"It's too late," she said. "You see what he's doing? My God! You see?"
Lost cause or not, the dream-creatures were ready to face the terata, pouncing as soon as the flood emerged from the house. Climbing the Hill Howie had expected the fight ahead to be somehow refined; a battle of wills or wits. But the violence that erupted all around him now was purely physical. All they had was their bodies to pitch into the battle, and they put themselves to the task with a ferocity he'd not have guessed the melancholy souls gathered at the woods—much less the civil folk they'd been at the Knapp house—capable of. There was no distinction between children and heroes.
They were barely recognizable now, as the last traces of the people they'd been dreamt into being faded in the face of an equally plain enemy. It was essential stuff now. Fletcher's love of light against the Jaff's passion for the dark. Beneath both was a single intention, which unified them. The destruction of the other.
He'd done as they requested, he thought; he'd led them up the Hill, calling the stragglers when they forgot themselves, and began to dissolve. With several, those less coherently conjured in the first place, perhaps, he'd lost. Their bodies had dispersed before he could get them within scenting distance of their enemy. For the rest, the sight of the terata was stimulus enough. They'd fight until torn apart.
Grievous damage was already being done on both sides. Fragments of sleek darkness torn from the bodies of the terata; washes of light breaking from the dream-army when they were opened up. There was no sign of pain among the warriors. No blood from the wounds. They endured assault after assault, fighting on having sustained damage that would have incapacitated anything remotely alive. Only when more than half their substance had been torn from them did they unravel, and disperse. Even then the air they dissolved into wasn't empty. It buzzed and shook as though the war was continuing on a sub-atomic level, negative and positive energies fighting to impasse, or the extinction of both.
The latter, most likely, if the forces warring in front of the house were any model. Equally matched, they were simply eradicating each other, countering harm with harm, their numbers dwindling.
The battle had spread down to the gate by the time Tesla reached the top of the Hill, and was spilling out on to the road. Forms that might once have been recognizable but were now abstractions, smears of darkness, smears of light, tearing at each other. She stopped the car, and started up towards the house. Two combatants emerged from the trees that lined the driveway, and fell to the ground a few yards ahead, their limbs locked around—and it seemed through—each other. She looked on, appalled. Was this what the Art had released? How they escaped from Quiddity?
"Tesla!"
She looked up. Howie was in sight. His explanation was quick and breathless.
"It's started," he said. "The Jaff's using the Art."
"Where?"
"In the house."
"And these?" she said.
"The last defense," he replied. "We were too late."
What now, babe? she thought. You don't have any way of stopping this. The world's on a tilt and everything's sliding.
"We should all get the hell out of here," she told Howie.
"You think?"
"What else can we do?"
She looked up towards the house. Grillo had told her it was a folly, but she hadn't expected architecture as wild as this. The angles all subtly off, no upright that wasn't askew by a few degrees. Then she understood. It wasn't some postmodernist joke. It was something inside the house, pulling it out of shape.
"My God," she said. "Grillo's still in there."
Even as she spoke the facade bent a little more. In the face of such strangeness the remnants of the battle all around her were of little consequence. Just two tribes tearing at each other like rabid dogs. Men's stuff. She skirted it, ignored.
"Where are you going?" Howie said.
"Inside."
"It's mayhem."
"And it isn't out here? I've got a friend in there."
"I'll come with you," he said.
"Is Jo-Beth here?"
"She was."
"Find her. I'll find Grillo and we'll both get the fuck out of here."
Without waiting for a reply she headed on towards the door.
The third force loose in the Grove tonight was halfway up the Hill when Witt realized that however profound his grief at losing his dreams, tonight he didn't want to die. He started to struggle with the door handle, fully ready to pitch himself out, but the dust storm on their tail dissuaded him. He looked across at Tommy-Ray. The boy's face had never sung out intelligence, but its slackness now was shocking. He looked almost moronic. Spittle ran from his lower lip, his face was glossy with sweat. But he managed a name as he drove. "Jo-Beth," he said.
She didn't hear that call, but she heard another. From inside the house a cry, put out mind to mind, from the man who'd made her. It was not directed at her, she guessed. He didn't know she was even near. But she caught it: an expression of terror which she couldn't ignore. She crossed through the matter-thickened air to the front door, the uprights of which were blowing in.
The scene was worse inside. The whole interior had lost its solidity, and was being drawn inexorably to some central point. It wasn't difficult to find that point. The whole softening world was moving in its direction.
The Jaff was there of course, at the core. In front of him a hole in the very substance of reality, which was exercising this claim on living and non-living alike. What was on the other side of the hole she couldn't see, but she could guess. Quiddity; the dream-sea; and on it an island both Howie and her father had told her about, where time and space were laughable laws, and spirits walked.
But if that was the case—he'd succeeded in his ambition, used the Art to gain access to the miracle—why was he so afraid? Why was he trying to retreat from the sight, tearing at his own hands with his teeth to make them let go the matter his fingers had penetrated?
All her reason said: go back. Go back while you can. The pull of whatever lay beyond the hole already had a hold of her. She could resist it for a short time, but that window was getting smaller. What she couldn't resist, however, was the hunger that brought her into the house in the first place. She wanted to see her father's pain. Not a sweet, daughterly desire, but he was not the sweetest of fathers. He'd caused her pain, and Howie too. He'd corrupted Tommy-Ray out of all recognition. He'd broken Momma's heart and life. Now she wanted to see him suffer, and she couldn't take her eyes off the sight. His self-mutilation was increasingly manic. He spat out pieces of his fingers, shaking his head back and forth in an attempt to deny whatever he saw beyond the hole the Art had made.
She heard a voice behind her say her name, and looked around to see a woman whom she'd never met, but Howie had described, beckoning her back to the safety of the threshold. She ignored the summons. She wanted to see the Jaff undo himself completely; or be dragged away and destroyed by his own mischief. She hadn't realized until this moment, how much she hated him. How much cleaner she'd feel when he was gone out of the world.
Tesla's voice had found other ears besides Jo-Beth's. Clinging to the ground a couple of yards behind the Jaff, on the eroding island of solidity around the Artist, Grillo heard Tesla call, and turned—against the call of Quiddity—to look her way. His face felt fat with blood, as the hole pulled his fluids up through his body. His head pounded as if ready to burst. The tears were being sucked from his eyes, his eyelashes plucked out. His nose poured two bloody streams, which ran straight from his face towards the hole.
He'd already seen most of the room snatched away into Quiddity. Rochelle had been one of the first to go, relinquishing what little hold her addicted body had on the solid world. Sagansky and his punched-out opponent had gone. The party-goers had followed, despite their attempts to get to the door. The pictures had been stripped from the walls, then the plaster cladding from the wood underneath; now the wood itself was giving up and bending to the call. Grillo would have joined them, walls, guests and all, had it not been for the fact that the Jaff's shadow offered a tenuous solidity in this chaotic sea.