Abarat: The First Book of Hours a-1

by Clive Barker

  Wolfswinkel wiped away the sweat that had popped up all over his forehead and was threatening to run into his eyes.

  “Malingo!” he yelled. “Get in here! RIGHT NOW!”

  Malingo dutifully crawled in, upside down, around the top of the door.

  “Seize that wretch!” Wolfswinkel demanded. “And give me my staff!”

  Malingo hesitated, his despairing eyes on Candy. I said—

  “I heard what you said,” Malingo replied.

  Wolfswinkel took a moment to consider what his slave had just said, or rather the tone of it. There was something new in Malingo’s voice. Something Wolfswinkel didn’t like at all. It called for a new order of threat.

  “Do as I say, geshrat. Or so help me I’ll break every bone in your body.”

  “With what?” Candy reminded him. “I’ve got your little magic stick.”

  “But you don’t know how to use it, missy,” Wolfswinkel replied, and before Candy could evade him he caught hold of the end of the staff.

  Even drunk on rum, he had a supernatural power in his grip. He twisted the stick to the left, then to the right, then to the left again, attempting to wrest it from Candy’s grip. But the more violently he twisted, the harder she held on.

  “If you don’t let go—” he hollered at her, his unpretty face made uglier still by his rage.

  “Hot air. That’s all you are,” Candy said. “Hot air in a banana-skin suit.”

  Wolfswinkel’s lip curled with fury, and he hauled his staff toward him. There was a short scuffle, and in the heat of the moment they both lost their grip on the staff.

  It fell to the floor between them and rolled off across the boards.

  Both Candy and Wolfswinkel made a lunge to reclaim it, but before either could reach it Malingo dropped from the ceiling and neatly snatched it up.

  A smug smile appeared on Kaspar Wolfswinkel’s face.

  “Good boy,” he said to Malingo. “You are a very, very good boy. I will think of some way to reward you for this.” He wiped his sweaty brow with the arm of his yellow jacket. Then he put out his fat hand. “Now give it back to Uncle Kaspar,” he said.

  The beaten Malingo looked at his master like a creature mesmerized by a poisonous snake. But he didn’t move to return the staff.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” Wolfswinkel demanded. “GIVE ME MY STAFF. I’m going to beat this wretched girl till she’s yelping. Won’t that be fun?”

  There was a long, long moment in which nothing happened. Then, slowly—very, very slowly—Malingo shook his head.

  “Candy…” he said quietly, not for a moment taking his eyes off the man who had once been his master. “You’d better go. Quickly, before Houlihan gets here.”

  “I’m not leaving without you.”

  At this, Malingo shot her a glance, filled with a mixture of fear and exhilaration.

  “Oh, how sweet this is,” Wolfswinkel remarkedl “how touching.” Then, putting on a smile, he beckoned to Malingo. “‘Come on now, boy. Joke’s over. You’ve had your moment. Let’s stop all this playacting. You know you don’t have the guts to leave me.”

  His tone was all milk and honey, and it was frighteningly credible.

  “You belong to me, Malingo,” he went on. “Remember? I bought you in an honest transaction. I have the papers. You can’t walk away. I mean, goodness gracious, where would the world be if every slave just upped and walked away when they got the inclination?”

  The smile went from his face. Wolfswinkel had exhausted his supply of sweetness.

  “Now,” he said, “for the last time: give me back my staff and I promise you, I promise you, I will not hurt you.”

  Malingo didn’t move. He didn’t even blink.

  “Oh now, wait a moment,” Wolfswinkel went on. “I know what you’re thinking. You can smell freedom, can’t you? And it’s rather tempting. But think, geshrat. You don’t know how to live out there in the world.”

  “Take no notice of him,” Candy said.

  “You’ve got a slave’s soul, geshrat. And you’ll never change that.”

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of out there,” Candy said. Then revising her opinion in the interest of honesty, she said: “Well, nothing worse than this. Than him. And I’ll be with you—”

  “Oh no, you won’t,” Wolfswinkel said, snatching hold of Candy’s wrist.

  His grip was like fire. She cried out in pain and struggled so hard to be free of him that his hats, all carefully perched upon one another, slid sideways from his sweat-slickened head.

  A look of panic crossed his face, and he let go of Candy so as to catch the falling hats and push them back into place. She stepped out of his range, her hand numb with pain. As she rubbed it back to life, the paintings of the five murdered magicians came into her mind’s eye. And with them, a simple thought:

  His hats. Part of his power is in those idiotic hats.

  She had only a moment to register this notion. Then Wolfswinkel was closing on Malingo, his hands reaching out to reclaim his staff.

  “Give it to me,” he said to Malingo. “Come on. You know it’s mine.”

  There were flecks of yellow-white spittle on his lips. He looked as though he was about ready to explode with fury.

  Malingo raised the staff.

  “Good boy,” Wolfswinkel said, a slight smile returning to his sweaty face.

  Malingo looked his master straight in the eyes. Then he lifted his leg, and taking the staff in a two-handed grip, he brought it down across his knee.

  Wolfswinkel let out a howl as the staff broke in half. Splinters flew in all directions, and the crack of the breaking staff echoed off the walls.

  Malingo lifted the pieces of the staff and showed them to Wolfswinkel.

  “You’ll never beat me with this again,” he said.

  Then he threw the two halves down on the floor, on the very spot where he’d been bruised and humiliated just a few minutes before.

  Wolfswinkel looked down at them, his body shaking.

  “Well, now…” he muttered. “Aren’t you a brave little rebel?”

  Now it was he who lifted his hands, locking his fingers together above his head.

  Then, muttering something that was incomprehensible to Candy’s ears, but still sounded profoundly threatening, he unknotted his hands and began to slowly, slowly ease them apart. There was a form made of seething darkness between his palms, which grew as he parted his hands. It resembled a fat, five-foot-long maggot armed with tentacles, each one of which ended in a cruel red hook. It had two heads, one at either end of its body, their faces resembling Kaspar. Their teeth were as sharp as a shark’s teeth.

  “Lovely,” Wolfswinkel said, looking up at this foul thing that he’d conjured. “You like my little eeriac?”

  Then, without waiting for a reply, he dropped his hands in front of him and released the creature.

  The eeriac, though solid, seemed to be able to defy gravity, for it instantly rose high above the heads of those in the room, twisting and turning like a rope that had an ambition to knot itself.

  It made an inverted curve of its body and turned both its grotesque faces down to look at its creator.

  Wolfswinkel nodded to the thing. “Are you ready?” he said. It opened its mouths and let out a hiss from the depths of its throats. “Good,” said Wolfswinkel. He pointed at Malingo and uttered these words:

  “Kill my slave.”

  The eeriac didn’t hesitate. It threw itself down from the heights of the room and flew toward Malingo.

  Luckily, Malingo was quick. He was used to climbing over the rooms. He knew every rock and cranny. Before the eeriac could reach him, up he went, like a spider on the wall. The creature pursued him, the hooks on its numberless tentacles striking sparks off one another, bright enough to flood the room with a rancid light.

  Wolfswinkel was pleased with the spectacle he’d created. He applauded like an egotistical child as the chase set the chandelier swinging. A dry rain of dust
and dead moths came down off the crystals as they twinkled and shook.

  “Get out!” Malingo yelled down to Candy. “Go!”

  The moment that he took to beg her to leave was his undoing. The creature closed the distance between them in a heartbeat and clamped both sets of jaws upon him.

  Candy couldn’t bear to look. She averted her eyes, her gaze going instead to Wolfswinkel. He was totally engrossed by the spectacle overhead. Surely she could creep up on him and not be noticed.

  Did she dare? Yes, of course she dared. Anything to save Malingo from Wolfswinkel’s monster.

  She glanced up once to see how Malingo was faring. Not well was the answer. The eeriac was wrapped around Malingo, its hooks seeking to catch his skin. But he wasn’t quite as vulnerable as a human being. Though doubtless his skin was tender from the beating he’d endured, the hooks did not wound him.

  Even so, he was in dire jeopardy: not from the hooks but from the eeriac’s teeth. He did his best to hold the beast’s two mouths away from his face with his hands, and for a while he succeeded. But the eeriac was strong. It was only a matter of time before the monster’s needle teeth pierced him.

  Candy waited no longer. As Wolfswinkel continued to applaud the horrible spectacle, Candy moved behind him. Then she pitched herself at his back.

  Wolfswinkel turned at the last moment and raised his hand to strike her, but he was too late. She threw herself at him, and with a backward sweep of her hand, she knocked all of his hats off his head.

  Wolfswinkel unleashed a howl of fury and went down on his knees in a desperate attempt to pick up the fallen hats. Candy did her best to prevent him from doing so by kicking them out of his hands.

  From overhead there came a din like the sound of an enormous firecracker exploding.

  Candy looked up to see that the eeriac was no longer threatening Malingo. With Wolfswinkel’s power suddenly removed, the eeriac was diminishing. It had let Malingo go and was bouncing back and forth around the room like an over-filled balloon that had suddenly had the air let out of it. As it struck a solid object—a wall of books, the chandelier, a table, the floor—it erupted in a shower of black sparks, its body getting smaller each time it did so. Candy watched it for a moment, then she called up to Malingo, who was still hanging on the ceiling.

  “Come on! Quickly!”

  He dropped down to stand in front of her.

  “Are you all right?” she said.

  “It didn’t hurt me.” He smiled. “It tried, but—”

  Candy smiled and caught hold of his clammy hand.

  “We have to get out of here!” she said, and they ran toward the front door.

  As they reached the door the beast slammed into the wall above it and released one last stinging rain of black sparks. Then it dropped to the ground between them. It was deflated to a tiny version of its former self. It writhed on the floor, its minuscule mouths still loosing that throaty hiss.

  “Look away,” Malingo said.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not squeamish,” Candy said.

  Malingo stamped his heel down on the eeriac, grinding out the last of its magical life. When he lifted his foot, the creature was no more than a dark stain on the carpet.

  “Now we go,” Malingo said.

  He pulled open the top bolt of the front door. Candy took the middle and the bottom. “Wait. What about the Key?” she said to Malingo, as she threw open the door.

  “This isn’t the time to be worrying about that,” Malingo said, as Kaspar’s din became louder behind them.

  Candy agreed with a little nod, and hand in hand they pitched themselves over the threshold.

  They didn’t look over their shoulders.

  They just stumbled away from the house into the early night of Ninnyhammer, leaving Kaspar Wolfswinkel to roar his threats and his frustration at their backs.

  29. Cat’s Eyes

  “ I’ m free,” Malingo yelled as they ran. “I can’t believe it! I’m free! I’m free!”

  Suddenly he stopped running and picked Candy up in his arms, hugging her so tightly she could barely catch her breath.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he said, swinging her around. “You gave me the courage to do it! Whatever happens to me after this, I’ll always be grateful to you.”

  Then he planted a loving, leathery kiss on her cheek and set her down again.

  Candy was a bit flustered by all this. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been hugged or kissed. But she quickly regained her composure and turned the conversation back to practical matters.

  “We’re not out of the woods yet,” she pointed out. “We need to put as much distance as we can between us and Ol’ Banana Suit.”

  Malingo laughed. “Agreed,” he said. “Do you have a boat?”

  “No. And I don’t suppose you have a luxury yacht in the vicinity?”

  “No. ‘Fraid not. How did you get here, by the way?”

  “Well, there was this giant moth, you see—” she said.

  “Giant moth?”

  “Sent by Christopher Carrion.”

  “So the Lord of Midnight has been after you for a while. What’s he so interested in?”

  “Well, I had this Key—” Candy began. Then she stopped herself. “But that can’t be why he was after me. He didn’t even know I had the Key until Wolfswinkel found it.”

  “Do you know what this mystery key is for?”

  “No, I don’t. I don’t think I was ever told.”

  Candy had no sooner spoken than she heard the voice of Kaspar Wolfswinkel. He was somewhere nearby, to judge by the way he whispered.

  “Oh the Key,” he said. “You want to know what the Key is for…”

  Malingo turned to Candy, the joy stripped from his face, terror replacing it. “He’s here!” he said.

  “It’s all right,” Candy murmured. “He’s not going to hurt us.”

  As she spoke, she looked around for some sign of Wolfswinkel in the murk. But despite the eerie intimacy of his voice, he was nowhere to be seen.

  “For your information,” the magician went on, “the Key opens the Pyramids at Xuxux.”

  “Really?” Candy said, hoping to keep the chat going while she tried to locate Wolfswinkel. “The Pyramids, huh? Very interesting.” She leaned close to Malingo. “Let’s stand back to back,” she said. “That way he can’t creep up on us.”

  Malingo did as she suggested and carefully stepped into place, his back against Candy’s.

  “Believe me,” Wolfswinkel went on boastfully, “I will be massively rewarded for what I did this Hour. I will have power on a scale that would be unimaginable to the likes of you—”

  “Where is he?” Candy whispered to Malingo. “He’s close. I know he’s close. Why can’t we see him?”

  “It’s driving you crazy, isn’t it?” Wolfswinkel said. “You’re wondering if your pitiful senses are finally giving out? Perhaps you’re going crazy. Have you thought about that? What is it the poet says? The mind cannot bear too much reality. You poor thing. It’s the madhouse for you.”

  Malingo seized hold of Candy’s hand. “You are not going crazy,” he said.

  “Then why does he sound so close to us?”

  Malingo was trembling violently. “Because he is close,” he said. “He’s very close.”

  “But I don’t see him,” Candy said, still inspecting the landscape around them.

  “Those hats of his give him a lot of powers,” Malingo whispered. “He’s just made himself invisible.”

  “So_ so he could be anywhere?” Candy said.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Armed with this new information Candy studied the landscape around them for some sign, however subtle, of their enemy’s presence. A bush shaking as Wolfswinkel brushed past it; a pebble cracking beneath his invisible heel. But in the flickering, deceptive light from the fire-poles, it was difficult to be sure of anything. Was that Wolfswinkel moving through the grass off to her left, or just a trick
of the light? Was that his breath, close to her ear, or simply the wind?

  “I hate this,” she whispered.

  She’d no sooner spoken than there was a loud slapping sound, and Malingo stumbled forward, crying out. He instantly let go of Candy’s hand and swung around, raising his fists like an old-fashioned boxer.

  “He’s right here!” Malingo warned. “He’s right here! He just hit the back of my—”

  He didn’t finish. There was another smack, and then a third, this one so violent that it threw Malingo to the ground. He put his hands over his head to protect himself from any further assault.

  “Run, Candy!” he yelled. “Get out of here before he starts on you.”

  At this point Candy felt Kaspar’s arms catching hold of her, and she was lifted up into the air. It was a supernatural strength Wolfswinkel was displaying: the source of it, of course, those ridiculous hats of his. Candy flailed around, hoping by chance to knock them off his head again, but he had her held in such a position that she was powerless to do so. “You’re coming back to the house with me,” he said. “Right now.”

  Candy continued to struggle, but the man’s strength was simply overwhelming. She started to yell for help, hoping there might be somebody out there on the murky slopes that could save them.

  “It’s a lost cause, I’m afraid,” Wolfswinkel said, his invisible mouth inches from Candy’s ear. His breath stank of rum.

  Before Candy could reply, there was a lot of motion in the grass around them, and out of the darkened landscape came a number of tarrie-cats. It was not a small assembly. One minute the place was deserted; the next the beasts seemed to be all around them, their ears pricked, their eyes incandescent, watching Candy intently as she struggled in the arms of her invisible captor. As they approached, she remembered the horrendous crimes Wolfswinkel had claimed the cats had been responsible for. Had any of what he’d told her been true? Had the tarrie-cats come here now to commit some new atrocity? To leap on poor Malingo while he lay on the ground and scratch out his eyes? Or to climb up her body and smother her?

  As if their situation wasn’t bad enough, it had now become incalculably worse.