Clive Barker - Sacrament

'So tell me one,' Will said. 'Tell me an epiphany.'

Jacob grinned. 'There's an order.'

'I didn't mean-'

'Don't tell me you didn't mean it if you did,' Jacob said.

'I did,' Will said, beginning to see a pattern in what Jacob asked of him. 'I want you to tell me an epiphany.'

Jacob poked the fire one last time, and then leaned back against the wall.

'Remember how I said I'd endured colder winters than this?'

Will nodded.

'There was one worse than any other. The winter of seventeen thirtynine. Mrs McGee and I were in Russia-'

'Seventeen thirty-nine?'

'No questions,' Jacob said. 'Or you'll have nothing more. It was the bitterest cold I've ever known. Birds froze in flight and fell out of the air like stones. People perished in their millions and lay in stacks unburied because the earth was too hard to be dug. You can't imagine ... well, perhaps you can.' He gave Will a curious little smile. 'Can you see it in your mind's eye?'

Will nodded. 'So far,' he said.

'Good. Well now. I was in St Petersburg, with Mrs McGee in tow. She had not wanted to come, as I recall, but there was a learned doctor there by the name of Khrouslov who had theorized that this lethal cold was the beginning of an age of ice; that acre by acre, soul by soul, species by species, it would grasp the earth'Jacob closed his stained hand into a fist as he spoke, until the knuckles blazed white. 'Until there was nothing left alive.' Now he opened his hand, and lightly blew the silvery dust of dried blood off his palm into the dying fire. 'Plainly, I needed to hear what the man had to say. Unfortunately by the time I arrived he was dead.'

'Of the cold?'

'Of the cold,' Jacob replied, indulging the question despite his edict. 'I would have left the city there and then,' he went on, 'but Mrs McGee wanted to stay. The Empress Anna, having recently executed a number of well-loved men, had commanded an ice-palace be built as a distraction for her disgruntled subjects. Now if there's one thing Mrs McGee loves it's artifice. Silk flowers, wax fruit, china cats. And this palace was to be the greatest piece of fakery ice and man could create. The architect was

a fellow called Eropkin. I got to know him briefly. The Empress had him executed as a traitor the following summer: it wasn't the last winter of the world, you see, except for him. But for the months his palace stood, there on the riverbank between the Admiralty and the Winter Palace, he was the most admired, the most lionized, the most adored man in St Petersburg.'

'Why?' Will said.

'Because he'd made a masterpiece, Will. I don't suppose you've ever seen an icepalace? No. But you understand the principle. Blocks of ice were cut from the river, which was solid enough to march an army over, then carved, and assembled, just the way you'd build an ordinary palace.

'Except ... Eropkin had genius in him that winter. It was as though his whole career had been leading up to this triumph. He'd only let the masons use the finest, clearest ice, blue and white. He had ice-trees carved for the gardens around the palace, with ice-birds in their branches and ice-wolves lurking between. There were ice-dolphins flanking the front doors, that seemed to be leaping from spumy waves, and dogs playing on the step. There was a bitch, I remember, lying casually at the threshold, suckling her pups. And inside-'

'You could go inside?' Will said, astonished.

'Oh certainly. There was a ballroom, with chandeliers. There was a receiving room with a vast fireplace and an ice-fire burning in the grate. There was a bedroom, with a stupendous four-poster bed. And of course people came in their tens of thousands to see the place. It was better by night than by day I think, because at night they lit thousands of lanterns and bonfires around it, and the walls were translucent, so it was possible to see layer upon layer of the place-'

'As if you had X-ray eyes.'

'Exactly so.'

'Is that when you had your moment of ... of...'

'Epiphany? No. That comes later.'

'So what happened to the palace?'

'What do you think?'

'It just melted.'

Jacob nodded. 'I went back to St Petersburg in the late spring, because I'd heard the papers of the learned Dr Khrouslov had been discovered. They had, but his wife had burned them, mistaking them for love-letters to his mistress. Anyway, it was by then early May, and every trace of the palace had gone.

'And I went down to the Neva - to smoke a cigarette, or take a piss; something inconsequential - and while I was looking down into the river something seized hold of my - I want to say my soul, if I have one - and I thought of all those wonders, the wolves and dolphins and spires and

chandeliers and birds and trees, there, somehow waiting in the water. Being in the water already, if I just knew how to see them-' he wasn't looking at Will any longer, but staring into what remained of the fire, his eyes huge. 'Ready to spring into life. And I thought, if I throw myself in, and drown in the river, and dissolve in the river, then next year when the river freezes, if the Empress Anna commands another palace to be built I'll be in every part of it. Jacob in the bird. Jacob in the tree. Jacob in the wolf.' 'But none of it'd be alive.' Jacob smiled. 'That was the glory of it, Will. Not to be alive. That was the perfection. I stood there on the river-bank and the joy in me, oh, Will, the sheer ... sheer ... brimming bliss of it. I mean God could not have been happier at that moment. And that, to answer your question, was my Russian epiphany.' His voice trailed away, in deference to the memory, leaving only the soft popping of the dying fire. Will was content with the hush; he needed time to mull over all he'd just been told. Jacob's story had put so many images into his head. Of carved ice-birds sitting on carved ice-perches, more alive than the frozen flocks that had dropped out of the sky. Of the people - Empress Anna's complaining subjects -so astonished by the spires and the lights that they forgot the deaths of great men. And of the river the following spring, with Jacob sitting on its banks, staring into the rushing waters and seeing bliss. If somebody had asked him what all this meant, he wouldn't have had any answers. But nor would he have cared. Jacob had filled up some empty place in him with these pictures and he was grateful for the gift. At last, Jacob roused himself from his reverie and giving the fire one last, desultory poke said: 'There's something I need you to do for me.' 'Whatever you want.' 'How strong are you feeling?' 'I'm fine.' 'Can you stand?' 'Of course,' Will proceeded to do so, lifting the coat up with him. It was heavier and more cumbersome than he'd imagined, however, and as he rose it slipped off him. He didn't bother to pick it up. There was scarcely any light for Jacob to see him naked by. And even if he did, hadn't he taken Will's clothes off, hours before, and laid him down beside the fire? They had no secrets, he and Jacob. 'I feel fine,' Will pronounced, as he shook the numbness from his legs. 'Here-'Jacob said. He pointed to Will's clothes which had been laid out to dry on the far side of the fire. 'Get dressed. We have a hard climb ahead of us.' 'What about Mrs McGee?'

'She has no business with us tonight,' Jacob replied. 'Or indeed, after our deeds on the hill, any night.' 'Why not?' said Will. 'Because I won't need her for company, will I? I'll have you.'

i

Burnt Yarley was too small to merit a policeman of its own; on the few occasions police assistance was needed in the valley, a car was dispatched from Skipton. Tonight the call went out at a little before eight - a thirteen-year-old boy missing from his home - and the car, containing Constables Maynard and Hemp, was at the Rabjohns residence by half past. There was very little by way of information. The lad had disappeared from his bedroom sometime between six and seven, approximately. Neither his temperature nor his medication was likely to have induced a delirium, and there was nothing to indicate an abduction, so it had to be assumed he'd left of his own volition, with his wits about him. As to his whereabouts, the parents had no clue. He had few friends, and those he had knew nothing. The father, whose condescending manner did nothing to endear him to the officers, was of the opinion that the boy had made for Manchester.