The Essential Clive Barker

by Clive Barker

  Toward the Loom.

  She retraced her steps to the trail with fresh enthusiasm. The fact of the buyer’s existence in the Gyre, apparently accepted by the forces here—even welcomed—gave her some hope that the mere presence of a trespasser was not sufficient to make the Gyre turn itself inside out. Its sensitivity had apparently been overestimated. It was strong enough to deal with an invading force in its own inimitable fashion.

  Her skin had begun to itch, and there was a restlessness in her gut. She tried not to think too hard of what this signified, but the irritation increased as she again followed the trail. The atmosphere was thickening now; the world around her darkening. It wasn’t night’s darkness, coaxing sleep. The murk buzzed with life. She could taste it, sweet and sour. She could see it, busy behind her eyes.

  She’d gone only a little way when something ran across her feet. She looked down to see an animal—an unlikely cross between squirrel and centipede, eyes bright, legs innumerable, cavorting between the roots. Nor, she now realized, was the creature alone. The forest was inhabited. Animals, as numerous and as remarkable as the plant life, were spilling out from the undergrowth, changing even as they hopped and squirmed, more ambitious by the breath.

  Their origins?: the plants. The flora had parented its own fauna; its buds flowering into insects, its fruits growing fur and scales. A plant opened, and butterflies rose in a flickering cloud; in a thorn thicket birds were fluttering into life; from a tree trunk, white snakes poured like sentient sap.

  The air was so thick now she could have sliced it, new creatures crossing her path with every yard she advanced, only to be eclipsed by the murk. Something that was a distant relation of the armadillo waddled in front of her; three variations on the theme of ape came and went; a golden dog cavorted among the flowers. And so on. And so forth.

  She had no doubt now why her skin itched. It longed to join this game of changes, to throw itself back into the melting pot and find a new design. Her mind, too, was half seduced by the notion. Among such joyous invention it seemed churlish to cleave to a single anatomy.

  Indeed she might have succumbed in time to these temptations of the flesh, but that ahead of her a building now emerged from the fog: a plain brick building which she caught sight of for an instant before the air enclosed it again. Plain as it was, this could only be the Temple of the Loom.

  A huge parrot swooped in front of her, speaking in tongues, then flitted away. She began to run. The golden dog had elected to keep pace with her; it panted at her heels.

  Then, the shock wave. It came from the direction of the building, a force that convulsed the living membrane of the air, and rocked the earth. She was thrown off her feet amid sprawling roots, which instantly attempted to incorporate her into their design. She disengaged them from around about her, and pulled herself to her feet. Either the contact with the earth, or the wave of energy from the Temple, had sent her into paroxysms. Though she was standing quite still her whole body seemed to be dancing. There was no other word for it. Every part of her, from eyelash to marrow, had caught the rhythm of power here; its percussion ordered her heart to a different beat; her blood sped then slowed; her mind soared and plummeted by turns.

  But that was only flesh. Her other anatomy—the subtle body which the menstruum had quickened—was beyond the control of the forces here; or else was already in such accord with them it was left to its own work.

  She occupied it now — telling it to keep her feet from rooting, and her head from sprouting wings and flying off. It soothed her. She’d been a dragon, and emerged again, hadn’t she? This was no different.

  Yes it is, said her fears. This is flesh and bone business; the dragon was all in my mind.

  Haven’t you learned yet? came the reply, there is no difference.

  As the answer rang in her head, the second shock wave struck; and this time it was no petit mal, but the full fit. The ground beneath her began to roar. She started to run toward the Temple once more, as the noise mounted, but she’d got five yards at best when the roar became the hard din of breaking stone, and a zigzag crack appeared to the right of her; and to the left another; and another.

  The Gyre was tearing itself apart.

  Outside the Temple, the quake tremors were worsening. Inside, however, an uneasy peace reigned. Suzanna started to advance down the darkened corridors, the itching in her body subdued now that she was out of the turbulence, in this, the eye of the hurricane.

  There was light ahead. She turned a corner, and another, and finding a door in the wall, slipped through into a second passageway, as spartan as the one she’d left. The light was still tantalizingly out of reach. Around the next corner, it promised; just a little further, a little further.

  The menstruum was quiet inside her, as though it feared to show itself. Was that the natural respect one miracle paid to a greater? If so, the raptures here were hiding their faces with no little skill; there was nothing about these corridors suggestive of revelation or power: just bare brick. Except for the light. That coaxed her still, through another door and along further passageways. The building, she now realized, was built on the principle of a Russian doll, one within another. Worlds within worlds. They couldn’t diminish infinitely, she told herself. Or could they?

  Around the very next corner she had her answer, or at least part of it, as a shadow was thrown up against the wall and she heard somebody shouting:

  “What in God’s name?”

  For the first time since setting foot here, she felt the ground vibrate. There was a fall of brick dust from the ceiling.

  “Shadwell,” she said.

  As she spoke it seemed she could see the two syllables—Shad Well—carried along the corridor toward the next door. A fleeting memory came too: of Jerichau speaking his love to her; word as reality.

  The shadow on the wall shifted, and suddenly the Salesman was standing in front of her. All trace of the Prophet had gone. The face revealed beneath was bloated and pale; the face of a beached fish.

  “Gone,” he said.

  He was shaking from head to foot. Sweat droplets decorated his face like pearls. “It’s all gone.”

  Any fear she might once have had of this man had disappeared. He was here unmasked as ludicrous. But his words made her wonder. What had gone? She began to walk toward the door he’d stepped through.

  “It was you—” he said, his shakes worsening. “You did this.”

  “I did nothing.”

  “Oh yes—”

  As she came within a yard of him he reached for her, his clammy hands suddenly about her neck.

  “There’s nothing there!” he shrieked, pulling her close.

  His grip intended harm, but the menstruum didn’t rise to her aid. She was left with only muscle power to disengage him, and it was not enough.

  “You want to see?” he screamed into her face. “You want to see how I’ve been cheated? I’ll show you!”

  He dragged her toward the door, and pitched her through into the room at the heart of the Temple: the inner sanctum in which the miracles of the Gyre had been generated; the powerhouse which had held the many worlds of the Fugue together for so long.

  It was a room some fifteen feet square, built of the same naked brick as the rest of the Temple, and high. She looked up to see that the roof had a skylight of sorts, open to the heavens. The clouds that swirled around the Temple roof shed a milky brightness down, as if the lightning from the Gyre was being kindled in the womb of troubled air above. The clouds were not the only movement overhead, however. As she gazed up she caught sight of a form in the corner of the roof. Before her gaze could focus on it, Shadwell was approaching her.

  “Where is it?” he demanded. “Where’s the Loom?”

  She looked around the sanctum, and discovered now that it was not entirely bare. In each of the four corners a figure was sitting, gazing toward the center of the room. Her spine twitched. Though they sat bolt upright on their high-backed chairs, the quartet we
re long dead, their flesh like stained paper on their bones, their clothes hanging in rotted rags.

  Had these guardians been murdered where they sat, so that thieves could remove the Loom unchallenged? So it seemed. Yet there was nothing in their posture that suggested a violent death; nor could she believe that this charmed place would have sanctioned bloodshed. No; something else had happened here—was happening still, perhaps—some essential point both she and Shadwell could not yet grasp.

  He was still muttering to himself, his voice a decaying spiral of complaint. She was only half-listening; she was far more interested in the object she now saw lying in the middle of the floor. There it lay, the kitchen knife Cal had brought into the Auction Room all those months ago; the commonplace domestic tool which the look between them had somehow drawn into the Weave, to this very spot, the absolute center of the Fugue.

  Seeing it, pieces of the riddle began to slot together in her head. Here, where the glances of the sentinels intersected, lay the knife that another glance—between herself and Cal—had empowered. It had entered this chamber and somehow cut the last knot the Loom had created; and the Weave had released its secrets. All of which was well and good, except that the sentinels were dead, and the Loom, as Shadwell kept repeating, was gone.

  “You were the one,” he growled. “You knew all along.”

  She ignored his accusations, a new thought forming. If the magic had gone, she reasoned, why did the menstruum hide itself?

  As she shaped the question Shadwell’s fury drove him to attack.

  “I’ll kill you!” he yelled.

  His assault caught her unawares, and she was flung back against the wall. The breath went out of her in a rush, and before she could defend herself his thumbs were at her throat, his bulk trapping her.

  “Thieving bitch,” he said. “You cheated me!”

  She raised her hands to beat him off, but she was already growing weak. She struggled to draw breath, desperate for a mouthful of air even if it was the flatulent breath he was expelling, but his grip on her throat prevented so much as a mouthful reaching her. I’m going to die, she thought; I’m going to die looking into this curdled face.

  And then her upturned eyes caught a glimpse of movement in the roof, and a voice said:

  “The Loom is here.”

  Shadwell’s grip on Suzanna relaxed. He turned, and looked up at the speaker.

  Immacolata, her arms spread out like a parachutist in free-fall, was hovering above them.

  “Do you remember me?” she asked Shadwell.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “I missed you, Shadwell. Though you were unkind.”

  “Where’s the Loom?” he said. “Tell me.”

  “There is no Loom,” she replied.

  “But you just said—”

  “The Loom is here.”

  “Where then? Where?”

  “There is no Loom.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” he yelled up at her. “Either there is or there isn’t!”

  The Incantatrix had a skull’s smile as she gazed down on the man below.

  “You’re the fool,” she said mildly. “You don’t understand, do you?” Shadwell put on a gentler tone. “Why don’t you come down?” he said. “My neck aches.”

  She shook her head. It cost her effort to hang in the air that way, Suzanna could see; she was defying the sanctity of the Temple by working her raptures here. But she flew in the face of such edicts, determined to remind Shadwell of how earthbound he was.

  “Afraid, are you?” said Shadwell.

  Immacolata’s smile did not falter. “I’m not afraid,” she said, and began to float down toward him.

  Keep out of his way, Suzanna willed her. Though the Incantatrix had done terrible harm, Suzanna had no desire to see her felled by Shadwell’s mischief. But the Salesman stood face to face with the woman and made no move. He simply said:

  “You reached here before me.”

  “I almost forgot you,” Immacolata replied. Her voice had lost any trace of stridency. It was full of sighs. “But she reminded me,” she glanced at Suzanna. “It was a fine service you did me, sister,” she said. “To remind me of my enemy.”

  Her eves went back to Shadwell.

  “You drove me mad,” she said. “And I forgot you. But I remember now.”

  Suddenly the smile and the sighs had gone entirely. There was only ruin, and rage.

  “I remember very well.”

  “Where’s the Loom?” Shadwell demanded.

  “You were always so literal,” Immacolata replied, contemptuously. “Did you really expect to find a thing? Another object to be possessed? Is that your Godhood, Shadwell? Possession?”

  “Where the fuck is it?”

  She laughed then, though the sound from her throat had nothing to do with pleasure.

  Her ridicule pressed Shadwell to breaking point; he flung himself at her. But she was not about to let herself be touched by his hands. As he snatched hold of her it seemed to Suzanna that her whole ruined face cracked open, spilling a force that might once have been the menstruum—that cool, bright river Suzanna had first plunged into at Immacolata’s behest—but was now a damned and polluted stream, breaking from the wounds like pus. It had force nevertheless. Shadwell was thrown to the ground.

  Overhead, the clouds threw lightning across the roof, freezing the scene below by its scalpel light. The killing blow could only be a glance away, surely.

  But it didn’t come. The Incantatrix hesitated, the broken face leaking tainted power, and in that instant Shadwell’s hand closed on the kitchen knife at his side.

  Suzanna cried a warning, but Immacolata either failed to hear or chose not to. Then Shadwell was on his feet, his ungainly rise offering his victim a moment to strike him down, which was missed—and drove the blade up into her abdomen, a butcher’s stroke which opened a traumatic wound.

  At last she seemed to know he meant her death, and responded. Her face began to blaze afresh, but before the spark could become fire Shadwell’s blade was dividing her to the breasts. Her innards slid from the wound. She screamed, and threw back her head, the unleashed force wasted against the sanctum walls.

  On the instant, the room was filled with a roaring that seemed to come from both the bricks and the innards of Immacolata. Shadwell dropped the blood-slicked knife, and made to retreat from his crime, but his victim reached out and pulled him close.

  The fire had entirely gone from Immacolata’s face. She was dying, and quickly. But even in her failing moments her grip was strong. As the roaring grew louder she granted Shadwell the embrace she’d always denied him, her wound besmirching his jacket. He made a cry of repugnance, but she wouldn’t let him go. He struggled, and finally succeeded in breaking her hold, throwing her off and staggering from her, his chest and belly plastered with blood. He cast one more look in her direction then started toward the door, making small moans of horror. As he reached the exit he looked up at Suzanna.

  “I didn’t …,” he began, his hands raised, blood trickling between his fingers. “It wasn’t me …”

  The words were as much appeal as denial.

  “It was magic!” he said, tears starting to his eyes. Not of sorrow, she knew, but of a sudden righteous rage.

  “Filthy magic!” he shrieked. The ground rocked to hear its glory denied.

  He didn’t wait to have the roof fall on his head, but fled from the chamber as the roars rose in intensity.

  Suzanna looked back at Immacolata.

  Despite the grievous wounding she’d sustained she was not yet dead. She was standing against one of the walls, clinging to the brick with one hand and keeping her innards from falling with the other.

  “Blood’s been spilled,” she said, as another tremor, more fierce than any that had preceded it, unknitted the foundations of the building. “Blood’s been spilled in the Temple of the Loom.”

  She smiled that terrible, twisted smile.

  “The Fugue’s un
done, sister—” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I came here intending to spill his blood and bring the Gyre down. Seems it’s me who’s done the bleeding. It’s no matter.” Her voice grew weaker. Suzanna stepped close, to hear her better. “It’s all the same in the end. The Fugue is finished. It’ll be dust. All dust …”

  She pushed herself off the wall. Suzanna reached and kept her from falling. The contact made her palm tingle.

  “They’re exiles forever,” Immacolata said, and frail as it was, there was triumph in her voice. “The Fugue ends here. Wiped away as if it had never been.”

  At this, her legs buckled beneath her. Pushing Suzanna away, she stumbled back against the wall. Her hand slipped from her belly; her guts unspooled.

  “I used to dream …,” she said, “terrible emptiness …”

  She stopped speaking, as she slid down the wall, strands of her hair catching on the brick.

  “Sand and nothingness,” she said. “That’s what I dreamed. Sand and nothingness. And here it is.”

  As if to bear out her remark the din grew cataclysmic.

  Satisfied with her labors, Immacolata sank to the ground.

  Suzanna looked toward her escape route, as the bricks of the Temple began to grind upon each other with fresh ferocity. What more could she do here? The mysteries of the Loom had defeated her. If she stayed she’d be buried in the ruins. There was nothing left to do but get out while she still could.

  As she moved to the door, two pencil beams of light sliced through the grimy air, and struck her arm. Their brightness shocked her. More shocking still, their source. They were coming from the eye sockets of one of the sentinels. She stepped out of the path of the light, and as the beams struck the corpse opposite lights flared there too; then in the third sentinel’s head, and the fourth.

  These events weren’t lost on Immacolata.

  “The Loom …,” she whispered, her breath failing.

  The intersecting beams were brightening, and the fraught air was soothed by the sound of voices, softly murmuring words so unfixable they were almost music.

  “You’re too late,” said the Incantatrix, her comment made not to Suzanna but to the dead quartet. “You can’t save it now.”