by Sean Wallace
My brothers know, though. My hesitation to do her no harm has given them space to call her back. And I, bodiless, am powerless. I try to blaze brighter, but the voices of my brethren rise louder and louder, a dissonant clamor of commands and cries, and our Maker is frozen. Her body twitches, her neck twists, and with those delicate scissors in hand she starts to make her way toward her macabre collection—the collection she has been putting together for so long, for this purpose alone.
Maker:
Julian knows few thoughts of her own. Except a sense of gladness. A sense of purpose. The blue flame creature burns brightly, but it no longer speaks words she knows. It can no longer command her. The others, the Watchers, whom she has waited her whole life, command her steps now. Command her movements. She understands now, yes. She understands that collection around her has not been only to keep her company, it has been part of a grand plan—a plan to make her more. Greater. It’s what Brother Barrier has told her, time and again. She is part of a bigger, more divine plan. And the awakened specimens, her friends, have come at last.
The scissors. She understands.
This is the blade that binds, no longer the blade that sunders. Cleave and join, Daugher of Nephilim, and give your body new life.
The first cut is the hardest, even though there is little pain. Julian has spent so much time cutting and dissecting other things, that even in her dimming consciousness, it seems wrong. But she needs another arm to do this task, and the only way she will be able to add another appendage is to make room for it on her chest.
She picks the corded arm from the sewer worker she’d harvested two months before. Or, rather, it picks her. Its container falls to the tiles and shatters, then it climbs its way up her soiled petticoat and leather vest as she leans back to accept it.
That moment of connection is a black terror, but Julian has dreamed of this her whole life. She has only not remembered the dream. Now, as it’s happening, this moment of rebuilding and transformation, she recalls every detail. Of her dying. But not dying. Her ecstasy.
Again and again she plunges the scissors into her body, through cloth and skin and muscle, and again and again the specimens come to her, merging with her body. She is their mother and Maker, giving them blood and life again—saving them from death. Every step in her life has been leading to this moment—every spewed word of hate, every uttered curse below her breath. She has never believed in God, no. Julian has only relied on herself and her connection to a greater, wilder, madder design out there.
Julian plunges the scissor blades into her heart, and it is done.
And now she is all greatness and power, and mad beauty. Her body swells and grows to accommodate the appendages of her new friends, roiling and undulating, filling up the small space, pushing out that blue fire into the passageway beyond. There comes the sound of feet, but it is distant and unimportant to her now. For she is a creature of a thousand eyes and arms, a thousand voices, a thousand terrors.
And she is hunger. She is wanting. But she is no longer waiting.
Penemue:
It has gone wrong. So wrong. I should have known my brothers would never manage a peaceful entry—they are too full of fury. She has welcomed them, but she cannot see what I see. It is not that they are granting her power, but that they are fighting for it among themselves. Her humanity is swallowed up in moments as she grows beyond imagining, her form undulating like the long body of some many-armed creature of the deep, or monstrous arachnid.
My brothers fight among themselves for control of the body. Arms and teeth rend one another, and by virtue of blood and filth birth more—grow even more repulsive.
Penemue. My name still lingers on my mind and I taste something I have not in centuries: fear. I am afraid. Who am I? I have never been like my brothers. I have been outcast from heaven and hell, and now moments from my freedom, I am shoved out into the strange, dark corridor from where I was awoken, and my flame begins to diminish. Without a host, I know I will fade to nothingness. True nothingness. Perhaps that is better. I am sinless, now. I am reborn and perfect.
But I cannot. I know their hunger. Finding a host means a harsher judgment, but only I know how to stop the creature, the many-eyed beast growing fast along these strange hallways running with filth.
He stands there, clutching his heart, my blue flames flickering in his eyes. There are tears coursing down his cheeks, and his lip trembles. A priest, I can tell, even in this strange place. He wears black with a swath of white at his collar, and his bald pate reflects. He whispers ancient words familiar to me, an invocation of an angel. Of Gabriel. I remember him well. A friend in brighter times. That this man thinks I am Gabriel is a balm to me, a moment of strength in this weakened state.
“I must welcome you, messenger,” the priest says, bowing his head and going down to one knee. “I am your servant, all body and soul.”
I enter him in an instant. I do not think beyond that, for I can hear the walls around me shaking as the creature expands. It groans, as well, this leviathan of the deep.
I become the priest, and the priest becomes me. He is not gone, but he is no longer. I take from him his life, his memories, his intelligence, his faults. To the human eye this priest—this Brother Barrier—is like all others save for the gentle glowing of his eyes and fingernails. He tells me what I need to know of this world that has grown in my absence. I am in a sewer, where all the filth of humanity flows. Julian, the name of the Child of the Nephilim, has lived here for thirty years, since she was but a newly flowered girl, and has collected these specimens for her own pleasure, to quell the voices in her head. Brother Barrier found her fifteen years before, and helped her out of pity—but also out of understanding. He, too, has heard our voices. Not through his blood, as Julian has, but through his own preternatural abilities.
The body I have now is painfully human. The muscles are atrophied in places, the stomach soft. The heart trembles with some sort of ailment. I can heal what I am able, but there is little hope he will last beyond this task.
Creature:
The creature of a thousand corpses cries out in agony and joy, feeling the pulse of humanity above, and sensing the waters not far. The cleansing waters of the ocean. Food and drink. Revenge and lust. With nothing more than the stars to guide, the creature looks up with a thousand eyes through grates and slits in the ground, pulled toward the center of the city, along the great bend in the river.
Sliding up through the sewer, its shape changed a dozen times, rearranging its girth. Arms and legs, paws and muzzles, teeth and hooves, all slither against each other to slip through the narrow space. Up and up in an endless ladder of bodies and bones, snapping and mending over and over, dim eyes lighting up and down each unfathomable arm.
Toward the whitest, tallest building, pulled as if by magical impulse. The most holy place in the city—it must be taken down before the feeding can begin, this alone the fallen brothers agree upon. The creature of a thousand corpses knows the dark memories of their host, knows the way she had been turned away as an abomination. It feels the dead beneath the streets, smells the murder and chaos. All these beautiful and horrible gifts—they, not God, has given them to mankind. And now, it is a great reckoning.
When the creature’s full girth meets the air a great fog begins, as something in the smoky atmosphere reacts against the living dead. The many fallen brothers begin to argue, surprised by the sudden pain. The creature lunges forward north, spilling white smoke throughout the streets in huge, stinking pillars. As the brothers disagree, the mass of the beast smashes left and right, crushing buildings beneath it and smothering all living things in its wake. Brick and wood and steel crumble as if mere afterthoughts, and those caught below see nothing but the massive arms casting shadows. Hands and mouths reach for any usable weapon, and so the seething creature becomes sharper and more deadly.
Penemue:
I am slow in this body, and breathing—something I had dreamed of doing so long—is an a
bysmal pain to me. I know where the creature is, where my fallen brothers move, but I cannot catch up to them fast enough. I pause as I exit the sewer, feeling something digging against my hip. I had not noticed it before, and I have to listen to Brother Barrier tell me about it before I throw it away. It is a weapon, which he calls a “firearm.” It is intended to kill others, though I cannot imagine how. He explains it is full of ammunition. I still do not understand, so he shows me. Turning it over in the moonlight I feel the cold metal and understand better. There is a charge within, and with the proper aim, I could send a menacing bolt.
But not to the creature. Not to my brothers. Only one thing would undo them, and likely me. I pause to catch my breath and renew my focus. At my feet, fog swirls, smelling of sulphur and decay. I could see better than the other humans now running past me, away south. Some carry bodies, severed in unspeakable ways. Livestock knock over humans in their terror, trample them.
Trying to keep a distance, I make my way slowly north. I can see straight through the strange square buildings, and know immediately where the fallen brothers are going. Even though they continue to squabble, and through their squabbling grow and absorb all around them, they seek a holy place. A high, holy place. From there, they will fight. Or they will seek to storm heaven. Or they will seek more blood until they have summoned the Devil himself. Or all at once.
The skies crackle with lightning, and the fog rises. In the distance I can see the arms of the great beast limned against the dwindling starlight.
“She buried the blade in her breast,” I tell Brother Barrier. He is rather quiet, and does not seem to understand. “I must reach it—I must remove it.”
“Don’t angels fly?” he asks slowly.
“Sometimes,” I tell him. “I mostly burn.”
“Seraphim,” he says.
“Once,” I reply.
“You were close to Heaven.”
“I thought I could go back. But I see now, I cannot.”
I run, now. The air smells of blood and fire. Shrill noises—sirens, Brother Barrier tells me—whine in the distance. The salt air from the sea drives tears to my eyes, remembering a life for which I earned a thousand centuries of torture. Remembering a face. Remembering hands, perfect and strong feet. A perfect human, touched by none of this terror. What became of him? We bore no children—how could we?—but his love cost me so much. Those perfect ebony hands which I loved and taught the holy marks upon paper.
The cathedral rises before me, three steeples stretching to the skies, but darkening against their white sides as my fallen brothers rise. There is no time for me to marvel in this creation of humanity, for I hear voices in the air, now. My fallen brothers. Hear their wailing cry, their furious oaths of destruction and death. Destruction of humanity, destruction of each other. They loved once, as I did. But they birthed the Nephilim. I was merely caught up.
And now. I watch in horror as I hear the side of the cathedral snap. One long tendril reaches up and squeezes, working as leverage so the fallen brothers can climb higher, that the massive creature may get a better view of the city.
In the distance I sense that the waters rise from below, Julian’s steam pumps failing. Soon the city will be submerged. What does not die from the hand of my brethren will drown.
I can see the beast better now, as I come around to the square behind the cathedral. It arranges itself over and over again, the center glowing blue where the scissors lie, but never rids itself of the massive tentacles. Sometimes six. Sometimes thirteen. They lash and break and bend all around them.
I approach the cathedral at a dead run, ducking as debris falls down. There are still people inside. Many of them. No doubt they came here seeking refuge. I can smell their fear mingled with incense. The closer I get the more I see the muck and sludge the fallen brothers have dropped over the building. It hisses and oozes, stinging my face as it drips on my skin. I wipe it away, and with it comes some of my flesh. I cannot even imagine what it would do to a mortal.
Then, in a moment of sudden inspiration from Brother Barrier, I stop. I look to the heavens in between a swath of cloud. The stars blink at me. I wonder . . . the other angels. Would they hear me? Did they forget me? In this moment of need, would they heed my cry?
No. I am too afraid they will not answer. As the beast rages above me I move through from pillar to pillar around the cathedral, until I find a door unobstructed by bodies or debris. The sound from inside is somehow worse, though dampened. I do not have time to wonder at the strange symbols and drawings, so alien to me. The straining of the building rips my breath from my body, but I keep the pace while Brother Barrier sings strange hymns I do not know.
The center tower is still holding, and that is where I must go. I pass humans, many of whom recognize me as Brother Barrier until they see my eyes. Some scream, others fall into a sort of silent reverie, giving me knowing smiles. He tells me their names, and I say them aloud, and they are blessed by it.
Up and up I go, pushed ever onwards by the passing of time and the groaning of the building. On top of it all I hear the keening of the bell at the top of the tower, straining with the cries of the creature. The fighting, rending battle. It grows. More and more it grows as the fallen brothers continue their squabbling. And it will continue to swell with hatred and fury until not only this city is swallowed, but the entirety of humanity is black with its insatiable search for blood.
Just below the bells, I make my exit into the night air. My brothers feel me, but they do not yet understand where I am. Brother Barrier’s body is like a blanket across their eyes. From where I stand I can see down into the gaping maws of the beast, faces and mouths open in anguish, eyes spinning in invisible sockets. They sing a thousand curses at me, but I search for only one thing. That glittering metal, stuck fast in the heart of what was once a woman.
I have never been the brave one among my brothers. My hands have rarely wielded swords, and instead have written poems and ballads and songs of old. I hesitate again, up on the ledge, and it nearly does me in. A thick cord of sinew comes up and around my ankle, snapping it but not sundering it. The pain is strange and welcome, burning with my heartbeat and the searing in my face.
Now they know.
I am a Seraphim. I am a creature of flame. With one hand I steady the pistol, with the other I draw a word in the air with blue fire: thunder. I shoot the bullet through the word as it still lingers in air, and when it hits the creature, a sound erupts from its center and shakes it to its core. Another sinew shoots out, this time around my middle, but it is with less precision. I am able to shake it off, and I can see a new fire alight down the impossible monster’s gullet of a thousand mouths. Some of the pieces begin to fall, mostly those which were acquired during the creature’s journey from below the city. The weapons fall, too—long metal poles, broken iron doorways. They clatter and spark as they hit the rocky ground below.
“There are only two more bullets,” Brother Barrier whispers to me.
I do not hesitate with my second spell. I mark the word “silence” in the air and shoot through it again, and the whole beast shudders and stops its wailing. Now I can hear the screams from all around the city. People are dying everywhere. But if they are screaming, it also means some are living.
We are a many. We are a waiting. We are a hunger. We are a watching.
“No longer,” I shout down. “Release yourselves and return to the darkness! You will win nothing by your madness!”
We are a many. We are a waiting. We are a hunger. We are a watching.
I remembered that strange liturgy. I had escaped it. But I had held out hope. That was my greatest sin. I had held out hope for myself alone, and I had abandoned them. After a hundred thousand years of suffering together, I sinned before I had even begun again.
“I am so sorry,” I tell them, and Brother Barrier.
It is with that I draw the last word. I drop the gun and close my eyes. With a final, blessed breath, I dive through the wo
rd “brother” and plunge into the belly of the beast to withdraw the key to our salvation, and doom us all back to oblivion.
Titanic!
Lavie Tidhar
10 April 1912
When I come on board the ship I pay little heed to her splendor; nor to the gaily-strewn lines of colored electric lights, nor to the polished brass of the crew’s jacket uniforms, nor to the crowds at the dock in Southampton, waving handkerchiefs and pushing and shoving for a better look; nor to my fellow passengers. I keep my eyes open only for signs of pursuit; specifically, for signs of the Law.
The ship is named the Titanic. I purchased a second-class ticket in London the day before and traveled down to Southampton by train. I had packed hurriedly. I do not know how far behind me the officers are. I know only that they will come. He made sure of that, in his last excursion. The corpses he left were a mockery, body parts ripped, exposed rib cages and lungs stretched like Indian rubber; he had turned murder into a sculpture, a form of grotesque art. The Japanese would call such a thing as he a yōkai, a monster, otherworldly and weird. Or perhaps a kaiju. I admire the Japanese for their mastery of the science of monstrosity, of what in our Latin would be called the lusus naturae. I have corresponded with a Dr. Yamane, of Tokyo, for some time, but had of course destroyed all correspondence when I escaped from London.
And yet I cannot leave him behind. I had packed hurriedly. A simple change of clothes. I had not dressed like a gentleman. But I carry, along with my portmanteau, also my doctor’s black medical bag; it defines me more than I could ever define myself otherwise; it is as much a part of me as my toes, or my navel, or my eyes; and inside the bag I carry him, all that is left of him: one bottle, that is all, and the rest were all smashed up to shards back in London, back in the house where the bodies are.
I present my ticket to the steward. There is no suspicion in his eyes. He smiles courteously, professionally, already not seeing me as he turns to the ones behind me; and then I am on board. Perhaps infected by the other passengers’ gaiety, perhaps just relieved at my soon-to-be escape, I stand with them on the deck, against the railings, shouting and waving at the people we are soon to leave behind. My heart beats faster; my palms sweat; I am eager for us to depart, for our transatlantic journey to begin. I long for escape.
