by Joey Ruff
“Okay…?”
“In Australia, the aboriginal tribes teach that in the beginning of the world, a time they refer to as The Dreaming, the creator-gods walked the Earth and sang life into being. Their words, as they believe, fell into the soil and created these lines of energy. The aboriginals call them Song Lines.”
“The Ley Lines.”
“Yes. Telluric energy is the residual energy of Creation. It is the purest, most powerful form of magic that exists.”
“So, like white magic?”
If it were possible, the doll would have rolled its button eyes. “Magic is not quantified by White Magic and Black Magic. This is not a fucking children’s tale, Swyftt.”
“Touchy. Sorry. Didn’t mean to hit a nerve.”
“Magic is one of two things. The highest, purest magic, is Mana. What I refer to as Agape. From the Greek…”
“It means Love, Hux. I got it. You told me this part before. Like a mother what lifts a car off her trapped kid.”
“Yes. Either magic is Love. Or it is something else entirely. Either it is truth and light, or it is a borrowed shadow.”
“You said before that my ability was a, what did you call it, a gift of light?”
“Yes. Before Aegir tainted it.”
I rolled my eyes. “And your magic? From when you were alive?”
Just when I thought he’d never shut up, he grew very quiet all of a sudden.
“Hux?” I said.
“What did you want to know about the Mana Pool?”
“I was just making small talk,” I said. “But the Mana…the Ley Lines, it’s not just energy, right. It’s a road for the dead. To go beyond the Veil.”
“It connects Creation to the Creator,” Huxley said.
That particular wording brought back long-forgotten memories. Things that seemed like a million lifetimes ago. “It’s a tether,” I said.
“Yes.”
It was quiet for a minute, and then Huxley said, “The factory is here on the right.”
Just after he said that, the giant wall of trees that lined the side of the road gave way. The factory rose like a fortress. It was huge and boxy, with enormous smoke stacks that rose a hundred yards or more into the air.
There wasn’t a sign as I pulled into the parking lot, which was surprisingly full for – what time was it? I was a little disoriented still. The clock on the dash read just after eleven. “This place runs all night?” I asked.
“Didn’t used to. Things change.”
I pulled into a parking space and pulled out my mobile, calling DeNobb. He answered on the third ring.
“Swyftt, are you okay?”
“I’m fucking kittens and rainbows, mate. Where are you?”
He was quiet for a second before he said, “You’re fucking kittens…?”
I ignored him. “Did you get away?”
“Yeah. I’m at Ezra’s. I wasn’t sure where else to go, and I remembered you saying something about being there in case she came back.”
“Well, any sign of the dodgy cunt?”
“No,” he said. “Are you using your one phone call right now? I don’t have any bail money. It’s all still tied up in that insurance investigation with my apartment…”
“I’m out. Don’t worry about it.”
“You’re out? You’re fucking gangster, man. Did they let you go? How’d you swing that?”
“I said don’t worry about it.”
“Okay. What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing. I’m following a lead. I’ll call you back.”
I left the car running and opened the door. “St. Clair said this place was vandalized. He didn’t specify how or where, but I’d be hard-pressed to think the skunk apes went inside. I figure we just loop around the perimeter. I’m thinking we’ll know the place when we see it. Chances are good we’ll find the Ballad symbol, also. You ready?”
Huxley didn’t say anything, just walked to the edge of his seat. I scooped him up. As I shut the door behind us, he said, “This is quite demeaning.”
“May want to get used to it. It’s either this or you run, run as fast as you can.”
“I am not a gingerbread man.”
“You just look like one. You’re so cute.”
“Swyftt…”
“I’m just fucking with you, Hux.” We rounded the building, walking around the front, the side facing the road. As all the factory windows were painted over, the only light out here was from the moon, which wasn’t as bright as it could’ve been. Normally, I would use the light mounted under the barrel of my gun, but I only had one FN in my pocket, and the light was still in the trunk of the rental. I pulled out my phone, activating a flashlight app I’d recently downloaded, and walked with its beam trained on the wall.
About halfway down, we came across a sign bearing the company’s name that owned the factory. At first, the words “Collinger Industries” didn’t ring any bells, but as I continued past, I stopped, looking at it one more time.
I slipped my wallet out of my pocket and pulled out the business card I’d been given at the church. Collinger Industries, CEO. “Son of a whore,” I said.
“What is it?”
“This is the tree man’s business.”
25
Ape
I sat at my desk, reading quietly. London kept to his armchair, making slow progress working through his stack of books. We weren’t looking for ghosts anymore, but anything we could find on Dusares, the Edomites, sacred fruit, and beast people. At least, I was.
We’d left Levi chained in the dungeon. I didn’t take kindly to his threats on my life. After the first, he had continued on, growing slowly more aggressive. That’s when I turned the Babel stone over, motioned to London, and closed the door as he continued to shout violently in Hebrew.
Because it lowered my blood pressure, I had the record player in the corner scratching out Sinatra’s “My Funny Valentine.”
On one side of my desk, I had the Hand’s Codex, opened to the page about the Edomites. On the other side, I had an old King James translation of the Bible.
From what I could piece together, the Edomites, during most of the Old Testament, lived in and around Mount Seir, a vast range of mountains that stretched from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Akaba, one of the arms of the Red Sea. The mountain was named, quite morbidly, I think, for the Horite king that Esau slaughtered when he took the land for his own people.
It appeared that the Edomites lived in peace for much of their history, but when they sided with the Babylonians to invade Israel’s southern kingdom, named Judah, they became cursed. The Old Testament book of Ezekiel talked about how Seir would be a desolate waste. I read chapter thirty-five, verses eight and nine over and over again. “I will fill your mountains with the slain; those killed by the sword will fall on your hills and in your valleys and in all your ravines. I will make you desolate forever; your towns will not be inhabited. Then you will know that I am the LORD.”
Overcome with the gravity of the words, I may have breathed a dirty word.
Levi had mentioned the prophet Obadiah, which was its own book in the Old Testament. I flipped to that, reading the small book in its entirety. The entire thing was a decree against Edom. Desolation, death. Verses seventeen and eighteen said, “Edom shall become a horror. Everyone who passes by it will be horrified and will hiss because of all its disasters. As when Sodom and Gomorrah and their neighboring cities were overthrown, says the LORD, no man shall dwell there, no man shall sojourn in her.”
I set the Bible to the side and flipped open the Codex to the passage on the Edomites that London had read before. Turns out, they were a very tribal people. The Jews, although called the Israelites in Biblical times, were the lineal cousins to Edom. Esau, who was Edom’s founder, was the brother of Jacob, who would later be given the name Israel.
With their forefathers given similar upbringings, it was not out of the question to see that Edom and Israel had similar beginnings, as
well. While the Codex had nothing on the fruit or the god Dusares, it did detail the tribal patriarchy that defined Edom prior to their betrayal of Israel and subsequent damnation by Israel’s God.
A tribal patriarchy meant simply that they lived together with their immediate family. A man and his wife would live with his adult male children and their wives, along with any grandchildren. Female children were married away to live with their husband’s family tribe, called a bet’ab. The father provided everything, from food and clothes to shelter. If you were a widow or an orphan, you likely had no bet’ab, which left you essentially homeless, poor, and destitute.
I thought of the story that Levi had told. About the woman named Sarah that had taken in and fallen for Uncle Arthur. She had been a widow. Her child with Arthur, as a bastard and fathered by someone outside of the bet’ab, would have been born as an outsider. It would have made Sarah, herself, an outcast. It was about the worst position to be in.
Scanning further down the article, the only modern mention the Codex gave to Edom was of their mercenary status. They were known as ruthless warriors who could be bought off. The only mention of Dusares at all was a quick glib on something called Dusares’ fire. It sounded like a weapon, but it wasn’t defined and it was listed as being an Edomite trademark.
Changing gears, I flipped in the Codex to see if it had anything on Dusares, their god. I found a small article that read, “Name meaning Lord of the Mountain. Also called Kaus. See Moloch.”
Moloch.
The name Dusares didn’t mean anything. From the sound of it, the name was just a title, anyway. The name, Moloch, however, was a big deal. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Moloch was the god of the Ammonites. He was big into blood sacrifices, especially those involving children and even babies. It wasn’t uncommon for ancient deities to be worshipped by various cultures, or even to be called something different when crossing over.
I flipped the Codex to the pages on Moloch. Pages. There was a lot of lore on him. The first sentence was not encouraging. “Worshipped in the Greek as Dionysus, Moloch was one of the Baalim worshipped by the Phoenicians andCanaanites. Moloch had associations with a particular kind of child sacrifice. In the Old Testament,Gehenna was a valley by Jerusalem, where apostate Israelites and followers of various Caananite gods, including Moloch, sacrificed their children by fire. His appearance was that of a man with large horns, like those of a bull or ram.” I skimmed through the paragraphs, catching lines here or there. Nothing seemed greatly important, except for the mentions of his influence on other cultures. He was believed to have been the Celtic god Cernunnos, later worshipped by the Norse as Freyr. To the Greeks, he was referred to as Dionysus, god of wine. Lord of satyrs and fauns.
I couldn’t help but wonder what it meant for me that he found me “worthy.”
I looked up at London, who was just sitting in his chair, reading. He seemed intent on the book and didn’t even look up at me.
Feeling a sudden rush of emotion, I stood from the desk, tried to say something but couldn’t find the words, and hobbled on my crutches directly out into the hallway. Maybe I was imagining it, but it felt cooler being out of the study.
I stood there for a minute, just leaning against the wall, staring at the carpet. My mind spinning with thoughts and ideas. None of them were good. None of them hopeful.
I moved to the stairs, navigating the descent quickly, and moved straight to my bedroom, pushing through the door, and moving past the bed to the bathroom. At the sink, I leaned the crutches against the wall and turned on the tap, splashing cold water into my face. I look up into the mirror, seeing the face that always stared back at me, the hair on my cheeks matted and wet. The eyes sunken and lost. The same, yet different. The reddish brown hair that I had grown accustomed to over the years seemed almost to mock me. I was okay with the hair when I didn’t know where it came from, didn’t know what it meant. That sudden knowledge brought with it a weight that threatened to crush my chest. Suddenly, my breathing became shorter, more labored. My chest was very tight. Rational thought became a fleeting vapor. I didn’t understand what was happening.
Was I having a panic attack?
My fingers grabbed hold of the edge of the sink, squeezing until the marble counter began to crack. Splashing more water into my face, I struggled to breathe. Long, slow, deep breaths. Fighting the instinct to gasp hungrily for air. This went on for ten, fifteen minutes. Maybe more, maybe less.
Not bothering to think things through, I opened the cabinet on my right and took out the electric razor, clicking the button and both feeling and hearing the thrumming vibration in my hand. I took a deep breath, unsure, and brought the metal blade to my head. I drew a streak through the top of my hair, slicing right over the cowlick. My vision started to cloud, but as I watched my sad reflection, I knew it was too late to stop. The gauntlet had been cast, and I drew another line across my scalp, then another. Another. I didn’t stop there, either. I traced down my side burns, across my jaw, my cheeks, chin, down my neck.
Once my head had been buzzed down to a fuzz-like carpet, I stripped out of my shirt and went to work on my chest, shoulders, stomach. I shaved my arms, front and back. I did as much of my back as I could reach. My hair had been inches long in places, long enough to braid, almost, and as thick as any animal’s. There was a reason Jono called me Ape. There was a reason that I never tried to correct him. The name was fitting. Even if I hated it.
No, it wasn’t the name that I hated. I knew, at least in some deep down part of me, that Jono used the term endearingly. What I hated was how accurate it was. Maybe I hated, to a degree, the not knowing. But the knowing…
I stripped off my pants and started working on my legs, the tops of my feet.
There was enough hair in the sink and around the floor to stuff a pillow, but my skin was still coated in a peach-like fuzz. I silenced the electric razor and grabbed the bottle of shave cream and the straight razor from the cabinet, setting them down on the counter. I worked a nice lather of cream into my hand and spread it across my chest, on my arms, all over my face. I shaved one area, then another.
I shaved my head and face down to the skin, leaving only the eyebrows, and stared at the face in the mirror. I didn’t recognize myself. I hadn’t seen myself this way in years. My skin was pale white with only a few patches of red where the razor had irritated it.
I moved down to my chest and arms, then my legs. When I finished, I just watched myself in the mirror, staring through foggy eyes and wet cheeks at every bump in my skin that had been hidden behind the carpet I’d grown accustomed to. My gaze lingered on every freckle, every blemish, every scar. Marks on the road map of my life that had gotten lost and become so unfamiliar.
My hand squeaked across the wet skin on the top of my head.
It occurred to me how naked and cold I felt. And then I just lost it. Sure, tears had trickled down my cheeks the entire time, but they began now to flow freely. I sobbed. I don’t know for how long. Eventually, fatigue overcame me, and I collapsed back against the wall, hugging my knees to my chest, and burying my face.
I guess after you’ve cried hard enough and long enough, your body becomes dehydrated and your eyes just sit there, emotionally dry-heaving. That’s how London found me. Exposed and bare and too damn drained to care a lick about it.
I heard his feet on the tile and looked up to see him in the doorway. As I met his gaze, he started to say something, but decided against it. The look on his face was part horror and part awe. I knew in his eyes, I looked like a shaved dog. But even more than that, he could see what I knew would happen, what I was already beginning to feel all over my body: my hair was growing back. And not even like a five o’clock shadow. I had done this before. In high school. In middle school. Every time the kids began their name calling, their chanting, their taunts. I’ve shaved and waxed. Hell, I even did laser hair removal. Within twenty, thirty minutes, it all grew right back. That’s what London was witnessing. I could see it i
n his eyes.
He stepped forward, and I could see the two beers he carried. He handed me one and then sat beside me, leaning against the wall. He pulled his knees to his chest, resting his arms on them, mirroring me in posture. He didn’t say anything. Neither of us did. We sat for five whole minutes in silence.
Then he spoke, “Brother, I’ve been sitting here trying to think of shit to say to make you feel better, but I don’t got fucking anything.” He took a drink from his beer. “I…” He shook his head, tipped his beer back and drained the bottle, then set the empty on the tile next to him.
“I told you my old man was in the army, yeah? Well, I didn’t tell you he beat the shit out of me between tours. He was a fucking drunk, brother. There were…shit, I don’t even fucking know. He was stationed in goddamn ‘Nam. He didn’t just kill Charlie gook fucks, though he killed plenty of those. He killed women and children, brother, then he came home, drank until he pissed himself trying to forget, and if I got in the way he’d fucking beat the shit out of me.
“I enlisted for myself on my eighteenth birthday because I needed out of that goddamned house. I couldn’t be his punching bag anymore, ya feel me? I just…I couldn’t. It was tough. I took it for so long because I thought, maybe, fuck…I don’t even fucking know, but I thought maybe it helped him. I was just a kid. What did I know. But I got out, first chance I could. I was Special Forces.”
He cleared his throat. “In 1989, my unit was chosen to take part in Operation Bright Star. We were sent to Egypt for a week to take part in what was supposed to just be military exercises. Everything was shits and giggles until the second-to-last day.” He grew suddenly very quiet. Gravely quiet. When he spoke again, his voice was broken. “There was a kid. Don’t know where he came from. There was a convoy of us driving through the desert, and there he was. He was…shit. Couldn’t have been more than eight years old. Some sick motherfuckers had strapped bombs to him – it was like some kind of Hamas shit, but it was way before they fucking started doing it. Nobody knew where he fucking came from, if he had parents or what. Nobody saw him at all until he was just there in the middle of the road. We’d managed to take him alive, this kid, but we couldn’t get the shit off of him. We decided to take him back, back to the fucking bomb guys, right. For forty minutes, I held him in my lap, holding his arms up and out of the way so he couldn’t trigger his load, right. Finally, we got back to camp, handed the kid over to the security people, some fucking Egyptian unit, until the bomb guys got there. They took the boy into custody.”
