by Clive Barker
The receiver clicked.
‘Are you still there?’ he said.
But the divine messenger was probably already winging his way.
IX
FINDERS KEEPERS
1
ilchrist’s Second-Hand Furniture Warehouse had once been a cinema, in the years when cinemas were still palatial follies. A folly it remained, with its mock-rococo facade, and the unlikely dome perched on its roof; but there was nothing remotely palatial about it now. It stood within a stone’s throw of the Dock Road, the only property left in its block that remained in use. The rest were either boarded up or burned out.
Standing at the corner of Jamaica Street, staring across at the dereliction, Cal wondered if the late Mr Gilchrist would have been proud to have his name emblazoned across such a decayed establishment. Business could not flourish here, unless they were the kind of dealings best done out of the public eye.
The opening times of the warehouse were displayed on a weather-beaten board, where the cinema had once announced its current fare. Sundays, it was open between nine-thirty and twelve. It was now one-fifteen. The double-doors were closed and bolted, and a pair of huge ironwork gates, a grotesque addition to the facade, padlocked in front of the doors.
‘What are your house-breaking skills like?’ Cal asked Suzanna.
‘Under-developed,’ she replied. ‘But I’m a fast learner.’
They crossed Jamaica Street for a closer inspection. There was little need to pretend innocence; there had been no pedestrians on the street since they’d arrived, and traffic was minimal.
‘There must be some way in,’ said Suzanna. ‘You head round the far side. I’ll go this way.’
‘Right. Meet you at the back.’
They parted. Whereas Cal’s route had taken him into shadow, Suzanna’s left her in bright sunlight. Oddly, she found herself longing for some clouds. The heat was making her blood sing, as though she was tuned in to some alien radio-station, and its melodies were whining around her skull.
As she listened to them Cal stepped around the corner, startling her.
‘I’ve found a way,’ he said, and led her round to what had once been the cinema’s emergency exit. It too was padlocked, but both chain and lock were well rusted. He had already found himself half a brick, with which he now berated the lock. Brick-shards flew off in all directions, but after a dozen blows the chain surrendered, Cal put his shoulder to the door, and pushed. There was a commotion from inside, as a mirror and several other items piled against the door toppled over; but he was able to force a gap large enough for them to squeeze through.
2
The interior was a kind of Purgatory, in which thousands of household items – armchairs, wardrobes, lamps large and small, curtains, rugs – awaited Judgment, piled up in dusty wretchedness. The place stank of its occupants; of things claimed by woodworm and rot and sheer usage; of once fine pieces now so age-worn even their makers would not have given them house room.
And beneath the smell of decrepitude, something more bitter and more human. The scent of sweat perhaps, soaked up by the boards of a sick bed, or in the fabric of a lamp that had burned through a night whose endurer had known no morning. Not a place to linger too long.
They separated once more, for speed’s sake.
‘Anything that looks promising,’ Cal said, ‘holler.’
He was now eclipsed by piles of furniture.
The whine in Suzanna’s skull did not die down once she was out of the sun; it worsened. Maybe it was the enormity of the task before them that made her head spin, like an impossible quest from some faery-tale, seeking a particle of magic in the wilderness of decay.
The same thought, though formulated differently, was passing through Cal’s mind. The more he searched, the more he doubted his memory. Maybe it hadn’t been Gilchrist they’d named; or perhaps the removal men had decided the profit made bringing the carpet here would not repay their effort.
As he turned a corner, he heard a scraping sound from behind a stack of furniture.
‘Suzanna?’ he said. The word went out and returned unanswered. The noise had already faded behind him, but it had sent adrenalin rushing through his system, and it was with speedier step that he made his way to the next mountain of goods and chattels. Even before he came within five yards of it his eyes had alighted upon the rolled carpet that was all but concealed beneath half a dozen dining chairs and a chest of drawers. All of these items lacked price-tags, which suggested they were recent, unsorted acquisitions.
He went down on his knees and pulled at the edge of the carpet, in an attempt to see the design. The border was damaged, the weave weak. When he pulled he felt strands snap. But he could see enough to confirm what his gut already knew: that this was the carpet from Rue Street, the carpet which Mimi Laschenski had lived and died protecting; the carpet of the Fugue.
He stood up and started to unpile the chairs, deaf to the sound of approaching footsteps at his back.
3
The first thing Suzanna saw was a shadow on the ground. She looked up.
A face appeared between two wardrobes, only to move off again before she could call it by its name.
Mimi! It was Mimi.
She walked over to the wardrobes. There was no sign of anyone. Was she losing her sanity? First the din in her head, now hallucinations?
And yet, why were they here if they didn’t believe in miracles? Doubt was drowned in a sudden rush of hope – that the dead might somehow break the seal on the invisible world and come amongst the living.
She called her grandmother’s name, softly. And she was granted an answer. Not in words, but in the scent of lavender water. Off to her left, down a corridor of piled tea-chests, a ball of dust rolled and came to rest. She went towards it, or rather towards the source of the breeze that had carried it, the scent getting stronger with every step she took.
4
‘That’s my property, I believe,’ said the voice at Cal’s back. He turned. Shadwell was standing a few feet from him. His jacket was unbuttoned.
‘Perhaps you’d stand aside, Mooney, and let me claim what’s mine.’
Cal wished he’d had the presence of mind to come here armed. At that moment he’d have had no hesitation in stabbing Shadwell through his gleaming eye and calling himself a hero for it. As it was, all he had were his bare hands. They’d have to suffice.
He took a step towards Shadwell, but as he did so the man stood aside. There was somebody standing behind him. One of the sisters, no doubt; or their bastards.
Cal didn’t wait to see, but turned and picked up one of the chairs from those dumped on the carpet. His action brought a small avalanche; chairs spilling between him and the enemy. He threw the one he held towards the shadowy form that had taken Shadwell’s place. He picked up a second, and threw it the way of the first, but now the target had disappeared into the labyrinth of furniture. So had the Salesman.
Cal turned, his muscles fired, and put his back into shifting the chest of drawers. He succeeded; the chest toppled backwards, knocking over several other pieces as it fell. He was glad of the commotion; perhaps it would draw Suzanna’s attention. Now he reached to take possession of the carpet, but as he did so something seized him from behind. He was dragged bodily from his prize, a small section of the carpet coming away in his hand, then he was flung across the floor.
He came to a halt against a pile of ornately framed paintings and photographs, several of which toppled and smashed. He lay amid the litter of glass for a moment to catch his breath, but the next sight snatched it from him again.
The by-blow was coming at him out of the gloom.
‘Get up!’ it told him.
He was dead to its instruction, his attention claimed by the face before him. It wasn’t Elroy’s off-spring, though this monstrosity also had its father’s features. No; this child was his.
The horror he’d glimpsed, stirring from the lullaby he’d heard lying in the dirt of the rub
bish tip, had been all too real. The sisters had squeezed his seed from him, and this beast with his face was the consequence.
It was not a fine likeness. Its naked body was entirely hairless, and there were several horrid distortions – the fingers of one hand were twice their natural length, and those of the other half-inch stumps, while from the shoulder blades eruptions of matter sprang like malformed wings – parodies, perhaps, of the creatures his dreams envied.
It was made in more of its father’s image than the other beasts had been, however, and faced with himself, he hesitated.
It was enough, that hesitation, to give the beast the edge. It leapt at him, seizing his throat with its long-fingered hand, its touch without a trace of warmth, its mouth sucking at his as if to steal the breath from his lips.
It intended patricide, no doubt of that; its grip was unconditional. He felt his legs weaken, and the child allowed him to collapse to his knees, following him down. The knuckles of his fingers brushed against the glass shards, and he made a fumbling attempt to pick one up, but between mind and hand the instruction lost urgency. The weapon dropped from his hand.
Somewhere, in that place of breath and light from which he was outcast, he heard Shadwell laughing. Then the sound stopped, and he was staring at his own face, which looked back at him as if from a corrupted mirror. His eyes, which he’d always liked for the paleness of their colour; the mouth, which though it had been an embarrassment to him as a child because he’d thought it too girlish, he’d now trained into a modicum of severity when the occasion demanded, and which was, he was told, capable of a winning smile. The ears, large and protuberant: a comedian’s ears on a face that warranted something sleeker …
Probably most people slip out of the world with such trivialities in their heads. Certainly it was that way for Cal.
Thinking of his ears, the undertow took hold of him and dragged him down.
X
THE MENSTRUUM
uzanna knew the instant before she stepped into what had once been the cinema foyer that this was an error. Even then, she might have retreated, but that she heard Mimi’s voice speak her name and before any argument could stay her step her feet had carried her through the door.
The foyer was darker than the main warehouse, but she could see the vague figure of her grandmother standing beside the boarded-up box-office.
‘Mimi?’ she said, her mind a blur of contrary impressions.
‘Here I am,’ said the old lady, and opened her arms to Suzanna.
The proffered embrace was also an error of judgment, but on the part of the enemy. Gestures of physical affection had not been Mimi’s forte in life, and Suzanna saw no reason to suppose her grandmother would have changed her habits upon expiring.
‘You’re not Mimi,’ she said.
‘I know it’s a surprise, seeing me,’ the would-be ghost replied. The voice was soft as a feather-fall. ‘But there’s nothing to be afraid of.’
‘Who are you?’
‘You know who I am,’ came the response.
Suzanna didn’t linger for any further words of seduction, but turned to retrace her path. There were perhaps three yards between her and the exit, but now they seemed as many miles. She tried to take a step on that long road, but the commotion in her head suddenly rose to deafening proportions.
The presence behind her had no intention of letting her escape. It sought a confrontation, and it was a waste of effort to defy it. So she turned and looked.
The mask was melting, though there was ice in the eyes that emerged from behind it, not fire. She knew the face, and though she’d not thought herself ready to brave its fury yet, she was strangely elated by the sight. The last shreds of Mimi evaporated, and Immacolata stood revealed.
‘My sister …’ she said, the air around her dancing to her words. ‘… my sister the Hag had me play that part. She thought she saw Mimi in your face. She was right, wasn’t she? You’re her child.’
‘Grandchild,’ Suzanna murmured.
‘Child,’ came the certain reply.
Suzanna stared at the woman before her, fascinated by the masterwork of grief half-concealed in those features. Immacolata flinched at her scrutiny.
‘How dare you pity me?’ she said, as if she’d read Suzanna’s thought, and on the words something leapt from her face.
It came too fast for Suzanna to see what it was; she had time only to throw herself out of its whining path. The wall behind her shook as it was struck. The next instant the face was spilling more brightness towards her.
Suzanna was not afraid. The display only elated her further. This time, as the brightness came her way, her instinct overruled all constraints of sanity, and she put her hand out as if to catch the light.
It was like plunging her arm into a torrent of ice-water. A torrent in which innumerable fish were swimming, fast, fast, against the flood; swimming to spawn. She closed her fist, snatching at this brimming tide, and pulled.
The action had three consequences. One, a cry from Immacolata. Two, the sudden cessation of the din in Suzanna’s head. Three, all that her hand had felt – the chill, the torment and the shoal it contained – all of that was suddenly within her. Her body was the flood. Not the body of flesh and bone, but some other anatomy, made more of thought than of substance, and more ancient than either. Somehow it had recognized itself in Immacolata’s assault, and thrown off its sleep.
Never in her life had she felt so complete. In the face of this feeling all other ambition – for happiness, for pleasure, for power – all others faded.
She looked back at Immacolata, and her new eyes saw not an enemy but a woman possessed of the same torrent that ran in her own veins. A woman twisted and full of anguish but for all that more like her than not.
‘That was stupid,’ said the Incantatrix.
‘Was it?’ said Suzanna. She didn’t think so.
‘Better you remained unfound. Better you never tasted the menstruum.’
‘The menstruum?’
‘Now you’ll know more than you wish to know, feel more than you ever wanted to feel.’ There seemed to be something approximating pity in Immacolata’s voice. ‘So the grief begins,’ she said. ‘And it will never end. Believe me. You should have lived and died a Cuckoo.’
‘Is that how Mimi died?’ said Suzanna.
The ice eyes flickered. ‘She knew what risks she took. She had Seerkind blood, and that’s always run freely. You’re of their blood too, through that bitch grand-dam of yours.’
‘Seerkind?’ So many new words. ‘Are they the Fugue people?’
‘They’re dead people,’ came the reply. ‘Don’t look to them for answers. They’re dust soon enough. Gone the way everything in this stinking Kingdom goes. To dirt and mediocrity. We’ll see to that. You’re alone. Like she was.’
That ‘we’ reminded her of the Salesman, and the potency of the coat he wore.
‘Is Shadwell a Seerkind?’ she asked.
‘Him?’ The thought was apparently preposterous. ‘No. Any power he’s got’s my gift.’
‘Why?’ said Suzanna. She understood little of Immacolata, but enough to know that she and Shadwell were not a perfect match.
‘He taught me …’ the Incantatrix began, her hand moving up to her face, ‘… he taught me, the show.’ The hand passed across her features, and upon reappearing she was smiling, almost warmly. ‘You’ll need that now.’
‘And for that you’re his mistress?’
The sound that came from the woman might have been a laugh; but only might. ‘I leave love to the Magdalene, sister. She’s an appetite for it. Ask Mooney –’
Cal. She’d forgotten Cal.
‘– if he has the breath to answer.’
Suzanna glanced back towards the door.
‘Go on …’ said Immacolata, ‘… go find him. I won’t stop you.’
The brightness in her, the menstruum, knew the Incantatrix was telling the truth. That flood was part of them both now. It bo
nded them in ways Suzanna could not yet guess at.
‘The battle’s already lost, sister.’ Immacolata murmured as Suzanna reached the threshold. ‘While you indulged your curiosity, the Fugue’s fallen into our hands.’
Suzanna stepped back into the warehouse, fear beginning for the first time. Not for herself, but for Cal. She yelled his name into the murk.
‘Too late …’ said the woman behind her.
‘Cal!’
There was no reply. She started to search for him, calling his name at intervals, her anxiety growing with each unanswered shout. The place was a maze; twice she found herself in a location she’d already searched.
It was the glitter of broken glass that drew her attention; and then, lying face down a little way from it, Cal. Before she got close enough to touch him she sensed the profundity of his stillness.
He was too brittle, the menstruum in her said. You know how these Cuckoos are.
She rejected the thought. It wasn’t hers.
‘Don’t be dead.’
That was hers. It slipped from her as she knelt down beside him, a plea to his silence.
‘Please God, don’t be dead.’
She was frightened to touch him, for fear of discovering the worst, all the while knowing that she was the only help he had. His head was turned towards her, his eyes closed, his mouth open, trailing blood-tinged spittle. Instinctively, her hand went to his hair, as if she might stroke him awake, but pragmatism had not entirely deserted her, and instead her fingers sought the pulse in his neck. It was weak.
So the grief begins, Immacolata had said, mere minutes before. Had she known, even as she offered that prophecy, that Cal was half way to dying already?
Of course she’d known. Known, and welcomed the grief this would bring, because she wanted Suzanna’s pleasure in the menstruum soured from its discovery; wanted them sisters in sorrow.
Distracted by the realization she focused again on Cal to find that her hand had left his neck and was once again stroking his hair. Why was she doing this? He wasn’t a sleeping child. He was hurt; he needed more concrete help. But even as she rebuked herself she felt the menstruum start to rise from her lower abdomen, washing her entrails, and lungs and heart, and moving – without any conscious instruction – down her arm towards Cal. Before, it had been indifferent to his wounding; you know how these Cuckoos are, it had said to her. But her rage, or perhaps her sadness, had chastened it. Now she felt its energies carry her need to wake him, to heal him, through the palm of her hand and into his sealed head.
