Infernal Parade Read online

  Infernal Parade

  Copyright © 2017 by Clive Barker.

  All rights reserved.

  “Tom Requiem” Copyright © 2004 by Clive Barker.

  All rights reserved.

  “Mary Slaughter” Copyright © 2004 by Clive Barker.

  All rights reserved.

  “The Golem, Elijah” Copyright © 2004 by Clive Barker.

  All rights reserved.

  “Dr. Fetter’s Family of Freaks” Copyright © 2004 by

  Clive Barker. All rights reserved.

  “The Sabbaticus” Copyright © 2004 by Clive Barker.

  All rights reserved.

  “Bethany Bled” Copyright © 2004 by Clive Barker.

  All rights reserved.

  Dust jacket and interior illustrations

  Copyright © 2017 by Bob Eggleton.

  All rights reserved.

  Print version interior design

  Copyright © 2017 by Desert Isle Design, LLC.

  All rights reserved.

  Electronic Edition

  ISBN

  978-1-59606-808-7

  Subterranean Press

  PO Box 190106

  Burton, MI 48519

  subterraneanpress.com

  Table of Contents

  TOM REQUIEM

  MARY SLAUGHTER

  THE GOLEM, ELIJAH

  DR. FETTER'S FAMILY OF FREAKS

  THE SABBATICUS

  BETHANY BLED

  THOUGH THERE HAD been men in recent history who had committed crimes far worse than those of Tom Requiem, none drew the crowds the size of those who came to the Requiem Trial. The reason? Tom was a star. He knew how to smile, he knew how to look penitent, he knew when to play the fool, and when to simply do nothing, and leave his admirers to project upon his beautiful face all that they wanted to see there.

  Some saw Christ. With his long dark curly hair, and the rough beard he’d grown in prison, Requiem did indeed look like the Man of Sorrows in certain lights.

  What he didn’t look like was a man who killed a woman in a sordid back-street squabble over the dividing of the profit from an afternoon of pick-pocketing. But as the prosecution reminded the jury over and over, Requiem’s many faces were not to be trusted. He was a Guizer, said the lawyer, a man who took pleasure in putting on faces to suit the occasion, not one of them more trustworthy than any other.

  “I have heard men grow pale when they hear of Tom Requiem’s reputation as a great fighter, and tender hearted women blush when they hear stories of his prowess as a lover, but when we come to inquire as to where these stories originate, what do we find? Why, that they have come from the lips of the great lover himself. He is a liar, born and bred, a man who likes nothing better than to weave fabrications and fantastications, and make the world his fool by having us believe them! This, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I will prove today, as I uncover his crimes and deceits. By the time I am done telling you the truth about Thomas Absalom Requiem you will find very little to admire about him, I’ll wager, and much to hold in the profoundest contempt.”

  Prosecutors are not always good at doing as they promise they’ll do, but this one was an exception. By the time the lengthy trial was over, Tom Requiem’s many reputations were in tatters. His female conquests had come into the witness box and given lists of his inadequacies, while those he had reputedly fought against in human combat told of his street-dog tricks.

  “There you have it then,” said the prosecutor. “Tom Requiem is a cheat, a philanderer and a murderer. He may have an innocent look on his face right now but I beg you—be not deceived!—he is fully deserving of the hangman’s noose.”

  The jury agreed, and the judge declared the next day that Tom Requiem would be hanged by the neck until dead. And God have mercy on his soul.

  That night, well after midnight, Tom had a visitor. He introduced himself as Joshua Kemp; he was to be Tom’s hangman.

  “I will be merciful,” Kemp said, “for I see no purpose in prolonging a man’s agony.” He drew closer to Tom as he spoke, and glanced back over his shoulder to be certain that nobody was listening at the door. “But,” he said, lowering his voice in a whisper, “should you find by some wild chance that I did not complete tomorrow’s business—”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Keep your voice down and listen. There are those parties who would like to see you preserved from so short a life.”

  “Well, well,” said Tom. “Not that I’m not grateful an’ all, but why would anybody work to save my sorry neck from the noose?”

  Kemp tugged at the collar of his shirt, as though this subject was growing a little too uncomfortable for him. “Better I don’t talk about that,” he said. “I just came here to tell you to take courage and for God’s sake, play dead. You may be buried, but you’ll be dug up again. That’s a promise.”

  “Buried…alive?” Tom Requiem murmured.

  “That’s the word to keep remembering,” the hangman said. “Alive. Alive.”

  “Oh, I’ll remember,” Tom replied.

  SO THE NEXT day, with his head shorn of its shiny locks, and his chest shaved clean, Tom Requiem was taken to the gallows, where a huge crowd waited to see judgment done. Despite his conversation with Kemp of the previous night, he did not feel much reassured. He watched the hangman’s face—right up until the moment when the burlap sack was put over his head—searching for some sign, however small, of reassurance. A wink, a tiny smile. But there was nothing but sweat on Kemp’s face. Then the bag came down like a black curtain, and Tom heard himself breathing hard in darkness. The murmur of the crowd receded to near silence. The priest came to the end of his prayer. There was clatter, and a terrible emptiness beneath his feet. Then he fell, down and down, and the darkness became a blaze of white, so bright that it burned all his thoughts away.

  What happened then was all fragments, coming and going. He saw faces, looking down at him, contemptuous faces, laughing faces. He saw a doctor come and give him a cursory glance (a doctor, it should be said, with a most peculiar look in his eye, as though there were many fires burning in his head), and then apparently dismissing him as a dead thing; as worthless. All that was easy enough to take. What followed was not. What followed was the stuff of nightmares, and in that tiny place in his head where Tom Requiem was still alive he was a tiny ball of fear. To see the coffin sides rising around him as he was put in that plain wooden box! To see the lid slid into place, eclipsing the last of the light, until there was nothing, nothing, nothing to see but darkness! To hear the wood creak around him as the coffin was carried to the grave, and the sound of the digging, and the raw rasp of the ropes as they were hauled beneath the box to drop it down into the grave! And finally—oh worst of all, the very worst!—the sound of the earth rattling down onto the lid of the coffin, becoming more and more muffled as the grave filled up, until there was no sound at all. Nothing!

  It had all been a terrible trick, he began to think. This was his enemies’ way of revenging themselves on him. Death hadn’t been enough. They’d wanted to try him by hope, leaving him alive in the grave, knowing that eventually he would lose his sanity.

  He could feel it slipping away, moment by moment, heartbeat by heartbeat. There he had nothing to pray to in his darkness. No God that he believed in. No loving Virgin Mother who would have forgiven him his trespasses. He was beyond all help.

  Or was he?

  What was that sound in the earth?

  Somebody digging, was it?

  Did he dare believe that after all somebody was going to come and save him from this place of torments? Or was it just his crazed mind playing tricks on him? Yes, that it was! It was just one last proof of his insanity, because, listen, listen, the sound wasn’t even
coming from above, it was coming from below!

  Ridiculous. How could anybody be digging towards him from below?

  And yet…and yet…

  The more he listened, the more he seemed to hear the sound of shovels cutting through dirt, and voices even, the voices of the diggers, getting louder as they approached.

  Finally, he heard a spade strike against the board beneath him. The coffin reverberated. He wanted to weep with relief. He was going to be saved! The question remained as to what manner of creature would dig a man out of his grave from below, but frankly he didn’t much care: a savior was a savior, whatever shape it came in, and from whatever direction.

  Now he felt hands on the coffin from all sides; and people talking all around. He couldn’t make sense of what they were saying, but some of them were perhaps giving orders, for a few seconds later several powerful instruments (perhaps crowbars) were tearing at the underside of his coffin. Light broke through, yellow light, and finally the bottom of the coffin was removed completely, and he dropped into the arms of those who had worked to save him.

  There were three of them, small, quick-eyed creatures, with painted faces. They introduced themselves. Clovio, Heeler and Bleb.

  But it wasn’t the diggers who claimed most of Tom Requiem’s attention, it was their master. He knew the man, though not his name. This was the fellow whom Tom had presumed to be a doctor, who had briefly examined him before he was committed to the grave. No wonder he had spotted no sign of life in the hanged man. He’d been in the plot all along.

  His eyes burned brighter now, and when they fixed their gaze on “the dead man” Tom felt the rigidities of death fall away, and life flooded back into his body, from scalp to sole.

  “Welcome,” said the Doctor. “No doubt you are surprised to see me down here.”

  “Yeah. I guess I am,” Tom said. His voice was low from the constriction his windpipe had lately taken, but the Doctor had a quick cure for that.

  “Drink this!” he said, handing a silver flask to Requiem.

  Never one for half measures, Tom knocked back two full throatfuls of the liquor, which coursed through his cold body most pleasantly.

  “We haven’t brought you down here into the Underland out of simple compassion, Tom,” the Doctor went on.

  “No?”

  “No, we have work for you to do. We will dress you in a costume befitting a shaman, and you will go out into the world to lead an Infernal Parade. The world has grown complacent, Tom; and fat with its own certainties. It’s time to send some fears into the hearts of men.”

  Tom thought of the crowd that had assembled in such howling numbers to see him hanged by the neck until dead.

  “It will be my pleasure,” he said. “Where do I begin?”

  “With the woman whose life you took,” said the Doctor. With Mary Slaughter…”

  “MARY, MARY, MARY,” Tom Requiem said. “Look at you. You haven’t changed a bit.”

  “Whereas you, Tom, you look like you’ve been scalped and hanged and buried alive.”

  “Was that just a lucky guess or…?”

  “Guessing games are for children,” Mary said. “I believe in being in possession of all the facts. So I’ve made it my business to watch every little humiliation that you’ve had to endure since you took my life from me.”

  The smug smile she’d been wearing since setting eyes on him suddenly disappeared; she bared her teeth which she had sharpened, since her demise, and said:

  “I watched it all. The court. The trial. All those intimate moments in the prison when you prayed for my forgiveness—”

  “I never prayed!” Tom Requiem grumbled.

  “Oh yes you did. You sobbed until the shit ran down your face, you were so afraid of going to Hell for your sins. And you’re a lucky sonofabitch, Tom Requiem. Because plenty of people have been sent to Hell for less than what you did to me! A lot less! Other people burn in the everlasting fires for their crimes against all that is natural and loving. But you—you get to lead a parade out of the Underland and into the lives of poor dull humanity.”

  “Yeah…it has turned out pretty well hasn’t it? I mean I can’t say I didn’t shit myself when I was in that damn coffin. But now…things are looking pretty good.”

  “Just don’t think you’re going to be the only one in charge of the fun and frolics. I’m joining the parade myself, to watch over you: make sure you don’t step out of line.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Hate the idea, do you?”

  “It wouldn’t be my first choice,” Tom replied. “But when I think about it maybe we’ll end up finding we’re fond of one another again.”

  “That I somehow doubt.” Mary Slaughter smiled.

  “But you are very beautiful.”

  “As you remarked just a few minutes before you put your knife into my heart.”

  “Oh, must we talk about all this sordid stuff? It’s ancient history, isn’t it?”

  “No, Tom, it isn’t. In fact in the time since my sloughing off this mortal skin, I have educated myself in the way of blades, so that I would be ready to defend myself should you or any other cowardly, witless man attempt to do me harm.”

  “What harm can possibly be done to you? You’re dead.”

  “They didn’t tell you about our audience, did they?”

  “No.”

  Mary Slaughter smiled sardonically. “We’re going amongst the fallen angels, Tom. The rotted souls who gave up their place beside the Lord for a scrappy hope of revolution. That’s going to be one real audience. And they’re dangerous, Tom, they’re mischief-makers. Hope destroyers. They plot night and day for some way to rise up against Heaven—?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “We will care if we get mixed up in any of their domestic politics. We could die a thousand times, believe me, at the hands of those things. It would not be pretty.”

  “Well then we won’t go amongst them. We’ll just go wherever the hell we want.”

  “Listen to you. As though they’d give a job to do and then trust us to do it. The likes of us! They know what you are, Tom: a liar and a cheat and a cut-purse.”

  “And what do they say about you? Adulteress?”

  “Probably.”

  “Whore?”

  “Now, now, don’t get hurtful. I have tender feelings.”

  “You? Tender? You’ve smothered more unwanted babies and buried the mothers if they died giving birth…so don’t you try to get high and mighty—not with me. It isn’t going to work.”

  “Maybe there was some sense in making a team of us. We know each other so well—”

  “And hate each other so fiercely—”

  “Oh, hate’s just the beginning, Tom,” Mary Slaughter said, leaning towards him. “I got a thousand different feelings for you, not a single one of them pleasant.”

  “Well then, shall we get this show on the road?”

  “First,” Mary said, “don’t you want to see my performance?”

  “I didn’t realize you had one.”

  “I’m not just a pretty face, Tom, unlike some I could mention. Here!” She snapped her fingers and a large wooden casket, profusely decorated with Carnival colors—bright yellows and reds, greens and golds—came sliding over the ground and stopped in front of her feet. No bird-dog could have been better trained to attend upon its mistress’ summons than this casket.

  “Open!” she commanded it.

  The lock picked itself in less than thirty seconds. Then the casket threw open its lid and its contents rose into the air, in a bright vein-nicking array. Swords, swords, and more swords. Swords for captains, swords for butchers, swords straight as God’s gaze, swords curved like a woman’s back.

  “As you so unkindly took from me the opportunity to have children—”

  “Oh, do the dead not breed?” said Tom casually. “Pity, I’d have given it a go.”

  “May God rot my eyes if I ever let you inside me, Tom Requiem. As I was saying, a
s I can’t have children, I assembled myself a family that would never grow old, nor break my heart.” She called a sword to her: “Monsieur!” It flew into her hand. “Owned by Napoleon. And bloodied, more than once.”

  “You surprise me. What about that one? The long one!”

  “Oh, my Chief? My love sword.” She let Monsieur go and he took his place at her feet. The Chief, meanwhile, rose up above her head, perilously close to her. There was such size and weight to the blade that had the might that held it aloft failed for the merest moment she would have been dead in two seconds. But Mary was fearless. She threw back her head and opened her lovely wet mouth.

  “Come,” she said.

  The sword began to descend into her throat. Tom’s jaw hung open staring at the sight; he could barely believe what he was seeing. For one thing the sword was so broad, and so very plainly razor sharp, that the tiniest palpitation in the woman’s throat would open a wound in her esophagus, or stomach, or innards, God help her, that no surgeon would be able to fix without cutting her open from throat to—

  Mary’s gaze slid in the direction of her audience of one. She even managed the tiniest twitch of a smile, as she took pleasure in the mingling of awe and incomprehension on his handsome face.

  But she had more to show him. Two swords had gently slid beneath her feet, and now, as if she had issued some order that Tom had failed to catch, they lifted her up, until she was standing on their points, defying the laws of life and physics. Nor was she finished there. More blades rose from the casket and performed a series of elegant motions in the air around her head and torso. Was she their victim or their mistress; a martyr to these piercing, plunging blades or their effortless commander? He could not tell. And that perhaps was the point of this spectacle, that at any moment—a slip, a misstep, and there would be blood everywhere, albeit the blood of a dead woman.

  Finally, Mary touched her forefinger to the sword she had swallowed and it rose with the same glacial ease with which it had descended, and the other blades gathered themselves up like fans and returned to their resting place in the casket.