Clive Barker - Everville

"It's all right," she said, going back to the bedside and laying her hand on his cold brow. "Morton. Listen to me. It's all right."

His eyes were roving back and forth behind his lids. His gasps were horrible. "Hold on, Morton," she said, as his suffering continued to mount. "You'll bust something."

If he heard her, he didn't listen. But then when had he ever listened? He went on gasping, until his body was out of power. Then he simply stopped.

"Morton," she murmured to him. "Don't you dare-"

There were nurses back at the bedside now, and a doctor spewing agitated orders, but Phoebe registered none of them. Her focus was upon Morton's stricken face. There were flecks of spittle on his chin, and his eyes were still wide open. He looked the way he'd looked at the bathroom doorraging; raging even as the sea he'd been dreaming about closed over his head. One of the nurses took hold of her hand and now gently escorted her away from the bed.

"I'm afraid his heart's given out," she murmured consolingly. But Phoebe knew better. The damn fool had drowned.

There was always a moment at the close of day when the blue gloom of dusk had settled on the city, but the sun was, still in glory on Harmon's Heights. The effect was to make Everville seem like a ghost town, sitting in the shadow of a living mountain. What had seemed unequivocal a minute ago had now become ethereal. Folks who'd been able to read their neighbors' smiles across the street could no longer do so; children who'd known for certain there was nothing darting behind the fence, or snaking between the garbage cans, were no longer secure in their belief.

In that uncertain time before the sun left the Heights entirely, and the streetlamps and porch lights of Everville asserted their authority, the city bathed in doubt, and insolid souls in insolid streets entertained the notion that this life was just a candle-flame dream, and likely to flicker out with the next gust of wind.

It was Seth Lundy's favorite time of day. Better even than midnight, or that time before dawn when the moon had sunk, and the sun was no more than a gray hope in the east. Better than those, that minute.

He was standing in the town square, looking up at the last of the light on the mountaintop and listening for the hammering, which was often loud at this uncertain hour, when a man he hoped at one glance he would come to know better stepped out of the murk towards him and said, "What can you hear?"

He had only ever been asked that question by doctors. This was no doctor. "I can hear angels hammering on the sky from Heaven's side," he replied, seeing no reason to lie.

"My name's Owen Buddenbaum," the man said, coming so close that Seth could smell the brandy on his breath. "May I ask yours?"

"Seth Lundy." Owen Buddenbaum came a little closer still. Then, le the city waited in doubt around them, he kissed Seth on the lips. Seth had never been kissed on the lips by a man before, but he knew the rightness of it, to his heart, soul, and groin.

"Shall we listen to the hammering together?" Owen Buddenbaum said, "or shall we make some for ourselves?"

"For ourselves," Seth replied.

"Good," said Owen Buddenbaum. "Ourselves it will be."

Tesla had woken early, despite the late-night call with Gfillo and the pukings from Lucien; early enough to enjoy the birdsong before the sound of traffic from Melrose and Santa Monica drowned it out. With the kitchen cupboards empty she ambled up to the cafe below the Health Club on Santa Monica, which had been open since five for the benefit of masochists, and bought coffee, fruits, and bran muffins for herself and her guest.

I don't want you screwing him, Raul reminded her as she walked back to the apartment. We agree& No sex till we're separated

"That may never happen, Raul," she pointed out, "and I'm damned if I'm going to live like a nun for the rest of my life. Which might be, by the way, a very short time."

My, we arefeeling chipper this morning.

"Anyway, monkeys like sex. It's all they ever do at the ZOO.

Gofuck yourself Bombeck.

"That's all I've been doing. Which you haven't been complaining about, by the way. Did you get off on me diddlin' myself?"

No comment.

"I'm going to fuck Lucien, Raul. So you'd better get used to the idea."

Slut.

"Monkey."

Lucien was showered and sitting on the balcony in the sun by the time she got back to the apartment. He had found some of Tesla's old clothes in the closet: patchwork jeans circa 1968 and a leather vest which fitted his skinny torso better than it had ever fitted her. Ah, the resilience of youth, she thought, seeing how quickly he'd recovered from the excesses of the previous night. Face flushed, smile lavish, he rose to help her unpack the breakfast and partook with no little appetite.

"I feel so stupid about throwing up," he said. "I never do that. Mind you, I never drink vodka." He gave her a sidelong glance. "You're teaching me bad habits," he said. "Kate says you have to purify the body if you want to be a vessel for the infinite."

"Now there's a phrase," Tesla said. "Vesselfor the infinite. What does that mean-exactly?"

"Well... it means... you know, we're made from the same stuff stars are made of... and... all we have to do is open our souls up... and the infinite, I mean, you know... everything becomes one, and everything flows through us."

"The past, the future, and the dreaming moment between are all one country living one immortal day. "

The quote had Lucien agog. "Where'd that come from?" he said. "You never heard it before? I learned it from@' She paused to think about this. "Fletcher maybe," she said, "maybe Kissoon."

"Who's Kissoon?" Lucien said.

"Somebody I don't want to talk about," she said. There were few experiences in her life she still kept filed away under untouchable, but Kissoon was definitely one of them.

"I want you to tell me, when you're in a good space to do it," Lucien said. "I mean, I want to share all the wisdom in you."

"You'll be disappointed," Tesla said.

He laid his hand over hers. "Please. I mean it."

She heard the monkey make a retching sound in her head, and could not keep a smile from her lips.

"What's so funny?" Lucien said, looking a little hurt.

"Nothing," she said. "Don't be sensitive. If there's one thing I can't bear it's sensitive men." they were heading north by seven-thirty, and made good time up the coast. Either Tesla, or Raul, or perhaps a combination of them both, had developed an uncanny instinct when it came to the presence of cops, and she gunned the cycle to a hundred, a hundred and ten when they were certain they were unmatched. By Thursday evening they were across the state line, and about ten at night decided they'd come far enough for one day. they found a motel and checked in. One room, one bed. What this meant went undiscussed.

While Lucien headed out for food, Tesla called Grillo. He sounded glad to hear from her. The conversation with Howie had not gone well, he told her, and suggested she might have to put a call in to the couple herself, to offer some support for his warning.

"What the hell happened to D'Amour?" Tesla wanted to know. "I thought he was supposed to be watching over them?"

"Want my best guess?" Grillo said.

"Yeah."

"He's dead."

"What?"

"He was closing on something big-he wouldn't tell me what-then he just ceased communication."

The news shook Tesla. While her relationship with D'Amour had never been that close-she'd met with him one time only since the Grove, when her trek through the Americas had taken her up to New York-she'd vaguely thought of him as both a backstop and a source of esotefica, as someone who would always be in the picture. Now it seemed that this was not the case. And if D'Amour, who'd been fighting this fight for fifteen years and had defenses against the enemy in every corner (including several tattooed on his person), had lost the battle, then what hope did she have? Little or none.