Books of Blood: Volumes 1-6

by Clive Barker

  "And where's Lacey?"

  Leverthal's loving smile decayed.

  "With Kevin," said the youth, “where Kevin wants him." He pointed through the door of the sty. There was a body lying on the straw, back to the door.

  "If you want him, you'll have to go and get him," said the boy, and the next moment he had the back of Redman's neck in a vice-like grip.

  The sow responded to the sudden action. She started to stamp the straw, showing the whites of her eyes. Redman tried to shrug off the boy's grip, at the same time delivering an elbow to his belly. The boy backed off, winded and cursing, only to be replaced by Leverthal.

  "Go to him," she said as she snatched at Redman's hair. "G o to him if you want him." Her nails raked across his temple and nose, just missing his eyes.

  "Get off me!" he said, trying to shake the woman off, but she clung, her head lashing back and forth as she tried to press him over the wall.

  The rest happened with horrid speed. Her long hair brushed through a candle flame and her head caught fire, the flames climbing quickly. Shrieking for help she stumbled heavily against the gate. It failed to support her weight, and gave inward. Redman watched helplessly as the burning woman fell amongst the straw. The flames spread enthusiastically across the forecourt towards the sow, lapping up the kindling.

  Even now, in extremis, the pig was still a pig. No miracles here: no speaking, or pleading, in tongues. The animal panicked as the blaze surrounded her, cornering her stamping bulk and licking at her flanks. The air was filled with the stench of singeing bacon as the flames ran up her sides and over her head, chasing through her bristles like a grass-fire.

  Her voice was a pig's voice, her complaints a pig's complaints. Hysterical grunts escaped her lips and she hurtled across the forecourt of the sty and out of the broken gate, trampling Leverthal.

  The sow's body, still burning, was a magic thing in the night as she careered across the field, weaving about in her pain. Her cries did not diminish as the dark ate her up, they seemed just to echo back and forth across the field, unable to find a way out of the locked room.

  Redman stepped over Leverthal's fire-ridden corpse and into the sty. The straw was burning on every side, and the fire was creeping towards the door. He half-shut his eyes against the stinging smoke and ducked into the pig-house. Lacey was lying as he had been all along, back to the door. Redman turned the boy over. He was alive. He was awake. His face, bloated with tears and terror, stared up off his straw pillow, eyes so wide they looked fit to leap from his head.

  "Get up," said Redman, leaning over the boy.

  His small body was rigid, and it was all Redman could do to prize his limbs apart. With little words of care, he coaxed the boy to his feet as the smoke began to swirl into the pig-house.

  "Come on, it's all right, come on."

  He stood upright and something brushed his hair. Redman felt a little rain of worms across his face and glanced up to see Henessey, or what was left of him, still suspended from the crossbeam of the pig-house. His features were incomprehensible, blackened to a drooping mush. His body was raggedly gnawed off at the hip, and his innards hung from the fetid carcass, dangling in wormy loops in front of Redman's face.

  Had it not been for the thick smoke the smell of the body would have been overpowering. As it was Redman was simply revolted, and his revulsion gave strength to his arm. He hauled Lacey out of the shadow of the body and pushed him through the door.

  Outside the straw was no longer blazing as brightly, but the light of fire and candles and burning body still made him squint after the dark interior.

  "Come on lad," he said, lifting the kid through the flames. The boy's eyes were button-bright, lunatic-bright. They said futility.

  They crossed the sty to the gate, skipping Leverthal's corpse, and headed into the darkness of the open field. The boy seemed to be stirring from his stricken state with every step they took away from the farm. Behind them the sty was already a blazing memory. Ahead, the night was as still and impenetrable as ever.

  Redman tried not to think of the pig. It must be dead by now, surely.

  But as they ran, there seemed to be a noise in the earth as something huge kept pace with them, content to keep its distance, wary now but relentless in its pursuit.

  He dragged on Lacey's arm, and hurried on, the ground sun baked beneath their feet. Lacey was whimpering now, no words as yet, but sound at least. It was a good sign, a sign Redman needed.

  He'd had about his fill of insanity.

  They reached the building without incident. The corridors were as empty as they'd been when he'd left an hour ago. Perhaps nobody had found Slape's corpse yet. It was possible. None of the boys had seemed in a fit mood for recreation. Perhaps they had slipped silently to their dormitories, to sleep off their worship.

  It was time to find a phone and call the Police.

  Man and boy walked down the corridor towards the Governor's Office hand in hand. Lacey had fallen silent again, but his expression was no longer so manic; it looked as though cleansing tears might be close. He sniffed; made noises in his throat.

  His grip on Redman's hand tightened, then relaxed completely.

  Ahead, the vestibule was in darkness. Somebody had smashed the bulb recently. It still rocked gently on its cable, illuminated by a seepage of dull light from the window.

  "Come on. There's nothing to be afraid of. Come on, boy."

  Lacey bent to Redman's hand and bit the flesh. The trick was so quick he let the boy go before he could prevent himself, and Lacey was showing his heels as he scooted away down the corridor away from the vestibule. No matter. He couldn't get far. For once Redman was glad the place had walls and bars.

  Redman crossed the darkened vestibule to the Secretary's Office. Nothing moved. Whoever had broken the bulb was keeping very quiet, very still.

  The telephone had been smashed too. Not just broken, smashed to smithereens.

  Redman doubled back to the Governor's room. There was a telephone there; he'd not be stopped by vandals. The door was locked, of course, but Redman was prepared for that. He smashed the frosted glass in the window of the door with his elbow, and reached through to the other side. No key there.

  To hell with it, he thought, and put his shoulder to the door. It was sturdy, strong wood, and the lock was good quality. His shoulder ached and the wound in his stomach had reopened by the time the lock gave, and he gained access to the room.

  The floor was littered with straw; the smell inside made the sty seem sweet. The Governor was lying behind his desk, his heart eaten out.

  "The pig," said Redman. "The pig. The pig." And saying, “the pig', he reached for the phone.

  A sound. He turned, and met the blow full-face. It broke his cheek-bone and his nose. The room mottled, and went white.

  The vestibule was no longer dark. Candles were burning, it seemed hundreds of them, in every corner, on every edge. But then his head was swimming, his eyesight blurred with concussion. It could have been a single candle, multiplied by senses that could no longer be trusted to tell the truth.

  He stood in the middle of the arena of the vestibule, not quite knowing how he could be standing, for his legs felt numb and useless beneath him. At the periphery of his vision, beyond the light of the candles, he could hear people talking. No, not really talking. They weren't proper words. They were nonsense sounds, made by people who may or may not have been there.

  Then he heard the grunt, the low, asthmatic grunt of the sow, and straight ahead she emerged from the swimming light of the candles. She was bright and beautiful no longer. Her flanks were charred, her beady eyes withered, her snout somehow twisted out of true. She hobbled towards him very slowly, and very slowly the figure astride her became apparent. It was Tommy Lacey of course, naked as the day he was born, his body as pink and as hairless as one of her farrow, his face as innocent of human feeling. His eyes were now her eyes, as he guided the great sow by her ears. And the noise of the sow, the snaff
ling sound, was not out of the pig's mouth, but out of his. His was the voice of the pig.

  Redman said his name, quietly. Not Lacey, but Tommy. The boy seemed not to hear. Only then, as the pig and her rider approached, did Redman register why he hadn't fallen on his face.

  There was a rope around his neck.

  Even as he thought the thought, the noose tightened, and he was hauled off his feet into the air. No pain, but a terrible horror, worse, so much worse than pain, opened in him, a gorge of loss and regret, and all he was sank away into it.

  Below him, the sow and the boy had come to a halt, beneath his jangling feet. The boy, still grunting, had climbed off the pig and was squatting down beside the beast. Through the greying air Redman could see the curve of the boy's spine, the flawless skin of his back. He saw too the knotted rope that protruded from between his pale buttocks, the end frayed. For all the world like the tail of a pig.

  The sow put its head up, though its eyes were beyond seeing.

  He liked to think that she suffered, and would suffer now until she died. It was almost sufficient, to think of that. Then the sow's mouth opened, and she spoke. He wasn't certain how the words came, but they came. A boy's voice, lilting.

  "This is the state of the beast," it said, “to eat and be eaten."

  Then the sow smiled, and Redman felt, though he had believed himself numb, the first shock of pain as Lacey's teeth bit off a piece from his foot, and the boy clambered, snorting, up his saviour's body to kiss out his life.

  V: SEX, DEATH AND STARSHINE

  Diane ran her scented fingers through the two days' growth of ginger stubble on Terry's chin. "I love it," she said, "Even the grey bits." She loved everything about him, or at least that's what she claimed.

  When he kissed her: I love it.

  When he undressed her: I love it.

  When he slid his briefs off: I love it, I love it, I love it.

  She'd go down on him with such unalloyed enthusiasm, all he could do was watch the top of her ash-blonde head bobbing at his groin, and hope to God nobody chanced to walk into the dressing-room. She was a married woman, after all, even if she was an actress. He had a wife himself, somewhere. This tкte-а-tкte would make some juicy copy for one of the local rags, and here he was trying to garner a reputation as a serious-minded director; no gimmicks, no gossip; just art.

  Then, even thoughts of ambition would be dissolved on her tongue, as she played havoc with his nerve-endings. She wasn't much of an actress, but by God she was quite a performer. Faultless technique; immaculate timing: she knew either by instinct or by rehearsal just when to pick up the rhythm and bring the whole scene to a satisfying conclusion. When she'd finished milking the moment dry, he almost wanted to applaud. The whole cast of Calloway's production of Twelfth Night knew about the affair, of course. There'd be the occasional snide comment passed if actress and director were both late for rehearsals, or if she arrived looking full, and he flushed. He tried to persuade her to control the cat-with-the-cream look that crept over her face, but she just wasn't that good a deceiver. Which was rich, considering her profession.

  But then La Duvall, as Edward insisted on calling her, didn't need to be a great player, she was famous. So what if she spoke Shakespeare like it was Hiawatha, dum de dum de dum de dum? So what if her grasp of psychology was dubious, her logic faulty, her projection inadequate? So what if she had as much sense of poetry as she did propriety? She was a star, and that meant business.

  There was no taking that away from her: her name was money. The Elysium Theatre publicity announced her claim to fame in three inch Roman Bold, black on yellow: "Diane Duvall: star of The Love Child."

  The Love Child. Possibly the worst soap opera to cavort across the screens of the nation in the history of that genre, two solid hours a week of under-written characters and mind-numbing dialogue, as a result of which it consistently drew high ratings, and its performers became, almost overnight, brilliant stars in television's rhinestone heaven. Glittering there, the brightest of the bright, was Diane Duvall.

  Maybe she wasn't born to play the classics, but Jesus was she good box-office. And in this day and age, with theatres deserted, all that mattered was the number of punters on seats.

  Calloway had resigned himself to the fact that this would not be the definitive Twelfth Night, but if the production were successful, and with Diane in the role of Viola it had every chance, and it might open a few doors to him in the West End. Besides, working with the ever-adoring, ever-demanding Miss D. Duvall had its compensations.

  Galloway pulled up his serge trousers, and looked down at her. She was giving him that winsome smile of hers, the one she used in the letter scene. Expression Five in the Duvall repertoire, somewhere between Virginal and Motherly.

  He acknowledged the smile with one from his own stock, a small, loving look that passed for genuine at a yard's distance.

  Then he consulted his watch.

  "God, we're late, sweetie."

  She licked her lips. Did she really like the taste that much?

  "I'd better fix my hair," she said, standing up and glancing in the long mirror beside the shower. "Yes."

  "Are you OK?"

  "Couldn't be better," he replied. He kissed her lightly on the nose and left her to her teasing.

  On his way to the stage he ducked into the Men's Dressing Room to adjust his clothing, and dowse his burning cheeks with cold water. Sex always induced a giveaway mottling on his face and upper chest. Bending to splash water on himself Galloway studied his features critically in the mirror over the sink. After thirty-six years of holding the signs of age at bay, he was beginning to look the part. He was no more the juvenile lead. There was an indisputable puffiness beneath his eyes, which was nothing to do with sleeplessness and there were lines too, on his forehead, and round his mouth. He didn't look the wunderkind any longer; the secrets of his debauchery were written all over his face. The excess of sex, booze and ambition, the frustration of aspiring and just missing the main chance so many times. What would he look like now, he thought bitterly, if he'd been content to be some unenterprising nobody working in a minor rep, guaranteed a house of ten aficionados every night, and devoted to Brecht? Face as smooth as a baby's bottom probably, most of the people in the socially-committed theatre had that look. Vacant and content, poor cows.

  "Well, you pays your money and you takes your choice," he told himself. He took one last look at the haggard cherub in the mirror, reflecting that, crow's feet or not, women still couldn't resist him, and went out to face the trials and tribulations of Act III.

  On stage there was a heated debate in progress. The carpenter, his name was Jake, had built two hedges for Olivia's garden. They still had to be covered with leaves, but they looked quite impressive, running the depth of the stage to the cyclorama, where the rest of the garden would be painted. None of this symbolic stuff. A garden was a garden: green grass, blue sky. That's the way the audience liked it North of Birmingham, and Terry had some sympathy for their plain tastes.

  "Terry, love."

  Eddie Cunningham had him by the hand and elbow, escorting him into the fray.

  "What's the problem?"

  "Terry, love, you cannot be serious about these fucking (it came trippingly off the tongue: fucking) hedges. Tell Uncle Eddie you're not serious before I throw a fit." Eddie pointed towards the offending hedges. "I mean look at them." As he spoke a thin plume of spittle fizzed in the air.

  "What's the problem?" Terry asked again.

  "Problem? Blocking, love, blocking. Think about it. We've rehearsed this whole scene with me bobbing up and down like a March hare. Up right, down left – but it doesn't work if I haven't got access round the back. And look! These fucking things are flush with the backdrop."

  "Well they have to be, for the illusion, Eddie."

  "I can't get round though, Terry. You must see my point."

  He appealed to the few others on stage: the carpenters, two technicians, three a
ctors.

  "I mean – there's just not enough time."

  "Eddie, we'll re-block."

  "Oh."

  That took the wind out of his sails.

  "No?"

  "Urn."

  "I mean it seems easiest, doesn't it?"

  "Yes… I just liked…

  "I know."

  "Well. Needs must. What about the croquet?"

  "We'll cut that too."

  "All that business with the croquet mallets? The bawdy stuff?"

  "It'll all have to go. I'm sorry, I haven't thought this through. I wasn't thinking straight."

  Eddie flounced.

  "That's all you ever do, love, think straight…"

  Titters. Terry let it pass. Eddie had a genuine point of criticism; he had failed to consider the problems of the hedge design.

  "I'm sorry about the business; but there's no way we can accommodate it."

  "You won't be cutting anybody else's business, I'm sure," said Eddie. He threw a glance over Galloway's shoulder at Diane, then headed for the dressing-room. Exit enraged actor, stage left. Calloway made no attempt to stop him. It would have worsened the situation considerably to spoil his departure. He just breathed out a quiet 'oh Jesus', and dragged a wide hand down over his face. That was the fatal flaw of this profession: actors.

  "Will somebody fetch him back?" he said.

  Silence.

  "Where's Ryan?"

  The Stage Manager showed his bespectacled face over the offending hedge.

  "Sorry?"

  "Ryan, love – will you please take a cup of coffee to Eddie and coax him back into the bosom of the family?" Ryan pulled a face that said: you offended him, you fetch him.

  But Galloway had passed this particular buck before: he was a past master at it. He just stared at Ryan, defying him to contradict his request, until the other man dropped his eyes and nodded his acquiescence.

  "Sure," he said glumly.