by Clive Barker
Dolan jabbed his finger in Erwin’s direction. “Now you take that back,” he said.
“Why would I do that?” Erwin said. “It’s the truth.”
“I put some pleasure in people’s lives. What did you ever do, besides get yourself murdered?”
“Now you take care.”
“You think your customers will mourn you, Toothaker? No. They’ll say: Thank God, there’s one less lawyer in the world.”
“I told you, take care!”
“I’m quaking, Toothaker.” Dolan raised his hand. “Look at that, shaking like a leaf.”
“If you’re so damn strong why’d you put a bullet through your brain, huh? Gun slip, did it?”
“Shut up.”
“Or were you just so full of guilt—”
“I said—”
“So full of guilt the only thing left to do was kill yourself?”
“I don’t have to listen to this,” Dolan said, turning his back and stalking away.
“If it’s any comfort,” Erwin called after him, “I’m sure you made a lot of people very happy.”
“Asshole!” Dolan yelled back at him, and before Erwin had a chance to muster a reply, was gone, like smoke in a high wind.
NINE
I
We have our crew, Joe.”
Joe opened his eyes. Noah was standing a little way up the beach with six individuals standing a couple of yards behind him, two of them less than half Noah’s height, one a foot taller, the other three broad as stevedores. He could make out little else. The brightness had almost gone out of the sky entirely. Now it simmered like a pot of dark pigments—purples and grays and blues—that shed a constantly shifting murk on the beach and sea.
“We should get moving,” Noah went on. “There are currents to catch.”
He turned to the six crew members, and spoke to them in a voice Joe had not heard from him before, low and monotonous. They moved to their tasks without so much as a murmur, one of the smaller pair clambering up into the wheelhouse while the other five went to the bow of The Fanacapan and began to push the vessel down the beach. It was a plainly backbreaking labor, even if they made no sound of complaint, and Joe went to lend a hand. But Noah intercepted him. “They can do it,” he said, drawing Joe out of the way.
“How did you hire them?”
“They’re volunteers.”
“You must have promised them something.”
“They’re doing it for love,” Noah said.
“I don’t get it.”
“Don’t concern yourself,” Noah said. “Let’s just be away while we can.” He turned to watch the volunteers pushing the boat out. The waves were breaking against the stern now, sending up fans of spray. “The news is worse than I’d imagined,” Noah went on, now turning his gaze towards the invisible horizon. Lightning was moving through the clouds that coiled there, the bolts, if that was what they were, vast and serpentine. Some rose from sea to sky, describing vivid scrawls that burned in the eye after they’d gone. Some came at each other like locomotives, and, colliding, gave birth to showers of smaller bolts. Some simply fell in blazing sheets and seemed to sink into the sea, their brilliance barely dimmed by the fathoms, until they drowned.
“News about what?” Joe asked.
“About what’s out there.”
“And what is out there?”
“I suppose you should be told,” Noah replied. “The Iad Uroboros is moving this way. The greatest evil in this world or yours.”
“What is it?”
“Not it. Them. It’s a nation. A people. Not remotely like us, but a people nevertheless, who’ve always harbored a hunger to be in your world.”
“Why?”
“Does appetite need reasons?” Noah said. “They’ve tried before, and been stopped. But this time—”
“What’s being done about it?”
“The volunteers don’t know. I’m not sure they even care.” He drew a little closer to Joe. “One thing,” he said. “Don’t engage them in conversation, however tempted you are. Their silence is part of my deal with them.” Joe looked puzzled. “Don’t ask,” Noah said, “for fear you won’t like the answer. Just believe me, this is for the best.” The vessel was in the water now, rising and falling as the waves broke against it. “We’d better get aboard,” Noah said, and with more strength in his limbs than Joe he strode out into the surf and was hauled up onto the deck by one of the volunteers, all of whom were now aboard. Joe followed, his mind a mass of confusions.
“We’re out of our minds,” he told Noah once he was aboard. The volunteers were at the oars and laboring to row the vessel out beyond the breakers. Joe had to yell above the noise of sea and creaking timbers. “You know that? We’re out of our fucking minds!”
“Why’s that?” Noah yelled back.
“Look what we’re heading into!” Joe hollered, pointing out towards the maelstrom.
“You’re right,” Noah said, catching hold of a rope ladder to keep from being thrown off his feet. “This may be the end of us both.” He laughed, and for a moment Joe considered throwing himself overboard and striking out for the shore while he was still within swimming distance. “But my friend,” Noah went on, laying his hand on Joe’s shoulder. “You’ve come so far. So very far. And why? Because you know in your heart this is your journey as much as it’s mine. You have to take it, or you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”
“Which would at least be long,” Joe yelled.
“Not without power,” Noah replied. “Without power it’s over in a couple of breaths, and before you know it you’re on your deathbed thinking: Why didn’t I trust my instinct? Why didn’t I dare?”
“You talk like you know me,” Joe replied, irritated by Noah’s presumption. “You don’t.”
“Isn’t it a universal truth that men regret their lives?” Noah said. “And die wishing they could live again?” Joe had no reply to this. “If you want to make for shore,” Noah went on, “best do it quickly.”
Joe glanced back at the beach, and was astonished to see that in this short time the vessel had cleared the breakers and was in the grip of a current that was carrying it away from land at no little speed. He looked along the darkened shore towards the city, its harbor lights twinkling, then back to the crack, and the small encampment around it. Then, determined he would regret nothing, he turned his back on the sight, and his face towards the raging seas ahead.
* * *
II
Tesla and Phoebe had little in common, beyond their womanhood. Tesla had traveled; Phoebe had not. Phoebe had been married; Tesla had not. Tesla had never been in love, not obsessively; Phoebe had, and still was.
It made her curiously open, Tesla soon discovered; as though anything was plausible in a world where passion held sway. And sway it held; no doubt of that. Though they knew each other scarcely at all, Phoebe seemed to sense an uncensorious soul in Tesla, and soon began to freely talk about the scandal in which she’d played so large a role. More particularly, she spoke of Joe Flicker—of his eyes, his kisses, his ways in bed—all of this with a sweet boastfulness, as if he were a prize she had been awarded for suffering a life with Morton. The world was strange, she said several times, apropos of how they’d met, or how quickly they’d discovered the depth of their feelings.
“I know,” Tesla said, wondering as she listened how much this woman would accept if and when she asked for Tesla’s story in return. That was put to the test when Tesla got off the phone from Grillo, and Phoebe, who’d been in the room throughout the call said, “What was that all about?”
“You really want to know?”
“I asked, didn’t I?”
She began with the easy stuff: Grillo, and the Reef, and how she’d traveled the states in the last five years, discovering in the progress that things were damn weird out there.
“Like how?” Phoebe said.
“This is going to sound crazy.”
“I don’t care,” said Phoe
be. “I want to know.”
“I think maybe we’re coming to the end of being what we are. We’re going to take an evolutionary jump. And that makes this a dangerous and wonderful time.”
“Why dangerous?”
“Because there are things that don’t want us to take the jump. Things that’d prefer us to stay just the way we are, wandering around blindly, afraid of our own shadows, afraid of being dead and afraid of being too much alive. They want to keep us that way. But then there’s people everywhere saying: I’m not going to be blind. I’m not going to be afraid. I can see invisible roads. I can hear angel’s voices. I know who I was before I was born and I know what I want to be when I’m dead.”
“You’ve met people like this?”
“Oh yes.”
“That’s wonderful,” said Phoebe. “I don’t know if I believe any of those things, but it’s still wonderful.” She got to her feet and went to the refrigerator, talking on as she surveyed the contents. “What about the things that want to stop us?” she said. “I don’t think I believe in the Devil, so maybe you’re right about that, but if not the Devil then who are these people?”
“That’s another conversation,” Tesla said.
“Want to talk while we eat?” Phoebe said. “I’m getting hungry. How about you?”
“Getting that way.”
“There’s nothing worth having in there,” she said, closing the fridge. “We’ll have to go out. You want pizza? Chicken?”
“I don’t care. Anywhere but that fucking diner.”
“You mean Bosley’s place?”
“What an asshole.”
“The hamburgers are good.”
“I had the fish.”
They walked rather than taking the car, and while they walked Phoebe told Tesla how she’d come to gain a lover and lose a husband. The more she told, the more Tesla warmed to her. She was a curious mingling of small-town pretensions (she plainly thought herself better than most of her fellow Evervillians) and charming self-deprecation (especially on the subject of her weight); funny at times (she was wittily indiscreet about the medical problems of those who, upon seeing her on the sidewalk, played the Pharisee) and at other times (speaking about Joe, and how she’d almost given up believing she could be loved that way) sweetly touching.
“You’ve got no idea where he’s gone, then?” Tesla said.
“No.” Phoebe surveyed the thronged street ahead of them. “He can’t hide in a crowd, that’s for sure. When he comes back he’ll have to be really careful.”
“You’re sure he’ll come back?”
“Sure I’m sure. He promised.” She cast Tesla a sideways glance. “You think I sound stupid.”
“No, just trusting.”
“We’ve all got to trust somebody, right?”
“Do we?”
“If you could feel what I feel,” Phoebe said, “you wouldn’t ask that question.”
“All I know is, you’re alone in the end. Always.”
“Who’s talking about the end?” Phoebe said.
Tesla stepped out of the stream of people into the street, taking Phoebe with her. “Listen to me,” she said, “something terrible’s going to happen here. I don’t know exactly what and I don’t know exactly when, but trust me: This place is finished.”
Phoebe said nothing at first. She simply looked up and down the busy street. Then, after a moment to consider, she said, “It can’t happen fast enough as far as I’m concerned.”
“You mean that?”
“Just ’cause I live here doesn’t mean I like it,” Phoebe replied. “I’m not saying I believe you, I’m just saying if it happens you won’t hear any complaints from me.”
She’s quite a piece of work, Raul said when they found a table at the pizza parlor, and Phoebe had gone off to relieve herself.
“I wondered where you’d got to.”
I was just enjoying the girl-talk, Raul said. She’s one angry lady.
“She’s no lady,” Tesla said, “that’s what I like about her. Pity about her boyfriend.”
You think he’s gone for good, right?
“Don’t you?”
Probably. Why are you wasting time with her? I mean she’s very entertaining, but we came here to find Fletcher.
“I can’t go back to Toothaker’s house alone,” Tesla replied. “I just can’t. Soon as I smelled that smell—”
Maybe it was just a backed-up sewer.
“And maybe it was Lix,” Tesla said. “And whoever raised them’s already killed Fletcher.”
But we have to get in to find out.
“Right.”
And you think this woman’s going to lend some moral support?
“If it’s not her who’s it going to be? I can’t wait till Lucien comes crawling back.”
I knew we’d get to him—
“I’m not blaming you, I’m just saying: I need help, and she’s the only help available.”
Suppose she comes to some serious harm?
“I don’t want to think about that.”
You have to.
“What are you, Jiminy Cricket? I’ll be honest with her. I’ll tell her what we’re up against—”
So then you’re not responsible, is that it? Tesla, she’s just an ordinary woman.
“So was I,” Tesla reminded him.
Whatever you were, Tesla, I don’t think you were ever ordinary.
“Thank you.”
My pleasure.
“She’s coming back. I’m going to tell her, Raul. I have to.”
It’ll end in tears—
“Doesn’t it always?”
It was a hell of a conversation to have over a pepperoni pizza, but Phoebe’s appetite wasn’t visibly curbed by anything that Tesla had to say. She listened without comment as Tesla went through her experiences in the Loop, detail by terrible detail, stopping every now and then to say: I know this sounds ridiculous or You probably think this is crazy until Phoebe told her not to bother, because yes, it was crazy, but she didn’t care. Tesla took her at her word, and continued the account without further interruption, until she got to the matter of the Lix. Here she stopped.
“What’s the problem?” Phoebe wanted to know.
“I’ll leave this bit to later.”
“Why?”
“It’s disgusting, is why. And we’re eating.”
“If you can bear to tell it, it won’t bother me. I’ve worked in a doctor’s office for eight years, remember? I’ve seen everything.”
“You never saw anything like a Lix,” Tesla said, and went on to describe them and their conception, dropping her volume even lower than it had been. Phoebe was unfazed.
“And you think it was one of these Lix things you saw in Erwin’s house?”
“I think it’s possible, yes.”
“This guy Fletcher made them?”
“I doubt it.”
“Then what?”
“Somebody who meant Fletcher harm. Somebody who came after him, and found him there and—” She threw up her hands. “The fact is, I don’t know. And the only way I’ll find out—”
“Is by going in there.”
“Right.”
“Seems to me,” Phoebe said, “if the Lix are real—I’m not saying they are, I’m saying if they are—and if they’re made of what you say they’re made of, they shouldn’t be that hard to kill.”
“Some they grow six, seven feet long,” Tesla said.
“Huh. And you’ve actually seen these things?”
“Oh, I’ve seen them.” She turned her gaze out through the window, in part so as not to look at the congealing pizza on her plate, in part so that Phoebe couldn’t see the fear in her eyes. “They got into my apartment in L.A.—”
“What did they do: Come up through the toilet?”
Tesla didn’t reply.
You’re going to have to tell her, Raul murmured in her head.
“Well?” Phoebe said.
Tell her about Kissoon.<
br />
“She’ll freak,” Tesla thought.
She’s doing pretty well so far.
Tesla glanced back at Phoebe, who was finishing off her pizza while she waited for a reply.
“Once I’ve started with Kissoon, where do I stop?” she said to Raul.
You should have thought of that before you mentioned the Lix. It’s all part of the same story.
Silence from Tesla.
Isn’t it? he prodded.
“I guess so.”
So tell her. Tell her about Kissoon. Tell her about the Loop. Tell her about the Shoal. Tell her about Quiddity if she hasn’t got up and left.
“Did you know your lips move when you’re thinking?” Phoebe said.
“They do?”
“Just a little.”
“Well—I was debating something.”
“What?”
“Whether I could tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but—”
“And have you decided?”
Tell her.
“Yes. I’ve decided,” Tesla leaned forward, pushing her plate aside. “In answer to your question,” she said, “no, the Lix didn’t come up from the toilet. They came from a loop in time—”
This was the tale she’d never told. Not in its entirety. She’d given Grillo and D’Amour the bare outlines, of course, but she’d never been able to bring herself to fill in the details. They were too painful, too ugly. But she told it now, to this woman she barely knew, and once she’d begun it wasn’t so difficult, not with the clatter of plates and the chatter of patrons all around them; a wall of normality to keep the past from catching hold of her heart.
“There was a man called Kissoon,” she began, “and I think if we had to make a list of the worst people to have graced the planet he’d probably be somewhere near the top. He was a—what was he?—a shaman, he called himself, but that doesn’t really get to it. He had power, a lot of power. He could play with time, he could get in and out of people’s heads, he could make Lix—”
“So he was the one.”
“It’s an old trick, apparently. Sorcerers have been doing it for centuries. And when I say sorcerers I’m not talking about rabbits and hats, I’m talking about people who could change the world—who have changed the world, sometimes—in ways we’ll never completely understand.”