Clive Barker - Everville

"By the way, was it really so terrible?"

Abominable.

"Well at least you know what you're missing," she said.

So strike me blind

"What?"

Tiresias, he said.

She was none the wiser. You don't know that story?

It was one of the paradoxes of their relationship that he, the sometime ape, had been educated in the great myths of the world by Fletcher, while she, the professional storyteller, had only the sketchiest knowledge of the subject.

"Tell me," she said, lying back on the bed.

Now?

"Well, you scared off my entertainment." She closed her eyes. "Go on," she said, "tell me."

He'd several times regaled her with his versions of classical tales, usually when she'd questioned some reference of his. The philanderings of Aphrodite; the voyages of Odysseus; the fall of Troy. But this story was so much more appropriate to their present situation than any he'd shared with her, and she slipped into sleep with images of the Theban seer Tiresias (who according to legend had known sex as both a man and a woman, and declaring the woman's pleasures ten times finer had been struck blind by a goddess, irritated that the secret was out) wandering through the wilds of the Americas in search of Tesla, until he found her in the rubble of Palomo Grove, where they made love, at last, with the ground cracking open around them.

At about the same time Tesia was falling asleep in a motel somewhere south of Salem, Oregon, Erwin was stirring from a strange slumber to find himself lying on the floor of his own living room. Somebody had lit a fire in the grate-he could see it flickering from the corner of his eye-and he was glad of the fact, because for some reason he was incredibly cold; colder than he could ever remember being in his life before.

He had to work hard to recall the return journey from the creek. He had not come alone; of that he was certain, Fletcher had come too. They'd waited until dusk, hadn't they? Waited in the ruins of the house until the first stars showed, and then wound their way through the least populated streets. Had he left the car down by the Masonic Hall? Presumably so. He vaguely remembered Fletcher saying that he despised engines, but that sounded so absurd Erwin dismissed it as delirium. What was there to hate in an engine?

He started to raise his head off the ground, but Lifting it an inch was enough to induce nausea, so he lay down again. The motion, however, brought a voice out of the shadows. Fletcher was here in the room with him.

"You're awake," he said.

"I think I must have the flu," Erwin replied. "I feel terrible."

"It'll pass," Fletcher replied. "Just lie still."

"I need some water. Maybe some aspirin. My head-2'

"Your needs are of no importance," Fletcher said. "they too will pass." A little irritated by this, Erwin rolled his head to one side to see if he could get a glimpse of Fletcher, but it was the remains of a chair his eyes found: one of a quartet of Colonial pieces which had cost him several thousand, now reduced to scrap wood. He let out a groan.

"What happened to my lovely furniture?"

"I fed the fire with it," Fletcher replied.

This was more than Erwin could take. Defying his giddiness, he sat up, only to discover that the other chairs had also gone for tinderwood, and that the rest of the roomwhich he had kept as meticulously as his files-was in total disarray. His prints gone from the walls, his collection of stuffed birds swept from the shelves.

"What happened?" he said. "Did somebody break in?"

"It was your doing, not mine," Fletcher replied.

"Out of the question." Erwin's gaze sought Fletcher as he spoke and found him sitting in the one chair that wasn't tinder, his back to Erwin. In front of him, the window. Beyond the window, darkness.

"Believe me, you're responsible," Fletcher said. "If you had just been a little more compliant."

"What are you talking about?" Erwin said. He was getting angry, which was in turn making his head thump.

"Just lie down," Fletcher said. "All of this will pass, by and by."

"Stop saying that," Erwin replied. "I want some explanations, damn it."

"Explanations?" said Fletcher. "Oh, those are always so difficult." He turned from the window, and by some trick Erwin didn't comprehend, the whole chair swiveled with him, though he put no effort into realigning it. The firelight flattered him. His skin looked healthier than Erwin remembered it looking, his eyes brighter. "I told you I'd come here with a purpose," he said.

Erwin recalled that claim more clearly than any other detail of recent events. "You came to save me from banality," he replied.

"And how do you suppose I'll do that?" Fletcher said.

"I don't know and right now I don't care."

"What more do you have to care about?" Fletcher asked him. "Your furniture? It's a little late for that. Your frailty? Too late for that too, I'm afraid-"

Erwin didn't like the way this conversation was going; not at all. He reached for the mantelpiece, caught hold of it, and started to haul himself to his feet.

"What are you doing?" Fletcher wanted to know.

"I'm going to get mysclf some rncdication," he @d. It would not be wise, he suspected, simply to announce that he was going to call the police. "Can I get you anything?" he added lightly.

"Such as?"

"Something to eat or drink? I've got juice, soda water@' His legs were weak, but the door was just a few strides away. He tottered towards it.

"Nothing for me," Fletcher replied. "I have everything I need here." Erwin reached for the door handle, barely listening to Fletcher now. He wanted to get out of this room, out of this house in fact, even if it meant shivering in the street until the police arrived.

As his fist closed around the handle, the firelightwhich had been so kind to Fletcher-showed him the state of his flesh. The news was not good. His skin was hanging loosely at his wrist, as though the sinew had withered. He pulled the sleeve of his shirt back from his arm, and the sight made him cry out. No wonder he was weak. He was emaciated; his forearm down to little more than nerve and bone.

Only now did the significance of Fletcher's last remark sink in. Nothingfor me "Oh God no," Erwin said, and started to pull on the door. It was locked, of course, and the key gone.

I have everything I need here.

He threw himself against the door and beat on it, unleashing a yell. As it died in his throat for want of wind he heard a motion behind him, and glanced over his shoulder to see Fletcher-still seated on the last Colonial chair-moving towards him. He turned to face his devourer, back hard against the door.

"You promised you were going to save me," he said.

"And is your life not banality?" Fletcher said. "And will ath not save you from it?"

Erwin opened his mouth to say: No, my life isn't banal. I've got a secret, such a secret.

But before he could utter a word Fletcher reached out and caught hold of his hands@old flesh on cold flesh-and he felt the last of his life rushing out of him, as if eager to be gone into a body that would use it more wisely.

He started to sob, as much in rage at its desertion as in fear, and he went on sobbing as the substance of him was sucked away and sucked away, until there was not enough of him left even to sob.

It had not been Joe's intention to venture far up the mountain. He'd intended to stay among the trees on the lower slope until the last of the late-night traffic had died away in the streets below. Then he'd descend and make his way to Phoebe's house. That had been the plan. But sometime in the middle of the evening-he'd no way of telling exactly when-he'd decided to walk a little way to relieve the boredom, and once he'd started, his dreamy thoughts had counseled him to keep on climbing until he was clear of the trees. It was a fine night. There would be such a view from the Heights: The city, the valley, and more important than either, a glimpse of the world beyond, the world where he and Phoebe would be headed after tonight. So he'd climbed and climbed, but the trees, instead of thinning, grew so dense for a time he could barely see the stars between their branches. And still he climbed, the narcotic side-effects of the drug leaving him indifferent to the fact that its painkilling properties were steadily wearing off. It almost added to the pleasure of the ascent that some part of his mind and body was suffering: a touch of bitterness to sharpen his bliss.