Cabal, book review. (Clive Barker)

Things are getting a bit dark and very weird in my house at the moment as I revisit some of the 'horror' reads from my teenage years, and with Clive Barker, James Herbert, Stephen King, and Steve Harris being so influential all those years ago, I thought it about time I tried to feel young again!
Cabal (a group of people with a collective secret or agenda) is the story of Boone, a man with an undiagnosed mental issue - he believes he has murdered eleven people, mutilating them, but can't remember committing the crimes - his relationship with his psychologist, doctor Decker, and the woman he has fallen for but can never love, Lori.
Unable to live with his crimes, Boone decides that he must die, but death seems to shrink from him and his suicide attempt fails. So, where will he go? Heaven has no place for a man like him, nor it seems does Hell, and he is too much of a danger to society to remain free so, Midian then - the place of legend, where the half-dead go, the Nightbreed, where Baphomet rules. (You might have to look Baphomet up like I did to know what I'm talking about there).
Mixing legend with reality, the undead with the living, the sane with the insane, Barker takes us on a journey from Calgary to the wilds of Canada, and it is both intriguing and damned right horrific and should not be approached lightly - this is proper horror folks, none of that dampened down jump-scare stuff you get today, but it's also a love story (aren't they all?) between Boone and Lori, and the lengths that they will go too to find and save each other.
This book is quite short and has so much pace that it's almost impossible to put down - which is good of course - has characters that come across plausible and likeable, events that stretch the imagination and horrors that are both explained and implied so that your mind is constantly flexing, conjuring both the author's and your own images, which I like - some books just info dump too much and leave little to the imagination.

I love the police chief Eigerman, who's deputies hate him as much as he hates them, how the town's people of Midian are so easily convinced that there's foul play at the Cemetery. I love the interaction between Boone and Decker, how the Nightbreed are both frightened and frightening in equal measure, and I will admit, despite it having been a while since I last read a true horror book, I love the no-holds-barred attitude to death this book portrays.
So, Cabal. Not one of Clive Barker's best books from my recollection but a great one to cut your teeth on. Three and a half stars then, but go in with your eyes open. There will be blood, lots of blood.