Steve was happy as a lamb. They had the rest of the night ahead of them, and all the music he could possibly want was sounding in his head.
And Quaid knew, meeting the clown's vacant stare through an air turned bloody, that there was worse in the world than dread. Worse than death itself.
There was pain without hope of healing. There was life that refused to end, long after the mind had begged the body to cease. And worst, there were dreams come true.
VIII: HELL'S EVENT
Hell came up to the streets and squares of London that September, icy from the depths of the Ninth Circle, too frozen to be warmed even by the swelter of an Indian summer. It had laid its plans as carefully as ever, plans being what they were, and fragile. This time it was perhaps a little more finicky than usual, checking every last detail twice or three times, to be certain it had every chance of winning this vital game. It had never lacked competitive spirit; it had matched life against flesh a thousand times down the centuries, sometimes winning, more often losing. Wagers were, after all, the stuff of its advancement. Without the human urge to compete, to bargain, and to bet, Pandemonium might well have fallen for want of citizens. Dancing, dog racing, fiddle-playing: it was all one to the gulfs; all a game in which it might, if it played with sufficient wit, garner a soul or two. That was why Hell came up to London that bright blue day: to run a race, and to win, if it could, enough souls to keep it busy with perdition another age.
Cameron tuned his radio; the voice of the commentator flared and faded as though he was speaking from the Pole instead of St Paul's Cathedral. It was still a good half-hour before the race began, but Cameron wanted to listen to the warm-up commentary, just to hear what they were saying about his boy.
"… atmosphere is electric… probably tens of thousands along the route…"
The voice disappeared: Cameron cursed, and toyed with the dial until the imbecilities reappeared."…been called the race of the year, and what a day it is! Isn't it, Jim?"
"It certainly is, Mike -”
"That's big Jim Delaney, who's up there in the Eye in the Sky, and he'll be following the race along the route, giving us a bird's eye view, won't you, Jim?"
"I certainly will, Mike -”
"Well, there's a lot of activity behind the line, the competitors are all loosening up for the start. I can see Nick Loyer there, he's wearing number three, and I must say he's looking very fit. H e said to m e when he arrived he didn't usually like to run on Sundays, but he's made an exception for this race, because of course it's a charity event, and all the proceeds will be going to Cancer Research. Joel Jones, our Gold Medalist in the 800 metres is here, and he'll be running against his great rival Frank McCloud. And besides the big boys we've got a smattering of new faces. Wearing number five, the South African, Malcolm Voight, and completing the field Lester Kinderman, who was of course the surprise winner of the marathon in Austria last year. And I must say they all look fresh as daisies on this superb September afternoon. Couldn't ask for a better day, could we Jim?"
Joel had woken with bad dreams.
"You'll be fine, stop fretting," Cameron had told him.
But he didn't feel fine; he felt sick in the pit of his stomach. Not pre-race nerves; he was used to those, and he could deal with the feeling. Two fingers down the Throat and throw up, that was the best remedy he'd found; get it over and done with. No, this wasn't pre-race nerves, or anything like them. It was deeper, for a start, as though his bowels, to his centre, to his source, were cooking.
Cameron had no sympathy.
"It's a charity race, not the Olympics," he said, looking the boy over. "Act your age."
That was Cameron's technique. His mellow voice was made for coaxing, but was used to bully. Without that bullying there would have been no gold medal, no cheering crowds, no admiring girls. One of the tabloids had voted Joel the best loved black face in England. It was good to be greeted as a friend by people he'd never met; he liked the admiration, however short-lived it might turn out to be.
"They love you," said Cameron. "God knows why – they love you."
Then he laughed, his little cruelty over.
"You'll be all right, son," he said. "Get out and run for your life."
Now, in the broad daylight, Joel looked at the rest of the field and felt a little more buoyant. Kinderman had stamina, but he had no finishing power over middle distance. Marathon technique was a different skill altogether. Besides he was so short-sighted he wore wire rimmed glasses so thick they gave him the look of a bemused frog. No danger there. Loyer; he was good, but this wasn't really his distance either. He was a hurdler, and a sometime sprinter. 400 metres was his limit and even then he wasn't happy. Voight, the South African. Well, there was not much information on him. Obviously a fit man to judge by the look of him, and someone to watch out for just in case he sprung a surprise. But the real problem of the race was McCloud. Joel had run against Frank "Flash' McCloud three times. Twice beaten him into second place, once (painfully) had the positions reversed. And Frankie boy had a few scores to settle: especially the Olympics defeat; he hadn't liked taking the silver. Frank was the man to watch. Charity race or no charity race McCloud would be running his best, for the crowd and for his pride. He was at the line already testing his starting position, his ears practically pricked. Flash was the man, no doubt of it.
For a moment Joel caught Voight staring at him. Unusual that. Competitors seldom even glanced at each other before a race, it was a kind of coyness. The man's face was pale, and his hair-line was receding. He looked to be in his early thirties, but had a younger, leaner physique. Long legs, big hands. A body somehow out of proportion to his head. When their eyes met, Voight looked away. The fine chain around his neck caught the sun and the crucifix he was wearing glinted gold as it swung gently beneath his chin.
Joel had his good-luck charm with him too. Tucked into the waistband of his shorts, a lock of his mother's hair, which she had plaited for him half a decade ago, before his first major race. She had returned to Barbados the following year, and died there. A great grief: an unforgettable loss. Without Cameron, he would have crumbled. Cameron watched the preparations from the steps of the Cathedral; he planned to see the start, then ride his bike round the back of the Strand to catch the finish. He'd arrive well before the competitors, and he could keep up with the race on his radio. He felt good with the day. His boy was in fine shape, nausea or no nausea, and the race was an ideal way to keep the lad in a competitive mood without over-stretching him. It was quite a distance of course, across Ludgate Circus, along Fleet Street and past Temple Bar into the Strand, then cutting across the corner of Trafalgar and down Whitehall to the Houses of Parliament. Running on tarmac too. But it was good experience for Joel, and it would pressure him a little, which was useful. There was a distance runner in the boy, and Cameron knew it. He'd never been a sprinter, he couldn't pace himself accurately enough. He needed distance and time, to find his pulse, to settle down and to work out his tactics. Over 800 metres the boy was a natural: his stride was a model of economy, his rhythm damn-near perfect. But more, he had courage. Courage had won him the gold, and courage would take him first to the finish again and again. That's what made Joel different. Any number of technical whizzkids came and went, but without courage to supplement those skills they went for almost nothing. To risk when it was worth risking, to run 'til the pain blinded you, that was special and Cameron knew it. He liked to think he'd had a little of it himself.
Today, the boy looked less than happy. W omen trouble was Cameron's bet. There were always problems with women, especially with the golden boy reputation Joel had garnered. He'd tried to explain that there'd be plenty of time for bed and bawd when his career had run out of steam, but Joel wasn't interested in celibacy, and Cameron didn't altogether blame him.
The pistol was raised, and fired. A plume of blue-white smoke followed by a sound more pop than bang. The shot woke the pigeons from the dome of St Paul's and they rose in a
chattering congregation, their worship interrupted. Joel was off to a good start. Clean, neat and fast.
The crowd began to call his name immediately, their voices at his back, at his side, a gale of loving enthusiasm. Cameron watched the first two dozen yards, as the field jockeyed for a running order. Loyer was at the front of the pack, though Cameron wasn't sure whether he'd got there by choice or chance. Joel was behind McCloud, who was behind Loyer. No hurry, boy, said Cameron, and slipped away from the starting line. His bicycle was chained up in Paternoster Row, a minute's walk from the square. He'd always hated cars: godless things, crippling, inhuman, unchristian things. With a bike you were your own master. Wasn't that all a man could ask?
"- And it's a superb start here, to what looks like a potentially marvelous race. They're already across the square and the crowd's going wild here: it really is more like the European Games than a Charity Race. What does it look like to you, Jim?"
"Well Mike, I can see crowds lining the route all the way along Fleet Street: and I've been asked by the police to tell people please not to try and drive down to see the race, because of course all these roads have been cleared for the event, and if you try and drive, really you'll get nowhere."
"Who's got the lead at the moment?"
"Well, Nick Loyer is really setting the pace at this stage in the game, though of course as we know there's going to be a lot of tactical running over this kind of distance. It's more than a middle-distance, and it's less than a marathon, but these men are all tacticians, and they'll each be trying to let the other make the running in the early stages." Cameron always said: let the others be heroes.
That was a hard lesson to learn, Joel had found. When the pistol was fired it was difficult not to go for broke, unwind suddenly like a tight spring. All gone in the first two hundred yards and nothing left in reserve. It's easy to be a hero, Cameron used to say. It's not clever, it's not clever at all. Don't waste your time showing off, just let the Supermen have their moment. Hang on to the pack, but hold back a little. Better to be cheered at the post because you won than have them call you a good-hearted loser.
Win. Win. Win.
At all costs. At almost all costs.
Win.
The man who doesn't want to win is no friend of mine, he'd say. If you want to do it for the love of it, for the sport of it, do it with somebody else. Only public schoolboys believe that crap about the joy of playing the game. There's no joy for losers, boy. What did I say?
There's no joy for losers.
Be barbaric. Play the rules, but play them to the limit. As far as you can push, push. Let no other sonofabitch tell you differently. You're here to win. What did I say?
Win.
In Paternoster Row the cheering was muted, and the shadows of the buildings blocked the sun. It was almost cold. The pigeons still passed over, unable to settle now they'd been roused from their roost. They were the only occupants of the back streets. The rest of the living world, it seemed, was watching this race.
Cameron unlocked his bicycle, pocketed the chain and pad-locks, and hopped on. Pretty healthy for a fifty year old he thought, despite the addiction to cheap cigars. He switched on the radio. Reception was bad, walled in by the buildings; all crackle. He stood astride his bike and tried to improve the tuning. It did a little good."- and Nick Loyer is falling behind already -”
That was quick. Mind you, Loyer was past his prime by two or three years. Time to throw in the spikes and let the younger men take over. He'd had to do it, though my God it had been painful. Cameron remembered acutely how he'd felt at thirty-three, when he realized that his best running years were over. It was like having one foot buried in the grave, a salutary reminder of how quickly the body blooms and begins to wither.
As he pedaled out of the shadows into a sunnier street a black Mercedes, chauffeur-driven, sailed past, so quietly it could have been wind-propelled. Cameron caught sight of the passengers only briefly. One he recognized as a man Voight had been talking with before the race, a thin faced individual of about forty, with a mouth so tight his lips might have been surgically removed.
Beside him sat Voight.
Impossible as it seemed it was Voight's face that glanced back out of the smoked glass windows; he was even dressed for the race.
Cameron didn't like the look of this at all. He'd seen the South African five minutes earlier, off and running. So who was this? A double obviously. It smelt of a fix, somehow; it stank to high heaven.
The Mercedes was already disappearing around a corner. Cameron turned off the radio and pedaled pell-mell after the car. The balmy sun made him sweat as he rode.
The Mercedes was threading its way through the narrow streets with some difficulty, ignoring all the One Way signs as it went. Its slow passage made it relatively easy for Cameron to keep the vehicle in view without being seen by its occupants, though the effort was beginning to light a fire in his lungs.
In a tiny, nameless alley just west of Fetter Lane, where the shadows were particularly dense, the Mercedes stopped. Cameron, hidden from view round a corner not twenty yards from the car, watched as the door was opened by the chauffeur and the lipless man, with the Voight look-alike close behind, stepped out and went into a nondescript building. When all three had disappeared Cameron propped his bike up against the wall and followed. The street was pin-drop hushed. From this distance the roar of the crowd was only a murmur. It could have been another world, this street. The flitting shadows of birds, the windows of the buildings bricked up, the peeling paint, the rotten smell in the still air. A dead rabbit lay in the gutter, a black rabbit with a white collar, someone's lost pet. Flies rose and fell on it, alternately startled and ravenous.
Cameron crept towards the open door as quietly as he was able. He had, as it turned out, nothing to fear. The trio had disappeared down the dark hallway of the house long since. The air was cool in the hall, and smelt of damp. Looking fearless, but feeling afraid, Cameron entered the blind building. The wall-paper in the hallway was shit-coloured, the paint the same. It was like walking into a bowel; a dead man's bowel, cold and shitty. Ahead, the stairway had collapsed, preventing access to the upper storey. They had not gone up, but down.
The door to the cellar was adjacent to the defunct staircase, and Cameron could hear voices from below. No time like the present, he thought, and opened the door sufficiently to squeeze into the dark beyond. It was icy. Not just cold, not damp, but refrigerated. For a moment he thought he'd stepped into a cold storage room. His breath became a mist at his lips: his teeth wanted to chatter.
Can't turn back now, he thought, and started down the frost-slick steps. It wasn't impossibly dark. At the bottom of the flight, a long way down, a pale light flickered, its uninspired glow aspiring to the day. Cameron glanced longingly round at the open door behind him. It looked extremely tempting, but he was curious, so curious. There was nothing to do but descend.
In his nostrils the scent of the place teased. He had a lousy sense of smell, and a worse palate, as his wife was fond of reminding him. She'd say he couldn't distinguish between garlic and a rose, and it was probably true. But the smell in this deep meant something to him, something that stirred the acid in his belly into life. Goats. It smelt, ha, he wanted to tell her then and there how he'd remembered, it smelt of goats. He was almost at the bottom of the stairs, twenty, maybe thirty, feet underground. The voices were still some distance away, behind a second door.
He was standing in a little chamber, its walls badly white-washed and scrawled with obscene graffiti, mostly pictures of the sex-act. On the floor, a candelabra, seven forked. Only two of the dingy candles were lit, and they burned with a guttering flame that was almost blue. The goaty smell was stronger now: and mingled with a scent so sickly-sweet it belonged in a Turkish brothel.
Two doors led off the chamber, and from behind one Cameron heard the conversation continuing. With scrupulous caution he crossed the slippery floor to the door, straining to make sense of t
he murmuring voices. There was an urgency in them.
"- hurry -”
"- the right skills -”'children, children -”Laughter.
"I believe we – tomorrow – all of us -”
Laughter again.
Suddenly the voices seemed to change direction, as if the speakers were moving back towards the door. Cameron took three steps back across the icy floor, almost colliding with the candelabra. The flames spat and whispered in the chamber as he passed.
He had to choose either the stairs or the other door. The stairs represented utter retreat. If he climbed them he'd be safe, but he would never know. Never know why the cold, why the blue flames, why the smell of goats. The door was a chance. Back to it, his eyes on the door opposite, he fought with the bitingly cold brass handle. It turned with some tussling, and he ducked out of sight as the door opposite opened. The two movements were perfectly syncopated: God was with him.
Even as he closed the door he knew he'd made an error. God wasn't with him at all.
Needles of cold penetrated his head, his teeth, his eyes, his fingers. He felt as though he'd been thrown naked into the heart of an iceberg. His blood seemed to stand still in his veins: the spit on his tongue crystallized: the mucus on the lining of his nose pricked as it turned to ice. The cold seemed to cripple him: he couldn't even turn round.
Barely able to move his joints, he fumbled for his cigarette lighter with fingers so numb they could have been cut off without him feeling it.
The lighter was already glued to his hand, the sweat on his fingers had turned to frost. He tried to ignite it, against the dark, against the cold. Reluctantly it sparked into a spluttering half-life.
The room was large: an ice-cavern. Its walls, its encrusted roof, sparkled and shone. Stalactites of ice, lance-sharp, hung over his head. The floor on which he stood, poised uncertainly, was raked towards a hole in the middle of the room. Five or six feet across, its edges and walls were so lined with ice it seemed as though a river had been arrested as it poured down into the darkness.