by Clive Barker
His lacerating din was too much for Tesla’s beleaguered body. She felt something in her head break; felt her tongue slacken in her mouth and her lids fall. Saw, as darkness came, the bright ground divide before her—
And there it was, shining in the dirt: the cross of crosses, the sign of signs. In the long, slow moments of her dying fall, she remembered with a kind of yearning how she’d solved the puzzles of that cross; seen the four journeys that were etched upon it. One to the dream world, one to the real; one to the bestial, one to the divine. And there at the heart of these journeys—where they crossed, where they divided, where they finished and began—the human mystery. It was not about the flesh, that mystery: It was not about hanging broken from a cross or the triumph of the spirit over suffering. It was about the living dream of mind, that made body and spirit and all they took joy in.
Remembering the revelation now the time between that moment and this—the years she’d spent wandering the roads of the lost Americas—folded up and fled. She had glimpsed the vast eternal sitting in the earth beneath Palomo Grove, and now she was dying into it, her lids closing, her heart stopping.
Somewhere far off she heard Yie shrieking, and knew the power here had claimed him as it had claimed the others.
She wanted to tell him not to be afraid; that he was going into a place where the future of being lay in wait. A time out of time when the singularity from which all things came would be whole again. But she had no tongue. No, nor breath. No, nor life.
It was over.
* * *
II
Harry, Raul, and Maeve O’Connell had just come in sight of the crossroads when Tesla slid from Yie’s grasp, and stumbled forward. Though they were a hundred yards from the spot or more, the light was exquisitely particular, and kept no detail of the expression on Tesla’s face from Harry’s eyes. She was dead, or dying, but her slackening features carried a look of strange contentment.
The luminous ground was no longer solid where she fell. It received her like a shining grave, and she was gone.
“Oh Jesus . . . ” Harry breathed. “Oh Jesus Christ in Heaven . . . ”
He picked up his pace and raced towards the intersection, following the braided rivulets of light that ran in the ground beneath his feet.
Behind him, Maeve had started to shout.
“I know that man!” she hollered. “That’s Buddenbaum! My Lord, that’s Buddenbaum! That’s the bastard started all this!” Wresting herself from Raul’s custody, she started to hobble after D’Amour.
“Will you please stop her?” Coker yelled in Raul’s ear.
Raul was too distressed by Tesla’s disappearance to reply. Coker yelled on until Raul said, “I thought you’d gone.”
“No, never,” Coker replied. “I was simply silenced by her bitterness. Now I beg you, my friend, don’t let her be taken from me. I want her to know what I feel for her, just once.”
Raul swallowed a sob. So many people already taken, and this last the most unthinkable. Tesla had survived a bullet, Kissoon, and enough drugs to fell a horse. But now she was gone.
“Please,” Coker said. “Go after Maeve.”
“I’ll do my best,” Raul said, and started in pursuit of the old woman. For all her frailty, she’d already covered quite a distance.
“Wait!” he called after her. “Somebody wants to talk to you!”
As he caught up with her, she scowled. “It’s him I want to talk to!” she said, nodding in Buddenbaum’s direction. “He’s the one!”
“Listen to me a moment,” Raul said, catching hold of her arm. “It wasn’t an accident we found you. Somebody led us to you. Do you understand? Somebody who’s here, right now, beside us.”
“Are you crazy?” Maeve replied, looking around.
“You don’t see him because he’s dead.”
“I don’t give a shit for the dead,” Maeve snapped. “It’s the living I want answers from! Buddenbaum!” she yelled.
It was Erwin who piped up now. “Tell her who you are!” he said to Coker.
“I wanted it to be a special moment,” Coker replied.
“I wasted my life waiting for the special moments,” Erwin told him. “Now is all we’ve got!” So saying, he pushed his fellow phantom aside to get access to Raul’s ear. “Tell her it’s Coker! Go on! Tell her!”
“Coker?” Raul said aloud.
Maeve O’Connell stopped in her hobbling tracks. “What did you say?” she murmured.
“The dead man’s name is Coker,” Raul replied.
“I’m her husband,” said Coker.
“He says he’s—”
“I know who he is,” she said, and drawing a gasping breath she said, “Coker? My Coker? Can this be true?”
“It’s true,” Raul said.
Tears came, but she didn’t stop saying his name. “Coker . . . oh my Coker . . . my sweet Coker . . . ”
Harry heard Maeve sobbing behind him, and looked round to see her with her head flung back, as though her husband was raining kisses on her and she was bathing in them. When he returned his gaze to the crossroads, Buddenbaum had dropped to the ground where Tesla had vanished, and was beating his fists violently against the now-solidified street. He was on the verge of apoplexy, sprays of spittle, sweat, and tears erupting from his face.
“You can’t, you bitch!” he shrieked at the street. “I won’t let you have it!”
Energies were still pouring up out of the ground, spirals and filigrees rising around him. He tried to snatch hold of them in his bloodied hands, as if they might still transfigure him, but his fists extinguished those he caught, and the rest simply climbed on out of his reach and faded into the darkness above him. His fury and frustration mounted. He began to swing around, unleashing a solid scream of rage, “This can’t happen! It can’t! It can’t!”
Behind him, Harry heard Maeve O’Connell say, “Do you see this, Coker? At the crossroads?”
“He sees it,” Raul replied.
“That’s where I buried the medallion,” Maeve went on. “Does Coker know that?”
“He knows.”
Maeve had come to Harry’s side now. Her face was wet with tears but her smile was unalloyed. “My husband’s here . . . ” she said to Harry, rather proudly. “Imagine that . . . ”
“That’s wonderful.”
She pointed down the street. “That’s where we had the whorehouse. Right there. It’s no coincidence, is it?”
“No,” said Harry, “I don’t think it is.”
“All that light, it’s coming from the medallion.”
“It certainly looks that way.”
Her smile broadened. “I’m going to see for myself.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you.”
“Well you’re not me,” she said sharply. “Whatever’s going on there’s my doing.” She calmed herself a little, and the smile crept back on to her face. “I don’t think you know what’s going on any more than I do, am I right?”
“More or less,” Harry conceded.
“So if we don’t know what’s to be afraid of, why be afraid?” she reasoned. “Raul? I want you on my left side. And Coker, wherever you are, I want you on my right.”
“At least let me go first,” Harry said, and without waiting for her permission, headed on towards Buddenbaum, who was once again berating the asphalt. He saw Harry coming from the corner of his eye.
“Keep your distance,” he gasped, his breathing raw. “This ground’s mine. And I’ve still got power in me if you try to take it from me.”
“I’m not here to take anything,” Harry said.
“You and that bitch Bombeck, plotting against me.”
“There was no plot. Tesla never wanted to be a part of this—”
“Of course she did!” Buddenbaum replied. “She wasn’t stupid. She wanted the Art the same as everyone.” He looked round at D’Amour, his fury decaying into self-pity. “But you see I trusted her. That was my mistake. And she lied!” He slammed hi
s wounded palms down upon the solid ground. “This was my ground! My miracle!”
“Listen to the shit he speaks!” Maeve hollered. Harry stood aside, to let Buddenbaum see her. “You’re the liar!” she said. “That land was, is, and always will be mine.”
Buddenbaum’s expression turned from fury to astonishment. “Are you . . . are you what I think you are?”
“Why do you look surprised?” Maeve said. “Sure, I got old, but we can’t all do deals with the Devil.”
“It wasn’t the Devil I dealt with,” Buddenbaum said softly. “I might have more to show for it if I had. What are you doing here?”
“I came to get some answers,” Maeve said. “I deserve some, don’t you think, before we both go to our graves?”
“I’m not going to my grave,” Buddenbaum said.
“Oh are you not?” Maeve replied. “My mistake.” She waved Raul away, so as to proceed unaided to where Buddenbaum knelt. “Do you want another hundred, hundred and fifty years?” she said to him. “You’re welcome to them. I’m off, after this. Somewhere my bones don’t ache.”
While she was speaking, one of the luminous ribbons rising from the ground strayed in her direction. She reached out towards it and instead of avoiding her grasp it wove between her arthritic fingers.
“Did you ever see the house we built here?” she said, as she watched the ribbon at play. “Oh it was such a sight. Such a sight.”
The ribbon went from her fingers now, but several more strands and particles were rising from out of the earth towards her.
“What are you doing, woman?” Buddenbaum said.
“Nothing,” Maeve shrugged.
“Even if the land isn’t mine, the magic is.”
“I’m not taking it from you,” Maeve said mildly, “I’m too old to be possessive about anything. Except maybe my memories. Those are mine, Buddenbaum . . . ” The motes were getting busier all the time, as though inspired by what she was saying. “And right now they’re very clear. Very, very, clear.” She closed her eyes for a moment, and a new wave of luminosity broke from the street, rising to graze her hands and face before darting off. “Sometimes I think I remember my childhood more clearly than yesterday . . . ” she went on, extending her hand. “Coker?” she said. “Are you there?”
“He’s right here,” said Raul.
“Will you take my hand?” she said.
“He says he’s doing it,” Raul said. Then, after a moment. “He’s got tight hold of you.”
Maeve smiled. “You know I believe I can feel it?” she said.
Buddenbaum caught hold of Harry’s sleeve. “Is she crazy?”
“No. Her husband’s ghost is here.”
“I should have seen, I suppose,” he said, his voice a monotone. “Final acts . . . they’re a bitch . . . ”
“Better get used to it,” Harry said.
“I never liked the sentimental shit,” Buddenbaum replied.
“I think it’s more than that,” Harry said, looking up at the motes and filaments that had touched Maeve’s skin. They were not extinguishing themselves in the night sky as those that had gone before had done, but were roving purposefully, like bees in a field of flowers, mazing the air as they went about their purpose. Where they traveled they left trails of light, which, once loosed, proceeded to elaborate themselves, describing a multitude of forms in the warm night air.
It was Raul who spoke what he saw first. “The house—” he said in amazement. “You see it, Harry?”
“I see it.”
“Enough,” said Buddenbaum, waving the sight away as if nauseated. “I’m done with the past. Done with it!”
Covering his head with his hands he stumbled off as Maeve’s memory raised her whorehouse out of light and air: walls and windows, staircase and ceilings. Off to Harry’s left a passageway led to the front door, and the step beyond. To his right, through another door there was a parlor, and through another, a kitchen, and through a third a yard where the trees were blossoming. And everywhere, even as the floors were laid, the rooms were being filled with furniture and rugs and plants and vases, the sheer proliferation of detail suggesting that once the process had been initiated these objects were coming back into being of their own accord. Their solid selves had gone to dust decades since, but these, their imagined forms, remained encoded at the spot where they’d existed. Now they came again, remembering themselves in all their perfection.
None was so solid, however, as to keep Harry’s eyes from wandering in any direction he wished. He could see the picket fence that bounded the backyard and the fine Spanish tile on the front step. He could see up the graceful staircase to the second and third floors, each of which boasted two bathrooms and half a dozen well-appointed bedrooms.
And now, even before the roof had appeared on the house, the souls who had occupied it began to appear, gracing its rooms.
“Ah . . . ” Raul cooed appreciatively, “the ladies.”
They appeared everywhere. On the landings and in the bedrooms, in the parlors and in the kitchen, their voices and their laughter like whispering music.
“There’s Bedelia,” Maeve said, “and Hildegard and Jennie, oh my dear Jennie, look at her . . . ”
It was not such a bad place to be, Harry thought, come the end of the world, surrounded by such memories. Though only one or two of the women would have been judged pretty by current standards, there was an air of ease and pleasure here, of a house as much dedicated to laughter as to erotic excess.
As for the clients who’d patronized the establishment, they were like the ghosts of ghosts, gossamer forms passing up and down the stairs and in and out of the bedrooms and bathrooms, their dress and flesh gray. Once in a while Harry would catch a glimpse of a face, but it was always fleeting, as though the house had conjured the furtiveness of these men, rather than the men themselves; caught them turning from scrutiny, ashamed of their desire.
There was little evidence of shame among the women. They went bare-breasted on the stairs, and naked on the landing. They chatted to one another as they shat or passed water. They helped each other bathe and douche and shave their legs and what lay between.
“There,” said Maeve, pointing to a prodigiously ample woman sitting in the kitchen, taking fingerfuls of pudding from a porcelain bowl, “that’s Mary Elizabeth. You got a lot for your bucks with her. She always had a waiting list. And up there”—she pointed towards a slim, pale girl feeding a parrot from between her teeth—“that’s Dolores. And the parrot, what was the parrot’s name?” She glanced round at Raul. “Ask Coker,” she said.
The answer came in an instant. “Elijah.”
Maeve smiled. “Elijah. Of course, Elijah. She swore it spoke prophecies.”
“Were you happy here?” Harry asked her.
“It wasn’t what I’d expected my life to be,” she said. “But yes, I was happy. Probably too happy. That made people envious.”
“Is that why they burned the place down?” Harry said, wandering to the stairs to watch Mary Elizabeth ascend. “Because they were envious?”
“That was some of it,” she said. “And some of it was sheer self-righteousness: They didn’t want me and my business corrupting the citizens. Can you imagine? Without me, without this house and these women, there wouldn’t have been any citizens because there wouldn’t have been any city. And they knew that. That’s why they waited until they had an excuse—”
“And what was that?”
“Our son, our crazy son, who was too little like his father and too much like me. Coker was always gentle, you see. But there was a streak of the lunatic in the O’Connells, and it came out in Clayton. Not just that, but we made the error of teaching him he was special, telling him he’d have power in his hands one day, because he was a child of two worlds. We should never have done that. It made him think he was above the common decencies; that he had the right to be barbarous if he chose, because he was better than everybody else.” She grew pensive. “I saw him once, when
he was maybe ten or so, looking up at Harmon’s Heights, and I said to him: What are you thinking? And do you know what he said to me? One day, he said, I’ll have that hill, and I’ll look down on a world of fishes. I’ve thought so many times, that was the sign. I should have put him out of his misery right there and then. But it had taken Coker and me so much pain and effort to get a child . . . ”
While part of Harry’s mind listened to the story of Clayton O’Connell’s begetting—how Coker’s charms and suits had kept Maeve preternaturally young, but slowed her ovulations to a trickle; how she was almost seventy when she gave birth to the boy—another part turned over what she’d said previously. The child’s notion of looking down from Harmon’s Heights on a world of fishes rang some vague bell.
“What happened to Clayton?” he asked her, while he puzzled over the problem.
“He was hanged.”
“You saw him dead?”
“No. His body was taken by wolves or bears . . . ”
And now, thinking of wild beasts up on the mountain, he remembered where he’d heard the words before.
“Raul?” he said. “Stay here with Maeve, will you?”
“I’m not leaving.” Raul smiled, his face flushed with voyeuristic pleasure.
“Don’t you go,” Maeve said, as Harry left the bottom of the stairs.
“I’ll be back,” he replied, “you just keep remembering,” and heading off down the hallway he slipped through the unopened front door onto the street.
* * *
III
Lives are leaves on the story tree,” the man who walked on Quiddity had told Tesla. To which she’d replied that she’d never told a story she’d given a damn about.
“Oh, but you did,” he’d said. “Your own . . . your own . . . ”
It was true, of course. She’d told that story with every blink of her eye, every beat of her heart, with every deed and word, cruel and kind alike.
But here was a mystery; that now, though her heart was no longer beating and her eyes could no longer blink, though she would never again say or do anything in the living world, cruel or kind, the story refused to finish.