Cabal

ROUGH ROADS

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 it 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 never 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.

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 downward spiral of morbidity which made her fearful for the first time in her life of her own mental processes.

Boone had been a mystery in life, his affection miracle which gave her a sense of herself she’d never had. Now, in death, that mystery deepened. It seemed she’d not known him at all, even in those moments I traumatic lucidity between them, when he’d been ready to break his skull open till she coaxed the distress from him; even then he’d been hiding a secret life of murder from her.

It scarcely seemed possible. When she pictured him now, making idiot faces at her, or weeping in her lap, the thought that she’d never known him properly was like a physical hurt. Somehow, she had to heal that hurt, or be prepared to bear the wound of his betrayal for ever. She had to know why his other life had taken him off to the back of beyond. Maybe the best solution was to go looking where he’d been found: in Midian. Perhaps there she’d find the mystery answered.

The police had instructed her not to leave Calgary until after the inquest, but she was a creature of impulse like her mother. She’d woken at three in the morning with the idea of going to Midian. She was packing by five, and was heading north on Highway 2 an hour after dawn.

Things went well at first. It was good to be away from the office where she’d be missed, but what the hell? and the apartment, with all its reminders of her time with Boone. She wasn’t quite driving blind, but as near as damn it; no map she’d been able to lay hands on marked any town called Midian. She’d heard mention of other towns, however, in exchanges between the police. Shere Neck was one, she remembered and that was marked on the maps. She made that her target.

She knew little or nothing about the landscape she was crossing. Her family had come from Toronto the civilized east as her mother had called it to the day she died, resenting her husband for the move that had taken them into the hinterland. The prejudice had rubbed off. The sight of wheat fields stretching as far as the eye could see had never done much for Lori’s imagination and nothing she saw as she drove changed her mind. The grain was being left to grow, its planters and reapers about other business. The sheer monotony of it wearied her more than she’d anticipated. She broke her journey at McLennan, an hour’s drive short of Peace River, and slept a full night undisturbed on a motel bed, to be up good and early the next morning, and off again. She’d make Shere Neck by noon, she estimated.

Things didn’t quite work out that way, however. Somewhere east of Peace River she lost her bearings, and had to drive forty miles in what she suspected was the wrong direction till she found a gas station, and someone to help her on her way.

There were twin boys playing with plastic armies in the dirt of the station office step. Their father, whose blond hair they shared, ground a cigarette out amongst the battalions and crossed to the car.

“What can I get you?”

“Gas, please. And some information?”

“It’ll cost you,” he said, not smiling.

“I’m looking for a town called Shere Neck. Do you know it?”

The war games had escalated behind him. He turned on the children.

“Will you shut up?” he said.

The boys threw each other sideways glances, and fell silent, until he turned back to Lori. Too many years working outdoors in the summer sun had aged him prematurely.

“What do you want Shere Neck for?” he said.

“I’m trying… to track somebody.”

“That so?” he replied, plainly intrigued. He offered her a grin designed for better teeth. “Anyone I know?” he said. “We don’t get too many strangers through here.”

There was no harm in asking, she supposed. She reached back into the car and fetched a photograph from her bag.

“You didn’t ever see this man I suppose?”

Armageddon was looming at the step. Before looking at Boone’s photograph he turned on the children.

“I told you to shut the fuck up!” he said, then turned back to study the picture. His response was immediate. “You know who this guy is?”

Lori hesitated. The raw face before her was scowling. It was too late to claim ignorance, however.

“Yes,” she said, trying not to sound offensive. “I know who it is.”

“And you know what he did?” The man’s lip curled as he spoke. “There were pictures of him. I saw them.” Again, he turned on the children. “Will you shut up?”

“It wasn’t me,” one of the pair protested.

“I don’t give a fuck who it was!” came the reply.

He moved towards them, arm raised. They were out from his shadow in seconds, forsaking the armies in fear of him. His rage at the children and his disgust at the picture were welded into one revulsion now.

“A fucking animal,” he said, turning to Lori. “That’s what he was. A fucking animal.”

He thrust the tainted photograph back at her. “Damn good thing they took him out. What you wanna do, go bless the spot?”

She claimed the photograph from his oily fingers without replying, but he read her expression well enough. Unbowed he continued his tirade.

“Man like that should be put down like a dog, lady. Like a fucking dog.”

She retreated before his vehemence, her hands trembling so much she could barely open the car door.

“Don’t you want no gas?” he suddenly said.

“Go to hell,” she replied.

He looked bewildered.

“What’s your problem?” he spat back.

She turned the ignition, muttering a prayer that the car would not play dead. She was in luck. Driving away at speed she glanced in her mirror to see the man shouting after her through the dust she’d kicked up.

She didn’t know where his anger had come from, but she knew where it would go: to the children. No use to fret about it. The world was full of brutal fathers and tyrannical mothers; and come to that, cruel and uncaring children. It was the way of things. She couldn’t police the species.

Relief at her escape kept any other response at bay for ten minutes, but then it ran out, and a trembling overtook her, so violent she had to stop at the first sign of civilization and find somewhere to calm herself down. There was a small diner amongst the dozen or so stores, where she ordered coffee and a sugar fix of pie, then retired to the rest room to splash some cold water on her flushed cheeks. Solitude, albeit snatched, was the only cue her tears needed. Staring at her blotchy, agitated features in the cracked mirror she began to sob so insistently, nothing not even the entrance of another customer could shame her into stopping.

The newcomer didn’t do as Lori would have done in such circumstances, and withdraw. Instead, catching Lori’s eye in the mirror, she said:

“What is it? Men or money?”

Lori wiped the tears away with her fingers.

“I’m sorry?” she said.

“When I cry,” the girl said, putting a comb through her hennaed hair, “it’s only ever men or money.”

“Oh.” The girl’s unabashed curiosity helped hold fresh tears at bay. “A man,” Lori said.

“Leave you, did he?”

“Not exactly.”

“Jesus,” said the girl. “Did he come back? That’s even worse.”

The remark earned a tiny smile from Lori.

“It’s usually the ones you don’t want, right?” the girl went on. “You tell ‘em to piss off, they just keep coming back, like dogs.”

Mention of dogs reminded Lori of the scene at the garage, and she felt tears mustering again.

“Oh shut up, Sheryl,” the newcomer chided herself, “you’re making it worse.”

“No,” said Lori. “No really. I need to talk.”

Sheryl smiled.

“As badly as I need coffee?”

Sheryl Margaret Clark was her name, and she could have coaxed gossip from angels. By their second hour of conversation and their fifth coffee, Lori had told her the whole sorry story, from her first meeting with Boone to the moment she and Sheryl had exchanged looks in the mirror. Sheryl herself had a story to tell more comedy than tragedy—about her lover’s passion for cars and hers for his brother, which had ended in hard words and parting. She was on the road to clear her head.

“I’ve not done this since I was a kid,” she said, “just going where the fancy takes me. I’ve forgotten how good it feels. Maybe we could go on together. To Shere Neck. I’ve always wanted to see the place.”

“Is that right?”

Sheryl laughed.

“No. But it’s as good a destination as any. All directions being equal to the fancy-free.”

WHERE HE FELL

So they travelled on together, having taken directions from the owner of the diner, who claimed he had a better than vague idea of Midian’s whereabouts. The instructions were good. Their route took them through Shere Neck, which was bigger than Lori had expected, and on down an unmarked road that in theory led to Midian.

“Why d’you wanna go there?” the diner owner had wanted to know. “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s empty.”

“I’m writing an article on the gold rush,” Sheryl had replied, an enthusiastic liar. “She’s sightseeing.”

“Some sight,” came the response.

The remark had been made ironically, but it was truer than its speaker had known. It was late afternoon, the light golden on the gravel road, when the town came into view, and until they were in the streets themselves they were certain this could not be the right place, because what ghost town ever looked so welcoming? Once out of the sun, however, that impression changed. There was something forlornly romantic about the deserted houses, but finally the sight was dispiriting and not a little eerie. Seeing the place, Lori’s first thought was:

“Why would Boone come here?”

Her second:

“He didn’t come of his own volition. He was chased. It was an accident that he was here at all.”

They parked the car in the middle of the main street which was, give or take an alleyway, the only street.

“No need to lock it,” Sheryl said. “Ain’t anybody coming to steal it.”

Now that they were here, Lori was gladder than ever of Sheryl’s company. Her verve and good humour were an affront to this sombre place; they kept whatever haunted it at bay.

Ghosts could be laid with laughter; misery was made of sterner stuff. For the first time since Decker’s telephone call she felt something approximating bereavement. It was so easy to imagine Boone here alone and confused, knowing his pursuers were closing on him. It was easier still to find the place where they’d shot him down. The holes the stray bullets had made were ringed with chalk marks; smears and splashes of blood had soaked into the planks of the porch. She stood off from the spot for several minutes, unable to approach it yet equally unable to retreat. Sheryl had tactfully taken herself off exploring: there was nobody to break the hypnotic hold the sight of his deathbed had upon her.

She would miss him forever. Yet there were no tears. Perhaps she’d sobbed them out back in the diner washroom. What she felt instead, fuelling her loss, was the mystery of how a man she’d known and loved or loved and thought she’d known—could have died here for crimes she’d never have suspected him of. Perhaps it was the anger she felt towards him that prevented tears, knowing that despite his professions of love he’d hidden so much from her, and was now beyond the reach of her demands for explanation. Could he not at least have left a sign? She found herself staring at the blood stains wondering if eyes more acute than hers might have found some meaning in them. If prophecies could be read from the dregs in a coffee cup surely the last mark Boone had made on the world carried some significance. But she was no interpreter. The signs were just of many unsolved mysteries, chief amongst them the feeling she voiced aloud as she stared at the stairs:

“I still love you, Boone.”

Now there was a puzzle, that despite her anger and her bewilderment she’d have traded the life that was left in her just to have him walk out through that door now and embrace her.

But there was no reply to her declaration, however oblique. No wraith breath against her cheek; no sigh against her inner ear. If Boone was still here in some phantom form he was mute, and breathless; not released by death, but its prisoner.

Somebody spoke her name. She looked up.

“… don’t you think?” Sheryl was saying.

“I’m sorry?”

“Time we went,” Sheryl repeated. “Don’t you think it’s time we went?”

“Oh.”

“You don’t mind me saying, you look like shit.”

“Thanks.”

Lori put her hand out, in need of steadying. Sheryl grasped it.

“You’ve seen all you need to, honey,” she said.

“Yes…”

“Let it go.”

“You know it still doesn’t seem quite real,” Lori said. “Even standing here. Even seeing the place. I can’t quite believe it. How can he be so… irretrievable? There should be some way we could reach, don’t you think, some way to reach and touch them.”

“Who?”

“The dead. Otherwise it’s all nonsense, isn’t it? It’s all sadistic nonsense.” She broke her hold with Sheryl; put her hand to her brow and rubbed it with her fingertips.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m not making much sense, am I?”

“Honestly? No.”

Lori proffered an apologetic look.

“Listen,” Sheryl said, “the old town’s not what it used to be. I think we should get out of here and leave. I fall apart. Whadda you say?”

“To vote for that.”

“I keep thinking…” Sheryl stopped.

“What?”

“I just don’t like the company very much,” she said. “I don’t mean you,” she added hurriedly.

“Who then?”

“All these dead folk,” she said.

“What dead folk?”

“Over the hill. There’s a bloody cemetery.”

“Really?”

“It’s not ideal viewing in your state of mind,” she said hurriedly. But she could tell by the expression on Lori’s face she shouldn’t have volunteered information.

“You don’t want to see,” she said. “Really you don’t.”

“Just a minute or two.” Lori said.

“If we stay much longer, we’ll be driving back in the dark.”

“I’ll never come here again.”

“Oh sure. You should see the sights. Great sight; Dead people’s houses.”

Lori made a small smile.

“I’ll be quick,” she said, starting down the street the direction of the cemetery. Sheryl hesitated. She’d left her sweater in the car, and was getting chilly, all the time she’d been here she hadn’t been able dislodge the suspicion that they were being watched. With dusk close she didn’t want to be alone in the street.

“Wait for me,” she said, and caught up with Lori who was already in sight of the graveyard wall.

“Why’s it so big?” Lori wondered aloud.

“Lord knows. Maybe they all died out at once.”

“So many? It’s just a little town.”

“True.”

“And look at the size of the tombs.”

“I should be impressed?”

“Did you go in?”

“No. And I don’t much want to.”

“Just a little way.”

“Where have I heard that before?”

There was no reply from Lori. She was at the cemetery gates now, reaching through the ironwork to operate the latch. She succeeded. Pushing one of the gates open far enough to slip through, she entered. Reluctantly, Sheryl followed.

“Why so many?” Lori said again. It wasn’t simply curiosity that had her voice the question; it was that this strange spectacle made her wonder again if Boone had simply been cornered here by accident or whether Midian had been his destination. Was somebody buried here he’d come hoping to find alive? or at whose grave he’d wanted to confess his crimes? Though it was all conjecture, the avenues of tombs seemed to offer some faint hope of comprehension the blood he’d shed would not have supplied had she studied it till the sky fell.

“It’s late,” Sheryl reminded her.

“Yes.”

“And I’m cold.”

“Are you?”

“I’d like to go, Lori.”

“Oh… I’m sorry. Yes. Of course. It’s getting too dark to see much anyhow.”

“You noticed.”

They started back up the hill towards the town, Sheryl making the pace.

What little light remained was almost gone by the time they reached the outskirts of the town. Letting Sheryl march on to the car Lori stopped to take one final look at the cemetery. From this vantage point it resembled a fortress. Perhaps the high walls kept animals out, though it seemed an unnecessary precaution. The dead were surely secure, beneath their memorial stones. More likely the walls were the mourners’ way to keep the dead from having power over them. Within those gates the ground was sacred to the departed, tended in their name. Outside, the world belonged to the living, who had nothing left to learn from those they’d lost.

She was not so arrogant. There was much she wanted to say to the dead tonight; and much to hear. That was the pity of it.

She returned to the car oddly exhilarated. It was only once the doors were locked and the engine running that Sheryl said:

“There’s been somebody watching us.”

“You sure?”

“I swear. I saw him just as I got to the car.”

She was rubbing her breasts vigorously. “Jesus, my nipples get numb when I’m cold.”

“What did he look like?” Lori said.

Sheryl shrugged. “Too dark to see,” she said. “Doesn’t matter now. Like you said, we won’t be coming back here again.”

True, Lori thought. They could drive away down a straight road and never look back. Maybe the deceased citizens of Midian envied them that, behind their fortress walls.

TOUCHED

It wasn’t difficult to choose their accommodation in Shere Neck; there were only two places available, and one was already full to brimming with buyers and sellers for a farm machinery sale that had just taken place, some of the spillage occupying the rooms at the other establishment: the Sweetgrass Inn. Had it not been for Sheryl’s way with a smile they might have been turned away from there too; but after some debate a twin-bedded room was found that they could share. It was plain, but comfortable.

“You know what my mother used to tell me?” said Sheryl, as she unpacked her toiletries in the bathroom.

“What?”

“She used to say: there’s a man out there for you, Sheryl; he’s walking around with your name on. Mind you, this is from a woman who’s been looking for her particular man for thirty years and never found him. But she was always stuck on this romantic notion. You know, the man of your dreams is just around the next corner. And she stuck me on it too, damn her.”

“Still?”

“Oh yeah. I’m still looking. You’d think I’d know better, after what I’ve been through. You want to shower first?”

“No. You go ahead.”

A party had started up in the next room, the walls too thin to muffle much of the noise. While Sheryl took her shower Lori lay on the bed and turned the events of the day over in her head. The exercise didn’t last long. The next thing she knew she was being stirred from sleep by Sheryl, who’d showered and was ready for a night on the town.

“You coming?” she wanted to know.

“I’m too tired,” Lori said. “You go have a good time.”

“If there’s a good time to be had,” said Sheryl ruefully.

“You’ll find it,” Lori said. “Give ‘em something to talk about.”

Sheryl promised she would, and left Lori to rest, but the edge had been taken off her fatigue. She could do no more than doze, and even that was interrupted at intervals by loud bursts of drunken hilarity from the adjacent room.

She got up to go in search of a soda machine and ice, returning with her calorie-free nightcap to a less than peaceful bed. She’d take a leisurely bathe, she decided, until drink or fatigue quieted the neighbours. Immersed to her neck in hot water she felt her muscles unknotting themselves, and by the time she emerged she felt a good deal mellower. The bathroom had no extractor, so both the mirrors had steamed up. She was grateful for their discretion. The catalogue of her frailties was quite long enough without another round of self-scrutiny to swell it. Her neck was too thick, her face too thin, her eyes too large, her nose too small. In essence she was one excess upon another, and any attempt on her part to undo the damage merely exacerbated it. Her hair, which she grew long to cover the sins of her neck, was so luxuriant and so dark her face looked sickly in its frame. Her mouth, which was her mother’s mouth to the last flute, was naturally, even indecently, red, but taming its colour with a pale lipstick merely made her eyes look vaster and more vulnerable than ever.

It wasn’t that the sum of her features was unattractive. She’d had more than her share of men at her feet. No, the trouble was she didn’t look the way she felt. It was a sweet face, and she wasn’t sweet; didn’t want to be sweet, or thought of as sweet. Perhaps the powerful feelings that had touched her in the last few hours seeing the blood, seeing the tombs would make their mark in time. She hoped so. The memory of them moved in her still, and she was richer for them, however painful they’d been.

Still naked, she wandered back into the bedroom. As she’d hoped the celebrants next door had quietened down. The music was no longer rock’n’roll, but something smoochy. She sat on the edge of the bed and ran her palms back and forth over her breasts, enjoying their smoothness. Her breath had taken on the slow rhythm of the music through the wall; music for dancing groin to groin, mouth to mouth. She lay back on the bed, her right hand sliding down her body. She could smell several months’ accrual of cigarette smoke in the coverlet she lay on. It made the room seem almost a public place, with its nightly comings and goings. The thought of her nakedness in such a room, and the smell of her skin’s cleanliness on this stale bed, was acutely arousing.

She eased her first and middle fingers into her cunt, raising her hips a little to meet the exploration. This was a joy she offered herself all too seldom, her Catholic upbringing had put guilt between her instinct and her fingertips. But tonight she was a different woman. She found the gasping places quickly, putting her feet on the edge of the bed and spreading her legs wide to give both hands a chance to play.

It wasn’t Boone she pictured as the first waves of gooseflesh came. Dead men were bad lovers. Better she forgot him. His face had been pretty, but she’d never kiss it again. His cock had been pretty too, but she’d never stroke it, or have it in her again. All she had was herself, and pleasure for pleasure’s sake. That was what she pictured now: the very act she was performing. A clean body naked on a stale bed. A woman in a strange room enjoying her own strange self.

The rhythm of the music no longer moved her. She had her own rhythm, rising and falling, rising and falling, each time climbing higher. There was no peak. Just height after height, till she was running with sweat and gorged on sensation. She lay still for several minutes. Then, knowing sleep was quickly overtaking her and that she could scarcely pass the night in her present position, she threw off all the covers but a single sheet, put her head on the pillow, and fell into the space behind her closed eyes.

The sweat on her body cooled beneath the thin sheet. In sleep, she was at Midian’s necropolis, the wind coming to meet her down its avenues from all directions at once north, south, east and west chilling her as it whipped her hair above her head, and ran up inside her blouse. The wind was not invisible. It had a texture, as though it carried a weight of dust, the motes steadily gumming up her eyes and sealing her nose, finding its way into her underwear and up into her body by those routes too.

It was only as the dust blinded her completely that she realized what it was—the remains of the dead, the ancient dead, blown on contrary winds from pyramids and mausoleums, from vaults and dolmen, charnel houses and crematoria coffin-dust, and human ash, and bone pounded to bits, all blown to Midian, and catching her at the crossroads.

She felt the dead inside her. Behind her lids; in her throat; carried up towards her womb. And despite the chill, and the fury of the four storms, she had no fear of them, nor desire to expel them. They sought her warmth and her womanliness. She would not reject them.

“Where’s Boone?” she asked in her dream, assuming the dead would know. He was one of their number after all.

She knew he was not far from her, but the wind was getting stronger, buffeting her from all directions, howling around her head.

“Boone?” she said again. “I want Boone. Bring him to me.”

The wind heard her. Its howling grew louder.

But somebody else was nearby, distracting her from hearing its reply.

“He’s dead, Lori,” the voice said.

She tried to ignore the idiot voice, and concentrate on interpreting the wind. But she’d lost her place in the conversation, and had to begin again.

“It’s Boone I want,” she said. “Bring me Boone.”

“No!”

Again, that damn voice.

She tried a third time, but the violence of the wind had become another violence; she was being shaken.

“Lori! Wake up!”

She clung to sleep, to the dream of wind. It might yet tell her what she needed to know if she could resist the assault of consciousness a moment longer.

“Boone!” she called again, but the winds were receding from her, and taking the dead with them. She felt the itch of their exit from her veins and senses. What knowledge they had to impart was going with them. She was powerless to hold them.

“Lori.”

Gone now; all of them gone. Carried away on the storm.

She had no choice but to open her eyes knowing they would find Sheryl, mere flesh and blood, sitting at the end of the bed and smiling at her.

“Nightmare?” she said.

“No. Not really.”

“You were calling his name.”

“I know.”

“You should have come out with me,” Sheryl said. “Get him out of your system.”

“Maybe.”

Sheryl was beaming; she clearly had news to tell.

“You met somebody?” Lori guessed.

Sheryl’s smile became a grin.

“Who’d have thought it?” she said. “Mother may have been right after all.”

“That good?”

“That good.”

“Tell all.”

“There’s not much to tell. I just went out to find a bar, and I met this great guy. Who’d have thought it?” she said again. “In the middle of the damn prairies? Love comes looking for me.”

Her excitement was a joy to behold; she could barely contain her enthusiasm, as she gave Lori a complete account of the night’s romance. The man’s name was Curtis; a banker, born in Vancouver, divorced and recently moved to Edmonton. They were perfect complimentaries she said; star signs, tastes in food and drink, family background. And better still, though they’d talked for hours he’d not once tried to persuade her out of her underwear. He was a gentleman: articulate, intelligent and yearning for the sophisticated life of the West Coast, to which he’d intimated he’d return if he could find the right companion. Maybe she was it.

“I’m going to see him again tomorrow night,” Sheryl said. “Maybe even stay over a few weeks if things go well.”

“They will,” Lori replied. “You deserve some good times.”

“Are you going back to Calgary tomorrow?” Sheryl asked.

“Yes,” was the reply her mind was readying. But the dream was there before her, answering quite differently.

“I think I’ll go back to Midian first,” it said. “I want to see the place one more time.”

Sheryl pulled a face.

“Please don’t ask me to go.” she said. “I’m not up for another visit.”

“No problem,” Lori replied. “I’m happy to go alone.”

SUN AND SHADE

The sky was cloudless over Midian, the air effervescent. All the fretfulness she’d felt during her first visit here had disappeared. Though this was still the town where Boone had died, she could not hate it for that. Rather the reverse: she and it were allies, both marked by the man’s passing.

It was not the town itself she’d come to visit however, it was the graveyard, and it did not disappoint her. The sun gleamed on the mausoleums, the sharp shadows flattering their elaboration. Even the grass that sprouted between the tombs was a more brilliant green today. There was no wind, from any quarter; no breath of the dream-storms, bringing the dead. Within the high walls there was an extraordinary stillness, as if the outside world no longer existed. Here was a place sacred to the dead, who were not the living ceased, but almost another species, requiring rites and prayers that belonged uniquely to them. She was surrounded on every side by such signs: epitaphs in English, French, Polish and Russian; images of veiled women and shattered urns, saints whose martyrdom she could only guess at, stone dogs sleeping upon their masters’ tombs all the symbolism that accompanied this other people. And the more she explored, the more she found herself asking the question she’d posed the day before: why was the cemetery so big? And why, as became apparent the more tombs she studied, were there so many nationalities laid here? She thought of her dream; of the wind that had come from all quarters of the earth. It was as if there’d been something prophetic in it. The thought didn’t worry her. If that was the way the world worked by omens and prophecies then it was at least a system, and she had lived too long without one. Love had failed her, perhaps this would not.

It took her an hour, wandering down the hushed avenues to reach the back wall of the cemetery against which she found a row of animals’ graves cats interred beside birds, dogs beside cats; at peace with each other as common clay. It was an odd sight. Though she knew of other animal cemeteries she’d never heard of pets being laid in the same consecrated ground as their owners. But then should she be surprised at anything here? The place was a law unto itself, built far from any who would care or condemn.

Turning from the back wall, she could see no sign of the front gate, nor could she remember which of the avenues led back there. It didn’t matter. She felt secure in the emptiness of the place, and there was a good deal she wanted to see: sepulchres whose architecture, towering over its fellows, invited admiration. Choosing a route that would take in half a dozen of the most promising, she began an idling return journey. The sun was warmer by the minute now, as it climbed towards noon. Though her pace was slow she broke out into a sweat, and her throat became steadily drier. It would be no short drive to find somewhere to quench her thirst. But parched throat or no, she didn’t hurry. She knew she’d never come here again. She intended to leave with her memories well stocked.

Along the way were several tombs which had been virtually overtaken by saplings planted in front of them. Evergreens mostly, reminders of the life eternal, the trees flourished in the seclusion of the walls, fed well on rich soil. In some cases their spreading roots had cracked the very memorials they’d been planted to offer shade and protection. These scenes of verdancy and ruin she found particularly poignant. She was lingering at one when the perfect silence was broken.

Hidden in the foliage somebody, or something, was panting. She automatically stepped back, out of the tree’s shadow and into the hot sun. Shock made her heart beat furiously, its thump deafening her to the sound that had excited it. She had to wait a few moments, and listen hard, to be sure she’d not imagined the sound. There was no error. Something was in hiding beneath the branches of the tree, which were so weighed by their burden of leaves they almost touched the ground. The sound, now that she listened more carefully, was not human; nor was it healthy. Its roughness and raggedness suggested a dying animal.

She stood in the heat of the sun for a minute or more, just staring into the mass of foliage and shadow, trying to catch some sight of the creature. Occasionally there was a movement: a body vainly trying to right itself, a desperate pawing at the ground as the creature tried to rise. Its helplessness touched her. If she failed to do what she could for it the animal would certainly perish, knowing this was the thought that moved her to action that someone had heard its agony and passed it by.

She stepped back into the shadow. For a space the panting stopped completely. Perhaps the creature was fearful of her, and reading her approach as aggression was preparing some final act of defence. Readying herself to retreat before claws and teeth, she parted the outer twigs and peered through the mesh of branches. Her first impression was not one of sight or sound but of smell: a bitter-sweet scent that was not unpleasant, its source the pale flanked creature she now made out in the murk, gazing at her wide-eyed. It was a young animal, she guessed, but of no species she could name.

A wild cat of some kind, perhaps, but that the skin resembled deer hide rather than fur. It watched her warily, its neck barely able to support the weight of its delicately marked head. Even as she returned its gaze it seemed to give up on life. Its eyes closed and its head sank to the ground.

The resilience of the branches defied any further approach. Rather than attempting to bend them aside she began to break them in order to get to the failing creature. They were living wood, and fought back. Halfway through the thicket a particularly truculent branch snapped back in her face with such stinging force it brought a shout of pain from her. She put her hand to her cheek. The skin to the right of her mouth was broken. Dabbing the blood away she attacked the branch with fresh vigour, at last coming within reach of the animal. It was almost beyond responding to her touch, its eyes momentarily fluttering open as she stroked its flank, then closing again. There was no sign that she could see of a wound, but the body beneath her hand was feverish and full of tremors.

As she struggled to pick the animal up it began to urinate, wetting her hands and blouse, but she drew it to her nevertheless, a dead weight in her arms. Beyond the spasms that ran through its nervous system there was no power left in its muscles. Its limbs hung limply, its head the same. Only the smell she’d first encountered had any strength, intensifying as the creature’s final moments approached.

Something like a sob reached her ears. She froze.

Again, the sound. Off to her left, some way, and barely suppressed. She stepped back, out of the shadow of the evergreen, bringing the dying animal with her. As the sunlight fell on the creature it responded with a violence utterly belied by its apparent frailty, its limbs jerking madly. She stepped back into the shade, instinct rather than analysis telling her the brightness was responsible. Only then did she look again in the direction from which the sob had come.

The door of one of the mausoleums further down the avenue a massive structure of cracked marble stood ajar, and in the column of darkness beyond she could vaguely make out a human figure. Vaguely, because it was dressed in black, and seemed to be veiled.

She could make no sense of this scenario. The dying animal, tormented by light; the sobbing woman surely a woman in the doorway, dressed for mourning. What was the association?

“Who are you?” she called out.

The mourner seemed to shrink back into the shadows as she was addressed, then regretted the move and approached the open door again, but so very tentatively the connection between animal and woman became clear.

She’s afraid of the sun too, Lori thought. They belonged together, animal and mourner, the woman sobbing for the creature Lori had in her arms.

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.

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 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.