by Clive Barker
"Are there any others?" he asked a heavily set man slumped by the shore.
"Others?"
"You know . . . like us."
There was the same puzzled and distracted air about this man as there'd been about the Silksheen Woman. He seemed to be laboring to put the words he'd heard together.
"Us," Howie said. "From the house."
There was no answer forthcoming. The man just kept on staring, his gaze glassy. Howie gave up and searched for a more useful source of information, electing the one man among the survivors who wasn't looking out over Quiddity. Instead he was standing high up on the beach, staring up at the smoke tower at the core of the archipelago. The journey here hadn't left him unmarked. There were signs of Quiddity's work on his neck and face, and running down his spine. He'd taken off his shirt and bound it around his left hand. Howie approached him.
No excuse me this time, just the plain statement:
"I'm looking for a girl. She's blonde. About eighteen. Have you seen her?"
"What's up there?" the man replied. "I want to go. I want to see."
Howie tried again. "I'm looking—"
"I heard you."
"Have you seen her?"
"No."
"Do you know if there are any more survivors?"
The reply was the same deadpan syllable. It got Howie raging.
"What the fuck's wrong with everybody?" he said.
The man looked at him. His face was pock-marked and far from handsome, but he had a lop-sided smile that Quiddity's handiwork couldn't spoil.
"Don't get mad," he said. "It's not worth it."
"She's worth it."
"Why? We're all dead anyhow."
"Not necessarily. We got in, we can get out."
"What, you mean swim? Fuck that, man. I'm not going back in that fucking soup. I'd prefer to die. Somewhere up there."
He looked back towards the mountain. "There's something up there. Something wonderful. I know it."
"Maybe."
"You want to come with me?"
"Climb, you mean? You'll never make it."
"Not all the way, maybe, but I can get closer. Get a sniff of it."
His appetite for the mystery of the tower was welcome when everyone else was so lethargic, and Howie was loath to part company with him. But wherever Jo-Beth was, it wasn't on the mountain.
"Just come some of the way," the guy said. "You'll get a better view up there. Maybe spot your lady-friend."
That was no bad idea, especially when they had so little time. The unrest in the air was more palpable with every minute that passed.
"Why not?" Howie said.
"I've been looking for the easiest route. Seems to me we're best going back along the beach aways. By the way, who are you? I'm Garrett Byrne. Two R's. No u. Just in case you get to write the obit. You are?"
"Howie Katz."
"I'd shake your hand only mine isn't fit for shaking." He raised the shirt-swathed limb. "I don't know what happened out there but I'll never draft another contract. Maybe I'm glad, you know? It was a fucking dumb business anyhow."
"What was?"
"Entertainment lawyer. You know the joke? What have you got if you've got three entertainment lawyers up to their necks in shit?"
"What?"
"Not enough shit."
Byrne laughed out loud at this.
"Want to see?" he said, unwrapping his hand. It was scarcely recognizable as such. The fingers and thumb had fused and swollen.
"You know what?" he said. "I think it's trying to turn itself into a dick. All those years fucking people with this, just taking them up the ass, and it's finally got the message. It's a dick, don't you think? No, don't tell me. Let's just climb."
Tommy-Ray felt the dream-sea working upon him as he floated, but he didn't waste effort looking to see what changes it was making. He just let the fury that was fuelling those changes come.
Perhaps it was that—the anger and the snot—that brought the phantoms back. He became aware of them as a memory first, his mind picturing their pursuit of him down the empty highways of the Baja, their cloud like tin cans tied to a dog's tail. No sooner thought than felt. A cold wind blew on his face, which was the only part of him showing out of the sea. He knew what was coming. Smelled the tombs, and the dust in the tombs. It wasn't until the sea around him started to churn, however, that he opened his eyes and saw the cloud circling above him. It was not the great storm it had been in the Grove; the destroyer of churches and mommas. It was a mad runty spiral of dirt. But the sea knew it belonged to him, and it began new work on his body. He felt his limbs getting heavier. His face itched furiously. He wanted to say: this isn't my legion. Don't blame me for what they feel. But what was the use of denying it? He was the Death-Boy, now and always. Quiddity knew it, and worked its work accordingly. There were no lies here. No pretenses. He watched as the spirits descended towards the surface of the sea, their circle centering on him. The fury in Quiddity's ether intensified. He was spun like a top, his motion screwing him down. He tried to throw his arms up over his head, but they were leaden, and the sea simply closed over his head. His mouth was open. Quiddity flooded his throat; his system. In the confusion one simple knowledge—carried by Quiddity, now swallowed in its bitter whole—touched him. That there was an evil coming he had never known the likes of; that no one had ever known the likes of. He felt it in his chest first, then in his stomach and bowels. Finally, in his head, like a blossoming night. It was called Iad , this night, and the chill it brought had no equal on any planet in the system; even those so far from the sun they could bear no life. None owned a darkness this deep, this murderous.
He rose to the surface again. The phantoms had gone, not away, but into him, subsumed into his transforming anatomy as part of Quiddity's work. He was suddenly, perversely, glad of it. There would be no salvation in the night that was coming, except for those who were its allies. Better he should be a death among many deaths, then, when he might have a hope of being passed over in the holocaust.
He took a breath, and expelled it in laughter, putting his remade hands, heavy as they were, up to his face. It had finally taken on the shape of his soul.
Howie and Byrne climbed for several minutes, but however high they got the best view was always above them: the spectacle of the smoke tower. The closer they got the more Byrne's obsession with the sight touched Howie. He began wondering, as he had when the tide had first brought him within sighting distance of the Ephemeris, what great unknown was hiding up there, so powerful it drew the sleepers of the world to its threshold. Byrne was by no means agile, given that he had only one hand available. He repeatedly slipped. But there was no murmur of complaint from him, though with every fall the number of cuts and scrapes on his bare body multiplied. Eyes fixed on the highest reaches of the mountain he pushed on, not seeming to give a damn what damage he did himself as long as he closed the gap between himself and the mystery. Howie found it easy enough to keep up with him, but had to halt every few minutes to survey the scene below from a new vantage point. There was no sign of Jo-Beth along any visible stretch of shore, and he now began to question the wisdom of his coming with Byrne. The journey was increasingly perilous, as the formations they were ascending became steeper, and the bridges they crossed narrower. Beneath the bridges it was a straight fall, usually on to rock. Sometimes, however, there was a glint of Quiddity at the bottom of these chasms, its waters as frenzied as they were beyond the shore.
There were fewer and fewer spirits in the air, but as they crossed an arch no broader than a plank a flight of them passed directly overhead and Howie saw that within each of the lights was a single sinuous line, like a bright snake. Genesis couldn't have been more misguided, or misguiding, he thought, to picture the serpent crushed beneath a human heel. The soul was that serpent, and it could fly.
The sight brought him to a halt, and a decision.
"I'm not going any further," he said.
Byrne looked bac
k at him. "Why not?"
"I've got as good a view of the shore-line as I'm going to get."
The view was by no means comprehensive, but climbing higher wasn't going to improve it significantly. Besides, the figures on the beach below were now so small they were barely recognizable. Another few minutes' ascent and he'd not know Jo-Beth from any other survivor.
"Don't you want to see what's up there?" Byrne said.
"Yes, of course," Howie replied. "But another time." He knew the response was ridiculous. There'd be no other time this side of his death-bed.
"I'll leave you then," Byrne said. He didn't waste breath with a goodbye, fond or otherwise. Instead he turned back to the business of the climb. His body was running with blood and sweat, and he was stumbling now with every second step he took, but Howie knew it was a vain course trying to call him back. Vain, and presumptuous. Whatever kind of life he'd lived—and it sounded to have been lacking charity— Byrne was seizing his last chance to be touched by the holy. Maybe death was the inevitable consequence of such pursuit.
Howie returned his gaze to the scene below. He followed the line of the beach, looking for the least sign of movement. To his left lay the stretch of shore they'd climbed from. He could still see the party of survivors, at the margin of the sea, as mesmerized as ever. To their right, the solitary figure of the Silksheen Woman, the waves that broke against the shore—their boom carried to his ears—large enough to threaten her with acquisition. Beyond her again, the beach upon which he'd first found himself.
It wasn't empty. His heart did double time. There was somebody stumbling along the shore, keeping well away from the encroaching sea. Her hair shone, even at this distance. It could only be Jo-Beth. With the recognition came fear for her. It looked as though every step she took was an agony.
He immediately started down the way they'd come, the rock marked in several places by splashes of Byrne's blood. At one such spot, after ten minutes of descent, he looked back to see if he could spot the man, but the heights were dark and, as far as he could see, empty. The last remaining souls had gone from the smoke tower; and with them much of the light. There was no sign of Byrne.
When he turned back, there was. The man was standing two or three yards lower down the slope. The multitude of wounds he'd collected on his way up were nothing beside his newest. It ran from the side of his head to his hip, and had opened him up to his innards.
"I fell," he said simply.
"All the way down here?" Howie said, marvelling at the fact that the man was even standing.
"No. I came down of my own accord."
"How?"
"It was easy," Byrne replied. "I'm larvae now."
"What?"
"Ghost. Spirit. I thought maybe you'd seen me fall."
"No."
"It was a long drop, but it ended well. I don't think anybody ever died on the Ephemeris before. That makes me one of one. I can make my own rules. Play it any way I like. And I thought I should come help Howie—" His obsessive heat had been replaced by a calm authority. "You have to be quick," he said. "I understand a lot of things suddenly, and the news isn't good."
"Something's happening, isn't it?"
"The Iad ," Byrne said. "They're starting across Quiddity." Terms that he hadn't known minutes before were now commonplace from his lips.
"What are Iad ?" Howie asked.
"Evil beyond words," Byrne said, "so I won't even try."
"Going to the Cosm?"
"Yes. Maybe you can get there ahead of them."
"How?"
"Trust to the sea. It wants what you want."
"Which is?"
"You, out, " Byrne said. "So go. And quickly."
"I hear."
Byrne stood aside to let Howie pass. As he did so he took hold of Howie's arm with his good hand.
"You should know—" he said.
"What?"
"What's on the mountain. It's wonderful. "
"Worth dying for?"
"A hundred times."
He let go of Howie.
"I'm glad."
"If Quiddity survives," Byrne said. "If you survive this, look for me. I'm going to be wanting words with you."
"I will," Howie replied, and began down the slope as fast as he was able, his descent veering between the ungainly and the suicidal. He started to yell Jo-Beth's name as soon as he came within what he guessed was hailing distance, but his call went unheeded. The blonde head didn't look up from its study. Perhaps the sound of the waves was drowning him out. He reached beach level in a scrambling, sweaty daze and began to race towards her.
"Jo-Beth! It's me! Jo-Beth!"
This time she did hear, and she looked up. Even with several yards between them he could see clearly the reason for her stumbling. Horrified, he slowed his pace, barely aware he was doing so. Quiddity had been at work on her. The face he'd fallen in love with at Butrick's Steak House, the face from the sight of which he dated his life, was a mass of spiky growths that spread down her neck and disfigured her arms. There was a moment, one he'd never quite forgive himself for, in which he wished she wouldn't know him, and he'd be able to walk on past her. But she did; and the voice that came from behind the mask was the same that had told him she loved him.
Now it said: "Howie . . . help me . . ."
He opened his arms and let her come into them. Her body was feverish, racked with shudders.
"I thought I'd never see you again," she said, her hands over her face.
"I wouldn't have left you."
"At least we can die together now."
"Where's Tommy-Ray?"
"He's gone," she said.
"We've got to do the same," Howie said. "Get off the island as quickly as possible. Something terrible's coming."
She dared to look up at him, her eyes as clear and blue as they'd ever been, staring out at him like the gleam of treasure in muck. The sight made him hold her tighter, as if to prove to her (and to himself) that he'd mastered the horror. He hadn't. It was her beauty that had first taken his breath away. Now that was gone. He had to look beyond its absence to the Jo-Beth he'd later come to love. That was going to be hard.
He looked away from her, towards the sea. The waves were thunderous.
"We have to go back into Quiddity," he said.
"We can't!" she said. "I can't!"
"We've got no choice. It's the only way back."
"It did this to me," she said. "It changed me!"
"If we don't go now," Howie said, "we never go. It's as simple as that. We stay here and we die here."
"Maybe that's for the best," she said.
"How can that be?" Howie said. "How's dying for the best?"
"The sea'll kill us anyway. It'll twist us up."
"Not if we trust it. Give ourselves over to it."
He remembered, briefly, his journey here, floating on his back, watching the lights. If he thought the return trip would be so mellow he was kidding himself. Quiddity was no longer a tranquil sea of souls. But what other choice did they have?
"We can stay," Jo-Beth said again. "We can die here, together. Even if we got back—" she started to sob again, "—even if we got back I couldn't live like this."
"Stop crying," he told her. "And stop talking about dying. We're going to get back to the Grove. Both of us. If not for our sakes, then to warn people."
"About what?"
"There's something coming across Quiddity. An invasion. Heading home. That's why the sea's going wild."
The commotion in the sky above them was every bit as violent. There was no sign, either in sea or sky, of the spirit-lights. However precious these moments on the Ephemeris were, every last dreamer had forsaken the journey, and woken. He envied them the ease of that passage. Just to be able to snap out of this horror and find yourself back in your own bed. Sweaty, maybe; scared, certainly. But home. Sweet and easy. Not so for the trespassers like themselves, flesh and blood in a place of spirit. Nor, now he thought of it, for the other
s here. He owed them a warning, though he suspected his words would be ignored.
"Come with me," he said.
He took hold of Jo-Beth's hand and they headed back along the beach to where the rest of the survivors were gathered. Very little had changed, though the man who'd been lying in the waves had now gone, dragged away, Howie presumed, by the violence of the sea. Apparently nobody had gone to his aid. They were standing or sitting as before, their lazy gazes still on Quiddity. Howie went to the nearest of them, a man not much older than himself, with a face born for its present vacuity.
"You have to get out of here," he said. "We all have to."
The urgency in his voice did something to rouse the man from his torpor, but not much. He managed a wary "Yeah?" but did nothing.
"You'll die if you stay," Howie told him, then raised his voice above the waves to address them all. "You'll die!" he said. "You have to go into Quiddity, and let it take you back."
"Where?" said the young man.
"What do you mean, where?"
"Back where?"
"To the Grove. The place you came from. Don't you remember?"