Mister B. Gone by Clive Barker Page B

to:
    “Close in! Close in! Have you got the hood, Shamit?”
    “Yes sir, Mr. Cawley, I got it right here in my hand.”
    “And the face piece?”
    “I got that too, Mister Cawley. And a hammer to slam in those rivets.”
    “So let’s get this done! Close in on him!”
    I gave a quick thought to the notion of scrambling up one of the low-hanging boughs and hiding high up, where they wouldn’t look. But they were so close, to judge by the sounds of shrubbery being hacked away, that I was afraid I’d be seen making my ascent, and then they’d have me cornered in the tree with nowhere to escape to.

    Are you wondering as you read this why I didn’t use some demonic wile of mine, some unholy power inherited from Lucifer, to either kill my enemies or make myself invisible? Easy answer.
    I have no such powers. I have a bastard for a father and a sometime whore for a mother. Such creatures as I are not granted supernatural forces. We are barely given the power to evacuate.
    But most of the time I am cleverer than the enemy, and I can do more harm with my wits and imagination than would be possible with fists or tails. That still left me weaker, however, than I wanted to feel. It was time, I thought, that I learned the magical deceits that my betters wielded so effortlessly.
    If I escaped these pursuers, I swore to myself, I would make it my business to learn magic. The blacker the better.
    But that was for another day. Right now, I was a naked, wingless demon, doing my best to keep Cawley’s mob from catching up with me.
    I saw now a glimpse of firelight between the trees ahead, and my heart sank. They had driven me back to their own encampment. I still had a chance to strike out to my right, and move still deeper into the forest, but curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to see what wickedness they had done.
    So I ran towards the firelight, realizing even as I did so that it was probably a foolish, perhaps even suicidal move. But I was unable to resist knowing the worst . That’s what defines the Demonation, I think. Perhaps it’s a corrupted form of the angelic urge to be all-wise, I don’t know. All I can say with any certainty is that I had to know what Cawley’s cruelties had wrought, and I was willing to risk my sole possession—my life—in order to witness the sight.
    I saw the flames first, between the trees. It had not been left untended. There was one more member of Cawley’s pack feeding it fresh tinder even as I stepped into the grove that the flames illuminated.
    It was Hell on Earth.
    Hanging from the branches around the fire were the stretched skins of several demons like me, except, of course, their skins were not burned as mine was. Their faces had been very carefully eased off the flesh and stretched, so they would dry looking like masks. The resemblance to their living selves was remote, but it seemed perhaps I had known one of them a little; perhaps, two. As for their meat, it was presently being hacked into pieces by Cawley’s last thug. She was a sweet-faced girl of maybe sixteen or seventeen, the expression she wore as she went about her chores of hacking the meat off the dead and chopping it up before tossing it into the larger of two enormous black pots as innocent as that of a child. Now and then she would check on the progress of the tails she was boiling in the other pot. Several tails belonging to other victims were hung from the branches; they were already cleaned and ready to be sold. There were nine, I think, including one which, to judge by its length and the elaborate design which rose from each tailbone, had belonged to a demon of great rank and antiquity.
    When the girl looked up and saw me I expected her to scream for help. But no. She simply smiled.
    How can I express to you the effect that smile had upon me, appearing as it did upon a face completely lacking in flaws?
    Lord, but she was beautiful; the first true thing of beauty I had ever seen. All I wanted to do at that