Debris of Shadows_Book II_The Forgotten Cathedral

by Tony LaRocca

  His impersonator matched the song before the wasps within him could respond. His litany was the same, but its delayed, overlapping tones turned the monk’s incantation into gibberish. Asher could sense his children struggling to decide which way to turn. Overwhelmed by confusion, they gave up and stayed within their cells. It was hopeless.

  The monk balled his bony hands into fists. He let out a cry, and punched the other him in the stomach as hard as he could.

  Unfazed, the doppelganger struck him in return. The copycat’s blow, coming from someone taller and more muscular, sent him reeling into the gutter. He fell again, this time rolling on his cloak.

  The other Asher did the same in the opposite direction — and came face to face with the prone man with a wheel embedded in his coccyx.

  The copycat looked back at the monk for one, frantic moment. Then he began to change. He doubled over, ramming his head against the curb. The right side of his skull melted into the cement. He bent one knee, while the leg that faced Asher tried to remain erect. The result was a disjointed hipbone that bulged from beneath his taut skin. A skewed wheel of rubber and bone molded itself between his legs. It spun off kilter, squeaking and clicking as it rolled. The trapped, distorted mirror — half–Asher, half–unicycle–hybrid — turned his one free eye towards him. He stared at his once resurrector, and shuddered. A single tear ran down his cheek, and fell upon the sidewalk.

  Asher whispered a final apology, and ran.

  The sky grew darker with each passing minute, though he could still see the sun. Another purple lightning strike illuminated the landscape. The Magistrate was closer. Had Asher really tried to look into his face, once? He could never forget the crushing, humiliating migraine the Chosen Prince had given him for that unforgivable crime. But why had the supreme pontiff come now? Had Matthew or Theresa somehow sent for him? The reason did not matter. He was here, and no rock would give the fallen monk a hiding place from the scourge of his lilac flames.

  A figure that came up to his knees pattered through the mist. It was a two–foot–long guinea pig, wearing black canvas high–tops. It gave him a look of disdain as it passed, and scuttled back into the fog. Asher could hear a high–pitched giggle. After a few seconds, he realized that it came from his own lips. Another volley of thunder shook the sky, followed by the soft rattle of cascading sand. He clamped his hand over his mouth, and pushed himself onward.

  He could see the flickering neon sign of the hardware store a block away. He continued towards it, ignoring the occasional screams that rode on the pungent wind. The tubes that composed its glowing letters had melted and re–fused to form a single word:

  AWARE.

  He turned the door’s handle, pulled it open, and stepped inside.

  “Hello?” he called. He heard the shuffling of feet, followed by silence. The lights were on, but he could barely see. The dark, murky fog had somehow seeped inside of the store. He found a box of long aluminum flashlights on a stand by the counter. Their display claimed that the police also used them as nightsticks. He picked one up, and bounced it in his hand. He found its solid, heavy weight reassuring. He turned it on.

  Its cold, white light sliced through the ashen haze. He turned its beam away from the window, and scanned the signs hanging from the ceiling. Where did they keep their axes? He decided to try Lawn and Gardening, and walked towards the designated aisle.

  He heard footsteps again, this time from his left. He shone his light in that direction, but all he could see were dusty shelves packed with wire nuts, black tape, and wall outlets. “I’m not hiding from you,” he said. “I can hear you, and you can hear me. I don’t mean any harm. Please, show yourself.”

  There was no response. He made his way towards the lawn care department, trying to ignore his growing sense of dread. His last attack on the city’s flora had been futile, but he had to keep trying. Above all else, he needed his children. Once he had them back he would return to the catacombs, find Theresa, and take care of her once and for all. He felt a flicker of shame for abandoning Matthew down there, but he squashed it. The man was a NorMec soldier, after all. As kind as he had seemed, he had had his own agenda. Besides, despite all of his protests, he was undoubtedly in collusion with the good sister.

  Asher sighed. He wished that upon awakening, he had had the presence of mind to find Roger. Roger was the only one of his charges who had ever truly been his friend.

  A patter of footsteps sounded from the far end of the aisle. He shone his light down it, and saw a couple standing together. The taller of the two threw her arms across her face.

  “Please,” she said, “turn off the light.”

  He did as she asked. He could still make her out through the mist. She wore a tied–off blue t–shirt, and denim shorts. Her red hair was tied back in a ponytail. As for the other person… He realized that there was no one else. She had four arms, two on each side. Each of her lower hands rubbed her body with frantic desperation. He stepped towards her. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Please,” she murmured again.

  “It’s okay,” he said, and took another step. “What is your name?”

  “Collette,” she said. “Collette Kelley.”

  Asher nodded. He remembered her now. As he got closer, he could see that a dark green mold covered her pale, freckled skin. Each of her hands held a sponge. They cleared away the scum that coated her slender body, but whether the cruddy splotches had besmirched her neck, thighs, or midriff, after a few seconds, they would return. She lowered her arms, revealing features that were slathered in the same muck. She let out a long sigh, and scrubbed at her face with her top two hands. The gunk came off with a few wipes, only to reform seconds later.

  “Brother Asher,” she said. She looked down at the tiled floor. “I guess that I should thank you. You made me forget, if only for a little while.”

  He swallowed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Do you want me to do it again? Make you forget, I mean.”

  Her head bobbed up and down as she cleaned her forehead, her eyes glistening with tears. “Please.”

  “I will,” he said, “I promise. But you have to help me, first. Not as a condition, you understand, but because it’s the only way.”

  “Anything,” she said. “I’ll do anything.”

  He looked at her many arms. “How good are you at chopping?”

  They ran towards the plaza. He held a long–handled axe in one hand, and the flashlight in the other. Collette carried her axe in her upper two hands, while her lower ones continued to scrub her legs and sides. Occasionally they would reach up to clean her face.

  They passed the library. It had transformed into a jagged monolith, constructed from written pages. He wondered what was printed upon them. Was their text from the original books, complete with their dynamic range of emotions, or were they excerpts from his abridged, sanitized versions? Perhaps they told his own tale, and the tragic story of his city. If so, then how would it end? He shook the distracting thoughts from his head as they turned the corner and entered the public courtyard.

  The trees were gone.

  He slowed his pace to a walk as he approached the broken granite squares that had once framed the oaks and maples. Each tree had disappeared, including their roots. He bent over the spot where Theresa’s sap had swallowed his children, and stirred the soil with his axe. The dark, fragrant loam was loose and soft. It was as if each tree had been sucked into the earth, taking his children with them.

  A low, static–laced growl filled the square. Asher looked up at Collette. Her eyes bulged from her head as she stared across the plaza. A tiger prowled along its edge, its tail swishing back and forth. Its base fur was a luminescent, glittery silver. Its stripes, shining and gold, wove across its body in the sharp angles of an integrated circuit board. The woman’s top set of hands dropped her axe to the pavement with an echoing clang, and proceeded to scrub her face. The beast stopped, and swung its head towards her.

  “Hey,” Asher s
houted, “over here!” He jumped up and down as he waved his flashlight in the air. The technological tiger focused its attention on him. It pulled its ears back against its head, and crouched. Then it looked back at the woman with the many hands as she rubbed her body with compulsive desperation.

  “Go,” he said, “get out of here.” She did not move. “Collette!”

  She shook. “I… I can’t.”

  “Yes you —”

  The tiger pounced, letting out a roar that peaked with white noise, as if it had come from a broken speaker. It drove Collette to the ground, and opened its jaws.

  “No!” Asher shouted. Without thinking, he swung his axe into its neck.

  The animal threw its head back to stare at him. Up close, he could see that its glowing fur had no texture or shadows. It was composed of ever–shifting static. It roared again as sparks and lightning flew from its wound. Then it bounded off, the wooden axe–handle still protruding from its spine.

  He knelt beside his companion, expecting the worst. She lay still as she stared at the sky, her breath coming in gasps. He patted her ribs and arms, and underneath her head where it had struck the pavement. He did not feel blood, or any broken bones. “Collette,” he said, “can you move?”

  She did not respond. She just continued to stare at the dim sun above, gasp, and wheeze. With sluggish, lazy circles, her hands resumed cleansing her skin.

  He closed his eyes, and lowered his head. He could not help or heal her. Without his children, he was useless. He shone the flashlight into her eyes. Her steel–blue irises did not respond.

  He wrapped his arms around her, and picked her up. She was light. Carrying her back to the library would be easy, but it would cost him minutes that he could not afford. Besides, he had no idea if she would be any safer there. He shifted her in his arms, and heard a whispering chatter from within her head, a rapid, buzzing hum.

  He looked over his shoulder into the fog. It was only a matter of time before the Magistrate found her, no matter where she was. When he did, he would judge her impure and erase her, destroying his wasps in the process. Taking them back was the most logical choice.

  Except that you’re awake now, and everything is going back to normal. You know that if she has enough time to heal, the Chosen Prince might spare her life.

  Asher bit the inside of his cheek. Maybe she had time left, maybe she did not. He could not take the chance. He opened his mouth, and took a deep breath.

  He stopped, and looked at her expressionless face. Her top set of hands still rubbed at her features, even though she was catatonic.

  Forks of purple lightning, only a few blocks away, lit up the fog–covered sky. They cast the library in a silhouette, surrounding its paper architecture with diffused beams of violet light.

  He laid her back on the broken granite as gently as he could. He closed her eyes. She would be more comfortable that way, if she survived.

  He gave her one last look, and ran off into the mist.

  He climbed the steps of La Iglesia de Santo Domingo, and threw open the door. He realized that he needed a hammer to break through the cinder blocks in the cellar below. There must be a maintenance room somewhere, or perhaps even a garden shed out back. He wished that he had grabbed Collette’s axe. He felt another stab of shame for leaving her behind, but he pushed it aside. He would have to do much that he would feel guilty over, if he wanted to save his charges and himself. He shone his light across the chapel.

  The dank miasma had permeated the church as well. He strode to the altar, and aimed his heavy flashlight at the side door. The bottom of its plain, dry wood was dark, as if someone had rubbed it with a damp rag. He pulled it open, and walked down the hallway.

  He flicked the switch at the top of the cellar stairs. Sparks shot out of it and the basement’s broken light bulbs before fizzling into silence. He tilted his beam down into the darkness.

  The room looked as if someone had detonated a grenade within its walls. The bottom four stairs had been ripped from their splintered frame. Fragments of candles, cardboard, sand, and glass littered the floor. He grabbed onto the rickety banister, and descended as far as he dared. The slats creaked and swayed as their supports pulled away from the crumbling mortar. He jumped, and fell to the cement.

  The cellar smelled even worse than he had remembered. The air reeked of charred meat, moldy vegetables, and soil. He shone his light from wall to wall. Tiny motes of debris danced in its white shaft. He coughed, and wished that he had grabbed the altar’s linen to cover his mouth. The dust and sand made the air taste sour. He gagged and spat.

  The beam fell upon the patch that had once housed the root–woven door. The bottom half of the wall had been smashed into rubble. A naked man, covered in dust, lay halfway inside. Asher walked up to him, and nudged his bare foot with his own. It was composed of solid rock.

  He crouched in front of the hole, and peered through. Chunks of cinder block and cement lay on the other side, which meant that someone had broken into the crypt, not out of it. Had the trespasser found this statue somewhere within the church and used it as a battering ram? The explanation seemed ridiculous, but it was the only one that made any sense.

  He tried to pull the sculpture aside, but it would not budge. He let out a sigh of resignation, and crawled on top of it. He had to lay flat to squeeze through the wall —

  A slow ticking came from within its head. He pressed his ear against it. He could just hear the soft, slow staccato of a watch that was winding down. His hands clenched the statue’s cold, gritty arms.

  Some of his children were inside.

  He shimmied along its body, and crammed himself through to the cobblestone floor of the catacombs. The stink of rot was worse here, but in his excitement, he barely noticed. He shone his light into the statue’s face.

  He thought back to his time at the monastery, and of its garden. Its planners had scattered elegant marble statues along its walls and pathways. One of them was of a scantily clad woman, meant to represent one of the seraphim. Her silky, chiseled dress clung to the contours of her naked form, her classic features peeking out from beneath a gauze–like veil of stone. While it had not stirred any devotional response within him, Asher had been amazed at the craftsmanship needed to carve such complex, lifelike realism. He had overheard Brother Leo lecture Kish about it, once. The sculptor had used a technique known as wet drapery, a skill Leo had exalted as an example of the Greeks’ artistic mastery.

  The fallen man, undeniably one of his charges, reminded him of that statue. It was as if a sculptor had smothered his subject’s mouth, nose, eyes, and ears with cellophane, melted the plastic into his skin, and then proceeded to immortalize the throes of his suffocation. Asher could not find anything recognizable in his liquefied features. The poor bastard must have calcified while in the midst of transformation, but from what? Water? Fog? Smoke? He could not tell. The only thing he knew for certain was that whoever this man had been, he was beyond healing.

  He pressed his ear against the stone head once more. He could hear the faint, drawn–out ticks of his children that were trapped inside. He took the bulb end of the heavy flashlight in his hand, and raised it over his head.

  “Whoever you are,” he said, “I’m sorry.” He drove the weight down upon its skull.

  It took a few swings, the shock of the blows rippling up his arm, before the stone head cracked open. Its cranium was porous and sandy, like the cinder block that surrounded them. He pried and smashed at the fissure until the frontal lobes’ cauliflower–like branches were exposed.

  One wasp’s tiny head poked from the gritty folds, followed by another, and then another. Asher put the flashlight aside, and as gently as he could, broke the cement apart with his fingers. His children buzzed and ticked as they took to the air. He parted a sac within his neck, and they flew inside. He could feel their hunger and desperation as they suckled whatever nutrients he could provide.

  He divided and crushed all of the cerebrum’s
petrified wrinkles until he had ground them into dust. Whatever children had survived returned to the home of his body, and fed. In the end, he recovered fifty out of what had once been a swarm of thousands. He hoped it would be enough.

  He sat against the wall, lightheaded. He had forgotten how demanding his wasps’ hunger could be, but it did not matter. He had a chance now. He leaned over, and brushed his lips against the shattered forehead. “Thank you,” he said. “Somehow, you must have known that I would need you. I’ll resurrect you properly when all this is done. But for now, sleep in peace.”

  He shone his light into the catacombs. Everything had burned to ash, from the moss and vines that had lined the crypt’s stones to the ancient bodies that filled its niches. Had Theresa and Matthew incinerated themselves as well? He hoped so, but he doubted it.

  He remembered turning on her, his rage making his body feel as if it were on fire. He remembered the look of shock and fear on her face as his swarm devoured her. He remembered how delicious her panic had tasted as they rendered her to Life Sands, how sweet her realization that she had pushed him too far.

  After recoding the shield, his next task had been to resurrect the subject of Brother Leo’s enigmatic painting. He had hoped that it would give him answers, but all it brought were more questions. He explored the church’s chapel and sacristy, but found nothing. Then he had discovered its cellar.

  The basement’s far cinder block wall had sported a patch of bricks that were lighter and smoother than the others, and it had piqued his curiosity. Perhaps the wisdom he sought hid on the other side, knowledge that the church’s elders had deemed forbidden. He had torn the discolored blocks apart with his children, and looked inside.

  When he had discovered the catacombs and their corpses, he had wanted to vomit. How had their decomposing filth been inside of his mind without him knowing? Who were they? Why had they been included in his scrolls? He forced himself to squash each question as it popped into his head. Just thinking about them made him feel sick with anxiety.