Clive Barker - Sacrament

He found a shining new Mitsubishi at the next service station, and well pleased with his acquisition, went on his way through the night. But his melancholy thoughts would not be banished; they returned again to memories of murder. There was a simple reason he kept his mind circling on these grim images; it kept an even grimmer memory at bay. But that memory refused to be dispatched to the bay of his skull. Though he filled his head with blood and despair, the thought returned and returned

Will had kissed him. Oh God in Heaven, the queer had kissed him, and lived to boast about it. How was that possible? How? And why, though he'd wiped his hand back and forth across his mouth until his lips were raw, did they only remember the touch better with each assault? Was there some shameful part of him that had taken pleasure in the violation?

No. No. There was no such part. In others maybe, in weaker men, but not in him. He had simply been taken by surprise, expecting a blow and getting filth instead. A lesser man might have spat the kiss in his violator's face. But for a man as pure as he, unmoved by doubt or ambiguity, the kiss had been worse than any blow. Was it any wonder he felt it still? And would continue to feel it, no doubt, until he had the slivers of his enemy's lips between his fingers, pared from his face.

By six in the morning he had reached Dumbarton, and the sky was brightening in the east. Another day beginning; another round of trivialities for the human herd. He saw the morning rituals underway in the street through which he drove. Curtains drawn back to waken the children, milk collected off the doorsteps for the morning tea; a few early commuters trudging to the bus-stop or the railway-station, still half in dreams. They had no idea what their world was coming to; nor, if they'd been told, would they have cared or understood. They just wanted to get through their day, and have the bus or the train deliver them home again, safe and sound.

His mood lightened watching them. They were such clowns. How could he not be amused? On through Helensburgh and Garelochhead he drove, the narrow road becoming heavily trafficked as the day proceeded, until at length he reached the town he'd long ago realized was his destination: Oban. It was seven forty-five. The ferry, he was told, had sailed on time.

Will, Frannie and Rosa had boarded The Claymore at six-thirty. Though the morning air was on the nippy side of bracing, they were happy to be out of the car, which had become a little ripe towards the end of the night, and into the open air. And Lord, was the day fine, the sun rising in a cloudless sky.

'Ye canna ask for a nicer day to be sailing,' the sailor who'd stowed their car had observed. 'It'll be as calm as a lily pond all the way out tae the islands.'

Frannie and Will made for the ship's bathrooms, to wash the sleep out of their eyes. The facilities were modest at best, but they both emerged looking a little more presentable, and went back on deck to discover Rosa seated at the bows of The Claymore. Of the three, she looked the least travelworn. There was a freshness to her pallor and a brightness in her eyes that utterly belied her wounded state.

'I'll be fine just sitting here,' she said, like an old lady who wanted to be as little bother as possible to her companions. 'Why don't you two go off and have some breakfast?'

Will offered to bring her something, but she told him no, she was quite happy as she was. They left her to her solitude, and with a short detour to the stern to watch the harbour receding behind them, the town pictureperfect in the warming sun, they went below to the dining-room, and sat down to a breakfast of porridge, toast and tea.

'They won't recognize me if I ever get back to San Francisco,' Will said. 'Cream, butter, porridge ... I can feel my arteries clogging up just looking at it.'

'So what do people do for fun in San Francisco?'

'Don't ask.'

'No. I want to know, for when I come over and see you.'

'Oh, you're going to come see me?'

'If you'll have me. Maybe at Christmas,' she replied. 'Is it warm at Christmas?'

'Warmer than here. It rains, of course. And it's foggy.'

'But you like the city?'

'I used to think it was Paradise,' he said. 'Of course, it's a different place from when I first arrived.'

'Tell me,' she said.

The prospect defeated him. 'I wouldn't know where to begin.'

'Tell me about your friends. Your ... lovers?' She ventured this tentatively, as though she wasn't sure she had her vocabulary right. 'It's so different from anything I've ever experienced.'

So he gave a guided tour of life in Boys' Town, over the tea and toast. A quick verbal gazetteer to begin with; then a little about the house on Sanchez Street, and on to the people in his circle. Adrianna, of course (with a footnote on Cornelius), Patrick and Rafael, Drew, Jack Fisher, even a quick jaunt across the Bay for a snapshot of Bethlynn. 'You said at the beginning it had all changed,' Frannie reminded him.

'It has. A lot of people I knew when I first lived there are dead. Men my age; some of them younger. There are a lot of funerals. A lot of men in mourning. It changes the way you look at your life. You start to think: maybe none of it's worth a damn.'

'You don't believe that,' Frannie said.

'I don't know what I believe,' he told her. 'I don't have the same faith you have.'

'It must be hard when you're in the middle of so much death. It's like an extinction.'

'We're not going anywhere,' Will said with unshakeable conviction, 'because we don't come from anywhere. We're spontaneous events. We just appear in the middle of families. And we'll keep appearing. Even if the plague killed every homosexual on the planet, it wouldn't be extinction, because there's queer babies being born every minute. It's like magic.' He grinned at the notion. 'You know, that's exactly what it is. It's magic.'

'I'm afraid you've lost me.'

'I'm just playing,' he laughed.

'What's so funny?'

'This,' he said, slowly spreading his arms to take in the table, then Frannie, then the rest of the dining-room. 'Us sitting talking like this. Queer politics over the porridge. Rosa sitting up there, hiding her secret self. Me down here talking about mine.' He leaned forward. 'Doesn't it strike you as a little funny?' She stared at him blankly. 'No, I'm sorry. I'm getting out of hand.'

The conversation was here interrupted by the waiter, a ruddy-faced man with an accent Will found initially unintelligible, asking them if they had finished. They had. Leaving him to clear the table, they headed up on deck. The wind had strengthened considerably in the hour or so they'd been breakfasting, and the greyblue waters of the Sound, though far from choppy, were flecked with spume. To the left of them, the hills of the Island of Mull, purple with heather, to the right the slopes of the Scottish mainland, more heavily wooded, with here and there signs of human habitation - most humble, some grand - set on the higher elevations. An aerial wake of herring gulls followed the ship, diving to pluck pieces of food, courtesy of the galley, out of the water. When the birds were sated, they settled on the ship, their clamour silenced, and beadily watched their fellow passengers from the railings and the lifeboats.

'They've got an easy life,' Frannie observed as another well-fed gull came to perch amongst its brethren. 'Catch the morning ferry, have breakfast, then catch the next one home.'

'They're practical buggers, gulls,' Will said. 'They'll feed on anything. Look at that one! What's he eating?'

'Coagulated porridge.'

'Is it? Oh hell, it is! Straight down!'

Frannie wasn't watching the gull, she was watching Will. 'The look on your face-'she said.