Cabal

  Though the unholy world beneath the cemetery was as far from Sheryl and her whirlwind romances as night from day, it was no less real for that. In time she would have to address that reality; find a place for it, though it defied all sense, all logic. For now, she would keep it in mind, with the cut as its guardian, and enjoy the pleasures of the evening ahead.

  2

  ‘It’s a joke,’ said Sheryl, as they stood outside the Hudson Bay Sunset. ‘Didn’t I tell you he had this weird sense of humour?’

  The restaurant he’d named had been completely gutted by fire, several weeks ago to judge by the state of the timbers.

  ‘Are you sure you got the right address?’ Lori asked.

  Sheryl laughed.

  ‘I tell you it’s one of his jokes,’ she said.

  ‘So we’ve laughed,’ said Lori. ‘When do we get to eat?’

  ‘He’s probably watching us,’ Sheryl said, her good humour slightly forced.

  Lori looked around for some sign of the voyeur. Though there was nothing to fear on the streets of a town like this, even on a Saturday night, the neighbourhood was far from welcoming. Every other shop along the block was closed up – several of them permanently – and the sidewalks completely deserted in both directions. It was no place they wanted to linger.

  ‘I don’t see him,’ she said.

  ‘Neither do I.’

  ‘So what do we do now?’ Lori asked, doing her best to keep any trace of irritation from her voice. If this was Curtis the Beau’s idea of a good time Sheryl’s taste had to be in doubt; but then who was she to judge, who’d loved and lost a psycho in her time?

  ‘He’s got to be here somewhere,’ Sheryl said hopefully. ‘Curtis?’ she called out, pushing open the heat-blistered door.

  ‘Why don’t we wait for him out here, Sheryl?’

  ‘He’s probably inside.’

  ‘The place could be dangerous.’

  Her appeal was ignored.

  ‘Sheryl.’

  ‘I hear you. I’m OK.’ She was already immersed in the darkness of the interior. The smell of burned wood and fabric stung Lori’s nostrils.

  ‘Curtis?’ she heard Sheryl call.

  A car went past, its engine badly tuned. The passenger, a youth, prematurely balding, leaned out of the window.

  ‘Need any help?’

  ‘No thanks,’ Lori yelled back, not certain if the question was small town courtesy or a come-on. Probably the latter, she decided, as the car picked up speed and disappeared; people were the same all over. Her mood, which had improved by leaps and bounds since she’d been back in Sheryl’s company, was rapidly souring. She didn’t like being on this empty street, with what little was left of the day sliding towards extinction. The night, which had always been a place of promise, belonged too much to the Breed, who had taken its name for themselves. And why not? All darkness was one darkness in the end. Of heart or heavens; one darkness. Even now, in Midian, they’d be dragging back the doors of the mausoleums, knowing the starlight would not wither them. She shuddered at the thought.

  Off down one of the streets she heard the car engine rev up, and roar, then a squeal of brakes. Were the Good Samaritans coming round for a second look?

  ‘Sheryl?’ she called out. ‘Where are you?’

  The joke, if joke it had been and not Sheryl’s error – had long since lost what questionable humour it had. She wanted to get back into the car and drive, back to the hotel if necessary.

  ‘Sheryl? Are you there?’

  There was laughter from the interior of the building; Sheryl’s gurgling laughter. Suspecting now her compliance in this fiasco, Lori stepped through the door in search of the tricksters.

  The laughter came again, then broke off as Sheryl said:

  ‘Curtis,’ in a tone of mock indignation that decayed into further inane laughter. So the great lover was here. Lori half contemplated returning to the street, getting back into the car and leaving them to their damn fool games. But the thought of the evening alone in the hotel room, listening to more partying, spurred her on through an assault course of burnt furniture.

  Had it not been for the brightness of the floor tiles, throwing the street light up towards the cage of ceiling beams, she might not have risked advancing far. But ahead she could dimly see the archways through which Sheryl’s laughter had floated. She made her way towards it. All sound had ceased. They were watching her every tentative step. She felt their scrutiny.

  ‘Come on, guys,’ she said. ‘Joke’s over. I’m hungry.’

  There was no reply. Behind her, on the street, she heard the Samaritans yelling. Retreat was not advisable. She advanced, stepping through the archway.

  Her first thought was: he only told half a lie; this was a restaurant. The exploration had taken her into a kitchen, where probably the fire had started. It too was tiled in white, surfaces smoke-stained but still bright enough to lend the whole interior, which was large, an odd luminescence. She stood in the doorway, and scanned the room. The largest of the cookers was placed in the centre, racks of shining utensils still hanging above it, truncating her view. The jokers had to be in hiding on the other side of the range; it was the only refuge the room offered.

  Despite her anxieties, she felt an echo here of remembered games of hide-and-seek. The first game, because the simplest. How she’d loved to be terrorized by her father; chased and caught. If only he were here in hiding now, she found herself thinking, waiting to embrace her. But cancer had caught him long since, by the throat.

  ‘Sheryl?’ she said. ‘I give up. Where are you?’

  Even as she spoke her advance brought her within sight of one of the players, and the game ended.

  Sheryl was not in hiding, unless death was hiding. She was crouched against the cooker, the darkness around her too wet for shadow, her head thrown back, her face slashed open.

  ‘Jesus God.’

  Behind Lori, a sound. Somebody coming to find her. Too late to hide. She’d be caught. And not by loving arms; not by her father, playing the monster. This was the monster itself.

  She turned to see its face before it took her, but running at her was a sewing-box doll: zipper for mouth, buttons for eyes, all sewn on white linen and tied around the monster’s face so tightly his saliva darkened a patch around his mouth. She was denied the face but not the teeth. He held them above his head, gleaming knives, their blades fine as grass-stalks, sweeping down to stab out her eyes. She threw herself out of their reach but he was after her in an instant, the mouth behind the zipper calling her name.

  ‘Better get it over with, Lori.’

  The blades were coming at her again, but she was quicker. The Mask didn’t seem too hurried; he closed on her with a steady step, his confidence obscene.

  ‘Sheryl had the right idea,’ he said. ‘She just stood there and let it happen.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Later maybe.’

  He ran one of the blades along the row of hanging pots, striking squeals and sparks.

  ‘Later, when you’re a little colder.’

  He laughed, the zipper gaping.

  ‘There’s something to look forward to.’

  She let him talk, while trying to get some sense of what escape routes lay open to her. The news was not good. The fire door was blocked by burnt timbers; her only exit was the arch through which she’d entered, and the Mask stood between her and it, sharpening his teeth on each other.

  He started towards her again. No jibes from him now; the time for talk was over. As he closed on her she thought of Midian. Surely she’d not survived its terrors to be hacked to death by some lone psycho?

  Fuck him!

  As the knives slid towards her she snatched a pot from the rack above the range and brought it up to meet his face. It connected squarely. Her strength shocked her. The Mask reeled, dropping one of his blades. There was no sound from behind the linen, however. He merely transferred the remaining blade from right hand to left, shook his head as if
to stop it singing, and came at her again, at a rush. She barely had time to raise the pan in defence. The blade slid down it and met her hand. For a moment there was no pain, nor even blood. Then both came in profusion, the pan falling from her hand at her feet. Now he made a sound, a cooing sound, the tilt of his head suggesting that it was the blood he was staring at, as it ran from the wound he’d fathered.

  She looked towards the door, calculating the time it would take to get there against his speed of pursuit. But before she could act the Mask began his last advance. The knife was not raised. Nor was his voice, when he spoke.

  ‘Lori,’ he said. ‘We must talk, you and me.’

  ‘Keep the fuck away.’

  To her amazement he obeyed the instruction. She seized what little time this offered to claim his other blade from the floor. She was less competent with her unwounded hand, but he was a large target. She could do him damage; preferably through the heart.

  That’s what I killed Sheryl with,’ he said. ‘I’d put it down if I were you.’

  The steel was sticky in her palm.

  ‘Yes, that slit little Sheryl, ear to ear,’ he went on. ‘And now you’ve got your prints all over it. You should have worn gloves, like me.’

  The thought of what the blade had done appalled her, but she wasn’t about to drop it, and stand unarmed.

  ‘Of course, you could always blame Boone,’ the Mask was saying. ‘Tell the police he did it.’

  ‘How do you know about Boone?’ she said. Hadn’t Sheryl sworn she’d told her paramour nothing?

  ‘You know where he is?’ the Mask asked.

  ‘He’s dead,’ she replied.

  The sewing-box face denied it with a shake.

  ‘No, I’m afraid not. He got up and walked. God knows how. But he got up and walked. Can you imagine that? The man was pumped full of bullets. You saw the blood he shed –’

  He was watching us all the time, she thought. He followed us to Midian, that first day. But why? That was what she couldn’t make sense of; why?

  ‘– all that blood, all those bullets, and still he wouldn’t lie down dead.’

  ‘Somebody stole the body,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ came the reply, ‘that’s not the way it was.’

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘Good question. No reason why you shouldn’t have an answer.’

  His hand went up to his face and he pulled off the mask. Beneath was Decker, sweaty and smiling.

  ‘I wish I’d brought my camera,’ he said. ‘The look on your face.’

  She couldn’t wipe it off, though she hated to amuse him. The shock made her gape like a fish. Decker was Curtis, Sheryl’s Mister Right.

  ‘Why?’ she demanded.

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why did you kill Sheryl?’

  ‘For the same reason I killed all the others,’ he said lightly, as though the question hadn’t much vexed him. Then, deadly serious: ‘For the fun of it, of course. For the pleasure. We used to talk a lot about why, Boone and me. Digging deep, you know; trying to understand. But when it really comes down to it, I do it because I like it.’

  ‘Boone was innocent.’

  ‘Is innocent, wherever he’s hiding. Which is a problem, because he knows the real facts, and one of these days he might find someone to convince of the truth.’

  ‘So you want to stop him?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you? All the trouble I went to so he could die a guilty man. I even put a bullet in him myself and he still gets up and walks away.’

  ‘They told me he was dead. They were certain.’

  ‘The mortuary was unlocked from the inside. Did they tell you that? His fingerprints were on the handle; his footprints on the floor: did they tell you that? No, of course not. But I’m telling you. I know. Boone is alive. And your death is going to bring him out of hiding, I’ll bet on it. He’ll have to show himself.’

  Slowly, as he spoke, he was raising the knife.

  ‘If it’s only to mourn.’

  Suddenly, he was at her. She put the blade that had killed Sheryl between her and his approach. It slowed him, but he didn’t stop coming.

  ‘Could you really do it?’ he said to her. ‘I don’t think so. And I speak from experience. People are squeamish even when their lives are at stake. And that knife, of course, it’s already been blunted on poor Sheryl. You’ll have to really dig to make some impression on me.’

  He spoke almost playfully, still advancing.

  ‘I’d like to see you try though,’ he said. ‘I really would. Like to see you try.’

  Out of the corner of her eye she was aware that she’d come abreast of piled plates mere inches from her elbow. Might they offer her time enough to get to the door, she wondered? In knife to knife combat with this maniac she’d lose, no doubt of it. But she might yet outwit him.

  ‘Come on. Try me. Kill me if you can. For Boone. For poor, mad Boone –’

  As the words became laughter she threw her wounded hand out towards the plates, hooked them round, and flung them onto the floor in front of Decker. A second pile followed, and a third, china shards flying up in all directions. He took a step back, his hands going up to his face to protect himself, and she took the chance while she had it, bolting for the archway. She got through it and into the restaurant itself before she heard his pursuit. By that time she had sufficient lead to reach the outer door and fling herself through it, onto the street. Once on the sidewalk she immediately turned and faced the door through which he would come. But he had no intention of following her into the light.

  ‘Clever bitch,’ he said, from the darkness. ‘I’ll get you. When I’ve got Boone I’ll come back for you; you just count the breaths till then.’

  Eyes still fixed on the door she backed off down the sidewalk towards the car. Only now did she realize that she still carried the murder weapon, her grip so strong she felt almost glued to it. She had no choice but to take it with her, and give it, and her evidence, to the police. Back to the car, she opened the door and got in, only looking away from the burnt out building when the locks were on. Then she threw the knife onto the floor in front of the passenger seat, started the engine, and drove.

  3

  The choice before her came down to this: the police, or Midian. A night of interrogation or a return to the necropolis. If she chose the former she would not be able to warn Boone of Decker’s pursuit. But then suppose Decker had been lying, and Boone had not survived the bullets? She’d not only be fleeing from the scene of a murder but putting herself within reach of the Nightbreed, and uselessly.

  Yesterday she would have chosen to go to the law. She would have trusted that its procedures would make all these mysteries come clear; that they would believe her story, and bring Decker to justice. But yesterday she’d thought beasts were beasts, and children, children; she’d thought that only the dead lived in the earth, and that they were peaceful there. She’d thought doctors healed; and that when the madman’s mask was raised she would say: ‘But of course, that’s a madman’s face.’

  All wrong; all so wrong. Yesterday’s assumptions were gone to the wind. Anything might be true.

  Boone might be alive.

  She drove to Midian.

  XII

  Above and Below

  1

  Visions came to meet her down the highway, brought on by the after-effects of shock, and the loss of blood from her bound but wounded hand. They began like snow blown towards the windscreen, flakes of brightness that defied the glass and flew past her, whining as they went. As her dreamy state worsened, she seemed to see faces flying at her, and commas of life like foetuses, which whispered as they tumbled past. The spectacle did not distress her; quite the reverse. It seemed to confirm a scenario her hallucinating mind had created: that she, like Boone, was living a charmed life. Nothing could harm her, not tonight. Though her cut hand was now so numb it could no longer grip the wheel, leaving her to navigate an unlit road one-handed and at speed, fat
e had not let her survive Decker’s attack only to kill her on the highway.

  There was a reunion in the air. That was why the visions came, racing into the headlamps, and skipping over the car to burst above her in showers of white lights. They were welcoming her.

  To Midian.

  2

  Once she looked in the mirror and thought she glimpsed a car behind her, its lights turned off. But when she looked again it had gone. Perhaps it had never been there. Ahead lay the town, its houses blinded by her headlights. She drove down the main street, all the way to the graveyard gates.

  The mingled intoxications of blood loss and exhaustion had dulled all fear of this place. If she could survive the malice of the living she could surely survive the dead, or their companions. And Boone was here; that hope had hardened into certainty as she drove. Boone was here, and finally she’d be able to take him into her arms.

  She stumbled out of the car, and almost fell flat on her face.

  ‘Get up …’ she told herself.

  The lights were still coming at her, though she was no longer moving, but now all trace of detail in them had vanished. There was only the brightness, its ferocity threatening to wash the whole world away. Knowing total collapse was imminent she crossed to the gates, calling Boone’s name. She had an answer immediately, though not the one she sought.