Clive Barker - Weave World

He did not need to voice his response. Thought was enough.

‘And you did?' he answered.

‘I didn't know myself,' Immacolata told him. ‘I think this Scourge is the same.'

‘It's called Uriel,' Shadwell reminded her, ‘it's an Angel.'

‘Whatever it is, you have no power over it.'

‘I freed it.' Shadwell responded. ‘It obeys me.'

‘Why lie?' Immacolata said. ‘I know when you're afraid.'

The din of destruction broke the exchange. Shadwell looked up from his thoughts to see Uriel, its tendrils extended across the wall, sweep all the bones from their places like so much crockery from a piled table. They fell around it in a dusty litter, the remains of fully half a hundred people.

Uriel laughed - another trick it had caught from Shadwell - the sound made more distressing by its artificiality. It had found a game it liked. Turning to the next wall it proceeded to vandalize that in the same manner; then on to the third.

Tell it to stop ...' Immacolata's ghost whispered, as bones large and small joined the myriad on the ground. ‘If you're not afraid: tell it to stop.'

But Shadwell simply watched as the Angel cleared the fourth wall at a stroke, then turned its attention to the ceiling.

‘You'll be next,' Immacolata said.

Shadwell flattened himself against the now naked brick as remains rained down.

‘No ...' he murmured.

The bones stopped falling; there were none left on either walls or ceiling. Slowly, the dust began to settle. Uriel turned to Shadwell.

‘Why do you whisper behind my back?' it enquired lightly.

Shadwell glanced towards the door. How far would he get if he tried to run now? A yard or two, probably. There was no escape. It knew; it heard.

‘Where is she?' Uriel demanded. The demolished chamber was hushed from one end to the other. ‘Make her show herself.'

‘She used me,' Shadwell began. ‘She'll tell you lies. Tell you I loved raptures. I didn't. You must believe me, I didn't.'

He felt the Angel's countless eyes upon him; their stare silenced him.

‘You can hide nothing from me,' the Angel pronounced. ‘I know what you've desired, in all its triviality, and you needn't fear me.'

‘No?'

‘No. I enjoy the dust you are, Shadwell. I enjoy your futility, your meaningless desires. But the other that's here - the woman whose raptures I can smell - she I want to kill. Tell her to show herself and be done with it.'

‘She's dead already.'

‘So why does she hide?'

‘I don't,' came Immacolata's voice, and the bones on the floor churned like a sea as the ghost rose from them. Not simply from them but of them, defying Uriel's destruction as her will made a new anatomy from the fragments. The result was far more than a sum of its parts. It was, Shadwell saw, not one but all of the sisters, or a projection of their collective spirit.

‘Why should I hide from you?' the monument said. Every shard in its body revolved as she spoke.

‘Are you happy now?' she asked.

‘What is happy?' Uriel wanted to know.

‘Don't bother to protest your innocence,' the phantom said. ‘You know you don't belong in this world.'

‘I came here before.'

‘And you left. Do so again.'

‘When I'm done.' Uriel replied. ‘When the rapture-makers are extinguished. That's my duty.'

‘Duty?' Immacolata said, and her bones laughed.

‘Why do I amuse you?' Uriel demanded.

‘You are so deceived. You think you're alone - ‘

‘I am alone.'

‘No. You've forgotten yourself; and so you've been forgotten.'

‘I am Uriel. I guard the gate.'

‘You are not alone. Nobody - nothing - is alone. You're part of something more.'

‘I am Uriel. I guard the gate.'

There's nothing left to guard,' Immacolata said. ‘But your duty.'

‘I am Uriel. I -'

‘Look at yourself. I dare you. Throw the man you're wearing away, and look at yourself.'

Uriel did not speak its reply, but shrieked it.

‘I WILL NOT!'

And with its words it unleashed its fury against the body of bones. The statue flew apart as the fire struck it, burning fragments shattering against the walls. Shadwell shielded his face as Uriel's flame ran back and forth across the chamber to eradicate the Incantatrix's image completely. It was not satisfied for a long while, scouring each corner of the Shrine until every last offending shard was chased to ash.

Only then did that same sudden tranquillity descend that Shadwell loathed so much. The Angel sat Hobart's wretched body on a pile of bones, and picked up a skull between the fire-blackened hands.

‘Might it not be cleaner...' the Angel said, its words measured,'... if we emptied the whole world of living things?'

The suggestion was floated so delicately, its tone so perfectly a copy of Shadwell's Reasonable Man, that it took him a moment to comprehend the ambition of what it proposed.

‘Well?' it said. ‘Might it not?'

It looked up at Shadwell. Though its features were still in essence Hobart's, all trace of the man had been banished from them. Uriel shone from every pore.

‘I asked a question,' it said. ‘Would that not be fine?'

Shadwell murmured that it would.

‘Then we should see such afire, shouldn't we?' it said, rising from its seat of bones. It went to the door, and stared off down the passageway, where the caskets still burned.

‘Oh...'it said with yearning in its voice.'... such afire.'

Then, eager not to delay its goal's consummation by a moment, it started back towards the stairs, and the sleeping Kingdom beyond.

IV

THE SECRET ISLE

1

The train was an hour late reaching Birmingham. When it finally arrived the snow was still falling, and taxis couldn't be had for love nor money. Cal asked for directions to Harborne, and waited in line for twenty-five minutes to board the bus, which then crawled from stop to stop, taking on further chilled passengers until it was so overburdened it could carry no more. Progress was slow. The city-centre was snarled with traffic, reducing everything to a snail's pace. Once out of the centre the roads were hazardous - dusk and snow conspiring to cut visibility - and the driver never risked more than ten miles an hour. Everyone sat in wilful cheerfulness, avoiding each others' eyes for fear of having to make conversation. The woman who'd seated herself beside Cal was nursing a small terrier, encased in a tartan coat, and a picture of misery. Several times he caught its doleful eyes regarding him, and returned its gaze with a consoling smile.

He'd eaten on the train, but he still felt lightheaded, utterly divorced from the dismal scenes their route had to offer. The wind slapped him from his reverie, however, once he stepped out of the bus on Harborne Hill. The woman with the tartan dog had given him directions to Waterloo Road, assuring him that it was a three-minute trot at the outside. In fact it took him almost half an hour to find, during which time the chill had clawed its way through his clothes and into his marrow. Gluck's house was a large, double-fronted building, its

facade dominated by a monkey-puzzle tree which rose to challenge the eaves. Twitching with cold, he rang the bell. He didn't hear it sound in the houseI so he knocked, hard, then harder. A light was turned on in the hallway, and after what seemed an age the door was opened, to reveal Gluck, the remains of a chewed cigar in his hand, grinning and instructing him to get in out of the cold before his balls froze. He didn't need a second invitation. Gluck closed the door after him, and threw a piece of carpet against it to keep out the draught, then led Cal down the hallway. It was a tight squeeze. The passage was all but choked by cardboard boxes, piled to well above head height.