Cabal

THE STALKING GROUND

Driving back to Shere Neck, the radio turned up to a deafening level both to confirm her existence and keep it from straying, she became more certain by the mile that promises notwithstanding she’d not be able to conceal the experience from Sheryl. How could it not be obvious, in her face, in her voice? Such fears proved groundless. Either she was better at concealment than she’d thought, or Sheryl was more insensitive. Either way, Sheryl asked only the most perfunctory questions about Lori’s return visit to Midian, before moving on to talk of Curtis.

“I want you to meet him,” she said, “just to be sure I’m not dreaming.”

“I’m going to go home, Sheryl,” Lori said.

“Not tonight, surely. It’s too late.”

She was right; the day was too advanced for Lori to contemplate a homeward trip. Nor could she fabricate a reason for denying Sheryl’s request without offending.

“You won’t feel like a lemon, I promise,” Sheryl said. “He said he wanted to meet you. I’ve told him all about you. Well… not all. But enough, you know, about how we met.” She made a forlorn face. “Say you’ll come,” she said.

“I’ll come.”

“Fabulous! I’ll call him right now.”

While Sheryl went about making her call Lori took a shower. There was news of the night’s arrangements within two minutes.

“He’ll meet us at this restaurant he knows, around eight,” Sheryl hollered. “He’ll even find a friend for you.”

“No, Sheryl.”

“I think he was just kidding,” came the reply. Sheryl appeared at the bathroom door. “He’s got a funny sense of humour,” she said. “You know, when you’re not sure if someone’s making a joke or not? He’s like that.”

Great, Lori thought, a failed comedian. But there was something undeniably comforting about coming back to Sheryl and this girlish passion. Her endless talk of Curtis—none of which gave Lori more than a street artist’s portrait of the man: all surface and no insight was the perfect distraction from thoughts of Midian and its revelations. The early evening was so filled with good humour, and the rituals of preparing for a night on the town, that on occasion Lori found herself wondering if all that had happened in the necropolis had not been a hallucination. But she had evidence that confirmed the memory: the cut beside her mouth from that wayward branch. It was little enough sign, but the sharp hurt of it kept her from doubting her sanity. She had been to Midian. She had held the shape-shifter in her arms, and stood on the crypt stairs gazing into a miasma so profound it could have rotted the faith of a saint.

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.

“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.”

“He’s 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.

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.

ABOVE AND BELOW

it 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, fate 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.

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.

“He’s here?” somebody said. “Boone is here.”

Clinging to the gate she turned her leaden head, and through the surf of light saw Decker, standing a few yards from her. Behind him, his light-less car. Even in her dizzied state she understood how she’d been manipulated. Decker had allowed her to escape, knowing she’d seek out his enemy.

“Stupid!” she told herself.

“Well yes. But then, what were you to do? No doubt you thought you might save him.”

She had neither the strength nor the wit left to resist the man. Relinquishing the support of the gates, she staggered into the cemetery.

“Boone!” she yelled. “Boone!”

Decker didn’t come after her quickly; he had no need. She was a wounded animal going in search of another wounded animal. Glancing behind her she saw him checking his gun by the light of his headlamps. Then he pushed the gate wider, and came in pursuit.

She could barely see the avenues in front of her for the bursts of light in her head. She was like a blind woman, sobbing as she stumbled; no longer even certain if Decker was behind her or in front. Any moment he would despatch her. One bullet, and her charmed life would end.

In the ground below, the Breed heard her arrival, their senses attuned to panic and despair. They knew the hunter’s tread too, they heard it behind them all too often. Now they waited, pitying the woman in her last moments but too covetous of their refuge to put it at risk. There were few enough hiding places left where the monstrous might find peace. They’d not endanger their hermitage for a human life.

Still it pained them, hearing her pleas and her calls. And for one of their number the sound was almost beyond endurance.

“Let me go to her.”

“You can’t. You know you can’t.”

“I can kill him. Who’s to know he was ever here.”

“He won’t be alone. There’ll be others waiting outside the walls. Remember how they came for you.”

“I can’t let her die.”

“Boone! Please, God!”

It was worse than anything he’d suffered, hearing her calling him, and knowing Midian’s law wouldn’t let him answer.

“Listen to her, for god’s sake!” he said. “Listen.”

“You made promises when we took you in,” Lylesburg reminded him.

“I know. I understand.”

“I wonder if you do. They weren’t demanded lightly, Boone. Break them and you belong nowhere. Not with us. Not with them.”

“You’re asking me to listen to her die.”

“So block your ears. It’ll soon be over.”

She could no longer find the breath to call his name. No matter. He wasn’t here. Or if he was, he was dead in the earth, and corrupted. Beyond help, in the giving or the taking.

She was alone, and the man with the gun was closing on her.

Decker took the mask from his pocket; the button mask he felt so safe behind. Oh, the number of times, in those tiresome days with Boone, teaching him the dates and the places of the murders he was inheriting, when Decker’s pride had almost brimmed over and he’d itched to claim the crimes back. But he needed the scapegoat more than the quick thrill of confession, to keep suspicion at bay. Boone’s admitting to the crimes wouldn’t have been an end to it all of course. In time the Mask would start speaking to its owner again, demanding to be bloodied, and the killings would have to begin afresh. But not until Decker had found himself another name, and another city to set up his store in. Boone had spoiled those well-laid plans, but he’d get no chance to tell what he knew. Of’ Button Face would see to that.

Decker pulled the mask on. It smelt of his excitement. As soon as he breathed in he got a hard. Not the little sex-hard, but the death-hard; the murder-hard. It sniffed the air for him, even through the thickness of his trousers and underwear. It smelt the victim that ran ahead of him. The Mask didn’t care that his prey was female; he got the murder-hard for anyone. In his time he’d had a heat for old men, pissing their pants as they went down in front of him; for girls, sometimes, sometimes women; even children. Of’ Button Face looked with the same cross-threaded eyes on the whole of humanity.

This one, this woman in the dark up ahead, meant no more to the Mask than any of the others. Once they started to panic and bleed, they were all the same. He followed her with steady step; that was one of Button Head’s trade marks, the executioner’s tread. And she fled before him, her pleas deteriorating into snot and gasps. Though she hadn’t got breath to call for her hero, no doubt she prayed he’d still come for her. Poor bitch. Didn’t she know they never showed? He’d heard them all called upon in his time, begged for, bargained with, the Holy Fathers and Mothers, the champions, the interceders none of them ever showed.

But her agony would be over soon. A shot through the back of the head to bring her down, and then he’d take the big knife, the heavy knife, to her face, the way he did with all of them. Crisscross, crisscross, like the threads in his eye, till there was nothing left to look at but meat.

Ah! She was falling. Too tired to run any further.

He opened Of’ Button Head’s steel mouth, and spoke to the fallen girl “Be still,” he said.

“It’s quicker that way.”

She tried to get up one final time, but her legs had given out completely, and the wash of whiteness was practically all consuming. Giddily, she turned her head in the direction of Decker’s voice, and in a trough between the white waves, she saw that he’d put his mask back on. Its face was a death’s head.

He raised the gun. In the ground beneath her, she felt tremors. Was it the sound of a shot, perhaps? She couldn’t see the gun any longer, or even Decker. One final wave had washed him from sight. But her body felt the earth rock, and through the whine in her head she heard somebody calling the name of the man she’d hoped to find here.

Boone!

She didn’t hear an answer—perhaps there wasn’t one but the call came again, as if summoning him back into the earth.

Before she could muster the last of her power to counter the call her good arm gave out beneath her and she was face down on the ground.

Button Head walked towards his quarry, disappointed that the woman would not be conscious to hear his final benediction. He liked to offer a few words of insight at the penultimate moment; words he never planned but that came like poetry from the zipper mouth. On occasion they’d laughed at his sermon, and that had made him cruel. But if they cried, and they often did, then he took it in good part, and made certain the last moment, the very last, was swift and painless.

He kicked the woman over onto her back, to see if he could raise her from her sleep. And yes, her eyes flickered open slightly.

“Good,” he said, pointing the gun at her face.

As he felt wisdom coming to his lips he heard the growl. It drew his gaze off the woman for a moment. A soundless wind had risen from somewhere, and was shaking the trees. There was complaint in the ground beneath his feet. The Mask was untouched. Wandering in tomb yards didn’t raise a hair on his neck. He was the New Death, tomorrow’s face today: what harm could dust do him?

He laughed at the melodrama of it. Threw back his head and laughed.

At his feet the woman started moaning. Time to shut her up. He took aim at her open mouth.

As he recognized the word she was shaping the dark ahead of him divided, and that word stepped out of hiding.

“Boone,” she’d said.

It was.

He emerged from the shadow of the shaking trees, dressed just as the Mask remembered, in dirty tee shirt and jeans. But there was a brightness in his eyes the Mask did not remember; and he walked—despite the bullets he’d taken like a man who’d never known an ache in his life.

Mystery enough. But there was more. Even as he stepped into view he began to change, breathing out a veil of smoke that took his flesh for fantasy.

This was the scapegoat; yet not. So much not.

The Mask looked down at the woman to confirm that they shared this vision but she had fallen into unconsciousness. He had to trust what the cross-sewn eyes told him, and they told him terrors.

The sinews of Boone’s arms and neck were rippling with light and darkness; his fingers were growing larger; his face, behind the smoke he exhaled, seemed to be running with dazzling filaments that described a hidden form within his head which muscle and bone were conforming to.

And out of the confusion, a voice. It was not the voice the Mask remembered. No scapegoat’s voice, hushed with guilt. It was a yell of fury.

“You’re a dead man, Decker!” the monster cried.

The Mask hated that name; that Decker. The man was just some old flame he’d fucked once in a while. In a heat like this, with the murder-hard so strong, Of’ Button Head could barely remember whether Dr. Decker was alive or dead.

Still the monster called him by that name.

“You hear me, Decker!” he said.

Bastard thing, the Mask thought. Misbegotten, half aborted bastard thing. He pointed a gun at its heart. It had finished breathing transformations, and stood before its enemy complete, if a thing born on a butcher’s slab could ever be called complete. Mothered by a she-wolf, fathered by a clown, it was ridiculous to a fault. There’d be no benediction for this one, the Mask decided. Only phlegm on its hybrid face when it was dead on the ground.

Without further thought he fired. The bullet opened a hole in the centre of Boone’s tee shirt and in the changed flesh beneath but the creature only grinned.

“You tried that already, Decker,” Boone said. “Don’t you ever learn?”

“I’m not Decker,” the Mask replied, and fired again. Another hole opened up beside the first but there was no blood from either.

Boone had begun to advance on the gun. No last, faltering step but a steady approach which the Mask recognized as his own executioner’s tread. He could smell the filth of the beast, even through the linen across his face. It was bitter-sweet, and sickened him to the stomach.

“Be still,” the monster said. “It’s quicker that way.”

The stolen step was insult enough, but to hear the purity of his own words from that unnatural throat drove the Mask to distraction. He shrieked against the cloth, and aimed the gun at Boone’s mouth. But before he could blow out the offending tongue Boone’s swollen hands reached and took hold of the gun. Even as it was snatched from him the Mask pulled the trigger, firing against Boone’s hand. The bullets blew off his smallest finger. The expression on his face darkened with displeasure. He dragged the gun out of the Mask’s hands and flung it away. Then he reached for his mutilator and drew him close.

Faced with imminent extinction, the Mask and its wearer divided. Of’ Button Head did not believe he could ever die. Decker did. His teeth grated against the cage across his mouth, as he began to beg.

“Boone… you don’t know what you’re doing.”

He felt the mask tighten over his head in fury at this cowardice but he talked on, trying to find that even tone he remembered calming this man with, once upon a time.

“You’re diseased, Boone.”

Don’t beg, he heard the Mask saying: don’t you dare beg.

“And you can heal me, can you?” the monster said.

“Oh yes,” Decker replied. “Oh certainly. Just give me a little time.”

Boone’s wounded hand stroked the mask.

“Why do you hide behind this thing?” he asked.

“It makes me hide. I don’t want to, but it makes me.”

The Mask’s fury knew no bounds. It shrieked in Decker’s head, hearing him betray his master. If he survived tonight it would demand the vilest compensation for these lies. He’d pay it gladly, tomorrow. But he had to outwit the beast to live that long.

“You must feel the same as me,” he said. “Behind that skin you have to wear.”

“The same?” said Boone.

“Trapped. Made to spill blood. You don’t want to spill blood any more than I do.”

“You don’t understand,” Boone said. “I’m not behind this face. I am this face.”

Decker shook his head.

“I don’t think so. I think that somewhere you’re still Boone.”

“Boone is dead. Boone was shot down in front of you. Remember? You put bullets in him yourself.”

“But you survived.”

“Not alive.”

Decker’s bulk had been trembling. Now it stopped. Every muscle in his body became rigid, as the explanation for these mysteries came clear.

“You drove me into the hands of monsters, Decker. And I became one. Not your kind of monster. Not the soulless kind.” He drew Decker very close, his face inches from the mask. “I’m dead, Decker. Your bullets mean nothing to me. I’ve got Midian in my veins. That means I’ll heal myself over and over. But you…”

The hand stroking the mask now gripped the fabric.

“… you, Decker… when you die, you die. And I want to see your face when it happens.”

Boone pulled at the mask. It was tied on securely and wouldn’t come. He had to get his claws into the warp and weft to tear it open and uncover the sweaty facts beneath. How many hours had he spent watching this face, hanging on its every flicker of approbation? So much wasted time. This was the healer’s true condition: lost and weak and weeping.

“I was afraid,” Decker said. “You understand that, don’t you? They were going to find me, punish me. I needed someone to blame.”

“You chose the wrong man.”

“Man?” said a soft voice from the darkness. “You call yourself a man?”

Boone stood corrected.

“Monster,” he said.

Laughter followed. Then:

“Well, are you going to kill him or not?”

Boone looked away from Decker to the speaker squatting on the tomb. His face was a mass of scar tissue.

“Does he remember me?” the man asked Boone.

“I don’t know. Do you?” Boone demanded of Decker. “His name’s Narcisse.”

Decker just stared.

“Another of Midian’s tribe,” Boone said.

“I was never quite certain I belonged,” Narcisse mused. “Not till I was picking the bullets from my face. Kept thinking I was dreaming it all.”

“Afraid,” said Boone.

“I was. You know what they do to natural men.”

Boone nodded.

“So kill him,” Narcisse said. “Eat out his eyes or I’ll do it for you.”

“Not till I get a confession from him.”

“Confession,” said Decker, his eyes widening at the thought of reprieve. “If that’s what you want, say the word.”

He began rummaging in his jacket, as if looking for a pen.

“What the fuck’s the use of a confession?” Narcisse said. “You think anybody’s ever gonna forgive you now? Look at yourself!”

He jumped down off the tomb.

“Look,” he whispered, “if Lylesburg knows I came up here he’ll have me out. Just give me his eyes, for old times’ sake. Then the rest’s yours.”

“Don’t let him touch me,” Decker begged Boone. “Anything you want… full confession… anything. But keep him off me!”

Too late; Narcisse was already reaching for him, with or without Boone’s permission. Boone attempted to keep him at bay with his free hand, but the man was too eager for revenge to be blocked. He forced himself between Boone and his prey.

“Look your last,” he grinned, raising his hooked thumbs.

But Decker’s rummaging hadn’t been all panic. As the hooks came at his eyes he drew the big knife out of hiding in his jacket and thrust it into his attacker’s belly. He’d made long and sober study of his craft. The cut he gave Narcisse was a disembowelling manoeuvre learnt from the Japanese: deep into the intestines and up towards the navel, drawing the blade two-handed against the weight of meat. Narcisse cried out more in memory of pain than in pain itself.

In one smooth motion Decker pulled the big knife out, knowing from researches in the field that the well packed contents were bound to follow. He wasn’t wrong. Narcisse’s gut uncoiled, falling like a flesh apron to its owner’s knees. The wounding which would have dropped a living man to the ground on the spot—merely made a clown of Narcisse. Howling in disgust at the sight of his innards, he clutched at Boone.

“Help me,” he hollered, “I’m coming undone.”

Decker took the moment. While Boone was held fast he fled towards the gates. There wasn’t much ground to cover. By the time Boone had struggled free of Narcisse the enemy was within sight of unconsecrated earth. Boone gave chase, but before he was even halfway to the gates he heard Decker’s car door slam and the engine rev. The doctor was away. Damn it, away!

“What the fuck do I do with this?” Boone heard Narcisse sob. He turned from the gates. The man had his guts looped between his hands like so much knitting.

“Go below,” Boone said flatly. It was useless to curse Narcisse for his interference. “Somebody’ll help you,” he said.

“I can’t. They’ll know I was up here.”

“You think they don’t know already?” Boone replied. “They know everything.”

He was no longer concerned about Narcisse. It was the body sprawled on the walkway that had claimed his attentions. In his hunger to terrorize Decker he’d forgotten Lori entirely.

“They’ll throw us both out,” Narcisse was saying.

“Maybe,” said Boone.

“What will we do?”

“Just go below,” Boone said wearily. “Tell Mister Lylesburg I led you astray.”

“You did?” said Narcisse. Then, warming to the idea, “Yes, I think you did.”

Carrying his guts, he limped away.

Boone knelt beside Lori. Her scent made him dizzy, the softness of her skin beneath his palms was almost overpowering. She was still alive, her pulse strong despite the traumas she must have endured at Decker’s hand. Gazing on her gentle face the thought that she might wake and see him in the shape he’d inherited from Peloquin’s bite distressed him beyond measure. In Decker’s presence he’d been proud to call himself a monster, to parade his Nightbreed self. But now, looking at the woman he had loved, and had been loved by in return for his frailty and his humanity, he was ashamed.

He inhaled, his will making flesh smoke, which his lungs drew back into his body. It was a process as strange in its ease as its nature. How quickly he’d become accustomed to what he’d once have called miraculous.

But he was no wonder; not compared with this woman. The fact that she’d enough faith to come looking for him with death on her heels was more than any natural man could hope for, and for one such as himself, the true miracle.

Her humanity made him proud: of what he’d been, and could still pretend to be.

So it was in human form he picked her up, and tenderly carried her underground.

THE PROPHETIC CHILD

Lori listened to the fury of the voices.

“You cheated us!”

The first was Lylesburg.

“I had no choice!”

The second, Boone.

“So Midian’s put at risk for your finer feelings?”

“Decker won’t tell anyone,” Boone responded. “What’s he going to say? That he tried to kill a girl and a dead man stopped him? Talk sense.”

“So suddenly you’re the expert. A few days here and you’re re-writing the law. Well do it somewhere else, Boone. Take the woman and leave.”

Lori wanted to open her eyes and go to Boone; calm him before his anger made him say or do something stupid. But her body was numb. Even the muscles of her face wouldn’t respond to instruction. All she could do was lie still, and listen as the argument raged.

“I belong here,” Boone said. “I’m Nightbreed now.”

“Not any longer.”

“I can’t live out there.”

“We did. For generations we took our chances in the natural world, and it nearly extinguished us. Now you come along and damn near destroy our one hope of surviving. If Midian’s unearthed, you and the woman will be responsible. Think of that on your travels.”

There was a long silence. Then Boone said:

“Let me make amends.”

“Too late. The law makes no exceptions. The other one goes too.”

“Narcisse! No. You’ll break his heart. He spent half his life waiting to come here.”

“The decision’s made.”

“Who by? You? Or Baphomet?”

At the sound of that name Lori felt a chill. The word meant nothing to her, but clearly it did to others nearby. She heard whispers echoing around her, repeated phrases like words of worship.

“I demand to speak with it,” Boone said.

“Out of the question.”

“What are you afraid of! Losing your grip on your tribe. I want to see Baphomet. If you want to try and stop me, do it now.”

As Boone threw the challenge down, Lori’s eyes opened. There was a vaulted roof above her, where last there’d been sky. It was painted with stars; however, more fireworks than celestial bodies; Catherine wheels, throwing off sparks as they rolled across the stone heavens.

She inclined her head a little. She was in a crypt. There were sealed coffins on every side of her, upended against the walls. To her left a profusion of squat candles, their wax grimy, their flame as weak as she. To her right, Babette, sitting cross-legged on the floor, watching her intently. The child was dressed completely in black, her eyes catching the candlelight and steadying its flicker. She was not pretty. Her face was too solemn for prettiness. Even in the smile she offered Lori, seeing her wake, couldn’t mellow the sadness in her features. Lori did her best to return the welcoming look, but wasn’t certain her muscles were yet obeying her.

“It was a bad hurt he did us,” Babette said.

Lori assumed she meant Boone. But the child’s next words put her right.

“Rachel made it clean. Now it doesn’t sting.”

She raised her right hand. It was bandaged with dark linen, around thumb and forefinger.

“Nor you either.”

Mustering her will, Lori raised her own right hand from her side. It was bandaged identically.

“Where… is Rachel?” Lori asked, her voice barely audible to herself. Babette heard the question clearly however.

“Somewhere near,” she said.

“Could you get her for me?”

Babette’s perpetual frown deepened.

“Are you here forever?” she asked.

“No,” came the reply, not from Lori but from Rachel, who had appeared at the door, “no she’s not. She’s going to be away very soon.”

“Why?” said Babette.

“I heard Lylesburg,” Lori murmured.

“Mister Lylesburg,” Rachel said, crossing to where Lori lay. “Boone broke his word going over ground to fetch you. He’s put us all in danger.”

Lori understood only a fraction of Midian’s story, but enough to know that the maxim she’d first heard from Lylesburg’s lips ‘what below remains below’ was not some idle catch phrase. It was a law the inhabitants of Midian had sworn to live by or else forfeit their place here.

“Can you help me?” she asked. She felt vulnerable lying on the floor.

It wasn’t Rachel who came to her aid, however, but Babette, by laying her small, bandaged hand on Lori’s stomach. Her system responded instantly to the child’s touch, all trace of numbness leaving her body at once. She remembered the same sensation, or its like, from her last encounter with the girl: that feeling of transferred power that had moved through her when the beast had dissolved in her arms.

“She’s formed quite a bond with you,” Rachel said.

“So it seems.” Lori sat up. “Is she hurt?”

“Why don’t you ask me?” Babette said. “I’m here too.”

“I’m sorry,” Lori said, chastened. “Did you get cut too?”

“No. But I felt your hurt.”

“She’s empathic,” Rachel said. “She feels what others feel; particularly if she has some emotional connection with them.”

“I knew you were coming here,” Babette said. “I saw through your eyes. And you can see through mine.”

“Is that true?” Lori asked Rachel.

“Believe her,” came the reply.

Lori wasn’t quite certain she was ready to get to her feet yet, but she decided to put her body to the test. It was easier than she’d expected. She stood up readily, her limbs strong, her head clear.

“Will you take me to Boone?” she requested.

“If that’s what you want.”

“He was here all along, wasn’t he?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Who brought him?”

“Brought him?”

“To Midian.”

“Nobody.”

“He was almost dead,” Lori said. “Somebody must have got him out of the mortuary.”

“You still don’t understand, do you?” said Rachel grimly.

“About Midian? No; not really.”

“Not just Midian. About Boone, and why he is here.”

“He thinks he’s Nightbreed,” Lori said.

“He was, until he broke his word.”

“So we’ll go,” Lori replied. “That’s what Lylesburg wants, isn’t it? And I’ve got no wish to stay.”

“Where will you go?” Rachel asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe back to Calgary. It shouldn’t be so hard to prove Decker’s the guilty man. Then we can start over.”

Rachel shook her head.

“That won’t be possible,” she said.

“Why not? Have you got some prior claim on him?”

“He came here because he’s one of us.”

“Us. Meaning what?” Lori replied sharply. She was tired of evasion and innuendo. “Who are you? Sick people living in the dark. Boone isn’t sick. He’s a sane man. A sane, healthy man.”

“I suggest you ask him how healthy he feels,” was Rachel’s retort.

“Oh I will, when the time comes.”

Babette was not untouched by this exchange of contempt.

“You mustn’t go,” she said to Lori.

“I have to.”

“Not into the light.” She took fierce hold of Lori’s sleeve. “I can’t come with you there.”

“She has to go,” Rachel said, reaching over to prise her child loose. “She doesn’t belong with us.”

Babette held fast.

“You can,” she said, looking up at Lori. “It’s easy.”

“She doesn’t want to,” Rachel said.

Babette looked up at Lori.

“Is that true?” she asked.

“Tell her,” Rachel said, taking plain satisfaction in Lori’s discomfort. “Tell her she’s one of the sick people.”

“But we live forever,” Babette said. She glanced at her mother, “Don we?”

“Some of us.”

“All of us. If we want to live for ever and ever. And one day, when the sun goes out…”

“Enough!” said Rachel.

But Babette had more to say.

“… when the sun goes out and there’s only night, we’ll live on the earth. It’ll be ours.”

Now it was Rachel’s turn to be ill at ease.

“She doesn’t know what she’s saying,” the woman muttered.

“I think she knows very well,” Lori replied.

The proximity of Babette, and the thought that she had some bond with the child, suddenly chilled her. What little peace her rational mind had made with Midian was rapidly crumbling. She wanted more that anything to be away from here, from children who talked of the end of the world, from candles and coffins and the life of the tomb.

“Where’s Boone?” she said to Rachel.

“Gone to the Tabernacle. To Baphomet.”

“Who or what is Baphomet?”

Rachel made a ritualistic gesture at mention of Baphomet, touching her forefinger to tongue and heart. It was so familiar to her, and so often performed, Lori doubted she even knew she’d done it.

“Baphomet is the Baptiser,” she said. “Who Made Midian. Who called us here.”

Finger touched tongue and heart again.

“Will you take me to the Tabernacle?” Lori asked.

Rachel’s reply was a plain and simple: “No.”

“Direct me at least.”

“I’ll take you,” Babette volunteered.

“No you won’t,” Rachel said, this time snatching the child’s hand from Lori’s sleeve with such speed Babette had no chance to resist.

“I’ve paid my debt to you,” Rachel said, “healing the wound. We’ve no more business together.”

She took hold of Babette, and lifted the child up into her arms. Babette squirmed in her mother’s embrace so as to look back at Lori.

“I want you to see beautiful things for me.”

“Be quiet,” Rachel chided.

“What you see I’ll see.”

Lori nodded.

“Yes?” Babette said.

“Yes.”

Before her child could utter another mournful word Rachel had carried her out of the room, leaving Lori to the company of the coffins.

She threw her head back and exhaled slowly. Calm, she thought; be calm. It’ll be over soon.

The painted stars cavorted overhead, seeming to turn as she watched. Was their riot just the artist’s fancy, she wondered, or was this the way the sky looked to the Breed, when they stepped out of their mausoleums at night to take the air?

Better not to know. It was bad enough that these creatures had children and art; that they might also have vision was too dangerous a thought to entertain.

When first she’d encountered them, halfway down the stairs into this underworld, she’d feared for her life. She still did, in some hushed corner of herself. Not that it would be taken away, but that it would be changed; that somehow they’d taint her with their rites and visions, so she’d not be able to scrub them from her mind.

The sooner she was out of here, with Boone beside her, the sooner she’d be back in Calgary. The street lights were bright there. They tamed the stars.

Reassured by the thought, she went in search of the Baptiser.

TABERNACLE

This was the true Midian. Not the empty town in the hill; not even the necropolis above her, but this network of tunnels and chambers which presumably spread beneath the entire cemetery. Some of the tombs were occupied only by the undisturbed dead; their caskets laid on shelves to moulder. Were these the first occupants of the cemetery, laid to rest here before the Nightbreed had taken possession? Or were they Breed who had died from their half-life, caught in the sun, perhaps, or withered by longing? Whichever, they were in the minority. Most of the chambers were tenanted by more vital souls, their quarters lit by lamps or candles, or on occasion by the occupant itself: a being that burned with its own light. Only once did she glimpse such an entity, supine on a mattress in the corner of its boudoir. It was naked, corpulent and sexless, its sagging body a motley of dark oily skin and larval eruptions which seeped phosphorescence, soaking its simple bed. It seemed every other doorway let on to some fragment as mysterious, her response to them problematic as the tableaux that inspired it. Was it simply disgust that made her stomach flip, seeing the stigma tic in full flood, with sharp-toothed adherents sucking noisily at her wounds; or excitement, confronting the legend of the vampire in the flesh? And what was she to make of the man whose body broke into birds when he saw her watching, or the dog-headed painter who turned from his fresco and beckoned her to join his apprentice mixing paint? Or the machine beasts running up the walls on caliper legs? After a dozen corridors she no longer knew horror from fascination. Perhaps she’d never known.

She might have spent days lost and seeing the sights, but luck or instinct brought her close enough to Boone that further progress was blocked. It was Lylesburg’s shadow that appeared before her, seeming to step from the solid wall.

“You may go no further.”

“I intend to find Boone,” she told him.

“You’re not to blame in this,” Lylesburg said. “That’s completely understood. But you must in turn understand: what Boone did has put us all in danger.”

“Then let me speak to it. We’ll get out of here together.”

“That might have been possible, a little while ago,” Lylesburg said, the voice emerging from his shadow coat as measured and authoritative as ever.

“And now?”

“He’s beyond my recall. And yours too. He’s made appeal to another force entirely.”

Even as he spoke there was noise from further down the catacomb—a din the like of which Lori had never heard. For an instant she felt certain an earthquake was at its source, the sound seemed to be in and of the earth around them. But as the second wave began she heard something animal in it: a moan of pain, perhaps, or of ecstasy… Surely this was Baphomet Who Made Midian, Rachel had said. What other voice could shake the very fabric of the place?

Lylesburg confirmed the belief.

“That is what Boone has gone to parley with,” he said. “Or so he thinks.”

“Let me go to him.”

“It’s already devoured him,” Lylesburg said. “Taken him into the flame.”

“I want to see for myself,” Lori demanded.

Unwilling to delay a moment longer she pushed past Lylesburg, expecting resistance. But her hands sank into the darkness he wore and touched the wall behind him. He had no substance. He couldn’t keep her from going anywhere.

“It will kill you too,” she heard him warn, as she ran in pursuit of the sound. Though it was all around her, she sensed its source. Every step she took it got louder, and more complex, layers of raw sound each of which touched a different part of her: head, heart, groin.

A quick backward glance confirmed what she’d already guessed: that Lylesburg had made no attempt to follow. She turned a corner, and another, the undercurrents in the voice still multiplying, until she was walking against them as if in a high wind, head down, shoulders hunched.

There were no chambers now along the passageway; and consequently no lights. There was a glow up ahead however fitful and cold, but bright enough to illuminate both the ground she stumbled over, which was bare earth, and the silvery frost on the walls.

“Boone?” she shouted. “Are you there? Boone?”

After what Lylesburg had said she didn’t hope too hard for an answer, but she got one. His voice came to meet her from the core of light and sound ahead. But all she heard through the din was:

“Don’t—”

Don’t what? she wondered. Don’t come any further? Don’t leave me here?

She slowed her pace, and called again, but the noise the Baptiser was making virtually drowned out the sound of her own voice, never mind a reply. Having come so far, she had to go forward, not knowing if his call had been a warning or not.

Ahead, the passageway became a slope, a steep slope. She halted at the top, and squinted into the brightness. This was Baphomet’s hole, no doubt of that. The din it was making eroded the walls of the slope and carried the dust up into her face. Tears began to fill her eyes to wash the grit away, but it kept coming. Deafened by voice, blinded by dust, she teetered on the lip of the slope, unable to go forward or back.

Suddenly, the Baptiser fell silent, the layers of sound all dying at once, and completely.

The hush that followed was more alarming than the din that had preceded it. Had it shut its mouth because it knew it had a trespasser in its midst? She held her breath, afraid to utter a sound.

At the bottom of the slope was a sacred place, she had not the slightest doubt of that. Standing in the great cathedrals of Europe with her mother, years before, gazing at the windows and the altars, she’d felt nothing approaching the surge of recognition she felt now. Nor, in all her life dreaming or awake had such contradictory impulses run in her. She wanted to flee the place with a passion wanted to forsake it and forget it; and yet it summoned. It was not Boone’s presence there that called her, but the pull of the holy, or the unholy, or the two in one; and it wouldn’t be resisted.

Her tears had cleared the dust from her eyes now. She had no excuse but cowardice to remain where she stood. She began down the slope. It was a descent of thirty yards, but she’d covered no more than a third of it when a familiar figure staggered into view at the bottom.

The last time she’d seen Boone had been over ground as he emerged to confront Decker. In the seconds before she’d passed out she’d seen him as never before: like a man who’d forgotten pain and defeat entirely. Not so now. He could barely hold himself upright.

She whispered his name, the word gathering weight as it tumbled towards him.

He heard, and raised his head towards her. Even in his worst times, when she’d rocked him and held him to keep the terrors at bay, she’d not seen such grief on his face as she saw now. Tears coming and coming, his features so crumpled with sorrow they were like a baby’s.

She began the descent again, every sound her feet made, every tiny breath she took, multiplied by the acoustics of the slope.

Seeing her approach he left off holding himself up to wave her away, but in doing so lost his only means of support and fell heavily. She picked up her pace, careless now of the noise she was making. Whatever power occupied the pit at the bottom it knew she was there. Most likely it knew her history. In a way she hoped it did. She wasn’t afraid of its judgement. She had loving reason for her trespass; she came weaponless, and alone. If Baphomet was indeed the architect of Midian then it understood vulnerability, and would not act against her. She was within five yards of Boone by now. He was attempting to roll himself onto his back.

“Wait!” she said, distressed by his desperation.

He didn’t look her way, however. It was Baphomet his eyes went to, once he got onto his back. Her gaze went with his, into a room with walls of frozen earth, and a floor the same, the latter split from corner to corner, and a fissure opened in it from which a flame column rose four or five times the size of a man. There was bitter cold off it rather than heat, and no reassuring flicker in its heart. Instead its innards churned upon themselves, turning over and over some freight of stuff which she failed to recognize at first, but her appalled stare rapidly interpreted.

There was a body in the fire, hacked limb from limb, human enough that she recognized it as flesh, but no more than that. Baphomet’s doing presumably; some torment visited on a transgressor.

Boone said the Baptiser’s name even now, and she readied herself for sight of its face. She had it too, but from inside the flame, as the creature there not dead, but alive; not Midian’s subject, but its creator rolled its head over in the turmoil of flame and looked her way.

This was Baphomet. This diced and divided thing. Seeing its face, she screamed. No story or movie screen, no desolation, no bliss had prepared her for the maker of Midian. Sacred it must be, as anything so extreme must be sacred. A thing beyond things. Beyond love or hatred, or their sum, beyond the beautiful or the monstrous, or their sum. Beyond, finally, her mind’s power to comprehend or catalogue. In the instant she looked away from it she had already blanked every fraction of the sight from conscious memory and locked it where no torment or entreaty would ever make her look again.

She hadn’t known her own strength till the frenzy to be out of its presence had her hauling Boone to his feet and dragging him up the slope. He could do little to help her. The time he’d spent in the Baptiser’s presence had driven all but the rags of power from his muscles. It seemed to Lori that it took an age staggering up to the head of the slope, the flame’s icy light throwing their shadows before them like prophecies.

The passageway above was deserted. She had half expected Lylesburg to be in wait somewhere with more solid cohorts, but the silence of the chamber below had spread throughout the tunnel. Once she’d hauled Boone a few yards from the summit of the slope she halted, her lungs burning with the effort of bearing him up. He was emerging from the daze of grief or terror she’d found him in.

“Do you know a way out of here?” she asked him.

“I think so,” he said.

“You’re going to have to give me some help. I can’t support you much longer.”

He nodded, then looked back at the entrance to Baphomet’s pit.

“What did you see?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“Good.”

He covered his face with his hands. One of his fingers was missing, she saw, the wound fresh. He seemed indifferent to it, however, so she asked no questions but concentrated on encouraging him to move. He was reluctant, almost sullen in the aftermath of high emotion, but she chivvied him along, until they reached a steep stairway which took them up through one of the mausoleums and into the night.

The air smelt of distance after the confinement of the earth, but rather than linger to enjoy it, she insisted they get out of the cemetery, threading their way through the maze of tombs to the gate. There Boone halted.

“The car’s just outside,” she said.

He was shuddering, though the night was quite warm.

“I can’t…” he said.

“Can’t what?”

“I belong here.”

“No you don’t,” she said. “You belong with me. We belong with each other.”

She stood close to him, but his head was turned towards the shadow. She took hold of his face in her hands and pulled his gaze round upon her.

“We belong to each other, Boone. That’s why you’re alive. Don’t you see? After all this. After all we’ve been through. We’ve survived.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“I know that. We’ve both had terrible times. I understand things can’t be the same. I wouldn’t want them to be.”

“You don’t know…” he began.

“Then you’ll tell me,” she said. “When the time’s right. You have to forget Midian, Boone. It’s already forgotten you.”

The shudders were not cold, but the precursors of tears, which broke now.

“I can’t go,” he said, “I can’t go.”

“We’ve got no choice,” she reminded him. “All we’ve got is each other.”

The pain of his hurt was almost bending him double.

“Stand up, Boone,” she said. “Put your arms around me. The Breed don’t want you; they don’t need you. I do. Boone. Please.”

Slowly he drew himself upright, and embraced her.

“Tight,” she told him. “Hold me tight, Boone.”

His grip tightened. When she dropped her hands from his face to reciprocate, his gaze did not now return to the necropolis. He looked at her.

“We’re going to go back to the Inn and pick up all my belongings, yes? We have to do that. There are letters, photographs lots of stuff we don’t want anyone finding.”

“Then?” he said.

“Then we find somewhere to go where no-one will look for us, and work out a way to prove you innocent.”

“I don’t like the light,” he said.

“Then we’ll stay out of it,” she replied. “Till you’ve got this damn place in perspective.”

She couldn’t find anything in his face resembling an echo of her optimism. His eyes shone, but that was only the dregs of his tears. The rest of him was so cold; so much still a part of Midian’s darkness. She didn’t wonder at that. After all this night (and the days that had preceded it) had brought, she was surprised to find such capacity for hope in herself. But it was there, strong as a heartbeat, and she wouldn’t let the fears she’d learned from the Breed undercut it.

“I love you, Boone,” she said, not expecting an answer.

Maybe in time he’d speak up. If not words of love, at least of explanation. And if he didn’t, or couldn’t, it was not so bad. She had better than explanations. She had the fact of him, the flesh of him. His body was solid in her arms. Whatever claim Midian had upon his memories Lylesburg had been perfectly explicit: he would never be allowed to return there. Instead he would be beside her again at night, his simple presence more precious than any display of passion.

And as time went by she’d persuade him from the torments of Midian, as she had from the self-inflicted torments of his lunacy. She hadn’t failed in that, as Decker’s deceits had convinced her she had. Boone had not concealed a secret life from her; he was innocent. As was she. Innocents both, which fact had brought them alive through this precarious night and into the safety of the day.