Clive Barker - The Great and Secret Show

He started along the course of the beach, choosing left over right because whenever he was faced with two roads about which he knew equally little he always chose the left. He kept close to the edge of the sea, in the hope that he'd find Jo-Beth on the beach, brought by the same current that had caught him. Once out of the soothing waters, his body no longer borne up and caressed, anxieties the sea had lulled from him took hold. The first, that he might search the archipelago for days, weeks even, and never find Jo-Beth. Second, that even if he did, there was still Tommy-Ray to contend with. Nor was Tommy-Ray alone; he'd come to the Vance house with phantoms. Three—and this was the least of his worries, in a sense, but it became steadily more important— that something was changing in Quiddity. He no longer cared what words were most appropriate for this reality: whether it was another dimension or a state of mind was not relevant. They were probably one and the same anyhow. What did matter was the holiness of this place. He didn't doubt for a moment that all that he'd gleaned about Quiddity and the Ephemeris was true. This was the place in which all his species that knew of glory got their glimpses. A constant place; a place of comfort, where the body was forgotten (except for trespassers like himself) and the dreaming soul knew flight, and mystery. But there were subtle signs—some so subtle he couldn't have pinpointed them—that the dream place was not secure. The small waves splashing up on the beach, their surf bluish, were not as rhythmical as they'd been when he first stepped out of the sea. The motion of the lights in Quiddity seemed similarly changed, as though something was happening in the system that was distressing it. He doubted that the simple intrusion of flesh and blood from the Cosm was responsible. Quiddity was vast, and had ways of dealing with those who resisted the calm of its waters: he'd seen that process at work. No, whatever was souring the tranquillity had to be more significant than the presence of himself, or any of the invaders from the other side.

He began to come across evidence of that trespass, washed up on the shore. A door frame, pieces of smashed furniture, cushions, and, inevitably, fragments of Vance's collection. A short distance beyond this pitiful litter, around a bend in the beach, he found hope that the tide had brought Jo-Beth here: another survivor. She was standing at the very edge of Quiddity, gazing out over the sea. If she heard him approaching she didn't look his way. Her posture (hands limp at her sides, shoulders slumped) and the steadiness of her stare suggested someone mesmerized. Loath as he was to break her trance, if that was how she'd chosen to deal with the shock of dislocation, he had no choice:

"Excuse me," he said, knowing his politeness was pathetic in such circumstances, "are you the only one here?"

She looked around at him and he got a second surprise. He'd seen this face dozens of times, smiling out from the TV screen, extolling the virtues of shampoo. He didn't know her name. She was simply the Silksheen Woman. She frowned at him, as though she was having difficulty focusing on his face. He tried the question again, rephrased.

"Are there any other survivors?" he said. "From the house?"

"Yes," she said.

"Where are they?"

"Just keep on walking."

"Thank you."

"This isn't happening, is it?" she said.

"I'm afraid it is," he said.

"What happened to the world? Did they drop the bomb?"

"No."

"What then?"

"It's back there somewhere," he said. "Back over Quiddity. Over the sea."

"Oh," she said, though it was clear she hadn't quite grasped this information. "Do you have any coke?" she said. "Or pills? Anything?"

"Sorry."

She returned her gaze to Quiddity, leaving him to follow her instructions and make his way along the beach. The agitation in the waves was increasing with every step he took. Either that or he was simply becoming more sensitive to it. Perhaps the latter, because he was noticing other signs besides that of the wave-rhythm. In the air around his head a restlessness, as though conversations between invisibles were being conducted just out of hearing range. In the sky, the waves of color were breaking up into patches, like herring-bone cloud, their tranquil progressions replaced by the same agitation that had tainted Quiddity. Lights still passed overhead, moving towards the smoke tower, but there were fewer and fewer of them. The dreamers were definitely waking.

Ahead, the beach was partially blocked by a rock formation of chain-link boulders, between which he had to climb before continuing his search. The Silksheen Woman had offered good directions however. A little way beyond the boulders, around another sweep in the beach, he found several more survivors, both men and women. None seemed to have been able to climb more than a few yards from the sea. One of them was still lying with his feet in the waves, his body sprawled as though dead. Nobody went to help him. The same languor that kept the Silksheen Woman staring out over Quiddity had affected many of them, but several were inert for a different reason. They'd hauled themselves from Quiddity changed by floating in its waters. Their bodies were encrusted and misshapen, as though the same process that had turned the warring guests into an island was underway in them too. He could only guess what quality, or its absence, marked these people out from the rest. Why had he, and perhaps half the dozen here, crossed the same distance in the same element as these sufferers and stepped out of Quiddity unchanged? Had the victims entered the sea hot with emotion, and Quiddity battened on it, whereas he'd drifted much as the dreamers did, his life left behind in another place, and with it all ambition, obsession; all feeling indeed, but the quiescence Quiddity induced? It had even lulled from him his desire to find Jo-Beth, but not for long. That was his only thought now. He went among the survivors looking for her, but he was disappointed. She wasn't among this number, nor was Tommy-Ray.

"Are there any others?" he asked a heavily set man slumped by the shore.

"Others?"

"You know...like us."

There was the same puzzled and distracted air about this man as there'd been about the Silksheen Woman. He seemed to be laboring to put the words he'd heard together.

"Us," Howie said. "From the house."

There was no answer forthcoming. The man just kept on staring, his gaze glassy. Howie gave up and searched for a more useful source of information, electing the one man among the survivors who wasn't looking out over Quiddity. Instead he was standing high up on the beach, staring up at the smoke tower at the core of the archipelago. The journey here hadn't left him unmarked. There were signs of Quiddity's work on his neck and face, and running down his spine. He'd taken off his shirt and bound it around his left hand. Howie approached him.

No excuse me this time, just the plain statement:

"I'm looking for a girl. She's blonde. About eighteen. Have you seen her?"

"What's up there?" the man replied. "I want to go. I want to see."

Howie tried again. "I'm looking—"

"I heard you."

"Have you seen her?"

"No."

"Do you know if there are any more survivors?"

The reply was the same deadpan syllable. It got Howie raging.

"What the fuck's wrong with everybody?" he said.

The man looked at him. His face was pock-marked and far from handsome, but he had a lop-sided smile that Quiddity's handiwork couldn't spoil.

"Don't get mad," he said. "It's not worth it."

"She's worth it."

"Why? We're all dead anyhow."

"Not necessarily. We got in, we can get out."

"What, you mean swim? Fuck that, man. I'm not going back in that fucking soup. I'd prefer to die. Somewhere up there."