Carys ducked his flailing, and slipped sideways out of harm’s way. The knife and fork she had held were no longer in her hands. Breer had run straight onto them. He seemed not to be aware of their presence in his gut, however. His concern was for the girl whose body was even now toppling and falling into a rubber-jointed heap on the cellar floor. He rushed to her comfort, ignoring the desecraters in his anguish. Carys caught sight of Marty, his face a greaseball, hauling himself upright by hanging on to the ceiling pipes.
“Move!” she yelled at him. She waited long enough to see that he had responded and then made for the stairs. As she clattered up the steps toward the light, she heard the Razor-Eater behind him, shouting: “No! No!” She glanced over her shoulder. Marty gained the bottom of the stairs just as Breer’s hands-manicured, perfumed and lethal-grabbed for him. Marty threw an ill-aimed swipe backward, and Breer lost his hold. It was a moment’s grace, however, no more. Marty was only halfway up the stairs before his attacker was back on his heels. The rouged face was smeared as it peered up from the cellar depths, the features so contorted by outrage that they appeared scarcely human.
This time Breer’s grasp caught Marty’s trousers, the fingers digging deeply into the muscle of his skin. Marty yelped as cloth tore and blood ran. He flung out a hand to Carys, who loaned what strength she had left to the contest, pulling Marty up toward her. Breer, badly balanced, lost his snatched grip, and Marty stumbled up the stairs, pressing Carys ahead of him. She tumbled into the hallway, and Marty followed, with Breer at his back. At the top of the stairs Marty suddenly turned and kicked. His heel struck the Razor-Eater’s punctured belly. Breer fell backward, hands clawing the air for support; there was none to be had. His nails managed to rake the brickwork as he toppled and fell heavily down the steps, hitting the stone floor of the cellar with a lazy thud. There, sprawled, he lay still; a painted giant.
Marty slammed the door on him, and bolted it. He felt too squeamish to look at the gouging on his leg, but he could tell by the warmth soaking into sock and shoe that it was bleeding badly.
“Can you . . . you get something . . .” he said, “. . . just to cover it?”
Too breathless to reply, Carys nodded, and rounded the corner into the kitchen. There was a towel on the draining board, but it was too unsavory to be used on an open wound. She started to search for something clean, however primitive. It was time they were gone; Mamoulian would not stay out all night.
In the hallway, Marty listened for any sound from the cellar. He heard none.
Another noise infiltrated, however, one that he’d almost forgotten about. The buzz of the house was back in his head, and that mellow voice was threaded into it, a dreamy undercurrent. Common sense told him to shut it out. But when he listened, trying to sort out its syllables, it seemed the nausea and the pain in his leg subsided.
On the back of a kitchen chair Carys had found one of Mamoulian’s dark-gray shirts. The European was fastidious about his laundry. The shirt had been recently laundered; an ideal bandage. She tore it up-though its fine-quality cotton resisted-then soaked a length of it in cold water to clean the wound, and made strips of the rest to bind the leg up. When she was done, she went out into the hallway. But Marty had gone.
55
He had to see. Or if seeing wouldn’t do (What was seeing anyway? Mere sensuality) then he would learn a new way of knowing. That was the promise the room whispered in his ear: a new thing to know and a way of knowing it. He pulled himself up the banisters, hand over hand, less and less aware of the pain as he climbed to the buzzing darkness. He wanted so much to take the ghost-train ride. There were dreams in there. he’d never dreamed, would never have a chance to dream again. Blood squelched in his shoe; he laughed at it. A spasm had begun in his leg; he ignored it. The last steps were ahead: he climbed them with steady work. The door was ajar.