The House of Lost Souls - F. G. Cottam [134]
They descended stairs, carpet remnants sticky under their feet. A corridor followed. The bellowing fury above them faded slightly. But that was no comfort. The corridor was catacomb-like, dank and dripping. Seaton felt more deeply entombed with every step.
‘In here,’ Mason said.
They entered a billiards room. It was low and narrow and four tables had been arranged along its length. There were racks of cues. There was a shelf heaped with rotting boxes of board games. Baccarat counters and casino chips formed greedy neglected piles. Music was playing. Seaton thought he recognised Frank Rosolino’s mournful trombone. The sound was euphonic, soft at its sonic edges, as though played through an old-fashioned valve amplifier. The lights over the tables, one by one, switched on with a weary fizz.
There were framed pictures on the walls and Seaton saw that, of course, they were Pandora’s photographs. They were the lost archive, retrieved and printed up and mounted and hung in here. Passing them, Seaton identified Aleister Crowley, something preternaturally old in the sunken skin around the eyes and coarsely textured about his complexion. His shoulders were bunched under the black vanity of the silk embroidered robe he wore. His neck was a wattle of flesh. The eyes themselves were only partially focused, as though mostly lost to some wild and sly avenue of speculation. It was the study of a man who had lived too much and far too extremely. He had dug too deep into what wiser and less ambitious men avoid. The experience had left him frayed, had dispossessed him, it seemed, of his vitality and senses. As Seaton passed by, the portrait’s eyes followed him and the lips cracked a confidential smile.
Wheatley was almost beatific, by comparison. He had a pale face too pudgy for distinction and his glossy black hair was centre-parted, after the fashion of the period. He wore a for-the-camera smile that seemed strictly the minimum of effort required by the protocol of the moment. There was something about the eyes, though, that gave their owner away. They were focused on the photographer, rather than on the lens. And although they were dark eyes, lacking naturally in transparency, the lust in them for Pandora was nakedly apparent. Seaton paused in front of Wheatley’s picture. He looked for telltale scars from the explosion in Flanders that should by rights have completely obliterated all trace of the man. But the magic had been strong and complete and there were none. His complexion was innocently smooth. It had taken a lifetime’s indulgent thirst for the best vintages in his well-kept cellar to kill Wheatley. He had been almost eighty when his liver eventually failed, and death was finally permitted to claim him.
Fischer was confident and debauched. His was the picture of a man smugly and completely given over to evil. Seaton knew he was looking at the darker and more sinister progenitor of Malcolm Covey. This was apparently what Covey was destined to become. Had Covey looked like this at their first encounter, he thought, he might have screamed as he did on the afternoon he became lost in the forgotten turns of the hospital maze. What was the difference between them? Covey was more human, Seaton decided. There was not much left that was human any more in Pandora’s last portrait of Klaus Fischer. It was the depiction of a willing monster. They had all been monsters. What they had done had been monstrous, too.
There was baize still on the billiard tables. It was frayed and faded to yellow under the lights. When they reached it, Seaton saw that the far billiard table was spread with an ancient stain. It was a thick, black excrescence that had once welled across the baize and dribbled into the pockets.
‘Steady, Paul,’ Mason said.
But there had been no way to steel his resolve for this. Grief shuddered through him. He felt the grip of comforting fingers on his shoulder. He stared at the stain on the table. He groaned and his