by Clive Barker
“He won’t be alone there.”
That was it, Candy knew. That was the heart of it, in those words somewhere.
He won’t be alone.
The Hag had such a terrible malice in her face. Such a profound perversity. But why?
He won’t be—
Candy looked down at the doll, then back up at the Old Mother again, hoping to study the woman’s face a little while longer. But Mater Motley was already turning away from her so as to focus all her energies upon the broken figure of Zephario.
“Look at you; so old, so broken. I held you once, against my breast.” She began to walk back toward him. “Die now,” she said softly. “Give up your soul to me.”
She very slowly reached up toward him, as though she was capable of pulling his soul out of him. By way of response Zephario let out an anguished sound, something between a howl and a sob, the cry of a man losing his mind.
It was more than Candy could bear. She couldn’t just stand there and let the Hag go on tormenting him. She had to do something. What that something was she had not the remotest notion, but she had will, and she was free to use it. Whatever choices fate put in her head or heart or hands she’d use. Anything to stop the suffering.
She started to move toward the Hag, who was far too busy enjoying the anguish of her own flesh and blood to bother looking back over her shoulder.
“Stop that!” Motley said to her son. “It won’t do any good. I’m your mother, Zephario. I brought you into the world and now I’m going to remove you from it.”
Every despicable word of this quickened Candy’s step. She would do whatever she could to make the Hag regret her cruelty, she swore to herself. But that was more easily said than done, wasn’t it? Fate hadn’t provided her with any means to bring Mater Motley to her knees. She was up against the Empress of the Abarat with bare hands. But if that was how it had to be, that was how it had to be.
Without even thinking about what she was doing, she leaped, the very last traces of the Abarataraba’s magic lending her jump power it would never have had without it.
Without looking, the Hag turned, striking Candy with the back of her hand.
“Creeping up on me, girl?” She struck Candy a second time, and having nothing with which to shield herself from the blows, Candy was knocked to the ground, the breath beaten out of her. “I am so thoroughly sick of you,” she said, kicking Candy with unrestrained venom. “I’m going to kick you until your heart stops beating.”
She proceeded to make good on her promise.
“You.” She kicked.
“Stupid.” And again.
“Little.” And again.
“Nobody.”
“Stop it!” Malingo yelled.
Candy saw him from the corner of her eye, stumbling forward to put himself between Candy and the Hag’s assault. He distracted Mater Motley long enough to give Candy time to draw breath, but his intervention cost him dearly. The Empress cast a glance toward two of the stitchlings nearest to her and snatched the blades they were carrying out of their hands. Candy used the drawn breath to tell him:
“Run! Malingo! RUN!”
But even if he’d been willing to abandon Candy, which he wasn’t, his death sentence had been written. The blades came at him from left and right. Candy heard him cry out, just once, then the blades cut at him with horrible speed, slicing his head from his neck, his hands from his wrists, his arms from his torso—Candy’s horror and fury left her speechless, which was no bad thing. Not a scrap of her energies was wasted on words. All of it went straight from her heart to her hands. She reached up and grabbed hold of Mater Motley’s crowded skirts, hauling her aching body to its feet.
She had killed Malingo.
Her beloved Malingo, who had said he would be with Candy forever, Midnight or no Midnight. But the Hag had taken him from her. Snatched him away with a casual gesture, as though his life was worthless, his love was worthless, as though his body was no more than a slab of meat and she the butcher, casually cutting it up—
As she climbed, Candy found Mater Motley’s gaze, and for just a fraction of a second she saw the Hag recoil, her high regard for her Imperial Self shocked when it met such an intensity of hatred as it found pouring from Candy’s eyes.
It wasn’t enough, of course, to prick the Hag’s vanity.
She had killed Malingo.
No death was too terrible to revenge such a slaughter. Candy wanted to turn the Hag’s bones to blazing wood and her blood to gasoline, to watch the Old Mother consumed by the very element she’d used to kill her own flesh and blood all those years before. But she didn’t have sufficient magic to make such an execution happen. She’d have to do whatever damage she could do with her hands and fingers: gouge out the Old Mother’s vicious eyes and tear her lying tongue out by its rotting roots. She’d start with the eyes—
But the Hag wasn’t in the mood to die today. She reached up and caught hold of Candy’s hand, her grip so tight, and tightening still, that she plainly intended to grind Candy’s finger bones to dust.
With one hand holding Candy firmly, she reached out with the other. Her Imperial dignity was once again intact. And so was the power that accompanied it. She murmured a syllable or two, and one of the wide-bladed knives that had taken Malingo apart came to her outstretched hand. She closed her fingers around the sticky handle.
“I’ve had more than my fill of you, Miss Chickentown.”
So saying, the Empress raised the knife high above her head.
Candy refused to give the old woman the satisfaction of seeing her afraid. Instead she kept climbing, grabbing hold of whatever she could find, whether it was antiquated fabric of the dress or one of the dolls. Her bruises ached and her head throbbed, but not once did she take her eyes off Mater Motley’s turkey-neck throat, even as the knife came whistling down.
Chapter 72
Truth
THE KNIFE DIDN’T REACH her. Eighteen inches from Candy’s skin, it struck something: an object that was completely invisible yet sufficiently solid to shatter the blade as though it had been made of ice.
“Who did this?” Mater Motley demanded. “Who did this?” She glanced down at Candy. “It wasn’t you, so don’t even try to claim it was.” She thrust her hand over Candy’s face and pushed her away. Her presence here, dead or alive, was suddenly of no interest to her. Somebody here had blocked the Imperial will, and she wanted to know who.
She turned her black gaze on those in her immediate vicinity, staring very hard at each dirty, scorched stitchling for a moment to assess their chances of guilt.
“You, was it? No. Too stupid. You? No. Your brains are burning. You perhaps? No, another cretin. Is nobody proud enough to own this act?”
Silence.
“Are you all just mud and cowardice? EVERY? SINGLE? ONE?”
Finally, a weary voice said:
“All right, don’t give yourself a fit, you old boneyard. If it’s all that important to you . . . I did it.”
The crowd of stitchlings parted, a figure emerged from behind a flickering Distraction Shield.
“You,” the Hag said.
“Me,” said Christopher Carrion.
“Why must you always defy me?”
“Oh, Lordy Lou. I didn’t want you to kill the girl.”
“And again I say: why? You had a reason to protect her when she had your Princess in residence. But now?”
“I don’t know,” Carrion said. “But please, don’t . . .”
The Hag thought for a moment, then grinned.
“A favor for a favor, then?”
Carrion’s thin lips curled.
“What do you want from me?”
“Tell your father, Christopher,” Mater Motley said. “Tell him how he’ll be welcomed.”
Candy turned this phrase over and over in her head and watched Carrion’s face very closely. Her belief that there was indeed a mystery here, some family secret that was teetering on the rim of revelation, was deep
ening. She still had absolutely no idea of what it was. Her one clue was that the Hag had made that bizarre remark that after death her son would not be alone.
Was there somebody else held prisoner in Mater Motley’s dolls? Another soul—or souls, perhaps? Yes, it was several—she knew it the instant she thought it—and they were all being held prisoner in all those wretched little dolls made of filth and rags.
Suddenly, she understood.
“The children!” Candy said. “Oh God, she’s got all the children!”
Mater Motley didn’t respond at first. She had already moved with unnatural speed to stand in front of Zephario and had begun to sing a death lullaby to him. But Candy’s outburst silenced the slaughter song.
“Shut her up,” she ordered Carrion. “Quickly, you fool. Shut her up!”
“What’s she saying?”
“It doesn’t matter what she’s saying! Just SHUT HER UP!”
For a few seconds the Hag unglued her gaze from Zephario and threw Carrion a look, which briefly lit up his face with a burst of stinging, bitter green light, as though she’d just plunged his head in gangrenous waters. This was a new trick and it was only with the greatest effort that he succeeded in controlling his revulsion.
“Did you not hear me?” the Hag was saying.
“Yes,” Carrion said.
He didn’t need another lesson from his Empress. This newfound ability to render his own sanctuary poisonous was a terrifying escalation in her skills. He had no choice but to grovel. He stumbled toward Candy, his head roaring from the toxins still in his system, telling her as he did so: “You should have gone when I told you to. Now I have to kill you.”
“Have you heard a word I’ve said?” Candy asked.
“Not one more word!” Mater Motley instructed.
She’s afraid, Candy thought. I’ve got the truth!
The sudden certainty gave her voice power.
“Carrion, listen to me! She’s got your brothers and sisters!” Carrion looked at her through the strangely stained fluid in his collar with a look of puzzlement. “In the dolls. She’s got all your family right here with her.”
“SHUT HER UP!”
“Your father thinks they’re in paradise. It’s what kept him sane. But it was a lie, Christopher. Just another of her cruel, vicious lies. She’s had their souls all along.”
“In the dolls?” Now he started to understand.
“In the dolls.”
“And my mother too?”
“Don’t ask me. Ask—”
Carrion was already turning on his grandmother.
“Is it true?” he demanded. “Well, is it?”
“Haven’t you slit her throat yet?”
“I asked you a question.”
“You really want to know?”
“I asked, didn’t I?”
“Oh, you know me. I’m frugal. Nothing ever goes to waste. Not when it can be turned into power. I wasn’t going to let all those souls fly off to paradise when I could use them, here, close to me. They’re family, after all. My flesh and blood. They wouldn’t even have existed if I hadn’t endured the gross befoulments of the womb. I even let them sense one another, which does help them to hope. And they yearn, of course, for what they will never see again, never touch again, even though they’re so very close to one another.” She ran her bony fingers over the dolls as she spoke. “And the longer I keep them, the deeper the yearning gets.”
As Candy watched Carrion listening to this she thought she caught a glimpse of something she’d never seen in his eyes before. She’d seen him dangerous and despairing, loving and lost. But this, this was a singularity. Hatred.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said.
“What business was it—is it—of yours?”
“They’re my brothers and sisters.”
“You never knew them. Why should you care? You never cared before.”
“I thought they were in a happier place.”
“Well, who’s to say what they feel?”
“They feel everything . . .” Candy said.
“Shut up,” screeched the Hag.
“They feel everything—”
“I will—”
“—because they’re connected to everything.”
“—KILL YOU!”
“There’d be no power in them if they weren’t,” Candy continued, unmoved. “You only drain off what comes through them. But it comes from everything and everywhere.”
“The girl speaks the truth,” Zephario said very softly.
Candy glanced up at Carrion’s father, who was staring down at his son through his blind, bleeding eyes.
“Must I show you?” he said to Christopher softly.
There was no answer forthcoming from Carrion.
“Then I must.”
Strands of pale creamy mist were appearing in the fluid like a blindfold, concealing the innocent blue in his eyes as well as the nightmares, black at their center.
This had to be his father’s handiwork, Candy thought. Not that Carrion had resisted it. Zephario was showing his son a glimpse of the world they had both lost: of Carrion’s brothers and sisters, whose laughter, shrieks, tears and prayers he had many times imagined he’d heard.
“Your mother stayed in the house until the very end,” Zephario said. “I had to drag her out of there myself. That’s how I got the burns. I started to melt in the heat.”
“This is absurd,” the Empress muttered.
“You know it’s the truth, Mother,” said Zephario. “This is how it was, Christopher. Do you see? Do you see what your beloved grandmother did?”
Candy couldn’t, of course, share the vision, but she didn’t need to. She knew perfectly well what Carrion the Elder was sharing with the Younger: his mother, in extremis. Carrion had told Candy once that it was the first image he remembered, though at the time he’d no knowledge that it was his own mother he’d been watching die. She’d just been a screaming column of fire.
“I’ve seen enough, Father,” Carrion said.
Weakened by the visions, he blindly struggled to get to his feet, unable to see anything but the horror he was being shown.
“Father,” he said again, more violently this time. “Please. I’ve seen your memory now.” He got to his feet. “I believe you.”
And as he spoke the words, the clouds cleared away. Carrion’s eyes had never looked as blue as they did now, nor his pupils as black.
Chapter 73
Souls
OH, SO SLOWLY, CARRION raised his head. His purified gaze was fixed on Mater Motley.
“I see you now so clearly, Grandmother,” he said.
“The clarity of your eyesight is of no importance to me,” the Empress said.
“My brothers and sisters—”
“Are dead.”
“—should be in paradise.”
“Well, they’re not. Nor will they ever be. They’re part of the power that raised you so high.”
“Let them go.”
“No.”
“I can make you do it.”
“You could try,” the Empress said. “But it would be your last act.”
“So be it,” he said.
As he spoke he came at her, throwing some wielding ahead of him as he did so. It exploded in her face like a ball of spiked darkness. He didn’t give her so much as an instant to recover, but grabbed at her throat, apparently intent on throttling the life out of her. He carried her before him, stumbling back among her stitchlings.
Candy had seen the two of them meet head-to-head like this once before, on the deck of the Wormwood. She had no interest in watching the struggle play out again. Her concern was for poor Zephario. He was still pierced by the Nephauree, but he clung to life. She went to him. The temperature of the air dropped several degrees as she got closer to the Enemy of All Living Things: an unnatural chill that drove ice needles into her ligaments and marrow, making every step she took more difficult than the one before. But she would not
be dissuaded.
Sensing her pain, Zephario raised his head. When he spoke his thoughts, it was a whisper of a whisper, the last exhausted murmur of a man using every sliver of strength to hold on to life.
The Abarataraba is still in you, he murmured.
I don’t feel it, Candy replied
It’s there. You would never have gotten so close without it. Not much of it, but—
What does it mean?
What does what mean?
Abarataraba.
. . . roughly translated, it means . . . Pieces of Life.
Then take them back. The Pieces of Life. Finish this. Set them free.
There’s a door in your head that Diamanda made when she put Boa’s soul into you. It’s not wood and hinges. It’s just a way into your being.
I know this door.
Then open it. Quickly.
I did it already.
Lordy Lou, so you did.
Will this hurt?
It won’t be my soul coming into you that will pain you, Zephario said, it will be my coming forth from you again.
Why?
Because I will enter you through a single door, which you opened. But if I am to free all the souls, I must exit through many.
You mean doors that haven’t been made yet.
I’m sure there’s a better way, but we don’t have the time—
Funny that. We live in islands of Hours and we never seem to have time enough for anything . . .
Here I come.
Instantly Candy felt the nerves in her head twitch. And Zephario’s life force came into her. It was strangely comforting, an odd sense of familiarity. Not the same as Boa being there, of course, but close enough. She felt Zephario’s anger turning her strength to its purpose, empowering her to face the monster.
The Hag had not even noticed her short exchange with Zephario. She’d been too busy fighting with her grandson. Unlike their battle on the deck of the Wormwood, in which the two of them had been equally matched, the balance had now plainly shifted in favor of the Hag. She had the wielding powers of the Nephauree at her disposal, and Carrion had nothing in his arsenal that was a match for them. Candy turned just in time to see Carrion drop down upon the ground, which was a chaotic mass of smoking fissures. The nightmares in his collar were writhing insanely, bleeding darkness into the fluid around his head. Whatever she had done to him, he had no fight left. The blow she landed would be the end of him.
