'I can't call you that,' Patricia said.
'You can. You must.' He reached out and took her hand. It was like a soft trap, fastening around her wrist. 'Dear Patricia. You must. You will. I will show you such things…' The fear was almost unbearable. She wanted to run. She wanted to go back. Back to that room, that book, like the coward she was. The man was holding open a door. Beyond lay darkness, it was true, but then again, Patricia was no stranger to the dark.
'L'Index,' she said.
When Mrs. Becque returned to the cafe to collect Patricia, Patricia had gone. One of the waiters had seen her leave with someone but found it impossible to describe the man. No one could describe the man. He had come and he had gone: a gray man in the rain. Invisible. The police were alerted. Half-heartedly they scoured the city, then gave up. Patricia's parents mounted their own futile search. The newspapers printed photographs of a rather plump, blind girl, smiling at a camera she could not see. Her eyes were pale blue, their color diluted to invisibility. Eyes full of rain, like puddles in a face. Very soon the papers and the public lost interest. Patricia's room lay untenanted. A stopped clock. The girl was never found and the police file stayed open, like a door leading nowhere.
The Chateau might have seemed like a prison were it not for the fact that it appeared to perpetually renew its own architecture. No door ever led twice to the same room, no corridor could ever be followed to the same conclusion, no stair could be made to repeat its steps.
Additionally, the variety of experiences offered by life in the Chateau was of such diversity that life outside could only be timid and pale by comparison. Here, there was no sin which could not be indulged to exhaustion. Here, the search for fresh sensation had long ago led to the practice of continually more refined atrocities. Here, finally, there were no laws, no boundaries, no limits, no judgment.
And the motto above the door read simply 'Hell is more beautiful than Heaven.'
Tonight was to be a special night. In the red room, in the room of the Sign of Seven, whose walls beat like a heart, Patricia lay in a tumble of silk cushions. She found a vein in her thigh and slowly inserted the needle. After the first rush, her head seemed to unlock and divide like a puzzle box. Her nervous system suffered a series of delicious shocks and smoke spilled into her brain. She licked red lips and began to shake. The tiny bells pinned to her skin reacted to her shudders. Her body became a tambourine. She drew a long breath. The room was hot and sweat ran on her oiled skin, trickling from the tongues of the lewd tattoos which now adorned her belly.
Above the pulse of the room, Patricia could hear the boy spitting, still spitting. L'Index had allowed her to touch the boy — to run her nails through his soft hair, to pluck feathers from the clipped and ragged wings he wore on his back and to finger the scars of his castration.
'What's he doing?' she said dreamily. 'Why is he spitting?'
L'Index had come back into the room. He closed the door and waited for the boy to finish.
'He's been spitting into this glass,' L'Index said. 'Here.'
Patricia took from him a beautiful crystal wineglass. L'Index knelt down beside her. Heat radiated off his body and he smelled faintly of blood and spiced sweat.
'The boy is an angel,' L'Index said. 'We summoned him here from Heaven and then we crippled and debauched him.'
Patricia giggled.
'Our own little soiled angel,' L'Index continued. 'Come here, angel.'
The boy shuffled across the room, slow as a sleepwalker. His wings rustled like dry paper.
'What shall I do with this?' Patricia asked, weighing the glass in her hand.
'I want you to drink it,' L'Index said. 'Drink.'
Patricia dipped her tongue into the warm froth of saliva.
'He has AIDS, of course,' L'Index said casually. 'The poor creature has been the plaything of god knows how many filthy old whores and catamites. As you might expect, his spit is a reservoir of disease.' He paused, smiling his almost-audible smile. 'Nevertheless, I do insist that you drink it.'
Patricia heard the boy whimpering as he was forced onto his hands and knees. She swirled the liquid round in the glass.
'Drink it
She heard the chink and creak of a leather harness. A match was struck. Was there no limit to what he would ask of her?
'All right,' she said, nosing the glass like a connoisseur. It smelled of nothing. 'I told you. I'll do anything.'
And she drank, slowly, savoring the bland, flat taste of the boy's saliva. The whole glass, to the dregs. As she drank, she could hear the boy gasp — sodomized. Patricia licked the rim of her glass.
'You were lying,' she said. 'AIDS. I knew you were lying.'
The boy cried out, with the voice of a bird. L'Index had done something new to him. Patricia waited for L'Index to undo the harness and sit down beside her.
'I knew I was right about you, when I saw you all those months ago,' L'Index said. He tugged on the ring that was threaded through her nipple, pulling her toward him. Automatically, she opened her mouth and allowed him to place an unclean treat on her tongue.
'I knew you were worthy of admission.'
'Admission?' said Patricia. 'Admission into what?' The sound of her own voice seemed to recede and return. She was beginning to feel strange.
'Do you remember when I mentioned to you the Braille Encyclopaedia?' L'Index asked.
'Yes.' Fragments of music flared in Patricia's head. Choral detonations. She felt that she was falling through some terrible space. 'The Braille Encyclopaedia. Yes. What is it?'
'Not a thing,' L'Index said. 'A society. Here. On your knees. Touch me.'
He took her hand.
'But you've never let me…' she began, growing excited. White noise blasted through her, like a stereo pan, from ear to ear.
'I'm letting you now,' he said. 'You've shown a rare appetite for all the sweet and rotting fruits of corruption. Sometimes, I'm almost frightened by your dedication. Now, I think it's time you were allowed to taste the most exquisite delicacy.' He set her hand to his bare chest. Her fingers brushed his skin and she started.
'What is it?' Patricia lightly traced her fingertips across tiny raised scars. Alarm returned as she realized that his entire body, from neck to feet, was similarly disfigured. She ran along a row of dots, suddenly unable to catch a breath.
'It's braille,' she said. 'Oh, God, it's braille… I feel so strange…' He filled her mouth and stopped her speech. Like a nursing child, she sucked and swallowed and allowed her hands to crawl across his skin.
'You drank angel spit,' L'Index said. His voice was full of echoes and ambiguous reverberations. 'You drank the rarest of narcotics. Now it's time to read me, Patricia. Read me!'
She read.
Entry 103 THE DEFORMATION OF BABY SOULS
Entry 45 THE HORN OF DECAY
Entry 217 THE MIRACLE OF THE SEVERED FACE
Entry 14 THE ATROCIOUS BRIDE
Entry 191 THE REGIMENTAL SIN
Entry 204 BLEEDING WINDO…
Patricia snatched back her hand and pulled away, terrified. L'Index came into her face, spattering her useless eyes.
'What are you?' she whispered. She blinked and sperm tears ran down her cheeks. Somewhere, the fallen angel whimpered in the darkness.
'There are several hundred of us,' L'Index explained. 'And together we form the most comprehensive collection of impure knowledge that has ever been assembled. Monstrous books, long thought destroyed, have
