Cabal Read online

Why could his attacker not see for himself, Boone wondered.

  He glanced down at the hand on his belly. It had six fingers, tipped not with nails but with claws, now buried half an inch in his muscle.

  ‘Don’t kill me,’ he said. ‘I’ve come a long way to be here.’

  ‘Hear that, Jackie?’ said Peloquin, thrusting from the ground with its four legs to stand upright in front of Boone. His eyes, now level with Boone’s, were bright blue. His breath was as hot as the blast from an open furnace.

  ‘What kind of beast are you, then?’ he wanted to know. The transformation was all but finished. The man beneath the monster was nothing remarkable. Forty, lean and sallow skinned.

  ‘We should take him below,’ said Jackie. ‘Lylesburg will want to see him.’

  ‘Probably,’ said Peloquin. ‘But I think we’d be wasting his time. This is a Natural, Jackie. I can smell ’em.’

  ‘I’ve spilled blood …’ Boone murmured. ‘Killed eleven people.’

  The blue eyes perused him. There was humour in them.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Peloquin said.

  ‘It’s not up to us,’ Jackie put in. ‘You can’t judge him.’

  ‘I’ve got eyes in my head, haven’t I?’ said Peloquin. ‘I know a clean man when I see one.’ He wagged his finger at Boone. ‘You’re not Nightbreed,’ he said. ‘You’re meat. That’s what you are. Meat for the beast.’

  The humour drained from his expression as he spoke, and hunger replaced it.

  ‘We can’t do this,’ the other creature protested.

  ‘Who’ll know?’ said Peloquin. ‘Who’ll ever know?’

  ‘We’re breaking the law.’

  Peloquin seemed indifferent to that. He bared his teeth, dark smoke oozing from the gaps and rising up over his face. Boone knew what was coming next. The man was breathing out what he’d moments ago inhaled: his lizard self. The proportions of his head were already altering subtly, as though his skull were dismantling and re-organizing himself beneath the hood of his flesh.

  ‘You can’t kill me!’ he said. ‘I belong with you.’

  Was there a denial out of the smoke in front of him? If so it was lost in translation. There was to be no further debate. The beast intended to eat him –

  He felt a sharp pain in his belly, and glanced down to see the clawed hand detach itself from his flesh. The hold at his neck slipped, and the creature behind him said:

  ‘Go.’

  He needed no persuasion. Before Peloquin could complete his reconstruction Boone slid from Jackie’s embrace and ran. Any sense of direction he might have had was forfeited in the desperation of the moment, a desperation fuelled by a roar of fury from the hungry beast, and the sound – almost instant, it seemed – of pursuit.

  The necropolis was a maze. He ran blindly, ducking to right and left wherever an opening offered itself, but he didn’t need to look over his shoulder to know that the devourer was closing on him. He heard its accusation in his head as he ran:

  You’re not Nightbreed. You’re meat. Meat for the beast.

  The words were an agony profounder than the ache in his legs or his lungs. Even here, amongst the monsters of Midian he did not belong. And if not here, where? He was running, as prey had always run when the hungry were on their heels, but it was a race he couldn’t win.

  He stopped. He turned.

  Peloquin was five or six yards behind him, his body still human, naked and vulnerable, but the head entirely bestial, the mouth wide and ringed with teeth like thorns. He too stopped running, perhaps expecting Boone to draw a weapon. When none was forthcoming, he raised his arms towards his victim. Behind him, Jackie stumbled into view, and Boone had his first glimpse of the man. Or was it men? There were two faces on his lumpen head, the features of both utterly distorted; eyes dislodged so they looked everywhere but ahead, mouths collided into a single gash, noses slits without bones. It was the face of a freak show foetus.

  Jackie tried one last appeal, but Peloquin’s outstretched arms were already transforming from fingertip to elbow, their delicacy giving way to formidable power.

  Before the muscle was fixed he came at Boone, leaping to bring his victim down. Boone fell before him. It was too late now to regret his passivity. He felt the claws tear at his jacket to bare the good flesh of his chest. Peloquin raised his head and grinned, an expression this mouth was not made for; then he bit. The teeth were not long, but many. They hurt less than Boone had expected until Peloquin pulled back, tearing away a mouthful of muscle, taking skin and nipple with it.

  The pain shocked Boone from resignation; he began to thrash beneath Peloquin’s weight. But the beast spat the morsel from its maw and came back for better, exhaling the smell of blood in its prey’s face. There was reason for the exhalation; on its next breath it would suck Boone’s heart and lungs from his chest. He cried out for help, and it came. Before the fatal breath could be drawn Jackie seized hold of Peloquin and dragged him from his sustenance. Boone felt the weight of the creature lifted, and through the blur of agony saw his champion wrestling with Peloquin, their thrashing limbs intertwined. He didn’t wait to cheer the victor. Pressing his palm to the wound on his chest, he got to his feet.

  There was no safety for him here; Peloquin was surely not the only occupant with a taste for human meat. He could feel others watching him as he staggered through the necropolis, waiting for him to falter and fall so they could take him with impunity.

  Yet his system, traumatized as it was, didn’t fail. There was a vigour in his muscles he’d not felt since he’d done violence to himself, a thought that repulsed him now as it had never before. Even the wound, throbbing beneath his hand, had its life, and was celebrating it. The pain had gone, replaced not by numbness but by a sensitivity that was almost erotic, tempting Boone to reach into his chest and stroke his heart. Entertained by such nonsenses he let instinct guide his feet and it brought him to the double gates. The latch defeated his blood-slicked hands so he climbed, scaling the gates with an ease that brought laughter to his throat. Then he was off up towards Midian, running not for fear of pursuit but for the pleasure his limbs took in usage, and his senses in speed.

  VI

  Feet of Clay

  The town was indeed empty, as he’d known it must be. Though the houses had seemed in good shape at half a mile’s distance, closer scrutiny showed them to be much the worse for being left unoccupied for the cycle of seasons. Though the feeling of well being still suffused him, he feared that loss of blood would undo him in time. He needed something to bind his wound, however primitive. In search of a length of curtaining, or a piece of forsaken bedlinen, he opened the door of one of the houses and plunged into the darkness within.

  He hadn’t been aware, until he was inside, how strangely attenuated his senses had become. His eyes pierced the gloom readily, discovering the pitiful debris the sometime tenants had left behind, all dusted by the dry earth years of prairie had borne in through broken window and the ill-fitting door. There was cloth to be found; a length of damp stained linen that he tore between teeth and right hand into strips while keeping his left upon the wound.

  He was in that process when he heard the creak of boards on the stoop. He let the bandaging drop from his teeth. The door stood open. On the threshold a silhouetted man, whose name Boone knew though the face was all darkness. It was Decker’s cologne he smelt; Decker’s heartbeat he heard; Decker’s sweat he tasted on the air between them.

  ‘So,’ said the doctor. ‘Here you are.’

  There were forces mustering in the starlit street. With ears preternaturally sharp Boone caught the sound of nervous whispers, and of wind passed by churning bowels, and of weapons cocked ready to bring the lunatic down should he try to slip them.

  ‘How did you find me?’ he said.

  ‘Narcisse, was it?’ Decker said. ‘Your friend at the hospital?’

  ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. He died fighting.’

  Decker to
ok a step into the house.

  ‘You’re hurt,’ he said. ‘What did you do to yourself?’

  Something prevented Boone from replying. Was it that the mysteries of Midian were so bizarre he’d not be believed? Or that their nature was not Decker’s business? Not the latter surely. Decker’s commitment to comprehending the monstrous could not be in doubt. Who better then to share the revelation with? Yet he hesitated.

  ‘Tell me,’ Decker said again. ‘How did you get the wound?’

  ‘Later,’ said Boone.

  ‘There’ll be no later. I think you know that.’

  ‘I’ll survive,’ Boone said. ‘This isn’t as bad as it looks. At least it doesn’t feel bad.’

  ‘I don’t mean the wound. I mean the police. They’re waiting for you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And you’re not going to come quietly, are you?’

  Boone was no longer sure. Decker’s voice reminded him so much of being safe, he almost believed it would be possible again, if the doctor wanted to make it so.

  But there was no talk of safety from Decker now. Only of death.

  ‘You’re a multiple murderer, Boone. Desperate. Dangerous. It was tough persuading them to let me near you.’

  ‘I’m glad you did.’

  ‘I’m glad too,’ Decker replied. ‘I wanted a chance to say goodbye.’

  ‘Why does it have to be this way?’

  ‘You know why.’

  He didn’t; not really. What he did know, more and more certainly, was that Peloquin had told the truth.

  You’re not Nightbreed, he’d said.

  Nor was he; he was innocent.

  ‘I killed nobody,’ he murmured.

  ‘I know that,’ Decker replied.

  ‘That’s why I couldn’t remember any of the rooms. I was never there.’

  ‘But you remember now,’ Decker said.

  ‘Only because – ’ Boone stopped, and stared at the man in the charcoal suit. ‘ – because you showed me.’

  ‘Taught you,’ Decker corrected him.

  Boone kept staring, waiting for an explanation that wasn’t the one in his head. It couldn’t be Decker. Decker was Reason, Decker was Calm.

  ‘There are two children dead in Westlock tonight,’ the doctor was saying. ‘They’re blaming you.’

  ‘I’ve never been to Westlock,’ Boone protested.

  ‘But I have,’ Decker replied. ‘I made sure they saw the pictures; the men out there. Child murderers are the worst. It’d be better you died here than be turned over to them.’

  ‘You?’ Boone said. ‘You did it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘And more.’

  ‘Why?’

  Decker pondered on this a moment.

  ‘Because I like it,’ he said flatly.

  He still looked so sane, in his well cut suit. Even his face, which Boone could see clearly now, bore no visible clue to the lunacy beneath. Who would have doubted, seeing the bloodied man and the clean, which was the lunatic and which his healer? But appearances deceived. It was only the monster, the child of Midian, who actually altered its flesh to parade its true self. The rest hid behind their calm, and plotted the deaths of children.

  Decker drew a gun from the inside of his jacket.

  ‘They armed me,’ he said. ‘In case you lost control.’

  His hand trembled, but at such a distance he could scarcely miss. In moments it would all be over. The bullet would fly and he’d be dead, with so many mysteries unsolved. The wound; Midian; Decker. So many questions that he’d never answer.

  There was no other moment but now. Flinging the cloth he still held at Decker, he threw himself aside behind it. Decker fired, the shot filling the room with sound and light. By the time the cloth hit the ground Boone was at the door. As he came within a yard of it the gun’s light came again. And an instant after, the sound. And with the sound a blow to Boone’s back that threw him forward, out through the door and onto the stoop.

  Decker’s shout came with him.

  ‘He’s armed!’

  Boone heard the shadows prepare to bring him down. He raised his arms in sign of surrender; opened his mouth to protest his innocence.

  The men gathered behind their cars saw only his bloodied hands; guilt enough. They fired.

  Boone heard the bullets coming his way – two from the left, three from the right, and one from straight ahead, aimed at his heart. He had time to wonder at how slow they were, and how musical. Then they struck him: upper thigh, groin, spleen, shoulder, cheek and heart. He stood upright for several seconds; then somebody fired again, and nervous trigger fingers unleashed a second volley. Two of these shots went wide. The rest hit home: abdomen, knee, two to the chest, one to the temple. This time he fell.

  As he hit the ground he felt the wound Peloquin had given him convulse like a second heart, its presence curiously comforting in his dwindling moments.

  Somewhere nearby he heard Decker’s voice, and his footsteps approaching as he emerged from the house to peruse the body.

  ‘Got the bastard,’ somebody said.

  ‘He’s dead,’ Decker said.

  ‘No I’m not,’ Boone thought.

  Then thought no more.

  PART TWO

  DEATH’S A BITCH

  ‘The miraculous too is born, has its season, and dies …’

  Carmel Sands

  Orthodoxies

  VII

  Rough Roads

  1

  Knowing Boone was gone from her was bad enough, but what came after was so much worse. First, of course, there’d been that telephone call. She’d met Philip Decker only once, and didn’t recognize his voice until he identified himself.

  ‘I’ve got some bad news I’m afraid.’

  ‘You’ve found Boone.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s hurt?’

  There was a pause. She knew before the silence was broken what came next.

  ‘I’m afraid he’s dead, Lori.’

  There it was, the news she’d half known was coming, because she’d been too happy, and it couldn’t last. Boone had changed her life out of all recognition. His death would do the same.

  She thanked the doctor for the kindness of telling her himself, rather than leaving the duty to the police. Then she put the phone down, and waited to believe it.

  There were those amongst her peers who said she’d never have been courted by a man like Boone if he’d been sane, meaning not that his illness made him choose blindly but that a face like his, which inspired such fawning in those susceptible to faces, would have been in the company of like beauty had the mind behind it not been unbalanced. These remarks bit deep, because in her heart of hearts she thought them true. Boone had little by way of possessions, but his face was his glory, demanding a devotion to its study that embarrassed and discomfited him. It gave him no pleasure to be stared at. Indeed Lori had more than once feared he’d scar himself in the hope of spoiling whatever drew attention to him, an urge rehearsed in his total lack of interest in his appearance. She’d known him go days without showering, weeks without shaving, half a year without a hair cut. It did little to dissuade the devotees. He haunted them because he in his turn was haunted; simple as that.

  She didn’t waste time trying to persuade her friends of the fact. Indeed she kept conversation about him to the minimum, particularly when talk turned to sex. She’d slept with Boone three times only, each occasion a disaster. She knew what the gossips would make of that. But his tender, eager way with her suggested his overtures were more than dutiful. He simply couldn’t carry them through, which fact made him rage, and fall into such depression she’d come to hold herself back, cooling their exchanges so as not to invite further failure.

  She dreamt of him often though; scenarios that were unequivocally sexual. No symbolism here. Just she and Boone in bare rooms, fucking. Sometimes there were people beating on the doors to get in and see, but they ne
ver did. He belonged to her completely; in all his beauty and his wretchedness.

  But only in dreams. Now more than ever, only in dreams.

  Their story together was over. There’d be no more dark days, when his conversation was a circle of defeat, no moments of sudden sunshine because she’d chanced upon some phrase that gave him hope. She’d not been unprepared for an abrupt end. But nothing like this. Not Boone unmasked as a killer and shot down in a town she’d never heard of. This was the wrong ending.

  But bad as it was, there was worse to follow.

  After the telephone call there’d been the inevitable cross questioning by the police: had she ever suspected him of criminal activities? had he ever been violent in his dealings with her? She told them a dozen times he’d never touched her except in love, and then only with coaxing. They seemed to find an unspoken confirmation in her account of his tentativeness, exchanging knowing looks as she made a blushing account of their lovemaking. When they’d finished with their questions they asked her if she would identify the body. She agreed to the duty. Though she’d been warned it would be unpleasant, she wanted a goodbye.

  It was then that the times, which had got strange of late, got stranger still.

  Boone’s body had disappeared.

  At first nobody would tell her why the identification process was being delayed; she was fobbed off with excuses that didn’t quite ring true. Finally, however, they had no option but to tell her the truth. The corpse, which had been left in the police mortuary overnight, had simply vanished. Nobody knew how it had been stolen – the mortuary had been locked up, and there was no sign of forced entry – or indeed why. A search was under way but to judge by the harassed faces that delivered this news there didn’t seem to be much hope held out of finding the body snatchers. The inquest on Aaron Boone would have to proceed without a corpse.

  2

  That he might never now be laid to rest tormented her. The thought of his body as some pervert’s plaything, or worse some terrible icon, haunted her night and day. She shocked herself with her power to imagine what uses his poor flesh might be put to, her mind set on a downward spiral of morbidity which made her fearful – for the first time in her life – of her own mental processes.