Clive Barker - Mister B. Gone

"This is the Archbishop's business," he yelled at them. "Not yours. You keep away, all of you!"

Finally, when I was just a few strides from the top of the slope, I looked back to see that his orders were being obeyed by most of the crowd, but not by all. Several men and women pursued me up the incline, though they were several strides behind the two soldiers.

I reached the trees without anyone catching up with me, and plunged into the cover of the thicket. Panicked birds let out warning cries as they deserted the branches over my head to retreat into the depths of the forest, while in the undergrowth rodents and snakes found bolt-holes of their own. Even wild pigs fled away squealing.

Now there was only the noise of my own coarse, pained breath, and the din of bushes being torn out of the earth if they blocked my way.

But I had done far too much running since the previous night, and had not eaten, nor drunk so much as a cup of rainwater, in that time. Now I was light-headed, the scene before me perilously close to flickering out. I could run no longer. It was time to turn and face my pursuers.

I did so in a small grove between the trees, lit by the brightening sky. I ran my last paces across the flower-littered grass and leaned my aching body against a tree so old it had surely sprouted the day the Flood retreated. There I waited, determined to endure with dignity whatever fate the soldiers and the lynch-mob on their heels had in mind for me.

The first of my pursuers to appear on the far side of the grove was the soldier clad in mud as well as armour. He took his helmet off so as to see me better, showing me in doing so his own muddy, sweaty, raging face. His hair was cropped to little more than a shadow; only his dark beard had been allowed to grow.

"Well you've given me quite an education, demon," he said. "I knew nothing about your people."

"The Demonation."

"What?"

"My people. We're the Demonation."

"Sounds more like a disease than a people," he said, curling his lip with contempt. "Luckily, I've got the cure." Pointing his halberd in my direction, he tossed down his helmet and unsheathed his sword. "Two cures, in fact," he said, moving towards me. "Which shall I stick you with first?"

I looked up from the roots of the tree, idly wondering how deep into the earth they went; how far short of Hell. The soldier was halfway across the grove.

"Which shall it be, demon?"

My dizzied gaze went from one weapon to the other.

"Your sword…"

"All right. You've made your choice."

"No, your sword… it looks cheap. Your friend has a much finer sword. The blade is nearly twice as long as yours, and so heavy, so large, I think he could probably drive it all the way through you from behind, armour and all, and the mere length of what came out of your belly would be longer than that ridiculous weapon of yours."

"I'll show you ridiculous!" the soldier said. "I'll cut — "

He stopped midsentence, his body convulsing as the claim I'd just made was proved, the sword his companion wielded emerging from the armour intended to protect his abdomen. It was bright with his blood. He dropped his halberd, but continued, though his fist trembled, to cling to his sword.

All the color had gone from his cheeks, and all trace of rage or murderous intent had gone with it. He didn't even attempt to look back at his executioner. He simply lifted his own paltry sword up so as to compare its length with the visible portion of the blade that had run him through. He drew one last, blood-clogged breath, which gained him a few seconds more in which to lay the two blades side by side.

Having done so he lifted his gaze and, fighting to keep his leaden eyelids from closing, he looked at me and murmured:

"I would have killed you, demon, if I'd had a bigger sword."

Upon the uttering of which, his hand dropped to his side, the length-impaled blade slipping from his fingers.

The soldier behind him now withdrew his own impressive weapon, and the corpse of my tormentor fell forwards, his head no more than a yard from my mud-encrusted feet.

"What's your name?" he said to me.

"Jakabok Botch. But everybody calls me Mister B."

"I'm Quitoon Pathea. Everybody calls me Sir."

"I'll remember that, sir."

"You got hooked by The Fisherman, I'll bet."

"The Fisherman?"

"His real name's Cawley."

"Oh. Him. Yes. How did you work that out?"

"Well, you're obviously not part of the Archbishop's guard."

Before I could question him further he put his finger to his lips, hushing me while he listened. My human pursuers had not turned back once they had reached the fringes of the forest. To judge by the way their clamor knitted, they had become a small mob, with one thought on their minds and tongues.

"Kill the demon! Kill the demon!"

"This isn't good, Botch. I'm not here to save your tail."

"Tails."

"Tails?"

"I have two," I said tearing off the dead lover's trousers and letting my tails uncoil.

Quitoon laughed.

"Those are as fine a pair of tails as I ever saw, Mister B.," he said, with genuine admiration. "I was of half a mind to let them finish you off, but now I see those — "

He looked back towards the torn undergrowth where the mob would soon appear. Then back at me:

"Here," he said, casually tossing his glorious sword in my direction.

I caught it, or more correctly, the sword caught me, convulsing in the air between its owner's confident hand and my own fumbling fingers so as to place itself in my grip. The soldier was already turning his back on me.

"Where are you going?"

"To raise the heat in this, " he said, slamming his fist against the chest plate of his armour.

"I don't understand."

"Just take cover when I call your name."

"Wait!" I said. "Please. Wait! What am I supposed to do with your sword?"

"Fight, Mister B. Fight for your life, your tails, and the Demonation!"

"But — "

The soldier raised his hand. I shut my mouth. Then he disappeared into the shadows off to the left of the grove, leaving me, the sword, a corpse which was already drawing summer flies eager to drink his blood and the noise of the approaching mob.

Let me pause a moment, not just to take a breath before I attempt to describe what happened next, but because in revisiting these events I see with a fresh clarity how the words uttered and the deeds done in that little grove changed me.

I had been a creature of little consequence, even to myself. I'd lived unremarkably (excepting perhaps the patricide) but I would not, I was suddenly determined, die that way.

The shape of the world changed in that place and moment. It had always seemed to me like a Palace that I would never know the joy of entering, for I had been marked as a pariah when I was still in my mother's womb. I was wrong, wrong ! I was my own Palace, every room of which was filled with splendors that only I could name or enumerate.

This revelation came in the little time between Quitoon Pathea's disappearance into the shadows and the arrival of the mob, and even now, having thought about the event countless times, I am still not certain as to why. Perhaps it was simply having escaped death so many times that day, first at the hands of Cawley's gang, then from the lover-boy's knife attack and later from the crowd on Joshua's Field, and that I was now facing it yet again — this time with a weapon in my hands that I had no knowledge of how to wield, and therefore expecting to die — that I gave myself the freedom to see my life clearly just this once.

Whatever the reason, I remember the most exquisite rush of pleasure with which that vision of the world blossomed in my skull, a rush that wasn't spoiled in the least by the appearance of the human enemy. They appeared not only from the spot where I had entered the grove, but also from between the trees to left and right of it. There were eleven of them; and they all had weapons of some description. Several had knives, of course, while others carried makeshift clubs of living wood, hacked off trees.