Clive Barker - The Great and Secret Show

She began to wonder how long it would be before her mind took refuge from this horror in insanity. A day? A week? Were there even such distinctions here? Did the sun set, and rise again? She strained to turn her sight skyward, but the sun was behind her, and having no body she neither threw a shadow by which to read its position nor possessed the power to turn and see it for herself.

There was something else to see, however, more curious than the town: a single tower or pylon, built of steel, standing in the middle of the desert, with wires tethering it as though it might at any moment float away. Again she was at it and past in seconds. Again, it gave her no comfort. But once beyond it a new sensation crept over her: that she, and the clouds and the sand beneath her were all fleeing from something. Had some entity been lurking in that blank town, just out of sight, and now, aroused by a human presence here, was coming after her? She couldn't turn, she couldn't hear, she couldn't even feel its footsteps in the earth as it approached. But it would come. If not now, then soon. It was relentless, inevitable. And the first moment she saw it would be her last.

Then, refuge! A fair distance away yet, but growing in size as she speeded towards it, what appeared to be a small stone hut, its walls painted white. Her sickening pace slowed. The ride apparently had a destination after all: this hovel.

Her sight was fixed upon the place, looking for signs of occupancy, but her peripheral vision nevertheless caught sight of a movement way off to the right of the hut. Though slowing, her speed was still considerable, and her inability to scan the scene prevented her catching more than a glimpse of the figure. But it was human; female; clothed in rags: that much she did grasp. Even if the hut turned out to be as empty as the town, she had the comfort—albeit slight—that some other soul wandered these wastes. She looked hard for the woman again, but she'd come and gone. And there was more urgent business: the fact that the hut was almost upon her, or her upon it, and her speed was still sufficient to demolish hovel and visitor on impact. She readied herself, reflecting that a death by dashing would be preferable to the unending journey she'd feared.

And then, she was at a dead stop; and at the door. From two hundred miles an hour to zero in half a heartbeat.

The door was closed, but she sensed something over her shoulder (bodiless though she was, it was impossible not to think of over and behind) which reached into her field of vision. It was serpentine, the thickness of her wrist, and so dark that even in bright sunlight she could make out no detail of its anatomy. It had no patterning; no head; no eyes; no mouth; no digits. It had strength however. Enough to push the door open. Then it withdrew, leaving her undecided as to whether she'd seen the whole beast, or merely one of its limbs.

The hut was not large; one glance and she'd taken it in. The walls unadorned stone, the floor bare earth. There was no bed, nor any furniture. Only a small fire, burning in the middle of the floor, its smoke given an escape route through a hole in the middle of the roof but instead choosing to stay and dirty the air between her and the hut's sole occupant.

He looked as old as the stone of this hovel's walls, naked and grimy, his paper skin stretched to splitting point over bird's bones. He'd singed off his beard patchily, leaving clumps of gray hairs in places. She wondered he had the wit to do that. The expression on his face suggested a mind in an advanced state of catatonia.

But no sooner had she entered than he looked up at her, seeing her despite the fact that she had no substance. He cleared his throat, splitting the phlegm into the fire.

"Close the door," he said.

"You can see me?" she replied. "And hear me?"

"Of course," he replied. "Now close the door."

"How do I do that?" she wanted to know. "I've got...no hands. Nothing."

"You can do it," he replied. "Just imagine yourself."

"Huh?"

"Oh for fuck's sake how difficult can it be? You've looked at yourself often enough. Picture what you look like. Make yourself real. Go on. Do it for me." His tone veered between that of bully and wheedler. "You have to close the door..."

"I'm trying."

"Not hard enough," came the reply.

She paused a moment before daring the next question.

"I'm dead, aren't I?" she said.

"Dead? No."

"No?"

"The Nuncio preserved you. You're alive and kicking, but your body's still back at the Mission. I want it here. We've got business to do."

The good news, that she was still alive, albeit separated flesh from spirit, fuelled her. She thought hard of the body she'd almost lost, the body she'd grown into over a period of thirty-two years. It was by no means perfect, but at least it was all hers. No silicone; no nips and tucks. She liked her hands and her fine-boned wrists, her squinty breasts with the left nipple twice the size of the right, her cunt, her ass. Most of all she liked her face, with its quirks and laugh-lines.

To imagine it was the trick. To picture its essentials, and so bring it into this other place where her spirit had come. The old man was aiding her in the process, she guessed. His gaze, though still on the door, was directed inward. The sinews of his neck stood out like harp strings; his lipless mouth twitched.

His energies helped. She felt herself losing her lightness, becoming substantial here, like a soup thickening in the heat of her imagining. There was a moment of doubt, when she almost regretted losing the ease of being thought, but then she remembered her face smiling back at her when she stepped from the shower in the morning. It was a fine feeling, maturing in that flesh, learning to enjoy it for its own sake. The simple pleasure of a good belch, or better yet a solid fart: the kind that had Butch blaming himself. Teaching her tongue to distinguish between vodkas; her eyes to appreciate Matisse. There were more gains than losses in bringing her body to her mind.

"Almost," she heard him say.

"I feel it."

"A little more. Conjure."

She looked down at the ground, aware that she had the freedom to do so. Her feet were there, standing on the threshold, naked. So, solidifying in front of her eyes, was the rest of her body. She was stark naked.

"Now..." said the man at the fire. "Close the door."

She turned and did so, her nakedness embarrassing her not at all, particularly after the effort she'd used bringing her body here. She worked out at the gym three times a week. She knew her belly was trim and her ass tight. Besides, her host was unconcerned, both with his own nudity and, it seemed, with giving her more than a cursory glance. If there'd ever been lechery in those eyes it had long ago dried up.

"So," he said. "I'm Kissoon. You're Tesla. Sit. Talk with me."

"I've got a lot of questions," she told him.

"I'd be surprised if you hadn't."

"I can ask?"

"Ask. But first, sit."

She squatted down on the opposite side of the fire to him. The floor was warm; the air too. Within thirty seconds her pores had begun to ooze. It was pleasant.

"First—" she said "—how did I get here? And where am I?"

"New Mexico is where you are," Kissoon replied. "And the how of it? Well, that's a more difficult question, but what it comes down to is this: I've been watching you—you and several others—waiting for a chance to bring someone here. Your near-death, and the Nuncio, helped erode your resistance to the journey. Indeed you had little choice."

"How much do you know about what's happening in the Grove?" she asked him.

He made dry sounds with his mouth, as though trying to summon saliva. When he finally replied it was with a weary tone.

"Oh God in Heaven, too much," he said, "I know too much."