Clive Barker - Imajica 02 - The Reconciliator

Perhaps this was true, but he kept on retreating nevertheless, as much from his mother as from the vapor, until he felt the comfort of his angels at his back.

"Guard me," he told them, his voice tremulous.

Clem wrapped his arms around Gentle's shoulders. "It's a woman, Maestro," he murmured. "Since when were you afraid of women?"

"Since always," Gentle replied. "Hold on, for Christ's sake."

Then the rain broke against their faces, and Clem let out a sigh of pleasure as its languor enclosed them. Gentle seized hard hold of his protector's arms, his fingers digging deep, but if the rain had the sinew to detach him from Clem's embrace it didn't attempt to do so. It lingered around their heads for no more than thirty seconds, then simply passed away through the open door.

As soon as it had gone, Gentle turned to Clem. "Nothing to hide, eh?" he said. "I don't think She believed you."

"Are you hurt?"

"No. She just got inside my head. Why does every damn thing want to get inside my head?"

"It must be the view," Tay remarked, grinning with his lover's lips.

"She only wanted to know if your purpose was pure, child," Celestine said.

"Pure?" Gentle said, staring at his mother venomously. "What right has She got to judge me?"

"What you call your Father's business is the business of every soul in the Imajica."

She had not yet claimed her modesty from the floor, and as she approached him he averted his eyes.

"Cover yourself, Mother," he said. "For God's sake, cover yourself."

Then he turned and headed out into the hallway, calling after the intruder as he went.

"Wherever you are," he yelled, "I want you out of this house! Clem, look downstairs. I'll go up."

He pelted up the flight, his fury mounting at the thought of this spirit invading the Meditation Room. The door stood open. Little Ease was cowering in the corner when he entered.

"Where is She?" Gentle demanded. "Is She here?"

"Is who here?"

Gentle didn't reply but went from wall to wall like a prisoner, beating his palms against them. There was no sound of running water from the brick, however, nor any drizzle, however fine, in the air. Content that the room was free of the visitor's taint, he returned to the door.

"If it starts raining in here," he said to Little Ease, "yell blue murder."

"Any color you like, Liberatore."

Gentle slammed the door and headed along the landing, searching all the rooms in the same manner. Finding them empty he climbed the last flight and went through the rooms above. Their air was bone-dry. But as he started back down the stairs he heard laughter from the street. It was Monday, though the sound he was making was lighter than Gentle had ever heard from his lips before. Suspicious of this music, he picked up the speed of his descent, meeting Clem at the bottom of the stairs and telling him the rooms were empty below, then racing across the hallway to the front door.

Monday had been busy with his chalks since Gentle had last crossed the threshold. The pavement at the bottom of the steps was covered with his designs: not copies of glamour girls this time but elaborate abstractions that spilled over the curb and onto the sun-softened tarmac. The artist had left off his work, however, and was now standing in the middle of the street. Gentle recognized the language of his body instantly. Head thrown back, eyes closed, he was bathing in the air. "Monday!"

But the boy didn't hear. He continued to luxuriate in this unction, the water running over his close-cropped skull like rippling fingers, and he might have gone on bathing until he drowned in it had Gentle's approach not driven the Goddess off. The rain went from the air in a heartbeat, and Monday's eyes opened. He squinted against the sky, his laughter faltering.

"Where'd the rain go?" he said. "There was no rain."

"What do you call this, boss?" Monday said, proffering arms from which the last of the waters still ran. "Take it from me, it wasn't rain."

"Whatever it was, it was fine by me," Monday said. He hauled his sodden T-shirt up over his head and used it as a mop to wipe his face. "Are you all right, boss?"

Gentle was scanning the street, looking for some sign of the Goddess.

"I will be," he said. "You go back to work, huh? You haven't decorated the door yet." "What do you want on it?"

"You're the artist," Gentle said, distracted from the conversation by the state of the street.

He hadn't realized until now how full of presences it had become, the revenants not simply occupying the pavement but hovering in the wilted foliage like hanged men or keeping their vigils on the eaves. They were benign enough, he thought. They had good reason to wish him well in this endeavor. Half a year ago, on the night he and Pie had left on their travels, the mystif had given Gentle a grim lesson in the pain that the spirits of this and every other Dominion suffered.

"No spirit is happy," Pie had said. "They haunt the doors, waiting to leave, but there's nowhere for them to go."

But hadn't there been some hope mooted then, that at the end of the journey ahead lay a solution to the anguish of the dead? Pie had known that solution even then, and must have longed to call Gentle Reconciler, to tell him that the wit lay somewhere in his head to open the doors at which the dead stood waiting and let them into Heaven.

"Be patient," he murmured, knowing the revenants heard. "It'll be soon, I swear. It'll be soon."

The sun was drying the Goddess's rain from his face, and, happy to stay out in the heat until he was dry, he wandered away from the house, while Monday resumed his whistling on the step. What a place this had become, Gentle thought: angels in the house behind him, lascivious rains in the street, ghosts in the trees. And he, the Maestro, wandering among them, ready to do the deed that would change their worlds forever. There would never be such a day again.

His optimistic mood darkened, however, as he approached the end of the street, for other than the sound of his footsteps, and the shrill noise of Monday's whistle, the world was absolutely quiet. The alarms that had raised such a din earlier in the day were now hushed. No bell rang, no voice cried out. It was as if all life beyond this thoroughfare had taken a vow of silence. He picked up his pace. Either his agitation was contagious or else the revenants that lingered at the end of the street were more jittery than those closer to the house. They milled around, their numbers, and perhaps their unease, sufficient to disturb the baked dust in the gutter. They made no attempt to impede his progress but parted like a cold curtain, allowing him to step over the invisible boundary of Gamut Street. He looked in both directions. The dogs that had gathered here for a time had gone; the birds had fled every eave and telephone wire. He held his breath and listened through the whine in his head for some evidence of life: an engine, a siren, a shout. But there was nothing. His unease now profound, he glanced back into Gamut Street. Loath though he was to leave it, he supposed it would be safe while the revenants remained at the perimeter. Though they were too insubstantial to protect the street from attackers, it was doubtful that anyone would dare enter while they milled and churned at the corner. Taking that small comfort, he headed towards Gray's Inn Road, his walk becoming a run as he went. The heat was less welcome now. It made his legs heavy and his lungs burn. But he didn't slacken his pace until he reached the intersection.

Gray's Inn Road and High Holborn were two of the city's major conduits. Had he stood at this corner on the coldest December midnight, there would have been some traffic upon one or the other. But there was nothing now; nor was there a murmur from any street, square, alleyway, or circus within earshot. The sphere of influence that had left Gamut Street untrammeled for two centuries had apparently spread, and if the citizens of London were still in residence they were keeping clear of this harrowed terrain. • And yet, despite the silence, the air was not unfreighted. There was something else upon it, which kept Gentle from turning on his heel and wandering back to Gamut Street: a smell so subtle that the tang of cooking asphalt almost overwhelmed it, but so unmistakable he could not ignore even the traces that came his way. He lingered at the corner, waiting for another gust of wind. It came after a time, confirming his suspicions. There was only one source for this sickly perfume, and only one man in this city—no, in this Dominion—who had access to that source. The In Ovo had been opened again, and this time the beasts that had been called forth were not the nonsense stuff he'd encountered at the tower. These were of another magnitude entirely. He'd seen and smelled their like only once, two hundred years before, and they'd done incalculable mischief. Given that the breeze was so languid, their scent could not be coming all the way from Highgate. Sartori and his legion were considerably closer than that: perhaps ten streets away, perhaps two, perhaps about to turn the corner of Gray's Inn Road and come in sight.