Sacrament by Clive Barker Read Free Book Online Page A

comes,' the stranger replied. 'And it will come, my faithless friend.
As sure as God put tits on trees.'
    And with this absurdity, he was gone.
    There was a moment of blissful silence, when it crossed Will's mind that maybe he'd died after all, and was
floating away into oblivion. Then he heard Lucy - poor, orphaned Lucy - howling out her heart somewhere
close to him. And coming on the heels of her din, human voices, telling him to be still, be still, he was going to
be all right.
    'Can you hear me, Will?' Adrianna was asking him.
    He could feel the snowflakes dropping on his face, like cold feathers. On his brow, on his lashes, on his lips, on
his teeth. And then - far less welcome than the pricking snow - a swelling agony in his torso and head.
    'Will,' Adrianna said. 'Speak to me.'
    ... ye ... s,' he said.
    The pain was becoming unendurable, rising and rising.
    'You're going to be all right,' Adrianna said. 'We've got help coming, and you're going to be all right.'
    'Christ, what a mess,' somebody said. He knew the inflections. One of the Lauterbach brothers, surely; Gert the
doctor, struck off the register for improper distribution of pharmaceuticals. He was giving orders like a field
sergeant: blankets, bandages, here, now, on the double!
    'Will?' A third voice, this one close to his ear. It was Cornelius, weeping as he spoke. 'I fucked up man. Oh
Christ, I'm sorry-'
    Will wanted to hush the man's self-recrimination - it was of no use to anybody now - but his tongue would not
work to make the words. His eyes, however, opened a fraction, dislodging the dusting of snow in his sockets.
He couldn't see Cornelius, nor Adrianna, nor Gert Lauterbach. Only the snow, spiralling down.
    'He's still with us,' Adrianna said.
    'Oh man, oh man-' Cornelius was sobbing. 'Thank fucking God.'
    'You hold on,' Adrianna said to Will. 'We've got you. You hear me? You're not going to die, Will. I'm not going
to let you, okay?'
    He let his eyes close again. But the snow kept coming down inside his head, laying its hush upon him; like a
tender blanket put over his hurt. And by degrees the pain retreated, and the voices retreated, and he slept under
the snow, and dreamt of another time.
     

PART TWO
    He Dreams He Is Loved
     

CHAPTER I
    For a few precious months following the death of his older brother, Will had been the happiest boy in
Manchester. Not publicly so, of course. He had quickly learned how to put on a glum face; even to look teary
sometimes, if a concerned relative asked him how he felt. But it was all a sham. Nathaniel was dead, and he was
glad. The golden boy would reign over him no longer. Now there was only one person in his life who
condescended to him the way Papa did, and that was Papa himself.
    Papa had reason: he was a great man. A philosopher, no less. Other thirteen-year-olds had plumbers for fathers,
or bus-drivers, but Will's father, Hugo Rabjohns, had six books to his name, books that a plumber or a bus-
driver would be unlikely to understand. The world, Hugo had once told Nathaniel in Will's presence, was made
by many men, but shaped by few. The important thing was to be one of those few; to find a place in which you
could change the repetitive patterns of the many through political influence and intellectual discourse, and
failing either of these, through benign coercion.
    Will adored hearing his father talk this way, even though much of what Papa said was beyond him. And his
father loved to talk about his ideas, though Will had heard him once fly into a fury when Eleanor, Will's mother,
had called her husband a teacher.
    'I am not, never have been, nor ever will be a teacher!' Hugo had roared, his always ruddy face turning a still
deeper red. 'Why do you always seek to reduce me?'
    What had his mother said by way of reply? Something vague. She was always vague. Looking past him to
something outside the window, probably; or staring critically at the flowers she'd just arranged.
    'Philosophy