Sacrament. Clive Barker

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СКАЧАТЬ was thirty. Way too old for Rosa. She liked ‘em real young. And of course she liked Steep. I mean the two of them, they were like husband and wife and brother and sister and fuck knows what else all rolled into one. I didn’t stand a chance with her.’ He let the subject trail away, and picked up another. ‘You want to do some good for these bears?’ he said. ‘Get out there on the dump and poison ‘em. Teach ‘em not to come back. Maybe it’ll take five seasons, and that’ll be a lot of dead bears, but they’ll get the message sooner or later.’ Finally he downed the contents of his glass, and while the liquor still burned his throat said: ‘I try not to think about them, but I do—’ He wasn’t talking about the bears now. Will knew. ‘I can see both of them, like it was yesterday.’ He shook his head. ‘Both of them so beautiful. So…pure.’ His lip curled at the word, as though he meant its antithesis. ‘It must be terrible for them.’

      ‘What must be terrible?’

      ‘Living in this filthy world.’ He looked up at Will. ‘That’s the worst part for me,’ he said. ‘That the older I get, the more I understand ‘em.’ Were those tears in his eyes. Will wondered, or simply rheum? ‘And I hate myself for it so fucking much.’ He put down his empty glass, and with sudden determination announced: That’s all you’re getting from me.’ He crossed to the door and unbolted it. ‘So you may as well just get the hell out of here.’

      ‘Well, thank you for your time,’ Will said, stepping past the old man and into the freezing air.

      Guthrie waved the courtesy away. ‘If you see Sister Ruth again—’

      ‘I won’t,’ Will said. ‘She died last February.’

      ‘What of?’

      ‘Ovarian cancer.’

      ‘Huh. That’s what you get for not using what God gave you,’ Guthrie said.

      The dog had joined them at the threshold now, and was growling loudly. Not at Will this time, but at whatever lay out there in the night. Guthrie didn’t hush her, but stared out at the darkness. ‘She smells bears. You’d better not hang around.’

      ‘I won’t,’ Will said, offering his hand to Guthrie The man looked down at it in puzzlement for a moment, as though he’d forgotten this simple ritual. Then he took it.

      ‘You should think about what I told you,’ he said. ‘About poisoning the bears. You’d be doing them a favour.’

      ‘I’d be doing Jacob’s work for him,’ Will replied. ‘That’s not what I was put on the planet to do.’

      ‘We’re all doing his work just being alive,’ Guthrie replied. ‘Adding to the trash-heap.’

      ‘Well at least I won’t be adding to the population,’ Will said, and started from the threshold towards his jeep.

      ‘You and Sister Ruth both,’ Guthrie called after him. There was a sudden eruption of fresh barking from his dog, a shrillness in its din which Will knew all too well. He’d heard camp dogs raise a similar row at the approach of lions. There was warning in it, and Will took heed. Scanning the darkness to left and right of him he was at the jeep in half a dozen quickened heartbeats.

      On the step behind him, Guthrie was yelling something – whether he was summoning his guest back inside or urging him to pick up his pace Will couldn’t make out; the dog was too loud. He blocked out the sound of both voices, man and animal, and concentrated on making his fingers perform the simple function of slipping the key into the lock. They played the fool. He fumbled, and the key slipped out of his hand. He went down on his haunches, the dog’s barking shriller by the moment, to pluck it out of the snow. Something moved at the limit of his vision. He looked around, his fingers digging blindly for the key. He could see only the rocks, but that was little comfort. The animal could be in hiding now and on him in five seconds. He’d seen them attack, and they were fast when they needed to be, moving like locomotives to take their quarry. He knew the drill if a bear elected to charge him: drop to his knees, arms over his head, face to ground. Present as small a target as possible, and on no account make eye contact with the animal. Don’t speak. Don’t move. The less alive you were, the better chance you had of living. There was probably a lesson in that somewhere, though it was a bitter one. Live like a stone and death might pass you by.

      His fingers had found the dropped key. He stood up, chancing a backward glance as he did so. Guthrie was still in the doorway, his dog, her hackles raised, now silenced at his side. Will hadn’t heard Guthrie hush her; she’d simply given up on this damn fool man who couldn’t come out of the snow when he was told.

      On the third time of trying, the key went into the lock. Will hauled open the door. As he did so he heard the bear’s roar for the first time. And there it was, barrelling out between the rocks. There was no doubting its intention. It had him in its sights. He flung himself into the driver’s seat, horribly aware of how vulnerable his legs were, and reached back to slam the door behind him.

      The roar came again, very close. He locked the door, put the key into the ignition and turned it. The headlamps came on instantly, flooding the icy ground as far as the rocks, which looked as flat as stage scenery in their glare. Of the bear there was no sign. He glanced back towards Guthrie’s shack. Man and dog had retreated behind the locked door. He put the jeep in gear and started to swing it round. As he did so he heard the roar again, followed by a thump. The bear had charged the vehicle in its frustration, and was rising up on its hind legs to strike it a second time. Will caught only a glimpse of its shaggy white bulk from the corner of his eye. It was a huge animal, no doubt of that: nine hundred pounds and counting. If it damaged the jeep badly enough to halt his escape, he’d be in trouble. The bear wanted him, and it had the means to get him if he didn’t outpace it. Claws and teeth enough to pry the vehicle open like a can of human meat.

      He put his foot on the accelerator, and swung the vehicle around to head it back down the street. As he did so the bear changed tactics and direction, dropping back onto all fours to overtake the jeep, then cutting in front of it.

      For an instant the animal was there in the sear of the headlamps, its wedge-snouted head pointing directly at the vehicle. It was not one of the pitiful clan Guthrie had described, their ferality dimmed by their addiction to human refuse. It was a piece of the wilderness still; defying the blaze and speed of the vehicle in whose path it had put itself. In the instant before it was struck, it was gone, disappearing with such speed that its departure seemed almost miraculous; as though it had been a vision conjured by the cold, then snatched away.

      As he drove back to the house, he felt for the first time the poverty of his craft. He had taken tens of thousands of photographs in his professional lifetime, in some of the wildest regions of the planet: the Torres de Paine, the plateaus of Tibet, the Gunung Leuser in Indonesia. There he had photographed species that were in their last desperate days, rogues and man-eaters. But he had never come close to capturing what he had seen in the jeep’s headlamps minutes before: the power and the glory of the bear, risking death to defy him. Perhaps it was beyond his talents to do so; in which case it was probably beyond anybody’s talents. He was, by general consensus, the best of the best. But the wild was better. Just as it was his genius to wait upon his subject until it revealed itself, so it was the genius of the wild to make that revelation less than complete. The rogues and man-eaters were dying out, one by one, but the mystery continued, undisclosed. And would continue. Will suspected, until the end of the rogues and mysteries and the men who were fools for them both.

       III

      Cornelius СКАЧАТЬ