Imajica. Clive Barker

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СКАЧАТЬ to paw at Pie fretfully, clearly wanting to be loosed from its leash.

      ‘What’s wrong, buster?’ he said to it, scratching behind its war-torn ears. ‘Have you got a lady out there?’

      He looked up towards the perimeter as he spoke, and caught the fleeting glimpse of a figure stepping into shadow behind one of the trailers. The dog had seen the interloper too. It set up a new round of barking. Pie stood up again.

      ‘Who’s there?’ he demanded.

      A sound at the other end of the encampment claimed his attention momentarily; water splashing on the ground. No, not water. The stench that reached his nostrils was that of petrol. He looked back towards his own trailer. Theresa’s shadow was on the blind, her head bared as she turned off the night-light beside the children’s bed. The stench was coming from that direction too. He reached down and released the dog.

       ‘Go, boy! Go! Go!’

      It ran barking at a figure slipping out through a gap in the fence. As it went Pie started towards his trailer, yelling Theresa’s name.

      Behind him, somebody shouted for him to shut up out there, but the curses were unfinished, erased by the boom and bloom of fire, twin eruptions that lit the encampment from end to end. He heard Theresa scream; saw flame surge up and around his trailer. The spilled fuel was only a fuse. Before he’d covered ten yards the motherlode exploded directly under the vehicle, the force sufficient to lift it off the ground and pitch it on its side.

      Pie was blown over by a solid wave of heat. By the time he’d scrabbled to his feet the trailer was a solid sheet of flame. As he pitched himself through the baking air towards the pyre he heard another sobbing cry, and realized it was his own; a sound he’d forgotten his throat could make, but which was always the same, grief on grief.

      Gentle had just sighted the church which had been Esta-brook’s last landmark when a sudden day broke on the street ahead, as though the sun had come to burn the night away. The car in front of his veered sharply, and he was only able to prevent a collision by mounting the pavement, bringing his own car to a juddering halt inches short of the church wall.

      He got out, and headed towards the fire on foot, turning a corner to head directly into the smoke, which veered and veered again as he ran, allowing him only glimpses of his destination. He saw a corrugated iron fence, and beyond it a host of caravans, most of which were already ablaze. Even if he’d not had Estabrook’s description to confirm that this was indeed Pie’oh’pah’s home, the fact of its destruction would have marked it out. Death had preceded him here, like his shadow, thrown forward by a blaze at his back that was even brighter than the one that lay ahead. His knowledge of this other cataclysm, the one behind, had been a part of the business between himself and the assassin from the beginning. It had flickered in their first exchanges on Fifth Avenue; it had lit the fury that had sent him to debate with the canvas; and it had burned brightest in his dreams, in that room he’d invented (or remembered) where he’d begged Pie for forgetfulness. What had they experienced together that had been so terrible he’d wanted to forget his whole life rather than live with the fact? Whatever it was, it was somehow echoed in this new calamity, and he wished to God he could have his forgetfulness undone, and know what crime he’d committed that brought upon innocents such punishment as this.

      The encampment was an inferno, wind fanning flames that in turn inspired new wind, with flesh the toy of both. He had only piss and spittle against this conflagration -useless! - but he ran on towards it anyway, his eyes streaming as the smoke bit at them, not knowing what hope of survival he had, only certain that Pie was somewhere in this firestorm and to lose him now would be tantamount to losing himself.

      There were some escapees; but a pitiful few. He ran past them towards the gap in the fence through which they’d escaped. His route was by turns clear and confounded, as the wind brought choking smoke in his direction then carried it away again. He pulled off his leather jacket and threw it over his head as primitive protection against the heat, then ducked through the fence. There was solid flame in front of him, making the way forward impassable. He tried to his left, and found a gap between two blazing vehicles. Dodging between them, the smell of singeing leather already sharp in his nostrils, he found himself in the middle of the compound, a space relatively free of combustible material, and thus of fire. But on every side, the flames had hold. Only three of the caravans weren’t blazing, and the veering wind would soon carry the flame in their direction. How many of the inhabitants had fled before the flames took hold he couldn’t know, but it was certain there’d be no further escapees. The heat was nearly unbearable. It beat upon him from every side, cooking his thoughts to incoherence. But he held on to the image of the creature he’d come to find, determined not to desert the pyre until he had that face in his hands, or knew beyond doubt it was ash.

      A dog appeared from the smoke, barking hysterically. As it ran past him a fresh eruption of fire drove it back the way it had come, its panic escalating. Having no better route, he chased its tail through the chaos, calling Pie’s name as he ran, though each breath he took was hotter than the last, and after a few such shouts the name was a rasp. He’d lost the dog in the smoke, and all sense of direction at the same time. Even if the way was still clear he no longer knew where it lay. The world was fire on every side.

      Somewhere up ahead he heard the dog again, and thinking now that maybe the only life he’d claim from this horror was the hound’s, he ran in search of it. Tears were pouring from his smoke-stung eyes; he could barely focus on the ground he was stumbling across. The barking had stopped again, leaving him without a beacon. There was no way to go but forward, hoping the silence didn’t mean the dog had succumbed. It hadn’t. He spotted it ahead of him now, cowering in terror.

      As he drew a breath to call it to him he saw the figure beyond it, stepping from the smoke. The fire had taken its toll on Pie’oh’pah, but he was at least alive. His eyes, like Gentle’s, streamed. There was blood at his mouth, and neck, and in his arms, a forlorn bundle. A child.

      ‘Are there more?’ Gentle yelled.

      Pie’s reply was to glance back over his shoulder, towards a heap of debris that had once been a trailer. Rather than draw another lung-cooking breath to reply, Gentle started towards this bonfire, but was intercepted by Pie, who passed over the child in his arms.

      Take her,’ he said.

      Gentle threw aside his jacket, and took the child.

      ‘Now get out!’ Pie said. ‘I’ll follow.’

      He didn’t wait to see his instruction obeyed, but turned back towards the debris.

      Gentle looked down at the child he was carrying. She was bloody and blackened; surely dead. But perhaps life could be pumped back into her if he was quick. What was the fastest route to safety? The way he’d come was blocked now, and the ground ahead littered with burning wreckage. Between left and right, he chose left, because he heard the incongruous sound of somebody whistling somewhere in the smoke: at least proof that breath could be drawn in that direction.

      The dog came with him, but only for a few steps. Then it retreated again, despite the fact that the air was cooler by the step, and a gap in the flames was visible ahead. Visible, but not empty. As Gentle headed for the place a figure stepped out from behind one of the bonfires. It was the whistler, still practising his craft, though his hair was burning and his hands, raised in front of him, were smoking ruins. He turned his head as he walked, and looked at Gentle.

      The tune he whistled was charmless, but it was sweet beside the stare he had. His eyes were like mirrors, reflecting the fires: they flared and smoked. СКАЧАТЬ