The Sleepless (59 page)

Perched on the arm of ‘Mr Hillary’s’ chair was the girl Jacqueline, her coppery hair plaited in fraying braids. She was wearing a gauzy white dress. Over both of her breasts, the dress was stained with speckles of dried blood. 

She smiled dreamily at Michael as he entered the library, and nodded her head towards the left-hand side of the room. There, a daybed had been positioned with its head close to the bookshelves. Three more lily-white boys stood beside it, two of them still wearing dark glasses. One of them kept putting his fist up to his mouth and coughing into it, and sniffing. 

The daybed had been draped with a fusty bedspread of yellow and red brocade; and on top of the bedspread lay Patsy, completely naked, her wrists and ankles fastened with black silk curtain-cords. 

‘Patsy!’ called Michael, in a wavering voice. ‘Patsy – are you okay?’ 

‘Michael – they haven’t hurt me!’ 

Michael stalked up to ‘Mr Hillary’ and said, ‘Let her go. You won’t get any kind of agreement out of me, if you don’t let her go.’ 

‘Michael,’ said ‘Mr Hillary’, ‘you’re one of us.’ 

He was holding a long thin riding crop with a tarnished silver handle. As he spoke, he flicked it against Jacqueline’s thigh, for emphasis. Jacqueline flinched with each flick, but she didn’t move her leg away. 

Michael said, ‘Let her go.’ 

‘Mr Hillary’ slowly shook his head. ‘You’ve read your vampire stories, haven’t you, Michael? Dracula, Salem’s Lot, and all the rest of them? How does the vampire spread his contamination throughout the community? He does it by sucking blood, and by infecting his victims with his own disease. They, too, become the Undead.’ 

He smiled, and twitched his riding-crop even more sharply against Jacqueline’s thigh. ‘Of course, there is no such thing as a vampire. The Lord thy God forbade the drinking of blood, and not even the most rebellious of his messengers would have
dared
to disobey such an edict. Read your Leviticus. 

‘But the vampire stories do have some basis in fact. Once one of the Seirim has sucked on your adrenaline, you become something of a slave, something of an addict. You want to give more adrenaline. You feel your kidneys itching, just to give more! Look at Jacqueline here, she adores it, she’d give me some now, if I were to beat her hard enough. Show Michael your studs, Jacqueline. Show him how ready you are, to have me sucking at your glands.’ 

Jacqueline’s eyes flickered green. But without a word, she stood up, and turned around, and lifted her gauzy white dress so that Michael could see her pale bare back. 

He knew what he was going to see. He had already seen it in his hypnotic trance. But all the same, those two gold studs in the small of her back still horrified him. They meant that she had deliberately and willingly given herself to ‘Mr Hillary’, in the full knowledge that he would hurt her, and torture her, and probably kill her, in the end. He had seen her with kittens scratching her bare breasts. God knows what other agonies lay in store for her. 

‘You can put down your dress now, Jacqueline,’ said ‘Mr Hillary’ – but not before he had struck her a quick, stinging blow across her bare bottom. 

He looked up at Michael and wolfishly grinned. ‘Your first reaction when you found out what had happened to Elaine Parker and to Cecilia O’Brien was that they had been tortured against their will. Of course! Who would want to be tortured like that? 

‘But your first reaction was wrong. Elaine Parker begged us to keep her alive longer, so that she could suffer more pain, and give us even more adrenaline. She even suggested tortures herself – like burning her eyelids with cigarettes, like scorching her public hair, like sticking needles through her nipples. She was a devotee, Michael, she wanted to give so much. Just like Cecilia O’Brien. 

‘It wasn’t I who devised the torture that finally killed Cecilia. I would have liked to keep her alive much longer ... as long as Elaine. But she begged us to do it, pleaded with us,
wept.
She couldn’t think of anything that would hurt her more.’ 

Delicately, ‘Mr Hillary’ licked his middle fingertip, and moistened his eyebrows. ‘She was beautiful, in her death throes. Quite beautiful. And she tasted – well, you shall never know. I shan’t make you jealous.’ 

Michael said, flatly, ‘You have to let us go.’ 

‘And I
shall
let you
go!’ ‘Mr Hillary’ exclaimed. ‘But not before you and your beautiful wife feel the same craving that Jacqueline feels ... and that Elaine felt, and Cecilia, too, and
oh
so many more.’ 

‘Don’t you fucking touch my wife!’ Michael screamed at him. 

But “Mr Hillary” stood up to his full height, and adjusted his long grey wool coat with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders, and glared at Michael with his grisly red eyes, and Michael knew with a terrible feeling of watery helplessness that there was nothing that he could do. 

‘Come with me,’ said “Mr Hillary”, and took hold of Michael’s arm with a clawlike grip, and pulled him across to the daybed. 

Michael was enraged and embarrassed and deeply humiliated. There was Patsy, naked, so that everybody in the room could see her pillowy breasts and her pale pink nipples and the light blonde fuzz of her pubic hair. Patsy’s nakedness was private. Patsy’s nakedness was something they shared in bed together, when Jason was asleep, and the moon was pinned up in the bedroom window, and the sea was whispering them lullabies. 

‘Patsy,’ he mouthed, trying to explain that he was sorry, that he had never meant this to happen. God almighty, who cared if the world were ruled by lily-white boys, and if presidents were shot, and wars were fought, and neighbourhoods were torn apart? Who cared, if the wife they loved was being shamed? 

‘You’re going to enjoy this, Michael,’ said ‘Mr Hillary’. ‘I don’t know how much you associate pain with pleasure, but you will from now on.’ 

He beckoned to Joseph and Bryan, and they came forward carrying between them a crimson blanket. 

‘Show him,’ said ‘Mr Hillary’, and they lifted the blanket to reveal a large circular wreath of blood-red roses, stripped of their leaves, but not of their thorns. 

Michael stared at him. ‘What the hell are you going to do?’ 

‘I’m going to watch you make love to your beautiful wife, that’s what I’m going to do. And I’m going to
taste
you, Michael, so that you know what it is to atone for everybody else’s sins – so that you know what it is to suffer. You have Seirim blood already ... now you’re going to join us body and soul.’ 

He snapped his riding-crop in the air, and without warning Joseph and Bryan seized hold of Michael’s arms. He shouted out, ‘Get off me!’ and ‘Shit, get off me!’ But then ‘Mr Hillary’ stepped forward and cracked him across the cheek with his riding-crop, a fierce stinging blow that set the side of his face on fire, and then cracked him again, right across the forehead, almost taking out his eye. 

‘You’re one of us, Michael. Never forget it.’ 

Michael shuddered with pain and shock. His knees felt weak, but two of the lily-white boys held him up. Another lily-white boy came around and dragged down his shorts, then lifted one heel after the other to tug them clear of his feet. 

With great ceremony, Joseph laid the wreath of roses on Patsy’s bare stomach. Then he looked up at Michael and smiled mischievously. ‘Your second honeymoon,’ he said, in that arch, drawling, Marblehead accent. ‘Enjoy.’ 

‘Mr Hillary’ came forward. ‘All you have to do is make love to her. You love her, don’t you? Show her how much you love her.’ 

He slid his fingers into Michael’s hair, the way a woman might have done, and in spite of himself, in spite of his fear, Michael felt a thrill of erotic attraction. ‘Mr Hillary’ caressed his scalp, and twisted his hair, and then he leaned forward and kissed Michael on the mouth. 

Michael tasted saliva, and flowers, and death. But he felt his penis rise, and there was nothing that he could do about it. From only two inches away, ‘Mr Hillary’s’ blood-red eyes stared into his – hypnotic, powerful, erotic, commanding – and he was almost tempted to kiss him back. 

‘Mr Hillary’ stood away, just a little. He looked down at Michael’s stiffening penis, and he grinned. He teased the end of it with his riding-crop, and then ran the crop all the way down the underside of the shaft, and tickled and probed at Michael’s tightening scrotum. 

‘Now you’re ready for her, aren’t you?’ he breathed, and his voice seemed like six or seven voices, one overdubbed on another. He held Michael’s erection in his left hand, and pulled him forward. Then he reached down between Patsy’s legs, and parted the lips of her vulva with his right hand. ‘Come on, now. Show me how much you love her! Show me how much she arouses you!’ 

Michael baulked, tried to pull back. ‘No! Don’t touch her!’ 

But Joseph knelt down beside the head of the daybed, and produced a long, sharp boning-knife, and held it close to Patsy’s cheek. Patsy was trembling and sobbing and her eyes were blurred with tears. ‘Michael, just do it, just do it, just do what they want.’ 

Michael closed his eyes for a moment, which was something the lily-white boys could never do. He didn’t say a prayer, he couldn’t think of any. But he asked God to keep Patsy safe, and Jason safe; and not to let ‘Mr Hillary’ hurt him too much. Then he climbed onto the daybed, and looked down into Patsy’s eyes, and asked God to kill him, now, on the spot. A heart attack, a stroke, a bolt of lightning. It didn’t matter.
Kill me, God. Don’t let Patsy suffer.
 

But ‘Mr Hillary’ reached between Michael’s legs, and scratched his scrotum with his long, sharp fingernails, and took hold of his penis, and guided it into Patsy’s vagina. He even slid two or three of his own fingers into Patsy, alongside Michael’s penis, so that he could caress both of them. Michael felt Patsy stiffen rock-hard in revulsion, her pelvic muscles locked, but then ‘Mr Hillary’ snapped her thighs with his riding-crop, and she flinched, and relaxed. 

‘You’re supposed to be enjoying this,’ breathed ‘Mr Hillary’. ‘All of the pain, and all of the pleasure.’ 

He drew the tip of his riding-crop down between Michael’s buttocks, and poked at his anus. ‘All of the pain, Michael, and all of the pleasure. Now –
lean forward.
’ 

Patsy’s stomach and breasts were completely encircled by the wreath of red roses. If he leaned forward, Michael would press them into her flesh, thorns and all. 

‘I can’t,’ he whispered. 

‘What?’ asked ‘Mr Hillary’. 

‘I can’t, I can’t hurt her for anything.’ 

‘Mr Hillary’ stepped back, staring at Michael in feigned disbelief. ‘You
can’t
?
Then we shall have to help you! Joseph – Bryan! Help him!’ 

Laughing, Joseph and Bryan came up to the daybed, and forced Michael down on to Patsy’s breasts. The prickling of the rose-thorns was agony. Their skin was snagged, their nerves lacerated. But that wasn’t the end of it. Joseph and Bryan forced Michael to ride backward and forward on top of Patsy, pushing him down harder and harder with every stroke. Patsy screamed in pain, and Michael bit the inside of his cheeks so hard that blood poured out of the sides of his mouth. 

‘In! Out! In! Out! ‘Joseph and Bryan chanted, and forced Michael deeper and deeper down, until his penis was thrusting right inside Patsy, and the rose thorns were ripping both of their chests into bloody rags. ‘In! Out! In! Out!’ 

Now ‘Mr Hillary’ stepped forward again, and held out his hand as if he expected Jacqueline to know exactly what he wanted. She did: and passed him two thin tubes of metal. 

‘In! Out! In! Out!’ chanted Joseph and Bryan. And in spite of his tears and in spite of his blood, and in spite of his anguish for Patsy, Michael began to feel a climax rising. 

‘Faster!’ ‘Mr Hillary’ urged him. ‘Harder!’ He lashed at Michael’s bare buttocks with his riding-crop, and lashed at his scrotum, until Michael didn’t know what was pain and what was sexual ecstasy. 

Michael felt a clenching feeling between his legs. His spine arched. Then he was climaxing in a way that he had never climaxed before. He felt as if his spine were being dragged out of his back, vertebra by vertebra, and spouted out of his penis. 

He dropped heavily onto Patsy and Patsy screamed in pain. She thrashed and twisted and tried to push him off her, but the lily-white boys held him down. Held him down hard, and wouldn’t let him move. 

They lay on the daybed, bleeding and shaking and crying, and the lily-white boys pressed them harder and harder together. ‘Mr Hillary’ walked around the daybed and stood over them, gently tapping his metal tubes together, so that they set up a high, tingling rhythm. ‘Now what do you think?’ he asked them, although Michael scarcely heard him. ‘Is it pain, or is it pleasure? Who’s to say?’ 

He reached down between Michael’s legs, and hooked his softening penis out of Patsy’s vagina with his curled finger. Then he probed inside Patsy with obscene, obstetric curiosity, stretching her, watching the semen slide out of her with remote, blood-red prurience. ‘You’re beautiful, both of you,’ he murmured, and he ran his fingernails around Patsy’s thighs; and Michael’s thighs, too; and it was probably then that Michael really understood what ‘Mr Hillary’ was. A perfect being, perfectly corrupted. A connoisseur of all things beautiful – of which lovemaking was one – yet a connoisseur whose taste had become totally depraved.