The Great and Secret Show

by Clive Barker

"Listen, it doesn't sound any more sane to me than it does to you, lady—"

  "My name's Tesla."

  "Every time I finish one of these damn investigations I end up thinking: maybe that didn't happen. Till the next time. Then it's the same damn-fool process. You deny the possibility till it tries to bite off your face."

  Tesla thought of the sights she'd seen in the last few days: the terata, Fletcher's death, the Loop, and Kissoon in the Loop; the Lix, seething on her own bed; finally, the Vance house, and the schism it contained. She couldn't deny any of that. She'd seen those sights, in hard focus. Almost been killed by them. D'Amour's talk of demons came as a shock only because the vocabulary was so archaic. She didn't believe in the Devil or Hell. The idea of demons in New York was therefore fundamentally absurd. But suppose what he called demons were the products of corrupt men of power like Kissoon? Things like the Lix, made of shit, semen and babies' hearts? She'd believe in them then, wouldn't she?

  "So," she said. "If you know, and the Pentagon knows, why's there nobody here in the Grove now, to stop the Iad appearing? We're holding the fort with four guns, D'Amour—"

  "Nobody knew where the breakout would happen. I'm sure there's a file on the Grove somewhere, as a place where things weren't quite natural. But that's a long, long list."

  "So we can expect help soon?"

  "I'd guess so. But in my experience it usually comes too late."

  "What about you?"

  "What about me?"

  "Any chance of help?"

  "I've got problems here," D'Amour said. "There's all hell breaking loose. There've been a hundred and fifty cases of double suicides in Manhattan alone in the last eight hours."

  "Lovers?"

  "Lovers. Sleeping together for the first time. Dreaming of the Ephemeris, and getting a nightmare instead."

  "Jesus."

  "Maybe they did the right thing," D'Amour said. "At least they're out of it."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "I think what those poor bastards saw for themselves we all guess, right?"

  She remembered the lurching pain she'd felt as she'd come off the freeway the night before. The world tipping towards a maw.

  "Yeah," she said. "We guess it."

  "We're going to see a lot of folks responding to that in the next few days. Our minds are very finely balanced. Doesn't take much to push them over the edge. I'm in a city full of people ready to fall. I have to be here."

  "And if the cavalry doesn't turn up?" Tesla said.

  "Then somebody giving the orders in the Pentagon is a disbeliever—and there's plenty of those—or he's working for the Iad."

  "They've got agents?"

  "Oh yes. Not many, but enough. People have been worshipping the Iad , by other names. For them this is the Second Coming."

  "There was a first?"

  "That's another story, but yes, apparently there was."

  "When?"

  "There's no reliable accounts, if that's what you're asking. Nobody knows what the Iad look like. I think we should just pray they're the size of mice."

  "I don't pray," Tesla replied.

  "You should," D'Amour replied. "Now that you know how much is out there besides us, it makes sense. Look, I've got to go. I wish I could be more use."

  "I wish you could."

  "But the way I hear it, you're not completely alone."

  "I've got Hotchkiss, and a couple of—"

  "No. I mean, Norma says there's a savior out there."

  Tesla kept her laughter to herself.

  "I don't see any savior," she replied. "What should I be looking for?"

  "She's not sure. Sometimes she says it's a man, sometimes a woman. Sometimes not even human."

  "Well that makes for easy identification."

  "Whoever it is, he, she or it may just swing the balance."

  "And if they don't?"

  "Move out of California. Quick."

  Now she did laugh, out loud. "Thanks a bunch," she said.

  "Stay happy," D'Amour replied. "As my father used to say, you shouldn't have joined if you couldn't take a joke."

  "Joined what?"

  "The race," D'Amour said, and put down the phone. The line buzzed. She listened to the noise, and distant conversations laced through it. Grillo appeared at the door.

  "This is looking more and more like a suicide trip," he announced. "We don't have the proper equipment, and we don't have any map of the system we're going into."

  "Why not?"

  "They don't exist. Apparently the whole town's built on ground which keeps shifting."

  "Do you have any alternatives?" Tesla said. "The Jaff's the only man—" She stopped for a moment.

  "What?" Grillo said.

  "I don't suppose he's really a man, is he?" she said.

  "I don't follow."

  "D'Amour said there was a savior in the vicinity. Someone not human. That has to be the Jaff, right? Nobody else fits the description."

  "I don't see him as much of a savior," Grillo said.

  "Then we'll have to persuade him," came the answer. "If it crucifies him."

  V

  THE police had arrived in the Grove by the time Tesla, Witt, Hotchkiss, and Grillo left the house to start the descent. Lights were flashing at the top of the Hill; and ambulance sirens wailing. Despite all this din and activity there was no sign of any of the town's occupants, though presumably some of them were still in residence. They were either holed up with their deteriorating dreams, as Ellen Nguyen had been, or locked away, mourning their passing. The Grove was effectively a ghost-town. When the siren wails wound down there was a hush through the four villages more profound than any midnight. The sun beat down on empty sidewalks, empty yards, empty driveways. There were no children playing on the swings; no sound of televisions, radios, lawn-mowers, food-mixers, air conditioners. The lights still flipped colors at the intersections, but—excepting patrol-cars and ambulances, whose drivers ignored them anyway—nobody was on the roads. Even the packs of dogs they'd seen in the gloom before dawn had gone about business that didn't bring them into the open. The sight of the brilliant sun, shining upon the empty town, had spooked even them.

  Hotchkiss had made a list of items they were going to need if they were to have a hope of making the proposed descent: ropes, torches and a few articles of clothing. So the Mall was first stop on the journey. Of the quartet it was William who was most distressed by the place when they got there. Every day of his working life he'd seen the Mall bustling, from early morning to early evening. Now there was nobody. The new glass in the store-fronts that had been damaged by Fletcher gleamed, the products stacked in the windows beckoned, but there were neither buyers nor sellers. The doors were all locked; the stores silent.

  There was one exception: the pet store. Unlike every other business in the Mall it was open for business as usual, its door wide, its products yapping, squawking and making a general hullabaloo. While Hotchkiss and Grillo went to pillage their way through the shopping list, Witt took Tesla into the pet store. Ted Elizando was at work refilling the drip-feed water bottles along the rows of kittens' cages. He didn't look surprised to see customers. He didn't express anything in fact. Not even recognition of William, though from their first exchange Tesla gathered they knew each other.

  "All alone this morning, Ted?" Witt said.

  The man nodded. He hadn't shaved in two or three days; nor showered. "I . . . didn't want to get up, really . . . but I had to. For the animals."

  "Of course."

  "They'd die if I didn't look after them," Ted went on, with the slow, studied speech of one who was trying hard to keep his thoughts coherent. As he spoke he opened up the cage beside him and brought one of the kittens out from a nest of newspaper strips. It lay along his arm, head in the crook. He stroked it. The animal enjoyed the attention, arching its back to meet each slow motion of his hand.

  "I don't think there's anybody left in town to buy them," William said.

>   Ted stared at the kitten.

  "What am I going to do?" he asked softly. "I can't feed them forever, can I?" His voice dropped in volume with every word, until he was barely whispering. "What's happened to everyone?" he said. "Where did they go? Where did everyone go?"

  "Away, Ted," William said. "Out of town. And I don't think they're going to be coming back."

  "You think I should go too?" Ted said.

  "I think maybe you should," William replied.

  The man looked devastated.

  "What will the animals do?" he said.

  For the first time—witnessing Ted Elizando's misery— Tesla was struck by the scale of the Grove's tragedy. When she'd first wandered through its streets, message-carrying for Grillo, she'd plotted its fictional overthrow. The bomb-in-a-suitcase scenario, with apathetic Grovers throwing the prophet out just as the big bang came. That narrative had not been wide of the mark. The explosion had been slow and subtle rather than quick and hard, but it had come nevertheless. It had cleared the streets, leaving only a few—like Ted— to wander in the ruins, picking up whatever shreds of furry life remained. Her scenario had been a sort of imagined revenge upon the cosy, smug existence of the town. But in retrospect she'd been as smug as the Grove, as certain of her moral superiority as it had been of its invulnerability. There was real pain here. Real loss. The people who'd lived in the Grove, and fled it, had not been cardboard cut-outs. They'd had lives and loves, families, pets; they'd made their homes here thinking they'd found a place in the sun where they'd be safe. She had no right to judge them.

  She couldn't bear to go on looking at Ted, who stroked the kitten with such tenderness, as though it was all he had of sanity. She left Witt to talk with him and went out into the brightness of the lot, walking around the corner of the block to see if she could locate Coney Eye among the trees. She studied the top of the Hill until she made out the row of shaggy palms that led up to the driveway. Just visible between them was the brightly colored facade of Buddy Vance's dream house. It was small comfort, but at least the fabric of the building was still standing. She'd feared the hole inside would simply keep getting bigger, unknitting reality until it consumed the house. She dared not hope it had simply closed up—her gut knew that not to be the case. But as long as it had stabilized that was something. If they could move quickly, and locate the Jaff, perhaps some way of undoing the damage he'd done could be found.

  "See anything?" Grillo asked her. He was coming around the corner with Hotchkiss, both weighed down with booty: loops of rope, torches, batteries, a selection of sweaters.

  "It'll be cold down there," Hotchkiss explained when she queried them. "Damn cold. And probably wet."

  "We get a choice," Grillo said with forced good humor. "Drown, freeze or fall."

  "I like options," she said, wondering if dying a second time would be as distasteful as the first. Don't even think about it, she told herself. There's no second resurrection for you.

  "We're ready," Hotchkiss said. "Or as ready as we'll ever be. Where's Witt?"

  "He's at the pet store," she told him. "I'll go get him."

  She headed back around the corner to find that Witt had left the store and was gazing through another window.

  "Seen something?" she asked.

  "These are my offices," he said. "Or were. I used to work there." He pointed a finger to the glass. "At the desk with the plant."

  "Dead plant," she observed.

  "It's all dead," Witt said, with a kind of vehemence.

  "Don't be so defeatist," she told him, and hurried him back to the car, which Hotchkiss and Grillo had already finished loading up with equipment.

  As they drove Hotchkiss laid his concerns out, plain and simple:

  "I already told Grillo," he said, "that this is a completely suicidal thing for us all to be doing. Especially you," he said, catching Tesla's eye in the mirror. He didn't expand on that observation, but passed straight on to practicalities. "We haven't got any of the necessary equipment. The stuff we found in the stores is for domestic use; it won't save our lives in a crisis. And we're untrained. All of us. I've made a few climbs myself, but a long time ago. I'm really just a theoretician. And this is no easy system. There's good reason why Vance's corpse wasn't brought up. Men died down there—"

  "That wasn't because of the caves," Tesla said. "It was the Jaff."

  "But they didn't go back in," Hotchkiss pointed out. "God knows, nobody wanted to leave a man down there without a decent burial, but enough was enough."

  "You were ready to take me down," Grillo reminded him. "Just a few days ago."

  "That was you and me," Hotchkiss said.

  "Meaning that you didn't have a woman along?" Tesla said. "Well let's be real clear about this. Going underground when it looks like half the world's caving in isn't my idea of fun, but I'm as good as any man at anything that doesn't need a dick. I'm no more of a liability than Grillo. Sorry, Grillo, but it's true. We'll get down there, safely. The problem isn't the caves, it's what's hiding in them. And I've got a better chance with the Jaff than any of you. I've met Kissoon; I've heard the same lies the Jaff was told. I've got half a clue as to why he became what he became. If we're to have any chance of persuading him to help us, I've got to do the persuading."

  There was no response from Hotchkiss. He kept his silence, at least until they'd parked the car and were unloading the gear. Only then did he take up his instructions again. This time there were no overt references to Tesla.

  "I propose to take the lead," he said. "With Witt following. You next, Miss Bombeck. Grillo can bring up the rear."

  String o'pearls, Tesla thought, and me in the middle, presumably because Hotchkiss lacked faith in her muscle power. She didn't argue. He was leading this expedition, which she didn't doubt was every bit as foolhardy as he'd stated, and attempting to undermine his authority when they were about to make the descent was lousy politics.

  "We've got torches," he went on, "two each. One for us to pocket, the other to tie around our necks. We couldn't find much in the way of protective headgear; we'll just have to make do with knitted hats. We've got gloves, some boots, two sweaters and two pairs of socks for everyone. Let's get to it."

  They carried the gear through the trees to the clearing, and there kitted up. The woods were as silent now as they'd been in the early morning. The sun that beat so strongly on their backs, bringing them out into sweat as soon as they put on the extra layers of clothing, could not coax a single bird to song. Once dressed, they roped themselves together, about ten feet apart. Hotchkiss the theoretician knew his knots, and made play with the fact, tying them, particularly Tesla's, with a theatrical casualness. Grillo was the last to be added to the chain. He was sweating more heavily than anyone else, and the veins at his temples were almost as fat as the rope round his waist.

  "Are you OK?" Tesla asked him as Hotchkiss sat on the edge of the fissure and swung his feet into the hole.

  "I'm fine," Grillo replied.

  "Never a great liar," she replied.

  Hotchkiss had one last instruction.

  "When we're down there," he said, "let's keep the chatter to the minimum, huh? We've got to preserve our energy. Remember, getting down's only half the trip."

  "It's always faster on the way home," Tesla said.

  Hotchkiss gave her a disparaging look, and began the descent.

  The first few feet were relatively easy, but the privations began no more than ten feet down, when, maneuvering them selves through a space that only just allowed access, the sunlight disappeared so suddenly and so totally it was as if it had never existed. Their torches were feeble substitutes.

  "We'll wait here a moment," Hotchkiss called back up. "Let's get our eyes accustomed to the dark."

  Tesla could hear Grillo breathing hard behind her; almost panting.

  "Grillo," she murmured.

  "I'm OK. I'm OK."

  It was easily said, but it was very far from the way he felt. The symptoms were
familiar from previous attacks: in elevators stuck between floors, or a crowded subway. His heart was working up a sweat in his chest, and it felt like a wire was tightening around his throat. But these were just externalizations. The real fear was of a panic that would rise to such an unbearable pitch that his sanity would simply switch off like a lamp, and darkness become a continuum, outside and in. He had a regime of remedies—pills, deep breathing; in extremis, prayer—none of which were the least use to him now. All he could do was endure. He said the word to himself. Tesla heard.

  "Did you say enjoy?" she said. "Some pleasure trip."

  "Keep it quiet back there," Hotchkiss hollered from the front. "We're going to move off again."

  They continued, in a silence broken only by grunts, and a single call from Hotchkiss warning that progress ahead was going to get steeper. What had been a zig-zag descent, squeezing between rocks thrown up by the rush of water when the Nunciates had escaped, now became a straight climb down a shaft whose bottom was untouched by their torch-beams. It was deadly cold, and they were glad of the layers of clothing Hotchkiss had demanded they wear, though their bulk impeded easy movement. The rock beneath their gloves was wet in places, and twice sprays of water, hitting a shelf on the opposite side of the shaft, caught them.

  The sum of discomforts left Tesla wondering what bizarre imperative drove men (surely they were all men: women wouldn't be so perverse) to pursue this as recreation. Was it, as Hotchkiss had said when she and Witt had first got to his house, that all the great secrets were underground? If so, she was keeping good company. Three men who could not have had stronger reasons for wanting to see those secrets and maybe haul one of them up into the light. Grillo, with his passion to tell the whole story to the world. Hotchkiss, still haunted by the memory of his daughter, who'd died because of events here. And Witt, who'd known the Grove to its length and breadth, but never to its depth, and was getting here a fundamental vision of the town he'd loved like a wife. There was another call from Hotchkiss, this one more welcome.

  "There's a ledge down here," he said. "We can rest up a while." One by one they climbed down to join him. The ledge was wet, and narrow, only just affording space to accommodate them all. They perched there in silence. Grillo pulled a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket, and lit up.