A Gathering of Twine

by Martin Adil-Smith

  I could hear people start to mutter, and point to the sky. There were others who knew the stars as well as Randall, and they had begun to point out the familiar constellations.

  Celus, sensing the balance of power was in danger of swinging away from him, sighed. “Guyana. November. Right? What is it - about seven in the evening? If this was your Earth, the moon should be right there,” he pointed to an empty patch of sky. “Where is it?”

  We all stopped, and immediately began scouring the heavens.

  Celus turned, not waiting for the answer he already knew.

  Randall stopped playing the game. “Just wait. What is going here?”

  Celus stopped and turned back to face him. “I don’t have all the answers. There is a place, back home, similar to this. Not the city, but the castle entrance, except it’s in ruins. But it has writing, carved into its walls. And it tells of this place. And a war. But the scripts are incomplete – they’ve been damaged. That’s why we need to see what’s on this cladding. George is trying to find a way… to stop it. Stop it reaching us.”

  Randall stopped. “Then what is it that we’ve been seeing here? What is it that we’ve been worshipping?”

  Celus was silent, and for a moment I thought that he was not going to answer. “The thing you’ve seen… The Eye. It tries to recruit people. Promising power and glory and... well, you know the rest... But there is more to The Eye than just that tree…”

  “You’re trying to beat it, aren’t you?” Randall said. “You’re trying to destroy the Devil.”

  Celus shook his head. “I don’t think we can. We’ve tried. You have no idea how hard we’ve tried. But maybe stop Her coming through. Stop Her sucking us in. But destroy it? Do you have any idea how insignificant we are? How small and meaningless our world really is. We might as well throw rocks at the sun. Ours is not even one hundredth of one drop in the ocean of the stars.” He looked skywards as the pinpricks of light continued to come out.

  “If we are so unimportant, why is the Devil here? Why bother with us?” asked Randall.

  “Because She bothers with all of creation. Everything everywhere.”

  Randall thought for a moment. “You mean aliens, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never met one. But there are stories of what happens if she doesn’t get her own way. And I do know that you can’t read the stars as well as you think you can.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Randall was becoming aggressive again.

  Celus made no reply but rolled his eyes skyward. I could hear mutterings from the crowd. They had already begun to notice other anomalies in the night sky. Randall was looking around frantically, playing a celestial spot-the-difference game. He wasn’t winning.

  “It’s Venus,” someone said. “Where’s Venus?”

  “Shouldn’t we be able to see Mars too?”

  “I’m telling you... I swear Alpha Centauri should be right there.”

  “That shouldn’t be there... what’s that spiral? Celus? What’s that constellation?”

  Celus looked at the ground instead of the sky. His friend stood next to him, gazing at the sky. “That’s the one, isn’t it?” he said. “That’s the constellation you cannot see.”

  Celus harrumphed, and then nodded. Despite the oppressive heat, I shivered. People were still chattering, spotting a myriad of stars that weren’t there and others in the wrong place. Celus said nothing but let realisation slowly break against our bewildered minds.

  “Like I said,” he eventually continued, “this isn’t your Earth.”

  “Then whose is it?” I asked.

  Celus made no reply, and instead looked at Dad, who had propped himself up against the wall of a tower. He was looking old and exhausted. The lines around his eyes seemed to have deepened since we had been here, and he had moved from being worried through to a state of fearful trepidation. I think Dad knew that he was going to have to pay, and as his friend had said, there were worse things to pay with than with your life.

  “Why won’t you say?” I pressed Celus again.

  “Because,” he snapped, “words have power. That’s what worship and prayer are. It feeds Her.”

  Randall took a step forward, not liking the way Celus was speaking to me.

  Celus looked to him, and then back to me. “Sorry. I... this place makes me nervous.”

  I could tell that he wasn’t the only one.

  “It’s ok,” I said, accepting the apology. I understood what he meant. This place was doing something to all of us. We could feel it, as though it was slowly stripping a thin veneer of restraint and civilisation from us, revealing the savage within us all.

  “When we came here,” I continued, “you said it was early. What did you mean?”

  Celus looked to his friend.

  “Time... it’s not a straight line. Not like we think it is,” George answered on his friend’s behalf. “I can’t explain it. We think of causality. You are born, then you live then you die. A chain of events... but... it’s not always like that. Sometimes the future comes first. And it affects the past...”

  “That sounds like some hippy talk to me,” muttered Randall. His mood was not improving.

  Dad chuckled. “I’m sure it does Randall. I thought the same at first. But think about it. You’ve probably experienced it yourself. Déjà vu. A dream so vivid it could be real. I swear, when I was growing up, my daddy used to tell me about this oriental actor who was a big noise in China and how people were out to get him because he was teaching the secrets of kung fu and then he died in mysterious circumstances. It was only after the fact I realised he was talking about Bruce Lee, and when I mentioned it to my mom she denied those conversations ever happened. It’s like... a false memory. But it’s real as well.”

  I knew what Dad meant. Sort of. I had a false memory. My great-grandfather feeding me a spoon of something as a baby. Except he had died years before I was born. But I could still see it. I recognised him from one of those old sepia style photos.

  “So why is it early?” I continued.

  “There are... some people claim to have been here. Sometimes the city is full of people. Sometimes it is empty like now. Other times there are weeds everywhere. Some just see the castle at the front, as if the city hasn’t been built yet. But all the accounts are jumbled like they are out of order.”

  “So because there are no people here, you think it is early?”

  “CELUS!” someone shouted. “CELUS!”

  Celus snapped his head around and then made his way through the crowd “Keep your voice down! What is it? Did you see something? Someone?”

  Someone was pointing towards the horizon. Several more people realised what they were seeing, and began to point too. A hush descended over us all.

  The land continued round to the west, in a long arcing curve so that the headland seemed to meet the sea and the sky all at the same point.

  We all saw it. A single solitary silver line, ascending into the night sky. A few moments later it was joined by a second, and then a third. Within a minute that little patch of sky was filled more than a dozen streaking white trails. And then a score.

  Dad and George were frowning, trying to understand what they were seeing. Celus had gone deathly pale.

  Dad turned to him. “What is it? Missiles? Nuclear holocaust?”

  Celus looked through him, to his friend. “No. It’s the exodus of the Sky Lords.” Tears were brimming in his eyes. We all wanted to ask more questions but were so transfixed by the display before us that we held our tongues.

  “… when the Iyrians left,” George whispered. “The Ghazals of Nod.”

  More than a hundred contrails now filled that distant patch of sky. All on a slightly different trajectory. I guessed that the headland must continue for another four of five miles. I had seen a rocket launch from Kennedy once. Not the moon shot, but one of the low orbiters – a satellite. We were a few miles out that time too. That had been similar, although the
smoke and steam they left behind seemed little more than a pencil line from my distant vantage point. But these... these were as wide my thumb. I realised that whatever was going up had to be huge. And there were now so many.

  We saw it before we heard it. One of the silver plumes stopped dead and then began to fall back to the ground in a spray of smoke and debris. The sound of a crack rolled out to us, as though a rolling pin had been smashed against a worktop. The impact threw up an ominous pillar of flame, and an all too familiar mushroom cloud began to form.

  “What just happened? Who are they?” I whispered to Celus. We all knew instinctively that people had had just perished. A lot of people.

  Tears rolled down Celus’ face. When it came, his voice was strained. “The ruined castle... back home. The story... it tells of a race before Man, who were expelled so that Man could be brought to this land. The Sky Lords. No-one... no-one really knows who they were or what they were or even if they were real. Some thought they were as the Greeks or Romans appeared to their primitive tribal neighbours – this advanced civilisation. Others have thought it was a race before ours. The Sky Lords... not all of them escaped. Not all of their Cloud Ships sailed well...” his voice trailed off.

  If it was an exodus, there would have been women and children on each and every one of those arks – like the story from the bible. Whole families. Maybe even several generations.

  I felt a strange pang of grief for the passing of people I had never known.

  By now the only remnant of the sun was a glow beneath the horizon. Celus eventually looked to his friend, his face strained. “We should go.”

  “I still need to get into those towers.”

  “Another time. It’s been enough for one day. We know how to get through together now.”

  “We’re nearly there,” George protested. “I can just take some rubbings.” He produced a few sheaves of plain paper from his rucksack.

  Someone gasped. And then a shriek. Our heads collectively snapped around to locate the source.

  “What is it?” Celus asked, craning his neck to see.

  “There’s someone here!” A voice called back. “I saw them. Moving between the buildings.”

  I shivered as fear flashed through my veins. Randall stepped protectively in front of me.

  Celus looked to his friend. “We need to go right now!”

  For a second the air seemed to thrum, as though with the distant sound of helicopter blades. Someone screamed, and the crowd scattered.

  Raul lay on the ground. A stave stuck out of his chest at a sickening angle. His eyes wide open in death.

  “Don’t run! For...” Celus bellowed.

  It was too late.

  People were scattering, streaming everywhere, desperately searching for some cover. The air thrummed again, and this time, in the half-light, I saw the shape of something flying through the air. It glanced off a huddled woman, taking a chunk of flesh from her arm… nearly severing it. Her scream rang out high against the noise of the congregation. People were suddenly by her side, trying to get her to stand, to take her to safety.

  “Stay down! Stay...”

  The air was filled with that noise again, and we all instinctively ducked. Three more staves flew through the air, embedding themselves deeply into the cluster of people trying to help the first woman. They fell with little more than a wheeze.

  More people started screaming.

  “This is going to be a massacre!” Dad hissed. “Celus! Get us out of here!”

  “I... we’re not close enough together.” Celus had a look of panic descending on him, like being caught in a net.

  And then we saw them. Dark silhouettes moving between the buildings. Lean. Agile. They were all carrying the staves we had seen being thrown through the air. A few at first. And then more. Hundreds of them. Circling us like wolves. More staves came flying. More people fell. Beneath the shrieks and cries, I could hear sobbing.

  And then something else. Like a chanting.

  George looked to Celus. “We’ve got to run for it!”

  “We won’t all make it!”

  “Then we all die!”

  “What is it?” Dad asked.

  In the gloom, I could see the two men look at each other.

  “They’re calling Her,” Celus said.

  I could see more and more dark silhouettes pouring down the hillside and into the city. The chanting around us began to swell, becoming rapturous.

  “Celus!” George barked. “We’re out of time!”

  “I can’t leave them here!”

  “Take back whoever you can!”

  Celus was defiant. “NO! We all go!”

  The clouds above our heads began to swirl, thickening like the coils of a mighty serpent. The wind picked up, ramming the sea against the city walls and sending a fine spray over all of us.

  Dad’s voice was pleading. “Celus!”

  “I said no!”

  George grabbed his friend’s arm. “We’re sitting ducks out here!”

  The chanting was reaching a fever pitch, and still more of the shadowy assassins were pouring down the hill, like a swarm of black death. Celus looked around. It had grown darker, the cloud obscuring the starlight.

  “Through that door.” Celus pointed to a tower. Its entrance faced into the square, and although we knew that we were surrounded, our would-be killers had not actually breached the line of the city-block.

  The tower seemed to be one of the bigger ones, and Celus was clearly hoping that there would be room for all of us in there. The entrance was maybe two hundred yards from where we were.

  The air thrummed again.

  “DOWN!” Randall roared.

  Almost as one, we dived into the dirt, as a volley of staves passed overhead. Somewhere we heard more screaming that ended in a gurgling choke and was then silenced forever.

  “We’re going to have to run for it,” Celus said.

  “Across... the... square?” Dad was labouring. His face was purpling as if he was having difficulty breathing.

  Celus looked up. The gathering clouds were boiling. “Yup,” he said.

  Word was quickly passed around, and we got ready to sprint.

  “THREE!” Celus set off, and the rest of us surged forward into the middle of the square.

  Time seemed to slow. I saw Randall next to me. Other friends were on either side of us. And then, high above... I don’t know if I heard it, or I felt it, but the cloud base darkened and began to descend. I felt a sound... like a bass note... pass through me. Some of us stopped, looking skyward. Others kept going.

  And then It snapped open, and I was again looking into the Eye of Providence. Except this was not the Eye of my God. It covered the sky and was filled with rage and bitterness and pure malice. I don’t know if it was in my head or not, but I heard such a howl of such hatred and vengeance that it filled my whole being, and I sank to the ground. Others followed me down or were already there.

  It came again, this time echoing and reverberating, and from the ground, I rolled onto my back, as another wave of loathing and disgust swept over me. What I thought were clouds began to unfurl into vast tentacles, miles across. Things began falling. I could see them. Plummeting from clouds and the Eye and the tentacles.

  I saw one smash onto the roof of a building and then slide down the back, out of sight. Another came down. And another. Raining all over the city. One crashed into the ground not far from me and began thrashing on the ground. I turned back onto my stomach and tried to crawl.

  The scream of hatred came again and this time, I felt the citadel physically shake. I got up onto all fours and managed to raise my head, looking to the side as another thing landed, this time right on top of a small huddle of Temple members. It thrashed, and I realised it was some sort of giant worm or maggot. It was at least six foot high and longer than I could guess. I saw what I thought was a mouth, filled with razor-like teeth, against the fat folds of the gray fetid flesh.

  The thra
shing continued and I could see its open maw buried into the small of a huddle of people as they pressed up against the building walls trying to escape the blur of teeth. Gore spurted up the wall, like a spray of paint. From the edge of my vision, I saw the silhouettes that had surrounded the square advancing. The staves were clenched by their sides and they seemed unaffected by the screaming from the sky.

  I felt two hands underneath my armpits and suddenly I was scooped up. “C’mon Izzy!” It was Randall. I had lost him when that thing... when The Eye had opened.

  He almost carried me under his arm and made for an open doorway. All around me I could hear chanting and screaming above the ever increasing wind. There was no door, just a twisting staircase that went up and down. Randall didn’t even break his stride and started his descent.

  “It’s ok,” I panted. “Randall... you can put me down.”

  He gently brought my feet to the floor but did not let me go. “Are you alright?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “I... don’t think so.” I realised that despite the dark of the building I could see in the gloom. The walls seemed to give off a low iridescence, and I could just make out Randall’s features.

  “Come on.” Randall took my hand and led me down the winding staircase.

  “Where are we going?”

  Randall said nothing.

  “Hun?”

  “We’re just going... we’ll find somewhere to hole up. And then... we’ll figure something out.”

  Figure something out. Part of me wanted to laugh or scream or pass out, but my feet kept walking.

  Figure something out. We had been worshipping... something, and now we were trapped in an alien city, even as our comrades were being butchered by an army of men with their staves and their pet worm monsters, whilst The Eye of Hate raged down at us. And we had no way of getting home.

  Figure something out.

  The stairs ended and we found ourselves in a small room, probably no more than three or four meters square. From the look of it, I guessed it was a basement store, and there were what looked like old wooden crates against one wall.