Clive Barker - Weave World

After a dozing time, Suzanna returned with a collection of clothes, and laid them beside him.

‘I'm going to make a round of the lookouts…….' she said, Til see you later.'

He thanked her for the clothes, and began to dress. This was his second borrowed skin in twenty-four hours, and it was -predictably, given its source - odder than anything Gluck had supplied. He took pleasure in the collision of styles: a formal waistcoat and a battered leather jacket; odd socks and pigskin shoes.

‘Now that's the way a poet should dress,' Lemuel declared when he came back for Cal. ‘Like a blind thief.'

‘I've been called worse.' Cal replied. There was talk of food?'

‘There was,' said Lem, and escorted him away from the fire. Once his flame-dazzled eyes had grown accustomed to the half-light he realized there were Kind everywhere; perched in the branches or sitting on the ground between the trees, surrounded by their earthly goods. Despite the wonders these people had been intimate with, tonight they resembled any band of refugees, their eyes dark and full of caution, their mouths tight. Some, it was true, had decided to make the best of what might well be their last night alive. Lovers lay in each others' arms exchanging whispers and kisses; a singer poured a lilt onto the air, to which three women were dancing, the stillness between their steps so profound they were lost amongst the trees. But most of the fugitives were inert, keeping themselves under lock and key for fear their dread show.

The smell of coffee came to greet Cal as Lem brought him into a clearing where another fire, smaller than the one he'd slept by, was burning. Half a dozen Kind were eating here. He knew none of them.

‘This is Calhoun Mooney,' Lem announced. ‘A poet.'

One of the number, who was sitting in a chair while a woman carefully shaved his head, said:

‘I remember you from the orchard. You're the Cuckoo.'

‘Yes.'

‘Have you come to die with us?' said a girl crouching beside the fire, pouring herself coffee. The remark, which would have been judged an indiscretion in most company, drew laughter.

‘If that's what it comes to,' said Cal.

‘Well don't go on an empty stomach,' said the shaved man. As his barber towelled the last of the suds from his scalp Cal realized he'd grown his mane to conceal a skull decorated with rhymthic pigmentation from the gaze of the Kingdom. Now he could parade it again.

‘We've only got bread and coffee,' Lem said.

‘Suits me,' Cal told him.

‘You saw the Scourge,' said another of the company.

‘Yes,' Cal replied.

‘Must we talk about that, Hamel?' said the girl at the fire.

The man ignored her. ‘What was it like?' he asked.

Cal shrugged. ‘Huge,' he said, hoping the subject would be dropped. But it wasn't just Hamel who wanted to know; all of them - even the girl who'd objected — were waiting for further details.

‘It had hundreds of eyes ...' he said. ‘That's all I saw, really.'

‘Maybe we could blind it,' Hamel said, drawing on his cigarette.

‘How?' said Lem.

‘The Old Science.'

‘We don't have the power to keep the screen up much longer,' said the woman who'd been doing the shaving.

‘Where are we going to get the strength to meet the Scourge?'

‘I don't understand this Old Science business,' said Cal, sipping at the coffee Lem had brought him.

‘It's all gone anyway,' said the shaved man.

‘Our enemies kept it,' Hamel reminded him. That bitch Immacolata and her fancy-man - they had it.'

‘And those who made the Loom,' said the girl.

‘They're dead and gone,' Lem said.

‘Anyway,' said Cal. ‘You couldn't blind the Scourge,'

‘Why not?' said Hamel.

‘Too many eyes.'

Hamel wandered to the fire and threw the stub of his cigarette into its heart.

‘All the better to see us with,' he said.

The flame the stub burned with was bright blue, which made Cal wonder what the man had been smoking. Turning his back on the fire Hamel disappeared between the trees, leaving silence in his wake.

‘Will you excuse me, poet?' said Lem. ‘I've got to go find my daughters,'

‘Of course,'

Cal sat down to finish his meal, leaning his back against a tree to watch the comings and goings. His short sleep had only taken the edge off his fatigue; eating made him dozy again. He might have slept where he sat but that the strong coffee he'd drunk had gone straight to his bladder, and he needed to relieve himself. He got up and went in search of a secluded bush to do just that, rapidly losing his bearings amongst the trees.

In one grove he came upon a couple dancing to the late-night music from a small transistor radio - like lovers left on a dance floor after the place had closed, too absorbed in each other to be parted. In another place a child was being taught to count, its abacus a string of floating lights its mother had spoken into being. He found a deserted spot to unburden himself, and was fumbling to do the buttons of his borrowed trousers up again when somebody took hold of his arm. He turned to find Apolline Dubois at his side. She was in black as ever, but was wearing lipstick and mascara, which didn't flatter her. Had he not seen the all but empty vodka bottle in her hand her breath would have told him she'd had a good night's drinking behind her.

‘I'd offer you some,' she said, ‘but it's all I've got left.'

‘Don't worry,' he told her.

‘Me?' she said. ‘I never worry. It's all going to end badly whether I worry or not.'

Drawing herself closer to him, she peered at his face.

‘You look sick,' she announced. ‘When did you last have a shave?'

As he opened his mouth to answer her something happened to the air around them. A tremor ran through it, with darkness at its heels. She forsook her hold on him instantly, dropping the vodka bottle in the same moment. It struck his foot, but he managed to bite back his curse, and was thankful for it. Every sound from between the trees, music or mathematics, had ceased utterly. So had the noises in the undergrowth, and from the branches. The wood was suddenly death-bed quiet, the shadows thickening between the trees. He put his arm out and clutched hold of one of the trunks, fearful of losing all sense of geography. When he looked around Apolline was backing away from him, only her powdered face visible. Then she turned away, and that too was gone.

He wasn't entirely alone. Off to his right he saw somebody step from the cover of the trees and hurriedly kick earth over the small fire by which mother and child had been engaged in their lessons. They were there still, the woman's hand pressed over her off-spring's mouth, the child's eyes turned up to look at her, wide with fear. As the last light was snuffed out Cal saw her mouth ask a question of the man, who in answer jerked his thumb over his shoulder. Then the scene went to black.

For a few moments Cal stayed put, vaguely aware that there were people moving past him - purposefully, as if to their stations. Rather than remain where he was, clinging to the tree like a man in a flood, he decided to go in the direction the fire-smotherer had pointed, and find out what was going

on. Hands extended to help him plot his course as he navigated his way between the trees. His every movement produced some unwelcome sound: his pigskin shoes creaked; his hands, touching a trunk, brought fragments of bark down in a pattering rain. But there was a destination in sight. The trees were thinning out, and between them he could see the brightness of snow. Its light made the going easier, and by it he came to within ten yards of the edge of the wood. He knew now where he was. Ahead lay the field where he'd seen Novello playing; and louring over it, the white slope of Rayment's Hill.