“Are you all right?” he asked her.
She murmured something like yes. He put his head back on the pillow.
“Hungry again,” he said, letting his eyes close. “Always hungry.” Cold air seeped into the bed as she raised the sheet to slip in beside him.
“You left the light on downstairs,” he chided, as sleep started to slide over him again. She didn’t reply. Asleep already, probably: she was blessed with a facility for instant unconsciousness. He turned to look at her in the semidarkness. She wasn’t snoring yet, but nor was she entirely silent. He listened more carefully, his coiled innards jittery. It was a liquid sound she was making: as though breathing through mud.
“Yvonne . . . are you all right?”
She didn’t answer.
From her face, which was inches from his, the slushing sound went on. He reached for the switch of the lamp above the bed, keeping his eyes on the black mass of Yvonne’s head as he did so. Best to do this fast, he reasoned, before my imagination gets the better of me. His fingers located the switch, fumbled with it, then pressed the light on.
What was facing him on the pillow was not recognizably Yvonne.
He jabbered her name as he scrambled backward out of bed, eyes fixed on the abomination beside him. How was it possible that she was alive enough to climb the stairs and get into bed, to murmur yes to him as she had? The profundity of her wounding had killed her, surely. Nobody could live skinned and boned like that.
She half-turned in the bed, eyes closed, as if rolling over in her sleep. Then-horribly-she said his name. Her mouth didn’t work as it had; blood greased the word on its way. He couldn’t bear to look anymore, or he’d scream, and that would bring them-whoever did this-bring them howling at him with their scalpels already wet. They were probably outside the door already; but nothing could induce him to stay in the same room. Not with her performing slow gyrations on the bed, still saying his name as she pulled up her nightdress.
He staggered out of the bedroom and onto the landing. To his surprise they were not waiting for him there.
At the top of the stairs he hesitated. He was not a brave man; nor was he foolish. Tomorrow he could mourn her: but for tonight she was simply gone from him, and there was nothing to be done but preserve himself from whoever’d done this. Whoever! Why didn’t he admit the name to himself? Mamoulian was responsible: it had his signature. And he was not alone. The European would never have laid his purged hands on human flesh the way someone had on Yvonne; his squeamishness was legendary. But it was he who’d given her that half-life to live after the murder was done. Only Mamoulian was capable of that service.
And he would be waiting below now, wouldn’t he, in the undersea world at the bottom of the stairs? Waiting, as he’d waited so long, for Toy to traipse down to join him.
“Go to Hell,” Toy whispered to the dark below, and walked (the urge was to run, but common sense counseled otherwise) along the landing toward the spare bedroom. With every step he anticipated some move from the enemy, but none came. Not until he reached the door of the bedroom anyway.
Then, as he turned the handle, he heard Yvonne’s voice behind him:
“Willy . . .” The word was better formed than before.
For the briefest moment he felt his sanity in doubt. Was it possible that if he turned now she would be standing at the bedroom door as disfigured as memory suggested; or was that all a fever-dream?
“Where are you going?” she demanded to know.
Downstairs, somebody moved.
“Come back to bed.”
Without turning to refuse her invitation, Toy pushed the door of the spare bedroom open, and as he did so he heard somebody start up the stairs behind him. The footsteps were heavy; their owner eager.
There was no key in the lock to delay his pursuer, and no time to drag furniture in front of the door. Toy crossed the lightless bedroom in three strides, threw open the French windows, and stepped onto the small wrought-iron balcony. It grunted beneath his weight. He suspected it would not hold for long.