by Tim Hawken
My attention turned back to Phineus. He would be able to tell me if the future held good things.
“The future holds only darkness for you,” Phineus said to me, anticipating my question with his talent.
My heart sank at the words, but he stood up and came to my side. He reached out and took my hands.
“When I say darkness,” he said in a comforting tone, “I mean I find it hard to see. There is only one event which I can make out with any clarity.”
“Tell me.”
“I will show you,” he said, gripping my palms.
NINETEEN
PHINEUS CLOSED HIS SMOKY EYES and bowed his head in concentration. I felt the welling of his energy starting to creep into my skin. I put my hands over his, drawing in his power. Last time this prophet had shown me my destiny, I hadn’t been ready. This time, I was willing to accept what I saw with an open mind.
As I relaxed, Phineus tightened his grip on me. With a whirl of internal color, a shudder of visions shot into my head. They flashed like the strobe of images I had experienced once before. This time, however, the tumult was so fast that no single thing could be taken in with detail. Frame after frame sped into the future, tumbling onward, until the series of events slammed to a halt. The final image held, to show me standing on the broken ridges of a deep ravine, facing Charlotte. I couldn’t feel any emotion in what was happening. All I could do was take in the scene in the third person, standing outside myself.
My love struggled on one knee almost a full body length away from me, breathless with exhaustion, holding her hands on the ground to keep upright. Beads of sweat pearled on her face. I stood watching her, not going to her side. Howling winds of power thrashed above us and below, yet where we were was calm. I looked up to make out the blue sky of Heaven, obscured by a thin atmosphere of power, which contained the empty expanse around us. Peering into the ravine below was like looking into a black hole which twisted down into a point, showing the red spark of Hell far beneath. This was Limbo, the central realm, but it had changed. Gone were the grey plains and mundane buildings. They had been replaced with nothing: with space. All that remained were the jagged edges of rock on which we stood. The rest had disappeared. The old barriers which had separated the realms had been ripped apart. Yet something else stood in its place: a makeshift, vacuum-like space to separate good and evil.
Charlotte struggled to her feet in front of me, her face twisting with the effort of it. She swayed, trying to gain her balance and then firmed, looking up at me with hate in her eyes. The revulsion of her gaze made me step back. She looked around her quickly, as if searching for something, before staring back at me again. She braced her legs as if to pounce, her lip curling in a snarl. I watched her closely, waiting for her to strike, but she wavered. Her body wobbled again and her sneer fell momentarily. The hate in her eyes turned abruptly to a look of pleading. Her lips moved, but let out no sound.
Help me.
The features of my face hardened. All love left my countenance and was replaced with hateful anger. I took a step towards her and she recoiled. Pushing my hands out in front of me in a wedge, I strained with effort, every muscle in my arms bulging. My hand slipped forward and a tearing sound split the air. On one side of my fists, new elements were born into existence. On the other side, anti-matter sprang awake in its shimmering death. I had just torn the nothingness around me as I had once seen The Perceptionist do in his void. Charlotte turned to run, spinning on her heels in fear. It was too late. Before she had taken barely a step, I had wrapped the darkness into a ball and hurled it towards her soul. As the hideous weapon struck, her skin dissolved around her. All sense of anything that had made Lotte my love melted before my eyes. Her material nature bled away. Her soul disintegrated into the atmosphere of nothingness around us. The anti-matter ate away at her being until not even a speck of an element was left.
I stood looking at the space that had once contained the body of the woman I loved. A bitter tear slid down my face. My Charlotte was gone and there was no coming back.
part three
Deicide
ONE
I AWOKE FROM THE VISION, my eyes trying to focus. After blinking, my sight cleared. I was lying on the carpet with feet surrounding me. Looking up, the first thing I saw was Charlotte with an expression of hopeful anticipation on her face. That beautiful, innocent face I had just seen destroyed. She had run from me and I had torn her down like a heartless god. My love. My wife. My life. Gone.
Squeezing my eyes closed, I rolled over and buried my face into the carpet to muffle the scream of hopelessness that shuddered from my lungs. The scene flashed through my head again and I started to shiver. The emotions I had felt after Mary’s betrayal came raging up inside me again. Despair. Sorrow. If there had ever been a time to contemplate taking my life, it was now. I needed to kill myself: to burn my ethereal body away like my flesh had been destroyed on Earth. I could do it. I could end this all with force of will. But I had no will left. It had been sucked out of me when I had witnessed what I would do. Every muscle and thought in me went limp. I didn’t even feel the hands picking me up and propping me up on the couch. The emotional agony overwhelmed the rest of my senses. I was no longer coherent. Madness was threatening to wrap its tentacles around me and strangle all reason from my mind. I let out another wailing cry to try and push my thoughts away. Distantly, I felt a body hugging into mine, and a voice ask:
“What did you show him?”
There was no reply.
He showed me the end of eternity, I thought.
The body pressed softly against mine, wrapping me in its arms. I could hear Charlotte whisper in my ear, her lips brushing across my cheek.
“Whatever it was, we can change it,” she said. “It hasn’t happened. We can change it.”
There was some other murmuring in the background, but the only voice I could listen to was the voice I would silence forever: Lotte’s.
“It hasn’t happened. We can change it,” she repeated over and over again, rocking me in her arms.
Could we change it? I thought, with more internal panic. Having seen it with my own eyes had made it so real. Phineus was a powerful prophet: he wouldn’t show me this lightly. If it was the only thing he could see with such clarity, then surely that was my destiny. Yet the outcome seemed beyond comprehension. I would never hurt Lotte. Ever. Each time I tried to reason it through, trying to pick the scene apart, the ending would crash its finality into me: Charlotte’s pleading eyes; her turning to flee; her body bleeding away into darkness. I watched it again and again, until my own mind melted into darkness. I welcomed unconsciousness as some survival mechanism cut my thoughts to black.
TWO
WHEN I CAME TO AGAIN, THE ROOM WAS DARK. Blinds had been drawn over the office windows. I was still cradled in Charlotte’s arms. No one else was there. The only sound was the breath in her body that my ear rested against. The breath I would rob from her. My first thought was that I wished I were dead – Not this fake afterlife we had been given, but true death. I couldn’t bear knowing that eventually, I would deliver just that to Lotte.
“We can change it. It hasn’t happened,” Charlotte said to me firmly, as she saw my eyes open.
I didn’t believe her, but I didn’t answer. I just looked at her face, trying to force a sense of calm within myself, at least enough to be able to speak. The quiet surroundings helped. A lack of movement within the room enabled me to still myself as well. Lotte watched me patiently, hugging me tightly, showing I had all support I needed.
“What did you see?” Lotte whispered softly, looking concerned. “Did you see your own death?”
I let out a sigh. I wanted nothing more than to lie to her, but I could not. If I owed Charlotte anything it was honesty. She had died because of me once before already. She knew every part of me. There was no hiding in the shadows from her. I held my breath for a moment before letting the words out in a rush.
“I killed you. I to
ok dark matter and turned your soul into nothing.”
There was a momentary look of confusion on her face, before it filled with compassion.
“Oh, Michael, that must have been horrible.”
Horrible? Horrible didn’t even begin to describe it. Just thinking about it again brought terror to my bones.
“How?” she asked, interrupting my thoughts.
I watched her, puzzled. She was still holding me, asking in a perfectly straight voice how I would murder her. It was like she didn’t believe it. But she hadn’t seen it like I had. The placid look on her face made me hurt even more. She trusted me completely and I was going to betray her. There was no shying away from this future. Deep in my bones I knew it was the truth. I wished I could just push the memory deep inside myself. Instead, I let it out in the open.
“I used dark matter,” I said, not meeting her eyes. “We were in Purgatory, but it was like it wasn’t there anymore. It was more like The Perceptionist’s void. The barrier between us and Heaven was gone, but it was still divided by something. You were hurt, exhausted. You looked like you hated me. Then, you seemed frightened and begged me to help you.”
I looked away to the covered windows, wishing I could escape from this reality. Charlotte’s silence spurred me on.
“Then, I turned on you. You tried to run, but I didn’t let you. I ripped the void around us apart and created anti-matter. I used it to burn you into nothing. I killed you, Charlotte.”
My last few words were barely a whisper.
“We can stop it from happening,” Charlotte said firmly, putting her hand on my chest. “We make our own fate.”
“I will stop it,” I said, finally meeting her gaze. “I’m going to kill myself.”
An anger I had never seen in Lotte before twisted her features. Pushing me off her, she lashed out and slapped me on the face. I fell to the ground. She stood up and slapped me again as I cowered beneath her.
“Don’t ever say that again!” she yelled, before her anger turned into hot tears. “I would rather die.”
“You will if I don’t!” I countered from the floor, afraid to stand up. I couldn’t fight her. I didn’t understand why she was acting like this.
“Do you really think I would want to live for an eternity, knowing that you ended your existence for me?” she said, exasperated. “How could you be so selfish? There couldn’t be a worse torture!”
I hung my head in shame. I hadn’t looked at it like that. I had thought I would be saving her. I needed to save her. Charlotte’s life was worth more than mine. I was tainted, an ugly soul. She had something inside her I could only envy: total trust in humanity. That was what would save us all, not me and my hatred of Asmodeus. Lotte went on, the words flowing out of her like a rage.
“I’m not afraid to die, Michael. It would be nothing. You’re only thinking about yourself; how you’ll feel afterwards. If we can’t change this, you’ll be the one suffering, not me. Did you think of that? If I were dead I wouldn’t have to worry about you every day. I couldn’t be lonely, because I would be nothing. I wouldn’t miss you, because I wouldn’t be. This afterlife has taught me that we shouldn’t fear dying. Living forever is the greater horror, especially if you were to lose the one you love most. If we are to die, then let it be together, not to save the other.”
She brushed tears from her face, still furious. I didn’t know what to say. Lotte continued, unrelenting.
“It could have been Asmodeus, you know, making himself look like me. Wouldn’t that make more sense? That you killed him?”
I was absolutely taken aback by her fury. Charlotte was standing over me, waiting for me to answer. All I could do was stare at her transfixed. She had the determination and energy in her that I normally had. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes wild. Her hair was pressed against the sweat that had started to form on her brow. She kept going with her argument, hammering the point home to me.
“It could have been any one of his angels that he disguised as me, trying to throw you off. This isn’t a normal war. We aren’t fighting an enemy that fights in the open. That vision is totally out of context. You don’t know what happened before, or after. You don’t even know when it’s meant to happen, if it does at all. It could be thousands of years from now. You can’t let something like that cripple you!”
She knelt down, gripping my arms and lowering her voice.
“You’re focusing too hard on the obvious, Michael. We’re on the verge of a great victory and you’re letting a small thing stop you. You missed the most important thing about this future!”
I didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t witnessed what I had. She didn’t know that pain I felt just looking at her perfect face.
“How can you say I missed the most important thing?” I whispered, still having the image of me murdering her in my head. “You are the most important thing. You are everything there is.”
“No,” she said, standing up straighter, looking down at me again. “You said in your vision that the barriers were gone. Don’t you see that? There was literally nothing between Heaven and Hell. We broke them down. We won.”
THREE
CHARLOTTE STOOD NEXT TO ME as the others gathered with us on the rooftop of Satan’s Tower. My wife, who had dragged me out of debilitating self-pity, was yet again the only reason I could continue. She was my true savior. The memory of the vision still hovered in the background of my consciousness like a stain of dread, but Lotte had cast enough doubt on its reality to keep me moving. The future was complicated. That much was clear. I had retold what I had seen to the others. After my collapse, Lotte had sent them to prepare for our departure, resolute that no matter what, we were pressing ahead.
It did appear that in the scene I had witnessed we had pulled down the barrier that caused all of The Guilt in this Hell. The filter that separated Heaven and Hell would be no more, to be replaced with something weaker, which I was sure could be passed through by our armies. It was strange that even the certainty of the barrier being destroyed still didn’t seem real somehow. It only remained a possibility. Even though I had seen it as the future, I knew we still had a lot of to work to do to make it happen. Destiny did not come to those lying in bed. Logic would say that I should have felt the same way about the darker part of my vision as well, but I didn’t. The outcome we fear is always the one that seems the most likely.
I looked up to the clouds, which were forever streaked with lightning. I would carry us to their edges, beyond the mountains in the far distance; to the end of Hell. There we would rise up to meet whatever fate lay in between now and the prophesied vision we had been given. Clytemnestra, Phineus, Marlowe and Germaine would be the ones coming with Charlotte and me. Smithy and Mack had gone with Marax to carry out the rest of the plans and continue the training of the legions of Hell. The remaining six of us now gathered together, with the furnace winds of the underworld whipping about us. Germaine stood firm, his purple eyes cold, without a trace of the madness inside them.
Marlowe stood at his back steadily, never far away from the beggar alchemist. Phineus waited to the side with the ease of somebody who always knew what was just around the corner. A slight grin hung on his lips. Clytemnestra looked fierce. She was dressed all in black, with her raven hair flowing around her shoulders. Since I had destroyed the dagger she normally had with her, she had replaced it with two small hatchets, strapped to each thigh. The razor edge of their blades matched the sharpness of her teeth.
“So, we are all clear on the path,” I said to them. “I will use the elements to take us to where The Guilt enters Hell. Germaine will hold us together, while I move us forward. That way neither of us will become too drained. We’ll await the storm at the base of the mountains. As The Guilt begins to form, we will push up through it, again with mine and Germaine’s help.”
Everyone nodded their understanding and Charlotte picked up my line of command.
“We’re expecting to enter the edges of what was once
Purgatory,” she said, stepping forward. “From there, with the old barrier above gone, we will move as quickly as possible toward Heaven and the city we’ve been told about. Mary said that Saint Peter stands on the wall there, at the gates. That’s our target. If we can band together to bring him down, we can take his keys and use them to destroy that last wall between Paradise and misery.”
“Is that all we know?” Clytemnestra asked. “Do we have any kind of map of Heaven? Do we know how to make it to the city?”
“We do not,” I shook my head. “However, we have Phineus. His vision will be able to help us on the right path.”
“The closer the future, the easier it is for me to predict,” the prophet said, backing me up. “I will be able to lead the way, I’m sure. Michael’s path might be clouded, but I can follow everyone else’s to make sure we don’t get lost or divided.”
His words injected confidence into the others. Talk of the future kept the uncertainly of Charlotte’s possible death fresh in my mind. I did my best to push it back, reasoning it away as being only one possibility of many. Moving always helped clear my mind, so I stepped back and asked Germaine to stand next to me, ready to depart.
