Midian Unmade

by Joseph Nassise

  Ben asked, “Who would play you in the movie of your life, man?”

  I remember wondering. I hated all the hero actors. I thought they were all a little too cocky and sure of themselves. I couldn’t understand why people cheered for them. I was always ultimately disappointed when they survived to the end. I wondered why there were no movies where the bad guy survived.

  “What makes you think you’re a good guy?” I remember asking.

  “Because I fight for the winning side,” he said, laughing, completely unaware of the stupid simplicity of his answer.

  Dobler was sputtering like a baby from somewhere off to my right when I next came to. “We have him in a box. We … we’re studying him.”

  “Did he tell you what I did to him?” Rook asked.

  I couldn’t hear the answer, but I heard Rook respond, “I thought as much. So this was all a ruse? What would you have done if I’d come?”

  Dobler mumbled something.

  “Oh, you mean you thought I’d actually fall for it? What made you think that?”

  I couldn’t hear the answer again. I levered myself up, using Segrest’s face for balance. I wanted to hear. I wanted to see Dobler as he was talking.

  I saw him hanging from the ceiling, his hands tied and hooked. His skin was gone—completely absent from where it was supposed to be. How Rook had done it without killing Dobler I hadn’t a clue, but I wanted to make sure and ask. It looked cool.

  I straightened and arched my back. My shoulders felt tight so I rotated them.

  “Why don’t you answer him, Dobler? Why don’t you tell Rook what I said?”

  “He—he said you’d fall for it hook, line, and sinker.”

  Rook looked at me with those same appraising eyes he’d given me earlier.

  This time I returned his gaze. “Sublime, isn’t it?” It was a statement rather than a question.

  Rook grinned. “Yes it is. Very sublime.”

  Dobler shook once, his body rattling savagely, then died.

  Soldiers do things in war. Murder changes them. They can become monsters, torturing, raping, and collecting body parts as the animal part is begged to the surface. But this is only temporary. When it’s over, we return home to a life where the only raised fists are at the television or against a bad driver. I used to believe that these things I did were like those things, an act of war meant to be left in the war. A souvenir meant to be left behind.

  Rook had said it earlier: “I’m the devil until the credits roll, then everyone scrambles to see who I really am.” It was the most sublime thing I’d ever heard and informed my inner self who I really was better than a thousand nights staring into the barrel of my gun.

  Sometimes the devil plays himself, but most often it’s someone else, someone you least expect, or someone you don’t want to expect.

  Sunlight suddenly streamed into the cave’s opening like laser beams from an angry god. I took one look then stepped into the blinding day, and in that moment I knew who I really was.

  My skin popped and sizzled.

  My hair flamed like Johnny Blaze.

  My ears blackened and burst.

  I watched my hands turn to ash.

  In the movie of my life I’d played the devil, but when the credits rolled, it was me all along … John Hershey Gillam, son of Marguerite and Frank Gillam, brother of Peter and Susan, soldier, warrior, believer in the cause, devil in disguise, Nightbreed in training … it was me.

  It was me.

  I stepped back inside the cave, glancing at Ben’s head hanging with the others from the ceiling. Shadows lived where his eyes had been. He’d given me good memories all the way to the end.

  Rook regarded me with a sad smile.

  My hands re-formed.

  And the credits rolled.

  THE LIGHTHOUSE OF MIDIAN

  Ian Rogers

  She had many names.

  The first one she got when she was born, the second she received when she was reborn. The others came after that.

  She didn’t remember her first name; she’d forgotten it, much as she’d forgotten the life that had gone with it. Her only memory of that time was a city of lights and cold winds that blew down mercilessly from the north lands. The second name—the one she thought of as her true name—had been given to her by Baphomet, the Baptizer, the one who made Midian.

  Now Midian was gone, destroyed by fire and hatred, and she found herself, suddenly and inexplicably, back in that city of lights and cold winds. She thought it might be time for a third name but there was no one here to give it to her. No one except Causwell, and he wasn’t giving anything to anyone these days.

  So, for now, she remained Luna.

  Luna of Midian.

  Luna of the Nightbreed.

  * * *

  She was watching for the blue man.

  Since returning to the city of lights and cold winds, Luna had discovered that if she sat on the sidewalk some people would give her money. Coins mostly. She rubbed them between her fingers, feeling a combination of cold metal and distant sympathy. It was, she came to learn, the sensation of an impersonal transaction. They paid her to ignore her.

  One time a man offered her paper money, a pink bill with “50” printed on it. Unlike the others, he didn’t leave the money on the ground in front of her. He held it out to her in his hand, and when she tried to take it, he gripped the bill tighter until she raised her eyes to his. She could tell what he wanted, but not from the look in his eyes. She knew the moment she touched his money. She let go, lowering and shaking her head in refusal. When she looked up again, the man and the money were gone.

  There were a lot of people out tonight. She was stationed on the sidewalk in front of a large stadium. Larger even than the tabernacle in Midian. Inside, men in different-colored uniforms pounded away at each other in order to control possession of a brown ball. It was funny in a way. Also a bit sad. But it drew a lot of people, and some of them would give her money that she used to buy food.

  She had to be careful, because a few times a man in another uniform, a blue one, would chase her away. She didn’t let other people bother her, but the blue man was different. He wore a gun on his belt. Luna didn’t know about guns until the fall of Midian. She had learned all about them, then. The loud, barking power they possessed. The damage they could inflict. Even a little one like the one the blue man had on his hip, always close to hand.

  A couple walking past stopped suddenly. The man tried to pull the woman on, but she held him back. She looked down at Luna with something in her eyes that might have been pity. She held out a blue bill. It made Luna think of the blue man, and she didn’t take it at first. The woman noticed her reluctance and held the money out farther. “Come on. It’s okay. You can take it.”

  Luna reached out quickly and snapped the bill from her hand. It had “5”s all over it. She only had a little math, but she knew the bills were worth more than the coins. “Thank you,” she said, with a small nod. “You’re very kind.”

  The woman gave her a sad smile. “Do you have a place to stay?”

  Luna responded with another small nod. She kept her head down, afraid to meet the woman’s eyes. She stayed like that until the man succeeded in drawing the woman away.

  Luna raised her head when she was sure they were gone.

  It was then that she saw him. The blue man. He was sauntering through the crowd like he was the master of all he surveyed. Perhaps he was. He was the only one she’d ever seen with a gun.

  Luna stood up abruptly, pockets jingling with the coins she had acquired that evening. She turned to put her back to the blue man and started away …

  … and walked right into a wall.

  At least that’s what it felt like. Hard and … wet? Then the wall let out a grunt and a curse—“Fuck!”—and she realized she had collided with a man.

  He was a brute, large and broad-shouldered, with a thick neck and a wide forehead. His face was a congestion of anger; squinting, unfocused
eyes, sneering nose, and gritting teeth. He was wearing a jacket with a galloping horse over the left breast. He smelled foul, as if he existed in a personal cloud of pollution.

  “You li’l bitch.”

  Her face was buffeted by his rank breath. She lowered her eyes and saw a plastic cup in his large hand, crinkled into a dripping, shapeless mess.

  “You spilled my fucking beer. Li’l bitch.”

  The man’s hand sprang open, dropping the mangled cup, and snapped out to clamp onto Luna’s upper arm.

  “Let me go.”

  She didn’t scream, didn’t even raise her voice above its normal register. There were two reasons for this. One, she didn’t want to draw the attention of the blue man, who would surely side with the foul man and join him in this assault. The second reason was that she didn’t need to raise her voice. She never had to.

  With his grip on her arm, Luna saw everything inside the foul man. All the clean and all the dirty. There was so much more dirty. No surprise there. She held her breath reflexively so she wouldn’t take it in, but it was all around her. She told herself she was clean, that this was the foul man’s dirty, the two were separate, and she would be okay once they broke contact. But not yet.

  With her mind, she reached out and took a piece of his dirty—she saw the foul man as a foul boy, almost as big in adolescence as the man he would become, wearing a jacket similar to the one he was wearing now. Luna saw him in a darkened room, tugging down the pants of a girl lying passed out on a bed, the muffled sounds of laughter and music coming from somewhere nearby. The foul boy climbed on top of the girl’s supine body and began to thrust into her, moving with the beat of the music. Luna took the memory and turned it around and shined it back at the foul man.

  Confronted with these noxious images, the foul man let go of Luna, his hand flying off her arm as if propelled by a powerful electric shock. He stumbled away from her, legs twisting around each other, and he tumbled over backward. He landed on his back and continued to push himself away from her, moving awkwardly like a crab along the sidewalk.

  “Don’t touch me!” he said in a high-pitched squeal that belied his massive size. “Keep your hands off me!”

  Luna stared at him without expression. The foul man wasn’t really talking to her. He was still inside his memory. He wasn’t even himself right now. He was the unconscious woman he had assaulted. She had been passed out through the ordeal, but the foul man was very much awake. More awake than he’d been in his entire life.

  As she walked off into the night, Luna knew he would never sleep soundly ever again.

  * * *

  The building had been a radio station at one time.

  Luna knew about radio. Someone in Midian had one. It wasn’t forbidden, but you had to get close to the surface to pick anything up on it, and the elders didn’t like anyone spending too much time topside. The man who owned the radio—his name was Grazer—didn’t seem to have much regard for Midian’s laws. Luna snuck away to see him sometimes so she could listen to the music.

  “Mostly country and oldies from the station in Peace River,” Grazer told her. “Reception sucks, but that’s the best you can get out here in the willywags.”

  Luna didn’t understand “country” or “oldies,” but she liked the sounds that came out of the black plastic box. Plucking strings and screaming horns. Sad voices, happy voices. She didn’t always understand what the people were singing about, but it didn’t matter. She loved to listen to those sounds from far away.

  She had asked Grazer where they came from, those sounds, and he said they were sent out—“broadcast” was the word he used—from a great metal tower.

  “How tall is it?” Luna asked.

  “Very tall,” Grazer said.

  “Taller than the Strivent?”

  “Yes, child.”

  Standing outside the abandoned building she now called home, Luna found that hard to believe. The tower that stood atop the roof was tall, but surely not as tall as the Strivent of Midian. She should know; she had climbed the Strivent on several occasions, had clung to the top as the wind screamed and howled and threatened to pull her off.

  Of course, this was not the same station that broadcast from Peace River, but she imagined they were all the same. This one had gone quiet. It sent out no songs. The building was empty now except for her and Causwell.

  * * *

  She found him in the basement.

  That was where he spent most of his time. Huddled in his blankets, wandering around in the darkness, yelling at unseen phantoms. Or at least at phantoms that Luna could not see.

  Presently he stood in front of a tall metal box with a glass window on the front. Inside were rows of candy held in place by coils of metal. She had seen devices such as these before. You put coins in the little slot, punched the code that matched the one next to the piece of candy you wanted, and the coil would turn, causing the candy to fall to the bottom of the box, where you could retrieve it from a narrow push-door.

  This candy box didn’t work because there was no power in the building. Luna didn’t know much about electricity except that many things in the city of lights and cold winds needed it to work.

  Causwell wasn’t about to let that stop him, though. He was hammering the window with a stick he had found somewhere. The stick wasn’t very strong, and neither was the effort Causwell was putting into each swing; he had succeeded so far in only scuffing and scratching the glass.

  He stopped when he realized he was no longer alone. He turned his sleek, hairless head toward her.

  “Luna,” he said in his hollow, breathless voice. “You came back.”

  “You say that every time, Causwell. Why do you keep thinking I’m going to leave you?”

  “Everyone leaves,” he said. “Eventually. It would be better for you if you did. This is a bad place.”

  “This is our new home.”

  Causwell sneered. “This isn’t home. This is a foul-smelling pit.” His eyes took on a dreamy look of longing. “I miss my old pit. This one doesn’t hold a candle to it.”

  Luna nodded solemnly.

  Causwell came shuffling forward, looking for comfort—Luna had held him through many a night since they’d taken refuge in this place. He stopped abruptly and sniffed at her.

  “You smell like beer. Have you been drinking?”

  “A man spilled it on me.”

  “Did he hurt you?”

  Luna lowered her eyes and shook her head.

  “Did you hurt him?”

  “A little.”

  She expected to be rebuked, but Causwell scoffed instead.

  “Serves them right.” He looked away, deep in thought. “I came from a town much like this place—cattle country, it’s called. Do you know cattle?”

  Luna nodded. She’d seen pictures in books.

  “They have an expression there: You mess with the bull, you get the horns. Same goes for anyone who tries to fuck with the Breed. Although in your case, I guess they get the eyes instead of the horns. We may not have a home anymore, but that doesn’t change who we are.”

  The quiet strength of his words reminded Luna of the way Causwell had been in Midian. The tricks he could do with his body. Making cat’s cradle with the veins in his fingers, drawing out the wet red threads to the delight of the children. The way he could extend his ribs out through his chest, the bones sharpened to points, and make them snap like a voracious mouth. He didn’t do anything now except wander this dark basement and beat his stick against the candy box.

  As quickly as it arrived, the conviction in his voice departed; his shoulders slumped, as if glad to be free of some monumental weight.

  “Not that it matters,” he said. “We’re the last. They’ll find us eventually and slaughter us. Drag our bodies through their pristine streets so they can show the world that the monsters are dead.”

  Causwell turned away from Luna, turned back into his sorrow. She reached out and gripped his arm.

 
; “We’re still Nightbreed,” she said. “If we are alive, then there must be others.”

  “The Breed are gone,” Causwell said despondently. “Like Midian.”

  She let go of him and he shuffled off into the corner.

  * * *

  When she wasn’t sitting on the sidewalks for money, Luna walked the streets and back alleys looking for others of her kind.

  After the fall of Midian, the remaining Nightbreed scattered to all points of the compass. Many had come here, to the city of lights and cold winds; their only wish to be ignored, to find the peace they’d once known before.

  Besides Causwell, Luna hadn’t seen any other Breed. But she could feel them, somewhere out there. Lurking. Hiding. She wanted to find them—she needed to find them—but the Breed were good at staying hidden, even from each other.

  Her reasons were not entirely altruistic. She told herself there was power in numbers, but mostly she just didn’t want to be alone. Causwell didn’t count. He lived so much inside himself, inside his own melancholy, that it was like she lived by herself at the radio station.

  So, every night she went out and searched. She moved like a ghost along the periphery of city life, drifting along the edge of crowds, losing herself in the smoke haze of bars and the frenetic light show of dance clubs. She explored abandoned buildings and stalked the city’s few green places, which at night became black places. Occasionally she found traces of the Breed—a faint scent of tombs and spices, a sigil painted or on a wall.

  She thought it was only a matter of time before she found them, just as she had found Causwell. But sometimes she wondered if they were the last. It didn’t make any difference. No matter how much the dread in her heart might eclipse the hope, she knew she’d never stop looking.

  * * *

  No joy tonight.

  Luna returned to the radio station empty-handed and empty-headed. Her stomach growled; it was empty, too. Her pockets were filled with coins again, but she hadn’t bothered to buy any food.

  She felt bad that she hadn’t at least got something for Causwell. She descended to the basement and found him in his corner. He turned away guiltily at Luna’s approach.