Children of No One

by Nicole Cushing

  He trips. Shrieks. Flails his arms in front of him. Tumbles. There’s the sound of impact against the ground. Panting. Screaming. His hands move over the darkness and find a shape lurking within it. A tube of flesh. A neck. Resting at an angle at which a neck shouldn’t rest. He flinches. Shudders. Retreats back to a corner of the room. Curls up in a ball. Whispers, over and over again, “Sorry…sorry.”

  * * *

  MacPherson recognized the Quonset hut, and recognized Kitterman’s face when he opened the door. Once they were all inside, the security man took time to apologize. “I’m sorry I made some misleading statements about the so-called ‘background check’ earlier today, MacPherson. Like I said earlier, the art isn’t really my end of things.”

  “Oh, come now, Roger, when I saw the surveillance tape, I thought you handled yourself admirably, especially considering this had to be your first performance since…well…what…some god-awful high school play?”

  “I think the last time I was on stage I was a nine-year-old shepherd at my church’s annual nativity play, Mr. Krieg.”

  “How…bourgeois, n’est-ce pas, Mr. No One?”

  “Well, I suppose you could say that—in any case—it was poor preparation for ’is present duties…both on stage and off, as it were.”

  “Indeed. Anyway, No One, let’s get to business, shall we? Where do you plan on holding this…ceremony.”

  “I want a big chamber,” No One said. “I want the darkness to drown us.”

  Kitterman spoke up. “There’s a larger chamber available just a little over a mile away, in the tunnels. In Level Minus One. At least, earlier today it was there…I’m not sure if the workers already changed it.”

  “That new, deeper level,” Krieg said. “Would that be suitable for your purposes?”

  “Indeed it would. The deeper, the darker, the better.”

  Krieg grinned. “Then, my friend, you shall have the deepest and darkest chamber Nowhere can furnish. I want you to have access to the perfect setting, the perfect magickal accessories, the perfect props, the perfect ambiance. I want you not to have any excuse to fall back on when the ritual fails and the world keeps chugging on with cruel insistence. I don’t want you to be able to say, ‘Alas, if I only I ’ad me Scepter of Mithras, then all would ’ave gone to plahn!’ or ‘I didn’t wear me trusty Ring of Galzabadar, that made all the difference!’ or ‘The bloody room was too small to ’ouse all the energy needed for the ritual.’”

  Mr. No One rolled his eyes. “Is that what I sound like to you? You think I talk like Mary fucking Poppins?”

  MacPherson yawned.

  “Tut-tut,” Krieg said. “None of that. Kitterman, get this”—he paused and looked at MacPherson’s sweatpants and loafers—“gentleman some coffee, posthaste. I don’t want No One to be able to make the case that the audience was too tired to fully attend to the performance, and that that’s the reason why the ritual didn’t work.”

  “Oh,” MacPherson said. “That’s okay. Honestly, I’m able to stay awake without it.”

  Kitterman poured coffee from a stale pot into a mug and presented it to Krieg. Krieg thrust it toward MacPherson. “Please,” Krieg said. “I insist.”

  MacPherson took a sip. It tasted like mud and metal. Instead of making him more alert, it gave him vertigo.

  * * *

  There’s the walls, there’s the dark, there’s the him. There’s the wreckage of his brother’s body just a few feet away. There’s the walls, there’s the dark, there’s the him.

  He’s sitting, and begins to rock back and forth, over and over, to self-soothe. He has offended the Angels, and this is the awful penalty. Worst of all, they didn’t kill him. They got his innocent brother instead. His brother, who believed in them all along and tried his best to bring him into the fold.

  The ground is cold beneath him, and he feels vulnerable. The blackness once felt familiar. Yes, he thought he remembered light. Yearned to see it again, but he nonetheless felt at home here in the dark. Now it is as though the blackness—his home for all these years—has turned against him. He imagines the Ocean of Darkness all around him teems with avenging Angels. He rests his head against the cold ground and imagines there are creatures crawling through the soil, toward him. Hunting him down. The fall should have killed him, too. But it didn’t. And now there are Things silently trotting and flying and crawling and slithering through the blackness, all on a mission to eat him. Or maybe the blackness is nothing more than the gaping maw of a single gigantic predator and he is falling into the gullet, in slow motion. Falling. That’s what he’s doing. The ground beneath him might seem sturdy but it is an illusion. Sturdiness proved to be a false assumption before. The ground, it is Nothing.

  Go ahead, he thinks. Stop toying with me and take me. The fall should have taken me. Take me. Take me quick. Don’t make me suffer.

  His prayer is answered by silence, interrupted only by the sound of his pulse in his ears.

  * * *

  “I think I might be able to stand now,” MacPherson said. He hugged Kitterman’s office chair. From the dark tint of the room, it seemed as though he was wearing sunglasses indoors. But when he tried to rub his eyes, he found no shades there.

  A bipedal thing with a long black toothy gatorlike snout spoke in a muffled voice, with an English accent. “You better not ’ave given ’im too much, Krieg. Remember, art isn’t art without the audience.” There was a ringing in MacPherson’s ears before and after it spoke.

  Krieg took off his beret and began whirling it around his finger. He had a veiny bald head that rotated in a tight circle as his eyes tracked the spinning hat. “How was I supposed to know he was such a lightweight? World traveler, art connoisseur. Ha! Bourgeois ninny, more like it!”

  MacPherson opened his mouth to protest, but found he could only drool. The ringing in his ears worsened, too. Now it occurred even when other people were talking, not just in the silences in between.

  “If you don’t mind me saying so, Krieg, you sound just as obnoxious on the potion as you were before you took it. If I were a suspicious man, I’d say you might ’ave skimped on it as a way to sabotage the ritual. No sign of sedation. Need I remind you, all participants need to assume an altered state of consciousness to facilitate the Great Dark Mouth assuming its Greater Consciousness over all of us, and then the rest of ’umanity.”

  “And if you don’t mind me saying so, you’re every bit as whacked on this souped-up LSD as you were before you took it.”

  “You ’ave it all wrong, Krieg. For starters, it’s not LSD. It’s me own special concoction. A little bit of opioid to constrict the pupils, a little bit of barbiturate to calm the nerves, and me own special, secret ingredient to open the door to Dark-consciousness.”

  “Yeah. Whatever. You sound nutty of course, but you’re not slurring your speech or acting goofy in any other way. If I were a suspicious man, I’d say you might have tricked me and not, in fact, taken the potion at all…so that you could have the advantage. Maybe that was really just skunky coffee in your mug, so you could dope us all up and convince us later on this ritual of yours almost worked. And while I’m at it…that costume. Black robe and cheesy black mask. You look like a black reptile dressed up as a nun. Sister Godzilla!”

  “Godzilla was green. Rather like the shade of Mac-Pher-son’s skin, actually. Anyway, I do feel calm and mellow. Perhaps there’s no change in me mental status because me mind is already quite open to Dark-consciousness. And as for your quip about me so-called ‘costume’—I’m dressed in these vestments so I can consecrate the Great Dark Mouth into me very body. The vestments, the drug, the eclipse, the ritual, the prayers to Darkness tattooed on me skin. All these things are the gunpowder. Nowhere, Indiana, shall be the spark.”

  “Then let’s get out of here,” Krieg said. “What time is it anyway?”

  MacPherson searched for his cell phone so he could answer that question, but remembered it was still up in his room.

  Now Kit
terman’s voice. Off to the side, someplace MacPherson couldn’t see. The sound…weak. Almost too quiet to rise above the ringing in his ears. “It’s three a.m., gentlemen. If this is the night we’re going to do this, then perhaps we ought to drive out to the tunnels.”

  “There’s no ifs about it,” the Black Gator Thing said. “Tonight’s the night it must ’appen.”

  “Then let’s go,” Kitterman said.

  “Let’s?” the Black Gator Thing said. “As in ‘let us’? As in Kitterman’s joining us, too? I won’t allow it, not until ’e takes the elixir.”

  Krieg stopped whirling his beret, averted his eyes from it altogether, and looked up at the Black Gator Thing. “He doesn’t have to enter your ritual space. He’s just going to be the chauffeur. Time’s too short to walk out there, and I don’t trust any of the rest of us to drive.” Then he started whirling his beret on his finger again. “You got the heat-sensing goggles, Kit-Kit?”

  “They’re already packed in the Humvee.”

  “No need to pack any for me,” Black Gator said. “If I’m to manifest the Great Dark Mouth, then I mustn’t chase away the darkness by any means. When we go underground, someone will need to guide me. Someone, preferably, besides that ass’ole with the beret.”

  “Um, I suppose I can be helpful in that regard?” Kitterman said, as though he was asking Krieg’s permission.

  Krieg kept looking at the spinning beret, but smirked. “How cute! Now No One will have a six-foot, redneck seeing-eye-dog!” Krieg affected an exaggerated Hoosier drawl. “I cain’t say I know a lot about art. That thar art, t’aint muh side of the business. But I sure as hell am good to shepherd a nutty nihilist around in the dark so he can do that thar ritual, I reckon!”

  MacPherson began to cough. Then retch.

  “See what effect your jokes ’ave on people?”

  Then Kitterman again. “Gentlemen…if we’re going to conduct Mr. No One’s ritual at the appointed time, then I suggest we move.”

  Krieg stopped twirling his beret. Poked his head up. Seemed a little less manic. A little more businesslike. “That’s right! That’s right! We can’t give No One any excuses! Let’s go. Let’s see him and his nihilist principles fail. Let’s see sadism emerge as superior! Oh, this is the most fun I’ve had in Nowhere for a long, long time!”

  * * *

  This is the end and he knows it. He hungers, but he hears not even the slightest, distant tinkle of Angels’ bells. He hears only the sound of his own too-fast breathing, and wishes it away. Now that his brother’s dead, he finds the very sound of his own breath to be a blasphemy.

  Something in the darkness agrees with him. It is cold and distant, but coming closer.

  Somehow trotting and flying and crawling and slithering toward him, all at the same time. It is different than him. It’s different from him or his brother or any of the other boys. It’s different from the Angels. It’s just different. It’s bigger than him, too. So much bigger than any of the big people he’s ever known. And it’s coming. For him, but not just for him. Somehow, it’s coming for the world.

  He wonders if this is Judgment Day.

  He wants to die. He doesn’t want to wait for The Thing That is Coming. He tries to imagine what death will be like. He’s so sorry about disbelieving. He believes in Angels and Heaven now. Knows now, for certain, he’s never before seen light. His memories were mistaken. His brother was right.

  Was right. Now dead. His brother shouldn’t have died. He should have died. He was the nonbeliever.

  He tries to remain hopeful that death will bring him into Heaven’s light. By admitting his sins and giving up his life, he’s showing he’s more obedient now. No longer a know-it-all. This must count for something with Heaven. Won’t it?

  But what if it doesn’t? The teachers never talked a lot about Hell, they just said there was one. The only thing he could figure, for sure, was that Hell wouldn’t have Angels in it. No Angels meant no food. So Hell was a place where you would starve.

  Then the terrible thought struck him: maybe he was already there.

  Trotting and flying and crawling and slithering. Trotting and flying and crawling and slithering. And walking. Footsteps. Overhead. Voices.

  “Careful, No One, you’re going to trip over that robe!”

  Voices, and something falling down the hole in the ceiling. “Rope ladder’s secured. Who will be the first one down there?”

  * * *

  MacPherson didn’t care to be the first to climb down the rope ladder. On an ordinary night, he would have been all gung-ho about such a venture. This, after all, was a chance to really live. To have an Experience. To get his hands dirty in the appreciation of art. But even with his heat-sensing goggles on, he didn’t like the idea of climbing down without someone below to hold it steady. Maybe he was getting a little old for this sort of thing.

  But at least the nausea and dizziness had passed, and these had been the worst parts. His ears still rang though. And he had these flashes. Visions. Emaciated horses, pockmarked by big black sores, galloping over an Indiana pasture. The sores grew bigger and bigger until they were like a dozen tiny mouths swallowing each animal. Then the crows, spiders, and snakes. Flying, crawling, and slithering toward him. He hadn’t been able to brace himself for such hallucinations. Hadn’t known he was taking a drug until it was too late. It had been too long since he’d last taken drugs. This particular light-headedness, these particular visions—so foreign. This new dope…so much more potent! It made the stuff he took in the ’60s seem so tame.

  Krieg got on his belly and looked down the hole. He whispered, “MacPherson, you’ve gotta see this!”

  “See what?” MacPherson whispered back.

  “Two kids. One dead. Looks like the other’s on his way to dyin’.”

  This had been what MacPherson had traveled so far to see. Somehow, his trip to Nowhere, Indiana, had been hijacked by Mr. No One and his crackpot theories about magick, art, and nothingness. Somehow, MacPherson’s special tour had become overshadowed by the impending ritual. Now, finally, here was an opportunity to let his eyes linger on the suffering he’d so anticipated. He joined Krieg on the ground to take a gander.

  MacPherson had seen broken necks before, of course. One tended to see quite a lot of them while perusing public hangings in the more chaotic parts of the world. Nothing special there. Yes, there was an overall gauntness to the dead boy’s body. His ribs stuck out spectacularly…but this was not exactly unexpected. He’d seen plenty such sights in Romania during the early ’90s. Hell, if you got off on seeing hunger, all you had to do is watch a couple of Holocaust documentaries. But the boy who still lived…now that was something to behold.

  The lad appeared to have started to go insane. He was rocking back and forth. Nowhere, Indiana, had utter control over every muscle in his rag-adorned body, and undoubtedly every neuron firing in his little brain as well. If there was such a thing as a soul, then Nowhere had control of it, too. And that, MacPherson decided, had been where Krieg had outdone himself. The prisoners in Beirut may have suffered highly inventive tortures of the flesh, but they could always dissociate. They could always make their minds go back to better times.

  With Nowhere, Indiana, Krieg had created a world of his own…had placed children in there at such a young age they probably couldn’t remember anything else. He created their entire frame of reference, created their Heaven and Hell and Angels. Krieg had long ago acquired power over life and death, but he now had power over hope and despair. Perhaps even over sanity and madness. He was, in a way, the creator of a new branch in human evolution—Wild Children of the Dark. Krieg, through behavioral art, had transcended simple sadism. Krieg had now become a sadistic god.

  “I’d like photographs,” MacPherson whispered. “There has to be a night-vision camera around here someplace, maybe back in the Quonset hut, right?”

  “No pictures,” Krieg whispered back. “Sorry. I’m sure you understand.”

  MacPh
erson nodded. He did understand. They probably didn’t have time to go back and get a camera. Moreover, Krieg obviously didn’t want stills of Nowhere floating around on the Internet. Then there were was the matter of reverence. MacPherson felt that Nowhere might be just too holy a sight to photograph.

  Then Kitterman’s voice whispering. “There’s kids down there? Already? The hole’s pretty new. Didn’t think anyone would find it already.”

  Then Mr.-No-One-Dressed-like-a-Black-Gator chimed in with his muffled whispers. “What’s going on down there? Why the delay?”

  “Kids in the chamber,” Kitterman said.

  “Are you daft! They’re not drugged. Their consciousness will throw off the entire ritual. Their energy will be—”

  Krieg got up off the floor. “Calm down, No One. Jesus Christ. Just listen for a second. I don’t think you have to worry that much about their goddamned energy. One of them’s so low on energy his goddamned neck is broken. The other one looks like he’s almost starved. They aren’t going to throw off anything.”

  “We need to cancel the ritual, it won’t work this way. I won’t be able to invoke the Great Dark Mouth unless everyone in attendance submits their consciousness to the consciousness of the ritual.”

  Krieg jabbed a finger into Mr. No One’s chest. “Stop…freaking…out. Kitterman will handle it. We’ll have him go down and fetch the kiddos out of there, and then you’ll have your ritual space.”

  “Kitterman can’t go down there…’e’s not drugged…’e’s not pure! Send Mac-Pher-son instead. And don’t touch the vestments! They must be kept immaculate for the Mouth!” Perhaps trying to compensate for the muffled voice under the mask, Mr. No One had spoken too loudly.