The Lazarus Gate by Mark Latham

Author:Mark Latham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan

NINE

Slowly but surely I began to come round from the exertions of my torture. My body was almost broken, yet I had somehow managed to remain lucid. There was a tattered cloth tied around my head, covering my empty eye socket, though I do not remember how it got there. The opium fug had already begun to wear off, perhaps due to my tolerance to the hated drug, or perhaps to the indeterminate length of time I had spent there; in its place, the deep, aching pain of my lost eye and the thousand keen cuts on my body conspired to bring to me to my senses.

The Artist was gone, and there was not even a crack of light from beneath the door, if I was indeed in the same room at all. I was alone in a Stygian blackness, hanging limply in a dark void, with the pain from my bound wrists the only indicator that I was not already dead, and drifting in some yawning chasm of Purgatory. I listened hard, and heard the muffled grunts of the pitiable female ‘agents’ near to me—were it not so horrifying it would have been a relief, for at least I knew then that I was very much alive, and most probably still within the House of Zhengming. I felt one of them brush against my legs, causing me to swing slightly, but I felt no revulsion this time. My own state was so poor, and my mind so overpowered by trauma, that I had no room for further terrors. Instead, I took some small comfort that I was not alone in my suffering.

Then I felt a podgy hand paw at my leg. I tried to ignore it, but it seemed to persist, until it had a hold of my trouser linen. I felt the ropes strain at my wrists—the creature was using me to pull itself upright, and I could barely take the strain. I hissed at it to leave me alone, not wanting to raise my voice for fear of alerting my captors, but it was no use. My one eye adjusted to the gloom, and I saw the dark shapes around my feet. One of the slothful creatures seemed to lie down to support my weight, so that I might rest a second, and it gave me such relief not to have the rope cutting at my flesh even for a moment. Then the second creature began to climb once more, and now I did start to feel the fear and loathing creeping back into my heart, for that noisome remnant of a woman climbed higher and higher, its clammy, misshapen hands gaining purchase on my shirt breast, then my collar. Somehow, laboriously, and with an effort that made it grunt and wheeze, it pulled itself upright so that it was almost facing me, and I felt its hand scrabbling towards my own. I squeezed my eyelids tight, hoping that the nightmare would end, but it did not. Not immediately.

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