The Damnation Game

The grave was open and empty; the black plastic shrouds had been torn apart, their contents unceremoniously removed. Marty stared into the hole not quite comprehending the joke. What use were dead dogs?

There was a movement in the grave; something shifted beneath the plastic sheets. He stepped back from the edge, his gorge too susceptible for this. A nest of maggots presumably, or perhaps a worm the size of his arm, grown fat on dogmeat; who knew what hid in the earth?

Turning his back on the hole, he walked toward the house, following the trail Mamoulian had taken, until the trees thi

Stephanie excused herself from the table, and went out to the bathroom, leaving the hysteria behind her. As she closed the door one of the men-Ottaway, she thought-suggested she come back in and piss in a bottle for him. She didn't grace the remark with a reply. However well they paid, she wasn't going to get involved in that kind of activity; it wasn't clean.

The hallway was in semidarkness; the sheen of vases, the richness of the carpet underfoot-all of it spoke wealth, and on previous visits she'd enjoyed the extravagance of the place. But tonight they were so uneasy-Ottaway, Dwoskin, the old man himself-there was an air of desperation in their drinking and their i

She bent close to the bathroom mirror and tried to reapply her eyeliner, but her hand was shaky with drink, and it slipped. She cursed, and dug in her purse for a tissue to clean off the error. As she did so there was a scuffling sound in the hallway. Dwoskin, she guessed. She didn't want the gargoyle touching her again, at least not until she was too paralytic with drink to care. She tiptoed to the door and locked it. The sounds outside had stopped. She went back to the sink and turned on the tap; cold water, to splash on her tired face.

Dwoskin had gone out after Stephanie. He intended to suggest something outrageous for her to perform on him, something gross for this night- of nights.

"Where are you going?" somebody asked him, as he traipsed the hall, or did he just imagine the words? He'd taken a few pills before the party-that always loosened him up-but it tended to put voices in his head, mostly his mother's. Whether somebody had asked the question or not, he chose not to answer; he just wandered down the corridor, calling for Stephanie. The woman was extraordinary, or so his drugged libido had decided. She had superb buttocks. He wanted to be smothered by those cheeks; to die under them.

"Stephanie," he demanded. She didn't reappear. "Come on," he reassured her, "it's only me."

There was a smell in the corridor: just a hint of sewer. He inhaled it. "Foul," he a

A few yards down the corridor something started to move toward him. The light was too dim to see properly by, but it was a man, and the man was not alone. There were other shapes, knee-high, mustering in the darkness. The smell was becoming overpowering. Dwoskin's head had started to dance with color; disgraceful images flickered in the air to accompany the smell. It took him a moment to grasp that this air graffiti was not his doing. It was coming from the man ahead of him. Dashes and dots of light flared and whirled away into the air.

"Who are you?" Dwoskin demanded. In answer, the graffiti ignited into a full-blown literature. Not certain if any sound was coming out, the Troll-King began to screech.

Stephanie dropped the eyeliner into the sink as the scream reached her. She didn't recognize the voice. It was high enough to be a woman's, but it was neither Emily nor Oriana.

The shakes suddenly worsened. She held on to the edge of the sink to steady herself as the noises multiplied: howls now, and ru

She backed away from the door and sat on the edge of the bath. There, in the darkness, she started to sing "Abide with Me"-or what little she could remember of it-very quietly.

Marty heard the screams too, though he didn't want to. Even at such a distance, they carried a freight of blind panic that made him clammy.

He knelt down in the dirt between the trees and stopped his ears. The earth smelled ripe beneath him, and his mind seethed with unwelcome thoughts of lying faceup in the ground, dead perhaps, but anticipating resurrection. Like a sleeper on the verge of waking, nervous of the day.

After a while the din became intermittent. Soon, he told himself, he must open his eyes, stand up and go back to the house to see the hows and the whys of all this commotion. Soon; but not yet.

When the noise in the hallway and on the stairs had long stopped, Stephanie crept to the bathroom door, unlocked it and peered out. The corridor was in complete darkness now. The lamps had either been turned off or shattered. But her eyes, accustomed to the blackness of the bathroom, soon pierced the feeble light from the stairwell. The gallery was empty in both directions. There was just a smell in the air like a bad butcher's shop on a hot day.

She slipped off her shoes, and started to the top of the stairs. The contents of a handbag were scattered down the steps, and there was something wet underfoot. She looked down: the carpet was stained: either wine or blood. She hurried on down into the hallway. It was chilly; both front and vestibule doors were wide open. Again, there was no sign of life. The cars had gone from the driveway; the downstairs rooms-library, reception rooms, kitchen-all were forsaken. She rushed back upstairs to collect her belongings from the white room and leave.

As she retraced her steps along the gallery she heard a soft padding behind her. She turned. There was a dog at the top of the stairs; it had presumably followed her up. She could scarcely make it out in the bad light, but she wasn't afraid. "Good boy," she said, glad of its living presence in the abandoned house.

It didn't growl, nor did it wag its tail, it simply hobbled towards her. Only then did she realize her error in welcoming it. The butcher's shop was here, on all fours: she backed off.

"No..." she said, "I don't... oh, Christ... leave me alone."

Still it came; and with every step it took toward her she saw more of its condition. The i