Thousands howl back at me, enraged.
In
the little silence that follows just before I crash through the windows
of the ranch house comes a solitary, plaintive howl, far, far away.
I hear You, it says. I'm coming. You good stay! You good stay! I am Max, I come when you call!
If there is a second howl, I do not hear it above my own.
I land, rolling, and come up in a room littered with bodies that are struggling to their feet, each one with a snarl-faced beastling pushing its way out of whatever wound felled the person now huffing and grunting as they tear and eat pieces of their own flesh. I snap the leg from an overturned table and impale the two nearest hosts to the wall, then turn to see an approaching host whose beastling is nearly out of the hole in the back of her head. Its arms are wrapped around her skull, its claws digging into her forehead, snapping and snarling and pointing at me as she lurches in my direction with the slack grin of a teenager on shrooms. I lift her in the air and slam her onto the broken stump of the table leg I've just broken.
Snapping two more legs from the table, I impale two more lurching hosts and throw another two onto the jagged stumps. All of this has happened in about ten seconds, and the forces of Her Ladyship are coming in through the windows and doors behind me.
"Break furniture!" I shout, pointing, then bound through the back door and into the night, realizing that what I just said was very silly and laughing again, smelling -- tasting -- the fire come over the hill behind us to my left, hearing every sizzle (trapped rabbit struggling, too late, yum), every snap (this oak tree will brown but live, that eucalyptus is about to explode) and whoosh as a stand of dry brush goes up.
I'm leaping along a low hillside behind the ranch house, the barn ahead and to my right; it's a very traditional barn, probably painted red with a white border, once. Now it's all faded wood, exactly the kind of place I'd have liked for our wedding. Only without crazed hosts stumbling toward Her Ladyship's forces as they approach en masse, Henrietta herself leading the charge. I am there in an instant, landing to her right and slamming two hosts into one another and so happy when Boggs impales them with a broken pitchfork, then spins them and uses the fork to impale a third to the wall right of the barn door.
I am about to head off to my left, to the south, toward where I know he revels in devouring the helpless, when I see that several feet inside the barn, a group of hosts have knocked down a soldier and are tearing at his clothes. Not his flesh, right away, but his clothes. I am among them, knocking them aside as quickly as I can, but they seem to have gained some kind of strength. And something in here smells very strongly of ... sex. Wow. Following my nose, I grab the soldier from the floor -- his eyes glazed over, his jaw slack, he looks stoned -- and head around a pile of haybales.
There on the floor is the source of the smell. A Rachel of the Prophet, apparently free of wounds, on her hands and knees, being taken doggy-style by one of the beastlings. His claws are tearing at her hips and buttocks, but she looks and sounds like she loves it. The smell of sex is overpowering, the smell of something rotten that has been set on fire. It's not unpleasant, but it's ... very strong. Very ... wow ... I feel kind of good.
There's a thump to my left and the soldier is nude, his belt the last thing to hit the floor as, behind him, the hosts I didn't deal with have dragged another three soldiers to the floor and are tearing their clothes off. A fourth soldier is already nude, and I realize what is going to happen to them before I see a very attractive host girl take the first bite of the fourth soldier. As he begins to scream, I draw my pistol and shoot him through the head. No man wants to live with his cock bitten off. Then I shoot the rutting Rachel, turning and dragging the recently nude -- and impressively equipped -- soldier with me. Oak and Bay saplings have sprouted in the barn and their amber light is confusing the hosts and beastlings. Soaking up all the blood in the floor, the trees are growing very quickly, a small forest in seconds; the smell of Bay is cutting through the intoxicating sex perfume and the soldiers are fighting the hosts and beastlings. I throw one host against a support beam, impaling her on a hook where she hangs, weeping and begging to be killed. I leave her there and, still pulling the soldier with me, run out into the night.
The Oak that Iron Rachel mounted is glowing brightly an eighth of a mile to my left. The soldier is shaking, his erection beginning to droop, as he sees the thousands of beastlings overrunning our forces from the back. A rending of wood and the shattering of glass herald the first branches breaking through the roof of the ranch house as those trees are nourished by the blood of whatever has happened in there during the minute or less since I left. I turn the soldier and look into his eyes.
"Petherbridge!" I say, then can't help myself, taking another eyeful of his impressive junk. He tries to cover up with one hand, which isn't enough. I smile at him. "Get some clothes on," I say. "And stay out of barns that smell like sex!" He mumbles something and tries to salute, then slaps his hand back down over his man parts. Men are silly and oddly-shaped. But I have no time, I hear Henrietta calling me and I am off to my right, toward my goal, leaping over the saplings that have sprung up since we got out of the barn.
I reach her in seconds, about a half mile south. She is running toward a smaller structure, a dairy barn full of screams and crying and death. This is the place. I stumble. I fall. I am completely empty.
"I am going to have to cut you again, it's for your own good, lie still," Lady Henrietta is breathing in my hear and I feel a slice in my right palm and something metallic near the cut, then cloth pressed into the wound. The sound of a cap being screwed onto something metal and I am drifting ...
Tad and I were in the car. Driving up Mines Road, south of Livermore.
"Look behind us on the next turn," he said. "You can see Trevarno City Hall and Diogenes Park." I turned and there they were, City Hall and the lovely park surrounding it. I'd never seen them before. Nobody I know except Tad has ever made it into -- and back out of -- the Township of Trevarno.
Something flashed to the left and with a groaning roar I saw Mt. Diablo explode upward in lava and smoke.
"Oh my God," we said at once, and Tad pulled the car over in the slight turnout on our right, a steep drop of about a thousand feet to the dry canyon below. I took Max with me out the passenger side door and Tad opened the driver's door and got out and we both just stood there, silent, as the world we knew changed forever. I realized in that moment how right he was, and relief washed over me.
"I'm really glad we came this way," I said. "You were right. I'm sorry it took so long for us to get out of the house."
"That's okay," he said, and his voice was tight with emotion the way it gets when he speaks at a funeral or a wedding. "We should keep going, though, because every canyon is a potential fault line and ..."
Something rumbled near us, a deep groan like a twenty-three wheeler grinding its gears on a steep uphill. Turning toward the source, we saw a fissure open in the wall of the canyon across from us, about two miles away.
Into the car with Max and buckled up and driving up the steep, winding road again was accomplished in seconds. We were silent for a long, long time. No music, we had agreed, so that we could hear anything happening out there. In case.
"No stopping again," I said. "Until we get there."
I glanced at him. He nodded, grim, and switched on the headlights ...
... something cold at my lips and a voice whispers to drink and I do, swallowing something that tastes like something I had earlier but also tastes like me, like copper, like I am awake and standing and stronger than before, stronger than Oak, strong as Iron but nothing like Iron Rachel.
And I am all of those things. Seconds have passed. The bulk of Henrietta's forces are grouped at our backs, in formation, ready. They step aside for the Oak and Bay saplings that are growing and glowing all around us. I understand that what I saw in those moments of unconsciousness is a glimpse of what wasn't, what isn't, what could have been and maybe should have been. I accept it, now, and wonder, regardless of how much better it would be to be with Tad and Max at the cabin with his family, if this was my fate all along. It feels so right to stand here in the burning night with a small army behind us and certain doom even now leaping at us from the back as fire or beastlings.
Henrietta herself has bled into the flask and taken a healthy swig from it. I watch as she gasps, shakes her head, and her body transforms: taller, more muscular, sprains and broken bones crackling lightly as they heal, ligaments and tendons growing strong, skin shedding old cells, her hair regrowing in a quiet whsshh, even on her legs and sex. She looks at me and I know, we know, that this moment has been a long time in the making. I can sense her age, her experience. Henrietta is very, very old, in spite of her apparent youth and vigor. I feel something turn inside me, deep in my core -- something twisted slightly seems to adjust itself and shift, like a bud ready to bloom. A sense of wholeness, rightness and time settles into me. All is as it should be. No other paths matter. My time is here and now, may all the Gods he prattles on about bless and protect Tad whenever and wherever he is.
This is my battle. Not his.
I think about saying as much to Henrietta, but then a child's voice cuts through the night, "Mama!" -- and we surge forward, a roar in our throats.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Notes from the Future: Rancher
He sits easily in the saddle. A lifetime on horseback. Anyone watching him knows it, and as he sits on a high ridge overlooking an old dairy farm, he knows that he has become just what his father and grandfather were, exactly as his wife predicted all those years ago: a relic. He'd expected her to leave him, and she did. Twenty years, now. He'd expected to hear next to nothing from his kids in all that time, and he had. He wasn't a cruel man or stern. Just not demonstrative. There is a demon in demonstration, his grandfather had told him once. And it shows.
He turns to the party behind him.
"You sure this is the place?"
The woman has a map on her knees, old map, young woman. Wouldn't say where she got it. Face illuminated by the reflection of the bright LED flashlight she has pointed at the map is ghostly pale, her blue eyes lost in shadow. Looks like a Banshee, he thinks. He hates LED flashlights. She says nothing. She's shown him the map several times. Brandished it like a sliver of the True Cross within minutes of their meeting. He knows she thinks he's an idiot. Silence shouts.
The husband. In the boots. Not even proper cowboy boots, but he clomps around in them like he knows a thing or two. Which he may. Or may not. Jury's out. Either way, young couple in a vintage Jeep, strange cargo, with a very old map. Too old to indicate much with accuracy. Too old to tell us anything at all, he'd told them in his kitchen, hours ago. But they'd insisted. Offered to pay. Way things are going, ain't much use for money these days, he'd said.
The payment they'd offered, there and then, was more valuable than any he could have imagined. Valueless to anyone else, it had been placed before him with the tenderness afforded a great treasure from the most secret and secure vaults of the most precious museum of antiquities. He himself had doubted its existence before that. But even as it had come to rest on his scarred wooden table, the bare light bulb overhead picking out the words painted on one side, he'd felt his life drop away under him. The room turned upside down for a moment. He'd been too shocked to move, or he'd have had the good sense to fall down.
"Where did you get that?" he'd asked.
"Same place we got the map," came the husband's terse reply.
"And that was?"
"An interested party," was all the husband would say. A long silence followed.
"Say I take you there, and there's nothing. Say we go all the way out there and there ain't so much as a toothpick in a dead raven's mouth, what then? You gonna ask me to search up and down for this place?" He had known as he asked that he would do it, if needed. He would do anything they asked, now. Anything for this object they'd placed before him. But he liked to play his cards close. Best not to let on.
"If you take us there," this from the woman. "It will be there. We know it will be there. But you have to take us there. You have to be our guide."
"If it's not there," Husband hasn't looked away or blinked since last he spoke. "You keep this. No harm, no foul. It's yours. It's meant for you. You have a job to do. We know that."
He'd gasped against his will, not a big gasp, nothing demonstrative; just an intake of breath. It felt loud in his mostly dark, empty house. Never in his life had he expected to hear those words. He'd thought he was the only person in the world who knew, who understood.
A dark day, late September, 1946. He'd returned from a dismal, cold weekend in leaking canvas tents with his scout troop to find his house empty, his parents gone -- and his best friend waiting on his doorstep, to say goodbye.
Not goodbye, you're moving (he'd had no idea, he'd loved this house, so many friends here, parents had never said a word); it was goodbye, I'm running away.
Something had come to him, his friend had said. A very great treasure. He was only allowed to tell one person about it, about its history and its purpose. Then he had to go, alone, and probably never come back.
They'd spent the rest of the day down by the creek, and when dusk had come his friend had turned to the west and said, "If I make it all the way, I'll be in California. Come and find me, someplace with horses, someplace close to the ocean."
When the police had come asking questions about his friend's disappearance, he'd kept his word. He'd said quiet, earnest, boyish prayers about adventure and discovery, maintaining this secret light in the center of his soul for decades. But time has a way of setting aside dusty thoughts, tucking them into forgotten attics and piling old news, tuxedos and mortgage payments into every clear space. He had, eventually, forgotten his promise, even though it was what had first drawn him to California.
He still hadn't touched it, afraid to dispel a dream. Staring at the tiny words in white on black, he knew. This was meant to be. This was what he'd been waiting for his whole life. He was the final Steward.
"I'll take you," he'd said. Maybe it was his imagination, but after he said those three words he thought he heard, far far away, the lonely throat of a foghorn, the solitary bell of a buoy. He had stood and walked away from the table, nudging the light bulb which swung a little, sending their shadows crazy over the walls.
"You're just going to leave it there?" the wife had asked.
"If that's really what it's supposed to be, I'd better," he'd said, looking into her very blue eyes for the first time. "If I want to come back alive."
Now he sits on Beulah looking down on a darkened farm, precisely as described by these two strangers, precisely where they'd said it would be. His job is done. All he'd agreed to do was take them this far. He could go back to his quiet home and solid bed, away from phantoms of the past and an obligation he'd long ago thought impossible to fulfill. But something doesn't sit.
Dismounting, he leads Beulah near to where the other four horses are tied to a tree -- two extra horses, saddle and all, for what they wouldn't say, insisting that they had to leave the Jeep at his house and travel to the location on horseback. Wrapping her reins once around a dead branch, he kneels next to the couple. "Something don't feel right," he says. "This is the place, you are right as rain in every detail as far as I can tell. But if anyone's down there it's got to be an accident. That place is older than God and empty as my old creaking bed."
"Impossible as it may seem," the husband speaks low, like he's afraid to be overheard. "There is more down there than you can imagine. You know Mount Diablo has erupted; this seemed impossible a month ago. Almost everyone in the Bay Area is dead -- nobody saw that coming either -- help is slow to arrive and city folk like us should be getting away from here, not getting closer to the burning mountain. Right? So everything's already weird. But yes: something in this place feels less right than everything else. I don't know what it is. But I expect we'll find out sooner than we want to. My question for you is, how easily do these horses spook?"
"Depends on what you throw at them," he says, a grudging respect building inside.
"Ever take 'em to a Halloween party?"
October, 1946, the air crisp and smoky, a secret journey to Betty's attic, the old papers they'd read by candlelight -- more memories he's banished for years thrown into sharp relief by the footlights of time.
"Want to know a secret, Talmadge? Want to know something my Mama says never to tell?"
-- only if it gets me a kiss, Betty --
He'd never said it.
"Help me open this trunk."
"Are you sure we should be up here? On Halloween?"
"Are you some kind of sissy? It's my house, I know what's up here. Now hold the lid open and don't let it slip, Mama says it's heavy enough to cut off a finger."
How right she'd been.
"No, can't say I have," he says.
Miles away, a gigantic explosion tears the night to shreds. Flames leap into the sky on the other side of a farther ridge and down the hillsides a ways. Even at this distance, the fire is practically overhead.
"Good Lord," he murmurs. "Must be a gas main, like San Bruno -- like I heard about in Pleasanton a few days ago."
"That's our signal," the woman says. The husband takes his shotgun from the scabbard on his saddle, checks it, his wife doing the same with her longbow. Silent, competent, prepared. This couple might not be as city-slick as they pretended. Jury's still out.
Shaking his head, he grabs his Winchester and joins them on the stony outcropping at the edge of the ridge. "What now?" he asks.
They're silent for a time, the roar of the fire loud and getting louder. The husband looks at him, a little smile in his eyes:
"We wait."
He turns to the party behind him.
"You sure this is the place?"
The woman has a map on her knees, old map, young woman. Wouldn't say where she got it. Face illuminated by the reflection of the bright LED flashlight she has pointed at the map is ghostly pale, her blue eyes lost in shadow. Looks like a Banshee, he thinks. He hates LED flashlights. She says nothing. She's shown him the map several times. Brandished it like a sliver of the True Cross within minutes of their meeting. He knows she thinks he's an idiot. Silence shouts.
The husband. In the boots. Not even proper cowboy boots, but he clomps around in them like he knows a thing or two. Which he may. Or may not. Jury's out. Either way, young couple in a vintage Jeep, strange cargo, with a very old map. Too old to indicate much with accuracy. Too old to tell us anything at all, he'd told them in his kitchen, hours ago. But they'd insisted. Offered to pay. Way things are going, ain't much use for money these days, he'd said.
The payment they'd offered, there and then, was more valuable than any he could have imagined. Valueless to anyone else, it had been placed before him with the tenderness afforded a great treasure from the most secret and secure vaults of the most precious museum of antiquities. He himself had doubted its existence before that. But even as it had come to rest on his scarred wooden table, the bare light bulb overhead picking out the words painted on one side, he'd felt his life drop away under him. The room turned upside down for a moment. He'd been too shocked to move, or he'd have had the good sense to fall down.
"Where did you get that?" he'd asked.
"Same place we got the map," came the husband's terse reply.
"And that was?"
"An interested party," was all the husband would say. A long silence followed.
"Say I take you there, and there's nothing. Say we go all the way out there and there ain't so much as a toothpick in a dead raven's mouth, what then? You gonna ask me to search up and down for this place?" He had known as he asked that he would do it, if needed. He would do anything they asked, now. Anything for this object they'd placed before him. But he liked to play his cards close. Best not to let on.
"If you take us there," this from the woman. "It will be there. We know it will be there. But you have to take us there. You have to be our guide."
"If it's not there," Husband hasn't looked away or blinked since last he spoke. "You keep this. No harm, no foul. It's yours. It's meant for you. You have a job to do. We know that."
He'd gasped against his will, not a big gasp, nothing demonstrative; just an intake of breath. It felt loud in his mostly dark, empty house. Never in his life had he expected to hear those words. He'd thought he was the only person in the world who knew, who understood.
A dark day, late September, 1946. He'd returned from a dismal, cold weekend in leaking canvas tents with his scout troop to find his house empty, his parents gone -- and his best friend waiting on his doorstep, to say goodbye.
Not goodbye, you're moving (he'd had no idea, he'd loved this house, so many friends here, parents had never said a word); it was goodbye, I'm running away.
Something had come to him, his friend had said. A very great treasure. He was only allowed to tell one person about it, about its history and its purpose. Then he had to go, alone, and probably never come back.
They'd spent the rest of the day down by the creek, and when dusk had come his friend had turned to the west and said, "If I make it all the way, I'll be in California. Come and find me, someplace with horses, someplace close to the ocean."
When the police had come asking questions about his friend's disappearance, he'd kept his word. He'd said quiet, earnest, boyish prayers about adventure and discovery, maintaining this secret light in the center of his soul for decades. But time has a way of setting aside dusty thoughts, tucking them into forgotten attics and piling old news, tuxedos and mortgage payments into every clear space. He had, eventually, forgotten his promise, even though it was what had first drawn him to California.
He still hadn't touched it, afraid to dispel a dream. Staring at the tiny words in white on black, he knew. This was meant to be. This was what he'd been waiting for his whole life. He was the final Steward.
"I'll take you," he'd said. Maybe it was his imagination, but after he said those three words he thought he heard, far far away, the lonely throat of a foghorn, the solitary bell of a buoy. He had stood and walked away from the table, nudging the light bulb which swung a little, sending their shadows crazy over the walls.
"You're just going to leave it there?" the wife had asked.
"If that's really what it's supposed to be, I'd better," he'd said, looking into her very blue eyes for the first time. "If I want to come back alive."
Now he sits on Beulah looking down on a darkened farm, precisely as described by these two strangers, precisely where they'd said it would be. His job is done. All he'd agreed to do was take them this far. He could go back to his quiet home and solid bed, away from phantoms of the past and an obligation he'd long ago thought impossible to fulfill. But something doesn't sit.
Dismounting, he leads Beulah near to where the other four horses are tied to a tree -- two extra horses, saddle and all, for what they wouldn't say, insisting that they had to leave the Jeep at his house and travel to the location on horseback. Wrapping her reins once around a dead branch, he kneels next to the couple. "Something don't feel right," he says. "This is the place, you are right as rain in every detail as far as I can tell. But if anyone's down there it's got to be an accident. That place is older than God and empty as my old creaking bed."
"Impossible as it may seem," the husband speaks low, like he's afraid to be overheard. "There is more down there than you can imagine. You know Mount Diablo has erupted; this seemed impossible a month ago. Almost everyone in the Bay Area is dead -- nobody saw that coming either -- help is slow to arrive and city folk like us should be getting away from here, not getting closer to the burning mountain. Right? So everything's already weird. But yes: something in this place feels less right than everything else. I don't know what it is. But I expect we'll find out sooner than we want to. My question for you is, how easily do these horses spook?"
"Depends on what you throw at them," he says, a grudging respect building inside.
"Ever take 'em to a Halloween party?"
October, 1946, the air crisp and smoky, a secret journey to Betty's attic, the old papers they'd read by candlelight -- more memories he's banished for years thrown into sharp relief by the footlights of time.
"Want to know a secret, Talmadge? Want to know something my Mama says never to tell?"
-- only if it gets me a kiss, Betty --
He'd never said it.
"Help me open this trunk."
"Are you sure we should be up here? On Halloween?"
"Are you some kind of sissy? It's my house, I know what's up here. Now hold the lid open and don't let it slip, Mama says it's heavy enough to cut off a finger."
How right she'd been.
"No, can't say I have," he says.
Miles away, a gigantic explosion tears the night to shreds. Flames leap into the sky on the other side of a farther ridge and down the hillsides a ways. Even at this distance, the fire is practically overhead.
"Good Lord," he murmurs. "Must be a gas main, like San Bruno -- like I heard about in Pleasanton a few days ago."
"That's our signal," the woman says. The husband takes his shotgun from the scabbard on his saddle, checks it, his wife doing the same with her longbow. Silent, competent, prepared. This couple might not be as city-slick as they pretended. Jury's still out.
Shaking his head, he grabs his Winchester and joins them on the stony outcropping at the edge of the ridge. "What now?" he asks.
They're silent for a time, the roar of the fire loud and getting louder. The husband looks at him, a little smile in his eyes:
"We wait."
Monday, November 19, 2012
Notes from the Future: Journal of Brother Ambrose
I awakened this morning to find my ink spilled across my desk, the candle burned down to nothing. I was sprawled across my bed, still in my robes. Scattered across my floor was the entire contents of my small library, every book opened and thrown aside. I thought my room had been searched as I slept, a startling thought after so many years away from that world. Now I realize that I have no memory of going to sleep last night. As I was putting the books away, I noticed writing on the formerly blank end pages. This is the phrase I saw that made me fall back and sit heavily on the floor before my bookcase:
"... they tell me this is the Mont Perdu Abbey."
Even now, I can hardly believe it. Looking through all the books, it appears I have filled every blank page and some gaps between chapters with this writing. For it is my handwriting -- if rushed, sloppier than I would allow.
What impetus has driven me to scrawl thus? Am I in my right mind? Or is there some fiend guiding my hand as I sleep? In all other ways I feel well, no worse the wear for having burnt a fresh twelve-hour candle down to the nub as I wrote through the night. In search of some clue, I herein transcribe my scrawl; my hope is that through earnest investigation I may detect the source and (if possible) truth of what has lead me in my sleep to write of the Forbidden Mountain.
Friar Rudel stared at the wizard (at once twin to Father Robert and yet not) in a thin white gown with thick, filthy bandages hardened around one leg. The man was pale, dirty, reeking of vomit and shit, a tear in his right arm still weeping some blood. This was the man at whose strange, clean bedside Rudel had found himself standing mere minutes ago. And seconds after his own reappearance here in the circle of flames, this man had appeared with a popping sound and a puff of wind to land face-down in the snow mere feet away from Rudel and Hannibal. They could communicate with one or two words, but other than that this sorcerer -- a word that became less accurate with every passing moment -- looked more like a frightened fool completely out of his element.
The burning wolf demon, having transformed almost entirely back to human form, had regenerated its legs and most of its body in a soup of its own foul fluids, blood mixed with semen and phlegm and their accompanying greasy black ichor. Wolf form breaking through its human face, the beast had once again asserted itself and once again stood before them in all its horrid strength. Blood, froth and seed dripped from the torn tip of its monstrous, barbed cock. Its three surviving offspring, jealous of Papa, tugged at their own barbed phalli as they grew to the height of their father's furred shoulders. As the burning wolf demon picked up the smallest of its horrid babies, it became clear to everyone within the safety of the circle of flames what was about to happen: Papa was going to throw baby over the wall of flames, into the circle where it could attack and eat anyone. Probably scare the animals. Ah. Yes. Scare them out of the circle, with the girl and Father Robert unconscious, possibly dying, on their backs. Then it would be the simplest thing in the world to just leap and feast. That would be then end of them all.
As the beast crouched, ready to throw, Rudel readied himself: no point in running. Better to stay and fight. Drawing his dagger, he felt a little naked. Reaching over to where Father Robert lay across the back of Abelard the donkey, Rudel took a dagger from Father Robert's belt. Looking at the blade, he noticed that there was a line of some lighter metal going up the center. It reflected the blood red light of the fire, making the center of the blade appear to glow with its own flames.
Just as the beast's shoulders flexed, the shivering, injured man shouted one word. Just one word. The beast paused, its eyes gleaming. Then it dropped its demonspawn onto its own cock and fucked it where the beastling was impaled, in the very spot where Our Lord was pierced in his side by the spear of Longinus. The little creature screamed and squealed and yet seemed to enjoy the pain, turning to look Rudel directly in the eye as it slid further down the shaft of the darkness that was its progenitor.
The beast stepped forward, gestured, and the newcomer fell to his knees where he stood between Rudel and Hannibal the Talkative (who, it should be noted, had said very little in the last few minutes). Its creature still bleeding to death and now fully penetrated, the beast lifted its left foot, putting first a toe into the red flames, a horror testing the waters of damnation.
Nothing happened. Stretching it foot with elaborate delicacy, the beast put the rest of its toes through the flames. Still nothing. Looking up at Friar Rudel and Hannibal the Talkative, the beast smiled and, smiling down at the newcomer whose pale face seemed drained of all desire to live, the beast stepped fully onto the circle of flames.
The flames shifted from brightest red to a smoky red edged with black. In the center of each flame was a soul in torment, Rudel knew this without looking. As the beast had remained whole, he knew something else as well.
"You fool! You've doomed us all! You've given yourself up to to the beast!" he shouted. His voice sounded small, old and weak.
The beast reached down and pushed its still-twitching beastling farther onto its cock until the tip ripped through the little demon's back near the opposite shoulder blade; then, with one gnarled, clawed hand, the beast broke the tip from the barb arching up from the head of its infected beastcock, and smiling, brought the sharp, barbed bit of bone to its own lips, murmuring a word or to and kissing the shard before placing it on its tongue. Tilting its head back, it put both hands on the shoulders of its screaming offspring and gave three gigantic thrusts until, on the last, the miniature horror was torn in two -- each half falling to the snow to stain it crimson-black -- and the beast spat the broken barb of bone from its mouth directly at the forehead of the newcomer, piercing the spot immediately above and between his eyes. A spurt of blood and a crunch of bone, and the barb was inside. The newcomer collapsed, twitching, great toadlike noises coming from within him -- though whether from belly or lungs it was hard to tell.
The beast chuckled in dark delight and stepped its right foot into the circle. For a moment, silence. The beast inhaled, its ribcage expanding beyond natural capacity as it prepared to howl victory to the unfeeling night.
With a great spasmodic jerking, the newcomer -- Edouard, Rudel remembered; Edouard the fool -- threw back his own head and arms and cried out in agony: a prolonged sound of pain and distress which echoed, keening, from the towering, jagged stone walls of this desolate valley. Within those echoes, another voice began to speak.
It was the voice of a woman.
"You have penetrated a holy, secret place! Your darkness cannot be allowed to thrive here and, like rancid oil, shall be mopped up and left to rot for worms and flies to feast!"
The flames of the torch burning from the top of Father Robert's staff had stayed deepest brightest bloodiest red, and now grew and sparked until a familiar figure appeared above them all: the nude woman of the fire, She whose threefold enchantment Father Robert himself had broken. No blue sparks now, only red, and the hair of her head and the hair between her legs and under her arms burned bright as the sun, hot enough that snow began to melt around them. Red flames spread out from the base of the staff, snuffing the black from each tongue of fire as they went.
The beast crouched, cowed, just inside the circle. Too late he tried to turn and run, singeing the tip of his evil phallus and dropping to his knees to cradle and kiss it, whimpering around his jagged, needle-sharp teeth.
This is too much. I must take a rest. I cannot fathom that these words came from my mind, my pen.
Are these, then, the final days? Could that madman in Oakland have been right all along? Or am I the voice of some new, dark prophecy? Have I perhaps lost my mind? Jesus help me if either of these is so.
Since the earthquake, everything has gone crazy. It could be that this is merely stress from the disappearance of Brother Johannes and Brother Oswald.
Whatever it may be, how will I find comfort or help without speaking of this to someone? It must be some form of madness, if not full possession. I shall submit myself and all of my writing to the master of our order and await his judgement.
"... they tell me this is the Mont Perdu Abbey."
Even now, I can hardly believe it. Looking through all the books, it appears I have filled every blank page and some gaps between chapters with this writing. For it is my handwriting -- if rushed, sloppier than I would allow.
What impetus has driven me to scrawl thus? Am I in my right mind? Or is there some fiend guiding my hand as I sleep? In all other ways I feel well, no worse the wear for having burnt a fresh twelve-hour candle down to the nub as I wrote through the night. In search of some clue, I herein transcribe my scrawl; my hope is that through earnest investigation I may detect the source and (if possible) truth of what has lead me in my sleep to write of the Forbidden Mountain.
Friar Rudel stared at the wizard (at once twin to Father Robert and yet not) in a thin white gown with thick, filthy bandages hardened around one leg. The man was pale, dirty, reeking of vomit and shit, a tear in his right arm still weeping some blood. This was the man at whose strange, clean bedside Rudel had found himself standing mere minutes ago. And seconds after his own reappearance here in the circle of flames, this man had appeared with a popping sound and a puff of wind to land face-down in the snow mere feet away from Rudel and Hannibal. They could communicate with one or two words, but other than that this sorcerer -- a word that became less accurate with every passing moment -- looked more like a frightened fool completely out of his element.
The burning wolf demon, having transformed almost entirely back to human form, had regenerated its legs and most of its body in a soup of its own foul fluids, blood mixed with semen and phlegm and their accompanying greasy black ichor. Wolf form breaking through its human face, the beast had once again asserted itself and once again stood before them in all its horrid strength. Blood, froth and seed dripped from the torn tip of its monstrous, barbed cock. Its three surviving offspring, jealous of Papa, tugged at their own barbed phalli as they grew to the height of their father's furred shoulders. As the burning wolf demon picked up the smallest of its horrid babies, it became clear to everyone within the safety of the circle of flames what was about to happen: Papa was going to throw baby over the wall of flames, into the circle where it could attack and eat anyone. Probably scare the animals. Ah. Yes. Scare them out of the circle, with the girl and Father Robert unconscious, possibly dying, on their backs. Then it would be the simplest thing in the world to just leap and feast. That would be then end of them all.
As the beast crouched, ready to throw, Rudel readied himself: no point in running. Better to stay and fight. Drawing his dagger, he felt a little naked. Reaching over to where Father Robert lay across the back of Abelard the donkey, Rudel took a dagger from Father Robert's belt. Looking at the blade, he noticed that there was a line of some lighter metal going up the center. It reflected the blood red light of the fire, making the center of the blade appear to glow with its own flames.
Just as the beast's shoulders flexed, the shivering, injured man shouted one word. Just one word. The beast paused, its eyes gleaming. Then it dropped its demonspawn onto its own cock and fucked it where the beastling was impaled, in the very spot where Our Lord was pierced in his side by the spear of Longinus. The little creature screamed and squealed and yet seemed to enjoy the pain, turning to look Rudel directly in the eye as it slid further down the shaft of the darkness that was its progenitor.
The beast stepped forward, gestured, and the newcomer fell to his knees where he stood between Rudel and Hannibal the Talkative (who, it should be noted, had said very little in the last few minutes). Its creature still bleeding to death and now fully penetrated, the beast lifted its left foot, putting first a toe into the red flames, a horror testing the waters of damnation.
Nothing happened. Stretching it foot with elaborate delicacy, the beast put the rest of its toes through the flames. Still nothing. Looking up at Friar Rudel and Hannibal the Talkative, the beast smiled and, smiling down at the newcomer whose pale face seemed drained of all desire to live, the beast stepped fully onto the circle of flames.
The flames shifted from brightest red to a smoky red edged with black. In the center of each flame was a soul in torment, Rudel knew this without looking. As the beast had remained whole, he knew something else as well.
"You fool! You've doomed us all! You've given yourself up to to the beast!" he shouted. His voice sounded small, old and weak.
The beast reached down and pushed its still-twitching beastling farther onto its cock until the tip ripped through the little demon's back near the opposite shoulder blade; then, with one gnarled, clawed hand, the beast broke the tip from the barb arching up from the head of its infected beastcock, and smiling, brought the sharp, barbed bit of bone to its own lips, murmuring a word or to and kissing the shard before placing it on its tongue. Tilting its head back, it put both hands on the shoulders of its screaming offspring and gave three gigantic thrusts until, on the last, the miniature horror was torn in two -- each half falling to the snow to stain it crimson-black -- and the beast spat the broken barb of bone from its mouth directly at the forehead of the newcomer, piercing the spot immediately above and between his eyes. A spurt of blood and a crunch of bone, and the barb was inside. The newcomer collapsed, twitching, great toadlike noises coming from within him -- though whether from belly or lungs it was hard to tell.
The beast chuckled in dark delight and stepped its right foot into the circle. For a moment, silence. The beast inhaled, its ribcage expanding beyond natural capacity as it prepared to howl victory to the unfeeling night.
With a great spasmodic jerking, the newcomer -- Edouard, Rudel remembered; Edouard the fool -- threw back his own head and arms and cried out in agony: a prolonged sound of pain and distress which echoed, keening, from the towering, jagged stone walls of this desolate valley. Within those echoes, another voice began to speak.
It was the voice of a woman.
"You have penetrated a holy, secret place! Your darkness cannot be allowed to thrive here and, like rancid oil, shall be mopped up and left to rot for worms and flies to feast!"
The flames of the torch burning from the top of Father Robert's staff had stayed deepest brightest bloodiest red, and now grew and sparked until a familiar figure appeared above them all: the nude woman of the fire, She whose threefold enchantment Father Robert himself had broken. No blue sparks now, only red, and the hair of her head and the hair between her legs and under her arms burned bright as the sun, hot enough that snow began to melt around them. Red flames spread out from the base of the staff, snuffing the black from each tongue of fire as they went.
The beast crouched, cowed, just inside the circle. Too late he tried to turn and run, singeing the tip of his evil phallus and dropping to his knees to cradle and kiss it, whimpering around his jagged, needle-sharp teeth.
This is too much. I must take a rest. I cannot fathom that these words came from my mind, my pen.
Are these, then, the final days? Could that madman in Oakland have been right all along? Or am I the voice of some new, dark prophecy? Have I perhaps lost my mind? Jesus help me if either of these is so.
Since the earthquake, everything has gone crazy. It could be that this is merely stress from the disappearance of Brother Johannes and Brother Oswald.
Whatever it may be, how will I find comfort or help without speaking of this to someone? It must be some form of madness, if not full possession. I shall submit myself and all of my writing to the master of our order and await his judgement.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Notes from the Future: Iron Rachel II
I hear the screams.
I sense his dark rapture at their pain, the tearing of their flesh, their eyes wild as they watch him eat them. I am crossing the field. We have taken the ranch house. The barn will be next. I am not stopping. It is almost time.
Almost.
Time.
Something is fluttering in my awareness, somewhere behind me and to my left. I turn to see, about five hundred yards back the way we've come, Her Hottieship locked in combat.
With Iron Rachel.
"Boggs! Didn't you bayonet her?!" I shout, my voice carrying the ring of command for the first time. Ever.
Boggs turns and, if a blue-eyed Anglo can get more pale than he already is, Boggs would be a gold medalist. Which means Iron Rachel died.
And is alive again.
"Oh, fuck NO!" I shout, launching myself back toward where they fight. I'm there in about seven strides, just as Iron Rachel swings something at Henrietta's legs and she jumps away in time to avoid being severed at the knees by a ...
"What the fuck is that, you fucking ugly undead cunt?!" I shout, stepping in on Iron Rachel's left and clocking her with the chunk of stone I don't remember picking up. "Is that a scythe? Are you the Grim fucking Reaper now, you damn ugly bitch!?"
Rather than fall from the shattered jaw and broken cheekbone I have brought as a housewarming present for her first night in hell, Iron Rachel huffs two or three times, kind of hunched to the right. She's laughing. This crazy ass bitch is laughing at me when I broke her face open with a stone. Then she raises up slightly and I see something black and glistening sticking out of her left cheekbone. It's wet and pulsating and has two little holes in it.
Good Lord. It's a dog's nose.
"What the fuck?" I step back involuntarily, looking to Henrietta, whose eyes are fixated on the hole in Iron Rachel's face; now I see that Henrietta is injured -- her left arm deeply wounded, blood flowing freely from a slice through her tricep. I look back to Iron Rachel in time to see the dog nose press forward, out of the hole in her face; a snout follows, canine teeth gritting in exertion. In one grunting push, the jaw and much of the head -- the eyes, certainly -- are free, the jaw popping open with a sickening crunch of the left side of Iron Rachel's face. Tongue lolling, eyes wild, this thing is not a dog.
It's a wolf. Only, not: it's a thing. It's an infection. I recognize it, and, glancing at Henrietta again, I see that she does, as well. Iron Rachel is still grunting and huffing, bent over to her right. The soldiers and nurses around her are backing away, frank disgust on their faces. I step back as well, but only to get a clearer picture; she does not scare me anymore, even with half a wolf head poking out her face.
She appears to be doing something to her lady parts, though. And from the sound of things and the fresh smell of blood, it can't be good. As though she senses my thoughts, Iron Rachel turns in that moment and lifts her skirt. I know what she wants to show me, but I will not look. I will not take my eyes from her face. I don't need to. And as she raises a torn, bloody chunk of her own flesh to her mouth I know that the only thing to do is kill her, now, before she can infect anyone else. The rock drops from my hand and I'm lifting the flap of the pouch I still carry slung diagonally across my body when the scythe in Iron Rachel's left hand whips out behind her and slices a young soldier neatly, diagonally in two. His eyes wide in shock, the upper half of his body slides wetly to the not-so-dry grass to his left and his fellow soldiers shout and cry out, a nurse falling to her knees and cradling his head in her lap. This is what demoralization looks like; I recognize it from my days at Ajilon.
"Veronica," Iron Rachel says, for all the world as calm as someone standing in the lobby of a theatre. "A word in your ear?"
Henrietta is chanting something, or yelling something. I can't really tell. I can't really hear her. I can't seem to hear much of anything. Why is that. And what is this dark fog rolling in?
I know that to allow Iron Rachel to speak another word may spell doom for us all. I step forward, pressing the muzzle of my gun against her forehead and firing, but at that exact moment another young soldier has darted forward to behead her with a sabre. I feel and smell and hear the bullet hit the sword and snap it before it can fully sever Iron Rachel's head from her body.
The bullet ricochets to the right and I sense rather than hear another soldier or a nurse fall dead or mortally injured. Then I am being tickled and poked in the ass cheek and I feel leaves on my arm and I turn and see little trees all around us, little trees growing and shining with a warm amber light. The dark fog -- which I had hardly noticed -- disperses, and it's like when you're driving in the rain and you can't see anything until the defroster vents clear the windshield of your own condensation.
We are surrounded by hundreds of little saplings, and the thingbeast that is trying to birth itself through Iron Rachel's face does not like them at all. She is turning and spinning and trying to find a way out, but she is pinned in. She stomps on any that start to grow beneath her, but this just seems to make the trees around her grow stronger, taller and more determined.
"I desecrate you!" she shouts, grabbing a sapling and stripping it of its leaves, then, to the mutual abhorrence of all present, mounting the sapling and forcing herself onto it, just as the false prophet Torvald Mayberry forced objects into innocent Rachels in the compound. She is cackling like the ugly crazy hag she is, the creature squirming in her face is panting in ecstasy, and I understand in an instant what is going on.
"Heal her!" I shout, grabbing the scythe from where she let it drop so she could push an Oak up her cooter. The nurses are staring at me like I'm the crazy tree rapist, but Henrietta seems to understand.
"Do as she says! Heal her now! Dull the pain!" As she barks these orders, Henrietta herself steps forward and holds Iron Rachel's arms to her sides as nurses dart in with syringes and bandages, simultaneously binding Iron Rachel's arms at her side and trying to stanch the flow of blood from her badly damaged body.
The thingbeast in her face hears and sees everything we are doing. With renewed fervor it wriggles and squees and grunts, but there is no way it is getting out.
When Iron Rachel's head falls from her body to land in the bloody earth beneath her, I realize what it was doing: the thingbeast was using the claws of its feet to cut the rest of the way through her neck. Iron Rachel's body slumps where it is, still held upright by the strapling. As we all stare, shocked to silence and stillness, the first tip of the tree pokes up through her torn, ruined neck. The tree is growing at a faster rate than all the others, drinking her blood and absorbing her as an offering.
The thingbeast stuck in her severed head gives a cry, a howl, and I scythe it in half before I realize I've thought of doing so. At the same moment, a second thingbeast snout begins to push up out of her neck.
The two halves of the first thingbeast begin to twitch and bleed and ... begin to regenerate.
There is a silence, then, as we all realize what we've done. Then, from the darkness out around us, comes the first howl. Then the second howl. Then the third, and fourth and then too many to count joining in, and we understand: for every one of the false prophet's followers we've cut down, some monstrosity has been unleashed into the night.
I can sense, smell, taste them. They are all around us.
All the way back to where Mother Henrietta was shot.
All of their dead have risen, birthing these abominations from their wounds, unholy children of darkness pushed from false wombs of the uncaring dead.
Flames light the sky and I see the first tongues of destruction crest the hill to the east of us; glancing to the south and north, I understand: the fire has eaten through the businesses and tract homes, it is coming up the hill to devour these unnatural things. There really is no escape.
"Listen to me," I shout, and the murmuring and near-hysterical panic goes still, though the reloading continues. "We are surrounded. What the creatures don't get, the fire will. Our job -- our only job, now -- is to incapacitate as many of them as we can!"
We can hear them running for us, now.
"I've seen Henry V," I cry, turning to face the barn where thingbeasts are grunting and struggling from the dead of our first charge. "I've seen it, but I don't remember his speech. So here's all I have to say: do not kill these motherfuckers! Pin them down and let the fire do the rest! Stake them to the earth, to each other, impale them on a willing tree! I'm gonna go kill me a false prophet!"
The cheer that follows as we surge forward feels really, really good. Before we turned, I caught a glimpse of the misshapen horde racing at us from all sides.
I realize, now, that I will never call Max to me. I want him to live.
Ah, well. My sweet boy, I think, and leaping over a barb-wire fence, I impale a thingbeast backwards to the fencepost with the scythe, leaving it there to rust and not quite die. Good boy, stay, Maxwell, and when I am gone, know that you are free.
A gas main bursts somewhere on the far side of that hill, down among the houses that were, the explosion roaring up into the night sky like hell unleashed. Scattered before us as I lead the charge are thingbeasts, thousands of them, growing faster and stronger than the Oak and Bay saplings that spring up in my wake.
On a certain level, it's funny. Tad should be the one doing this, not me.
I laugh. The laugh becomes a howl, a challenge, a mocking taunt.
Thousands howl back at me, enraged.
In the little silence that follows just before I crash through the windows of the ranch house comes a solitary, plaintive howl, far, far away.
I hear You, it says. I'm coming. You good stay! You good stay! I am Max, I come when you call!
If there is a second howl, I do not hear it above my own.
I sense his dark rapture at their pain, the tearing of their flesh, their eyes wild as they watch him eat them. I am crossing the field. We have taken the ranch house. The barn will be next. I am not stopping. It is almost time.
Almost.
Time.
Something is fluttering in my awareness, somewhere behind me and to my left. I turn to see, about five hundred yards back the way we've come, Her Hottieship locked in combat.
With Iron Rachel.
"Boggs! Didn't you bayonet her?!" I shout, my voice carrying the ring of command for the first time. Ever.
Boggs turns and, if a blue-eyed Anglo can get more pale than he already is, Boggs would be a gold medalist. Which means Iron Rachel died.
And is alive again.
"Oh, fuck NO!" I shout, launching myself back toward where they fight. I'm there in about seven strides, just as Iron Rachel swings something at Henrietta's legs and she jumps away in time to avoid being severed at the knees by a ...
"What the fuck is that, you fucking ugly undead cunt?!" I shout, stepping in on Iron Rachel's left and clocking her with the chunk of stone I don't remember picking up. "Is that a scythe? Are you the Grim fucking Reaper now, you damn ugly bitch!?"
Rather than fall from the shattered jaw and broken cheekbone I have brought as a housewarming present for her first night in hell, Iron Rachel huffs two or three times, kind of hunched to the right. She's laughing. This crazy ass bitch is laughing at me when I broke her face open with a stone. Then she raises up slightly and I see something black and glistening sticking out of her left cheekbone. It's wet and pulsating and has two little holes in it.
Good Lord. It's a dog's nose.
"What the fuck?" I step back involuntarily, looking to Henrietta, whose eyes are fixated on the hole in Iron Rachel's face; now I see that Henrietta is injured -- her left arm deeply wounded, blood flowing freely from a slice through her tricep. I look back to Iron Rachel in time to see the dog nose press forward, out of the hole in her face; a snout follows, canine teeth gritting in exertion. In one grunting push, the jaw and much of the head -- the eyes, certainly -- are free, the jaw popping open with a sickening crunch of the left side of Iron Rachel's face. Tongue lolling, eyes wild, this thing is not a dog.
It's a wolf. Only, not: it's a thing. It's an infection. I recognize it, and, glancing at Henrietta again, I see that she does, as well. Iron Rachel is still grunting and huffing, bent over to her right. The soldiers and nurses around her are backing away, frank disgust on their faces. I step back as well, but only to get a clearer picture; she does not scare me anymore, even with half a wolf head poking out her face.
She appears to be doing something to her lady parts, though. And from the sound of things and the fresh smell of blood, it can't be good. As though she senses my thoughts, Iron Rachel turns in that moment and lifts her skirt. I know what she wants to show me, but I will not look. I will not take my eyes from her face. I don't need to. And as she raises a torn, bloody chunk of her own flesh to her mouth I know that the only thing to do is kill her, now, before she can infect anyone else. The rock drops from my hand and I'm lifting the flap of the pouch I still carry slung diagonally across my body when the scythe in Iron Rachel's left hand whips out behind her and slices a young soldier neatly, diagonally in two. His eyes wide in shock, the upper half of his body slides wetly to the not-so-dry grass to his left and his fellow soldiers shout and cry out, a nurse falling to her knees and cradling his head in her lap. This is what demoralization looks like; I recognize it from my days at Ajilon.
"Veronica," Iron Rachel says, for all the world as calm as someone standing in the lobby of a theatre. "A word in your ear?"
Henrietta is chanting something, or yelling something. I can't really tell. I can't really hear her. I can't seem to hear much of anything. Why is that. And what is this dark fog rolling in?
I know that to allow Iron Rachel to speak another word may spell doom for us all. I step forward, pressing the muzzle of my gun against her forehead and firing, but at that exact moment another young soldier has darted forward to behead her with a sabre. I feel and smell and hear the bullet hit the sword and snap it before it can fully sever Iron Rachel's head from her body.
The bullet ricochets to the right and I sense rather than hear another soldier or a nurse fall dead or mortally injured. Then I am being tickled and poked in the ass cheek and I feel leaves on my arm and I turn and see little trees all around us, little trees growing and shining with a warm amber light. The dark fog -- which I had hardly noticed -- disperses, and it's like when you're driving in the rain and you can't see anything until the defroster vents clear the windshield of your own condensation.
We are surrounded by hundreds of little saplings, and the thingbeast that is trying to birth itself through Iron Rachel's face does not like them at all. She is turning and spinning and trying to find a way out, but she is pinned in. She stomps on any that start to grow beneath her, but this just seems to make the trees around her grow stronger, taller and more determined.
"I desecrate you!" she shouts, grabbing a sapling and stripping it of its leaves, then, to the mutual abhorrence of all present, mounting the sapling and forcing herself onto it, just as the false prophet Torvald Mayberry forced objects into innocent Rachels in the compound. She is cackling like the ugly crazy hag she is, the creature squirming in her face is panting in ecstasy, and I understand in an instant what is going on.
"Heal her!" I shout, grabbing the scythe from where she let it drop so she could push an Oak up her cooter. The nurses are staring at me like I'm the crazy tree rapist, but Henrietta seems to understand.
"Do as she says! Heal her now! Dull the pain!" As she barks these orders, Henrietta herself steps forward and holds Iron Rachel's arms to her sides as nurses dart in with syringes and bandages, simultaneously binding Iron Rachel's arms at her side and trying to stanch the flow of blood from her badly damaged body.
The thingbeast in her face hears and sees everything we are doing. With renewed fervor it wriggles and squees and grunts, but there is no way it is getting out.
When Iron Rachel's head falls from her body to land in the bloody earth beneath her, I realize what it was doing: the thingbeast was using the claws of its feet to cut the rest of the way through her neck. Iron Rachel's body slumps where it is, still held upright by the strapling. As we all stare, shocked to silence and stillness, the first tip of the tree pokes up through her torn, ruined neck. The tree is growing at a faster rate than all the others, drinking her blood and absorbing her as an offering.
The thingbeast stuck in her severed head gives a cry, a howl, and I scythe it in half before I realize I've thought of doing so. At the same moment, a second thingbeast snout begins to push up out of her neck.
The two halves of the first thingbeast begin to twitch and bleed and ... begin to regenerate.
There is a silence, then, as we all realize what we've done. Then, from the darkness out around us, comes the first howl. Then the second howl. Then the third, and fourth and then too many to count joining in, and we understand: for every one of the false prophet's followers we've cut down, some monstrosity has been unleashed into the night.
I can sense, smell, taste them. They are all around us.
All the way back to where Mother Henrietta was shot.
All of their dead have risen, birthing these abominations from their wounds, unholy children of darkness pushed from false wombs of the uncaring dead.
Flames light the sky and I see the first tongues of destruction crest the hill to the east of us; glancing to the south and north, I understand: the fire has eaten through the businesses and tract homes, it is coming up the hill to devour these unnatural things. There really is no escape.
"Listen to me," I shout, and the murmuring and near-hysterical panic goes still, though the reloading continues. "We are surrounded. What the creatures don't get, the fire will. Our job -- our only job, now -- is to incapacitate as many of them as we can!"
We can hear them running for us, now.
"I've seen Henry V," I cry, turning to face the barn where thingbeasts are grunting and struggling from the dead of our first charge. "I've seen it, but I don't remember his speech. So here's all I have to say: do not kill these motherfuckers! Pin them down and let the fire do the rest! Stake them to the earth, to each other, impale them on a willing tree! I'm gonna go kill me a false prophet!"
The cheer that follows as we surge forward feels really, really good. Before we turned, I caught a glimpse of the misshapen horde racing at us from all sides.
I realize, now, that I will never call Max to me. I want him to live.
Ah, well. My sweet boy, I think, and leaping over a barb-wire fence, I impale a thingbeast backwards to the fencepost with the scythe, leaving it there to rust and not quite die. Good boy, stay, Maxwell, and when I am gone, know that you are free.
A gas main bursts somewhere on the far side of that hill, down among the houses that were, the explosion roaring up into the night sky like hell unleashed. Scattered before us as I lead the charge are thingbeasts, thousands of them, growing faster and stronger than the Oak and Bay saplings that spring up in my wake.
On a certain level, it's funny. Tad should be the one doing this, not me.
I laugh. The laugh becomes a howl, a challenge, a mocking taunt.
Thousands howl back at me, enraged.
In the little silence that follows just before I crash through the windows of the ranch house comes a solitary, plaintive howl, far, far away.
I hear You, it says. I'm coming. You good stay! You good stay! I am Max, I come when you call!
If there is a second howl, I do not hear it above my own.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Notes from the Future: Iron Rachel
"Mother Henrietta? Is that really you?" I ask.
She opens her mouth to answer, and in that moment a figure leaps to the top of the embankment in front of us, shouting, "Die in the name of the Prophet!"
It's a woman, her silhouette looks familiar. And as fire ignites in the treetops all around us, more figures appear on the embankment near her and I realize who she is.
Iron Rachel has found us.
She wears glasses that turn dark in daylight, like her soul. But right now, in the growing light of the burning trees, I can see her eyes clearly and they are the eyes of a crazy lady. A feeling of doom settles over me, like a black fog. We are surrounded. We will never escape.
Then Mother (Her Ladyship?) Henrietta stands up and brings her wrists together above her head as she shouts something:
"!قد الظلام الخاص بك لا العبور إلى دائرة الضوء بلدي"
A rippling wall of blue-white light shoots out of her as she throws her wrists apart on the last word; Iron Rachel and her minions are blasted back off their feet by the light, which snuffs out the burning trees with a sound like an instant torrential downpour. The trees are rippling, rustling, sighing, and new growth is appearing, visible in the night as though shining with their own light. New growth, little puffy fronds and, as I watch, acorns and bay nuts appear in seconds and begin to drop from the trees. Where they fall, they take root and begin to grow. By the time the first of Iron Rachel's minions is trying to stand, we are surrounded by a small and actively growing forest of Oak and Bay. Maybe five seconds have passed.
I am staring at this woman whom I thought I knew, this younger version of Mother Henrietta, a woman that Second Lieutenant Petherbridge and Private Boggs refer to as Her Ladyship -- and I realize that I have no idea who she is or how she can do these things. Even as I watch, she is throwing small handsful of some powder among the roots of the rapidly growing trees, and she is chanting -- singing, even -- as she does so:
"تنمو وتمتد، تنفس تنفس الصعداء و؛
تصل الفروع الخاصة بك إلى السماء،
انظر ما يأتي من الحفر العميقة،
تنبيه من النوم في العطاء الشتلات،
عقد الخضراء الخاصة بك في الشتاء واسعة،
الغناء الخاص بك الصمت والأغاني القديمة؛
شرب الأمطار، أبدا النوم،
وفهم الشتاء لا يصمد كثيرا ..."
Even as these words leave her mouth, Petherbridge and Boggs are collecting the lantern, the tripod, the lamp and the chest -- but over the sound of their quick, efficient movement there comes a whispering, sighing, creaking. Almost a chorus. Her Ladyship turns to me.
"Veronica, give me your hand; I must cut it and add your blood to this work, to protect you and to put you in touch with the trees," she's reaching her hand to me, her eyes a little wild in the light of the single lantern still burning.
The trees, as they grow, seem to be flexing their roots. Flexing and lifting and shifting their roots. Even the trunks appear to have faces rippling within them as these little trees get larger and sprout branches like stretching toddlers.
"Why me? Why my blood?" It feels stupid and weak, but I have to know.
"It must be you, it must be your blood, because you are the only one who is from this place and time. In that way, you are the only one who is really here. We are merely visitors. Help me, quickly!"
I hold out my hand, and like lightning she whips a silver dagger across my palm; it's so sharp, I don't really feel the cut even as I watch it happen. Warm blood flows from my hand and she moves me over to the still-growing, stretching saplings, where she holds my wrist and moves my hand and arm in a series of gestures that feel significant, but hold no meaning for me. She moves with me, her body close to mine, and it's like a dance. At specific points, she flicks my hand out and I fling my fingers wide, throwing my blood among the roots of the trees. It may be my imagination, but it looks as though the trees are strengthened by my blood. Her body is warm against mine, and I realize that she and I may be around the same age, now. And she's totally a hottie. I catch her scent and breathe deeply as we move; cinnamon, rosemary ... and some other, more exotic scents I can't name. I am beginning to wonder where her tent might be when I hear something.
It arises from the sighs and creaks that began earlier, now coalescing into a chorus of voices. Their harmonies are deep, their voices -- though young -- feel older than time. All thoughts of Her Ladyship in a sleeping bag evaporate as the saplings sing:
"Grow and stretch, breathe and sigh;
Reach your branches to the sky,
See what comes of digging deep,
Wake from seedling's tender sleep,
Hold your green in sweeping Winter,
Sing your silent, ancient songs;
Drink the rains, never sleeping,
Winter's grasp won't hold for long ..."
My blood has spattered the roots of every tree, it seems. I am feeling a little faint. Her Hottieship presses a flask to my lips, whispering to me to drink, and I do. What meets my tongue is a liquid that feels like ice and flame but seems to have no water in it; flavors that move toward fruit then veer off into clove and ginger; a whirlwind of changing notes and my tongue feels like every individual tastebud is living a lifetime of unexpected vast horizons.
Holy shit, I can smell everything. My hand tingles, and I turn it over to see the wound knitting closed. For a moment, there is soft pink scarflesh, then that heals and the wound is gone completely.
I can taste the air.
Ooo, not just taste it -- I can practically feel the shapes of what I smell and taste; I know where they are, what they are, how they are. I know where the minions are and who is conscious. My ears are attuned to my sense of smell, now. I can feel who is injured. My bones are whole, my bones are like OAK! I can smell the fires in the houses down the hills and I know that they are close, too close, closer than they ever should have been. Every moment we are here is a risk, but it is a risk that must be taken. We will win. We are alive. I will lead us.
I am Alpha.
As that thought takes root in my mind and soul, I feel something -- a bell, a clarion call, a kind of inner, muted tone or note (anagrams! Suddenly fascinating!) that isn't really inner at all. It's outer. It's someone I know, he's nearby, he's alive, he's awake he's --
... You! You! You! You!
I am here! Do you need me?
I must stay her 'til you call!
I am here! Say you need me!
You, You Need me! Need me!
Call! ...
Before I can fully respond, I see Iron Rachel being helped to her feet by two of her minions. I take the amber lantern from Petherbridge and smash it among the roots of the Oak saplings which are strapping youths now and therefore straplings. Whatever that liquid is, the treelings drink it up as the metal of the lantern breaks into golden sparks and puffs like thistledown begin to blow among the trees. Now they lift their roots and part for me as I bound forward, leaping from the embankment to the near edge of the small clearing where Iron Rachel has landed. As I land, and even before I touch earth, I sense that every acorn and bay nut lying dormant in the soil sprouts and takes root around me, even as the strapling Oaks and Bays behind me have begun to move across the land in my wake, their roots like tentacles propelling them smoothly to surround me within seconds of my arrival.
Iron Rachel is brought up short by my landing, my appearance, my very me-ness. I know I have transformed, and I glory in it. The strapling trees, having absorbed the liquid of the amber lantern, now put off a glow even stronger than the lantern itself. Each tree is growing and glowing at the same time, and it is by their light that I see that Iron Rachel's glasses are cracked and askew.
"Like your soul," I say, pointing at them. Her left hand moves self-consciously to adjust them and I laugh but it seems to come out as one long, bright howl.
Like a ripple in a still pool, my howl spreads and I feel where it goes, my awareness spreading with it. Every animal terrified goes still (including Iron Rachel, erstwhile sexual cannibal of San Ramon), every animal akin to me perks up ... and one entity, one not-animal, one thing of dark and ancient origin perks up its ears and lifts its head in answer, transforming my howl to a challenge even as it mocks me in acceptance.
I know where he is.
"This way," I cry, and, leaping past Iron Rachel I bat her aside like the insignificant thing she is, satisfied to hear her last grunting breath as Boggs bayonets her in passing. The rest of her minions are dispatched quickly and I sense more than see that our side is joining me in this charge, they are coming from everywhere, this is what they've been waiting for. It's why they're here. I am why they're here. I lead an army of men and women from another time; I lead an army of indigenous species. Tad would be so proud of me.
I will do it, Tad, I think. I will do as you ask. I will do anything you ask. Come home, come home to me, we mate for life, you and I. Come home. I need you. Our boy needs you. Your pack needs you.
I can feel the question from the bright note in the night, he wants to be near me. I can tell that he wants to be near me, but it is not time. I am sprinting, leaping through the trees and dry brown grass (soon to burn, the fires are less than a mile away), smacking aside any resistance I meet, savoring the sounds of their deaths as I hear him calling to me, begging to join me and help me and be of good service to the pack. Not yet, I tell him in my mind. Not yet, sweet boy. Stay until I call you. Stay and sit and gather your strength, sweet Maxwell. Daddy is lost in time, but Mommy will need you by her side. Be a good boy, gather your strength, and listen well. For when I call you, my need will be great, the danger terrible. You are the best boy. You are the noblest beast. You are a smoochy stinkface, and I love you so.
I see the lights of a structure beyond the ranch house, beyond the barn, tucked back among three smaller hills. I know instantly that this is where the beast lurks.
I see the lights.
I hear the screams.
I sense his dark rapture at their pain, the tearing of their flesh, their eyes wild as they watch him eat them. I am crossing the field. We have taken the ranch house. The barn will be next. I am not stopping. It is almost time.
Almost.
Time.
She opens her mouth to answer, and in that moment a figure leaps to the top of the embankment in front of us, shouting, "Die in the name of the Prophet!"
It's a woman, her silhouette looks familiar. And as fire ignites in the treetops all around us, more figures appear on the embankment near her and I realize who she is.
Iron Rachel has found us.
She wears glasses that turn dark in daylight, like her soul. But right now, in the growing light of the burning trees, I can see her eyes clearly and they are the eyes of a crazy lady. A feeling of doom settles over me, like a black fog. We are surrounded. We will never escape.
Then Mother (Her Ladyship?) Henrietta stands up and brings her wrists together above her head as she shouts something:
"!قد الظلام الخاص بك لا العبور إلى دائرة الضوء بلدي"
A rippling wall of blue-white light shoots out of her as she throws her wrists apart on the last word; Iron Rachel and her minions are blasted back off their feet by the light, which snuffs out the burning trees with a sound like an instant torrential downpour. The trees are rippling, rustling, sighing, and new growth is appearing, visible in the night as though shining with their own light. New growth, little puffy fronds and, as I watch, acorns and bay nuts appear in seconds and begin to drop from the trees. Where they fall, they take root and begin to grow. By the time the first of Iron Rachel's minions is trying to stand, we are surrounded by a small and actively growing forest of Oak and Bay. Maybe five seconds have passed.
I am staring at this woman whom I thought I knew, this younger version of Mother Henrietta, a woman that Second Lieutenant Petherbridge and Private Boggs refer to as Her Ladyship -- and I realize that I have no idea who she is or how she can do these things. Even as I watch, she is throwing small handsful of some powder among the roots of the rapidly growing trees, and she is chanting -- singing, even -- as she does so:
"تنمو وتمتد، تنفس تنفس الصعداء و؛
تصل الفروع الخاصة بك إلى السماء،
انظر ما يأتي من الحفر العميقة،
تنبيه من النوم في العطاء الشتلات،
عقد الخضراء الخاصة بك في الشتاء واسعة،
الغناء الخاص بك الصمت والأغاني القديمة؛
شرب الأمطار، أبدا النوم،
وفهم الشتاء لا يصمد كثيرا ..."
Even as these words leave her mouth, Petherbridge and Boggs are collecting the lantern, the tripod, the lamp and the chest -- but over the sound of their quick, efficient movement there comes a whispering, sighing, creaking. Almost a chorus. Her Ladyship turns to me.
"Veronica, give me your hand; I must cut it and add your blood to this work, to protect you and to put you in touch with the trees," she's reaching her hand to me, her eyes a little wild in the light of the single lantern still burning.
The trees, as they grow, seem to be flexing their roots. Flexing and lifting and shifting their roots. Even the trunks appear to have faces rippling within them as these little trees get larger and sprout branches like stretching toddlers.
"Why me? Why my blood?" It feels stupid and weak, but I have to know.
"It must be you, it must be your blood, because you are the only one who is from this place and time. In that way, you are the only one who is really here. We are merely visitors. Help me, quickly!"
I hold out my hand, and like lightning she whips a silver dagger across my palm; it's so sharp, I don't really feel the cut even as I watch it happen. Warm blood flows from my hand and she moves me over to the still-growing, stretching saplings, where she holds my wrist and moves my hand and arm in a series of gestures that feel significant, but hold no meaning for me. She moves with me, her body close to mine, and it's like a dance. At specific points, she flicks my hand out and I fling my fingers wide, throwing my blood among the roots of the trees. It may be my imagination, but it looks as though the trees are strengthened by my blood. Her body is warm against mine, and I realize that she and I may be around the same age, now. And she's totally a hottie. I catch her scent and breathe deeply as we move; cinnamon, rosemary ... and some other, more exotic scents I can't name. I am beginning to wonder where her tent might be when I hear something.
It arises from the sighs and creaks that began earlier, now coalescing into a chorus of voices. Their harmonies are deep, their voices -- though young -- feel older than time. All thoughts of Her Ladyship in a sleeping bag evaporate as the saplings sing:
"Grow and stretch, breathe and sigh;
Reach your branches to the sky,
See what comes of digging deep,
Wake from seedling's tender sleep,
Hold your green in sweeping Winter,
Sing your silent, ancient songs;
Drink the rains, never sleeping,
Winter's grasp won't hold for long ..."
My blood has spattered the roots of every tree, it seems. I am feeling a little faint. Her Hottieship presses a flask to my lips, whispering to me to drink, and I do. What meets my tongue is a liquid that feels like ice and flame but seems to have no water in it; flavors that move toward fruit then veer off into clove and ginger; a whirlwind of changing notes and my tongue feels like every individual tastebud is living a lifetime of unexpected vast horizons.
Holy shit, I can smell everything. My hand tingles, and I turn it over to see the wound knitting closed. For a moment, there is soft pink scarflesh, then that heals and the wound is gone completely.
I can taste the air.
Ooo, not just taste it -- I can practically feel the shapes of what I smell and taste; I know where they are, what they are, how they are. I know where the minions are and who is conscious. My ears are attuned to my sense of smell, now. I can feel who is injured. My bones are whole, my bones are like OAK! I can smell the fires in the houses down the hills and I know that they are close, too close, closer than they ever should have been. Every moment we are here is a risk, but it is a risk that must be taken. We will win. We are alive. I will lead us.
I am Alpha.
As that thought takes root in my mind and soul, I feel something -- a bell, a clarion call, a kind of inner, muted tone or note (anagrams! Suddenly fascinating!) that isn't really inner at all. It's outer. It's someone I know, he's nearby, he's alive, he's awake he's --
... You! You! You! You!
I am here! Do you need me?
I must stay her 'til you call!
I am here! Say you need me!
You, You Need me! Need me!
Call! ...
Before I can fully respond, I see Iron Rachel being helped to her feet by two of her minions. I take the amber lantern from Petherbridge and smash it among the roots of the Oak saplings which are strapping youths now and therefore straplings. Whatever that liquid is, the treelings drink it up as the metal of the lantern breaks into golden sparks and puffs like thistledown begin to blow among the trees. Now they lift their roots and part for me as I bound forward, leaping from the embankment to the near edge of the small clearing where Iron Rachel has landed. As I land, and even before I touch earth, I sense that every acorn and bay nut lying dormant in the soil sprouts and takes root around me, even as the strapling Oaks and Bays behind me have begun to move across the land in my wake, their roots like tentacles propelling them smoothly to surround me within seconds of my arrival.
Iron Rachel is brought up short by my landing, my appearance, my very me-ness. I know I have transformed, and I glory in it. The strapling trees, having absorbed the liquid of the amber lantern, now put off a glow even stronger than the lantern itself. Each tree is growing and glowing at the same time, and it is by their light that I see that Iron Rachel's glasses are cracked and askew.
"Like your soul," I say, pointing at them. Her left hand moves self-consciously to adjust them and I laugh but it seems to come out as one long, bright howl.
Like a ripple in a still pool, my howl spreads and I feel where it goes, my awareness spreading with it. Every animal terrified goes still (including Iron Rachel, erstwhile sexual cannibal of San Ramon), every animal akin to me perks up ... and one entity, one not-animal, one thing of dark and ancient origin perks up its ears and lifts its head in answer, transforming my howl to a challenge even as it mocks me in acceptance.
I know where he is.
"This way," I cry, and, leaping past Iron Rachel I bat her aside like the insignificant thing she is, satisfied to hear her last grunting breath as Boggs bayonets her in passing. The rest of her minions are dispatched quickly and I sense more than see that our side is joining me in this charge, they are coming from everywhere, this is what they've been waiting for. It's why they're here. I am why they're here. I lead an army of men and women from another time; I lead an army of indigenous species. Tad would be so proud of me.
I will do it, Tad, I think. I will do as you ask. I will do anything you ask. Come home, come home to me, we mate for life, you and I. Come home. I need you. Our boy needs you. Your pack needs you.
I can feel the question from the bright note in the night, he wants to be near me. I can tell that he wants to be near me, but it is not time. I am sprinting, leaping through the trees and dry brown grass (soon to burn, the fires are less than a mile away), smacking aside any resistance I meet, savoring the sounds of their deaths as I hear him calling to me, begging to join me and help me and be of good service to the pack. Not yet, I tell him in my mind. Not yet, sweet boy. Stay until I call you. Stay and sit and gather your strength, sweet Maxwell. Daddy is lost in time, but Mommy will need you by her side. Be a good boy, gather your strength, and listen well. For when I call you, my need will be great, the danger terrible. You are the best boy. You are the noblest beast. You are a smoochy stinkface, and I love you so.
I see the lights of a structure beyond the ranch house, beyond the barn, tucked back among three smaller hills. I know instantly that this is where the beast lurks.
I see the lights.
I hear the screams.
I sense his dark rapture at their pain, the tearing of their flesh, their eyes wild as they watch him eat them. I am crossing the field. We have taken the ranch house. The barn will be next. I am not stopping. It is almost time.
Almost.
Time.
Monday, November 5, 2012
Notes from the Future: Her Ladyship
One lantern hanging from a broken branch jammed into the left wall of the dugout lights a map spread out on a log, pored over by the figure kneeling next to it. Both men salute. Should I? Who is this?
"First Lieutenant Petherbridge and Private Boggs, Your Ladyship. We've brought her," he says.
She turns, standing, faces me.
I can't believe my eyes.
"At ease, Gentlemen," she says. Her accent is amazing, it's British but tinged with something more European ... is it French? Basque? Tad would know. Damn him.
She stands in front of me in a tailored man's uniform, her hair -- a dark brown bordering on black -- pinned up under an Officers' cap, her face unlined. She is so beautiful, she looks incredible in that uniform, I feel under-dressed and outclassed. But this can't be real. She can't be who she seems to be. It has to be a coincidence.
"Veronica," she says. "Our time here is extremely short. How we have achieved this is too long a story to tell at this time. Why we have achieved it is simple: in order to alter the course of events and secure your safety in this place and time, we needed to intervene."
"My safety? What about ... everyone else?" I feel like I'm talking slowly. Emotional molasses stuck in a mental January.
"Their safety is your safety, but what you did not know was that there were those among ... the Rachels and Ezekiels -- who planned to assassinate --" Hesitating, her eyes shift to First Lieutenant Petherbridge. He gives a crisp little shake of the head, his eyes shifting down and away. There is a pause as she breathes, then: "I see. It is exactly as I was shown. We are too late for that, then. Well. We shall simply redouble our efforts here and accept no result other than total and complete victory."
"Wait, wait -- are you talking about what just happened? About how -- the shooting?" I'm stumbling on my words, lost and angry, and I sit down, right away, because that's my only option. She's kneeling in front of me and Petherbridge and Boggs are kneeling on either side of me.
"Veronica, look into my eyes," she says. I do, and she continues, "You know these eyes. You know my face."
I'm thinking, They look familiar, but this has to be a coincidence. It has to be.
She is still speaking, and I do my best to focus on her words: "What you do not know is where I come from and how I got here. But there is a message that I need to give you, a message that has taken quite a long time to reach you in the here and now. I need you to stay focused and to remember that we are your friends. The first shot that was fired, the first bullet ... came from behind. I know this as certainly as I know that Edward loves you still, that he loves you from countless centuries and miles away, and that he is -- even as we speak -- fighting to return to you."
Now, with the smell of smoke stronger and the sounds of gunfire somehow muted in this place, she turns and opens a very old and solid wooden trunk. It looks like the prototype pirate chest, only small and covered with strange symbols. As she opens it, there is a brief shimmer -- like light through water. She withdraws something that looks like an ancient glass lantern. It is filled with a thick, clear ambler liquid, in which there appear to be flakes of gold, floating in place.
Petherbridge draws a pennywhistle from within his jacket or whatever it would be called, and Boggs begins to hum. Her Ladyship withdraws an old oil lamp -- like the one Aladdin's Djinn lives in -- from within the trunk as well. Opening its lid, she breathes a word or two over the oil inside and a whisp of blue-white light swirls up out of the oil like condensation over a cup of hot coffee. I feel my eyes widen. She closes the lid and sets the lamp on the flat, level top of a log round in front of us. From within the trunk she draws a brass tripodal arrangement which she sets up over and around the lamp. She hangs the lantern from the tripod, directly over where the flame of the lamp would be.
Petherbridge begins to play something, a tuneless wail that seems to weave in and out of Boggs' humming. Like snakes intertwined. As that thought comes to me, the pennywhistle and the voice settle into a harmony that sounds very Eastern, very Arabic, I think.
Her Ladyship says a word:
"اللسان"
A tongue of blue-white flame leaps up from the mouth of the oil lamp, heating the bottom of the amber liquid lantern.
Almost immediately, the specks of gold look like they're glowing. Her Ladyship sings softly in that other language and the flame grows stronger and the golden flecks begin to move within the liquid. The light around us changes, no longer coming just from the flame lantern on the broken branch or the oil lamp beneath the amber liquid lantern, but from all around us. It starts as a light pinkish glow, like everything around us -- from the mud and dirt and leaves to the Oak and Bay trees, to the map and the log and maybe even we ourselves -- everything is putting out a general light. And there are no shadows. It looks like the light before a really big storm, when late afternoon sun is reflected off of the bay and from there off the underside of the clouds about to burst, and everything is soft and pretty for a few minutes.
I find that I can't take my eyes from the golden specks in the amber lantern. As the lantern grows warmer from the oil lamp beneath it, the specks start to move around one another. Even as they move from the heat, it seems that they are moving with the music of her voice. The sound of fighting is very far away, now, and the smell of the smoke has become sweet like incense. I am completely comfortable, at ease. It's like being stoned, but aware and awake at the same time. Like sleeping would be if walking and sleeping were possible without the sleeping part, and if the walking part were in a really nice park next to a beautiful palace like in Prince of Persia or Aladdin. With peacocks roaming the grounds. Yes.
Now the specks are moving so fast that they are making streaks of light. The more she sings, the faster they move. And as they move, a picture begins to form within the streaks of light, until they are zipping around so fast that the picture is as solid and as real as everything around us.
It is the picture of a gigantic eyeball. I lean back in disgust. It looks like the eyeball is inside the lantern. Like I could touch it. The pupil is dilating, focusing, almost as though it is focusing on us, on me. The eye itself is just slightly bloodshot, but the iris ... the iris is the prettiest shade of blue-green, almost the exact color of peacock feathers, only with little brown specks.
Little brown specks ... ?
I gasp and there is a hand on my shoulder, Her Ladyship calming me; I know without being told that to speak now would break whatever is going on.
The eye grows smaller and more of the face appears, like it's leaning back away from inspecting us. The image solidifies. And there he is. Looking directly at me, from inside a magic lantern brought here in a treasure chest from I don't know where, looking at me with his happy half-smile and eyes all crinkly, is ...
"Tad ..." I breathe. His eyes light up.
"Wow. I didn't expect to be able to hear you so well. This is wayyy better than Skype," I can tell he's expecting me to laugh, but I'm crying. Again. Damn it. Damn him.
"Damn you, Edward Hightower. Where the fuck are you? And when the fuck are you coming home? And where the hell is our boy? Where is Max?! This is not just some jaunt to the mountains, Tad, you disappeared. You literally disappeared right in front of me! Where are you?!"
His eyes are soft and his smile is sad. I wipe more tears from my cheeks.
"The question is not so much about where I am, honey. The question is, 'When?'" As he says this, I sense more than see Petherbridge and Boggs nodding. "And the answer to the question of when is something that can change at any time -- though truth be told, it hasn't changed all that much in the past year or so."
"Year?! YEAR?! You've been gone a few days, what are you talking about, 'the past year'?" I'm shouting now, and someone shushes me quietly, gently. I realize in that moment how risky this is. I glance up and around at the trees, lit only by these strange lamps and lanterns and whatever it is that is making everything around us glow.
"Veronica, I am lost in time. I have been trying to find my way back to you ever since I got here, but you have to understand that I can't just pop back and forth like I was doing before you broke the Prophet's hold over the compound. And I ... seem to have lost someone. Within time," his eyes flick to my right and I realize he's looking at her. Why? He continues, "And what I have to ask you, right now, is this: the next time you have a chance to kill Torvald Mayberry, do it. Please."
The golden flecks that have been whirling within the amber liquid have begun to fall, sand-like, in an hourglass pattern, which Tad seems to see at the same time I do.
"Crap. My time is running out. You're going to see him sooner than you think. Reload that pistol the instant this lantern stops. Shatter the lantern at the base of an Oak tree, do not leave it for anyone to find. The lamp and tripod may be kept, but the lantern is too dangerous to be risked. Promise me, Veronica, that you will immediately destroy this lantern. And that you will kill Torvald Mayberry the first chance you have."
My face is so wet with tears that I don't even bother wiping them away now. His image has been decaying fleck by golden fleck as he talks, and though now most of his face is gone, his eyes seem to be glowing brighter.
"Honey," I say, barely a whisper. "Can I touch your face through this?"
His eyes grow sad again as he says, "No. It would not even be a good idea to try. But just seeing you touches my soul. You are my star, my beacon, Veronica. I set my course by your light every time I travel. And travel is all I seem to do, these days."
"How can I get you back here? What can I do? I would walk from here to Nepal and back if that's what it takes," I'm sobbing a little. Keeping it under control. His eyes are smiling, as is what's left of his face. I realize the light in his eyes is the reflection of the lantern in tears.
"Do as I ask," he says. "Kill him the instant you have the opportunity. He is connected to too many other things, like a spider in a web of time. Eliminate the spider, and his hold over the web disappears. Now --" and I see his eyes glance around him, like he's checking the weather. "We are almost done. Petherbridge? Boggs?"
Both men snap to attention, saluting from where they are sitting. Curious.
"At ease. Keep an eye on these ladies. I'll get back to you all as soon as I can," his eyes are disappearing fleck by fleck. "Good night, Veronica. I love you."
I can't even speak, I'm holding my left hand over my mouth and I raise my right to wave goodbye. What's left of his eyes look very sad. They shift to my right.
"Take care of her, Henrietta," he says.
The last golden specks fall. The amber liquid lantern goes out. The light from within fades.
I turn to my right.
"Mother Henrietta? Is that really you?" I ask.
She opens her mouth to answer, and in that moment a figure leaps to the top of the embankment in front of us, shouting, "Die in the name of the Prophet!"
It's a woman, her silhouette looks familiar. And as fire ignites in the treetops all around us, more figures appear on the embankment near her and I realize who she is.
Iron Rachel has found us.
"First Lieutenant Petherbridge and Private Boggs, Your Ladyship. We've brought her," he says.
She turns, standing, faces me.
I can't believe my eyes.
"At ease, Gentlemen," she says. Her accent is amazing, it's British but tinged with something more European ... is it French? Basque? Tad would know. Damn him.
She stands in front of me in a tailored man's uniform, her hair -- a dark brown bordering on black -- pinned up under an Officers' cap, her face unlined. She is so beautiful, she looks incredible in that uniform, I feel under-dressed and outclassed. But this can't be real. She can't be who she seems to be. It has to be a coincidence.
"Veronica," she says. "Our time here is extremely short. How we have achieved this is too long a story to tell at this time. Why we have achieved it is simple: in order to alter the course of events and secure your safety in this place and time, we needed to intervene."
"My safety? What about ... everyone else?" I feel like I'm talking slowly. Emotional molasses stuck in a mental January.
"Their safety is your safety, but what you did not know was that there were those among ... the Rachels and Ezekiels -- who planned to assassinate --" Hesitating, her eyes shift to First Lieutenant Petherbridge. He gives a crisp little shake of the head, his eyes shifting down and away. There is a pause as she breathes, then: "I see. It is exactly as I was shown. We are too late for that, then. Well. We shall simply redouble our efforts here and accept no result other than total and complete victory."
"Wait, wait -- are you talking about what just happened? About how -- the shooting?" I'm stumbling on my words, lost and angry, and I sit down, right away, because that's my only option. She's kneeling in front of me and Petherbridge and Boggs are kneeling on either side of me.
"Veronica, look into my eyes," she says. I do, and she continues, "You know these eyes. You know my face."
I'm thinking, They look familiar, but this has to be a coincidence. It has to be.
She is still speaking, and I do my best to focus on her words: "What you do not know is where I come from and how I got here. But there is a message that I need to give you, a message that has taken quite a long time to reach you in the here and now. I need you to stay focused and to remember that we are your friends. The first shot that was fired, the first bullet ... came from behind. I know this as certainly as I know that Edward loves you still, that he loves you from countless centuries and miles away, and that he is -- even as we speak -- fighting to return to you."
Now, with the smell of smoke stronger and the sounds of gunfire somehow muted in this place, she turns and opens a very old and solid wooden trunk. It looks like the prototype pirate chest, only small and covered with strange symbols. As she opens it, there is a brief shimmer -- like light through water. She withdraws something that looks like an ancient glass lantern. It is filled with a thick, clear ambler liquid, in which there appear to be flakes of gold, floating in place.
Petherbridge draws a pennywhistle from within his jacket or whatever it would be called, and Boggs begins to hum. Her Ladyship withdraws an old oil lamp -- like the one Aladdin's Djinn lives in -- from within the trunk as well. Opening its lid, she breathes a word or two over the oil inside and a whisp of blue-white light swirls up out of the oil like condensation over a cup of hot coffee. I feel my eyes widen. She closes the lid and sets the lamp on the flat, level top of a log round in front of us. From within the trunk she draws a brass tripodal arrangement which she sets up over and around the lamp. She hangs the lantern from the tripod, directly over where the flame of the lamp would be.
Petherbridge begins to play something, a tuneless wail that seems to weave in and out of Boggs' humming. Like snakes intertwined. As that thought comes to me, the pennywhistle and the voice settle into a harmony that sounds very Eastern, very Arabic, I think.
Her Ladyship says a word:
"اللسان"
A tongue of blue-white flame leaps up from the mouth of the oil lamp, heating the bottom of the amber liquid lantern.
Almost immediately, the specks of gold look like they're glowing. Her Ladyship sings softly in that other language and the flame grows stronger and the golden flecks begin to move within the liquid. The light around us changes, no longer coming just from the flame lantern on the broken branch or the oil lamp beneath the amber liquid lantern, but from all around us. It starts as a light pinkish glow, like everything around us -- from the mud and dirt and leaves to the Oak and Bay trees, to the map and the log and maybe even we ourselves -- everything is putting out a general light. And there are no shadows. It looks like the light before a really big storm, when late afternoon sun is reflected off of the bay and from there off the underside of the clouds about to burst, and everything is soft and pretty for a few minutes.
I find that I can't take my eyes from the golden specks in the amber lantern. As the lantern grows warmer from the oil lamp beneath it, the specks start to move around one another. Even as they move from the heat, it seems that they are moving with the music of her voice. The sound of fighting is very far away, now, and the smell of the smoke has become sweet like incense. I am completely comfortable, at ease. It's like being stoned, but aware and awake at the same time. Like sleeping would be if walking and sleeping were possible without the sleeping part, and if the walking part were in a really nice park next to a beautiful palace like in Prince of Persia or Aladdin. With peacocks roaming the grounds. Yes.
Now the specks are moving so fast that they are making streaks of light. The more she sings, the faster they move. And as they move, a picture begins to form within the streaks of light, until they are zipping around so fast that the picture is as solid and as real as everything around us.
It is the picture of a gigantic eyeball. I lean back in disgust. It looks like the eyeball is inside the lantern. Like I could touch it. The pupil is dilating, focusing, almost as though it is focusing on us, on me. The eye itself is just slightly bloodshot, but the iris ... the iris is the prettiest shade of blue-green, almost the exact color of peacock feathers, only with little brown specks.
Little brown specks ... ?
I gasp and there is a hand on my shoulder, Her Ladyship calming me; I know without being told that to speak now would break whatever is going on.
The eye grows smaller and more of the face appears, like it's leaning back away from inspecting us. The image solidifies. And there he is. Looking directly at me, from inside a magic lantern brought here in a treasure chest from I don't know where, looking at me with his happy half-smile and eyes all crinkly, is ...
"Tad ..." I breathe. His eyes light up.
"Wow. I didn't expect to be able to hear you so well. This is wayyy better than Skype," I can tell he's expecting me to laugh, but I'm crying. Again. Damn it. Damn him.
"Damn you, Edward Hightower. Where the fuck are you? And when the fuck are you coming home? And where the hell is our boy? Where is Max?! This is not just some jaunt to the mountains, Tad, you disappeared. You literally disappeared right in front of me! Where are you?!"
His eyes are soft and his smile is sad. I wipe more tears from my cheeks.
"The question is not so much about where I am, honey. The question is, 'When?'" As he says this, I sense more than see Petherbridge and Boggs nodding. "And the answer to the question of when is something that can change at any time -- though truth be told, it hasn't changed all that much in the past year or so."
"Year?! YEAR?! You've been gone a few days, what are you talking about, 'the past year'?" I'm shouting now, and someone shushes me quietly, gently. I realize in that moment how risky this is. I glance up and around at the trees, lit only by these strange lamps and lanterns and whatever it is that is making everything around us glow.
"Veronica, I am lost in time. I have been trying to find my way back to you ever since I got here, but you have to understand that I can't just pop back and forth like I was doing before you broke the Prophet's hold over the compound. And I ... seem to have lost someone. Within time," his eyes flick to my right and I realize he's looking at her. Why? He continues, "And what I have to ask you, right now, is this: the next time you have a chance to kill Torvald Mayberry, do it. Please."
The golden flecks that have been whirling within the amber liquid have begun to fall, sand-like, in an hourglass pattern, which Tad seems to see at the same time I do.
"Crap. My time is running out. You're going to see him sooner than you think. Reload that pistol the instant this lantern stops. Shatter the lantern at the base of an Oak tree, do not leave it for anyone to find. The lamp and tripod may be kept, but the lantern is too dangerous to be risked. Promise me, Veronica, that you will immediately destroy this lantern. And that you will kill Torvald Mayberry the first chance you have."
My face is so wet with tears that I don't even bother wiping them away now. His image has been decaying fleck by golden fleck as he talks, and though now most of his face is gone, his eyes seem to be glowing brighter.
"Honey," I say, barely a whisper. "Can I touch your face through this?"
His eyes grow sad again as he says, "No. It would not even be a good idea to try. But just seeing you touches my soul. You are my star, my beacon, Veronica. I set my course by your light every time I travel. And travel is all I seem to do, these days."
"How can I get you back here? What can I do? I would walk from here to Nepal and back if that's what it takes," I'm sobbing a little. Keeping it under control. His eyes are smiling, as is what's left of his face. I realize the light in his eyes is the reflection of the lantern in tears.
"Do as I ask," he says. "Kill him the instant you have the opportunity. He is connected to too many other things, like a spider in a web of time. Eliminate the spider, and his hold over the web disappears. Now --" and I see his eyes glance around him, like he's checking the weather. "We are almost done. Petherbridge? Boggs?"
Both men snap to attention, saluting from where they are sitting. Curious.
"At ease. Keep an eye on these ladies. I'll get back to you all as soon as I can," his eyes are disappearing fleck by fleck. "Good night, Veronica. I love you."
I can't even speak, I'm holding my left hand over my mouth and I raise my right to wave goodbye. What's left of his eyes look very sad. They shift to my right.
"Take care of her, Henrietta," he says.
The last golden specks fall. The amber liquid lantern goes out. The light from within fades.
I turn to my right.
"Mother Henrietta? Is that really you?" I ask.
She opens her mouth to answer, and in that moment a figure leaps to the top of the embankment in front of us, shouting, "Die in the name of the Prophet!"
It's a woman, her silhouette looks familiar. And as fire ignites in the treetops all around us, more figures appear on the embankment near her and I realize who she is.
Iron Rachel has found us.
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