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 Deluxe Hardcover Edition: $30
ISBN: 978-1-59606-636-6

THE LEGEND OF PRIMORDIUM

TORTURED SOULS is one of the most

vividly imagined, tightly compressed
novellas ever written by the incompa-
rable Clive Barker. At once violent and
erotic, brutal and strangely beautiful,
it takes us into the heart of the legend-
ary “first city” known as Primordium,
the site of political upheaval, passion-
ate encounters, and astonishing acts of
transformation.
Lurking at the edges of this extrav-
agant tale is the ancient entity known
as “Agonistes,” who accepts the pleas
of selected “Supplicants,” transforming
them, through a combination of art,
magic, and pain, into avatars of -vio-
lence and revenge.
The story begins when a freelance
assassin named Zarles Krieger com-
mits a routine murder-for-hire. This act, | Al
will lead him to two life-altering et}-
counters, one with the daughter of Hfs}jj |
i]

victim, the other with Agonistes hirlt-

self. This conjunction of the humaih|

|
and the inhuman stands at the centr} |
{)
of this instantly absorbing creation. AW ti
|
TORTURED
SOULS
wy
TORTURED
SOULS
The Legend of Primordium

CLIVE BARKER

SUBTERRANEAN PRESS 2015

Tortured Souls: The Legend of Primordium
Copyright © 2001 by Clive Barker.
All rights reserved.

Dust jacket and interior illustrations

Copyright © 2015 by Bob Eggleton.
All rights reserved.

Interior design
Copyright © 2015 by Desert Isle Design, LLC.
All rights reserved.

First Edition

ISBN
978-1-59606-636-6

Subterranean Press

PO Box 190106
Burton, MI 48519

subterraneanpress.com
 I
HE IS A transformer of human flesh; a creator of mon-
sters. If a Supplicant comes to him with sufficient need,
sufficient hunger for change—knowing how painful
that change will be—he will accommodate them. They
become objects of perverse beauty beneath his hand;
their bodies remade in fashions that they have no power
to dictate.
Over the years, over the centuries, indeed, this
extraordinary creature has gone by many names. But
we will call him by the first name he was ever given:
AGONISTES.
Where would a Supplicant find him? Usually in what
he calls ‘the burning places’: deserts, for instance. But
sometimes he can be found in ‘the burning places’ in
our own inflamed cities: places where despair has seared
away all belief in hope and love.
There he moves, silently, irreproachably, his presence
barely more than a rumour. And there he waits for those
who need him to come to find him.
When a Supplicant presents him or herself there
is never coercion. There is never violence, at least until

11
CLIVE BARKER

the Supplicant has signed over his or her flesh. Then

yes, there may be some second thoughts, once the work
begins. The truth is that on many occasions a Supplicant
has begged to die rather than continue to be ‘empow-
ered’ by Agonistes. It hurts too much, they tell him, as his
scalpels and his torches work their terrible surgery upon
him. But in all the time he has been wandering the world
Agonistes has only ever granted the comfort of death to
one Supplicant who changed his mind. That man was
Judas Iscariot, who whined so much Agonistes hanged
him from a tree. The rest he works on despite their com-
plaints, sometimes for days and nights, coming back to
his labours when a piece of flesh has healed and he can
begin on the next part of the surgery.
There are some minor compensations for all this pain,
which Agonistes will sometimes offer his Supplicants as
he works. He will sing to them, for instance, and it is
said that he knows every lullaby written, in every lan-
guage of the world; songs of the cradle and the breast, to
soothe the men and women he is remaking in the image
of their terror.
And, if for some reason he feels particularly sym-
pathetic to the Supplicant, Agonistes may even give his
victim a piece of his own flesh to eat: just a sliver, cut
with one of his finest scalpels, from the tender flesh of his
upper thigh, or inner lip. According to legend, there is no
food more eomforting, more exquisite, than the flesh of
Agonistes. The merest sliver of it upon the tongue of the
Supplicant will make him or her forget all the horrors
they are enduring, and deliver them to a place of para-
disical calm.

12
 Tortured Souls: The Legend of Primordium

Then once his client is soothed Agonistes contin-

ues his work, cutting, infibulating, searing, cauterizing,
stretching, twisting, reconfiguring.
Sometimes he will bring a mirror to show his
Supplicants what he has so far created. Sometimes he will
announce that he wants the results to be a surprise; and
so the Supplicant is left to imagine, through the haze of
pain, what Agonistes is turning them into.

II
IT IS AN art, what Agonistes achieves.
He claims it is The First Art, this creation of new flesh,
being the art God used to call life into being. Agonistes
believes in God; prays to Him night and morning: thank-
ing Him for making a world in which there is so much
hopelessness and such a profound hunger for revenge
that Supplicants will seek him out and beg him to recon-
figure them in the image of their monstrous ideal.
And it appears that God apparently finds no offence
in what Agonistes does, because for two and a half thou-
sand years he has walked the planet, performing what he
calls his holy art, and no harm has come to him. In fact
he has prospered.
Some of the people who went under his knife, like
Pontius Pilate, have a place in our culture’s history. Many
are anonymous. He has transformed potentates and
gangsters, failed actors and architects; women who've
been cheated by their husbands and come seeking a
new form to greet their adulterer in their marriage beds;

L3
CLIVE BARKER

school mistresses and perfumiers, dog-trainers and char-

coal burners. The mighty and the insignificant, the noble
and the peasant. As long as they are sincere Supplicants,
and their prayers sound genuine, then Agonistes will be
attentive to them.
Who is he, this Agonistes? This artist, this wanderer,
this transformer of human flesh and bone?
In truth, nobody really knows. There is a heretical
volume in the Vatican Library called ‘A Treatise on the
Madness of God’, written by one Cardinal Gaillema in
the mid-seventeenth century. In it, Gaillema argues that
the account of the Creation of the world offered in the
Book of Genesis is wrong in several particulars, one of
which is relevant here: on the seventh day, the Cardinal
argued, God did not rest. Instead, driven into a kind of
ecstatic fugue state by the labours of His Creation, God
continued to work. But the creations He summoned up
in His exhausted state were not the wholesome beasts
with which He had populated Eden. In one day and one
night, wandering amongst the fresh glories of creation,
He summoned up forms that defied all the beauty of
his early work. Destroyers and demons, these were the
antitheses of the wholesome forms that He had made in
the first six days.
One of the creatures Jehovah created, the Cardinal
claims, was Agonistes. That’s why Agonistes can pray to
His Father in Heaven, and expect to be listened to. He
is—at least according to Cardinal Gaillema’s account—
one of God’s own creations.
And there is no doubt that in his perverse way
Agonistes serves a function. Over the years, over the

14
 Tortured Souls: The Legend of Primordium
centuries, he has been the answer to countless prayers for
deliverance from powerlessness.
The words may change from prayer to prayer, but the
meat of them is always the same:
“O Agonistes, dark deliverer, make me in the image
of my enemies’ nightmares. Let my flesh be the stuff from
which you carve their terrors; let my skull be a bell which
sounds their death-knell. Give me a song to sing, which
will be the song of their despair, and let them wake and
find me singing it at the bottom of their beds.”
“Unmake me, unknit me, transform me.”
“And if you cannot do that for me, Agonistes, then let
me be excrement; let me be nothing; less than nothing.”
“For I want to be the terror of my enemies, or I want
oblivion.”
“The choice, Lord, is yours.”

15
 I
THE CITY OF Primordium was founded before any of
the great cities of myth or history. Indeed, it is, accord-
ing to many sources, the first city ever built. Before Troy,
before Rome, before Jerusalem, there was Primordium.
Until recently it was ruled by a dynasty of Emperors,
whose long tenure had steadily produced a capacity for
cruelty that would have challenged the worst excesses of
Rome’s corrupted Caesars. The Emperor Perfetto XI, for
instance, who controlled Primordium for sixteen years
until the Great Insurrection, was a man familiar with
every corruption of mind and spirit. He lived in excessive
luxury, in a palace he believed impregnable, caring little
or nothing for the two and three quarter million people
who occupied Primordium.
In the end, that was his undoing.
But we'll come to that.

II
FIRST, LET ME tell you about Zarles Kreiger, who came
from the lowest strata of the city. As a child, it was

21
CLIVE BARKER

common for him to eat at the Vomitorium, where—as in

ancient Rome—the rich food disgorged by the wealthy
and overfed could be purchased for a small amount of
money, and consumed a second time. It was Kreiger’s
good fortune that such a life of poverty did not kill him.
By some physical paradox, experiences that would have
reduced most men to shadows of their former selves,
served to strengthen Zarles. By the time he was thirteen
he was already larger than all his older brothers. And
along with his physical prowess came something else: a
curiosity about how the infinitely corrupt city in which
he lived actually worked.
At the age of fourteen he became a runner for a
gangster in the East City called Duraf Cascarellian, and
quickly elevated himself in the criminal’s employ, sim-
ply because he was willing to do anything requested of
him. In return, Cascarellian treated Kreiger like a son;
protecting him from capture by sending men out after
Kreiger to clean up after one of his murders. Kreiger was a
messy killer. Not for him the simple slit across the throat.
He liked to use scythes, first disembowelling his victims
then strangling them with their own entrails.

Ca=te=0

NOW SUCH BEHAVIOUR does not go unnoticed for

long, even ina city as filled with excesses as Primordium.
And kreiger’s reputation was increased considerably by
the fact that the hits Cascarellian was having him make
were often political. Judges, congressmen, journalists who
were critical of the Emperor: these were often Kreiger’s

22
 Tortured Souls: The Legend of Primordium

victims. Personally, he cared not at all about the affilia-

tion of his’ victims. Blood was blood as far as Kreiger was
concerned, and he took the same pleasure in it whether it
poured from the flesh of a Republican or a Royalist.
Then he met a woman called Lucidique, and all that
changed.

ilabd
LUCIDIQUE WAS THE daughter of a Senator who had
been lately complaining in open forum about the fact
that the city was running into a state of decadence. The
Perfetto Dynasty was using the people’s taxes to fund its
own pleasures, the Senator argued: it had to stop.
The order quickly came down from the Emperor: rid
me of this Senator. Cascarellian, not giving a damn about
the philosophical issues, but happy to oblige his Emperor,
sent Kreiger out to kill the political troublemaker.
Kreiger went to the Senator’s estate, caught him in
the garden amongst his roses, gutted him and carried
him inside. He was in the act of arranging the Senator’s
body on the dinner table, when Lucidique entered. She
was naked, having just come from bathing. But she was
also prepared for the intruder. She carried two knives.
She circled Kreiger, as he stood amongst the blood
and the innards of her father.
“If you move I'll kill you,” she said.
“With two table knives?” Kreiger said, slicing the air
with his scythes. “Go back to your bath and forget I was
here.”

23
CLIVE BARKER

“This was my father you just murdered!”

“Yes. I see the resemblance.”
“I would have thought a man like you would have
thought twice about taking a knife to my father’s throat.
He wanted to overthrow the Empire so that you and your
like would not be exploited.”
“Me and my like? You don’t know anything about me.”
“IT can guess,” Lucidique said. “You were born in filth,
and you've lived in filth so long you don't even see what’s
going on right in front of you.”
Kreiger’s expression changed. “So perhaps you do
know a little,” he said, his voice uneasy. The woman’s
confidence unnerved him. “I will leave you to mourn
your father,” he said, retreating from the table.
“Wait!” the woman said. “Not so quickly.”
“What do you mean: wait? I could kill you in a heart-
beat if | wanted to.”
“But you don’t want to, or you would have done it.”
“What's your name?”
“Lucidique.”
“So then, what do you want from me?”
“I want you to come with me, into the filthiest streets
of Primordium.”
“Believe me, I’ve seen them.”
“Then you show me.”

IV
IT WAS THE strangest walk a man and a woman ever
took together. Though Kreiger had washed the Senator’s

24
 Tortured Souls: the Legend of Primordium
blood from his face, hands, and arms he still stank of
murder. And here he was, walking beside the daughter
of the man he’d just murdered, wrapped in dark linen.
Together, they saw the worst of Primordium: the
disease, the violence, and the grinding, unrelieved pov-
erty. And every now and then Lucidique would point
to the walls and the towers of the Emperor’s Winter
Palace, any one room of which contained sufficient
wealth to clear the slums of the city, and feed every
starving child.
And for the first time in many, many years Kreiger
felt some measure of real emotion, remembering cir-
cumstances of his own upbringing, left to sit in the
open sewers of Primordium’s streets while his mother
sold her drug-riddled body to one of the Emperor’s
guards. There was anger in him as he walked. And it
steadily grew.
“What do you want me to do?” he said, frustrated by
what he felt, and his own helplessness. “I could never get
to the Emperor.”
“Don't be so sure.”
“What do you mean?”
“You're right, the Dynasty is untouchable as long as
you're just a man; a scabby little assassin hired to kill
overweight Senators. But suppose you could be more
than that? Then you could bring the Dynasty down.”
“How?”
Lucidique gave Kreiger a sideways glance. “It’s noth-
ing I can show you here. Besides, I have a father to bury.
If you want to know more, then meet me tomorrow night
outside the Western Gates. Come alone.”

25
CLIVE BARKER

“Tf this is some kind of trap...” Kreiger said, “...some

way to revenge your father...then before they take me I'll
cut out your eyes.”
Lucidique smiled. “You make such pretty love-talk,”
she said.
“I mean it.”
“I know. And I wouldn't be so stupid as to conspire
against you. Quite the reverse. I believe we were meant to
know one another. I was meant to walk in on your killing
my father, and you were meant to hold your hand off and
not kill me. There’s some connection between us. You feel
it, don’t you?”
Kreiger looked at the dirty street between them. The
night had been filled with feelings he had not anticipated
experiencing. And now here was another; admitting to
the strange intimacy he felt for the daughter of the man
he’d murdered.
“Yes,” he said. “I feel it.” Then, after a long silence:
“What time tomorrow night?”
“Sometime after one,” Lucidique told him. “I'll be there.”

THE FOLLOWING DAY the streets of Primordium

were alive with gossip and speculation: the death of
the Senator‘had started all kinds of rumours. Was this
murder the first indication that the Emperor would
put up with no more moves towards democracy in the
city? Believing this to be the case many members of the
Senate left Primordium hurriedly, in case, they were

26
 Tortured Souls: The Legend of Primordium
next on the Emperor’s hit list. There was a general sense
of unrest, everywhere.
And in Kreiger, a profound sense of anticipation.
He had barely slept, thinking of what had happened
the night before. No, not just the night before. Thinking
about his life: where it had led him so far, and where—
if Lucidique’s promise were a true one—it would go
after this.
Every now and then he’d glance towards the walls of
the palace (which had twice as many guards patrolling
them today as yesterday) and wonder to himself what
she had meant about finding a way for one man to bring
down a Dynasty?

Vi
AT ONE O’CLOCK in the morning, a mile outside
the West Gate of Primordium, he sat on a stone and
he waited. At nine minutes past one, a pair of horses
approached (not from the city, from which direction
Kreiger had expected her to come, but from the Desert,
which lay, vast and largely uncharted, out to the West
and South-West of the city).
They drew nearer, and dismounted.
“Kreiger. ..”
mieee.
“I want you to meet Agonistes.”
Kreiger had heard rumours about this man Agonistes.
It was the kind of story that was exchanged between
assassins, more of a legend than a reality.

2F
CLIVE BARKER

But here he was. As real as the woman who'd

brought him.
“I hear you want to make Primordium a Republic,”
Agonistes said. “Single-handed.”
“She persuaded me it was possible,” Kreiger replied.
“But...1 don’t believe it is.”
“You should have more faith, Kreiger. |can make you
the terror of Emperors, if you want it badly enough. It’s up
to you. Make up your mind quickly, for I have better busi-
ness elsewhere tonight if you don’t require my services. I
can hear a hundred prayers pouring out of Primordium
at this very moment; people wanting me to give them the
power to change their world.”
Lucidique put her hand up to Kreiger’s face. “Now the
moment's here, I see you don't want it,” she said. “You're
afraid.”
“Tm not afraid!” Kreiger said. He thought of his mother,
dead of the pox, of his brothers killed in the street as chil-
dren by noblemen passing on horses, of his sister, in the
asylum, never to be sane again.
“Take me,” he said.
“Youre sure?” Agonistes asked him. “Remember,
there’s no way back.”
“I don’t want to go back. Take me. Change me.”
He glanced at Lucidique. She was smiling.
“Take the horses,” Agonistes told her. “We won't
need them.”s
So together, Kreiger and Agonistes turned round and
headed into the desert.

28
 Tortured Souls: The Legend of Primordium

Vil
THE NEXT DAY Lucidique buried her father. The
rumours quietened down a little in the city, but there was
still an undercurrent, subtle but pervasive: Primordium
was in a very volatile state; like an explosive, which might
be set off with a jolt.
Eight nights after Agonistes had taken Kreiger out
into the desert, Lucidique—whose father’s house lay
close to the palace—woke to the sounds of screams.
She got up, and went to the window. There were
lights burning in all the palace windows. The gates were
flung wide. Guards were running around in confusion.
She dressed, anonymously, and went down into the
streets. The din had woken the city; and though the
Emperor’s guards were riding back and forth, attempting
to enforce an on-the-spot curfew, nobody was attending
to them.
Lucidique went into the palace. The screams had died
down now, to be replaced by half-whispered prayers.
But it didn’t take her very long to discover what the
creature who had once been Zarles Kreiger had wrought.
There was death on every side. And his slaughter had
been indiscriminate: men and women, yes; but also their
children, their babies; their unborn babies.
The Perfetto Empire ceased to rule Primordium that
night. There were none left alive to do so. Kreiger had
killed them all.
As Lucidique stood in the Great Hall of the Palace,
in a pool of blood that reached to the walls, she caught a
reflection. She looked up.

29
CLIVE BARKER

There he was. Kreiger, remade. THE SCYTHE-

MEISTER. There was almost nothing left of the man
she'd known: Agonistes’ handiwork had transformed
the humble assassin into something that would haunt
the nightmares, and the streets, of Primordium, for
many years to come.
He approached her. She wondered if this was her last
moment; if he intended to kill her as efficiently as he’d
dispatched all the rest. But no. He simply leaned down
and whispered in her ear:
“...you cannot imagine...”
Then he left the carnage behind him, and wandered
out into the night, pausing only to wash his blades in one
of the many fountains in the courtyards.

30
 I
ZARLES KREIGER WAS human once. An assassin work-
ing for the gangster Duraf Cascarellian, Kreiger was a
man who would do anything for a price. But there are
some tasks that have an unforeseen price, and this
proved to be one of them. Caught red-handed by the
Senator’s daughter, the exquisite Lucidique, Kreiger
was persuaded that he in his turn had been a victim.
The rulers of the city in which they all lived—the vast,
degenerate city-state of Primordium—were the truly
guilty souls; and until the dynasty was brought down
life would continue to be a bloody confusion in which
men like Kreiger acted like rabid animals and women
like Lucidique lost their loved ones.
It had to stop. And Lucidique knew how. She per-
suaded Kreiger to put himself into the hands of an ancient
entity called Agonistes, who would traumatically recon-
figure him.
He did as Lucidique suggested, and after eight days
and nights out in the desert, he returned to Primordium as
The Scythe-Meister: a powerful engine of destruction, who
in a matter of hours brought the Perfetto Dynasty to a close.

35
CLIVE BARKER

Before disappearing into the desert, he had three

words for Lucidique, three teasing words:
“". you cannot imagine...”

II
THEY CALLED THAT night—the night the Emperor
and his family were murdered—the Great Insurrection.
In its wake, a host of minor insurrections took place, as
old enmities erupted. Powerful figures who'd used the
decadent reign of the Emperor Perfetto as a cover for their
corruptions—judges, bishops, members of the clergy,
guild and union leaders—found themselves unprotected,
and face to face with the people they’d exploited.
Even those amongst the criminal classes who had
private armies to protect them against this very eventual-
ity were fearful now.
Take, for example, Duraf Cascarellian. He wasn’t by
any means a stupid man. The fact that his assassin, Zarles
Kreiger, had disappeared the night of the Insurrection
made him highly suspicious that Kreiger’s fate was tied in
with the almost supernatural fall of the Emperor. Indeed
one of Cascarellian’s spies, who had been a guard at the
palace the night of the slaughter, had seen the creature
everyone called The Scythe-Meister washing his weapons
in one of the Palace’s many fountains. The informant had
escaped the massacre without harm coming to him, and
reported that unlikely as it seemed, the semi-mythical
figure of The Scythe-Meister bore a subtle but undeniable
resemblance to Zarles Kreiger.

36
 Tortured Souls: the Legend of Primordium
Was it possible, Cascarellian wondered, that the miss-
ing assassin and The Scythe-Meister were somehow the
same person? Had some incomprehensible sea-change
been worked upon Kreiger, turning him into this unstop-
pable avenger? And if so, what part did Lucidique—who
had been seen in a brief exchange with The Scythe-
Meister—play in the process?

III
CASCARELLIAN DID NOT sleep well any longer. He had
nightmares in which The Scythe-Meister broke down his
doors, as it had broken down the doors of the Emperor’s
Palace, killing his lieutenants, as it had slaughtered the
palace guards, and finally come to the foot of his bed—as
the killer had come to the Emperor’s bed, pulling him
limb from limb.
He decided the best way to protect himself from this
unknowable force was through Lucidique. He sent three
of his sons out to take the Senator’s daughter captive,
ordering them to do as little as possible to arouse her
wrath. In his heart (though he would never have admitted
this to anyone, not even his priest) he was a little afraid
of Lucidique. She needed to be treated with more respect
than he was used to proffering women.
Unfortunately, his offspring weren’t as smart as
he was. Though they’d been told to respect their cap-
tive, they took the first opportunity to test the limits of
their father’s patience. Lucidique was taunted, abused,
humiliated. No doubt worse would have come her way

37
CLIVE BARKER

had Old Man Cascarellian not returned from his day

of business early, interrupting his sons’ taunting of
the woman.
Lucidique instantly demanded to know why she was
being held. If Cascarellian intended to kill her, why the
hell didn’t he get on with it? She was sick and tired, she
told him. Of him, of his sons, of life itself. She’d seen too
much blood.
“You were at the Palace, weren't you? The Night of the
Great Insurrection?” |
“Yes. I was there.”
“You have something to do with this creature: this
Scythe-Meister?”
“My business, Cascarellian.”
“I could give you to my sons for half an hour. They’d
have it out of you!”
“Your sons don’t intimidate me. And neither do you.”
“I don’t wish to make you uncomfortable. You're here
under my protection; that’s all. Do you know what it’s
like out there on our streets? Pandemonium! The city is
coming apart at the seams!”
“Do you think holding me here is going to protect
you from what's coming your way?” Lucidique said.
A look of superstitious fear crossed Cascarellian’s
face. “What's coming my way?” he said. “You know some-
thing about the future?”
“No,” Lucidique said wearily. “I'm not a prophet. I don’t
know what's going to happen to you and frankly I don’t
care. If the world ends tomorrow, I don’t think you'll be
judged very kindly, but—” she shrugged, “—-why should I
care? I won't be there to see you suffer in Hell.”

38
 Tortured Souls: the Legend of Primordium
Cascarellian had grown pale and clammy while
Lucidique spoke. She only half-knew what she was doing
to him, but she took a certain pleasure in it. This was the
man who'd orphaned her; why not enjoy his supersti-
tious fear?
“You think I’m a stupid man?” he said.
“To be afraid the way you're afraid now? Yes. I think
that’s pitiful.”
“I don’t want your contempt,” Cascarellian said, with
a strange sincerity. “I have enough enemies.”
“Then don’t make one of me,” Lucidique said. “Let me
go. Let me see the sky!”
“Tll take you out, if that’s what you want.”
“You will?”
“Yes, We'll go wherever you like.”
“I want to go out into the desert. Away from the
city.”
“Really? Why?”
“I told you. I want to see the sky...”

IV
THE NEXT DAY, a convoy of three cars wound through
the chaotic streets of Primordium and headed for the
West Gate. In the first car, two of Cascarellian’s best
men—loyal bodyguards who'd seen him through many
attempts upon his life. In the back car, the three brothers,
wondering aloud (as they increasingly did these days) if
a kind of lunacy had overtaken their father. Why was he
indulging this woman Lucidique in her whims? Didn't he

ay
CLIVE BARKER

understand that she had every reason to hate him, to plot

against him?
In the middle car, chauffeured by Marius, Cascarellian’s
driver for three decades, sat the Don himself, accompanied
by Lucidique.
“Satisfied?” he said to her, once they were outside the
gates, and in sight of the open sky.
“A little further, please...” she said.
“Don't think you can fool me, woman. You may be
cleverer than most of your sex, but you won't escape me,
if that’s your thought!”
They drove on in silence for a distance.
“I think we've come far enough. And you've seen
enough of the sky for one day!”
“Can't I just get out and walk?”
“Walking now, is it?”
“Please. There’s no harm in that surely? Look...open
ground in every direction.”
Cascarellian considered this for a moment. Then he
called the convoy to a halt.
A dust storm was on the horizon, slowly approaching
the road.
“You'd better be quick!” the Don told her.
Lucidique watched the approaching wall of sand,
then glanced round at the men who were getting out of
the cars; particularly the brothers. They smiled slyly as
they eyed her. One of them flicked his tongue between
his lips, the obscene inference plain.
It was the last straw. Lucidique turned her back
on him—on them all—and began to walk towards the
sandstorm.

40
 Tortured Souls: The Legend of Primordium
A-chorus of warnings instantly erupted behind her.
“Don't take another step!” one of the brothers said, “or I'll
shoot you!”
She turned to him, her arms opened wide. “So shoot!”
she said.
Then she turned again and strode on.
“Come back here, woman!” the Don yelled. “There’s
nothing out there but sand.”
The wind from the storm was whipping up Lucidique’s
hair now. It was like a dark halo around her head.
“Do you hear me?” the Don called after her.
Lucidique looked over her shoulder.
“Come walk with me,” she said to him.
The old man drew hard on his cigar, and then went
after the woman.
His sons set up a chorus of complaint: what was he
doing? Was he out of his mind?
He ignored them. He simply followed in Lucidique’s
footsteps across the sand.
She glanced over her shoulder at the old man, who
wore a curious expression. In some strange way he was
happy at that moment; happier than he’d been in many
years, with the wind hot against his face, and the beauti-
ful woman calling to him to come with her—
Seeing that he was obeying her, she returned her gaze
to the sandstorm, which was now no more than a hun-
dred yards off. There was something moving at its heart.
She was not surprised. Though she hadn't planned the
reunion that lay ahead she had nevertheless known in her
heart that it was coming. Her life since she’d stepped into
her father’s death-chamber, and seen Kreiger at work, had

4]
CLIVE BARKER

been like a strange dream, which she was somehow shap-

ing without conscious effort.
She stopped walking. Cascarellian had caught up
with her and seized her arm. He had a knife in the other
hand. He pressed it to her breast.
“So that’s where he is!” said Cascarellian, staring at the
dark giant in the heart of the storm. “Your Scythe-Meister.”
As he spoke, the sandstorm picked up a sudden spurt
of speed and came at them—
“Don't come any closer!” the Don warned the creature
in the storm. “PII kill her.”
He pressed the knife into Lucidique’s skin, just
enough to draw blood.
“Tell him to keep his distance,” he warned.
“It isn’t Kreiger. It’s a man called Agonistes. He has
God’s fingerprints upon him.”
The heresy of this made Cascarellian’s devoted
stomach turn. “Don’t talk that way!” he said, and with
a sudden spurt of righteousness he drove the knife into
her heart. She reached out, and touched the wound,
then with her finger bloody, grazed his forehead. A
death mark.
Cascarellian let the bodysdrop to the ground and
ordered a quick retreat to the cars before the storm reached
them. This grim business wasn't finished, just because
she was dead. He knew that. It was just beginning.

C==t==0

HE TURNED THE house into a fortress. He had the win-

dows sealed, and blessed with holy water. He bricked up

42
 Tortured Souls: The Legend of Primordium

the chimneys. He had guards and dogs patrolling the

place night and day.
After a week he began to believe that perhaps his
faith and his gifts of money to the diocese, buying con-
gregations praying for his safety, were having some effect.
He started to relax.
Then, on the afternoon of the eighth day, a wind
came out of the West: a sandy wind. It hissed at the
sealed doors and the windows. It whined beneath the
floorboards. The old man took two tranquilizers and a
glass of wine, and went to sit in his bath.
A pleasant torpor overcame him as he sat in the warm
water. His eyes fluttered closed.
And then her voice. Somehow she'd got in. She’d sur-
vived the knife to her heart and she’d got in.
“Look at you,” she said. “Naked as a baby.”
He grabbed his towel to cover himself, but as he did
so she stepped out of the shadows and showed herself to
him, in all her terrible glory. She was not the Lucidique
he’d known; not remotely. Her whole body was trans-
formed. She’d become a living weapon.
“Oh Jesus help me...” he murmured.
She reached forward and she castrated him with one
sweep of her scythe. He clamped his bloody hands to
his empty groin and stumbled out to the landing, calling
for help. But the house was silent from roof to cellar. He
called his sons’ names, one by one. None came. Only his
old dog Malleus answered his call, and when he trotted
through from the kitchen he left red paw-marks on the
white carpet. He was eating something human.
“All dead,” Lucidique said.

43
CLIVE BARKER

Then, very gently, she took hold of the back of

Cascarellian’s neck, the way a mother-cat catches hold of
an errant kitten, and lifted him up, effortlessly. The blood
from his vacant groin slapped against the carpet.
She put her blade to his chest and cut out his heart.
Then she let his body tumble back down the stairs.
Later, when the wind had dropped, and she could
see the stars clearly, she went out into the street, leaving
the door to the Cascarellian mansion wide open so that
the atrocity there should be soon discovered. Then she
headed out, through a variety of back streets and alleys,
to the West Gate, and thence into the waiting desert.

44
 -
a3beoar
» a! y —- ‘thn)

’
 I
WITH THE EMPEROR and his family dead at the hand
of The Scythe-Meister, and the head Don of Primordium,
Duraf Cascarellian, slaughtered by Lucidique (along with
most of his sons and bodyguards) an uneasy peace had
settled on the city. The minor brawls and battles that had
erupted after the Great Insurrection quietened down. It
was as though nobody wanted to draw attention to them-
selves; not with so many murderous forces abroad in the
city’s streets.
The military junta that had taken charge of the
running of the city during this crisis was headed by a
triumvirate of Generals: Bogoto, Urbano and Montefalco.
They were no better nor worse than any of their type:
men who'd risen to the top of their belligerent trade by
showing the greatest propensity for cruelty and control.
But beneath the institutionalized sadism and their
manic capacity for violence, two qualities long hidden in
the hearts of the three Generals, there also lay qualities
that they would have been ashamed to confess they pos-
sessed. One, a sickly sentimentality (focused upon their
mothers in the cases of Generals Bogoto and Urbano,

49
CLIVE BARKER

and upon girls of six or seven in the case of Montefalco).

Second, a startling capacity for superstition.
It went undiscussed, but they each knew the other
was touched by a profound fear of the uncanny. And there
was no city presently more inundated in unholy matters
than Primordium. Rumour was rife here; and its subject
was seldom rational. The stories that were passed around
the soldiers’ campfires (and sooner or later reached the
Generals’ ears) were of unnatural horrors: things that
defied reason. Tales of monsters that had been bred from
the loins of The Scythe-Meister; of the vengeful ghosts of
children; of succubi, their sexual attributes discussed in
clammy, but arousing detail.

C==t=0

ONE NIGHT, AFTER some very heavy drinking, the

three men vented their fears.
“It is my belief,” Urbano said, “that this damned city
is haunted.”
The other two men nodded grimly.
“What do you suggest we do about it?” Bogoto asked.
It was Montefalco who replied. “Well, for a start.. .if 1
had my druthers I’d burn the illegal immigrant quarter to
the ground. It’s they who engage in most of these unholy
goings-on.”
“But the work-force...” Bogoto said. “Who'd empty
our shit cans? Who'd bury the lepers?”
Montefalco had to concede the point. “At least we
could target any element we suspect of intercourse with
demonic forces.”
“Good. Good,” said Urbano. “Vigilance.”

50
 Tortured Souls: The Legend of Primordium
“And punishment,” Montefalco went on. “Swift, dra-
conian measures—”
“Public executions.”
vest”
“Burnings?”
“No, too theatrical. Shootings are clean and fast. And
they don’t smell.”
“That bothers you?” said Bogoto.
Montefalco shuddered. “I loathe the smell of burning
bodies,” he said.

II
WHILE THE GENERALS debated the relative merits of
this kind of execution or that, Lucidique was sleeping—
or attempting to sleep—in the house which her father
had built many years ago for her mother. Her slumbers
were uneasy. So many memories. So many regrets.
Often in earlier, simpler times, when sleep eluded her,
she would go out walking. Now, of course, she could not
go by day. The transformation of her body that had been
wrought by Agonistes had resulted in a physique which
was strong, supple and powerful, but which terrified
many who laid eyes on her. When she did go out—even
in the blackest night—she did her best to keep to the quiet
back-alleys of Primordium where she would not be seen.

C=

TONIGHT, HAVING GIVEN up on sleep, she went wan-

dering in these alleys, and became aware that she was
being followed.

at
CLIVE BARKER

After a little distance she sensed the rhythm of the

step, and realized that she knew who her pursuer was. It
was Zarles Kreiger, the assassin turned Scythe-Meister.
She stopped, and turned.
The Scythe-Meister was standing a little distance from
her. His flesh had the same sickly luminescence that hers
did; a bacterial brightness that was part of Agonistes’ hand-
iwork. The rawer the wounds (and there were parts of both
their transformed bodies that were designed to never heal)
the brighter the luminescence with which they burned.
“IT thought youd left the city,” she said to him.
“I did. For a while. I went out into the desert. Meditated
on my changed state.”
“And did you learn anything from your meditations?”
Kreiger shook his head.
“So you came back?”
“So L came back.”

III
A FEW DAYS after the three Generals had exchanged
their fears about the presence of unsacred powers in
Primordium, Montefalco brought them together again for
a midnight journey.
“Where are we going?”
“There’s a man called Doctor Talisac who has been
conducting*experiments on my behalf for several years
now.”
“What kind of experiments?” Urbano wanted to know.
“I hoped he would perfect me a soldier. Make a fight-
ing machine that was not susceptible to fear.”

52
 Tortured Souls: The Legend of Primordium
“Has he succeeded?”
“No. Not so far. Nor do I have great hope for him now.
He’s addicted to many of his own medications, and.. -well,
youll see for yourself. But there was one failure of his
which might be useful to us now.”
“A useful failure?” Bogoto said, somewhat amused by
the paradox.
“We need a creature that will drive the unholy ele-
ments out of Primordium. I believe he has sucha creature.”
“Ah...” said Urbano.
“So will you see this creature with me?”
“Where is he?”
“I have him hidden away in what used to be the
Hospice of the Sacred Heart, on Dreyfus Hill.”
“I thought the place was empty.”
“That's the impression I intended to give the world. If
anybody ventures in there I have them killed and thrown
in the canal.”
“Is that what happened to the nuns?”
Montefalco smiled. “Nothing so humane, I’m afraid,”
he said. “Soldiers can be brutish if left to their own devices.”
The subject was left there, and the three headed up
towards Dreyfus Hill.

IV
ZARLES KREIGER STRETCHED out naked on
Lucidique’s bed. She looked at him admiringly: at the
plethora of scars; at the intricate way the machina-
tions of his flesh had been bound to Agonistes’ own

53
CLIVE BARKER

creations. Silver bonded with bone and nerve; gold and

bronze the same.
She climbed on top of him. Arcs of electricity leapt
between them: nipple to nipple, eye to eye.
What a time this was! she thought. Here she was mat-
ing with the man who had taken her father’s life. In a
sense there was something even more taboo about their
intimacy. They were both the offspring of the same father.
Both Agonistes’ children.
“I wonder if he’d approve?” Lucidique said.
“You mean Agonistes?”
“yess
Kreiger didn’t speak. It was Lucidique who realized
what her lover’s reference to Agonistes implied.
“You saw him in the desert?”
-xess
“And he sent you back here?”
res.
“To find me?”
“To be with you. He said you were the only thing that
would make me happy.”

THE HOSPICE OF the Sacred Heart was an enormous

edifice, its upper floors in darkness. But the Generals
didn’t have to wait long for a guide. After a few minutes
a female dwarf—who introduced herself as Camille—
came with candles. She escorted the uniformed trio
through the echoing cloisters (which were heaped with

54
 Tortured Souls: the Legend of Primordium

huge mounds of dirt) and down two flights of steep stairs

into Doctor. Talisac’s laboratory.
His workspace had been dug out of the earth so as to
accommodate the scale of the Doctor’s experimentation
and still preserve the secrecy of his location. In place of
tile there was hard-trodden earth beneath the Generals’
boots, and the walls were beaten dirt. The place stank of
cold earth: which served to complete the scene. For if the
stench was that of the grave, so were many of the sights
before them. The dead were Talisac’s raw materials, and
they lay everywhere around, in various states of ampu-
tation. He was an uneconomic consumer. In many cases
the corpses were lacking only a limb, or a portion of a
limb; an eye, in one case, lips in another.
“So where is he?” Urbano demanded to know.
Camille pointed the way over a carpet of corpses to
a dank corner of the immense chamber, where Talisac
awaited them.
He looked, to the Generals’ astonished eyes, like one
of his own victims; a terrible, implausible experiment in
the extremes to which a human carcass might be put.
He hung by his mouth from a device whose purpose
was beyond the Generals’ comprehension, his mouth
hooked up, as though he were a fish. In his perversity, or
his genius, or both, he had created some kind of external
womb for himself. A semi-translucent bag hung from the
lower portion of his abdomen, down between his spidery
legs. There was life inside.
“A Mongroid,” Camille whispered.
Montefalco took his eyes off the foul sight of the womb
and its twitching contents, and addressed its owner.

55
CLIVE BARKER

“Talisac?” he said. “We need something from you.”

Talisac turned his fluttering eyes in Montefalco’s
direction. When he spoke, the maimed form of his mouth
meant that what he said was virtually incomprehensible.
It took Camille to translate it.
“He says: ‘What? What do you need?”
“We need a fiend to put fear into the heart of the
Devil himself,” Montefalco said. “A beast amongst beasts.
Something to scour the city of its monsters by being still
more monstrous.” |
Talisac made a strange sound—which might have
been laughter; shaking as he hung from his hooks. The
creature in his womb responded to its parent’s movement
by spasming.
“How the hell did he come by that thing?” Bogoto
murmured to Urbano behind his hand.
“Don't whisper,” Camille snapped. “He hates it.”
“He was wondering how Talisac got himself preg-
nant?” Urbano said.
This time Talisac pressed his lips into service, in order
that he answer for himself. The reply was a single word:
“Science,” he said.
“Really?” Urbano said, sufficiently reassured to step
over some of the mutilated bodies to examine Talisac
more closely. “Well I’m pleased to hear that. I would
have been distressed if there’s been some sexual impro-
priety here”
Again, Talisac laughed, though none of the Generals
were in the mood to see the humour of the situation. His
laughter spent, he spoke again. This time Camille’s ser-
vices as a translator were required.

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 Tortured Souls: The Legend of Primordium

“He has a golem he thinks would suit your purposes

very well,” the dwarf said. “He only asks one thing in
return”
“And what's that?” Montefalco said.
“That you shouldn't attempt to hurt any of his children.”
“Meaning that?” Montefalco said, nodding towards
the twitching womb.
“Es,” said Talisac. “Is my ur chile.”
“What did he say?” Urbano said to Camille.
“He said it was his child,” Camille replied.
Montefalco shrugged.
“No harm will come of this Mongroid, if we are given
a fiend of our own,” Montefalco said. “I will personally
guarantee that.”
“Good,” said Camille. Then, without Talisac speaking
again, she added: “He would prefer if you did not come
here again together. Only General Montefalco.”
“You'll get no argument from me on that account,”
Bogoto said, waving the horror away as he retreated. “If
he gives us our monster, then he can give birth to a thou-
sand little brats as far as I’m concerned. Just keep them
the hell away from me.”

Vi
LUCIDIQUE LAY ON tthe blood- and sweat-stained
bed beside her lover, and watched the moon through
the window.
“This can’t last for long, you know. This thing be-
tween us.”

57
CLIVE BARKER

“Why not?”
“For two such as us to find some happiness together?”
she said. “It’s against nature. You killed my father. I should
hate you.”
“And you put me through hell at Agonistes’ hands. I
should hate you.”
“What a pair we make.”
“Maybe we should go back out into the desert,”
Kreiger said. “We'd be safer there.”
Lucidique laughed. “Listen to you. Safer! Isn’t the world
supposed to be afraid of us? Not the other way round.”
“I just want to hold on to this...hope that I feel.”
Lucidique reached across the bed and ran her blade
along Kreiger’s arm. “We can’t leave Primordium,” she said.
“Why not? It’s going up in flames, sooner or later. Let
it burn.”
“But love, we started the fire, you and me. We should
stay and watch it to the end.”
Kreiger nodded. “If that’s what you want.”
“It’s the way things have to end.”
“End? Why do you say that?”
“Hush, love. It'll be better this way, you'll see.” She
leaned over and kissed him. “Do it for me.”
“That’s as good a reason as any I ever heard,”
Kreiger said.
“So youll stay?”
“TH stay.”

58
 I
HAVING MADE THE arrangement with Talisac to
provide them with a creature, the three Generals—
Bogoto, Urbano and Montefalco—returned to Military
Headquarters and waited. Bogoto was the most anxious
of the three. He’d seen his share of battle scenes; bodies
blown to pieces, the stink of burning hair and bone in the
air: but the grotesqueries of Talisac’s laboratory had left
him sickened and nervous.
He decided to do what he often did when his life
became difficult: he drove across the city in the night
to seek the comfort of a woman called Greta Sabatier, a
reader of fortunes. Though he would have been appalled if
he’d thought any of his fellow Generals knew it, Sabatier’s
advice had been behind much of what Bogoto had done
over the years: who he’d favoured amongst his subordi-
nates, and who he’d demoted; even, on occasion, how
he’d run some of his military campaigns. And as events
in Primordium had steadily become more crazed, Bogoto
had come to rely more and more upon Sabatier’s wisdom.
Her cards, he had come to believe, carried vital clues to
his fate. In a world where madness was constantly in the

63
CLIVE BARKER

air, and nothing and no one could be trusted, it made

a paradoxical sense to seek illumination from a woman
who read the future from a pack of dirty cards.
“You've seen somebody powerful,” Greta told him
that night, tapping one of the cards she’d just turned
over. “I can’t tell if it's a man...or a woman.”
Bogoto pictured Talisac, hanging up from his hooks,
with that vile womb of his hanging down between his legs.
Sabatier was studying his face.
“You know this person I’m talking about?”
Bogoto nodded.
“Well then you don’t need any warning from me. He,
or she—which is it?”
“It’s a man.”
“Well he has friends...allies...its hard to be sure
exactly who or what they are...the cards are very ambig-
uous. But there’s harm from this source, whatever it is.”
“Harm to me?”
“Harm to the world.”
“Huh.”
“That matters less to you, yes?”
“Of course. Do you think I should consider leaving
the city?”
“Well...you’re a military man. It’s not the first time
I’ve seen death in your cards, General.”
This was the first time Greta had ever made mention
of the General’s profession. Whether she knew it from the
cards or from the broadsheets in which he was regularly
eulogized was anybody’s guess.
“But I don’t think I ever saw it so near to you,” she
went on, looking at the cards.

64
 Tortured Souls: the Legend of Primordium
see”
“So yes, I think you should consider leaving. At least
until this unsettled period is over astronomically.”
“So it’s not just the cards, it’s the stars too?”
“They're all reflections of one another: cards, stars,
palms. It’s the same story wherever you look.”
She sorted through the cards as she spoke, and now
dropped one down on the table in front of General Bogoto.
It was called The Tower, and it represented—in a simpli-
fied, even crude, form—a tower struck by lightning. Its
upper half was erupting, raining down rubble, and bod-
ies; the lower half was cracked and ready to topple.
“This is Primordium?” Bogoto said.
“It’s the city’s future,” Greta replied, nodding. “Or at
least one of them.”
“So will you be leaving too?” Bogoto said, thinking to
catch the woman out. Greta was as old as the antiquated
table she read her cards upon and her legs were a good
deal less reliable. She’d never leave Primordium; or so
he thought.
“Yes, I’m leaving. This will be the last time you see
me, General, unless you should come to Calyx.”
“Youre moving to Calyx?”
“Tomorrow. Before things get any worse.”

II
THE HOUSE ON Diamanda Street, which had once
belonged to the murdered Senator, had gathered itself
quite a reputation of late.

65
CLIVE BARKER

There were lovers there, it was rumoured; several of

them. Night and day, passers-by heard the sound of love-
making: the sighs, the sobs, the irresistible demands.
The houses nearby were all virtually deserted, their
owners having fled Primordium for safer cities; or better
still, for the country. Life on a pig-farm might be boring,
but at least it had a chance of being long. Nevertheless
people came to Diamanda Street of late, simply to hear
the noise of pleasure out of the lamp-lit home. No, not
just to hear. There was a feeling about the place, which
got under people’s skin. The energy seeping out from
open windows was enough to make the fireflies assemble
in their many tens of thousands each dusk and describe
elaborate arabesques in their pursuit of one another, the
air so thick with their passion, and their light so insis-
tent, that the house was festooned with their flight paths,
which lingered long after the deed was done and the
insects lay exhausted and extinguished in the long grass.
Sometimes the human voyeurs, who lingered in the
shadows of the nearby houses, hoping to catch a glimpse
of the lovers, were granted what they were here to see. As
the strange force of the lover’s din suggested, they were
not natural creatures, not by any means. They seemed to
be hybrids; one third human, one third metallic, one third
the no-man’s land between flesh and devices made to strip
it and slash it and scour it. They bled as they rose from
their nuptial sheets; but smiled, kissing one another’s
wounds as though they were inconsequential, as though
these flaps and sores and gougings were proof of devotion.
Word got round, quickly enough. It didn’t take
long for General Montefalco to hear about the house on

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 Tortured Souls: The Legend of Primordium
Diamanda Street, and the reputation it had got for itself.
He went to the location, late one night. Things were in
full swing: the air filled with weaving lights, the houses
moaning and shaking. Then shrieks of terrible joy out of
the fire-lit interior, and shadows on the blinds, moving
from room to room as the momentum of the lovers’ pas-
sion carried them around the house.
Montefalco had never seen, heard, or felt anything
like it before. A wave of something like superstition
passed through his body, weakening his bowels and
making his hair, which was a quarter inch from widow’s
peak to nape, stand on end.
He started to retreat from the house, clammy-palmed.
As he did so he heard a voice behind him. He turned. It
was Urbano. He looked like a man who had just discovered
some truly terrible thing about himself, or God, or both.
“These we kill,” Montefalco said, very calmly.
General Urbano began to nod, but the motion was
too much for his sickened system. He puked a yellowish
puke, which spattered his immaculately polished boots.
He took out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth; then
he said:
i (ae
“Yes?”
“Yes. These we kill.”
Later that night, Montefalco went back to see Talisac.
He went alone, which turned out to be a wise move.
Neither Urbano nor Bogoto had the guts for what awaited
him there.
The place had deteriorated considerably in the forty-
eight hours since he’d last stepped over the threshold;

67
CLIVE BARKER

the bodies were still everywhere, but they were in a new

condition. It looked as though all the moisture, all the
energy, had been sucked out of them, leaving them with-
ered. The eyes had gone from the sockets and the lips had
been drawn back from the teeth, giving them all the look
of blind, squealing monkeys.
The flesh on their torsos had withered to bones, as
had the meat on their arms and legs. The skin itself was
now like a thin layer of dried tissue, covering the struc-
ture of the bone. When the dwarf Camille appeared to
greet Montefalco, and kicked a couple of the corpses
aside, they rolled away from her kick like so many paper
mannequins.
“Is it done?” Montefalco asked her.
“Oh yes, its done,” Camille said with a twinkling
smile, “and I think youre going to be very pleased.”
A voice emerged from the shadows, speaking words
Montefalco could not comprehend.
“He’s asking me to unveil it,” Camille said.
The General scanned the dirt-walled room, looking
for what ‘it’ might be; and there at the end of the chamber
he saw a monumental form, covered with a threadbare
tapestry obviously brought down from the floor above.
“That?” he said, not waiting for confirmation before
approaching it. As he strode through the bodies, they
cracked beneath his heels, erupting into dust and frag-
ments. Sogn the room was filled with spiralling bits of
pale human stuff.
Montefalco grabbed hold of the tapestry. As he did
so, Camille named the thing—
“Venal Anatomica.”

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 Tortured Souls: The Legend of Primordium
The General pulled the tapestry off and revealed it.
As might have been guessed from its scale beneath the
carpet, it was of heroic size, nine feet tall or more. It had
death’s face, and was equipped with a variety of medie-
val murder weapons. There were nails crudely hammered
into its shoulder and leg. Blood had coagulated around
the nails, but when Anatomica began to move (as now
it did) fresh blood bubbled up from the wounds and ran
down his body.
“Does it know me?” the General asked.
“Yes,” said Camille, “it is ready to obey your instruc-
tions.” Talisac spoke, and Camille translated. “He says he has
no loyalty to its Creator, only to you, General Montefalco.”
“That's good to hear.”
Montefalco beckoned to it.
“Come on then.”
The creature made a hesitant step. Then another.
“Can I come with you?” Camille said.
Montefalco looked down at her nakedness. “Only if
you cover yourself up,” he said.
She smiled, and then went away to fetch herself a
flea-bitten fur coat.
They went out into the night together: the three of
them. The General, the Dwarf and Venal Anatomica.
Daybreak wasn’t far off. Neither was the end of cer-
tain things. Though Greta Sabatier had been killed by the
bandits on the road to Calyx—a fate she had not fore-
seen—she had been right about that much. An age was
coming to an end: and it was the Age of Lovers.

69
 ee “| Ste nts eh, ae
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 I
IN HIS BUNKER of dirt and corpses Talisac waited alone,
while his body—which was a thing without precedent—
twitched and jumped and spasmed.
There was a child inside of him; the Mongroid, the
infant of the Second Coming. Or so he’d come to believe,
after the years he’d spent experimenting upon others,
and himself. It wasn’t until he had created an homuncu-
lus that would be to all intents and purposes his child,
its flesh made up of the same DNA as his, that he had
come to believe there was something holy in the immi-
nent arrival. It was another Virgin Birth.
In only a matter of hours now, the child would be in
his arms.
He would have no one to share the triumph of what
he’d achieved, but so be it. He’d been alone all his life, even
in the company of his fellow human beings. Alone with his
ambition, alone with his failures, alone with the strange
dreams that came to find him in the middle of the night;
dreams of his child, speaking to him, telling him that the
world was going to end, but that it wouldn’t matter, because
they’d be together, Man and Child, to the End of Time.

75
CLIVE BARKER

He could feel the child struggling to get out now. He

could hear its tiny, high-pitched voice as it worked to
free itself.
The pain was excruciating; a vicious hallucinogen.
He sobbed and he screamed; the Convent had never
heard such cursings as it heard now.
But finally the womb tore as the Holy Child scrab-
bled with his little hands, his little nails, and in a gush of
blood-tinged fluids the Mongroid was disgorged onto the
ground amongst the corpses.

ib
“KREIGER?”
Lucidique went to the window and called down into
the garden around her father’s house. Zarles Kreiger, The
Scythe-Meister, who had lately become Lucidique’s lover,
had gone out into the garden to bring her some perfumed
flowers. The bedroom stank of the pungent oil that their
violently transfigured bodies gave off. It was a bitter and
unpleasant smell; not the salty smell of natural sex.
But the garden was full of sweet-smelling flowers that
would conceal the bitterness; and some of the strangest
scents were those of blossoms that opened after dark. It
was now almost two in the morning; and the smells that
rose fram the darkened garden were giddyingly strong.
She called Kreiger’s name again. Then she seemed to
see him; a dark presence moving through the bushes.
If it was indeed Kreiger, why didn’t he answer her
call? Perhaps it wasn’t him.

76
 Tortured Souls: the Legend of Primordium
Keeping her silence now, she crept down the stairs
and went out into the garden.
There was a gentle, balmy breeze tonight: it made the
bushes and trees churn. The garden was large, and its lay-
out complex, but she’d been playing here since she was
a child. She could have found her way down its narrow,
labyrinthine paths and around its rose patches and secret
groves with her eyes closed.
She went directly to the place where she aihaoke
she'd seen the man when she’d been up at the bedroom
window. Despite the sweetness of honeysuckle and the
night-blooming jasmine, her nostrils caught the scent of
something else, somebody else, in the vicinity. There was
a stink that was not the bitter smell of her own body, or
that of Kreiger. This was something else. Something that
made her think of disease, of corruption, of death.
She stood very still. Something moved through the
bushes close by. She saw its form, silhouetted against the
starless sky: a vast misshapen head, armoured shoulders,
the chest of an ox. Whatever it was, it walked with a pro-
nounced limp, dragging its left leg. The closer it came
to her the stronger the smell of corruption became. This
trespasser was the source; no doubt of that.
Then, from the darkness close by, the sound of her
lover's voice:
“Lucidique! Get away from here! Quickly!”
There was something broken in his voice.
“What's happened to you?” she said, afraid of the
answer.
Hearing her voice, the trespasser looked in her direc-
tion. A hood of flesh slid slickly back from the upper

Tele
CLIVE BARKER

half of its face, revealing its skeletal features. This was—

like them—a monster. And yet it was not like them. Not
Agonistes’ handiwork, at least. Not the product of the
unsung architect of Eden.
This trespasser was a charnel-house child if ever
there was one. It was made of parcels of rotten flesh
and nerve and bone, all nailed together and given foetid
breath.
She retreated as it strode towards her. She knew how
to kill; that was not in doubt. But the creature still made
her afraid. It was a powerhouse; and indifferent, she
guessed, to any pain she might be able to cause it.
“Go!” she heard Kreiger yelling to her.
Her eyes flittered in his direction, and by the light
shed from the bedroom window she saw him, on the
ground, blood pouring out of him.
“Christ!”
She started towards him, but the trespasser moved to
intercept her, its vast hands eager to tear out her throat.
But she wasn’t going to flee the garden; not with her
lover lying there in the dirt, bleeding from a hundred
places. Instead she turned and led the limping slaugh-
terer away from Kreiger, dodging through the darkened
garden, using her knowledge of its layout to double the
distance between them.
Still it came after her, throwing its weight through
the tangle ef thorny bushes; emitting a guttural din as it
did so, like the noise of some immense mechanism that
imperfectly copied the sound of a tormented animal; a
bull, perhaps, beneath the slaughterer’s hammer. It was
horrible to hear.

78
 Tortured Souls: The Legend of Primordium

She had come to the place where she hoped to outwit

her pursuer: a tree which she had climbed a thousand
times as a child, and now climbed again, so quickly that
by the time the trespasser came in sight of it she was
already concealed in its verdant canopy.
Now, she thought, if the beast would only wander
beneath the tree, she could perhaps kill it. Drop out of
the branches and cut open its throat. Even if it was some-
thing that was made from mortuary slops, it drew breath;
and if she could open its throat from ear to ear, it would
be dead as any other slitted thing.
But about six feet from the tree the creature stopped,
and sniffed the air, looking around suspiciously. Did it
sense that there was a trap laid for it here? She couldn't
believe it had the wit to be so cautious. And yet it had
halted, hadn't it? And now it retreated from the tree, loos-
ing a low, barely audible noise in its throat, limping off
into the darkness.
She carefully parted the foliage, to see if she could
discover what it was up to. There was some sound from
the direction in which she’d come, and then an audible
moan from Kreiger.
Oh God, no, she thought. Don’t let the trespasser be
smart enough to use Kreiger as bait...
Her fears were realized a moment later, as the crea-
ture reappeared between the thorn bushes, dragging
a heavy burden behind him. It was Kreiger, of course.
This lover of hers, who was now reduced to little more
than a sack, hauled behind the nameless fiend, had
been a terror in his own right not so long ago. As the
assassin Zarles Kreiger he’d once haunted the city of

vey
CLIVE BARKER

Primordium from the shanties to the chateaus. Then,

after the transformation worked upon him by Agonistes,
as The Scythe-Meister, he’d wiped out the ruling class of
the city in one scarlet night.
But now look at him! His face was torn open,
as though the fiend had simply put his fingers into
Kreiger’s mouth (whose lips Lucidique had kissed an
hour before) and ripped it apart like a paper bag. The
rest of his body had been just as cruelly treated; the
flesh torn away from its seating, exposing the breast-
bone and the ribs and the long bone of his thigh. The
loss of blood from these wounds was traumatic. It was
a wonder Kreiger was still alive. But plainly—having
been surprised in the garden while peacefully flower-
picking—he’d fought back until he had no strength
to fight with, at which point his attacker had sim-
ply waited in the garden while one of its two victims
slowly bled to death, knowing the other would appear
given time.
And so she had. No doubt the creature had expected
to dispatch her in a heartbeat; now it was obliged to
coax her out of her hiding place with this bloody hos-
tage. It grabbed Kreiger’s neck and lifted him up by
one hand, thrusting his broken face towards the tree.
Kreiger’s head lolled on his neck; his eyes rolled back
into their sockets. He was as close to dead as made
no difference.
Then his killer lifted its other hand and beckoned to
the woman in the tree. As it did so it twitched Kreiger’s
head back and forth, like that of a doll. For Lucidique it
was agonizing beyond words to see her lover, a man who

80
 Tortured Souls: the Legend of Primordium
had brought down a dynasty, bobbing around like a ven-
triloquist’s doll. It made her lose all reason. Though she
knew the trespasser below had the physical power to kill
her, she could not watch Kreiger’s last moments played
out as a humiliating puppet-show.
She leapt from the tree with a shriek of rage, and
before the creature could bring down its visor of flesh,
she had slit both of its eyes with her weapon, blinding it.
It dropped Kreiger, and let out a roar that sounded
pleasingly like panic. She ducked under its flailing arms
and went to Kreiger.
He was dead.
She glanced back at his killer, who was indeed in a
state of child-like terror. His roar had turned into howls
that were close to descending into whimpers.
She could have wounded it again easily enough;
and perhaps, after a dozen woundings, or two dozen,
she might have claimed its life. But she didn’t have any
time to waste with the blinded thing. She needed to take
Kreiger somewhere he had a hope of resurrection.
Out into the desert. Out to find Agonistes.
She lifted her lover's body up over her shoulders (he
was lighter than she’d expected; troublingly so, as though
the mass of his life had gone from him and would never
be returned, even by a miracle). She would not let such
pessimism linger in her mind, however. Leaving the blind
trespasser to rage amongst the roses, she headed to the
forecourt of the house. She gently laid the corpse in the
back of the car, and then drove out of the city, in search
of a sandstorm.

81
CLIVE BARKER

III
TALISAC LOOKED DOWN at the creature that had
spilled from his body: his Mongroid. He’d seen prettier
things, but then he’d seen uglier too. It had more self-
reliance than any creature five minutes old should
reasonably have; it walked, crab-like, on four hands; it
made rudimentary attempts to express itself.
He called it to him, as he might a dog, but it wouldn't
come. It was too interested in the bodies that lay every-
where about the chamber, examining them with its
inverted head, sniffing at the ranker examples. It seemed
to have a well-formed head, as far as Talisac could make
out. There was some family resemblance there, he thought.
He had given up trying to draw its attention, but
now—paradoxically—its eyes came to rest on him, and
with its ungainly, sideways gait it approached him. It
cast a glance around the charnel house as it did so, and
its thought processes were perfectly clear. It was making
the first distinction of its young life: between the living
and the dead.
“That’s right...” Talisac said, attempting an encourag-
ing tone, “...they’re dead. They’re no use to you. I’m the
one you have to help. I’m your father.”
How much of this—if any—the Mongroid under-
stood, Talisac had no idea. Very little, he guessed. But
they had to.begin somewhere. It would be a long, weary
business, rearing this thing. He had hoped to give birth
to something more praiseworthy; something he could
show Montefalco, and thus be funded for further, more
ambitious researches.

82
 Tortured Souls: The Legend of Primordium
Now, he would have to do some fast-talking to get the
General to see his vision of things. The crab homunculus
produced from his sac of semen and sea-water was very
far from the perfect, vicious child he’d hoped to produce:
a hymn to the glories of testosterone.
But never mind, there would be others. In time he’d
subdue this one, and vivisect it to see if he could work out
where the errors lay. Then he'd try again.
The creature had come to a halt a few yards away
from him, and was studying the sac in which it had been
contained for seventeen weeks. Blood still dripped from
it, onto the dirt floor. It scuttled over and put its tongue
to the pool, tasting the fluid.
“No,” Talisac said, faintly revolted by its display.
“Don't do that.”
He didn’t want it getting some unnatural appetite; for
blood, or flesh, or whatever other juices ran from him
freely as he hung there. He was altogether too vulnerable
in his present state.
“Bad,” he said, effecting a tone of disgust. “Bad.”
But the creature wasn’t interested in being forbidden
anything. It was a creature of instinct, and its instinct
told it that there was a meal to be had here. It traced the
source of the pool to the hanging corpse of flesh that had
been its makeshift womb.
He didn’t like the look in the creature’s eyes at all.
Nor did he like the way its belly was distending, as
though its aroused appetite was awaking a change in
its anatomy.
The Mongroid was pulling on the loose bloody tatters
of his flesh now, its belly skin still swelling obscenely.

83
CLIVE BARKER

“Camille!” Talisac yelled, forgetting in his fear that

the dwarf had left in the company of General Montefalco.
He was alone.
And now, as he swung there, helpless, the belly of his
offspring split open, revealing a vast mouth, completely
arrayed with glistening teeth.
“Jesus! Oh Jesus!”
They were the last words Talisac uttered.
Using its four hands to spring up towards the
womb from which he had so recently been delivered,
the thing closed its gaping jaws on the groin of its par-
ent, its teeth digging deep into Talisac’s flesh. The cries
to Jesus became a solid shriek. The Mongroid took a
healthy mouthful of gut and manhood and womb, and
dropped down to the ground again to devour what it
had bitten off.
Talisac’s innards, with their lower half removed, sim-
ply fell out of his body: uncoiling innards followed by
liver and kidneys and spleen.
The genius of the Hospice of the Sacred Heart stopped
screaming.

IV
THUS IN ONE night Primordium lost two of the monsters
that had haunted its streets, and gained two new ones.
Venal Anatomica—or The Blind One, as he became
known—was, in truth, something of a joke. Despite his
bulk, and his phenomenal strength, he never developed
the compensating skills that often come after a blinding.

84
 Tortured Souls: The Legend of Primordium
He lived always as though he had just been blinded.
Always flailing, always raging, always violent.
Montefalco took care of him, however, out of a bizarre
sense of loyalty. He ordered that anyone found taunting
the once mighty Venal Anatomica be summarily shot.
After a dozen such casual executions, the message made
it out to those who liked to torment the creature. The
Blind One was left alone to haunt the city’s graveyards,
often digging up and eating the recently dead.

LUCIDIQUE NEVER FOUND Agonistes. Though she

drove for several days, looking for the sandstorms where
he hid himself, the desert was preternaturally still. Not
a breeze to move so much as a grain of sand; much less
a storm.
After a week, when The Scythe-Meister’s body was
beginning to smell, she dug a hole with her bare hands,
and put him in it. Even as she sat there beside the mound,
keening, she thought she heard Agonistes calling her
name, and got up, ready at a moment’s notice to reclaim
Kreiger from his dry bed, and let the genius of Eden work
his Lazarene magic on her lover.
But it was not the Resurrection she had heard. It was
just a trick of the wind. Indeed, not once in the next forty-
one years, during which time Lucidique seldom strayed
more than a quarter of a mile from the place where Zarles
Kreiger was laid, did Agonistes appear.

85
CLIVE BARKER

Vi
THEN ONE DAY, waking to the same bright sky she’d
woken to for over four decades—she was seized by a
desire to see Primordium.
The house her father had built was still standing, she
was surprised to find; left by authorities too superstitious
to knock it down. She occupied it again, and after a few
nights of sleeping on the bare boards overcame her fear
of memories that would unknit her sanity, and moved up
into the stained, ancient bed where she and Kreiger had
made love all those years before.
There were no nightmares. He was with her, here,
more than he’d ever been in the desert. He held her,
in her dreams, and he whispered mischiefs to her, that
sometimes she acted upon, for old time’s sake. Blood she
let freely, when it pleased her to do so. Nobody was safe
from her. She would have happily murdered a saint if he’d
looked at her in some fashion that irritated her.
And one night, just for the hell of it, she killed the
three Generals, Montefalco, Bogoto and Urbano, who were
by now fat and old and put up little protest at her arrival.
Another night, she went to find Kreiger’s killer, The
Blind One.
She found him in the cemetery, weeping from his slit
eyes, the weary tears of a man who weeps every night,
but knows no cure for them. She watched him for a
while, while he wept and ate the dead. Then she left him
to his suffering.
It was cruel, of course, to let him live, when she
could have put him out of his misery with a well-placed

86
 Tortured Souls: The Legend of Primordium
blow. But why should she dispense mercy, when no one
had ever been merciful to her? Besides, it pleased her to
know that there were three monsters in Primordium. The
Mongroid (whom she’d also gone to view in his excre-
mental kingdom) in the sewers, Venal Anatomica in the
charnel houses, she in her father’s mansion. It had a cer-
tain neatness.
Sometimes, when she became lonely, she thought
about going out into the desert, and lying down beside
Kreiger’s mummified corpse; letting the sand smother
her. But something stopped her from doing it. Perhaps
she’d have to watch the city of Primordium burn down
first; or feel insanity creeping up her spine.
Until then, she would live out her destiny, in blood
and tears and loneliness; in the knowledge that she was
named in the prayers of tens of thousands of God-fearing
citizens every night, who begged the Lord to keep them
and their faces safe from her.
It was a land of immortality.

87
oer
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th become a portrait of Primordium
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mysteries, its shifting yOWer struectur
and—most significant ly—its indeli dle
cast of characters. A pe a(cedymeeyetace) rel
example of what Barker calls “the fan-
tastique, Tortured Sot Kun tSumsteyantadell ng
truly special, a story w 1ose imaginative
reach and sheer narrative power are
evident on every page.

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