by Clive Barker
'Over the wall,' Wyburd told him.
The book nodded. 'Come to see if the rumours were true?'
'Something like that.'
Amongst connoisseurs of the bizarre, McNeal's story was told in reverential whispers. How the boy had passed himself off as a medium, inventing stories on behalf of the departed for his own profit; and how the dead had finally tired of his mockery, and broken into the living world to exact an immaculate revenge. They had written upon him; tattooed their true testaments upon his skin so that he would never again take their grief in vain. They had turned his body into a living book, a book of blood, every inch of which was minutely engraved with their histories.
Wyburd was not a credulous man. He had never quite believed the story - until now. But here was living proof of its veracity, standing before him. There was no part of McNeaFs exposed skin which was not itching with tiny words. Though it was four years and more since the ghosts had come for him, the flesh still looked tender, as though the wounds would never entirely heal.
'Have you seen enough?' the boy asked. 'There's more. He's covered from head to foot. Sometimes he wonders if they didn't write on the inside as well.' He sighed. 'Do you want a drink?'
Wyburd nodded. Maybe a throatful of spirits would stop his hands from trembling.
McNeal poured himself a glass of vodka, took a slug from it, then poured a second glass for his guest. As he did so, Wyburd saw that the boy's nape was as densely inscribed as his face and hands, the writing creeping up into his hair. Not even his scalp had escaped the authors' attentions, it seemed.
'Why do you talk about yourself in the third person?' he asked McNeal, as the boy returned with the glass. 'Like you weren't here ...?'
The boy?' McNeal said. 'He isn't here. He hasn't been here in a long time.'
He sat down; drank. Wyburd began to feel more than a little uneasy. Was the boy simply mad, or playing some damn-fool game?
The boy swallowed another mouthful of vodka, then asked, matter of factly: 'What's it worth to you?'
Wyburd frowned. 'What's what worth?'
'His skin,' the boy prompted. 'That's what you came for, isn't it?' Wyburd emptied his glass with two swallows, making no reply. McNeal shrugged. 'Everyone has the right to silence,' he said. 'Except for the boy of course. No silence for him.' He looked down at his hand, turning it over to appraise the writing on his palm. 'The stories go on, night and day. Never stop. They tell themselves, you see. They bleed and bleed. You can never hush them; never heal them.'
He is mad, Wyburd thought, and somehow the reali- sation made what he was about to do easier. Better to kill a sick animal than a healthy one.
'There's a road, you know ...' the boy was saying. He wasn't even looking at his executioner. 'A road the dead go down. He saw it. Dark, strange road, full of people. Not a day gone by when he hasn't ... hasn't wanted to go back there.'
'Back?' said Wyburd, happy to keep the boy talking. His hand went to his jacket pocket; to the knife. It comforted him in the presence of this lunacy.
'Nothing's enough,' McNeal said. 'Not love. Not music. Nothing.'
Clasping the knife, Wyburd drew it from his pocket. The boy's eyes found the blade, and warmed to the sight.
'You never told him how much it was worth,' he said.
'Two hundred thousand,' Wyburd replied.
'Anyone he knows?'
The assassin shook his head. 'An exile,' he replied. 'In Rio. A collector.'
'Of skins?'
'Of skins.'
The boy put down his glass. He murmured something Wyburd didn't catch. Then, very quietly, he said:
'Be quick, and do it.'
He juddered a little as the knife found his heart, but Wyburd was efficient. The moment had come and gone before the boy even knew it was happening, much less felt it. Then it was all over, for him at least. For Wyburd the real labour was only just beginning. It took him two hours to complete the flaying. When he was finished - the skin folded in fresh linen, and locked in the suitcase he'd brought for that very purpose - he was weary.
Tomorrow he would fly to Rio, he thought as he left the house, and claim the rest of his payment. Then, Florida.
He spent the evening in the small apartment he'd rented for the tedious weeks of surveillance and planning which had preceded this afternoon's work. He was glad to be leaving. He had been lonely here, and anxious with anticipation. Now the job was done, and he could put the time behind him.
He slept well, lulled to sleep by the imagined scent of orange groves.
It was not fruit he smelt when he woke, however, but something savoury. The room was in darkness. He reached to his right, and fumbled for the lamp-switch, but it failed to come on.
Now he heard a heavy slopping sound from across the room. He sat up in bed, narrowing his eyes against the dark, but could see nothing. Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, he went to stand up.
His first thought was that he'd left the bathroom taps on, and had flooded the apartment. He was knee-deep in warm water. Confounded, he waded towards the door and reached for the main light-switch, flipping it on. It was not water he was standing in. Too cloying, too precious; too red.
He made a cry of disgust, and turned to haul open the door, but it was locked, and there was no key. He beat a panicked fusillade upon the solid wood, and yelled for help. His appeals went unanswered.
Now he turned back into the room, the hot tide eddying about his thighs, and sought out the fountain- head.
The suitcase. It sat where he had left it on the bureau, and bled copiously from every seam; and from the locks; and from around the hinges - as if a hundred atrocities were being committed within its confines, and it could not contain the flood these acts had unleashed.
He watched the blood pouring out in steaming abun- dance. In the scant seconds since he'd stepped from the bed the pool had deepened by several inches, and still the deluge came.
He tried the bathroom door, but that too was locked and keyless. He tried the windows, but the shutters were immovable. The blood had reached his waist. Much of the furniture was floating. Knowing he was lost unless he attempted some direct action, he pressed through the flood towards the case, and put his hands upon the lid in the hope that he might yet stem the flow. It was a lost cause. At his touch the blood seemed to come with fresh eagerness, threatening to burst the seams.
The stories go on, the boy had said. They bleed and bleed. And now he seemed to hear them in his head, those stories. Dozens of voices, each telling some tragic tale. The flood bore him up towards the ceiling. He paddled to keep his chin above the frothy tide, but in minutes there was barely an inch of air left at the top of the room. As even that margin narrowed, he added his own voice to the .cacophony, begging for the nightmare to stop. But the other voices drowned him out with their stories, and as he kissed the ceiling his breath ran out.
The dead have highways. They run, unerring lines of ghost-trains, of dream-carriages, across the wasteland behind our lives, bearing an endless traffic of departed souls. They have sign-posts, these highways, and bridges and lay-bys. They have turnpikes and intersections.
It was at one of thesejntersections that Leon Wyburd caught sight of the man in the red suit. The throng pressed him forward, and it was only when he came closer that he realised his error. The man was not wearing a suit. He was not even wearing his skin. It was not the McNeal boy however; he had gone on from this point long since. It was another flayed man entirely. Leon fell in beside the man as he walked, as they talked together. The flayed man told him how he had come to this condition; of his brother-in-law's conspiracies, and the ingratitude of his daughter. Leon in turn told of his last moments.
It was a great relief to tell the story. Not because he wanted to be remembered, but because the telling relieved him of the tale. It no longer belonged to him, that life, that death. He had better business, as did they all. Roads to travel; splendours to drink down. He felt the landscape widen. Felt the air
brightening.
What the boy had said was true. The dead have highways.
Only the living are lost.
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