I was innocent then, virginal if you will, of the battle between man and beast both exterior and interior. I had such sights to see.
It's all very crystalline you know, that day.
I was about thirteen years old, and I was sat in my mother's kitchen. It was early evening and I was finishing what I believe to be a Ginsters pasty and thinking about school the next day. We had a small television in the kitchen, and whilst my mother watched the larger one in the living room at the far end of the house, I turned on the little one in the kitchen and sat on a wooden chair.
Now in those days we had four channels to choose from and you never knew what was on any of them beforehand. You could pretty much count on the news to be on one of them, and Antiques Roadshow to be on another. You had about a fifty-fifty chance of the other two channels either being Top of the Pops, or some random assed movie. I decided to see what was on.
Nightbreed was on of course.
It was the scene where Boone is being escorted by Narcisse into the dimly lit room, to suffer his initiation before Lylesburg and the assembled breed.
I was absolutely spellbound.
Here were monsters, amazing monsters with grotesquely warped faces, blackened eyes, horns, claws. Yet they spoke and interacted like people, regular people.
Now you have to understand I was a strange kid, I never thought the heroes were cool. I thought the heroes were usually sad, and the villains always had the better outfits and the more convincing voice actors. My toy collection was all bad guys. Immediately I fell in love with these characters. The moment when Shuna Sassi leans aside, her gaze fixed on Boone, and whispers: "I dreamt him!" I was into it.
I sat rooted to the spot watching the rest of the film. Decker's mask a terrifying villain, more cruel and vicious than any I'd seen in a film before. I remember loving his voice, David Cronenberg's stone cold delivery was perfect. The man behind the mask was the true monster in this world of horrors, and that seemed at the time like the DEEPEST THING EVER.
I watched open-mouthed as Rachel and Narcisse rescue Boone from the police station. Catherine Chevalier's wide eyed, smoky voiced, dark haired Rachel was like no woman I'd ever seen. By the end of that scene I'd firmly decided she was my new crush, had the BEST TITS EVER and thusly I was set on Goth girls for life.
I was leaning forward on my seat during the battle of Midian, watching the graves burn on the eight inch screen. The cowardly Sheriff Eigerman directing his troops to battle. Ooh I hated him.
Watching Peloquin bash the shit out of the cops did it for me, his character leapt out of the screen and became my favorite almost immediately.
I watched Midian burn, I was enthralled.
When the film was over, and Ashberry lets out his final declaration of war and Decker awakes with a scream, I was so angry that it had ended on such a cliché horror movie note. I didn't want Decker to come back, he had got what he deserved, I had wanted to see where the breed had gone to next in those precious moments before the credits.
When it was over, I realized with fear that I had no idea what the film was called.
The next day in school I resolved to sort that shit out.
We had the internet in school now, we hadn't had it long, but it was available. We could only use the computer rooms a little bit during lunch if we skipped the grunge on offer and headed to the IT areas.
The internet was a disorganized place back then it seems. You couldn't just find an IMDB page or a Wikipedia article on whatever you were looking for. You could barely even find results relevant to your searches most of the time. There was no Google yet, we had the old fashioned man's search engine: AltaVista!
At first I didn't know what to search for. I tried looking up the previous night's Television programming schedule, but no luck. All I really knew concrete about the thing was the character names. So of course, into the search engine I entered 'Cabal'.
Not specific enough.
'Cabal + Midian.'
That did it.
I came across a fan site, one of the little visitor trackers ticking away up top around a hundred or so, called Midian. There I found a wealth of information on my film. Finally it had a name.
Nightbreed.
I read that site from top to bottom, waiting with bitten lip, glancing over my shoulder for teachers while the images loaded line by line. (Cornwall would not receive broadband until I was in college.) I would later find out the website was pretty much word for word copied from the tie in book released with the film: The Nightbreed Chronicles. It contained images of all the characters, major and minor. I was most thrilled at the mysterious histories linked to every character. It was like exploring the hidden freakish creatures that populated Jabba's Palace. Return of the Jedi was my other favorite at the time after all.
I used up all my printer credits for the term printing out images from the site. (Colour? The boys gone mad!) My school folder had a publicity shot of Peloquin on the front of it by the end of lunch. A few days later I was asked by an ancillary teacher to remove the image of Shuna Sassi from my binder, as she was of course topless. (Shuna, not the ancillary. Ba-zing.)
I told all my friends about it. All four of them. It would be months before I saw the film again, our local video store not having it in stock, but I promised them all we'd have one of our ragers drinking red bull and watch it soon. ("Seriously guys, there's monsters and explosions and tits and a wonderful message about the hidden nature of man and our ingrained fear and mistrust of the things we don't understand!")
I remember looking for more information online in months to come. There was of course little to be found. I began to find links to other media though. A little later on I found an album called Midian, by the British band Cradle of Filth. I'd not listened to Extreme metal before, So that's another thing Nightbreed gave me. You have no idea what 'At the Gates of Midian' could do for the imagination of a teenage boy.
It was a while before I came across the book. My local library had it.
I hadn't really gone to the town library much before. The school library had always been pretty well stocked and I bought a lot of my own books from one of the many stores in town. I never knew you'd find something good at the old library.
The copy they had was a paperback. Small, tattered. Missing its back cover. The UK print edition. The cover a pair of figures running through the looming gates of Midian from a raging inferno.
Clive Barker's Cabal.
If seeing that film gave me excitement and wonder, Reading that book changed my life.
The more I read the book of course, the more I found the differences.
I was saddened at the lack of my porcupine woman of course, she had been created in the transition to film. I was however changed in my opinion of Decker, the book exploring his madness in such a more exciting way. He really did see himself as another being altogether in that mask, invincible, powerful. The film never showed us that well enough. The violence of Narcisse's death was a shocker, but gave the final confrontation between Decker and Boone-become-Cabal so much more poignant. Even Eigerman, a character I despised in the film, had a compelling edge to him in the book.
I remember sitting at the back of Religious Ed one day, reading the last few pages after devouring it in a few short sittings. The last few words echoed in my head after putting the book down. No cliché horror ending. I wanted to know immediately what happened next between the fallen priest Ashberry and his guardian angel, Eigerman. The Tribe is scattered to the winds, what life do they have now?
But real sadness, such loss. It was a beautiful ending. I can tell you I learnt a hell of a lot more from that book than I did in RE that year.
So. Fourteen years later. Here I am.
I still consider Nightbreed one of my favorites. After the thousands of films I have seen. I can acknowledge its many flaws. Gods, its edited like hell and so many scenes feel like they were hashed out over donuts that morning. The berserkers look like something out of a low budget mid season episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and where the hell did they get Narcisse's car from?
But it's still up there. A favorite. I had to get the DVD from Australia because England never got one.
Cabal remains among my favorite stories I have ever read. I don't make a habit of rereading books, every time I have I've muddied a fond memory I had for it from a younger age. But taking a risk, I reread Cabal. A few times now. It gets better with age and experience.
It was made much more powerful for me personally after I'd left my home, then in turn my country, and left all my family behind. The Tribes of the Moon are easy to identify with when you yourself don't belong among those around you.
So, what do I imagine happened with Eigerman and Ashberry?
I picture Eigerman, quiet and supplicant, kneeling by a bedside. Ashberry lies upon it, bound in gauze and stained dressings. A limbless, faceless horror. No eyes, a lipless mouth fed through tubes. The room is silent but for the steady beeps of his life support machines. Eigerman takes the remaining hand of the priest when it twitches slightly. He looks up expectantly:
"Yes?"
There is silence for a moment, finally, in a voice like autumn leaves underfoot, Ashberry speaks.
"I can see him."
Fade out.
