Galilee by Clive Barker Read Free Book Online Page A

probably.
    â€œYes,” he said finally, “she spoke to me. But I don’t think you need to be seeing the stuff she wants you to see. It ain’t your business.”
    â€œShe thinks it is.”
    â€œHuh.”
    â€œLook, can we at least have this conversation out of the way of the mosquitoes?”
    â€œYou don’t like bein’ bit?” he said, with a nasty little grin. “Oh I like to get naked an’ have ’em at me. Gets me goin’.”
    Perhaps he hoped he’d repulse me with this, and I’d leave, but I was not about to be so easily removed. I simply stared at him.
    â€œDo you have any more of them cigars?”
    I had indeed come prepared. Not only did I have cigars, I had gin, and, by way of more intellectual seduction, a small pamphlet on madhouses from my collection. Many years before Luman had spent some months incarcerated in Utica, an institution in upstate New York. A century later (so Marietta told me) he was still obsessed with the business of how a sane man might be thought mad, and a madman put in charge of Congress. I dug first for the cigar, as he’d requested it.
    â€œHere,” I said.
    â€œIs it Cuban?”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œToss it to me.”
    â€œDwight can bring it.”
    â€œNo. Toss it.”
    I gently lobbed the cigar in his direction. It fell a foot shy of the threshold. He bent down and picked it up, rolling it between his fingers and sniffing it.
    â€œThis is nice,” he said appreciatively. “You keep a humidor?”
    â€œYes. In this humidity—”
    â€œGot to, got to,” he said, his tone distinctly warming. “Well then,” he said, “you’d better get your sorry ass in here.”
    â€œIt’s all right if Dwight carries me in?”
    â€œAs long as he leaves,” Luman said. Then to Dwight: “No offense. But this is between my half-brother and me.”
    â€œI understand,” said Dwight, and picking me up out of my wheelchair carried me to the door, which Luman now hauled open. A wave of stinking heat hit me; like the stench of a pigpen in high summer.
    â€œI like it rank,” Luman said by way of explanation. “It reminds me of the old country.”
    I didn’t reply to him; I was too—I don’t know quite what the word is—astonished, perhaps appalled, by the state of the interior.
    â€œSit him down on the ol’ crib there,” Luman said, pointing to a peculiar bed-cum-coffin set close to the hearth. Worse than the crib itself—which looked more like an instrument of torture than a place of repose—was the fact that the hearth was far from cold: a large, smoky fire was burning there. It was little wonder Luman was sweating so profusely.
    â€œWill this be all right?” Dwight said to me, plainly concerned for my well-being.
    â€œI’ll be fine,” I said. “I could do with losing the weight.”
    â€œThat you could,” Luman said. “You need to get fightin’ fit. We all do.”
    He had lit a match, and with the care of a true connoisseur, was slowly coaxing his cigar to life. “My,” he said, “this is nice. I surely do appreciate a good bribe, brother. It’s a sign o’ good breedin’, when a man knows how to offer a good bribe.”
    â€œSpeaking of which . . .” I said. “Dwight. The gin.”
    Dwight set the bottle of gin on the table, which was as thickly strewn with detritus as every other inch of Luman’s hellhole.
    â€œWell that’s mighty kind of you,” Luman said.
    â€œAnd this—”
    â€œMy, my, the presents jus’ keep comin’, don’t they?” I gave him the book. “What’s this now?” He looked at the cover. “Oh, this is interestin’, brother.” He flipped through the book, which was amply illustrated. “I wonder if there’s a picture of my li’l ol’