title: Sacrament
author:  Clive Barker 
description: A famous photographer lying in a coma holds the key to the salvation of the world. But first he must travel back into the traumatic events of his childhood. Will Rabjohns has everything. He's handsome, he's rich, and he's revered as the world's greatest wildlife photographer. He's also a haunted man, driven to risk his life for his art -- to capture the raw tragedy of the wild, the beauty of nature's violence. After a near fatal encounter with a polar bear, he lies in a coma. There he must relive a central childhood memory: a meeting with ancient and terrible forces which revealed to him the mystery at the heart of nature. And he realizes that if he awakes, he must confront the darkness of his past and wage a war, not only for his own soul, but for the soul of the planet and every animal that breathes upon it.
zlib_text: Clive Barker
  
  
  
  
  
  SACRAMENT
  
  
  
  
  
  This edition published 1996
  
  
  Printed and bound in Germany
  
  
  
  
  
  For Malcolm
  
  
  
  
  
  CONTENTS
  
  
  
  
  
  PART ONE He Stands Before An Unopened Door
  
  
  PART TWO He Dreams He Is Loved
  
  
  PART THREE He Is Lost; He Is Found
  
  
  PART FOUR He Meets The Stranger In His Skin
  
  
  ## PART FIVE He Names The Mystery
  
  
  PART SIX He Enters The House Of The World
  
  
  
  
  
  I am a man, and men are animals who tell stories. This is a gift from God, who
  spoke our species into being,
  
  
  but left the end of our story untold. That mystery is troubling to us. How
  could it be otherwise? Without the final
  
  
  part, we think, how are we to make sense of all that went before; which is to
  say, our lives?
  
  
  So we make stories of our own, in fevered and envious imitation of our Maker,
  hoping that we’ll tell, by
  
  
  chance, what God left untold. And finishing our tale, come to understand why
  we were born.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## PART ONE
  
  He Stands Before An
  
  
  Unopened Door
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER I
  
  To every hour, its mystery