The Essential Clive Barker

by Clive Barker

  “Jesus,” she said, backing away, “Jesus, Jesus.”

  There was no horror on the woman’s face, however, only joy. Tears of welcome rolled down her pale cheeks, and fell into the melting pot she held. Lori looked away toward the sunlight. After the gloom of the interior it was blinding. She was momentarily disoriented, and closed her eyes to allow herself a reprieve from both tomb and light.

  It was sobbing that made her open her eyes. Not the woman this time, but a child, a girl of four or five, lying naked where the muck of transformation had been.

  “Babette,” the woman said.

  Impossible, reason replied. This thin white child could not be the animal she’d rescued from beneath the tree. It was sleight of hand, or some idiot delusion she’d foisted upon herself. Impossible, all impossible.

  “She likes to play outside,” the woman was saying, looking up from the child at Lori. “And I tell her: never, never in the sun. Never play in the sun. But she’s a child. She doesn’t understand.”

  Impossible, reason repeated. But somewhere in her gut Lori had already given up trying to deny. The animal had been real. The transformation had been real. Now here was a living child, weeping in her mother’s arms. She too was real. Every moment she wasted saying No to what she knew, was a moment lost to comprehension. That her worldview couldn’t contain such a mystery without shattering was its liability, and a problem for another day. For now she simply wanted to be away, into the sunlight where she knew these shape shifters feared to follow. Not daring to take her eyes off them until she was in the sun, she reached out to the wall to guide her tentative backward steps. But Babette’s mother wanted to hold her awhile longer.

  “I owe you something …,” she said.

  “No,” Lori replied, “I don’t … want anything … from you.”

  She felt the urge to express her revulsion, but the scene of reunion before her—the child reaching up to touch her mother’s chin, her sobs passing—were so tender. Disgust became bewilderment, fear, confusion.

  “Let me help you,” the woman said, “I know why you came here.”

  “I doubt it,” Lori said.

  “Don’t waste your time here,” the woman replied. “There’s nothing for you here. Midian’s a home for the Nightbreed. Only the Nightbreed.”

  Her voice had dropped in volume; it was barely above a whisper.

  “The Nightbreed?” Lori said, more loudly.

  The woman looked pained.

  “Shh …,” she said. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. But I owe you this much at least.”

  Lori had stopped her retreat to the door. Her instinct was telling her to wait.

  “Do you know a man called Boone?” she said.

  The woman opened her mouth to reply, her face a mass of contrary feelings. She wanted to answer, that much was clear, but fear prevented her from speaking. It didn’t matter. Her hesitation was answer enough. She did know Boone, or had.

  “Rachel.”

  A voice rose from the door that led down into the earth. A man’s voice.

  “Come away,” it demanded, “you’ve nothing to tell.”

  The woman looked toward the stairs.

  “Mr. Lylesburg,” she said, her tone formal, “she saved Babette.”

  “We know,” came the reply from the darkness, “we saw. Still, you must come away.”

  We, Lori thought. How many others were there below ground, how many more of the Nightbreed?

  Taking confidence from the proximity of the open door, she challenged the voice that was attempting to silence her informant.

  “I saved the child,” she said. “I think I deserve something for that.”

  There was a silence from the darkness, then a point of heated ash brightened in its midst and Lori realized that Mr. Lylesburg was standing almost at the top of the stairs, where the light from outside should have illuminated him, albeit poorly, but that somehow the shadows were clotted about him, leaving him invisible but for his cigarette.

  “The child has no life to save,” he said to Lori, “but what she has is yours, if you want it.” He paused. “Do you want it? If you do, take her. She belongs to you.”

  The notion of this exchange horrified her.

  “What do you take me for?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” Lylesburg replied. “You were the one who demanded recompense.”

  “I just want some questions answered,” Lori protested. “1 don’t want the child. I’m not a savage.”

  “No,” the voice said softly, “no, you’re not. So go. You’ve no business here.”

  He drew on the cigarette and by its tiny light Lori glimpsed the speaker’s features. She sensed that he willingly revealed himself in this moment, dropping the veil of shadow for a handful of instants to meet her gaze face-to-face. He, like Rachel, was wasted, his gauntness more acute because his bones were large and made for solid cladding. Now, with his eyes sunk into their sockets, and the muscles of his face all too plain beneath papery skin, it was the sweep of his brow that dominated, furrowed and sickly.

  “This was never intended,” he said. “You weren’t meant to see.”

  “I know that,” Lori replied.

  “Then you also know that to speak of this will bring dire consequences.”

  “Don’t threaten me.”

  “Not for you,” Lylesburg said, “for us.”

  She felt a twinge of shame at her misunderstanding. She wasn’t the vulnerable one, she who could walk in the sunlight.

  “I won’t say anything,” she told him.

  “I thank you,” he said.

  He drew on his cigarette again, and the dark smoke took his face from view.

  “What’s below,” he said from behind the veil, “remains below.”

  Rachel sighed softly at this, gazing down at the child as she rocked it gently.

  “Come away,” Lylesburg told her, and the shadows that concealed him moved off down the stairs.

  “I have to go,” Rachel said, and turned to follow. “Forget you were ever here. There’s nothing you can do. You heard Mr. Lylesburg. What’s below—”

  “Remains below. Yes, I heard.”

  “Midian’s for the Breed. There’s no one here who needs you—”

  “Just tell me,” Lori requested, “is Boone here?”

  Rachel was already at the top of the stairs, and now began to descend.

  “He is, isn’t he?” Lori said, forsaking the safety of the open door and crossing the chamber toward Rachel. “You people stole the body!”

  It made some terrible, macabre sense. These tomb dwellers, this Nightbreed, keeping Boone from being laid to rest.

  “You did! You stole him!”

  Rachel paused and looked back up at Lori, her face barely visible in the blackness of the stairs.

  “We stole nothing,” she said, her reply without rancor.

  “So where is he?” Lori demanded.

  Rachel turned away, and the shadows took her completely from view.

  “Tell me! Please God!” Lori yelled down after her. Suddenly she was crying, in a turmoil of rage and fear and frustration. “Tell me, please!”

  Desperation carried her down the stairs after Rachel, her shouts becoming appeals.

  “Wait … talk to me …”

  She took three steps, then a fourth. On the fifth she stopped, or rather her body stopped, the muscles of her legs becoming rigid without her instruction, refusing to carry her another step into the darkness of the crypt. Her skin was suddenly crawling with gooseflesh, her pulse thumping in her ears. No force of will could overrule the animal imperative forbidding her to descend; all she could do was stand rooted to the spot and stare into the depths. Even her tears had suddenly dried and the saliva gone from her mouth, so she could no more speak than walk. Not that she wanted to call down into the darkness now, for fear the forces there would answer her summons. Though she could see nothing of them her gut knew they were more terrible by far than Rachel and he
r beast-child. Shape-shifting was almost a natural act beside the skills these others had to hand. She felt their perversity as a quality of the air. She breathed it in and out. It scoured her lungs and hurried her heart.

  If they had Boone’s corpse as a plaything it was beyond reclamation. She would have to take comfort from the hope that his spirit was somewhere brighter.

  Defeated, she took a step backward. The shadows seemed unwilling to relinquish her, however. She felt them weave themselves into her blouse and hook themselves on her eyelashes, a thousand tiny holds upon her, slowing her retreat.

  “I won’t tell anyone,” she murmured. “Please let me go.”

  But the shadows held on, their power a promise of retribution if she defied them.

  “I promise,” she said. “What more can I do?”

  And suddenly, they capitulated. She hadn’t realized how strong their claim was until it was withdrawn. She stumbled backward, falling up the stairs into the light of the antechamber. Turning her back on the crypt, she fled for the door and out into the sun.

  It was too bright. She covered her eyes, holding herself upright by gripping the stone portico so that she could accustom herself to its violence. It took several minutes, standing against the mausoleum, shaking and rigid by turns. Only when she felt able to see through half-closed eves did she attempt to walk, her route back to the main gate a farrago of cul-de-sacs and missed turnings.

  By the time she reached it, however, she’d more or less accustomed herself to the brutality of light and sky. Her body was still not back at her mind’s disposal, however. Her legs refused to carry her more than a few paces up the hill to Midian without threatening to drop her to the ground. Her system, overdosed on adrenaline, was cavorting. But at least she was alive. For a short while there on the stairs it had been touch and go. The shadows that had held her by lash and thread could have taken her, she had no doubt of that. Claimed her for the Underworld and snuffed her out. Why had they released her? Perhaps because she’d saved the child, perhaps because she’d sworn silence and they’d trusted her. Neither, however, seemed the motives of monsters, and she had to believe that what lived beneath Midian’s cemetery deserved that name. Who other than monsters made their nests among the dead? They might call themselves the Nightbreed, but neither words nor gestures of good faith could disguise their true nature.

  She had escaped demons—things of rot and wickedness—and she would have offered up a prayer of thanks for her deliverance if the sky had not been so wide and bright, and so plainly devoid of deities to hear.

  From Weaveworld

  URIEL

  Night came down like a dropped curtain. Jabir made a fire in the shelter of the wall, out of the remorseless assault of the wind, and there they ate bread and drank coffee. There was no conversation. Exhaustion had claimed their tongues. They simply sat hunched up, staring into the flames.

  Though his bones ached, Shadwell couldn’t sleep. As the fire burned low, and one by one the others succumbed to fatigue, he was left to keep watch. The wind dropped a little as the night deepened, its bellow becoming a moan. It soothed him like a lullaby, and at last, his eyelids dropped closed. Behind them, the busy patterns of his inner-eye. Then emptiness.

  In sleep, he heard the boy Jabir’s voice. It called him from darkness but he didn’t want to answer. Rest was too sweet. It came again, however: a horrid shriek. This time he opened his lids.

  The wind had died completely. Overhead the stars were bright in a perfect sky, trembling in their places. The fire had gone out, but their light was sufficient for him to see that both Ibn Talaq and Jabir were missing from their places. He got up, crossed to Hobart, and shook him awake.

  As he did so, his eye caught sight of something on the ground a little way beyond Hobart’s head. He stared—doubting what he saw.

  There were flowers underfoot, or so he seemed to see. Clusters of blooms, set in abundant foliage. He looked up from the ground, and his parched throat unleashed a cry of astonishment.

  The dunes had gone. In their place a jungle had risen up, a riot of trees that challenged the wall’s height—vast, flower-laden species whose leaves were the size of a man. Beneath their canopy was a wilderness of vines and shrubs and grasses.

  For a moment he doubted his sanity, until he heard Hobart say: “My God,” at his side.

  “You see it too?” said Shadwell.

  “I see it …,” Hobart said, “a garden.”

  “Garden?”

  At first sight the word scarcely described this chaos. But further scrutiny showed that there was order at work in what had initially seemed anarchy. Avenues had been laid under the vast, blossom-laden trees; there were lawns and terraces. This was indeed a garden of sorts, though there would be little pleasure to be had walking in it, for despite the surfeit of species—plants and bushes of every size and shape—there was not among them a single variety that had color. Neither bloom nor branch nor leaf nor fruit; all, down to the humblest blade, had been bled of pigment.

  Shadwell was puzzling at this when a further cry issued from the depths. It was Ibn Talaq’s voice this time; and it rose in a steep curve to a shriek. He followed it. The ground was soft beneath his feet, which slowed his progress, but the shriek went on, broken only by sobbing breaths. Shadwell ran, calling the man’s name. There was no fear left in him; only an overwhelming hunger to see the Maker of this enigma face to face.

  As he advanced down one of the shadowy boulevards, its pathway strewn with the same colorless plant-life, Ibn Talaq’s cry stopped dead. Shadwell was momentarily disoriented. He halted, and scanned the foliage for some sign of movement. There was none. The breeze did not stir a single frond; nor—to further compound the mystery—was there a hint of perfume, however subtle, from the mass of blossoms.

  Behind him, Hobart muttered a cautionary word. Shadwell turned, and was about to condemn the man’s lack of curiosity when he caught sight of the trail his own footsteps had made. In the Gyre, his heels had brought forth life. Here, they’d destroyed it. Wherever he’d set foot the plants had simply crumbled away.

  He stared at the blank ground where there’d previously been grasses and flowers, and the explanation for this extraordinary growth became apparent. Ignoring Hobart now, he walked toward the nearest of the bushes, the blooms of which hung like censers from their branches. Tentatively, he touched his fingers to one of the flowers. Upon this lightest of contacts the blossom fell apart, dropping from the branch in a shower of sand. He brushed its companion with his thumb: it too fell away, and with it the branch, and the exquisite leaves it bore; all returned to sand at a touch.

  The dunes hadn’t disappeared in the night, to make way for this garden. They had become the garden; risen up at some unthinkable command to create this sterile illusion. What had at first sight seemed a miracle of fecundity was a mockery. It was sand. Scentless, colorless, lifeless: a dead garden.

  A sudden disgust gripped him. This trick was all too like the work of the Seerkind: some deceitful rapture. He flung himself into the midst of the shrubbery, flailing to right and left of him in his fury, destroying the bushes in stinging clouds. A tree, brushed by his hand, collapsed like an extinguished fountain. The most elaborate blossoms fell apart at his merest touch. But he wasn’t satisfied. He flailed on until he’d cleared a small grove amid the press of foliage.

  “Raptures!” he kept yelling, as the sand rained down on him. “Raptures!”

  He might have gone on to more ambitious destruction, but that the Scourge’s howl—the same he’d first heard days before, as he’d squatted in shit—began. That voice had brought him through desolation and emptiness; and to what? More desolation, more emptiness. His anger unassuaged by the damage he’d done, he turned to Hobart.

  “Which way’s it coming from?”

  “I don’t know,” said Hobart, stumbling back a few steps. “Everywhere.”

  “Where are you?” Shadwell demanded, yelling into the depths of the illusion. “Sho
w yourself!”

  “Don’t—” said Hobart, his voice full of dread.

  “This is your Dragon,” Shadwell said. “We have to see it.”

  Hobart shook his head. The power that had made this place was not one he wanted sight of. Before he could retreat, however, Shadwell had hold of him.

  “We meet it together,” he said. “It’s cheated us both.”

  Hobart struggled to be free of Shadwell’s grip, but his violence ceased as his panicked eyes caught sight of the form that now appeared at the far end of the avenue.

  It was as tall as the canopy; twenty-five feet or more, its long, bone-white head brushing the branches, sand-petals spiraling down.

  Though it still howled, it lacked a mouth, or indeed any feature on its face but eyes, which it had in terrifying numbers, twin rows of lidless, lash-less slits which ran down each side of its head. There were perhaps a hundred eves in all, but staring an age at it would not have revealed their true number, for the thing, despite its solidity, defied fixing. Were those wheels that moved at its heart, tied with lines of liquid fire to a hundred other geometries which informed the air it occupied? Did innumerable wings beat at its perimeters, and light burn in its bowels, as though it had swallowed stars?

  Nothing was certain. In one breath it seemed to be enclosed in a matrix of darting light, like scaffolding struck by lightning; in the next the pattern became flame confetti, which swarmed at its extremities before it was snatched away. One moment, ether; the next, juggernaut.