Clive Barker - Sacrament

'This can't be happening,' she said, raising her head. Her eyes were stinging but her tears weren't coming yet. She could see Sherwood's killer perfectly clearly, standing in the hallway on the spot to which he had retreated. If she'd had a gun in her hand she would have shot him through the heart right there and then. 'You bastard,' she said, her voice coming out like a growl. 'You killed him. You killed him.'

Steep didn't respond. He simply stared at her, blank-eyed, which only enraged her more. She started to step over Sherwood's body towards him, but before she could do so Rosa caught hold of her arm. 'Don't-'she said, pulling her back towards the kitchen.

'He killed him-

-and he'll kill you,' Rosa said. 'Then you'll both be dead, and what will that prove?' Frannie didn't want to hear reason right now. She tried to wrench herself free of Rosa's grip, but despite the woman's wound she remained strong, and would not let Frannie go. There was a moment of uncanny silence, when nobody moved. Then came the sound of footsteps on the gravel pathway, and a moment later Will was at the doorstep. Steep looked round at him, his motion lazy.

'Stay away,' Frannie yelled to Will. 'He's-'she could hardly get the words out '-killed Sherwood.' Will's gaze went from Steep's face down to Sherwood's body, then back up to Steep again. As he did so he reached into his jacket and pulled the knife into view.

'We're leaving,' Rosa said to Frannie, very quietly. 'We can't do anything here. Let's just ... leave it to the boys, shall we?'

Frannie didn't want to leave. Not with Sherwood lying there on the dusty ground, glassy-eyed. She wanted to close his lids, and put him somewhere comfortable; at very least cover him up. But she knew in her gut Rosa was right: she had no place in what was unfolding down the hall. Will had already made it plain to her how private his business with Steep was; even if it was fatal business. Reluctantly, she allowed Rosa to take her arm and coax her to the back door and out into the lush green.

Of course the bees were still droning in the overgrown flower beds. Of course the blackbirds were still raising a sweet chorus in the sycamore. And of course nothing was as it had been three minutes before, nor could ever be again.

It was very simple. Sherwood, poor Sherwood, was dead, sprawled there on the floor, and his murderer was standing here right in front of Will, and there was a knife in Will's hand, trembling to be put to its purpose. It didn't care that Steep had once been its owner; it only wanted to be used. Now; quickly! Never mind that the flesh it would be butchering belonged to the man who'd treated it like a holy relic. All that mattered was to glint and glitter in the deed; to rise and fall and rise again red.

'Have you come to give that back to me?' Steep said.

Will could barely fumble a reply, his mind was so filled with the knife's advertisements for its skills. How it would lop off Steep's ears and nose; reduce his beauty to a wound. He sees you still? Scoop out his eyes! His screams distress you? Cut out his tongue!

They were terrible thoughts; sickening thoughts. Will didn't want them. But they kept coming.

Steep on his back now, naked. And the knife opening his chest - one, two - exposing his beating heart. You want his nipples for souvenirs? Here! Something more intimate perhaps? Meat for the fox

And before Will knew what he was doing, his hand was up, the knife exalting. It would have opened Steep's face to the bone a moment later had Steep not reached up and caught the blade in his fist. Oh it stung him; even him. His perfect lips curled in pain, and a hiss came between his perfect teeth; a soft hiss that died into a sigh, as he expelled every vestige of air.

Will attempted to pull the knife out of his grip. Surely it would slice the sheath of Steep's palm, and free itself; its edges were too keen to be contained. But it didn't move. He tugged again, harder. Still it didn't move. And again he pulled; but still Steep held it fast.

Will's eyes flickered from the knife to his enemy's face. Steep had not drawn breath since he'd exhaled his sigh; he was staring at Will, his mouth open a little way, as though he were about to speak.

Then, of course, he inhaled. It was no common breath; no simple summoning of air. It was Steep's reprise of what had happened on the hill, thirty years before, except that this time he was the one commanding the moment, unknitting the world around them. It flickered out on theinstant, the floor seeming to fall away beneath their feet, so that Will and Steep seemed to hang above a velvet immensity, connected only by the blade.

'I want you to share this with me,' Steep said softly, as though he had found a fine wine and was inviting Will to drink from the same cup. The darkness was solidifying beneath their feet: a roiling dust, ebbing, and flowing. But all around them otherwise, darkness. And above, darkness. No clouds; nor stars, nor moon.

'Where are we?' Will breathed, looking back at Steep. Jacob's face was not as solid as it had been. The once smooth skin of his brow and cheek had become grainy, and the murk behind him seemed to be leaking through his eye. 'Can you hear me?' Will wanted to know. But the face before him continued to lose coherence. And now, though Will knew this was just a vision, panic began to grow in him. Suppose Steep deserted him here, in this emptiness?

'Stay...' he found himself saying, like a child afraid to be left alone in the dark. 'Please stay ...

'What are you frightened of?' Steep said. The darkness had almost claimed his face entirely. 'You can tell me.'

'I don't want to get lost,' Will replied.

'There's no help for that,' Steep said. 'Not unless we know our way to God. And that's hard in this confusion. This sickening confusion.' Though his image had almost disappeared completely now, his voice remained, soft and solicitous. 'Listen to that din ...'

'Don't go.'

'Listen,' Steep told him.

Will could hear the noise Steep was referring to. It wasn't a single sound, it was a thousand, a thousand thousand, coming at him from every direction at once. It wasn't strident, nor was it sweet or musical. It was simply insistent. And its source? That was coming too, from all directions. Tidal multitudes of pale, indistinguishable forms, crawling towards him. No, not crawling: being born. Creatures spreading their limbs and purging themselves of infants that, even in the moment of their birth, were ungluing their legs to be fertilized; and before their partners had rolled off them were spreading their limbs to expel another generation. And on; and on; in sickening multitudes, their mingled mewlings and sighings and sobs the din that Steep had said drowned out God.

It wasn't hard for Will to fathom what he was witnessing. This was what Steep saw when he looked at living things. Not their beauty, not their particularity, just their smothering, deafening fecundity. Flesh begetting flesh, din begetting din. It wasn't hard to fathom, because he'd thought it himself, in his darkest times. Seen the human tide advancing on species he'd loved -beasts too wild or too wise to compromise with the invader - and wished for a plague to wither every human womb

Heard the din and longed for a gentle death to silence every throat. Sometimes not even gentle. He understood. Oh Lord, he understood.

'Are you still there?' he said to Steep.

'Still here...' the man replied.

'Make it go away.'

'That's what I've been trying to do all these years,' Steep replied.

The rising tide of life was almost upon them, forms being born and being born, spilling around Will's feet.

'Enough,' Will said.

'You understand my point of view?'

'Yes...'

'Louder.'

'Yes! I understand. Perfectly.'