the years of his illness, in and out of mental wards and hospices, Boone had met very few fellow sufferers who didn’t cleave to some talisman, some sign or keepsake to stand guard at the gates of their heads and hearts. He’d learned quickly not to despise such charms. Whatever gets you through the night was an axiom he understood from hard experience. Most of these safeguards against chaos were personal to those that wielded them. Trinkets, keys, books and photographs: mementoes of good times treasured as defence against the bad. But some belonged to the collective mind. They were words he would hear more than once: nonsense rhymes whose rhythm kept the pain at bay; names of Gods.
Amongst them, Midian.
He’d heard the name of that place spoken maybe half a dozen times by people he’d met on the way through, usually those whose strength was all burned up. When they called on Midian it was as a place of refuge; a place to be carried away to. And more: a place where whatever sins they’d committed – real or imagined – would be forgiven them. Boone didn’t know the origins of this mythology; nor had he ever been interested enough to enquire. He had not been in need of forgiveness, or so he thought. Now he knew better. He had plenty to seek cleansing of; obscenities his mind had kept from him until Decker had brought them to light, which no agency he knew could lift from him. He had joined another class of creature.
Midian called.
Locked up in his misery, he’d not been aware that someone else now shared the white room with him until he heard the rasping voice.
‘Midian …’
He thought at first it was another voice from the past, like Lori’s. But when it came again it was not at his shoulder, as hers had been, but from across the room. He opened his eyes, the left lid gummy with blood from a cut on his temple, and looked towards the speaker. Another of the night’s walking wounded, apparently, brought in for mending and left to fend for himself until some patchwork could be done. He was sitting in the corner of the room furthest from the door, on which his wild eyes were fixed as though at any moment his saviour would step into view. It was virtually impossible to guess anything of his age or true appearance: dirt and caked blood concealed both. I must look as bad or worse, Boone thought. He didn’t much mind; people were always staring at him. In their present state he and the man in the corner were the kind folks crossed the street to avoid.
But whereas he, in his jeans and his scuffed boots and black teeshirt, was just another nobody, there were some signs about the other man that marked him out. The long coat he wore had a monkish severity to it; his grey hair pulled back tight on his scalp, hung to the middle of his back in a plaited pony tail. There was jewellery at his neck, almost hidden by his high collar, and on his thumbs two artificial nails that looked to be silver, curled into hooks.
Finally, there was that name, rising from the man again.
‘… Will you take me?’ he asked softly. ‘Take me to Midian?’
His eyes had not left the door for an instant. It seemed he was oblivious of Boone, until without warning. he turned his wounded head and spat across the room. The blood-marbled phlegm hit the floor at Boone’s feet.
‘Get the fuck out of here!’ he said. ‘You’re keeping them from me. They won’t come while you’re here.’
Boone was too weary to argue, and too bruised to get up. He let the man rant.
‘Get out!’ he said again. ‘They won’t show themselves to the likes of you. Don’t you see that?’
Boone put his head back and tried to keep the man’s pain from invading him.
‘Shit!’ the other said. ‘I’ve missed them. I’ve missed them!’
He stood up and crossed to the window. Outside there was solid darkness.
‘They passed by,’ he murmured, suddenly plaintive. The next moment he was a yard from Boone, grinning through the dirt.
‘Got anything for the pain?’ he wanted to know.
‘The nurse gave me something,’ Boone replied.
The man spat again; not at Boone this time, but at the floor.
‘Drink, man …’ he said. ‘Have you got a drink?’
‘No.’
The grin evaporated instantly, and the face began to crumple up as tears overtook him. He turned away from Boone, sobbing, his litany beginning again.
‘Why won’t they take me? Why won’t they come for me?’
‘Maybe they’ll come later,’ Boone said. ‘When I’ve gone.’
The man looked back at him.
‘What do you know?’ he said.
Very little was the answer; but Boone kept that fact to himself. There were enough fragments of Midian’s mythology in his head to have him eager for more. Wasn’t it a place where those who had run out of refuges could find a home? And wasn’t that his condition now? He had no source of comfort left. Not Decker, not Lori, not even Death. Even though Midian was just another talisman, he wanted to hear its story recited.
‘Tell me,’ he said.
‘I asked you what you know,’ the other man replied, catching the flesh beneath his unshaven chin with the hook of his left hand.
‘I know it takes away the pain,’ Boone replied.
‘And?’
‘I know it turns nobody away.’
‘Not true,’ came the response.
‘No?’
‘If it turned nobody away you think I wouldn’t be there already? You think it wouldn’t be the biggest city on earth? Of course it turns people away …’
The man’s tear-brightened eyes were fixed on Boone. Does he realize I know nothing? Boone wondered. It seemed not. The man talked on, content to debate the secret. Or more particularly, his fear of it.
‘I don’t go because I may not be worthy,’ he said. ‘And they don’t forgive that easily. They don’t forgive at all. You know what they do … to those who aren’t worthy?’
Boone was less interested in Midian’s rites of passage than in the man’s certainty that it existed at all. He didn’t speak of Midian as a lunatic’s Shangri-la, but as a place to be found, and entered, and made peace with.
‘Do you know how to get there?’ he asked.
The man looked away. As he broke eye-contact a surge of panic rose in Boone: fearing that the bastard was going to keep the rest of the story to himself.
‘I need to know,’ Boone said.
The other man looked up again.
‘I can see that,’ he said, and there was a twist in his voice that suggested the spectacle of Boone’s despair entertained him.
‘It’s north-west of Athabasca,’ the man replied.
‘Yes?’
That’s what I heard.’
‘That’s empty country,’ Boone replied. ‘You could wander forever, less you’ve got a map.’
‘Midian’s on no map,’ the man said. ‘You look east of Peace River; near Shere Neck; north of Dwyer.’
There was no taint of doubt in this recitation of directions. He believed in Midian’s existence as much as, perhaps more than, the four walls he was bound by.
‘What’s your name?’ Boone asked.
The question seemed to flummox him. It had been a long time since anyone had cared to ask him his name.
‘Narcisse,’ he said finally. ‘You?’
‘Aaron Boone. Nobody