‘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.
IV
Necropolis
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 parking facility and was away, mapped and monied, before the source of the car alarms had been traced by security.
The rain washed his face; his bloodied tee-shirt he dumped, happy to have his beloved jacket next to his skin. Then he found himself a ride to Edmonton, and another which took him through Athabasca to High Prairie. It was easy.
2
Easy? To go in search of a place he’d only heard rumour of amongst lunatics? Perhaps not easy. But it was necessary; even inevitable. From the moment the truck he’d chosen to die beneath had cast him aside this journey had been beckoning. Perhaps from long before that, only he’d never seen the invitation. The sense he had of its rightness might almost have made a fatalist of him. If Midian existed, and was willing to embrace him, then he was travelling to a place where he would finally find some self-comprehension and peace. If not – if it existed only as a talisman for the frightened and the lost – then that too was right, and he would meet whatever extinction awaited him searching for a nowhere. Better that than the pills, better that than Decker’s fruitless pursuit of rhymes and reasons.
The doctor’s quest to root out the monster in Boone had been bound to fail. That much was clear as the skies overhead. Boone the man and Boone the monster could not be divided. They were one; they travelled the same road in the same mind and body. And whatever lay at the end of that road, death or glory, would be the fate of both.
3
East of Peace River, Narcisse had said, near the town of Shere Neck; north of Dwyer.
He had to sleep rough in High Prairie, until the following morning when he found a ride to Peace River. The driver was a woman in her late fifties, proud of the region she’d known since childhood and happy to give him a quick geography lesson. He made no mention of Midian, but Dwyer and Shere Neck she knew – the latter a town of five thousand souls away to the east of Highway 67. He’d have saved himself a good two hundred miles if he’d not travelled as far as High Prairie, he was told, but taken himself north earlier. No matter, she said; she knew a place in Peace River where the farmers stopped off to eat before heading back to their homesteads. He’d find a ride there, to take him where he wanted to go.
Got people there? she asked. He said he had.
It was close to dusk by the time the last of his rides dropped him a mile or so shy of Dwyer. He watched the truck take a gravel road off into the deepening blue, then began to walk the short distance to the town. A night of sleeping rough, and travelling in farm vehicles on roads that had seen better days, had taken its toll on his already battered system. It took him an hour to come within sight of the outskirts of Dwyer, by which time night had fallen completely. Fate was once again on his side. Without the darkness he might not have seen the lights flashing ahead; not in welcome but in warning.
The police were here before him; three or four cars he judged. It was possible they were in pursuit of s
omeone else entirely but he doubted it. More likely Narcisse, lost to himself, had told the law what he’d told Boone. In which case this was a reception committee. They were probably already searching for him, house to house. And if here, in Shere Neck too. He was expected.
Thankful for the cover of the night, he made his way off the road and into the middle of a rape seed field, where he could lie and think through his next move. There was certainly no wisdom in trying to go into Dwyer. Better he set off for Midian now, putting his hunger and weariness aside and trusting to the stars and his instinct to give him directions.
He got up, smelling of earth, and headed off in what he judged to be a northerly direction. He knew very well he might miss his destination by miles with such rough bearings to travel by, or just as easily fail to see it in the darkness. No matter; he had no other choice, which was a kind of comfort to him.
In his five minute spree as thief he’d not found a watch to steal, so the only sense he had of time passing was the slow progression of the constellations overhead. The air became cold, then bitter, but he kept up his painful pace, avoiding the roads wherever possible, though they would have been easier to walk than the ploughed and seeded ground. This caution proved well founded at one point when two police vehicles, book-ending a black limousine, slid all but silently down a road he had a minute ago crossed. He had no evidence whatsoever for the feeling that seized him as the cars passed by, but he sensed more than strongly that the limo’s passenger was Decker, the good doctor, still in pursuit of understanding.
4
Then, Midian.
Out of nowhere, Midian. One moment the night ahead was featureless darkness, the next there was a cluster of buildings on the horizon, their painted walls glimmering grey blue in the starlight. Boone stood for several minutes and studied the scene. There was no light burning in any window, or on any porch. By now it was surely well after midnight, and the men and women of the town, with work to rise to the following morning, would be in bed. But not one single light? That struck him as strange. Small Midian might be – forgotten by map-makers and signpost writers alike – but did it not lay claim to one insomniac?; or a child who needed the comfort of a lamp burning through the night hours? More probably they were in wait for him – Decker and the law – concealed in the shadows until he was foolish enough to step into the trap. The simplest solution would be to turn tail and leave them to their vigil, but he had little enough energy left. If he retreated now how long would he have to wait before attempting a return, every hour making recognition and a rest more likely?
He decided to skirt the edge of the town and get some sense of the lie of the land. If he could find no evidence of a police presence then he’d enter, and take the consequences. He hadn’t come all this way to turn back.
Midian revealed nothing of itself as he moved around its south eastern flank, except perhaps its emptiness. Not only could he see no sign of police vehicles in the streets, or secreted between the houses, he could see no automobile of any kind: no truck, no farm vehicle. He began to wonder if the town was one of those religious communities he’d read of, whose dogmas denied them electricity or the combustion engine.
But as he climbed toward the spine of a small hill on the summit of which Midian stood, a second and plainer explanation occurred. There was nobody in Midian. The thought stopped him in his tracks. He stared across at the houses, searching for some evidence of decay, but he could see none. The roofs were intact, as far as he could make out, there were no buildings that appeared on the verge of collapse. Yet, with the night so quiet he could hear the whoosh of falling stars overhead, he could hear nothing from the town. If somebody in Midian had moaned in their sleep the night would have brought the sound his way, but there was only silence.
Midian was a ghost town.
Never in his life had he felt such desolation. He stood like a dog returned home to find its masters gone, not knowing what his life now meant or would ever mean again.
It took him several minutes to uproot himself and continue his circuit of the town. Twenty yards on from where he’d stood, however, the height of the hill gave him sight of a scene more mysterious even than the vacant Midian.
On the far side of the town lay a cemetery. His vantage point gave him an uninterrupted view of it, despite the high walls that bounded the place. Presumably it had been built to serve the entire region, for it was massively larger than a town Midian’s size could ever have required. Many of the mausoleums were of impressive scale, that much was clear even from a distance, the layout of avenues, trees and tombs lending the cemetery the appearance of a small city.
Boone began down the slope of the hill towards it, his route still taking him well clear of the town itself. After the adrenalin rush of finding and approaching Midian he felt his reserves of strength failing fast; the pain and exhaustion that expectation had numbed now returned with a vengeance. It could not be long, he knew, before his muscles gave out completely and he collapsed. Perhaps behind the cemetery’s walls he’d be able to find a niche to conceal himself from his pursuers and rest his bones.
There were two means of access. A small gate in the side wall, and large double gates that faced towards the town. He chose the former. It was latched but not locked. He gently pushed it open, and stepped inside. The impression he’d had from the hill, of the cemetery as city, was here confirmed, the mausoleums rising house-high around him. Their scale, and, now that he could study them close up, their elaboration, puzzled him. What great families had occupied the town or its surrounds, moneyed enough to bury their dead in such splendour? The small communities of the prairie clung to the land as their sustenance, but it seldom made them rich; and on the few occasions when it did, with oil or gold, never in such numbers. Yet here were magnificent tombs, avenue upon avenue of them, built in all manner of styles from the classical to the baroque, and marked – though he was not certain his fatigued senses were telling him the truth – with motifs from warring theologies.
It was beyond him. He needed sleep. The tombs had been standing a century or more; the puzzle would still be there at dawn.
He found himself a bed out of sight between two graves and laid his head down. The spring growth of grass smelt sweet. He’d slept on far worse pillows, and would again.
V
A Different Ape
The sound of an animal woke him, its growls finding their way into floating dreams and calling him down to earth. He opened his eyes, and sat up. He couldn’t see the dog, but he heard it still. Was it behind him?; the proximity of the tombs threw echoes back and forth. Very slowly, he turned to look over his shoulder. The darkness was deep, but did not quite conceal a large beast, its species impossible to read. There was no misinterpreting the threat from its throat however. It didn’t like his scrutiny, to judge by the tenor of its growls.
‘Hey, boy …’ he said softly, ‘it’s OK.’
Ligaments creaking, he started to stand up, knowing that if he stayed on the ground the animal had easy access to his throat. His limbs had stiffened lying on the cold ground; he moved like a geriatric. Perhaps it was this that kept the animal from attacking, for it simply watched him, the crescents of the whites of its eyes – the only detail he could make out – widening as its gaze followed him into a standing position. Once on his feet he turned to face the creature, which began to move towards him. There was something in its advance that made him think it was wounded. He could hear it dragging one of its limbs behind it; its head low, its stride ragged.
He had words of comfort on his lips when an arm hooked about his neck, taking breath and words away.
‘Move and I gut you.’
With the threat a second arm slid around his body, the fingers digging into his belly with such force he had no doubt the man would make the threat good with his bare hand.
Boone took a shallow breath. Even that minor motion brought a tightening of the death grip at neck and abdomen. He felt blood run down his belly and into his j
eans.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ the voice demanded.
He was a bad liar; the truth was safer.
‘My name’s Boone. I came here … I came to find Midian.’
Did the hold on his belly relax a little when he named his purpose?
‘Why?’ a second voice now demanded. It took Boone no more than a heart beat to realize that the voice had come from the shadows ahead of him, where the wounded beast stood. Indeed from the beast.
‘My friend asked you a question,’ said the voice at his ear. ‘Answer him.’
Boone, disoriented by the attack, fixed his gaze again on whatever occupied the shadows and found himself doubting his eyes. The head of his questioner was not solid; it seemed almost to be inhaling its redundant features, their substance darkening and flowing through socket and nostrils and mouth back into itself.
All thought of his jeopardy disappeared; what seized him now was elation. Narcisse had not lied. Here was the transforming truth of that.
‘I came to be amongst you –’ he said, answering the miracle’s question. ‘I came because I belong here.’
A question emerged from the soft laughter behind him.
‘What does he look like, Peloquin?’
The thing had drunk its beast-face down. There were human features beneath, set on a body more reptile than mammal. That limb he dragged behind him was a tail; his wounded lope the gait of a low slung lizard. That too was under review, as the tremor of change moved down its jutting spine.
‘He looks like a Natural,’ Peloquin replied. ‘Not that that means much.’