Клайв Баркер – The Great and Secret Show (страница 8)

‘Jaffe, you of all people should never say I don’t believe. The extraordinary’s the norm. There are loops in time. We’re in one now. There are armies in our minds, waiting to march. And suns in our groins and cunts in the sky. Suits being wrought in every state –’

‘Suits?’

‘Petitions! Conjurations! Magic, magic! It’s everywhere. And you’re right, Quiddity is the source, and the Art its lock and key. And you think it’s tough for me to climb inside your skin. Have you learned nothing?’

‘Suppose I agree.’

‘Suppose you do.’

‘What happens to me, if I was to vacate my body?’

‘You’d stay here. As spirit. It’s not much but it’s home. I’ll be back, after a while. And the flesh and blood’s yours again.’

‘Why do you even want my body?’ Jaffe said. ‘It’s utterly fucked up.’

‘That’s my business,’ Kissoon replied.

‘I need to know.’

‘And I choose not to tell you. If you want the Art then you damn well do as I say. You’ve got no choice.’

The old man’s manner – his arrogant little smile, his shrugs, the way he half closed his lids as though using all his gaze on his guest would be a waste of eyesight – all of this put Jaffe in mind of Homer. They could have been two halves of a double-act; the lumpen boor and the wily old goat. When he thought of Homer he inevitably thought of the knife in his pocket. How many times would he need to slice Kissoon’s stringy carcass before the agonies made him speak? Would he have to take off the old man’s fingers, joint by joint? If so, he was ready. Maybe cut off his ears. Perhaps scoop out his eyes. Whatever it took, he’d do. It was too late now for squeamishness, much too late.

He slid his hand into his pocket, and around the knife.

Kissoon saw the motion.

‘You understand nothing, do you?’ he said, his eyes suddenly roving violently to and fro, as though speed-reading the air between him and Jaffe.

‘I understand a lot more than you think,’ Jaffe said. ‘I understand I’m not pure enough for you. I’m not – how did you say it? – evolved. Yeah, evolved.’

‘I said you were an ape.’

‘Yeah, you did.’

‘I insulted the ape.’

Jaffe’s hold on the knife tightened. He started to get to his feet.

‘Don’t you dare,’ Kissoon said.

‘Red rag to a bull,’ Jaffe said, his head spinning from the effort of rising, ‘– saying dare to me. I’ve seen stuff … done stuff …’ He started to take the knife out of his pocket ‘… I’m not afraid of you.’

Kissoon’s eyes stopped their speed-reading and settled on the blade. There was no surprise on his face, the way there’d been on Homer’s; but there was fear. A small thrill of pleasure coursed through Jaffe, seeing that expression.

Kissoon began to get to his feet. He was a good deal shorter than Jaffe, almost stunted, and every angle slightly askew, as though all his bones and joints had once been broken, and re-set in haste.

‘You shouldn’t spill blood,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Not in a Loop. It’s one of the rules of the looping suit, not to spill blood.’

‘Feeble,’ said Jaffe, beginning to step around the fire towards his victim.

‘That’s the truth,’ Kissoon said, and he gave Jaffe the strangest, most misbegotten smile, ‘I make it a point of honour not to lie.’

‘I had a year working in a slaughterhouse,’ Jaffe said. ‘In Omaha, Nebraska. Gateway to the West. I worked for a whole year, just cutting up meat. I know the business.’

Kissoon was very frightened now. He’d backed against the wall of the hut, his arms spread out to either side of him for support, looking, Jaffe thought, like a silent-movie heroine. His eyes weren’t half-open now, but huge and wet. So was his mouth, huge and wet. He couldn’t even bring himself to make threats; he just shook.

Jaffe reached out and put his hand around the man’s turkey throat. He gripped hard, fingers and thumb digging into the sinew. Then he brought his other hand, bearing the blunt knife, up to the corner of Kissoon’s left eye. The old man’s breath smelt like a sick man’s fart. Jaffe didn’t want to inhale it, but he had no choice, and the moment he did he realized he’d been fucked. The breath was more than sour air. There was something else in it, being expelled from Kissoon’s body and snaking its way into him – or at least attempting to. Jaffe took his hand from the scrawn of the neck, and stepped away.

‘Fucker!’ he said, spitting and coughing out the breath before it occupied him.

Kissoon didn’t concede the pretence.

‘Aren’t you going to kill me?’ he said. ‘Am I reprieved?’

It was he who advanced now; Jaffe the one retreating.

‘Keep away from me!’ Jaffe said.

‘I’m just an old man!’

‘I felt the breath!’ Jaffe yelled, slamming his fist against his chest. ‘You’re trying to get inside me!’

‘No,’ Kissoon protested.

‘Don’t fucking lie to me. I felt it!’

He still could. A weight in his lungs where there’d not been weight before. He backed towards the door, knowing that if he stayed the fucker would have the better of him.

‘Don’t leave,’ Kissoon said. ‘Don’t open the door.’

‘There’s other ways to the Art,’ Jaffe said.

‘No,’ Kissoon said. ‘Only me. The rest are dead. There’s nobody can help you but me.’

He tried that little smile of his, bowing his wretched body, but the humility was as much a sham as the fear had been. All tricks to keep his victim near, so as to have his flesh and blood. Jaffe wasn’t buying the routine a second time. He tried to block out Kissoon’s seductions with memories. Pleasures taken, that he’d take again if he could only get out of this trap alive. The woman in Illinois, the one-armed man in Kentucky, the caress of roaches. The recollections kept Kissoon from getting any further hold on him. He reached behind him and grabbed the door handle.

‘Don’t open that,’ Kissoon said.

‘I’m getting out of here.’

‘I made a mistake. I’m sorry. I underestimated you. We can come to some arrangement surely? I’ll tell you all you want to know. I’ll teach you the Art. I don’t have the skill myself. Not in the Loop. But you could have it. You could take it with you. Out there. Back into the world. Arm in the pie! Only stay. Stay, Jaffe. I’ve been alone here a long time. I need company. Someone to explain it all to. Share it with.’

Jaffe turned the handle. As he did so he felt the earth beneath his feet shudder, and a brightness seemed to appear momentarily beyond the door. It seemed too livid to be mere daylight, but it must have been, because there was only sun awaiting him on the step outside.

‘Don’t leave me!’ he heard Kissoon yelling, and with the yell felt the man clutching at his innards the way he had bringing him here. But the hold was nowhere near as strong as it had been. Either Kissoon had burned up too much of his energy in attempting to breathe his spirit into Jaffe, or his fury was weakening him. Whichever, the hold was resistible, and the further Jaffe ran the weaker it became.

A hundred yards from the hut he glanced back, and thought he saw a patch of darkness moving across the ground towards him, like dark rope uncurling. He didn’t linger to discover what new trick the old bastard was mounting, but ran and ran, following his own trail across the ground, until the steel tower came in sight. Its presence suggested some attempt to populate this wasteland, long abandoned. Beyond it, an aching hour later, was further proof of that endeavour. The town he half-remembered staggering through on his way here, its street empty not only of people and vehicles but of any distinguishing marks whatsoever, like a film-set yet to be dressed for shooting.

Half a mile beyond it an agitation in the air signalled that he had reached the perimeters of the Loop. He braved its confusions willingly, passing through a place of sickening disorientation in which he was not certain he was even walking, and suddenly he was out the other side, and back in a calm, starlit night.

Forty-eight hours later, drunk in an alleyway in Santa Fe, he made two momentous decisions. One, that he’d keep the beard he’d grown in the last few weeks, as a reminder of his search. Two, that every wit he possessed, every hint of knowledge he’d gained about the occult life of America, every iota of power his astral eyes lent him, would go to the possessing of the Art (Fuck Kissoon; Fuck the Shoal), and that only when he’d got it would he once again show his face unshaven.

IV

Holding to the promises he’d made himself was not easy. Not when there were so many simple pleasures to be had from the power he’d gained; pleasures he made himself forfeit for fear of depleting his little strength before he stole his way to greater.

His first priority was to locate a fellow quester; someone who could aid him in his search. It was two months before his enquiries threw up the name and reputation of a man perfectly suited to that role. That man was Richard Wesley Fletcher, who’d been – until his recent fall from grace – one of the most lauded and revolutionary minds in the field of evolutionary studies; the head of several research programmes in Boston and Washington; a theorist whose every remark was scrutinized by his peers for clues to his next breakthrough. But his genius had been flawed by addiction. Mescalin and its derivatives had brought him low, much to the satisfaction of many of his colleagues, who made no bones about their contempt for the man once his guilty secret came out. In article after article Jaffe found the same smug tone, as the academic community rounded on the deposed Wunderkind, condemning his theories as ludicrous and his morals as reprehensible. Jaffe couldn’t have cared less about Fletcher’s moral standing. It was the man’s theories that intrigued him, dovetailing as they did with his own ambition. Fletcher’s researches had been aimed at isolating, and synthesizing in a laboratory, the force in living organisms that drove them to evolve. Like Jaffe, he believed heaven could be stolen.