A Rose-Red City

Eight

Jerry was frantically poking at the wood stove, trying to make it burn brighter— and the pile of firewood had already shrunk horribly, revealing the hilt of a sword which had been hidden behind it.

She felt a strange calmness, a sort of inevitability that was probably an effect of shock, like Maisie had. She wandered over to the room where the children were and looked in. Maisie was kneeling by the bed, praying, the words undistinguishable under the gibbering and obscene mutterings from the window. Alan and Lacey— she thought she could make out their shapes, little bundles on the bed in the gloom, but she couldn’t be sure and she couldn’t go and give them a farewell kiss because she might waken them, and that would be the most unkind thing to do right now. Perhaps they were innocent enough that demons would have no hold over them… but werewolves?

Good-bye, darlings. Mommy is very sorry she got you into this.

Then she looked into the other bedroom. The youth was sitting on the floor, leaning against a wall, visible in the stream of light from the doorway, and tied up with strips of bedsheet. One eye followed her angrily; the other was half closed by swelling and his mouth equally puffed on the other side, smashed by Jerry in his fury.

Something was gnawing loudly at the window frame, making harsh rasping and tearing noises.

Graham was squirming around on the bed, also bound, and with a gag over his mouth. She leaned over him.

“If I take off the gag, will you be quiet?” she asked, and he nodded strenuously. She fumbled for a long time with the knot. What had she ever seen in him? Her mother had asked her that. “He is a man who knows what he wants,” she had answered. Silly little bitch— she should have trusted a mother’s instincts, because a man who knows what he wants can easily become a man who will do anything to get it; charm becomes a weapon and charisma corrupts. Then the gag came loose “There,” she said.

“Untie me, Ariadne! Don’t leave me tied up like this!”

She had never heard him beg before and despised herself for the momentary pleasure that thought gave her.

“It isn’t going to matter soon,” she said and noticed how flat her voice sounded. “The oil has all disappeared from the lamps. Jerry thinks we’re going to be attacked by monsters.”

“No!”

“Maisie is praying like a conclave of cardinals,” she said, “and I’m sure she won’t forget you. I just wanted to tell you that I didn’t mean to get you into this. You’re not blameless, Graham, but you didn’t deserve this. Not quite this…”

“Oh, that’s very comforting,” he sneered. “I would have been more careful if I’d known that D.T.s were infectious.” Why couldn’t they just talk together, like human beings?

“Evil is infectious,” she said. “Which one of us was the vector, Graham?”

“It was my fault, was it?” he snapped. “Nothing like a wino for self-pity.” He would never admit an error— he never had.

“No,” she said. “In the end I was much more at fault than you; all those things you said tonight were true, except that you blamed only me for Lacey. If that was where we went wrong, then you were as much at fault as me… and you were the one who pushed for an abortion.” That would hurt him.

“Always that!” he snarled. “I was waiting for it… All right, for that I’m grateful. I love her— and see where you’ve got her?” What else had been his fault? Plenty, she thought. The long absences, the strange friends, the sudden incredible prosperity— feast after famine— and then the steadily growing realization that a young lawyer couldn’t possibly be making this much money by honest means “How about Alan, then?” he said with a sneer. “If we’re going to chew over the old bones, he was all my doing, wasn’t he?”

“If you mean that you virtually raped me that time, yes,” she said. “I suppose you get the credit for Alan.” That was a night she would never forget; even now she got cold shakes at the sight of a cowboy hat. She had left him, taken Lacey and gone… and that had perhaps been her last chance for sanity and sobriety, the last ray of sunset before the dark and the storm. He had tracked her down to her sister’s cabin, a cabin not unlike this one, and they had had a most glorious fight. Shredded and tattered, she had gone off to bed, and he had stayed in the chair and finished the bottle She could still remember the crash as the bedroom door opened, him standing there, ready for her, his intent obvious, his mind made up… and the cowboy hat. Looking back at it, the cowboy hat should be funny, but the events of that night had never ripened into funniness. He had arrived wearing western dress, having come from some ranchmen’s affair or other, and all night long they had screamed and argued, and he had never taken off that hat. Even when he finally came roaring into the bedroom to slake his lawful lust, he had still been wearing the hat— nothing else, just the hat. No, somehow that was not funny, even now. Too much pain, too much humiliation. She had left again with Lacey before dawn, before he awoke, and had stayed away until she had realized that she was again pregnant He broke the silence. “Well, at least he looks like me,” he said. “To begin with I worried, but I had the blood groups checked— which doesn’t prove anything, but didn’t disprove anything— and we’re a rare type, he and I. And the little beggar does look like me.” Obviously he still wasn’t sure. She could try once again.

“I suppose this is a deathbed repentance, Graham, so I’ll assure you again that there is no doubt. I was never unfaithful to you.” He snorted.

“Not consciously, then. When I was on a bender… but that came later, after Alan. No, he had to be yours.” Pause, as though he were gathering ammunition, but then he said, “All right, deathbed repentance. Maybe all of it wasn’t a hundred pecent your fault. Ninety-five, maybe, but not a hundred.”

“My, you’re gallant!”

“Go back to your demon lover, then.”

“He’s a better man than you’ll ever be.” But that was just going to start the shouting and tearing again. She stepped backwards and almost fell over Carlo.

“Who is this character?” she said. “Where did you get him?”

“Just a friend,” Graham said, suddenly cautious.

No, not a friend. An electronics expert with a switchblade, one of the new generation of all-rounders.

“What’s his speciality?” she asked, curious.

“Revenge,” said a distorted whisper from the floor.

“Meaning you’d better not get between him and that Howard man tomorrow,” Gillis said. “If the devils don’t get him, then Carlo will.” Not very likely— Jerry Howard could handle that little punk. It didn’t matter now, anyway.

“If this is good-bye, Graham,” she said, “then good riddance.” Nice exit— he hadn’t had a reply ready for that. She went out and closed the door on the chewing noise coming from the window— maybe both men would be gnawed to death by werebeavers before morning, and she wasn’t sure she cared.

Jerry had created a good blaze in the stove; a cheerful glow and crackle were streaming out its open door. The noises outside were dying away— was that a good sign or a bad sign? He was back on the sofa, checking out the guns, two of them sub-machine guns and two that looked like hunting rifles, with small clips for six or so bullets. She went around in front of him and looked down at the barely visible shape of Killer and the wand in his dead-man’s grip, shining brightly as though fluorescent.

“He’s still alive?” she asked.

“No change,” Jerry said, snapping a gun back together. “I suppose he could stay that way for quite a time, if the opposition left us in peace.” She stepped over Killer and sat down next to Jerry, moving a couple of guns to do so. “Show me how they work,” she said.

He looked at her in surprise. “You’ve shot before?”

She picked up one of the rifles, grunting at the unexpected weight. Pointing it over Killer at the door, she worked the bolt rapidly, spraying cartridges. “I lived on a ranch— the gophers’ nemesis, I was.”

“Wonder woman!” he said.

“Those Uzis are beyond me, though,” she said and laughed at his astonishment. “But I’ve read enough magazines in doctors’ waiting rooms to recognize them.”

“Killer would approve of you, I think,” he said. “Or maybe not he thinks a woman’s weapon is a feather duster.”

“Clio? That his wife?” He nodded. “You noticed the message? That she did well, not that he loved her? She is supposed to keep house and be there in his bed if he comes home early.” There was an acidity in his tone that she had not noticed before when he spoke of Killer. Why did they always come back to Killer? She wondered about this Clio.

Then he showed her quickly how to fire and reload the Uzis and the others, Lee Enfields. “Stick to single shots,” he said. “Automatic fire only when things are absolutely desperate.” The walls might be bulletproof, he said, and cause ricochets.

Then the second lamp faded away, and they were sitting in the fire’s glow. The two front windows showed up as pale rectangles, for the high yard light was still working. Shadows crossed and re-crossed the drapes, inhuman, indistinct, humped shapes.

They fell silent, Jerry hunched over with his face in his hands. That would not do.

“And who is in Jerry Howard’s bed when he comes home early?” He lowered his hands and smiled at her. “Jerry is.”

“Bachelor?” He nodded. “Bachelor. Not a virgin, but not a Killer.”

“In forty years?” The light was too dim to see if she had made him blush.

“I catch a fish once in a while,” he said, “but I always throw them back. I’m too fussy.”

“What specifications do you have, then,” she asked, “that are so hard to fill?” It was growing very quiet outside.

His teeth glinted in the flickering light— perfect teeth, of course. “Not tall,” he said, “because I’m very insecure and need the advantage. A blond, naturally— but not too blond because then other men would chase her too much, and, as I said, I’m insecure. Musical, because I like music; interested in literature, because I have thousands of books for her to read, and I like to read in bed.”

“Is that all you do in bed?” He sort of spluttered— she had figured him as shy— and if she were serious, she would never dare push him like this, but it was keeping their minds off the other things. There was nothing they could do; talk was all they had.

“Sometimes I get madly passionate and chew a girl’s ear,” he said, “or read Keats to her. They like that.”

She said, “I suppose if they’re all five or six hundred years old, it would be dangerous to excite them too much?”

He was responding, eyes shining with enjoyment by that dancing firelight behind her. “And what specifications have you drawn up for Graham’s replacement?” he asked.

Queen’s gambit accepted. “An older man,” she said. “Good thinking.”

“Musical, of course. Well read.”

“Good on Keats?” She sniffed. “You know what you can do with Keats?”

“We’ll leave him to Killer,” he said, and they laughed together in graveside humor.

“So you have marriages in Mera?” she asked, and he nodded. She pondered. “Surely sex must be a problem, though? It usually is, isn’t it— people are like that. Can any marriage last for centuries? Don’t couples tire of each other?”

He leaned back wearily. “It’s surprisingly rare. I suppose there’s a lot of cheating; I don’t know. Well,” he added in a softer tone, “I do know— I’ve done some. But with no disease and no pregnancies, Mera is a great place for love-making.” And before she had to think of something else to keep him talking, he said, “It’s the place where dreams come true.”

“What do you mean by that?” she demanded, intrigued by his tone.

He turned his head and smiled at her. “Things are possible in Mera that aren’t possible elsewhere. The angles of a triangle don’t add up Have you ever read Homer?” He was a Greek freak. “A little; in translation, of course.”

“You must come to Mera and read the original,” he said. “If you know the Odyssey or the Iliad…

Killer can quote great chunks of them at you, by the way, they’re his bible. He can’t read, but Clio can; she reads him bits, and he memorizes them. Of course he knew a lot of them before he ever left Greece; it was how he was educated. He likes Hesiod, too, because he was another Thespian. What I’m going to tell you makes more sense in Killer’s view of it— which is Homer’s view— than it does in mine. In Homer’s world, if a friend dropped in to visit you— Mary Smith, say?— well, in Homer, you could never be quite sure that it really was Mary Smith or actually the goddess Athena in disguise.”

“Listen!” she said. The yard had gone absolutely silent; even the faint chewing from the window of Graham’s room had stopped.

“No, don’t listen,” he sighed. “It’s just a trick to make you jumpy. Let’s get back to Mera… I don’t know what it’s like for girls, but most boys— men— see a good-looking girl once in a while and think, ‘wouldn’t it be lovely…’ Then they go home and pester their wives, in most cases…” He had left this world forty years ago.

“It’s not unknown nowadays for ladies to think that way,” she said. “If we see some tall, blond… er… bare-chested type? Not rare at all, actually, these days.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll remember that, if I can. But in Mera, the dreams come true.”

“Huh?” He stared in sudden silence down where Killer lay, only the pearly trace of the wand showing. “Take Killer as an example. A horrible example, perhaps, but an example. I’ve told you how promiscuous he is. So he takes a fancy to, say, the Mary Smith we mentioned, and starts pestering her. She tells him to… vanish. Fair enough, but one day when Killer makes a pass, she responds. Great— he has another stamp in his album. But Mary Smith may know nothing about it!”

“Jerry! How?” He chuckled. “Killer’s explanation is that the goddess Aphrodite took pity on him and assumed Mary Smith’s form. I talk about wish fulfilment, but what does it matter? Of course, the truth may be that Mary Smith did actually fancy a tumble with Killer and is lying. Who knows?”

“But…” The idea was too numbing to take in.

“I suppose there are limits,” he said. “You probably couldn’t have two husbands without the fact being obvious, but truth in Mera is very much what you believe. Reality is relative. There is no black and white in Mera, literally. If I get you to Mera, Ariadne, I shall probably have an affair with you, at the very least, whether you know it or not!”

“You get me to Mera, Jerry Howard,” she said, “and you needn’t put the goddess Aphrodite to any trouble on my behalf.” They sat and looked at each other for a while in silence, and then he sighed and got up and put more logs into the stove.

There was a murmur outside, a sound like a great crowd. Jerry must have heard it also, but he came back and sat down without mentioning it.

“What is bringing them?” he muttered to himself. “Why so much, so many?”

“Killer’s words?” she said. “He talked about Clio and then he said something about Eros. ‘Then it was not always Eros?’ ” He cleared his throat harshly. The noise outside fell and then came back, greater, like an orchestra tuning up or… or a crowd waiting for the teams to emerge? Jerry started to speak loudly; as though trying to drown it out.

“It happened a month ago,” he said, “and this is just one example out of many, over the years. I was heading home of an evening and was hailed unexpectedly by Lopez— another friend. He asked me in for chess, and we sipped wine and smoked Havanas and played chess until we were too drunk to remember what colors we were. Lopez is so black he’s blue in Mera, so that took some doing.” The noise was growing, and he was raising his voice over it.

“I staggered home at last, crawled upstairs, and found Killer— asleep.” Even dim firelight was bright enough to show his blushes.

“So I went downstairs and read a book for a while. I think I was holding it upside down, but it didn’t matter. There were two glasses and an empty wine bottle there. In a little while Killer came down and said he’d better be going.”

“What did you say?” The multitude outside roared enormously, and Jerry turned and stared bleakly at the windows. Then the racket died away again. “I said I was glad he’d been able to come… and I hoped he’d had as memorable an evening as I had.” She gripped his hand suddenly. “You’re a good friend to Killer, Jerry. Better, I suspect, than he deserves.”

“No!” he said and was drowned out again. If demons made the same amount of noise as people, there must be thousands of them out there.

Then a sudden, heart-stopping silence, and Jerry spoke as though nothing had happened. “At times he’s just a little SOB, Ariadne, but he’s also the most faithful, trustworthy friend a man could have. Mera needs him; that’s why I wondered about Thermopylae. A Greek’s loyalty was always first to his city, his polis…

Killer has transferred his loyalty from Thespiae to Mera.” Shout… shout… shout…

SHOUT… What was that? It sounded like a word.

“Here it comes,” Jerry muttered. “I mustn’t say it, but you can probably make out the name. They’re hailing the champion, the big banana himself.” Ast… something? Aster?

“Who?” she whispered.

“He has the Mera desk in hell,” Jerry said grimly. Then the racket rose to a greater cheer than any they had heard yet, that went on and on… and stopped in a sudden, expectant hush. Jerry picked up one of the guns.

“But there’s one disadvantage,” he remarked, continuing the conversation as though nothing had happened. “You can never be quite sure. I’ve always refused Killer’s entreaties. I just can’t swim in those waters and in Mera I don’t have to. That night he had heard me accept— there have been other times, I’m sure. But he doesn’t dare ask. He never knows which is me and which is the god Eros in my shape, and, if he asked, I might deny it all.”

“But here…”

“But here,” he finished the thought, “here Outside, it has to be Jerry. So tonight he asked. And I lied.” Then he muttered, “And tonight I gave him a promise. That’s another first.” There had been no need for him to tell her that. And if what he had been saying was true, then there would be no need for him to honor that promise when he returned to Mera, except that of course Jerry Howard would always honor a promise. If he returned to Mera.

The stove crackled loudly, and she jumped, her nerves rapidly reaching breaking point again— she had thought they’d snapped long ago. The light patches marking the windows seemed to sway.

“What the hell now?” Jerry muttered, studying them. A deep creaking echoed from the yard, then silence.

More creaking sounded, then louder… The light moved on the window patches.

“Oh, this is bloody ridiculous,” Jerry muttered. “It’s all a big fake for our benefit. There aren’t thousands of demons out there. Just one big evil.”

“Maybe they have elections in hell?” she suggested. “And this is part of the pizzazz?” The creaking grew to a splintering screech and she half expected someone to call out, “Timberrrrrrrr!”

A thunderous crash and darkness beyond the drapes. Wild cheering… “That light,” she said weakly. “It was on a telephone pole. I saw it… it was a foot thick! More than a foot.” And whatever was out there had just snapped the pole.

She picked up the other automatic weapon, her hands trembling so much that she was not sure she would be able to fire it.

Then something struck the corner of the cottage with a blow that shook the whole building.

“It’s him,” said Jerry in a very hoarse voice, as though his mouth were bone dry. “No doubt about it.”

“Who?” she shouted.

He hesitated and then shrugged. “Asterios.”

A bellow of triumph, a great, animal roaring rolled through the cottage like a tidal wave…

“What is it?” she whispered. “What does it look like?”

“Hard to tell… can be almost anything… to the Greeks he was ...” His voice was lost in another crash, halfway along the wall, and she heard planks splinter.

“He’s kicking tires,” she whispered.

A third blow came, heavier yet, and the cottage rocked, dishes rattled, and logs fell off the firewood pile and rolled on the floor… then silence.

“It’s behind the cottage,” she said, thinking of those back windows and Alan and Lacey.

“There’s no use.” His voice was barely audible. “If it’s what I think, then it’s bulletproof. We need that antitank gun I mentioned, and even that…”

“Can’t you shoot its eyes out, or something?” He shook his head sadly. “It would hunt by smell or just by demon senses.”

“What about the wand?” she demanded, shocked at the way Jerry seemed to be deliquescing.

“The wand would burn it like a hot poker, but not really damage it. And if we take the wand, Killer dies.”

“He’ll die anyway,” she said. Lacey? Alan?

“It wouldn’t help,” Jerry sighed. “With the wand and a fast horse, you might escape back to Mera… It’s been done. But it would have to be a very fast horse.” The building rocked. Wood squeaked and then splintered and shattered. Graham started screaming. Something was tearing its way in through the back wall. Again came that rending noise, as if half the wall had been ripped out, and the tinkling of glass.

“There must be something!” she moaned, staring at the closed door in front of her, dim in the glimmer of firelight. Jerry, beside her, was mumbling incoherently.

Graham’s screaming grew louder and another voice, Carlo’s, joined in. Jerry stood up. “All I can think of— ” he said. “I’ll stand alongside the door and when it comes in this room I’ll jam the gun hard against its chest. Just maybe the bullet will penetrate its hide, then.” Or just maybe it would grab him first.

Thump. There was a rocking and a creak of floorboards. “I think it’s in,” she said. “Heavy as… as hell.”

Jerry walked around the sofa and stood beside the door, waiting. She stayed where she was and trembled.

Then a great crunching sounded, which she thought might have been the dresser, and thuds from the distance, as though the intruder was throwing the furniture out of the cottage altogether.

Graham stopped screaming… Carlo stopped screaming… More thuds… Silence. Jerry said nothing.

With creaks and a shuddering, the whole building trembled as the visitor walked, probably stepping carefully in case the floor collapsed.

Then the bedroom door was ripped from its hinges and hurled to the floor with a crash, and two eyes glowed in the darkness beyond… much too far apart, much too high in the air The size of it!

She could hear breathing, very deep, very slow… a sort of big-animal snuffling noise… an animal smell— rank, putrid.

Jerry started to whimper

Then it bellowed again, a cataract of noise that filled the cottage and went on and on, full of triumph and gloating and fury. One huge hand gripped the lintel and ripped out that section of the wall, hurling it away and raising the opening to the ceiling; and suddenly she could see it as the light flickered vaguely on its vast bulk… a black muzzle as big as a laundry basket with horns almost to the roof and shoulders that touched both sides of the doorway, an impossible chest, and arms hanging down at its sides, and…

NOT THAT!

Her fear dissolved as she erupted hate and anger; she snapped the sub-machine gun to automatic and opened fire And then all hell seemed to explode into the cabin.