The Devil's Colony

by Bill Schweigart

  Chapter 47

  Alex gathered his legs under him and pushed off the wall, bounding across the room. He glanced at the desk as he flew past, looking for a weapon—a letter opener, a lamp within reach—but there was nothing in his path to Miranda. He flung toward her as if to tackle her, but he meant to put himself between her and the redmouths. He failed.

  Three of them grabbed him mid-stride and fell upon him. He landed hard but had the presence of mind to cradle the back of his neck. He felt two savage bites as soon as he hit the floor, on the back of his left hand, the other on his calf. He thrashed on the floor, but two redmouths wrapped themselves around his legs while the other snapped frantically at his hands to get to Alex’s neck or throat. He craned his head to look up at Miranda and saw a fourth redmouth advancing on her. She pressed herself against the bookshelf, which was still splattered in Lindsay’s blood, Lindsay’s body still sprawled at her feet.

  “Run!” he yelled.

  The woman stared at Alex in disbelief, unable to move.

  The redmouths were rolling him onto his back now. The soft underbelly, thought Alex. They would go for the places where he would instinctively try to protect and as soon as he removed his arms from around his jugular, it would be over.

  He caught another glimpse of Miranda. She was staring at her hand, looking at the blood from the bookshelf that had stained it.

  Why wasn’t she running?

  On his back now, Alex bucked, but a redmouth sat on one leg while another wrapped both arms around his other leg. He felt a burning pain in his thigh. Another bite. The third redmouth bedeviled his head, trying to pry his hands away. Alex kept shifting his arms to protect his face and neck, but he saw through his forearms that the redmouth had his teeth bared, ready to plunge. They were in a state of frenzy. Their incessant giggling was maddening, worse even than the bites. And through his shifting arms, he saw the fourth redmouth reach Miranda and wrap a hand around her throat.

  She turned her head to look at it. At this she snapped back to reality, to finally comprehend her fate.

  “Vermin,” she said.

  She gripped the hand at her throat. The redmouth’s giggling found a higher pitch, became a squeal. With her other hand she grabbed the creature’s torso, under the arm, and pried her arms apart. The redmouth’s squeals became howls then, until there was a large pop and its arm was rent from its body. She shoved the redmouth aside, its blood spraying from the socket in a monochromatic rainbow, and flung his arm away.

  The redmouths released Alex and shrank back. He scrambled backward until he collided with Drexler’s desk. He looked from the redmouths—cowering against the far wall, their mad laughter ceased, and their eyes a new kind of wild—to the woman advancing on them.

  “Damn you,” she said, her eyes glowing orange like two burning embers. “I liked being Miranda Mahajan.”

  Chapter 48

  Severance fell backward, unable to breathe. Anson toppled with him. As he landed, he looked up at Felix, who still managed to stand upright even with the dagger buried in his throat. After a moment, though, the man’s knees buckled and he fell to the stage. Blood poured from both his mouth and the wound. In the stunned hush of the crowd, Severance could hear the high whistling from Felix, the air trying to flow past the blade lodged in his windpipe.

  Severance was speechless. He resisted the urge to pat himself, to ensure he wasn’t stabbed.

  Had it been a mistake?

  Severance got to his feet. He looked at Felix again, whose eyes were even wider than his, his hands wrapped around the slippery hilt. The man’s kicking legs began to flail weakly as the strength poured from his neck. The blood flowing out of his mouth bubbled in a pink froth as he fought for air that no longer came.

  Drexler turned to Felix now as well. “It should bring you some comfort to know that Dietrich Drexler was your real father, not me,” spat Drexler. He loomed over Felix and grabbed his sleeve. “Your beloved opa—your father—forced himself on my Marigold. And I need you to know, to understand, that he didn’t die peacefully. I’m the last thing both of you saw before you died.”

  When Drexler released Felix’s sleeve, his head landed on the stage with a thump. There was a final spasm, and then the man was still. Anson was still on his back, toward the edge of the stage, propped on his elbows, too stunned by the spectacle, by Drexler’s words. Hendrix stood at the edge of the stage, eyeing the ten-foot drop to the ground.

  Drexler set his boot on Felix’s forehead to pull the bloody knife out of the man’s throat like Excalibur from the stone. He straightened to face Severance, who took a step backward.

  Drexler walked past him to the front of the stage. “I’m sorry for the subterfuge, Richard. The incantation was very specific. It actually called for the blood of one’s father, brother, and son. Technically, Felix wasn’t my son, but I tried raising him like one for a while. I really did. I’m hoping what’s coming won’t split hairs.”

  Drexler raised his hand and tried to snap his fingers, but they were too bloody. Finally, he nodded at the nearest Black Cadre and said, “Your turn.”

  Anson disappeared under a pile of guards. Severance had no idea what was happening, until the man’s shrieking pierced the night.

  “Redmouths,” said Severance, recoiling. He nearly fell over the edge of the stage, and teetered there for a moment, but Drexler grabbed his arm before he went over. When Hendrix realized what was happening, he muttered, “Holy fuck,” and took a running leap off the stage. Severance heard a snap and looked over his shoulder. The tattooed man was clutching his ankle, his face creased in pain, but he looked up toward the stage again, met Severance’s eyes, and began to crawl toward the crowd.

  “Ghul,” said Drexler.

  The shrieking had been replaced by a muffled groan, which was soon drowned out by huffing, wet sounds and giggling. Severance looked at the writhing pack, then at Drexler, then at the bloody print Drexler had left on his sleeve when he steadied him.

  “How?”

  “The ghul are attracted to death and I have promised them a great many deaths.” Drexler added, “They’ve been very patient…”

  Severance remembered Alex and Miranda in the office then, guarded by redmouths, and his head swam. He felt as if his own blood was draining from him.

  “My God…”

  “There is no God, Richard. If there were, none of this would have ever been allowed to happen. I never would have crossed paths with Marigold. I never would have brought her home to that monster. Better yet, I never would have been born.”

  “What do you want, Henry?”

  “I told you. Judgment. Look at them,” said Drexler, gesturing at the crowd with the dripping knife. The people of Välkommen were confused, not realizing what was really transpiring on the stage, but they had not run. Where would they go? thought Richard absently.

  “All these years, we chased monsters, Richard, and there they are. They just watched a man hung and they clamored for more.”

  “You hung that man,” said Severance.

  “To prove a point. And to keep them occupied.”

  “Occupied for what?”

  “When I found my father’s cache—his journals, the chest—I didn’t know what to do with them. But when I got cancer, it was like the scales finally fell from my eyes. I would use his own life’s work against him. Starting with this place, his seat of power, and these people, his like-minded. Watch the news, Richard. These people are not the exception to the rule, they are the rule. They’re the underbelly that people don’t even bother to hide anymore. Mankind is a plague, a nightmare, but its reign of terror ends tonight. The Nazis—and is there a better example of my thesis?—wanted to use folklore as a weapon, but even in that they were myopic. But thanks to Dietrich, I can summon them. And these useful idiots are going to help me. I’m going to use folklore as a weapon of mass destruction, and Välkommen is ground zero.”

  Severance was numb. Watching Lindsay die, then Davis. Knowing
similar fates were awaiting Alex and Miranda, spying Ben, who lay curled up, unresponsive, on the far corner of the stage, even watching Felix and Anson killed so cruelly…all of it had overloaded Severance. It was too much horror in too short a time and he seemed to be floating above it.

  “Why am I still alive?” Severance heard himself ask.

  Drexler walked to the front of the stage and faced the crowd. He looked back over his shoulder at Severance.

  “You’re the only friend I ever had, Richard. And it’s the end of the world. Even I don’t want to be alone for it.”

  Drexler raised his arms, holding the bloody dagger aloft to the crowd. This time they did not cheer, because they did not understand. Sounds came from Drexler’s mouth, but they were in no language Severance had ever heard before and could not be described as words. Even if he didn’t understand the words, Severance somehow comprehended their intent. The strange syllables made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end and he felt as if something were scratching at the back of his brain. Suddenly gunfire erupted beside him. The redmouths from the stage were firing into the crowd. Dozens fell. The crowd shifted and heaved then, but Severance saw muzzle flashes around the perimeter of the field as well, stymieing the people of Välkommen’s chances of escape. Severance clapped his hands to his ears and stifled a scream, but it was not because of the gunfire or watching the bullets chew through the crowd. It was Drexler’s unholy words. He looked toward the man, whose head was tipped back to the heavens, his eyes closed, his mouth still spewing a terrible summons. Establishing a connection, through the void, to something ancient and unfathomable and pitiless. Calling it down from the black sky.

  Severance balled his fists and charged.

  Chapter 49

  Lindsay Clark floats downriver. At least she believes it’s a river. At least she believes she is Lindsay Clark. She’s immersed in it entirely and it feels whispery against her skin, but the water is a luminous white and she feels her consciousness slowly dissolving in it. But when she squints her eyes, when she concentrates, which is getting harder and harder to do the farther downriver she floats, she can see colors. Every color. Little shards of them dashing around her in a liquid mosaic, and every shard, she understands without knowing, is a fellow traveler. Another soul. A fractal in an infinite, more beautiful whole.

  She lifts her hands to her face to examine them, but she doesn’t see anything but the colors, no longer certain she has hands to see or eyes to see them with. Nor is she certain that this writhing Gaudí sculpture she is immersed in is water, or even light, yet these thoughts do not fill her with panic. In fact, she registers that she has never felt better, more at peace. It’s like her whole body—if she has a body—is aglow, effervescent. The analytical part of her, the scientist, struggles to grasp for a reference for the sensation—the pleasant throb when cooling down in yoga, the heady feeling from too much wine, the post-orgasmic thrum—but it’s tenfold, a hundredfold, and the need to categorize or quantify it is washing away in the waterlight. Her memories are fading, the particulars, but she senses that where she came from was darkness and pain, but where she is going is more serene than she can imagine. The colors buzz around her and urge her on, as if to say go with the flow. Leave what’s in the last room behind.

  She is on the cusp of surrendering to it, of leaving Lindsay Clark behind entirely, when she is jerked from her reverie, hauled sputtering to the surface, and flung to a rocky shore.

  Her first words are not Where or Who or How but an anguished Why? Why, she cries, why would you do that?

  She looks up at the figure who has just pulled her from the river but it’s like her eyes are dilated and she can’t take in all of the light. She shades her eyes with her hand and registers with an ache that she has a hand again, and eyes. She squints and she sees it’s a man. He is wearing some kind of uniform.

  I know you, she says. I mean…I’ve seen you before. In pictures…

  Our boy is going down the tubes, he says, isn’t he?

  She looks past the man at the rocky shoreline. He has pulled her onto a berm of some kind, composed of jagged rocks. She notices the man’s hands at his sides then, and as she squints, she sees they are bleeding, crisscrossed with old scars and fresh cuts. He notices her watching his hands.

  I’ve been holding on for a long time.

  The man helps her to her feet and she looks at him, astounded.

  Two years, she says.

  The man closes his eyes as he considers this for a moment. Finally, he shakes his head in disbelief.

  How? she asks. Why?

  Do you have kids?

  Lindsay shakes her head.

  I knew it would be bad for him when I left. Did it get bad?

  Lindsay nods.

  How bad?

  Lindsay meets his eye but says nothing.

  Are you helping him?

  We help each other.

  That’s the worst part, he says, looking at his hands. Not being able to help.

  She hears his voice crack at this, just a hair.

  What’s your name? he asks.

  Lindsay.

  My friends call me Big Ben.

  He’s not particularly big, she notices. Small in fact. But he carries himself in a certain manner and she thinks there’s size and then there’s stature. She can see now he’s wearing a policeman’s uniform. On his head is thinning white hair that was once dark and curly. A handsomeness that’s been earned. She sees the resemblance to his son most in the eyes, hard one moment, disarmingly warm the next. She can see the whole of her friend in those eyes, all of his potential.

  She turns, and they stand side by side, looking at the river. She is still squinting, as if the sun is low in the sky and shining off its surface. She lets her eyes drift downstream with the current. The farther she looks, the harder it is to make out the contours of the river. From this vantage, in this light, it’s all just mercury.

  That way? she asks.

  He follows Lindsay’s gaze downriver with what looks to her like suspicion, maybe even contempt.

  Our reward, he says.

  They look back in the other direction, upstream, from where she had floated. Dark thunderheads are gathering, black anvils in the sky.

  Gotta admit, he says, that’s new.

  That’s how bad, she says.

  The river reacts, though the clouds are still far off. The gentle rapids churn and encroach on the shore, like a storm at sea pushing waves ahead of it to the beach. The man takes Lindsay by the arm and climbs to the top of the berm. Lindsay follows. She looks behind him, down the back face of the rocky ridge. It’s much higher than she had thought. The wind picks up. She looks at the man again, at his slashed hands.

  I have to go back, don’t I?

  I’m sorry.

  The moment I saw you, she says, her own voice cracking. I knew it.

  He puts his hands on her shoulders and turns her to him. The sky darkens enough that she can see him clearly now. The river rages below them.

  They can’t hurt you, he says. He shakes her gently with each word.

  You have no idea what we’re up against.

  He stares at her, his eyes harder now, as if to bore the point into her.

  I’m from a little town in New Jersey a mile long by a mile wide, right on the Delaware River. Didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. They called me a river rat. No one ever thought I’d amount to anything. But I proved them all wrong. I don’t know much, girl, but I know rivers, I know hard work, and I know how to fight. You think I don’t know another fighter when I see one?

  It’s not a fight I can win.

  Listen, he says, taking her hand. He balls it into a fist, places her fist on the bridge of his own nose.

  It doesn’t matter how big the other guy is. One punch is all it takes. Right here, okay? The other guy’s eyes go all watery. He can’t see for a full minute. And in that minute, when he’s blind, you hit him with everything you got. Then
he’ll remember you. He’ll respect you. And he’ll never mess with you again.

  It’s the end of the world, she says.

  It’s always the end of the world! he laughs.

  He lets her hand go and she sees he’s slipped something into her palm.

  Maybe I can help a little, he says with a wry smile.

  The waters are crashing off the rocks now, sending spray high into the air. Lindsay looks hard at the spray, trying to see the individual colors, as she would a canvas painted with pointillism, but from the outside it is just a river.

  In the center of the confused currents, she can see an eddy. Big Ben sees it too. It swirls, then unravels, lengthening, like the peel of an orange, until it is a straight line. A channel running down the center of the river, a stream running back from where she came. She can see the seams.

  I’ve only ever seen it flow the one way, he says. He looks at her. You must have some powerful friends.

  I do, she says.

  She takes a step forward, but he catches her off guard and pulls her into a hug. It’s a father’s hug and she melts into it, allowing herself this moment, before going back. She barely knows him, and yet…my God, she thinks, is this how it’s supposed to feel? He whispers affirmations in her ear, messages for his son, and that he wishes he had gotten to know her before—upriver—in his old life.

  He pulls back and holds her at arm’s length.

  Thank you, he says finally.

  She wipes her eyes. Thank me?

  He’s in good hands. I think I can stop hanging around here now.

  His eyes are shining.

  Do me a favor though. Tell him, the night I left, I heard him. If there’s a way, when it’s his time, I’ll meet him halfway. But also tell him: Don’t be in such a goddamn hurry.

  I will. I promise.

  He takes her hand and leads her to the lower rocks, where the water is crashing against them, then sucking back to rear itself again. He says something to her over the roar of the waves, then juts his chin at the water as if to say time to go.