Imajica

by Clive Barker

  III

  Exhausted by his outpouring of pain, Sartori turned from Gentle and began to wander back to the chair where he’d been sitting at the start of their interview. He idled as he went, kicking over those servile scraps that came to dote on him and pausing to look up at Godolphin’s gutted body, then setting it in motion with a touch, so that its bulk eclipsed and uncovered him by turns, as he went to his little throne. There were peripeteria gathered around in a sycophantic horde, but Gentle didn’t wait for him to order them against him. Sartori was no less dangerous for the despair he’d just expressed; all it did was free him from any last hope of peace between them. It freed Gentle too. This had to end in Sartori’s dispatch, or the Devil he’d decided to be would undo the Great Work all over again. Gentle drew breath. As soon as his brother turned he’d let the pneuma fly and be done.

  “What makes you think you can kill me, brother?” Sartori said, still not turning. “God’s in the First Dominion, and Mother’s nearly dead downstairs. You’re alone. All you have is your breath.”

  Godolphin’s body continued to swing between them, but the man kept his back turned.

  “And if you unknit me, what do you do to yourself in the process? Have you thought about that? Kill me, and maybe you kill yourself.”

  Gentle knew Sartori was capable of planting such doubts all night. It was the complement to his own lost skill with seduction: dropping these possibilities into promising earth. He wouldn’t be delayed by them. His pneuma readied, he started after the man, pausing only for the swing of Godolphin’s corpse, then stopping on the other side of it. Sartori still refused to show his face, and Gentle had no option but to waste a little of the killing breath with words.

  “Look at me, brother,” he said.

  He read the intention to do so in Sartori’s body, a motion beginning in his heels and torso and head. But before his face came in sight Gentle heard a sound behind him and glanced back to see the third actor here—the dead Godolphin—dropping from his gallows. He had time to glimpse the Oviates in the carcass; then it was upon him. It should have been easy to stand aside, but the beasts had done more than nest in the corpse. They were busy in Godolphin’s rotted muscle, engineering the resurrection Sartori had begged Gentle to perform. The corpse’s arms snatched hold of him, and its bulk, all the vaster for the weight of parasites, bore him to his knees. The breath went out of him as harmless air, and before he could take another his arms were caught and twisted to breaking point behind his back.

  “Never turn your back on a dead man,” Sartori said, finally showing his face.

  There was no triumph on it, though he’d incapacitated his enemy in one swift maneuver. He turned his sorrowful eyes up to the host of peripeteria that had been Godolphin’s gallows and, with the thumb of his left hand, described a tiny circle. They took their cue instantly, the motion appearing in their cloud.

  “I’m more superstitious than you, brother,” Sartori said, reaching behind him and throwing over his chair. It didn’t lie where it fell, but rolled on around the room as though the motion overhead had some correspondence below. “I’m not going to lay a hand on you,” he went on. “In case there is some consequence for a man who takes his other’s life.” He raised his palms. “Look, I’m blameless,” he said, stepping back towards the draped windows. “You’re going to die because the world is coming apart.”

  While he spoke the motion around Gentle increased, as the peripeteria took their summoner’s cue. They were insubstantial as individuals, but en masse they had considerable authority. As their circling speeded up, it generated a current strong enough to lift the chair Sartori had overthrown into the air. The light fixtures were sheared off the walls, taking cobs of plaster with them; the handles were ripped from the doors; and the rest of the chairs snatched up to join the tarantella, smashed to firewood as they collided with each other. Even the table, enormous as it was, began to move. At the eye of this storm Gentle struggled to free himself from Godolphin’s cold embrace. He might have done so, given time, but the circle and its freight of shards closed on him too quickly. Unable to protect himself, all he could do was bow his head against the hail of wood, plaster, and glass, the breath pummeled from him by the assault. Only once did he lift his eyes to look for Sartori through the storm. His brotherstood flat against the wall, his head thrown back as he watched the execution. If there was any feeling on his face, it was that of a man offended by what he saw, a lamb obliged to watch helplessly as his companion was pulped.

  It seemed he didn’t hear the voice raised in the corridor outside, but Gentle did. It was Clem, calling the Maestro’s name and beating on the door. Gentle didn’t have the strength left to reply. His body sagged in Godolphin’s arms as the fusillade increased, striking his skull and rib cage and thighs. Clem, God love him, didn’t need an answering call. He slammed himself against the door repeatedly, and the lock suddenly burst, throwing both doors open at once.

  There was more light outside than in, of course, and just as before it was drawn into the darkened room at a rush, sweeping past the astonished Clem. The peripeteria were as desperate as ever to have a sliver of illumination for themselves, and their swirling ranks fell into confusion at the appearance of the light. Gentle felt the hold on him loosen as those Oviates who’d quickened Godolphin’s corpse left off their labors and went to join the mêlée. With the energies in the room diverted, the circling wreckage began to lose momentum, but not before a piece of the splintered table struck one of the open doors, sheering it off at the hinges. Clem saw the collision coming and retreated before he too was struck, his shout of alarm stirring Sartori.

  Gentle looked towards his brother. He’d left off his sham of innocence and was studying the stranger in the hallway with gleaming eyes. He didn’t leave his place at the wall, however. A rain of wreckage was falling now, littering the room from end to end, and he clearly had no desire to step into it. Instead he reached up to snatch a uredo from his eye, intending to strike Clem down before he could intervene again.

  Godolphin’s bulk was doubling Gentle over, but he strained to raise himself from beneath it, yelling a warning to Clem, who was back at the threshold now, as he did so. Clem heard the shout and saw Sartori snatch at his eye. Though he had no knowledge of what the gesture meant, he was quick to defend himself, ducking behind the surviving door as the killing blow flew his way. In the same instant, Gentle heaved himself to his feet, throwing off Godolphin’s body. He glanced in Clem’s direction to be certain his friend had survived and, seeing that he had, started towards Sartori. He had breath in his body now, and might easily have dispatched a pneuma at his enemy. But his hands wanted more than air in them. They wanted flesh; they wanted bone.

  Careless of the trash that was both underfoot and falling from the air, he ran at his brother, who sensed his approach and turned his way. Gentle had time to see the face before him smile a feral welcome; then he was upon him. His momentum carried them both back against the drapes. The window behind Sartori shattered, and the rail above him broke, bringing the curtain down.

  This time the light that filled the room was a blaze, and it fell directly on Gentle’s face. He was momentarily blinded, but his body still knew its business. He pushed his brother to the sill and hauled him up over it. Sartori reached for a handhold and snatched at the fallen drape, but its folds were of little use. The cloth tore as he tipped backwards, carried over the sill by his brother’s arms. Even then he fought to keep himself from falling, but Gentle gave him no quarter. Sartori flailed for a moment, scrabbling at the air. Then he was gone from Gentle’s hands, his scream going with him, down and down and down.

  Gentle didn’t see the fall and was glad of it. Only when the cry stopped did he retreat from the window and cover his face, while the circle of the sun blazed blue and green and red behind his lids. When he finally opened his eyes, it was to devastation. The only whole thing in the room was Clem, and even he was the worse for wear. He’d picked himself up and w
as watching the Oviates, who’d fought so vehemently for a piece of light, withering for excess of it. Their matter was drab slough, their skitters and flights reduced to a wretched crawling retreat from the window.

  “I’ve seen prettier turds,” Clem remarked.

  Then he started around the room, pulling all the rest of the drapes down, the dust he raised making the sun solid as it came and leaving no shadow for the peripeteria to retreat to.

  “Taylor’s here,” he said, when the job was done.

  “In the sun?”

  “Better than that,” Clem replied. “In my head. We think you need guardian angels, Maestro.”

  “So do I,” said Gentle. “Thank you. Both.”

  He turned back to the window and looked down at the wasteland into which Sartori had fallen. He didn’t expect to see a body there; nor did he. Sartori hadn’t survived all those years as Autarch without finding a hundred feits to protect his flesh.

  They met Monday, who had heard the window breaking above, coming up the stairs as they descended.

  “I thought you was a goner, boss,” he said.

  “Almost,” came the reply.

  “What do we do about Godolphin?” Clem said as the trio headed down together.

  “We don’t need to do anything,” Gentle said. “There’s an open window—”

  “I don’t think he’s going to be flying anywhere.”

  “No, but the birds can get to him,” Gentle said lightly. “Better to fatten birds than worms.”

  “There’s a morbid sense in that, I suppose,” Clem said.

  “And how’s Celestine?” Gentle asked the boy.

  “She’s in the car, all wrapped up and not saying very much. I don’t think she likes the sun.”

  “After two hundred years in the dark, I’m not surprised. We’ll make her comfortable once we get to Gamut Street. She’s a great lady, gentlemen. She’s also my mother.”

  “So that’s where you get your bloody-mindedness from,” Tay remarked.

  “How safe is this house we’re going to?” Monday asked.

  “If you mean how do we stop Sartori getting in, I don’t think we can.”

  They’d reached the foyer, which was as sun-filled as ever.

  “So what do you think the bastard’s going to do?” Clem wondered.

  “He won’t come back here, I’m sure of that,” Gentle said. “I think he’ll wander the city for a while. But sooner or later he’ll be driven back to where he belongs.”

  “Which is where?”

  Gentle opened his arms. “Here,” he said.

  Sixteen

  I

  THERE WAS SURELY NO more haunted thoroughfare in London that blistering afternoon than Gamut Street. Neither those locations in the city famous for their phantoms, nor those anonymous spots—known only to psychics and children—where revenants gathered, boasted more souls eager to debate events in the place of their decease as that backwater in Clerkenwell. While few human eyes, even those ready for the marvelous (and the car that turned into Gamut Street at a little past four o’clock contained several such eyes), could see the phantoms as solid entities, their presence was clear enough, marked by the cold, still places in the shimmering haze rising off the road and by the stray dogs that gathered in such numbers at the corners, drawn by the high whistle some of the dead were wont to make. Thus Gamut Street cooked in a heat of its own, its stew potent with spirits.

  Gentle had warned them all that there was no comfort to be had at the house. It was without furniture, water, or electricity. But the past was there, he said, and it would be a comfort to them all, after their time in the enemy’s tower.

  “I remember this house,” Jude said as she emerged from the car.

  “We should both be careful,” Gentle warned, as he climbed the steps. “Sartori left one of his Oviates inside, and it nearly drove me crazy. I want to get rid of it before we all go in.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Jude said, following him to the door.

  “I don’t think that’s wise,” he said. “Let me deal with Little Ease first.”

  “That’s Sartori’s beast?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’d like to see it. Don’t worry, it’s not going to hurt me. I’ve got a little of its Maestro right here, remember?” She laid her hand upon her belly. “I’m safe.”

  Gentle made no objection but stood aside to let Monday force the door, which he did with the efficiency of a practiced thief. Before the boy had even retreated down the steps again, Jude was over the threshold, braving the stale, cold air.

  “Wait up,” Gentle said, following her into the hallway.

  “What does this creature look like?” she wanted to know.

  “Like an ape. Or a baby. I don’t know. It talks a lot, I’m certain of that much.”

  “Little Ease . . .”

  “That’s right.”

  “Perfect name for a place like this.”

  She’d reached the bottom of the stairs and was staring up towards the Meditation Room.

  “Be careful,” Gentle said.

  “I heard you the first time.”

  “I don’t think you quite understand how powerful—”

  “I was born up there, wasn’t I?” she said, her tone as chilly as the air. He didn’t reply; not until she swung around and asked him again. “Wasn’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  Nodding, she returned to her study of the stairs. “You said the past was waiting here,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “My past, too?”

  “I don’t know. Probably.”

  “I don’t feel anything. It’s like a bloody graveyard. A few vague recollections, that’s all.”

  “They’ll come.”

  “You’re very certain.”

  “We have to be whole, Jude.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “We have to be . . . reconciled . . . with everything we ever were before we can go on.”

  “Suppose I don’t want to be reconciled? Suppose I want to invent myself all over again, starting now?”

  “You can’t do it,” he said simply. “We have to be whole before we can get home.”

  “If that’s home,” she said, nodding in the direction of the Meditation Room, “you can keep it.”

  “I don’t mean the cradle.”

  “What then?”

  “The place before the cradle. Heaven.”

  “Fuck Heaven. I haven’t got Earth sorted out yet.”

  “You don’t need to.”

  “Let me be the judge of that. I haven’t even had a life I could call my own, and you’re ready to slot me into the grand design. Well, I don’t think I want to go. I want to be my own design.”

  “You can be. As part of—”

  “Part of nothing. I want to be me. A law unto myself.”

  “That isn’t you talking. It’s Sartori.”

  “What if it is?”

  “You know what he’s done,” Gentle replied. “The atrocities. What are you doing taking lessons from him?”

  “When I should be taking them from you, you mean? Since when were you so damn perfect?” He made no reply, and she took his silence as further sign of his new high-mindedness. “Oh, so you’re not going to stoop to mudslinging, is that it?”

  “We’ll debate it later,” he said.

  “Debate it?” she mocked. “What are you going to give us, Maestro, an ethics lesson? I want to know what makes you so damn rare.”

  “I’m Celestine’s son,” he said quietly.

  She stared at him, agog. “You’re what?”

  “Celestine’s son. She was taken from the Fifth—”

  “I know where she was taken. Dowd did it. I thought he’d told me the whole story.”

  “Not this part?”

  “Not this part.”

  “There were kinder ways to tell you. I’m sorry I didn’t find one.”

  “No,” she said. “Where better?”
<
br />   Her gaze went back up the stairs. When she spoke again, which was not for a little time, it was in a whisper.

  “You’re lucky,” she said. “Home and Heaven are the same place.”

  “Maybe that’s true for us all,” he murmured.

  “I doubt it.”

  A long silence followed, punctuated only by Monday’s forlorn attempts to whistle on the step outside.

  At last, Jude said, “I can see now why you’re so desperate to get all this right. You’re . . . how does it go? . . . you’re about your Father’s business.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it quite like that. . . .”

  “But you are.”

  “I suppose I am. I just hope I’m equal to it, that’s all. One minute I feel it’s all possible. The next . . .”

  He studied her, while outside Monday attempted the tune afresh.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” he said.

  “I’m thinking I wish I’d kept your love letters,” she replied.

  There was another aching pause; then she turned from him and wandered off towards the back of the house. He lingered at the bottom of the stairs, thinking he should probably go with her, in case Sartori’s agent was hiding there, but he was afraid to bruise her further with his scrutiny. He glanced back towards the open door and the sunlight on the step. Safety wasn’t far from her, if she needed it.

  “How’s it going?” he called to Monday.

  “Hot,” came the reply. “Clem’s gone to fetch some food and beer. Lots of beer. We should have a party, boss. We fuckin’ deserve it, don’t we?”

  “We do. How’s Celestine?”

  “She’s asleep. Is it okay to come in yet?”

  “Just a little while longer,” Gentle replied. “But keep up the whistling, will you? There’s a tune in there somewhere.”

  Monday laughed, and the sound, which was utterly commonplace of course, yet as unlikely as whale song, pleased him. If Little Ease was still in the house, Gentle thought, his malice could do no great harm on a day as miraculous as this. Comforted, he set off up the stairs, wondering as he went if perhaps the daylight had shooed all the memories into hiding. But before he was halfway up the flight, he had proof that they hadn’t. The phantom form of Lucius Cobbitt, conjured in his mind’s eye, appeared beside him, snotty, tearful, and desperate for wisdom. Moments later, the sound of his own voice, offering the advice he’d given the boy that last, terrible night.