Clive Barker - Absolute Midnight

“Must I come and find you?” he said. “Is that what this is? Do you want a sentimental reunion, Mother?”

He judged by weight how many of the cards he had so far laid down. A little over half, he guessed. It was possible the half he still held carried news of his last connection with Abaratian history but he doubted it. This was not a spread of specificities. It was the Hereafter Naught, the last apocalyptic gospel of the Abaratian tarot.

He set the unplayed cards down, and went to the door of his house to bathe his scarred face in the cast of the silver starlight. The years when the children of the village of Eedo, which was at the bottom of the steep trail that zigzagged up the cliff to his house, had lived in fear of him had long since passed. Though they would playact terror to amuse each other, and he played the growling monster to feed the fiction, they knew he usually had a few paterzem to toss over the threshold for them to squabble over, especially when—as tonight—they brought him something they had found along the shore to give to him. Today, as he stood at the door of the house, one of his favorites, a sweet hybrid of Sea-Skipper and commonplace child, called Lupta, came squealing to find him with an entourage of children following closely behind her.

“I have flotsammi jetsammi!” she boasted. “I have many. Lookazis! Lookazis! All thrown up by Our Gracious Lady Izabella.”

“You want to see more?” said her brother, Kipthin.

“Of course,” the Card-Reader said. “Always.”

Lupta grunted out instructions to her little gang, who noisily un-netted their catch onto the ground in front of the Card-Reader’s house. He listened with a practiced ear to the noise the find gave off: the objects were large. Some clattered and clanged, others rang like sour-noted bells.

“Describe them to me, will you, child?”

Lupta proceeded to do so, but—as was so often the case for haggling in the weeks since the persuasive currents of the Izabella had invaded the Hereafter, flooded Chickentown in Minnesota, and returned carrying some trophies of that other dimension with them—the objects that the tide had thrown up on the rocky beach below were not easily described or pictured, having no equivalent in the Abarat. Still the Card-Reader listened intently, knowing that if he was to understand the significance of the deck half spread in the darkened room behind him then he would need to understand the nature of the mysterious Humaniticks, some of whose artifacts, their details hard to make sense of when a man had no sight, surely offered profound clues to the nature of those who might unmake the world. Little Lupta perhaps knew more than she thought she knew. And behind her guesses, she was plucking up truths.

“What were these things made for?” he asked her. “Are they engines? Or toys? Are they to be eaten? Or maybe to kill?”

There was some frantic whispering among Lupta’s gang, but finally the girl said with absolute confidence:

“We don’t know.”

“They’re much beaten by the sea,” Kipthin said.

“I would expect nothing less,” the Card-Reader said. “Even so, let me put my hands upon them. Guide me, Lupta. You needn’t hesitate, child. I’m not a monster.”

“I know that. If you were, you wouldn’t look like one.”

“Who told you that?”

“I did.”

“Hm. Well, is there something here you think I might understand?”

“Yes. Here. Put out your hands.”

Lupta put one of the objects into his proffered palms. As soon as his fingers made contact with whatever it was, his legs gave way beneath him, and he fell to the ground dumping the piece of trash Lupta had given him. He reached down and searched for it, seized by the same fervor that caught hold of him whenever he was reading the cards. There was one significant difference, however. When he read the cards his mind was able to make a pattern of the signs he was seeing. But there was no pattern here. Only chaos upon chaos. He saw a monstrous ship of war, with his mother, aged but still as much a harridan as ever, commanding the waters of the Izabella to burst through the divide between its natural bed and into the Hereafter, its crazed flood ripping apart what lay on the other side.

“Chickentown,” he murmured.

“You see it?” said Lupta’s brother.

The Card-Reader nodded. “Being ripped apart.” He closed his eyes more tightly, as though he might blot out with a willed blindness the horrors he saw.

“Have any of you heard any stories concerning the people of the Hereafter?” he asked the children.

As before, there was frantic whispering. But he caught one of his visitors urging Lupta to tell him.

“Tell me what?” the blind man said.

“About people from a place called Chickentown. They’re just stories,” Lupta said. “I don’t know if any of them are true.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“Tell him about the girl. She’s the one everyone talks about,” said a third member of Lupta’s gang.

“Candy . . . Quackenbush . . .” the blind man said, half to himself.

“Have you seen her in your cards?” Lupta asked. “Do you know where she is?”

“Why?”

“You have, haven’t you?”

“What would it matter if I had?”

“I need to talk with her! I want to be like her! Everything she does people talk about.”

“Like what?”

Lupta’s voice became a whisper. “Our priest says it’s a sin to talk about her. Is he right?”

“No, Lupta, I don’t believe he is.”

“I’m going to run away one day. I am! I want to find her.”

“You be careful,” the Card-Reader said. “It’s a dangerous time and it’s going to get worse.”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, at least come and say good-bye, child,” the Card-Reader said. He dug into his pocket and brought out a few paterzem.

“Here,” he said, handing the coins over to Lupta. “Thank you for bringing the stuff up from the shore. Will you divide this between you? Fairly, now.”

“Of course!” Lupta said. And happy with their reward she and her friends went off down the road to the village, leaving the Card-Reader with his thoughts and the collection of objects the current, the children, and circumstance had brought before him.

The urchin and her gang had arrived at an opportune moment. Perhaps with the remnants they’d brought he could make better sense of the Spread. The cards and the trash had much in common: they were both collections of clues connecting what the world had been like in a better age. He went back into the house and sat at the table again, picking up the un-spread cards. He had only laid down another two when the card representing Candy Quackenbush appeared. It was easily identified. I Am They, the card was called. He could not recall having ever seen it before.

“Well, well . . .” he murmured. “Look at you.” He tapped her with his finger. “What gives you the right to be such a power? And what business have you got with me?” The girl on the card stared at him from his mind’s eye. “Are you here to give me harm or happiness? Because I tell you I’ve had more than my share of sorrow. I can’t take much more.”

I Am They watched him with great compassion.

“Ah,” he said. “It isn’t over. At least now I know. Be kind to me, will you? If it is in your power.”

It took him another six and a half hours from his speaking to Candy Quackenbush to finally deciding he was done with the Spread. He gathered up all of the cards, counting them to be sure he had them all, and then he went outside, taking them with him. The wind had picked up considerably since he’d been out here with Lupta and her little gang. It came speeding around the corner of the house, buffeting him as he walked toward the cliff edge, the pack of cards trembling in his hand.