

  "I'm sorry," he answered. She wasn't sure if he was conceding his error or simply hadn't understood her observation.

  "There's no need to handle me with kid gloves. I don't want that from you. I get it all the time."

  He threw her a disconsolate glance. Why didn't he believe what she told him? She waited, hoping for some clue, but none was offered, however tentative.

  They'd come to the weir that fed the lake. It was high, and fast. People had drowned in it, she'd been told, as recently as a couple of decades ago, just before Papa had bought the estate. She started to explain all this, and about a coach and horses that had been driven into the lake during a storm, telling him without listening to herself, working out how to get past his courtesy and his machismo to the part of him that might be of use to her.

  "And the coach is still in there?" he asked, staring into the threshing water.

  "Presumably," she said. The story had lost its charm already.

  "Why don't you trust me?" she asked him straight out.

  He didn't reply; but he was clearly struggling with something. The frown of puzzlement he displayed deepened to dismay. Damn, she thought, I've really spoiled things somehow. But it was done. She'd asked him outright, and she was ready to take the bad news, whatever it was.

  Almost without planning the theft, she stole another thought from him, and it was shockingly clear: like living it. Through his eyes she saw the door of her bedroom, and her lying on the bed beyond it, glassy-eyed, with Papa sitting close by. When was this, she wondered? Yesterday? The day before? Had he heard them talking about it; was that what woke such distaste in him? He'd played the detective, and he hadn't liked what he'd discovered.

  "I'm not very good with people," he said, answering her question about trust. "I never have been."

  How he squirmed rather than tell the truth. He was being obscenely polite with her. She wanted to wring his neck.

  "You spied on us," she said with brutal plainness. "That's all it is, isn't it? You saw Papa and me together-"

  She tried to frame the remark as if it were a wild guess. It didn't quite convince as such, and she knew it. But what the hell? It was said now, and he would have to invent his own reasons as to how she'd reached that conclusion.

  "What did you overhear?" she demanded, but got no response. It wasn't anger that tongue-tied him, but shame for his peeping. The blushing had infected his face from ear to ear.

  "He treats you like he owns you," he murmured, not taking-his eyes off the roiling water.

  "He does, in a way."

  "Why?"

  "I'm all he's got. He's alone..."

  "Yes."

  "... and afraid."

  "Does he ever let you leave the Sanctuary?"

  "I've got no desire to go," she said. "I've got all I want here."

  He wanted to ask her what she did for bed companions, but he'd embarrassed himself enough as it was. She found the thought anyway, and fast upon the thought, the image of Whitehead leaning forward to kiss her. Perhaps it was more than a fatherly kiss. Though she tried not to think of that possibility too often, she could not avoid its presence. Marty was more acute than she'd given him credit for; he'd caught that subtext, subtle as it was.

  "I don't trust him," he said. He took his gaze off the water to look around at her. His bewilderment was perfectly apparent.

  "I know how to handle him," she replied. "I've made a bargain with him. He understands bargains. He gets me to stay with him, and I get what I want."

  "Which is?"

  Now she looked away. The spume off the whipping water was a grubby brown. "A little sunshine," she finally replied.

  "I thought that came free," Marty said, puzzled.

  "Not the way I like it," she answered. What did he want from her? Apologies? If so, he'd be disappointed.

  "I should get back to the house," he said.

  Suddenly, she said: "Don't hate me, Marty."

  "I don't," he came back.

  "There's a lot of us the same."

  "The same?"

  "Belonging to him."

  Another ugly truth. She was positively brimful of them today.

  "You could get the hell out of here if you really wanted to, couldn't you?" he said, peevishly.

  She nodded. "I suppose I could. But where?"

&n
bsp; The question made no sense to him. There was an entire world outside the fences, and she surely didn't lack the finances to explore it, not Joseph Whitehead's daughter. Did she really find the prospect so stale? They made such a strange pair. He with his experience so unnaturally abbreviated-years of his life wasted-and now anxious to make up for lost time. She, so apathetic, fatigued by the very thought of escape from her self-defined prison.

  "You could go anywhere," he said.

  "That's as good as nowhere," she replied flatly; it was a destination that remained much on her mind. She glanced across at him, hoping some light would have dawned but he didn't show a glimmer of comprehension.

  "Never mind," she said.

  "Are you coming?"

  "No, I think I'll stay here for a while."

  "Don't throw yourself in."

  "Can't swim, eh?" she replied, testily. He frowned, not understanding. "Doesn't matter. I never took you for a hero."

  He left her standing inches from the edge of the bank, watching the water. What he'd told her was true; he wasn't good with people. But with women, he was even worse. He should have taken the cloth, the way his mother had always wanted him to. That would have solved the problem; except that he had no grasp of religion either, and never had. Maybe that was part of the problem between him and the girl: they neither of them believed a damn thing. There was nothing to say, there were no issues to debate. He glanced around. Carys had walked a short way along the bank from the spot where he'd left her. The sun glared off the skin of the water and burned into her outline. It was almost as if she wasn't real at all.

  Part Three. DEUCE

  deuce1 n. The two at dice or cards;

  (Tennis) state of score (40 all, games all) at which either party must gain two consecutive points or games to win.

  deuce2 n. Plague, mischief; the Devil.

  V. Superstition

  29

  Less than a week after the talk at the weir, the first hairline cracks began to appear in the pillars of the Whitehead Empire. They rapidly widened. Spontaneous selling began on the world's stock markets, a sudden failure of faith in the Empire's credibility. Crippling losses in share values soon mounted. The selling fever, once contracted, appeared well-nigh incurable