Clive Barker - 1994 by Everville

Author:Everville
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-07-07T01:25:59+00:00

PART FIVE

PARADE

ONE

I

Not for the first time in the dark years since the Loop, Tesla dreamed of fleas. A veritable tsunami of fleas, that rose over Harmon’s Heights with the wreckage of America on its busy crest, and teetered there, ready to drop at a moment’s notice. In its itching shadow, Everville had become a lagoon city.

Main Street was a solid river of fleas, upon which makeshift rafts were paddled from house to house, rescuing people from the leaping surf.

A few folks seemed to know her, though she didn’t recognize any of them.

“You! You!” they said, stabbing their fingers in her direction as she towed her own creaky little boat down the street, “You did this! You with the monkey!” (She had a monkey on her shoulder, complete with vest and red felt hat.) “Admit it! You did this!”

She protested her innocence. Yes, she’d known the wave was coming. And yes, maybe she’d wasted time with her wandering when she should have been warning the world. But it wasn’t her fault. She was just a victim of circumstance, like all of them. It wasn’t—

“Tesla? Wake up! Tesla? Listen to me. Wake up, will you?”

She unglued her eyes to find Phoebe staring down at her, grinning from ear to ear.

“I know where he is. And I know how he got there.” Tesla sat up, shaking the last of the fleas from her head.

“Joe?”

“Of course Joe.” Phoebe sat down on the edge of the sofa. She was trembling. “I was with him last night, Tesla.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I thought it was a dream at first, but it wasn’t. I know it wasn’t. It’s just as clear in my head now as it was when I was there.”

“Where?”

“With Joe.”

“Yes, but where, Phoebe?”

“Oh. In Quiddity.”

Tesla was ready to dismiss the whole thing as wishful thinking at first, but the more Phoebe told, the more she began to think there was truth here.

Raul concurred. Didn’t I tell you? he murmured in Tesla’s ear when Phoebe came to the part about the door on Harmon’s Heights. Didn’t I say there was something about the mountain?

“If there is a door up there. . . . ” she thought.

It explains why this damn town’s gone crazy.

“I have to go up there,” Phoebe was saying. “Get through the door, so I can go find Joe.” She grabbed hold of Tesla’s hands. “You will help me, won’t you? Say you will.”

“Yes, but—”

“I knew. I said the moment I woke this is why Tesla came into my life, because she’s going to help me find Joe.”

“Where was he when you left him?”

Phoebe’s face fell. “He was in the sea.”

“What about his boat?”

“It went on without him. I think . . . I think they must have thought he was dead. But he isn’t dead. I know he isn’t. If he was dead I wouldn’t be feeling what I’m feeling now. My heart’d be empty, you know?”

Tesla looked at the woman’s elation, and heard her faith, and felt a pang of envy, that never in her life had love taken hold of her this way.

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