Clive Barker - Weave World

She looked at him with something close to awe, that even now he could bargain.

‘I've got stuff stashed away,' he said. ‘A fortune. You name your price. It's all yours. Whatever you want. Free, gratis and - ‘

He stopped.

‘Oh sweet Jesus,' he said.

Somewhere in the fog, something had begun to howl: a rising wail which he recognized and feared. He seemed to decide that it was no use hoping she'd aid him, for he let her go and rose to his feet. The fog was equally dense on every side; it took him several seconds to elect an escape route. But once he had, he was away at a stumbling run, as the howl -which could only be Uriel - shook the hill.

Suzanna stood up, the fog and her aching head making the surroundings swim. The ground was so churned it was impossible to tell where the slope of the hill lay, so she couldn't orient herself to get back to the wood. All she could do was run, as fast as possible, away from the howl, blood coursing down the back of her neck. Twice she fell; twice her body made contact with an earth that seemed ready to open up beneath her.

She was on the verge of collapse when a figure loomed from the fog ahead of her, calling her name. It was Hamel.

‘I'm here - ‘ she yelled to him, over the din of the Scourge. He was with her in seconds, leading her over the treacherous ground and back towards the wood.

3

Luck was on Shadwell's side. Once he was away from the hill itself the fog thinned and he realized that either by instinct or accident he'd chosen the best direction to run in. The road was not far from here; he'd be away down it before the Angel had finished on the hill; away to some safe place on the other side of the globe where he could lick his wounds and put this whole horror out of his head.

He chanced a look over his shoulder. His blessed flight had already put a good distance between himself and the scene of devastation. The only sign of the Angel was the fog; and that still clung to the hill. He was safe.

He slowed his pace as he came within sight of the hedgerow which bounded the road; all he had to do now was follow it until he came to a gate. The snow was still falling, but his sudden turn of speed had got him heated; sweat was running down his back and chest. Even as he unbuttoned his coat, however, he realized the warmth was not self-generated. The snow was turning to slush beneath his feet, as heat rose from the ground, and with it, a sudden spring, shoots bursting from the earth and rising like snakes towards his face. As they flowered he realized the depth of his error. They came with fire for sap, these blossoms, and at their hearts were Uriel's eyes, Uriel's countless eyes.

He could go neither forward nor back; they were all around him. To his horror he heard the Angel's voice in his head, as he had first heard it back in the Rub al Khali.

Do I dare? — it said, mocking his boast to Suzanna.

DO I DARE?

And then it was upon him.

One moment he was only himself. A man; a history.

The next he was pressed to the lid of his creaking skull as the Angel of Eden claimed him.

His last act as a man with a body he could call his own was to shriek.

4

‘Shadwell,' she said.

‘No time to enjoy it,' Hamel remarked grimly. ‘We've got to get back before they start to move out.'

‘Move out?' she said. ‘No, we mustn't do that. The Scourge is still here. It's in the hill.'

‘No choice,' Hamel replied. ‘The raptures are almost used up. See?'

They were within a few yards of the trees now, and there was indeed a smoky presence in the air; a hint of what was concealed behind the screen.

‘No strength left,' Hamel said.

‘Any sign of Cal?' she asked. ‘Or Nimrod?'

He gave a short, dismissive shake of the head. They were gone, his look said, and not worth fretting for.

She glanced back at the hill, hoping for some sign that contradicted him, but there was no movement. Fog still held court at the summit; the upturned earth around it was still.

‘Are you coming?' he wanted to know.

She followed him, her head throbbing, the first step taken through snow, the second through thicket. There was a child crying in the depths of the hideaway, its sobs inconsolable.

‘See if you can keep her quiet, Hamel,' she said. ‘But gently.'

‘Are we going or aren't we?' he said.

‘Yes,' she conceded. ‘We have to. I just want to see Cal back first.'

There's no time,' he insisted.

‘All right,' she said. ‘I heard you. We'll go.' He grunted, and turned away from her. ‘Hamel?' she called after him.

‘What?'

Thank you for coming after me.'

‘I want to be out of here,' he said plainly, and went in search of the sobbing, leaving her to return to the lookout post that offered the best view of the hill.

There were several Kind keeping watch there.

‘Anything?' she asked one of them.

He didn't need to answer. A murmur amongst them drew her gaze to the hill.

The fog cloud was stirring. It was as if something in its midst had taken a vast breath, for the cloud folded upon itself, growing smaller and smaller, until the force that haunted it became visible.

Uriel had found the Salesman. Though it was Shadwell's body that stood in the mud of Rayment's Hill, the eyes burned with a seraphic light. From the purposeful way it surveyed the field there could be little doubt that the distraction which had made it mild had passed. The Angel was no longer lost in a remembered void. It knew both where it was and why. ‘We've got to move!' she said. The children first.'

The order came not an instant too soon, for even as the message ran through the trees, and the fugitives began their last dash for safety, Uriel turned its murderous eyes on the field below Rayment's Hill, and the snow began to burn.

IV

SYMMETRY

1

No trace of the route Cal had described across the field behind the hill was visible when he and Nimrod reached there; the blizzard had erased it. All they could do was guess at the path he would have followed, and dig in the vicinity in the hope of chancing upon the lost package. But it was nearly hopeless. His route to the hill had been far from direct - fatigue had made him reel and wander like a drunkard; and since then the wind had re-arranged the drifts so that in some places they were deep enough to bury a man upright.

The driving snow obscured the hill-top most of the time, so Cal could only guess at what was happening up there. What chance did anyone have of survival against Shadwell, and the Scourge?: little or none, probably. But then Suzanna had brought him out of the Gyre alive, hadn't she?, against all the odds. The thought of her on the hill, distracting Uriel's fatal gaze, made him dig with greater devotion to the task, without really believing they had a hope in hell of finding the jacket. Their digging steadily took he and Nimrod further apart, until Cal could no longer see his fellow searcher through the veil of snow. But at one point he heard the man cry out in alarm, and turned to see a flickering brightness in the wastes behind him. Something was burning on the hill. He started back towards it, but sense prevailed over heroics. If Suzanna was alive, then she was alive. If she was dead, he was wasting her sacrifice turning his back on the search.

As he began again, any pretence to a system in the work forgotten, the roaring in the hill began, climaxing in the din of erupting earth. This time he didn't look back, didn't try to pierce the veil for news of love; he simply dug, and dug, turning his grief into fuel for the task.

In his haste he almost lost the treasure in the act of finding it, his hands already covering the glimpse of paper before his distracted brain had registered what it was. When it did he began to dig like a terrier, shovelling snow behind him, not quite daring to believe he'd found the package. As he dug the wind brought a voice to him, then whipped it away again, a cry for help, somewhere in the wilderness. It wasn't Nimrod, so he kept digging. The voice came back. He looked up, narrowing his eyes against the onslaught. Was there somebody wading through the snow some way off from him? Like the voice, the sight came and went.