Free Weaveworld by Clive Barker Page A

wasn’t so sure.
    ‘I won’t be polite with you much longer,’ she said. ‘You’re a thief.’
    ‘No –’ he protested.
    ‘Yes. You came here to raid an old woman’s house and you got a glimpse of something you shouldn’t.’
    ‘We shouldn’t waste time,’ said Shadwell.
    Cal had begun to regret his decision to play the pair along. He should have run while he had half a chance. The noise from the other side of the door was getting louder.
    ‘Hear that?’ said the woman. ‘Those are some of my sister’s bastards. Her by-blows.’
    ‘They’re vile,’ said Shadwell.
    He could believe it.
    ‘Once more,’ she said. The carpet.’
    And once more he told her. ‘I don’t have it.’ This time his words were more appeal than defence.
    ‘Then we must make you tell,’ said the woman.
    ‘Be careful, Immacolata,’ said Shadwell.
    If the woman heard him, she didn’t care for his warning. Softly, she rubbed the middle and fourth fingers of her right hand against the palm of her left, and at this all but silent summons her sister’s children came running.

II

    THE SKIN OF THE TEETH
    1
    uzanna arrived in Rue Street a little before three, and went first to tell Mrs Pumphrey of her grandmother’s condition. She was invited into the house with such insistence she couldn’t refuse. They drank tea, and talked for ten minutes or so: chiefly of Mimi. Violet Pumphrey spoke of the old woman without malice, but the portrait she drew was far from flattering.
    ‘They turned off the gas and electricity in the house years ago,’ Violet said. ‘She hadn’t paid the bills. Living in squalor, she was, and it weren’t for want of me keeping a neighbourly eye. But she was rude, you know, if you enquired about her health.’ She lowered her voice a little. I know I shouldn’t say it but … your grandmother wasn’t entirely of sound mind.’
    Suzanna murmured something in reply, which she knew would go unheard.
    ‘All she had was candles for light. No television, no refrigerator. God alone knows what she was eating.’
    ‘Do you know if anyone has a key to the house?’
    ‘Oh no, she wouldn’t have done that. She had more locks on that house than you’ve had hot dinners. She didn’t trust anybody, you see. Not anybody.’
    ‘I just wanted to look around.’
    ‘Well there’s been people in and out since she went; probably find the place wide open by now. Even thought of having a look myself, but I didn’t fancy it. Some houses …they’re not quite natural. You know what I mean?’
    She knew. Standing finally on the doorstep of number eighteen Suzanna confessed to herself that she’d welcomed the various duties that had postponed this visit. The episode at the hospital had validated much of the family suspicion regarding Mimi. She was different. She could give her dreams away with a touch. And whatever powers the old woman possessed, or was possessed by, would they not also haunt the house she’d spent so many years in?
    Suzanna felt the grip of the past tighten around her: except that it was no longer that simple. She wasn’t here hesitating on the threshold just because she feared a confrontation with childhood ghosts. It was that here – on a stage she’d thought to have made a permanent exit from – she dimly sensed dramas waiting to be played, and that Mimi had somehow cast her in a pivotal role.
    She put her hand on the door. Despite what Violet had said, it was locked. She peered through the front window, into a room of debris and dust. The desolation proved oddly comforting. Maybe her anxieties would yet prove groundless. She went around the back of the house. Here she had more luck. The yard gate was open, and so was the back door.
    She stepped inside. The condition of the front room was reprised here: practically all trace of Mimi Laschenski’s presence – with the exception of candles and valueless junk – had been removed. She felt an unhappy mixture of responses. On the one hand, the