Clive Barker's First Tales Read online

  About 11:30 p.m. Mrs. Fortesque fainted - ‘Probably the heat,’ her escort said - but really because she had drunk too much. She had to be attended to by her friends and then taken home long before the party was due to finish. For long years afterwards Mrs. Fortesque would talk of that night and how divine providence had seen fit to save her alone.

  The party continued. The laughter became more hysterical, the music louder and more insistent. Logs were heaped on the bonfire. It crackled and roared. Case after case of champagne was opened and emptied, tray after tray of food prepared and devoured. Beneath their Hallowe’en masks, fat faces dissolved into rolls of hysteria, disdainful faces sneered, military faces looked grim. Each played his or her part better than ever before. And above their heads, unknown to the guests, the trees were whispering to each other softly, whispering in a language as old as the world itself. Whispering of a vengeance planned.

  Someone carved his initials in the trunk of an old oak.

  He will die, said the whisperer.

  Another man threw a living branch on to the blazing bonfire and smiled as it burned.

  He too, said the whisperer.

  And in the midst of her guests, the Duchess laughed beneath her mask of silver leaves, and forgot all that had been told her. And the whisperers hated her the most — for she had begun it all, caused these murders, these desecrations. For her there could be no death too terrible.

  The Duchess had arranged that at the stroke of midnight all lights should be extinguished (except for the bonfire of course) and that everybody should take off their masks and reveal who they were (everybody knew really, but it was still fun). So, as midnight grew near, the Duchess told the orchestra to stop playing, which they did. As soon as they stopped, of course, the talking stopped too, and all the guests turned to look at her.

  ‘My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen,’ she began (a solitary cheer from the Admiral, who had had a little too much to drink). ‘It is almost midnight’ (another cheer from the Admiral; this time halted abruptly by the Admiral’s wife pushing a gooseberry tart inside his mouth). ‘If we are silent,’ the Duchess continued, ‘we shall be able to hear the striking of the church in the valley. Then, on the twelfth stroke, let us all make merry until the dawn!’

  The clearing was silent except for the bonfire’s cracklings. No one moved. The Admiral had fallen asleep, gooseberry tart smeared round his mouth. Then, far, far away, the bell chimed.

  One...

  Two...

  ...The Duchess thought something moved in the trees...

  Three...

  Four...

  ...Dark forms shifting and gathering...

  Five...

  Six...

  ...The sorcerer was right...

  Seven...

  Eight...

  ...The woods were alive...

  Nine...

  Ten...

  ...And seeking vengeance...!

  Eleven...

  Twelve!

  On the twelfth stroke, the woods attacked!

  From out of the shadows appeared creatures forgotten since the world was young. Black, hideous creatures with eyes of fire and wings of death. Screeching, flapping monstrosities defying description.

  The Duchess screamed. A great wind sprang up. The torches were blown out. In the flickering light of the bonfire the guests fled, scattered by huge claws. The wind whistled, colder than ever before, bringing back on its shrieking darkness the dragons from the north, to wreak a terrible vengeance. . .

  The tables were overturned. Screaming people ran everywhere, but there was no escape. The trees were alive! Branches became arms which tightened about men’s throats, roots seemed to wrench themselves from the earth to halt the guests’ hysterical flight.

  For a single, terrible moment, the Duchess caught sight of the General, silhouetted against the blazing fire, crying out.

  ‘No! Don’t panic. For goodness sake don’t —’ Then a great claw struck him, ripping his mask off. And the Duchess saw that he really did have a skull instead of a face. Then, in madness, she fled from that place of horror. It was almost as if the wood wanted to let her go, for though she feared that at any moment a flapping monstrosity would descend from the trees upon her, none did. Thus half-weeping and half-laughing in madness, she fled from the wood into the moonlight and ran until the tormented screams were faint on the cold night wind. . .

  The Duchess was never seen again. And when the villagers ventured into the wood they found only the smouldering bonfire, nothing more. No — that’s not quite true. They found one other thing. A mask of silver leaves, torn by huge talons, not of our world.

  Some say that the Duchess still lives, an old woman now, quite mad since that unholy night. Others say that she ran away to Ireland with an officer in the Hussars, but some people would say that.

  But in the valley, the villagers are free now of their masters and run in the woods as of old, and dance and sing of endless summers to come. They do not fear the woods. For they planted young trees where the old ones were cut down, thus destroying the last remains of that grim celebration, so that none should ever know of it again.

  Old Michael still lives to this day, in a cottage built for him on the edge of the woods, and he is the woods’ guardian. Only he remembers truly the events of that night, only he knows the fate of his proud mistress, the Duchess. Some say that what he saw turned his mind, and that now he is quite mad. But they are the unbelievers. The villagers know Old Michael is not mad, they know he speaks the truth.

  The dragons he mutters about are not figments of his imagination, nor are the whisperers in the trees. Old Michael knows the woods, and the woods know him. For Michael talks to the trees, especially a very beautiful silver birch that appeared, quite inexplicably, in the middle of that dark clearing. A shining silver tree, which Michael tends with great care, even in the deep winter.

  And the woods will never be dark again, for each day is a joy greater than the last, and the world is at peace.

  THE END

  The Candle in the Cloud

  In the Brambles

  It was a cold day in early January. The sky had threatened snow since the first grey light of morning, but so far only a few, dismal flakes had drifted down, powdering the crazy-paving in the garden and then hardening into crusty ice. The birds sat silently on the bare branches of the apple tree, looking chilly and miserable. Occasionally, one of them would fly down and peck vainly at the frozen soil, then, giving it up as a bad job, flutter up into the apple tree again. The iron sky frowned, and the day was long and heavy.

  "I wish it would snow," muttered Graham, half to himself.

  Mrs. Bedford, his mother, stood at the sink, peeling potatoes and looking out into the garden.

  "Heaven preserve us if it does. Your father will get his twinges again and then where'll we be? We're supposed to be going to your Auntie Stella's on Sunday."

  "Oh no."

  "Oh yes. What are you pulling faces for now? I thought you liked going to Auntie Stella's. You hardly ever see them."

  "It's Mandy."

  "What's wrong with Mandy? She's growing into a proper young lady."

  "Yeah. She's a snob. All she ever talks about is riding school and the boys she met at the tennis club."

  "Oh really, Graham -"

  "Anyway, I'm fed up. I wish I was back at school. Oh –no I don't. We'd be doing physics now – Hey! It's beginning to snow."

  "Oh my goodness. Your father'll go mad. Here, take the peelings up to the top of the garden will you dear? Hurry up, before it comes on heavy."

  "Yes Mum."

  "– put your shoes on. You'll get your slippers wet."

  "Yes Mum."

  "And put your anorak on too."

  "I'm only going -"

  "– you heard me."

  "Yes Mum."

  Graham slipped on his old anorak and took the dripping colander from his mother.

  "Don't dawdle up there - there's half a blizzard coming up
." Graham slammed the kitchen door behind him.

  "– and don't slam the door! Really – that boy –"

  She dried her hands and went into the front room.

  The path was slippery and Graham half ran, half slid his way up the garden. His breath hung in misty clouds at his lips. He ducked under the low branches of the apple tree, and as he did, his anorak became caught in the brambles.

  For some reason, nobody had bothered to touch the bramble patch this year, and it had already begun to take over the strawberry bed and the lettuce frames. Not that Graham minded. He had always disliked gardens in which the plants were all in neat rows and the grass was cut just to the right height to see the plastic dwarves. The tangled mass of brambles at the top of the garden made the place look a little more exciting. Indeed, there was something about the twisted thicket against the dark sky that was a little frightening. But today it was just annoying.

  Graham yelled as he scratched the back of his hand on the thorns trying to free his anorak. The colander tipped and the peelings were scattered all over the path.

  "Damn!"

  He pulled at his anorak in a sudden fit of anger and it tore. "Oh blimey, now I've done it."

  Freed, he examined the damage to his hand and his anorak, neither of which was irreparable, and bent down to pick up the spilt peelings.

  Suddenly, something moved behind him. At first he thought it was a cat, or even a bird, in the brambles, but from the way the entire mesh of brambles was shaking, it seemed to a bigger animal than that. He stopped gathering up the peelings, and stood up, watching.

  The sky had darkened. The snow was falling more heavily than ever.

  Curious, and not a little unnerved, by the horrid stillness that had fallen, Graham scanned the bramble-patch, not moving a muscle in case he frightened whatever it was away. Nothing. The patch was absolutely still.

  Wait! There, in the thickest, darkest part of the patch his eyes met the gaze of another two eyes, large and shining. Graham drew a quick breath with surprise. He knew the eyes were human. They looked back at him with intelligence and not a little enmity.

  His first thought was to turn and run for it - but suppose he got caught in the brambles again and whoever it was jumped from their hiding place and caught him? On the other hand, he could hardly stand there and gaze like an idiot at the mysterious eyes until one of them froze to death, so he said, in a very low and hoarse voice:

  "Who – are – you?"

  No answer. Maybe he can't speak, Graham thought. The figure moved a little in the shadows, and Graham discerned the hunched shape of a thin little man.

  "What are you doing in our bramble patch?" The eyes stared back, unblinking.

  "Are you hurt?"

  Graham made to approach the man, but suddenly the expression in the large eyes changed and a wiry brown arm shot out from the brambles, seemingly unharmed by the thorns, and dragged a fistful aside. A head emerged, with a long and wizened face, brown and seamed like bark, with a small, scrawny beard. He had rings in his slightly over-large ears.

  Graham stepped back, and the man darted from the bramble patch and started to scramble over the fence at the bottom of the garden. As he ran, he dropped something which fell amongst the strawberry plants. Graham picked it up. It was a candle, a white candle.

  "Hey wait! You've dropped –"

  The little man turned, poised with expert, almost cat-like balance on the top of the fence. His eyes were wide with fear and confusion. Graham proffered the candle.

  "Here – take it."

  The man looked at him, and then, slowly and warily, climbed down the fence and started towards Graham. Suddenly, muted by the ever-thickening snow, there came a strange and unearthly sound. It might have been a man blowing on a horn; it might have been an animal bellowing. The sound made Graham shudder, but the little man, having been momentarily transfixed by terror, gave one last look at Graham and the candle and then turned and disappeared over the fence. Graham ran after him and put his foot through one of the lettuce frames. The glass shattered and cut his ankle. Yelling with pain and anger, he managed to hop to the fence, and, sticking his head over it, looked to see where the man had gone.

  By now the snow was thick and he couldn't see farther than a few yards. There was a school playing field at the bottom of the garden, but it was almost completely obliterated by the swirling snow. The man had gone.

  Then Graham heard the bellowing again and for just the briefest of moments the snow made the shapes of two horsemen, galloping off across the field, to be lost into the wall of white. His bleeding ankle stung him back to this world, and gritting his teeth, he hopped and limped his way back to the kitchen door. As he turned the door-knob he remembered the candle, which he still clutched in his hand. For some reason he did not want his mother to see it, so hastily stuffing it into his anorak pocket he opened the door, and fell inside with a yell that brought his mother running.

  "You'll survive," his mother said unsympathetically, when the ritual of washing and bandaging the cut was completed. "But I shouldn't be surprised if your father doesn't make you pay for the glass."

  "It wasn't my fault, it's those brambles. You can't get to the compost heap without tip-toeing through the vegetable patch. They're everywhere."

  "Well nobody else manages to put their foot through the lettuce frames. You are clumsy, you know."

  "Yes, Mum."

  Hoof Prints in the Night

  The incident was soon forgotten, by all except Graham. He still had the candle to remind him. And when, some time later, he examined it more closely, he found it was by no means an ordinary candle. It had upon it three eyes, each with a beam shining from it. It was an odd design, and had been carved in the wax and the grooves filled with what looked like gold. Graham buried the candle in amongst his sweaters and left it there.

  But that was not the end. Far from it. That January was a windy one, and the branches of the apple tree creaked and the telephone wires whistled, and sometimes, far-off, there would seem to drift across the playing field the distant, eerie sound of the horsemen's horns. It was a month of sudden snow and sudden sun, which broke through the dark, massed clouds a pale lemon, melting the icicles on the gutter only for them to form again in frost-silent night.

  One morning, two or three weeks later, Graham was breaking the ice from the birdbath in the garden. His mother was talking to the next-door neighbour over the hedge, and what he heard made a shudder run down his back.

  "Well," said the lady next door, "I can't say I've seen anything. I don't know where he gets his stories from."

  "He's getting on a bit," Graham's mother put it.

  "Yes, well he's lost it. I mean, horses. Dear, oh dear, it's a bit much isn't it? Horses. We'd have seen them, backing on to the field. We'd have seen them horses."

  "You'd think so. Still, it's very strange. Graham?" his mother called across to him.

  "Yes Mum?"

  "You haven't seen anybody riding round the field have you?"

  "Anybody in particular?"

  "He didn't say," said the lady next door. "That's just it. I mean, who's going to ride round there? They'd ask permission wouldn't they?"

  "No – I haven't seen anybody," Graham said, almost truthfully. He had put down the horsemen he had seen to a trick played by the snow. Now he was less certain.

  "Still, it's very strange," said Mrs. Bedford.

  "Yes, oh yes, it's strange all right. I mean, it's not like he'd seen the horses. Just the hoof-prints in the frost, like, on the grass. Well, that's what he said. Been riding round and round he said. It's his turf he's bothered about, with the new term starting next week. He's proud of his turf. Doesn't want it messed up by horses. And in the night. Now who'd ride round the field in the middle of the night, he said? Vandals, I said. Must be vandals.

  Graham stood and listened to the next-door neighbour chatter on for a few more minutes, but it was clear that she was as much in the dark about who the horsemen were as
the grounds man. But Graham knew, and his heart beat faster when he thought about it. The horsemen he thought he had seen galloping away into the snow had been real. Who they were and what they had been doing there, he could only blindly guess at. What was more important was the fact that they had returned, who could say how often, to gallop around in seemingly meaningless circles in the field at the bottom of their garden. Why do that, he wondered, unless they were searching for someone, or something? The man in the brambles had plainly been in mortal terror of them, to judge by the expression on his face when the horn had first sounded. Were they in pursuit of him? Or perhaps they sought what he carried.

  Graham slipped up to his room, opened his drawer and rummaged through his sweaters with his heart beating like a hammer in his chest. The candle was still there. He took it out, suddenly fiercely possessive, and studied it again. From that moment on, he never let it more than a few yards from him. He felt like the wizened little man had entrusted the candle's safety to him, and it was his duty to keep it from the horsemen's grasp.

  At night he hid the candle under his pillow, and the first thing he did in the morning was to make sure it was still there. He carried it around with him all day, looked at the shining eyes on it and pondered for hour upon hour what they could mean.

  Then, overnight, he had a dream. He was on the field, and the snow was falling heavily, and he could hear the pounding of the horsemen's hooves in the murk. They rode round and round, though he couldn't see them, and he knew they were closing in. Suddenly the whole world lurched. He felt himself dragged up and over the field, over the city. He could see the houses and the docks, the dirty river creeping to the sea, far, far below him. The factories belched smoke into the heavy sky and the millions of city people went their many ways. All this he took in, as a hawk might, leaning on the wind. Then he felt a great fear rush into him, flooding his mind, numbing his limbs. A wall of impenetrable darkness unfolded before him and plucked him from the light.