“That they’re not real. They’re demons created by the minds of disturbed individuals racked by guilt and shame over something awful that they’ve done.”
Lori pondered this for a moment. It was an idea that was equally comforting and disturbing. Comforting in the sense that if the Cabal was a projection of her own subconscious, then that meant it could be possible for her to exert control over them somehow. But it also meant that she was, on some level at least, insane. Still, this explanation didn’t make sense to her. Her mind wasn’t more powerful than any other person’s. She was smart, but she was no genius, and it wasn’t like she had psychic powers or anything. How could she create actual living beings? No, more likely the Cabal and the Shadowkin were realistic illusions. And if so, did that mean the Nightway was an illusion, too? That Edgar was? Was she in reality lying in a bed in some mental hospital imagining all this? The last scenario seemed the most realistic of those she’d considered so far, but it still didn’t feel right. Or maybe she simply didn’t want to believe it. Who would?
“There’s one other explanation I’ve heard,” Edgar said. “It’s kind of out there, though.”
Lori laughed. “Like the others are more believable?”
He gave her a sideways glance, smiled. “True. Well, some say the Cabal’s purpose is to maintain the Balance.”
She frowned. “The balance between what?”
“Between what we think of as the real world and what’s called Shadow.”
“Like in Shadowkin?” she asked.
He nodded. “Each moment of time is like an entire separate universe. As one moment gives way to a new one, the old moment begins to die. The dark energy produced by these deaths creates a realm all its own. It’s like….” He paused, considering. “Like part of a shoreline being eroded and falling into the ocean. Except in this case, it’s the falling that creates the ocean. Does that make sense?”
“Not really,” she admitted. “But go on.”
“Some creatures thrive in Shadow, whether they’re things born there or people who can sense it and move back and forth between it and the real world. The creatures native to Shadow feed on the death of all those moments in time that create their world. They break it down, and process it so it can then go on to feed the Gyre. They kind of pre-digest its food for it. The Shadowkin are such creatures. They’re ravenous, mindless things.” He tapped his chest. “Not all that different from insects in a lot of ways.”
Lori wanted to ask him what the Gyre was, but she didn’t want to stray too far from what she really needed to know. “So why do the Shadowkin seem so drawn to me?”
He shrugged. “That I don’t know.”
“Okay, then can you tell me how the Cabal figures into all of this?”
“The creatures natural to Shadow can be greedy. Their hunger is never sated, and they try to find their way into the real world to feed on it. Destroying it, breaking it down. The Cabal exists to make sure that doesn’t happen. They work to keep Shadow and the real world separate as much as possible, although even with all their efforts, there are still some places where the worlds intersect.”
“What about the Nightway?”
“It’s connected to both Shadow and the real world. And to neither. Basically, it’s its own thing.”
That didn’t make any sense to her, but she decided to let it go. “So what you’re saying is that, according to this explanation, the Cabal are really the good guys?” She couldn’t keep the disbelief out of her voice.
“I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t think they give much of a damn for either world or the beings that inhabit them. All they care about is the Balance, and they’ll do whatever is necessary to maintain it, without any concern for who they might hurt in the process. They’re like sociopathic doctors who don’t give a shit about their patients, only about solving medical problems.”
“So if this explanation is true, that means the Cabal thinks we’ve both done something to upset the Balance between Shadow and the real world?
“Or at least threaten it,” Edgar said.
She mulled this over for a time. If the Cabal were like doctors, it would make sense why they were so enigmatic in how they went about their work. They’d be like surgeons, operating very carefully, in limited, controlled ways, so they could fix a problem without causing additional damage. It was a concept she was well familiar with as a physical therapist. Therapy needed to be specifically targeted to a client’s needs, without making their condition worse or causing any new problems.
So the Cabal are basically the PTs of the universe, she thought, and despite the situation, the notion made her smile. “So if we can figure out what we did to screw up the Balance….” she began.
“We can confess and, more importantly, atone,” Edgar said. “Easier said than done, though. I’ve been trying to figure out what the hell I did for years, and so far, I haven’t had much luck.”
The thought that she might end up like Edgar, as a sort of Flying Dutchman of the Nightway, endlessly on the run from the Cabal while trying to figure out what they wanted her to do, sounded like a kind of Purgatory to her, if not actual damnation. She’d prefer to avoid that fate if she could.
“We’re here,” Edgar said.
Chapter Eleven
Lori peered through the windshield. At first she saw only a glow of blue-white light spread against the darkness, but then she began to make out shapes – lots of them. She thought they might be trees, but they were too uniform in size to be organic. As the van drew closer, she saw what she was looking at were wooden poles about eight feet in height, with a crosspiece on top to form a large letter T, topped with a fluorescent light. There were dozens of poles, spread out alongside the road and continuing back into the darkness, making it impossible to guess how many there might be. There were objects on the Ts, and these objects had heads, arms, and legs. She realized then that she wasn’t looking at Ts – she was looking at crosses, all of which had people affixed to them.
“Fuck me,” she said softly.
Edgar said nothing. He pulled the van to the side of the road and turned off the engine and the headlights. Everything went dark for a moment, but then individual fluorescent lights came on above the crosses, bulbs attached to lengths of metal that rose from behind the wooden structures and curved downward to hang above them, illuminating the people on the crosses in pools of blue white. The people were naked and represented a mix of ages, races, and body types. Men and women were equally present. The people were bound to the crosses by tight coils of barbed wire around their wrists and ankles, but as painful as that looked, it was nothing compared to the other condition they all shared. Their abdomens had been slit open from sternum to crotch, and their internal organs were now external ones. Viscera spilled forth from body cavities and hung down past the victims’ feet, entrails making soft, glistening piles on the ground beneath them. The lower halves of their bodies were streaked with blood, and the ground around the base of the crosses was soaked with the red stuff. But as horrifying a sight as the mass crucifixion was, far worse was the fact that each one of these men, women, and children were still alive. Pain-filled eyes blinked as tears flowed freely, mouths opened and closed silently as if their owners were trying to speak but could not. Bodies writhed in agony, some of their exertions so violent it was clear they were trying to shake themselves free. But all they did was cause the barbed wire to dig deeper into their flesh, fresh blood flowing from those new wounds. Lori didn’t understand how anyone could survive like this for any length of time. They should all be dead. But they weren’t, and she supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised. This was the Nightway, after all.
She experienced an urge to tell Edgar to start the van, pull back onto the road, and drive away from this awful place as fast as he could. She almost did it, too. But she thought of her family and friends, of what the Cabal might be doing to them at this very moment, and she said nothing. They both sat there for a moment, gazing at the nightmarish tableau. Then Edgar got out of the van, and a couple seconds later, Lori did the same, keeping the blanket wrapped around her more for the security of it than any sense of modesty. Self-consciousness about her own nakedness seemed almost obscene among so many unclothed and violated bodies.
Edgar came around to the passenger side of the van, opened the door, and leaned inside. He opened the glove box, retrieved an object, then stepped back and closed the door. Lori saw that he held what looked like a gun in his right hand. At least it was shaped like a gun, but it was white and made of a number of smaller pieces that had been put together.
Those are bones, she thought. Small ones, like you’d find in a foot or hand.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“That’s just in case,” Edgar said.
“Good idea.”
The two of them walked around to the other side of the van and surveyed the scene before them.
“Goddamn,” he said. “And I thought void crawlers stank.”
Lori was too busy gagging to respond. The air was filled with the coppery tang of blood, so strong she could taste it. When she’d been a child, she’d bit the tip of her tongue while talking to a friend in her parents’ kitchen. She tried to recall which friend it had been. Aashrita? Maybe. It hadn’t hurt all that much, but it bled like mad, and her mouth quickly filled with blood. Terrified, she’d tried to cry out for help, but all she succeeded in doing was spraying blood all over (Aashrita) her friend, who immediately started screaming.
The smell here was bad, but equally horrifying to Lori was the low buzzing thrum that hung heavy in the air. Flies covered the victims’ exposed organs, crawling across them, traveling back and forth between the crosses, searching for just the right place to lay their eggs. She glanced at Edgar. He gazed upon the bodies nearest the edge of the road, swaying slightly, as if in time to music only he could hear. The man had said he hated bugs, but that was before he became a host to a legion of them. Perhaps because of his little hard-shelled friends, the flies’ droning sounded quite different to him than it did to her.
