Even as he approached he recognized the glade, though he had previously come to it from the direction of the house. His late-evening walk had taken him in a semicircle. He was standing now in the place he’d buried the dogs.
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 thinned and the starlight brightened. There, on the borderland between wood and lawn, he stayed, until the sounds of the night reestablished themselves around him.
47
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 innuendo, and it took any pleasure out of being here. On the other nights they’d all got pleasantly drunk and then there’d been the usual performances, sometimes developing into something more serious with one or two of them. Just as often they were content to watch. And at the end of the night there’d been generous payment. But tonight was different. There was cruelty in it, which she disliked. Money or no money, she wouldn’t come here again. It was time she retired anyway; leave it to younger girls, who at least looked less raddled than she did.
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 announced, not unappreciatively. The smell was getting stronger, as though its source was close by, and approaching. “Lights,” he told himself and peered along the wall looking for a switch.
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.