by Clive Barker
She didn’t let up. She kept calling, over and over.
“Joe . . . Joe . . . Joe . . . ”
Sprawled asleep in the cabin of The Fanacapan, Joe heard somebody calling his name. He almost stirred, thinking the summons was coming from somewhere in the waking world, but as soon as he began to float up out of his slumbers, the call became more remote, so he let the weight of his fatigue carry him back down into dreams.
The voice came again and this time he recognized it.
Phoebe! It was Phoebe. She was trying to find him.
He started to reply to her, but before he could do so she called out to him again.
“Where are you, Joe?” she said.
“I’m here,” he said. “I can hear you. Can you hear me?”
“Oh my God,” she gasped, plainly astonished that this was actually happening. “Is that really you?”
“It’s really me.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m on a ship.”
On a ship? she thought. What the hell was he doing on a ship? Had he fled to Portland and hopped the first cargo vessel out?
“You’ve left me,” she said.
“No, I haven’t. I swear.”
“That’s easy to say—” she murmured, her voice thickening with tears, “I’m on my own, Joe—”
“Don’t cry.”
“And I’m afraid—”
“Listen to me,” he said softly. “Are you dreaming?”
She had to think about this for a moment. “Yes,” she said. “I’m dreaming.”
“Then maybe we’re not that far apart,” he said. “Maybe we can find each other.”
“Where?”
“In the sea. In the dream-sea.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Hold on,” he said. “Just hold on to my voice. I’ll lead you here.”
He didn’t dare wake. If he woke, the contact between them would surely be broken, and she’d despair (she was already close to that; he could hear it in her voice) and perhaps give up on ever finding him again. He had to walk a very narrow path; the path that lay between the state of dreaming, which was one of forgetfulness, and the waking world, where he would lose contact with her. He had to somehow find his way across the solid boards of this solid boat without rising from slumber to do so, and plunge into the waters of Quiddity, where perhaps the paradox of dreaming with his eyes open would be countenanced and he could call her to him.
“Joe?”
“Just wait for me—” he murmured.
“I can’t. I’m going crazy.”
“No you’re not. It’s just that things are stranger than we ever thought.”
“I’m afraid—”
“Don’t be.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to die and I’ll never see you again.”
“You’ll see me. Just hold on, Phoebe. You’ll see me.”
He felt the cabin door brush against his arm; felt the steps up into the deck beneath his feet. At the top, he stumbled, and his eyes might have flickered open, but that by chance she called to him, and her voice anchored him; kept him in a sweet sleep.
He turned to his right. Walked two, three, four strides until he felt the side of the boat against his shins. Then he threw himself overboard.
The water was cold, the shock of it slapped him into wakefulness. He opened his eyes to see the weeds around him like a swaying thicket, its tangle rife with fish, most of them no larger than those he’d swallowed whole on the shore. Cursing his consciousness, he looked up towards the surface, and as he did so heard Phoebe again, calling him.
“Joe—?” she said, her voice no longer despairing, but light; almost excited.
He caught hold of the knotted weed around him, so as not to float to the surface. “I’m here,” he thought. “Can you hear me?”
There was no answer at first, and he feared her call had been the remnants of their previous contact. But no. She spoke again, softly.
“I can hear you.”
It was as though her voice was in the very water around him. The syllables seemed to caress his face.
“Stay where you are,” she said.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he replied. It seemed he had no need of breath; or rather that the waters were supplying him with air through his skin. He felt no ache in his chest; no panic. Simply exhilaration.
He turned himself around in the water, parting the strands of weed to look for her. The fish had no fear of him. They darted around his face, and brushed against his back and belly; they played between his legs. And then, out of the tangle to his right, a form he knew. Not Phoebe, but a Zehrapushu, a spirit pilot, its golden gaze fixed upon him. He gave up turning a moment, in order to let it see him properly. It scooted around him once, clockwise, then reversed its direction and did the same again, always coming to a perfect hovering halt in front of his face.
It knew him. He was certain of it. The way its huge eye tilted in its socket, scanning his face; the way it came close enough to brush his cheek with its tentacles, fearlessly; the way it flirted with his fingers, as though encouraging them to caress it: all were signs of familiarity. And if this was not the same ’shu he’d cradled on the shore (and how many billion to one was that chance?) then he had to assume that for all Noah’s misrepresentations, he’d been telling the truth on the subject of ’shu. They had not many minds, but one, and this individual knew him because it had seen him through its brother or sister’s eyes.
Suddenly, it darted away. He watched it go, weaving through the thicket of weeds, and as it disappeared from sight, the tangle around him convulsed, and he heard Phoebe say his name again, not remotely this time, but almost like a whisper in his ear. He turned his head to the left, and—
There he was, just a few feet from her, floating in the forested water, looking at her. Even now, she wasn’t sure how she’d got here. One moment she’d been lost in a mist, hearing Joe’s voice but unable to reach him; the next she’d been naked and tumbling down the bank of Unger’s Creek. The creek was running high and fast, and in the grip of its water she was carried away. She’d been vaguely aware that this was her mind’s prosaic creation; its way of supplying pictures to accompany the journey her spirit was taking. But even as she’d grasped that slippery notion, the landscape had receded around her, the sky overhead becoming vast and strange, and Unger’s Creek had disappeared, delivering her into far deeper waters.
Down she went, down, down into the dream-sea. And though she felt its currents caress her and saw its shoals part like shimmering veils to let her pass, and so knew she wasn’t imagining this, she didn’t fear that she’d drown. The laws that bound her body in the world she’d left had no authority here. She moved with exquisite ease, passing over a landscape whose mysteries she could not begin to fathom, the most puzzling of which lay waiting for her at the end of the journey in the person of the man she’d last seen hobbling out of a door in Everville.
“It’s really you,” she said, opening her arms to him.
He swam to meet her, his voice in her head, the way it had been from the beginning of this strange journey. “Yes,” he said, “it’s really me,” and held her tight.
“You said you were on a ship.”
He directed her gaze up towards the dark shadow overhead.
“That’s it,” he said.
“Can I go with you?” she asked him, knowing as she spoke what the answer would be.
“You’re dreaming this,” he said. “When you wake up—”
“I’ll be back in bed?”
“Yes.”
She took fiercer hold of him. “Then I won’t wake up,” she said, “I’ll stay with you until you wake up too.”
“It’s not as easy as that,” he said. “I have a journey I have to take.”
“Where to?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why are you taking it? Why not just tell me where you’re sleeping and I’ll go find you?”
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“I’m not sleeping, Phoebe.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is me.” He touched her face. “The real me. You’re dreaming but I’m not. I’m here, mind and body.”
She started to draw away from him, distressed. “That’s not true,” she said.
“It is. I walked through a door, and I was in another world.”
“What door?” she demanded to know.
“On the mountain,” he said.
Her face grew slack. She stared past him into the swaying fronds. “Then it’s true,” she said. “Quiddity’s real.”
“How do you know that name?”
“A woman I met . . . ” Phoebe said, her tone and expression distracted.
“What woman?”
“Tesla . . . Tesla Bombeck. She’s downstairs right now . . . I thought she was crazy—”
“Whoever she is,” Joe said, “she isn’t crazy. Things are weirder than either of us ever guessed, Phoebe.”
She put her hands on his face, “I want to be with you,” she said.
“You are.”
“No. Really be with you.”
“I’m going to come back,” Joe said, “sooner or later.” He kissed her face. “Things are going to be all right.”
“Tell me about the door, Joe,” she said.
Instead, he kissed her again, and again, and now she opened her mouth to let his tongue between her lips, still speaking her thoughts at him. “The door, Joe—”
“Don’t go near it,” he said, pressing his face against hers. “Just be here with me now. Be close with me. Oh God, Phoebe, I love you.” He kissed her cheek and eyes, running his fingers up through her hair.
“I love you too,” she said. “And I want us to be together more than anything. More than anything, Joe.”
“We will be. We will be,” he said. “I can’t live without you, baby. I told you, didn’t I?”
“Keep telling me. I need to know.”
“I’ll do better than tell you.” He ran his hands down her shoulders, and round to touch her breasts. “Beautiful,” he murmured. His left hand lingered there while his right slid on down over her belly, between her legs. She raised her knees little. He ran his fingers back and forth over her sex.
She sighed, and leaned forward to kiss him. “I want to stay here,” she said. “I want to sleep forever and just stay here with you.”
He slid down her body now, kissing her along the way, her neck, her breasts, her belly, until he had his lips where his fingers had been, his tongue darting between. She opened her legs a little wider, and he took the signal of her abandon, pressing his palms against her knees to spread her still wider and burying his face in her groin.
The weeds seemed to sense the passion in their midst, and were excited by it. Their sinuous stems stroked her body with an eagerness all of their own, their silky pods nuzzling her. Four or five of them dallied around her face, like suitors awaiting an invitation to her mouth, while others ran up her spine and down between the cleft of her buttocks.
She started to let out little gasps of bliss, and reached out to left and right of her to take handfuls of the weed. It responded to her attentions instantly, wrapping lengths of itself around her wrists and elbows to anchor her, and swaying against her body with fresh abandon, its strands, soft though they were, falling on her naked back like gentle whips, rousing her dreamed skin, her spirit skin, to new heights of sensation.
All the while Joe licked and probed below, and with each new wave of sensation that passed through her and over her, and spread out into the forest of weed around her, she felt the limits of her body dissolving, as though she and the waters and the weeds were no longer quite distinct. There was nothing unpleasant or distressing about this. Quite the reverse. The more she spread, the more of her there was to feel pleasure, her sensations flowing out into the stems and the pods and the swaying element in which she floated, then returning in waves to the soft vessel of her body, which in turn spread wider to accommodate the feelings, so that body and feelings kept on growing, each feeding off the other’s advancement.
She looked up at the surface of the dream-sea, and at the dark shape of the boat above. There were figures working in the water up there, she saw, hacking at the weed to clear a path for the vessel. She wished she could coax them down to join the fun; to share what she was feeling and exuding; to watch them dissolve in the grip of bliss, and have them open to her.
She felt a sliver of shame at these thoughts—moments ago this had been the most intimate of encounters between herself and Joe, now here she was, wanting to invite everyone in sight to join the party—but she couldn’t help it. Her pleasure didn’t belong to her. It couldn’t be boxed, it couldn’t be banked, it couldn’t be traded or trafficked. It moved through her and disappeared, existing for the length of a shudder or a sigh, or a loving afternoon.
It was part of being alive, like tears and hunger; and given that her being was connected with everything else with the water and the weeds and the men on the boat above—what right did she have to prevent pleasure radiating from her, giving itself freely?
With a great democracy of bliss founded in her head, she looked down at Joe through the swaying veil of stems that were caressing her face. Oh, but he was beautiful. The flesh of him, the bone of him; the bruise and blood of him.
He seemed to sense her scrutiny, and cast his gaze up towards her. She smiled down upon him, feeling at that moment like some sea goddess in her temple while he, her worshipper, rose up from the darkness to eat and drink from her.
The stems had caught hold of him as they had her, she saw. They were wrapped around his limbs, and pressed against his back and buttocks with the same shamelessness as they pressed against her. She no longer saw any reason to keep them out. She relaxed her body and on the instant they floated into her, down her throat, up into her bowels, even pressing between her labia and Joe’s lips to come into her by that route.
The surge of sensations almost undid her, literally. For a moment her body seemed to lose its coherence, shredding itself in pleasured layers, opening at every pore and letting the waters and all they contained rush into her, dissolving her dreamed bones.
Oh, but it was wonderful. Her parameters spread to contain all that swayed and surged around her. She was present in the waters, and in the stems and in the pods; she was rising towards the boat, she was plunging towards the darkness. She was embracing Joe as she never embraced him before, her consciousness surrounding him from all sides. She nuzzled at his ass in the form of pods, eager to enter him as she was entered; she bound his legs and arms, round and round, so tight she could feel the throb of his veins; she flowed across his back and against his chest, and against his groin too, where the water was murky with blood. He was plainly wounded, but not so badly that he couldn’t be aroused. She could see and feel his rod, hard in his pants, wanting liberty.
If not for the memory of their previous couplings—the particulars of which would never leave her—she might have let her body dissolve completely. But the promise of having that intimacy again, even if it was just one more time, kept her from embracing dissolution.
Tomorrow maybe, or the day after, she’d let Phoebe go, and be unmade into everything. But before that happened—before her body slipped from her and went into the world—she wanted to enjoy its particulars a little longer; wanted to take pleasure in knitting her substance with Joe’s.
She pulled her arms free of the strands and reached down to take hold of his head. Again, he looked at her, but now his expression was so distracted she wasn’t even certain he saw her. Then a smile appeared in his eyes and loosing himself from the eager weeds he climbed her body until they were face to face, mouth to mouth.
Did he know what had happened to her in the last few moments, she wondered? It seemed not, for when she heard his voice in her head again, murmuring his love to her, it was as if he was picking up where he’d left off.
“You can’t stay,�
�� he said. “You’ll wake up sooner or later, and when you do—”
“I’ll come and find you.”
He laid his forefinger against her lips, though she was not using them to speak. “Stay away from the door,” he said, “it’s dangerous. There’s something terrible coming through it. Understand me? Please, Phoebe, tell me you understand me?”
“What’s coming through it?” she said. “Tell me.”
“Iad,” he said, “Iad Uroboros.”
His hand slipped from her mouth to the back of her head, and took firm hold of her. “I want you to promise me you’ll stay away from the door,” he said.
She pushed her tongue out between her lips. She wasn’t going to promise anything.
“Phoebe,” he said, but before he could get beyond her name she mashed her face against his, distracting him with her fervor.
“I love you,” she thought, “and I want you inside me.”
He didn’t need a second invitation. She felt him pulling his belt, then felt his dick pressing into her. It was easy; oh it was easy. But it pained him. He grimaced, and stopped moving; stopped kissing her even.
“Are you all right?” she breathed.
“Your damn husband,” he said, his voice small, and punctuated with little gasps. “I don’t know . . . I don’t know if I can . . . do this—”
“It’s okay.”
“Christ, it hurts.”
“I said it’s okay.”
“I want to finish what I started,” he said, and began to push into her again. She looked down. The water between them was tinged red; he was plainly bleeding, and badly.
“We should stop,” she said.
But he had a dogged look upon his face: teeth gritted, brow furrowed. “I want to finish,” he gasped, “I want to—”
A shadow fell upon them both. Phoebe looked up, and saw that somebody was leaning over the side of the boat, pointing down into the water. Did she hear a voice, remotely? She thought so.