Abarat: The First Book of Hours a-1

by Clive Barker

The glyph threw itself over and over, three hundred and sixty degrees, flipping so fast its passengers remained in their seats. Candy heard poor Malingo yelling in mortal terror beside her, then all the sounds that were filling her head—Malingo’s cries, the rushing of the wind, the crash of the glyph as it came to a violent halt—all of them disappeared.

  She was plunged into a sudden and absolute silence, and a darkness just as sudden, just as absolute.

  She couldn’t feel the glyph beneath her; nor, when she reached out, could she feel Malingo at her side. She seemed to be floating in blank space, her body removed from all physical contact.

  Then, of all things, she heard rain.

  It was distant, but it was reassuringly real. Whatever this lightless place was, it rained here. Seconds later another sound came to find her. No, not one sound, two.

  Two heartbeats.

  Somebody was here in the darkness with her. And whoever it was, they were very close.

  She tried to shape a question, a simple: “Who’s there?” But for some reason her mouth wouldn’t obey the instruction. All she could do was wait and listen, while the twinned hearts beat on, and the downpour continued.

  For some reason she wasn’t afraid. There was something reassuring about the mingling of heartbeats and rain.

  And finally, there came a third sound. The last sound she expected to hear in this mysterious place: her mother’s voice.

  “Please don’t be long, Bill,” Melissa Quackenbush said. “I can’t wait long.”

  Her voice sounded remote from Candy, dulled not by distance but by something placed between them. A wall of some kind.

  “Did you hear me, honey? I don’t like being here on my own.”

  Here? Candy thought. What did her mother mean by that? Was Melissa Quackenbush in the Twenty-Fifth Hour with her? Surely not. Besides, there was something about the way her mother sounded that made Candy think that it was a younger woman who was speaking. It wasn’t the tired, sad woman she’d last seen making meatloaf in the kitchen in Followell Street. How long, for instance, had it been since she’d heard her mother call her father honey? Years.

  And now—astonishment upon astonishment—she heard her father’s voice replying.

  Like Melissa’s voice, Bill Quackenbush’s speech was muted. But again, it was a gentler, more loving version of her father Candy was now hearing.

  “I promise I’ll be quick, sweetheart. You just hold on. I’ll be back in just a few minutes.”

  “Maybe I should come with you… “Melissa said.

  “In your condition, baby?” Bill Quackenbush replied lovingly. “I don’t think that would be too smart. It’s cold out here. You stay in the car and keep that blanket wrapped up tight around you, and I’ll be back so fast you won’t even know I’ve gone. I love you, Lambkins.”

  “I love you too, Nachos.”

  Lambkins? Nachos? Candy had never heard her parents exchange pet names, not even when she was very young. Perhaps she’d forgotten, but she doubted it. Lambkins and Nachos she would have remembered. She felt slightly uncomfortable, as though she was spying on a secret part of her mother and father’s life. A part that belonged in some distant Once Upon a Time when they’d both been young and happily in love. Probably before—

  “Before I was born,” Candy murmured to herself.

  This time, for some reason, her mouth obeyed her instruction, and the words came out.

  She even got an answer.

  “That’s right,” said a woman, somewhere in the darkness ahead of her. It wasn’t her mother who replied to her. This woman had subtle Abaratian inflections in her words, her tone warm and reassuring. “You haven’t been born yet,” she said to Candy.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We just wanted to give you a hint of your past,” said a second woman, her voice slightly lighter than that of the first speaker. “You need to know who you were before you became who you’re going to be.”

  “How do you know who I was?” Candy said. “Or who I’m going to be? Who are you, anyway?”

  Questions.

  Questions.

  “Questions.”

  A third woman laughed along with the other two, and as they did so there was a gentle blossoming of light in Candy’s vicinity. By it she saw all three women. In the middle of the trio, standing a little closer to Candy than her companions, was a woman who looked to be extraordinarily old. Her face was deeply etched with lines, and her hair—which was woven into navel-length braids—was pure white. But she still carried herself with great elegance, even in her antique phase. Nor did she seem weakened by age.

  There was a dark energy that flickered in the delicate veins of her face and hands.

  The women who stood to the right and left of her were somewhat younger than the old lady, but there was nothing fixed about any of the trio. Their faces, despite the welcoming expressions they offered Candy, seemed to be full of subtle hints of transformation.

  The youngest of the three—her black hair cropped to her skull—carried a glimpse of something feral in an otherwise benign expression, a beast that was just out of sight behind her lovely bones. The other woman, who was black, had the strangest gaze of the three. When her long hair—which was filled with hints of bright color—parted and showed Candy her eyes, they had the glory of a night sky in them.

  So there they were, three protean souls: one carrying lightning, one carrying sky, one touched with wilderness.

  Candy felt no fear in the presence of these three: just mystification. By now, of course, she was used to experiencing that particular feeling here in the Abarat. And she’d learned what she should do in the face of mystery. She would watch and listen. The answers to her questions would probably make themselves apparent, after a time. And if they didn’t, then she wasn’t meant to know those answers. She’d learned that too.

  The women now started to identify themselves. “I’m Diamanda,” said the old woman. “I’m Joephi,” said the wild one.

  “And I’m Mespa,” said the one with the night sky in her eyes. “We are Sisters of the Fantomaya,” said Diamanda.

  “The Fantomaya?”

  “Ssh! Keep jour voice down,” said Joephi, though it hadn’t seemed to Candy that she’d spoken any more loudly than the other three. “By law we shouldn’t have brought you into the Twenty-Fifth. But one day you’ll be coming here with work to do of your own. Great work—”

  “So we felt you should get a taste of it—”said Mespa.

  “That way” said Diamanda, “when you come back you’ll be prepared. You’ll know what it’s like.”

  “You sound very certain that I’m coming back,” Candy said.

  “We are,” Diamanda said. “You will have things to do here, in the future—”

  “If we are reading the future right,” said Mespa. “Sometimes it’s hard to be sure.”

  Now Candy thought about it, the idea didn’t seem so very unlikely. If the Twenty-Fifth Hour had let her in once, then why not again, when she better understood who she was, and what purpose she had in this strange world?

  “I want to see more of this place,” Candy said, staring into the darkness that surrounded them.

  “Do you indeed?” said Mespa.

  “Yes.”

  The three women exchanged tentative looks, as though to say, are we ready to do this, or not?

  It appeared that they were, because the air suddenly quickened with life around Candy, and in it, like tiny silver fish being carried in a fast-flowing river, she saw glimpses of extraordinary things. At first the images moved past her so fast she could make only the most rudimentary sense of them: a white tower, a field of yellow blossom, a chair sitting on the blue roof of a house, and a man in gold sitting upon it. But as her eyes grew accustomed to the way the shoal of pictures were flowing past her, she in her turn became more able to snatch hold of one for a few moments; like a hot coin, caught in the palm of her hand, that she had time to turn over and examine on both sides
before the discomfort obliged her to let it go.

  And there was an undeniable discomfort in seeing many of these images. They were so powerful, their shapes and their colors so full of strangeness that it hurt her head to catch them and hold them, even for a moment.

  It wasn’t just the intensity of each image that ached, it was the fact that there were so many of them. For every coin that she caught and flipped, there were a thousand, no ten thousand, that tumbled by, glittering and unexamined.

  What did she see?

  A woman walking upside down, fish in the sky above her, birds at her feet.

  A man standing in a moonlit wasteland, his head flowering like an oasis of thoughts.

  A city of red towers, under a sky filled with falling stars; another city, made in perfect miniature, and raised up on legs, with a blue bird—surely vast, even monstrous, to the city’s inhabitants—wheeling overhead.

  A grotesque mask singing as it floated in midair; a creature the size of a lion, with the head of a human being, vast and bearded, sitting on the lip of a volcano. A shore of some tropical island, with a tiny red boat in the bay, and a single star hanging over the horizon.

  And so on. And on. And on. The images kept flying.

  Sometimes there would be a sound attached to the scene, though it didn’t always seem to fit, as though—just like lightning preceding thunder—the images came more quickly than the sounds, so that they were out of step with one another. Sometimes she glimpsed things that she recognized, albeit briefly. The Yebba Dim Day, rising from the misty waters of the Straits of Dusk. The Gilholly Bridge being crossed by an army of people with bright white fire springing from their heads. Even Ninnyhammer, in the midst of a storm so violent that its young trees were being plucked from the earth and carried away.

  At last—just as the flow of images came close to overwhelming her—the shoal of fish began to thin out, and between the occasional flash of strangeness, the relatively reassuring vision of Diamanda, Joephi and Mespa began to reappear.

  Candy was left breathless.

  “What…?” she gasped.

  “What was all that?” Mespa said.

  “Yes.”

  It was Diamanda who replied.

  “An infinitesimally small piece of a tiny fragment of a virtually invisible fraction of what is here at Odom’s Spire. The past and the present-past and the future-present. They’re all in this place, you see. Every particular of every thing in every moment of forever.”

  “And you?”

  “The Fantomaya?”

  “Yes. What do you do with the images?”

  “We study them. We immerse ourselves in them. We protect them.”

  “From who?” said Candy.

  “From any and all. These are not things a common soul needs to see.”

  Candy laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” said Joephi.

  “Well… aren’t I a common soul?” said Candy.

  “Good question” said Diamanda. “The fact is you are many things, my dear. Many, many things. One of them is Candy Quackenbush of the town of Murkitt—”

  “You mean Chickentown?”

  “Oh. Yes, of course. I mean Chickentown. Back when I was there, it was called after my husband’s grandfather.”

  “Wait a moment,” Candy said, a little smile of realization creeping into her face. “I knew I’d heard the name Diamanda before. You’re Diamanda Murkitt. You were married to Henry Murkitt.”

  The old woman nodded slowly, staring at Candy with fresh intensity. “I am that woman. Much changed, but in many ways the same.”

  “Amazing,” said Candy.

  “Is it?” Diamanda said. “I mean, am I? Why?”

  “Everything’s coming full circle.”

  “Please explain,” said Diamanda.

  “Well, my journey began with Henry Murkitt,” Candy said. “You see, I wrote something about him.”

  “About Henry?” said Diamanda, speaking her husband’s name with no lack of tenderness. “You wrote about Henry?”

  “Just a few pages,” Candy said. “I was in the room where he committed suicide.”.

  “Ah,” said Diamanda softly. “So that’s what happened to him.”

  Candy nodded. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you.”

  “No, don’t apologize. It’s better I know than not. I knew I’d have to make my peace with the truth sooner or later. I ran out on Henry, you see. He had so few dreams.”

  “Yes, I heard,” Candy said. “Not about the dreams, but about you running out on him.”

  “He thought I went to Philadelphia, but why would I do a thing like that, when I knew about the Abarat? No… I caught the first ship out of that wretched world…”

  “You did the same, yes?” said Joephi.

  “Yes. I did the same. I didn’t have a ship to carry me. I came by Sea-Skipper.” Candy smiled at the memory; it seemed so long ago.

  “But my, you got here quicker than we expected” said Mespa. “A lot quicker”

  “Well sisters,” said Diamanda, unbraiding her hair as she spoke, “it seems we will have to be very careful about laying our plans in future. A new and highly unpredictable element has entered our sphere. And she changes everything. It will be impossible to guess the future with any of the old confidence.” She looked back at Candy. “All we know is that we’ve got our hands full.”

  “What’s changed?” said Candy. “Please explain. There’s so much I want to know. I feel as though I belong here for some reason. That this is really my home.”

  The three women didn’t make any attempt to dissuade her of this. Apparently they believe I belong here too, Candy thought. The realization made her eyes sting with happy tears. The women’s smiles and silence were confirming something she hadn’t dared to believe until now. She had a reason to be here. Even if nobody yet knew what it was, she still belonged.

  “If I really do have some purpose here,” Candy said, “I mean, if I’m more than just some dumb sightseer, then can you help me understand what that purpose is?”

  “We’d be happy to,” said Joephi.

  “But I’m not sure we understand ourselves,” Mespa went on. The starlight in her eyes trembled. The woman wasn’t afraid, Candy thought; but filled with a curious excitement.

  “Something’s going to happen to me, isn’t it?” Candy said.

  “My dear, something already has,” Diamanda replied. “You’re not the same girl who threw herself into the Izabella, are you?”

  Candy took a moment to think about this. But no more than a moment.

  “No. No, I’m not.” Then she said: “I’m somebody else. I just don’t know who that somebody else is yet.”

  “Well that’s what journeys are for,” Diamanda Murkitt said. “Remember, I made the same trip myself. Looking for something I didn’t have. And trust me, Candy, wherever you think you’re going, the real destination is… right here.” She tapped her chest, directly above her heart.

  “Will I ever go back to the Hereafter?” Candy said.

  The three women exchanged anxious looks.

  “What’s wrong?” said Candy, reading the discomfort in their eyes. “Do you know something about this?”

  “We’ve had glimpses…” Diamanda said, “only glimpses.”

  “There isn’t much to tell,” Joephi said.

  “But the news is bad?” Candy said.

  “Not for you,” Mespa said.

  “Then who for?”

  Joephi and Mespa both looked at Diamanda, as though seeking some guidance from their elder.

  “I’m not going to start making prophecies on the basis of glimpses,” Diamanda said. “But you should know, my dear, that from now on there is jeopardy at every step. For you. For those who travel with you. And even for the places you choose to go. You may bring down cities before you have solved all the mysteries that lie ahead of you.”

  “That sure sounds like a prophecy to me,” said Mespa.

  “Well, what do
you suggest we tell her?” the old lady said, a little irritated.

  “We could begin with the stories we’ve been hearing about Finnegan.”

  “Who’s Finnegan?” Candy said, thinking halfway through the question that perhaps somebody on this journey had already told her, because the name rang a bell. Or did she maybe know a Finnegan in Chickentown?

  “Oh, you’ll like Finnegan,” Diamanda said, with a teasing little smile.

  “That she will,” said Mespa.

  “Then there’s the Requiax,” said Joephi, moving on before Candy had time to ask about Finnegan.

  “Who are the Requiax?” Candy asked, determined to get an answer this time.

  There was silence for a moment. Candy looked from face to face. “Please,” she said. “I need some help here.”

  Mespa began: “The Requiax are the worst of the worst,” she said.

  “They’re the enemies of love,” Diamanda went on. “The enemies of life. Wicked beyond words…”

  “And where are they?”

  “Right now,” said Joephi, “they’re deep inthe Izabella, and let’s hope they stay there.”

  “Doubtful,” Diamanda went on. “We hear all manner of rumors about the Requiax being on the move. And there are those who say that when they surface, it will be the end of the world as we know it.”

  “You’re scaring me,” Candy said.

  “I forbid you to be scared,” Diamanda replied, gently. “She was never scared, so you shouldn’t be.”

  “She?” said Candy. “What do you mean, she?”

  Curiously enough, all three women opened their mouths to reply to this, but before any of them could answer, there came the sound of a series of doors closing—maybe ten in all—the smallest of which sounded like the noise of a doll’s house door, the largest a solid oak door, slamming somewhere nearby.

  “He’s coming,” cried Joephi.

  “We’ve got to be off, Candy,” Diamanda said. “Abraham Hollow, the Keeper of the Twenty-Fifth Hour, doesn’t approve of anybody from the outside world being brought into the Time Out of Time. If he knew you were here, he’d have the Fugit Brothers tear you from limb to limb.”

  “Nice,” said Candy. “What do I do with all the questions I’ve still got?”