Midian—the name means a place of refuge, a legendary city where all sins are forgiven.
—Clive Barker’s The Nightbreed Chronicles
Twenty-five years ago, Clive Barker was the tour guide for our journey into Midian, a place he described as a “labyrinthine necropolis” occupied by “an ancient race of mythological creatures.” During this sojourn, he challenged our perceptions and prejudices when he declared that “evil hides behind a human mask and even monsters have souls.”
Barker’s “grotesques and freaks, noble beasts and exquisite transformers” were both apart from and a part of the world. Whether the sense of isolation sprang from an uncommon visage or, like Narcisse, a knowing from deep within, Midian called out to each of them.
More than a literary locale, the “hidden city” represented a liminal space familiar to anyone who felt that he or she did not belong; simultaneously a safe haven and a precarious dwelling where self-destruction, annihilation, or even transcendence was possible.
While no two Nightbreed looked alike, their sins were in essence singular; they were the Other. As such, they were feared and hated, for as Julia Kristeva posited in Powers of Horror: “The abject has only one quality of the object—that of being opposed to I.”
Even though sympathetic creatures populated other works, they often appeared as loners forced to the dark edges of society. If more than one type of monster inhabited the same landscape, they were enemies. Battle lines drawn, man’s oft-repeated history of “us versus them” was allowed to play out, neither questioned nor challenged.
Cabal was a tale written for the readers of its day but also in anticipation of the future. Like Rachel and Babette, the Other was and is a shape-shifter, transforming at the behest of a time, a people, or a nation. The constant? A seemingly insatiable need by humans for this space to be, at all times, occupied.
Although Barker engineered Midian’s destruction, he also left among the ruins pieces of hope. For the Nightbreed came together as one, not because they were the same, but because they were different.
LISA MAJEWSKI