Cabal. Clive Barker

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      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. СКАЧАТЬ