The Great And Secret Show Part 55

"I have to speak with you," he said. "You're Grillo, right?"

"Yeah. And you?"

"My name's Witt. I used to have offices in the Mall. And friends here at the hotel. They told me about you."

"What do you want?" Tesla said.

"I was up at Coney Eye," he said. "When you came out. I wanted to speak to you then but I was hiding...I couldn't move myself." He glanced down at the front of his trousers, which were damp.

"What's going on up there?"

"I suggest you get out of the Grove as quickly as possible," Tesla advised. "There's worse on the way."

"There's no Grove to leave," Witt replied. "The Grove's gone. Finished. People have left on vacations and I don't think they're going to come back. But I'm not leaving. I've got nowhere to go. Besides-" he looked close to tears as he spoke "-this is my town. If it's going to get swallowed up somehow, then I want to be here when it goes. Even if the Jaff-"

"Wait!" said Tesla. "What do you know about the Jaff?"

"I...met him. Tommy-Ray McGuire's his son, you know that?" Tesla nodded. "Well, McGuire introduced me to the Jaff."

"Here in the Grove?"

"Sure."

"Where?"

"In Cherry Tree Glade."

"Then that's where we start," said Tesla. "Can you take us there?"

"Of course."

"You think he'll have just gone back there?" Grillo said.

"You saw his condition," Tesla replied. "I think he'll go looking for someplace familiar, where he feels reasonably safe."

"Makes sense," said Grillo.

"If it does," said Witt, "it's the first thing tonight that has."

Dawn showed them what William Witt had already described: a town practically deserted, its occupants fled. A pack of domestic dogs roved the streets, having either been turned loose or escaped from owners whose minds were on the business of panicked departure. In the s.p.a.ce of a day or two they'd become a small scavenging band. Witt recognized the dogs. Mrs. Duffin's poodles were in the pack; so were two dachshunds belonging to Blaze Hebbard, the pups of the pups of the pups of dogs owned by a Grover who'd died when Witt was a boy, one Edgar Lott. Died and left his money to be used to put up a memorial to the League of Virgins.

Besides the dogs there were other, perhaps more distressing signs of hurried exits. Garage doors left open; toys dropped on the front path or in the driveway as sleepy children were put into cars in the middle of the night.

"Everybody knew," Witt said as they drove. "They knew all along but n.o.body said anything. That's why most of them just slipped away in the middle of the night. They thought they were the only ones who were losing their minds. They all thought they were the only ones."

"You worked here, you said."

"Yeah," Witt told Grillo, "real estate."

"Looks like business may be booming tomorrow. Plenty of properties for sale."

"And who's going to buy?" Witt said. "This is going to be cursed ground."

"It's not the Grove's fault that all this happened," Tesla put in. "It's an accident."

"It is?"

"Of course. Fletcher and the Jaff ended up here because they ran out of power, not because the Grove was somehow chosen."

"I still think it'll be cursed ground," Witt began, breaking off to instruct Grillo: "This next turning's Cherry Tree Glade. And Mrs. Lloyd's house is the fourth or fifth on the right."

From the outside at least it looked unoccupied. When they broke in, that was confirmed. The Jaff hadn't been in the house since he'd taunted Witt in the upper room.

"It was worth a try," Tesla said. "I guess we just have to keep looking. The town's not that big. We just go from street to street till we get a sniff of him. Anybody got any better ideas?" She looked at Grillo, whose gaze and concentration were elsewhere. "What is it?" she said.

"Huh?"

"Somebody left water running," Witt said, following the direction of Grillo's gaze.

Water was indeed running out from under the front door of a house opposite the Lloyd house, a steady stream which made its way down the incline of the driveway, across the sidewalk and into the gutter.

"What's so interesting?" Tesla said.

"I just realized..." Grillo said.

"What?"

He kept staring at the water, disappearing down the sewer. "I think I know where he's gone."

He turned and looked at Tesla.

"A familiar place, you said. The place he knows best in the Grove isn't above ground, it's below. "

Tesla's face brightened. "The caves. Yeah. That makes perfect sense."

They got back into the car, and with Witt directing them by the fastest route, drove back through the town-in defiance of red lights and one-way streets-towards Deerdell.

"It's not going to be long before the police start to arrive," Grillo remarked. "Looking for lost movie stars."

"I should go up to the house and warn them away," Tesla said.

"You can't be in two places at one time," Grillo said. "Unless that's another talent I don't know about."

"Ha f.u.c.king ha."

"They'll have to find out the hard way. We've got more urgent stuff to do."

"True," Tesla conceded.

"If the Jaff is in the caves," Witt said, "how do we get down to him? I don't think he's just going to appear if we holler."

"You know a man called Hotchkiss?" Grillo said.

"Of course. Carolyn's father?"

"Yeah."

"We can get help from him. I betcha he's still in town. He can get us down there. Whether he can get us back up again's another problem, but he seemed confident enough a couple of days back. He tried to get me to go into the caves with him."

"Why?"

"He's obsessed with things buried under the Grove."

"I don't follow."

"I'm not sure I do. Let him explain it."

They'd reached the woods. There was no sound of a dawn chorus, however ragged. They stepped in among the trees, the silence oppressive.

"He's been here," Tesla said.

n.o.body needed to ask how she knew. Even without the benefit of senses sharpened by the Nuncio it was clear the atmosphere in the woods was charged with antic.i.p.ation. The birds hadn't left, they were just scared to sing.

It was Witt who led the way through to the clearing, his sense of direction that of a man who knew exactly where he was headed.

"You come here often?" Grillo said, half joking.

"Almost never," Witt replied.

"Stop," Tesla suddenly whispered.

The clearing was just ahead, visible through the trees. She nodded towards it.

"Look there," she said.

A yard or two beyond the police barricade, turning over and over in the gra.s.s, was proof positive that the Jaff had indeed taken refuge here. One of the terata, too weak and wounded to cover the last few yards to the safety of the caves, was living out its last moments, its dissolution giving off a sickly luminescence.

"It's not going to do us any harm," Grillo said, about to step into view.

Tesla took hold of his arm. "It can maybe alert the Jaff," she said. "We don't know what kind of contact he has with those things. We don't need to go any further. We know he's there."

"True."

"Let's go find Hotchkiss."

They began to retrace their steps.

"Do you know where he lives?" Grillo asked Witt, once they were a good distance from the clearing.

"I know where everybody lives," Witt said. "Or lived."

The sight of the caves seemed to have shaken him, fuelling Grillo's suspicion that despite the claim that he seldom ventured there it was some kind of place of pilgrimage.

"Take Tesla to Hotchkiss," Grillo said. "I'll meet you both there."

"Where are you going?" Tesla wanted to know.

"I want to be sure Ellen left the Grove."

"She's a sensible lady," came the reply, "I'm sure she has."

"I'm going to check anyhow," Grillo said, not about to be dissuaded.

He left them at the car, and started off in the direction of the Nguyen house, leaving Tesla to summon Witt from staring at the woods. When Grillo turned the corner she still hadn't succeeded. He was gazing towards the trees as though the clearing was calling him back into some shared past, and it was all he could do to keep himself from obeying the summons.

III.

It wasn't Howie that came to help Jo-Beth in her solitary terror, but the tide, which picked her up and carried her-her eyes often closed (and when they were open, blurred with tears)-towards the place she'd glimpsed all too briefly when she and Howie had swum in Quiddity together: the Ephemeris. There was the beginnings of a disturbance in the element that bore her up, but she was as ignorant of that as she was of the proximity of the island. Others were not. Had she been more aware of her surroundings she'd have seen a subtle but undeniable agitation pa.s.s among the souls swimming in Quiddity's ether. Their motion was no longer so steady. Some-perhaps those more sensitive to the rumor the ether was carrying-stopped advancing and hung in the darkness like drowned stars. Others took themselves deeper, hoping to avoid the cataclysm that was being whispered. Still others, these very few as yet, went out altogether, waking in heir beds in the Cosm grateful to be out of danger. For most, however, the message was too hushed to be heard; or if it was heard the pleasure of being in Quiddity outweighed the anxiety. They rose and fell, rose and fell, their route more often than not taking them where Jo-Beth was going: to the island on the dream-sea.

Ephemeris.

The name had echoed in Howie's head since he'd first heard it spoken, by Fletcher.

What's on Ephemeris? he'd asked, imagining some paradise island. His father's reply hadn't been particularly illuminating. The Great and Secret Show, he'd said, an answer which begged a dozen more questions. Now, as the island came into view ahead of him, he wished he'd pursued his questions with more persistence. Even from a distance it was quite clear his picturing of the place had been spectacularly short of the mark. Just as Quiddity wasn't in any conventional sense a sea, so Ephemeris demanded a redefinition of the word island. For one, it was not a single land-ma.s.s But many, perhaps hundreds, joined by arches of rock, the whole archipelago resembling a vast, floating cathedral, the bridges like b.u.t.tresses, the islands towers which mounted in scale as they approached the central island, from which solid pillars of smoke rose to meet the sky. The similarity was too strong to be coincidence. This image was surely the subconscious inspiration of architects the world over. Cathedral builders, tower raisers, even-who knew?-children playing with building blocks, had this dream place somewhere at the back of their minds, and paid homage as best they could. But their master-works could only be approximations, compromises with gravity and the limitations of their medium. Nor could they ever aspire to a work so ma.s.sive. The Ephemeris was many miles across, Howie guessed, and there was no portion of it that had not been touched by genius. If it was a natural phenomenon (and who knew what natural was, in a place of mind?) then it was nature in a frenzy of invention. It made solid matter play games only cloud or light would be capable of in the world he'd left behind. Made towers as fine as reeds on which globes the size of houses balanced; made sheer cliff faces fluted like sh.e.l.ls and canyon walls that seemed to billow like curtains at a window; made spiral hills; made boulders like b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and dogs, and the sweepings from some vast table. So many likenesses, but none he could be certain were intended. A fragment in which he'd seen a face was part of another likeness the glance after, each interpretation subject to change at a moment's notice. Perhaps they were all true, all intended. Perhaps none were, and this game of resemblances was, like the creation of the pier when he'd first approached Quiddity, his mind's way of taming the immensity. If so, there was one sight it failed to master: the island at the center of the archipelago, which rose straight out of Quiddity, sheer, the smoke that gouted from countless fissures on its walls rising with the same verticality. Its pinnacle was completely concealed by the smoke, but whatever mystery lay behind it was nectar to the spirit-lights, who rose to it unburdened by flesh and blood, not entering the smoke but grazing its blossom. He wondered if it was fear that kept them from moving into the smoke, or if it was a more solid barrier than it seemed. Perhaps when he got closer, he'd discover the answer. Eager to be there as quickly as possible, he aided the tide with strokes of his own, so that within ten or fifteen minutes of first seeing the Ephemeris he was hauling himself up on to its beach. It was dark, though not as dark as Quiddity, and harsh beneath his palms, not sand but encrustations, like coral. Was it possible, he suddenly wondered, that the archipelago had been created the way the island he'd seen floating among the flotsam from the Vance house had been created, formed around the presence of human beings in Quiddity? If so, how long ago must they have come into the dream-sea, to have grown so ma.s.sive?

He started along the course of the beach, choosing left over right because whenever he was faced with two roads about which he knew equally little he always chose the left. He kept close to the edge of the sea, in the hope that he'd find Jo-Beth on the beach, brought by the same current that had caught him. Once out of the soothing waters, his body no longer borne up and caressed, anxieties the sea had lulled from him took hold. The first, that he might search the archipelago for days, weeks even, and never find Jo-Beth. Second, that even if he did, there was still Tommy-Ray to contend with. Nor was Tommy-Ray alone; he'd come to the Vance house with phantoms. Three-and this was the least of his worries, in a sense, but it became steadily more important- that something was changing in Quiddity. He no longer cared what words were most appropriate for this reality: whether it was another dimension or a state of mind was not relevant. They were probably one and the same anyhow. What did matter was the holiness of this place. He didn't doubt for a moment that all that he'd gleaned about Quiddity and the Ephemeris was true. This was the place in which all his species that knew of glory got their glimpses. A constant place; a place of comfort, where the body was forgotten (except for trespa.s.sers like himself) and the dreaming soul knew flight, and mystery. But there were subtle signs-some so subtle he couldn't have pinpointed them-that the dream place was not secure. The small waves splas.h.i.+ng up on the beach, their surf bluish, were not as rhythmical as they'd been when he first stepped out of the sea. The motion of the lights in Quiddity seemed similarly changed, as though something was happening in the system that was distressing it. He doubted that the simple intrusion of flesh and blood from the Cosm was responsible. Quiddity was vast, and had ways of dealing with those who resisted the calm of its waters: he'd seen that process at work. No, whatever was souring the tranquillity had to be more significant than the presence of himself, or any of the invaders from the other side.

He began to come across evidence of that trespa.s.s, washed up on the sh.o.r.e. A door frame, pieces of smashed furniture, cus.h.i.+ons, and, inevitably, fragments of Vance's collection. A short distance beyond this pitiful litter, around a bend in the beach, he found hope that the tide had brought Jo-Beth here: another survivor. She was standing at the very edge of Quiddity, gazing out over the sea. If she heard him approaching she didn't look his way. Her posture (hands limp at her sides, shoulders slumped) and the steadiness of her stare suggested someone mesmerized. Loath as he was to break her trance, if that was how she'd chosen to deal with the shock of dislocation, he had no choice: "Excuse me," he said, knowing his politeness was pathetic in such circ.u.mstances, "are you the only one here?"

She looked around at him and he got a second surprise. He'd seen this face dozens of times, smiling out from the TV screen, extolling the virtues of shampoo. He didn't know her name. She was simply the Silksheen Woman. She frowned at him, as though she was having difficulty focusing on his face. He tried the question again, rephrased.

"Are there any other survivors?" he said. "From the house?"

"Yes," she said.

"Where are they?"

"Just keep on walking."

"Thank you."

"This isn't happening, is it?" she said.

"I'm afraid it is," he said.