Cabal. Clive Barker

      CLIVE BARKER

      CABAL:

       The Nightbreed

       DEDICATION

      TO ANNIE

      ‘We are all imaginary animals …’

      DOMINGO D’YBARRONDO

      A Bestiary of the Soul

      CONTENTS

       Cover

       Title Page

Dedication

PART ONE: LOCO

I The Truth

II Academy

III The Rhapsodist

IV Necropolis

V A Different Ape

VI Feet of Clay

       PART TWO: DEATH’S A BITCH

VII Rough Roads

VIII Where He Fell

       IX Touched

       X Sun and Shade

       PART THREE: DARK AGES

       XI The Stalking Ground

       XII Above and Below

       XIII The Prophetic Child

       XIV Tabernacle

       PART FOUR: SAINTS AND SINNERS

       XV The Toll

       XVI Now or Never

       XVII Delirium

       XVIII The Wrath of the Righteous

       PART FIVE: THE GOOD NIGHT

       XIX A Friendless Face

       XX Driven

       XXI That Desire

       XXII Triumph of the Mask

       XXIII The Harrowing

       XXIV Cabal

       XXV Abide with Me

       About the Author

       Praise

      Other Works

       Weaveworld

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

       PART ONE LOCO

       ‘I was born alive. Isn’t that punishment enough?’

      Mary Hendrickson, at her trial for patricide

       I The Truth

      Of all the rash and midnight promises made in the name of love none, Boone now knew, was more certain to be broken than: ‘I’ll never leave you’.

      What time didn’t steal from under your nose, circumstance did. It was useless to hope otherwise; useless to dream that the world somehow meant you good. Everything of value, everything you clung to for your sanity would rot or be snatched in the long run, and the abyss would gape beneath you, as it gaped for Boone now, and suddenly, without so much as a breath of explanation, you were gone. Gone to hell or worse, professions of love and all.

      His outlook hadn’t always been so pessimistic. There’d been a time – not all that long ago – when he’d felt the burden of his mental anguish lifting. There’d been fewer psychotic episodes, fewer days when he felt like slitting his wrists rather than enduring the hours till his next medication. There’d seemed to be a chance for happiness.

      It was that prospect that had won the declaration of love from him; that: ‘I’ll never leave you,’ whispered in Lori’s ear as they lay in the narrow bed he’d never dared hope would hold two. The words had not come in the throes of high passion. Their love life, like so much else between them, was fraught with problems. But where other women had given up on him, unforgiving of his failure, she’d persevered: told him there was plenty of time to get it right, all the time in the world.

      I’m with you for as long as you want me to be, her patience had seemed to say.

      Nobody had ever offered such a commitment; and he wanted to offer one in return. Those words: ‘I’ll never leave you’. Were it.

      The memory of them, and of her skin almost luminous in the murk of his room, and of the sound of her breathing when she finally fell asleep beside him – all of it still had the power to catch his heart, and squeeze it till it hurt.

      He longed to be free of both the memory and the words,