by Clive Barker
'I haven't prayed in twenty years,' Harry replied.
'Then learn,' came the response, and Valentin turned to run.
As he did so a ripple of darkness moved down the street from the north, dimming the lustre of bar-signs and street-lamps as it came. Neon announcements suddenly guttered and died; there were protests out of upstairs windows as the lights failed and, as if encouraged by the curses, the music took on a fresh and yet more hectic rhythm. Above his head Harry heard a wailing sound, and looked up to see a ragged silhouette against the clouds which trailed tendrils like a man o' war as it descended upon the street, leaving the stench of rotting fish in its wake. Its target was clearly Valentin. He shouted above the wail and the music and the panic from the black-out, but no sooner had he yelled than he heard Valentin shout out from the darkness; a pleading cry that was rudely cut short.
He stood in the murk, his feet unwilling to carry him a step nearer the place from which the plea had come. The smell still stung his nostrils; nosing it, his nausea returned. And then, so did the lights; a wave of power igniting the lamps and the bar-signs as it washed back down the street. It reached Harry, and moved on to the spot where he had last seen Valentin. It was deserted; indeed the sidewalk was empty all the way down to the next intersection.
The drivelling jazz had stopped.
Eyes peeled for man, beast, or the remnants of either, Harry wandered down the sidewalk. Twenty yards from where he had been standing the concrete was wet. Not with blood, he was pleased to see; the fluid was the colour of bile, and stank to high heaven. Amongst the splashes were several slivers of what might have been human tissue. Evidently Valentin had fought, and succeeded in opening a wound in his attacker. There were more traces of the blood further down the sidewalk, as if the injured thing had crawled some way before taking flight again. With Valentin, presumably. In the face of such strength Harry knew his meagre powers would have availed him not at all, but he felt guilty nevertheless. He'd heard the cry - seen the assailant swoop - and yet fear had sealed his soles to the ground.
He'd last felt fear the equal of this in Wyckoff Street, when Mimi Lomax's demon-lover had finally thrown off any pretence to humanity. The room had filled with the stink of ether and human dirt, and the demon had stood there in its appalling nakedness and shown him scenes that had turned his bowels to water. They were with him now, those scenes. They would be with him forever.
He looked down at die scrap of paper Valentin had given him: the name and address had been rapidly scrawled, but they were just decipherable.
A wise man, Harry reminded himself, would screw this note up and throw it down into the gutter. But if the events in Wyckoff Street had taught him anything, it was that once touched by such malignancy as he had seen and dreamt in the last few hours, there could be no casual disposal of it. He had to follow it to its source, however repugnant that thought was, and make with it whatever bargains the strength of his hand allowed.
There was no good time to do business like this: the present would have to suffice. He walked back to Lexington and caught a cab to the address on the paper. He got no response from the bell marked Bernstein, but roused the doorman, and engaged in a frustrating debate with him through the glass door. The man was angry to have been raised at such an hour; Miss Bernstein was not in her apartment, he insisted, and remained untouched even when Harry intimated that there might be some life-or-death urgency in the matter. It was only when he produced his wallet that the fellow displayed the least flicker of concern. Finally, he let Harry in.
'She's not up there,' he said, pocketing the bills. 'She's not been in for days.'
Harry took the elevator: his shins were aching, and his back too. He wanted sleep; bourbon, then sleep. There was no reply at the apartment as the doorman had predicted, but he kept knocking, and calling her.
'Miss Bernstein? Are you there?'
There was no sign of life from within; not at least, until he said:
'I want to talk about Swann.'
He heard an intake of breath, close to the door.
'Is somebody there?' he asked. 'Please answer. There's nothing to be afraid of.'
After several seconds a slurred and melancholy voice murmured: 'Swann's dead.'
At least she wasn't, Harry thought. Whatever forces had snatched Valentin away, they had not yet reached this corner of Manhattan. 'May I talk to you?' he requested.
'No,' she replied. Her voice was a candle flame on the verge of extinction.
'Just a few questions, Barbara.'
'I'm in the tiger's belly,' the slow reply came, 'and it doesn't want me to let you in.'
Perhaps they had got here before him.
'Can't you reach the door?' he coaxed her. 'It's not so far. . .'
'But it's eaten me,' she said.
'Try, Barbara. The tiger won't mind. Reach.'
There was silence from the other side of the door, then a shuffling sound. Was she doing as he had requested? It seemed so. He heard her fingers fumbling with the catch.
'That's it,' he encouraged her. 'Can you turn it? Try to turn it.'
At the last instant he thought: suppose she's telling the truth, and there is a tiger in there with her? It was too late for retreat, the door was opening. There was no animal in the hallway. Just a woman, and the smell of dirt. She had clearly neither washed nor changed her clothes since fleeing from the theatre. The evening gown she wore was soiled and torn, her skin was grey with grime. He stepped into the apartment. She moved down the hallway away from him, desperate to avoid his touch.
'It's all right,' he said, 'there's no tiger here.'
Her wide eyes were almost empty; what presence roved there was lost to sanity.
'Oh there is,' she said, Tm in the tiger. I'm in it forever.'
As he had neither the time nor the skill required to dissuade her from this madness, he decided it was wiser to go with it.
'How did you get there?' he asked her. 'Into the tiger? Was it when you were with Swann?'
She nodded.
'You remember that, do you?'
'Oh yes.'
'What do you remember?'
'There was a sword; it fell. He was picking up -' She stopped and frowned.
'Picking up what?'
She seemed suddenly more distracted than ever. 'How can you hear me,' she wondered, 'when I'm in the tiger? Are you in the tiger too?
'Maybe I am,' he said, not wanting to analyse the metaphor too closely.
'We're here forever, you know,' she informed him. 'We'll never be let out.'
'Who told you that?'
She didn't reply, but cocked her head a little.
'Can you hear?' she said.
'Hear?'
She took another step back down the hallway. Harry listened, but he could hear nothing. The growing agitation on Barbara's face was sufficient to send him back to the front door and open it, however. The elevator was in operation. He could hear its soft hum across the landing. Worse: the lights in the hallway and on the stairs were deteriorating; the bulbs losing power with every foot the elevator ascended.
He turned back into the apartment and went to take hold of Barbara's wrist. She made no protest. Her eyes were fixed on the doorway through which she seemed to know her judgement would come.
'We'll take the stairs,' he told her, and led her out on to the landing. The lights were within an ace of failing. He glanced up at the floor numbers being ticked off above the elevator doors. Was this the top floor they were on, or one shy of it? He couldn't remember, and there was no time to think before the lights went out entirely.
He stumbled across the unfamiliar territory of the landing with the girl in tow, hoping to God he'd find the stairs before the elevator reached this floor. Barbara wanted to loiter, but he bullied her to pick up her pace. As his foot found the top stair the elevator finished its ascent.
The doors hissed open, and a cold fluorescence washed the landing. He couldn't see its source, nor did he wish to, but
its effect was to reveal to the naked eye every stain and blemish, every sign of decay and creeping rot that the paintwork sought to camouflage. The show stole Harry's attention for a moment only, then he took a firmer hold of the woman's hand and they began their descent. Barbara was not interested in escape however, but in events on the landing. Thus occupied she tripped and fell heavily against Harry. The two would have toppled but that he caught hold of the banister. Angered, he turned to her. They were out of sight of the landing, but the light crept down the stairs and washed over Barbara's face. Beneath its uncharitable scrutiny Harry saw decay busy in her. Saw rot in her teeth, and the death in her skin and hair and nails. No doubt he would have appeared much the same to her, were she to have looked, but she was still staring back over her shoulder and up the stairs. The light-source was on the move. Voices accompanied it.
The door's open,' a woman said.
'What are you waiting for?' a voice replied. It was Butterfield.
Harry held both breath and wrist as the light- source moved again, towards the door presumably, and then was partially eclipsed as it disappeared into the apartment.
'We have to be quick,' he told Barbara. She went with him down three or four steps and then, without warning, her hand leapt for his face, nails opening his cheek. He let go of her hand to protect himself, and in that instant she was away - back up the stairs.
He cursed and stumbled in pursuit of her, but her former sluggishness had lifted; she was startlingly nimble. By the dregs of light from the landing he watched her reach the top of the stairs and disappear from sight.
'Here I am,' she called out as she went.
He stood immobile on the stairway, unable to decide whether to go or stay, and so unable to move at all. Ever since Wyckoff Street he'd hated stairs. Momentarily the light from above flared up, throwing the shadows of the banisters across him; then it died again. He put his hand to his face. She had raised weals, but there was little blood. What could he hope from her if he went to her aid? Only more of the same. She was a lost cause.
Even as he despaired of her he heard a sound from round the corner at the head of the stairs; a soft sound that might have been either a footstep or a sigh. Had she escaped their influence after all? Or perhaps not even reached the apartment door, but thought better of it and about-turned? Even as he was weighing up the odds he heard her say:
'Help me ..." The voice was a ghost of a ghost; but it was indisputably her, and she was in terror.
He reached for his .38, and started up the stairs again. Even before he had turned the corner he felt the nape of his neck itch as his hackles rose.
She was there. But so was the tiger. It stood on the landing, mere feet from Harry, its body humming with latent power. Its eyes were molten; its open maw impossibly large. And there, already in its vast throat, was Barbara. He met her eyes out of the tiger's mouth, and saw a flicker of comprehension in them that was worse than any madness. Then the beast threw its head back and forth to settle its prey in its gut. She had been swallowed whole, apparently. There was no blood on the landing, nor about the tiger's muzzle; only the appalling sight of the girl's face disappearing down the tunnel of the animal's throat.
She loosed a final cry from the belly of the thing, and as it rose it seemed to Harry that the beast attempted a grin. Its face crinkled up grotesquely, the eyes narrowing like those of a laughing Buddha, the lips peeling back to expose a sickle of brilliant teeth. Behind this display the cry was finally hushed. In that instant the tiger leapt.
Harry fired into its devouring bulk and as the shot met its flesh the leer and the maw and the whole striped mass of it unwove in a single beat. Suddenly it was gone, and there was only a drizzle of pastel confetti spiralling down around him. The shot had aroused interest. There were raised voices in one or two of the apartments, and the light that had accompanied Butterfield from the elevator was brightening through the open door of the Bernstein residence. He was almost tempted to stay and see the light-bringer, but discretion bettered his curiosity, and he turned and made his descent, taking the stairs two and three at a time. The confetti tumbled after him, as if it had a life of its own. Barbara's life, perhaps; transformed into paper pieces and tossed away.
He reached the lobby breathless. The doorman was standing there, staring up the stairs vacantly.
'Somebody get shot?' he enquired.
'No,' said Harry, 'eaten.'
As he headed for the door he heard the elevator start to hum as it descended. Perhaps merely a tenant, coming down for a pre-dawn stroll. Perhaps not.
He left the doorman as he had found him, sullen and confused, and made his escape into the street, putting two block lengths between him and the apartment building before he stopped running. They did not bother to come after him. He was beneath their concern, most likely.
So what was he to do now? Valentin was dead, Barbara Bernstein too. He was none the wiser now than he'd been at the outset, except that he'd learned again the lesson he'd been taught in Wyckoff Street: that when dealing with the Gulfs it was wiser never to believe your eyes. The moment you trusted your senses, the moment you believed a tiger to be a tiger, you were half theirs.
Not a complicated lesson, but it seemed he had forgotten it, like a fool, and it had taken two deaths to teach it to him afresh. Maybe it would be simpler to have the rule tattooed on the back of his hand, so that he couldn't check the time without being reminded: Never believe your eyes.
The principle was still fresh in his mind as he walked back towards his apartment and a man stepped out of the doorway and said:
'Harry.'
It looked like Valentin; a wounded Valentin, a Valentin who'd been dismembered and sewn together again by a committee of blind surgeons, but the same man in essence. But then the tiger had looked like a tiger, hadn't it?
'It's me,' he said.
'Oh no,' Harry said. 'Not this time.'
'What are you talking about? It's Valentin.'
'So prove it.'
The other man looked puzzled. 'This is no time for games,' he said, 'we're in desperate straits.'
Harry took his .38 from his pocket and pointed at Valentin's chest. 'Prove it or I shoot you,' he said.
'Are you out of your mind?'
'I saw you torn apart.'
'Not quite,' said Valentin. His left arm was swathed in makeshift bandaging from fingertip to mid-bicep. 'It was touch and go ...'he said,'... but everything has its Achilles' heel. It's just a question of finding the right spot.'
Harry peered at the man. He wanted to believe that this was indeed Valentin, but it was too incredible to believe that the frail form in front of him could have survived the monstrosity he'd seen on 83rd Street. No; this was another illusion. Like the tiger: paper and malice.
The man broke Harry's train of thought. 'Your steak ...'he said.
'My steak?'
'You like it almost burned,' Valentin said. 'I protested, remember?'
Harry remembered. 'Go on,' he said.
'And you said you hated the sight of blood. Even, if it wasn't your own.'
'Yes,' said Harry. His doubts were lifting. 'That's right.'
'You asked me to prove I'm Valentin. That's the best I can do.' Harry was almost persuaded. 'In God's name,' Valentin said, 'do we have to debate this standing on the street?'
'You'd better come in.'
The apartment was small, but tonight it felt more stifling than ever. Valentin sat himself down with a good view of the door. He refused spirits or first-aid. Harry helped himself to bourbon. He was on his third shot when Valentin finally said:
'We have to go back to the house, Harry.'
'What?'
'We have to claim Swann's body before Butterfield.'
'I did my best already. It's not my business any more.'
'So you leave Swann to the Pit?' Valentin said.
'She doesn't care, why should I?'
'You mean Dorothea? She doesn't know what Swann was involved with. That
's why she's so trusting. She has suspicions maybe, but, insofar as it is possible to be guiltless in all of this, she is.' He paused to adjust the position of his injured arm. 'She was a prostitute, you know. I don't suppose she told you that. Swann once said to me he married her because only prostitutes know the value of love.'
Harry let this apparent paradox go.
'Why did she stay with him?' he asked. 'He wasn't exactly faithful, was he?'
'She loved him,' Valentin replied. 'It's not unheard of.'
'And you?'
'Oh I loved him too, in spite of his stupidities. That's why we have to help him. If Butterfield and his associates get their hands on Swann's mortal remains, there'll be all Hell to pay.'
'I know. I got a glimpse at the Bernstein place.'
'What did you see?'
'Something and nothing,' said Harry. 'A tiger, I thought; only it wasn't.'
'The old paraphernalia,' Valentin commented.
'And there was something else with Butterfield. Something that shed light: I didn't see what.'
'The Castrate,' Valentin muttered to himself, clearly discomfited. 'We'll have to be careful.'
He stood up, the movement causing him to wince. 'I think we should be on our way, Harry.'
'Are you paying me for this?' Harry inquired, 'or am I doing it all for love?'
'You're doing it because of what happened at Wyckoff Street,' came the softly-spoken reply. 'Because you lost poor Mimi Lomax to the Gulfs, and you don't want to lose Swann. That is, if you've not already done so.'
They caught a cab on Madison Avenue and headed back uptown to 61st Street, keeping their silence as they rode. Harry had half a hundred questions to ask of Valentin. Who was Butterfield, for one, and what was Swann's crime was that he be pursued to death and beyond? So many puzzles. But Valentin looked sick and unfit for plying with questions. Besides, Harry sensed that the more he knew the less enthusiastic he would be about the journey they were now taking.
'We have perhaps one advantage -' Valentin said as they approached 61st Street. 'They can't be expecting this frontal attack. Butterfield presumes I'm dead, and probably thinks you're hiding your head in mortal terror.'