Imajica

by Clive Barker

  “What is this?” He said.

  Gentle couldn’t see the fire yet, but he could feel whispers of its approach.

  “What is this?” Hapexamendios said again.

  Without waiting for a reply, He began feverishly to unknit his semblance, something Gentle had both feared and hoped He’d do. Feared, because the body from which the fire had been issued would doubtless be its destination, and if it was too quickly undone, the fire would have no target. And hoped, because only in that undoing would he have a chance to locate Pie. The barrier around his Father’s form softened as the God was distracted by the intricacies of this dismantling, and though Gentle had yet to get a second glimpse of Pie he turned his thought to entering the body; but for all His perplexity Hapexamendios was not about to be breached so readily. As Gentle approached, a will too powerful to be denied seized hold of him.

  “What is this?” the God demanded a third time.

  Hoping he might yet gain a few precious seconds’ reprieve, Gentle answered with the truth.

  “The Imajica’s a circle,” he said.

  “A circle?”

  “This is Your fire, Father. This is Your fire, coming around again.”

  Hapexamendios didn’t respond with words. He understood instantly the significance of what He’d been told and let His hold on Gentle slip again, in order to turn all His will to the business of unknitting Himself.

  The ungainly body began to unravel, and in its midst Gentle once again glimpsed Pie. This time, the mystif saw him. Its frail limbs thrashed to clear a way through the turmoil between them, but before Gentle could finally wrest himself from his Father’s custody the ground beneath Pie ‘oh’ pah grew unsolid. The mystif reached up to take hold of some support in the body above, but it was decaying too fast. The ground gaped like a grave, and, with one last despairing look in Gentle’s direction, the mystif sank from sight.

  Gentle raised his head in a howl, but the sound he made was drowned out by that of his Father, who—as if in imitation of His child—had also thrown back His head. But His was a din of fury rather than sorrow, as He wrenched and thrashed in His attempts to speed His unmasking.

  Behind Him, now, the fire. As it came Gentle thought he saw his mother’s face in the blaze, shaped from ashes, her eyes and mouth wide as she returned to meet the God who’d raped, rejected, and finally murdered her. A glimpse, no more, and then the fire was upon its maker, its judgment absolute.

  Gentle’s spirit was gone from the conflagration at a thought, but His Father—the world His flesh, the flesh His world—could not escape it. His fetal head broke, and the fire consumed the shards as they flew, its blaze cremating His heart and innards and spreading through His mismatched limbs, burning them away to every last fingertip and toe.

  The consequence for His city was both instantly felt and calamitous. Every street from one end of the Dominion to the other shook as the message of collapse went from the place where its First Cause had fallen. Gentle had nothing to fear from this dissolution, but the sight of it appalled him nevertheless. This was his Father, and it gave him neither pleasure nor satisfaction to see the body whose child he was now reel and bleed. The imperious towers began to topple, their ornament dropping in rococo rains, their arches forsaking the illusion of stone and falling as flesh. The streets heaved and turned to meat; the houses threw down their bony roofs. Despite the collapse around him, Gentle remained close to the place where his Father had been consumed, in the hope that he might yet find Pie ‘oh’ pah in the maelstrom. But it seemed Hapexamendios’ last voluntary act had been to deny the lovers their reunion. He’d opened the ground and buried the mystif in the pit of His decay, sealing it with His will to prevent Gentle from ever finding Pie again.

  There was nothing left for the Reconciler to do but leave the city to its decease, which in due course he did, not taking the route across the Dominions but going back the way the fire had come. As he flew, the sheer enormity of what was under way became apparent. If every living body that had passed a span on Earth had been left to putrefy here in the First, the sum of their flesh would not begin to approach that of this city. Nor would this carrion rot into the ground and its decomposition feed a new generation of life. It was the ground; it was the life. With its passing, there would only be putrescence here: decay laid on decay laid on decay. A Dominion of filth, polluted until the end of time.

  Ahead, now, the fog that divided the city’s outskirts from the Fifth. Gentle passed through it, returning gratefully to the modest streets of Clerkenwell. They were drab, of course, after the brilliance of the metropolis he’d left. But he knew the air had the sweetness of summer leaves upon it, even if he couldn’t smell that sweetness, and the welcome sound of an engine from Holborn or Gray’s Inn Road could be heard, as some fleet fellow, knowing the worst was past, got about his business. It was unlikely to be legal work at such an hour. But Gentle wished the driver well, even in his crime. The Dominion had been saved for thieves as well as saints.

  He didn’t linger at the passing place but went as fast as his weary thoughts would drive him, back to number 28 and the wounded body that was still clinging to continuance at the bottom of the stairs.

  At the top, Jude hadn’t waited for the smoke to clear before venturing into the Meditation Room. Despite a warning shout from Clem she’d gone up into the murk to find Sartori, hoping that he’d survived. His creatures hadn’t. Their corpses were twitching close to the threshold, not struck by the blast, she thought, but laid low by their summoner’s decline. She found that summoner easily enough. He was lying close to where Celestine had pitched him, his body arrested in the act of turning towards the circle.

  It had been his undoing. The fire that had carried his mother to oblivion had seared every part of him. The ashes of his clothes had been fused with his blistered back, his hair singed from his scalp, his face cooked beyond tenderness. But like his brother, lying in ribbons below, he refused to give up life. His fingers clutched the boards; his lips still worked, baring teeth as bright as a death’s-head smile. There was even power in his sinews. When his blood-filled eyes saw Jude he managed to push himself up, until his body rolled over onto its charred spine, and he used his agonies to fuel the hand that clutched at her, dragging her down beside him.

  “My mother . . .”

  “She’s gone.”

  There was bafflement on his face. “Why?” he said, shudders convulsing him as he spoke. “She seemed . . . to want it. Why?”

  “So that she’d be there when the fire took Hapexamendios,” Jude replied.

  He shook his head, not comprehending the significance of this.

  “How . . . could that . . . be?” he murmured.

  “The Imajica’s a circle,” she said. He studied her face, attempting to puzzle this out. “The fire went back to the one who sent it.”

  Now the sense of what she was telling him dawned. Even in his agony, here was a greater pain.

  “He’s gone?” he said.

  She wanted to say, I hope so, but she kept that sentiment to herself and simply nodded.

  “And my mother too?” Sartori went on. The trembling quieted; so did his voice, which was already frail. “I’m alone,” he said.

  The anguish in these last few words was bottomless, and she longed to have some way of comforting him. She was afraid to touch him for fear of causing him still greater discomfort, but perhaps there was more hurt in her not doing so. With the greatest delicacy she laid her hand over his.

  “You’re not alone,” she said. “I’m here.”

  He didn’t acknowledge her solace, perhaps didn’t even hear it. His thoughts were elsewhere.

  “I should never have touched him,” he said softly. “A man shouldn’t lay hands on his own brother.”

  As he squeezed out these words there was a moan from the bottom of the stairs, followed by a yelp of pure joy from Clem, and then Monday’s ecstatic whoops.

  “Boss oh boss oh boss!”

  “Do
you hear that?” Jude said to Sartori.

  “Yes. . . .”

  “I don’t think you killed him after all.”

  A strange tic appeared around his mouth, which after a moment she realized was the shreds of a smile. She took it to be pleasure at Gentle’s survival, but its source was more bitter.

  “That won’t save me now,” he said.

  His hand, which was laid on his stomach, began to knead the muscles there, its clutches so violent that his body began to spasm. Blood bubbled up between his lips, and he moved his hand to his mouth, as if to conceal it. There, he seemed to spit his blood into his palm. Then he removed his hand and offered its grisly contents to her.

  “Take it,” he said, uncurling his fist.

  She felt something drop into her hand. She didn’t glance at his gift, however, but kept her eyes fixed on his face as he looked away from her, back towards the circle. She realized, even before his gaze had found its resting place, that he was looking away from her for the final time, and she started to call him back. She said his name; she called him love; she said she’d never wanted to desert him, and never would again, if he’d only stay. But her words were wasted. As his eyes found the circle, the life went from them, his last sight not of her but of the place where he’d been made.

  In her palm, bloody from his belly and throat, lay the blue egg.

  After a time, she got up and went out onto the landing. The place at the bottom of the stairs where Gentle’s body had lain was empty. Clem was standing in the candlelight with both tears and a broad smile on his face. He looked up at Jude as she started down the stairs.

  “Sartori?” he said.

  “He’s dead.”

  “What about Celestine?”

  “Gone,” she said.

  “But it’s over, isn’t it?” Hoi-Polloi said. “We’re going to live.”

  “Are we?”

  “Yes, we are,” said Clem. “Gentle saw Hapexamendios destroyed.”

  “Where is Gentle?”

  “He went outside,” Clem said. “He’s got enough life in him—”

  “For another life?”

  “For another twenty, the lucky bugger,” came Tay’s reply.

  Reaching the bottom of the stairs, she put her arms around Gentle’s protectors, then went out onto the step. Gentle was standing in the middle of the street, wrapped in one of Celestine’s sheets. Monday was at his side, and he was leaning on the boy as he stared up at the tree that grew outside number 28. Hapexamendios’ fire had charred much of its foliage, leaving the branches naked and blackened. But there was a breeze stirring the leaves that had survived, and after such a long motionless time even these shreds of wind were welcome: final, simple proof that the Imajica had survived its perils and was once again drawing breath.

  She hesitated to join him, thinking perhaps he’d prefer to have these moments of meditation uninterrupted. But his gaze came her way after half a minute or so, and though there was only starlight and the last guttering flames in the fretwork above to see him by, the smile was as luminous as ever, and as inviting. She left the step but, as she approached, saw that his smile was slender and the wounds he’d sustained deeper than cuts.

  “I failed,” he said.

  “The Imajica’s whole,” she replied. “That isn’t failure.”

  He looked away from her, down the street. The darkness was full of agitation.

  “The ghosts are still here,” he said. “I swore to them I’d find a way out, and I failed. That was why I went with Pie in the first place, to find Taylor a way out—”

  “Maybe there isn’t one,” came a third voice.

  Clem had appeared on the doorstep, but it was Tay who spoke.

  “I promised you an answer,” Gentle said.

  “And you found one. The Imajica’s a circle, and there’s no way out of it. We just go round and round. Well, that’s not so bad, Gentle. We have what we have.”

  Gentle lifted his hand from Monday’s shoulder and turned away from the tree, and from Jude, and from the angels on the step. As he hobbled out into the middle of the street, his head bowed, he murmured a reply to Tay too quiet for any but an angel’s ear.

  “It’s not enough,” he said.

  Twenty-five

  I

  FOR THE LIVING OCCUPANTS of Gamut Street, the days that followed the events of that midsummer were as strange in their way as anything that had gone before. The world that returned to life around them seemed to be totally ignorant of the fact that its existence had hung in the balance, and if it now sensed the least change in its condition it concealed its suspicion very well. The monsoons and heat waves that had preceded the Reconciliation were replaced the next morning with the drizzles and tepid sunshine of an English summer, its moderation the model for public behavior in subsequent weeks. The eruptions of irrationality which had turned every junction and street corner into a little battleground summarily ceased; the night walkers Monday and Jude had seen watching for revelation no longer strayed out to peer quizzically at the stars.

  In any city other than London, perhaps the mysteries now present in its streets would have been discovered and celebrated. If such fogs as lingered in Clerkenwell had appeared instead in Rome, the Vatican would have been pronouncing on them within a week. Had they appeared in Mexico City, the poor would have been through them in a shorter time still, desperate for a better life in the world beyond. But England: oh! England. It had never had much of a taste for the mystical, and with all but the weakest of its evocators and feit workers murdered by the Tabula Rasa, there was nobody to begin the labor of freeing minds locked up in dogmas and utilities.

  The fogs were not entirely ignored, however. The animal life of the city knew something was afoot and came to Clerkenwell to sniff it out. The runaway dogs who’d gathered in the vicinity of Gamut Street when the revenants had come, only to be frightened off by Sartori’s horde, now returned, their noses twitching after some piquant scent or other. Cats came too, yowling in the trees at dusk, curious but casual. There were also visitations by bees, and birds, who twice in the three days following midsummer gathered in the same stupefying numbers as Monday and Jude had witnessed at the Retreat. In all these cases the packs, swarms, and flocks disappeared after a time, having discovered the source of the perfumes and poles that had directed them to the district and gone into the Fourth to have a life under different skies.

  But if no two-legged traffic passed into the Fourth, there was certainly some in the opposite direction. A little over a week after the Reconciliation, Tick Raw arrived on the doorstep of number 28 and, having introduced himself to Clem and Monday, asked to see the Maestro. He came into a house that was a good deal more comfortable than his quarters in Vanaeph, furnished as it was from a score of recent burglaries by Monday and Clem. But the atmosphere of domesticity was cosmetic. Though the bodies of the gek-a-gek had been removed and buried, along with their summoner, beneath the long grass in Shiverick Square; though the front door had been mended and the bloodstains mopped up; though the Meditation Room had been scoured and the stones of the circle individually wrapped in linen and locked away, the house was charged with all that had happened here: the deaths, the love scenes, the reunions and revelations.

  “You’re living in the middle of a history lesson,” Tick Raw said when he sat himself down beside the bed in which Gentle lay.

  The Reconciler was healing, but even with his extraordinary powers of recuperation it would be a lengthy business. He slept twenty hours or more out of every twenty-four and barely ventured from his mattress when he was awake.

  “You look as though you’ve seen some wars, my friend,” Tick Raw said.

  “More than I’d like,” Gentle replied wearily.

  “I sniff something Oviate.”

  “Gek-a-gek,” Gentle said. “Don’t worry, they’re gone.”

  “Did they break through during the ceremony?”

  “No. It’s more complicated than that. Ask Clem. He’ll tel
l you the whole story.”

  “No offense to your friends,” Tick Raw said, fetching a jar of pickled sausage from his pocket, “but I’d prefer to hear it from you.”

  “I’ve thought about it too much as it is,” Gentle said. “I don’t want to be reminded.”

  “But we won the day,” Tick Raw said. “Doesn’t that merit a little celebration?”

  “Celebrate with Clem, Tick. I need to sleep.”

  “As you like, as you like,” Tick Raw said, retreating to the door. “Oh. I wonder? Do you mind if I stay here for a few days? There’s a number of parties in Vanaeph who want the grand tour of the Fifth, and I’ve volunteered to show them the sights. But as I don’t yet know them myself—”

  “Be my guest,” Gentle said. “And forgive me if I don’t brim with bonhomie.”

  “No apology required,” Tick Raw said. “I’ll leave you to sleep.”

  That evening, Tick did as Gentle had suggested and plied both Clem and Monday with questions until he had the full story.

  “So when do I meet the mesmeric Judith?” he asked when the tale was told.

  “I don’t know if you ever will,” Clem said. “She didn’t come back to the house after we buried Sartori.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Wherever she is,” Monday said dolefully, “Hoi-Polloi’s with her. Just my fuckin’ luck.”

  “Well, now, listen,” Tick Raw said. “I’ve always had a way with the ladies. I’ll make you a deal. If you show me this city, inside out, I’ll show you a few ladies the same way.”

  Monday’s palm went from his pocket, where it’d been stroking the consequence of Hoi-Polloi’s absence, and seized hold of Tick Raw’s hand before it was even extended.

  “You’re a gentleman an’ a squalor,” Monday said. “You got yourself a tour, mate.”

  “What about Gentle?” Tick Raw said to Clem. “Is he languishing for want of female company?”

  “No, he’s just tired. He’ll get well.”