by Clive Barker
She got to her feet, and looked about her. The colonnades were empty in every direction: there was no hero to call upon, nor mother to take comfort with. She was alone with the Worm.
It raised its head a few feet higher, this minor motion causing a slow avalanche of coils.
It was a beautiful worm, there was no denying that, its iridescent scales glittering, the elegance of its malice enchanting. She felt, looking at it, that same combination of yearning and anxiety which she remembered so well from childhood. Its presence aroused her, there was no other word for it. As if in response to that confession, the Dragon roared. The sound it made was hot and low, seeming to begin in its bowels and winding down its length to break from between the countless needles of its teeth, a promise of greater heat to come.
All light had gone from between the trees. No birds sang or spoke, no animal, if any lived so close to the Dragon, dared move a whisker in the undergrowth. Even the bone-words and the poppies had disappeared, leaving these two elements, Maiden and Monster, to play out their legend.
“If finishes here,” Hobart said, with the Dragon’s laval tongue. Each syllable he shaped was a little fire, which cremated the specks of dust around her head. She was not afraid of all this; rather, exhilarated. She had only ever been an observer of these rites; at last she was a performer.
“Have you nothing more to tell me?” the Dragon demanded, spitting the words from between its serried teeth. “No blessings? No explanations?”
“Nothing,” she said defiantly. What was the purpose of talk, when they were so perfectly transparent to each other? They knew who they were, didn’t they; knew what they meant to one another? In the final confrontation of any great tale dialogue was redundant. With nothing left to say, only action remained: a murder or a marriage.
“Very well,” said the Dragon, and it moved toward her, drawing its length over the wasteland between them with vestigial forelegs.
He means to kill me, she thought; I have to act quickly. What did the Maiden do to protect herself in such circumstances as this? Did she flee, or try to sing the beast to sleep?
The Dragon was towering over her now. But it didn’t attack. Instead it threw back its head, exposing the pale, tender flesh of its throat.
“Please be quick,” it growled.
She was bewildered by this.
“Be quick?” she said.
“Kill me and be done,” it instructed her.
Though her mind didn’t fully comprehend this volte-face, the body she occupied did. She felt it changing in response to the invitation; felt a new ripeness in it. She’d thought to live in this world as an innocent; but that she couldn’t be. She was a grown woman; a woman who’d changed in the last several months, sloughed off years of dead assumptions; found magic inside herself; suffered loss. The role of Maiden—all milk and soft sighs—didn’t fit.
Hobart knew that better than she. He hadn’t come into these pages as a child, but as the man he was, and he’d found a role here that suited his most secret and forbidden dreams. This was no place for pretense. She was not the virgin, he was not the devouring worm. He, in his private imaginings, was power besieged, and seduced, and finally—painfully—martyred. That was why the Dragon before her raised its milky throat.
Kill me and be done, he said, lowering his head a little to look at her. In his surviving eye she saw for the first time how wounded he was by his obsession with her; how he’d come to be in thrall to her, sniffing after her like a lost dog, hating her more with every day that passed for the power she had over him.
In the other reality—in the room from which they’d stepped, which was in turn hidden in a larger Kingdom (worlds within worlds)—he would be brutal with her. Given the chance he’d kill her for fear of the truth he could only admit in the sacred grove of his dreams. But here there was no story to tell except the true one. That was why he raised his palpitating throat, and fluttered his heavily lidded eye. He was the virgin, frightened and alone, ready to die rather than sacrifice his tattered virtue.
And what did that make her? The beast, of course. She was the beast.
No sooner thought than felt.
She sensed her body growing larger, and larger, and larger still. Her bloodstream ran colder than a shark’s. A furnace flared up in her belly.
In front of her Hobart was shrinking. The dragon-skin fell away from him in silky folds, and he was revealed, naked and white: a human male, covered in wounds. A chaste knight at the end of a weary road, bereft of strength or certitude.
She had claimed the skin he’d lost; she felt it solidify around her, its armor glittering. The size of her body was a joy to her. She exulted in the way it felt to be so dangerous and so impossible. This was how she truly dreamed of herself; this was the real Suzanna. She was a Dragon.
With that lesson learned, what was she to do? Finish the story as the man before her wished? Burn him? Swallow him?
Looking down at his insipidity from her rearing height, smelling the dirt off him, the sweat off him—she could easily find it in her heart to do her Dragon’s duty, and devour. It would be easy.
She moved toward him, her shadow engulfing him. He was weeping, and smiling up at her with gratitude. She opened her vast jaws. Her breath singed his hair. She would cook him and swallow him in one swift motion. But she was not quick enough. As she was about to devour him she was distracted by a voice nearby. Was there somebody else in the grove? The sounds certainly belonged in these pages. They were far from human, though there were words attempting to surface through the barking and grunting. Pig; dog; man: a combination of all three, and all panicking.
The Knight Hobart opened his eyes, and there was something new in them, something besides tears and fatigue. He too had heard the voices; and hearing them, he was reminded of the place that lay beyond these Wild Woods.
The Dragon’s moment of triumph was already sliding away. She roared her frustration, but there was nothing to be done. She felt herself shedding her scales, dwindling from the mythical to the particular, while Hobart’s scarred body fluttered like a flame in a breeze, and went out.
Her instant of questioning would surely cost her dearly. In failing to finish the story, to satisfy her victim’s desire for death, she’d given him fresh motive for hatred. What change might it have wrought in Hobart to have dreamed himself devoured; to have made a second womb in the Worm’s belly until he was born back into the world?
Too late, damn it; far too late. The pages could contain them no longer. Leaving their confrontation unfinished they broke from the words in a burst of punctuation. They didn’t leave the din of the animals behind them: it grew louder as the darkness of the Wild Woods lifted.
Her only thought was for the book. She felt it in her hands once more, and took fiercer hold of it. But Hobart had the same idea. As the room appeared around them in all its solidity she found his fingers clawing at hers, tearing at her skin in his eagerness to claim the prize back.
“You should have killed me,” she heard him murmur.
She glanced up at his face. He looked even sicklier than the knight he’d been, sweat running down his sallow cheeks, gaze desperate. Then he seemed to realize himself, and the eyes grew arctic.
Somebody was beating on the other side of the door, from which the pained cacophony of animals still came.
“Wait!” Hobart yelled to his visitors, whoever they were. As he shouted he took one hand from the book and drew a gun from the inside of his jacket, digging the muzzle into Suzanna’s abdomen.
“Let the book go, or I’ll kill you.”
She had no choice but to comply. The menstruum would not be swift enough to incapacitate him before he pulled the trigger.
As her hands slipped from the volume, however, the door was thrown open, and all thought of books was eclipsed by what stood on the threshold.
Once, this quartet had been among the pride of Hobart’s Squad: the smartest, the hardest. But their night of drinking and seduction had
unbuttoned more than their trousers. It had undone their minds as well. It was as if the splendors Suzanna had first seen on Lord Street, the haloes that sainted Human and Seerkind alike, had somehow been drawn inside them, for the skin of their limbs and faces was swollen and raw, bubbles of darkness scurrying around their anatomies like rats under sheets.
In their panic at this disease, they’d clawed their clothes to tatters; their torsos shone with sweat and blood. And from their throats came the cacophony that had called the Dragon and the Knight out of the book; a bestiality that was echoed in a dozen horrid details. The way this one’s face had swollen to lend him a snout; the way another’s hands were fat as paws.
This, she presumed, was how the Seerkind had opposed the occupation of their homeland. They’d feigned passivity to seduce the invading army into their raptures, and this nightmare menagerie was the result. Apt as it was, she was appalled.
One of the pack now staggered into the room, his lips and forehead swollen to the brink of bursting. He was clearly trying to address Hobart, but all his spellbound palate could produce was the complaint of a cat having its neck wrung.
Hobart had no intention of deciphering the mewls, but instead leveled his gun at the wreckage shambling toward him.
“Come no closer,” he warned.
The man, spittle running from his open mouth, made a incoherent appeal.
“Get out!” was Hobart’s response. He took a step toward the quartet.
The leader retreated, as did those in the doorway. Not for the gun’s sake, Suzanna thought, but because Hobart was their master. These new anatomies only confirmed what their training had long ago taught them: that they were unthinking animals, in thrall to the Law.
“Out!” said Hobart again.
They were backing off along the corridor now, their din subdued by their fear of Hobart.
In a matter of moments his attention would no longer be diverted, Suzanna knew. He’d turn on her again, and the slim advantage gained by this interruption would have been squandered.
She had to let her instinct lead; she might have no other opportunity.
Seizing the moment, she ran at Hobart and snatched the book from his hand. He shouted out, and glanced her way, his gun still keeping the howling quartet at bay. With his eye off them, the creatures set up their racket afresh.
“There’s no way out—” Hobart said to her, “except by this door. Maybe you’d like to go that way …?”
The creatures clearly sensed that something was in the air, and redoubled their din. It was like feeding time at the zoo. She’d not get two steps down the passage before they were upon her. Hobart had her trapped.
At that realization, she felt the menstruum rise in her, coming with breath-snatching suddenness.
Hobart knew instantly she was gathering strength. He crossed quickly to the door, and slammed it on the howling breed outside, then turned on her again.
“We saw some things, didn’t we?” he said. “But it’s a story you won’t live to tell.”
He aimed the gun at her face.
It wasn’t possible to analyze what happened next. Perhaps he fired and the shot miraculously went wide, shattering the window behind her. Whatever, she felt the night air invade the room, and the next moment the menstruum was bathing her from head to foot, turning her on her heel, and she was running toward the window with no time to consider the sense of this escape route until she was up on the sill and hurling herself out.
The window was three stories up. But it was too late for such practicalities. She was committed to the leap, or fall, or—flight!
The menstruum scooped her up, throwing its strength against the wall of the house opposite, and letting her slide from window to roof on its cool back. It wasn’t true flight, but it felt like the real thing.
The street reeled beneath her as she tumbled on solid air to meet the eaves of the other house, only to be scooped up a second time and carried over the roof, Hobart’s shouts diminishing behind her.
She could not be held aloft for long, of course; but it was an exhilarating ride while it lasted. She slid helter skelter down another roof, catching sight in that moment of a streak of dawn light between the hills, then over gables and chimney stacks and down, swooping, into a square where the birds were already tuning up for the day.
As she flew down they scattered, startled by the twist evolution had taken to produce such a bird as this. Her landing must have reassured them that there was much design work still to do. She skidded across the paving stones, the menstruum cushioning the worst of the impact, and came to a halt inches from a mosaic-covered wall.
Shaking, and faintly nauseous, she stood up. The entire flight had probably lasted no more than twenty seconds, but already she heard voices raising the alarm in an adjacent street.
Clutching Mimi’s gift, she slipped from the square and out of the township by a route that took her once in a circle and twice almost threw her into the arms of her pursuers. Every step of the way she discovered a new bruise, but she was at least alive, and wiser for the night’s adventures.
Life and wisdom. What more could anybody ask?
From Everville
That,” said the man with the salmon-pink tie, gesturing toward the canvas on the gallery wall, “is an abomination. What the hell’s it called?” He peered at his price sheet.
“Bronx Apocalypse,” the man at his side said. “Bronx Apocalypse,” the critic snorted. “Jesus!”
He eyed the man who’d supplied the title. “You’re not him, are you?” he said. “You’re not this fellow Dusseldorf?”
The other man—a well-made fellow in his late thirties, with three days’ growth of beard and the eyes of an insomniac—shook his head. “No. I’m not.”
“You are in one of the paintings though, aren’t you?” said the Asian woman at Salmon Tie’s side. “Am I?”
She took the sheet from her companion’s hand and scanned the twenty or so titles upon it. “There,” she said. “D’Amour in Wyckoff Street. It’s the big painting next door,” she said to Salmon Tie, “with that bilious sky.”
“Loathsome,” the man remarked. “Dusseldorf should go back to pushing heroin or whatever the hell he was doing. He’s got no business foisting this crap on people.”
“Ted didn’t push,” D’Amour said. He spoke softly, but there was no doubting the warning in his voice.
“I was simply stating my opinion,” the man said, somewhat defensively.
“Just don’t spread lies,” D’Amour said. “You’ll put the Devil out of work.”
It was July 8, a Friday, and the Devil was much on Harry’s mind tonight. New York was a stew as ever, and, as ever, Harry wished he could be out of the pot and away, but there was nowhere to go; nowhere he wouldn’t be followed and found. And here, at least, in the sweet-and-sour streets he knew so well, he had niches and hiding places; he had people who owed him, people who feared him. He even had a couple of friends.
One of whom was Ted Dusseldorf, reformed heroin addict, sometime performance artist, and now, remarkably, a painter of metropolitan apocalypses.
There he was, holding court in front of one of his rowdier pieces, all five foot nothing of him, dressed in a baggy plaid suit, and chewing on a contender for the largest damn cigar in Manhattan.
“Ham! Harry!” he said, laying eyes on D’Amour. “Thanks for coming.” He deserted his little audience and hooked his arm over Harry’s shoulder. “I know you hate crowds, but I wanted you to see I got myself some admirers.”
“Any sales?”
“Yeah, would you believe it? Nice Jewish lady, big collector, lives on the park, fancy address, buys that—” he jabbed his cigar in the direction of Slaughtered Lambs on the Brooklyn Bridge, “for her dining room. I guess maybe she’s a vegetarian,” he added, with a catarrhal laugh. “Sold a couple of drawings too. I mean, I ain’t gonna get rich, you know, but I proved something, right?”
“That you did.”
“I want
you to see the masterwork,” Ted said, leading Harry through the throng, which was divided into three distinct camps. The inevitable fashion victims, here to be seen and noted in columns. A smattering of well-heeled collectors, slumming. And Ted’s friends, several of whom had tattoos as colorful as anything on the walls.
“I had this guy come up to me,” Ted said, “fancy shoes, designer haircut, he says: Fantasy’s so passé. I said: What fantasy? He looks at me like I farted. He says: These works of yours. I said: This isn’t fantasy. This is my life. He shakes his head, walks away.” Ted leaned closer to Harry. “I think sometimes there’s two different kinds of people in the world. The people who understand and the people who don’t. And if they don’t, it’s no use trying to explain, ‘cause it’s just beyond them, and it always will be.”
There was an eight-by-six foot canvas on the wall ahead, its colors more livid and its focus more strident than anything else in the exhibition.
“You know, it keeps me sane, doin’ this shit. If I hadn’t started lettin’ all this out onto canvas, man, I’d have lost my fuckin’ mind. I don’t know how you keep your head straight, Harry. I really don’t. I mean, knowing what you know, seeing what you see …”
The knot of people standing in front of the picture parted, seeing the artist and his model approach, giving them plain view of the masterpiece. Like most of the other works it too depicted a commonplace street. Only this was a street Harry,’ could name. This was Wyckoff Street, in Brooklyn, where one sunny Easter Sunday almost a decade before Harry had first been brushed by infernal wings.
Ted had painted the street pretty much as it looked—drab and uncomfortable—and had placed the figure of D’Amour in the middle of the thoroughfare, regarding the viewer with a curious gaze, as if to say: do you see what I see? At first glance it seemed there was nothing untoward about the scene, but further study gave the lie to that. Rather than simply accruing a host of disturbing details on the canvas, Ted had worked a subtler effect. He’d laid down a field of mushy scarlets and ochers, like the guts of an overripe pomegranate, and then stroked the details of Wyckoff Street over this seething backcloth, the grays and sepias of brick and iron and asphalt never completely concealing the rotted hues beneath, so that for all the carefully rendered detail, Wyckoff Street looked like a veil drawn over a more insistent and powerful reality.