Galilee by Clive Barker Read Free Book Online

hung about them. “Bad things happened here.”
    This didn’t make a lot of sense to me, and I told him so. If one room had rot in the walls and another didn’t, it was because of some vagary in the water table; it wasn’t evidence of bad karma.
    â€œIn this house,” Dwight said, “everything’s connected.”
    That was all I could get him to say on the subject, but it was plain enough, I suppose. Just as I had come to appreciate the way the house played back and forth between spirit and sight, so Dwight seemed to be telling me the physical and moral states of the house were connected.
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    He was right, of course, though I couldn’t see it at the time. The house wasn’t simply a reflection of Jefferson’s genius and Cesaria’s vision: it was a repository for all that it had ever contained. The past was still present here, in ways my limited senses had yet to grasp.
VI
    I encountered Marietta once or twice during these days of reacquaintance with the house (I even glimpsed Zabrina on a few occasions, though she shared no interest in conversing with me; only hurried away). But of Luman, of the man Cesaria had promised could help educate me, I saw not a hair. Had my stepmother decided not to allow me access to her secrets after all? Or perhaps simply forgotten to tell Luman that he was to be my guide? I decided after a couple of days that I’d seek him out for myself, and tell him how badly I wanted to get on with my work, but that I couldn’t do so; not until I knew the stories Cesaria had told me I could not even guess at.
    Luman, as I’ve said, does not live in the main house, though Lord knows it has enough rooms, empty rooms, to accommodate several families. He chooses instead to live in what was once the Smoke House; a modest building, which he claims suits him better. I had not until this visit ever come within fifty yards of the building, much less entered it; he has always been fiercely protective of his isolation.
    My mounting irritation made me bold, however. So I had Dwight take me to the place, wheeling me down what had once been a pleasant path, but which was now thickly overgrown. The air became steadily danker; in places it swarmed with mosquitoes. I lit up a cigar to keep them at bay, which I doubt worked, but a good cigar always gets me a little high, so I cared rather less that they were making a meal of me.
    As we approached the door I saw that it was open a little way, and that somebody was moving around inside. Luman knew I was here; which probably meant he also knew why I called out to him.
    â€œLuman? It’s Maddox! Is it all right if Dwight brings me in? I’d like to have a little talk!”
    â€œWe got nothing to talk about,” came the reply out of the murky interior.
    â€œI beg to differ.”
    Now Luman’s face appeared at the partially opened door. He looked thoroughly raddled, like a man who’d just stepped away from not one but several excesses. His wide, tawny face was shiny with sweat, his pupils pinpricks, his cornea yellowed. His beard looked as though it hadn’t been trimmed, or indeed even washed, in several weeks.
    â€œJesus, man,” he growled, “can’t you just let it be?”
    â€œDid you speak to Cesaria?” I asked him.
    He ran his hand through his mane and tugged it back from his head so violently it looked like an act of masochism. Those pinprick eyes of his suddenly grew to the size of quarters. This was a parlor trick I’d never seen him perform before; I was so startled I all but cried out. I stifled the yelp, however. I didn’t want him thinking he had the upper hand here. There was too much of the mad dog about him. If he sensed fear in me, I was certain he’d at very least drive me from his door. And at worst? Who knew what a creature like this could do if he set his perverse mind to it? Just about anything,