by Clive Barker
Mahogany felt the blade in his neck as a choking sensation, almost as though he had caught a chicken bone in his throat. He made a ridiculous, half-hearted coughing sound. Blood issued from his lips, painting them, like lipstick on his woman’s mouth. The cleaver clattered to the floor.
Kaufman pulled out the knife. The two wounds spouted little arcs of blood.
Mahogany collapsed to his knees, staring at the knife that had killed him. The little man was watching him quite passively. He was saying something, but Mahogany’s ears were deaf to the remarks, as though he was under water.
Mahogany suddenly went blind. He knew with a nos-talgia for his senses that he would not see or hear again. This was death: it was on him for certain.
His hands still felt the weave of his trousers, however, and the hot splashes on his skin. His life seemed to totter on its tiptoes while his fingers grasped at one last sense.
Then his body collapsed, and his hands, and his life, and his sacred duty folded up under a weight of grey flesh.
The Butcher was dead.
Kaufman dragged gulps of stale air into his lungs and grabbed one of the straps to steady his reeling body. Tears blotted out the shambles he stood in. A time passed: he didn’t know how long; he was lost in a dream of victory.
Then the train began to slow. He felt and heard the brakes being applied. The hanging bodies lurched forward as the careering train slowed, its wheels squealing on rails that were sweating slime. Curiosity overtook Kaufman. Would the train shunt into the Butcher’s underground slaughterhouse, decorated with the meats he had gathered through his career? And the laughing driver, so indifferent to the massacre, what would he do once the train had stopped? Whatever happened now was academic. He could face anything at all; watch and see.
The tannoy crackled. The voice of the driver:
‘We’re here man. Better take your place eh?’
Take your place? What did that mean?
The train had slowed to a snail’s pace. Outside the windows, everything was as dark as ever. The lights flickered, then went out. This time they didn’t come back on.
Kaufman was left in total darkness.
‘We’ll be out in half-an-hour,’ the tannoy announced, so like any station report.
The train had come to a stop. The sound of its wheels on the tracks, the rush of its passage, which Kaufman had grown so used to, were suddenly absent. All he could hear was the hum of the tannoy. He could still see nothing at all.
Then, a hiss. The doors were opening. A smell entered the car, a smell so caustic that Kaufman clapped his hand over his face to shut it out.
He stood in silence, hand to mouth, for what seemed a lifetime. See no evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil.
Then, there was a flicker of light outside the window. It threw the door frame into silhouette, and it grew stronger by degrees. Soon there was sufficient light in the car for Kaufman to see the crumpled body of the Butcher at his feet, and the sallow sides of meat hanging on every side of him.
There was a whisper too, from the dark outside the train, a gathering of tiny noises like the voices of beetles. In the tunnel, shuffling towards the train, were human beings. Kaufman could see their outlines now. Some of them carried torches, which burned with a dead brown light. The noise was perhaps their feet on the damp earth, or perhaps their tongues clicking, or both.
Kaufman wasn’t as naive as he’d been an hour before. Could there be any doubt as to the intention these things had, coming out of the blackness towards the train? The Butcher had slaughtered the men and women as meat for these cannibals, they were coming, like diners at the dinner-gong, to eat in this restaurant car.
Kaufman bent down and picked up the cleaver the Butcher had dropped. The noise of the creatures’ approach was louder every moment. He backed down the car away from the open doors, only to find that the doors behind him were also open, and there was the whisper of approach there too.
He shrank back against one of the seats, and was about to take refuge under them when a hand, thin and frail to the point of transparency appeared around the door.
He could not look away. Not that terror froze him as it had at the window. He simply wanted to watch.
The creature stepped into the car. The torches behind it threw its face into shadow, but its outline could be clearly seen.
There was nothing very remarkable about it.
It had two arms and two legs as he did; its head was not abnormally shaped. The body was small, and the effort of climbing into the train made its breath coarse. It seemed more geriatric than psychotic; generations of fictional man-eaters had not prepared him for its distressing vulnerability.
Behind it, similar creatures were appearing out of the darkness, shuffling into the train. In fact they were coming in at every door. Kaufman was trapped. He weighed the cleaver in his hands, getting the balance of it, ready for the battle with these antique monsters. A torch had been brought into the car, and it illuminated the faces of the leaders.
They were completely bald. The tired flesh of their faces was pulled tight over their skulls, so that it shone with tension. There were stains of decay and disease on their skin, and in places the muscle had withered to a black pus, through which the bone of cheek or temple was showing. Some of them were naked as babies, their pulpy, syphilitic bodies scarcely sexed. What had been breasts were leathery bags hanging off the torso, the genitalia shrunken away.
Worse sights than the naked amongst them were those who wore a veil of clothes. It soon dawned on Kaufman that the rotting fabric slung around their shoulders, or knotted about their midriffs was made of human skins. Not one, but a dozen or more, heaped haphazardly on top of each other, like pathetic trophies.
The leaders of this grotesque meal-line had reached the bodies now, and the gracile hands were laid upon the shanks of meat, and were running up and down the shaved flesh in a manner that suggested sensual pleasure. Tongues were dancing out of mouths, flecks of spittle landing on the meat. The eyes of the monsters were flickering back and forth with hunger and excitement.
Eventually one of them saw Kaufman.
Its eyes stopped flickering for a moment, and fixed on him. A look of enquiry came over the face, making a parody of puzzlement.
‘You,’ it said. The voice was as wasted as the lips it came from.
Kaufman raised the cleaver a little, calculating his chances. There were perhaps thirty of them in the car and many more outside. But they looked so weak, and they had no weapons, but their skin and bones. The monster spoke again, its voice quite well modu-lated, when it found itself, the piping of a once-cultured, once-charming man.
‘You came after the other, yes?’
It glanced down at the body of Mahogany. It had clearly taken in the situation very quickly.
‘Old anyway,’ it said, its watery eyes back on Kaufman, studying him with care.
‘Fuck you,’ said Kaufman.
The creature attempted a wry smile, but it had almost forgotten the technique and the result was a grimace which exposed a mouthful of teeth that had been systematically filed into points.
‘You must now do this for us,’ it said through the bestial grin.
‘We cannot survive without food.’
The hand patted the rump of human flesh. Kaufman had no reply to the idea. He just stared in disgust as the fingernails slid between the cleft in the buttocks, feeling the swell of tender muscle.
‘It disgusts us no less than you,’ said the creature. ‘But we’re bound to eat this meat, or we die. God knows, I have no appetite for it.’
The thing was drooling nevertheless.
Kaufman found his voice. It was small, more with a confusion of feelings than with fear.
‘What are you?’ He remembered the bearded man in the Deli.
‘Are you accidents of some kind?’
‘We are the City fathers,’ the thing said. ‘And mothers, and daughters and sons. The builders, the law-makers. We made this city.
’
‘New York?’ said Kaufman. The Palace of Delights? ‘Before you were born, before anyone living was born.’ As it spoke the creature’s fingernails were running up under the skin of the split body, and were peeling the thin elastic layer off the luscious brawn. Behind Kaufman, the other creatures had begun to unhook the bodies from the straps, their hands laid in that same delighting manner on the smooth breasts and flanks of flesh. These too had begun skinning the meat.
‘You will bring us more,’ the father said. ‘More meat for us. The other one was weak.’
Kaufman stared in disbelief.
‘Me?’ he said. ‘Feed you? What do you think I am?’
‘You must do it for us, and for those older than us. For those born before the city was thought of, when America was a timberland and desert.’
The fragile hand gestured out of the train.
Kaufman’s gaze followed the pointing finger into the gloom. There was something else outside the train which he’d failed to see before; much bigger than anything human.
The pack of creatures parted to let Kaufman through so that he could inspect more closely whatever it was that stood outside, but his feet would not move.
‘Go on,’ said the father.
Kaufman thought of the city he’d loved. Were these really its ancients, its philosophers, its creators? He had to believe it. Perhaps there were people on the surface —bureaucrats, politicians, authorities of every kind — who knew this horrible secret and whose lives were dedicated to preserving these abominations, feeding them, as savages feed lambs to their gods. There was a horrible familiarity about this ritual. It rang a bell — not in Kaufman’s conscious mind, but in his deeper, older self.
His feet, no longer obeying his mind, but his instinct to worship, moved. He walked through the corridor of bodies and stepped out of the train.
The light of the torches scarcely began to illuminate the limitless darkness outside. The air seemed solid, it was so thick with the smell of ancient earth. But Kaufman smelt nothing. His head bowed, it was all he could do to prevent himself from fainting again.
It was there; the precursor of man. The original Ameri-can, whose homeland this was before Passamaquoddy or Cheyenne. Its eyes, if it had eyes, were on him.
His body shook. His teeth chattered.
He could hear the noise of its anatomy: ticking, crack-ling, sobbing.
It shifted a little in the dark.
The sound of its movement was awesome. Like a mountain sitting up.
Kaufman’s face was raised to it, and without thinking about what he was doing or why, he fell to his knees in the shit in front of the Father of Fathers.
Every day of his life had been leading to this day, every moment quickening to this incalculable moment of holy terror.
Had there been sufficient light in that pit to see the whole, perhaps his tepid heart would have burst. As it was he felt it flutter in his chest as he saw what he saw. It was a giant. Without head or limb. Without a feature that was analogous to human, without an organ that made sense, or senses. If it was like anything, it was like a shoal of fish. A thousand snouts all moving in unison, budding, blossoming and withering rhythmically. It was iridescent, like mother of pearl, but it was sometimes deeper than any colour Kaufman knew, or could put a name to.
That was all Kaufman could see, and it was more than he wanted to see. There was much more in the darkness, flickering and flapping.
But he could look no longer. He turned away, and as he did so a football was pitched out of the train and rolled to a halt in front of the Father. At least he thought it was a football, until he peered more attentively at it, and recognized it as a human head, the head of the Butcher. The skin of the face had been peeled off in strips. It glistened with blood as it lay in front of its Lord.
Kaufman looked away, and walked back to the train. Every part of his body seemed to be weeping but his eyes. They were too hot with the sight behind him, they boiled his tears away.
Inside, the creatures had already set about their supper. One, he saw, was plucking the blue sweet morsel of a woman’s eye out of the socket. Another had a hand in its mouth. At Kaufman’s feet lay the Butcher’s headless corpse, still bleeding profusely from where its neck had been bitten through.
The little father who had spoken earlier stood in front of Kaufman.
‘Serve us?’ it asked, gently, as you might ask a cow to follow you.
Kaufman was staring at the cleaver, the Butcher’s symbol of office. The creatures were leaving the car now, dragging the half-eaten bodies after them. As the torches were taken out of the car, darkness was returning.
But before the lights had completely disappeared the father reached out and took hold of Kaufman’s face, thrusting him round to look at himself in the filthy glass of the car window.
It was a thin reflection, but Kaufman could see quite well enough how changed he was. Whiter than any living man should be, covered in grime and blood.
The father’s hand still gripped Kaufman’s face, and its forefinger hooked into his mouth and down his gullet, the nail scoring the back of his throat. Kaufman gagged on the intruder, but had no will left to repel the attack.
‘Serve,’ said the creature. ‘In silence.’
Too late, Kaufman realized the intention of the fingers — Suddenly his tongue was seized tight and twisted on the root. Kaufman, in shock, dropped the cleaver. He tried to scream, but no sound came. Blood was in his throat, he heard his flesh tearing, and agonies convulsed him.
Then the hand was out of his mouth and the scarlet, spittle-covered fingers were in front of his face, with his tongue, held between thumb and forefinger.
Kaufman was speechless.
‘Serve,’ said the father, and stuffed the tongue into his own mouth, chewing on it with evident satisfaction. Kaufman fell to his knees, spewing up his sandwich.
The father was already shuffling away into the dark; the rest of the ancients had disappeared into their warren for another night.
The tannoy crackled.
‘Home,’ said the driver.
The doors hissed closed and the sound of power surged through the train. The lights flickered on, then off again, then on.
The train began to move.
Kaufman lay on the floor, tears pouring down his face, tears of discomfiture and of resignation. He would bleed to death, he decided, where he lay. It wouldn’t matter if he died. It was a foul world anyway.
The driver woke him. He opened his eyes. The face that was looking down at him was black, and not unfriendly. It grinned. Kaufman tried to say something, but his mouth was sealed up with dried blood. He jerked his head around like a driveller trying to spit out a word. Nothing came but grunts.
He wasn’t dead. He hadn’t bled to death.
The driver pulled him to his knees, talking to him as though he were a three-year-old. ‘You got a job to do, my man: they’re very pleased with you.’
The driver had licked his fingers, and was rubbing Kaufman’s swollen lips, trying to part them.
‘Lots to learn before tomorrow night...‘
Lots to learn. Lots to learn.
He led Kaufman out of the train. They were in no station he had ever seen before. It was white-tiled and absolutely pristine; a station-keeper’s Nirvana. No graffiti disfigured the walls. There were no token-booths, but then there were no gates and no passengers either. This was a line that provided only one service: The Meat Train.
A morning shift of cleaners were already busy hosing the blood off the seats and the floor of the train. Somebody was stripping the Butcher’s body, in preparation for dispatch to New Jersey. All around Kaufman people were at work.
A rain of dawn light was pouring through a grating in the roof of the station. Motes of dust hung in the beams, turning over and over. Kaufman watched them, entranced. He hadn’t seen such a beautiful thing since he was a child. Lovely dust. Over and over, and over and over.
The driver had managed
to separate Kaufman’s lips. His mouth was too wounded for him to move it, but at least he could breathe easily. And the pain was already beginning to subside.
The driver smiled at him, then turned to the rest of the workers in the station.
‘I’d like to introduce Mahogany’s replacement. Our new butcher,’ he announced.
The workers looked at Kaufman. There was a certain deference in their faces, which he found appealing.
Kaufman looked up at the sunlight, now falling all around him. He jerked his head, signifying that he wanted to go up, into the open air. The driver nodded, and led him up a steep flight of steps and through an alley-way and so out on to the sidewalk.
It was a beautiful day. The bright sky over New York was streaked with filaments of pale pink cloud, and the air smelt of morning.
The Streets and Avenues were practically empty. At a distance an occasional cab crossed an intersection, its engine a whisper; a runner sweated past on the other side of the street.
Very soon these same deserted sidewalks would be thronged with people. The city would go about its business in ignorance: never knowing what it was built upon, or what it owed its life to. Without hesitation, Kaufman fell to his knees and kissed the dirty concrete with his bloody lips, silently swearing his eternal loyalty to its continuance.
The Palace of Delights received the adoration without comment.
THE YATTERING AND JACK
WHY THE POWERS (long may they hold court; long may they shit light on the heads of the damned) had sent it out from Hell to stalk Jack Polo, the Yattering couldn’t discover. Whenever he passed a tentative enquiry along the system to his master, just asking the simple question, ‘What am I doing here?’ it was answered with a swift rebuke for its curiosity. None of its business, came the reply, its business was to do. Or die trying. And after six months of pursuing Polo, the Yattering was beginning to see extinction as an easy option. This endless game of hide and seek was to nobody’s benefit, and to the Yattering’s immense frustration. It feared ulcers, it feared psychosomatic leprosy (a condition lower demons like itself were susceptible to), worst of all it feared losing its temper completely and killing the man outright in an uncontrollable fit of pique.