Clive Barker - The Great and Secret Show

A cry from the next room stirred him from self-pity.

"Tesla?" he called.

There was no coherent reply: only further muted cries. He got up and followed the sound. The door to her bedroom was closed. He hesitated, hand on handle, nervous of entering without invitation. Then another round of cries reached him. He pushed the door open.

He'd never in his life seen a woman so exposed. The sight of Tesla sprawled on the bed transfixed him. Her arms were at her sides, gripping the sheet, her head rolled from side to side. But there was a fogginess about her body that reminded him of what had happened on the road below the Mission. She was moving away from him again. Back towards the Loop. Her shouts had become moans now. They were not of pleasure. She was going unwillingly.

He called her name again, very loudly. She suddenly sat bolt upright, eyes wide and staring at him.

"Jesus!" she said. She was panting, as though she'd just run a race. "Jesus. Jesus. Jesus."

"You were shouting..." he said, trying to begin to explain his presence in the room.

Only now did she seem to realize their situation: her nakedness, his embarrassed fascination. She reached for a sheet and started to haul it over her, but her intention was distracted by what she'd just experienced.

"I was there," she said.

"I know."

"Trinity. Kissoon's Loop."

As they'd driven back up the coast she'd done her best to explain to him the vision she'd had while the Nuncio had been healing her, both as a way to fix its details in her head and to keep a recurrence at bay by coaxing the memories out of the sealed cell of her inner life and into shared experience. She painted a repulsive picture of Kissoon.

"You saw him?" Raul said.

"I didn't get to the hut," she replied. "But he wants me there. I can feel him pulling. " She put her hand on her stomach. "I can feel him now, Raul."

"I'm here," he said. "I won't let you go."

"I know, and I'm glad."

She reached out. "Take hold of my hand, huh?" He tentatively approached the bed. "Please," she said. He did so. "I saw that town again," she went on. "It seems so real, except there's nobody there, nobody at all. It's...it's like a stage...like something's going to be performed there."

"Performed."

"This is making no sense, I know, but I'm just telling you what I feel. Something terrible's going to happen there, Raul. The worst thing imaginable."

"You don't know what?"

"Or maybe it already happened?" she said. "Maybe that's why there's nobody in the town. No. No. That's not it. It's not over, it's just about to happen."

She tried to make sense of her confusions the best way she knew. If she were setting a scene in that town, for a movie, what would it be? A gun-fight on Main Street? The citizens locked up behind their doors while the White Hats and the Black Hats shot it out? Possibly. Or a town vacated as some stomping behemoth appeared on the horizon? The classic fifties monster scenario: a creature woken by nuclear tests—

"That's closer," she said.

"What is?"

"Maybe it's a dinosaur movie. Or a giant tarantula. I don't know. That's definitely closer. Christ, this is frustrating! I know something about this place, Raul, and I can't quite get hold of it."

From next door, the strains of Donizetti's masterpiece. She knew it so well now she could have sung along with it had she had the voice.

"I'm going to make some coffee," she said. "Wake myself up. Will you go and ask Ron for some milk?"

"Yes. Of course."

"Just tell him you're a friend of mine."

Raul got up off the bed, detaching his hand from hers.

"Ron's apartment's number four," she called after him, then went through to the bathroom and took her postponed shower, still vexed by the problem of the town. By the time she'd sluiced herself down and found a clean T-shirt and jeans Raul was back in the apartment, and the telephone was ringing. From the other end, opera and Ron.

"Where did you find him?" he wanted to know. "And does he have a brother?"

"Is it impossible to have a private life around here?" she said.

"You shouldn't have paraded him, girl," Ron replied. "What is he, a truck driver? Marines? He's so broad."

"That he is."

"If he gets bored just send him back over."

"He'll be flattered," Tesla said, and put the phone down. "You've got yourself an admirer," she told Raul. "Ron thinks you're very sexy."

Raul's look was less perplexed than she'd anticipated. It made her ask: "Are there gay apes, do you suppose?"

"Gay?"

"Homosexual. Men who like other men in bed."

"Is Ron?"

"Is Ron?" she laughed. "Yes, Ron is. It's that kind of neighborhood. That's why I like it."

She started to measure out the coffee into the cups. As she heard the granules slide from the spoon she felt the vision beginning in on her again.

She dropped the spoon. Turned to Raul. He was a long way from her, across a room that seemed to be filling with dust.

"Raul?" she said.

"What's wrong?" she saw him say. Saw rather than heard; the volume had been turned down to zero in the world she was slipping from. Panic set in. She reached out for Raul with both hands.

"Don't let me go—" she yelled at him. "—I don't want to go! I don't—"

Then the dust came between them, eroding him. Her hands missed his in the storm and instead of falling into his solid embrace she was pitched back into the desert, moving at speed across by now familiar terrain. The same baked earth she'd travelled twice before.

Her apartment had disappeared completely. She was back in the Loop, heading through the town. Above her, the sky was delicately tinted, as it had been the first time she'd travelled here. The sun was still close to the horizon. She could see it clearly, unlike that first time. More than see, stare at, without having to look away. She could even make out details. Solar flares leaping from its rim like arms of fire. A cluster of sun-spots marking its burning face. When she looked back to earth she was approaching the town.

With the first flush of panic over she began to take control of her circumstances, reminding herself sharply that this was the third time she'd been here, and she should be able to grasp the trick of it by now. She willed her pace to slow, and found that indeed she was slowing, giving her more time to study the town as she came to its fringes. Her instinct, seeing it for the first time, had been that it was somehow fake. That instinct was now confirmed. The boards of the houses were not weather-beaten, nor even painted. There were no curtains at the windows; no key-holes in the doors. And beyond those doors and windows? She told her floating system to veer towards one of the houses, and peered through the window. The roof of the house had been improperly finished; sunlight darted between the cracks and illuminated the interior. It was empty. There was no furniture, nor any other sign of human habitation. There was not even any division of the interior into rooms. The building was a complete sham. And if this one, then the next too presumably. She moved along the row to confirm the suspicion. It was also completely deserted.

As she drew away from the second window she felt the pull she'd experienced back in the other world: Kissoon was trying to bring her to him. She hoped now that Raul made no attempt to wake her, if indeed her body was still present in the world she'd left. Though she had a fear of this place, and a profound suspicion of the man who'd called her here, her curiosity laid stronger claim upon her. The mysteries of Palomo Grove had been bizarre enough, but nothing in Fletcher's hurried transfer of information about the Jaff, the Art and Quiddity went far towards explaining this place. The answers lay with Kissoon, she'd not the slightest doubt of that. If she could dig between the lines of his conversation, oblique as it was, she might have a hope of understanding. And with her newfound confidence in this condition she felt easier at the thought of returning to the hut. If he threatened her, or got a hard-on, she'd simply leave. It was within her power. Anything was within her power, if she wanted it badly enough. If she could look at the sun and not be blinded, she could certainly deal with Kissoon's fumbling claims on her body.