Ararat

by Christopher Golden

  “Father, you need to consider the bitumen.”

  Another rustle of cloth and Olivieri rolled over and looked at them in the half light. He had no idea what the man had done to end up in the infirmary, but his head lolled and it was clear Olivieri had been sedated. A thin line of drool gleamed on his cheek.

  “Armando, now is not the time,” Father Cornelius said.

  Olivieri’s face contorted into a snarl. “Now is the only time. Your arrogance will cost lives, perhaps your own among them. You are not the only scholar here, Father.”

  Walker flicked his gaze toward the priest, letting his confusion and curiosity show.

  Kim looked back out into the passageway, searching for Meryam.

  “Father?” Walker prodded.

  The priest loosened his scarf. “All right, Armando. What about the bitumen?”

  Olivieri coughed, a dry rattle that gave him a momentary paroxysm. He settled down and then stared blearily at the priest. “Helen Marshall’s team studied the remains of many of the ark’s passengers. Many of them wore charms around their necks on leather cords—shards of the same black bitumen that they used to encase the demon’s coffin.”

  “Your point?” Walker asked.

  “Have you read the historian Berossus?”

  “We don’t have time for this,” Walker said, looking anxiously at Kim, who shook her head out in the passage. No sign of Meryam.

  “Third century, B.C.?” Father Cornelius said. “I’ve read of him, seen some summaries, but have never had the opportunity to read the original text.”

  “Small wonder. A minor historian, at best, and he reported many stories passed down to him as if he’d heard them firsthand. It’s only my research into the ark that led me to him. Even then there were scholars who argued the existence of Noah and of the ark, and tried to find evidence but instead found only more stories. Berossus reported that in his youth he had met a man who claimed to have found the ruin of the ark on one of the mountains of this range. The people who lived in the shadow of the mountain, Berossus reported, wore shards of hardened bitumen on cords around their necks as wards against evil.”

  “Like the ark’s passengers,” Father Cornelius observed.

  Kim brushed her hair from her eyes. “Was the bitumen supposed to have magical properties? Or did they perform some kind of ritual to imbue it with those protections?”

  “I thought of it when Helen showed me the charms, but that was before all of this and I’d forgotten until now,” Olivieri said gruffly. “I don’t recall it verbatim. Berossus may have said, or he may not, but if the family who built this ark took the time to cover the coffin with bitumen—”

  “They coated the coffin with at least six inches of that shit,” Walker said. “Why bother if they didn’t feel it gave them some kind of protection?”

  “They must have known something of the demon still lived,” Father Cornelius said thoughtfully. “That its essence continued to be a threat.”

  “Forever,” Kim added grimly. “Like nuclear waste, put in barrels and then buried inside cement and steel bunkers.”

  The infirmary went quiet. Walker glanced around at the people gathered there—the priest and the doctor, Kim and Olivieri—and knew it might mean nothing. But it might mean something. It might mean life or death.

  “Father, can you work with Professor Olivieri? Find any of the charms that Professor Marshall recovered. Then dig out some of the bitumen from the encasement and separate out other shards. We need enough for everyone.”

  Dr. Dwyer huffed. “You believe this? It’s a two-thousand-year-old folk tale.”

  Walker stared at him and couldn’t stop the dry chuckle that escaped his lips. “Yeah? What the hell do you think we’re standing in?”

  The doctor started to argue, but Kim hissed for him to be silent, holding up a hand. She stood in the doorway, listening to the sounds of the cave.

  “Someone’s shouting.”

  An awful melancholy fell over Walker, and he saw in her eyes that Kim shared it, as if a moment before they had been attempting to stoke an ember of hope, and now it had been extinguished.

  “Father, you and the professor get to work,” he said, moving toward Kim. “Let’s go.”

  They followed the shouting. With the stalls and passages and openings between levels, the ark could play tricks with sound, throwing whispers into dark corners. But as they reached the back wall, the shouts grew louder and more numerous. Walker hit the ladder first, his thoughts toward what it would take for his team to get down the mountain on their own. How long before they could be ready? Could Father Cornelius make the climb in the storm? Would one of the Kurds guide them? Maybe Hakan himself, who seemed so determined to halt the project.

  He dropped to the floor, turned, and raced to the ladder that led down to level one. Through the opening, he saw the glow of flames. Meryam stood there, pools of orange light flickering on her face, shadows moving like some undersea hell.

  “Kim,” he said. “Fire.”

  She responded with a string of colorful English profanity. By the time she finished he was already rushing down that ladder, Kim following.

  “Get back!” Meryam snapped.

  Walker leaped the last three rungs and spun to face her, but Meryam hadn’t been talking to him. Polly had arrived from one of the passageways, a fire extinguisher in her hands, and Meryam had rushed to block her way.

  “Are you out of your fucking mind?” Polly screamed. “There’s nothing but dry wood in here and you started a goddamn fire!”

  Meryam jabbed a finger in the air, as if that alone would keep Polly from moving. “Then your job is to keep it from spreading, but you let it burn! You hear me? You let the fucking thing burn!”

  Kim came up beside Walker. There were a handful of others there—Feyiz, Mr. Avci, and a grad student named Chloe—and Calliope stood in the corner, getting it all on film. Walker could see the reflection of the flames off the lens of her camera.

  “Meryam,” Feyiz said, starting toward her, his hands out in supplication.

  “No,” Meryam said, swallowing hard as she fought back tears. “Not you. You’re the last person who should be talking to me right now.”

  So nobody did.

  She had unwrapped the corpse of the demon, maybe doused it with some kind of accelerant, and set it on fire. The dry bones popped and the wisps of ancient papyrus-like skin crisped and curled, and ashes floated up into the rising smoke. Flames danced inside the skull, making a hideous jack-o’-lantern out of the wicked curve of the open jaws. The horns blackened further, somehow untouched by light or flame, as if determined to declare themselves infernal.

  Walker saw the fire beginning to eat through the timbers under the cadaver, spreading to the wall. Polly and Chloe and Feyiz all shuffled forward, as if they might all rush in at once.

  “Wait,” Walker said, sliding past Meryam.

  She started to protest as he reached for the fire extinguisher in Polly’s hands. Polly resisted, confused, but then relinquished the metal canister. Walker took it, and turned to face the popping, crackling, blackening bones of the demon.

  “Meryam’s right,” he said. “We’re gonna let it burn.”

  FIFTEEN

  Meryam’s skin prickled with the memory of heat. The cadaver lay on the canted floor at the rear of the ark’s lowest level, nothing but charred bones, ashes, and glowing embers. They flared orange, popped and hissed, and then went dark one by one. The demon’s horns still jutted from its skull, but most of its skeleton had been burned down to withered framework, and some of the bones had crumbled.

  Half an hour, maybe less, and the demon’s remains were reduced to this.

  The demon, she thought, staring at those glowing embers. In some strange way, she felt she ought to be celebrating. She believed in this thing, in its evil, and if evil truly existed, that opened up so many other questions she had thought she had answered for herself years before. Adam had lived with terror as a boy, real fe
ar inspired by his grandmother’s belief in an evil spirit hiding inside her clock. He’d always lied to himself and to her about how much of that he’d believed. He had fought against believing because of what it would mean about those days, those long nights.

  Now the evil had slipped inside of him, almost as if the dybbuk had cracked open the door into his soul all those years ago, and this thing, Shamdon, had found its way in.

  When she reached her soot-blackened hand to wipe at her tears, her whole body began to shake.

  One of the dark figures at the back of the ark moved toward the crumbling, smoking remains of the demon. Walker, she saw. He wore a grim expression as he approached the thing, raised a heavy boot, and smashed his heel into the face of the demon. The skull gave way, crushed to black powder. A puff of sparks rose.

  A line of fire had spread to the wall behind the remains, but Walker lifted the extinguisher and blasted it. He had kept the blaze under control the whole time. The cadaver had burned remarkably fast, nothing but dry skin and bones, but there had been a great deal of smoke. Meryam felt it in her hair and clothing and at the back of her throat. The stink would remain with her for days. Perhaps forever.

  She winced and glanced around at the shadowed figures. For the first time, it occurred to her that forever might end for her right here in the ark. Meryam wasn’t going to let that happen.

  “How much of it do you think we can lay off on the demon?” she asked, scanning the faces of those around her. Wyn Douglas and Polly Bennett. Kim and Walker. Mr. Avci and Father Cornelius. Calliope, with her fucking camera.

  No, don’t hate her for that. Hate her if you want, but not for that. Adam would want this all on film.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said the old priest.

  “Yes you do. Our behavior, mine included. I’ve got some ugly shit happening in my life even outside of this nightmare, but still I wonder if it’s been influencing me. Influencing all of us.”

  Walker wiped his boot heel on the timber floor. “It has or it hasn’t. Doesn’t matter. From this point forward, we watch each other and we look inside ourselves. What’s happened to Adam isn’t just influence, it’s full on…”

  She could see he didn’t want to say the word, so she said it for him. “Possession.”

  “Father,” Kim said, “was it moving it from the box that did it? Allowed it to … move more freely?”

  “That may be,” Father Cornelius replied. “It does seem bolder now. But we have to assume those who’ve vanished have been killed, and that it used one of the people inside the ark to kill them, which suggests that either Adam or someone else had been possessed before we moved the cadaver.”

  “We can’t trust anyone,” Walker said. “I could be looking at you, talking to you, and you might be the demon. No way to know.”

  Meryam inhaled the smoky air. A cold wind slithered down the passage. For a moment they all stared at one another, wondering.

  “No,” Wyn Douglas said. “Right now, we do know. It’s taken control of Adam. So whatever we’re going to do, whatever decisions we’re going to make, let’s make them.”

  Mr. Avci agreed. Polly and Kim both nodded.

  Father Cornelius coughed. Smoke inhalation had gotten to them all. “I disagree. The demon is going to continue to plague us. And we have no way of knowing what more it might be capable of.”

  “Meryam destroyed the remains,” Wyn said. “There’s nothing left of it.”

  “And yet I’ve just come from seeing Adam,” Father Cornelius said. “He’s awake. His eyes are open and he’s grinning. When I asked who it was, lying there in the infirmary, he spit on me.”

  Walker whispered a curse that might have been a prayer.

  “So what do you suggest?” Polly asked, shuddering. “And please suggest something, because just doing nothing—”

  “I intend to do something,” Father Cornelius interrupted. “It’s all I can think to do. But I need you all to agree that it must be done, that there is no other recourse, and that you will exert your influence to calm the rest of the staff if it ruffles feathers. We can’t be fighting about faith right now. This demon predates my own religion. If it is truly what I believe it to be, then it predates them all. But if there is any way to help Adam and to protect the rest of us, the only thing I can think of is an exorcism.”

  Mr. Avci began to shake his head immediately. “I think this is a very bad idea. Very bad. Several of the Turkish students are troubled enough already. And the guides, Hakan’s workers—”

  “Don’t speak for them,” Polly interrupted. “They’ve all just seen what’s happened with Adam. If you have your own troubles with it, say so, but we’ve all been working together for weeks. The Muslims and Jews on staff don’t need to believe in Christianity to want us to try everything to protect them.”

  Mr. Avci huffed and fell silent. Meryam nodded her thanks to Polly.

  “Do you know the rite?” Walker asked, staring at the priest. “I’ve always thought it was pure bullshit, but I know that priests who are approved to perform an exorcism go through rigorous training.”

  “I haven’t had that training,” Father Cornelius said. “But I’ve observed the rite being performed. I understand its components. I’m sure the pontiff would not approve, but I’m not sure what other choice we have. The danger posed by the presence of the demon outweighs whatever danger the rite might pose to me, personally.”

  Walker reached up and massaged the back of his own neck as though he was fighting an oncoming migraine. Meryam understood, but she had come to a place in her mind where she recognized that certain things simply must be done. Setting fire to the cadaver had been a necessary step, and so was this.

  “Our options are to sit and wait for the demon to kill someone else, or to at least try to do something about it,” she said.

  “Or climb down the mountain in the middle of a blizzard,” Wyn Douglas added.

  Meryam turned to Polly. “Go to the infirmary. Ask Hakan and Feyiz to bring Adam here. Make sure he’s cuffed.”

  Mr. Avci began to speak her name and Meryam shot him a withering glance.

  “Your objections are noted, Avci. Report them to your government if you get off this bloody mountain alive.”

  * * *

  The air in the passage had grown close and stale, and strangely warm. Meryam told herself it had to be body heat, now that Feyiz and Hakan had joined them. She told herself that, and she tried to force herself to believe it. According to Polly, the storm still raged outside. She had gone to check on the rest of the staff and found most of them huddled together on level two, not far from the infirmary, and a handful of others in the camp on level one. Morning must only be a few hours away, but the temperature had continued to drop, and ice had formed on the outside of some of the plastic sheeting.

  Not here, where the embers still glowed among the demon’s scorched remains. Kim stood beside Father Cornelius. The old priest knelt on a pillow that had been brought to him. On the timber floor in front of them, Adam lay on his back, hands now bound in front of him. Another zip tie had been cinched around his ankles. He wore the same stupid, silent grin he’d had when they had marched him back here. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. His skin had an oily sheen and the yellowed hue of old parchment.

  Something rose up the back of Meryam’s throat when she looked at him. She didn’t know if it would be a scream or a stream of vomit, but she fought it back down.

  “He’s Jewish,” Feyiz said softly, standing beside her.

  “And I’m Muslim,” she replied.

  But she felt the lie when she spoke the words. Adam might be more Jewish than she was Muslim, but neither of them had ever been very religious. They were both seekers, just looking for the truth. She’d always hoped the truth would reveal some hidden mysteries in the world, and Adam had hoped for the opposite. Now here she was, getting exactly what she’d wanted, in the worst way imaginable.

  And it’s warm back here, she tho
ught. The wind did not seem to want to come back here now, the cold staying away. Body heat. But she knew that wasn’t it.

  Father Cornelius had been at it for the better part of an hour already. Prayer after prayer. For some of them, he had enlisted Kim Seong’s assistance, as the only faithful, avowed Catholic among them. Hakan and Walker stood at the ready, looming over Adam, ready to step in if the demon lashed out. Polly and Wyn were guarding the passages that led toward the front of the cave, making certain they wouldn’t be interrupted. Mr. Avci and Feyiz observed with Meryam. A strange crew to perform an exorcism. The word itself felt absurd when she rolled it around in her brain, so why not a group that felt equally ridiculous?

  So warm, she thought. She glanced at the little dots of flame that still flickered in the demon’s ashes. The smoke had been cleared by the wind blowing through the cave, before the wind had begun to refuse to sweep the passage clean. Even the smell of smoke had abated, partly replaced by something else. Something she could at first not identify. Then it struck her. The odor reminded her of the strong scent of rich, black tea, of loose leaves when she’d first open a container. Dry and old and earthen.

  “It smells strange back here,” Calliope said from behind the camera, as if reading her mind.

  A frown creased Meryam’s forehead. Was Calliope crying? She glanced from the camerawoman to Adam and back again, noting the way Calliope looked at him. Really noticing for the first time.

  Oh, you bitch, she thought, and then she forced her thoughts away, put her focus back on Adam. Jealousy would wait. For years she had envisioned herself as the one in the spotlight, the one who got the attention, and Adam had supported that vision. He was her partner and coauthor, but he was the man behind the camera. Had wanting the spotlight blinded her from seeing things she ought to have noticed?

  Stop, she told herself. There’s nothing to be gained from this. Worry about your relationship when Adam’s free.

  “Are you sure this is what you want?” Feyiz asked quietly as the prayers continued.

  Meryam refused to meet his eyes. “None of this is what I want. Now hush.”