by Clive Barker
He rummaged amongst the keys and by some magical chance the first he tried slotted easily in the lock and turned like a finger in hot grease. The door was open, the street ahead.
But Glass glided up behind him soundlessly, and before he could step over the threshold he had thrown something around Maguire's face, a cloth of some kind. It smelt of hospitals, of ether or disinfectant or both. Magure tried to cry out but a fist of cloth was being thrust down his throat. He gagged on it, the vomit-reflex making his system revolt. In response the assassin just tightened his grip.
In the street opposite a girl Maguire knew only as Natalie (Model: seeks interesting position with strict disciplinarian) was watching the struggle in the doorway of the shop with a doped look on her vapid face. She'd seen murder once or twice; she'd seen rape aplenty, and she wasn't about to get involved. Besides, it was late, and the insides of her thighs ached. Casually she turned away down the pink-lit corridor, leaving the violence to take its course. Maguire made a mental note to have the girl's face carved up one of these days. If he survived; which seemed less likely by the moment. The red, blue, red, blue was unfixable now, as his airless brain went colour-blind, and though he seemed to-snatch a grip on his would-be assassin, the hold seemed to evaporate, leaving cloth, empty cloth, running through his sweating hands like silk.
Then someone spoke. Not behind him, not the voice of his assassin, but in front. In the street. Norton. It was Norton. He'd returned for some reason, God love him, and he was getting out of his car ten yards down the street, shouting Maguire's name.
The assassin's choke-hold faltered and gravity claimed Maguire. He fell heavily, the world spinning, to the pavement, his face purple in the lurid light.
Norton ran towards his boss, fumbling for his gun amongst the bric-a-brac in his pocket. The white-suited assassin was already backing off down the street, unprepared to take on another man. He looked, thought Norton, for all the world like a failed member of the Ku Klux Klan; a hood, a robe, a cloak. Norton dropped to one knee, took a double-handed aim at the man and fired. The result was startling. The figure seemed to balloon up, his body losing its shape, becoming a flapping mass of white cloth, with a face loosely imprinted on it. There was a noise like the snapping of Monday-washed sheets on a line, a sound that was out of place in this grimy back-street. Norton's confusion left him responseless for a moment, and the man-sheet seemed to rise in the air, illusory.
At Norton's feet, Maguire was coming round, groaning. He was trying to speak but having difficulty making himself understood through his bruised larynx and throat. Norton bent closer to him. He smelt of vomit and fear.
"Glass," he seemed to be saying.
It was enough. Norton nodded, said hush. That was the face, of course, on the sheet. Glass, the imprudent accountant. He'd watched the man's feet fried, watched the whole vicious ritual; not to his taste at all.
Well, well: Ronnie Glass had some friends apparently, friends not above revenge.
Norton looked up, but the wind had lifted the ghost above the rooftops and away.
That had been a bad experience; the first taste of failure. Ronnie remembered it still, the desolation of that night. He'd lain, heaped in a rat-run corner of a derelict factory south of the river, and calmed the panic in his fibers. What good was this trick he'd mastered if he lost control of it the instant he was threatened? He must plan more carefully, and wind his will up until it would brook no resistance. Already he sensed that his energy was ebbing: and there was a hint of difficulty in restructuring his body this second time round. He had no time to waste with fumbled failures. He must corner the man where he could not possibly escape.
Police investigations at the mortuary had led round in circles for half a day; and now into the night. Inspector Wall of the Yard had tried every technique he knew. Soft words, hard words, promises, threats, seductions, surprises, even blows. Still Lenny told the same story; a ridiculous story he swore would be corroborated when his fellow technician came out of the catatonic state he'd now taken refuge in. But there was no way the Inspector could take the story seriously. A shroud that walked? How could he put that in his report? No, he wanted something concrete, even if it was a lie.
"Can I have a cigarette?" asked Lenny for the umpteenth time. Wall shook his head.
"Hey, Fresco -” Wall addressed his right-hand man, Al Kincaid. "I think it's time you searched the lad again."
Lenny knew what another search implied; it was a euphemism for a beating. Up against the wall, legs spread, hands on head: wham! His stomach jumped at the thought.
"Listen…" he implored.
"What, Lenny?"
"I didn't do it."
"Of course you did it," said Wall, picking his nose. "We just want to know why. Didn't you like the old fucker? Make dirty remarks about your lady-friends, did he? He had a bit of a reputation for that, I understand."
Al Fresco smirked.
"Was that why you nobbled him?"
"For God's sake," said Lenny, "you think I'd tell you a fucking story like that if I didn't see it with my own fucking eyes."
"Language," chided Fresco.
"Shrouds don't fly," said Wall, with understandable conviction.
"Then where is the shroud, eh?" reasoned Lenny.
"You incinerated it, you ate it, how the fuck should I know?"
"Language," said Lenny quietly.
The phone rang before Fresco could hit him. He picked it up, spoke and handed it to Wall. Then he hit Lenny, a friendly slap that drew a little blood.
"Listen," said Fresco, breathing with lethal proximity to Lenny as if to suck the air out of his mouth, "We know you did it, see? You were the only one in the morgue alive to do it, see? We just want to know why. That's all. Just why."
"Fresco." Wall had covered the receiver as he spoke to the muscle-man.
"Yes, sir."
"It's Mr. Maguire."
"Mr. Maguire?"
"Micky Maguire."
Fresco nodded.
"He's very upset." "Oh yeah? Why's that?"
"He thinks he's been attacked, by the man in the morgue. The pornographer."
"Glass," said Lenny, "Ronnie Glass."
"Ronald Glass, like the man says," said Wall, grinning at Lenny.
"That's ridiculous," said Fresco.
"Well I think we ought to do our duty to an upstanding member of the community, don't you? Duck in to the morgue will you, make sure -”
"Make sure?"
That the bastard's still down there -”
"Oh."
Fresco exited, confused but obedient.
Lenny didn't understand any of this: but he was past caring. What the hell was it to him anyway? He started to play with his balls through a hole in his left-hand pocket. Wall watched him with disdain.
"Don't do that," he said. "You can play with yourself as much as you like once we've got you tucked up in a nice, warm cell."
Lenny shook his head slowly, and removed his hand from his pocket. Just wasn't his day.
Fresco was already back from down the hall, a little breathless.
"He's there," he said, visibly brightened by the simplicity of the task.
"Of course he is," said Wall.
"Dead as a Dodo," said Fresco.
"What's a Dodo?" asked Lenny.
Fresco looked blank.
Turn of phrase," he said testily.
Wall of the Yard was back on the line, talking to Maguire. The man at the other end sounded well spooked; and his reassurances seemed to do little good.
"He's all present and correct, Micky. You must have been mistaken."
Maguire's fear ran back through the phone line like a mild electric charge.
"I saw him, damn you."
"Well, he's lying down there with a hole in the middle of his head, Micky. So tell me how can you have seen him?"
"I don't know," said Maguire. "Well then."
"Listen… if you get the chance, drop by will you? Same arrangemen
t as usual. I could put some nice work your way."
Wall didn't like talking business on the phone, it made him uneasy.
"Later, Micky."
"OK. Call by?"
"I will."
"Promise?"
"Yes."
Wall put down the receiver and stared at the suspect. Lenny was back to pocket billiards again. Crass little animal; another search was clearly called for.
"Fresco," said Wall in dove-like tones, “will you please teach Lenny not to play with himself in front of police officers?"
In his fortress in Richmond, Maguire cried like a baby.
He'd seen Glass, no doubt of it. Whatever Wall believed about the body being at the mortuary, he knew otherwise. Glass was out, on the street, foot-loose and fancy-free, despite the fact that he'd blown a hole in the bastard's head.
Maguire was a God-fearing man, and he believed in life after death, though until now he'd never questioned how it would come about. This was the answer, this blank-faced son of a whore stinking of ether: this was the way the afterlife would be. It made him weep, fearing to live, and fearing to die.
It was well past dawn now; a peaceful Sunday morning. Nothing would happen to him in the safety of the "Ponderosa', and in full daylight. This was his castle, built with his hard-won thievings. Norton was here, armed to the teeth. There were dogs at every gate. No-one, living or dead, would dare challenge his supremacy in this territory. Here, amongst the portraits of his heroes: Louis B. Mayer, Dillinger, Churchill; amongst his family; amidst his good taste, his money, his objets d'an, here he was his own man. If the mad accountant came for him he'd be blasted in his tracks, ghost or no ghost. Finis.
After all, wasn't he Michael Roscoe Maguire, an empire builder? Born with nothing, he'd risen by virtue of his stockbroker's face and his maverick's heart. Once in a while, maybe, and only under very controlled conditions, he might let his darker appetites show; as at the execution of Glass. He'd taken genuine pleasure in that little scenario; his the coup de grace, his the infinite compassion of the killing stroke. But his life of violence was all but behind him now. Now he was a bourgeois, secure in his fortress.
Raquel woke at eight, and busied herself with preparing breakfast.
"You want anything to eat?" she asked Maguire.
He shook his head. His throat hurt too much.
"Coffee?"
"Yes."
"You want it in here?"
He nodded. He liked sitting in front of the window that overlooked the lawn and the greenhouse. The day was brightening; fat, fleecy clouds bucked the wind, their shadows passing over the perfect green. Maybe he'd take up painting, he thought, like Winston. Commit his favourite landscapes to canvas; maybe a view of the garden, even a nude of Raquel, immortalised in oils before her tits sagged beyond all hope of support.
She was back purring at his side, with the coffee.
"You, OK?" she asked.
Dumb bitch. Of course he wasn't OK.
"Sure," he said.
"You've got a visitor."
"What?" He sat up straight in the leather chair. "Who?"
She was smiling at him.
"Tracy," she said. "She wants to come in and cuddle."
He expelled a hiss of air from the sides of his mouth. Dumb, dumb bitch.
"You want to see Tracy?"
"Sure."
The little accident, as he was fond of calling her, was at the door, still in her dressing gown.
"Hi, Daddy."
"Hello, sweetheart."
She sashayed across the room towards him, her mother's walk in embryo.
"Mummy says you're ill."
I'm getting better."
I'm glad."
"So am I."
"Shall we go out today?"'Maybe."
"See the fair?"
"Maybe."
She pouted fetchingly, perfectly in control of the effect. Raquel's tricks all over again. He just hoped to God she wasn't going to grow up as dumb as her mother.
"We'll see," he said, hoping to imply yes, but knowing he meant no.
She hoisted herself on to his knee and he indulged her tales of a five year old's mischief's for a while, then sent her packing. Talking made his throat hurt, and he didn't feel too much like the loving father today.
Alone again, he watched the shadows waltz on the lawn.
The dogs began to bark just after eleven. Then, after a short while, they fell silent. He got up to find Norton, who was in the kitchen doing a jigsaw with Tracy. "The Hay-Wain' in two thousand pieces. One of Raquel's favourites.
"You check the dogs, Norton?"
"No, boss."
"Well fucking do it."
He didn't often swear in front of the child; but he felt ready to go bang. Norton snapped to it. As he opened the back door Maguire could smell the day. It was tempting to step outside the house. But the dogs barked in a way that set his head thumping and his palms prickling. Tracy had her head down to the business of the jigsaw, her body tense with anticipation of her father's anger. He said nothing, but went straight back into the lounge.
From his chair he could see Norton striding across the lawn. The dogs weren't making a sound now. Norton disappeared from sight behind the greenhouse. A long wait. Maguire was just beginning to get agitated, when Norton appeared again, and looked up at the house, shrugging at Maguire, and speaking. Maguire unlocked the sliding door, opened it and stepped on to the patio. The day met him: balmy.
"What are you saying?" he called to Norton.
"The dogs are fine," Norton returned.
Maguire felt his body relax. Of course the dogs were OK; why shouldn't they bark a bit, what else were they for? He was damn near making a fool of himself, pissing his pants just because the dogs barked. He nodded to Norton and stepped off the patio on to the lawn. Beautiful day, he thought. Quickening his pace he crossed the lawn to the greenhouse, where his carefully nurtured Bonsai trees bloomed. At the door of the greenhouse Norton was waiting dutifully, going through his pockets, looking for mints.
"You want me here, sir?"
"No."
"Sure?"
"Sure," he said magnanimously, “you go back up and play with the kid."
Norton nodded.
"Dogs are fine," he said again.
"Yeah."
"Must have been the wind stirred them up."
There was a wind. Warm, but strong. It stirred the line of copper beeches that bounded the garden. They shimmered, and showed the paler undersides of their leaves to the sky, their movement reassuring in its ease and gentility.
Maguire unlocked the greenhouse and stepped into his haven. Here in this artificial Eden were his true loves, nurtured on coos and cuttlefish manure. His Sargent's Juniper, that had survived the rigours of Mount Ishizuchi; his flowering quince, his Yeddo Spruce (Picea Jesoensis), his favourite dwarf, that he'd trained, after several failed attempts, to cling to a stone. All beauties: all minor miracles of winding trunk and cascading needles, worthy of his fondest attention.
Content, mindless for a while of the outside world, he pottered amongst his flora.
The dogs had fought over possession of Ronnie as though he were a plaything. They'd caught him breaching the wall and surrounded him before he could make his escape, grinning as they seized him, tore him and spat him out. He escaped only because Norton had approached, and distracted them from their fury for a moment.
His body was torn in several places after their attack. Confused, concentrating to try and keep his shape coherent, he had narrowly avoided being spotted by Norton.
Now he crept out of hiding. The fight had sapped him of energy, and the shroud gaped, so that the illusion of substance was spoiled. His belly was torn open; his left leg all but severed. The stains had multiplied; mucus and dog-shit joining the blood. But the will, the will was all. He had come so close; this was not the time to relinquish his grip and let nature take its course. He existed in mutiny against nature, that was his state; and for the fi
rst time in his life (and death) he felt an elation. To be unnatural: to be in defiance of system and sanity, was that so bad? He was shitty, bloody, dead and resurrected in a piece of stained cloth; he was a nonsense. Yet lie was. No-one could deny him being, as long as he had the will to be. The thought was delicious: like finding a new sense in a blind, deaf world.
He saw Maguire in the greenhouse and watched him awhile. The enemy was totally absorbed in his hobby; he was even whistling the National Anthem as he tended his flowering charges. Ronnie moved closer to the glass, and closer, his voice an oh-so-gentle moan in the failing weave.
Maguire didn't hear the sigh of cloth on the window, until Ronnie's face pressed flat to the glass, the features smeared and misshapen. He dropped the Yeddo Spruce. It shattered on the floor, its branches broken.
Maguire tried to yell, but all he could squeeze from his vocal cords was a strangled yelp. He broke for the door, as the face, huge with greed for revenge, broke the glass. Maguire didn't quite comprehend what happened next. The way the head and the body seemed to flow through the broken pane, defying physics, and reassembled in his sanctum, taking on the shape of a human being.
No, it wasn't quite human. It had the look of a stroke-victim, its white mask and its white body sagged down the right side, and it dragged its torn leg after it as it lunged at him.
He opened the door and retreated into the garden. The thing followed, speaking now, arms extended towards him. "Maguire…" It said his name in a voice so soft he might have imagined it.
But no, it spoke again.
"Recognise me, Maguire?" it said.
And of course he did, even with its stroke-stricken, billowing features it was clearly Ronnie Glass.
"Glass," he said.
"Yes," said the ghost.
"I don't want -” Maguire began, then faltered. What didn't he want? To speak with this horror, certainly. To know that it existed; that too. To die, most of all. "I don't want to die." "You will," said the ghost.
Maguire felt the gust of the sheet as it flew in his face, or perhaps it was the wind that caught this insubstantial monster and threw it around him.
Whichever, the embrace stank of ether, and disinfectant, and death. Arms of Linen tightened around him, the gaping face was pressed on to his, as though the thing wanted to kiss him.