Part 52 (1/2)

He threw his radio down, and clambered over the fence opposite the house. On the other side the shrubbery was thick, and the ground fell off steeply, but he slid away through the darkness not caring if he reached the other side of the Hill in tatters, simply wanting to be as far from the house when the mob reached the gate as he could get.

Grillo had seen sights in the last few days that had slapped the breath out of him, but he'd found a way to slot them into his world-view. But in front of him now was a sight so utterly beyond his comprehension all he could do was say no to it.

Not once, a dozen times.

”No...no...” and so on, ”no.”

But denial didn't work. The sight refused to pack its bag and leave. It stayed. Demanded to be seen.

The Jaff's fingers had entered the solid wall, and clutched it. Now he took a step back, and a second step, pulling the substance of reality towards him as though it were made of sun-softened candy. The carnival pictures hanging on the wall began to twist out of true; the intersection of wall and ceiling and wall and floor eased in towards the Artist's fist, losing their rigor.

It was as if the whole room were projected on a cinema screen and the Jaff had simply s.n.a.t.c.hed hold of the fabric, dragging it towards him. The projected image, which moments before had seemed so life-like, was revealed for the sham it was.

It's a movie, Grillo thought. The whole f.u.c.king world's a movie.

And the Art was the calling of that bluff. A s.n.a.t.c.hing away of the sheet, the shroud, the screen.

He wasn't the only one reeling before this revelation. Several of Buddy Vance's mourners, shaken from their stupor, had opened their eyes to see a sight their worst bad trips had never proffered.

Even the Jaff seemed to be shocked by the ease of the task. A tremor was running through his body, which had never looked so frail, so vulnerable, so human, as now. Whatever trials he'd undergone to anneal his spirit for this moment, they were not enough. Nothing could be enough. This was an art in defiance of the condition of flesh. All the profoundest certainties of being were forfeit in the face of it. From somewhere behind the screen, Grillo heard a rising sound, which filled his skull like the thud of his heart. It summoned the terata. He glanced around to see them coming through the door to lend their maker aid in whatever was imminent. They were uninterested in Grillo; he knew he could leave at any moment and not be challenged. But he could not turn his back on this, however it wrenched his gut. Whatever played behind the screen of the world was about to be seen, and his eyes wouldn't be coaxed from the sight. If he fled now, what would he do? Run to the gate and watch from a safe distance? There was no safe distance, knowing what he now knew. He'd spend the rest of his life touching the solid world and knowing that had he the Art at his fingertips, it would melt.

Not everyone was so fatalistic. Many of those conscious enough were attempting to make for the door. But the disease of malleability that had infected the walls had spread across half the floor. It became glutinous beneath the escapees, pitching as the Jaff pulled, two-handed now, at the matter of the room.

Grillo sought out some solid place in the s.h.i.+fting environment, but could only find a chair, which was as p.r.o.ne to the new vagaries of physics as any other item in the room. It slipped from his grasp, and he fell to his knees, the impact re-starting the flow of the blood from his nose. He let it run.

Looking up, he saw that the Jaff had pulled so hard on the far end of the room that it was distorted out of all recognition. The brilliance of the lights in the yard outside were dimmed, had gone, smeared into a featureless sweep so taut it could not be long before it broke. The sound from the other side had not grown any louder, but became, in a matter of seconds, almost inevitable, as though it had always been there, just out of hearing range.

The Jaff pulled another handful of the room's stuff into his grasp, and in doing so pressed the screen beyond endurance. It didn't tear in one place but in several. The room tipped again. Grillo clung to the heaving floor as bodies rolled past him. In the chaos he glimpsed the Jaff, who seemed at this last moment to be regretting all he'd done, struggling with the raw substance of reality he'd gathered up as if attempting to throw it away. Either his fists wouldn't obey him and release it or else it had its own momentum now and was opening itself without his aid, because a look of wild terror crossed his face, and he screamed a summons to his legions. They started towards him, their anatomies finding some purchase in this s.h.i.+fting chaos. Grillo was pressed to the ground as they clambered over him. No sooner had they begun their advance, however, than something brought them to a halt. Grasping the hides to right and left of him, no longer afraid of them with so much worse on view, Grillo hauled himself upright, or as near upright as was possible, and looked back towards the door. That end of the room was still more or less intact. Only a subtle twisting of the architecture gave any clue to what was happening behind him. He could see through into the hall, and beyond to the front door. It was open. In it stood Fletcher's son.

There were calls greater than that of makers and masters, Howie understood. There was the call of a thing to its opposite, to its natural enemy. That was what fuelled the terata now, as they turned back towards the door, leaving whatever chaos was unleashed inside the house to the Jaff's control.

”They're coming!” he yelled to Fletcher's army, backing off as the tide of terata approached the door. Jo-Beth, who'd stepped inside with him, lingered on the threshold. He took hold of her arm and pulled her away.

”It's too late,” she said. ”You see what he's doing? My G.o.d! You see?”

Lost cause or not, the dream-creatures were ready to face the terata, pouncing as soon as the flood emerged from the house. Climbing the Hill Howie had expected the fight ahead to be somehow refined; a battle of wills or wits. But the violence that erupted all around him now was purely physical. All they had was their bodies to pitch into the battle, and they put themselves to the task with a ferocity he'd not have guessed the melancholy souls gathered at the woods-much less the civil folk they'd been at the Knapp house-capable of. There was no distinction between children and heroes.

They were barely recognizable now, as the last traces of the people they'd been dreamt into being faded in the face of an equally plain enemy. It was essential stuff now. Fletcher's love of light against the Jaff's pa.s.sion for the dark. Beneath both was a single intention, which unified them. The destruction of the other.

He'd done as they requested, he thought; he'd led them up the Hill, calling the stragglers when they forgot themselves, and began to dissolve. With several, those less coherently conjured in the first place, perhaps, he'd lost. Their bodies had dispersed before he could get them within scenting distance of their enemy. For the rest, the sight of the terata was stimulus enough. They'd fight until torn apart.

Grievous damage was already being done on both sides. Fragments of sleek darkness torn from the bodies of the terata; washes of light breaking from the dream-army when they were opened up. There was no sign of pain among the warriors. No blood from the wounds. They endured a.s.sault after a.s.sault, fighting on having sustained damage that would have incapacitated anything remotely alive. Only when more than half their substance had been torn from them did they unravel, and disperse. Even then the air they dissolved into wasn't empty. It buzzed and shook as though the war was continuing on a sub-atomic level, negative and positive energies fighting to impa.s.se, or the extinction of both.

The latter, most likely, if the forces warring in front of the house were any model. Equally matched, they were simply eradicating each other, countering harm with harm, their numbers dwindling.

The battle had spread down to the gate by the time Tesla reached the top of the Hill, and was spilling out on to the road. Forms that might once have been recognizable but were now abstractions, smears of darkness, smears of light, tearing at each other. She stopped the car, and started up towards the house. Two combatants emerged from the trees that lined the driveway, and fell to the ground a few yards ahead, their limbs locked around-and it seemed through-each other. She looked on, appalled. Was this what the Art had released? How they escaped from Quiddity?

”Tesla!”

She looked up. Howie was in sight. His explanation was quick and breathless.

”It's started,” he said. ”The Jaff's using the Art.”

”Where?”

”In the house.”

”And these?” she said.

”The last defense,” he replied. ”We were too late.”

What now, babe? she thought. You don't have any way of stopping this. The world's on a tilt and everything's sliding.

”We should all get the h.e.l.l out of here,” she told Howie.

”You think?”

”What else can we do?”

She looked up towards the house. Grillo had told her it was a folly, but she hadn't expected architecture as wild as this. The angles all subtly off, no upright that wasn't askew by a few degrees. Then she understood. It wasn't some postmodernist joke. It was something inside the house, pulling it out of shape.

”My G.o.d,” she said. ”Grillo's still in there.”

Even as she spoke the facade bent a little more. In the face of such strangeness the remnants of the battle all around her were of little consequence. Just two tribes tearing at each other like rabid dogs. Men's stuff. She skirted it, ignored.

”Where are you going?” Howie said.

”Inside.”

”It's mayhem.”

”And it isn't out here? I've got a friend in there.”

”I'll come with you,” he said.

”Is Jo-Beth here?”

”She was.”

”Find her. I'll find Grillo and we'll both get the f.u.c.k out of here.”

Without waiting for a reply she headed on towards the door.

The third force loose in the Grove tonight was halfway up the Hill when Witt realized that however profound his grief at losing his dreams, tonight he didn't want to die. He started to struggle with the door handle, fully ready to pitch himself out, but the dust storm on their tail dissuaded him. He looked across at Tommy-Ray. The boy's face had never sung out intelligence, but its slackness now was shocking. He looked almost moronic. Spittle ran from his lower lip, his face was glossy with sweat. But he managed a name as he drove. ”Jo-Beth,” he said.

She didn't hear that call, but she heard another. From inside the house a cry, put out mind to mind, from the man who'd made her. It was not directed at her, she guessed. He didn't know she was even near. But she caught it: an expression of terror which she couldn't ignore. She crossed through the matter-thickened air to the front door, the uprights of which were blowing in.