The Hellbound Heart

  “You’re being silly,” she replied softly.

  “Am I?”

  “It was just the thunder.”

  His face, lit from the hall below, suddenly softened. “Why do you treat me like shit?’

  he asked her.

  “You’re just tired,” she told him.

  “Why though?” he persisted, childlike.

  “What have I ever done to you?”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Really, Rory.

  Everything’s all right.” The same hypnotic banalities, over and over.

  Again, the thunder. And beneath the din, another sound. She cursed Frank’s indiscretion.

  Rory turned, and looked along the darkened landing.

  “Hear that?” he said.

  “No.”

  His limbs dogged by drink, he moved away from her. She watched him recede into shadow. Lightning, spilling through the open bedroom door, flash—lit him; then darkness again. He was walking toward the damp room. Toward Frank.

  “Wait.. .” she said, and went after him.

  He didn’t halt, but covered the few yards to the door. As she reached him, his hand was closing on the handle.

  Inspired by panic, she reached out and touched his cheek. “I’m afraid. . .” she said.

  He looked round at her woozily.

  “What of?” he asked her.

  She moved her hand to his lips, letting him taste the fear on her fingers.

  “The storm,” she said.

  She could see the wetness of his eyes in the gloom, little more. Was he swallowing the hook, or spitting it out?

  Then: “Poor baby,” he said.

  Swallowed, she elated, and reaching down she put her hand over his and drew it from the door. If Frank so much as breathed now, all was lost.

  “Poor baby,” he said again and wrapped an embrace around her. His balance was not too good; he was a lead weight in her arms.

  “Come on,” she said, coaxing him away from the door. He went with her for a couple of stumbling paces, and then lost his equilibrium. She let go of him, and reached out to the wall for support. The lightning came again, and by it she saw that his eyes had found her, and glittered.

  “I love you,” he said, stepping across the hallway to where she stood. He pressed against her, so heavily there was no resisting.

  His head went to the crook of her neck, muttering sweet talk into her skin. Now he was kissing her. She wanted to throw him off.

  More, she wanted to take him by his clammy hand and show him the death-defying monster he had been so close to stumbling across.

  But Frank wasn’t ready for that confrontation, not yet. All she could do was endure Rory’s caresses and hope that exhaustion claimed him quickly.

  “Why don’t we go downstairs?” she suggested.

  He muttered something into her neck and didn’t move. His left hand was on her breast, the other clasped around her waist. She let him work his fingers beneath her blouse. To resist at this juncture would only inflame him afresh.

  “I need you,” he said, raising his mouth to her ear. Once, half a lifetime ago, her heart had seemed to skip at such a profession.

  Now she knew better. Her heart was no acrobat; there was no tingle in the coils of her abdomen. Only the steady workings of her body. Breath drawn, blood circulated, food pulped and purged. Thinking of her anatomy thus, untainted by romanticism—as a collection of natural imperatives housed in muscle and bone—she found it easier to let him strip her blouse and put his face to her breasts.

  Her nerve endings dutifully responded to his tongue, but again, it was merely an anatomy lesson. She stood back in the dome of her skull, and was unmoved.

  He was unbuttoning himself now; she caught sight of the boastful plum as he stroked it against her thigh. Now he opened her legs, and pulled her underwear down just far enough to give him access. She made no objection, nor even a sound, as he made his entrance.

  His own din began almost immediately, feeble claims to love and lust hopelessly tangled together. She half listened, and let him work at his play, his face buried in her hair.

  Closing her eyes, she tried to picture better times, but the lightning spoiled her dreaming. As sound followed light, she opened her eyes again to see that the door of the damp room had been opened two or three inches. In the narrow gap between door and frame she could just make out a glistening figure, watching them.

  She could not see Frank’s eyes, but she felt them sharpened beyond pricking by envy and rage. Nor did she look away, but stared on at the shadow while Rory’s moans increased. And at the end one moment became another, and she was lying on the bed with her wedding dress crushed beneath her, while a black and scarlet beast crept up between her legs to give her a sample of its love.

  “Poor baby,” was the last thing Rory said as sleep overcame him. He lay on the bed still dressed; she made no attempt to strip him. When his snores were even, she left him to it, and went back to the room.

  Frank was standing beside the window, watching the storm move to the southeast.

  He had torn the blind away. Lamplight washed the walls.

  “He heard you,” she said.

  “I had to see the storm,” he replied simply. “I needed it.”

  “He almost found you, damn it.”

  Frank shook his head. “There’s no such thing as almost,” he said, still staring out of the window. Then, after a pause: “I want to be out there. I want to have it all again.”

  “I know.”

  “No you don’t,” he told her. “You’ve no conception of the hunger I’ve got on me.”

  “Tomorrow then,” she said. “I’ll get another body tomorrow.”

  “Yes. You do that. And I want some other stuff. A radio, for one. I want to know what’s going on out there. And food: proper food.

  Fresh bread—”

  “Whatever you need.”

  “—and ginger. The preserved kind, you know? In syrup.”

  “I know.”

  He glanced round at her briefly, but he wasn’t seeing her. There was too much world to be reacquainted with tonight.

  “I didn’t realize it was autumn,” he said, and went back to watching the storm.

  The first thing Kirsty noticed when she came round the corner of Lodovico Street the following day was that the blind had gone from the upper front window. Sheets of newspaper had been taped against the glass in its place.

  She found herself a vantage point in the shelter of a holly hedge, from which she hoped she could watch the house but remain unseen. Then she settled down for her vigil.

  It was not quickly rewarded. Two hours and more went by before she saw Julia leave the house, another hour and a quarter before she returned, by which time Kirsty’s feet were numb with cold.

  Julia had not returned alone. The man she was with was not known to Kirsty, nor indeed did he look to be a likely member of Julia’s circle. From a distance he appeared to be in middle age, stocky, balding. When he followed Julia into the house he gave a nervous backward glance, as if fearful of voyeurs.

  She waited in her hiding place for a further quarter of an hour, not certain of what to do next. Did she linger here until the man emerged, and challenge him? Or did she go to the house and try to talk her way inside?

  Neither option was particularly attractive.

  She decided not to decide. Instead she would get closer to the house, and see what inspiration the moment brought.

  The answer was, very little. As she made her way up the path her feet itched to turn and carry her away. Indeed she was within an ace of doing just that when she heard a shout from within.

  The man’s name was Sykes, Stanley Sykes. Nor was that all he’d told Julia on the way back from the bar. She knew his wife’s name (Maudie) and occupation (assistant chiropodist); she’d had pictures of the children (Rebecca and Ethan) provided for her to coo over. The man seemed to be defying her to continue the seduction. She merely smiled, and told him he
was a lucky man.

  But once in the house, things had begun to go awry. Halfway up the stairs friend Sykes had suddenly announced that what they were doing was wrong—that God saw them, and knew their hearts, and found them wanting. She had done her best to calm him, but he was not to be won back from the Lord.

  Instead, he lost his temper and flailed out at her. He might have done worse, in his righteous wrath, but for the voice that had called him from the landing. He’d stopped hitting her instantly and become so pale it was as if he believed God himself was doing the calling. Then Frank had appeared at the top of the stairs, in all his glory. Sykes had loosed a cry, and tried to run. But Julia was quick.

  She had her hand on him long enough for Frank to descend the few stairs and make a permanent arrest.

  She had not realized, until she heard the creak and snap of bone as Frank took hold of his prey, how strong he had become of late: stronger surely than a natural man. At Frank’s touch Sykes had shouted again. To silence him, Frank wrenched off his jaw.

  The second shout that Kirsty had heard had ended abruptly, but she read enough panic in the din to have her at the door and on the verge of knocking.

  Only then did she think better of it. Instead, she slipped down the side of the house, doubting with every step the wisdom of this, but equally certain that a frontal assault would get her nowhere. The gate that offered access to the back garden was lacking a bolt.

  She slipped through, her ears alive to every sound, especially that of her own feet. From the house, nothing. Not so much as a moan.

  Leaving the gate open in case she should need a quick retreat, she hurried to the back door. It was unlocked. This time, she let doubt slow her step. Maybe she should go and call Rory, bring him to the house. But by that time whatever was happening inside would be over, and she knew damn well that unless Julia was caught red-handed she would slide from under any accusation. No, this was the only way. She stepped inside.

  The house remained completely quiet.

  There was not even a footfall to help her locate the actors she’d come to view. She moved to the kitchen door, and from there through to the dining room. Her stomach twitched; her throat was suddenly so dry she could barely swallow.

  From dining room to lounge, and thence into the hallway. Still nothing, no whisper or sigh. Julia and her companion could only be upstairs, which suggested that she had been wrong, thinking she heard fear in the shouts.

  Perhaps it was pleasure that she’d heard. An orgasmic whoop, instead of the terror she’d taken it for. It was an easy mistake to make.

  The front door was on her right, mere yards away. She could still slip out and away, the coward in her tempted, and no one be any the wiser. But a fierce curiosity had seized her, a desire to know (to see) the mysteries the house held, and be done with them. As she climbed the stairs the curiosity mounted to a kind of exhilaration.

  She reached the top, and began to make her way along the landing. The thought occurred now that the birds had flown, that while she had been creeping through from the back of the house they had left via the front.

  The first door on the left was the bedroom: if they were mating anywhere, Julia and her paramour, it would surely be here.

  But no. The door stood ajar; she peered in.

  The bedspread was uncreased.

  Then, a misshapen cry. So near, so loud, her heart missed its rhythm.

  She ducked out of the bedroom, to see a figure lurch from one of the rooms farther along the landing. It took her a moment to recognize the fretful man who had arrived with Julia—and only then by his clothes. The rest was changed, horribly changed. A wasting disease had seized him in the minutes since she’d seen him on the step, shriveling his flesh on the bone.

  Seeing Kirsty, he threw himself toward her, seeking what fragile protection she could offer. He had got no more than a pace from the door however, when a form spilled into sight behind him. It too seemed diseased, its body bandaged from head to foot—the bindings stained by issues of blood and pus. There was nothing in its speed, however, or the ferocity of its subsequent attack, that suggested sickness. Quite the reverse. It reached for the fleeing man and took hold of him by the neck. Kirsty let out a cry, as the captor drew its prey back into its embrace.

  The victim made what little complaint his dislocated face was capable of. Then the antagonist tightened its embrace. The body trembled and twitched; its legs buckled.

  Blood spurted from eyes and nose and mouth. Spots of it filled the air like hot hail, breaking against her brow. The sensation snapped her from her inertia. This was no time to wait and watch. She ran.

  The monster made no pursuit. She reached the top of the stairs without being overtaken. But as her foot descended, it addressed her.

  Its voice was . . . familiar.

  “There you are,” it said.

  It spoke with melting tones, as if it knew her. She stopped.

  “Kirsty,” it said. “Wait a while.”

  Her head told her to run. Her gut defied the wisdom, however. It wanted to remember whose voice this was, speaking from the binding. She could still make good her escape, she reasoned; she had an eight-yard start. She looked round at the figure. The body in its arms had curled up, fetally, legs against chest. The beast dropped it.

  “You killed him. . .” she said.

  The thing nodded. It had no apologies to make, apparently, to either victim or witness.

  “We’ll mourn him later,” it told her and took a step toward her.

  “Where’s Julia?” Kirsty demanded.

  “Don’t you fret. All’s well. . .” the voice said. She was so close to remembering who it was.

  As she puzzled it took another step, one hand upon the wall, as if its balance was still uncertain.

  “I saw you,” it went on. “And I think you saw me. At the window. . .”

  Her mystification increased. Had this thing been in the house that long? If so, surely Rory must— And then she knew the voice.

  “Yes. You do remember. I can see you remember.

  It was Rory’s voice, or rather, a close approximation of it. More guttural, more self-regarding, but the resemblance was uncanny enough to keep her rooted to the spot while the beast shambled within snatching distance of her.

  At the last she recanted her fascination, and turned to flee, but the cause was already lost. She heard its step a pace behind her, then felt its fingers at her neck. A cry came to her lips, but it was barely mounted before the thing had its corrugated palm across her face, canceling both the shout and the breath it came upon.

  It plucked her up, and took her back the way she’d come. In vain she struggled against its hold; the small wounds her fingers made upon its body—tearing at the bandages and digging into the rawness beneath—left it entirely unmoved, it seemed.

  For a horrid moment her heels snagged the corpse on the floor. Then she was being hauled into the room from which the living and the dead had emerged. It smelled of soured milk and fresh meat. When she was flung down the boards beneath her were wet and warm.

  Her belly wanted to turn inside out. She didn’t fight the instinct, but retched up all that her stomach held. In the confusion of present discomfort and anticipated terror she was not certain of what happened next. Did she glimpse somebody else (Julia) on the landing as the door was slammed, or was it shadow? One way or another it was too late for appeals. She was alone with the nightmare.

  Wiping the bile from her mouth she got to her feet. Daylight pierced the newspaper at the window here and there, dappling the room like sunlight through branches. And through this pastoral, the thing came sniffing her.

  “Come to Daddy,” it said.

  In her twenty-six years she had never heard an easier invitation to refuse.

  “Don’t touch me,” she told it.

  It cocked its head a little, as if charmed by this show of propriety. Then it closed in on her, all pus and laughter, and—God help her—desire.

  Sh
e backed a few desperate inches into the corner, until there was nowhere else for her to go.

  “Don’t you remember me?” it said.

  She shook her head.

  “Frank,” came the reply. “This is brother Frank. . .”

  She had met Frank only once, at Alexandra Road. He’d come visiting one afternoon, just before the wedding, more she couldn’t recall. Except that she’d hated him on sight.

  “Leave me alone,” she said as it reached for her. There was a vile finesse in the way his stained fingers touched her breast.

  “Don’t,” she shrieked, “or so help me—”

  “What?” said Rory’s voice. “What will you do?”

  Nothing, was the answer of course. She was helpless, as only she had ever been in dreams, those dreams of pursuit and assault that her psyche had always staged on a ghetto street in some eternal night. Never—not even in her most witless fantasies—had she anticipated that the arena would be a room she had walked past a dozen times, in a house where she had been happy, while outside the day went on as ever, gray on gray.

  In a futile gesture of disgust, she pushed the investigating hand away.

  “Don’t be cruel,” the thing said, and his fingers found her skin again, as unshooable as October wasps. “What’s to be frightened of?”

  “Outside. . .” she began, thinking of the horror on the landing.

  “A man has to eat,” Frank replied. “Surely you can forgive me that?”

  Why did she even feel his touch, she wondered? Why didn’t her nerves share her disgust and die beneath his caress?

  “This isn’t happening,” she told herself aloud, but the beast only laughed.

  “I used to tell myself that,” he said. “Day in, day out. Used to try and dream the agonies away. But you can’t. Take it from me.

  You can’t. They have to be endured.”

  She knew he was telling the truth, the kind of unsavory truth that only monsters were at liberty to tell. He had no need to flatter or cajole; he had no philosophy to debate, or sermon to deliver. His awful nakedness was a kind of sophistication. Past the lies of faith, and into purer realms.

  She knew too that she would not endure.

  That when her pleadings faltered, and Frank claimed her for whatever vileness he had in mind, she would loose such a scream that she would shatter.