The Footsteps of Cain

by Derek Kohlhagen

  And so, understandably, he’d slowly lost his mind.

  But, he’d been given a great gift as well. He’d come to regard sanity for the elastic thing that it was; a contrivance of those with a system of survival taken for granted. It was a liquid concept that churned and swirled and could take a different, convenient form of whatever bottle of civilization it was nurtured in. He had seen the world outside, and knew that there was far more of it that found sanity useless than actually useful. He was a product of that world, displaced into the Spire—a place of order—and so he had adapted himself as he had many times before. If he needed to hold his mind together to receive the nectar of civilization, he could do that.

  The buzzing in his head was growing, now. His eyes rolled back in his head and now he did hear himself let out a portentous giggle. If he didn’t get a hold he might lose himself, and he couldn’t do that, couldn’t risk drawing that kind of attention.

  He needed the case.

  He stood and swiftly shuffled over to a pile of rags in the corner. Dropping to his haunches, he rifled through them until he felt something solid. He withdrew it and felt a pang of excitement as the cylindrical case came into view, the dim light dancing on the withered binding. He fawned over it and ran his fingers over it, delighted in the cracked leather and the smell of years on it. He pulled back from the chasm in his mind and the world again came into focus, anchored by the weight of the precious thing he cradled.

  He kept it wrapped up most of the time to keep the acidic tendrils of time away from it. He opened it rarely, only on special occasions when he needed guidance, or felt he could indulge in rewarding himself a glimpse of the words within. Tristan didn’t need to actually read it much anymore. By now most of it had found its way into his memory. He could see the pages in his head while he was awake, and could read them in his sleep.

  It had been his teacher, the first and only words he ever cared to read. He had learned to pattern his speech after its style, especially during his sermons when an effective delivery of The Message was at stake.

  Inside the case were thick rolls of parchment, and on those pages were many thousands of words. His father had written them, his father who his mother had called Prophet, his father who had been touched by the Greater Power and chosen to channel its Message into something that feeble human minds could grasp. His father, who had driven them so hard, always searching for something that was never to be found.

  He had never known his father’s true name. Certainly as a small boy he had learned never to ask the question. But he could remember the nights, usually after forcing whatever rotten nourishment he could into his belly, watching the Prophet scribble the words on the paper, watching the pen he so coveted spill its lifeblood onto the pages. He remembered how his father’s lips would move as he wrote, sometimes silently, and other times babbling a kind of gibberish that frightened Tristan, the boy. He remembered the wild zeal in his father’s eyes, something that intermingled with the reflection of the camp fire. The fire danced with the Message while the pen furiously scratched across the paper.

  The Message, along with his keen sense of survival, was one of the few things his parents left to him. His father was the writer, his mother, the reader. She would speak its words to him nightly, until his eyes had taken on the same fervent shine as theirs and it had filled all the holes in him with the awe of it...the promises it made. And in the end, when he’d knelt by the silent body of his mother, crying his orphan’s tears, he’d held onto the leather case and felt the upheaval of the earth lessen somewhat. If not for it, he might have laid down beside her and fed himself to the Wastes’ insatiable appetite for life.

  Everything else was in flux...usually transitioning from order to chaos...but The Message was solid. It was the bedrock that he could drive a pole into. Everything he did, he did through its filter. He laid his complete trust in it, for it had been given to his father through divine transference and personal witness.

  It told of the Reclamation, and the manner in which it would take the world. It made sense of the madness, explained it so that fear could be transplanted with understanding. It was his father’s personal testimony, for he had beheld the Reclaimer itself...had seen it do its terrible and miraculous work.

  Only once had the Prophet spoken the story aloud. And even as he did, it was only through what appeared to be a colossal effort, his brow glistening like he was pushing a mountain with his words. As he relived the events of his past, he occasionally would shake his head and weakly wave his hands through the air, like he was trying to ward off some evil spirit. He never looked at them—Tristan or his mother—as he recounted it; indeed, it wasn’t completely apparent that he was even speaking to them at all. One moment he was sitting there, staring into the fire and then, without preamble or introduction, the words were pouring out of him.

  The Prophet’s story completely captured and held Tristan, and the more he spoke, the more the world around him seemed to melt away. And thus, Tristan, the boy, heard his testimony:

  “Long ago, before I met her who would bear my child, but after my trial by fire in the Wastes, I was encamped in one of the many dead forests, in a place whose location has long since been lost to my memory. It was mid-day and the sun was high, pouring down heat without mercy.

  “And then, I heard a sound. The sound of wings, many thousands of wings that beat together in a rising roar. They extinguished the sun with their darkness, and I cowered under them and felt naked and unprotected. I scrambled as far into the great roots of the dead tree as I could as the instinct to flee took me, and I peered about me in despair. I thought death was coming for me, finally. I had dodged it too many times, and now it would come and claim the debt I owed it.

  “Then, I saw it. My eyes told me it was a man, but all other senses disagreed. The sounds of the world seemed to mute in its passing, and the longer I looked at it the more I was sure I heard a persistent whine, like an unearthly scream bellowing up from the deep. It rose in volume until it filled my head up, and I clutched at my ears and felt madness creep in with it.

  “The ‘man’ walked along on powerful legs, its thick back bent over as if under a great weight. Its pace was slow and plodding, like it wasn’t walking through air so much as wading through water, fighting against a current that was always against it. Its eyes were as black as the sky, and they peered out through the strands of greasy hair that fell over its face.

  “But the worst part, the very worst thing that truly terrified me, was the gaping hole in the thing’s chest, right down at the base of its rib cage. A ghostly light flickered there, bone-white and dreadful...like moonlight shining through mist, over the grave.

  “I felt waves of terror from the thing the likes of which I had never before encountered. It made me want to tuck myself up into a ball and lie there forever...give myself to the earth.

  “The whine in my head lured me into a trance-like state, and then I was hearing voices in it, whisperings of the endings of things and ancient death...making convincing persuasions to me to open my own veins and become one with them. In the center of the insanity, I might have succumbed to this influence had I not been so paralyzed with fright.

  “The creature seemed to take no notice of me. It strode into view and moved on with purpose, and the hellish storm of wings that filled the sky moved with it. I stayed there in the roots, shivering in its wake, until it had passed and I felt myself, again.

  “Lying there, I found that my horror had steadily been replaced with a sense of wonder. Awe. I climbed out from under the tree, gathered up my meager supplies, and crept out into the open. The sky was still dark on the horizon, the enormous ebony cloud hovering there, marking the route of the-man-who-was-not-a-man.

  “Against my better judgment, against all instincts of self-preservation, I followed it through the dead forest, darting in between the lengthening shadows of the trunks. I felt compelled to see it again, to try and understand the thing that had filled me with such dr
ead and fascination.

  “Then, at long last, I found it. The screams made it difficult to miss.

  “I remember crawling up to the crest of a large, rocky hill, and settling myself behind one of the crags. I gathered my courage and looked out.

  “The slope before me fell into a great valley, and at the bottom of the valley there stood a city! Larger than I had ever seen! What was more, this place was not a crumbling ruin, not marked with long-past downfall like every other I’d stumbled upon in my travels. This place bore the signs of life! Organization! Structures of wood with great, angled rooftops littered the uneven ground, and they were separated by a network of dirt avenues. A stream flowed through the center of it at the valley’s lowest point, no doubt the lifeblood of the huge settlement. To find free-flowing water...I couldn’t believe my eyes!

  “Yet, even majestic as the place was, it quickly became apparent to me that it was also damned. The city was ablaze. Flames licked the rooftops and danced in windows. Some of the structures were already collapsing. I rummaged through my sack, and brought out an old telescope I had found one day, while scavenging a broken down farmhouse I’d happened upon. I put the glass to my eye and scanned the devastation below in greater detail.

  “There were people...everywhere. Some of them were fighting the fires with whatever water they could find. Others were...behaving strangely:

  “I remember seeing one man on his knees, in the middle of one of the streets. He looked like he was weeping and, to my amazement, eating the dirt, grabbing large clumps of it in his hands and cramming them into his mouth.

  “I saw a woman, in the window of one of the burning buildings, sitting in a chair and calmly weaving something...some sort of garment...out of thread, while the room around her burned down. The fires had just started to lick at her dress, but she paid it no notice. She just smiled contentedly and continued her work.

  “Another, a thin man...older than the rest...he was ramming his head against a wall of one of the houses. He would back up, and then burst into a sprint the likes of which I wouldn’t expect from one of his age, and then lower his body at the waist, slamming into the house head-first. He must have been at it a while; he was leaving a stain on the wall.

  “There were many others, doing all sorts of bizarre things. It was like they had no idea their lives were being reduced to cinders.

  “Finally I saw it, standing calmly before the burning buildings on the edge of the settlement. Its head was back and its eyes were closed, and its face wore an expression of boundless exhaustion. It appeared to sway on its feet, and it stumbled occasionally to maintain its footing. The man-thing. The creature.

  “As I watched, it opened its eyes, and the blackness that lay within them was suddenly alive. It sprouted upward, away from it, in a network of spidery, silky strands, up and up, until it touched the roaring, screeching darkness of the sky. Where it touched the black cloud above, dark specks descended. I adjusted the focus on my telescope, and then I could see that they were black birds, ravens or crows perhaps. They rained down upon the city in a legion, landing among the people as a great swarm of shadow.

  “And then, after the last one had come down to the earth, I saw something that I will never forget, for it is something that I am reminded of in my nightmares. The birds...they began to change. They grew and twisted in on themselves. Wings became arms, claws became feet, and feathers merged and lightened until only skin remained. The beaks retracted into noses and mouths. In their place, stood men...copies...of the original creature. The same dark eyes, the same muscular form, but curiously devoid of the white hole in their chests. And, although their faces might have been identical to the original, the expressions on them were different. Angry...murderous. Violent.

  “They began to rip into the people, old and young, man and woman alike. The copies...the impostors...tore them apart with their bare hands. They were unbelievably fast, unthinkably strong. There was no outrunning them, no escape. The people were nothing to them...utterly helpless under their assault. Blood flowed in the streets and ran down the walls. It reflected the fire until it seemed like all surfaces were bathed with it.

  “It went on like that until all their lives were stamped out. Every one. Their cries slowly tapered off, until I could no longer hear them. And then, at long last, the copies of the creature began to emerge from the burning city, trickling out in twos and threes and covered with the blood they’d spilled, until they had surrounded the original in a thick circle, many deep.

  “The creature’s head was bowed, now; truly, it didn’t seem to acknowledge them at all. They smiled and leered at him...they clicked their jaws inhumanly, shifted from one foot to another in anticipation of...what?

  “The original...the first...opened its eyes, then. It gave an almost imperceptible nod of its head.

  “The hoard descended upon him. Pummeling. Biting. Wrenching. All at once he was lost to my vision as they piled on him. I’d seen how only one of the copies could mean the destruction of many men; how could the creature withstand all of them at once?

  “Then, I saw a flash of white! There was an impact, down in the chaos of thrashing bodies, and my ears were abused by the compression wave that struck me. A group of the malevolent copies were thrown skyward, their limbs sprawling for purchase, until they rained down on their brethren, knocking many off their feet. And then another flash blazed out, another concussive wave wracked the air, and another cluster of the murderous copies were thrown to the side like dolls. They bowled over others in their way until they came to rest in a great tangle of bodies. This continued until a clearing was reformed in the center of the mass, and there I could see the original, bleeding and torn, but now also gritting its teeth in determination, clenching its fists at its sides and radiating a measure of power that I could feel prickling my skin, even at that distance.

  “The original then plunged into the ranks of the snarling impersonators, visiting upon them a violence of the same sort they had brought upon the poor people of the city, but by many more levels of magnitude. I have lived my life in the Wastes, and have seen all manner of atrocities the likes of which I will never recover from, but I can say that the sheer savagery of the original’s assault will forever burn in my head as the most vicious, most disturbing thing I have ever seen. Where its blows landed, flesh disintegrated into paste and putty. It ripped through them as if they were made from parchment instead of muscle and sinew. Body parts littered the air, skidded across the ground...heads rolling, blood spraying. I had to take the glass away from my eye to retch, so repulsed was I by the scene that played out below me.

  “When I could resume my observation, I saw there were more copies that were pouring out of of the city. How many had the original creature created? A thousand? Ten? Why did it need to dispatch them so, when it had created them almost with the ease of an eye blink? Surely a being of such power would not have to resort to such basic savagery?

  “The slaughter went on for many hours. During that time, I sat and gathered my thoughts, to begin figuring an answer to the question. I concluded, in the end, that there could only be one of two possible truths. The first, that the creature chose to undertake its current endeavors. This caused a shiver in my spine, for if the thing’s tendency toward violence was anywhere close to its ability to carry it out, it seemed there could be no hope for any of us.

  “My second conjecture was that, if the thing was not choosing to undertake such brutality, then it was subject to the will of another. Indeed, it appeared to be suffering, and so might the ritual indicate some sort of torture it was enduring? But from whom? For what? What could possibly demand such bloody reparations?

  “Whatever the answer, I knew then that I was in the presence of the divine. I became overwhelmed with the assurance that this creature was an agent of spiritual cleansing, for as a child of the Wastes I know as well as any other that Suffering is the mother of Purification. Suffering sloughs off the outer layers of illusion, of affectation, a
nd leaves behind a spirit untainted by disease bred from false perception. It lays bare the world, so we can see things as they truly are. Witnessing this thing, I named it Reclaimer, for that is its form and function...to recapture and purify the souls of who remained of this world and leave behind something suitable for rapture...to recall the worthy and cast them forward into the What Comes After!

  “This revelation invigorated me, and suddenly I was springing from out behind the rocks, calling out to the creature below, this avenging angel born of man’s folly and infirmity! By now it had finished its work and laid itself down on the ground, seemingly spent after so many hours of unflinching exertion. I was practically sprinting, my feet lighter than they had been in a long time...maybe ever...so eager was I to submit myself for Reclamation!

  “And yet, it was not to be. My body struck a wall of invisible force, and I was thrown backward to the ground. I tried to rise, but an invisible hand held me down. I tried to scream, but something kinked my throat and seized my lungs so that I couldn’t even utter a whisper. As I lay there, helpless as a baby and struggling to breathe, I heard a voice enter my head. It sounded despicable...greasy. I’ll never forget what it said to me.

  “‘Nope,’, it said, almost absentmindedly. ‘It’s not your turn yet, puppet. Sit down and shut up. You’re needed for other things, and so’s your spawn.’

  “I felt something strange, like somebody was winking at me that I couldn’t see. And then it said its parting words:

  “‘You stay put, for now. Oh, by the way...Tristan’s a nice name.’

  “Then, I felt the presence dissipate. I was glad to be free of its careless antipathy, even as I quivered beneath the immovable force that still held me.

  “I do not know how long I was pinned there, but it felt like days. When at long last I was free to stand, I stumbled down to the city, looking in earnest for the Reclaimer...calling out its name. As I approached, I saw the piles of impostors’ bodies, strewn about in ghastly decoration. Sadly, they were the only ones I saw. The one I was looking for, the one I needed to lift me from this world...was gone. I found only an empty patch of dirt where the creature had lain, and footprints leading away.