by Clive Barker
‘Brendan,’ he said. ‘I may call you Brendan –?’
‘Don’t call me anything.’
The Salesman unbuttoned his jacket.
‘Really, Brendan, we have a great deal to discuss, you and I. Your prize, for one.’
The lining of the jacket scintillated, drawing Brendan’s eye. He’d never in his life seen a fabric its equal.
‘Are you sure there’s nothing you want?’ the Salesman said. ‘Absolutely sure?’
The Love Duet had reached a new plateau, the voices of Butterfly and Pinkerton urging each other on to fresh confessions of pain. Brendan heard, but his attention was increasingly focused on the jacket. And yes, there was something there that he wanted.
Shadwell watched the man’s eyes and saw the flame of desire ignited. It never failed.
‘You do see something, Mr Mooney.’
‘Yes,’ Brendan admitted softly. He saw, and the joy he felt at what he saw made his heavy heart light.
Eileen had said to him once (when they were young, and mortality was just another way to express their devotion to each other): ‘– if I die first, Brendan, I’ll find some way to tell you what Heaven’s like. I swear I will.’ He’d hushed her with kisses then, and said that if she were to die he would die too, of a broken heart.
But he hadn’t died, had he? He’d lived three long, empty months, and more than once in that time he’d remembered her frivolous promise. And now, just as he felt despair would undo him utterly, here on his doorstep was this celestial messenger. An odd choice, perhaps, to appear in the shape of a salesman, but no doubt the Seraphim had their reasons.
‘Do you want what you see, Brendan?’ the visitor asked.
‘Who are you?’ Brendan breathed, awe-struck.
‘My name’s Shadwell.’
‘And you brought this for me?’
‘Of course. But if you accept it, Brendan, you must understand there’ll be a small charge for the service.’
Brendan didn’t take his eyes off the prize the jacket housed. ‘Whatever you say,’ he replied.
‘We may ask for your help, for instance, which you’d be obliged to furnish.’
‘Do angels need help?’
‘Once in a while.’
‘Then of course,’ said Brendan. ‘I’d be honoured.’
‘Good.’ The Salesman smiled. ‘Then please –’ he opened the jacket a little wider, ‘– help yourself.’
Brendan knew how the letter from Eileen would smell and feel long before he had it in his hands. It did not disappoint him. It was warm, as he’d expected, and the scent of flowers lingered about it. She’d written it in a garden, no doubt; in the paradise garden.
‘So, Mr Mooney. We have a deal, do we?’
The Love Duet had ended; the house behind Brendan was silent. He held the letter close to his chest, still fearful that this was all a dream, and he’d wake to find himself empty-handed.
‘Whatever you want,’ he said, desperate that this salvation not be snatched from him.
‘Sweetness and light,’ came the smiling reply. ‘That’s all a wise man ever wants, isn’t it? Sweetness and light.’
Brendan was only half-listening. He ran his fingers back and forth over the letter. His name was on the front, in Eileen’s cautious hand.
‘So tell me, Mr Mooney –’ the Seraphim said, ‘about Cal.’
‘Cal?’
‘Can you tell me where I can find him?’
‘He’s at a wedding.’
‘A wedding. Ah. Could you perhaps furnish me with address?’
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘We’ve got a little something for Cal too. Lucky man.’
IV
NUPTIALS
1
eraldine had spent many long hours giving Cal a working knowledge of her family tree, so that come Teresa’s wedding he’d know who was who. It was a difficult business. The Kellaway family was heroically fecund, and Cal had a poor memory for names, so it wasn’t surprising that many of the hundred and thirty guests who packed the reception hall this balmy Saturday evening were unknown to him. He didn’t much mind. He felt safe amongst such numbers, even if he didn’t know who they were; and the drink, which had flowed freely since four in the afternoon, further allayed his anxieties. He didn’t even object when Geraldine presented him before a parade of admiring aunts and uncles, every one of whom asked him when he was going to make an honest woman of her. He played the game; smiled; charmed; did his best to seem sane.
Not that a little lunacy would have been noticeable in such a heady atmosphere. Norman Kellaway’s ambition for his daughter’s wedding day seemed to have been upped a notch for every inch her waist-line had swelled. The ceremony had been grand, but necessarily decorous; the reception, however, was a triumph of excess over good taste. The hall had been decorated from floor to ceiling with streamers and paper lanterns; ropes of coloured lights were looped along the walls and in the trees out at the back of the hall. The bar was supplied with beer, spirits and liqueurs sufficient to intoxicate a modest army; food was in endless supply, carried to the tables of those content to sit and gorge by a dozen harassed waitresses.
Even with all the doors and windows open, the hall soon grew hot as Hell, the heat in part generated by those guests who’d thrown inhibitions to the wind and were dancing to a deafening mixture of country and western and rock and roll, the latter bringing comical exhibitions from several of the older guests, applauded ferociously from all sides.
At the edge of the crowd, lingering by the door that led out behind the hall, the groom’s younger brother, accompanied by two young bucks who’d both at some point courted Teresa, and a fourth youth whose presence was only countenanced because he had cigarettes, stood in a litter of beer cans and surveyed the talent available. The pickings were poor; those few girls who were of beddable age were either spoken for or judged so unattractive that any approach would have been evidence of desperation.
Only Elroy. Teresa’s penultimate boy-friend, could lay claim to any hint of success tonight. Since the ceremony he’d had his eyes on one of the bridesmaids, whose name he’d yet to establish but who’d twice chanced to be at the bar while he was there: a significant statistic. Now he leaned against the door and watched the object of his lust across the smoky room.
The lights had been dimmed inside the hall, and the mood of the dancing had changed from cavortings to slow, smoochy embraces.
This was the moment, he judged, to make his approach. He’d invite the woman onto the dance floor, then, after a song or two, take her out for a breath of fresh air. Several couples had already retired to the privacy of the bushes, there to do what weddings were made to celebrate. Beneath the pretty vows and the flowers they were here in the name of fucking, and he was damned if he was going to be left out.
He’d caught sight of Cal chatting with the girl earlier on; it’d be simplest, he thought, to have Cal to introduce them. He pressed through the crush of dancers to where Cal was standing.
‘How you doin’, mate?’
Cal looked at Elroy blearily. The face before him was flushed with alcohol.
‘I’m doing fine.’
‘Didn’t much like the ceremony,’ Elroy said. ‘I think I’m allergic to churches. Do us a favour, will yer?’
‘What is it?’
‘I’m in lust.’
‘Who with?’
‘One of the bridesmaids. She was over by the bar. Long blonde hair.’
‘You mean Loretta?’ Cal said. ‘She’s a cousin of Geraldine’s.’
It was odd, but the drunker he got the more of his lessons on the Kellaway family he remembered.
‘She’s a fucking cracker. And she’s been giving me the eye all night.’
‘Is that right?’
‘I was wondering … will you introduce us?’
Cal looked at Elroy’s panting eyes. ‘I think you’re too late,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘She went outside
–’
Before Elroy could voice his irritation Cal felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned. It was Norman, the father of the bride.
‘A word, Cal, m’boy?’ he said, glancing across at Elroy.
‘I’ll catch you later,’ Elroy said, retreating in case Norman nabbed him too.
‘Are you enjoying yourself?’
‘Yes, Mr Kellaway.’
‘Less of this Mr Kellaway shit, Cal. Call me Norm.’
He poured a generous measure of whisky from the bottle he was armed with into Cal’s lager glass, then drew on his cigar.
‘So tell me,’ he said. ‘How long before I have to give my other little girl away? Don’t think I’m pushing, son. I’m not. But one bride in labour’s enough.’
Cal swilled the whisky around the bottom of his glass, hoping for a prompt from the poet. None came.
‘I’ve got a job for you at the works,’ Norm went on, unfazed by Cal’s silence. ‘I want to see my baby live in a little style. You’re a good lad, Cal. Her mother likes you a lot, and I always trust her judgment. So you think on it…’
He transferred the bottle to his cigar-wielding right hand, and reached into his jacket.
The gesture, innocent as it was, brought a chill of recognition. For an instant Cal was back in Rue Street, gazing into the enchanted cave of Shadwell’s jacket. But Kellaway had simpler gifts to give.
‘Have a cigar,’ he said, and went off to his duties as host.
2
Elroy picked up another can of beer from the bar then headed out into the garden in search of Loretta. The air was considerably cooler than inside, and as soon as it hit him he felt sick as a flea in a leper’s jock strap. He tossed the beer aside and headed towards the bottom of the garden, where he could throw up unseen.
The coloured lights stopped a few yards from the hall, where the cable petered out. Beyond was a welcoming darkness, which he plunged into. He was used to vomiting; a week in which his stomach didn’t rebel through some excess or other was poorly spent. He efficiently discharged the contents of his belly over a rhododendron bush, then turned his thoughts back to the lovely Loretta.
A little way from where he stood the leaf-shadow, or something concealed by it, moved. He peered more closely, trying to interpret what he saw, but there was not sufficient illumination to make sense of it. He heard a sigh however: a woman’s sigh.
There was a couple in the shelter of the tree, he decided, doing what darkness had been created to conceal. Perhaps it was Loretta, her skirt up and her knickers down. It would break his heart, but he had to see.
Very quietly, he advanced a couple of paces.
On his second step, something grazed his face. He stifled a cry of shock and put his hand up to find strands of matter in the air around his head. For some reason he thought of phlegm – cold, wet threads of phlegm – except that they moved against his flesh as if they were a part of something larger.
A heart-beat later this notion was confirmed, as the matter, which was adhering now to his legs and body, pulled him off his feet. He would have let out a cry, but the filthy stuff had already sealed up his lips. And then, as if this were not preposterous enough, he felt a chill around his lower belly. His trousers were being torn open. He started to fight like fury, but resistance was fruitless. There was a weight bearing down on his abdomen and hips, and he felt his manhood drawn up into a channel that might have been flesh, but that it was corpse cold.
Tears of panic blurred his vision, but he could see that the thing astride him had a human form. He could see no face, but the breasts were heavy the way he liked them, and though this was far from the scene he’d pictured with Loretta his lust ignited, his little length responding to the chilly ministrations of the body that contained him.
He raised his head slightly, wanting a better view of those sumptuous breasts, but in doing so he caught sight of another figure behind the first. She was the antithesis of the ripe, gleaming woman that rode him: a stained, wretched thing, with gaping holes in her body where cunt and mouth and navel should have been, so large the stars showed through from the other side.
He started to fight afresh, but his thrashings did nothing to slow his mistress’ rhythm. Despite his panic he felt the familiar tremor in his balls.
In his head half a dozen pictures collided, becoming one monstrous beauty: the ragged woman, a necklace of coloured lights hanging between her sister’s breasts, raised her skirts, and the mouth between her legs was Loretta’s mouth, flicking its tongue. He could not resist this pornography: his prick spat its load. He howled against the seal at his mouth. The pleasure was short, the pain that followed, agonizing.
‘What’s your fuckin’ problem?’ somebody said in the darkness. It took him a moment to realize that his cry for help had been heard. He opened his eyes. The silhouettes of the trees loomed over him, but that was all.
He started to shout again; not caring that he was lying in the muck with his trousers around his ankles. Just needing to know he was still in the land of the living –
3
The first glimpse Cal had of trouble was through the bottom of his glass, as he upped it to drain the last of Norman’s malt whisky. At the door two of the printers from the Kellaway factory, who were acting as bouncers for the night, were engaged in friendly conversation with a man in a well-cut suit. Laughing, the man glanced into the hall. It was Shadwell.
The jacket was closed and buttoned. There was no need, it seemed, for supernatural seductions; the Salesman was buying his entrance with charm alone. Even as Cal watched he patted one of the men on the shoulder as if they’d been bosom-buddies since childhood, and stepped inside.
Cal didn’t know whether to stay still and hope that the crowd would conceal him, or make a move to escape and so risk drawing the enemy’s attention. As it was he had no choice in the matter, A hand was over his, and at his side stood one of the aunts Geraldine had introduced him to.
‘So tell me,’ she said, apropos of nothing, ‘have you been to America?’
‘No,’ he said, looking away from her powdered face towards the Salesman. He was entering the hall with flawless confidence, bestowing smiles hither and thither. His appearance won admiring eyes on all sides. Somebody extended a hand to be shaken; another asked him what he was drinking. He played the crowd with ease, a smiling word offered to every ear, all the while his eyes ranging back and forth as he sought out his quarry.
As the distance between them narrowed Cal knew he couldn’t long avoid being seen. Claiming his hand from the grip of the aunt he headed off into the thickest pan of the crowd. A hubbub drew his attention to the far end of the hall, where he saw somebody – it looked to be Elroy – being carried in from the garden, his clothes in filthied disarray, his jaw slack. Nobody seemed much bothered by his condition – every gathering had its share of professional drunkards. There was laughter, and some disapproving looks, then a rapid return to jollification.
Cal glanced back over his shoulder. Where was Shadwell? Still close to the door, pressing the flesh like an aspirant politician? No; he’d moved. Cal scanned the room nervously. The noise and the dancing went on unabated, but now the sweating faces seemed a mite too hungry for happiness; the dancers only dancing because it put the world away for a little time. There was a desperation in this jamboree, and Shadwell knew how to exploit it, with his stale bonhomie and that air he pretended of one who’d walked with the great and the good.
Cal itched to get up onto a table and tell the revellers to stop their cavortings; to see for themselves how foolish their revels looked, and how dangerous the shark they’d invited into their midst.
But what would they do, when he’d shouted himself hoarse? Laugh behind their hands, and quietly remind each other that he had a madman’s blood in his veins?
He’d find no allies here. This was Shadwell’s territory. The safest thing would be to keep his head down, and negotiate a route to the door. Then get away, as far as possible as fast as possible
.
He acted upon the plan immediately. Thanking God for the lack of light, he began to slip between the dancers, keeping his eyes peeled for the man with the coat of many colours.
There was a shout behind him. He glanced round, and through the milling figures caught sight of Elroy, who was thrashing about like an epileptic, yelling blue murder. Somebody was calling for a doctor.
Cal turned back towards the door, and the shark was suddenly at his side.
‘Calhoun.’ said Shadwell, soft and low. ‘Your father told me I’d find you here.’
Cal didn’t reply to Shadwell’s words, merely pretended he hadn’t heard. The Salesman wouldn’t dare do anything violent in such a crowd, surely, and he was safe from the man’s jacket as long as he kept his eyes off the lining.
‘Where are you going?’ Shadwell said, as Cal moved off. ‘I want a word with you’
Cal kept walking.
‘We can help each other …’
Somebody called Cal’s name, asking him if he knew what was wrong with Elroy. He shook his head, and forged on through the crowd towards the door. His plan was simple. Tell the bouncers to find Geraldine’s father, and have Shadwell thrown out.
‘… tell me where the carpet is,’ the Salesman was saying, ‘and I’ll make sure her sisters never get their hands on you.’ His manner was placatory. ‘I’ve no argument with you,’ he said. ‘I just want some information.’
‘I told you,’ said Cal, knowing even as he spoke that any appeal was a lost cause. ‘I don’t know where the carpet went.’
They were within a dozen yards of the vestibule now, and with every step they took Shadwell’s courtesy decayed further.
‘They’ll drain you dry,’ he warned. ‘Those sisters of hers. And I won’t be able to stop them, not once they’ve got their hands on you. They’re dead, and the dead don’t take discipline.’
‘Dead?’