Clive Barker - Weave World

The package was just as evasive. But even as he was thinking he'd been mistaken, and there was nothing to find, his frozen fingers closed on the thing. As he pulled it from the drift the paper, which was almost mush, tore, and the contents fell in the snow. A box of cigars; some trinkets; and the jacket. He picked it up. If it had looked unremarkable at Gluck's house it looked more so now. He hoped somebody in the wood had a clue as to how to unleash its powers, because he certainly didn't.

He looked around for Nimrod, to give him the news, and saw two figures trudging towards him, one holding the other up. The bearer was Nimrod; the man he was helping - the same Cal had heard and glimpsed presumably - so swathed in protective clothing he was unrecognizable. Nimrod had seen the prize Cal had lifted up to show him, however, and was coaxing the man to pick up his speed, yelling something to Cal as he approached. The wind stole the words away, but he yelled them again as he came closer.

‘Is this a friend of yours?'

The man he was all but carrying lifted his snow-encrusted face, and fumbled with the scarf that was wrapped around its lower half. Before he'd pulled it down, however, Cal said:

‘Virgil?'

The scarf came away, and Gluck was looking up at him with a mixture of shame and triumph on his face in equal measure.

‘Forgive me,' he said. ‘I had to be here. I had to see.'

‘If there's anything left to see,' Nimrod shouted over the din of the wind.

Cal looked back towards Rayment's Hill. Between the gusts it was apparent that the top of the hill had been entirely blown open. Over it a pall of smoke was rising, its underbelly lit by flames.

The wood...' he said. Forgetting Nimrod and Gluck, he began to plough through the snow, back towards the hill and what lay beyond.

2

There was nothing arbitrary in the Scourge's attack. It was systematically destroying the field and the surrounding region in the knowledge that sooner or later its eyes would find the creatures whose proximity it smelt. In the trees there was an organized retreat; the children, accompanied by either guardians or parents, moving through to the rear of the wood and out into the open air. Few others moved, but stayed at their stations, preserving the integrity of their hiding place. Suzanna wasn't certain if this was defiance or fatalism; perhaps a little of both. But however deep they dug, their store of raptures was all but exhausted. It was a matter of seconds rather than minutes now before Uriel-in-Shadwell's glance reached the trees. When it did so the woods would burn, invisible or no.

Hamel was at Suzanna's side as she watched the Angel's approach.

‘Are you coming?' he said.

‘In a moment.'

‘It's now or never.'

Maybe it would be never, then. She was so transfixed by the formidable power being unleashed in front of her, she couldn't

avert her astonished gaze. It fascinated her that strength of this magnitude should be turned to the sordid business of atrocity; something was wrong with a reality that made that possible, and offered no cure for it, nor hope of cure.

‘We have to go,' said Hamel.

Then go,' she told him.

Tears were welling in her eyes. She resented them coming between her and seeing. But with them she felt the menstruum rising - not to protect her but to be with her at the last; to give her its little sum of joy.

The Angel raised its sights. She heard Hamel shout. Then the trees to the right of where she stood burst into flames.

There were cries from the depths of the wood as the screen was breached.

‘Scatter!' somebody yelled.

Hearing its prey, the Scourge caused Shadwell's face to smile: a smile to end the world with. Then the light in the bloated body intensified, as Uriel mustered a final fire, to destroy the rapturers forever.

A beat before it broke, a voice said:

‘Shadwell?'

It was the Salesman's name that had been called, but it was Uriel that looked round, its calamitous glance momentarily postponed.

Suzanna's gaze left the Scourge, and went to the speaker.

It was Cal. He was walking across the smoking ground that had once been the snow-covered field at the bottom of the hill; walking straight towards the enemy.

At the sight of him she didn't hesitate to break cover. She stepped out from the margin of the trees and into the open air. Nor did she come alone. Though she didn't take her eyes off Cal for an instant she heard whispers and footfalls at her side as the Kind appeared from hiding; a gesture of solidarity in the face of extinction which moved her profoundly. At the last, their appearance here said, we're together. Cuckoo and Kind, part of one story.

None of which prevented an awed voice, which she recognized as that of Apolline, from saying:

‘Is he out of his fucking mind?' as Cal continued to advance across the earth Uriel had laid waste.

Behind her, the crackling of flames mounted, as the fire, fanned by the wind, spread through the woods. Its glow washed the ground, throwing the shadows of the Kind towards the two figures in the field ahead. Shadwell, with his fine clothes torn and singed, his face paler than a dead man's. Cal in his pigskin shoes, the flame-light picking out threads in his jacket.

No; not his jacket: Shadwell's. The jacket of illusions.

How could she have been so slow as not to have noticed it earlier? Was it the fact that it fitted him so well, though it had been made for a man half his size again? Or was it simply that his face had claimed all her attention, that face which even now had about it a purposefulness she'd come to love.

He was within ten yards of the Scourge, and now stood still.

Uriel-in-Shadwell said nothing, but there was a restlessness in the Salesman's body that threatened to detonate at any moment.

Cal fumbled to unbutton the jacket, frowning at the ineptitude of his fingers. But he got the trick of it on the fourth attempt, and the jacket fell open.

That done, he spoke. His voice was thin, but it didn't shake.

‘I've got something to show you,' he said.

At first Uriel-in-Shadwell offered no response. When it did it was not the possessor who replied but the possessed.

There's nothing there I want,' the Salesman said.

‘It's not for you,' Cal replied, his voice growing stronger. ‘It's for the Angel of Eden. For Uriel.'

This time neither Scourge nor Salesman replied. Cal took hold of the front panel of the jacket, and opened it, exposing the lining.

‘Don't you want to look?' he enquired.

Silence answered him.

‘Whatever you see,' he went on. ‘It's yours.'

Somebody at Suzanna's side whispered: ‘What does he think he's doing?'

She knew; but didn't waste precious effort on a reply. Cal needed all the power she could will to him: all her hope, all her love.

Again, he addressed the Scourge.

‘What do you see?' he said.

This time he got an answer.

‘Nothing.'

It was Shadwell who spoke.

‘I See. Nothing.'

‘Oh Cal,' Suzanna breathed, catching the flicker of despair that crossed his face. She knew exactly what he was thinking, and shared his doubt. Were the raptures in the jacket dead? Had they withered away without victims to nourish them, leaving him standing before Uriel unarmed?

A long moment passed. Then, from somewhere in the belly of the Angel there rose a low moan. As it came Shadwell's mouth opened, and he spoke again. But it was quietly this time, as if to himself; or the thing inside himself.

‘Don't look,' he said.

Suzanna held her breath, not daring to believe his words were a warning. Yet how else could they be construed?

‘You do see something,' Cal said.

‘No,' Shadwell replied.

‘Look,' said Cal, opening the jacket as wide as he could. ‘Look and see.'