Cabal. Clive Barker

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      The man spat again; not at Boone this time, but at the floor.

      ‘Drink, man …’ he said. ‘Have you got a drink?’

      ‘No.’

      The grin evaporated instantly, and the face began to crumple up as tears overtook him. He turned away from Boone, sobbing, his litany beginning again.

      ‘Why won’t they take me? Why won’t they come for me?’

      ‘Maybe they’ll come later,’ Boone said. ‘When I’ve gone.’

      The man looked back at him.

      ‘What do you know?’ he said.

      Very little was the answer; but Boone kept that fact to himself. There were enough fragments of Midian’s mythology in his head to have him eager for more. Wasn’t it a place where those who had run out of refuges could find a home? And wasn’t that his condition now? He had no source of comfort left. Not Decker, not Lori, not even Death. Even though Midian was just another talisman, he wanted to hear its story recited.

      ‘Tell me,’ he said.

      ‘I asked you what you know,’ the other man replied, catching the flesh beneath his unshaven chin with the hook of his left hand.

      ‘I know it takes away the pain,’ Boone replied.

      ‘And?’

      ‘I know it turns nobody away.’

      ‘Not true,’ came the response.

      ‘No?’

      ‘If it turned nobody away you think I wouldn’t be there already? You think it wouldn’t be the biggest city on earth? Of course it turns people away …’

      The man’s tear-brightened eyes were fixed on Boone. Does he realize I know nothing? Boone wondered. It seemed not. The man talked on, content to debate the secret. Or more particularly, his fear of it.

      ‘I don’t go because I may not be worthy,’ he said. ‘And they don’t forgive that easily. They don’t forgive at all. You know what they do … to those who aren’t worthy?’

      Boone was less interested in Midian’s rites of passage than in the man’s certainty that it existed at all. He didn’t speak of Midian as a lunatic’s Shangri-la, but as a place to be found, and entered, and made peace with.

      ‘Do you know how to get there?’ he asked.

      The man looked away. As he broke eye-contact a surge of panic rose in Boone: fearing that the bastard was going to keep the rest of the story to himself.

      ‘I need to know,’ Boone said.

      The other man looked up again.

      ‘I can see that,’ he said, and there was a twist in his voice that suggested the spectacle of Boone’s despair entertained him.

      ‘It’s north-west of Athabasca,’ the man replied.

      ‘Yes?’

      That’s what I heard.’

      ‘That’s empty country,’ Boone replied. ‘You could wander forever, less you’ve got a map.’

      ‘Midian’s on no map,’ the man said. ‘You look east of Peace River; near Shere Neck; north of Dwyer.’

      There was no taint of doubt in this recitation of directions. He believed in Midian’s existence as much as, perhaps more than, the four walls he was bound by.

      ‘What’s your name?’ Boone asked.

      The question seemed to flummox him. It had been a long time since anyone had cared to ask him his name.

      ‘Narcisse,’ he said finally. ‘You?’

      ‘Aaron Boone. Nobody ever calls me Aaron. Only Boone.’

      ‘Aaron,’ said the other. ‘Where d’you hear about Midian?’

      ‘Same place you did,’ 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.

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