The Face

bones.
        Dunny is aware that changes are occurring in Typhon’s face, that the sweet androgynous features and the merry eyes are giving way to something that better reflects the spirit within the grandfatherly form that he has heretofore assumed. Dunny is aware of this only from the corner of his eye, for he dares not look directly. Dares not.
        Floor after floor they descend, though the numbers on the panel above the door run only from one to five.
        “I am developing quite an appetite,” Typhon informs him. “As far as I am able to recall-and I’ve got a fine memory-I’ve never been as famished as this. I’m positively ravenous.”
        Dunny refuses to think about what this might mean, and in fact he is beyond caring. “I have earned whatever comes,” he says, as the faces from his life still haunt his memory, faces in legions.
        “Soon,” Typhon says.
        Dunny stands in spirit bowed, looking at the floor from which his body had disappeared, ready to accept whatever suffering comes if it will mean an end to this unbearable anguish, this gnawing remorse.
        “As terrible as this will be,” Typhon says, “perhaps it would have been as bad for you if you had rejected my offer and chosen to wait a thousand years in purgatory before moving… up. You weren’t ready to go directly to the light. The sweet deal I gave you has spared you from so much tedious waiting.”
        The elevator slows, stops. Aping signifies arrival, as if they are going nowhere more exotic than to work in an office building.
        When the doors slide open, someone enters, but Dunny will not look up at this new arrival. There is room in him for terror now, but still he is not dominated by it.
        At the sight of the person who has entered the elevator, Typhon curses explosively, with a rage inhuman, voice still recognizable but with none of its former humor or charm. He thrusts himself in front [600] of Dunny and says with bitter condemnation, “We have a bargain. You sold your soul to me, boy, and I gave you more than you asked for.”
        By the exertion of his greater will, by the awesome power at his command, Typhon makes Dunny look at him.
        This face.
        Oh, this face . This face of ten thousand nightmares distilled. This face that the mind of no mortal ever could imagine. Had Dunny been alive, the sight of this face would have killed him, and here it withered his spirit.
        “You asked to save Truman, and you did,” Typhon reminds him in a voice that by the word grows more guttural and more saturated with hatred. “Guardian angel, you told him. Dark angel was nearer the truth. Truman is all you asked, but I gave you the brat and Yancy, too. You’re like those Hollywood pooh-bahs in that hotel bar, like the politician and her handlers that I snared in San Francisco. You all think you’re clever enough to slip out of the deals you make with me when the time comes to fulfill the terms, but all pay in the end. Bargains are not broken here!”
        “Leave,” says the new arrival.
        Dunny has chosen not to look at this person. If there are worse sights than what Typhon has here become-and surely there will be an infinite progression of far worse sights-he will not look at them by choice but only as he is forced to look, as Typhon forced him.
        More insistently this time: “Leave.”
        Typhon steps out of the elevator, and as Dunny starts to follow him, going to the fate that he has earned and accepted, the doors slide shut, barring his exit, and he is alone with the new arrival.
        The elevator begins to move once more, and Dunny trembles at the realization that there may be even deeper realms than the abyss into which Typhon has gone.
        “I understand what you’re going through,” the new arrival says, echoing the statement Typhon had made earlier as they had descended out of Palazzo Rospo to places stranger still.
        [601] When she’d spoken the single word, leave, he had not recognized her voice. Now he does. He knows this must be a trick, a torment, and he will not look up.
        She says, “You’re right that the word remorse can’t describe the anguish that’s come over you, that tears so painfully at your spirit. Neither can sorrow or regret or grief . But you’re wrong to think you don’t know the word, Dunny. You learned it once, and you still know it, although until now it’s been an emotion beyond your