Clive Barker - Coldheart Canyon

Todd, meanwhile, stood watching the sky. There was, it seemed, a subtle change in the configuration of the heavens. The moon was very slowly moving off the face of the sun.

Suddenly, there was a shriek from one of the Duke's men. The goat-boy had found a place where his hand and arm could fit through the bars without touching the icons, and using a moment of the man's distraction, had reached out and was digging his short-fingered hand into the meat around the man's eye. He had firm hold of it; firm enough to shake the man back and forth like a puppet. Blood gushed from the place, splashing against the goat-boy's palm and running down his victim's face.

The horse on which the crate was set reared up in panic, and the crate-which had not yet been firmly fixed to the saddle, slid off. The creature did not let go of his victim. He hung onto the man's face as the crate crashed to the ground. It did not break open, as no doubt the goat-boy had hoped; and in a fit of frustration he started to tear the man's flesh open still further.

The Duke was swift. He came to the place in two strides and with a single swing of his sword separated the goat-boy's hand from his wrist. The creature let out a sickening, shrill wail.

Tammy -- who'd watched all this in a state of horrified disbelief (how could this cruel monster be the same childish thing she'd had sucking on her moments ago?) -- now covered her ears against the noise of both victims, man and boy. Though she'd muted the scene she couldn't take her eyes off it: the hunter, dropping to his knees with the child's hand still fixed in his face like some foul parasite; the goat-boy in his crate, stanching his stump with his other hand; the Duke, wiping the blood off his blade-

There was a short moment of calm as the goat-boy's sobs became subdued and the wounded man, having pulled the hooked finger out of his flesh, covered his wound with a cloth, to slow the flow of blood.

The calm lasted no more than twenty seconds. It was broken by a grinding sound in the earth, as though a machine made of stone and iron was on the move down there.

"What fresh hell is this?" Jerry murmured.

Tammy's eyes were on the crate, and its contents. The goat-boy had given up all his complaints, and was peering between the bars with his mouth open and slack. He knew exactly what was about to happen.

"Earthquake?" Eppstadt said.

"No," Tammy replied, reading the look on the goat-boy's face. "Lilith."

ONE

The ground opened up as though it was going to bring forth some fantastic spring: red shoots, as fine as needles, appeared in their tens of thousands, pierced the ground. A V-shaped crack, each side perhaps twenty feet in length, then erupted into the burgeoning ground, the apex no more than a yard from the spot where had goat-boy's crate sat.

The steady reverberation of immense machinery increased, and it now became apparent what purpose this machine had, for an opening appeared in the earth, resembling the upper part of some vast reptilian snout. The red needles continued to grow, both in size and number, especially around the lip; and at a certain point, when they were perhaps a foot tall, or taller, they produced hosts of tiny purple-black flowers, which gave off a scent no one in the vicinity (except, of course, Qwaftzefoni) was familiar with. It was pungent, like a spice, but there was nothing about it which would ever have persuaded a cook to use it: the smell, and thus presumably the taste, was so powerful that it would have overwhelmed even the most robust dish. It made everyone feel faintly nauseated by its forcefulness. Eppstadt, who had the weakest stomach, actually threw up.

By the time he'd done with his retching the extraordinary growth-cycle of the plant had carried it past its peak, however. The small black blossoms were in sudden decay, their petals losing their colour. And now, in its autumnal mode, the odor of the plant changed. What had been an almost unbearable stench a minute before became transformed by the process of corruption, its foulness entirely evaporated.

What remained was a scent that somehow conspired with the souls of everyone present to put them in mind of some sweet memory: something lost; something sacrificed; something taken by time or circumstance. Nor, though their bodies were held in the embrace of these feelings, could they have named them. The scent was too subtle in its workings to be pinned to any one memory. All that mattered was the state of utter vulnerability in which it left everyone. By the time the Hell's Mouth had opened, and Lilith herself had stepped out of its long, sharp shadows, her flora had enraptured the souls of everyone who stood before her. Whatever they saw from now on, whatever they said and did, was colored by the way the scent of her strange garden had touched them.

Was she beautiful? Well, perhaps. The scent was beautiful, so it seemed she -- who was shaped by the scent, as if her body were carved from perfumed smoke -- was surely beautiful too, though a more logical assessment might have pointed out how curiously made her face was, close in colour and texture to the blossoms in their corrupted phase.

Her voice, that same less dreamy assessor might have said, was unmusical, and her dress, despite its great size and elaboration (tiny, incomprehensible motifs hand-sewn in neat rows, millions of times) more proof of obsession, even of madness, than of beauty.

Even allowing that there can be not one good and reliable report of Lilith, the Devil's wife, some things may still be clearly said of her. She was happy, for one. She laughed with almost indecent glee at the sight of her caged child, though she plainly saw that he was missing a hand. And her manner, when dealing with the Duke, was nothing short of exquisite.

"You've suffered much for your crime against my household," she said, speaking in cultured English, which -- by some little miracle of her making -- he understood. "Do you have any idea how many years have passed since you first began to hunt for that idiot child of mine?" She stabbed a finger at the creature in the crate, who started to moan and complain, until she shushed him by slapping the bars.

The Duke replied that no, he did not know.

"Well, perhaps it's best you don't," Lilith told him. "But what you should know, because it will shape what happens when I have taken this imp of mine back, is that your natural life-span-your three score years and ten-was over centuries ago."

The Duke looked puzzled at this; and then aghast, as he realized the consequences of what she was telling him: that he and his men had hidden their lives away in this fruitless Hunt; around and around and around, chasing a baby who'd put on perhaps two years in the period of the pursuit.

"My father?" he said. "My brother?"

"All dead," Lilith said, with some little show of sympathy. "All that you knew and remembered has gone."

The Duke's face remained unchanged, but tears filled up his eyes and then spilled down his cheeks.

"Men and your hunts," Lilith went on, addressing, it seemed, some larger error in the Duke's sex. "If you hadn't been out killing healthy stags and boars in the first place, you could have married and lived and loved. But," she shrugged, "we do as our instincts dictate, yes? And yours brought you here. To the very edge of your own grave."

She was telling him, it seemed, that he'd run out of life and now, after all the sacrifices of his Hunt, his reward would be death: pure, simple and comfortless.

"Let me have my child then," she said. "Then we'll have this wretched business over and done with."

It was at this point that Eppstadt spoke up once more. He'd had a twitching little smile on his face for a while, the reason for which was simple enough: this latest spectacle (the earth opening up, the flowers, the scent that toyed with memory) had finally convinced him that one of his earlier explanations for all of this was most likely the correct one. He was lying unconscious somewhere in the house (probably having been struck by a falling object during the earthquake) and was fantasizing this whole absurd scene. He very seldom felt as self-willed in dreams as he felt in this one; indeed, he seldom dreamed at all; or at least remembered his dreams. But now that he had this nonsense in his grasp, he wasn't ready to let it go just yet. Ever the negotiator, he stepped forward and put out his hand, to prevent the Duke passing over the child.