The Essential Clive Barker

by Clive Barker

  “Once in a while,” Will replied, staring at the littered floor, still half-thinking he might catch a glittering light in one of the pictures. But there was nothing.

  “Shall we go back to bed then?” Drew said.

  “No, actually I’d prefer to stay up for a while,” Will said. He’d had enough dreams for one night. “You go back up. I’m going to make myself some tea.”

  “I can stay with you, if you want.”

  “I’m okay,” Will told him. “I’ll be up in a while.”

  Drew bequeathed the sheet to Will and headed on upstairs, leaving Will to go brew himself a pot of Earl Grey. He didn’t particularly want to revisit the images that had just come to find him, but as he sat sipping his tea he couldn’t help but picture the uncanny life his littered photographs had taken on as he dreamed them. It was as though they contained some freight of meaning he’d neglected to see or understand, and had chosen to communicate it to him in his sleep. But what? That death was terrible? He knew that better than most. That Patrick was going to die, and there was nothing Will could do about it? He knew that too. He chewed it over and over, but he couldn’t make much sense of the experience. Perhaps he was looking for significance where there was none. How much credence should he be giving a dream that showcased a talking fox claiming to be God’s messenger? Probably very little.

  And yet, hadn’t there been a hairbreadth moment at the end, after Drew had called his name, and he’d woken, when the fox had lingered, as though it were testing the limits of its jurisdiction, ready to trespass where it had no business being?

  He returned to bed at last. The rainstorm had passed over the city and the only sound in the room was Drew’s peaceful breath. Will slipped between the sheets as delicately as possible so as not to wake him, but somewhere in his slumber, Drew knew his bedmate had come back, because he turned to face Will, his eyes still closed, his breathing even, and found a place against Will’s body where they fitted together comfortably. Will was certain he wouldn’t sleep, but he did; and deeply. There were no further visits. Cod and his messenger left him undisturbed for the rest of the night, and when he woke it was to sunlight and kisses.

  From Sacrament

  There was a club on Folsom called the Penitent. At the height of its notoriety in the mid-seventies, it had been called the Serpent’s Tooth, and had been to San Francisco what the Mineshaft had been to New York: a club where nothing was verboten if it got you hard. On the wild nights, moving down the streets of the Castro, the serious leather crowd had counted off their pleasuredomes on the knuckles of one well-greased fist, and the Tooth had always been one of the five. Chuck and Jean-Pierre, the owners of the club, had long since gone, dying within three weeks of one another in the early years of the plague, and for a time the site had remained untaken, as though in deference to the men who’d played there and passed away. But in 1987 the Sons of Priapus, a group of onanists who’d restored masturbation to the status of a respectable handicraft, had occupied the building for their Monday night circle jerks. The ghosts of the building had smiled on them, it seemed, because word of the atmosphere there soon swelled the number of the Sons. They organized a second weekly gathering, on Thursdays, and then when that become overcrowded, a third. Almost overnight the building had become a paean to the democracy of the palm. An element of the fetishistic gradually crept into the Thursday and Friday assemblies (Monday remained vanilla) and before long the leaders of the Sons had turned into businessmen, leased the building, and were running the most successful sex club in San Francisco. Chuck and Jean-Pierre would have been proud. The Penitent had been born.

  The club wasn’t particularly busy. Tuesdays were usually slow, and tonight was no exception. But for the thirty or so individuals who were wandering the Penitent’s bare-brick halls, or chatting around the juice bar (unlike the back room, this was an alcohol-free party), or idling in the television lounge, watching porno of strictly historical interest, there would be reason to remember tonight.

  Just before eleven-thirty, a man appeared in the hallway, whose identity would be described variously by people who later talked about the evening’s events. Good-looking, certainly, in a man-who’s-seen-the-world kind of way. Hair slicked back or receding, depending on who was telling you the story. Eves dark and deep set, or invisible behind sunglasses, depending, again, on who was recounting the tale. Nobody really remembered what he was wearing in any detail. (He wasn’t naked, as a few of the more exhibitionist patrons were; that was agreed.) Nor was he dressed for casting in any specific scenario. He wasn’t a biker or a cowboy, or a hard-hat or a cop. He didn’t carry a paddle or a whip. Hearing this, a certain kind of listener would inevitably ask: “Well what the hell was he into?” to which the storytellers universally replied: sex. Well, not universally. The more pretentious may have said the pleasures of the flesh, and the cruder said meat, but it amounted to the same thing: this man—who within the space of an hour and a half had created a stir so potent it would become local myth inside a day—was an embodiment of the spirit of the Penitent: a creature of pure sensation, ready to take on any partner heated enough to match the fierceness of his desires. In this brave brotherhood, there were only three or four members equal to the challenge, and—not coincidentally—they were the only celebrants that night who said nothing about the experience afterward. They kept their silence and their fantasies intact, leaving the rest to chatter on what they’d seen and heard. In truth, no more than half a dozen people remained purely witnesses. As had happened often in the long ago, but infrequently now, the presence of one unfettered imagination in the crowd had been the signal for general license. Men who had only ever come to the Penitent to watch dared a touch, and more, tonight. Two love affairs began there, and both prospered; four people caught crabs, and one traced his gonorrhea to his loss of control on the stained sofa of the television lounge.

  As for the man who’d initiated this orgy, he came several times, and went, leaving the couplings to continue until closing time. Several people claimed he spoke to them, though he said nothing. One claimed they knew him to be a sometime porn star who’d retired from the business and moved to Oregon. He’d returned to his old hunting grounds, this account went, for sentimental reasons, only to vanish again into the wilderness that always claims the sexual professional.

  One part of this was certainly true. The man vanished and did not return, though every one of the thirty patrons that night came back, crabs and gonorrhea notwithstanding, within the next few days (most of them the next night) in the hope of seeing him again. When he did not appear, a few then made it their private mission to discover him in some other watering hole, but a man seen by the yellowing light of a dim lamp in a secret place is not easily identified elsewhere. The more they thought about him and talked about him, the less clear the memory of him became, so that a week after the event, no two witnesses could have readily agreed on any of his personal details.

  And as for the man himself, he could not remember the events of the night clearly, and thanked God for the fact.

  From Imajica

  As soon as they got back to the flat Jude threw open the windows to let the breeze, which was still balmy though the night had long since fallen, come and go. News from the streets outside came with it, of course, but nothing momentous: the inevitable sirens; chatter from the pavement; jazz from the club down the block. With the windows wide, she sat down on the bed beside Gentle. It was time for them to speak without any other agenda but the truth.

  “I didn’t think we’d end up this way,” she said. “Here, together.”

  “Are you glad we have?”

  “Yes, I’m glad,” she said, after a pause. “It feels right.”

  “Good,” he replied. “It feels perfectly natural to me too.”

  He slid around the back of her and, threading his hands through her hair, began to work his fingers against her scalp. She sighed.

  “You like that?” he asked.

  “I like th
at.”

  “Do you want to tell me how you feel?”

  “About what?”

  “About me. About us.”

  “I told you, it feels right.”

  “That’s all?”

  “No.”

  “What else?”

  She closed her eyes, the persuasive fingers almost easing the words out of her. “I’m glad you’re here because I think we can learn from one another. Maybe even love each other again. How does that sound?”

  “Fine by me,” he said softly.

  “And what about you? What’s in your head?”

  “That I’d forgotten how strange this Dominion is. That I need your help to make me strong. That I’m afraid I may act strangely sometimes, make mistakes, and I want you to love me enough to forgive me if I do. Will

  you?”

  “You know I will,” she said.

  “I want you to share my visions, Judith. I want you to see what’s shining in me and not be afraid of it.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “That’s good to hear,” he said. “That’s so very good.” He leaned toward her, putting his mouth close to her ear. “We make the rules from now on,” he whispered. “And the world follows. Yes? There’s no law but us. What we want. What we feel. We’ll let that consume us, and the fire’ll spread. You’ll see.”

  He kissed the ear into which he’d poured these seductions, then her cheek, and finally her mouth. She started to kiss him back, fervently, putting her hands around his head as he had hers, kneading the flesh from which his hair sprang and feeling its motion against his skull. He had his hands on the neck of her blouse, but he didn’t bother to unbutton it. Instead he tore it open, not in a frenzy but rhythmically, rent after rent, like a ritual of uncovering. As soon as her breasts were bare his mouth was on them. Her skin was hot, but his tongue was hotter, painting her with spiral tracks of spittle, then closing his mouth around her nipples until they were harder than the tongue that teased them. His hands were reducing her skirt to tatters in the same efficient way he’d torn open her blouse. She let herself drop back onto the bed, with the rags of blouse and skirt beneath her. He looked down at her, laying his palm at her crotch, which was still protected from his touch by the thin fabric of her underwear.

  “How many men have had this?” he asked her, the question murmured without inflection. His head was silhouetted against the pale billows at the window, and she could not read his expression. “How many?” he said, moving the ball of his hand in a circular motion. From any other source but this the question would have offended or even enraged her. But she liked his curiosity.

  “A few.”

  He ran his fingers down into the space between her legs and worked his middle fingers under the fabric to touch her other hole. “And this?” he said, pushing at the place.

  She was less comfortable with this inquiry, verbal or digital, but he insisted. “Tell me,” he said. “Who’s been in here?”

  “Just one,” she said.

  “Godolphin?” he replied.

  “Yes.”

  He removed his finger and rose from the bed. “A family enthusiasm,” he remarked.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Just closing the curtains,” he said. “The dark’s better for what we’re going to do.” He drew the drapes without closing the window. “Are you wearing any jewelry?” he asked her.

  “Just my earrings.”

  “Take them off,” he said.

  “Can’t we have a little light?”

  “It’s too bright as it is,” he replied, though she could barely see him. He was watching her as she undressed, that much she knew. He saw her slide her earrings from the holes in her lobes and then take off her underwear. By the time she was completely naked so was he.

  “I don’t want a little part of you,” he said, approaching the bottom of the bed. “I want all of you, every last piece. And I want you to want all of me.”

  “I do,” she said.

  “I hope you mean that.”

  “How can I prove it?”

  His gray form seemed to darken as she spoke, receding into the shadows of the room. He’d said he’d be invisible, and now he was. Though she felt his hand graze her ankle, and looked down the bed to find him, he was beyond the grasp of her eye. But pleasure flowed from his touch nevertheless.

  “I want this,” he said as he caressed her foot. “And this.” Now her shin and thigh. “And this”—her sex—”as much as the rest, but no more. And this, and these.” Belly, breasts. His touch was on them all, so he had to be very close to her now, but still invisible. “And this sweet throat, and this wonderful head.” Now the hands slid away again, down her arms. “And these,” he said, “to the ends of your fingers.”

  The touch was back at her foot again, but everywhere his hands had been—which was to say her entire body—trembled with anticipation at the touch coming again. She raised her head from the pillow a second time in the hope of glimpsing her lover.

  “Lie back,” he told her.

  “I want to see you.”

  “I’m here,” he said, his eyes stealing a gleam from somewhere as he spoke: two bright dots in a space that, had she not known it was bounded, could have been limitless. After his words, there was only his breath. She couldn’t help but let the rhythm of her own inhalations and exhalations fall in with his, a lulling regularity which steadily slowed.

  After a time, he raised her foot to his mouth and licked the sole from heel to toe in one motion. Then his breath again, cooling the fluid he’d bathed her with, and slowing still further as it came and went, until her system seemed to teeter on termination at the end of each breath, only to be coaxed back into life again as she inhaled. This was the substance of every moment, she realized: the body—never certain if the next lungful would be its last-hovering for a tiny time between cessation and continuance. And in that space out of time, between a breath expelled and another drawn, the miraculous was easy, because neither flesh nor reason had laid their edicts there. She felt his mouth open wide enough to encompass her toes and then, impossible as it was, slide her foot into his throat.

  He’s going to swallow me, she thought, and the notion conjured once again the book she’d found in Estabrook’s study, with its sequence of lovers enclosed in a circle of consumption: a devouring so prodigious it had ended with mutual eclipse. She felt no unease at the prospect. This wasn’t the business of the visible world, where fear got fat because there was so much to win and lose. This was a place for lovers, where there was only ever gain.

  She felt him draw her other leg up to his head and immerse it in the same heat; then felt him take hold of her hips and use them as purchase to impale himself upon her, inch by inch. Perhaps he’d become vast: his maw monstrous, his throat a tunnel; or perhaps she was pliant as silk, and he was drawing her into him like a magician threading fake flowers into a wand. She reached up toward him in the darkness, to feel the miracle, but her fingers couldn’t interpret what buzzed beneath them. Was this her flesh or his? Ankle or cheek? There was no way of knowing. Nor, in truth, any need to know. All she wanted now was to do as the lovers in the book had done and match his devouring with her own.

  She reached for the edge of the bed and turned herself half over, bringing him down beside her. Now, though her eyes were besotted by darkness, she saw the outline of his body, folded into the shadows of her own. There was nothing changed about his anatomy. Though he was consuming her, his body was in no way distorted. He lay beside her like a sleeper. She reached out to touch him a second time, not expecting to make sense of his body now but finding she could. This was his thigh; this his shin; this his ankle and foot. As she ran her palm across his flesh a delicate wave of change came with it, and his substance seemed to soften beneath her touch. The scent of his sweat was appetizing. It quickened the juices in her throat and belly. She drew her head toward his feet and touched her lips to the substance of him. Then she was feeding; spreading her hunge
r around him like a mouth and closing her mind on his glistening skin. He shuddered as she took him in, and she felt the thrill of his pleasure as her own. He had already consumed her to the hips, but she quickly matched his appetite, taking his legs down into her, swallowing both his prick and the belly it lay hard against. She loved the excess of this, and its absurdity, their bodies defying physics and physique, or else making fresh proofs of both as the configuration closed upon itself. Was anything ever so easy, and yet so impossible, besides love? And what was this, if not that paradox laid on a sheet? He had slowed his swallows to allow her to catch up, and now, in tandem, they closed the loop of their consumption, until their bodies were figments, and they were mouth to mouth.

  Something from outside—a shout in the street, a sour saxophone chord — threw her back into the plausible world again, and she saw the root from which their invention had flowered. It was a commonplace conjunction: her legs crossed around his hips, his erection high inside her. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew he wasn’t here in this fugitive place with her. He was still dreaming their devouring. She panicked, wanted to regain the vision but not knowing how. She tightened her grip on his body and, in so doing, inspired his hips to motion. He began to move in her, breathing oh so slowly against her face. She forgot her panic and let her rhythm once again slow until it matched his. The solid world dissolved as she did so, and she returned to the place from which she’d been called to find that the loop was tightening by the moment, his mind enveloping her head as she enveloped his, like layers of an impossible onion, each one smaller than the layer it concealed: an enigma that could only exist where substance collapsed into the very mind which begged its being.

  This bliss could not be sustained indefinitely, however. Before long it began once more to lose its purity, tainted by further sounds from the outside world, and this time she sensed that he was also relinquishing his hold on the delirium. Perhaps, as they learned to be lovers again, they’d find a way to sustain the state for longer: spend nights and days, perhaps, lost in the precious space between a breath expelled and another drawn. But for now she would have to be content with the ecstasy they’d had. Reluctantly, she let the tropic night in which they’d devoured each other be subsumed into a simpler darkness, and, without quite knowing where consciousness began and ended, she fell asleep.