Clive Barker - Mister B. Gone

I quickly snatched his clothes off the ground before his corpse sank down and bled upon them.

The girl had stopped her entreaties and was staring at the dead youth.

"It was an accident," I told her. "I had no intention of…"

She opened her mouth.

"Don't scream," I said.

She screamed. Christ, how she screamed. It was a wonder the birds didn't drop from the sky, slaughtered by that scream. I didn't try and stop her. I would have only ended up knocking the life out of her, and she was too lovely, even in her hysterical state, to lose her young life.

I put the dead youth's clothes on as quickly as I could. They stunk of his humanity, his doubt, his lust, his stupidity; all of it was in the threads of his shirt. I don't even want to tell you what his trousers stunk of. Still, he was bigger than I, which was useful. I was able to curl up my tails and stuff them down the trousers, one against each buttock, which effectively concealed them. While his clothes had been too big for me, his boots were too small, so I was obliged to leave them and go barefoot. My feet were recognizable demonatic, scaly and three clawed, but I would have to take the risk of their being noticed.

The girl — do I have need to mention? — was still screaming, though I'd done nothing to make her fear me beside my casual remark about strangling her with my tail and accidentally smashing her lover-boy's skull. It was only when I approached her that she ceased her din.

"If you torture me — "

"I have to — "

"My father will send assassins after you, all the way back to Hell. They'll crucify you upside down and roast you over a slow fire."

"I have no fear of nails," I said. "Or of flames. And your father's assassins will not find me in Hell, so don't send them looking. They'll only be eaten alive. Or worse."

"What's worse than being eaten alive?" the girl said, her eyes widening, not with horror but with curiosity.

Her question tested my memory and found it wanting. As a child I'd been able to rattle off the Forty-seven Torments in ascending order of agony at such speed and so completely free of error that I had been considered something of a prodigy. But now I could barely recall more than a dozen agonies on the list.

"Just take it from me," I said, "there's much worse than being eaten. And if you want to save innocents from suffering, then you'll keep your mouth shut and pretend you never laid eyes on me."

She stared back at me with all the sparkling intelligence of a maggot. I decided to waste no further time with her. I picked her clothes up from the ground.

"I'm taking these with me," I told her.

"I'll freeze to death."

"No, you won't. The sun's getting warm now."

"But I'll still be naked."

"Yes, you will. And unless you want to walk through the crowd down there in your present state, you'll stay here, out of sight, until somebody comes to find you."

"Nobody will find me here."

"Yes they will." I assured her. "Because I'll tell them, in half an hour or so, when I'm on the far side of the field."

"You promise?" she said.

"Demons don't make promises. Or if we do, we don't keep them."

"Just this once. For me."

"Very well. I promise. You stay here, and somebody will come to fetch you in a while with this." I lifted up the dress she'd so willingly removed just a few minutes before. "Meanwhile, why don't you do some good for your soul and offer up some prayers to your martyrs and your angels?"

To my astonishment, she fell instantly to her knees, clasping her hands together and closing her eyes, and began to do exactly as I had suggested.

"O Angels, hear me! I am in jeopardy of my soul — "

I left her to it and, dressed in my purloined clothes, I strode out from behind the boulder and down the slope towards the field.

So, now you know how I came to walk the earth. It's not a pleasant story. But every word of it is true.

So now are you satisfied? Have you had enough confessions out of me? I've admitted to patricides. I've told you how I fell in love, and how quickly and tragically my dreams of Caroline's adoration were snatched from me. And I've told you how I kept myself from killing off the Archbishop's daughter, though I'm sure most of my kind would have slaughtered her on the spot. They would have been right to do so, as it turned out. But you don't need to hear that. I've told you enough. Nor do you need to hear about the Archbishop and the bonfires on Joshua's Field. Believe me, it wouldn't please you. Why not? Because it's a very unflattering picture of your kind.

On the other hand… maybe that's exactly why I should tell you. Yes, why not? You've obliged me to uncover the flaws in my soul. Maybe you should hear the naked truth about your own people. And before you protest and tell me that I'm talking about distant days, when your species was far cruder and crueler than it is now, think .

Consider how many genocides are under way as you sit reading this, how many villages, tribes, even nations, are being erased. Good. So listen and I'll tell you about the glorious horrors of Joshua's Field. This one's on me.

As I descended the slope, I took in the vista below. There were hundreds of people assembled for the eight o'clock fire lighting, kept in check by a line of soldiers, their halberds pointed at the crowd so as to slit from navel to neck anyone foolish enough to try and get a closer look at the scene. In the large open space the soldiers were guarding a semicircle of woodpiles that had been raised, twice as tall as their builders. The three woodpiles in the center of the crescent were distinguished by having inverted wooden crosses raised above them.

Facing this grim array were two viewing stands. The larger of the two was a simple construction resembling a flight of deep, tall stairs, which was already almost full of God-fearing lords and ladies who had no doubt paid well for the privilege of watching the executions in such comfort. The other construction was very much smaller, and draped and canopied with lush red velvet, to protect those who would be seated inside from wind or rain. A large cross was raised above the canopy in case anyone would be in doubt that this was where the new Archbishop and his entourage would be seated.

Once I got down to the base of the slope, however, my own view was entirely blocked. Why? Because though it irks me to admit it, I was shorter than the peasants all around me. It wasn't only my vision that was besieged; so was my sense of smell. I was pressed upon from all sides by filthy, flea-infested bodies, whose breath was sickening and whose flatulence, its source of which I was regrettably closer than most, barely short of toxic.

Panic seized me, like a snake weaving its way up my spine from bowels to brain, turning my thoughts to excrement. I began to flail wildly and the sound my mother made in the depths of her nightmares escaped me, as shrill as a spitted baby. It opened cracks in the mud beneath me.

My noise inevitably drew the unwelcome attention of those in my vicinity who knew where it had issued from. People retreated from me on every side. Their eyes, in which I had until now only seen the dull luster of ignorance and inbreeding, now gleamed with a superstitious horror.

"Look, the earth cracks beneath his feet!" one woman yowled.

"His feet! God in heaven, look at his feet!" another yelled.

Though the mud had done something to disguise my feet, it wasn't enough to conceal the truth.

"It's not human!"

"Hell! It's from Hell!"

A frenzy of terror immediately seized hold of the crowd. While the woman who'd begun this furor shrieked the same few words over and over — "A demon! A demon! A demon!" — others began to gabble prayers, crossing themselves in a desperate attempt to protect themselves from me.