Clive Barker - Mister B. Gone

Mister B. Gone

by Clive Barker

Copyright 2007

ISBN: 978-0-06-018298-

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BURN THIS BOOK.

Go on. Quickly, while theres still time. Burn it. Dont look at another word. Did you hear me? Not. One. More. Word.
Why are you waiting? Its not that difficult. Just stop reading and burn the book. Its for your own good, believe me. No, I cant explain why. We dont have time for explanations. Every syllable that you let your eyes wander over gets you into more and more trouble. And when I say trouble, I mean things so terrifying your sanity wont hold once you see them, feel them. Youll go mad. Become a living blank, all that you ever were wiped away, because you wouldnt do one simple thing. Burn this book.
It doesnt matter if you spent your last dollar buying it. No, and it doesnt matter if it was a gift from somebody you love. Believe me, friend, you should set fire to this book right now, or youll regret the consequences.

*

Go on. What are you waiting for? You dont have a light? Ask somebody. Beg them.
Its a matter of light and death Believe me! Will you please believe me? A little runt of a book like this isnt worth risking madness and eternal damnation over. Well, is it? No, of course not. So burn it. Now! Dont let your eyes travel any further. Just stop HERE.

*

Oh God! Youre still reading? What is it? You think this is some silly little joke Im playing? Trust me, it isnt. I know, I know, youre thinking its just a book filled with words, like any other book. And what are words? Black marks on white paper. How much harm could there be in something so simple? If I had ten hundred years to answer that question I would barely scratch the surface of the monstrous deeds the words in this book could be used to instigate and inflame. But we dont have ten hundred years. We dont even have ten hours, ten minutes. Youre just going to have to trust me. Here, Ill make it as simple as possible for you: This book will do you harm beyond description unless you do as Im asking you to.
You can do it. Just stop reading
Now.

*

Whats the problem? Why are you still reading? Is it because you dont know who I am, or what? I suppose I can hardly blame you. If I had picked up a book and found somebody inside it, talking at me the way Im talking at you, Id probably be a little wary too.
What can I say thatll make you believe me? Ive never been one of those golden-tongued types. You know, the ones who always have the perfect words for every situation. I used to listen to them when I was just a little demon and Hell and Demonation! I let that slip without meaning to. About me being a demon, I mean. Oh well, its done. You were bound to figure it out for yourself sooner or later.
Yeah, Im a demon. My full name is Jakabok Botch. I used to know what that meant, but Ive forgotten. I used to. Ive been a prisoner of these pages, trapped in the words youre reading right now and left in darkness most of the time, while the book sat somewhere through the passage of many centuries in a pile of books nobody ever opened. All the while Id think about how happy, how grateful , Id be when somebody finally opened the book. This is my memoir, you see. Or, if you will, my confes-sional. A portrait of Jakabok Botch. I dont mean portrait literally. There arent any pictures in these pages. Which is probably a good thing, because Im not a pretty sight to look at. At least I wasnt the last time I looked.
And that was a long, long time ago. When I was young and afraid. Of what, you ask? Of my father, Pappy Gatmuss. He worked at the furnaces in Hell and when he got home from the night shift he would have such a temper me and my sister, Charyat, would hide from him. She was a year and two months younger than me, and for some reason if my father caught her he would beat and beat her and not be satisfied until she was sob-bing and snotty and begging him to stop. So I started to watch for him. About the time hed be heading home, Id climb up the drainpipe onto the roof out of our house and watch for him. I knew his walk [or his stagger, if hed been drinking] the moment he turned the corner of our street. That gave me time to climb back down the pipe, find Charyat, and the two of us could find a safe place where wed go until hed done what he always did when he, drunk or sober, came home. Hed beat our mother. Some-times with his bare hands, but as he got older with one of the tools from his workbag, which he always brought home with him. She wouldnt ever scream or cry, which only made him angrier. I asked her once very quietly why she never made any noise when my father hit her. She looked up at me. She was on her knees at the time trying to get the toilet unclogged and the stink was terrible; the little room full of ecstatic flies. She said: I would never give him the satisfaction of knowing he had hurt me. Thirteen words. That was all she had to say on the subject. But she poured into those words so much hatred and rage that it was a wonder that the walls didnt crack and bring the house down on our heads. But something worse happened. My father heard.
How he sniffed out what we were saying I do not know to this day. I suspect he had buzzing tell-tales amongst the flies. I dont remember much of what he did to us, except for his pushing my head into the unclogged toiletthat I do remember. His face is also inscribed on my memory.
Oh Demonation, he was ugly! At the best of times, the sight of him was enough to make children run away screaming, and old devils clutch at their hearts and drop down dead. It was as if every sin hed ever committed had left its mark on his face. His eyes were small, the flesh around them puffy and bruised. His mouth was wide, like a toads mouth, his teeth stained yellowish-brown and pointed, like the teeth of a feral animal. He stank like an animal too, like a very old, very dead animal. So that was the family. Momma, Pappy Gatmuss, Charyat, and me. I didnt have any friends. Demons my age didnt want to be seen with me. I was an embarrassment, coming from such a messed-up family. Theyd throw stones at me, to drive me away, or excrement. So I kept myself from becoming a lunatic by writing down all my frustrations on anything that would carry a markpaper, wood, even bits of linenwhich I kept hidden under a loose floorboard in my room. I poured everything into those pages. It was the first time I understood the power of what youre looking at right now. Words. I found over time that if I wrote on my pages all the things I wished I could do to the kids who humiliated me, or to Pappy Gatmuss [I had some fine ideas about how I would make him regret his bru-talities], then the anger would not sting so much. As I got older and the girls I liked threw stones at me just like their brothers had only a few years before, Id go back home and spend half the night writing about how Id have my revenge one day. I filled page after page after page with all my plans and plots, until there were so many of them that I could barely fit them into my hidey-hole under the floorboard. I should have thought of another place, a bigger place, to keep them safe, but Id been using the same hole for so long I didnt worry about it. Stupid, stupid! One day I get home from school and race upstairs only to find that all my secrets, my Pages of Vengeance, had been unearthed. They were heaped up in the middle of the room. Id never risked taking them all out of their hiding place together, so this was the first time Id seen all of them at once. There were so many of them. Hun-dreds. For a minute I was amazed, proud even, that Id written so much. Then my mother comes in with such a look of fury on her face I knew I was going to get the beating of my life for this. You are a selhsh, vicous, horrible creature, she said to me. And I wish youd never been born.