Book of the Art (01): Great and Secret Show, The by Barker Clive

Author:Barker, Clive [Barker, Clive]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Horror, Modern, Science Fiction, Suspense, Thriller
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1989-01-01T02:00:00+00:00

II

Though Howie had valiantly fought off sleep through most of the afternoon, by early evening he could barely keep his eyes open. When he told Jo-Beth he wanted to return to the hotel Momma intervened, telling him she’d feel much comforted if he remained in the house. She made up the spare room (he’d spent the previous night on the sofa) and he retired to it. His body had taken a considerable beating in the last few days. His hand was still badly bruised, and his back, though the punctures inflicted by the terata were not deep, still ached. None of which kept him from sleep for more than a few moments.

Jo-Beth prepared food for Momma—salad for Momma, as ever—and herself, going through the familiar domestic processes as though nothing in the world had changed since a week ago, and for short spaces of time, involved in her labors, forgetting the horrors. Then a look on her mother’s face, or the sight of the shiny new lock on the back door, brought the memories back. She could no longer put them into any kind of order: there was just humiliation and pain upon further humiliation and further pain. Leering through it all the Jaff; near to her, too near to her, coming so close on occasion to persuading her to his vision the way he’d persuaded Tommy-Ray. Of all her fears the one that distressed her the most was that she might actually have been capable of joining the enemy. When he’d explained to her how he wanted reasons rather than feelings, she’d understood. Even been moved to sympathy. And that teasing talk of the Art, and the island he wanted to show her . . .

“Jo-Beth?”

“Momma?”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. Of course. Yes.”

“What were you thinking of? The expression on your face . . .”

“Just . . . about last night.”

“You should put it out of your head.”

“Maybe I’ll drive over to see Lois; talk with her for a while? Would you mind?”

“No. I’ll be fine here. Howard’s with me.”

“Then I’ll go.”

Of all her friends in the Grove none represented the normality from which her life had departed as perfectly as Lois. For all her moral strictures she had a strong and simple faith in what was good. In essence, she wanted the world a peaceful place, where children raised in love could in their turn raise children. She knew evil too. It was any force mounted against that vision. The terrorist, the anarchist, the lunatic. Now Jo-Beth knew that such human forces had allies on a more rarefied plane of being. One of those was her father. It was never more important that she sought the company of those whose definition of good was unshakable.

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