The Great and Secret Show. Clive Barker

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СКАЧАТЬ entire quartet. Why else were they struggling with each other, stains light and dark interwoven like a barber’s pole as they rose to snatch the bodies down?

      She had assumed herself free prematurely. As the first tendrils of mingled spirit touched her foot the precious moments of liberation ceased. She was called back into her cranium, the door of her skull slamming behind her with a crack. Eye-sight replaced mind-sight; pain and panic, that sweet detachment. She saw the warring spirits wrap themselves around her. She was a morsel, pulled back and forth between them as they each fought to possess her. The why of it beyond her. She would be dead in seconds. It mattered not at all to her which claimed the corpse, the bright or the less than bright. Both, if they wanted her sex (she felt their investigations there, even at the last), would have no joy back from her, nor from any of them. They were gone; the four of them.

      Even as she relinquished the last bubble of breath from her throat, a gleam of sunlight hit her eyes. Could it be she was rising again? Had they dismissed her body as redundant to their purpose, and let the fat float? She snatched the chance, however small it was, pushing up towards the surface. A new shoal of bubbles rose with her, that almost seemed to bear her up towards the air. It was closer by the instant. If she could hold on to consciousness a heartbeat longer she might yet survive.

      God loved her! She broke surface face-first, puking water then drinking air. Her limbs were numb, but the very forces that had been so intent on drowning her now kept her afloat. After three or four breaths she realized the others had also been released. They choked and splashed around her. Joyce was already making towards the shore, pulling Trudi after her. Arleen now began to follow. Solid ground was only a few yards away. Even with legs and arms barely functional Carolyn covered the distance, until all four of them could stand up. Bodies racked with sobs they staggered towards dry land. Even now they cast backward glances, for fear whatever had assaulted them decided to pursue them into the shallows. But the spot in the middle of the lake was completely placid.

      Before they’d reached the shore, hysteria took hold of Arleen. She began to wail, and shudder. Nobody went to comfort her. They had barely sufficient energy to advance one foot in front of the other, never mind waste breath in trying to calm the girl. She overtook Trudi and Joyce to reach the grass first, dropping down on the ground where she’d left her clothes and attempting to drag on her blouse, her sobs redoubling as she struggled, failing to find the armholes. A yard from the shore Trudi fell to her knees and threw up. Carolyn trudged down-wind of her, knowing that if she caught a whiff of vomit she’d end up doing the same. It was a wasted manoeuvre. The gagging sound was sufficient cue. She felt her stomach flip; then she was painting the grass in bile and icecream.

      Even now, though the scene he was watching had moved from the erotic to the terrifying to the nauseating, William Witt could not take his eyes off it. To the end of his life he’d remember the sight of the girls rising from the depths where he was certain they must have drowned, their efforts, or pressure from below, shoving them up into the air so high he saw their breasts bob.

      Now the waters that had almost claimed them were still. Not a ripple moved; not a bubble broke. And yet, could he doubt that something other than an accident had occurred in front of him? There was something alive in the lake. The fact that he’d seen only its consequences – the flailings, the screams – rather than the thing itself, shook him to the gut. Nor would he ever be able to quiz the girls as to their assailants’ nature. He was alone with what he’d seen.

      For the first time in his life his self-elected role as voyeur weighed heavily upon him. He swore to himself he’d never spy on anyone again. It was an oath he kept for a day before breaking.

      As to this event, he’d had enough of it. All he could see of the girls now were the outlines of their hips and buttocks as they lay in the grass. All he could hear, with the vomiting over, was weeping.

      As quietly as he could, he slipped away.

      Joyce heard him go. She sat up in the grass.

      ‘Somebody’s watching us,’ she said.

      She studied the patch of sunlit foliage, and again it moved. Just the wind, catching the leaves.

      Arleen had finally found her way into her blouse. She sat with her arms wrapped around her. ‘I want to die,’ she said.

      ‘No you don’t,’ Trudi told her. ‘We just escaped that.’

      Joyce put her hands back to her face. The tears she thought she’d bettered came again, in a wave.

      ‘What in Christ’s name happened?’ she said. ‘I thought it was just … flood water.’

      It was Carolyn who supplied the answer, her voice without inflexion, but shaking.

      ‘There are caves under the whole town,’ she said. ‘They must have filled with water during the storm. We swam out over the mouth of one of them.’

      ‘It was so dark,’ Trudi said. ‘Did you look down?’

      ‘There was something else,’ Arleen said. ‘Besides the darkness. Something in the water.’

      Joyce’s sobs intensified in response to this.

      ‘I didn’t see anything,’ Carolyn said. ‘But I felt it.’ She looked at Trudi. ‘We all felt the same, didn’t we?’

      ‘No,’ Trudi replied, shaking her head. ‘It was currents out of the caves.’

      ‘It tried to drown me,’ Arleen said.

      ‘Just currents,’ Trudi reiterated. ‘It’s happened to me before, at the beach. Undertow. Pulled the legs from under me.’

      ‘You don’t believe that,’ Arleen said flatly. ‘Why bother to lie? We all know what we felt.’

      Trudi stared hard at her.

      ‘And what was that?’ she said. ‘Exactly.’

      Arleen shook her head. With her hair plastered to her scalp and mascara smeared across her cheeks, she looked anything but the Prom Queen beauty of ten minutes before.

      ‘All I know is it wasn’t undertow,’ she said. ‘I saw shapes. Two shapes. Not fishes. Nothing like fishes.’ She looked away from Trudi, down between her legs. ‘I felt them touch me,’ she said, shuddering. ‘Touch me inside.’

      ‘Shut up!’ Joyce suddenly erupted. ‘Don’t say it.’

      ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ Arleen replied. ‘Isn’t it?’ She looked up again. First at Joyce, then at Carolyn; finally at Trudi, who nodded.

      ‘Whatever’s out there wanted us because we’re women.’

      Joyce’s sobs climbed to a fresh plateau.

      ‘Keep quiet,’ Trudi snapped. ‘We’ve got to think about this.’

      ‘What’s to think?’ Carolyn said.

      ‘What we’re going to say for one thing,’ Trudi replied.

      ‘We say we went swimming –’ Carolyn began.

      ‘Then what?’

      ‘– СКАЧАТЬ