Cabal by Clive Barker

woman say, but Lori wasn’t about to take her eyes off this horrendous dance. Nor could she give the creature over to the woman’s charge, while the claw gripped her so tightly any attempt to separate them would draw blood.
    But that
Don’t Look!
had purpose. Now it was Lori’s turn to raise her voice in panic, as she realized that what was taking place in her arms defied all reason.
    ‘Jesus God!’
    The animal was changing before her eyes. In the luxury of slough and spasm it was losing its bestiality, not by re-ordering its anatomy but by liquefying its whole self – through to the bone – until what had been solid was a tumble of matter. Here was the origin of the bitter-sweet scent she’d met beneath the tree: the stuff of the beast’s dissolution. In the moment it lost its coherence the matter was ready to be out of her grasp, but somehow the essence of the thing – its will, perhaps; perhaps its
soul
– drew it back for the business of re-making. The last part of the beast to melt was the claw, its disintegration sending a throb of pleasure through Lori’s body. It did not distract her from the fact that she was released. Horrified, she couldn’t get what she held from her embrace fast enough, tipping it into the mourner’s outstretched arms like so much excrement.
    ‘Jesus,’
she said, backing away.
‘Jesus. Jesus.’
    There was no horror on the woman’s face however; only joy. Tears of welcome rolled down her pale cheeks, and fell into the melting pot she held. Lori looked away towards the sunlight. After the gloom of the interior it was blinding. She was momentarily disoriented, and closed her eyes to allow herself a reprieve from both tomb and light.
    It was sobbing that made her open her eyes. Not the woman this time, but a child, a girl of four or five, lying naked where the muck of transformation had been.
    ‘Babette,’ the woman said.
    Impossible, reason replied. This thin white child could not be the animal she’d rescued from beneath the tree. It was sleight of hand, or some idiot delusion she’d foisted upon herself. Impossible; all impossible.
    ‘She likes to play outside,’ the woman was saying, looking up from the child at Lori. ‘And I tell her: never, never in the sun. Never play in the sun. But she’s a child. She doesn’t understand.’
    Impossible, reason repeated. But somewhere in her gut Lori had already given up trying to deny. The animal had been real. The transformation had been real. Now here was a living child, weeping in her mother’s arms. She too was real. Every moment she wasted saying No to what she
knew
, was a moment lost to comprehension. That her world-view couldn’t contain such a mystery without shattering was its liability, and a problem for another day. For now she simply wanted to be away; into the sunlight where she knew these shape-shifters feared to follow. Not daring to take her eyes off them until she was in the sun, she reached out to the wall to guide her tentative backward steps. But Babette’s mother wanted to hold her a while longer.
    ‘I owe you something …’ she said.
    ‘No,’ Lori replied. ‘I don’t … want anything … from you.’
    She felt the urge to express her revulsion, but the scene of reunion before her – the child reaching up to touch her mother’s chin, its sobs passing – were so tender. Disgust became bewilderment; fear, confusion.
    ‘Let me help you,’ the woman said. ‘I know why you came here.’
    ‘I doubt it,’ Lori said.
    ‘Don’t waste your time here.’ the woman replied. ‘There’s nothing for you here, Midian’s a home for the Nightbreed. Only the Nightbreed.’
    Her voice had dropped in volume; it was barely a whisper.
    ‘The Nightbreed?’ Lori said, more loudly.
    The woman looked pained.
    ‘Shh …’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this. But I owe you, this much at least.’
    Lori had stopped her retreat to the door. Her instinct was telling her to wait.
    ‘Do you know a man