The Great and Secret Show

by Clive Barker

  The bartender started to pray out loud, but he wasn't putting his faith in prayer alone. He reached down to his side and picked Tommy-Ray up one-handed, hauling him close. Then, with his hostage taken, he opened the door to the sex arena and backed through it. Tommy-Ray heard him repeating something as they went, the hook of the prayer perhaps? Santo Dios! Santo Dios! But neither words nor hostage slowed the advance of the wind and its dusty freight. They came after him, throwing the door wide.

  Tommy-Ray saw their mouths grow huger still, and then the blur of faces was upon them both. He lost sight of what happened next. The dust filled his eyes before he had an opportunity to close them. But he felt the bartender's grip slide from him, and the next moment a rush of wet heat. The howling in the wind instantly rose in volume to a keening that he tried to stop his ears against, but it came anyway, boring into the bone of his head like a hundred drills.

  When he opened his eyes he was red. Chest, arms, legs, hands: all red. The bartender, the source of the color, had been dragged on to the stage where the night before Tommy had seen the woman and the dog. His head was in one corner, upended; his arms, hands locked in supplication, in another; the rest of him lay center stage, the neck still pumping.

  Tommy-Ray tried not to be sickened (he was the Death-Boy, after all) but this was too much. And yet, he told himself, what had he expected when he'd invited them over the threshold? This was not a circus he had in tow. It was not sane; it was not civilized.

  Shaking, sickened and chastened, he got to his feet and hauled himself back out into the bar. His legion's labors here were as cataclysmic as those he'd turned his back upon. All three of the bar's occupants had been brutally slaughtered. Giving the scene only the most casual perusal, he crossed through the destruction to the door.

  Events inside the bar had inevitably attracted an audience outside, even at such an early hour. But the velocity of the wind—in which his ghost army was once more dissolved—kept all but the most adventurous, youths and children, from approaching the scene, and even they were cowed by the suspicion that the air howling around them was not entirely empty.

  They watched the blond, blood-spattered boy emerge from the bar and cross to his car, but made no attempt to apprehend him. Their scrutiny made Tommy-Ray take note of his gait. Instead of slouching he walked more upright. When they remembered the Death-Boy, he thought, let them remember someone terrible.

  As he drove he began to believe he'd left the legion behind; that they'd found the game of murder more exciting than follow the leader and were going on to slaughter the rest of the town. He didn't much mind the desertion. Indeed he was in part thankful for it. The revelations that had seemed so welcome the previous night had lost some of their glamour.

  He was sticky and stinking with another man's blood; he was bruised from the bartender's handling of him. Naively enough he'd believed that the touch of the Nuncio had made him immortal. What was the use of being the Death-Boy, after all, if death could still master you? In learning the error of his ways he'd come closer to losing his life than he cared to think too hard about. As to his saviors, his legion—he'd been equally naive in his belief that he had control of them.

  They were not the shambling, fawning refugees he'd taken them for the previous night. Or if they had been, their being together had changed their nature. Now they were lethal, and would probably have slipped from his control sooner or later anyhow. He was better off without them.

  He stopped to wipe the blood from his face before crossing the border, turned his bloodied shirt inside out to conceal the worst of the stains, then drove on. As he reached the border itself he saw the dust cloud in the mirror, and knew his relief at losing his legion had been premature. Whatever slaughter had detained them they'd done with it. He put his foot down, hoping against hope to lose them, but they had the scent of him, and followed like a pack of loyal but lethal dogs, closing on the car till they were once more swirling behind him.

  Once over the border the cloud picked up its pace, so that instead of following, it surrounded the car to left and right. There was more purpose in the maneuver than mere intimacy. Spirits hauled the windows and rattled at the passenger door, finally pulling it open. Tommy-Ray reached to drag it closed again. As he did so the bartender's head, much battered by being carried by the storm, was pitched out of the dust on to the seat beside him. Then the door was slammed, and the cloud once more took its dutiful place as his train.

  His instinct was to stop and throw the trophy out on to the street, but he knew that to do so would confirm his weakness in his legion's estimation. They'd not brought him the head simply to humor him, though that might be their pretense. There was a warning here; even a threat. Don't try to cheat or betray them, the dusty, bloody ball announced from its gaping mouth, or you and I'll be brothers.

  He took the silent message to heart. Though he was still ostensibly the leader, the dynamic changed thereafter. Every few miles the cloud would once more pick up its pace and merge one way or another, pointing him towards more of their number; many waiting in the unlikeliest of places: squalid street corners and minor intersections (often at intersections); once in the lot of a motel; once outside a boarded-up gas station, where a man, a woman and a child all waited, as though they'd known this transport would be coming along.

  As the numbers swelled, so did the scale of the storm that carried them, until its passage was sufficient to cause minor damage along the highway, driving cars off the road, and blowing down signs. It even made the news bulletin. Tommy-Ray heard the report as he drove. It was described as a freak wind, which had blown up off the ocean and was proceeding north towards Los Angeles County.

  He wondered, as he listened, if anyone in Palomo Grove would hear the report. The Jaff maybe; or Jo-Beth. He hoped so. He hoped they heard, and understood what was coming their way. The town had seen some strange sights since his father's return from the rock, but nothing, surely, the equal of the wind he had in tow, or the living dust that danced on its back.

  II

  IT WAS hunger that drove William out from his home on Saturday morning. He went reluctantly, like a man at an orgy suddenly aware that his bladder had to be emptied, and exiting with many a backward glance. But hunger, like the need to piss, couldn't be ignored forever, and William had exhausted what few supplies his refrigerator had contained very quickly. Working as he did at the Mall he'd never stocked up on food, but taken a quarter of an hour every day to wander around the supermarket and pick up whatever got him salivating. But he'd not been shopping now for two days, and if he wasn't to starve to death in the lap of the tasty but inedible luxuries gathered behind the drawn blinds of his home he had to fetch himself something to eat. This was easier said than done. His mind was so wholly obsessed by the company he was keeping that the simple problem of making himself presentable for a public appearance and going down to the Mall became a major challenge.

  Until recently, his life had been so very organized. The week's shirts were always washed and pressed on a Sunday, laid out on his dresser with the five bow ties selected from his hundred and eleven to complement the shade of the shirt; his kitchen could have been shot for an ad campaign, its surfaces always pristine; the sink smelled of lemon; the washing machine of his flower-scented fabric conditioner; his toilet bowl of pine.

  But Babylon had taken control of his house. He'd last seen his best suit being worn by the notorious bisexual Marcella St. John, while she straddled one of her girlfriends. His bow ties had been purloined for a competition to see which of three erections could wear the most, a tournament won by Moses "The Hose" Jasper, who'd ended up sporting seventeen.

  Rather than try and tidy up, or claim any of these belongings back, William decided to let the celebrants have their way. He rummaged in his bottom drawer and found a sweatshirt and jeans he'd not worn for several years, put them on, and wandered down to the Mall.

  At about the time he was doing so Jo-Beth was waking with the worst hangover of her li
fe. The worst, because the first.

  Her memories of the previous night's events were uncertain. She remembered going to Lois's house, of course, and the guests, and Howie arriving, but how all of this had ended up she couldn't be sure. She got up feeling giddy and sick, and went to the bathroom. Momma, hearing her moving about, came upstairs and was waiting for her when she emerged.

  "Are you all right?" she asked.

  "No," Jo-Beth freely admitted. "I feel terrible."

  "You were drinking last night."

  "Yes," she said. There was no purpose in denial.

  "Where did you go?"

  "To see Lois."

  "There'd be no liquor in Lois's house," Momma said.

  "There was last night. And a lot more besides."

  "Don't lie to me, Jo-Beth."

  "I'm not lying."

  "Lois would never have that poison in the house."

  "I think you should hear her tell it herself," Jo-Beth said, defying Momma's accusing looks. "I think we should both go down to the store and speak to her."

  "I'm not leaving the house," Momma told her flatly.

  "You went out into the yard the night before last. Today you can get in the car."

  She spoke as she'd never spoken to Momma before, with a kind of rage in her tone which was in part response to Momma's calling her a liar, and in part against herself for not being able to think her way through the blur of the previous night. What had happened between Howie and herself? Had they argued? She thought so. They'd certainly parted on the street . . . but why? It was another reason to speak to Lois.

  "I mean what I say, Momma," she said. "We're both of us going to go down to the Mall."

  "No, I can't . . ." Momma said. "Really I can't. I feel so sick today."

  "No you don't."

  "Yes. My stomach . . ."

  "No, Momma! Enough of that! You can't pretend to be sick for the rest of your life, just because you're afraid. I'm afraid too, Momma."

  "It's good you're afraid."

  "No it's not. It's what the Jaff wants. What he feeds on. The fear inside. I know that because I've seen it working and it's horrible."

  "We can pray. Prayer—"

  "—won't do us any good any longer. It didn't help the Pastor. It won't help us." She was raising her voice, which in turn made her head spin, but she knew this had to be said now before full sobriety returned, and with it, fear of offending.

  "You always said it was dangerous outside," she went on, not liking to hurt Momma the way she surely was, but unable to stem the flow of feeling. "Well it is dangerous. Even more than you thought. But inside, Momma—" she jabbed at her chest, meaning her heart, meaning Howie and Tommy-Ray and the terror that she'd lost them both "—inside, it's worse. Even worse. To have things . . . dreams . . . just for a while . . . then have them taken away before you can get a hold of them properly."

  "You're not making any sense, Jo-Beth," Momma said.

  "Lois'll tell you," she replied. "I'm going to take you down to see Lois, and then you'll believe."

  Howie sat at the window and let the sun dry the sweat on his skin. Its smell was as familiar to him as his own face in the mirror, more familiar, perhaps, because his face kept changing and the smell of sweat didn't. He needed the comfort of such familiarity now, with nothing certain in all the world but that nothing was certain. He could find no way through the tangle of feelings in his gut. What had seemed simple the day before, when he'd stood in the sun at the back of the house and kissed Jo-Beth, was no longer simple. Fletcher might be dead but he'd left a legacy here in the Grove, a legacy of dream-creatures which viewed him as some substitute for their lost creator. He couldn't be that. Even if they didn't share Fletcher's view of Jo-Beth, which after last night's confrontation they surely did, he still couldn't fulfill their expectations. He'd come here a desperado and become, albeit fleetingly, a lover. Now they wanted to make a general of him; wanted marching orders and battle plans. He could supply neither. Nor would Fletcher have been able to offer such direction. The army he'd created would have to elect a leader from its own ranks, or disperse.

  He'd rehearsed these arguments so often now he almost believed them; or rather, had almost convinced himself he wasn't a coward for wanting to believe them. But the trick hadn't worked. He came back and back to the same stark fact: that once, in the woods, Fletcher had warned him to make a choice between Jo-Beth and his destiny, and he'd flown in the face of that advice. The consequences of his desertion, whether direct or indirect was immaterial now, had been Fletcher's public death, a last, desperate attempt to seize some hope for the future. Now here was he, the unprodigal son, willfully turning his back on the product of that sacrifice.

  And yet; and yet; always, and yet. If he sided with Fletcher's army then he became part of the war he and Jo-Beth had studiously attempted to remain untouched by. She would become one of the enemy, simply by birth.

  What he wanted more than anything, ever in his life— more than the pubic hair he'd tried to will into growing at age eleven, more than the motorcycle he'd stolen at fourteen, more than his mother back from death for two minutes just so he could tell her how sorry he was for all the times he'd made her cry; more, at this moment, than Jo-Beth—was certainty. Just to be told which way was the right way, which act was the right act, and have the comfort that even if it turned out not to be the way or the act it was not his responsibility. But there was nobody to tell him. He had to think this out for himself. Sit in the sun and let the sweat dry on his skin, and work it out for himself.

  The Mall was not as busy as it usually was on a Saturday morning, but William nevertheless met half a dozen people he knew on his way to the supermarket. One was his assistant Valerie.

  "Are you all right?" she wanted to know. "I've been calling your house. You never answer."

  "I've been ill," he said.

  "I didn't bother to open the office yesterday. What with all the trouble the night before. It was a real mess. Roger went down, you know, when the alarms started?"

  "Roger?"

  She stared at him. "Yes, Roger."

  "Oh yes," William said, not knowing whether this was Valerie's husband, brother or dog, and not much caring.

  "He's been ill too," she said.

  "I think you should take a few days off," William suggested.

  "That would be nice. A lot of people are going away at the moment, have you noticed? Just taking off. We won't lose much business."

  He made some polite remark about how she should treat herself to a rest, and parted from her.

  The muzak in the market reminded him of what he'd left at home: it sounded so much like the soundtracks of some of his early movies, a wash of nondescript melodies bearing no relation to the scenes they accompanied. The memory hurried him up and down the long aisles, filling his basket more by instinct than planning. He didn't bother to cater for his guests. They only fed on each other.

  He wasn't the only shopper in the store ignoring practical purchases (household cleaners, detergents and the like) in favor of quick-fix items and junk foods. Distracted as he was he noticed others doing just as he was doing, indiscriminately filling up their carts and baskets with trash, as though new reassurances had supplanted the rituals of cooking and eating. He saw on the purchasers' faces (faces he'd known by name once, but could only half remember now) the same secretive look he'd known had been on his own face all his life. They were going about their shopping pretending there was nothing different about this particular Saturday, but everything was different now. They all had secrets; or almost all. And those that didn't were either leaving town, like Valerie, or pretending not to notice, which was, in its way, another secret.

  As he reached the checkout, adding two fistfuls of Hershey bars to his basketload, he saw a face he hadn't set eyes on in many a long year: Joyce McGuire. She came in with her daughter, Jo-Beth, arm-in-arm. If he had ever seen them together it must have been before Jo-Beth grew to be a woman. Now, side by side, the sim
ilarities in their faces was enough to take his breath away. He stared, unable to prevent himself from remembering the day at the lake and the way

  Joyce had looked as she'd stripped down. Did the daughter look that way now, beneath her loose clothes, he wondered; small dark nipples, long, tanned thighs?

  He realized suddenly that he was not the only customer looking towards the McGuire women; practically everyone was doing the same. Nor could he doubt that similar thoughts were in every head: that here, in the flesh, was one of the first clues to the apocalypse that was stealing up over the Grove. Eighteen years ago Joyce McGuire had given birth in circumstances that had then seemed merely scandalous. Now she stepped back into the public eye at the very time the most ludicrous rumors surrounding the League of Virgins seemed to be being proved true. There were presences walking the Grove (or lurking beneath it) which had power over lesser beings. Their influence had made flesh children in the body of Joyce McGuire. Was it perhaps that same influence that had made his dreams? They too were flesh from mind.

  He looked back at Joyce, and understood something about himself he'd never grasped before: that he and the woman (beholder and beheld) were forever and intimately associated. The realization lasted a moment only: it was too difficult to grasp for any longer. But it made him put down his basket and press his way past the line waiting at the checkout, then walk straight towards Joyce McGuire. She saw him coming, and a look of fear crossed her face. He smiled at her. She tried to back away but her daughter had hold of her hand.

  "It's all right, Momma," he heard her say.

  "Yes—" he said, extending his own hand to Joyce. "Yes, it is. Really it is. I'm . . . so pleased to see you."

  The sincere emotion, simply stated, seemed to mellow her anxiety; the frown softened. She even began to smile.

  "William Witt," he said, putting his hand in hers. "You probably don't remember me, but . . ."