Authors: Clive Barker
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packed, which had been mislaid by the original tilers (there were a hundred and sixteen such tiles; most turned ninety or a hundred and eighty degrees by an artisan too tired, too bewildered or perhaps too drunk to realize his error); all so that when the tiles were unpacked at the house in Coldheart Canyon there would be no difficulty reordering them into the original design.
It was a long process; a total of eleven weeks were to pass before the crated tiles were finally transported from the Fortress.
All the work had drawn much attention, of course; from the brothers themselves, who knew what was going on because Father Sandru had told them, and from the villagers, who had only the vaguest of ideas of what all this was about. There were rumors flying around that the removal was being undertaken because the tiles had put the souls of the Fathers in spiritual jeopardy, but precise details of this jeopardy changed from account to account.
The vast sum of money that was now in the possession of the Order did very little to transform the lives of the priests, apart from inspiring some of the most embittered exchanges in the history of the brotherhood. Several of the priests were of the opinion that the tiles should not have been sold (not because of their merit, but because it was not wise to loose such unholy images on the secular world). To this, Father Sandru—who was more often, and more publicly, drunk by the day—offered only a sneering dismissal.
What does it matter?
he said to the complainers:
they are only tiles, for
God’s sake
.
There were a good number of shaken heads by way of response, and a very eloquent riposte from one of the older Fathers, who said that God had put the tiles into their protection, and it was cynical and careless of him to let them go. What damage might they not do, out there in the world, he said; what hurt to innocent souls?
Sandru was unmoved by all this. There
were
no innocent souls in Hollywood, he had learned; nor was there any sin or excess painted in the tiles that the people of that city were not intimately familiar with. He CC[001-347] 9/10/01 2:26 PM Page 44
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CLIVE BARKER
spoke with an authority which he didn’t in truth possess, but it sufficiently impressed the brothers—or at least a greater number of them—so that the nay-sayers were finally silenced.
There was much debate about what should happen to the money. One faction, led by the older men, believed it had been acquired by dubious means, and the only uncorrupted way to dispose of it was to distribute it among the poor. Surprisingly, very few voices supported this solution;
some
part of the money might be given to the needy in the village, the priests agreed, but there were other causes that should be attended to.
There was some lobbying for a complete removal of the Order to some other place than the Fortress; a more comfortable place, where they could find their way to God without the Devil’s shadow falling across their path.
It was Sandru who was the most eloquent advocate of their staying in the Fortress. His tongue well lubricated with wine, he explained that he felt no sense of regret that he’d sold the tiles; it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and he was glad he’d taken it. Now, he said, they should use the money to rejuvenate the place. Get the hospital up and running, as had always been the plan; see what they could do about refertilizing the land, so that the vineyard would prosper as it had in the old days.
“Our path is perfectly clear!” he said to the Brothers. “Whether our faith in the Lord is secure or not, we can heal here, and we can grow the grape, and pass our lives with purpose.”
He smiled as he spoke. That word—
purpose
—had not been on his lips for many years, and it gave him pleasure to speak it. But even as he spoke the smile started to die away, and the color shrank from his ruddy face.
“I beg you to excuse me,” he said, putting his hand to his belly, “I am sickened by too much brandy.”
With that he pulled out of his robes the bottle from which he had been drinking since early morning, and set it clumsily down on the table in front of him. Then he turned and stumbled out to get a breath of fresh air.
Nobody went after him; he had no friends left in the Fortress. His old allies were too embarrassed by his excesses to publicly share his opinions; fearful that his behavior might reflect poorly on them, and keep them CC[001-347] 9/10/01 2:26 PM Page 45
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from advancement. So he was alone as he wandered giddily through the ruins of the dead vines. It was evening, and now that the summer was past, the air was beginning to get chilly. But the sky overhead was a perfect blue, and there was a new moon, its pallid crescent just clearing the mountains.
Sandru tried to let the sight of the sky and moon calm him; have them placate the pain of his heart, give life back to his numbed fingers. But the trick was beyond them. He realized suddenly that this was not a spasm brought on by too much brandy. He was dying.
The Brothers had medicines for weakness of the heart, he knew; it would not be the end of him if he got back to them quickly enough. He turned on his heel, attempting to voice a shout of alarm. But his panicked chest would provide no breath for him to cry for help. His legs began to fail him, and down he went, face first, into the dirt. He tasted the soil in his mouth, bitter and unappetizing. He spat it out; and with the last of his strength he pushed himself up out of the filth and let gravity roll him over.
He could not move, but it didn’t matter. The darkening sky overhead was spectacle enough. He lay there for six or seven shortening gasps, while a star, lonely in its solitude, brightened at his zenith. Then he let life go.
The Brothers did not find him until the middle of the night, by which time a frost had settled on the old vineyard, the first frost of that autumn. It glittered on the bulk of the dead Father; on his bulbous nose and in the knots of his beard. It had even inscribed its filigrees on his unblinking eyes.
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F O U R
There was no hospital established at the Fortress; then or ever. Nor was there any attempt to replant the vineyard, or make the grounds around the Fortress in any way flourish. With Father Sandru’s passing (at the relatively tender age of sixty-two), what little enthusiasm there had been for change withered. The younger men decided to leave the Fortress; three of them left the Order entirely and became members of the secular community. Of the three, one—a young man by the name of Jan Valek—took his own life less than a year later, leaving a long suicide note, a kind of epistle to his sometime Brothers, in which he wrote of how he’d had a dream after the death of Father Sandru, in which “
I met the Father in the vineyards,
which were all burning. It was a terrible place to be. Black smoke was filling the
sky, blotting out the sun. He said to me that this was Hell, this world, and there
was only one way to escape it, and that was to die. His face was bright, even in
the darkness. He said he wished he’d died earlier, instead of going on suffering in
the world.
“I asked him if they allowed him to drink brandy wherever he was now. He
said he had no need of brandy; his existence was happy; there was no need to conceal the pain with drinking.
“Then I told him I still had a life to live in the world, whereas he had been an
old man, with a weak heart. I was strong, I said, and there was a good chance I’d
be alive for another thirty, maybe forty years, which was an agony to me, but what
could I do?
“ ‘So take your own life,’ he said to me. He made it sound so simple. ‘Cut your
throat. God understands.’
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“ ‘He does?’ I said to him.
“ ‘Certainly,’ he told me. ‘This world is Hell. Just look around. What do you
see?’
“I told him what I saw. Fire, smoke, black earth.
“ ‘See?’ he said. ‘Hell.’
“I told him, though of course I was still dreaming, I was going to take his
advice. I was going to go back to my room, find a sharp knife, and kill myself. But
for some reason, as often happens in dreams, I didn’t go home. I went into
Bucharest. To the cinema where Brother Stefan used to bring me sometimes, to see
films. We went inside. It was very dark. We found seats and Stefan had me sit
down. Then the film began. And it was a film about some earthly paradise. It
made me weep, it was so perfect, this place. The music, the way the people looked.
Beautiful men and women, all so lovely it took my breath away to look at them.
There was one young man in particular—and it makes me ashamed to write this,
but if I don’t do it here, in my last confession, where will I do it?—a young man
with dark hair and light-filled eyes, who opened his arms to me. He was naked,
on the screen, with open arms, inviting me into his embrace. I turned to Father
Stefan in the darkness, and he said the very thing that was going through my
mind. ‘He wants to take you into his arms.’
“I started to deny it. But Stefan interrupted me and said: ‘Look at him. Look
at his face. It’s flawless. Look at his body. It’s perfect. And there—between his
legs
—
’
“I covered my face in shame, but Stefan pulled my hands from my face and told
me not to be ashamed, just to look, and enjoy looking. ‘God made all of this for
our pleasure,’ he said. ‘Why would He give us such a hunger to look at nakedness
unless He wanted us to take pleasure in it?’
“I asked Stefan how he knew it was God’s work. Perhaps the Devil had made
nakedness, I said, to tempt us and ensnare us. He laughed, and put his arm
around me, and kissed me on the cheek as though I were just a little child.
“ ‘This isn’t the Devil’s work,’ he said. ‘This is your invitation to paradise.’
Then he kissed me again, and I felt a warm wind blowing, as though it were spring
in whatever country they had created on the screen. And the wind made me want
to die with pleasure, because it smelled of a time I remembered from long ago.
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“So now I have come back to my room. I have a knife. When I have finished
writing this I will leave what I have written on the table, and I will go out into the
field, and cut my wrists. I know we are taught that self-slaughter is a sin, and that
the Lord does not wish us to harm ourselves, but if He does not wish me to end my
life, why is this knife within reach of my hand, and why is my heart so much at
peace?
”
His body was found about a hundred yards from the place where Sandru’s frost-covered body had been discovered. Coming so soon upon the death of the old priest, the death of Jan Valek undid the Brotherhood completely. Orders came from Bucharest, and the Brotherhood was dis-banded. There was no need to guard the Fortress any longer, the Archbishop said. The brothers would be more useful to the Church if they worked with the sick and the dying, to offer the Lord’s comfort where it was most needed.
Within a week, the Order of Saint Teodor had left the Fortress Goga.
There were those among the villagers who felt that the Fortress had invited its abandonment, and began its own process of self-slaughter.
Superstition, no doubt; but it was certainly strange that after five centuries of life, during which span it had remained strong, a quick process of dis-integration should begin as soon as the community of caretakers departed.
True, the winter immediately following was particularly severe. But there had been heavier snows on the roofs and they had not bowed beneath the weight; there had been stronger winds through the casements and they’d not broken open and smashed; there had been more persistent floodings of the lower floors, and the doors had not been carried off on their rotted hinges.
By the time the spring came round—which was late April that year—the Fortress had effectively become uninhabitable. It was as though its soul had gone out of it, and now all it wanted was to allow the seasons to take their steady toll. They were guileless collaborators. The summer was as violently hot as the winter had been bitter, and it bred all manner of CC[001-347] 9/10/01 2:26 PM Page 49
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destroyers in the fabric of the building. Worm and fly and wasp contributed to the baking heat of the sun with their burrowings and layings and nestings. Beams that had taken ten men to lift them became dusty, hollow things, as delicate as the bones of immense birds. Unable to support their own weight, they collapsed upon themselves, bringing down entire floors as they fell. By the time September arrived, the Fortress was open to the elements. The ward where the Brothers had optimistically laid out rows of beds now had a ceiling of cloud. When the first rains of autumn came the mattresses were soaked; fungus and mildew sprouted where the sick would have lain. The place stank of rot from end to end.
And finally, somewhere in the middle of the second winter in its empty state, the floorboards cracked and opened up, and the lowest level of the Fortress, the level where Father Sandru had brought Zeffer to show him the tiled chamber, became available to sky and storm. If anyone had ventured into the Fortress that winter he would have witnessed the most delicate of spectacles. Through the eight vaults above the once-tiled room—which were now all cracked like eggs—snow came spiraling down. It fell into a room denuded. The workmen Zeffer had hired to do the work of removing the tiles had first been obliged to empty the room of all the monks had left in there. Some of the furniture had subsequently been stolen, some broken up for firewood, and the rest—perhaps a quarter of the bounty—simply left to decay where it had been piled up. The snow, spiraling down, settled in little patches on the floor; patches which would not melt for the next four months, but only get wider and deeper as the winter’s storms got worse, the snow heavier.