there were cartoons and racing results. He headed back to the flat prepared to forget his 
doubts, to tell her that she'd been right all along, only to find the bedroom locked and 
from the inside her voice-softened by sleep-stumbling toward a new coherence.
    He broke in and tried to wake her, but this time neither shaking nor slaps made any 
impression upon her possessed slumber.
    
    74
    And he was almost there now. He wasn't dressed for the cold that was creeping on, and 
he shivered as he crossed the desolation to the Hotel Pandemonium. Autumn was making its 
presence felt early this year, not even waiting for the beginning of September to chill 
the air. In the weeks since he'd last stood on this spot the summer had given in to rain 
and wind. He was not unhappy with its desertion. Summer heat in small rooms would never 
have benign associations for him again.
    He looked up at the hotel. It was coral-colored in the sliding light-the details of 
scorch marks and graffiti looked almost too real. A portrait by an obsessive, each detail 
in absolute focus. He watched the facade awhile, to see if something signaled to him. 
Perhaps a window might wink, a door grimace; anything to prepare him for what he might 
discover inside. But it remained politic. Just a solid building, face staled with age and 
flame, catching the last light of the day.
    The front door had been closed by the last visitor to leave the hotel, but no attempt 
had been made to replace the boards. Marty pushed, and the door opened, grinding across 
the plaster and dirt on the floor. Inside, nothing had changed. The chandelier tinkled as 
a gust from outside trespassed into the sanctum; a dry rain of dust flitted down.
    As he climbed the first two flights, a smell began to infiltrate; something riper 
than damp or ash. Presumably the bodies would still be where they'd been left. 
Substantial decay would have set in. He didn't know how long such processes took, but 
after the experiences of recent weeks he was prepared for the worst; even the 
strengthening smell as he ascended scarcely touched him.
    He halted halfway up and took out the bottle of Scotch he'd bought, unscrewed the 
top, and, still eyeing the remaining flights of stairs, put the bottle to his lips. The 
mouthful of spirits sluiced his gums and throat, and scorched its way down into his 
belly. He resisted the temptation to take a second swig. Instead, he resealed the bottle 
and pocketed it before continuing up.
    Memories began to besiege him. He'd hoped to keep them at bay, but they came 
unbidden, and he wasn't strong enough to resist them. There were no pictures, just 
voices. They echoed around his skull as if it were empty, as if he were simply some 
mindless brute answering the call of a superior mind. The urge to turn tail and run came 
over him, but he knew that if he capitulated now, and went back to her, the qualms would 
only deepen. Soon he'd be suspecting every twitch of her arm, wondering if the European 
was preparing her for murder. It would be another kind of prison: its walls suspicion, 
its bars doubt, and he'd be sentenced to it for the rest of his life. Even if Carys left, 
wouldn't he still be glancing over his shoulder as the years passed, watching for a 
someone to appear who had a face behind his face, and the European's unforgiving eyes?
    And still, with every step taken, his fears multiplied. He gripped the filthy 
banister, and forced himself onward and upward. I don't want to go, the child in him 
complained. Don't make me go, please. Easy enough to turn around, easy enough to delay 
the whole thing. Look! Your feet will do it, just say the word. Go back! She'll wake 
eventually; just be patient. Go back!
    And if she doesn't wake? the voice of reason replied. And that made him go on.
    As he took another step, something moved on the landing ahead of him. A flea-jump 
noise, no more; so soft he could barely hear it. A rat, perhaps? Probably. All manner of 
scavengers would come here, wouldn't they, in the expectation of a feast. He'd preempted 
that horror too, and was hardened to the thought.
    He reached the landing. No rats scurried away from his footfall, at least he saw 
none. But there was something here. At the head of the stairs a small brown maggot rolled 
around on the carpet, twisting upon itself in its enthusiasm to get somewhere. Down the 
stairs probably: into the dark. He didn't look at it too closely. Whatever it was, it was 
harmless. Let it find a niche to grow fat in, and become a fly in time, if that was its 
ambition.
    He crossed the penultimate landing and started up the final flight of stairs. A few 
steps up, the smell abruptly worsened. The stench of fetid meat assaulted him, and now, 
despite the Scotch and all the mental preparation, his innards turned over and over; like 
the maggot on the carpet, twisting and turning.
    He stopped two or three steps up the flight, pulled out his whisky, and took two 
solid throatfuls, swallowing it so quickly it made his eyes water. Then he continued his 
ascent. Something soft slid beneath his heel. He looked down. Another maggot, the larger 
brother of the one below, had been arrested in its descent by his foot: it was squashed 
to a fatty pulp. He glanced at it for only a second before hurrying on, aware that the 
sole of his shoe was slimy; either that or he was pressing other such grubs underfoot as 
he went.
    The gulps of liquor had made his head sing; he took the last two dozen steps almost 
at a run, eager to have the worst over with. By the time he'd reached the top of the 
stairs, he was breathless. He had an absurd image of himself, a drunkard's fancy, as a 
messenger coming with news-lost battles, murdered children-to the palace of some fabulous 
king. Except that the king too was murdered, his battles lost.
    He started toward the penthouse; the smell had become so dense it was almost edible. 
As he had once before, he caught sight of himself in the mirror; he looked down, ashamed, 
from the frightened face and-God!-the carpet crawled. Not two or three but a dozen or 
more fat, ragged maggots were laboring, blindly it seemed, to find their way across the 
carpet, which was stained by their travels. They were like no insect he'd ever seen 
before, lacking any decipherable anatomy, and all different sizes: some finger-thin, 
others the size of a baby's fist, their shapeless forms purple, but streaked with yellow. 
They left trails of slime and blood like wounded slugs. He stepped around them. They'd 
got fat on meat he'd once debated with. He didn't want to examine them too closely.
    But as he pushed open the door of the suite, and stepped, cautiously, into the 
corridor, an appalling possibility crept into his head and sat there, whispering 
obscenities. The creatures were everywhere in the suite. The more ambitious of them were 
scaling the pastel walls, gluing the slivers of their bodies to the wallpaper with seeped 
fluids, edging up like caterpillars, a peristalsis moving through their length. Their 
direction was arbitrary; some, to judge by their trails, were circling on themselves.
    In the dim light of the corridor his worst suspicions merely simmered; but they began 
to boil when he edged past Whitehead's sprawled body and stepped into the slaughterhouse 
room, where the light from the highway made a sodium day. Here the creatures were in yet 
greater abundance. The whole room swarmed with them, from flea-sized fragments to slabs 
the size of a man's heart, throwing out tattered filaments like tentacles to haul 
themselves about. Worms, fleas, maggots-a whole new entymology congregated at the place 
of execution.
    Except that these weren't insects, or the larvae of insects: he could see that 
plainly now. They were pieces of the European's flesh. He was still alive. In pieces, in 
a thousand senseless pieces, but alive.