The Best Beast Book

The Great and Secret Show
By: Clive Barker

Randolph Jaffe is a man working in a post office in Omaha. His life is boring and he sits day after day shifting though peoples mail. Everything that is undeliverable ends up there. By sorting through this mail Jaffe starts to put pieces of a puzzle together. A knowledge or power that is hidden from everyday man. Through coded letters and postcards, he begins to learn of The Art and of a great sea with islands and a secret society that guards it.

Drawn to this knowledge, Jaffe is determined to end this boring life and learn the Art. He dreams to stand on the shores of the great Ocean, Quiddity. But in order to accomplish this, he must lose his humanity. This is accomplished with the help of Fletcher, a biochemist. Jaffe lures Fletcher to a secluded Mexican mission and they make themselves suitable to wield the Art - the Nuncio.

When they find the Nuncio, humanity takes over. A fight breaks out between them and they both end up absorbing the Nuncio. They have different reactions to the Nuncio. They become bitter enemies, fighting a deadly battle across America.

Fletcher gains his power from the dreams of people. Their love, their fantasies become his army. Jaffe uses people's worst fears, creating a legion of horrible monsters and beasts called Terata.

They continue to battle until they end up in the woods outside a small California town. Exhausted from years of fighting, they lie entwined under the earth, each being the other's prisoner. Their war is almost over, until four girls go swimming in the pond. In a desperation move, Jaffe and Fletcher send their spirits into the girls who go out immediately to get pregnant.

Soon the girls give birth and a new generation of fighting begins.