Read Online Galilee by Clive Barker - Free Book Online

landing was deserted.
    Well, I thought, there’s no use my sitting here, getting dizzy and paranoid. I may as well spit out my reasons for coming, and see if that elicited some response.
    I drew an anxious breath, and spoke.
    â€œI came . . . I came to see the past,” I said. My voice sounded tiny, like a child’s voice. “Cesaria sent me,” I added, thinking that might help whatever forces occupied the room understand that I was a legitimate presence, and that if they had something to show me, they should damned well do it.
    Something that I’d said—whether it was talking about the past or about Cesaria I can’t say—brought a response. The shadows seemed to darken around me, and their motion grew more complex. Some portion of the pattern twitched like a living thing, and rose up in front of me—up, up toward the skylight. Another flew off toward the wall at my left, trailing more fragments of dark air, whipping like the tail of a kite. A third dropped to the polished boards and spread across the floor.
    I believe I breathed some words of astonishment. “Oh my Lord,” or some such. I had reason. The spectacle was growing by the moment, the writhing motions of these shadows, and their scale, expanding as if by some logarithmic progression. Motion was inspiring motion; forms were inspiring forms. In the space of perhaps forty-five seconds the walls of the dome room had been all but eclipsed by these roiling abstractions; gray on gray, yet filled with subtle intimations of visions to come. My eyes were darting everywhere, of course, amazed by all this, but even as my gaze went on from one cloudy cluster of shapes to the next, it moved with the impression that something was almost visible here. That I was moments away from understanding how these abstractions worked.
    And yet, even in their protean condition they moved me. Watching these roilings and cavortings I began to understand why Luman had been so reluctant to enter this room. He was a man of great vulnerability, despite his manner there was simply too much feeling here for a soul so tender. Watching the unfolding spectacle, I felt as though I were listening to a piece of music; or rather several at the same time.
    Those grand shapes moving overhead, like columns of smoke passing across the sun had all the gravity of a requiem; while the forms that moved close to me reeled and swaggered as though to a drunken polka. And in between, circling me as they climbed, were sinuous ropes of ether that seemed to express lovely, rising music, like the bright line of a rhapsody.
    To say I was enchanted does not begin to express my beguilement. It was all so perfectly mysterious: a seduction of eye and heart that left me close to tears. But I was not so enthralled that I didn’t wonder what powers lay so far undisclosed. I had invited this vision with my own readiness to accept it. Now it was time to do the same thing again; to open my spirit, as it were, a little wider, and see what the shadows would show me.
    â€œI’m ready,” I said softly, “whenever you are . . .”
    The forms before me continued to profligate, but made no visible response to my invitation. There was still a sense of evolution in their motion, but I sensed that it had slowed. I was no longer seeing the heart-quickening changes that had astonished me a minute or two before.
    Again, I spoke. “I’m not afraid,” I said.
    Did I ever say anything so foolish in my life as to boast fearlessness in such a place as this?
    The words were no sooner out of my mouth than the shadows before me convulsed, as though some seismic shock had shaken the dome. Two or three seconds later, like thunder coming a heartbeat after lightning, the shock wave struck the only nonethereal form in the room, which is to say, myself. My chair was propelled backward, tipping over as it went. I vainly tried to regain some measure of control, but the chair