Galilee

by Clive Barker

  “She doesn’t care about the money.”

  “Don’t be so dumb, Mitch!” Garrison suddenly yelled down the phone. “Everybody cares about the fucking money!” He took a moment to let his irritation subside, then he said: “Mitch, listen to me. There are other ways to deal with this. Nice, calm, calculated ways.”

  “I’m perfectly calm,” Mitchell said. “And I’m not going to do anything stupid. I just don’t want her there. Not with him.”

  “You don’t even know—”

  “Give it up, Garrison. I’m on my way and that’s all there is to it. I’ll call you when I arrive.”

  Getting to his destination proved more irksome than Mitchell had anticipated. His hired transport had no sooner taxied onto the runway in preparation for takeoff than the radar system servicing the airport ceased operation, grounding every flight and preventing all landings for the next hour and a half. There was nothing to be done but endure the delay. When the glitch in the system was finally fixed, there was of course a large number of circling aircraft which needed to be landed before anybody could take off, and even then progress was slow, with the bigger commercial aircraft being given precedence. By the time the jet was finally airborne, Mitchell had been sitting in his leather seat sipping whiskey and breathing stale air for almost three and a half hours, with a ten-hour flight ahead.

  ii

  Garrison had a meeting that evening to finalize plans for the funeral. It was chaired by a fellow he’d never much liked, one Carl Linville, who had organized the momentous events in the family’s collective life for thirty years, as his father had done before him. An effete man with a suspicious taste in pastel silk ties, Linville always seemed to know what the most tasteful choice would be under any given circumstance, which skill had always faintly disgusted Garrison. Now more than ever: the idea of what was tasteful and what was not—what flowers, what music, what prayers—seemed profoundly irrelevant. The old man was being put in the ground; that was all.

  But he kept his views to himself, and let the ever voluble Linville opine late into the night. He had a sizable audience. Loretta, of course, but also Jocelyn and two of his own staff. There wasn’t a detail to be left to chance, Linville insisted; the eyes of the world would be on the event and they all owed it to Cadmus that the funeral proceed with dignity and professionalism. So it went on, with Loretta chiming in now and again to comment on something Linville had said. The only surprising moment in the meeting (and the closest it came to drama) occurred when, in the midst of a discussion about the guest list, Loretta proffered a list of her own, informing Linville that there were two or three dozen names upon it that he would not know, but that had all to be invited.

  “May I enquire as to who these people are?” Carl asked.

  “If you must know,” Loretta said, “several of them are mistresses of Cadmus’s.”

  “I see,” said Carl, looking as though he wished the question had never crossed his lips.

  “He was a man who loved women,” Loretta said with a little shrug. “Everybody knows that. And I’m sure many of them loved him. They have a right to say goodbye.”

  “This is all very . . . European,” Carl remarked.

  “And you don’t think it’s appropriate—”

  “Frankly, no.”

  “—and I don’t care,” Loretta replied. “Invite them.”

  “And these others?” he said, a distant chill in his voice now.

  “Some of them are business associates from way back. Don’t look so nervous, Carl, none of them are going to come dressed as the Easter Bunny. They’ve all been to funerals before.”

  There was a little uncomfortable laughter, and the meeting moved on. But Garrison’s attention remained with Loretta. She was different tonight, he thought. It wasn’t just the black she was wearing, though that did accentuate the precision of her makeup. There was a glitter in her eye; and he didn’t like it. What did she have to be so pleased about? It was only when Linville, toward the close of the meeting, mentioned Mitch’s function at the funeral, and asked where he was, that Garrison realized why Loretta was looking so smug: she was the one who’d sent him to the island. She was up to her old tricks again, manipulating Mitch, sweetening him, getting him on her side. No wonder he’d sounded so certain of himself on the phone, when a few hours before he’d been a sobbing idiot. She’d given him a pep talk; probably persuaded him that if he did as she instructed he might still get the shopgirl back. And of course he’d fallen for it. She’d always been able to wrap him around her finger.

  As the meeting broke up, Linville promising that by midmorning tomorrow he’d have a full itinerary for the funeral in everyone’s hands, Loretta came over to Garrison and said:

  “When the funeral’s over, I’d like you to go down to the Washington house and see if there’s anything you want to have for yourself before I put it up for auction.”

  “How kind of you,” he replied.

  “I know there’s some pieces of furniture there that were brought over from Vienna by your mother.”

  “I don’t have any sentimental attachments to that stuff,” Garrison said.

  “There’s nothing wrong with a little sentiment now and again,” Loretta replied.

  “I haven’t noticed much of it from you.”

  “I do my grieving in private.”

  “Well you’ll have all the privacy you want when he’s buried,” Garrison remarked. “I’m surprised you’re selling the Washington place. Where are you going to live?”

  “I’m not planning to quietly fade away, if that’s what you’re hoping,” Loretta replied. “I’ve got a lot of responsibilities.”

  “Don’t worry about all that,” Garrison said. “You deserve a rest.”

  “I’m not worried,” Loretta said flatly. “In fact, I’m looking forward to getting a better handle on things. I let a lot of details slip in the last few months.” Garrison gave her a tight little smile. “Goodnight, Garrison.” She pecked him on the cheek. “You should get some sleep, by the way,” she said as she departed. “You look worse than Mitchell did.”

  It was only when Garrison was back at the Tower, and sitting in the chair where he now preferred to sleep (his bed made him feel uneasy, for some reason) that he thought again of the Washington house, and of Loretta’s suggestion that he look for some keepsake there. As he’d said, he’d had no great desire to have anything from the house, but if it and its contents were indeed to be auctioned off then he would have to find a day in his schedule to go down and walk around. He’d had happy times there, as a child: in the dog days of summer, playing under the sycamores at the back of the house, where the shadows were cool and blue; Christmases when the place had been warm and welcoming, and he’d felt, if only for a few hours, part of the family. Such feelings of belonging had never lasted very long; he’d always in the end felt himself an outsider. He’d had years of analysis trying to untangle the reasons, but he’d never come close to understanding why. What an utter waste of time that had been: sitting hour after hour with those stale-headed men examining his navel fluff, looking for some clue as to why he felt like a stranger to himself. He knew now of course; now that he could see himself clearly. He didn’t belong in that nest because he was another order of being.

  It put him in a fine, dreamy mood reflecting on that; and he slipped into sleep sitting in the chair, and did not move until the first sirens of the new day woke him.

  XIV

  i

  The storm lasted well into the night, veering at the last moment and coming ashore along the southeast coast of the island. The chief town to suffer was Poi’pu, but a number of smaller communities in the area were also badly struck. There was some flooding, and a bridge outside Kalaheo was washed away; so were some small huts. By the time the wind carried the storm clouds off into the interior of the island—where they hung over the mountains for the rest of the night, slowly dissipating—there had been three more fatalities to add to those lives lost at sea
.

  Rachel didn’t retire to bed until after one; she sat up listening to the roar of the wind-filled trees around the house, the palms bending so low that their fronds scraped the roof like long-nailed fingers. She had loved rainstorms as a child—they’d always seemed cleansing to her—and this storm was no exception. She liked its din, its violence, its showmanship. Even when the power failed, leaving her to sit by the light of a couple of candles, she was still quite happy. She had only one regret: that she didn’t still have Holt’s journal. What a perfect time and place this would have been to be reading the last section of the book. She would never see it again, she assumed: now it was in Mitchell or Garrison’s hands, and the chances of her reclaiming it were slim. No matter. She’d find out from Galilee what had happened to Holt. Maybe he’d turn it into a story for her; hold her in his arms and tell her how Nickelberry and the captain and himself had fared together. There wouldn’t be a happy conclusion, she guessed, but right now, listening to the downpour lashing against the windows, she didn’t much care. It wasn’t a night for happy endings: it was a night for the dark to have its way. Tomorrow, when the clouds had cleared and the sun was up, she’d be pleased to hear about miraculous rescues and prayers answered. But right now, in the roaring, pelting heart of the night, she wanted Galilee there to tell her how death had come to Captain Holt, and how the ghost of his child—yes! surely the child came back—had stood at the bottom of his deathbed and called him away, just as he’d called Holt’s horse. Beckoned to his father from beyond the grave and escorted him into the hereafter.

  The candle flickered a little; and she shuddered. She’d actually succeeded in spooking herself. She picked the candle up and carried it through to the kitchen, setting it down beside the stove while she refilled the kettle. There was a scuttling in the shadowy roof above her head, and she looked up to see a large gecko—the largest she’d seen either in or around the house—scuttling across the wooden slats of the ceiling. It seemed to sense her gaze, because it froze in its tracks and remained frozen until she looked away. Only then did she hear its scrabblings resume. When she looked up again it had gone.

  She went back to refilling the kettle, but in the time it had taken her to look up and see the gecko her desire for tea had disappeared. She put the kettle back on the stove, unfilled, and picking up the candle, she went to bed. She started to undress, but only got as far as taking off her sandals and jeans. Then she slipped under the covers, and fell asleep to the accompaniment of the rain.

  ii

  She was woken by an impatient rapping on the bedroom door. Then a voice, calling to her: “Rachel? Are you in there?”

  She sat up, the dream she’d woken from—something about Boston, and diamonds buried in the snow on Newbury Street—lingering for a moment. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Niolopua. Nobody answered the front door so I came in.”

  “Is there a problem?” She looked out of the window. It was day; the sky was a brilliant blue.

  “You have to get up.” Niolopua said, his voice urgent. ‘There’s been a wreck. And I think maybe it’s his boat.”

  She got up out of bed, and wandered across the room, still not fully comprehending what she was being told. There was Niolopua, spattered with red-brown mud. “The Samarkand,” he said to her. “Galilee’s boat. It’s been washed up on the beach.” She looked back toward the window. “Not here,” Niolopua went on. “Down at the other end of the island. On the Napali coast.”

  “Are you sure it’s his?”

  Niolopua nodded. “As sure as I can be,” he said.

  Her heart was suddenly racing. “And him? What about him?”

  “There’s no sign of him,” Niolopua said. “At least there wasn’t an hour ago, when I was down there.”

  “Let me just get some clothes on,” she said. “And I’ll be with you.”

  “Have you got any boots?” he said.

  “No. Why?”

  “Because it’s hard to get to where we’re going. You have to climb.”

  “I’ll climb,” she said, “boots or no boots.”

  The effects of the storm were to be seen everywhere. The highway south was still awash with bright orange runoff water, the heavier streams of which carried a freight of debris: branches, boards, drowned poultry, even a few small trees. Thankfully, there were very few other vehicles on the road at this early hour—it was still only seven—and Niolopua negotiated both streams and debris with confidence.

  While he drove he offered Rachel a short explanation of where they were going. The Napali coast was the most dangerous and beautiful portion of the island, he explained. Here the cliffs rose out of the sea, the beaches and caves at their feet hard to reach except from the sea. Rachel was familiar with images of the coast from a brochure she’d glanced at on the short flight from Honolulu: one of the most popular tourist trips was a helicopter flight over the cliffs, and the narrow, lush valleys between the cliffs, which could only be reached by those foolhardy enough to trek down from the summits. There were rewards for those who dared such journeys—waterfalls of spectacular scale, and dense, virgin jungle—but the trip wasn’t to be taken lightly. According to local legend some of the valleys were so hard to reach that until recent times small communities had existed there, completely isolated from the rest of the island.

  “The beach we’re going to can be reached along the foot of the cliffs,” Niolopua told her. “It’s maybe a mile from where the road stops.”

  “How did you find out about the wreck?”

  “I was there during the storm. I don’t know why I went. I just knew I had to be there.” He glanced over at her. “I guess maybe he was calling for me.”

  Rachel put her hand up to her face; tears suddenly threatened. The thought of Galilee out in the dark water—

  “Do you still hear him?’ she said softly.

  Niolopua shook his head, and his own tears ran freely. “But that doesn’t mean anything,” he said without much real conviction. “He knows the sea. Nobody knows it better. After all these years . . .”

  “But if the boat sank—”

  “Then we have to hope the tide brought him in.”

  Rachel remembered suddenly the tales of the shark lord, who sometimes guided shipwrecked sailors back to land, and sometimes, for his own unfathomable reasons, devoured them, and how Galilee had thrown their dinner into the water that night, as an offering, which she’d thought sweetly absurd at the time. Now she was grateful he’d done so. The world she’d been raised in had no room for shark gods, nor the efficacy of food thrown on water, but of late she’d come to understand how narrow that vision was. There were forces out there, beyond the limits of her wits or education, which could not be contained by simple commandments. Things that lived their own, wild life, unwitnessed, unbounded. Galilee knew them because he was in some measure of them.

  That was both her present fear and her present hope. If he felt he belonged to that other life too much, might he not have decided to give himself over to it? To lose himself in that boundless place? If so, she would never find him again. He was gone where she could never go. If, on the other hand, his professions of love had been real—if he’d meant what he said when he talked of all that wasted time, when he should have been looking for her—perhaps the very powers that would claim him if he chose were presently her allies, and the offering he’d made, and the shark god for whom it was intended, had been part of the story that would return him to her.

  iii

  The signs of storm damage got worse once they were on the other side of Poi’pu; the road was nearly impassable in several places, where the force of the rainwater had washed down large rocks. And once they got onto the beach road, which hugged the base of the cliffs, matters became worse still. The road was little more than a winding, rutted track, which was now largely reduced to red mud. Even driving cautiously, Niolopua several times lost momentary control of the vehicle, as its slickened wheels lost their grip.

  Out
to the left of the track, on the other side of a ragged band of black rocks, was the shore: and here, more than any other place along their route, was the most eloquent evidence of the storm’s power. The sand was strewn with debris from the margin of the rocks to the water’s edge, and the waves themselves dyed with the run-off mud. It was like a scene from a dream—the sky cerulean, the sea scarlet, the bright sand littered with dark, sodden timbers. In other circumstances she might have thought it beautiful. But all she saw now was debris and blood-red water: it enchanted her not at all.

  “Here’s where the climbing starts,” Niolopua announced.

  She took her eyes from the shore and looked ahead. The muddy track ended a few yards from them, where the cliff face jutted out into the sea; a spit of rock against which the ruddied waves rushed and broke.

  “The beach we’re headed for is on the other side.”

  “I’m ready,” Rachel said, and got out of the car.

  The air, for all the din and motion of the sea, was curiously still close to the cliff. Almost clammy, in fact. After just a minute or so she was sweating, and once they began to clamber over the rocks her head started to throb. Niolopua had left his sandals at the car, and was climbing barefoot, making little concession to the fact that Rachel was a neophyte at this. Only when the route became particularly dangerous did he glance back at her, and once or twice offered a hand up when the rock became steep or slick. In order to avoid having to climb over boulders that were virtually unscalable he led them out onto the spit of rock. Once away from the cliff the air became fresher and every now and then an ambitious wave reached higher and farther than its fellows and broke close to them, throwing showers of icy water against their faces. She was soon soaked to the skin, her breasts so cold that her nipples hurt, her fingers numb. But they had sight of their destination now—a beach that would have looked paradisiacal if it had not been so littered: a long, wide curve of sand bounded on its landward side not by rocks but by a verdant valley scooped from the cliff. The storm had taken its toll here too: many of the trees had been practically stripped by the wind, and the fronds were cast everywhere. But the vegetation was too lush and too impenetrable for the storm to have done more than superficial damage; behind the stripped palms were banks of glistening green, speckled with bright blossom.