The Inhuman Condition [Paperback]

A master storyteller and unrivaled visionary, Clive Barker has mixed the real and unreal with the horrible and wonderful in more than twenty years of fantastic fiction.The Inhuman Conditionis a masterwork of surrealistic terror, recounting tragedy with pragmatism, inspiring panic more than dread and evoking equal parts revulsion and delight.Chapter One

Are you the one then? Red demanded, seizing hold of the derelict by the shoulder of his squalid gabardine.

What one d'you mean? the dirt-caked face replied. He was scanning the quartet of young men who'd cornered him with rodent's eyes. The tunnel where they'd found him relieving himself was far from hope of help. They all knew it and so, it seemed, did he. I don't know what you're talking about.

You've been showing yourself to children, Red said.

The man shook his head, a dribble of spittle running from his lip into the matted bush of his beard. I've done nothing, he insisted.

Brendan sauntered across to the man, heavy footsteps hollow in the tunnel. What's your name? he inquired, with deceptive courtesy. Though he lacked Red's height and commanding manner, the scar that inscribed Brendan's cheek from temple to jawline suggested he knew suffering, both in the giving and the receiving. Name, he demanded. I'm not going to ask you again.

Pope, the old man muttered. Mr. Pope.

Brendan grinned. Mr. Pope? he said. Well, we heard you've been exposing that rancid little prick of yours to innocent children. What do you say to that?

No, Pope replied, again shaking his head. That's not true. I never done nothing like that. When he frowned the filth on his face cracked like crazy paving, a second skin of grime which was the accrual of many months. Had it not been for the fragrance of alcohol off him, which obscured the worst of his bodily stench, it would have been nigh on impossible to stand within a yard of him. The man was human rl39