Clive Barker MisterBGone

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Anyway, the workshop. Or, more particularly, the Arch-bishop [who had, by the
way, the rankest breath I have ever been obliged to inhale] who told me to:
"Get out. Immediately! You've no business here."
"He's my business!" I said, pointing at Quitoon. "And that woman beside him, she's
not a woman at all she's "
"Been possessed by an angel," the Archbishop said. "Yes, so I see. There's another
one behind you, demon, if you care to look."
I turned, in time to see light spilling from another of the men who had been working
on the press. It poured from his eyes, and from his mouth, and from the tips of his
fingers. As I watched him he picked up a simple metal rod, which he lifted up,
intending, I'm sure, to beat out my brains. But once the rod was held high it caught
the contagion of light from his eyes, and became a length of spiraling fire, which
threw off flames that fluttered overhead like a swelling cloud of burning butterflies.
Their strangeness momentarily claimed my attention, and in that moment the
man-becoming-angel struck me with his sword.
Fire, again. Always fire. It had marked every crossroad in my life. Its agonies, its
cleansings, its transformations. All of them were gifts of fire.
And now, this wound, which the man-becoming-angel deliv-ered in its less than
perfected state half a step short. It was the saving of me. Any closer and the blade
would have cut through me from shoulder to my right hip, and would certainly have
brought my existence to an end. Instead it inscribed a line across my body but only
sliced into my scarred flesh an inch at most. It was nevertheless a dire wounding, the
fire cutting not only my flesh but some fleshless part of me too; the pain of it was
worse than even the cut, which was itself enough to make me cry out.
With both my substance and my soul slashed wide, I was unable to return the blow.
I reeled away, bent double by the pain, stumbling blindly across the uneven boards,
until my arm found a wall. Its coldness was welcome. I pressed my face against it,
trying to govern the urge to weep like a child. What use was there in that, I reasoned.
Nobody would answer. Nobody would come. My pain possessed me; as I, it. We
were our other's only reliable companion in that room. Agony my only certain
friend.
Darkness closed in around the limits of my sight, and my knowledge of myself went
out like a candle, which then lit, flick-ered back into life again, and again went out,
and was again lit, this time staying alight.
In the meantime, I had sunk down against the wall, my legs folded up beneath me
and my face pressed to the wall. I looked down. Fluids blue-black and scarlet came
out of me, running down over my legs. I turned my face away from the wall a few
inches to see that the two fluids, unwilling to be intertwined, were forming a marbled
pool around me.
My thoughts went to Quitoon, who had been standing beside Hannah when last I'd
seen him. Had the angel already smoth-ered him in her brightness, or was there
something I, a wound within wound, might still do to help him?
I willed my shaking arms to rise, my hands to open, and my palms to push me from
the wall. It was hard work. There wasn't a sinew in my body that wanted to play this
fool's game. My body shook so violently I doubted I would even be able to stand,
much less walk.
But first I had to see the state of the battlefield.
I turned my unruly head towards the workshop, hoping I would quickly locate
Quitoon, and that he would be alive.
But I did not see him, nor did I see anybody, other than the dead. Quitoon, Hannah,
Gutenberg, and the Archbishop, even the demon who had been poised outside the
window, were gone. So, too, were those few workers who had survived the demon's
assault. There were only the bodies, and me. And I was only here because I had
been mistaken for one of them. A living demon left amongst the human dead.
Where had they gone? I turned my stuttering vision towards the door that led back
to the way I'd come, through to the front door, but I neither heard the moans of
wounded men nor the voices of demons or of angels. I then looked towards the
door through which Hannah and Quitoon had come, which led, I'd supposed, to the
kitchen, but there was no sign of lives natural or supernatural in that direction either.
Now sheer curiosity lent an unanticipated vigor to my body, dulling the pain and
allowing my senses to sharpen. I didn't delude myself that this was a permanent
reprieve, but I would take what I was given. There were, after all, only two ways to
come and go, so whichever way I chose I had at least half a chance of finding those
who'd been here no more than a minute or two before.
Wait, though. Perhaps it had not been a minute; no, nor even two. There were flies
congregating in the thousands around the blood spilled by the man I'd murdered,
and thousands more by the men who'd been taken by the flying glass. And for every
ten flies feeding there were twenty scrawling on the air above, look-ing for a place to
land and feed.
Seeing this, I realized that I had been wrong to assume that my consciousness had
flickered out for moments only. It was clearly much longer. Long enough for human
blood to have congealed a little, and for its smell to have caught the atten-tion of all
these hungry flies. Long enough too for everyone who had played a part in the
drama of Johannes Gutenberg's printing press to have departed, leaving me
forsaken. The fact that the emissaries of Lucifer and those of the Lord God had
gone was a matter of indifference to me. But that Quitoon had left the only soul I
had ever longed to be loved by who, even here, with all possible reason to believe
that all hope had been erased, I had still hoped would see my devotion and love me
for it had gone.
"Botch," I murmured to myself, remembering the Arch-bishop's definition. "A mess.
A muddle "
I stopped in midcondemnation. Why? Because though I may be a muddle and a
mess, I had still managed to catch a glimpse of the workshop's third door. The only
reason I did so was because someone had left it open half a thumb's length. Indeed,
others with less knowledge of the occult might have not have seen it as an open door
at all, but as a trick of the sun, for it seemed to hang in the air, a narrow length of
light that started a foot and a half or so off the ground and stopped six feet above
that.
I had no time to waste, not in my wounded state. I went directly to it. Subtle waves
of the supernatural forces that had opened this door and created whatever lay
beyond it broke against me as I approached. Their touch was not unkind. Indeed,
they seemed to understand my sickened state, and kindly bathed my wound in balm.
Their ministerings gave me the strength and the will to reach up to the narrow strip of
light and push it open. I didn't let it swing wide. I opened it just far enough for me to
raise my leg and slide myself with the greatest caution, having no idea of what lay
on the other side through the opening. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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