Clive Barker - The Great and Secret Show

"The Pentagon already knows," D'Amour said.

"It does?"

"We're not the only people who've heard of the Iad, lady. People all over the world have got images of it built into their culture. They're the enemy. "

"You mean like the Devil? Is that what's coming through? Satan?"

"I doubt it. I think we Christians have always been a little naive," D'Amour said. "I've met demons, and they never look the way you think they're going to look."

"Are you kidding me? Demons? In the flesh? In New York?"

"Listen, it doesn't sound any more sane to me than it does to you, lady—"

"My name's Tesla."

"Every time I finish one of these damn investigations I end up thinking: maybe that didn't happen. Till the next time. Then it's the same damn-fool process. You deny the possibility till it tries to bite off your face."

Tesla thought of the sights she'd seen in the last few days: the terata, Fletcher's death, the Loop, and Kissoon in the Loop; the Lix, seething on her own bed; finally, the Vance house, and the schism it contained. She couldn't deny any of that. She'd seen those sights, in hard focus. Almost been killed by them. D'Amour's talk of demons came as a shock only because the vocabulary was so archaic. She didn't believe in the Devil or Hell. The idea of demons in New York was therefore fundamentally absurd. But suppose what he called demons were the products of corrupt men of power like Kissoon? Things like the Lix, made of shit, semen and babies' hearts? She'd believe in them then, wouldn't she?

"So," she said. "If you know, and the Pentagon knows, why's there nobody here in the Grove now, to stop the Iad appearing? We're holding the fort with four guns, D'Amour—"

"Nobody knew where the breakout would happen. I'm sure there's a file on the Grove somewhere, as a place where things weren't quite natural. But that's a long, long list."

"So we can expect help soon?"

"I'd guess so. But in my experience it usually comes too late."

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Any chance of help?"

"I've got problems here," D'Amour said. "There's all hell breaking loose. There've been a hundred and fifty cases of double suicides in Manhattan alone in the last eight hours."

"Lovers?"

"Lovers. Sleeping together for the first time. Dreaming of the Ephemeris, and getting a nightmare instead."

"Jesus."

"Maybe they did the right thing," D'Amour said. "At least they're out of it."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I think what those poor bastards saw for themselves we all guess, right?"

She remembered the lurching pain she'd felt as she'd come off the freeway the night before. The world tipping towards a maw.

"Yeah," she said. "We guess it."

"We're going to see a lot of folks responding to that in the next few days. Our minds are very finely balanced. Doesn't take much to push them over the edge. I'm in a city full of people ready to fall. I have to be here."

"And if the cavalry doesn't turn up?" Tesla said.

"Then somebody giving the orders in the Pentagon is a disbeliever—and there's plenty of those—or he's working for the Iad."

"They've got agents?"

"Oh yes. Not many, but enough. People have been worshipping the Iad, by other names. For them this is the Second Coming."

"There was a first?"

"That's another story, but yes, apparently there was."

"When?"

"There's no reliable accounts, if that's what you're asking. Nobody knows what the Iad look like. I think we should just pray they're the size of mice."

"I don't pray," Tesla replied.

"You should," D'Amour replied. "Now that you know how much is out there besides us, it makes sense. Look, I've got to go. I wish I could be more use."

"I wish you could."

"But the way I hear it, you're not completely alone."

"I've got Hotchkiss, and a couple of—"

"No. I mean, Norma says there's a savior out there."

Tesla kept her laughter to herself.

"I don't see any savior," she replied. "What should I be looking for?"

"She's not sure. Sometimes she says it's a man, sometimes a woman. Sometimes not even human."

"Well that makes for easy identification."

"Whoever it is, he, she or it may just swing the balance."

"And if they don't?"

"Move out of California. Quick."

Now she did laugh, out loud. "Thanks a bunch," she said.

"Stay happy," D'Amour replied. "As my father used to say, you shouldn't have joined if you couldn't take a joke."

"Joined what?"

"The race," D'Amour said, and put down the phone. The line buzzed. She listened to the noise, and distant conversations laced through it. Grillo appeared at the door.

"This is looking more and more like a suicide trip," he announced. "We don't have the proper equipment, and we don't have any map of the system we're going into."

"Why not?"

"They don't exist. Apparently the whole town's built on ground which keeps shifting."

"Do you have any alternatives?" Tesla said. "The Jaff's the only man—" She stopped for a moment.

"What?" Grillo said.

"I don't suppose he's really a man, is he?" she said.

"I don't follow."

"D'Amour said there was a savior in the vicinity. Someone not human. That has to be the Jaff, right? Nobody else fits the description."

"I don't see him as much of a savior," Grillo said.

"Then we'll have to persuade him," came the answer. "If it crucifies him."

The police had arrived in the Grove by the time Tesla, Witt, Hotchkiss, and Grillo left the house to start the descent. Lights were flashing at the top of the Hill; and ambulance sirens wailing. Despite all this din and activity there was no sign of any of the town's occupants, though presumably some of them were still in residence. They were either holed up with their deteriorating dreams, as Ellen Nguyen had been, or locked away, mourning their passing. The Grove was effectively a ghost-town. When the siren wails wound down there was a hush through the four villages more profound than any midnight. The sun beat down on empty sidewalks, empty yards, empty driveways. There were no children playing on the swings; no sound of televisions, radios, lawn-mowers, food-mixers, air conditioners. The lights still flipped colors at the intersections, but—excepting patrol-cars and ambulances, whose drivers ignored them anyway—nobody was on the roads. Even the packs of dogs they'd seen in the gloom before dawn had gone about business that didn't bring them into the open. The sight of the brilliant sun, shining upon the empty town, had spooked even them.

Hotchkiss had made a list of items they were going to need if they were to have a hope of making the proposed descent: ropes, torches and a few articles of clothing. So the Mall was first stop on the journey. Of the quartet it was William who was most distressed by the place when they got there. Every day of his working life he'd seen the Mall bustling, from early morning to early evening. Now there was nobody. The new glass in the store-fronts that had been damaged by Fletcher gleamed, the products stacked in the windows beckoned, but there were neither buyers nor sellers. The doors were all locked; the stores silent.

There was one exception: the pet store. Unlike every other business in the Mall it was open for business as usual, its door wide, its products yapping, squawking and making a general hullabaloo. While Hotchkiss and Grillo went to pillage their way through the shopping list, Witt took Tesla into the pet store. Ted Elizando was at work refilling the drip-feed water bottles along the rows of kittens' cages. He didn't look surprised to see customers. He didn't express anything in fact. Not even recognition of William, though from their first exchange Tesla gathered they knew each other.