Clive Barker - Animal Life

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Clive Barker's Animal Life

Ralph was dreaming of Kathleen again. She was standing on the edge of the pool he

was building for Jerry Meuse on Coldwater Canyon, looking into the water saying:

"It's milk, Ralph!"

As he realized that yes, indeed, the pool was filled with milk, the ground began to

shake. Somewhere far off, he heard Duffy barking frantically.

I'm not dreaming, he thought, and opened his eyes. The walls were creaking, the

doors flying open, the bed pitching around. This was no minor temblor. This was big

and getting bigger. He felt a patter of dust on his face and threw himself out of the

bed. A heartbeat later the ceiling came down, burying the place where he'd been

sleeping seconds before.

The drapes were open a few inches (He'd not been able to sleep in total darkness since

Kathleen's departure), and there was moonlight enough to get him across the pitching

floor to the door. "Duffy?" he yelled as he raced down the stairs. "Where are you,

boy?"

He ducked into the kitchen where Duffy usually spent the night (he'd protect his food

before us, Kathleen had pointed out), but there was no response. The shaking had

given way to brutal jolts now, as though some titanic foot were kicking the house.

Every jar, plate, fork, and glass were either on the floor in pieces or on their way.

"Duffy?" he yelled again, fearing the worst.

Then, from the study, a fretful whine. He raced across the hall. The dog was under the

desk, which was a more sensible place to be than--

Behind him, the sound of plaster cracking and splintering. He turned in time to see

one of the huge bookcases, six of it's shelves weighted down with files on recent

projects, the seventh with his secret stash of skin magazines, toppling toward him. He

started to retreat, but a hail of books and Penthouses felled him.

Ralph's partner, Vincent, surveyed the chaos of the study.

"This is not a safe place for you to be right now," he said, "Come stay with Lauren

and me till you get a structural engineer in here."

Ralph was at his desk, which had become a life raft in this sea of destruction.

Preserved upon it: pictures of Kathleen, an antique clock, his first editions of

chandler.

"Thanks, but no thanks. I've already lost enough. First Kathleen--"

"She'll be back, Ralphie."

"--Then Duffy running off. I'm damned if I'm going to leave this house. It's practically

all I've got left." He put his hand to his bandaged brow. "Besides a permanant

headache."

The bedroom was uninhabitable, so the next night he made up a bed for himself on

the sofa. The aftershocks had continued through the day--the seismologists up at Cal

Tech were predicting they'd go on for several weeks after a quake of that magnitude--

but in the brightness and warmth of the day the tremors hadn't bothered him. Once

darkness fell however, he began to feel jittery. Sleep did not come easily. Twice he

woke from a light doze thinking he felt plaster dust on his face.

The third time, it was the sound that stirred him, that of somebody eating. He rose,

picking up the heavy-duty flashlight he'd left on the floor, and followed the noise

through to the kitchen. He could just make out a dimunitive figure in the darkness,

sitting at the table. It wasn't a child. A sliver of light caught the whiskers around its

chin.

"Ralphie?" The interloper's voice was deep and warm.

Ralph snapped on the light.

"Too bright." said Duffy, squinting. He was sitting up at the table with a tub of peach

ice cream in front of him. There was a spoon and a bowl beside it, but he'd apparently

decided they weren't worth the bother, and plunged his snout into the tub. "Boy," he

said, "You look like hell." Ralph put his hands to his throbbing head. His concussion

was plainly worse than he thought.

"I know, I shouldn't be eating ice cream," Duffy was saying. "Our digestive systems

weren't designed for sugar. But I thought, What the hell? Why not celebrate? It's not

every day that a dog gets to talk with it's master."

"This isn't happening." Ralph said flatly.

"Now that, Ralphie is a terrible cliche'. Come and have some ice cream, and I'll

explain." Ralph didn't move. "Come on." Duffy coaxed him, "I'm not going to bite."

"I'm hallucinating this," Ralph told him, and went to sit down opposite his illusion, so

as to find some flaw in its solidity.

"Kathleen was right, you know," Duffy said, "We'd be a lot safer in Wisconsin. But

then we'd have her damn mother living around the corner. Are you sure you don't

want some ice cream?" Ralph shook his head. "You're probably wondering how I got

to talk an' all, right? Well, after I ran off--sorry about that by the way, I guess it was

instinct--I was wandering up in the hills off of Mulholland, an' I saw this pack of

coyotes, so I followed them in case there was something worth scavenging."

"And was there?"

"I was gettin' to that. They disappeared among these trees, and there were animals

arriving from all directions. Deer and raccoons and snakes and birds and lizards.

There were a few pets too. Runaways who'd found their way up there by some fluke."

He broke off, and smiled at his astonished master. "It get weirder," he said, "See,

there was this crack in the ground, with smoke coming out of it, and all the animals

were takin' a breath of this smoke. So I did the same, and you know what? I could

talk. We all could talk. You never heard such bedlam." He laughed, much entertained

by the memory."And then--" he leaned across the table, his voice dropping to a

whisper, "Out of the earth comes this woman. and she says to us all: "You know

me..." "And did you?" "Vaguely. She was huge, maybe 300 pounds, and beautiful.

Every kind of blood in her, every kind of feeling in her face, all at once. Rage and

love and rapture..." he was entranced, even now. "Unbelievable," he said.

"And who was she?"

"Some earth spirit. A goddess. My Mother. I don't know. The point is, she said to us:

'I need to know whether or not I should shake this city to pieces.'"

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Clive Barker - Animal Life

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