Cabal

by Clive Barker

  Cormack liked women; liked to play the boss-man and bread-winner. Even the hero, as long as it didn’t cost him too much sweat. It went against the grain not to open the door to a woman begging for help. She’d sounded young, and desperate. It was not his heart that hardened, thinking of her vulnerability. Checking first that Koestenbaum wasn’t in sight to witness his defiance of Eigerman’s orders, he whispered:

  ‘Hold on.’

  And unbolted the door top and bottom.

  He’d only opened it an inch and a hand darted through, its thumb slashing his face. The wound missed his eye by a centimetre, but the spurting blood turned half the world red. Semi-blind, he was thrown backwards as the force on the other side of the door threw it open. He didn’t let the rifle go, however. He fired, first at the woman (the shot went wide), then at her companion, who ran at him half-crouching to avoid the bullets. The second shot, though as wide as the first, brought blood. Not his target’s, however. It was his own boot, and the good flesh and bone inside, that was spattered across the floor.

  ‘Jesus Fucking Christ!’

  In his horror he let the rifle drop from his fingers. Knowing he’d not be able to bend and snatch it up again without losing his balance he turned and started to hop towards the desk, where his gun lay.

  But Silver Thumbs was already there, swallowing the bullets like vitamin pills.

  Denied his defences, and knowing he could not stay vertical for more than a few seconds, he began to howl.

  2

  Outside Cell Five, Koestenbaum held his post. He had his orders. Whatever happened beyond the door into the station itself he was to stand guard by the cell, defending it from any and every assault. That he was determined to do, however much Cormack yelled.

  Grinding out his cigarette he drew the shutter in the cell door aside and put his eyes to the peep-hole. The killer had moved in the last few minutes, edging into the corner by degrees, as if hunted by a patch of weak sunlight that fell through the tiny window high above him. Now he could go no further. He was wedged in the corner, wrapped up in himself. Movement aside, he looked much as he had all along: like wreckage. No danger to anyone.

  Appearances deceived, of course; Koestenbaum had been in uniform too long to be naïve about that. But he knew a defeated man when he saw one. Boone didn’t even look up when Cormack let out another yelp. He just watched the crawling sunlight from the corner of his eye, and shook.

  Koestenbaum slammed the peep-hole shut and turned back to watch the door through which Cormack’s attackers – whoever they were – had to come. They’d find him ready and waiting, guns blazing.

  He didn’t have long to contemplate his last stand, as a blast blew out the lock and half the door with it, shards and smoke filling the air. He fired into the confusion, seeing somebody coming at him. The man was tossing away the rifle he’d used to blow the door, and was raising his hands, which glinted as they swept towards Koestenbaum’s eyes. The trooper hesitated long enough to catch sight of his assailant’s face – like something that should have been under bandages or six feet of earth – then he fired. The bullet struck its target, but slowed the man not a jot, and before he could fire a second time he was up against the wall, with the raw face inches from his. Now he saw all too clearly what glinted in the man’s hands. A hook hovered an inch from the gleam of his left eye. There was another at his groin.

  ‘Which do you want to live without?’ the man said.

  ‘No need,’ said a woman’s voice, before Koestenbaum had a chance to choose between sight and sex.

  ‘Let me,’ Narcisse said.

  ‘Don’t let him,’ Koestenbaum murmured. ‘Please … don’t let him.’

  The woman came into view now. The parts of her that showed seemed natural enough, but he wouldn’t have wanted to lay bets on what she looked like under her blouse. More tits than a bitch, most likely. He was in the hands of freaks.

  ‘Where’s Boone?’ she said.

  There was no purpose in risking his balls, eye or otherwise. They’d find the prisoner with or without his help.

  ‘Here,’ he said, glancing back towards Cell Five.

  ‘And the keys?’

  ‘On my belt.’

  The woman reached down and took the keys from him.

  ‘Which one?’ she said.

  ‘Blue tag,’ he replied.

  ‘Thank you.’

  She moved past him to the door.

  ‘Wait –’ Koestenbaum said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘– make him let me alone.’

  ‘Narcisse,’ she said.

  The hook was withdrawn from his eye, but the one at his groin remained, pricking him.

  ‘We have to be quick,’ Narcisse said.

  ‘I know,’ the woman replied.

  Koestenbaum heard the door swing open. He glanced round to see her stepping into the cell. As he looked back the fist came at his face, and he dropped to the floor with his jaw broken in three places.

  3

  Cormack had suffered the same summary blow, but he’d been already toppling when it came, and instead of knocking him solidly into unconsciousness it had merely left him in a daze, from which he quickly shook himself. He crawled to the door, and hauled himself, hand over hand, to his foot. Then he stumbled out in the street. The rush of homeward traffic was over, but there were still vehicles passing in both directions, and the sight of a toeless trooper hobbling into the middle of the street, arms raised, was enough to bring the flow of traffic to a squealing halt.

  But even as the drivers and their passengers stepped out of the trucks and cars to come to his assistance Cormack felt the delayed shock of his self-wounding closing his system down. The words his helpers were mouthing to him reached his befuddled mind as nonsense.

  He thought (hoped) somebody had said:

  ‘I’ll get a gun.’

  But he couldn’t be sure.

  He hoped (prayed) his lolling tongue had told them where to find the felons, but he was even less sure of that.

  As the ring of faces faded around him, however, he realized his seeping foot would have left a trail that would lead them back to the transgressors. Comforted, he passed out.

  4

  ‘Boone,’ she said.

  His sallow body, bared to the waist – scarred, and missing a nipple – shuddered as she spoke his name. But he didn’t look up at her.

  ‘Get him going, will you?’

  Narcisse was at the door, staring at the prisoner.

  ‘Not with you yelling I won’t,’ she told him. ‘Leave us alone a little while, huh?’

  ‘No time for fucky fucky.’

  ‘Just get out.’

  ‘OK.’ He raised his arms in mock surrender. ‘I’m going.’

  He closed the door. It was just her and Boone now. The living and the dead.

  ‘Get up,’ she told him.

  He did nothing but shudder.

  ‘Will you get up? We don’t have that much time.’

  ‘So leave me,’ he said.

  She ignored the sentiment but not the fact that he’d broken his silence.

  ‘Talk to me,’ she said.

  ‘You shouldn’t have come back,’ he said, defeat in his every word. ‘You put yourself at risk for nothing.’

  She hadn’t expected this. Anger maybe, that she’d left him to be captured at the Sweetgrass Inn. Suspicion even, that she’d come here with someone from Midian. But not this mumbling, broken creature, slumped in a corner like a boxer who’d fought a dozen too many fights. Where was the man she’d seen at the Inn, changing the order of his very flesh in front of her? Where was the casual strength she’d seen; and the appetite? He scarcely seemed capable of lifting his own head, never mind meat to his lips.

  That was the issue, she suddenly understood. That forbidden meat.

  ‘I can still taste it,’ he said.

  There was such shame in his voice; the human he’d been repulsed by the thing he’d become.

 
‘You weren’t answerable,’ she told him. ‘You weren’t in control of yourself.’

  ‘I am now,’ he replied. His nails dug into the muscle of his forearms, she saw, as though he were holding himself down. ‘I’m not going to let go. I’m going to wait here till they come to string me up.’

  ‘That won’t do any good, Boone,’ she reminded him.

  ‘Jesus …’ The word decayed into tears. ‘You know everything?’

  ‘Yes, Narcisse told me. You’re dead. So why wish a hanging on yourself? They can’t kill you.’

  ‘They’ll find a way,’ he said. ‘Take off my head. Blow out my brains.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that!’

  ‘They have to finish me, Lori. Put me out of my misery.’

  ‘I don’t want you out of your misery,’ she said.

  ‘But I do!’ he replied, looking up at her for the first time. Seeing his face, she remembered how many had doted on him, and understood why. Pain could have no more persuasive apologists than his bones, his eyes.

  ‘I want out,’ he said. ‘Out of this body. Out of this life.’

  ‘You can’t. Midian needs you. It’s being destroyed, Boone.’

  ‘Let it go! Let it all go. Midian’s just a hole in the ground, full of things that should lie down and be dead. They know that, all of ’em. They just haven’t got the balls to do what’s right.’

  ‘Nothing’s right,’ she found herself saying (how far she’d come, to this bleak relativity), ‘except what you feel and know.’

  His small fury abated. The sadness that replaced it was profounder than ever.

  ‘I feel dead,’ he said. ‘I know nothing.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ she replied, taking the first steps towards him she’d taken since entering the cell. He flinched as if he expected her to strike him.

  ‘You know me,’ she said. ‘You feel me.’

  She took hold of his arm, and pulled it up towards her. He didn’t have time to make a fist. She laid his palm on her stomach.

  ‘You think you disgust me, Boone? You think you horrify me? You don’t.’

  She drew his hand up towards her breasts.

  ‘I still want you, Boone. Midian wants you too, but I want you more. I want you cold, if that’s the way you are. I want you dead, if that’s the way you are. And I’ll come to you if you won’t come to me. I’ll let them shoot me down.’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  Her grip on his hand was light now. He could have slipped it. But he chose to leave his touch upon her, with only the thin fabric of her blouse intervening. She wished she could dissolve it at will; have his hand stroking the skin between her breasts.

  ‘They’re going to come for us sooner or later,’ she said.

  Nor was she bluffing. There were voices from outside. A lynch-mob gathering. Maybe the monsters were forever. But so were their persecutors.

  ‘They’ll destroy us both, Boone. You for what you are. Me for loving you. And I’ll never hold you again. I don’t want that, Boone. I don’t want us dust in the same wind. I want us flesh.’

  Her tongue had outstripped her intention. She hadn’t meant to say it so plainly. But it was said now; and true. She wasn’t ashamed of it.

  ‘I won’t let you deny me, Boone,’ she told him. The words were their own engine. They drove her hand to Boone’s cold scalp. She snatched a fist of his thick hair.

  He didn’t resist her. Instead the hand on her chest closed on the blouse, and he went down onto his knees in front of her, pressing his face to her crotch, licking at it as if to tongue her clean of clothes and enter her with spit and spirit all in one.

  She was wet beneath the fabric. He smelt her heat for him. Knew what she’d said was no lie. He kissed her cunt, or the cloth that hid her cunt, over and over and over.

  ‘Forgive yourself, Boone,’ she said.

  He nodded.

  She took tighter hold on his hair, and pulled him away from the bliss of her scent.

  ‘Say it,’ she told him. ‘Say you forgive yourself.’

  He looked up from his pleasure, and she could see before he spoke the weight of shame had gone from his face. Behind his sudden smile she met the monster’s eyes, dark, and darkening still as he delved for it.

  The look made her ache.

  ‘Please …’ she murmured, ‘… love me.’

  He pulled at her blouse. It tore. His hand was through the gap in one smooth motion, and beneath her bra for her breast. This was madness of course. The mob would be upon them if they didn’t get out quickly. But then madness had drawn her into this circle of dust and flies in the first place; why be surprised that her journey had brought her round to this new insanity? Better this than life without him. Better this than practically anything.

  He was getting to his feet, teasing her tit from hiding, putting his cold mouth to her hot nipple, flicking it, licking it, tongue and teeth in perfect play. Death had made a lover of him. Given him knowledge of clay, and how to rouse it; made him easy with the body’s mysteries. He was everywhere about her, working his hips against hers in slow grinding circles – trailing his tongue from her breasts to the sweat-bowl between her clavicles, and up along the ridge of her throat to her chin, thence to her mouth.

  Only once in her life had there been such wrenching hunger in her. In New York, years before, she’d met and fucked with a man whose name she’d never known, but whose hands and lips seemed to know her better than herself.

  ‘Have a drink with me?’ she’d said, when they’d unglued themselves.

  He’d told her no almost pityingly, as though someone so ignorant of the rules was bound for grief. So she’d watched him dress and leave, angry with herself for asking, and with him for such practised detachment. But she’d dreamt of him a dozen times in the weeks after, revisiting their squalid moments together, hungry for them again.

  She had them here. Boone was the lover of that dark corner, perfected. Cool and feverish, urgent and studied. She knew his name this time; but he was still strange to her. And in the fervour of his possession, and in her heat for him, she felt that other lover, and all the lovers who’d come and gone before him, burned up. It was only their ash in her now – where their tongues and cocks had been – and she had power over them completely.

  Boone was unzipping himself. She took his length in her hand. Now it was his turn to sigh, as she ran her fingers along the underside of his erection, up from his balls to where the ring of his circumcision scar bore a nugget of tender flesh. She stroked him there, tiny movements to match the measure of his tongue back and forth between her lips. Then, on the same sudden impulse, the teasing time was over. He was lifting her skirt, tearing at her underwear, his fingers going where only hers had been for too long. She pushed him back against the wall; pulled his jeans down to mid-thigh. Then, one arm hooked around his shoulders, the other hand enjoying the silk of his cock before it was out of sight, she took him inside. He resisted her speed, a delicious war of want which had her at screaming pitch in seconds. She was never so open, nor had ever needed to be. He filled her to overflowing.

  Then it really began. After the promises, the proof. Bracing his upper back against the wall he angled himself so as to throw his fuck up into her, her weight its own insistence. She licked his face. He grinned. She spat in it. He laughed and spat back.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. Go on. Yes.’

  All she could manage were affirmatives. Yes to his spittle; yes to his cock; yes to this life in death, and joy in life in death forever and ever.

  His answer was honey-hipped; wordless labour, teeth clenched, brow ploughed. The expression on his face made her cunt spasm. To see him shut his eyes against her pleasure; to know that the sight of her bliss took him too close to be countenanced. They had such power, each over each. She demanded his motion with motion of her own, one hand gripping the brick beside his head so she could raise herself along his length then impale herself again. There was no finer hurt. She wished it could never s
top.

  But there was a voice at the door. She could hear it through her whining head.

  ‘Quickly.’

  It was Narcisse.

  ‘Quickly.’ Boone heard him too; and the din behind his voice as the lynchers gathered. He matched her new rhythm; up to meet her descent.

  ‘Open your eyes,’ she said.

  He obeyed, grinning at the command. It was too much for him, meeting her eyes. Too much for her, meeting his. The pact struck, they parted till her cunt only sucked at the head of his cock – so slicked it might slip from her – then closed on each other for one final stroke.

  The joy of it made her cry out, but he choked her yell with his tongue, sealing their eruption inside their mouths. Not so below. Undammed after months, his come overflowed and ran down her legs, its course colder than his scalp or kisses.

  It was Narcisse who brought them back from their world of two into that of many. The door was now open. He was watching them without embarrassment.

  ‘Finished?’ he wanted to know.

  Boone wiped his lips back and forth on Lori’s, spreading their saliva from cheek to cheek.

  ‘For now,’ he said, looking only at her.

  ‘So can we get going?’ Narcisse said.

  ‘Whenever. Wherever.’

  ‘Midian,’ came the instant reply.

  ‘Midian then.’

  The lovers drew apart. Lori pulled up her underwear. Boone tried to get his cock, still hard, behind his zip.

  ‘There’s quite a mob out there,’ Narcisse said. ‘How the hell are we going to get past them?’

  ‘They’re all the same –’ Boone said, ‘–all afraid.’

  Lori, her back turned to Boone, felt a change in the air around her. A shadow was climbing the walls to left and right, spreading over her back, kissing her nape, her spine, her buttocks and what lay between. It was Boone’s darkness. He was in it to its length and breadth.

  Even Narcisse was agog.

  ‘Holy Shit,’ he muttered, then flung the door wide to let the night go running.

  5