Cabal. Clive Barker
Boone said. ‘Same place anyone hears. From others. People in pain.’
‘Monsters,’ said Narcisse.
Boone hadn’t thought of them as such, but perhaps to dispassionate eyes they were; the ranters and the weepers, unable to keep their nightmares under lock and key.
‘They’re the only ones welcome in Midian,’ Narcisse explained. ‘If you’re not a beast, you’re a victim. That’s true, isn’t it? You can only be one or the other. That’s why I don’t dare go unescorted. I wait for friends to come for me.’
‘People who went already?’
‘That’s right,’ Narcisse said. ‘Some of them alive. Some of them who died, and went after.’
Boone wasn’t certain he was hearing this story correctly.
‘Went after?’ he said.
‘Don’t you have anything for the pain, man?’ Narcisse said, his tone veering again, this time to the wheedling.
‘I’ve got some pills,’ Boone said, remembering the dregs of Decker’s supply. ‘Do you want those?’
‘Anything you got.’
Boone was content to be relieved of them. They’d kept his head in chains, driving him to the point where he didn’t care if he lived or died. Now he did. He had a place to go, where he might find someone at last who understood the horrors he was enduring. He would not need the pills to get to Midian. He’d need strength, and the will to be forgiven. The latter he had. The former his wounded body would have to find.
‘Where are they?’ said Narcisse, appetite igniting his features.
Boone’s leather jacket had been peeled from his back when he’d first been admitted, for a cursory examination of the damage he’d done himself. It hung on the back of a chair, a twice discarded skin. He plunged his hand into the inside pocket but found to his shock that the familiar bottle was not there.
‘Someone’s been through my jacket.’
He rummaged through the rest of the pockets. All of them were empty. Lori’s notes, his wallet, the pills: all gone. It took him seconds only to realize why they’d want evidence of who he was and the consequence of that. He’d attempted suicide; no doubt they thought him prepared to do the same again. In his wallet was Decker’s address. The doctor was probably already on his way, to collect his erring patient and deliver him to the police. Once in the hands of the law he’d never see Midian.
‘You said there were pills!’ Narcisse yelled.
‘They’ve been taken!’
Narcisse snatched the jacket from Boone’s hands, and began to tear at it.
‘Where?’ he yelled. ‘Where?’
His face was once more crumpling up as he realized he was not going to get a fix of peace. He dropped the jacket and backed away from Boone, his tears beginning again, but sliding down his face to meet a broad smile.
‘I know what you’re doing,’ he said, pointing at Boone. Laughter and sobs were coming in equal measure. ‘Midian sent you. To see if I’m worthy. You came to see if I was one of you or not!’
He offered Boone no chance to contradict, his elation spiralling into hysteria.
‘I’m sitting here praying for someone to come; begging; and you’re here all the time, watching me shit myself. Watching me shit!’
He laughed hard. Then, deadly serious:
‘I never doubted. Never once. I always knew somebody’d come. But I was expecting a face I recognized. Marvin maybe. I should have known they’d send someone new. Stands to reason. And you saw, right? You heard. I’m not ashamed. They never made me ashamed. You ask anyone. They tried. Over and over. They got in my fucking head and tried to take me apart, tried to take the Wild Ones out of me. But I held on. I knew you’d come sooner or later, and I wanted to be ready. That’s why I wear these.’
He thrust his thumbs up in front of his face. ‘So I could show you.’
He turned his head to right and left.
‘Want to see?’ he said.
He needed no reply. His hands were already up to either side of his face, the hooks touching the skin at the base of each ear. Boone watched, words of denial or appeal redundant. This was a moment Narcisse had rehearsed countless times; he was not about to be denied it. There was no sound as the hooks, razor sharp, slit his skin, but blood began to flow instantly, down his neck and arms. The expression on his face didn’t change, it merely intensified: a mask in which comic muse and tragic were united. Then, fingers spread to either side of his face, he steadily drew the razor hooks down the line of his jaw. He had a surgeon’s precision. The wounds opened with perfect symmetry, until the twin hooks met at his chin.
Only then did he drop one hand to his side, blood dripping from hook and wrist, the other moving across his face to seek the flap of skin his work had opened.
‘You want to see?’ he said again.
Boone murmured:
‘Don’t.’
It went unheard. With a sharp, upward jerk Narcisse detached the mask of skin from the muscle beneath, and began to tear, uncovering his true face.
From behind him, Boone heard somebody scream. The door had been opened, and one of the nursing staff stood on the threshold. He saw from the corner of his eye: her face whiter than her uniform, her mouth open wide; and beyond her the corridor, and freedom. But he couldn’t bring himself to look away from Narcisse; not while the blood filling the air between them kept the revelation from view. He wanted to see the man’s secret face: the Wild One beneath the skin that made him fit for Midian’s ease. The red rain was dispersing. The air began to clear. He saw the face now, a little, but couldn’t make sense of its complexity. Was that a beast’s anatomy that knotted up and snarled in front of him, or human tissue agonized by self-mutilation? A moment more, and he’d know –
Then, someone had hold of him, seizing his arms and dragging him towards the door. He glimpsed Narcisse raising the weapons of his hands to keep his saviours at bay, then the uniforms were upon him, and he was eclipsed. In the rush of the moment Boone took his chance. He pushed the nurse from him, snatched up his leather jacket, and ran for the unguarded door. His bruised body was not prepared for violent action. He stumbled, nausea and darting pains in his bruised limbs vying for the honour of bringing him to his knees, but the sight of Narcisse surrounded and tethered was enough to give him strength. He was away down the hall before anyone had a chance to come after him.
As he headed for the door to the night he heard Narcisse’s voice raised in protest; a howl of rage that was pitifully human.
1
Though the distance from Calgary to Athabasca was little more than three hundred miles the journey took a traveller to the borders of another world. North of here the highways were few, and the inhabitants fewer still, as the rich prairie lands of the province steadily gave way to forest, marshland and wilderness. It also marked the limits of Boone’s experience. A short stint as a truck driver, in his early twenties, had taken him as far as Bonnyville to the south-east, Barrhead to the south-west and Athabasca itself. But the territory beyond was unknown to him except as names on a map. Or more correctly, as an absence of names. There were great stretches of land here that were dotted only with small farming settlements; one of which bore the name Narcisse had used: Shere Neck.
The map which carried this information he found, along with enough change to buy himself a bottle of brandy, in five minutes of theft on the outskirts of Calgary. He rifled three vehicles left in an underground