Clive Barker - Mister B. Gone

I didn't tell you yet that Mainz, the town where Gutenberg resided, was built beside a river. In fact, there were parts of the town on both banks, and a wooden bridge between the two that looked poorly built, and likely to be swept away should the river get too ambitious.

I didn't make the crossing immediately, even though it was clear from a quick visit to the riverbank that the greater part of the town lay on the far side. First I scoured the streets and alleyways of the smaller part of the town, hoping that if I kept to the shadows, and kept my senses alert, I'd overhear some fragment of gossip, or an outpouring of fear-filled incoherence; signs, in short, that Quitoon was at work here. Once I had located someone who had information it would be quite easy, I knew, to follow them until I had them on some quiet street, then corner them and press them get to spit out all the little details. People were usually quick to unburden themselves of their secrets as long as I promised to leave them alone when they'd done so.

But my search was fruitless. There were gossips to be overheard, certainly, but their talk was just the usual dreary malice that is the stuff of gossiping women everywhere: talk of adultery, cruelty, and disease. I heard nothing that suggested some world-changing work was being undertaken in this squalid, little town.

I decided to cross the river, pausing on my way to the bridge only to coerce food from a maker of meat pies and drink from a vendor of the local beer. The latter was barely drinkable, but the pies were good, the meat rat or dog, at a guess — not bland but spicy and tender. I went back to the beerseller, and told him that his ale was foul and that I had a good mind to slaughter him for not preventing me from buying it. In terror, the man gave me all the money he had had about his person, which was more than enough to purchase three more meat pies from the pieman, who was clearly perplexed that I, the thuggish thief, had returned to make a legitimate purchase, paying for the coerced pie while I bought the others.

Pleased to have my money though he was, he did not hesitate, once he'd been paid, to tell me to go on my way.

"You may be honest," he said, "but you still stink of something bad."

"How bad is bad?" I said, my mouth crammed with meat and pastry.

"You won't take offense?"

"I swear."

"All right, well, let me put it this way, I've put plenty of things in my pies that would probably make my customers puke if they knew. But even if you were the last piece of meat in Christendom, and without your meat I would go out of business, I'd go be a sewer man instead of trying to make something tasty of you."

"Am I being insulted?" I said. "Because if I am — "

"You said you wouldn't take offense," the pieman reminded me.

"True. True." I took another mouthful of pie, and then said: "The name Gutenberg."

"What about them?"

"Them?"

"It's a big family. I don't know much except bits of gossip my wife tells me. She did say Old Man Gutenberg was close to dying, if that's what you've come about."

I gave him a puzzled stare, though I was less puzzled than I appeared.

"What would make you think I was in Mainz to see a dying man?"

"Well, I just assumed, you being a demon and Old Man Gutenberg having a reputation, I'm not saying it's true, I'm just telling you what Marta tells me, Marta's my wife, and she says he's — "

"Wait," I said. "You said demon?"

"I don't think Old Man Gutenberg's a demon."

"Christ in Heaven, pieman! No. I'm not suggesting any member of the Gutenberg clan is a demon. I'm telling you that I'm the demon."

"I know."

"That's my point. How do you know?"

"Oh. It was your tail."

I glanced behind me to see what the pieman was seeing. He was right. I had indeed allowed one of my tails to escape my breeches.

I ordered it to return into hiding, and it scornfully withdrew itself. When it was done, the dullard pieman seemed congenially pleased on my behalf that I should have such an obedient tail.

"Aren't you at least a little afraid of what you just saw?"

"No. Not really. Marta, that's my wife, said she'd seen many celestial and infernal presences around town this last week."

"Is she right in the head?"

"She married me. You be the judge."

"Then no." I replied.

The pieman looked puzzled. "Did you just insult me?" he said.

"Hush, I'm thinking," I told him.

"Can I go, then?"

"No, you can't. First you're going to take me to the Gutenberg house."

"But I'm covered in dirt and bits of pie."

"It'll be something to tell the kids," I told him. "How you led the Angel of Death himself — Mister Jakabok Botch, 'Mister B.' for short — all the way through town."

"No, no, no. I beg you, Mister B., I'm not strong enough. It would kill me. My children would be orphans. My wife, my poor wife — "

"Marta."

"I know her name."

"She'd be widowed."

"Yes."

"I see. I have no choice in the matter."

"None."

Then he shrugged, and we took our way through the streets, the pieman leading, me with my hand on his shoulder, as if I were blind.

"Tell me something," the pieman said matter-of-factly. "Is this the Apocalypse the priest reads to us about? The one from Revelations?"

"Demonation! No! "

"Then why all the presences celestial and infernal?"

"At a guess it's because something important is being invented. Something that will change the world forever."

"What?"

"I don't know. What does this man Gutenberg do?"

"He's a goldsmith, I believe."

I was thankful for his guidance, though not his conversation. The streets of the town all looked alike — mud, people, and grey-and-black houses, many less luxurious than some of the ruins Quitoon and I had slept in as we'd traveled.

Quitoon! Quitoon! Why was my every second thought of him, and of his absence? Rather than free myself of the obsession, I made a game of it, reciting to the pieman a list of the most noteworthy things Quitoon and I had eaten as we'd gone on our way: dog-fish, cat-fish, bladder-fish; potato blood soup, holy water soup with waffles, nettle and needle soup, dead man's gruel thickened with the ash of a burned bishop, and on and on, my memory serving me better rather than I'd expected. I was actually enjoying my recollections, and would have happily continued to share more unforgettable morsels had I not been interrupted by a rising howl of anguish from the streets ahead of us, accompanied by the unmistakable smell of burning human flesh. Seconds later the source of both the noise and the noisome stench came into view: a man and a woman, with flames leaping three feet or more from their lushly coiffed heads, which the fire was consuming with enthusiasm, as it was their backs and buttocks and legs. I stepped out of their path, but the pieman remained there, staring at them, until I took his arm and dragged him out of their way.

When I looked at him I found that he was staring up at the narrow strip of sky visible between the eaves of the houses on either side of the street. I followed the direction of his gaze to discover that despite the brightness of the summer sky there were forms moving overhead that were brighter still. They weren't clouds, though they were as pristine and unpredictable as clouds, schools of amorphous shapes moving across the sky in the same direction that we were traveling.

"Angels," the pieman said.

I was genuinely astonished that he could know such a thing. "Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure," he replied, not without a twinge of irritation. "Watch. They're going to do this thing they do."

I watched. And to my astonishment I saw them converge upon one another, until all the shapeless masses had become a single incandescent form that then began to spin counterclockwise in a spiral motion, its center growing still brighter until it erupted, spitting motes of light like a bursting seed pod. The seeds came twirling down onto the roofs of the houses, where, like a late winter snow, they went to nothing.