And in his wisdom hastes our marriage
To stop the inflammation of her tears.”
As the words echoed around the tower, Honeyman, suddenly uneasy, fell silent. He sensed movement at the periphery of his vision, felt an irrational certainty that there were presences here other than the woman and himself. Suppressing a shudder, he moved on.
He reached to top of the stairs and walked into an enormous room full to bursting with the very last thing he expected: profound, improbable luxury. A four-poster bed stretched out across the floor, a table beside it buckled beneath an immense feast, a bottle of champagne lay unopened and the air smelt sweet as though tempered by incense or perfume. The room’s sole window was made up of delicate, clear panes of glass held together by strips of lead, geometrically arranged — a window better suited to a church or chapel, to some forgotten cathedral, than to this ominous tower, this giant finger of fate raised in imprecation against the city. Honeyman walked across to admire the view. The streets lay spread out before him, the railway station crouched amongst them, the jutting spire of a nearby church glimmering in the moonlight.
The woman stood behind him. “Not what you expected?”
“How many men have you brought here?”
She sighed — a low, guttural sound. “You’re the first,” she said and slowly began to unbutton her dress, revealing a tantalizing layer of petticoat. Honeyman bit his lower lip hard in excitement.
“Take off your clothes,” she demanded.
He wiped his forehead. “You’re impatient.”
“Aren’t you?” She dealt with the last of the dress and set to work on her undergarments.
Honeyman prevaricated. “She we have a drink? Seems a shame to waste such good champagne.”
“Later.” She smiled. “I’ve a feeling you won’t last long.”
Honeyman shrugged, then eagerly complied. He unlaced his shoes, kicked them aside, took off his tie, unbuttoned his shirt and trousers. Folds of fat and unexpected bits of skin kept getting in the way and it took him far longer than it ought, but eventually he stood before her naked, febrile and tumescent. To his disappointment she was still in her petticoat.
“I want everything off,” he snapped. Then, with another involuntary nibble of his lower lip: “May I help?”
The woman shook her head as from the street below there came a deep, sonorous, metallic sound as though something vast had struck the side of the tower.
Honeyman felt a jolt of fear. “What was that?”
She tried to soothe him. “Nothing. Nothing. All is as it should be.”
He heard the sound again, louder this time, and Honeyman was afraid: “Someone knows we’re here.”
As if on cue, a figure unfurled itself from the shadows in one corner of the room. “Cyril?”
He spun around to confront the intruder — a grim, heavyset woman lost somewhere in the outer regions of middle age. He gasped at the sight of her. Tears pricked the corners of his eyes. “Mother?” He stared in horror. “Mother? Is that you?”
A part of him refused to take in the sheer wrongness of her presence and he flailed desperately about for some reasonable explanation. The happy thought occurred to him that this might be the result of some especially fevered poppy dream — certainly it had about it all the garbled, wonderland logic of the opium den. Maybe he had overindulged in some Eastern dive or other and this was all a horribly vivid dream. An uncomfortable thing to endure, to be sure, and most likely a stern lesson in the perils of narcotic excess, but there was nothing dangerous here, nothing life-threatening. All this unpleasantness would pass away soon enough. Why, no doubt he’d come to at any moment to find himself slumped upon a divan, some concerned Oriental type shaking him awake to offer him another pipe or two. He closed his eyes, willing away this terrible mirage.
When he opened them again his mother was still there, her thick arms folded like hunks of meat, wearing her angriest and most exasperated expression.
“Mother!” he managed feebly. “Mother, what are you doing here?”
“You always were a disappointment.” She sounded almost conversational, as though there were nothing at all extraordinary or remarkable in the scene. “Your father and I have become accustomed to your failures. But this…” She gestured vaguely around her. “This is too much.”
“Mother…” Reality kicked hard against him, and faced with so unexpected and unprovoked an assault, Honeyman could do little more than whimper. He made an unsuccessful attempt to cover his nakedness with his hands. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Better you stay silent.” She turned to the fallen woman. “Thank you, dear. You may get dressed now.” The woman curtseyed and busied herself rearranging her skirts.
Honeyman looked on, wide-eyed and terrified. From outside there came another tumultuous crash. “You knew?”
His mother smiled.
He heard the sound again, turned and peered from the window. To his utter disbelief and horror, a figure was climbing the tower, clattering noisily up the side of the structure, scuttling toward the top, crawling ever nearer as effortlessly as a lizard moves along a wall.
Cyril wept. “Mother?”
The figure came closer and a moment later a face appeared at the window, its nose squashed tight against the glass, its breath frosting the panes. It had the form, the size, the shape of a man, but there seemed no trace of humanity about it, as though it belonged to some other species all its own. Its sallow skin was covered in a multitude of vile gray scales which hung in grotesque flaps from its cheeks, lips, chin and eyelids, like molten cheese spread lumpily over toast. It was a face of melted candle wax.
Honeyman was paralyzed by fear. The creature grinned evilly at him and began, quite deliberately, to pick away at the fragile strips of lead which clasped the panes together.
Honeyman screamed, “Mother! It’s trying to get in.”
She smiled benignly. The fallen woman, now fully dressed, appeared at her side and together they blocked Honeyman’s only possible route of escape. The figure picked away some more at the window. It may just have been Honeyman’s imagination, but he could have sworn that the creature was whistling cheerily as it worked.
“Mother! Mother! Help me!”
The thing at the window continued to work away, only minutes from getting inside as the lead came off with a horrible, piercing, scraping sound.
“At least tell me why.”
Through the cracks in the window, Honeyman could feel the cool night air scratching at his neck, tickling the back of his spine.
His mother sighed. “You allowed yourself to be defiled. The city has corrupted you.”
“I’d take it back, Mother. If I could. Oh please. I’d undo it in a heartbeat.”
“We’re doing this for the poet, Cyril. This is his vision. And I doubt he’d consider you worthy of the merest shred of clemency.”
Behind him, a bony finger poked its way into the room and tore away a section of the window. The thing dropped it outside and they heard it crash and splinter on the street below.
“You really are a disappointment, you know. We had such high hopes for you.”
“Mother, please. Whatever I’ve done — however I’ve disappointed you — I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
With impossible strength and apparently impervious to pain, the thing pushed aside the last of the glass and thrust its way into the room. It squatted athletically beside the actor and leered malevolently up at him, like some maleficent vision from Bosch stepped, still wet with paint, glossy and glistening, from the canvas.
Mrs. Honeyman smiled again. “My the Lord have mercy on you.” She nodded at the creature, which leapt obediently to its feet and moved toward its victim, forcing him back against the shattered window. Honeyman screamed in anguish and mortal terror. He tried to mouth some final plea but before he was able to speak the monster was upon him, pushing him further and further back until, with a final, deceptively gentle shove, Honeyman disappeared through the window altogether and sailed out into the cold, merciless air.