Mister B. Gone by Clive Barker Read Free Book Online

which I was grateful as it was clear the cur didn’t like me. It bared its teeth to their mottled gums and growled.
    “Well, Father O’Brien?” said a much thinner man with long blond hair and a blood-stained apron. “Any answers?”
    Father O’Brien approached the net, a wine flagon in his hand, and scrutinized me for a few seconds before declaring,
    “It’s just a minor demon, Mister Cawley.”
    “Not another!” the large man said.
    “You want me to throw it back?” said yellow-hair, glancing over at the three men who were holding the rope from which I dangled. All three were sweaty and tired. Between the rim of the hole and this exhausted trio was a twelve-foot-tall tower made of timber and metal, its base weighed down with several huge boulders, so as to keep it from toppling over. Two metal arms extended from the top of the tower, so that it resembled a gallows designed to hang two felons at a time. The rope to which my net was attached ran up and around one of the grooved wheels at the end of one of the arms, and back along that arm, thence down to the three large men who were presently holding my rope (and life) in their huge hands.
    “You told me there’d be giants, O’Brien?”
    “And there will be. There will, I swear. But they’re rare, Cawley.”
    “Can you see any reason why I should keep this one?”
    The priest observed me. “He’d make poor dog meat.”
    “Why?” said Cawley.
    “He’s covered in scars. He must be quite the ugliest demon I have set eyes on.”
    “Let me see,” Cawley said, raising his wide rear from the doubtless grateful boulder and approaching me, the stomach first, the man some distance behind.
    “Shamit,” Cawley said to the yellow-hair. “Take Throat’s leash.”
    “She bit me last time.”
    “Take the leash, fool!” Cawley bellowed. “You know how I hate to ask for anything twice.”
    “Yes, Cawley. I’m sorry, Cawley.” The yellow-haired Shamit took Throat’s leash, plainly afraid he was going to be bitten a second time. But the dog had other dinner plans: me. Not for a moment did it take its huge black eyes off me, drool running in streaming rivulets from its mouth. There was something about its gaze, perhaps the flames flickering in its eyes, that made me think this was a dog that had a touch of the hell-hound in its blood.
    “What you staring at my dog for, demon?” Cawley said. Apparently it displeased him that I did so, because he drew an iron bar from his belt and struck me with it two or three times. The blows hurt, and for the first time in many years I forgot the power of speech and screeched at him like an enraged ape.
    My noise incited the dog, who began to bark, his huge frame shaking with every sound it made.
    “Stop that noise, demon!” Cawley yelled. “And you too, Throat!”
    Immediately the dog fell silent. I scaled down my screeches to little moans.
    “What shall we do with it?” Shamit said. He had taken out a little wooden comb and was running it through his golden locks over and over, as though he barely knew that he was doing it.
    “He’s no good for skinning. Not with so many scars.”
    “They’re burns,” said the priest.
    “Is that your Irish humor again, O’Brien?”
    “It’s no joke.”
    “Oh Lord, O’Brien, put away your wine and think about the foolishness of what you’re saying. This is a demon. We’ve snatched it out of Hell’s eternal fires. How could a thing that lives in such a place be burned?”
    “I don’t know. I’m just saying . . .”
    “Yes . . .”
    O’Brien’s eyes went from Cawley’s face to the iron bar and back to Cawley again. It seemed I was not the only one who’d endured some hurt from the thing.
    “Nothing, Cawley, nothing at all. Just the wine talking.
    You’re probably right. I should put it aside a while.” Having spoken, he did precisely the opposite, upending the flagon as he turned his back on Cawley and stumbled away.
    “I am surrounded by drunkards, idiots,