Clive Barker - The Great and Secret Show

—and on that sea, there's an island—

He glimpsed it, albeit distantly.

It's called Ephemeris—

A beautiful word, and a beautiful place. Its head was couched in cloud, but there was light on its lower slopes. Not sunlight; the light of spirit.

I want to be there, Howie thought, I want to be there with Jo-Beth.

Forget her.

Tell me what's there. What's on Ephemeris?

The Great and Secret Show, his father's thoughts returned, which we see three times. At birth, at death and for one night when we sleep beside the love of our lives.

Jo-Beth.

I told you, forget her.

I went with Jo-Beth! We were floating there, together.

No.

Yes. That means she's the love of my life. You just said so.

I told you to forget her.

It does! My God! It does!

Something that the Jaff fathered is too tainted to be loved. Too corrupt.

She's the most beautiful thing I ever saw.

She rejected you, Fletcher reminded him.

Then I'll win her back.

His image of her was clear in his head; clearer than the island now, or the dream-sea it floated upon. He reached for her memory and by it hauled himself out of the grip of his father's mind. Back came the nausea, and then the light, splashing through the foliage above his head.

He opened his eyes. Fletcher was not holding him, if indeed he ever had. Howie was lying on his back on the grass. His arm was numb from elbow to wrist, but the hand beyond felt twice its proper size. The pain in it was the first proof that he wasn't dreaming. The second, that he had just woken from a dream. The man with the pony-tail was real; no doubt of it. Which meant that the news he brought could be true. This was his father, for better or worse. He raised his head from the grass as Fletcher spoke:

"You don't understand how desperate our situation is," he said. "Quiddity will be invaded by the Jaff if I don't stop him."

"I don't want to know," Howie said.

"You have a responsibility," Fletcher stated. "I wouldn't have fathered you if I didn't think you could help me."

"Oh that's very touching," said Howie. "That really makes me feel wanted."

He started to get to his feet, avoiding the sight of his injured hand. "You shouldn't have shown me the island, Fletcher—" he said. "Now I know what's between Jo-Beth and me's the real thing. She's not tainted. And she's not my sister. That means I can get her back."

"Obey me!" Fletcher said. "You're my child. You're supposed to obey!"

"You want a slave, go find one," Howie said. "I've got better things to do."

He turned his back on Fletcher, or at least believed he had, until the man appeared in front of him.

"How the hell did you do that?"

"There's a lot I can do. Little stuff. I'll teach you. Only don't leave me alone, Howard."

"Nobody calls me Howard," Howie said, raising his hand to push Fletcher away. He'd momentarily forgotten his injury: now it came into sight. His knuckles were puffed up, the back of his hand and his fingers gummy with blood. Blades of grass had stuck to it, bright green on bright red. Fletcher took a step back, repulsed.

"Don't like the sight of blood, either, huh?" Howie said.

As he retreated something about Fletcher's appearance altered, too subtle for Howie to quite grasp. Was it that he'd backed away into a patch of sunlight, and that it somehow pierced him? Or that a piece of sky locked in his belly came undone and floated up into his eyes? Whatever, it was there and gone.

"I'll make a deal," Howie said.

"What's that?"

"You leave me alone; I'll leave you—"

"There's only us, son. Against the whole world."

"You're fucking crazy, you know that?" Howie said. He

took his eyes off Fletcher and set them on the route he'd come. "That's where I got it from. This holy fool shit! Well, not me! No more. I've got people who love me!"

"I love you!" Fletcher said.

"Liar."

"All right, then I'll learn."

Howie started away from him, his bloody arm outstretched.

"I can learn!" he heard his father call from behind him. "Howard, listen to me! I can learn!"

He didn't run. He didn't have the strength. But he reached the road without falling down, which was a victory of mind over matter, given how weak his legs felt. There he rested for a short time, content that Fletcher wouldn't follow him into such open territory. The man had secrets he didn't want mere human eyes to see. While resting, he planned. First he'd return to the motel, and tend to his hand. Then? Back to Jo-Beth's house. He had good news to impart, and he'd find a way to tell it if he had to wait all night for the opportunity. The sun was hot and bright. It threw his shadow in front of him as he went. He fixed his eyes on the sidewalk, and followed his pattern there, step for step, back towards sanity.

In the woods behind him, Fletcher cursed his inadequacy. He'd never been much good at persuasion, leaping from banality to visions with no proper grasp of the middle ground between: the simple social skills which most people were proficient in by the age of ten. He had failed to win his son over by straightforward argument, and Howard in his turn had resisted the revelations which might have made him comprehend his father's jeopardy. Not just his; the world's. Not for an instant did Fletcher doubt that the Jaff was as dangerous now as he'd been back in the Mision de Santa Catrina, when the Nuncio had first rarefied him. More so. He had his agents in the Cosm; children who would obey him because he had a way with words. Howard was heading back into the embrace of one of those agents even now. As good as lost. Which left him with no alternative but to go into the Grove on his own, and look for people from whom he might raise hallucigenia.

There was no value in putting off the moment. He had a few hours before dusk, when the day turned towards darkness, and the Jaff would have an even greater advantage than he had already. Even though he didn't much like the idea of walking the streets of the Grove for all to see and study, what choice did he have? Maybe there would be a few he could catch dreaming, even in the light of day.

He looked up at the sky, and thought of his room in the Mission, in which he'd sat with Raul for so many blissful hours, listening to Mozart and watching the clouds change as they came off the ocean. Changing, always changing. A flux of forms in which they'd find echoes of earthly things: a tree, a dog, a human face. One day, he would join those clouds, when his war with the Jaff was over. Then the sadness of parting he felt now—Raul gone, Howard gone, everything sliding away from him—would be extinguished.

Only the fixed felt pain. The protean lived in everything, always. One country, living one immortal day.

Oh, to be there!

For William Witt, Palomo Grove's Boswell, the morning had seen his worst nightmare become reality. He'd stepped out of his attractive, one-story residence in Stillbrook, which he boasted to clients had appreciated by thirty thousand dollars in the five years since he'd purchased, to do a normal day's real estate business in his favorite town on earth. But things were different this morning. Had he been asked to say what exactly, he couldn't have offered a cogent answer, but he knew by instinct that his beloved Grove was sickening. He spent most of the morning standing at the window of his offices, which looked directly across at the supermarket. Almost everybody in the Grove used the market at least once a week; it had for many the double function of suppliers and meeting place. William prided himself on the fact that he could name fully ninety-eight percent of the people who entered its doors. He'd been instrumental in finding houses for a good number of them; rehousing them when their families outgrew their first purchase as newlyweds; often rehousing those in middle-age when the children left; finally selling houses on when the occupants died. And he in turn was known by most of them. They called him by his first name, they commented on his bow ties (which were his trademark; he owned one hundred and eleven), they introduced him to visiting friends.