The Scarlet Gospels

by Clive Barker

  Though the pain was not diminished, the spirit coaxed him away from it and into some chamber of his soul where he had never been before. It was numinous, this place, and filled with little games to enchant his pain-wearied body.

  Then, the presence inside him seemed to speak. Harry heard it say, Get ready, and as that final syllable of its utterance reverberated in him the balmy dream evaporated and Harry was back in the room with Felixson, who, impossible as it was to believe, seemed to have gone a hell of a lot crazier. He had some invisible thing pinned against the opposite wall and was tearing into it. In its agony, the unseen victim was releasing a high-pitched shriek.

  “Tell dead friends!” Felixson said, his speech decaying as his frenzy grew. “Tell them all dead how you. Tell to them Felixson will shit them! To messing in Hell’s business? Never! Hear? Tell!” He twisted his fingers in the empty air and his voice rose an octave. “I hear no tell!”

  Though Harry couldn’t see the phantoms, he could feel them and their agitation. Felixson’s commands only seemed to make them angry. The whole room began to vibrate, the old boards throwing themselves back and forth across the room in their fury, opening cracks in the plaster every time they struck the wall.

  Harry watched as his allies dislodged several pieces of ceiling plaster, and in the clouds of dust that rose from the floor when they fell he seemed to see the ghosts, or at least their vague outlines. Cracks appeared in the ceiling, zigzagging across the plaster. The bare bulb swung back and forth, making Felixson’s shadow cavort as the phantoms moved around the room, their hunger to destroy this place and Felixson palpable. It was clear that they were working to pull the room apart. Plaster dust was filling the room like a white fog.

  Felixson turned his gaze back at Harry.

  “Harry Da More I blame! He pays!”

  Felixson reached for the chain, and Harry watched as the plaster fog was swept aside by a phantom, its descent mirrored by a second phantom coming from the opposite direction and intersecting at the chain. The chain, struck at the precise spot where the ghosts crossed, blew apart, leaving a length of perhaps eighteen inches of loose metal still dangling from the hook. The blow had formed a wound in Felixson’s brow. The magician was unprepared for this. He cursed and wiped away blood from his right eye.

  Then, two more phantoms converged not only on the remainder of the chain but directly onto the hand that held it. Before Felixson could loose the chain from his grasp, the spirits converged on his hand. When they met, fragments of flesh, bone, and metal blew outward. With Felixson wounded and unarmed, the spirits took it upon themselves to continue the destruction of Carston Goode’s den of iniquity. The whole place rocked as the phantoms shook its foundations. The bulb in the middle of the room flared with unnatural brightness and just as quickly burned out.

  Harry realized it was time to move. He was perhaps two strides from the door when the second tattoo Caz had given him, a warning sigil in the middle of his back, sent out a pulse that spread throughout his body. He swung round just in time to throw himself out of the way of Felixson, whose lips were drawn back to expose jagged, flesh-shredding teeth. Felixson’s teeth snapped in the air where Harry’s head had been two seconds before and the momentum of the lunge carried Felixson forward, slamming him into the wall beside the door.

  Harry didn’t give Felixson an opportunity to go after him a second time. He was out through the door and into the passageway. The ghosts were in a crazed state, and they were everywhere, tossing themselves back and forth. They slammed into the walls like invisible hammers. The plaster had been cleared off by now, exposing wooden slats beneath. There was a din of destruction from the other end of passageway, which suggested the stairs were being taken apart with the same gusto as the walls, but the dust and the darkness conspired to limit Harry’s sight to a foot in front of his face and no more. Despite the sounds of unmaking before him, he had no choice but to risk it.

  Meanwhile, the floorboards groaned and twisted, spitting out the nails that had held them in place. Harry ventured over them as fast as he dared, past the sling room, which was now a wall of suffocating dust, and on over the cavorting boards. The wooden slats were succumbing to the strikes of the hammer-bodied spirits even more quickly than the plaster. Harry crossed his arms in front of his face to protect it from the splinters that pierced the air. He was walking blind. For a third time the cool presence intervened, entering Harry and speaking in the blood that thundered in Harry’s ears

  Back! Now!

  Harry responded instantly, and as he jumped back Felixson charged past him, his mouth vast, and from it a solid howl emerged, which suddenly dropped away. The stairs were gone, and something about the way Felixson’s howl had diminished told Harry’s instincts that there was now a void beneath the house into which the Cenobite’s lapdog had been dispatched. Judging by Felixson’s faraway howl, it was deep, and there was likely no way anyone would ever be able to climb out of it if, or rather when, the house folded up and fell.

  Harry turned back in the direction he’d come. He quickly and carefully headed to the back room, trying not to focus on the passageway as it collapsed beneath him, the boards digging away into the blackness over which he was leaping.

  By the time he returned to the room, the plaster dust had almost cleared, sucked away by emptiness below. There was only a single unreliable patchwork of wooden slats left between Harry and the hole. But at least now he had a clear view of his last hope and his only target: the window. Trusting his feet to know their business, he crossed the room without incident. There was a ledge perhaps four floorboards in front of the window, but it didn’t look as though it was going to be there for long. The boards had already lost most of their nails.

  Harry started to pull at the blackout fabric that had been secured to the window. It had clearly been nailed to the frame by an obsessive, but had been done several years before, Harry guessed, because the fabric, though thick, had begun to rot through after several summers of extreme humidity and when he pulled at it the material tore like paper. The light of the outside world came flooding into the room. It wasn’t direct sunlight, but it was bright nonetheless, and it was more than welcome.

  Harry peered out of the window. It was a long way down, and there was nothing on either side. A drainpipe would have been adequate. A fire escape would have made a climb down plausible. But no, he was going to have to jump and hope for the best. He pulled on the window’s edge, trying to raise it, but it was sealed shut, so he turned around and tore up one of the floorboards, making his ledge even narrower. As he turned back toward the window with his weapon, he caught sight of something from the corner of his eye and glanced back to see that he was no longer alone in the room.

  Battered, bloody, and covered in dust—his teeth bared, his eyes narrowed to slits of fury—Pinhead’s rabid dog, Felixson, stood staring at Harry. Far though Felixson had surely fallen, he had climbed his way back up, intent on finishing the bloody business between them.

  “You’ve done some dumb fucking things, D’Amour…” Harry said to himself.

  Felixson came at him suddenly, the boards he had sprung from splintering as he leaped. Harry threw the wood he’d been carrying at the window, shattering the glass, and put all his effort into getting out. A crowd of people had gathered out on the sidewalk. Harry caught a few fragments of the things they were yelling—something about him breaking his neck, something about getting a ladder, or a mattress, or a sheet—but despite all the suggestions, nobody moved to help in case they missed the moment when Harry jumped.

  And two seconds later he could have, had he been free to do so, but Felixson wasn’t about to lose his prey. With one last bound, the living monstrosity cleared the chasm between them and caught hold of Harry’s leg, digging his fingers, their strength clearly enhanced by the merciless fusing of metal and flesh, deep into the bleeding holes in Harry’s thighs.

  Though Harry was in tremendous pain, he didn’t waste the remaining energy he had
by voicing it.

  “All right, fuckhead,” he said. “You’re coming with me.”

  And with that he threw himself out of the window. Felixson held on to Harry as far as the window ledge, and then, perhaps out of a fear of being seen, he let go.

  Harry landed hard on a patch of asphalt. He was familiar enough with the sound of breaking bones to know that he’d surely shattered a few. But before he could ask any of the onlookers for a ride to the nearest hospital, the house gave up a long growl of surrender and then collapsed, folding up and dropping down through what was left of the structure, the walls flying apart in places, and in others entire sections of wedded brick toppling in mounds. It happened with astonishing speed, the entire structure dropping away into the earth in less than a minute, its collapse finally releasing a dense gray-brown cloud of dust.

  As the walls succumbed, so did Harry’s body. A wave of shudders passed through him, and once again his sight was invaded by a pulsing blankness. It did not retreat this time but pressed forward from all directions. The world around him narrowed to a remote circle as though he were looking at it through the wrong end of a telescope. The pulse of pain maintained rhythm with that of the invading nullity, all moving to the beat of his drumming heart.

  Very far off, in the place from which his consciousness was departing, Harry saw somebody approaching him through the crowd: a bald, pale, diminutive man with a stare so penetrating that he could feel its intensity even though he was almost a world away. The man moved through the crowd with uncommon ease, as though some invisible presence cleared the way for him. The sight of the man lent Harry’s besieged senses a reason to hold on a little longer, to resist the encroaching emptiness that threatened to erase the place where he walked. It was hard, though. Much as he wanted to know who this intense Lilliputian was, Harry’s mind was closing down.

  Harry drew a ragged breath, determined at least to tell this man his name. But he had no need.

  “We should leave now, Mister D’Amour,” the man said. “While everyone is still distracted.”

  The man then reached out and took gentle hold of Harry’s hand. When their fingers made contact, a wave of forgiving warmth passed into Harry’s hand and the sting of his wounds retreated. He was comforted as a babe in its mother’s arms. And with that thought, the world went black.

  9

  There were no dreams at the beginning. He simply lay in the darkness, healing, and now and then he would rise to the surface of consciousness because somebody was talking about him near the place where he slept or perhaps in the hallway outside. He had no desire to wake and become a part of the conversation, but he heard the talk, or fragments of it at least.

  “This man belongs in a hospital, Dale,” said the voice of an elderly man.

  “I don’t believe in hospitals, Sol,” said the man who was Dale, his voice a playful Louisiana drawl. “Especially for someone like him. He wouldn’t be protected there. At least here I know nothing can get to him. For Pete’s sake, there was a demon at that house on Dupont Street.”

  “The same house he leveled?” the man called Sol replied.

  “He didn’t do that.”

  “How can you be so sure? I don’t like it, Dale,” Sol said. “Anyway, what the hell possessed you to go over to Dupont Street in the first place?”

  “You know about my dreams. They tell me where to go, and I go. I learned a long time ago not to ask questions. That’s just trouble. I showed up, there he was. I only got him back here by giving him a little of my energies. He was close to collapsing the entire time.”

  “That was foolish. Skills like yours should be kept secret.”

  “It was necessary. How else was I going to get him out of there unseen? Look, I know it’s crazy, but I know we need to help him get well.”

  “Fine. But once he’s healed, I want him out.”

  Dale, Harry thought. The name of his savior was Dale. Harry didn’t know who the other man in the conversation was but was sure he would meet him when the time was right. Meanwhile, there was that comfortable darkness to curl up in, which Harry did, certain in the knowledge he was safe.

  There were other conversations, or fragments of conversations, that came and went like night ships moving past him in the darkness. And then came the day when, without warning, everything in Harry’s dreaming state changed. It started with Dale talking to him, his face close to Harry’s so he could tell him what he needed to in a whisper.

  “Harry dear, I know you can hear me. You’re getting a visitor today. Solomon’s just gone to pick her up. Her name’s Freddie Bellmer. She and Sol have been friends for a long time. Sol thinks Miss Bellmer may be able to get your body to mend a little more quickly. Though between you and me I sometimes wonder if you’re not perfectly happy stayin’ asleep in there. I know you’ve had some hard times. That spill you took being one of them. Oh, and I’m sorry to report that your cell phone did not survive the fall. But I digress; as soon as Solomon got you cleaned up, and I don’t mind telling you I was a tiny bit jealous he didn’t let me stay and watch, he called me in to see your tattoos. I don’t know what all of them mean, but I know enough. They’re protections, aren’t they? Lord, you seem like a man that needs a lot of those. I … How shall I put this…?”

  He paused, as though looking for the right words, or, if he already had the words, he was looking for the most diplomatic way of using them. Finally, he began to speak again, though it was plainly difficult.

  “I … I always knew—even when I was small, y’see—I knew I wasn’t quite the same as the other boys. When my mother died—I never did know my father—I came to live with my uncle Sol. I had just turned six, and the moment old Uncle Sol laid eyes on me he said, ‘Lord, look at the colors coming off you. That’s quite a show.’ That’s when I knew I would have to live a different life than most folks. There’d be secrets I’d need to keep. Which is fine. I’m good at keeping secrets. And I don’t know what it is about you, but I just wanted you to know that whenever you do decide to wake up, I will gladly lap up anything you want to tell me about the world outside this stinky old town. And I look forward to the trouble we’ll get into together. I don’t know what it is yet, my dreams haven’t shown me, but I know it’s a doozy—”

  Then, the whispering was replaced by Solomon’s deep voice.

  “Are you kissing him?”

  “No,” Dale replied calmly, without turning around. “We were just talkin’.”

  It wasn’t Solomon who replied, but a new voice, that of Miss Bellmer. Her voice was deep and severe. It wasn’t as softly feminine as Harry had expected. But then neither, as Harry would soon find out, was the owner of the voice.

  “If you’re done playing doctor, I would recommend that you step away from the bed,” Miss Bellmer said to Dale, “and let me take a look at the patient.”

  Her voice grew louder as she approached the bed; then Harry heard the springs protesting as she sat down. She didn’t touch Harry, but he felt the proximity of her hand as it moved over his face and then down his body.

  There was nothing said; both Solomon and Dale were too much in awe of Miss Bellmer to interrupt her during the examination of the patient.

  Finally, Miss Bellmer spoke:

  “I don’t recommend keeping this man under your roof a moment more than you need to. The physical wounds are healing nicely. But … I have somewhere…” she said as she rummaged through her bag, “… something that will get him up on his feet a little quicker.”

  The weighty Miss Bellmer got up.

  “A teaspoon of this in half a cup of warm water.”

  “What does it do?” Dale asked.

  “It will give him bad dreams. He’s a little too comfortable in the dark. It’s time he woke. There’s trouble coming.”

  “Here?” Solomon said.

  “The entire world does not revolve around you and your house, Solomon. It’s this one here—your Mister D’Amour—that has some very bad things coming his way. Call me wh
en he wakes up.”

  “Is he in danger?” Dale asked.

  “Honey, that’s an understatement.”

  10

  Before leaving, the provocative Miss Freddie fed Harry his nightmare potion. The subtle energies her touch had released still pulsed through his body long after his three caretakers had left him to sleep. It was a different kind of sleep now, however, as though Miss Bellmer’s tonic had subtly reordered his thoughts.

  Fragments of meaning flickered in the darkness, two or three frames cut from the home movies of The Devil and D’Amour. No two demons were ever quite the same. They all had their own monstrous proclivities and they rose to visit Harry from deep within his subconscious. There was, of course, the clay-faced creature who had murdered Scummy and pleasured himself to the sight. There was also a chattering imbecile called Gist, who had come very close to killing Harry in a plunging elevator, a decade ago or more. There was Ysh’a’tar, the New Jersey Incubus Harry had caught giving Holy Communion one Sunday morning in Philadelphia. Another was Zuzan, the unholy assassin who’d taken the life of Harry’s friend and mentor, Father Hess, in a house in Brooklyn. Others Harry couldn’t even put a name to, perhaps because they didn’t even have names. They were just dreams of mindless malice that had crossed his path throughout the years, sometimes on an empty street long after midnight but just as often on the crowded avenues at noon when Hell’s creatures went about their vicious business in plain sight, defying human eyes to believe that they were real.

  After a while, however, the parade of atrocities dwindled, and Harry sank back into the darkness from which the arrival of Miss Bellmer had stirred him. How long he stayed there, recovering his strength, and healing, he had no idea, but certainly many hours. When he did finally rise from that healing darkness again it was to the sound of rain. And it was no light shower. The rain was lashing against the window, and the din reminded him suddenly of how very much he needed to piss.