by Clive Barker
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 overground, 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 heart-beat, 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.
PART FOUR
SAINTS AND SINNERS
‘You want my advice? Kiss the Devil, eat the worm’
Jan de Mooy
Another matter; or, Man remade
XV
The Toll
1
The sun rose like a stripper, keeping its glory well covered by cloud till it seemed there’d be no show at all, then casting its rags off one by one. As the light grew so did Boone’s discomfort. Rummaging in the glove compartment Lori rooted out a pair of sunglasses, which Boone put on to keep the worst of the light from his sensitized eyes. Even then he had to keep his head down, his face averted from the brightening East.
They spoke scarcely at all. Lori was too concerned to keep her weary mind on the task of driving, and Boone made no attempt to break the silence. He had thoughts of his own, but none that he could have articulated to the woman at his side. In the past Lori had meant a great deal to him, he knew, but making contact with those feelings now was beyond him. He felt utterly removed from his life with her; indeed from life at all. Through the years of his sickness he’d clung always to the threads of consequence he saw in living: how one action resulted in another; this feeling in that. He’d got through, albeit with stumbling steps, by seeing how the path behind him became the one ahead. Now he could see neither forward nor backward, except dimly.
Clearest in his head, Baphomet, the Divided One. Of all Midian’s occupants it was the most powerful and the most vulnerable, taken apart by ancient enemies but preserved, suffering and suffering, in the flame Lylesburg had called the Trial Fire. Boone had gone into Baphomet’s pit hoping to argue his case; but it was the Baptiser that had spoken, oracles from a severed head. He could not now remember its pronouncements but he knew the news had been grim.
Amongst his memories of the whole and the human, sharpest was that of Decker. He could piece together several fragments of their shared history, and knew it should enrage him, but he could not find it in himself to hate the man who’d led him to Midian’s deeps, anymore than he could love the woman who’d brought him out of them. They were part of some other biography; not quite his.
What Lori understood of his condition he didn’t know, but he suspected she remained for the most part ignorant. Whatever she guessed, she seemed content to accept him as he was, and in a simple, animal way he needed her presence too much to risk telling her the truth, assuming that he could have found the words. He was as much and as little as he was. Man. Monster. Dead. Alive. In Midian he’d seen all these states in a single creature: they were, most likely, all true of him. The only people who might have helped him understand how such contraries could co-exist were behind him, in the necropolis. They’d only begun the long, long process of educating him in Midian’s history when he’d defied them. Now he was exiled from their presence forever, and he’d never know.
There was a paradox. Lylesburg had warned him clearly enough as they’d stood together in the tunnels and listened to Lori’s cries for help; told him unequivocally that if he broke cover he broke his covenant with the Breed.
‘Remember what you are now,’ he’d said. ‘You can’t save her, and keep our refuge. So you have to let her die.’
Yet he couldn’t. Though Lori belonged in another life, a life he’d lost forever, he couldn’t leave her to the fiend. What that meant, if anything, was beyond his capacity to grasp right now. These few circling thoughts aside he was sealed in the moment he was living, and the next moment, and the moment after that; moving second by second through his life as the car moved over the road, ignorant of the place it had been and blind to where it was headed.
2
They were almost within sight of the Sweetgrass Inn when it occurred to Lori that if Sheryl’s body had been found at the Hudson Bay Sunset there was a chance their destination would already be crawling with police.
She stopped the car.
‘What’s wrong?’ Boone asked.
She told him.
‘Perhaps it’d be safer if I went there alone,’ she said. ‘If it’s safe I’ll get my things and come back for you.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s not so good.’
She couldn’t see his eyes behind the sunglasses, but his voice carried fear in it.
‘I’ll be quick,’ she said.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s better we stay together,’ he replied. He put his hands over his face, as he had at Midian’s gates. ‘Don’t leave me alone,’ he said, his voice hushed. ‘I don’t know where I am, Lori. I don’t even know who I am. Stay with me.’
She leaned over to him, and kissed the back of his hand. He let both fall from his face. She kissed his cheek, then his mouth. They drove on together to the Inn.
In fact her fears proved groundless. If Sheryl’s body had indeed been located overnight – which was perhaps unlikely given its location – no connection had been made with the Inn. Indeed not only were there no police to bar their way there was little sign of life at all. Only a dog yapping in one of the upper rooms, and a baby crying somewhere. Even the lobby was deserted, the desk clerk too occupied with the Morning Show to keep his post. The sound of laughter and music followed them through the hall and up the stairs to the first floor. Despite the ease of it, by the time they’d reached the room Lori’s hands were trembling so much she could scarcely align the key with the lock. She turned to Boone for assistance, only to discover that he was no longer close behind her but lingering at the top of the stairs, looking back and forth along the corridor. Again, she cursed the sunglasses, which prevented her reading his feelings with any certainty. At least until he backed against the wall, his fingers seeking some purchase though there was none to be had.
‘What’s the problem, Boone?’
‘There’s nobody here,’ he returned.
‘Well that’s good for us, isn’t it?’
‘But I can smell …’
‘What can you smell?’
He shook his head.
‘Tell me.’
‘I smell blood.’
‘Boone?’
‘I smell so much blood.’
‘Where? Where from?’
He made no answer, nor did he look her way, but stared off down the corridor.
‘I’ll be quick,’ she told him. ‘Just stay where you are, and I’ll be back with you.’
Going down on her haunches she clumsily fitted key to lock, then stood up and opened the door. There was no scent of blood from the room, only the stale perfume of the previous night. It reminded her instantly of Sheryl, and of the good times they’d had together, even in the midst of such bad. Less than twenty-four hours ago she’d been laughing in this very room, and talking of her killer as the man of her dreams.
Thinking of which, Lori looked back towards Boone. He was still pressed against the wall, as if it was the only way to be certain the world wasn’t toppling. Leaving him to it, she stepped into the room, and went about her packing. First into the bathroom, to collect up her toiletries, and then back into the bedroom to gather her strewn clothes. It was only as she put her bag on the bed to pack it that she saw the crack in the wall. It was as if something had hit it from the other side, very hard. The plaster had come away in clods, and littered the floor between the twin beds. She stared at the crack a moment. Had the party got so riotous they’d started throwing the furniture around?
Curious, she crossed to the wall. It was little more than a plasterboard partition, and the impact from the far side had actually opened a hole in it. She pulled a piece of loose plaster away and
put her eye to the aperture.
The curtains were still drawn in the room beyond, but the sun was strong enough to penetrate, lending the air an ochre gloom. Last night’s party must have been even more debauched than the one the night before, she thought. Wine stains on the walls, and the celebrants still asleep on the floor.
But the smell: it wasn’t wine.
She stepped back from the wall, her stomach turning.
Fruit spilled no such juice –
Another step.
– flesh did. And if it was blood she smelt then it was blood she saw, and if it was blood she saw then the sleepers were not sleeping, because who lies down in an abattoir? Only the dead.
She went quickly to the door. Down the corridor Boone was no long standing, but crouched against the wall, hugging his knees. His face, as he turned to her, was full of distressing tics.
‘Get up,’ she told him.
‘I smell blood,’ he said softly.
‘You’re right. So get up. Quickly. Help me.’
But he was rigid; rooted to the floor. She knew this posture of old: hunched in a corner, shivering like a beaten dog. In the past she’d had comforting words to offer, but there was no time for such solace now. Perhaps someone had survived the blood-bath in the next room. If so, she had to help, with Boone or without. She turned the handle of the slaughterhouse door, and opened it.
As the smell of death came out to meet her Boone started to moan.
‘… blood …’ she heard him say.
Everywhere, blood. She stood and stared for a full minute before forcing herself over the threshold to search for some sign of life. But even the most cursory glance at each of the corpses confirmed that the same nightmare had claimed all six. She knew his name too. He’d left his mark; wiping their features out with his knives the way he had Sheryl’s. Three of the six he’d caught in flagrante delicto. Two men and a woman, partially undressed and slumped over each other on the bed, their entanglements fatal. The others had died lying in spirit sodden comas around the room, most likely without even waking. Hand over her mouth to keep the smell out and the sobs in, she retreated from the room, the taste of her stomach in her throat. As she stepped out into the corridor her peripheral vision caught sight of Boone. He wasn’t sitting any longer, but moving purposefully down the passageway towards her.