Cabal by Clive Barker.
Title: Cabal.
Author: Clive Barker.
Genre: Fiction, horror, fantasy, romance.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1988.
Summary: A tortured soul called Boone seeks refuge in a necropolis in the wilds of Canada, where he finds the shape-shifters known as the Nightbreed. Only the courage of this strange human can save them from extinction. And only the undying passion of a woman can save Boone from his own corrupting hell.
My rating: 7.5/10.
♥ 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’.
♥ That name was Midian.
It and he had much in common, not least that they shared the power to make promises. But while his avowals of eternal love had proved hollow in a matter of weeks, Midian made promises - midnight, like his own, deepest midnight - that even death could not break.
♥ She thanked the doctor for the kindness of telling her himself, rather than leaving the duty to the police. Then she put the phone down, and waited to believe it.
♥ She didn’t know where his anger had come from, but she knew where it would go: to the children. No use to fret about it. The world was full of brutal fathers and tyrannical mothers; and come to that, cruel and uncaring children. It was the way of things. She couldn’t police the species.
♥ Every moment she wasted saying No to what she knew, was a moment lost to comprehension.
♥ The night, which had always been a place of promise, belonged too much to the Breed, who had taken its name for themselves. And why not? All darkness was one darkness in the end. Of heart or heavens; one darkness.
♥ Yesterday she would have chosen to go to the law. She would have trusted that its procedures would make all these mysteries come clear; that they would believe her story, and bring Decker to justice. But yesterday she’d thought beasts were beasts, and children, children; she’d thought that only the dead lived in the earth, and that they were peaceful there. She’d thought doctors healed; and that when the madman’s mask was raised she would say: ‘But of course, that’s a madman’s face.’
All wrong; all so wrong. Yesterday’s assumptions were gone to the wind. Anything might be true.
♥ But she could learn to understand. In a real sense she had no choice. She’d been touched by a knowledge that had changed her inner landscape out of all recognition. There was no way back to the bland pastures of adolescence and early womanhood. She had to go forward. And tonight that meant along this empty street, to see what the coming night had in store.
♥ The man’s appearance was horrendous, his face raw and red, like uncooked liver. Had it been any other way she might have distrusted it, knowing what she knew about pretenders. But this creature could pretend nothing: his wound was a vicious honesty.
♥ He smelt their heat, and hungered for it. He saw their terror, and took strength from it. They stole such authority for themselves, these people. Made themselves arbiters of good and bad, natural and unnatural, justifying their cruelty with spurious laws. Now they saw a simpler law at work, as their bowels remembered the oldest fear: of being prey.
♥ Most remained however, prepared to beat a retreat if necessary, but mesmerized by the spectacle of destruction. Her gaze went from one to another, looking for some sign of what they were feeling, but every face was blank. They looked like death masks, she thought, wiped of response. Except that she knew the dead now. She walked with them, talked with them. Saw them feel and weep. Who then were the real dead? The silent hearted, who still knew pain, or their glassy-eyed tormentors?