by Brian Hodge
Cityscape — the charred body of the Disciple over by Avenue X, the slumped, unconscious figure of Lydon in Ghetto 3 — and the realization currently stabbing through Eva’s midbrain like an icicle: This is not merely a scale model of a city, or even a diabolical magical effigy, it is more than that, much more than that —
She holstered the elemental and reached into her duster pocket with a trembling hand, fishing around for her digi-cam. She had brought along the tiny instrument — about the size of a deck of cards, normally used for gathering evidence — just in case she needed to record some aspect of Anger’s world. Now she was shakily bringing it to her eye and aiming it down at the model. She snapped a shot of the southeast sector, the dry-light flashing in the darkness. Then the northeast, the light strobing, leaving ghost-streaks on Eva’s retinas. Finally, she was looking through the lens at the far corner of the floor, the distant bay area organized on the black and white grid of tiles — the locale of this very building — when she realized exactly what she was photographing.
A game board.
An enormous black talisman of a game board: that’s what Anger had constructed here, and that’s what he was using to summon the unspeakable from the dark. The entire city was transformed into a game, and the Disciple, and Lydon — and probably Eva herself — were all game pieces, with different values, different ranks, different functions. Eva lowered the camera from her eye and glanced at the Avenue X area. The Disciple had been vanquished by — what? — a knight? She glanced over at the Ghetto 3 sector. Lydon had been taken by… what? Whom? What was Eva’s function? Was she part of the game? Eva stepped over rows of housing blocks and buildings, and stood near the old pier. She put the camera to her eye and snapped another shot, the dry-light blooming in the darkness. Again she looked through the lens, and she saw a little scale model of Anger’s building, complete with perfectly rendered bloodstains. The roof was cutaway, and Eva could see through the lens, down into Anger’s building, into the very foyer she was standing in —
— and her breath froze suddenly in her lungs, and her skin turned to ice as she saw another miniature of herself. Standing in the miniature foyer. Standing in the tiny scale model of the city. Which was a scale model of a scale model. Eva’s tiny likeness was hunched down there, taking pictures with a teeny-tiny digi-cam.
Eva swallowed needles. Upon closer scrutiny she could see the miniature figurine of herself looking down at an even tinier version of herself. Who was looking down at an even tinier version. Who was looking down at —
— Nnnnneeeeebirrrossss!
A sudden, tremendous whisper exhaled through the air above her, stiffening her spine, making her scalp crawl. She ducked reflexively down in the dark, nearly dropping her camera, her flesh rashing with goose bumps. What in Heaven or Hell could have made a whisper that loud? It sounded like an unearthly turbine filling the dark studio, the sigh of a monolith gusting through the darkness.
Sargannnnnatannnaaassssss!!
The second gasp of noise drove Eva to the floor, the camera spinning off into the wreckage of the malevolent miniature city. She crawled through shattered bits of obsidian and shards of hangman’s wood, scanning the shadows around her, searching for the source of the infernal whispering. Her traumatized brain was sparking connections, identifying the tsunami of sound whirling through the dark space overhead.
Fleurrrrrrrrrrreteeeeeeee!
Eva froze stiffly against a pile of broken pumice stone, her chest seizing up with cold panic. She recognized the words now, the magical significance of the names. Nebiros, Sarganatanas, Fleurety — the hierarchy of demons. The unspeakable names which formed the BlackStuffer’s nuclear arsenal. Forbidden utterances meant only for apocalyptic rites. Summonings of unimaginable evil.
Such as the Rip.
Agaaaaaallllllliarrrrrept!!
Eva sprang to her feet, suddenly drawing her elemental like a gunslinger.
Then several things were happening at once.
Eva swung the muzzle up at the ceiling just as the entire upper portion of the building seemed to metamorphose into a shimmering blanket of shadows, unfurling like smoke, revealing incredible heights of darkness that seemed to reach up into the vacuum of space. And it happened so suddenly that Eva acted on instinct and squeezed off a shot, and there was an audible POP! as the crimson flame bloomed out of the elemental’s muzzle and shot up into the terrible nothingness —
— Ssssssaaatannnnaaaacheeeeeeaaaa!!! —
— and then Eva was spinning toward the east wall in one lurching movement, fleeing through miniature allies, around tiny street corners, reaching inside her flapping duster, pulling the blessed Sword from its scabbard. The eighteen-inch metal stun-blade was buzzing softly with white energy as Eva stumbled over delicate, little buildings, locking her gaze onto the brick wall five meters ahead of her. Something enormous was moving above her.
Eva’s whisper was a faint prayer, almost inaudible, a secret invocation: “I love you, Grandma Miersol, I love you, Mom —”
She drove the tip of the Sword through the leprous bricks as though shoving a spike through butter.
There was a sub-sonic WHHHUMMMP! — the wall puckering suddenly around the Sword — and Eva felt a capsule of cold air engulfing her arm as the bricks melted away like a strip of celluloid film burning in the center. On the other side was darkness. Eva plunged into the shadows, then ran for all she was worth, her frantic steps crunching through something brittle beneath her.
Her stride faltered suddenly, and she slowed down, her lungs heaving. Eyes adjusting to the darkness, she began to see the telltale outlines of tiny objects strewn across the floor beneath her, some of them glistening like broken glass, some of them rising up several feet like tiny stalagmites. Her heart clenched suddenly as though an icy dagger had pierced her chest with a terrible realization.
LLLLLOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSIIIIFERRRRR!!
The last gigantic whisper crashed above her, stealing her breath away, and she stopped. She tried to catch her breath. Glancing around the shadowy interior, she realized she was still in Kenneth Anger’s studio, still walking amid the miniature city! She was trapped, and now she knew it didn’t matter how hard she fought, she would never leave this room. She would never leave it. Because she was the object of the game. She was the final piece. She recognized the sixth and final name: Lucifer.
She glanced up, mouth gaping open, the Sword slipping from her grasp.
If it is possible to see the opposite of light, then that is what Eva Strange saw illuminating the vast Escher-like world rising above her in the infinite darkness. The ceiling was gone, and in its place were elaborate buildings vaulting up into the black heavens, their blank windows shimmering in the anti-light, their spires vanishing into empty space. The same buildings as those of the miniature! And situated throughout the impossible sky line, perched on balconies like recalcitrant owls, their black cowls obscuring their faces as they gazed down upon Eva, were six gargantuan figures. The six old men. The puppeteers. The wizards of this broken world: Nebiros, Sarganatanas, Fleurety, Agaliarept, Satanachia, and Lucifer. They were there at Eva’s birth, and they were there at her induction into the white patrol, and they were here, at the unraveling of her destiny.
A massive weight pressed down on Eva as she reached down to her Cup and grasped the last round of ammunition. Sadness, rage, helplessness, regret and bitterness all swirled at once through her brain as she gaped up at the impossible black riddle of a world above her. She was staring at a vast version of Anger’s miniature city rising above her, and above it, an even larger version, and above it, an even larger one, and on and on, into forever. This was the manifestation of the end that Eva had dreaded all her life, the unraveling of Logic, the Rip in the delicate balance of reality. This was her inexorable Fate. This was what destiny held for the last virgin witch, the last of her bloodline.
She slammed the last round into the elemental— Click-chucka-clang! — then gazed up in terrible wonder at the pale f
igure towering above her. It was a middle-aged woman in a satiny dark duster and a flowing mane of iron grey hair, standing alone, gazing up at the black cathedrals. It was Eva’s ‘Sylpha’— her doppelganger — gazing up at an even greater version of herself, who was gazing up at an even greater version, and on and on as far as Eva’s tearful, traumatized gaze could reach.
One shot left.
The Old Ones were chanting now, incantations that Eva did not recognize. She couldn’t move. She realized they were going to absorb her. She was the sacrificial virgin, the spring lamb on the slaughtering block, and she felt the anguish weighing down on her. And the pressure was tremendous, an elephant standing on her heart. She realized her life had been a foregone conclusion, and all her struggles were mere prelude to this awful conclusion. She was holding her elemental with both hands now, and somehow she managed to aim it up at the Old Ones. She had one last shot and she wanted to make it count.
No second chances.
The chanting rose to excruciating levels, and Eva felt a cold, hideous finger entering her.
She began to weep, the ripples of sound and movement echoing throughout the giant versions of herself above her. The elemental was shaking in Eva’s trembling hands. She knew what she had to do. Her true destiny was borne out of generations of suffering, generations of white witches protecting life, protecting love and nature and humanity.
One shot!
“GOD HELP ME!”
Her scream was razor of pure white energy slicing through the endless worlds, and somehow, through all her convulsive terror, she managed one last burst of stubborn, righteous goodness, and with her right thumb she made an instantaneous adjustment to the elemental’s firing pin, closing off three out of the four natural elements — earth, air, and water — leaving only fire, the harbinger of destruction for her loved ones, fire, the cleansing flames that had brought a cruel end to her ancestors, Nettie and Mary and Helen and Miersol and Sarah — FIRE ALONE! — the missing puzzle piece to Eva Strange’s fate.
Then she turned the barrel toward herself and squeezed the trigger.
The scarlet flame swallowed her alive —
— and the ground began to rumble almost in reply to this amazing gesture.
“NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!” the piercing shrieks exploded in unison out of the Old Ones.
The vibrations erupted all around the studio, as though a huge engine had started, and the foundation began to buckle down the middle, the timbers and beams suddenly groaning, warping, cracking like kindling as Eva writhed in a cocoon of flame. Fractured memories of yellowed diaries shimmered in her traumatized brain, blurred notes on parchment, messages from her ancestors: The fire bites, the fire bites; the Father with thee, the Son with thee, the Holy Ghost between us both to be!
A chorus of feeble screams rose out of the skyline above Eva like a dissonant symphony. Flames jumped and rose and vanished. Lightning bolts licked up the sides of the walls, and the ground opened up, sending noxious fumes through the air. But Eva was oblivious to the destruction.
She collapsed like a blazing rag doll coming apart at the seams, folding into itself.
The pain devoured her, leaving only a faint awareness of the chaos around her, and the shards of old memories swirling through her mind, her cracked, seared lips mouthing an old incantation sent through the ages from grandmother to granddaughter: Old clod beneath the clay; Burn away, burn away; in the name of God be thou healed; Burn away now, burn away evermore.
Miles above her, the impossible world crumbled and gave way, sending the six Old Ones flailing into the gathering clouds of smoke and dust below. The enormous walls collapsed. And the building became a maelstrom of fire, smoke, blood, and death — all sinking into itself like a fallen house of cards.
And amid the smothering debris, the cleansing fire, and the blessed smoke — amid the place to which clean-up crews would come in subsequent days and completely miss the significance of what had happened here — Eva Strange breathed her last breaths, eyes open, hand still clutched around the elemental, her last conscious thoughts flickering like dying candle-light in her brain:
Hark the life of woman, a virgin travailing and not bearing, quickly coming to the marrow of His house, Amen, Amen, and made fast and sure her salvation in Heaven!
THE TRUE CAUSE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
For many years, long after the events of that fateful time had been relegated to legend, revisionist histories of how the stranger had first appeared — most of them apocryphal — would regularly surface in the pages of popular periodicals of the day. Beloved monthlies such as Saturday Evening Post and Ladies Companion, with their jovial J.C Leyendecker covers of cherubic children at play, and their advertisements for Ovaltine beverage mix and Imperial Leather soap, would carry small items relating eye witness reports of how the mysterious old man had first insinuated himself into the beleaguered American psyche. Some said they first glimpsed the stranger emerging from the dust on the edge on a squalid Okie encampment outside of Tulsa. Others swore they first saw him disembarking from a tramp steamer on the shores of Nova Scotia. But none of these tall tales could withstand the rigors of substantiation. According to official archives from President Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration Folklore Project, only two confirmed eyewitness accounts have survived. These matching accounts place the first official sighting of the old man on the edge of a hobo jungle just west of Prineville, Oregon, on the morning of March 23rd, 1930.
The weather was harsh that morning, even for early spring in the Pacific Northwest. A low-pressure cell had roared down across the Cascades from Vancouver, dumping about six inches of powder on the Crooked River Valley. The hobos along the old Southern Pacific line were dug in deep under the Douglas firs, huddled in meager lean-to’s of oily particle-boards and discarded boxcar tarps, their fires dwindling throughout the night. The first pale rays of dawn brought another day of misery.
“You hear that?” The first eyewitness spoke in a shivering wheeze. A gangly middle-aged man in rags and fingerless gloves, he went by the name of Greenie. He hadn’t slept well the previous night, and now he was trying to draw sustenance from a tin cup of cheap corn whiskey and weak coffee. The air smelled of wood-smoke and brimstone.
His companion peered out from under a ratty, torn blanket, blinking rheumy eyes at the light. “What’s that ya say?”
“Ssssh! Listen.”
The man under the blanket, a rotund specimen in brakeman’s overalls, held his breath and listened.
The sound seemed to be coming from a pile of ragged blankets covered with snow about fifteen feet away. It sounded like a mewling animal, like a gut-shot dog in its death throes – a faint, high keening moan.
“Grab the spike setter,” Greenie whispered, putting down his cup. He painfully rose on creaking knees, brushing the snow off his shoulders, flexing his frigid, greasy hands.
The fat one scrambled for the rusty hammer that lay on the ground next to the bedroll. Primitive weapons were a standard accoutrement for the stumblebum in those days. Ever since the crash of ’29, people were meaner. The dogs were hungrier, bolder, wilder. There were fewer clothes lines out, fewer bread lines from which to scavenge. The big guy – the one nick-named Cinder Box Sam – got his frozen mitts around the spike hammer and raised it.
Fifteen feet away, the moaning abruptly ceased. “Git outta there!” yelled the fat one, taking a step toward the mound of snow-dusted blankets with the hammer at the ready.
All at once the pile of blankets erupted.
“Watch it!” Greenie called out, shielding his greasy face from the commotion.
In a cloud of white dust an ancient figure burst out of the blankets, flailing his big arms at the daylight like a giant baby being born. He was gnarled and scarred and looked like an emaciated derelict Viking in a stolen parka. He wore trousers fashioned out of stained buckskins.
“Who the hell — ?!” Greenie and the fat man both jerked backward with a start, nearly slipping on
the frozen rocky earth.
“Ah God! Ah Jesus —!” The stranger fell to his knees, slobbering on himself. Ice crystals in his beard mingled with snot. He was as skinny as a corpse.
“Easy now, easy.” Cinder Box Sam held the hammer menacingly.
“I’m sorry – please! – ah Christ I didn’t mean it – I didn’t mean to do it!” The stranger was on his hands and knees, sobbing.
“Calm down, brother.”
The stranger heaved in a breath, and he looked up as though seeing the hobos for the first time. His skin was frost-bitten and clothes and boots were worn and bedraggled from traveling a great distance. “I ain’t got no – I didn’t mean to do it!”
The two hobos looked at each other. Finally Greenie took another step toward the stranger and spoke in a very low, very measured voice, as though trying to corral a rabid Doberman. “Do what?”
The old man on the ground looked up at the hobo. “You ain’t gonna kill me?”
Greenie sucked his cheek and shivered. “That depends on what ya done.”
The bony Viking wiped his icy, mucusy beard. “I didn’t mean to do nothin’.”
“Who the tarnation are you?” Cinder Box demanded. “What’s your name.”
The old man sobbed. “See… that’s just it. I don’t know. I don’t know who I am.”
Again the hobos shared a suspicious glance. Greenie watched the old coot blubber. “The hell d’ya mean? You don’t know yer own name?”
The old man cried and shook his head. “Something terrible happened – ah Jesus – I can’t even tell ya – all I got is the nightmares – over and over I see the damn thing – I think I done something awful!”
“Take it easy, brother.” Cinder Box Sam lowered the hammer. He could tell this old rum pot was fairly harmless. Probably nutty as a soup sandwich. But definitely not dangerous.
