Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1)

by James Costall

  *

  The worlds of shadows and light began to merge, seeping into each other and then slowly extricating. Like oil poured into water, the black cloud whirling gracefully as the liquids dance together until eventually separating.

  So it was that the light dissipated from the shadows and Alix felt aroused from a deep, dreamless sleep.

  She felt anaesthetised. Her stomach churned. Her breathing was laboured and slow. She was born again from the womb, naked and afraid.

  There were pains in her arms and feet but she couldn’t tell from what. She couldn’t feel the ends of her fingers or toes. The memories of Cargil’s office flashed before her eyes but she couldn’t make sense of what had happened.

  The room was dingy but it still took some time for her eyes to adjust to the light. Grey everywhere. Looking down from some point of elevation. A balcony perhaps. Rows of benches facing her. A stage maybe? Stone pillars standing to attention, lining a central aisle. A white table below her. The smell of mould and rot in the air.

  She couldn’t move. Her body was too painful. Her head rolled to one side and she looked down her extended arm. She was holding something. Metal. Long. She tried to unclasp her hand, expecting the thing to fall to the floor with a clatter but it didn’t. Then she saw the blood. Stained her arm from hand to shoulder but concentrated around the metal object, where the pain was. She only wore her jeans, which felt wet and heavy and pulled around her waist, and a sleeveless black top. Her other clothes were gone. What had they done to her?

  She blinked to remove the haze and focussed on her arm. She wasn’t holding anything. She wished she was, but she wasn’t. Jutting out from her arm, puncturing her skin and wedged through her wrist, pinning her to a wooden frame was a long, thick nail, slightly bent from the hammer strikes. She gagged and the pain wrentched up her arms. She turned her head. Same on the other side. Her legs crossed over, a nail driven through her feet, fusing them together.

  Jesus Christ.

  She was being crucified.

  Underneath her face was a rope hanging down like a noose. She found she could wrap her neck in it and tense her back and shoulder muscles, taking a small amount of strain off her arms and legs. Whilst it brought her a little comfort, she knew it was there to keep her from being asphyxiated by her own body weight. It was there to prolong her agony. Whoever had done this wanted her to stay alive for as long as they kept that rope in place.

  It could be days before she starved or bled to death.

  Her stomach churned again but it was more than just sharp pangs. Something was moving inside of her. The sensation was unbearable. She could feel something moving up her gullet, choking her, clawing its way up her windpipe.

  She gagged. Her stomach spasmed and for a moment it seemed like the intense pain caused by the movement would send her back to the shadows but at last she was able to gasp for air. Something in her mouth. At first she thought it might be a fly but the image of the moth in the jar came to her. She trapped the panicked creature at the roof of her mouth with her tongue. She felt its little wings beating furiously against her teeth as it fought her grip. It tasted disgusting. Her tongue could feel along its furry body and prickly legs but she resisted the temptation to spit. She moved the insect across the ridge to the front of her mouth, pushed it between her teeth and bit down hard.

  There was a horrible crunch.

  The moth’s insides were warm and gooey.

  She spat everything out and passed out again.

  *

  This time when the shadows left, Alix heard a familiar voice whisper in her ear.

  A Wyrm, Azrael said. She couldn’t find the power to respond but nodded her head, exhausted, drained of everything. She tasted blood at the back of her throat.

  A creature from the A’iniavh Sea, the Seventh Great World. Looks like an Indian atlas moth found here in the Ether but they’re not. They have the ability to break the connection between Necromire and Host causing a temporary severance of power. Best way to keep it that way is to ingest it. Evil little creature. Took me a long time to expel it from you.

  “Us,” she wheezed. It was all she could manage, although having the alien back with her gave her some strength back.

  Us, Azrael repeated.

  She was nailed to a giant wooden cross erected at the far end of the church, which she recognised now as being the church at White Helmsley, behind the altar. The church entrance and font were at the other end. It was dark outside. The only light was from the moon seeping in through the stained glass windows and picking out the stone work around the pillars and casting one side of the building in shadow. It was freezing and the moonlight glinted off her breath with every exhalation.

  The Harbinger was there waiting for us, said Azrael. Cargil must be a partisan for Sin. They must have corrupted him. But what do they want with y... with us?

  Alix alternated between letting her arms and feet hold her up and straining her neck in the noose in front of her. She felt, not for the first time in the last couple of days, like her life hung in the balance.

  “Can you...” she wheezed but every word was agony.

  I can keep you alive for some time, yes, she said softly. But not indefinitely.

  “I don’t... want...”

  I know. I can feel it. But you must fight, Alix. You have to fight it. If you can find some strength, I can help you control the Essence. But you have to help me.

  “Can’t... too far...”

  No. It’s not over. It is not over, Alix, but you have to help me.

  A tear rolled down her cheek and fell to the floor. She couldn’t live with this pain.

  She thought of Ash. Saw his face. Heard his voice calm her; the soft touch of his hand.

  She gritted her teeth and wailed.

  *

  Beneath her, she heard somebody moving around her feet. The sound of footsteps on the stone floor brought her back from the shadows once again. She opened her eyes, stared at a man moving chairs from one side of the church to the other. He was unnaturally tall and moved in a clumsy fashion, as if his arms and legs were too long to control. His skin was an unhealthy taupe, like a mushroom. His eyes were set in dark circles.

  The Russian from Innsmouth. Ned.

  For a while, she watched him shuffle around below busying himself with whatever he was doing. He wore a white robe. It looked unclean. There were streaks of red on it. The hood was down and she could see his face, his familiar face.

  Alix, it’s...

  “You,” she gasped, fighting back the pain so she could talk. “Fuck you!”

  He ignored her, un-stacked two wooden chairs he had found in the vestry and placed them at the side of the altar next to each other. He stood back to look at them. Dissatisfied, he moved one a little, making sure they were perfectly in line.

  After a while, he looked up at Alix and smiled.

  “What’s that expression? Ah, yes: how’s it hanging, doctor?” he said.

  “Fuck you,” Alix seethed and he let out a laugh that resonated round the stone walls. A laugh she recognised from earlier. After she had been dragged out of Cargil’s office.

  “This is a church, Doctor Franchot. Watch your language, won’t you?”

  “You’re... you’re the Harbinger?” Every effort to speak was agony.

  Grigori smiled broadly. The robe was fastened with a red cord tied at the side, two strands flaccid below his knee. Even from up on the cross he looked huge.

  She watched him smile at her again before he disappeared into the darkness of the far aisle. He returned a few seconds later, the Laicey twins dutifully following him. They held hands and did as he asked, sitting, with a very un-childlike rigidity, on the chairs he had put out, their lifeless eyes staring into space. Alix’s stomach churned.

  “Let them go,” she said weakly.

  “No, I cannot but if I would do it for anyone, doctor, then for you I would. But it is hopeless anyway. Their bodies have been regenerated but their souls trapp
ed in the Inter-World. They have no souls. Perhaps that is why they look so sad, wouldn’t you say? They are dead, no?”

  “You’re sick,” she whispered.

  “No, I am in good health, doctor; thank you. You on the other hand,” he chuckled unpleasantly, “you are - let me find the words – in a predicament, no?”

  He’s not the Harbinger, said Azrael. He’s just a foot-soldier.

  Grigori took out a gold cigarette case from the inside of his robe. He lit up and shuffled over to Alix so that his face was close to her feet. He looked up and grinned.

  “So much time wasted trying to find you, doctor, and then Harker sends you right to us! Makes you wonder about her, doesn’t it?”

  “What do you want with me?”

  “Oh, how delightful: you don’t know. It is fate that nailed you to that cross, doctor. Fate delivered you to us just when all seemed lost.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “No,” he said thoughtfully, taking a long, heavy drag on the cig. “No, perhaps you don’t. But then again, you get your information from that bitch Harker and is she going to tell you everything? I think not. You’re just a stupid child to her, doctor Franchot. A stupid child. But to us? To us, you’re much more than that.” He leant in close. Put his hands on her naked feet. Ran his tongue up her ankle, tasted the dried blood that stained everything.

  “To us, doctor Franchot, you’re a fucking goddess.”

  The contact was enough and even with every inch of her hurting, the Essence transported her into his mind...

  *

  She saw a young boy, no more than eight, sat on a chair, his head hung low; a greasy mop of yellow hair falling about his face. His arms hung clumsily by his side like they were unnatural growths protruding from his sides. Stood over him, an elderly man, the lines on his face almost as deep as the cracks on the walls. He wore a long brown cloak that trailed on the floor. The boy: a pair of shorts and a dirty yellow tee-shirt.

  “What is this blasphemy, Grigori?” the man demanded, a piece of paper screwed up in his giant hands with child’s writing on it. His accent like Grigori’s. The boy stayed silent, staring at nothing. The man bent low so that his eyes were level with Grigori’s and he spat the words into his face.

  “Do you know what we do to seers, Grigori?” He put his hand on the boys face, as if examining him, trying to find some hidden thing that evaded him. “We burn them,” he said. “We burn them and dispose of their ashes in holes in the ground and our lives go on as if they never existed.”

  Grigori looked up, looked through the man to the space between them. “This is a message from God, teacher,” he said quietly. “It is not for you.”

  He struck Grigori hard around the face with the back of his hand. The boy fell back from the chair and hit the floor. He curled himself up defensively, preparing for another blow, but it never came.

  The scene changed. Grigori sat at a table, his eyes focussed on the paper in front of him held down by a different man: a man in his sixties. A kindly face. Black clothes and dog collar.

  “Hello, Grigori,” said the Priest. “My name is Father Ireland. I’m from the Vatican and I’m here because your family are very worried about you.”

  Grigori didn’t respond but fondled the paper carefully, lovingly even.

  “Your family are worried, Grigori, that the people in your village fear you have a gift that might bring them misfortune. Do you understand that, Grigori? And scared people, sadly, can be dangerous people. Do you understand that, Grigori? But there is nothing to fear while I’m here; provided you do as I say. You have, perhaps, a great gift.”

  Grigori looked up at the Priest and there was a fire in his eyes far beyond his age. The Priest recoiled slightly, recognising immediately the abnormality.

  “They say I am a messenger of God, Father Ireland,” he said. “Do you understand that?”

  “I understand what they say, yes. But whether you are a messenger of God or... or just a boy with a good imagination remains to be seen.”

  “You are not qualified to judge me, Holy Man. Only God can judge me.”

  The Priest folded his arms and the scene changed again. A long table, laden with silverware, sparkling in the light of the grand chandelier. Green and gold wallpaper, deep red carpet, extravagant and Byzantine furnishings. Father Ireland brought the boy into the room, ushering him forward to the man sat eating at the end of the table. He wore the expression of one who had weathered poorly but the clothes of a cardinal.

  “This is the boy? The boy who has spoken to God?” He asked in a German accent without looking up.

  “This is Grigori,” replied Father Ireland.

  “See to it that he leads an uneventful life. His Hebrew ramblings are a sin. The transcripts you have made of your purported conversations with him shall be destroyed.”

  “If I could be given more time, My Lord-”

  “No. No more time. This so called prophecy is an abomination.”

  The cardinal turned to Grigori and spoke but Alix didn’t hear the words. The room faded and was replaced with a church.

  *

  He’s a Prophet, whispered Azrael.

  “A person who carries God’s message,” said Alix. “From the Greek word profetes, meaning ‘advocate’”.

  We refer to a Prophet as someone capable of communicating with the Hollow One – or Cronos for that matter - across Worlds. People who dream of the Inter-World. Most don’t understand the messages they receive unless they have some help. I recognise the Priest from Grigori’s memories. He must have been the one to nurture his abilities to serve Sin.

  “My name is Grigori Yefimovich,” he said, pulling his arm away, only vaguely aware of the temporary intruder in his mind. “You know me as Ned, the pet name that bastard Omotoso christened me with.”

  He laughed and lit another cigarette.

  “It is the greatest honour of my life for me to serve the Harbinger and, through him, to serve Sin. How naive I was back then to think that the visit I had was from the Christian God. It was only in England when the Harbinger found me that I learned of the existence of the Nine Great Worlds. I suppose you know all about that now. Cronos, Sin, the Void, the ridiculous laws that govern this world. What are there? Forty nine? Who cares? What matters is the end is coming, doctor. That is not something that can be prevented. Especially now the final part of the jigsaw is in place. That’s you of course. You don’t know about that bit and it’s not my place to tell you. But you will.”

  Alix coughed. She tasted a mixture of blood and bile building at the back of her throat but her mouth was too dry to swallow it. At least, she thought, it might choke her before the crucifixion strangled her.

  “Why? Why do you want this world to burn?”

  “Burn?” Grigori laughed. “It’s not the burning that interests me, doctor Franchot. You have to kill the bacteria before the wound can heal. It’s the phoenix that rises from the ashes that interests me. Sin will bring order to the chaos. He will destroy mankind and their pathetic beliefs and values. He will show their technology to be useless and their existence irrelevant. And he will have a place in the New Order for those that are loyal to him. Those who do his bidding and those that foretell his victory. It will be glorious. I will be glorious.”

  “You’re fucking crazy,” she said, blackness seeping in round the corner of her eyes. She felt as though she was standing on a precipice, staring into the darkness, thinking of jumping.

  “Crazy?” Grigori moved closer to her again. “No, doctor Franchot. I’m not crazy. I’m very sane.” He spoke quietly, “Would you like to know how it works? It’s quite brilliant really.”

  Alix didn’t respond, felt too weak to respond. He walked over to the altar and pulled a wooden box out from the underneath. He placed it carefully on the table, ran his fingers down its sides, examined it with intimate fondness.

  “Sin came to me when I was ten in a dream. He took the form of a sea-monst
er and he spoke to me in a language that I did not recognise but somehow understood. He told me that I was chosen to help his agent on the Ether and that I would come to know this man as the Harbinger, the Bringer of the New Order. He told me that once we have located the children we could use them to keep open a Portal to provide a direct route to the Inter World which could be used as a corridor allowing Sin to enter the Ether.

  “But of course, ascension to the Inter World is simple. Law twelve of the Forty Nine: any soul whose body is destroyed by unnatural means becomes the resident of the Inter-World. The Portal was opened by the murders that the Harbinger committed in this church. The Laicey twins keep the Portal open, providing the connection between the two Worlds, their bodies resident here, their souls in the Inter-World. What is needed is a Vessel to travel through the open Portal and, crucially, to return to the Ether with the Hollow One. Harker no doubt told you all of this if the pestilent Necromire in your head has forgotten it.

  “For centuries the Hollow One’s partisans searched for a way to achieve this. Throughout the Dark Ages, hordes of Sin Worshippers swept across Europe bringing death with them. They were the Witch Hunters. Convinced that achieving travel to and from the Inter-World lay in the method of death itself, they murdered women in their thousands and whilst ignorant crowds laughed and cheered at the flames consuming those hags and crones that, to their eyes, brought plague to the land and stripped their fields of corn, the Witch Hunters watched carefully the last moments of torture before slyly turning away only to return later to regenerate the body. They found, time after time, that the regeneration performed by their necromancers led to nothing but a barely animated, empty shell; a little like our friends the twins over there. Their bodies were barren, and they knew that the soul had been lost to oblivion.

  “But the answer had been there all along, written in the scriptures of the Christian god Yahweh. Mentioned several times of course, but ignored for two thousand years. The Witch Hunters – for that is what we call the early Sin Worshippers – disregarded the Bible; the incoherent ramblings of a scared and ancient race of people trying to make sense of their complicated world. It had no value to them. But you knew, didn’t you Azrael?”