Part 17 (1/2)
It only remained for her to go. She could no longer find shelter in this house. She must leave as she had entered.
She left the knife. That key had served its purpose. Through the hallways she returned, in the darkness her bare feet sometimes treading upon rich carpets, sometimes dust and fallen plaster. Her naked flesh tingled with the blood that had freed her soul.
She reached the sitting room and looked upon the storm that lashed the night beyond. For one gleam of lightning the room seemed festooned with torn wallpaper; empty wine bottles littered the floor and dingy furnis.h.i.+ngs. The flickering mirage pa.s.sed, and she saw that the room was exactly as she remembered. She must leave by the window.
There was a tapping at the window.
She started, then recoiled in horror as another repressed memory escaped into consciousness.
The figure that had pursued her through the darkness on that night she had sought refuge here. It waited for her now at the window. Half-glimpsed before, she saw it now fully revealed in the glare of the lightning.
Moisture glistened darkly upon its rippling and exaggerated musculature. Its uncouth head and shoulders hunched forward bullishly; its face was distorted with insensate l.u.s.t and drooling madness. A grotesque phallus swung between its misshapen legs-serpentine, possessed of its own life and volition. Like an obscene worm, it stretched blindly toward her, blood oozing from its toothless maw.
She raised her hands to ward it off, and the monstrosity pawed at the window, mocking her every terrified movement as it waited there on the other side of the rain-slick gla.s.s.
The horror was beyond enduring. There was another cas.e.m.e.nt window to the corner sitting room, the one that overlooked the waters of the river. She spun about and lunged toward it-noticing from the corner of her eye that the creature outside also whirled about, sensing her intent, flung itself toward the far window to forestall her.
The gla.s.s of the cas.e.m.e.nt shattered, even as its blubbery hands stretched out toward her. There was no pain in that release, only a dreamlike vertigo as she plunged into the greyness and the rain. Then the water and the darkness received her falling body, and she set out again into the night, letting the current carry her, she knew not where.
”A few personal effects remain to be officially disposed of, Dr Archer-since there's no one to claim them. It's been long enough now since the bus accident, and we'd like to be able to close the files on this catastrophe.”
”Let's have a look.” The psychiatrist opened the box of personal belongings. There wasn't much; there never was in such cases, and had there been anything worth stealing, it was already unofficially disposed of.
”They still haven't found a body,” the ward superintendent wondered. ”Do you suppose...”
”Callous as it sounds, I rather hope not,” Dr Archer confided. ”This patient was a paranoid schizophrenic-and dangerous.”
”Seemed quiet enough on the ward.”
”Thanks to a lot of ECT-and to depot phenothiazines. Without regular therapy, the delusional system would quickly regain control, and the patient would become frankly murderous.”
There were a few toiletry items and some articles of clothing, a bra.s.siere and pantyhose. ”I guess send this over to Social Services. These shouldn't be allowed on a locked ward- ” the psychiatrist pointed to the nylons ”-nor these s.m.u.t magazines.”
”They always find some way to smuggle the stuff in,” the ward superintendent sighed, ”and I've been working here at Coastal State since back before the War. What about these other books?” Dr Archer considered the stack of dog-eared gothic romance novels. ”Just return these to the Patients' Library. What's this one?” Beneath the paperbacks lay a small hardcover volume, bound in yellow cloth, somewhat soiled from age.
”Out of the Patients' Library too, I suppose. People have donated all sorts of books over the years, and if the patients don't tear them up, they just stay on the shelves forever.”
”The King in Yellow,” Dr Archer read from the spine, opening the book. On the flyleaf a name was penned in a graceful script: Constance Castaigne.
”Perhaps the name of a patient who left it here,” the superintendent suggested. ”Around the turn of the century this was a private sanitarium. Somehow, though, the name seems to ring a distant bell.”
”Let's just be sure this isn't vintage p.o.r.no.”
”I can't be sure-maybe something the old-timers talked about when I first started here. I seem to remember there was some famous scandal involving one of the wealthy families in the city. A murderess, was it? And something about a suicide, or was it an escape? I can't recall...”
”Harmless nineteenth-century romantic nonsense,” Dr Archer concluded. ”Send it on back to the library.”
The psychiatrist glanced at a last few lines before closing the book: Ca.s.silda: I tell you, I am lost! Utterly lost!
Camilla (terrified herself): You have seen the King...?
Ca.s.silda: And he has taken from me the power to direct or to escape my dreams.
Beyond Any Measure.
*I*
”In the dream I find myself alone in a room, I hear musical chimes-a sort of music-box tune- and I look around to see where the sound is coming from.
”I'm in a bedroom. Heavy curtains close off the windows, and it's quite dark, but I can sense that the furnis.h.i.+ngs are entirely antique-late Victorian, I think. There's a large four-poster bed, with its curtains drawn. Beside the bed is a small night table upon which a candle is burning. It is from here that the music seems to be coming.
”I walk across the room toward the bed, and as I stand beside it I see a gold watch resting on the night table next to the candlestick. The music-box tune is coming from the watch, I realize. It's one of those old pocket-watch affairs with a case that opens. The case is open now, and I see that the watch's hands are almost at midnight. I sense that on the inside of the watchcase there will be a picture, and I pick up the watch to see whose picture it is.
”The picture is obscured with a red smear. It's fresh blood.
”I look up in sudden fear. From the bed, a hand is pulling aside the curtain.
”That's when I wake up.”
”Bravo!” applauded someone.
Lisette frowned momentarily, then realized that the comment was directed toward another of the chattering groups crowded into the gallery. She sipped her champagne; she must be a bit tight, or she'd never have started talking about the dreams.
”What do you think, Dr Magnus?”
It was the gala reopening of Covent Garden. The venerable fruit, flower and vegetable market, preserved from the demolition crew, had been renovated into an airy mall of expensive shops and galleries: ”London's new shopping experience.” Lisette thought it an unhappy hybrid of born-again Victorian exhibition hall and trendy ”shoppes.” Let the dead past bury its dead. She wondered what they might make of the old Billingsgate fish market, should SAVE win its fight to preserve that landmark, as now seemed unlikely.
”Is this dream, then, a recurrent one, Miss Seyrig?”
She tried to read interest or skepticism in Dr Magnus' pale blue eyes. They told her nothing.
”Recurrent enough.”
To make me mention it to Danielle, she finished in her thoughts. Danielle Borland shared a flat- she'd stopped terming it an apartment even in her mind-with her in a row of terrace houses in Bloomsbury, within an easy walk of London University. The gallery was Maitland Reddin's project; Danielle was another. Whether Maitland really thought to make a business of it, or only intended to showcase his many friends' not always evident talents, was not open to discussion. His gallery in Knightsbridge was certainly successful, if that meant anything.
”How often is that?” Dr Magnus touched his gla.s.s to his blonde-bearded lips. He was drinking only Perrier water, and, at that, was using his gla.s.s for little more than to gesture.
”I don't know. Maybe half a dozen times since I can remember. And then, that many again since I came to London.”
”You're a student at London University, I believe Danielle said?”
”That's right. In art. I'm over here on fellows.h.i.+p.”
Danielle had modelled for an occasional session-Lisette now was certain it was solely from a desire to display her body rather than due to any financial need-and when a muttered profanity at a dropped brush disclosed a common American heritage, the two emigres had rallied at a pub afterward to exchange news and views. Lisette's bed-sit near the Museum was impossible, and Danielle's roommate had just skipped to the Continent with two months' owing. By closing time it was settled.
”How's your gla.s.s?”