Imajica

by Clive Barker

  After perhaps an hour of concentrated work he heard Jackeen behind him. First a footfall, then a question:

  “Speaking in tongues, Maestro?”

  Gentle hadn’t even been aware of the inventory he was rattling off until his attention was drawn to it: a seamless list of names that must have been incomprehensible to anyone other than himself, the stopping places of his pilgrimage, as familiar to his tongue as his many names.

  “Are you sketching the new world?” Jackeen asked him, hesitating to come too close to the artist while he worked.

  “No, no,” said Gentle, “I’m finishing a map.” He paused, then corrected himself. “No, not finishing. Starting.”

  “May I look?”

  “If you like.”

  Jackeen went down on his haunches behind Gentle and peered over his shoulder. The pages that depicted the desert were as complete as Gentle could make them. He was now attempting to delineate the peninsula he was sitting on, and something of the scene in front of him. It would be little more than a line or two, but it was a beginning.

  “I wonder, would you fetch Monday for me?”

  “Is there something you need?”

  “Yes, I want him to take these maps back into the Fifth with him and give them to Clem.”

  “Who’s Clem?”

  “An angel.”

  “Ah.”

  “Would you bring him here?”

  “Now?”

  “If you would,” Gentle said. “I’m almost done.”

  Ever dutiful, Jackeen stood up and started back towards the Second, leaving Gentle to work on. There was very little left to do. He finished making his crude rendering of the promontory; then he added a line of dots along it to mark his path and at the headland placed a small cross at the spot where he was sitting. That done, he went back through the album, to be certain that the pages were in proper order. It occurred to him as he did so that he’d fashioned a self-portrait. Like its maker, the map was flawed but, he hoped, redeemable: a rudimentary thing that might see finer versions in the fullness of time; be made and remade and made again, perhaps forever.

  He was about to set the album down beside the pen when he heard a hint of coherence in the surf that was beating against the slope below. Unable to quite make sense of the sound, he ventured to the edge. The ground was too newly made to be solid and threatened to crumble away beneath his weight, but he peered over as far as he could, and what he saw and what he heard were enough to make him retreat from the edge, kneel down in the dirt, and with trembling hands start scribbling a message to accompany the maps.

  It was necessarily brief. He could hear the words clearly now, rising from the surge of waves. They distracted him with promises.

  “Nisi Nirvana,” they said, “Nisi Nirvana. . . .”

  By the time he’d finished his note, laid down the album and the pen beside it, and returned to the edge of the promontory, the sun of this Dominion was emerging from the storm clouds overhead to shed its light on the waves below. The beams placated them for a time, soothing their frenzy and piercing them, so that Gentle had a glimpse of the ground they were moving over. It was not, it seemed, an earth at all, but another sky, and in it was a sphere so majestic that to his eyes all the bodies in the heavens of the Imajica—all stars, all moons, all noonday suns—could not in their sum have touched its glory. Here was the door that his Father’s city had been built to seal, the door through which his mother’s name in fable had been whispered. It had been closed for millenniums, but now it stood open, and through it a music of voices was rising, going on its way to every wandering spirit in Imajica and calling them home to rapture.

  In its midst was a voice Gentle knew, and before he’d even glimpsed its source his mind had shaped the face that called him, and his body felt the arms that would wrap him around and bear him up. Then they were there—those arms, that face—rising from the door to claim him, and he needed to imagine them no longer.

  “Are you finished?” he was asked.

  “Yes,” he replied. “I’m finished.”

  “Good,” said Pie ‘oh’ pah, smiling. “Then we can begin.”

  The congregation Chicka Jackeen had left at the perimeter of the First had steadily begun to venture along the peninsula as their courage and curiosity grew. Monday was of course among them, and Jackeen was just about to call the boy and summon him to the Reconciler’s side when Monday let out a cry of his own, pointing back along the promontory. Jackeen turned and fixed his eyes—as did they all—on the two figures standing on the headland, embracing. Later there would be much discussion between these witnesses as to what they’d actually seen. All agreed that one of the pair was the Maestro Sartori. As to the other, opinions differed widely. Some said they saw a woman, others a man, still others a cloud with a piece of sun burning in it. But whatever these ambiguities, what followed was not in doubt. Having embraced, the two figures advanced to the limit of the promontory, where they stepped out into the air and were gone.

  Two weeks later, on the penultimate day of a cheerless December, Clem was sitting in front of the fire in the dining room of number 28, a spot from which he’d seldom risen since Christmas, when he heard a hectic beating on the front door. He was not wearing a watch—what did time matter now?—but he assumed it was long after midnight. Anyone calling at such an hour was likely to be either desperate or dangerous, but in his present bleak mood he scarcely cared what harm might await him in the street outside. There was nothing left for him here: in this house, in this life. Gentle had gone, Judy had gone, and so, most recently, had Tay. It was five days since he’d heard his lover whisper his name.

  “Clem . . . I have to go.”

  “Go?” he’d replied. “Where to?”

  “Somebody opened the door,” came Tay’s reply. “The dead are being called home. I have to go.”

  They wept together for a while, tears pouring from Clem’s eyes while the sound of Tay’s anguish racked him from within. But there was no help for it. The call had come, and though Tay was grief-stricken at the thought of parting from Clem, his existence between conditions had become unbearable, and beneath the sorrow of parting was the joyful knowledge of imminent release. Their strange union was over. It was time for the living and the dead to part.

  Clem hadn’t known what loss really was until Tay left. The pain of losing his lover’s physical body had been acute enough, but losing the spirit that had so miraculously returned to him was immeasurably worse. It was not possible, he thought, to be emptier than this and still be a living being. Several times during those dark days he’d wondered if he should simply kill himself and hope he would be able to follow his lover through whatever door now stood open. That he didn’t was more a consequence of the responsibility he felt than from lack of courage. He was the only witness to the miracles of Gamut Street left in this Dominion. If he departed, who would there be to tell the tale?

  But such imperatives seemed frail things at an hour like this, and as he rose from the fire and crossed to the front door, he allowed himself the thought that if these midnight callers came with death in their hands perhaps he would not refuse it. Without asking who was on the other side, he slid back the bolts and opened the door. To his surprise he discovered Monday standing in the driving sleet. Beside him stood a shivering stranger, his thinning curls flattened to his skull.

  “This is Chicka Jackeen,” Monday said as he hauled his sodden guest over the threshold. “Jackie, this is Clem, eighth wonder of the world. Well, am I too wet to get a hug?”

  Clem opened his arms to Monday, who embraced him with fervor.

  “I thought you and Gentle had gone forever,” Clem said.

  “Well, one of us has,” came the reply.

  “I guessed as much,” Clem said. “Tay went after him. And the revenants too.”

  “When was this?”

  “Christmas Day.”

  Jackeen’s teeth were chattering, and Clem ushered him through to the fire, which he had bee
n fueling with sticks of furniture. He threw on a couple of chair legs and invited Jackeen to sit by the blaze to thaw out. The man thanked him and did so. Monday, however, was made of sterner stuff. Availing himself of the whisky that sat beside the hearth, he put several mouthfuls into his system, then set about clearing the room, explaining as he dragged the table into the corner that they needed some working space. With the floor cleared, he opened his jacket and pulled Gentle’s gazetteer from beneath his arm, dropping it in front of Clem.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s a map of the Imajica,” Monday said.

  “Gentle’s work?”

  “Yep.”

  Monday went down on his haunches and flipped the album open, taking out the loose leaves and handing the cover back up to Clem.

  “He wrote a message in it,” Monday said.

  While Clem read the few words Gentle had scribbled on the cover, Monday began to arrange the sheets side by side on the floor, carefully aligning them so that the maps became an unbroken flow. As he worked, he talked, his enthusiasm as unalloyed as ever.

  “You know what he wants us to do, don’t you? He wants us to draw this map on every fuckin’ wall we can find! On the pavements! On our foreheads! Anywhere and everywhere.”

  “That’s quite a task,” said Clem.

  “I’m here to help you,” Chicka Jackeen said. “In whatever capacity I can.”

  He got up from the fire and came to stand beside Clem, where he could admire the pattern that was emerging on the floor in front of them.

  “That’s not the only thing you’ve come to do, is it?” Monday said. “Be honest.”

  “Well, no,” said Jackeen. “I’d also like to find myself a wife. But that will have to wait.”

  “Damn right!” said Monday. “This is our business now.”

  He stood up and stepped out of the circle which the pages of Gentle’s album had formed. Here was the Imajica, or rather the tiny part of it which the Reconciler had seen: Patashoqua and Vanaeph; Beatrix and the mountains of the Jokalaylau; Mai-ké, the Cradle, L’Himby, and the Kwem; the Lenten Way, the delta, and Yzordderrex. And then the crossroads outside the city, and the desert beyond, with a single track leading to the borders of the Second Dominion. On the other side of that border, the pages were practically empty. The wanderer had sketched the peninsula he’d sat on, but beyond it he’d simply written: This is a new world.

  “And this,” said Jackeen, stooping to indicate the cross at the end of the promontory, “is where the Maestro’s pilgrimage ended.”

  “Is that where he’s buried?” Clem said.

  “Oh, no,” Jackeen said. “He’s gone to places that’ll make this life seem like a dream. He’s left the circle, you see.”

  “No, I don’t,” said Clem. “If he’s left the circle, then where’s he gone? Where have they all gone?”

  “Into it,” Jackeen said.

  Clem began to smile.

  “May I?” said Jackeen, rising and claiming from Clem’s fingers the sheet which carried Gentle’s last message.

  My friends, he’d written, Pie is here. I am found. Will you show these pages to the world, so that every wanderer may find their way home?

  “I think our duty is plain, gentlemen,” Jackeen said. He stooped again to lay the final page in the middle of the circle, marking the place of spirits to which the Reconciler hd gone. “And when we’ve done that duty, we have here the map that will show us where we must go. We’ll follow him. There’s nothing more certain. We’ll all of us follow him, by and by.”

  10th Regiment The Prince of Wales’s regiment whose officers were often entertained by Allegra while her husband was away.

  #28 Gamut Street Gentle’s home in Clerkenwell where he performed the Reconciliation. For nearly two centuries the house stood waiting for Gentle’s return, keeping alive the memories he’d evicted from his head.

  Abelove Parasitic oviate summoned by the Autarch Sartori to torture one of his prisoners; a living sac of flesh the size of a man’s head with thread-like limbs that puncture its victims’ internal organs for sustenance. Once attached, it creates a symbiosis with its host, both relying on each other’s presence for survival. This particular oviate had been named after Isaac Abelove, who the Autarch had known briefly during his time in the Fifth.

  Aboriginal, The See Hapexamendios.

  Albert Burke Ninety-three-year-old war veteran who discovered Chant’s body and #28 Gamut Street while walking his dog Kipper.

  Alexandrian Library Prior to the Tabula Rasa’s initial purge of all things metaphysical, the library at Alexandria housed the largest collection of sacred texts.

  Alice Tyrwhitt One of the two female members in the modern Tabula Rasa, her appointment branching back to founding member Horace Tyrwhitt. Quick to argue any point that is not her own, Alice’s presence is merely tolerated by the others within the Society.

  Allegra The mistress of #32 Gamut Street, who in addition to teasing the Maestro Sartori’s voyeuristic eye, was known to entertain officers of the 10th Regiment (and no other) while her husband was away.

  Almoth One of Gentle’s many names, taken from a street sign near Clerkenwell.

  Ana The five chambered “blossom” that appears within the In Ovo every two hundred years. Within the Ana, the five Maestros (collectively known as the Synod) represent their respective Dominions to perform the Reconciliation. While the Ana is intact, its occupants are safe from the terrors of the In Ovo. Also known as the Mansion of the Nexus.

  Annex A section of the Bastion of the Banu reserved for exceptionally dangerous or violent women (as perceived by the Autarch). Though few have actually visited the Annex, the compound’s legendary reputation has earned it a spot in much of the land’s folklore.

  Aping Second in command under Vigor N’ashap at the Maison de Santé. Though a soldier and warden by trade, his passion is painting. He’s also the proud father of Huzzah Aping, his only child.

  Arae ‘ke’ gei Eurhetemec shaman who assisted in Maestro Sartori’s first attempt at Reconciliation. He was lucky to survive the aftermath of that first working and died waiting for a second chance to reconcile. He was, without exception, the Second Dominion’s greatest sorcerer, and his name has come to mean magic in some Second Dominion dialects (Araeke).

  Attaboy See Effatoi.

  Augustine See Dowd.

  Autarch Sartori The Maestro Sartori’s perfect double, accidentally created while cloning Judith. The Autarch Sartori built the city of Yzordderrex with his palace at its apex, and moved the Pivot to the city’s tallest tower. He is the husband of Quasoir, the lover of Judith, and the father of Huzzah Odell. His atrocities are known throughout the Dominions, making him both hated and feared.

  Azzimulto Region of the Second Dominion whose entire population had reportedly been decimated by a disease introduced by agents of the Autarch. Popular opinion within quiet political circles in Yzordderrex suggests that the disease was a natural phenomenon and that the Autarch simply attached his name to the disaster to spread fear amongst the neighboring regions.

  Bard, The Refers to William Shakespeare, England’s greatest playwright.

  Bastard Boy One of Chester Klein’s affectionate nicknames for Gentle.

  Bastion of the Banu An asylum built by the Autarch to house women believed to be insane or criminal. These are women guilty of harboring crafts and ideals that had been banished by Hapexamendios during his journey across the Dominions.

  Beatrix A small village in the foothills of the Jokalaylau mountains in the Fourth Dominion. Its inhabitants, including the Splendid family, are covered in a fine, downy fur, though otherwise appear human.

  Bellamarre Thomas Roxborough’s favorite horse, named after one of the Comte de Saint-Germain’s aliases. A stray kick from Bellamarre resulted in the death of Roxborough’s son shortly after Roxbourgh’s own death.

  Bem Province of the Third Dominion of which L’Himby is the capital city.

  Benedict One
of Gentle’s homeless disciples found living in the cardboard communities near the South Bank.

  Billo Adopted son of Paramarola.

  Black Chapel, The See Retreat.

  Blitz The period from late 1940 to May 1941, when the air raids were centered on London, is commonly referred to as the Blitz.

  Bloomingdale’s Famous department store in New York City which Judith frequented during her tenure in that city.

  Bloomsbury Legend has it that the Maestro Sartori had driven a sometime nun to nymphomania with his touch at a bordello in Bloomsbury.

  Blue Egg Dowd’s mites reduced Judith’s statuary fragment (see Blue Eye) to nothing more than a small egg-shaped stone. Steeped in the powers of the Goddesses, the Blue Egg coaxed cleansing waters from the Second Dominion into the First to reclaim that Dominion from the remains of Hapexamendios.

  Blue Eye A fragment of statuary Judith pilfered from Charlie Estabrook’s personal safe. A relic of the Goddesses, the Blue Eye allowed Judith to travel with her mind, showing her more of the Imajica’s mysteries than would’ve been possible without it.

  Boem Cimarra Sakeo’s deceased brother.

  Boston Bowl Perhaps the most accurate prophetic tool in the Imajica, which Oscar Godolphin was lucky enough to procure near the walls of the Iahmandhas in the Third Dominion. The Bowl’s forty-one colored stones swirl wildly to create vivid images of future events.

  Boxing Day The first weekday after Christmas, observed as a holiday, when Christmas gifts or boxes were traditionally given to household staff or other service workers.

  Brothers of the Boulevard Two grotesquely obese men that Gentle and Pie ‘oh’ pah encounter on the overdue train departing from Mai-ké. Pie jokingly dubbed them to be the Brothers of the Boulevard.