Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1)

by James Costall

  Chapter 59

  The nine Great Worlds are connected by a tenth dimension known as the Inter-World. The Inter-World acts as a corridor between the nine Great Worlds. Travel between Worlds is generally only achievable via the Inter-World.

  Even Sin and the Necromire, explained Azrael as Alix pulled out into a stream of traffic on the M4 heading east towards London, are bound by certain laws. For centuries the Necromire have waited for the time when Sin might grow strong enough to attempt to cross over into another World. The Necromire are one of the few species capable of crossing through the Inter-World but to do so expends great energy and is at great risk. Only a few now remain in the Ether, which appears to be the most likely World for Sin to enter.

  The traffic was moving slowly. The inside lane had been cordoned off, although the reason for that was unclear. An old couple were jammed in an implausibly small car in front of her. They seemed content to let the gap between them and the petrol tanker in front widen but Alix guessed that the lack of space they had made changing gears in a hurry quite tricky.

  “Why our world?” she found herself asking out loud. She wasn’t sure whether Azrael could hear her thoughts or not, nor was she sure how deep rooted and irreversible the madness of it all really was.

  Before I answer that I suppose you must know a little more about the makeup of the nine Great Worlds and their genesis.

  “Do I have a choice about that? We could be listening to some Counting Crows instead.”

  Regrettably not. I assume they’re a band. Anwick used to listen to a lot of 1980’s punk era music, which I never understood. Anyway, the story begins with the Elder Ones, a race of unfathomably advanced beings whom you might regard as God-like. They are blessed with the ability to create life from nothing. One of the Elder Gods, Cronos, created the nine Great Worlds to prove to the others that he was the most powerful and for a time his creations were honoured by the Elder Ones as near miraculous. But there were those that disliked Cronos’ boast. They sought to set him an impossible challenge in the hope he would fail and demonstrate weakness to them. They told Cronos that they bet he couldn’t make one of their own.

  For eons, Cronos worked tirelessly to create an equal to the Elder Ones until, as life on the Ether, the last of the Great Worlds to be created, began to flourish, Cronos created his equal. And so was born Sin. But there were complications. Cronos had created his equal in every aspect save that Sin was not a clone; he was the negative of Cronos. A paradox. For all the capacity Cronos had for compassion and goodness, Sin possessed evil.

  Recognising that his creation was a threat to the Worlds he had created and a threat to the other Elder Ones, Cronos sought to contain Sin by imprisoning him in the Void. There was a great power struggle and for a time the two Gods fought an endless, unwinnable war against each other but, since they were equals, neither one was defeated. And so, growing wary of conflict, Cronos offered Sin a bargain: that for ten thousand years he would remain in the Void, giving the opportunity to the other Great Worlds to evolve and after that time, Sin would be free to choose one of the Great Worlds for himself to do with as he pleased. Sin agreed and served his time. But he was deceived. At the expiry of the ten thousand years, Sin found that he was not able to escape from the Void and there he remains. Wrathful. A festering mass of furious energy coiled in a prison of nothing.

  “And so what?” said Alix. “He’s trapped in another dimension with your ghost friends to look after him. Why be worried?”

  Because there are those that work tirelessly to emancipate Sin for their own gain. They are known as the Witch Hunters. They are led by the Harbinger and I fear that the night Anwick went mad was the beginning of a chain of events that may bring about the coming of the Hollow One.

  The old couple seemed to be having some sort of argument.

  “Like Eve, spawned was Sin of sacred flesh. Like Eve, thine equal was conceived. But thou art a fool brother; an ephemeral thing, this hollow prison and time be the servant of that which broods for thine own. Soon I will awaken from ancient slumber and I will rejoice in the fire that follows me.”

  It was like that moment when we fall in love, that elusive point in time when we know that, no matter what happens next, nothing will ever quite be the same again.

  How do you know those words?

  “My father,” she whispered, shielding her eyes from the sun glistening off the snow. “My father used to say it to me when I was a child. I just thought it was funny words, so I memorised it.”

  Yes, I understand.

  “What? What does it mean? Why do I know this?”

  They were clear of Bristol now and the capital lay just over an hour ahead, maybe more if the traffic didn’t start moving soon. On the side of the road, a trailer had been parked. The words “Believe and Jesus will save you” had been painted on the side. The old couple’s argument was escalating.

  When Azrael spoke his voice was nothing more than a soft whisper in her ear; it was more like the recollection of a conversation she had had years ago with an old friend.

  In 1959, when the memories of war had just started to ebb away a little, a young priest named Father Ireland was dispatched from the Vatican to investigate rumours that had reached Rome about a boy in a small village in Siberia who, claimed the locals, had the gift of foresight. Word of his gift had spread across the land, no doubt disfigured with every repetition, so by the time the Church opened a cause, which is where something is deemed to be worthy of investigation, the boy had reportedly foretold when and how the rapture would occur.

  That interested the Church greatly and the case was handed to the Congregation of the Causes of Saints, a Vatican office established primarily to investigate whether a servant of God should be beatified – meaning they have performed one miracle – or canonized as a Saint – meaning they have performed two miracles. Father Ireland was the youngest and newest member of the Congregation.

  He arrived in Romania on the 14th November 1959 and spent a day travelling to a remote village in the north east. He was struck by the poverty that the villagers endured but he was welcomed as a representative of God. He asked to see the boy and was taken to a small house on the outskirts of the village. The boy’s name was Grigori Yefimovich. He was twelve years old. Fearing that the child was possessed, the villagers had exiled the family and demanded the boy be either killed or exorcised so that the village would be cleansed of the Devil that dwelt within him. Father Ireland felt compassion for the family and managed to persuade the villages to leave him for a short while with the boy so that he could judge for himself whether an exorcism was necessary.

  Father Ireland spent time with the boy, talking to him slowly and patiently about what the villagers said about him. He only permitted the boy’s mother, Sabina, to remain in the house whilst he interviewed her son. What he learnt was that Grigori had always been a strange child; he was quiet and serious. He didn’t like playing with other children and had mainly been kept indoors.

  Father Ireland spent many days talking to Grigori. He made voluminous notes of his conversations during which the boy told him about dreams he had had in which an entity appeared to him, sometimes in the form of man and sometimes in the form of a beast or monster. The entity was Sin, although of course Father Ireland did not know this. The dreams were different but with common features. They were always set in small areas – corridors, lakes, classrooms, village greens, fields – and always surrounded by nine gates or doors. Does this mean anything to you?

  Alix had had the same dreams her entire life. Of some place that seemed so familiar yet was unrecognisable, with nine exists. Or were they entrances? The last had been while she was unconscious at Innsmouth. She had dreamt of a nightmarish place where the buildings were alive and a giant creature – an unholy conjoining of woman and spider – stalked her. There had been nine roads leading off a centre square set around a bloody, pulsating fountain.

  It is the Inter-World, Azrael explained. The tenth dimens
ion intersecting and connecting the Nine Great Worlds. And the creature you see there is Sin, or at least, it is some personification of Sin.

  “Then... then what? I’m like..?”

  The old couple had stopped arguing. He had lit up a cigarette. She was gazing angrily out of the window at the snow covered fields. Alix felt as though the life that she once knew was dissolving around her, like they had taken the props and backdrop away and she was left standing on a bare stage.

  What you are, Alix, is another story. But the dreams you shared with Grigori Yefimovich differ in one substantial way.

  “He’s Ned, isn’t he? Grigori, I mean. He’s Ned. The guy from Innsmouth.”

  Yes.

  “Okay. I share dreams with him. Great. Does that make us BFF’s?”

  I have no idea what that acronym stands for but, pertinently, you do differ somewhat because, as Father Ireland discovered, in Grigori’s dreams, Sin spoke to him. In fact, he did more than that. He instructed him. He told him how to bring about his coming into the Ether.

  “So this Grigori chap – Ned – he’s not the Harbinger?”

  No, the Harbinger is someone else. We haven’t been able to yet establish who but he is likely to be someone working closely with Grigori with the common aim of emancipating Sin.

  “So, Grigori Yef-whatever, when he was a kid some religious guy sent by the Pope found out that he was speaking to Sin – an evil God-like creature trapped in another world by a not-evil God-like creature – in his dreams and he was told how to get the evil God-like creature to get into this world so he could destroy it. Grigori Yef-whatever then grows up to be Ned, a guy who works at a secret mental institution looking after crazy people which included a mad professor who killed his wife and, possibly, a little girl, and who was possessed by an invisible spirit from the same world that the evil God-like creature is trapped in, namely you, and who is now trying to kill me. How am I doing?”

  Not bad. Save that Anwick didn’t kill his wife or Katelyn Laicey.

  “I knew it!”

  In fact, if I’m right, Katelyn isn’t even actually dead.

  Chapter 60

  By now they were half way to London. They had also slowed down again. It had started to snow and giant, white flakes were now landing on the windscreen. She could see break lights in the distance as the traffic clammed up with the drop in visibility. In the distance, flashing information boards read: QUEUES AHEAD 40.

  Inside her head the last few hours of her life spun in an endless cycle. Parts of her memory seemed faded. The fire. She remembered so vividly, the awful feeling of her skin burning and the smoke clogging her lungs. But there was no physical evidence that she had been burnt. The Russian – Grigori – chasing her, his stinking breath and greasy hands. How had she thrown him half way across the room? The eagle that had rescued her on the rooftop. It was all so messed up.

  Harker. They were going to see Harker. It had only just occurred to her that, after escaping the rooftop, she had just driven, instinctively, out of the city heading east.

  “Is this what madness is like?” She asked the voice in her head.

  You tell me. You’re the expert.

  She laughed. “I’m a criminal psychologist not a psychiatrist.”

  You were prepared to say whether you thought Anwick was mad, though.

  She thought about that, clicking her tongue on the roof of her mouth over and over.

  “I was there to evaluate his behaviour.”

  No. You were there because Harker wanted Anwick back in Innsmouth and you were going to cover her tracks.

  “What? That was point? I don’t understand.”

  They were crawling now, rows and rows of vehicles lining the three carriageways. Frustrated drivers slumping back in their seats, adjusting radios, turning to shout at wailing children. There must have been an accident up ahead but all Alix could see was break lights fading into the distance. Beside her a middle aged man in a Mercedes, slick back hair and prominent chin, smiled at her. She stuck up her middle finger and he looked away, embarrassed. Perhaps being mad had its perks.

  Which bit?

  “Which bit what?”

  Which bit don’t you understand?

  “Pretty much all of it.”

  Fortunately, the guy in the merc had drifted forward a few places and was no longer in her eye line. He was replaced by an old lady in a Corsa. She looked skeletal, her frail skin pulled tight around her thin skull. Alix might have mistaken her from someone who had died quite some time ago were it not for the heavy drag she took on a cig before re-adjusting her mirror. She flicked the remainder of her cigarette butt out of the car window. It bounced off the tarmac and fell into the black snow shovelled to the side of the road where it was instantly extinguished. She glanced sideways and caught Alix’s eye, scowling at her incredulously, the dark rings around her eyes looking like they were painted on.

  Alix chewed her tongue. The traffic still wasn’t moving. It felt suddenly very hot and she switched the heating down a few notches and turned the air con on.

  “Tell me what happened to Anwick,” she said.

  Ah, yes. My friend the Professor. I shall miss him. We were ready to take the Laicey twins to a safe house. The idea was to keep them with us, protect them from the Harbinger but then it all started to go wrong. I suspect the Harbinger managed to use his power to influence Anwick’s wife. He returned home to find that she had hacked the maid to death. There was a struggle and she fell backwards down the stairs. I tried to appeal to Anwick but he wouldn’t listen. The sight of the maid and his wife dying unhinged him. I tried to repair the mental damage but his mind had already started to decay rapidly. And with it, so did I.

  The connection between a Necromire and his Host is symbiotic. The mental stability of the Host directly affects the mental stability of the Necromire. That’s why anything that affects your brain waves – caffeine, alcohol, drugs – is a bad thing. There was only so much I could do before I began to succumb to Anwick’s response to the trauma his mind had endured. I remember him in the garage, hooking the pipe to the car exhaust. I knew what he was doing. It was something he had talked about before. Something we had discussed. Self termination: the only way to truly break the connection between Necromire and human. I think that the burden of his responsibility to the World had damaged him irreparably and the horror of what happened that night he was arrested was the catalyst that caused his fragile mind to implode.

  I guess I should have seen it coming long before but I had hoped he could keep it together long enough to protect the Laicey girls.

  “But why are the Laciey twins so important? What have they got to do with Sin?”

  I’m coming to that. Let’s stick with Anwick for now.

  “Fine. Does that happen a lot? People with Necro-whats-its in their heads going nuts?”

  What do you think Innsmouth’s for?

  “Innsmouth is a mental institute for people driven mad by-”

  Yes. By Hosting a Necromire. Sometimes it doesn’t work out that well.

  “That’s why it’s so secret. Because you have people in there affected by aliens from other worlds. That’s why no one knows about it, why it’s outside of the system.”

  Yes.

  “I don’t want to get all conspiratorial and nine-eleven slash Watergate on you but does the government know about this?”

  There are a handful of people – some in government – who are trusted by us to know the secret of the Necromire, yes.

  “Brill. And will I be going nuts soon or are we already there?”

  You’re doing fine. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.

  “Dudey. So what happened next?”

  Well, fortunately Harker found out what was happening. Anwick’s arrested and Harker pulls some strings to get him transferred to Innsmouth. But then something happened. We were moved. I don’t know why. Perhaps Harker realised that we needed one last opportunity and arranged the transfer. I don’t know. I reme
mber the truck hitting something. Grinding into something that stops it fast. We jolt forward. There’s blood. I get Anwick to open the doors. There’s still some power left. And he walks away from the wreckage. Walks and walks to where he knows the Laicey children are. The guilt of what happened bored into his soul, it had contaminated him. He walked right into the field where Megan and Katelyn played... After that, I’m not sure.

  “Was she dead? Katelyn? Anwick didn’t kill her, did he?”

  No. Anwick didn’t kill her. He tried to save her. But he had already started it.

  “Started what?”

  I’m not sure. Maybe Harker knows. But I don’t understand what the Harbinger is trying to achieve and I don’t understand how the Laicey children are supposed to be responsible for Sin’s entry into the Ether.

  “You don’t know? You put in so much effort trying to protect the Laicey children but you don’t know why they’re important?

  Look, I was pretty shot to pieces by what happened to my previous Host. I’ve lost a lot of my memory. I think. It’s all right for you pretending this is so unreal and how you must be going mad but believe me it’s no picnic for me either.

  “Okay, calm down, I’m sorry. Don’t overreact. One day you’re happy as Larry sitting in one of the most powerful minds around and now you’ve ended up in my fucked up universe where I don’t even really understand myself let alone you. I’m sure it’s very traumatic for you.”

  Azrael didn’t answer. The traffic stood still. Alix felt apprehensive. A storm was coming. She could feel the hairs on the back of her neck move. She could feel the tension in the air. Beside her, Skeletor lit up another menthol.

  “I want to believe,” she murmured.

  Why? Because believing me is better than accepting the alternative? Or because you’ve always known the world was bigger and more complex than it seemed.

  “A bit of both, I guess.” The snow was falling thickly now, the wiper blades struggling to keep the screen clear. She diverted the heat through the top vent so the snow would melt quicker and be washed away. The washer fluid was still frozen. The low hum of the idling engines around her sounded like the world was taking its last large intake of breath, readying itself for the fall.