Visions of Fear - Foundations of Fear III (1992)

by David G. Hartwell (Ed. )

  mixture of agony and delight. “I shall die,” he said,

  through gritted teeth.

  “No,” said Mick. “You’re all right— ”

  The man shook his head, his authority absolute.

  “I shall die,” he said again, the voice full of determination, “ I want to die.”

  Judd crouched closer to him. His voice was weaker by

  the moment.

  “Tell us what to do,” he said. The man had closed his

  eyes. Judd shook him awake, roughly.

  “Tell us,” he said again, his show of compassion

  rapidly disappearing. “Tell us what this is all about.”

  “About?” said the man, his eyes still closed. “ It was a

  fall, that’s all. Just a fall . . .”

  “What fell?”

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  “The city. Podujevo. My city.”

  “What did it fall from?”

  “Itself, of course.”

  The man was explaining nothing; just answering one

  riddle with another.

  “Where were you going?” Mick inquired, trying to

  sound as unaggressive as possible.

  “After Popolac,” said the man.

  “Popolac?” said Judd.

  Mick began to see some sense in the story.

  “Popolac is another city. Like Podujevo. Twin cities.

  They’re on the map— ”

  “Where’s the city now?” said Judd.

  Vaslav Jelovsek seemed to choose to tell the truth.

  There was a moment when he hovered between dying

  with a riddle on his lips, and living long enough to

  unburden his story. What did it matter if the tale was

  told now? There could never be another contest: all that

  was over.

  “They came to fight,” he said, his voice now very soft,

  “Popolac and Podujevo. They come every ten years— ”

  “Fight?” said Judd, “You mean all those people were

  slaughtered?”

  Vaslav shook his head.

  “No, no. They fell. I told you.”

  “Well how do they fight?” Mick said.

  “Go into the hills,” was the only reply.

  Vaslav opened his eyes a little. The faces that loomed

  over him were exhausted and sick. They had suffered,

  these innocents. They deserved some explanation.

  “As giants,” he said. “They fought as giants. They

  made a body out of their bodies, do you understand? The

  frame, the muscles, the bone, the eyes, nose, teeth all

  made of men and women.”

  “He’s delirious,” said Judd.

  “You go into the hills,” the man repeated. “See for

  yourselves how true it is.”

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  “Even supposing— ” Mick began.

  Vaslav interrupted him, eager to be finished. “They

  were good at the game of giants. It took many centuries

  of practice: every ten years making the figure larger and

  larger. One always ambitious to be larger than the other.

  Ropes to tie them all together, flawlessly. Sinews . . .

  ligaments . . . There was food in its belly . . . there were

  pipes from the loins, to take away the waste. The

  best-sighted sat in the eye-sockets, the best voiced in the

  mouth and throat. You wouldn’t believe the engineering

  of it.”

  “I don’t,” said Judd, and stood up.

  “ It is the body of the state,” said Vaslav, so softly his

  voice was barely above a whisper, “it is the shape of our

  lives.”

  There was a silence. Small clouds passed over the

  road, soundlessly shedding their mass to the air.

  “It was a miracle,” he said. It was as if he realized the

  true enormity of the fact for the first time. “It was a

  miracle.”

  It was enough. Yes. It was quite enough.

  His mouth closed, the words said, and he died.

  Mick felt this death more acutely than the thousands

  they had fled from; or rather this death was the key to

  unlock the anguish he felt for them all.

  Whether the man had chosen to tell a fantastic lie as he

  died, or whether this story was in some way true, Mick

  felt useless in the face of it. His imagination was too

  narrow to encompass the idea. His brain ached with the

  thought of it, and his compassion cracked under the

  weight of misery he felt.

  They stood on the road, while the clouds scudded by,

  their vague, grey shadows passing over them towards the

  enigmatic hills.

  It was twilight.

  Popolac could stride no further. It felt exhaustion in

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  every muscle. Here and there in its huge anatomy deaths

  had occurred; but there was no grieving in the city for its

  deceased cells. If the dead were in the interior, the

  corpses were allowed to hang from their harnesses. If

  they formed the skin of the city they were unbuckled

  from their positions and released, to plunge into the

  forest below.

  The giant was not capable of pity. It had no ambition

  but to continue until it ceased.

  As the sun slunk out of sight Popolac rested, sitting on

  a small hillock, nursing its huge head in its huge hands.

  The stars were coming out, with their familiar caution.

  Night was approaching, mercifully bandaging up the

  wounds of the day, blinding eyes that had seen too much.

  Popolac rose to its feet again, and began to move, step

  by booming step. It would not be long surely, before

  fatigue overcame it: before it could lie down in the tomb

  of some lost valley and die.

  But for a space yet it must walk on, each step more

  agonizingly slow than the last, while the night bloomed

  black around its head.

  Mick wanted to bury the car thief, somewhere on the

  edge of the forest. Judd, however, pointed out that

  burying a body might seem, in tomorrow’s saner light, a

  little suspicious. And besides, wasn’t it absurd to concern themselves with one corpse when there were literally thousands of them lying a few miles from where they stood?

  The body was left to lie, therefore, and the car to sink

  deeper into the ditch.

  They began to walk again.

  It was cold, and colder by the moment, and they were

  hungry. But the few houses they passed were all deserted,

  locked and shuttered, every one.

  “What did he mean?” said Mick, as they stood looking

  at another locked door.

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  “He was talking metaphor— ”

  “All that stuff about giants?”

  “ It was some Trotskyist tripe— ” Judd insisted.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I know so. It was his deathbed speech, he’d probably

  been preparing for years.”

  “ I don’t think so,” Mick said again, and began walking

  back towards the road.

  “Oh, how’s that?” Judd was at his back.

  “He wasn’t towing some party line.”

  “Are you saying you think there’s some giant around

  here someplace? For God’s sake!”

  Mick turned to Judd. His face was difficult to see in the

  twilight. But hi
s voice was sober with belief.

  “Yes. I think he was telling the truth.”

  “That’s absurd. That’s ridiculous. No.”

  Judd hated Mick that moment. Hated his naivete, his

  passion to believe any half-witted story if it had a whiff

  of romance about it. And this? This was the worst, the

  most preposterous . . .

  “No,” he said again. “No. No. No.”

  The sky was porcelain smooth, and the outline of the

  hills black as pitch.

  “I’m fucking freezing,” said Mick out of the ink. “Are

  you staying here or walking with me?”

  Judd shouted: “We’re not going to find anything this

  way.”

  “Well it’s a long way back.”

  “We’re just going deeper into the hills.”

  “Do what you like— I’m walking.”

  His footsteps receded: the dark encased him.

  After a minute, Judd followed.

  The night was cloudless and bitter. They walked on, their

  collars up against the chill, their feet swollen in their

  shoes. Above them the whole sky had become a parade

  of stars. A triumph of spilled light, from which the eye

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  could make as many patterns as it had patience for. After

  a while, they slung their tired arms around each other,

  for comfort and warmth.

  About eleven o’clock, they saw the glow of a window in

  the distance.

  The woman at the door of the stone cottage didn’t

  smile, but she understood their condition, and let them

  in. There seemed to be no purpose in trying to explain to

  either the woman or her crippled husband what they had

  seen. The cottage had no telephone, and there was no

  sign of a vehicle, so even had they found some way to

  express themselves, nothing could be done.

  With mimes and face-pullings they explained that they

  were hungry and exhausted. They tried further to explain that they were lost, cursing themselves for leaving their phrasebook in the VW. She didn’t seem to understand very much of what they said, but sat them down beside a blazing fire and put a pan of food on the stove to

  heat.

  They ate thick unsalted pea soup and eggs, and occasionally smiled their thanks at the woman. Her husband sat beside the lire, making no attempt to talk, or even

  look at the visitors.

  The food was good. It buoyed their spirits.

  They would sleep until morning and then begin the

  long trek back. By dawn the bodies in the field would be

  being quantified, identified, parcelled up and dispatched

  to their families. The air would be full of reassuring

  noises, cancelling out the moans that still rang in their

  ears. There would be helicopters, lorry loads of men

  ' organizing the clearing-up operations. All the rites and

  paraphernalia of a civilized disaster.

  And in a while, it would be palatable. It would become

  part of their history: a tragedy, of course, but one they

  could explain, classify and learn to live with. All would

  be well, yes, all would be well. Come morning.

  The sleep of sheer fatigue came on them suddenly.

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  Clive Barker

  They lay where they had fallen, still sitting at the table,

  their heads on their crossed arms. A litter of empty bowls

  and bread crusts surrounded them.

  They knew nothing. Dreamt nothing. Felt nothing.

  Then the thunder began.

  In the earth, in the deep earth, a rhythmical tread, as

  of a titan, that came, by degrees, closer and closer.

  The woman woke her husband. She blew out the lamp

  and went to the door. The night sky was luminous with

  stars: the hills black on every side.

  The thunder still sounded: a full half minute between

  every boom, but louder now. And louder with every new

  step.

  They stood at the door together, husband and wife,

  and listened to the night-hills echo back and forth with

  the sound. There was no lightning to accompany the

  thunder.

  Just the boom—

  Boom—

  Boom—

  It made the ground shake: it threw dust down from the

  door-lintel, and rattled the window-latches.

  Boom—

  Boom—

  They didn’t know what approached, but whatever

  shape it took, and whatever it intended, there seemed no

  sense in running from it. Where they stood, in the pitiful

  shelter of their cottage, was as safe as any nook of the

  forest. How could they choose, out of a hundred thousand trees, which would be standing when the thunder had passed? Better to wait: and watch.

  The wife’s eyes were not good, and she doubted what

  she saw when the blackness of the hill changed shape and

  reared up to block the stars. But her husband had seen it

  too: the unimaginably huge head, vaster in the deceiving

  darkness, looming up and up, dwarfing the hills themselves with ambition.

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  He fell to his knees, babbling a prayer, his arthritic legs

  twisted beneath him.

  His wife screamed: no words she knew could keep this

  monster at bay— no prayer, no plea, had power over it.

  In the cottage, Mick woke and his outstretched arm,

  twitching with a sudden cramp, wiped the plate and the

  lamp off the table.

  They smashed.

  Judd woke.

  The screaming outside had stopped. The woman had

  disappeared from the doorway into the forest. Any tree,

  any tree at all, was better than this sight. Her husband

  still let a string of prayers dribble from his slack mouth,

  as the great leg of the giant rose to take another step—

  Boom—

  The cottage shook. Plates danced and smashed off the

  dresser. A clay pipe rolled from the mantelpiece and

  shattered in the ashes of the hearth.

  The lovers knew the noise that sounded in their

  substance: that earth-thunder.

  Mick reached for Judd, and took him by the shoulder.

  “You see,” he said, his teeth blue-grey in the darkness

  of the cottage. “See? See?”

  There was a kind of hysteria bubbling behind his

  words. He ran to the door, stumbling over a chair in

  the dark. Cursing and bruised he staggered out into the

  night—

  Boom—

  The thunder was deafening. This time it broke all

  the windows in the cottage. In the bedroom one of the

  roof-joists cracked and flung debris downstairs.

  Judd joined his lover at the door. The old man was

  now face down on the ground, his sick and swollen

  fingers curled, his begging lips pressed to the damp soil.

  Mick was looking up, towards the sky. Judd followed

  his gaze.

  There was a place that showed no stars. It was a

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  Clive Barker

  darkness in the shape of a man, a vast, broad human

  frame, a colossus that soared up to meet heaven. It was

  not quite a perfect giant. Its outline was not tidy; it

  seethed and swarmed.

  He seemed broader too, this giant, than any real man.

  His legs wer
e abnormally thick and stumpy, and his arms

  were not long. The hands, as they clenched and unclenched, seemed oddly jointed and over-delicate for its torso.

  Then it raised one huge, flat foot and placed it on the

  earth, taking a stride towards them.

  Boom—

  The step brought the roof collapsing in on the cottage.

  Everything that the car-thief had said was true. Popolac

  was a city and a giant; and it had gone into the hills . . .

  Now their eyes were becoming accustomed to the

  night light. They could see in ever more horrible detail

  the way this monster was constructed. It was a masterpiece of human engineering: a man made entirely of men. Or rather, a sexless giant, made of men and women

  and children. All the citizens of Popolac writhed and

  strained in the body of this flesh-knitted giant, their

  muscles stretched to breaking point, their bones close to

  snapping.

  They could see how the architects of Popolac had

  subtly altered the proportions of the human body; how

  the thing had been made squatter to lower its center of

  gravity; how its legs had been made elephantine to bear

  the weight of the torso; how the head was sunk low on to

  the wide shoulders, so that the problems of a weak neck

  had been minimized.

  Despite these malformations, it was horribly lifelike.

  The bodies that were bound together to make its surface

  were naked but for their harnesses, so that its surface

  glistened in the starlight, like one vast human torso.

  Even the muscles were well copied, though simplified.

  They could see the way the roped bodies pushed and

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  pulled against each other in solid cords of flesh and bone.

  They could see the intertwined people that made up the

  body: the backs like turtles packed together to offer the

  sweep of the pectorals; the lashed and knotted acrobats

  at the joints of the arms and the legs alike, rolling and

  unwinding to articulate the city.

  But surely the most amazing sight of all was the face.

  Cheeks of bodies; cavernous eye-sockets in which

  heads stared, five bound together for each eyeball; a

  broad, flat nose and a mouth that opened and closed, as

  the muscles of the jaw bunched and hollowed rhythmically. And from that mouth, lined with teeth of bald children, the voice of the giant, now only a weak copy of

  its former powers, spoke a single note of idiot music.