She looked at the pavement that lay between where she stood and the mausoleum. Could she get to the door of the tomb without having to step back into the sun, and so hasten the creature’s demise? Perhaps, with care. Planning her route before she moved, she started to cross towards the mausoleum, using the shadows like stepping stones. She didn’t look up at the door – her attention was wholly focused on keeping the animal from the light – but she could feel the mourner’s presence, willing her on. Once the woman gave voice; not with a word but with a soft sound, a cradle-side sound, addressed not to Lori but to the dying animal.
With the mausoleum door three or four yards from her, Lori dared to look up. The woman in the door could be patient no longer. She reached out from her refuge, her arms bared as the garment she wore rode back, her flesh exposed to the sunlight. The skin was white – as ice, as paper – but only for an instant. As the fingers stretched to relieve Lori of her burden they darkened and swelled as though instantly bruised. The mourner made a cry of pain, and almost fell back into the tomb as she withdrew her arms, but not before the skin broke and trails of dust – yellowish, like pollen – burst from her fingers and fell through the sunlight on to the patio.
Seconds later, Lori was at the door; then through it into the safety of the darkness beyond. The room was no more than an antechamber. Two doors led out of it: one into a chapel of some sort, the other below ground. The woman in mourning was standing at this second door, which was open, as far from the wounding light as she could get. In her haste, her veil had fallen. The face beneath was fine-boned, and thin almost to the point of being wasted, which lent additional force to her eyes, which caught, even in the darkest corner of the room, some trace of light from through the open door, so that they seemed almost to glow.
Lori felt no trace of fear. It was the other woman who trembled as she nursed her sunstruck hands, her gaze moving from Lori’s bewildered face to the animal.
‘I’m afraid it’s dead,’ Lori said, not knowing what disease afflicted this woman, but recognizing her grief from all too recent memory.
‘No,’ the woman said with quiet conviction. ‘She can’t die.’
Her words were statement not entreaty, but the stillness in Lori’s arms contradicted such certainty. If the creature wasn’t yet dead it was surely beyond recall.
‘Will you bring her to me?’ the woman asked.
Lori hesitated. Though the weight of the body was making her arms ache, and she wanted the duty done, she didn’t want to cross the chamber.
‘Please,’ the woman said, reaching out with wounded hands.
Relenting, Lori left the comfort of the door and the sunlit patio beyond. She’d taken two or three steps, however, when she heard the sound of whispering. There could only be one source: the stairs. There were people in the crypt. She stopped walking, childhood superstitions rising up in her. Fear of tombs; fear of stairs descending; fear of the Underworld.
‘It’s nobody,’ the woman said, her face pained. ‘Please, bring me Babette.’
As if to further reassure Lori she took a step away from the stairs, murmuring to the animal she’d called Babette. Either the words, or the woman’s proximity, or perhaps the cool darkness of the chamber, won a response from the creature: a tremor that ran down its spine like an electric charge, so strong Lori almost lost hold of it. The woman’s murmurs grew louder, as if she were chiding the dying thing, her anxiety to claim it suddenly urgent. But there was an impasse. Lori was no more willing to approach the entrance to the crypt than the woman to come another step towards the outer door, and in the seconds of stasis the animal found new life. One of its claws seized Lori’s breast as it began to writhe in her embrace.
The chiding became a shout –
‘Babette!’
– but if the creature heard, it didn’t care to listen. Its motion became more violent: a mingling of fit and sensuality. One moment it shuddered as though tortured; the next it moved like a snake sloughing off its skin.
‘Don’t look, don’t look!’ she heard the woman say, but Lori wasn’t about to take her eyes off this horrendous dance. Nor could she give the creature over to the woman’s charge, while the claw gripped her so tightly any attempt to separate them would draw blood.
But that Don’t Look! had purpose. Now it was Lori’s turn to raise her voice in panic, as she realized that what was taking place in her arms defied all reason.
‘Jesus God!’
The animal was changing before her eyes. In the luxury of slough and spasm it was losing its bestiality, not by re-ordering its anatomy but by liquefying its whole self – through to the bone – until what had been solid was a tumble of matter. Here was the origin of the bitter-sweet scent she’d met beneath the tree: the stuff of the beast’s dissolution. In the moment it lost its coherence the matter was ready to be out of her grasp, but somehow the essence of the thing – its will, perhaps; perhaps its soul – drew it back for the business of re-making. The last part of the beast to melt was the claw, its disintegration sending a throb of pleasure through Lori’s body. It did not distract her from the fact that she was released. Horrified, she couldn’t get what she held from her embrace fast enough, tipping it into the mourner’s outstretched arms like so much excrement.
‘Jesus,’ she said, backing away. ‘Jesus. Jesus.’
There was no horror on the woman’s face however; only joy. Tears of welcome rolled down her pale cheeks, and fell into the melting pot she held. Lori looked away towards the sunlight. After the gloom of the interior it was blinding. She was momentarily disoriented, and closed her eyes to allow herself a reprieve from both tomb and light.
It was sobbing that made her open her eyes. Not the woman this time, but a child, a girl of four or five, lying naked where the muck of transformation had been.
‘Babette,’ the woman said.
Impossible, reason replied. This thin white child could not be the animal she’d rescued from beneath the tree. It was sleight of hand, or some idiot delusion she’d foisted upon herself. Impossible; all impossible.
‘She likes to play outside,’ the woman was saying, looking up from the child at Lori. ‘And I tell her: never, never in the sun. Never play in the sun. But she’s a child. She doesn’t understand.’
Impossible, reason repeated. But somewhere in her gut Lori had already given up trying to deny. The animal had been real. The transformation had been real. Now here was a living child, weeping in her mother’s arms. She too was real. Every moment she wasted saying No to what she knew, was a moment lost to comprehension. That her world-view couldn’t contain such a mystery without shattering was its liability, and a problem for another day. For now she simply wanted to be away; into the sunlight where she knew these shape-shifters feared to follow. Not daring to take her eyes off them until she was in the sun, she reached out to the wall to guide her tentative backward steps. But Babette’s mother wanted to hold her a while longer.
‘I owe you something …’ she said.
‘No,’ Lori replied. ‘I don’t … want anything … from you.’
She felt the urge to express her revulsion, but the scene of reunion before her – the child reaching up to touch her mother’s chin, its sobs passing – were so tender. Disgust became bewilderment; fear, confusion.
‘Let me help you,’ the woman said. ‘I know why you came here.’
‘I doubt it,’ Lori said.
‘Don’t waste your time here.’ the woman replied. ‘There’s nothing for you here, Midian’s a home for the Nightbreed. Only the Nightbreed.’
Her voice had dropped in volume; it was barely a whisper.
‘The Nightbreed?’ Lori said, more loudly.
The woman looked pained.
‘Shh …’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this. But I owe you, this much at least.’
Lori had stopped her retreat to the door. Her instinct was telling her to wait.
‘Do you know a man called Boone?’ she said.
&
nbsp; The woman opened her mouth to reply, her face a mass of contrary feelings. She wanted to answer, that much was clear; but fear prevented her from speaking. It didn’t matter. Her hesitation was answer enough. She did know Boone; or had.
‘Rachel.’
A voice rose from the door that led down into the earth. A man’s voice.
‘Come away,’ it demanded. ‘You’ve nothing to tell.’
The woman looked towards the stairs.
‘Mister Lylesburg,’ she said, her tone formal. ‘She saved Babette.’
‘We know,’ came the reply from the darkness, ‘We saw. Still, you must come away.’
We, Lori thought. How many others were there below ground; how many more of the Nightbreed?
Taking confidence from the proximity of the open door she challenged the voice that was attempting to silence her informant.
‘I saved the child,’ she said. ‘I think I deserve something for that.’
There was a silence from the darkness; then a point of heated ash brightened in its midst and Lori realized that Mister Lylesburg was standing almost at the top of the stairs, where the light from outside should have illuminated him, albeit poorly, but that somehow the shadows were clotted about him, leaving him invisible but for his cigarette.
‘The child has no life to save,’ he said to Lori, ‘but what she has is yours, if you want it.’ He paused. ‘Do you want it? If you do, take her. She belongs to you.’
The notion of this exchange horrified her.
‘What do you take me for?’ she said.
‘I don’t know,’ Lylesburg replied. ‘You were the one demanded recompense.’
‘I just want some questions answered,’ Lori protested. ‘I don’t want the child. I’m not a savage.’
‘No,’ the voice said softly. ‘No, you’re not. So go. You’ve no business here.’
He drew on the cigarette and by its tiny light Lori glimpsed the speaker’s features. She sensed that he willingly revealed himself in this moment, dropping the veil of shadow for a handful of instants to meet her gaze face to face. He, like Rachel, was wasted, his gauntness more acute because his bones were large, and made for solid cladding. Now, with his eyes sunk into their sockets, and the muscles of his face all too plain beneath papery skin, it was the sweep of his brow that dominated, furrowed and sickly.
‘This was never intended,’ he said. ‘You weren’t meant to see.’
‘I know that,’ Lori replied.
‘Then you also know that to speak of this will bring dire consequences.’
‘Don’t threaten me.’
‘Not for you,’ Lylesburg said. ‘For us.’
She felt a twinge of shame at her misunderstanding. She wasn’t the vulnerable one; she who could walk in the sunlight.
‘I won’t say anything,’ she told him.
‘I thank you,’ he said.
He drew on his cigarette again, and the dark smoke took his face from view.
‘What’s below …’ he said from behind the veil, ‘… remains below.’
Rachel sighed softly at this, gazing down at the child as she rocked it gently.
‘Come away,’ Lylesburg told her, and the shadows that concealed him moved off down the stairs.
‘I have to go,’ Rachel said, and turned to follow. ‘Forget you were ever here. There’s nothing you can do. You heard Mister Lylesburg. What’s below –’
‘– remains below. Yes, I heard.’
‘Midian’s for the Breed. There’s no-one here who needs you –’
‘Just tell me,’ Lori requested. ‘Is Boone here?’
Rachel was already at the top of the stairs, and now began to descend.
‘He is, isn’t he?’ Lori said, forsaking the safety of the open door and crossing the chamber towards Rachel. ‘You people stole the body!’
It made some terrible, macabre sense. These tomb-dwellers, this Nightbreed, keeping Boone from being laid to rest.
‘You did! You stole him!’
Rachel paused and looked back up at Lori, her face barely visible in the blackness of the stairs.
‘We stole nothing,’ she said, her reply without rancour.
‘So where is he?’ Lori demanded.
Rachel turned away, and the shadows took her completely from view.
‘Tell me! Please God!’ Lori yelled down after her. Suddenly she was crying: in a turmoil of rage and fear and frustration. ‘Tell me, please!’
Desperation carried her down the stairs after Rachel, her shouts becoming appeals.
‘Wait … talk to me …’
She took three steps, then a fourth. On the fifth she stopped, or rather her body stopped, the muscles of her legs becoming rigid without her instruction, refusing to carry her another step into the darkness of the crypt. Her skin was suddenly crawling with gooseflesh; her pulse thumping in her ears. No force of will could overrule the animal imperative forbidding her to descend; all she could do was stand rooted to the spot, and stare into the depths. Even her tears had suddenly dried, and the spit gone from her mouth, so she could no more speak than walk. Not that she wanted to call down into the darkness now, for fear the forces there answered her summons. Though she could see nothing of them her gut knew they were more terrible by far than Rachel and her beast-child. Shape-shifting was almost a natural act beside the skills these others had to hand. She felt their perversity as a quality of the air. She breathed it in and out. It scoured her lungs and hurried her heart.
If they had Boone’s corpse as a plaything it was beyond reclamation. She would have to take comfort from the hope that his spirit was somewhere brighter.
Defeated, she took a step backwards. The shadows seemed unwilling to relinquish her, however. She felt them weave themselves into her blouse and hook themselves on her eyelashes, a thousand tiny holds upon her, slowing her retreat.
‘I won’t tell anyone,’ she murmured. ‘Please let me go.’
But the shadows held on, their power a promise of retribution if she defied them.
‘I promise,’ she said. ‘What more can I do?’
And suddenly, they capitulated. She hadn’t realized how strong their claim was until it was withdrawn. She stumbled backwards, falling up the stairs into the light of the antechamber. Turning her back on the crypt she fled for the door, and out into the sun.
It was too bright. She covered her eyes, holding herself upright by gripping the stone portico, so that she could accustom herself to its violence. It took several minutes, standing against the mausoleum, shaking and rigid by turn. Only when she felt able to see through half-closed eyes did she attempt to walk, her route back to the main gate a farrago of cul-de-sacs and missed turnings.
By the time she reached it, however, she’d more or less accustomed herself to the brutality of light and sky. Her body was still not back at her mind’s disposal however. Her legs refused to carry her more than a few paces up the hill to Midian without threatening to drop her to the ground. Her system, overdosed on adrenalin, was cavorting. But at least she was alive. For a short while there on the stairs it had been touch and go. The shadows that had held her by lash and thread could have taken her, she had no doubt of that. Claimed her for the Underworld and snuffed her out. Why had they released her? Perhaps because she’d saved the child; perhaps because she’d sworn silence and they’d trusted her. Neither, however, seemed the motives of monsters; and she had to believe that what lived beneath Midian’s cemetery deserved that name. Who other than monsters made their nests amongst the dead? They might call themselves the Nightbreed, but neither words nor gestures of good faith could disguise their true nature.
She had escaped demons – things of rot and wickedness – and she would have offered up a prayer of thanks for her deliverance if the sky had not been so wide and bright, and so plainly devoid of deities to hear.
PART THREE
DARK AGES
‘… out on the town, with two skins. The leather and the flesh. Three if you count the fore
. All out to be touched tonight, yessir. All ready to be rubbed and nuzzled and loved tonight, yessir.’
Charles Kyd
Hanging by a thread
XI
The Stalking Ground
1
Driving back to Shere Neck, the radio turned up to a deafening level both to confirm her existence and keep it from straying, she became more certain by the mile that promises not withstanding she’d not be able to conceal the experience from Sheryl. How could it not be obvious, in her face, in her voice? Such fears proved groundless. Either she was better at concealment than she’d thought, or Sheryl was more insensitive. Either way, Sheryl asked only the most perfunctory questions about Lori’s return visit to Midian, before moving on to talk of Curtis.
‘I want you to meet him,’ she said, ‘just to be sure I’m not dreaming.’
‘I’m going to go home, Sheryl,’ Lori said.
‘Not tonight, surely. It’s too late.’
She was right; the day was too advanced for Lori to contemplate a homeward trip. Nor could she fabricate a reason for denying Sheryl’s request without offending.
‘You won’t feel like a lemon, I promise,’ Sheryl said. ‘He said he wanted to meet you. I’ve told him all about you. Well … not all. But enough, you know, about how we met.’ She made a forlorn face. ‘Say you’ll come,’ she said.
‘I’ll come.’
‘Fabulous! I’ll call him right now.’
While Sheryl went about making her call Lori took a shower. There was news of the night’s arrangements within two minutes.
‘He’ll meet us at this restaurant he knows, around eight,’ Sheryl hollered. ‘He’ll even find a friend for you –’
‘No, Sheryl –’
‘I think he was just kidding,’ came the reply. Sheryl appeared at the bathroom door. ‘He’s got a funny sense of humour,’ she said. ‘You know, when you’re not sure if someone’s making a joke or not? He’s like that.’
Great, Lori thought, a failed comedian. But there was something undeniably comforting about coming back to Sheryl and this girlish passion. Her endless talk of Curtis – none of which gave Lori more than a street artist’s portrait of the man: all surface and no insight – was the perfect distraction from thoughts of Midian and its revelations. The early evening was so filled with good humour, and the rituals of preparing for a night on the town, that on occasion Lori found herself wondering if all that had happened in the necropolis had not been a hallucination. But she had evidence that confirmed the memory: the cut beside her mouth from that wayward branch. It was little enough sign, but the sharp hurt of it kept her from doubting her sanity. She had been to Midian. She had held the shape-shifter in her arms, and stood on the crypt stairs gazing into a miasma so profound it could have rotted the faith of a saint.