ss - Lost Souls

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LOST SOULS

Clive Barker

Everything the blind woman had told Harry she'd seen was undeniably real.

Whatever inner eye Norma Paine possessed-that extraordinary skill that

allowed her to scan the island of Manhattan from the Broadway Bridge to

Battery Park and yet not move an inch from her tiny room on

Seventy-fifth-that eye was as sharp as any knife juggler's. Here was the

derelict house on Ridge Street, with the smoke stains besmirching the

brick. Here was the dead dog that she'd described, lying on the sidewalk

as though asleep, but that it lacked half its head. Here too, if Norma

was to be believed, was the demon that Harry had come in search of: the

shy and sublimely malignant Cha'Chat.

The house was not, Harry thought, a likely place for a desperado of

Cha'Chat's elevation to be in residence. Though the infernal brethren

could be a loutish lot, to be certain, it was Christian propaganda which

sold them as dwellers in excrement and ice. The escaped demon was more

likely to be downing fly eggs and vodka at the Waldorf-Astoria than

concealing itself amongst such wretchedness.

But Harry had gone to the blind clairvoyant in desperation, having failed

to locate Cha'Chat by any means conventionally available to a private eye

such as himself. He was, he had admitted to her, responsible for the fact

that the demon was loose at all. It seemed he'd never learned, in his all

too frequent encounters with the Gulf and its progeny, that Hell

possessed a genius for deceit. Why else had he believed in the child that

had tottered into view just as he'd leveled his gun at Cha'Chat?-a child,

of course, which had evaporated into a cloud of tainted air as soon as

the diversion was redundant and the demon had made its escape.

Now, after almost three weeks of vain pursuit, it was almost Christmas in

New York; season of goodwill and suicide. Streets thronged; the air like

salt in wounds; Mammon in glory. A more perfect playground for Cha'Chat's

despite could scarcely be imagined. Harry had to find the demon quickly,

before it did serious damage; find it and return it to the pit from which

it had come. In extremis he would even use the binding syllables which

the late Father Hesse had vouchsafed to him once, accompanying them with

such dire warnings that Harry had never even written them down. Whatever

it took. Just as long as Cha'Chat didn't see Christmas Day this side of

the Schism.

It seemed to be colder inside the house on Ridge Street than out. Harry

could feel the chill creep through both pairs of socks and start to numb

his feet. He was making his way along the second landing when he heard

the sigh. He turned, fully expecting to see Cha'Chat standing there, its

eye cluster looking a dozen ways at once, its cropped fur rippling. But

no. Instead a young woman stood at the end of the corridor. Her

undernourished features suggested Puerto Rican extraction, but that-and

the fact that she was heavily pregnant-was all Harry had time to grasp

before she hurried away down the stairs.

Listening to the girl descend, Harry knew that Norma had been wrong. If

Cha'Chat had been here, such a perfect victim would not have been allowed

to escape with her eyes in her head. The demon wasn't here.

Which left the rest of Manhattan to search.

The night before, something very peculiar had happened to Eddie Axel. It

had begun with his staggering out of his favorite bar, which was six

blocks from the grocery store he owned on Third Avenue. He was drunk, and

happy; and with reason. Today he had reached the age of fifty-five. He

had married three times in those years; he had sired four legitimate

children and a handful of bastards; and-perhaps most significantly-he'd

made Axel's Superette a highly lucrative business. All was well with the

world.

But Jesus, it was chilly! No chance, on a night threatening a second Ice

Age, of finding a cab. He would have to walk home.

He'd got maybe half a block, however, when-miracle of miracles-a cab did

indeed cruise by. He'd flagged it down, eased himself in, and the weird

times had begun.

For one, the driver knew his name.

"Home, Mr. Axel?" he'd said. Eddie hadn't questioned the godsend. Merely

mumbled, "Yes," and assumed this was a birthday treat, courtesy of

someone back at the bar. Perhaps his eyes had flickered closed; perhaps

he'd even slept. Whatever, the next thing he knew the cab was driving at

some speed through streets he didn't recognize. He stirred himself from

his doze. This was the Village,surely; an area Eddie kept clear of. His

neighborhood was the high Nineties, close to the store. Not for him the

decadence of the Village, where a shop sign offered "Ear piercing. With

or without pain" and young men with suspicious hips lingered in doorways.

"This isn't the right direction," he said, rapping on the Perspex between

him and the driver. There was no word of apology or explanation

forthcoming, however, until the cab made a turn toward the river, drawing

up in a street of warehouses, and the ride was over.

"This is your stop," said the chauffeur. Eddie didn't need a more

explicit invitation to disembark.

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