by Clive Barker
You've got all there is, the old voice said. This is as good as it gets. There is no more.
There was a light tapping on the door: Lamar's code.
"Wait," he murmured, trying to hold on to the argument he'd been running in his head.
Outside the door, Eve tapped Lamar on the shoulder:
"Who's up here?" she said.
The comedian offered a small smile.
"Somebody you should meet," he said.
"A friend of Buddy's?" she said.
"Very much so."
"Who?"
"You don't know him."
"So why bother meeting him?" Grillo said. He took hold of Eve's arm. Suspicion had given way to certainty now. There was a rank smell up here, and the sound of more than one presence on the other side of the door.
The invitation to enter came. Lamar turned the doorhandle, and opened up.
"Come along, Eve," he said.
She pulled her arm from Grillo's grip and allowed Lamar to escort her up a step into the room.
"It's dark," Grillo heard her say.
"Eve," he said, pushing past Lamar and reaching through the door after her. As she'd said, it was indeed dark. Evening had come over the Hill, and what little light fell through the far window scarcely etched the interior. But Eve's figure was visible in front of him. Again, he took hold of her arm.
"Enough," he said, and started to turn towards the door. As he did so Lamar's fist met the middle of his face, a solid, unexpected blow. His hand slipped from Eve's arm; he fell to his knees, smelling his own blood in his nose. Behind him, the comedian slammed the door.
"What's happening?" he heard Eve say. "Lamar! What's going on?"
"Nothing to worry about," the man murmured.
Grillo raised his head, causing a hot gush of blood to run from his nose. He put his hand to his face to stem it, and looked around the room. In the brief moment he'd had to glimpse the interior he'd thought it piled with furniture. He'd been wrong. This was living stuff.
"Lam . . ." Eve said again, all bravado gone from her voice now. "Lamar . . . who's up here?"
"Jaffe . . ." a soft voice said. "Randolph Jaffe."
"Shall I put on the light?" Lamar said.
"No," came the answer from the shadows. "No, don't. Not yet."
Despite his buzzing head Grillo recognized the voice and the name. Randolph Jaffe: the Jaff. Which fact gave him the identity of the forms that lurked in the darkest corners of his huge room. It was lavish with the beasts he'd made.
Eve had seen them too.
"My God . . ." she murmured. "My God, my God, what's going on?"
"Friends of friends," Lamar said.
"Don't hurt her," Grillo demanded.
"I'm not a murderer," the voice of Randolph Jaffe said. "Everyone who came in here has walked out alive. I just want a little part of you . . ."
His voice didn't carry the same weight of confidence it had when Grillo had heard him at the Mall. He'd spent much of his professional life listening to people talk; looking for signs of the life beneath the life. How had Tesla put it? Something about having an eye for the hidden agenda. There was certainly subtext to the Jaff's voice now. An ambiguity that had not been there before. Did it offer some hope of escape? Or at least a stay of execution.
"I remember you," Grillo said. He had to draw the man out: make subtext text. Make him tell his doubts. "I saw you catch fire."
"No . . ." said the voice in the darkness, " . . . that wasn't me . . ."
"My mistake. Then who . . . may I ask . . . ?"
"No you may not," Lamar said behind him. "Which of them do you want first?" he asked the Jaff.
The inquiry was ignored. Instead the man said: "Who am I? Strange you should ask." His tone was almost dreamy.
"Please," Eve murmured. "I can't breathe up here."
"Hush," Lamar said. He had moved to take hold of her. In the shadows, the Jaff shifted in his seat like a man who couldn't find a comfortable way to be.
"Nobody knows . . ." he began, ". . . just how terrible it is."
"What is?" Grillo said.
"I have the Art," the Jaff replied. "I have the Art. So I have to use it. It'd be a waste not to, after all this waiting, all this change."
He's shitting himself, Grillo thought. He's close to the edge and he's terrified of slipping over. Into what, he didn't know, but it was surely an exploitable condition. He decided to stay on the floor, where he offered no physical threat to the other man. Very softly he said:
"The Art. What is that?"
If the Jaff's next words were intended as an answer they were oblique.
"Everybody's lost, you know. I use that. Use the fear in them."
"Not you?" Grillo said.
"Not me?"
"Lost."
"I used to think I found the Art . . . but maybe the Art found me."
"That's good."
"Is it?" he said. "I don't know what it's going to do—"
So that's it, Grillo thought. He's got his prize and now he's afraid of unwrapping it.
"It could destroy us all."
"That's not what you said," Lamar muttered. "You said we'd have dreams. All the dreams America ever dreamt; that the world ever dreamt."
"Maybe," said the Jaff.
Lamar let go of Eve and took a step towards his master.
"But now you're saying we could die?" he said. "I don't want to die. I want Rochelle. I want the house. I've got a future. I'm not giving that up."
"Don't try and slip the leash," the Jaff said. For the first time since these exchanges had begun Grillo heard an echo of the man he'd seen at the Mall. Lamar's resistance was winning the old spirit back. Grillo cursed him for his rebellion. It bore one useful fruit only: it allowed Eve to step back towards the door. Grillo kept his place on the ground. Any attempt to join her would only draw attention to them both, and prevent any chance of escape for either. If she could get out she could raise the alarm.
Lamar's complaints, meanwhile, had multiplied.
"Why did you lie to me?" he said. "I should have known from the beginning you weren't going to do me any good. Well, fuck you—"
Silently, Grillo egged him on. The deepening dusk had kept pace with his eyes' attempt to pierce it, and he could see no more of his captor than he'd been able to see when he first came in, but he saw the figure stand. The motion caused consternation in the shadows, as the beasts hidden there responded to their creator's discomfiture.
"How dare you?" the Jaff said.
"You told me we were safe," Lamar said.
Grillo heard the door creak behind him. Though he wanted to turn he resisted the temptation.
"Safe, you said!"
"It's not that simple!" the Jaff said.
"I'm out of here!" Lamar replied, and turned to the door. It was too dark for Grillo to see the expression on his face, but a spill of light from behind him, and the sound of Eve's footsteps as she fled the room, was evidence enough. Grillo stood up as Lamar, cursing, crossed to the door. He was woozy from the blow, and reeled as he stood, but got to the door a pace before Lamar. They collided, their joint weights toppling against the door and slamming it again. There was a moment of confusion, almost farcical, in which they each fought for the handle of the door. Then something intervened, looming behind the comedian. It was pale in the darkness; gray against black. Lamar made a small noise in his throat as the creature took hold of him from behind. He reached out towards Grillo, who slipped from beneath his fingers, back towards the middle of the room. He couldn't work out how the terata was battening upon Lamar, and he was glad of the fact. The man's flailing limbs and guttural sounds were enough. He saw the comedian's bulk slump against the door, then slide down it, his body increasingly eclipsed by the terata. Then both were still.
"Dead?" Grillo breathed.
"Yes," said the Jaff. "He called me a liar."
"I'll remember that."
"You should."
The Jaff made a motion
in the darkness, which Grillo failed to make sense of. But it had consequences that made a great deal plain. Beads of light broke from the man's fingers, illuminating his face, which was wasted, his body, which was clothed as it had been at the Mall, but seemed to spill darkness, and the room itself, with terata, no longer the complex beasts they'd been but barbed shadows, lining every wall.
"Well, Grillo . . . ," the Jaff said, ". . . it seems I must do it."
IX
AFTER love, sleep. They hadn't planned it that way, but neither Jo-Beth nor Howie had slept more than a handful of uninterrupted hours since they'd met, and the ground they'd made love on was soft enough to tempt them. Even when the sun slipped behind the trees, they didn't waken. When finally Jo-Beth opened her eyes it wasn't the chill: the night was balmy. Cicadas made music in the grass around them. There was a gentle motion in the leaves. But beneath these reassuring sights and sounds was a strange, unfixable glow between the trees.
She rocked Howie out of sleep as gently as possible. He opened his eyes reluctantly, until they focused on his waker's face.
"Hi," he said. Then: "We overslept, huh? What time is—"
"There's somebody here, Howie," she whispered.
"Where?"
"I just see lights. They're all around us. Look!"
"My glasses," he whispered. "They're in my shirt."
"I'll get them."
She moved away from him in search of the clothes he'd dropped. He squinted at the scene. The police barricades, and the cave beyond: the abyss where Buddy Vance was still lying. It had seemed so natural to make love here in the full light of day. Now it seemed perverse. There was a dead man lying down there somewhere, in the same darkness where their fathers had waited all those years.
"Here," she said.
Her voice startled him. "It's OK," she murmured. He dug his glasses from the pocket of his shirt and hooked them on. There were indeed lights in between the trees, but their source was undefined.
Jo-Beth not only had some luck with his shirt, but with the rest of their clothes. She started to put on her underwear. Even now, with his heart thumping hard for quite another reason, the sight of her aroused him. She caught his look, and kissed him.
"I don't see anyone," he said, still keeping his voice low.
"Maybe I was wrong," she said, "I just thought I heard somebody."
"Ghosts," he said, then regretted inviting the thought into his head. He began to pull on his shorts. As he did he caught a movement between the trees. "Oh shit," he murmured.
"I see," she said. He looked towards her. She was looking in the opposite direction. Following her gaze he saw motion there too, in the shadows of the canopy. And another movement. And another.
"They're on all sides," he said, pulling on his shirt and reaching for his jeans. "Whatever they are they've got us surrounded."
He stood up, pins and needles in his legs, his thoughts turning desperately to how he might arm himself. Could he trash one of the barricades perhaps, and find a weapon in the wreckage? He glanced at Jo-Beth, who'd almost finished dressing, then back at the trees.
From beneath the canopy a diminutive figure emerged, trailing a phantom light. Suddenly it all came clear. The figure was that of Benny Patterson, whom Howie had last seen in the street outside Lois Knapp's house, calling after him. There was no sunny smile on his face now. Indeed his face was somehow blurred, his features like a picture taken by a palsied photographer. The light he'd brought from his TV appearances came with him, however. That was the radiance that haunted the trees.
"Howie," he said.
His voice, like his face, had lost its individuality. He was holding on to being Benny, but only just.
"What do you want?" Howie asked.
"We've been looking for you."
"Don't go near him," Jo-Beth said. "It's one of the dreams."
"I know," Howie said. "They don't mean us any harm. Do you, Benny?"
"Of course not."
"So show yourselves," Howie said, addressing the whole ring of trees. "I want to see you."
They did as they were instructed, stepping from the corner of the trees on every side. All of them, like Benny, had undergone a change since he'd seen them at the Knapp house, their honed and polished personalities smudged, their dazzling smiles dimmed. They looked more like each other than not, smeared forms of light who held on to the remains of identities only tenuously. The imaginations of the Grovers had conceived them, and shaped them, but once gone from their creator's company they slid towards a plainer condition: that of the light that had emanated from Fletcher's body as he'd died at the Mall. This was his army, his hallucigenia, and Howie didn't need to ask them what they'd come here searching for. Him. He was the rabbit from Fletcher's hat; the conjuror's purest creation. He'd fled before their demands the previous night, but they'd sought him out nevertheless, determined to have him as their leader.
"I know what you want from me," he said. "But I can't supply it. This isn't my war."
He surveyed the assembly as he spoke, distinguishing faces he'd seen at the Knapp house, despite their decay into light. Cowboys, surgeons, soap-opera queens and game-show hosts. Besides these there were many he hadn't seen at Lois's party. One form of light that had been a werewolf; several that might have been comic-book heroes; several more, four in fact, who had been incarnations of Jesus, two bleeding light from brow, side, hands and feet; another dozen who looked as though they'd stepped from an X-rated movie, their bodies wet with come and sweat. There was a balloon man, colored scarlet; and Tarzan; and Krazy Kat. And mingled with these identifiable deities, others who'd been private imaginings, called, he guessed, from the wish-list of those Fletcher's light had touched. Lost spouses, whose passing no other lover could replace; a face seen on a street whom their dreamers had never had the nerve to approach. All of them, real or unreal, bland or Technicolored, touchstones. The true stuff of worship. There was something undeniably moving about their existence. But he and Jo-Beth had been passionate in their desire to stay apart from this war; to preserve what was between them from taint or harm. That ambition hadn't changed.
Before he could reiterate the point one of the number he couldn't name, a woman in early middle age, stepped out of the ranks to speak.
"Your father's spirit's in all of us," she said. "If you turn your back on us, you turn your back on him."
"It's not as simple as that," he told her. "I've got other people to consider." He extended his hand to Jo-Beth, who rose to stand beside him. "You know who this is. Jo-Beth McGuire. Daughter of the Jaff. Fletcher's enemy, and therefore, if I understand you right, your enemy. But let me tell you . . . she's the first person I ever met in my life . . . I can really say I love. I put her before everything. You. Fletcher. This damn war."
Now a third voice rose from the ranks.
"It was my error—"
Howie looked round to see the blue-eyed cowboy, Mel Knapp's creation, moving forward. "My error thinking you wanted her killed. I regret it. If you don't wish harm done to her—"
"Don't wish harm? My God, she's worth ten of Fletcher! Value her as I value her or you can all go to Hell."
There was a resounding silence.
"Nobody's arguing," Benny said.
"I hear."
"So you'll lead us?"
"Oh Jesus."
"The Jaff's on the Hill," the woman said. "About to use the Art."
"How do you know?"
"We're Fletcher's spirit," the cowboy said. "We know the Jaff's purpose."
"And you know how to stop him?"
"No," the woman returned. "But we have to try. Quiddity must be preserved."
"And you think I can help? I'm no tactician."
"We're decaying," Benny said. Even in the brief time since he'd appeared his facial features had become more smudged. "Getting . . . dreamy. We need someone to keep us to our purpose."
"He's right," said the woman. "We're not here long. Many of us won't make it through to morn
ing. We have to do what we can. Quickly."
Howie sighed. He'd let Jo-Beth's hand slip from his when she'd stood up. He took it again.
"What do I do?" he asked her. "Help me."
"You do what feels right."
"What feels right . . ."
"You said to me once, you wished you'd known Fletcher better. Maybe—"
"What? Say it."
"I don't like the idea of us going up against the Jaff with these . . . dreams as an army . . . but maybe doing as your father would have done is the only way to be true to him. And . . . be free from him."
He looked at her with fresh understanding. She had a grasp of his deepest confusions, and could see a way through the maze to a clear place, where Fletcher and the Jaff would have no hold on either of them. But payment had to be made first. She'd paid: losing her family for him. It was his turn now.
"All right," he said to the assembly. "We'll go up the Hill."
Jo-Beth squeezed his hand.
"Good," she said.
"You want to come?"
"I have to."
"I wanted so much for us to be out of this."
"We will be," she said. "And if we don't escape it . . . if something happens to one or both of us. . . we've had our time."
"Don't say that."
"It's more than your momma had, or mine," she reminded him. "More than most people here. Howie, I love you."
He put his arms around her, and hugged her to him, glad that Fletcher's spirit, albeit in a hundred different shapes, was there to see.
I suppose I'm ready to die, he thought. Or as ready as I'll ever be.
X
EVE had left the room at the top of the stairs breathless and terrified. She'd glimpsed Grillo getting up and crossing to the door and Lamar intercepting him. Then the door was slammed in her face. She waited long enough to hear the Jokemeister's death-cough, then she hurried down the flight to raise the alarm.
Though darkness had now descended upon the house there were more lights burning outside than in: colored floods illuminating the various exhibits she and Grillo had wandered among earlier. The wash of mingled colors, scarlet, green, yellow, blue and violet, lit her way to the landing where she and Lamar had encountered Sam Sagansky. He was still there, with his wife. They seemed not to have moved at all, except to cast their eyes towards the ceiling.