Clive Barker - Books of Blood Vol 2

"What?" was all Cameron could manage; he hoped it stood for all the questions in his head.

"I serve Hell, Mr Cameron. And in its turn Hell serves me."

"Hell?"

"Behind you, one of the entrances to the Ninth Circle. You know your Dante, I presume?

"Lo! Dis; and lo! the place where thou hast need to arm thy heart with strength."

"Why are you here?"

"To run this race. Or rather my third familiar is already running the race. He will not be beaten this time. This time it is Hell's event, Mr Cameron, and we shall not be cheated of the prize."

"Hell," said Cameron again.

"You believe don't you? You're a good church-goer. Still pray before you eat, like any God-fearing soul. Afraid of choking on your dinner."

"How do you know I pray?"

"Your wife told me. Oh, your wife was very informative about you, Mr Cameron, she really opened up to me. Very accommodating. A confirmed analyst, after my attentions. She gave me so much... information. You're a good Socialist, aren't you, like your father."

"Politics now —"

"Oh, politics is the hub of the issue, Mr Cameron. Without politics We're lost in a wilderness, aren't we? Even Hell needs order. Nine great circles: a pecking order of punishments. Look down; see for yourself."

Cameron could feel the hole at his back: he didn't need to look.

"We stand for order, you know. Not chaos. That's just heavenly propaganda. And you know what we'll win?"

"It's a charity race."

"Charity is the least of it. We're not running this race to save the world from cancer. We're running it for government."

Cameron half-grasped the point.

"Government," he said.

"Once every century this race is run from St Paul's to the Palace of Westminster. Often it has been run at the dead of night, unheralded, unapplauded. Today it is run in full sunshine, watched by thousands. But whatever the circumstance, it is always the same race. Your athletes, against one of ours. If you win, another hundred years of democracy. If we win... as we will... the end of the world as you know it."

At his back Cameron felt a vibration. The expression on Burgess' face had abruptly changed; the confidence had become clouded, the smugness was instantly replaced by a look of nervous excitement.

"Well, well," he said, his hands flapping like birds. "It seems we are about to be visited by higher powers. How flattering —"

Cameron turned, and peered over the edge of the hole. It didn't matter how curious he was now. They had him; he may as well see all there was to see.

A wave of icy air blew up from the sunless circle and in the darkness of the shaft he could see a shape approaching. Its movement was steady, and its face was thrown back to look at the world.

Cameron could hear its breathing, see the wound of its features open and close in the murk, oily bone locking and unlocking like the face of a crab.

Burgess was on his knees, the two familiars flat on the floor to either side of him, faces to the ground.

Cameron knew he would have no other chance. He stood up, his limbs hardly in his control, and blundered towards Burgess, whose eyes were closed in reverent prayer. More by accident than intention his knee caught Burgess under the jaw as he passed, and the man was sent sprawling. Cameron's soles slid on the floor out of the ice-cavern and into the candlelit chamber beyond.

Behind him, the room was filling with smoke and sighs, and Cameron, like Lot's wife fleeing from the destruction of Sodom, glanced back just once to see the forbidden sight behind him.

It was emerging from the shaft, its grey bulk filling the hole, lit by some radiance from below. Its eyes, deep-set in the naked bone of its elephantine head, met Cameron's through the open door. They seemed to touch him like a kiss, entering his thoughts through his eyes.

He was not turned to salt. Pulling his curious glance away from the face, he skated across the ante-chamber and started to climb the stairs two and three at a time, falling and climbing, falling and climbing. The door was still ajar. Beyond it, daylight and the world.

He flung the door open and collapsed into the hallway, feeling the warmth already beginning to wake his frozen nerves. There was no noise on the stairs behind him: clearly they were too in awe of their fleshless visitor to follow him. He hauled himself along the wall of the hallway, his body wracked with shivers and chatterings.

Still they didn't follow.

Outside the day was blindingly bright, and he began to feel the exhilaration of escape. It was like nothing he'd ever felt before. To have been so close, yet survived. God had been with him after all.

He staggered along the road back to his bicycle, determined to stop the race, to tell the world —His bike was untouched, its handlebars warm as his wife's arms.

As he hooked his leg over, the look he had exchanged with Hell caught fire. His body, ignorant of the heat in his brain, continued about its business for a moment, putting its feet on the pedals and starting to ride away.

Cameron felt the ignition in his head and knew he was dead.

The look, the glance behind him —Lot's wife.

Like Lot's stupid wife —The lightning leapt between his ears: faster than thought.

His skull cracked, and the lightning, white-hot, shot out from the furnace of his brain. His eyes withered to black nuts in his sockets, he belched light from mouth and nostrils. The combustion turned him into a column of black flesh in a matter of seconds, without a flame or a wisp of smoke.

Cameron's body was completely incinerated by the time the bicycle careered off the road and crashed through the tailor's shop window, where it lay like a dummy, face down amongst the ashen suits. He, too, had looked back.

The crowds at Trafalgar Square were a seething mass of enthusiasm. Cheers, tears and flags. It was as though this little race had become something special for these people: a ritual the significance of which they could not know. Yet somewhere in them they understood the day was laden with sulphur, they sensed their lives stood on tiptoe to reach heaven. Especially the children. They ran along the route, shouting incoherent blessings, their faces squeezed up with their fears. Some called his name.

"Joel! Joel!"

Or did he imagine that? Had he imagined, too, the prayer from Loyer's lips, and the signs in the radiant faces of the babies held high to watch the runners pass?

As they turned into Whitehall Frank McCloud glanced confidentially over his shoulder and Hell took him.

It was sudden: it was simple.

He stumbled, an icy hand in his chest crushing the life out of him. Joel slowed as he approached the man. His face was purple: his lips foamy.

"McCloud," he said, and stopped to stare in his great rival's thin face.

McCloud looked up at him from behind a veil of smoke that had turned his grey eyes ochre. Joel reached down to help him.

"Don't touch me," McCloud growled. The filament vessels in his eyes bulged and bled.

"Cramp?" asked Joel. "Is it cramp?"

"Run, you bastard, run," McCloud was saying at him, as the hand in his innards seized his life out. He was oozing blood through the pores on his face now, weeping red tears. "Run. And don't look back. For Christ's sake, don't look back."

"What is it?"

"Run for your life!"

The words weren't requests but imperatives.

Run.

Not for gold or glory. Just to live.

Joel glanced up, suddenly aware that there was some huge-headed thing at his back, cold breath on his neck.

He picked up his heels and ran.

"— Well, things aren't going so well for the runners here, Jim. After Loyer going down so sensationally, now Frank McCloud has stumbled too. I've never seen anything quite like it. But he seems to have had a few words with Joel Jones as he ran past, so he must be OK."