Name Forthcoming: Review: Cabal, Clive Barker

My lord, it's so annoying to type blurb for a novella.
In a short novel like this there's no status quo from which the story sets out and nothing to latch on to, everything hits the ground running, one scene moving at a breakneck pace right into the next.
Meaning there's no clear cut-off point for what constitutes a spoiler.

Ah, well. Misdirection it is then.

Suffering from severe mental illness, when Aaron Boone is informed by his psychiatrist, Richard Decker, that he is likely responsible for the brutally sadistic murders of 11 people, he finds his so-hard-worked-for sanity crumbling.

He isolates himself from his girlfriend, Lori, and ceases to have contact with her despite her best intentions and repeated appeals for reconciliation.

Before he turns himself in to the police, Boone and his psychiatrist, at that one's insistence, try to fathom the depths of the self-deception at work that has enabled a killer to live beneath Boone's skin.
But try as he might, there is no understanding. The acts are monstrous, the doings of a beast.

In a fit of depression Boone walks out in front of a truck in the hopes of a swift end.

But as fate intervenes, he survives with minor injuries.

He is nonetheless hospitalized and it is there, among the broken, among the wounded and the insane that an old whisper reacquaints itself with him. A whisper speaking of a place that those without hope can go to, where those without a place to turn to can go and be welcomed.

Midian.

It is a name whispering an invitation to the monster beneath the skin.

As I've mentioned before, Barker has a unique voice with a penchant for uniquely original turns of phrase binding the beautifully poetic with down-to-earth grubbiness. A voice that, quite frequently, indulges gleefully in delivering violence. Said violence comes coupled with, and is all the better because of immensely well-done characterization that allows for those moments to actually hit hard.

Cabal then, is a typical Clive Barker horror story with the horror relying on sudden bouts of shocking violence and gore while introduced throughout are various story elements evoking disgust, sometimes told, sometimes genuinely evoked in the reader. And then that disgust is juxtaposed with something Barker also likes to evoke in his audience; lust. Primarily through graphic and rather well-depicted sex that nonetheless has an element of outré deviancy.

Oddly then, despite all that horror, Cabal is primarily a love story fueled by themes of isolation and acceptance, both of the self and by others. Completion through acceptance.

Something of note is that, throughout the novel, barker uses instants of utter dark to cancel out the existence of light, metaphorically and literally.

"-and stood on the crypt stairs gazing into a miasma so profound it could have rotted the faith of a saint."

But surely the dark cannot exist without the light. Despite the tantalizing ideas that are only just hinted at, the theme isn't very much explored. Barker shows himself dismissive of the light and focuses squarely on the squalid human darkness to drive his narrative. As in most of his work, come to think of it. There's a reason why I think it's noteworthy here but to tell would be to spoil.

Something I also thought was a bit of a shame that did not get explored more is the theme of mental illness. It started out very believable, layered with insight, and acted as the integral springboard for the plot but further into the story the element was abandoned completely. Something to kickstart the plot rather than something with any meaningful depth to it.

So, in the end, it's not Barker at his best, but still very decent. A good horror read if what you're looking for is to be aroused and grossed-out in equal measure.

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By the way; it's not for nothing that the publisher decided to reprint this story together with the 6th Book of Blood. The themes in Cabal show quite a large level of overlap with the first story in that one; The Life of Death, to the extent that I'm wondering if they share a universe.
Cemeteries, weirdly deformed bodies, the themes of death and decay, peace beyond life, the monstrous things hidden under the skin and of course necrophilia.
The same demon driving the man, I'm guessing.

Also, look at that delicious goat-man cover. It's one of those covers that makes you do a double-take as you realize that what you thought was on display might just have a little more depth to it.

It's not much hidden either. There's a subtle creep-factor here that is rather memorable.