The Great And Secret Show Part 52

He threw his radio down, and clambered over the fence opposite the house. On the other side the shrubbery was thick, and the ground fell off steeply, but he slid away through the darkness not caring if he reached the other side of the Hill in tatters, simply wanting to be as far from the house when the mob reached the gate as he could get.

Grillo had seen sights in the last few days that had slapped the breath out of him, but he'd found a way to slot them into his world-view. But in front of him now was a sight so utterly beyond his comprehension all he could do was say no to it.

Not once, a dozen times.

"No...no..." and so on, "no."

But denial didn't work. The sight refused to pack its bag and leave. It stayed. Demanded to be seen.

The Jaff's fingers had entered the solid wall, and clutched it. Now he took a step back, and a second step, pulling the substance of reality towards him as though it were made of sun-softened candy. The carnival pictures hanging on the wall began to twist out of true; the intersection of wall and ceiling and wall and floor eased in towards the Artist's fist, losing their rigor.

It was as if the whole room were projected on a cinema screen and the Jaff had simply s.n.a.t.c.hed hold of the fabric, dragging it towards him. The projected image, which moments before had seemed so life-like, was revealed for the sham it was.

It's a movie, Grillo thought. The whole f.u.c.king world's a movie.

And the Art was the calling of that bluff. A s.n.a.t.c.hing away of the sheet, the shroud, the screen.

He wasn't the only one reeling before this revelation. Several of Buddy Vance's mourners, shaken from their stupor, had opened their eyes to see a sight their worst bad trips had never proffered.

Even the Jaff seemed to be shocked by the ease of the task. A tremor was running through his body, which had never looked so frail, so vulnerable, so human, as now. Whatever trials he'd undergone to anneal his spirit for this moment, they were not enough. Nothing could be enough. This was an art in defiance of the condition of flesh. All the profoundest certainties of being were forfeit in the face of it. From somewhere behind the screen, Grillo heard a rising sound, which filled his skull like the thud of his heart. It summoned the terata. He glanced around to see them coming through the door to lend their maker aid in whatever was imminent. They were uninterested in Grillo; he knew he could leave at any moment and not be challenged. But he could not turn his back on this, however it wrenched his gut. Whatever played behind the screen of the world was about to be seen, and his eyes wouldn't be coaxed from the sight. If he fled now, what would he do? Run to the gate and watch from a safe distance? There was no safe distance, knowing what he now knew. He'd spend the rest of his life touching the solid world and knowing that had he the Art at his fingertips, it would melt.

Not everyone was so fatalistic. Many of those conscious enough were attempting to make for the door. But the disease of malleability that had infected the walls had spread across half the floor. It became glutinous beneath the escapees, pitching as the Jaff pulled, two-handed now, at the matter of the room.

Grillo sought out some solid place in the shifting environment, but could only find a chair, which was as p.r.o.ne to the new vagaries of physics as any other item in the room. It slipped from his grasp, and he fell to his knees, the impact re-starting the flow of the blood from his nose. He let it run.

Looking up, he saw that the Jaff had pulled so hard on the far end of the room that it was distorted out of all recognition. The brilliance of the lights in the yard outside were dimmed, had gone, smeared into a featureless sweep so taut it could not be long before it broke. The sound from the other side had not grown any louder, but became, in a matter of seconds, almost inevitable, as though it had always been there, just out of hearing range.

The Jaff pulled another handful of the room's stuff into his grasp, and in doing so pressed the screen beyond endurance. It didn't tear in one place but in several. The room tipped again. Grillo clung to the heaving floor as bodies rolled past him. In the chaos he glimpsed the Jaff, who seemed at this last moment to be regretting all he'd done, struggling with the raw substance of reality he'd gathered up as if attempting to throw it away. Either his fists wouldn't obey him and release it or else it had its own momentum now and was opening itself without his aid, because a look of wild terror crossed his face, and he screamed a summons to his legions. They started towards him, their anatomies finding some purchase in this shifting chaos. Grillo was pressed to the ground as they clambered over him. No sooner had they begun their advance, however, than something brought them to a halt. Grasping the hides to right and left of him, no longer afraid of them with so much worse on view, Grillo hauled himself upright, or as near upright as was possible, and looked back towards the door. That end of the room was still more or less intact. Only a subtle twisting of the architecture gave any clue to what was happening behind him. He could see through into the hall, and beyond to the front door. It was open. In it stood Fletcher's son.

There were calls greater than that of makers and masters, Howie understood. There was the call of a thing to its opposite, to its natural enemy. That was what fuelled the terata now, as they turned back towards the door, leaving whatever chaos was unleashed inside the house to the Jaff's control.

"They're coming!" he yelled to Fletcher's army, backing off as the tide of terata approached the door. Jo-Beth, who'd stepped inside with him, lingered on the threshold. He took hold of her arm and pulled her away.

"It's too late," she said. "You see what he's doing? My G.o.d! You see?"

Lost cause or not, the dream-creatures were ready to face the terata, pouncing as soon as the flood emerged from the house. Climbing the Hill Howie had expected the fight ahead to be somehow refined; a battle of wills or wits. But the violence that erupted all around him now was purely physical. All they had was their bodies to pitch into the battle, and they put themselves to the task with a ferocity he'd not have guessed the melancholy souls gathered at the woods-much less the civil folk they'd been at the Knapp house-capable of. There was no distinction between children and heroes.

They were barely recognizable now, as the last traces of the people they'd been dreamt into being faded in the face of an equally plain enemy. It was essential stuff now. Fletcher's love of light against the Jaff's pa.s.sion for the dark. Beneath both was a single intention, which unified them. The destruction of the other.

He'd done as they requested, he thought; he'd led them up the Hill, calling the stragglers when they forgot themselves, and began to dissolve. With several, those less coherently conjured in the first place, perhaps, he'd lost. Their bodies had dispersed before he could get them within scenting distance of their enemy. For the rest, the sight of the terata was stimulus enough. They'd fight until torn apart.

Grievous damage was already being done on both sides. Fragments of sleek darkness torn from the bodies of the terata; washes of light breaking from the dream-army when they were opened up. There was no sign of pain among the warriors. No blood from the wounds. They endured a.s.sault after a.s.sault, fighting on having sustained damage that would have incapacitated anything remotely alive. Only when more than half their substance had been torn from them did they unravel, and disperse. Even then the air they dissolved into wasn't empty. It buzzed and shook as though the war was continuing on a sub-atomic level, negative and positive energies fighting to impa.s.se, or the extinction of both.

The latter, most likely, if the forces warring in front of the house were any model. Equally matched, they were simply eradicating each other, countering harm with harm, their numbers dwindling.

The battle had spread down to the gate by the time Tesla reached the top of the Hill, and was spilling out on to the road. Forms that might once have been recognizable but were now abstractions, smears of darkness, smears of light, tearing at each other. She stopped the car, and started up towards the house. Two combatants emerged from the trees that lined the driveway, and fell to the ground a few yards ahead, their limbs locked around-and it seemed through-each other. She looked on, appalled. Was this what the Art had released? How they escaped from Quiddity?

"Tesla!"

She looked up. Howie was in sight. His explanation was quick and breathless.

"It's started," he said. "The Jaff's using the Art."

"Where?"

"In the house."

"And these?" she said.

"The last defense," he replied. "We were too late."

What now, babe? she thought. You don't have any way of stopping this. The world's on a tilt and everything's sliding.

"We should all get the h.e.l.l out of here," she told Howie.

"You think?"

"What else can we do?"

She looked up towards the house. Grillo had told her it was a folly, but she hadn't expected architecture as wild as this. The angles all subtly off, no upright that wasn't askew by a few degrees. Then she understood. It wasn't some postmodernist joke. It was something inside the house, pulling it out of shape.

"My G.o.d," she said. "Grillo's still in there."

Even as she spoke the facade bent a little more. In the face of such strangeness the remnants of the battle all around her were of little consequence. Just two tribes tearing at each other like rabid dogs. Men's stuff. She skirted it, ignored.

"Where are you going?" Howie said.

"Inside."

"It's mayhem."

"And it isn't out here? I've got a friend in there."

"I'll come with you," he said.

"Is Jo-Beth here?"

"She was."

"Find her. I'll find Grillo and we'll both get the f.u.c.k out of here."

Without waiting for a reply she headed on towards the door.

The third force loose in the Grove tonight was halfway up the Hill when Witt realized that however profound his grief at losing his dreams, tonight he didn't want to die. He started to struggle with the door handle, fully ready to pitch himself out, but the dust storm on their tail dissuaded him. He looked across at Tommy-Ray. The boy's face had never sung out intelligence, but its slackness now was shocking. He looked almost moronic. Spittle ran from his lower lip, his face was glossy with sweat. But he managed a name as he drove. "Jo-Beth," he said.

She didn't hear that call, but she heard another. From inside the house a cry, put out mind to mind, from the man who'd made her. It was not directed at her, she guessed. He didn't know she was even near. But she caught it: an expression of terror which she couldn't ignore. She crossed through the matter-thickened air to the front door, the uprights of which were blowing in.

The scene was worse inside. The whole interior had lost its solidity, and was being drawn inexorably to some central point. It wasn't difficult to find that point. The whole softening world was moving in its direction.

The Jaff was there of course, at the core. In front of him a hole in the very substance of reality, which was exercising this claim on living and non-living alike. What was on the other side of the hole she couldn't see, but she could guess. Quiddity; the dream-sea; and on it an island both Howie and her father had told her about, where time and s.p.a.ce were laughable laws, and spirits walked.

But if that was the case-he'd succeeded in his ambition, used the Art to gain access to the miracle-why was he so afraid? Why was he trying to retreat from the sight, tearing at his own hands with his teeth to make them let go the matter his fingers had penetrated?

All her reason said: go back. Go back while you can. The pull of whatever lay beyond the hole already had a hold of her. She could resist it for a short time, but that window was getting smaller. What she couldn't resist, however, was the hunger that brought her into the house in the first place. She wanted to see her father's pain. Not a sweet, daughterly desire, but he was not the sweetest of fathers. He'd caused her pain, and Howie too. He'd corrupted Tommy-Ray out of all recognition. He'd broken Momma's heart and life. Now she wanted to see him suffer, and she couldn't take her eyes off the sight. His self-mutilation was increasingly manic. He spat out pieces of his fingers, shaking his head back and forth in an attempt to deny whatever he saw beyond the hole the Art had made.

She heard a voice behind her say her name, and looked around to see a woman whom she'd never met, but Howie had described, beckoning her back to the safety of the threshold. She ignored the summons. She wanted to see the Jaff undo himself completely; or be dragged away and destroyed by his own mischief. She hadn't realized until this moment, how much she hated him. How much cleaner she'd feel when he was gone out of the world.

Tesla's voice had found other ears besides Jo-Beth's. Clinging to the ground a couple of yards behind the Jaff, on the eroding island of solidity around the Artist, Grillo heard Tesla call, and turned-against the call of Quiddity-to look her way. His face felt fat with blood, as the hole pulled his fluids up through his body. His head pounded as if ready to burst. The tears were being sucked from his eyes, his eyelashes plucked out. His nose poured two b.l.o.o.d.y streams, which ran straight from his face towards the hole.

He'd already seen most of the room s.n.a.t.c.hed away into Quiddity. Roch.e.l.le had been one of the first to go, relinquishing what little hold her addicted body had on the solid world. Sagansky and his punched-out opponent had gone. The party-goers had followed, despite their attempts to get to the door. The pictures had been stripped from the walls, then the plaster cladding from the wood underneath; now the wood itself was giving up and bending to the call. Grillo would have joined them, walls, guests and all, had it not been for the fact that the Jaff's shadow offered a tenuous solidity in this chaotic sea.

No, not sea. That was what he'd glimpsed on the other side of the hole, and it shamed every other image of the world.

Quiddity was the essential sea; the first, the fathomless. He'd given up all hope of escaping its summons. He'd come too close to its sh.o.r.e to turn away. Its undertow had already hauled most of the room away. It would soon take him.

But seeing Tesla he suddenly dared hope he might survive to tell the tale. If he was to have the least chance he'd have to be quick. What little cover the Jaff afforded was being eroded by the moment. Seeing Tesla reach for him, he reached back in her direction. The distance was too great. She couldn't stretch any further into the room without losing her hold on the relative solidity beyond the door.

She gave up the attempt, and stepped away from the opening.

Don't desert me now, he thought. Don't give me hope and then desert me.

He should have known better. She'd simply withdrawn in order to pull her belt from the loops of her trousers, then she was back at the door, letting Quiddity's pull unroll the belt and put it within his grasp.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed hold.

Outside on the battlefield, Howie had found the remains of the light that had been Benny Patterson. It had almost lost all trace of the boy it had been, but there was enough left for Howie to recognize. He went down on his knees beside it, thinking it was nonsense to mourn the pa.s.sing of something so transitory, then correcting that thought with another. That he too was transitory, and no more certain of his purpose than this dream, Benny Patterson, had been.

He put his hand to the boy's face, but it was already dissolving, and blew away like bright pollen beneath his fingers. Distressed, he looked up to see Tommy-Ray at the gate of Coney, starting up towards the house. Behind him, lingering at the gate, was a man Howie didn't know. And behind them both, a wall of moaning dust that followed Tommy-Ray in a swirling cloud.

His thoughts went from Benny Patterson to Jo-Beth. Where was she? In the confusion of the last few minutes he'd neglected her. He didn't doubt she was Tommy-Ray's target.

He stood up, and moved to intercept his enemy, who was as changed from the tanned, gleaming hero he'd first met in the Mall as it was possible to get. Blood-spattered now, eyes sunk in their sockets, he threw back his head and yelled: "Father!"

The dust on his heels flew at Howie as he came within striking distance of Tommy-Ray. Whatever haunted it, hate-bloated faces, with mouths like tunnels, swatted him aside, and moved in to better business, uninterested in his little life. He fell to the ground, covering his head until they'd pa.s.sed over him. When they had, he got to his feet. Tommy-Ray, and the cloud that had followed him, had disappeared inside.

He heard Tommy-Ray's voice raised above the din of the Art.

"Jo-Beth!" he bellowed.

She was inside the house, he realized. Why she'd gone there was beyond him, but he had to get to her before Tommy-Ray, or the b.a.s.t.a.r.d would take her.

As he raced to the front door, he saw the last of the dust storm s.n.a.t.c.hed by a force inside, and dragged out of sight.

The power that had taken it was visible the moment he stepped over the threshold; he saw the last, chaotic trails of the cloud being pulled into a maelstrom which was claiming the entire house. In front of it, his hands barely recognizable, stood the Jaff. Howie got only a glimpse of the scene before Tesla yelled for his attention.

"Help me! Howie? Howie? For Christ's sake help me!"

She was clinging to the inner door, its geometry gone to h.e.l.l, her other hand holding on to somebody who was about to be claimed by the maelstrom. He was with her in three strides, a hail of c.r.a.p flying past him (the step which he'd just crossed), and seized her hand. As he did so he recognized the figure standing a yard beyond Tesla, and closer to the maw the Jaff had opened. Jo-Beth!

His recognition came as a cry. She turned in his direction, half-blinded by the a.s.sault of debris. As their eyes met he saw Tommy-Ray move towards her. The machine had taken a beating of late but it still had power. He pulled on Tesla, dragging her and the man she'd been struggling to save out of the most chaotic zone into the hall. It was the moment Tommy-Ray needed to reach Jo-Beth, flinging himself at her with sufficient force to throw her off her feet.

He saw the terror in her eyes as she lost her balance. Saw Tommy-Ray's arms close around her, in the tightest of em-braces. Then the Quiddity claimed them both, sweeping them across the room past their father, and away, into the mystery.

Howie let out a howl.

Behind him Tesla was yelling his name. He ignored the call. His eyes on the place where Jo-Beth had gone he took a step towards the door. The power egged him on. He took another step, vaguely aware that Tesla was yelling for him to stop, to turn back before it was too late.

Didn't she know it had been too late the moment after he'd seen Jo-Beth? Everything had been lost, way back then.

A third step, and the whirlwind s.n.a.t.c.hed him up. The room turned over and over. He saw his father's enemy for an instant, gaping, followed by the hole, gaping wider still.

Then he was gone, where his beautiful Jo-Beth had gone, into Quiddity.

"Grillo?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you stand up?" "I think so."

He'd tried twice, and failed, and Tesla had no strength left to pick him up and carry him down to the gate.

"Give me a moment," he said. Not for the first time his eyes went back to the house they'd barely escaped from.

"There's nothing to see, Grillo," she said.

That wasn't true, by any means. The facade was like something from Caligari, the door sucked in, the windows going the same way. And inside, who knew?

As they stumbled down to the car a figure emerged from the chaos and stumbled out into the moonlight. It was the Jaff. The fact that he'd stood on Quiddity's sh.o.r.e and resisted its waves was testament to his power, but that resistance had taken its toll. His hands were reduced to gnawed flesh, the remains of the left hanging from the bones of his wrist in strips. His face was as brutally devoured, not by teeth but by what he'd seen. Blank-eyed and broken, he staggered down to the gate. Wisps of darkness, the last of the terata, followed him.

Tesla badly wanted to ask Grillo what glimpse he'd had of Quiddity, but this wasn't the moment. It was enough to know that he was alive to tell. Flesh in a world where flesh was forfeit every moment. Alive, when life ended with each exhalation and began again with every s.n.a.t.c.hed breath.

In the trough between, there was such jeopardy. And now, as never before. She didn't doubt that the worst had come to pa.s.s, and that somewhere on Quiddity's furthest sh.o.r.e the Iad Uroboros were sharpening their envy and starting across the dream-sea.

PART SEVEN.

SOULS AT ZERO.

I.

Presidents, messiahs, shamans, popes, saints and lunatics had attempted-over the pa.s.sage of a millennium-to buy, murder, drug and flagellate themselves into Quiddity. Almost to a one, they'd failed. The dream-sea had been more or less preserved, its existence an exquisite rumor, never proved, and all the more potent for that. The dominant species of the Cosm had kept what little sanity it possessed by visiting the sea in sleep, three times in a life span, and leaving it, always wanting more. That hunger had fuelled it. Made it ache; made it rage. Made it do good in the hope, often unconscious, of being granted more regular access. Made it do evil out of the idiot suspicion that it was conspired against by its enemies, who knew the secret but weren't telling. Made it create G.o.ds. Made it destroy G.o.ds. The few who'd taken the journey that Howie, Jo-Beth, Tommy-Ray and twenty-two guests from Buddy Vance's house were taking now had not been accidental travellers. They'd been chosen, for Quiddity's purposes, and gone (for the most part) prepared. Howie, on the other hand, was no more prepared for this than any stick of furniture hauled into the throat of the schism. He was pitched first through loops of energy and then into what appeared to be the middle of a thunderhead, lightning setting brief, bright fires all around him. Any trace of sound from the house had disappeared the moment he'd entered the throat. So had the pieces of trash that had flown in along with him. Helpless to steer or orient himself, all he could do was tumble through the cloud, the lightning becoming less frequent and more brilliant, the pa.s.sages of darkness between steadily more profound, until he wondered if perhaps his eyes were closing, and the darkness-along with the falling sensation that accompanied it-was in his head. If so, he was happy with its embrace, his thoughts now also in free-fall, fixing momentarily on images which appeared out of the darkness, seeming to be completely solid though he was almost certain they were in his mind's eye.