Clive Barker - The Great and Secret Show

"I asked a fucking question," he said.

Tommy-Ray was a little taken aback by the man's blindness. Did he not recognize the fact that he was speaking to a transformed creature? Had his perception been so dulled by years of drinking and dog-shows he couldn't see the Death-Boy when he came visiting? More fool him.

"Get out of my way," Tommy-Ray said.

Instead, the man took hold of the front of Tommy-Ray's shirt. "You been here before," he said.

"Yeah."

"Left something behind, did you?"

He pulled Tommy-Ray closer, till they were practically nose to nose. He had a sick man's breath.

"I'd let go if I were you," Tommy-Ray warned.

The man looked amused at this. "You're looking to get your fucking balls ripped off," he said. "Or do you want to join the show?" His eyes widened at this notion. "Is that what you came looking for? An audition?"

"I told you..." Tommy-Ray began.

"I don't give a fuck what you told me. I'm doing the talking now. Hear me?" He put one vast hand over Tommy-Ray's mouth. "So...do you want to show me something or not?"

The image of what he'd seen in the room behind him came back into Tommy-Ray's head as he stared up at his assaulter: the woman, glassy-eyed; the dog, glassy-eyed. He'd seen death here, in life. He opened his mouth against the man's palm, and pressed his tongue against the stale skin.

The man grinned.

"Yeah?" he said.

He dropped his hand from Tommy-Ray's face. "You got something to show?" he said again.

"Here..." Tommy-Ray murmured.

"What?"

"Come in...come in..."

"What are you talking about?"

"Not talking to you. Here. Come...in...here. " His gaze went from the man's face to the door.

"Don't give me shit, kid," the man responded. "You're on your own."

"Come in!" Tommy-Ray yelled.

"Shut the fuck up!"

"Come in!"

His din maddened the man. He hit Tommy-Ray across the face, so hard the blow knocked the boy out of his grip to the floor. Tommy-Ray didn't get up. He simply stared at the door, and made his invitation one more time.

"Please come in," he said, more quietly.

Was it because he asked this time instead of demanded, that the legion obeyed? Or simply that they'd been mustering themselves, and were only now ready to come to his aid? Either way, they began to rattle the closed doors. The barman grunted and turned. Even to his bleary eyes it must have been perfectly apparent that it was no natural wind that was pushing to come in. It pressed too rhythmically; it beat its fist too heavily. And its howls, oh its howls were nothing like the howls of any storm he'd heard before. He turned back to Tommy-Ray.

"What the fuck's out there?" he said.

Tommy-Ray just lay where he'd been thrown and smiled up at the man, that legendary smile, that forgive-me-my-trespasses smile, that would never be the same again now that he was the Death-Boy.

Die, that smile now said, die while I watch you. Die slowly. Die quickly. I don't care. It's all the same to the Death-Boy.

As the smile spread the doors opened, shards of the lock, and splinters of wood, thrown across the bar before the invading wind. Out, in the sunlight the spirits in this storm had not been visible; but they made themselves so now, congealing their dust in front of the witnesses' eyes. One of the men slumped on the table roused himself in time to see three figures forming from the head down in front of him, their torsos trailing like innards of dust. He backed off against the wall, where they threw themselves upon him. Tommy-Ray heard his screech but didn't see what kind of death they gave him. His eyes were on the spirits that were coming at the bartender.

Their faces were all appetite, he saw; as though travelling together in that caravan had given them time to simplify themselves. They were no longer as distinct from each other as they'd been; perhaps their dust had mingled in the storm, and each had become a little like the other. Unparticularized, they were more terrible than they'd been at the cemetery wall. He shuddered at the sight, the remnants of the man he'd been in fear of them, the Death-Boy in bliss. These were soldiers in his army: eyes vast, mouths vaster, dust and want in one howling legion.

The bartender started to pray out loud, but he wasn't putting his faith in prayer alone. He reached down to his side and picked Tommy-Ray up one-handed, hauling him close. Then, with his hostage taken, he opened the door to the sex arena and backed through it. Tommy-Ray heard him repeating something as they went, the hook of the prayer perhaps? Santo Dios! Santo Dios! But neither words nor hostage slowed the advance of the wind and its dusty freight. They came after him, throwing the door wide.

Tommy-Ray saw their mouths grow huger still, and then the blur of faces was upon them both. He lost sight of what happened next. The dust filled his eyes before he had an opportunity to close them. But he felt the bartender's grip slide from him, and the next moment a rush of wet heat. The howling in the wind instantly rose in volume to a keening that he tried to stop his ears against, but it came anyway, boring into the bone of his head like a hundred drills.

When he opened his eyes he was red. Chest, arms, legs, hands: all red. The bartender, the source of the color, had been dragged on to the stage where the night before Tommy had seen the woman and the dog. His head was in one corner, upended; his arms, hands locked in supplication, in another; the rest of him lay center stage, the neck still pumping.

Tommy-Ray tried not to be sickened (he was the Death-Boy, after all) but this was too much. And yet, he told himself, what had he expected when he'd invited them over the threshold? This was not a circus he had in tow. It was not sane; it was not civilized.

Shaking, sickened and chastened, he got to his feet and hauled himself back out into the bar. His legion's labors here were as cataclysmic as those he'd turned his back upon. All three of the bar's occupants had been brutally slaughtered. Giving the scene only the most casual perusal, he crossed through the destruction to the door.

Events inside the bar had inevitably attracted an audience outside, even at such an early hour. But the velocity of the wind—in which his ghost army was once more dissolved—kept all but the most adventurous, youths and children, from approaching the scene, and even they were cowed by the suspicion that the air howling around them was not entirely empty.

They watched the blond, blood-spattered boy emerge from the bar and cross to his car, but made no attempt to apprehend him. Their scrutiny made Tommy-Ray take note of his gait. Instead of slouching he walked more upright. When they remembered the Death-Boy, he thought, let them remember someone terrible.

As he drove he began to believe he'd left the legion behind; that they'd found the game of murder more exciting than follow the leader and were going on to slaughter the rest of the town. He didn't much mind the desertion. Indeed he was in part thankful for it. The revelations that had seemed so welcome the previous night had lost some of their glamour.

He was sticky and stinking with another man's blood; he was bruised from the bartender's handling of him. Naively enough he'd believed that the touch of the Nuncio had made him immortal. What was the use of being the Death-Boy, after all, if death could still master you? In learning the error of his ways he'd come closer to losing his life than he cared to think too hard about. As to his saviors, his legion—he'd been equally naive in his belief that he had control of them.

They were not the shambling, fawning refugees he'd taken them for the previous night. Or if they had been, their being together had changed their nature. Now they were lethal, and would probably have slipped from his control sooner or later anyhow. He was better off without them.