Clive Barker - The Great and Secret Show

"No you may not," Lamar said behind him. "Which of them do you want first?" he asked the Jaff.

The inquiry was ignored. Instead the man said: "Who am I? Strange you should ask." His tone was almost dreamy.

"Please," Eve murmured. "I can't breathe up here."

"Hush," Lamar said. He had moved to take hold of her. In the shadows, the Jaff shifted in his seat like a man who couldn't find a comfortable way to be.

"Nobody knows..." he began, "...just how terrible it is."

"What is?" Grillo said.

"I have the Art," the Jaff replied. "I have the Art. So I have to use it. It'd be a waste not to, after all this waiting, all this change."

He's shitting himself, Grillo thought. He's close to the edge and he's terrified of slipping over. Into what, he didn't know, but it was surely an exploitable condition. He decided to stay on the floor, where he offered no physical threat to the other man. Very softly he said:

"The Art. What is that?"

If the Jaff's next words were intended as an answer they were oblique.

"Everybody's lost, you know. I use that. Use the fear in them."

"Not you?" Grillo said.

"Not me?"

"Lost."

"I used to think I found the Art...but maybe the Art found me."

"That's good."

"Is it?" he said. "I don't know what it's going to do—"

So that's it, Grillo thought. He's got his prize and now he's afraid of unwrapping it.

"It could destroy us all."

"That's not what you said," Lamar muttered. "You said we'd have dreams. All the dreams America ever dreamt; that the world ever dreamt."

"Maybe," said the Jaff.

Lamar let go of Eve and took a step towards his master.

"But now you're saying we could die?" he said. "I don't want to die. I want Rochelle. I want the house. I've got a future. I'm not giving that up."

"Don't try and slip the leash," the Jaff said. For the first time since these exchanges had begun Grillo heard an echo of the man he'd seen at the Mall. Lamar's resistance was winning the old spirit back. Grillo cursed him for his rebellion. It bore one useful fruit only: it allowed Eve to step back towards the door. Grillo kept his place on the ground. Any attempt to join her would only draw attention to them both, and prevent any chance of escape for either. If she could get out she could raise the alarm.

Lamar's complaints, meanwhile, had multiplied.

"Why did you lie to me?" he said. "I should have known from the beginning you weren't going to do me any good. Well, fuck you—"

Silently, Grillo egged him on. The deepening dusk had kept pace with his eyes' attempt to pierce it, and he could see no more of his captor than he'd been able to see when he first came in, but he saw the figure stand. The motion caused consternation in the shadows, as the beasts hidden there responded to their creator's discomfiture.

"How dare you?" the Jaff said.

"You told me we were safe," Lamar said.

Grillo heard the door creak behind him. Though he wanted to turn he resisted the temptation.

"Safe, you said!"

"It's not that simple!" the Jaff said.

"I'm out of here!" Lamar replied, and turned to the door. It was too dark for Grillo to see the expression on his face, but a spill of light from behind him, and the sound of Eve's footsteps as she fled the room, was evidence enough. Grillo stood up as Lamar, cursing, crossed to the door. He was woozy from the blow, and reeled as he stood, but got to the door a pace before Lamar. They collided, their joint weights toppling against the door and slamming it again. There was a moment of confusion, almost farcical, in which they each fought for the handle of the door. Then something intervened, looming behind the comedian. It was pale in the darkness; gray against black. Lamar made a small noise in his throat as the creature took hold of him from behind. He reached out towards Grillo, who slipped from beneath his fingers, back towards the middle of the room. He couldn't work out how the terata was battening upon Lamar, and he was glad of the fact. The man's flailing limbs and guttural sounds were enough. He saw the comedian's bulk slump against the door, then slide down it, his body increasingly eclipsed by the terata. Then both were still.

"Dead?" Grillo breathed.

"Yes," said the Jaff. "He called me a liar."

"I'll remember that."

"You should."

The Jaff made a motion in the darkness, which Grillo failed to make sense of. But it had consequences that made a great deal plain. Beads of light broke from the man's fingers, illuminating his face, which was wasted, his body, which was clothed as it had been at the Mall, but seemed to spill darkness, and the room itself, with terata, no longer the complex beasts they'd been but barbed shadows, lining every wall.

"Well, Grillo...," the Jaff said, "...it seems I must do it."

After love, sleep. They hadn't planned it that way, but neither Jo-Beth nor Howie had slept more than a handful of uninterrupted hours since they'd met, and the ground they'd made love on was soft enough to tempt them. Even when the sun slipped behind the trees, they didn't waken. When finally Jo-Beth opened her eyes it wasn't the chill: the night was balmy. Cicadas made music in the grass around them. There was a gentle motion in the leaves. But beneath these reassuring sights and sounds was a strange, unfixable glow between the trees.

She rocked Howie out of sleep as gently as possible. He opened his eyes reluctantly, until they focused on his waker's face.

"Hi," he said. Then: "We overslept, huh? What time is—"

"There's somebody here, Howie," she whispered.

"Where?"

"I just see lights. They're all around us. Look!"

"My glasses," he whispered. "They're in my shirt."

"I'll get them."

She moved away from him in search of the clothes he'd dropped. He squinted at the scene. The police barricades, and the cave beyond: the abyss where Buddy Vance was still lying. It had seemed so natural to make love here in the full light of day. Now it seemed perverse. There was a dead man lying down there somewhere, in the same darkness where their fathers had waited all those years.

"Here," she said.

Her voice startled him. "It's OK," she murmured. He dug his glasses from the pocket of his shirt and hooked them on. There were indeed lights in between the trees, but their source was undefined.

Jo-Beth not only had some luck with his shirt, but with the rest of their clothes. She started to put on her underwear. Even now, with his heart thumping hard for quite another reason, the sight of her aroused him. She caught his look, and kissed him.

"I don't see anyone," he said, still keeping his voice low.

"Maybe I was wrong," she said, "I just thought I heard somebody."

"Ghosts," he said, then regretted inviting the thought into his head. He began to pull on his shorts. As he did he caught a movement between the trees. "Oh shit," he murmured.

"I see," she said. He looked towards her. She was looking in the opposite direction. Following her gaze he saw motion there too, in the shadows of the canopy. And another movement. And another.

"They're on all sides," he said, pulling on his shirt and reaching for his jeans. "Whatever they are they've got us surrounded."

He stood up, pins and needles in his legs, his thoughts turning desperately to how he might arm himself. Could he trash one of the barricades perhaps, and find a weapon in the wreckage? He glanced at Jo-Beth, who'd almost finished dressing, then back at the trees.

From beneath the canopy a diminutive figure emerged, trailing a phantom light. Suddenly it all came clear. The figure was that of Benny Patterson, whom Howie had last seen in the street outside Lois Knapp's house, calling after him. There was no sunny smile on his face now. Indeed his face was somehow blurred, his features like a picture taken by a palsied photographer. The light he'd brought from his TV appearances came with him, however. That was the radiance that haunted the trees.