The Great Lover

by Cisco, Michael; Hughes, Rhys

  “The Prosthetic Death is still alive!”

  A woman’s voice it rivets him to the spot.

  The moon is above the sun, full and white as ice. Its light alone shines on the wings of the birds, so that they are pale grey and snowy untinged with any of the sun’s scarlet, and wanly shine even against the disk of the sun, not silhouetted. Cassiopeia sparkles at the zenith. The sun, the moon, and Cassiopeia, are all together in one line, and, through all three, Vera flexes her slender waist in a still vaster constellation.

  A sight high and austere, now the sky is filled with stationary comets, large light-spindled stars, in peach-colored space like a transparent fire. Where the sun was, he sees a tree, with peach-fire light on bronze leaves, and blonde flames fixed to the end of each branch. The tree is silent.

  The woman on the horizon he now sees is wearing a long skirt, a garment that falls from her shoulders, a kerchief over her long hair. Gold hoops flash at her ears.

  “Oh, Great Lover, the sun is releasing-power, escapes all power, and can’t be bound. Always think of it. Be strengthened. Defeat your enemy.”

  Something is lying there in front of him. He takes it in his hand — a piece of gold. In picking it up, he had clumsily plucked a few blades of grass with it, and these damp blades lie around the gold in his hand. He looks at the colors beside each other; I am saying he looks at the color of gold, which is not yellow, and the color of grass, which is not green. He sees these shining colors live in his hand, which is his own color. Look around. See a golden haze glowing on the tall dewy grass like softened fire. Look up, and see the sun make blue gold of the sky. Stand up. There is a lane, almost only a dirt rut, threaded across the deep grass, which vanishes through a small stand of trees. A hoop, like the kind children used to chase with a wand, but made all of dazzling gold, rolls along the lane and darts swiftly into the stand of trees. The gold winks as the hoop vanishes around a tree. Turning the trunk, he enters a meadow surrounded by old trees and dense bracken, all saturated with shadow. The grass is long and tufted, and a lofty, slender beech is growing there apart from the others.

  Go up to the beech tree and drop to his knees at its roots. The hoop, although it has no gap in it, has encompassed the trunk, and hangs in midair, spinning slowly in place, like Saturn’s rings; it makes an inaudible sound against the air, like two earthenware plates rubbing together. In the shade of the branches — in that shade he sees the shade of her tresses. He breathes aloud, two fast deep breaths.

  He mutters her name, he lowers his head as though he were too weak to hold it up, his hands on the ground, his head shakes and his eyes drip.

  Then he raises his face again to the hoop; he feels her fingers drawn down his features, in his mind he hears her voice say “I am with you.” His head lowers again, and he sobs her name over and over, Vera Vera crushing black loam in hands that tremble. The hoop rotates slowly above him.

  *

  One of the women becomes a dark figure whose head ascends out of sight into blue shadows—

  “She is coming.”

  *

  Caught as a group, under the very worst circumstances: Futsi, Deuteronôme, Multiply, and Dr. Thefarie.

  Welling up around the stairs is a mob, blurred in a lethal grey fluoresence, and dotted with red armbanders. The stairs are however the only way to get onto the overhead walkway from this platform. They make their escape, but, as they tumble down the stairs on the far side — no street exit — have to go deeper, to the tracks below and pray they haven’t made it that far yet — but, Uar is gone.

  Uar is standing on the uptown platform they’ve just quitted, standing with his knife out at the base of the stairs. He’s going to hold them there.

  Multiply and Futsi are for going back but Deuteronôme orders them sharply to stay together. As they race for the lower platform a wave of enemies crashes around Uar. Face calm with fierce concentration he drives them all back, his knife darting and slashing. At first sight of blood the armbanders scatter, running, as they tell themselves, for the police, for reinforcements.

  Futsi nearly ploughs right into the midst of a grey haze waiting for them on the lower platform just before the stairs. A dull pull on them all as they wheel around the banister and head along the tracks in the opposite direction. No good — more ahead.

  Now the mob on the upper platform falls back from the stairs. Uar remains in place, breathing hard, sweat beaded on his face, but uninjured. In his trance he is able to lash out at them without fear of being weakened. Slashed remnants of wings, mushy arms and legs, ears and other severed extremities litter the base of the stairs where he has been at work. But now the enemy has recognized his immunity, and a cry rings out from blank faces. A moment later, something huge lumbers from the tunnels not twenty feet from Uar.

  Futsi and the others are forced to cross the tracks, leaping carefully over the charged rails. Shapes, rustling, footsteps on all sides. They’re hemmed in completely.

  Dr. Thefarie points toward a solitary car sitting idle by the divider. One of the passenger doors is half open. They clamber in hastily — the car is empty. Multiply is the last in — the door has been keyed open using the interior release, and the keys are still there — he turns them, the door rattles shut, sealing them inside.

  What faces Uar is something new, a billowing form of flabby suit with a ghoulish wax face the size of a trashcan lid. This is not exactly the Vampirism but something else, specially capable of positive assault. He barely avoids its massive stone arm. From behind its face, which melts through a series of flirtatious expressions, a faint simpering or groaning comes. Uar slashes at its forward leg, along the inner thigh. His knife pings loud against it, like scraping stone. A heavy arm stoves in his ribs and blood gushes into his mouth. Without changing expression, Uar stabs the retracting arm three times, and with each blow he exposes and cracks the stone underneath. Face going pale, Uar spins under the flailing arms and hacks at the torso. The arms close and crush him against the stone chest. His head rolls back and blood is squeezed out of him through his mouth and nose in a short jet.

  Figures step from the tunnels. Futsi leads them toward the other end of the train.

  “They don’t have to get in,” Deuteronôme says grimly. “They can gather outside and kill us by proximity.”

  They peer out the front window — a blackout train blocks the tracks ahead, but there is an open path to a sidetrack.

  “Look,” Deuteronôme’s arm straightens.

  Nearly invisible, shade-like figures are coming, walking along either side of the dead train. There is a fitful motion on top of the train as well, seething down its length toward them.

  The arms release him, and Uar falls with a splat. His enemy bounds up the stairs.

  “Wait—” Dr. Thefarie whips open the door to the TO’s booth and begins checking the controls. Deuteronôme stands watching over his shoulder anxiously, and Futsi cranes over him.

  Multiply picks up a wrench and silently heads for the far end of the car.

  Dr. Thefarie shakes his head, mouth compressed.

  “There is no power,” he says, emerging from the compartment.

  Multiply has the keys — uses them to open the forward door. He squats down carefully.

  “We would have had to send someone out to work the switchbox anyway.”

  Deuteronôme’s head suddenly swivels — “Lauture!”

  Multiply does not respond to his given name.

  “—Get back up here!”

  Multiply finds what he’s looking for — it’s an exposed brown sewage pipe protruding from the wall like a skinny column.

  “Hey yo Ding-a-Ling! Hey! Hey!” Multiply pounds on the pipe with all his might. Drawn by the noise, shapes come out of the dark, arms straight at sides, stepping high and moving quickly if awkwardly.

  “Hey! Hey!” An inner fog is rolling on his thoughts. He shakes his head and keeps pounding.

  “That’s all!” Deuteronôme yells behind him. “Get ba
ck inside!”

  Like a shot Multiply pulls back and slams the door, twists the lock to and then makes his way to the other end of the car, weaving a little. Has him by the shoulders, looking him in the eye.

  “You did well, but next time tell me what you mean to do before you do it.”

  They are gathered at the far end of the car, watching as men, women, and children, silently lope in their direction. Through the silence a sound is growing steadily — a hollow, wet, throbbing sound. Multiply’s head jerks as he glimpses what seems to be a giant golden ring spinning on top of a manhole by the platform — he blinks, and the ring is gone but the manhole lid is rising into the air on a black, shaggy form, sliding off the bent back.

  Like a shoal of fish, the people converging on the car veer toward the newcomer, who is prowling up onto the platform bent down like a hunchback and swinging a heavy curtainrod in his hands. Now he wades into a clutch of them on the platform — zig-zagging among them with amazing agility, flapping his curtains at them. They lunge and fall, topple off the platform, crash into posts — now and then they collide which each other and implode in spurts of feathers, as one vacuum clamps onto another. In among them his face blazes white, a grin like black glass distorts his features with its grip and tears run from his eyes in two glistening tracks.

  Futsi hisses: a solitary being — dressed sort of like the demon but smaller, and dragging itself forward with a languid, weary step, head a little to one side — has appeared at the opposite end of the platform. She stands there by herself, and just looking at her Futsi feels heavyheaded, slumps against Dr. Thefarie who jerks in alarm and seizes him around the ribs.

  Futsi recovers. They stare out at the platform in terror.

  “Will he be able to protect us?” Dr. Thefarie asks.

  “—From her?”

  “I don’t know,” Deuteronôme says. “She’s like a sister to him — she can hurt him.”

  “Let’s get away,” Futsi says insistently.

  “She could kill him?”

  “I think yes, she could force the demon out of him.”

  “Tell him to go back!”

  “Let’s get away!”

  “Look at him — I don’t think he would listen.”

  “How to win?” Dr. Thefarie thinks fiercely.

  “How to win?” — he demands of himself.

  cheat cheat cheat

  CHEAT

  The huge, flabby shape bounding up the stairs stops halfway to the top. It sways, and one of its feet slips and lands with a loud slam on a lower step. It turns, noticing for the first time the knife three-quarters stuck into its chest. It grabs the handle and instantly lets go with a muffled cry, the hand smokes and sizzles. Losing its balance it swings out a stone hand, but the rail it seizes is slick with Uar’s blood, and its grip slides loose it falls forward onto its face landing full on the protruding handle of the knife driving it all the rest of the way in.

  It tries to get up and rolls onto its side, moving strangely. The soft moaning or tittering is confused. Uar smiles through broken teeth. The thing reaches for him, dragging itself closer, then tips over onto its back. Uar lifts his broken arm and drops his hand onto the upright handle of the knife. His blood runs down the handle into the wound. His blood seeps into the wound and searches inside a petrified human body, running into its veins and arteries like water over parched desert ground.

  The shape flails violently, its right arm whacks the ground and the stiff stone splits exposing the bone. The grey and white flesh sizzles and the whole body shrinks, turns from stone to pink flesh, the assassin’s mask running off his face in a single sluice to show a cultured-looking redfaced man with silver hair, the knife embedded in his ribs. Uar’s smile slackens in death. The man rolls to one side with a sob.

  Lying on his right side, the man begins to scream.

  The god of the subway cult carefully gathers up these screams of pain, and plants them like seeds. They reverberate the length of the tunnels... the last trails away in gulps, shudders, the convulsion of the death rattle... a still, awed hush comes after. They can see it, trapped in the subway car on the lower level — the Vampirism shudders, falters, and seems to recoil.

  Dr. Thefarie can hear the message. It’s coming in faintly, but only because it is from far off and at its source it’s strong—

  CHEAT

  CHEAT DEATH

  Dr. Thefarie suddenly straightens a little, and brushes Futsi’s arm with his fingers.

  “Call Vera,” he says.

  Silence — Deuteronôme stares at him, brows screwed tight.

  “Vera?” Futsi asks blinking.

  “I think he’s right—” Deuteronôme says. “Quickly!”

  “Wh—” looking astounded, stupid.

  “You must call Vera,” Dr. Thefarie says levelly, looking him intently in the eyes.

  “H-How do I...—?”

  “Just call her name,” Dr. Thefarie says.

  “Call her,” Deuteronôme says.

  “Vera...?” Futsi calls uncertainly, tilting his head back. “Vera! Vera!”

  Multiply suddenly sticks out his arm, “Visualize the Deep Sun! Think of the Deep Sun when you call her!”

  “Vera.”

  Between Dr. Thefarie and Deuteronôme, Vera stands with her head thrown back, smiling mouth wide, singing out in a booming voice thick and sweet.

  Futsi stares ahead of him. They are alone.

  *

  The Great Lover whips himself between the figures pulling the curtain rod around his hips and dazzling them with the movement of the fabric, sees the Prosthetic Death in the distance, motionless, and from the stairwell opening just a dozen paces away black locks sway out and rise in the air out of sight. He stops instantly like a statue. Figures close around him, clawing and clamping onto him like lampreys with dry mouths. Now he sees nothing there with his eyes, but with his imagination he sees her plainly standing there in her long dress, smiling at him, eyes fixed on him as though she saw him. She gently raises her hand, and makes a jabbing motion with her finger in the air, with a look on her face that says—

  “Eh? Eh? How about it?”

  In the same motion he jabs the end of the rod into a face pulping the whole head, swings the rod round so fast and so hard it tears two bodies in half sending feathers everywhere, and his motion throws off the others who had latched on to him. He impales one and, without bothering to clear his rod of the body, swings it light as air and whacks another in half. The momentum hurls off the impaled one and he brings the rod up and down like a club to splatter the last of them with a single blow sending gobbets of the body flying like a burst sack of excrement.

  Dr. Thefarie suddenly seizes Futsi and Deuteronôme and points to the far end of the platform. The Prosthetic Death is swaying — she reels! She falls to the ground!

  And where’s the Great Lover?

  *

  For the Prosthetic Death, it was as though a blast of fog had rushed over her, and momentarily deprived her legs of power. Her lucid mind, too, had gone briefly dark; finds its way back to itself slowly, in a groping way that is wrong for her.

  She is on the floor of the platform, sitting up, but with her legs splayed about her, one before and one behind.

  As though prompted to, she looks up — past the other end of the platform she can see a long distance down the tunnel, which is completely dark except for a little island of yellow light off to one side, half hidden by the edge of the tunnel wall from here. There is a booth, switchboxes, and a vat or big pipe sticking out of the ground and the Great Lover emerging from that. He sniffs the air, bent nearly double, like a huge rat, or even more like an enormous wild boar.

  His head snaps up and the light reflects from his glasses like cats’ eyes staring straight at her, and the fur of his coat bristles up over his back and head. Heavy thuds of his feet getting louder he is coming — sickened with terror she gets to her feet and begins to run. He is out of the tunnel — he is huffing and laughin
g in the passages now, a hollow, crazy chuckle chasing her. She makes for a stairwell and he swings out of it not a foot before her blocking her path and looming high over her, saliva hanging from an ink-black snarl grins at her without smiling — a bright spot in each eye — a tiny face — Vera’s tiny face, wild with hilarity.

  The face in his eyes is now in her eyes, impossible to turn away from it laughing and screeching — long black hair brushes her face, a hand is at her throat, a man’s hand but the voice is a woman’s — she looks up and sees the long black locks swinging over her and the face in their midst is not his—

  *

  The Prosthetic Death, lying inert on the floor, screams. It’s a sound to stop the heart and block up the throat — Dr. Thefarie, Futsi, and Deuteronôme freeze and stare. A single scream, a pure, clean, piercing tone; the scream of an icicle. Now she is writhing on the floor like a dreamer trapped in a nightmare, and her silence now is worse than the scream. They watch...

  The train jerks, nearly toppling them over. Futsi rushes to the conductor’s compartment and looks out the window. The demon is there at the back of the train, pushing. The train rolls forward picking up momentum, the demon starting to jog. Perhaps it’s simply an effect of the distance, but her throes seem already beginning to weaken...

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Dr. Thefarie reading from Father Ptarmagant’s journals:

  The light congeals and is flung down upon the earth inundating the human landscape with supine radiance. Sleeping Rays keen with impaling sharpness are supple and at rest, blanketing the stern ground, baking beneath this frostburnt crust, the black earth broods the next season, and laced into the tender ground are bones — human bones out of their snug jackets. Disarticulated skeletons once were the structures of limbs and faces, which were their disguises, and from these dark, closed bodies, sparks of uncapturable light were struck. And after diligent service in total Darkness, were released when Death and Decay opened those bodies. Now, brilliant flakes swirl everywhere in a million effervescent and ephemeral constellations.