Clive Barker - Weave World

What followed was over in seconds. One moment the creature was on the line, its maw vast, its appetite for death vaster still. The next, the train hit it.

There was no cry. No moment of triumph, seeing the monster undone. Just a foul stench, as if every dead man in the vicinity had sat up and expelled a breath, then the train was rushing by, smeared faces peering from the windows.

And just as suddenly as it had appeared, it was away through the curtain on its way South. The whine in the rails receded to a sibilant whisper. Then even that was gone.

Cal shook Nimrod from his roll-call of deities.

‘It's over...' he said.

It took Nimrod a little while to accept the fact. He peered through the smoke, expecting the Rake to come at them again.

‘It's gone.' said Cal. ‘I killed it.'

The train killed it,' said Nimrod. ‘Put me down.'

Cal did so, and without looking right or left Nimrod started back across the tracks towards the garden where his sister had perished. Cal followed.

The wind that had come with the boneless creature, or borne it, had dropped completely. As there was not even a light breeze to keep the dirt it had swept up aloft, a deluge now descended. Small stones, fragments of garden furniture and fencing, even the remains of several household pets who'd been snatched away. A rain of blood and earth the like of which the good people of Chariot Street had not expected to see this side of Judgment Day.

VII

THE AFTERMATH

1

When the dust had begun to settle, it was possible to assess the extent of the devastation. The garden had been turned upside down, of course, as had all the other gardens along the row; there were dozens of slates missing from the roof, and the chimney stack looked less than secure. The wind had been equally lethal at the front of the house. All along the street havoc had been wreaked: lamps toppled, walls demolished, car windows smashed by flying trash. Mercifully there seemed to be no serious casualties; just cuts, bruises and shock. Lilia - of whom no sign remained -was the only fatality.

‘That was Immacolata's creature.' Nimrod said. Til kill her for that. I swear I will.'

The threat sounded doubly hollow coming from his diminutive body.

‘What's the use?' said Cal despondently. He was watching through the front window as the occupants of Chariot Street wandered around in a daze, some staring at the wreckage, others squinting up at the sky as if expecting some explanation to be written there.

‘We won a substantial victory this afternoon, Mr Mooney —' said Frederick. ‘Don't you understand that? And it was your doing.'

‘Some victory.' said Cal, bitterly. ‘My Dad sitting next door not saying a word; Lilia dead, half the street torn apart -'

‘We'll fight again,' said Freddy, ‘until the Fugue's safe.'

‘Fight, will we?' said Nimrod. ‘And where were you when the shit was flying?'

Cammell was about to protest, then thought better of it, letting silence confess his cowardice.

Two ambulances and several police cars had arrived at the far end of Chariot Street. Hearing the sirens, Nimrod joined Cal at the window.

‘Uniforms,' he muttered. ‘They always mean trouble.'

As he spoke the door of the lead police car swung open, and a sober-suited man stepped out, smoothing his thinning hair back with the palm of his hand. Cal knew the fellow's face — his eyes so ringed with shadow he seemed not to have slept in years - but, as ever, he could put no name to it.

‘We should get gone,' said Nimrod. ‘They'll want to talk with us-'

Already a dozen uniformed police were fanning out amongst the houses to begin their enquiries. What would his fellow Charioteers have to report, Cal wondered. Had they glimpsed anything of the creature that had killed Lilia, and if so, would they admit to it?

‘I can't go,' said Cal. ‘I can't leave Dad.'

‘You think they won't sniff a rat if they speak to you?' said Nimrod. ‘Don't be an imbecile. Let your father tell them all he has to tell. They won't believe it.'

Cal saw the sense in this, but he was still reluctant to leave Brendan alone.

‘What happened to Suzanna and the others?' asked Cammell, as Cal turned the problem over.

They went back to the warehouse to see if they could trace Shadwell from there,' said Freddy.

‘Isn't likely, is it?' said Cal.

‘It worked for Lilia,' said Freddy.

‘You mean you know where the carpet is?'

‘Almost. She and I went back to the Laschenski house, you see, to take bearings from there. She said the echoes were very strong.'

‘Echoes?'

‘Back from where the carpet now is, to where it had been.'

Freddy fished in his pocket and brought out three shiny new paperbacks, one of which was a Liverpool and District Atlas. The others were murder mysteries. ‘I borrowed these from a confectioner's,' he said, ‘to trace the carpet.'

‘But you didn't succeed,' said Cal.

‘As I said, almost. We were interrupted when she felt the presence of that thing that killed her.'

‘She was always acute,' said Nimrod.

That she was,' Freddy replied. ‘As soon as she sniffed the beast on the wind she forgot about the carpet. Demanded we came to warn you. That was our error. We should have stayed put.'

Then it would have picked us off one by one,' said Nimrod.

‘I hope to God it didn't go after the others first,' said Cal.

‘No. They're alive,' said Freddy. ‘We'd feel it if they weren't.'

‘He's right,' said Nimrod. ‘We can pick up their trail easily. But we have to go now. Once the uniforms get here we're trapped.'

‘All right, I heard you first time,' said Cal. ‘Let me just say goodbye to Dad.'

He went next door. Brendan hadn't moved since Cal had settled him in the chair.

‘Dad ... can you hear me?'

Brendan looked up from his sorrows.

‘Haven't seen a wind like that since the war,' he said. ‘Out in Malaya. Saw whole houses blown down. Didn't think to see it here.'

He spoke distractedly, his gaze on the empty wall.

The police are in the street,' said Cal.

‘At least the loft's still standing, eh,' Brendan said. ‘A wind like that...' his voice faded. Then he said: ‘Will they come here? The police?'

T would think so. Dad. Are you all right to speak to them? I have to go.'

‘Of course you do,' Brendan murmured. ‘You go on.'

‘Do you mind if I take the car?'

Take it. I can tell them -' Again, he halted, before picking up his thoughts. ‘Haven't seen a wind like that since ... oh, since the war.'

2

The trio left by the back door, climbing the fence and making their way along the embankment to the footbridge at the end of Chariot Street. From there they could see the size of the crowd that had already gathered from neighbouring streets, eager to view the spectacle.

Part of Cal itched to go down and tell them what he'd seen. To say: the world isn't just the tea-cup and the pot. I know, because I've seen. But he held onto his words, knowing how they'd look at him.

There'd maybe come a time to be proud, to tell his tribe about the terrors and miracles they shared with the world. But this wasn't it.

VIII

NECESSARY EVILS

The name of the man with the dark suit, whom Cal had seen getting out of the police-car, was Inspector Hobart. He had been in the force for eighteen of his forty-six years, but it was only recently - with the riots that had erupted in the city during the late spring and summer of the previous year - that his star had come into the ascendant.

The origins of those riots were still the subject of both Public Enquiry and private argument, but Hobart had no time for either. It was the Law and how to keep it that obsessed him, and in that year of civil disturbance his obsession had made him the man of the moment.