The Hellbound Heart

  “No problem . . .” she murmured.

  “There’s no hurry either. We’ve got all the time in the world.” She touched the front of his trousers, to reassure him. Like a stroked dog, he closed his eyes.

  “You’re a strange one,” he said.

  “Don’t look,” she told him.

  “Huh?”

  “Keep your eyes closed.”

  He frowned, but obeyed. She took a step backward toward the door, and half turned to fumble in the depths of the pocket, glancing back to see that he was still blind.

  He was, and unzipping himself. As her hand clasped the knife, the shadows growled.

  He heard the noise. His eyes sprang open.

  “What was that?” he said, reeling round and peering into the darkness.

  “It was nothing,” she insisted, as she pulled the knife from its hiding place. He was moving away from her, across the room.

  “There’s somebody—”

  “Don’t.”

  “—here.”

  The last syllable faltered on his lips, as he glimpsed a fretful motion in the corner beside the window.

  “What . . . in God’s . . .?” he began. As he pointed into the darkness she was at him, and slicing his neck open with a butcher’s efficiency. Blood jumped immediately, a fat spurt that hit the wall with a wet thud. She heard Frank’s pleasure, and then the dying man’s complaint, long and low. His hand went up to his neck to stem the pulse, but she was at him again, slicing his pleading hand, his face. He staggered, he sobbed. Finally, he collapsed, twitching.

  She stepped away from him to avoid the flailing legs. In the corner of the room she saw Frank rocking to and ho.

  “Good woman. . .” he said.

  Was it her imagination, or was his voice already stronger than it had been, more like the voice she’d heard in her head a thousand times these plundered years?

  The door bell rang. She froze.

  “Oh Jesus,” her mouth said.

  “It’s all right . . .” the shadow replied.

  “He’s as good as dead.”

  She looked at the man in the white tie and saw that Frank was right. The twitching had all but ceased.

  “He’s big,” said Frank. “And healthy.”

  He was moving into her sight, too greedy for sustenance to prohibit her stare; she saw him plainly now for the first time.

  He was a travesty. Not just of humanity, of life. She looked away.

  The door bell was ringing again, and for longer.

  “Go and answer it,” Frank told her.

  She made no reply.

  “Go on, ” he told her, turning his foul head in her direction, his eyes keen and bright in the surrounding corruption.

  The bell rang a third time.

  “Your caller is very insistent,” he said, trying persuasion where demands had failed.

  “I really think you should answer the door.”

  She backed away from him, and he turned his attentions back to the body on the floor.

  Again, the bell.

  It was better to answer it perhaps (she was already out of the room, trying not to hear the sounds Frank was making), better to open the door to the day. It would be a man selling insurance, most likely, or a Jehovah’s Witness, with news of salvation. Yes, she wouldn’t mind hearing that. The bell rang again. “Coming,” she said, hurrying now for fear he leave. She had welcome on her face when she opened the door. It died immediately.

  “Kirsty.”

  “I was just about to give up on you.”

  “I was . . . I was asleep.”

  “Oh.’’

  Kirsty looked at the apparition that had opened the door to her. From Rory’s descrip-tion she’d expected a washed-out creature.

  What she saw was quite the reverse.

  Julia’s face was flushed: strands of sweat-darkened hair glued to her brow. She did not look like a woman who had just risen from sleep. A bed, perhaps, but not sleep.

  “I just called by”—Kirsty said—”for a chat.”

  Julia made a half shrug.

  “Well, it’s not convenient just at the moment,” she said.

  “I see.”

  “Maybe we could speak later in the week?”

  Kirsty’s gaze drifted past Julia to the coat stand in the hall. A man’s gabardine hung from one of the pegs, still damp.

  “Is Rory in?” she ventured.

  “No,” Julia said. “Of course not. He’s at work.” Her face hardened. “Is that what you came round for?” she said. “To see Rory?”

  “No, I—”

  “You don’t have to ask my permission, you know. He’s a grown man. You two can do what the fuck you like.”

  Kirsty didn’t try to debate the point. The volte-face left her dizzied.

  “Go home,” Julia said. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  She slammed the door.

  Kirsty stood on the step for half a minute, shaking. She had little doubt of what was going on. The dripping raincoat, Julia’s agitation— her flushed face, her sudden anger.

  She had a lover in the house. Poor Rory had misread all the signs.

  She deserted the doorstep and started down the path to the street. A crowd of thoughts jostled for her attention. At last, one came clear of the pack: How would she tell Rory? His heart would break, she had no doubt of that. And she, the luckless tale-teller, she would be tainted with the news, wouldn’t she? She felt tears close.

  They didn’t come, however; another sensation, more insistent, overtook as she stepped onto the pavement from the path.

  She was being watched. She could feel the look at the back of her head. Was it Julia?

  Somehow, she thought not. The lover then.

  Yes, the lover!

  Safely out of the shadow of the house, she succumbed to the urge to turn and look.

  In the damp room, Frank stared through the hole he had made in the blind. The visitor—whose face he vaguely recognized—

  was staring up at the house, at his very window, indeed. Confident that she could see nothing of him, he stared back. He had certainly set his eyes on more voluptuous creatures, but something about her lack of glamour engaged him. Such women were in his experience often more entertaining company than beauties like Julia. They could be flattered or bullied into acts the beauties would never countenance and be grateful for the attention. Perhaps she would come back, this woman. He hoped she would.

  Kirsty scanned the facade of the house, but it was blank; the windows were either empty or curtained. Yet the feeling of being watched persisted; indeed it was so strong she turned away in embarrassment.

  The rain started again as she walked along Lodovico Street, and she welcomed it.

  It cooled her blushes, and gave cover to tears that would be postponed no longer.

  Julia had gone back upstairs trembling, and found White Tie at the door. Or rather, his head. This time, either out of an excess of greed or malice, Frank had dismembered the corpse. Pieces of bones and dried meat lay scattered about the room.

  There was no sign of the gourmet himself.

  She turned back toward the door, and he was there, blocking her path. Mere minutes had passed since she’d seen him bending to drain energy from the dead man. In that brief time he had changed out of all recognition.

  Where there had been withered cartilage, there was not ripening muscle; the map of his arteries and veins was being drawn anew: they pulsed with stolen life. There was even a sprouting of hair, somewhat premature perhaps given his absence of skin, on the raw ball of his head.

  None of this sweetened his appearance a jot. Indeed in many ways it worsened it.

  Previously there had been scarcely anything recognizable about him, but now there were scraps of humanity everywhere, throwing into yet greater relief the catastrophic nature of his wounding.

  There was worse to come. He spoke, and when he spoke it was with a voice that was indisputably Frank’s. The broken syllables had gone.
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  “I feel pain,” he said.

  His browless, half-lidded eyes were watching her every response. She tried to conceal the queasiness she felt, but knew the disguise inadequate.

  “My nerves are working again,” he was telling her, “and they hurt.”

  “What can I do about it?” she asked him.

  “Maybe... maybe some bandages.”

  “Bandages?”

  “Help me bind myself together.”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “But I need more than that, Julia. I need another body.”

  “Another?” she said. Was there no end to this?

  “What’s to lose?” he replied, moving closer to her. At his sudden proximity she became very anxious. Reading the fear in her face, he stopped his advance.

  “I’ll be whole soon.”, he promised her,

  “and when I am. . . ”

  “I’d better clear up,” she said, averting her gaze from him.

  “When I am, sweet Julia . . .”

  “Rory will be home soon.”

  “Rory!” He spat the name out. “My darling brother! How in God’s name did you come to marry such a dullard?”

  She felt a spasm of anger toward Frank.

  “I loved him,” she said. And then, after a moment’s pondering, corrected herself. “I thought I loved him.”

  His laugh only made his dreadful nakedness more apparent. “How can you have believed that?” he said. “He’s a slug. Always was. Always will be. Never had any sense of adventure.

  “Unlike you.”

  “Unlike me.”

  She looked down at the floor; a dead man’s hand lay between them. For an instant she was almost overwhelmed by self-revulsion. All that she had done, and dreamed of doing, in the last few days rose up in front of her: a parade of seductions that had ended in death— all for this death that she had hoped so fervently would end in seduction. She was as damned as he, she thought; no fouler ambition could nest in his head than presently cooed and fluttered in hers.

  Well . . . it was done.

  “Heal me,” he whispered to her. The harshness had gone from his voice. He spoke like a lover. “Heal me . . . please.”

  “I will,” she said. “I promise you I will.”

  “And then we’ll be together.”

  She frowned.

  “What about Rory?”

  “We’re brothers, under the skin,” Frank said. “I’ll make him see the wisdom of this, the miracle of it. You don’t belong to him Julia. Not anymore.”

  “No,” she said. It was true.

  “We belong to each other. That’s what you want isn’t it?”

  “It’s what I want.”

  “You know I think if I’d had you I wouldn’t have despaired,” he said to her. “Wouldn’t have given away my body and soul so cheaply.”

  “Cheaply?”

  “For pleasure. For mere sensuality. In you. . .” here he moved toward her again. This time his words held her; she didn’t retreat.

  “In you I might have discovered some reason to live.

  “I’m here,” she said. Without thinking, she reached across and touched him. The body was hot, and damp. His pulse seemed to be everywhere. In every tender bud of nerve, in each burgeoning sinew. The contact excited her. It was as if, until this moment, she had never quite believed him to be real.

  Now it was incontestable. She had made this man, or remade him, used her wit and her cunning to give him substance. The thrill she felt, touching this too vulnerable body, was the thrill of ownership.

  “This is the most dangerous time,” he told her. “Before now, I could hide myself. I was practically nothing at all. But not anymore.”

  “No. I’ve thought of that.”

  “We must be done with it quickly. I must be strong and whole, at whatever cost. You agree?”

  “Of course.”

  “After that there’ll be an end to the waiting, Julia.”

  The pulse in him seemed to quicken at the thought.

  Then he was kneeling in front of her. His unfinished hands were at her hips, then his mouth.

  Forsaking the dregs of her distaste, she put her hand upon his head, and felt the hair— silken, like a baby’s—and the shell of his skull beneath. He had learned nothing of delicacy since last he’d held her. But despair had taught her the fine art of squeezing blood from stones; with time she would have love from this hateful thing, or know the reason why.

  There was thunder that night. A storm without rain, which made the air smell of steel.

  Kirsty had never slept well. Even as a child, though her mother had known lullabies enough to pacify nations, the girl had never found slumber easy. It wasn’t that she had bad dreams; or at least none that lingered until morning. It was that sleep itself—the act of closing the eyes and relinquishing control of her consciousness—was something she was temperamentally unsuited to.

  Tonight, with the thunder so loud and the lightning so bright, she was happy. She had an excuse to forsake her tangled bed, and drink tea, and watch the spectacle from her window.

  It gave her time to think, as well—time to turn over the problem that had vexed her since leaving the house on Lodovico Street.

  But she was still no nearer an answer.

  One particular doubt nagged. Suppose she was wrong about what she’d seen?

  Suppose she’d misconstrued the evidence, and Julia had a perfectly good explanation?

  She would lose Rory at a stroke.

  And yet, how could she remain silent?

  She couldn’t bear to think of the woman laughing behind his back, exploiting his gentility, his naïveté. The thought made her blood boil.

  The only other option was to wait and watch, to see if she could gain some incontrovertible evidence. If her worst sup-positions were then confirmed, she would have no choice but to tell Rory all she’d seen.

  Yes. That was the answer. Wait and watch, watch and wait.

  The thunder rolled around for long hours, denying her sleep until nearly four. When, finally, she did sleep, it was the slumber of a watcher and waiter. Light, and full of sighs.

  The storm made a ghost train of the house. Julia sat downstairs, and counted the beats between the flash and the fury that came on its heels. She had never liked thunder. She, a murderess; she, a consorter with the living dead. It was another paradox to add to the thousand she’d found at work in herself of late. She thought more than once of going upstairs, and taking some comfort with the prodigy, but knew that it would be unwise. Rory might return at any moment from his office party. He would be drunk, on past experience, and full of unwelcome fondness.

  The storm crept closer. She put on the television, to block out the din, which it scarcely did.

  At eleven Rory came home, wreathed in smiles. He had good news. In the middle of the party his supervisor had taken him aside, commended him for his excellent work, and spoken of great things for the future. Julia listened to his retelling of the exchange, hoping that his inebriation would blind him to her indifference. At last, his news told, he threw off his jacket and sat down on the sofa beside her.

  “Poor you,” he said. “You don’t like the thunder.”

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Fine.”

  He leaned across to her and nuzzled her ear.

  “You’re sweaty,” she said matter-of-factly.

  He didn’t cease his overtures, however, unwilling to lower his baton now that he’d begun.

  “Please, Rory—” she said. “I don’t want this.

  “Why not? What did I do?”

  “Nothing,” she said, pretending some interest in the television. “You’re fine.”

  “Oh, is that right?” he said. “You’re fine.

  I’m fine. Everybody’s fucking fine.”

  She stared at the flickering screen. The late evening news had just begun, the usual cup of sorrows full to brimming. Rory
talked on, drowning out the newscaster’s voice with his diatribe. She didn’t much mind. What did the world have to tell her? Little enough.

  Whereas she, she had news for the world that it would reel to hear. About the condition of the damned; about love lost, and then found; about what despair and desire have in common.

  “Please, Julia”—Rory was saying—“just speak to me.”

  The pleas demanded her attention. He looked, she thought, like the boy in the photographs—his body hirsute and bloated, his clothes those of an adult—but still, in essence, a boy, with his bewildered gaze and sulky mouth. She remembered Frank’s question: “How could you ever have married such a dullard?” Thinking of it, a sour smile creased her lips. He looked at her, his puzzlement deepening.

  “What’s so funny, damn you?”

  “Nothing.”

  He shook his head, dull anger replacing the sulk. A peal of thunder followed the lightning with barely a beat intervening. As it came, there was a noise from the floor above. She turned her attention back to the television, to divert Rory’s interest. But it was .a vain attempt; he’d heard the sound:

  “What the fuck was that?”

  “Thunder.”

  He stood up. “No,” he said. “Something else.” He was already at the door.

  A dozen options raced through her head, none of them practical. He wrestled drunkenly with the door handle.’

  “Maybe I left a window open,” she said and got up. “I’ll go and see.”

  “I can do it,” he replied. “I’m not totally inept.

  “Nobody said—” she began, but he wasn’t listening. As he stepped out into the hallway the lightning came with the thunder: loud and bright. As she went in pursuit of him another flash came fast upon the first, accompanied by a bowel-rocking crash. Rory was already halfway up the stairs.

  “It was nothing!” she shouted after him.

  He made no reply but climbed on to the top of the stairs. She followed.

  “Don’t . . .” she said to him, in a lull between one peal and the next. He heard her this time. Or rather, chose to listen.

  When she reached the top of the stairs he was waiting.

  “Something wrong?” he said.

  She hid her trepidation behind a shrug.