Clive Barker - Thief of Always

"Are you...going to let me...go?" he murmured.

Harvey felt Jive's hand on his back.

"Do it!" Jive said.

Harvey looked at Wendell's tear-stained face and trembling hands. If the situation had been reversed, he thought to himself, would I have been much braver? The answer, he knew, was no.

"It's now or never," said Jive.

"Then it's never," Harvey said. "Never!"

The word came out as a guttural roar, and Wendell fled before it, yelling at the top of his voice. Harvey didn't give chase.

"You disappoint me, boy," Jive said. "I thought you had the killer instinct."

"Well, I don't," said Harvey, a little ashamed of himself. He felt like a coward, even though he knew he'd done the right thing.

"That was a waste of magic," said another voice, and Marr appeared from out of the bushes, her arms filled with enormous fungi.

"Where'd you find those?" Jive said.

"Usual place," Marr replied. She gave Harvey a contemptuous look. "I suppose you want your old body back," she said.

"Yes, please."

"We should leave him like this," said Jive. "He'd get around to sucking blood sooner or later."

"Nah," said Marr. "There's only so much magic to go around, you know that. Why waste it on a miserable little punk like this?"

She waved her hand casually in Harvey's direction, and he felt the power that had filled his limbs and transformed his face drain out of him. It was a relief, of course, to feel the magic unmade, but a little part of him mourned the loss. In a matter of moments he was once again an earthbound boy, wingless and weak.

With the spell removed, Marr turned her back on him and waddled off into the darkness. Jive, however, lingered long enough to have one last dig at Harvey.

"You missed your chance there, kiddo," he said. "You could have been one of the greats."

"It was a trick, that's all," Harvey said, concealing the strange unhappiness he felt. "A Halloween trick. It meant nothing."

"There are those who'd disagree," Jive said darkly. "Those who'd say that all the great powers in the world are bloodsuckers and soul-stealers at heart. And we must serve them. All of us. Serve them to our dying day"

He stared hard at Harvey all the way through this peculiar little speech, and then, with a nimble step, retreated into the shadows and was gone.

Harvey found Wendell in the kitchen, a hot dog in one hand and a cookie in the other, telling Mrs. Griffin about what he'd seen. He dropped his food when Harvey came in, and yelped with relief: "You're alive! You're alive!"

"Of course I'm alive," said Harvey. "Why shouldn't I be?"

"There was something out there. A terrible beast. It almost ate me. I thought maybe it had eaten you."

Harvey looked down at his hands and legs.

"Nope," he said. "Not a nibble."

"I'm glad!" Wendell said. "I'm so, so glad. You're my best friend, for always."

I was vampire food five minutes ago, Harvey thought; but he said nothing. Maybe there'd come a time when he could tell Wendell about his transformation and temptation, but this wasn't it. He simply said:

"I'm hungry," and sat down at the table beside his fair-weather friend, to put something sweeter than blood in his belly.

XI

Turnabout

Neither Wendell nor Lulu was around the following day-Mrs. Griffin said she'd seen them both before breakfast, and then they'd disappeared-so Harvey was left to his own devices. He tried not to think about what had happened the night before, but he couldn't help himself.

Snatches of conversation kept coming back, and he puzzled over them all day long. What had Jive meant, for instance, when he'd told Harvey that turning him into a vampire was not so much a game as an education? What kind of lesson had he learned by jumping off a roof and scaring Wendell?

And all that stuff about soul-stealers and how they had to be served; what had that meant? Was it Mr. Hood that Jive had been speaking of; that great power they all had to serve? If Hood was somewhere in the House, why hadn't anyone-Lulu, Wendell or himself-encountered him? Harvey had quizzed his friends about Hood, and had the same story from them both: they'd heard no footfalls, no whispers, no laughter. If Mr. Hood was indeed here, where was he hiding, and why?

So many questions; so few answers.

And then, if these mysteries weren't enough, another came along to vex him. In the late afternoon, lounging in the shade of the tree house, he heard a yell of frustration, and peered through the leaves to set Wendell racing across the lawn. He was dressed in a windbreaker and boots, even though it was swelteringly hot, and he was stamping around like a madman.

Harvey shouted to him, but his call went either unheard or ignored, so he climbed down and pursued Wendell around the side of the House. He found him in the orchard, red-faced and sweaty.

"What's going on?" he said.

"I can't get out!" Wendell said, grinding a half-rotted apple underfoot. "I want to leave, Harvey, but there's no way out!"

"Of course there is!"

"I've been trying for hours and hours and I tell you the mist keeps sending me hack the way I came"

"Hey, calm down!"

"I want to go home, Harvey," Wendell said, close to tears now. "Last night was too much for me. That thing came after my blood. I know you don't believe me-"

"I do," said Harvey, "honest I do."

"You do?"

"For sure."

"Well, then maybe you should leave too,'cause if I go it'll come after you."

"I don't think so," said Harvey.

"I've been kiddin' myself about this place," Wendell said. "It's dangerous. Oh, yeah, I know it seems like everything's perfect, but-"

Harvey interrupted him. "Maybe you should keep your voice down," he said. "We should talk about this quietly. In private."

"Like where?" said Wendell, wild-eyed. "The whole place is watching us and listening to us. Don't you feel it?"

"Why would it do that?"

"I don't know!" Wendell snapped. "But last night I thought, if I don't leave I'm going to die here. I'll just disappear one night; or go crazy like Lulu." He dropped his voice to a whisper. "We're not the first, you know. What about all the clothes upstairs? All the coats and shoes and hats. They belonged to kids like us."

Harvey shuddered. Had he played trick-or-treat in a murdered boy's shoes?

"I want to get out of here," Wendell said, tears running down his face. "But there's no way out."

"If there's a way in there must be a way out," Harvey reasoned. "We'll go to the wall."

With that he marched off, Wendell in tow, around to the front of the House and down the gentle slope of the lawn. The mist-wall looked perfectly harmless as they approached it.

"Be careful-" Wendell warned. "It's got some tricks up its sleeve."

Harvey slowed his step, expecting the wall to twitch, or even reach for him. But it did nothing. Bolder now, he strode into the mist, fully expecting to emerge on the other side. But by some trick or other he was turned around without even being aware of it, and delivered out of the wall with the House in front of him.

"What happened?" he said to himself. Puzzled, he stepped back into the mist.

The same thing occurred. In he went, and out he came again, facing the opposite direction. He tried again, and again, and again, but the same trick was worked upon him every time, until Harvey was as frustrated as Wendell had been a half hour before.

"Now do you believe me?" Wendell said.

"Yep."

"So what do we do?"

"Well, we don't yell about it," Harvey whispered. "We just get on with the day. Pretend we've given up leaving. I'm going to do a little looking around."

He began his investigations as soon as they got back into the House, by going in search of Lulu. Her bedroom door was closed. He knocked, then called her. There was no reply, so he tried the handle. The door was unlocked.