Clive Barker - Sacrament

'Don't deceive yourself,' she said. 'He'll kill you.'

'I'm ready for that, too.'

'Stupid,' she murmured, shaking her head. 'I heard a woman's voice-'

'It's Frannie. Sherwood's sister.'

'Bring her here,' Rosa said. 'I need tending to.'

'I can do it.'

'You will not,' she said. 'I want a woman to do it. Go on,' she said.

Will returned to the hallway. Sherwood was closer to the door, eager to be inside. But Will told him: 'She wants Frannie.'

'But I-' 'That's what she wants,' Will replied. Then to Frannie: 'She says she needs tending to. I don't think she'll let us take her to a doctor. But try and persuade her.'

Frannie looked more than a little doubtful, but after a moment's hesitation she slid past Sherwood and Will, and entered.

'She is going to die?' Sherwood said, very softly.

'I don't know,' Will told him. 'She's lived a very long life. Maybe it's time.' 'I won't let her,' Sherwood said.

Frannie was back at the door. 'I need some gauze and some bandages,' she said. 'Go back to the house, Sherwood, and bring whatever you can find. Is there still running water in the house?'

'Yes,' said Sherwood.

'You can't persuade her to let us take her to a doctor?'

'She won't go. And I don't think they'd be able to do much for her anyway.'

'It's that bad?'

'It's not just that it's bad. It's strange. It's not like any wound I ever saw before,' she shuddered. 'I don't know if I can bring myself to touch her again.' She glanced at Sherwood. 'Will you go?' she said.

He was like a dog being sent from the kitchen, glancing over his shoulder as he went to be certain he wasn't missing a scrap. At last, he made it to the front door and slipped away.

'What do we do once she's bandaged up?' Frannie wanted to know.

'Let me speak to her,' Will said.

'She said she didn't want either of you in there.'

'She's going to have to put up with it,' Will said. 'Excuse me.'

Frannie stood aside, and Will stepped back into the room. It was darker than it had been a few minutes before, and warmer; both changes, he guessed, brought about by Rosa's presence. He couldn't even see her at first, the shadow around the mantelpiece had become so dense. While he was trying to work out where in the darkness she was standing, she said:

'Go away.'

Her voice gave him her whereabouts. She had moved four or five yards to the corner of the room farthest from the door. The shutters, which were to her left, remained open a little way, but the daylight fluttered at the sill, stopped from entering by the miasma she was giving off.

'We need to talk,' Will said.

'About what?'

'What you need from me,' he said, attempting his most conciliatory tone.

'I killed your father,' she said softly. 'And you want to help me? You'll forgive me if I'm suspicious.'

'You were under Steep's influence,' Will said, taking a tentative step towards her. Even that stride was enough to thicken the atmosphere around him. Though he stared hard into the corner where she stood the murk resembled a picture taken in too low a light-level: a patch of granular grey.

'Under Steep's influence? Me?' She laughed in the darkness. 'Listen to you! He needs me a lot more than I need him.'

'Really?'

'Yes, really. He's going to go crazy without me. If he hasn't already. I was the one who kept his feet on the ground.'

Will had perhaps halved the distance between the door and the corner of the room while she spoke, but he was no closer to seeing Rosa. 'I wouldn't come any nearer if I were you,' she warned.

'Why not?'

'I'm coming apart,' she said. 'I'm unknitting. It's a dange:ous place for you to be right now.'

'And Frannie?'

'She's fine. Women are a lot less susceptible. If she can seal me up, I may survive a day or two.'

'But you won't heal?'

'I don't want to heal!' she replied. 'I want to find my way back to Rukenau, and I'll be happy...' She drew a deep, ragged breath. 'You asked me what I needed from you,' she said.

'Yes...'

'Take me to him.'

'Do you know where he is?'

'On the island.'

'Which island?'

'I don't think I ever knew. But you know where he is-'

'No, I don't.'

-but in the garden.'

'I was bluffing.'

There was a sound of motion from the corner of the room, and a wave of heat came against Will's face. He felt slightly sickened, and was sorely tempted to retreat to the door. But he held his ground, while the murk in front of him coalesced, and he began to see Rosa in its midst. She was like a phantom of her former self, her once-luxurious hair falling straight to either side of her hollow-eyed face. She had her hands clamped to the wound, but she could not entirely conceal its strangeness. There were motes of pale matter, some glinting like gold, skittering over her fingers. Some trailed up her body, clinging to her breasts. Others flew like sparks from a bonfire, and exhausting themselves in their flight, were extinguished.

'So you can't deliver me to Rukenau?' she said.

'I can't take you straight to him, no,' Will confessed. 'But that doesn't mean-'

'Just another liar-'

'I had no choice.'

-you're all the same.'

'He was going to kill me.'

'It wouldn't have been any great loss,' she said sourly. 'One liar more or less. Just go away!'

'Hear me out-'

'I've heard all I want to hear,' she said, starting to turn from him.

Without thinking, he moved towards her, intending another appeal. She caught the motion from the corner of her eye, and thinking perhaps he meant her some harm she reeled around. In that instant the fragments of brightness on her hands found purpose. They grew frenetic, and in a heartbeat fused, flying from her body in a bright thread. It came at Will too fast for him to avoid it, grazing his shoulder as it snaked towards the ceiling. A fleeting contact, but enough to throw him off-balance. He reeled for a moment, his legs so weak they refused to bear him up. Then he sank down to his knees while a kind of euphoria ran through him, its source the place where the thread had grazed his flesh. He felt, or imagined he felt, its energy spreading through his body, sinew, nerve and marrow illuminated by its passage; blood brightening, senses shining-He saw the thread on the ceiling now, dividing again, like a string of tiny pearls dropped in defiance of gravity, and snapping. They rolled away in every direction, the weaker ones going out on the instant, the stronger striking the walls before they ran out of light. Will watched them as he might have watched a meteor shower, head back, mouth wide. Only when every one had been extinguished did he look back at their source. Rosa had retreated to her corner, but Will's eyes had been lent an uncanny strength by the luminescence, and in the moments before it died in him he saw her as he had never seen before. There was a creature of burnished shadow in the midst of her; dark and sleek and protean. A creature held in check by all that she'd become over the years, like a painting so degraded by accruals of grime and varnish and the hands of inept restorers that its glory was now no longer visible. And just as surely as his revelatory gaze saw through to the core of her, so she in her turn saw something miraculous in him.

'So tell me,' she said, her voice low, 'when did you become a fox?'

'Me?' he said.

'It moves in you,' she replied, staring at him, 'I can see it there, plainly.'

He looked down at his body, half expecting the power that had emanated from her to have worked some physical change in him. Absurd, of course; it was still pale, sweaty flesh he was looking down at. More disappointing still, the last of the light was going out in him. He could feel its gift passing away, and was already mourning it.

'Steep was right about you,' she said. 'You're quite a creature. To have a spirit move in you that way, and not be driven crazy.'