Midian Unmade (3 page)

It is not a large room. It was a coffee shop once, before its windows were covered with soap and cobwebs and these children, these pretenders to Midian, found a way to pry open the back door and slip into their secret sanctuary. There are eight of them, Matt and Danni included. Some are dressed in black with too much makeup; the rest are in patches and rags, layers that don't quite match but echo Babette's own. The unseeables of the city, gathered with the would-be children of the night that never falls.

They are not her kind. She should never have come here.

But the door clangs shut and she is trapped, Matt coming up behind her on one side, Danni on the other. “Welcome to Midian,” he says, waving a hand to indicate the tired, dirty space, lit by candles, with faded Halloween decorations and newspaper clippings plastering the walls. He looks to her, waiting for her reaction. When it's not forthcoming he prompts, “Well?”

“It's not what I expected,” she manages, after a moment's strangled silence. She wants to laugh. She wants to cry. Is this what they are now, the tribes of the moon? From reality to legend to children telling themselves stories in dark and dusty rooms? The other kids are watching her, taking her measure in a way that makes her yearn to breathe out her beast, to run wild and biting through their ranks until they end their credulous lives on the tiled floor. She struggles to contain herself (
Lori, give me your strength
) and adds, “How did you find this place?”

“Danni's dad used to be the general manager,” says Matt, looking proudly to the girl in the black lace dress. “She realized we could use this space. That we could all be monsters here.”

“But you haven't proven you're a monster,” says Danni, shoving her way back into the conversation like a crowbar. “Why should we trust you?”

Answers pile up on Babette's tongue, each one truer and sourer than the last. She swallows most of them, spitting out the most innocuous: “Because I have no one to tell about you. How can I be a danger if I have no threats to make?”

“She's no monster,” says Danni dismissively. “She's a pet at best, and prey at worst. If you want to keep her, you'll need to feed and water her, and make sure no one else eats her.”

“Promise,” says Matt, with a small and secret smile that Babette can't help feeling is intended only for her. “I won't let her pee in the corners or anything.”

Danni snorts—the most monstrous thing Babette has heard from her yet—and turns her back on them. “It's your funeral,” she says, and walks away, showing how little she thinks of them. Babette doesn't mind.

It's better to be disregarded.

*   *   *

Now, not-Midian. Now, human children playing dress-up in a dark room that isn't theirs (which may be the most Breed aspect of this strange and deepening evening; they're all squatters in their own ways, clinging to the sides of human society like ticks on a fawn), wearing their artfully tattered clothing, hissing at each other in a mockery of monstrosity. Babette finds herself a place in one of the corners and watches them, all wide eyes and silence. She knows there's something to be learned here, if she can just sneak up on it and make it show its face to her.

There have always been Naturals who aspired to become Nightbreed. She was too young in the days of Midian to have had much congress with them, but she remembers their faces, pale with pain and weeping like the moon, and their eyes. You could always tell the monsters-in-waiting by their eyes. Some of them came to Midian full of sin and secrets, and those ones might make it past the doors, down into the dark to be judged by Baphomet. Others came innocent and empty, and they were turned away, if they were lucky. (But Boone came empty of anything but darkness and dreams, and he became Cabal, their savior; Lori came empty of anything but love, and she became
his
savior, and Babette's, and in the end, that made her everyone's. Maybe they chose the wrong supplicants, opened their doors to the wrong design.) Babette searches the faces around her for signs of Midian, for the slivers of moonlight that invite the monsters in.

She does not find them. She finds damage, yes; more damage than she could ever dream would lurk in the eyes of children. This world has used them harder than any monster, and for a moment she entertains the thought of taking them all home with her, handing them over to the members of the tribe who hunger, night after night, for the flesh they cannot have. Babette could feed her people and save the children in the same gesture: every bite would drive the balm deeper into the blood, until those who
truly
dreamed of Midian began to change, to breathe their true faces into the world.…

But no. That is not the way, not now, not in this open, exposed place. Cabal will come for them and they will make themselves a new home, far from the prying eyes of mankind. Then, and only then, will they be able to think of saving anyone but themselves.

“Having fun?” asks Matt. He thinks himself stealthy, moving through the shadows to appear suddenly beside her. She does not disabuse him, although he has taken no step without her knowing since they arrived.

She looks to him, trusting the darkness to hide the way her pupils have expanded, the way her nostrils flare and scent the air. He smells of sunlight. “I should go,” she says. “It's late.”

“You just got here.”

“No.” She pushes away from the wall. “It's too late.”

So she walks through the children of this unhallowed place, looking neither left nor right, until she reaches the door. Danni is already there, a sneer on her face.

“Didn't care for the monsters after all, did you, Blondie?”

It takes Babette a moment to remember that she gave her hair color as a name to these people. When she does, she inclines her head as politely as she can and says, “Not these monsters.” Then Danni is opening the door with a joyful crow's-cry of “Don't come back!” and Babette is stepping out into the damp nighttime air, and Matt is running after her, asking what he did wrong, asking why she didn't like their secret little kingdom.

Babette keeps walking. It's all she can think to do. Better not to run; running shows weakness, shows you should be pursued. So she walks, chin up and hands down, and Matt pursues away from the door (which closes behind them with a click, final as a coffin lid), away from the alley, into the warren of the midnight streets.

There are men, and there are monsters, and then there are the monsters who are men; a different thing than honest Nightbreed, who know what they are and do not conceal it. Babette is distracted, trying on different ways to evade her pursuer without giving herself away, and does not hear the footsteps until they come too close.

“What do we have here?” asks a voice, older and harder and colder than any of the children who played at being monsters.

Matt cringes.

Babette sighs. “My brother and I lost our way,” she says, turning, trusting the illusionary relationship granted to them by hair color to carry her story to willing ears. “Can you tell us how to get back to Pine?”

The men behind him—worse luck, for there to be three of them, all large with muscle and smiling in a way she recognizes too well—laugh. “Not until you pay the toll,” says the one who spoke before. He thrusts out his hand. “Empty your pockets.”

“My pockets are already empty,” says Babette, looking at his hand curiously, as if she expects it to fill with treasures. “What's in yours?”

“Don't mess with me, kid,” says the man, and grabs her shoulder.

Babette twists her head enough to keep looking at his hand, and sighs.

“I wish you hadn't done that,” she says.

The screaming begins shortly after.

*   *   *

Babette is not the most deceitful of her kind: the face she presents most often is that of a sweet-faced girl with a liar's halo of golden curls, and down deep, that girl is real, is not a lie. But that girl is not the only thing she is. The stranger's hand weighs heavy on her shoulder as she breathes out the fog that rests in the swampy depths of her lungs, breathes out flesh and fierceness and fury.
This is a terrible idea
, she thinks, and
He laid hands upon me
, she thinks, and through it all, the beast is unfolding across her person, until she has claws, until she has fangs, until she can make her displeasure known.

The process takes several seconds. The men do not move. Terror that comes too quickly can do that to a man; can freeze his feet in place while his mind denies the reality of what he sees before him.

When her teeth find the throat of the first man, he remembers movement, but he remembers it too late. Babette is not the most deceitful of her kind. Like all of the Nightbreed, she is exactly deceitful enough.

Once, Midian; once hiding through isolation, humans intruding rarely, for they knew the wisdom of staying far from the houses of the dead. Now, Seattle, where isolation is not the only way, for they lurk in the stronghold of the enemy. When they must kill, it is to be done quickly and well and leave no witnesses, for witnesses might remember the things they have seen, the impossible miracles of flesh and claw.

The first man falls, still twitching, as the flash of motion that is Babette finds the second. Cool wetness on his stomach, and he thinks she has missed, thinks he can run, but as he takes his first step his offal splatters to the ground, and the shell of his body follows, landing hard, so much discarded trash. Matt screams. It is the first sound since Babette breathed her secrets into the night, and he is still screaming when the third man falls, and Babette closes the distance between them, her hand over his mouth, his thin shoulders pressed against the nearest wall.

“You said you would take me to Midian,” she says, and her voice is broken glass and rusty nails filtered through a mouthful of teeth like knives. “You lied.”

He says nothing, only whimpers as she pins him there, and the alley smells of blood, and his flesh smells of fear.

“Forget monsters; forget Midian,” she says. “Run into the light, and do not look back. If you do—if you whisper a word of what you saw here—I will know, and I will come for you, and I will show you Midian. Now run, little liar, and forget, for your own sake.”

She releases him, and he runs, a fleeing fawn in this obscene, exposed forest of a city. Babette looks at the carnage and sighs before tilting back her head and howling to the hidden face of the moon, blocked out by clouds but no less present. She howls like she could bring back Midian through the sheer power of her grieving, and stops only when an answering howl from the rooftops tells her that her message is received.

Alone in the rain, Babette breathes her beast back into her body, and waits for the Nightbreed to come.

*   *   *

Messes are inevitable; when one world presses up against another, they cannot be avoided. Some messes serve a purpose. There are mouths to feed, after all, and three more of them on the way. Children are always born hungry. The Breed who answer Babette's call are happy enough to remove the bodies, carrying them in pieces back across the city to the warehouse. Rachel resolves out of the mist, her eyes wet with sorrow, and Babette flings herself into her almost-mother's arms, clinging there like a much younger child.

“Are you all right, my dear?” asks Rachel.

Babette does not respond. She is thinking of children who play at being monsters and monsters who play at being children, of men who cross lines they should have stayed far away from, and of the line between truth and legend, between legend and fairy tale. The rain will wash the blood away. The Nightbreed will remove the rest, and this night will enter the uncomfortable country between truth and lies. She has spent too many of her days there. She no longer knows where the boundary lies.

Babette is too large now, to be held with ease; too old now, to be carried. But she closes her eyes and lets Rachel carry her, and all her thoughts are far away, of Lori, and of Midian, where such boundaries will no longer be needed—where it will be only monsters, safe at last, forever.

 

THE NIGHT RAY BRADBURY DIED

A Tale of Lost Midian

Kevin J. Wetmore

Nobody walks in Los Angeles, but he walked as he always had. It almost never rains here, but tonight, during the “June Gloom,” drops fell from the dark skies. And so he walked, alone. Always alone.

He walked the thousands of miles to the city of lost angels and now he walked everywhere, mostly at night. With a face like his you cannot simply walk into the DMV and apply for a license. Didn't matter. He couldn't pass the driver's test anyway. He had never had much use for words. Not with a face like his. But at night, hidden under hats and clothing and hoods and darkness, he could walk unmolested.

He had been born with a wolf's snout where a Natural's nose and mouth would be. He couldn't speak. He tried to communicate through gestures and through tapping out messages. His birth parents hated and feared him. He couldn't even remember the name he was born with. When they finally left him at a highway rest area, he wandered, walking, until he found Midian. Midian gave him a home, and a name and a function. He spoke through rhythms and percussion, so they called him “Drummer” and let him drum. It was his gift to Baphomet and Baphomet's gift to him. The drums spoke for him and gave him a role in Midian. His voice, through the sticks in his fists, summoned the Breed, warned of danger and marked the rituals in honor of Baphomet. He had a name, a place, a purpose.

Then Midian fell. And once again the Breed now known as Drummer walked. He walked by night to the one other city he knew of where he might survive. Unlike some Breed, he had a silhouette that could pass for a Natural's, but his face, specifically his muzzle and teeth, gave away that he was something else. But Los Angeles was a superficial city. The people looked but did not see. One might blend in, if one didn't draw attention. Because once those superficial people saw, they hated anything not beautiful. And then they would try to hurt him, try to kill him. Yet again.