Cabal

by Clive Barker

  Only then did she glance up. His eyes were averted. It was now or never. She put the point of Decker’s blade to her belly. She knew she couldn’t drive it home with only one hand, so she went on to her knees, wedged the handle in the dirt, and let her body weight carry her down onto the blade. It hurt horribly. She yelled in pain.

  He turned to find her writhing, her good blood pouring out into the soil. He ran back to her, turning her over. The death spasms were already in her.

  ‘I lied,’ she murmured. ‘Boone … I lied. You’re all I ever want to see.’

  ‘Don’t die,’ he said. ‘Oh God in Heaven, don’t die.’

  ‘So stop me.’

  ‘I don’t know how.’

  ‘Kill me. Bite me … give me the balm.’

  Pain twisted up her face. She gasped.

  ‘Or let me die, if you can’t take me with you. That’s better than living without you.’

  He cradled her, tears dropping onto her face. Her pupils were turning up beneath her lids. Her tongue was twitching at her lips. In seconds, she’d be gone, he knew. Once dead, she’d be beyond his power of recall.

  ‘Is … it … no?’ she said. She wasn’t seeing him any longer.

  He opened his mouth to provide his answer, raising her neck to his bite. Her skin smelled sour. He bit deep into the muscle, her blood meaty on his tongue, the balm rising in his throat to enter her bloodstream. But the shudders in her body had already ceased. She slumped in his embrace.

  He raised his head from her torn neck, swallowing what he’d taken. He’s waited too long. Damn him! She was his mentor and his confessor, and he’d let her slip from him. Death had been upon her before he’d had time to turn sting into promise.

  Appalled at this last and most lamentable failure he laid her down on the ground in front of him.

  As he drew his arms out from beneath her she opened her eyes.

  ‘I’ll never leave you,’ she said.

  XXV

  Abide with Me

  1

  It was Pettine who found Ashbery, but it was Eigerman who recognized the remnants for the man they’d been. The priest still had life in him, a fact – given the severity of his injuries – that verged on the miraculous. Both his legs were amputated in the days following, and one of his arms up to mid-bicep. He didn’t emerge from his coma after the operations, nor did he die, though every surgeon opined that his chances were virtually zero. But the same fire that had maimed him had lent him an unnatural fortitude. Against all the odds, he endured.

  He was not alone through the nights and days of unconsciousness. Eigerman was at his side twenty hours out of every twenty-four, waiting like a dog at a table for some scrap from above, certain that the priest could lead him to the evil that had undone both their lives.

  He got more than he bargained for. When Ashbery finally rose from the deep, after two months of teetering on extinction, he rose voluble. Insane, but voluble. He named Baphomet. He named Cabal. He told, in the hieroglyphs of the hopelessly lunatic, of how the Breed had taken the pieces of their divinity’s body and hidden them. More than that. He said he could find them again. Touched by the Baptiser’s fire, and its survivors, he wanted the touch again.

  ‘I can smell God,’ he’d say, over and over.

  ‘Can you take us to Him?’ Eigerman asked.

  The answer was always yes.

  ‘I’ll be your eyes then,’ Eigerman volunteered. ‘We’ll go together.’

  Nobody else wanted the evidence Ashbery offered, there were too many nonsenses to be accounted for as it was, without adding to the burden on reality. The authorities gladly let Eigerman have custody of the priest. They deserved each other, was the common opinion. Not one sane cell between them.

  Ashbery was utterly dependent on Eigerman: incapable, at least at the beginning, of feeding, shitting or washing without help. Repugnant as it was to tend the imbecile, Eigerman knew Ashbery was a God-given gift. Through him he might yet revenge himself for the humiliations of Midian’s last hours. Coded in Ashbery’s rantings were clues to the enemy’s whereabouts. With time he’d decipher them.

  And when he did – oh when he did – there would come such a day of reckoning the Last Trump would pale beside.

  2

  The visitors came by night, stealthily, and took refuge wherever they could find it.

  Some revisited haunts their forebears had favoured; towns under wide skies where believers still sang on Sunday, and the picket fences were painted every spring. Others took to the cities: to Toronto, Washington, Chicago, hoping to avoid detection better where the streets were fullest, and yesterday’s corruption today’s commerce. In such a place their presence might not be noticed for a year, or two or three. But not forever. Whether they’d taken refuge in city canyon or bayou or dustbowl none pretended this was a permanent residence. They would be discovered in time, and rooted out. There was a new frenzy abroad, particularly amongst their old enemies the Christians, who were a daily spectacle, talking of their martyr and calling for purges in His name. The moment they discovered the Breed in their midst the persecutions would begin again.

  So, discretion was the by-word. They would only take meat when the hunger became crippling, and only then victims who were unlikely to be missed. They would refrain from infecting others, so as not to advertise their presence. If one was found, no other would risk exposure by going to their aid. Hard laws to live by, but not as hard as the consequences of breaking them.

  The rest was patience, and they were well used to that. Their liberator would come eventually, if they could only survive the wait. Few had any clue as to the shape he’d come in. But all knew his name.

  Cabal, he was called. Who Unmade Midian.

  Their prayers were full of him. On the next wind, let him come. If not now, then tomorrow.

  They might not have prayed so passionately had they known what a sea-change his coming would bring. They might not have prayed at all had they known they prayed to themselves. But these were revelations for a later day. For now, they had simpler concerns. Keeping the children from the roofs at night; the bereaved from crying out too loud; the young in summer from falling in love with the human.

  It was a life.

  Clive Barker’s previous novel was WEAVEWORLD. The following pages are taken from the early part of that novel.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CABAL

  Clive Barker was born in Liverpool in 1952. In addition to his work as a novelist and short-story writer, he also illustrates, writes, directs and produces for the stage and screen. His films include Hellraiser and Nightbreed, which is based on Cabal. He is the author of The Books of Blood, The Damnation Game, Weaveworld and The Great and Secret Show. Clive Barker now lives in Los Angeles.

  Cabal marks a ferocious high in Clive Barker’s on-going love affair with the bizarre, the perverse, the terrifying – the story of the ultimate clash between two very different monstrosities, and of a young woman willing to cross the borders of the human to be with the man she loves.

  PRAISE

  ‘A complete but open-ended system of multi-layered, dark magic. On the one hand it’s a simple macabre tale; on the other it shows a deep and dreadful understanding of society and its outcasts … a rare, powerful fantasy.’

  Fear

  ‘A gripping story of powerful erotic intensity.’

  Sunday Independent

  ‘Barker’s characteristic juxtaposition of fascination and fear finds eloquent expression in this novella which treats death as metamorphosis into another state of being.’

  Time Out

  ‘Barker at his terrifying best.

  Yorkshire Evening Post

  ‘Confirms his status as probably the most exciting contemporary writer of fantasy/horror. Definitely a book to have you looking over your shoulder.’

  Dublin Evening Herald

  From the Reviews

  CLIVE BARKER

  ‘A powerful and fascinating writer with a brilliant im
agination … an outstanding storyteller.’

  J.G. BALLARD

  ‘Mr Barker certainly extends one’s appreciation of the possible. He is a fine writer.’

  Wall Street Journal

  ‘Clive Barker has been an amazing writer from his first appearance, with the great gifts of invention and commitment to his own vision stamped on every page.’

  PETER STRAUB

  ‘Barker is so good I am almost tongue-tied. What Barker does makes the rest of us look like we’ve been asleep for the last ten years. His stories are compulsorily readable and original. He is an important, exciting and enormously saleable writer.’

  STEPHEN KING

  ‘Mixing elements of horror fiction and surrealist literature, Barker’s work reads like a cross between Stephen King and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He creates a world where our biggest fears appear to be our own dreams.’

  Boston Herald

  ‘Prodigiously talented … Barker can write weirdness like no one else.’

  City Limits

  ‘Barker’s visions are at one turn horrifying and at the next flickering wth brilliant invention that leaves the reader shaking, not with fear, but with wonder.’

  Sounds

  WEAVEWORLD

  ‘All that you expect from Clive Barker and more – terrifying, shocking, audaciously imaginative, moving and ruthlessly unputdownable.’

  RAMSEY CAMPBELL

  ‘His new dark fantasy, an epic tale of a magic carpet and the wondrous world within its weave, towers above his earlier work … it manages, via its powerful and giddy torrent of invention, to grasp the golden ring as the most ambitious and visionary horror novel of the decade … a raging flood of image and situation so rich as to overflow. Barker has unleashed literary genius.’

  Kirkus

  ‘Prodigious imagination … Weaveworld is beguiling for its imaginative power.’

  Today

  ‘Weaveworld is pure dazzle, pure storytelling. The mixed tricky country where fantasy and horror overlap has been visited before – though not very often – and Weaveworld will be a guide for everyone who travels there in the future. I think it’ll probably be imitated for the next decade or so, as lesser talents try to crack its code and tame its insights.’

  PETER STRAUB

  ‘His most ambitious and imaginative work … strands of Joyce, Poe, Tolkien … an irresistible yarn.’

  Time

  ‘Weaveworld confirms Clive Barker as a formidable talent in British dark fantasy.’

  Q

  ‘Recommended … a fantastic tale of imagination.’

  JONATHAN ROSS, Sunday Express

  THE GREAT AND SECRET SHOW

  ‘Clive Barker’s career has been building up to The Great and Secret Show. With each book, he’s been moving toward a sort of fiction that is grander than the usual horror novel but that is also a paradigm of horror fiction. If you thought Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland was disappointingly tidy and coherent, by all means latch on to The Great and Secret Show. In its vast, loopy sprawl, it is nothing so much as a cross between Gravity’s Rainbow and Lord of the Rings: allusive and mythic, complex and entertaining … extravagantly metaphorical, wildly symbolic, skillful and funny.’

  New York Times Book Review

  ‘A massive and brilliant Platonic dark fantasy that details an eruption of wonders and terrors – as the veil between the world of the senses and the world of the imagination is rent in a small California town. The torrent of invention is astounding, the total impact is staggering, as Barker creates one of the most powerful overtly metaphysical novels of recent years.’

  Kirkus

  ‘Rich and absorbing … the images are vivid, the asides incisive and the prose elegant in this joyride of a story.’

  Time

  ‘The best thing he has ever written … pure narrative simplicity … gore fans will get their chills, subtle horror readers will have theirs and the lighter fantasy readers will be entranced … what wonders are in store as he develops his themes?’

  Fear

  ‘There is such intensity and scope to this work that I can find no flaw in this utterly perfect novel. The Great and Secret Show is a horror story, it is mythology, and it is a story about people, real people … one of the most original and important works of horror fiction in a long, long time.’

  Rave Reviews

  Clive Barker’s Films

  HELLRAISER

  ‘A dazzling debut of exceptional promise … A serious, intelligent and disturbing horror film. Hellraiser will leave you, to coin one of Barker’s own phrases, “in a state between hysteria and ecstasy”.’

  Time Out

  ‘A pinnacle of the genre.’

  Daily Mail

  ‘Raising the scares that other films cannot reach, Hellraiser is a masterpiece of cinematic horror.’

  Tracks

  ‘The best horror movie of the year.’

  New Musical Express

  NIGHTBREED

  ‘A carnival feel, a breathless ghost train ride through a fantastical world of grotesquely glamorous monsters … it certainly has its finger on the pleasure button.’

  Time Out

  ‘Expansive and imaginative.’

  The List

  ‘Decorated with wild visual imagination and twists of plot … bizarre, outrageous, elaborate detail on an epic scale … flamboyant, inventive – it goes like a train and is notably stylish.’

  Daily Mail

  OTHER WORKS

  ALSO BY CLIVE BARKER

  THE BOOKS OF BLOOD, VOLUMES I–VI

  THE DAMNATION GAME

  WEAVEWORLD

  THE GREAT AND SECRET SHOW

  CLIVE BARKER’S NIGHTBREED

  WEAVEWORLD

  1

  The day Cal stepped out into was humid and stale. It could not be long before the summer let fall take its toll. Even the breeze seemed weary, and its condition was contagious. By the time Cal reached the vicinity of Rue Street his feet felt swollen in his shoes and his brain in his skull.

  And then, to add insult to injury, he couldn’t find the damn street. He’d made his way to the house the previous day with his eyes on the birds rather than on the route he was following, so he had only an impressionistic notion of its whereabouts. Knowing he could well wander for several hours and not find the street, he asked the way from a gaggle of six-year-olds, engaged in war games on a street corner. He was confidently re-directed. Either through ignorance or malice, however, the directions proved hopelessly incorrect, and he found himself in ever more desperate circles, his frustration mounting.

  Any sixth sense he might have hoped for – some instinct that would lead him unerringly to the region of his dreams – was conspicuous by its absence.

  It was luck then, pure luck, that brought him finally to the corner of Rue Street, and to the house that had once belonged to Mimi Laschenski.

  2

  Suzanna had spent much of the morning attempting to do as she had promised Doctor Chai: notifying Uncle Charlie in Toronto. It was a frustrating business. For one thing, the small hotel she’d found the previous night only boasted a single public telephone, and other guests wanted access to it as well as she. For another, she had to call round several friends of the family until she located one who had Charlie’s telephone number, all of which took the best part of the morning. When, around one, she finally made contact, Mimi’s only son took the news without a trace of surprise. There was no offer to drop his work and rush to his mother’s bedside; only a polite request that Suzanna call back when there was ‘more news’. Meaning, presumably, that he didn’t expect her to ring again until it was time for him to send a wreath. So much for filial devotion.

  The call done, she rang the hospital. There was no change in the patient’s condition. She’s hanging on, was the duty nurse’s phrase. It conjured an odd image of Mimi as mountaineer, clinging to a cliff-face. She took the opportunity to ask about her grandmother’s personal effects, and was told that she�
��d come into hospital without so much as a nightgown. Most probably the vultures Mrs Pumphrey had spoken of would by now have taken anything of worth from the house – the tall-boy included – but she elected to call by anyway, in case she could salvage anything to make Mimi’s dwindling hours a little more comfortable.

  She found a small Italian restaurant in the vicinity of the hotel to lunch in, then drove to Rue Street.

  3

  The back yard gate had been pushed closed by the removal men, but left unbolted. Cal opened it, and stepped into the yard.

  If he had expected some revelation, he was disappointed. There was nothing remarkable here. Just parched chickweed sprouting between the paving stones, and a litter of chattels the trio had discarded as worthless. Even the shadows, which might have hidden some glory, were wan and unsecretive.

  Standing in the middle of the yard – where all of the mysteries that had overturned his sanity had been unveiled – he doubted for the first time, truly doubted, that anything had in fact happened the previous day.

  Maybe there would be something inside the house, he told himself; some flotsam he could cling to that would bear him up in this flood of doubt.

  He crossed the ground where the carpet had lain, to the back door. The removal men had left it unlocked; or else vandals had broken in. Either way, it stood ajar. He stepped inside.

  At least the shadows were heavier within; there was some room for the fabulous. He waited for his eyes to accommodate the murk. Was it really only twenty-four hours since he’d been here, he thought, as his sharpening gaze scanned the grim interior; only yesterday that he’d entered this house with no more on his mind than catching a lost bird? This time he had so much more to find.