Books of Blood Read Free Page B

dead man.
    'Mr Swann.'
    'Mr Swann.'
    'If you need anything more tonight,' Valentin said,
    'I'm in the room directly above. Mrs Swann is down-
    stairs, so if you hear somebody moving about, don't worry. She doesn't sleep well these nights.'
    'Who  does?' Harry replied.
    Valentin left him to his vigil. Harry heard the man's tread on the stairs, and then the creaking of floorboards on the level above. He  returned his attention to the television, but he'd  lost the thread  of the  movie he'd been watching.  It was a long stretch 'til dawn;
    meanwhile New   York would be  having itself a fine Friday night: dancing, fighting, fooling around.
    The  picture on the television set began to flicker. He stood up, and  started to walk across to the set, but he never got there. Two steps from the chair where he'd been sitting the picture folded up and went out altogether, plunging the room into total darkness. Harrybriefly had time to register that no light was finding its way through the windows from  the street. Then the insanity began.
    Something moved in the blackness: vague forms rose and fell. It took him a moment to recognise them. The flowers! Invisible hands were tearing the wreaths and tributes apart, and tossing the blossoms up into the air. He followed their descent, but they didn't hit the ground. It seemed the floorboards had lost all faith in themselves, and disappeared, so the blossoms just kept falling - down, down - through the floor of the room below, and through the basement floor, away to God alone knew what destination. Fear gripped Harry, like some old dope-pusher promising a terrible high. Even those few boards that remained beneath his feet were becoming insubstantial. In seconds he would go the way of the blossoms.
    He reeled around to locate the chair he'd got up from - some fixed point in this vertiginous nightmare. The chair was still there; he could just discern its form in the gloom. With torn blossoms raining down upon him he reached for it, but even as his hand took hold of the arm,
    the floor beneath the chair gave up the ghost, and now,
    by a ghastly light that was thrown up from the pit that yawned beneath his feet, Harry saw it tumble away into Hell, turning over and over 'til it was pin-prick small.
    Then it was gone; and the flowers were gone, and the walls and the windows and every damn thing was gone but him.
    Not quite everything. Swann's casket remained, its lid still standing open, its overlay neatly turned back like the sheet on a child's bed. The trestle had gone,
    as had  the floor beneath the trestle. But the casket floated in the dark air for all the world like some morbid  illusion, while from the depths a rumblingsound accompanied  the trick like the roll of a snare-
    drum.
    Harry  felt the last solidity failing beneath him; felt the pit call. Even as his feet left the ground, that ground faded to nothing, and for a terrifying moment he hung over the Gulfs, his hands seeking the lip of the casket.
    His right hand caught hold of one of the handles, and closed thankfully around it. His arm was almost jerked from its socket as it took his body-weight, but he flung his other arm up and found the casket-edge. Using it as purchase, he hauled himself up like a half-drowned sailor. It was a strange lifeboat, but then this was a strange sea. Infinitely deep, infinitely terrible.
    Even as he laboured to secure himself a better hand-
    hold, the casket shook, and Harry looked up to discover that the dead man was  sitting upright. Swann's eyes opened wide. He  turned them on Harry; they were far from benign. The next moment the dead illusionist was scrambling to his feet - the floating casket rocking ever more violently with each movement. Once vertical,
    Swann  proceeded to dislodge his guest by grinding his heel in Harry's knuckles. Harry looked up at Swann,
    begging for him to stop.
    The  Great Pretender was a sight to see. His eyes were starting from his sockets; his shirt was