All the Bells on Earth Read online

  ALSO BY JAMES P. BLAYLOCK

  NOVELS

  The Elfin Ship

  The Disappearing Dwarf

  The Digging Leviathan

  Homunculus

  Land Of Dreams

  The Last Coin

  The Stone Giant

  The Paper Grail

  Lord Kelvin’s Machine

  The Magic Spectacles

  Night Relics

  All The Bells On Earth

  Winter Tides

  The Rainy Season

  Knights Of The Cornerstone

  Zeuglodon

  The Aylesford Skull (forthcoming)

  COLLECTIONS

  Thirteen Phantasms

  In For A Penny

  Metamorphosis

  The Shadow on the Doorstep

  NOVELLAS

  The Ebb Tide

  The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs

  WITH TIM POWERS

  On Pirates

  The Devil in the Details

  Copyright © 1995 by James P. Blaylock

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Dirk Berger. Cover design by John Berlyne.

  Published as an e-book in North America by Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc., in conjunction with the Zeno Agency LTD in 2012.

  ISBN: 9781936535699

  CONTENTS

  Also by James P. Blaylock

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Part Two

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Part Three

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  About the Author

  More e-books from James P. Blaylock

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  As ever, I’d like to thank a number of people for the help they gave me with this book: Tim Powers and Lew Shiner especially, for their friendship and for the right stuff at the right time, and John Accursi, who could make a fortune as a story editor. I’d also like to thank Chris Arena, who not only cheerfully put up with a thousand questions over the phone and over lunch, but who put up with them again when I called back for details. And thanks to Mark Ziesing, the king of Shingletown and the guru of catalogue sales….

  For sheer inspiration, energy, joy, and faith in the future, I’m grateful to the kids of the Orange County Children’s Theatre, who have added a whole lot of color to my life. “Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.” John Ruskin wrote that, and he was right.

  For Viki, John, and Daniel

  And this time,

  for the Meyer Family,

  Denny, Judy, Anderson, and Amanda

  Mahalo

  “ ’Oh ke aloha ke kuleana o kahi malihini”

  PART ONE

  The Dragon

  Our full energies are to be given to the soul’s work—to the great fight with the Dragon—the taking of the kingdom of heaven by force.

  John Ruskin

  Pre-Raphaelitism

  1

  A WET WINTER night. Nearly two in the morning and the spirit of Christmas haunts the ocean wind, sighing through the foil candycanes that sway from lampposts along Chapman Avenue, through the ribs of the illuminated Santa Claus in the distant Plaza, along empty alleys dark with shifting, anxious shadows. Raindrops slant across the misty glass globes of streetlamps, and heavy, broken clouds drift across the face of the moon. For a few moments the terra-cotta roof tiles of St. Anthony’s Church glisten in the moonlight. The downtown houses appear out of the darkness: clapboard bungalows with shadowy porches and leafy flowerbeds, curb trees pushing up the sidewalks, the houses dark except for the yellow glow of front porch lamps and here and there strings of Christmas lights left on all night.

  The moon slips behind clouds again, and in the deepening gloom a human figure steps out of the shadows onto the peak of the church roof and walks carefully across the rainwashed tiles, bent low and carrying a stiff cloth bag. The bell tower rises before him, above the west wall of the church, its white stucco a pale ghost against the deeper darkness of the roof. Within the open arches of the tower stand the crossmembers and struts of the iron framework that supports a carillon of eleven heavy bells.

  He climbs over the cast concrete railing in the east-facing arch and dissappears among the maze of shadows cast by the bells, and suddenly the silent night is broken by a tumult of flapping wings, and the sky above the tower is clouded with circling white doves.

  FATHER MAHONEY SAT in the small sacristy of Holy Spirit Catholic Church and listened to the water dripping from the eaves outside the windows, which were tilted open to let in the melody of the rain. The room was pleasantly scented with the smell of the night air, mingling with the odor of floor wax and incense blocks. It was early in the morning—he wasn’t sure just what time it was—but he rarely slept later than four these days, and over the years he had gotten used to seeing the sunrise as well as the sunset. And anyway, today he was seventy—he didn’t have the leisure to be wasting a morning of this quality.

  He heard a noise from somewhere off in the church, what sounded like the creaking of wooden joints.

  Probably it was just the old church settling in the weather. He sat for a moment listening to hear it again, but there was nothing, just the sound of the rainy morning. Something about the rain improved the silence, something vast and deep that reminded him of the last notes of a hymn or the silence that followed the ringing of bells.

  On the library table in front of him lay an open cigar box next to his cup of instant coffee. The box was filled with seashells. He picked out several kelp scallops and paired them according to size and color, but none of the pairs looked quite right. There had already been half a dozen Pacific storms this winter, and the shelling was better than any year he could remember. He had found two perfect chestnut cowries beneath the Huntington Beach pier last week—the fir
st he had ever found. They sat on the table now, neatly arrayed beside the scallops and a handful of jewel-box shells.

  He picked up an issue of The Nautilus and began to flip through the pages, but right then he heard the sound of wood scraping against wood, as if someone had pushed a pew out of its place in the church. He stood up and walked to the door, edging it open and looking out past the altar, seeing no one. He stepped across the choir and looked down into the nave, which was empty, the pews sitting square and neat and solid. After a moment he went back into the sacristy and sat down again, idly stirring the shells in the box with his index finger and gazing at the three stained-glass windows in the east wall.

  It was in the early morning that he most liked to sit in the wood-paneled room and simply look at these windows, which depicted Christ and two angels ascending into heaven. Holly leaves with red berries bordered the windows, and the same color of red tinted the stigmata on Christ’s out-turned palms. The windows looked out on a garden of tree ferns and maidenhair, and tonight the ivory light from the garden lamps muted the colors of the rain-washed glass, tinting the holly berries and the bleeding wounds an unearthly shade of deep red that reminded him of the sacrament. He couldn’t help making these connections, seeing the spirit of one thing alive in something else; it was evidence of the great design.

  There was the sound of car wheels swishing on the wet asphalt of the street, and he was momentarily thankful to be inside, where it was warm and dry and close. Picking up one of the cowries, he ran his finger over the smooth hump of its shell. And then, as he set it back down on the table among the others, the sacristy door creaked open.

  A man stepped into the room. He wore an oversized coat and trousers, rubber gloves, and a pair of dirty white loafers with tassels. Covering his head was a rubber mask that resembled the face of a goat, complete with a protruding rubber tongue, curled-back horns, and a tuft of coarse hair.

  THE MAN IN the church tower reeled against the railing, shocked at the rush of wings around him, at the wheeling birds that had been nesting in the belfry. Dropping the canvas sack full of tools, he held onto the smooth stucco of the tower wall with both hands. Although there was a floor beneath the bells, he felt himself to be standing at the edge of a yawning pit, as if the tower were a deep open well into the darkness.

  Birds landed on the peak of the roof and stood in the rain before wheeling away again, disappearing into the deep shadows of a big cypress tree in the lot next door. In a moment the night was quiet, and he felt steady again. He let go of the wall, shoved his tools aside with his foot, and forced himself to attend to the bells. There was just enough light to make out the immense bolts that secured them—three bolts in each of the two biggest bells, which must have been three feet in diameter, their bronze walls some three or four inches thick. He groped in the bag of tools, his heart racing, and found a can of lubricant, then sprayed the heavily rusted nuts that secured the biggest bell.

  It would be easier simply to cut the wires attached to the clappers and silence the bells that way, but then it would be equally easy for the bellringer to reattach the wires. He wanted something else to happen, something more permanent.

  He took a big wrench from the bag and fit it to the nut, leaning into it hard, throwing his weight behind it. Nothing happened. It was frozen tight. The wind blew a flurry of raindrops through the arch, and he let up on the wrench, picking up the can of spray lube again and spraying the nuts heavily. A car drove past on the street below, its headlights glaring against the wet asphalt, and he cursed the driver under his breath.

  Christmas lights winked off and on along the eaves of a house across the street, throwing a faint glow of blue and red and green across the dull metal of the bells. Somehow the colors horrified him, as if they were live things, tiny spirits dancing on the cold bells, mocking him, appearing and disappearing like goblin gold. The bells began to thrum in the wind, as if they had a voice, and for a moment he fancied he could hear a melody in the raindrops plinking against the bronze. The iron framework before him was dizzyingly complicated, and the bells swam in and out of his vision.

  He dropped the wrench and reached for a crossbar in order to steady himself, but touched the surface of the bell instead. It was horribly solid, the bronze so cold that for a moment he thought he’d been burned. He jerked his hand away and grabbed for the railing, looking away from the bells and the reflected Christmas lights, out into the night where the palms along the avenue moved slowly in the wind. Like a tide beneath a pier, the shifting palm fronds made the tower seem to sway, and he held on desperately. A dove alighted on the concrete railing, stark white in the moonlight, and in a moment of wild rage and fear he swung his hand at it, lurching forward to grab it by the neck. The dove lifted off again, and the back of his hand struck the stucco corner of the arch.

  The pain sobered him. He stood breathing hard, the rain in his face. He had nearly lost his mind there for a moment. It occurred to him abruptly that something was actively working against him, some power, filling his head with confusion—the rain, the colored lights, the doves….

  The idea of it appealed to him, giving him a strange sensation of potency. He was filled with the certainty that he was laboring at the heart of an ages-old struggle, that with his bag of tools he might shift something so monumentally heavy that it made the ponderous bell in front of him nothing more than a dust mote.

  Full of wild purpose, he picked up the spray lube, and held down the nozzle until all three nuts ran with oil. Then he fumbled in the sack again, pulling out a small propane torch. He lit the torch, adjusted the flame, and held it to the center nut. The oil burst into flame, and the flame ran out across the steel plate, flickering like witch fire, casting a glare on the walls around him. He held the torch to the nut, which had sat there immobile for sixty years, and watched the flaming oil burn itself out. Then, shutting off the torch, he fixed the wrench on the nut again and leaned hard against it. There was a spray of rust flakes and a loud squeak as the nut disengaged, but he didn’t let up. He cranked the wrench around in a big circle, forcing it up the rusty threads until the nut fell loose, dropping to the floor. The second nut was easier than the first; there was no need to heat it with the torch. He eased the third nut up the bolt until, with a heart-stopping shriek, the bell twisted away from its steel plate, the bolt itself bending backward from the bell’s weight. He stood for a moment, afraid to go on. If the bell came down now …

  But the bell didn’t fall. He counted four threads exposed above the remaining nut. Carefully he turned the wrench, easing the nut upward, the rusty iron groaning. Even when the nut was flush with the top of the bolt, he continued to turn the wrench, picturing the bell dropping, the terrible noise of it crashing through the floors below, slamming into the concrete floor at the bottom of the tower.

  The top of the bolt slowly edged its way down into the nut. He counted the revolutions, stopping at the fourth, trusting utterly to instinct: another quarter turn and it would fall. The bell swayed there, defying gravity, thousands of pounds of cast bronze held by a thin curl of iron. One of the doves could dislodge it. The wind could blow it down.

  He stepped backward and laughed out loud, picturing it, full of wild confidence now, of boundless exhilaration as he slid the wrench free, slipping it into the bag along with the torch and the spray can. Then he swung his leg over the railing, stepped out onto the roof again, and set out toward the back of the church. The moon shone now as if someone had turned on a lamp in the night sky. He hurried. It wouldn’t do to be caught. Not now. Never mind what it would do to his life, to his career, if he were seen up here. It had quite simply been vital that the bells be silenced, but the awful compulsion that had led him out into the rainy night was already draining away….

  A car approached from the west. He stepped down the back slope of the roof, trying to move out of sight, hunching forward to shrink himself. Suddenly he was off-balance, and he threw out his free hand, trying to grab the peak of the roof
as his foot slipped on the wet terra-cotta and his leg splayed outward. He dropped the bag, throwing out his arms to catch himself as he fell forward. His fingernails scraped across the slick tiles and he skittered downward, scrabbling uselessly, moaning out loud.

  In that instant there flew into his mind an image of himself lying dead on the ground, his soul sucked out of him, down through the dirt and rock of the cold earth, fleeing away toward some infinitely empty place. Terror and remorse surged through him, and for one appalling moment he thought he heard the bells themselves begin to toll.

  Then his right foot struck the rain gutter that ran along the eave, and he hugged the terra-cotta tiles to him as he jolted to a stop right at the roof’s edge. For a moment he lay there simply breathing, his eyes closed, feeling the cold rain against his back. Then, carefully, he looked behind him, down at the lawn and at the scattering of tools that had flown out of the canvas bag.

  He hunched forward, crawling up the rusted metal valley like a bug, hanging onto the edges of the roof tiles and breathing hard now, desperately careful. The wild elation he had felt in the tower was utterly gone, all of it replaced by the terrible need to save himself, to get down off the roof, retrieve his tools, and make his way to safety without being seen.

  When he was well clear of the edge, he stood up and quickened his pace, and within seconds was at the peak again, then past it, letting himself down the back side of the roof, which was hidden from the street by a row of trees.

  THE WET SIDEWALKS reflected the glow from the old cast-concrete streetlamps on the parkway, and water dripped with a slow, hollow plink in the metal downspout at the edge of the porch. The wind was full of the promise of more rain. Walt Stebbins stood on the porch and listened to the night. He wore his pajama shirt tucked into a pair of pants that he’d pulled on hastily. He hadn’t bothered with his bedroom slippers. The wisteria vine that climbed the downspout was bare of leaves, and the yellow buglight on the porch threw a tangle of moving shadows out onto the front lawn. There was a gust of wind, and the heavy vines scraped against the eaves of the house.

  He noticed then that he’d left the Christmas lights on again—the third time that season. It was amazing how a few colored lights could run up the bill. He stepped down off the porch now and peered around the outside corner of the front bedroom, up the driveway toward the garage. The driveway gate was shut. It was a little section of picket fence hinged to the latticework wall of the carport, supported by a single steel wheel that made a gravelly, metallic sound when it rolled open.