by Clive Barker
My dick’s Venus, Owen thought, rising from the surf.
The thought amused him, and while he was giggling at his own wit the boy’s mouth brought him to crisis.
“No!” he yelled, and forcibly pulled himself from between Seth’s lips, pinching it behind the head so hard it hurt. For a moment he thought he’d lost the battle. He grunted and convulsed, closing his eyes against the bewitching sight of Seth kneeling in front of him, his chin shiny. He pinched harder still, and by and by the crisis retreated.
“That was very close,” he gasped.
“I thought you wanted me to finish.”
Seth opened his eyes again. Sometime during the proceedings Seth had unzipped, and slickened his cock. He was still working it.
“I haven’t time to kick back and recover,” Owen replied, “Lord knows, I shouldn’t have let you start, but—”
“You kissed me first,” Seth said, a little petulantly.
“Mea culpa,” Owen said, raising his hands in mock surrender. “I’ll know better next time.”
Seth looked despondent. “There’s not going to be a next time, is there?” he said.
“Seth—”
“There’s no need to lie to me,” the boy replied, tucking his sex out of sight. “I’m not stupid.”
“No, you’re not,” Owen said. “Get up, will you?” Seth got to his feet, wiping his lips and chin with the ball of his hand. “It’s because you’re not stupid I’ve told you all I have. I’m trusting you with secrets I haven’t shared with any living soul.”
“Why?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe because I need your company more than I thought I did.”
“But for how long?”
“Don’t push me, Seth. There are consequences here. I have to be certain I won’t lose everything I fought for if I bring you along.”
“But you might?”
“I said: Don’t push me.” Seth hung his head. “And don’t do that, either. Look me in the eyes.” Slowly Seth raised his head again. He was close to tears. “I can’t be responsible for you, boy. Do you understand me?” Seth nodded. “I don’t know what’s going to happen out there myself. Not exactly. I only know that a lot of powerful minds have been wiped clean—gone, just like that—because they got to the dance, and found they didn’t know the steps.” He shrugged and sighed. “I don’t know what I feel for you, Seth, but I know I don’t want to leave you a vegetable. I couldn’t forgive myself that. On the other hand”—he took hold of the boy’s chin, his thumb in the cleft—“something about our destinies seems to be intermingled.” Seth opened his mouth to speak, but Owen hushed him with a look. “I don’t want another word on this subject,” he said.
“I wasn’t going to say a word.”
“Yes you were.”
“Not about that.”
“What then?”
“I was just going to say: I hear the band. Listen.”
He was right. The distant sound of brass and drum was drifting in through the broken window.
“The parade’s started,” Seth said.
“At last,” Owen replied, his gaze going past Seth to the crossroads below. “Oh my boy, now we shall see—”
FOUR
I suggest you stand still for a moment,” Raul said.
Tesla stopped in her tracks, bringing Phoebe to a halt beside her.
Very still.
There was movement in the mist ten or twelve yards ahead of them, Tesla saw. Four figures (one of them was the hammerer, she thought) moving across the slope. Phoebe had seen them too, and was holding her breath. If any of the quartet glanced in their direction, the game was up. With luck Tesla thought she might take out two of the four before they reached the spot where Phoebe and she were standing, but any one of the quartet looked fully capable of killing them both with a blow.
Not the prettiest things in creation, Raul remarked.
That was an understatement. Each displayed a particular foulness, which fact was emphasized by the way they hung upon each other’s shoulders, like brothers in grotesquerie. One was surely the thinnest man alive, his black flesh pasted over his sharp bones like tissue paper, his gait mincing, his eyes fiery. At his side was a man as gross as the first was wasted, his robes, which were pale and mud- or blood-spattered, like his brother’s, open to his navel. His breasts were pendulous, and covered in bruises, the source of which was a creature that resembled a cross between a lobster and a parrot—winged, clawed, and scarlet—that clung to his tits like a suckling child. The third member of this quartet was the hammerer. He was the most brutish of the four, with his iron shovel head and his bullish neck. But he whistled as he went, and the melody was sweetly lilting, like an Irish air. On his right, and closest to the woman, ran the runt of the litter, a full head shorter than the hammerer. His skin was the color of bile and had a clammy gleam to it, his scrawny form full of tics and stumbles. As for his features, they were testament to calamitous inbreeding, eyes bulging, chin receding, his nose no more than two slits that ran from between his eyes to just above his twisted mouth.
They didn’t seem to be in any great hurry. They took their time, chattering and laughing as they went, sufficiently entertained by one another’s company that they didn’t even glance down the slope towards the women.
At last the mist closed around them and they were gone.
“Horrible,” Phoebe said softly.
“I’ve seen worse,” Tesla remarked, and started up the slope again, with Phoebe still clinging to her arm.
There was a subtle ebb and flow in the mist around them now, which became more pronounced the higher they climbed.
“Oh my Lord,” Phoebe murmured, pointing to the ground. The same motion was visible underfoot: the grass, the dirt, even the rocks strewn around, being pulled by some force further up the mountain, and then released, only to be plucked up again seconds later. Some of the smaller pebbles were actually rolling uphill, which was odd enough, but odder still was the way the solid rock of the mountain responded to this summons. Here, close to the threshold, it hadn’t cracked, it had softened, and was subject to the same motion as mist, dirt, and grass.
“I think we’re getting warmer,” Tesla said, seeing the phenomenon. This was the same extraordinary sight she’d witnessed at Buddy Vance’s house: apparently solid objects losing faith in their solidity, and bending out of true. The Vance house had been a maelstrom. This was not. It was a gentle, rhythmic motion (Tidal, Raul quietly observed), the rocks being coaxed rather than bullied into surrendering their solidity. Tesla was still too traumatized by Lucien’s death to be in any state to enjoy the spectacle, but she could not help but feel a twinge of anticipation. They were close to the door; she didn’t doubt it. A few yards more, and she’d have sight of Quiddity. Even if the doped singer was right, and there were no wonders to be found on the shore, it would still be an event of consequence, to see the ocean where being was born.
Laughter erupted somewhere nearby. This time the women didn’t stop climbing, but instead picked up their pace. The motion of mist and ground was more urgent with every yard they covered. It was like an undertow, tugging at their feet and ankles, and though it didn’t have sufficient strength to overturn them yet, it would only be a matter of time, Tesla guessed, until it did.
I feel a little strange, Raul said.
“Like how?”
Like—I don’t know—like I’m not quite secure in here, he replied.
Before she had a chance to quiz him further on this, a particularly powerful wave passed through ground and air, parting the mist in front of them. Tesla let out a gasp of astonishment. It was not the mountaintop unveiled before them, but another landscape entirely. A sky of roiling colors, and a shore upon which the waters of the dream-sea threw themselves, dark and foamy.
Phoebe let go of Tesla’s arm. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “I see it, but I don’t—”
Tesla—
“Amazing, huh?”
Hold
on to me.
“What are you talking about?”
I’m losing my grip.
“So what else is new?”
Tesla! I mean it! He sounded panicky. Don’t get any closer.
“I’ve got to,” she said. Phoebe was already three strides ahead of her, her eyes fixed on the shore. “I’ll be careful.” She called out to Phoebe. “Slow down!” But her request was ignored. Phoebe hurried on as though mesmerized by the spectacle ahead, until without warning the motion in the ground escalated, and she was thrown off her feet. She went down with a cry loud enough to rouse anyone within a twenty-yard radius and had difficulty getting back onto her feet.
Tesla stumbled to her aid, the earth and air increasingly agitated, as if stirred up by their very presence. She grabbed hold of Phoebe’s arm and helped her to her feet, which was no minor task.
“I’m all right,” Phoebe gasped, “really I am.” She looked round at Tesla. “You can go back now,” she said.
Listen to her, Raul said, his voice quivering.
“You’ve done everything you can,” Phoebe went on. “I can make it from here.” She threw her arms around Tesla. “Thank you,” she said. “You’re an amazing woman, you know that?”
“Take care of yourself,” Tesla said.
“I will,” Phoebe replied, breaking their embrace now, and turning her gaze and her body towards the shore.
“I meant what I said,” Tesla called after Phoebe.
“What’s that?”
“I wasn’t—”
She didn’t have time to finish, distracted as she was by a figure who appeared on the shore ahead of Phoebe. He was, of all the creatures she’d seen at work and play here, the most authoritative; a fleshy, imperious individual, with sly, hooded eyes and a dozen or so small gingerish beards sprouting from his cheeks and chins, each teased and twirled so they resembled horns. In one hand he carried a small staff. The other he was using to lift up his voluminous robes, allowing three children—identical to one another and to the laughing child Phoebe and Tesla had encountered on the slope below—room to play tag between his bare and spindly legs. He was not so diverted by their frolics, however, that he didn’t see the women in his path, and by the look on his face it was plain he knew they were not part of his retinue. Instantly, he raised a shout, “Gamaliel! To me! Mutep! To me! Bartho! Swanky! To me! To me!”
Phoebe turned and looked back at Tesla, her face a picture of despair. The shore lay ten strides from her, at most, and now the way was blocked.
“Duck!” Tesla yelled, and pointed Lourdes at the man in the robes.
He raised his staff the same instant. There was energy skittering about it, she saw, gathering coherence—
It’s a weapon! Raul yelled.
She didn’t wait for proof. She simply fired. The bullet struck the man in the middle of his belly, lower than she’d aimed. He dropped his robes and his staff, and let out a cry of such shrillness she’d thought maybe she’d mis-sexed him. The children’s giggles turned to shrieks, and they raced around him as he tottered forward, the cry still coming between his tiny teeth.
One of the children pushed past Phoebe, ignoring or indifferent to the gun, yelling, “Somebody help Blessedm’n Zury!”
“Go!” Tesla yelled to Phoebe, but the order got lost in the din of Zury’s agony and the children’s shrieks. The mist didn’t mute the cacophony, it served as a roiling echo-chamber, the tumult gathering so much power it made the soft ground shudder.
By the panicked look on Phoebe’s face it was plain she was too confused to take advantage of the chance while she had it. Yelling to her again, Tesla started through the shallows to press her on her way.
No farther! Raul was yelling in her head. I can’t hold on.
He wasn’t alone in this. The assault of noise and motion threw Tesla’s senses into confusion. Her sight seemed to fly ahead of her, drummed from her skull, and for several sickening heartbeats she was looking back at herself from the very threshold between Cosm and shore. She might have been claimed completely, but that Phoebe reached out for her, and the contact brought her sight to heel.
“Get going!” she yelled to Phoebe, glancing towards Zury. He was in no condition to protest Phoebe’s departure. He was bent double, puking up blood.
“Come with me!” Phoebe hollered.
“I can’t.”
“You can’t go back that way!” Phoebe said. “They’ll kill you.”
“Not if I’m—”
Tesla—? Raul was yelling.
“Quick. Go on, for God’s sake!”
Tessllaa—?
“All right!” she said to him, and pushed Phoebe from her, down towards the shore.
Phoebe went, wading through a swamp of softened rock.
Tesssllaaa—
“We’re going!” Tesla said, and turning from Phoebe started back towards solid ground.
As she did so there was a moment of utter disorientation, as though her sanity suddenly fled her. She halted in mid-stride—her purpose, her will, her memory—gone from her in a blaze of white pain. There was a blank time when she felt nothing: no pain, no fear, no desire for self-preservation. She simply stood teetering in the midst of the tumult, Lourdes slipping out of her hands, and lost in the tidal ground. Then, as quickly as her wits left her, they returned. Her head ached as it had never ached in her life, and blood ran from her nose, but she had sufficient strength to continue her stumbling journey to safe ground.
There was bad news ahead, however, and it came in four appalling shapes: Gamaliel, Mutep, Bartho, and Swanky.
She had no strength left in her limbs to outrun them. The best she could hope now was that they not execute her on the spot for wounding Zury. As the hammerer closed upon her, she glanced back over her shoulder, looking for Phoebe, and was pleased to see that she had crossed the threshold, and was gone.
“That’s something,” she thought to Raul. He made no reply. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I did my best.”
The hammerer was within a stride of her, reaching to seize her arm.
“Don’t touch her,” somebody said.
She raised her spinning head. The somebody was striding out of the mist, carrying a shotgun. It was pointed past Tesla, towards the wounded Blessedm’n.
“Walk away, Tesla,” the shotgun wielder said.
She narrowed her eyes, to better make out the face of her savior.
“D’Amour?”
He gave her a wearily wolfish grin. “None other,” he said. “Now, do you want to just walk this way?”
The hammerer still stood within striking distance of Tesla, plainly eager to do her damage. “Move him,” D’Amour told Zury. “Or else.”
“Bartho,” the Blessedm’n said. “Let her pass.”
Whining like a frustrated dog, the hammerer stepped out of Tesla’s path, and she stumbled down the slope to where D’Amour stood.
“Gamaliel?” Harry said. The black stick-man turned his seared head in D’Amour’s direction. “You explain to the Brothers Grimm here that I’ve got sights on this gun that can see through fog. You understand what I’m telling you?” Gamaliel nodded. “And if any of you move in the next ten minutes I’m going to blow the old fuck’s head off. You don’t think I can?” He took a bead on Zury. Gamaliel whimpered. “Yeah, you get it,” he said. “I can kill him from a long way down the hill with this. A long, long way. Okay?”
It wasn’t Gamaliel who spoke, but his obese brother.
“O-key,” he said, raising his fat-fingered hands. “No shoot, o-key? We not move. O-key? You not shoot. O-key?”
“O-key do-key,” D’Amour said. He glanced round at Tesla. “You fit to run?” he whispered.
“I’ll do my best.”
“Go on then,” D’Amour replied, slowly backing away.
Tesla started off down the slope, slowly enough to keep D’Amour in view while he retreated from Zury and the brothers. He kept retreating until he could no longer be seen, then he turned, and r
aced down to join Tesla.
“We got to make this quick,” he said.
“Can you do it?”
“Can I do what?”
“Pick Zury off in the fog?”
“Hell no. But I’m betting they won’t risk it. Now let’s get going.”
It was easier descending than climbing, even though Tesla’s head felt as though it were splitting. Within ten minutes the fog ahead of them brightened, and a short while after they stumbled into the bright summer air.
“I don’t think we’re out of trouble yet,” Harry said.
“You think they’ll come after us?”
“I’m damn sure they will,” he said quickly. “Bartho’s probably making crosses for us right now.”
The image of Lucien flashed into her head and a sob escaped her. She put her hand to her mouth, to stop another, but tears came anyway, pouring down.
“They’re not going to get us,” D’Amour said, “I won’t let them.”
“It’s not that,” Tesla said.
“What is it then?”
She shook her head. “Later,” she said, and turning from him started on down the slope. The tears half-blinded her, and several times she stumbled, but she pushed her exhausted limbs to their limits, until she made the relative safety of the tree line. Even then she only slowed her pace a little, glancing back now and again to be certain she hadn’t lost D’Amour.
At last, with both of them gasping so hard they could barely speak, the trees began to thin out, and a mingling of sounds came drifting up towards them. The rush of Unger’s Creek was one. The murmuring roar of the crowd was another. And the thump and blare of the town band as it led the parade through the streets of Everville was a third.
“It’s not quite Mozart,” Tesla thought to Raul. “Sorry.”
Her tenant didn’t reply.
“Raul?” she said, this time aloud.
“Something wrong?” D’Amour wanted to know.
She hushed him with a look, and turned her attention inward again. “Raul—?” she said. Again, there was no answer.
Concerned now, she closed her eyes and went looking for him. Two or three times during her travels he had hidden from her in this fashion, out of anger or anxiety, and she’d been obliged to coax him out. She took her thoughts to the divide between his territory and hers, calling his name as she went. There was still no response.