by Scott Hale
“I don’t know,” Dario said. “I let people walk all over me.”
Ruth leaned in. “Why do you do it?”
“I used to think I was afraid of what would happen to me if I stood up for myself. But maybe I’m afraid of what I might to do them if I did.”
“You can never do enough to a person,” Ruth said. “Even if they die, you can always go further.”
“What did you do to Amon?” Dario asked.
“For a while I tracked him, but he was always one step ahead of me. He had discovered ways to move around the country that I was not privy to. Once or twice, we did cross paths, but I could do nothing to him. He was still my Amon, and the man who had taken care of me when I had lost everything else.”
Brooksville Manor shook; a picture frame fell off Ruth’s wall, and the glass shattered.
Raising an eyebrow, she continued. “While I was looking for ways into the Membrane, I tried to live a normal life for a while. I formed many connections, mostly criminal, and made a lot of money off the prohibition. When World War I and II happened, I roamed the cities and embedded myself into businesses, for no reason other than I could, and no one would stop me.”
“What about God?”
“Yes, God. When Amon and I had been traversing the Membrane, I discovered an opening into God. An orifice into Its gastrointestinal track. And there was something inside it.”
“The Maggot.”
“Yes, the Maggot. It had been so very small, then, but it spoke to me, and to me alone. Amon said to pay it no mind, but I always found a way to come back to it. The Maggot warned me of the Vermillion God, what It was capable of. The God had already consumed worlds and eons, and the Maggot had formed from the corpses and cultures digesting there.
“After Amon left me, and before I arrived here, I spent my time searching for the Membrane, as I said. And I did find it. The openings were temporary, but I was powerful enough to make the most of them. For thirty years, I fed people to the Maggot as often as I possibly could.”
Dario’s eye fell on the hammer in her hand.
“I counted, once, how many I killed. It was almost a thousand.”
“To feed… the Maggot?”
“God slumbered, and the Maggot needed to grow. But it wasn’t only me. I had an accomplice.”
Dario said, “E.A.973.”
“Well, it was only E.A.1 through E.A.612 at that point.”
“Edmund Ashcroft.”
“It isn’t my brother, but a representation of my brother. With the Membrane and the veins, I can mold pathetic recreations of him. They all have kept me company, and they all took the falls for my crimes, so that I could keep the Maggot fed.”
Dario had to keep the conversation going, to keep this new surge of adrenaline pumping through his veins. Without it, he’d be done for. “You said you came here because the barrier to the Membrane was weakest.”
“I did. Amon and I spent a lot of time in Brooksville, Bedlam, and Bitter Springs. Brooksville Manor had been constructed in response to the United States’ government’s push to provide low-incoming housing for the poor. With the barrier at its weakest and with an almost infinite supply of… stock—”
Someone screamed outside in the hallway.
“—I knew this was the place I had to be.” She paused and said aloud, “Edmund, please, go check what is going on out there.”
Out of nowhere, E.A.973 materialized. The gaunt, garish, museum-exhibit of flesh and bones built itself into existence from the living room, until it was standing behind Ruth in its leather apron, with the butcher knife attached to its belt. It had been there the whole time.
E.A.973 nodded, walked past Dario, but not before giving him a pat on the shoulder, and then opened the door and went into the hallway.
“But you… killed Michael.” Dario used restraint to shape the tone of his voice, to avoid it sounding judgmental. “And Jam.”
“I did, but that is not typical of what happens here. The Maggot’s appetite has grown exponentially. For years, I fed it limbs. Pieces of the tenants. We have a system here, Mr. Onai. Would you like to hear it?”
He nodded, and noted how she had let go of the hammer.
Brooksville Manor rumbled again. And again, as he had hours before, he heard something inside the walls.
“The newest tenants live on the bottom-most floor. As people pass away or lose faith, the tenants are shifted. There is a clear distinction of progress in Brooksville Manor. The ultimate goal is to live on the third floor, with myself.”
“They do that by sacrificing their bodies?”
“Yes, they do. There is a culture in Brooksville Manor, you see, and it is one that I have created. It is a living building, a country all its own. Everything is provided for, the same way your government supposedly provides for its people. I take their checks, and I take their needs into consideration, and I give them what they need.”
“And they go along with it?”
“Most of them do, but it is usually the youth that rebel. And that is fine. I make the most of them.”
More sounds from inside the walls.
“I give them everything, and they give everything they have, because to them the Maggot is god. They believe it is the Maggot that provides for them. And whereas your god only seems to answer prayers through sheer coincidence, the Maggot is reliable, and it is timely.”
“But it’s not god.”
“No, it is not, but that is okay. Do you always buy name-brand when you go to the store?”
Dario shook his head.
“But unless you really look for it, you seldom notice the difference between it and generic.”
“That’s true,” he said.
“It is. These are people that are nothing. They are already dead; dead to themselves and this world. They are whores and drug addicts, rapists and murderers. They are a drain to the system, your system.”
“How do you know?” Dario asked.
“I know,” she said, resolutely.
“If you think so lowly of them and this world, why does it bother you so much what they do to it?”
“I love this world,” Ruth said, cocking her head. “Everything I do, I do for this world.”
“You’ve filled it with monsters. You have murdered thousands of people.”
“I have.”
“Is that love?”
“You would do anything for the ones you love, wouldn’t you?”
Dario didn’t answer, because he wasn’t sure he would.
“The Vermillion God is real. And Amon is going to awaken It. This is inevitable. The Maggot is not God, but it has lived inside God, and it was formed by those that resisted God’s efforts. I’m not trying to destroy the world at all. I am trying to save it. When the Vermillion God awakens, so, too, will the Maggot, and it will stop God from enslaving everything and everyone.”
The bag of ice had melted in the heat inside Dario’s hand. It hung limply over it, like a body bag. “You said you were trying to summon the Vermillion God with Amon.”
“I was, but not anymore.”
“Do you not believe in It?”
“I do. I believe in It so much, that is why I have done what I have done all these years. It is God, but I do not want It. And neither will you or anybody else, once you see what It is capable of.”
More shouting, coming from somewhere on the second floor. Doors rattling; a loud thump; more noise in the walls.
Dario asked, “What is…?”
But Ruth cut him off. “I know that I am a terrible person, but I am still human.” She pulled down her blouse, where her breasts were covered in vermillion veins. “Despite every inhuman thing I have done and gone through, I am still human.
“I did not want this. I did not want to become this. I thought I was doing the right thing by trying to bring God into this world, but I was wrong. I thought I was doing the right thing by trying to feed Its nemesis, but now I am not so sure. I found Herbert North the other day, com
ing home with his partner from a case on the west coast, and killed him, thinking it would make me feel better. And it didn’t.
“The people that live in Brooksville Manor repulse me, and I do get pleasure bending to them to my will, and yet, at the same time, I am unsettled. I lie in my bed most of the day. I abuse E.A.973 for no reason other than it is there to abuse. I relish seeing the Maggot, and yet the feedings leave me empty. I have started to drink. I have—” she pointed to the scars on her neck, “—started to hurt myself.
“At first, I only did what I did to get back at Amon. I wanted to show him I didn’t need him. Later, I did what I did because I could, because no one would stop me. I wanted fulfillment. Now, I do what I do because it is routine, and because I have done it for so very long, and because I do not know anything else. I am not a gentle woman. I break everything I touch. The God inside me will not let me be anything else, and all I’ve ever wanted is to be happy. I cannot cope with what I’ve become.”
Dario was able to open his left eye a little. With his vision partially restored, and with Ruth Ashcroft’s supposed life laid out before him, he saw her in a somewhat different light. She was fidgeting, and her eyes were large. She had made tiny braids in her hair from the anxiety that had taken to her hands. She looked her age, which was one hundred and then some, as if the confidence she’d lost was the glamour that’d run out. The vermillion veins on her exposed chest were revolting, but like the needle in the junkie’s arm, they were also part of the problem. Dario hadn’t known who Ruth Ashcroft was, nor had he known Oblita Vesper, but he knew desperation when he saw it. She couldn’t go to a priest for guidance, because they would only validate what she’d done. Did she want out? Did she want to convert him?
Another scream from outside the apartment.
Dario went to stand, but Ruth started talking again.
“Can I be helped?”
Dario set down his pen. As a social worker, he had to believe everyone could be helped; otherwise, what the fuck was the point of his job? Even if it was the smallest of changes, it still meant something. Ruth Ashcroft was the most terrifying person he had ever met, but he had seen the Maggot with his own eyes. He didn’t, and wouldn’t, believe her about the Vermillion God. But the Maggot was real, and as far as he could tell, so too, to her, were the actions she’d made and the reasons that justified them.
“Would you help me? If you could?”
More screams. Something being torn down. This time, Dario did stand, and he looked to the front door, which E.A.973 had closed behind it.
“Ruth… there’s something going—”
“I’m your client,” she said, standing. “Will you come back to see me?”
“I… you… I have to report you… for everything. You know that.”
“It won’t make a difference. The police won’t come. They never do.”
Sounds in the walls, like dirt shaking free from the topsoil and cascading upon a grave.
“I won’t hurt you. You know that.” She slid the hammer across the table towards him. “I could have, but I did not. You might save them, saving me.”
Dario opened his mouth to stutter out some bullshit answer when E.A.973 burst into the apartment, screaming, “Sister, my sister! The Maggot has come for you!”
Ruth backed out of her chair, knocking it to the ground. Mouth quivering out malformed words, she ran past Dario and into the hallway.
Dario grabbed the hammer off the table, pocketed it, and then hid what still showed underneath his shirt. He picked up his bag, dropped it as E.A.973 slipped its hard hands under his armpits and jerked him to his feet. His skin stung where the imposter had touched him, as if it had left behind hairs or nettles. But it hadn’t seen him take the hammer, or if it had, it had wanted him to.
“This shouldn’t be happening,” Ruth was saying as E.A.973 shoved Dario into the hallway.
If the Membrane operated like clockwork, then Ruth’s final feeding had sent its gears into disarray. Phasing in and out of existence, the bio-organic plane was taking over the Manor like a timid tide lapping against a shore. Paint-like splatters of meat and fungus grew and shrank on every possible surface. The apartment doors widened and thinned, from gaping holes to bristled slits. The sleep-inducing light of the twelve chandeliers alternated between a heavenly white and hellish red. The diamond tiling on the floor congealed into maelstroms of color that puckered upward like nibbling lips. Fissures appeared in the ceiling—smeared eraser marks from god’s disappointed hand—and inside them, belts of stars were wrapped around abyssal bodies.
For all that had changed, one thing had not: the tenants were still locked in their apartments, and every man, woman, and child inside was screaming at the top of their lungs, begging, pleading, praying for any kind of release. Something was inside each of the apartments, and it was doing the kind of things to the tenants that made a human sound like a dying animal. Torture of the most terrible kind, where not even one nerve ending was spared.
“Where’s the Maggot?” Ruth asked E.A.973.
It shook its head. “Still… coming through.”
Because Dario’s body seemed to deem it necessary, he felt the blood draining from his face, allowing his eye to finally open completely. His broken arm, while unusable, became more manageable; and the chunk of flesh on his shoulder that breathed cold fire into his senses had dulled. He felt unlocked, unfettered; all the bats in his battered belfry had spread their wings, and inside his skull, they took flight to chase the ghosts away.
Ruth took off down the hall towards the stairwell. E.A.973 waved Dario on, not threateningly, but as a brother would his own. There was still time, Dario realized as he trailed after them. Time had frozen for them at Brooksville Manor, in the foul amber of Ruth’s deeds, but it didn’t have to, not anymore, and especially not for him. The larva of lethargy had incubated inside him long enough. He had to learn from hell. He had to do something. It was funny, but it took being on the brink of psychosis and about to collapse for Dario to finally figure out god’s purpose for him. But that was how it went, wasn’t it? If Ruth Ashcroft had gotten anything right with the Maggot and her designs for deicide, it was that suffering made the most potent motivator.
And his purpose was this: If he could save Ruth, he could save those who lived here. If he could get Ruth out, he could condemn her; turn her in, have her committed. If he could do that, then every problem he’d ever walked away from, every scapegoat he’d shielded himself with, might have actually meant something.
Ruth stepped aside. E.A.973 opened the stairwell door, his butcher knife readied, and told them it was clear. Ruth regurgitated hymns from deep in her breast; a ball of nightmarish green light, like an apple, formed inside her palm.
“There’s a part of the first floor the Membrane doesn’t overlap,” Ruth said. “Lets out to the back of the building, where the dumpsters are kept.”
Dario nodded, had looked inside the stairwell. It had taken the form of the metal sewage pipe as it had before. It was still sticky stair after stair connected to the cigarette burn-colored landing. But whereas there had been light shining through the opaque, square windows over the landing, there was now only a shadow; a shadow cast without light, by the shape clinging to the opposite side of the glass. It appeared to be an overgrown moth.
A swell of screams lifted through the stairwell. They carried a force with them that moved through their clothes and hair. Ruth leaned over the railing, cast the light of the orb onto the levels below; searched for stragglers.
“Why’re you running from the Maggot?” Dario asked. He could bash the back of Ruth’s head right now and end her. But he didn’t.
“I’m to be its last meal,” she said.
E.A.973 went down the steps, trying to steer clear of the moth’s shadow.
“A maggot feeds off the dead and decaying. I’ve been decaying for a very long time, Mr. Onai, but I am not ready to die. I want to be sure that all of this meant exactly what I told myself and
the others it did.”
E.A.973 made it to the landing and waved for them to follow.
“You’re holding out for something, aren’t you?”
Dario wasn’t expecting to confess, but if the Membrane was truly, in a way, the gates that guarded her heaven, he figured he might as well. “My wife and daughter. Divorced for four years. Haven’t heard from them or seen them since I lost custody in court. They asked me to dinner. Tonight.
“I thought I wasn’t going to make it; now I have to.”
“Put that on our headstones, Mr. Onai,” Ruth said. “It is the mantra of our species.”
Dario and Ruth made it to the landing as E.A.973 crept towards the second floor. Thick tangles of greasy hair unraveled from the ceiling and spread their cloying scent into the stairwell. The sounds of scratching came from behind the window to which the moth had attached itself. It sounded like knives were being dragged across the glass. It sounded like it was trying to get in.
E.A.973 started to go around the bend, to make his final jaunt to the first floor, when Dario heard something else. It wasn’t the moth, or the knives its fingers seemed to be made of. He craned his neck to look back the way they’d come. It was the wall. It was heaving. The cement was coming apart, melting, as if it were being broken down at a molecular level.
Dario reached for the hammer in his pocket, and then a gout of blood spewed out of the widening crack. Like a spear boring through a body, the Maggot thrust itself into this world and, writhing, dropped into the stairwell. Almost too large for the stairwell, its glistening girth destroyed the railing, crumpled several stairs. But it was here for a reason. And it didn’t need eyes or ears to see or hear that what it had come for stood but a few feet from it.
