As he headed for the door to the night he heard Narcisse’s voice raised in protest; a howl of rage that was pitifully human.
NECROPOLIS
Though the distance from Calgary to Athabasca has little more than three hundred miles the journey took a traveller to the borders of another world. North of here the highways were few, and the inhabitants fewer still, as the rich prairie lands of the province steadily gave way to forest, marshland and wilderness. It also marked the limits of Boone’s experience. A short stint as a truck driver, in his early twenties, had taken him as far as Bonnyville to the southeast, Barrhead to the southwest and Athabasca itself. But the territory beyond was unknown to him except as names on a map. Or more correctly, as an absence of names. There were great stretches of land here that were dotted only with small farming settlements; one of which bore the name Narcisse had used: Shere Neck.
The map which carried this information he found, along with enough change to buy himself a bottle of brandy, in five minutes of theft on the outskirts of Calgary. He rifled three vehicles left in an underground parking facility and was away, mapped and monied, before the source of the car alarms had been traced by security.
The rain washed his face, his bloodied tee-shirt he dumped, happy to have his beloved jacket next to his skin. Then he found himself a ride to Edmonton, and another which took him through Athabasca to Prairie. It was easy.
Easy? To go in search of a place he’d only heard rumours of amongst lunatics? Perhaps not easy. But it was necessary; even inevitable. From the moment the truck he’d chosen to die beneath had cast him aside, journey had been beckoning. Perhaps from long before that, only he’d never seen the invitation. The sense he had of its tightness might almost have made a fatalist of him. If Midian existed, and was willing to embrace him, then he was travelling to a place where he would finally find some self-comprehension and peace. If it existed only as a talisman for the frightened and the lost then that too was right, and he would meet whatever extinction awaited him searching for nowhere. Better that than the pills, better that than Decker’s fruitless pursuit of rhymes and reasons.
The doctor’s quest to root out the monster in Boone had been bound to fail. That much was clear as skies overhead. Boone the man and Boone the monster could not be divided. They were one, they travelled the same road in the same mind and body. And ever lay at the end of that road, death or glory, would be the fate of both.
East of Peace River, Narcisse had said, near the town of Shere Neck; north of Dwyer.
He had to sleep rough in High Prairie, until the following morning when he found a ride to Peace River. The driver was a woman in her late fifties, proud of the region she’d known since childhood and happy to give him a quick geography lesson. He made no mention of Midian, but Dwyer and Shere Neck she knew the latter a town of five thousand souls away to the east of Highway 67. He’d have saved himself a good two hundred miles if he’d not travelled as far as High Prairie, he was told, but taken himself north earlier. No matter, she said; she knew a place in Peace River where the farmers stopped off to eat before heading back to their homesteads. He’d find a ride there, to take him where he wanted to go. Got people there? she asked. He said he had.
It was close to dusk by the time the last of his rides dropped him a mile or so shy of Dwyer. He watched the truck take a gravel road off into the deepening blue, then began to walk the short distance to the town. A night of sleeping rough, and travelling in farm vehicles on roads that had seen better days, had taken its toll on his already battered system. It took him an hour to come within sight of the outskirts of Dwyer, by which time night had fallen completely. Fate was once again on his side. Without the darkness he might not have seen the lights flashing ahead; not in welcome but in warning.
The police were here before him; three or four cars he judged. It was possible they were in pursuit of someone else entirely but he doubted it. More likely Narcisse, lost to himself, had told the law what he’d told Boone. In which case this was a reception committee. They were probably already searching for him, house to house. And if here, in Shere Neck too. He was expected.
Thankful for the cover of the night, he made his way off the road and into the middle of a rape seed field, where he could lie and think through his next move. There was certainly no wisdom in trying to go into Dwyer. Better he set off for Midian now, putting hunger and weariness aside and trusting to the stars and his instinct to give him directions.
He got up, smelling of earth, and headed off in what he judged to be a northerly direction. He knew very well he might miss his destination by miles with such rough bearings to travel by, or just as easily fail to see it in the darkness. No matter, he had no other choice which was a kind of comfort to him.
In his five minute spree as thief he’d not found watch to steal, so the only sense he had of time passing was the slow progression of the constellations overhead. The air became cold, then bitter, but he kept his painful pace, avoiding the roads wherever possible though they would have been easier to walk than ploughed and seeded ground. This caution proved well-founded at one point when two police vehicles, book-ending a black limousine, slid all but silently down the road he had a minute ago crossed. He had no evidence whatsoever for the feeling that seized him as they passed by, but he sensed more than strongly that the limo’s passenger was Decker, the good doctor, still in pursuit of understanding.
Then, Midian.
Out of nowhere, Midian. One moment the night ahead was featureless darkness, the next there was cluster of buildings on the horizon, their painted walls glimmering grey-blue in the starlight. Boone stood several minutes and studied the scene. There wasn’t light burning in any window, or on any porch. By now it was surely well after midnight, and the men at women of the town, with work to rise to the following morning, would be in bed. But not one single light! That struck him as strange. Small Midian might be forgotten by map-makers and signpost writers alike but did it not lay claim to one insomniac?; or a child who needed the comfort of a lamp burning through the night hours? More probably they were in wait for him—Decker and the law concealed in the shadows until he was foolish enough to step into the trap. The simplest solution would be to turn tail and leave them to their vigil, but he had little enough energy left. If he retreated now how long would he have to wait before attempting a return, every hour making recognition and arrest more likely?
He decided to skirt the edge of the town and get some sense of the lie of the land. If he could find no evidence of a police presence then he’d enter, and take the consequences. He hadn’t come all this way to turn back.
Midian revealed nothing of itself as he moved around its south eastern flank, except perhaps its emptiness. Not only could he see no sign of police vehicles in the streets, or secreted between the houses, he could see no automobile of any kind: no truck, no farm vehicle. He began to wonder if the town was one of those religious communities he’d read of, whose dogmas denied them electricity or the combustion engine.