Free The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker Page A

wrong?" he said.
    She hid her trepidation behind a shrug. "You're being silly," she replied softly.
    "Am I?"
    "It was just the thunder."
    His face, lit from the hall below, suddenly softened. "Why do you treat me like shit?" he asked her.
    "You're just tired," she told him.
    "Why though?" he persisted, childlike. "What have I ever done to you?"
    "It's all right," she said. "Really, Rory. Everything's all right." The same hypnotic banalities, over and over.
    Again, the thunder. And beneath the din, another sound. She cursed Frank's indiscretion.
    Rory turned, and looked along the darkened landing.
    "Hear that?" he said.
    "No."
    His limbs dogged by drink, he moved away from her. She watched him recede into shadow. Lightning, spilling through the open bedroom door, flash-lit him; then darkness again. He was walking toward the damp room. Toward Frank.
    "Wait..." she said, and went after him.
    He didn't halt, but covered the few yards to the door. As she reached him, his hand was closing on the handle.
    Inspired by panic, she reached out and touched his cheek. "I'm afraid..." she said.
    He looked round at her woozily.
    "What of?" he asked her.
    She moved her hand to his lips, letting him taste the fear on her fingers.
    "The storm," she said.
    She could see the wetness of his eyes in the gloom, little more. Was he swallowing the hook, or spitting it out?
    Then: "Poor baby," he said.
    Swallowed, she elated, and reaching down she put her hand over his and drew it from the door. If Frank so much as breathed now, all was lost.
    "Poor baby," he said again and wrapped an embrace around her. His balance was not too good; he was a lead weight in her arms.
    "Come on," she said, coaxing him away from the door. He went with her for a couple of stumbling paces, and then lost his equilibrium. She let go of him, and reached out to the wall for support. The lightning came again, and by it she saw that his eyes had found her, and glittered.
    "I love you," he said, stepping across the hallway to where she stood. He pressed against her, so heavily there was no resisting. His head went to the crook of her neck, muttering sweet talk into her skin. Now he was kissing her. She wanted to throw him off. More, she wanted to take him by his clammy hand and show him the death-defying monster he had been so close to stumbling across.
    But Frank wasn't ready for that confrontation, not yet. All she could do was endure Rory's caresses and hope that exhaustion claimed him quickly.
    "Why don't we go downstairs?" she suggested.
    He muttered something into her neck and didn't move. His left hand was on her breast, the other clasped around her waist. She let him work his fingers beneath her blouse. To resist at this juncture would only inflame him afresh.
    "I need you," he said, raising his mouth to her ear. Once, half a lifetime ago, her heart had seemed to skip at such a profession. Now she knew better. Her heart was no acrobat; there was no tingle in the coils of her abdomen. Only the steady workings of her body. Breath drawn, blood circulated, food pulped and purged. Thinking of her anatomy thus, untainted by romanticism-as a collection of natural imperatives housed in muscle and bone-she found it easier to let him strip her blouse and put his face to her breasts. Her nerve endings dutifully responded to his tongue, but again, it was merely an anatomy lesson. She stood back in the dome of her skull, and was unmoved.
    He was unbuttoning himself now; she caught sight of the boastful plum as he stroked it against her thigh. Now he opened her legs, and pulled her underwear down just far enough to give him access. She made no objection, nor even a sound, as he made his entrance.
    His own din began almost immediately, feeble claims to love and lust hopelessly tangled together. She half listened, and let him work at his play, his face buried in her hair.
    Closing her eyes, she tried to picture better times, but the lightning spoiled her dreaming. As sound followed