Books of Blood: Volumes 1-6

  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, I'm 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 spiraling 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 t
ime. 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 pro- tested, 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. Some- thing 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." "I'm working on it."

  "You're not in danger," Valentin replied, “at least not the way Swann is. If they were to take you apart limb by limb it would be nothing beside the torments they have waiting for the magician."

  "Illusionist," Harry corrected him, but Valentin shook his head.

  "Magician he was; magician he will always be."

  The driver interrupted before Harry could quote Dorothea on the subject.

  "What number you people want?" he said.

  "Just drop us here on the right," Valentin instructed him. "And wait for us, understand?"

  "Sure."

  Valentin turned to Harry. "Give the man fifty dollars."

  "Fifty?

  "Do you want him to wait or not?"

  Harry counted four tens and ten singles into the driver's hand.

  "You'd better keep the engine running," he said.

  "Anything to oblige," the driver grinned.

  Harry joined Valentin on the sidewalk and they walked the twenty-five yards to the house. The street was still noisy, despite the hour: the party that Harry had seen in preparation half a night ago was at its height. There was no sign of life at the Swann residence however.

  Perhaps they don't expect us, Harry thought. Certainly this head-on assault was about the most foolhardy tactic imaginable, and as such might catch the enemy off- guard. But were such forces ever off-guard? Was there ever a minute in their maggoty lives when their eyelids drooped and sleep tamed them for a space? No. In Harry's experience it was only the good who needed sleep; iniquity and its practitioners were awake every eager moment, planning fresh felonies.

  "How do we get in?" he asked as they stood outside the house.

  "I have the key," Valentin replied, and went to the door.

  There was no retreat now. The key was turned, the door was open, and they were stepping out of the comparative safety of the street. The house was as dark within as it had appeared from without. There was no sound of human presence on any of the floors. Was it possible that the defences Swann had laid around his corpse had indeed rebuf
fed Butterfield, and that he and his cohorts had retreated? Valentin quashed such misplaced optimism almost immediately, taking hold of Harry's arm and leaning close to whisper: "They're here." This was not the time to ask Valentin how he knew, but Harry made a mental note to enquire when, or rather if, they got out of the house with their tongues still in their heads.

  Valentin was already on the stairs. Harry, his eyes still accustoming themselves to the vestigial light that crept in from the street, crossed the hallway after him. The other man moved confidently in the gloom, and Harry was glad of it. Without Valentin plucking at his sleeve, and guiding him around the half-landing he might well have crippled himself.

  Despite what Valentin had said, there was no more sound or sight of occupancy up here than there had been below, but as they advanced towards the master bedroom where Swann lay, a rotten tooth in Harry's lower jaw that had lately been quiescent began to throb afresh, and his bowels ached to break wind. The anticipation was crucifying. He felt a barely suppressible urge to yell out, and to oblige the enemy to show its hand, if indeed it had hands to show. Valentin had reached the door. He turned his head in Harry's direction, and even in the murk it was apparent that fear was taking its toll on him too. His skin glistened; he stank of fresh sweat.

  He pointed towards the door. Harry nodded. He was as ready as he was ever going to be. Valentin reached for the door handle. The sound of the lock-mechanism seemed deafeningly loud, but it brought no response from anywhere in the house. The door swung open, and the heady scent of flowers met them. They had begun to decay in the forced heat of the house; there was a rankness beneath the perfume. More welcome than the scent was the light. The curtains in the room had not been entirely drawn, and the street-lamps described the interior: the flowers massed like clouds around the casket; the chair where Harry had sat, the Calvados bottle beside it; the mirror above the fireplace showing the room its secret self.

  Valentin was already moving across to the casket, and Harry heard him sigh as he set eyes on his old master. He wasted little time, but immediately set to lifting the lower half of the casket lid. It defeated his single arm however and Harry went to his assistance, eager to get the job done and be away. Touching the solid wood of the casket brought his nightmare back with breath-snatching force: the Pit opening beneath him, the illusionist rising from his bed like a sleeper unwillingly woken. There was no such spectacle now, however. Indeed a little life in the corpse might have made the job easier. Swann was a big man, and his limp body was uncooperative to a fault. The simple act of lifting him from his casket took all their breath and attention. He came at last, though reluctantly, his long limbs flopping about.