by Clive Barker
Mitch was three or four steps from the top of the flight; in a few more seconds he would be out of sight. Oh God, she wanted to weep, in rage, in frustration. After all the grand endeavors of the recent past, would it all come down to this? Her lying at the bottom of a flight of stairs, unable to move, and he at the top, just as powerless, while a man with a little knife and a little soul cut the bond between them?
She heard Mitch speak; and tried to focus on him. But it was difficult to see him up there at the top of the stairs; the shadows were dense and they seemed almost to be concealing him from her. She tried to move her arm; to raise herself up a little way, and get a better look at him. As she did so he spoke again.
“Who are you?’ he said.
There was distress in his voice; a little panic even. She saw him jab his knife at the darkness, as though to keep it at bay. But it wouldn’t be driven off. It seemed to come at him, alive and eager. He stabbed again, and again. Then he took a backward step, loosing a panicked cry as he did so.
“Jesus!” he yelled. “What the fuck is this?”
With one last, agonizing effort of will Rachel pressed her aching arms into service, and lifted her upper body off the floor. Her head spun, and a wave of nausea rose up in her, but she forgot both in the next moment, as her eyes made sense of what was happening at the top of the stairs. There were three, perhaps four, human forms up there with Mitchell; they moved with gentility, but they pressed against him nevertheless, backing him against the wall. He still continued to jab at them, in the desperate hope of keeping them away from him, but it was clear that they weren’t susceptible to harm. They were spirits of some kind; their sinuous forms expressed from the simple convenience of light and dark. One of them, as it closed on Mitchell, looked down the stairs, and Rachel caught a glimpse of its face. Not it; she. It was a woman—they were all women—her expression faintly amused by the business she was about. Her features were not perfect by any means; she was like a portrait that the painter had only sketched, leaving the rendering of detail until later. But Rachel knew the face, nevertheless. Knew it not because they’d met, but because this woman had lent the essentials of her features to the generations that had followed her. The sweep of the brow, the curve of the cheekbones, the strength of the jaw, all of these .were echoed in the Geary line, as was her penetrating stare. And if she was, as Rachel guessed, one of the women who’d been with Galilee in this house, then so too were the others. All Geary women, who’d passed sweet, loving times beneath this roof, and who in death had returned here, to leave some part of their spirits where they’d been most happy.
The spinning in Rachel’s head retreated somewhat, and as it did so she was able to make better sense of the other forms that moved around Mitchell. Her suspicions were confirmed. One of this number was Cadmus’s first wife Kitty, whose picture had hung in the dining room at the mansion. A resplendent woman, with the bearing of an undisputed matriarch, she was here unleashed from her corsets and her formality; her body sensual despite the simple stuff with which it was expressed; as though she’d come back here in the form of the hedonist she’d been under this roof. A woman of pleasure for a few, blissful days, secure in Galilee’s arms; loved, even.
That was what these women had come here to find—what she, Rachel, had come here to find, though she hadn’t known it at the time—love. Something more than wifely duty; something more than compromise and concealment. A taste of an emotion that struck deep into their being; and offered them a glimpse of what their souls needed to stay bright. No wonder they’d found their way back here; and no wonder they now made themselves visible. They wanted to keep the man who’d offered them that glimpse from harm.
How much of this did Mitchell understand? Very little, Rachel suspected, but there were signs that he was being told. She could hear whisperings coming from the top of the flight—gentle, playful sounds—and the women were pressing themselves upon him as they spoke, their faces inches from his. He’d given up attempting to keep them at bay with his knife; instead he raised his hands to his face and tried to blot them out.
“Leave me alone!” Rachel heard him sobbing. “Leave me the fuck alone!”
But they had no intention of letting him go. They continued to press their attentions upon him, while he cowered in their midst, as though he’d walked into a swarm of bees and having no way to outrun it could only stand there and be stung and stung and stung—
Rachel, meanwhile, had reached for the curve of the banister at the bottom of the stairs, and was doing her best to haul herself to her feet. She was by no means certain she trusted her legs to bear her up, but she knew that while Mitchell’s gaze was averted she had a chance to arm herself. She might not get another. But as she was about to rise she caught sight of another figure up there on the landing. It was Galilee. He’d risen, naked, from his dreams, and was making his pained way to the top of the stairs.
Mitchell had also seen him. He dropped his knife hand from his face and flailed at the spirits around him, loosing as he did so a venomous yell. Then he raised the knife again and pushed up through the veil of his tormentors to get to his enemy.
From her position at the bottom of the stairs Rachel could not clearly see what happened next. Mitchell’s body blocked Galilee from view, and an instant later the women in their turn covered Mitchell, closing around him like a cloud. There was a still moment, when the darkness at the top of the flight showed her nothing. Then Mitchell appeared out of the murk, pitched backward with such force that his feet were off the ground. He missed the top stair, but struck the second, twisting as he did so. Rachel heard a shout escape him, then a series of smaller cries as he somersaulted down the flight. At the last moment she pulled herself out of his path, and he landed face down on the very spot where she’d been lying seconds before. Almost instantly he raised himself up off the floor, as though he were doing a push-up, and she drew away from him, certain he was going to renew his assault. But as he lifted his body she saw that blood was pouring out of him, slapping on the ground. The knife—that little knife of his—was sticking out of his chest. Her eyes went up to his face. The mask of his features had cracked; he was no longer implacable. Tears of pain sprang from his eyes, his mouth was drawn down to make a pitiful shape. He looked toward her, his wet eyes wide.
“Oh, baby . . . ” he said. “I’m hurting.”
It was the last thing he said. His trembling arms gave way beneath him and he sank down, driving the knife all the way into his flesh; burying it. His gaze was still turned up toward her as the life went out of him.
She stared at him, dry-eyed. There would be tears later, but not now; now there was only relief that this was ended; that they were finally done with one another.
She looked up to the top of the stairs. Galilee was standing there, holding onto the banister for support. He was looking down at Mitch’s body with such a forlorn expression on his face—such a look of loss—that it might have been the corpse of someone he’d loved lying there at the bottom of the stairs.
“I didn’t . . . ” he began to say. But he didn’t have the will to finish the thought.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said.
He sank down, still staring at the body. Behind him, the Geary women stood like a melancholy chorus.
Only one of them broke rank, and moving past Galilee began to descend the stairs. It wasn’t until she was halfway down, and had halted, that Rachel realized who it was. It was Margie; or rather some echo of the woman she’d called by that name. Her features were no more finished than those of the other women—perhaps a little less in fact—but there was no mistaking the raised, quizzical brow, nor the sly smile that now came on to her face.
More than a smile; laughter. It wasn’t quite the raucous din that had erupted from her in the high times, but it was still recognizably Margie. Who else would have found the sight of Mitchell Geary, sprawled face down in his own blood, funny? The prince was dead, and Margie’s spirit stood on the stairs and t
oasted the sight with long loud peals of laughter.
PART NINE
The Human Road
I
i
“I’m not a good man,” Galilee said. “I’ve done terrible things in my life. So many . . . very terrible things. But I never wanted this. Please believe me.”
They were on the beach, and he was setting a light to the heap of driftwood he’d made, in the same spot where he’d lit that first, fragrant fire: the fire that had summoned Rachel out of the house. As the flames caught, she saw his face. That curious beauty of his—Cesaria’s beauty, in the form of a man—was almost too much to see; the exquisite nakedness of him. Twice on the way out here she’d thought he’d lose control of himself. Once when he came down the stairs, and in stepping over Mitchell’s body, set his bare foot in a rivulet of blood. And again when they found Niolopua on the veranda. Great heaving sobs had escaped him then, like the sobbing of a child almost, terrible to hear.
His grief made Rachel strong. She took him by the hand and led him down onto the lawn. Then she went back into the house to fetch a bottle of whiskey and some cigarettes. She’d expected to see the women there, but they’d gone about other business, it seemed, for which fact she was grateful. She didn’t want to think about what happened to the dead right now; didn’t want to imagine Mitchell’s spirit, driven out of the body he’d been so proud of, lost in limbo.
By the time she got back to Galilee, she’d already planned what to tell him. Why don’t we go down onto the sand, she’d said to him, taking his hand. We can build a fire. I’m cold.
Like a child, he’d obeyed. Silently gone to collect pieces of driftwood, and arranged them. Then she’d passed the matches over to him, and he’d kindled the fire. The wood was still damp from the storm; it took a little time for the larger pieces of wood to catch. They spat and sizzled as they dried out, but at last the flames swelled around them, and they burned. Only then did he start talking. Beginning with that simple, blanket confession. I’m not a good man.
“I’m not afraid of anything you’ve got to tell me,” Rachel told him.
“You won’t leave me?” he said.
“Why would I ever do that?”
“Because of the things I’ve done.”
“Nothing’s that bad,” she said. He shook his head, as though he knew better. “I know you killed George Geary,” she went on. “And I know Cadmus ordered you to do it.”
“How did you find that out?”
“It was one of his deathbed confessions.”
“My mother made him tell you.”
“She made him tell Loretta. I was just a bystander.” Galilee stared into the fire. “You have to help me understand,” Rachel said. “That’s all I want: just to understand how this ever happened.”
“How I came to kill George Geary?”
“Not just that. Why you came here to be with the Geary women. Why you left your family in the first place.”
“Oh . . . ” he said softly. “You want the whole story.”
“Yes,” she said, “that’s what I want. Please.”
“May I ask you why?”
“Because I’m a part of it now. I guess I became a part of it the day Mitchell walked into the store in Boston. And I want to know how I fit.”
“I’m not sure I can help you with that,” Galilee said. “I’m not certain I know where I fit.”
“You just tell me the whole story,” Rachel said. “I’ll work out the rest for myself.”
He nodded, and took a deep breath. The fire had grown more confident in the last few minutes, cooking away the last of the moisture in the wood. The smoke had cleared. Now the flames were yellow and white; the fierce heat making the air between Rachel and Galilee shake.
“I think I should start with Cesaria,” Galilee said; and began.
ii
Nobody knows the whole story, of course; nobody can. Perhaps there is no thing entire; only that rubble that Heraclitus celebrates. At the beginning of this book I boasted that I’d tell everything, and I failed. Now Galilee promises to do the same thing, and he’s fated to fail the same way. But I’ve come to see that as nothing can be made that isn’t flawed, the challenge is twofold: first, not to berate oneself for what is, after all, inevitable; and second, to see in our failed perfection a different thing; a truer thing, perhaps, because it contains both our ambition and the spoiling of that ambition; the exhaustion of order, and the discovery—in the midst of despair—that the beast dogging the heels of beauty has a beauty all of its own.
So Galilee began to tell his story, and though Rachel had asked him for everything, and though he intended to tell her everything, he could give her only the parts that he could remember on that certain day at that certain hour. Not everything. Not remotely everything. Just slivers and fragments; that best universe which is rubble.
Galilee began his account, as he said he would, with Cesaria.
“You met my mother already,” he said to Rachel, “so you’ve seen a little of what she is. I think that’s all anybody’s ever seen: a little. Except for my father Nicodemus—”
“And Jefferson?’
“Oh she told you about him?”
“Not in detail. She just said he’d built a house for her.”
“He did. And it’s one of the most beautiful houses in the world.”
“Will you take me there?”
“I wouldn’t be welcome.”
“Maybe you would now,” Rachel suggested.
He looked at her through the flames. “Is that what you want to do? Go home and meet the family?”
“Yes. I’d like that very much.”
“They’re all crazy,” he warned.
“They can’t be any worse than the Gearys.”
He shrugged, conceding the point. “Then we’ll go back, if that’s what you want to do,” he told her.
Rachel smiled. “Well that was easy.”
“You thought I’d say no?”
“I thought you’d put up a fight.”
Galilee shook his head. “No,” he said, “it’s time I made my peace. Or at least tried to. None of us are going to be around forever. Not even Cesaria.”—
“She said at Cadmus’s house she was feeling old and weary.”
“I think there’s a part of her that’s always been old and weary. And another part that’s born new every day.” Rachel looked confounded, and Galilee said: “I can’t explain it any better than that. She’s as much a mystery to me as to anybody. Including herself. She’s a mass of contradictions.”
“You told me once, when we were out on the boat, that she doesn’t have parents.”
“To my knowledge, she doesn’t. Nor did my father.”
“How’s that possible? Where did they come from?”
“Out of the earth. Out of the stars.” He shrugged, the expression on his face suggesting that the question was so unanswerable that he didn’t think it worth contemplating.
“But she’s very old,” Rachel said. “You know that much.”
“She was being worshipped before Christ was born, before Rome was founded.”
“So she’s some kind of goddess?”
“That doesn’t mean very much anymore does it? Hollywood produces goddesses these days. It’s easy.”
“But you said she was worshipped.”
“And presumably still is, in some places. She had a lot of temples in Africa, I know. The missionaries destroyed some of her cults, but those things never die out completely. I did see a statue of her once, in Madagascar. That was strange, to see my own mother’s image, and people bowing down before it. I wanted to say to them: don’t waste your prayers. I know for a fact she’s not listening. She’s never listened to anyone in her life, except her husband. And she gave him such hell he died rather than stay with her. Or at least pretended to die. I think his death was a performance. He did it so he could slip away.”
“So where is he?”
“Where he came from presumably.
In the earth. In the stars.” He drew a deep breath. “This is hard for you, I know. I wish I could make it easier. But I’m not a great expert on what we are as a family. We take it for granted, the way you take your humanity for granted. And day for day, we’re not that different. We eat, we sleep, we get sick if we drink too much. At least, I do.”
“But you’re able to do things the rest of us can’t,” Rachel replied.
“Not much,” Galilee said lightly.
He lifted his hand, and the flames of the fire seemed to leap like an eager dog. “Of course we have more power together—you and I—than either of us had apart. But maybe that’s always true of lovers.”
Rachel said nothing; she just watched Galilee’s face through the fire.
“What else can I tell you?” he went on. “Well . . . my mother can raise storms. She raised the storm that brought me back here. And she can send her image wherever she wants to. I guess she could go sit on the moon if she was in the mood. She can take life like that—” he snapped his fingers “—and I think she can probably give it, though that’s not her nature. She’s been a very violent woman in her time. She finds killing easy.”
“You don’t.”
“No, I don’t. I’ll do it, if I have to, if I’ve agreed to, but no I don’t like it. My father was the same. He liked sex. That was his grand obsession. Not even love. Sex. Fucking. I saw a few of his temples in my time, and let me tell you they were quite a sight. Statues of my father, displaying himself. Sometimes not even him, just a carving of his dick.”
“So you got that from him,” Rachel said.
“The dick?”
“The love of sex.”
Galilee shook his head. “I’m not a great lover,” he said. “Not like him. I could go for months out at sea, not thinking about it.” He smiled. “Of course, when I’m with someone, it’s a different story.”