The Hallowed

by Lani Lenore

  “You’re still wearing your locket,” he said for no reason at all. “That’s good.”

  Celia didn’t reply. If she was to be caged, so be it, but the least he could do was to leave her alone so that she could mourn.

  “I owe you an apology for having to trick you like we did,” he began, despite her wish. “It could have all been easier, but we had to make you as human as possible. With that burden, I realize this has been very hard on you. I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this. I’ve always thought of you as a child of my own.”

  Celia wanted to scream at him—scream for him to get away from her—but only sobs came out of her throat.

  “I know you think you loved him,” he told her gently, “but the pain will fade in time. Perhaps, even, I will make a newer Adam. He will be similar—yes, very similar. You won’t know the difference. In fact, it might be very soon if we have to try again.”

  Did he think that his words might console her? Of course she would know the difference! A copy, though similar on the outside would not know her—would not understand what they had already been through together. There could never be another Adam in her eyes. How could Baltus even mention it? He had made her with emotions, hadn’t he? How could he believe that the one she had loved could simply be replaced?

  “You know, it just occurs to me that you have no idea what I mean. I believe Adam had discovered it, but perhaps he didn’t tell you.”

  “He told me we were created by you,” she snapped hastily, turning her head to face him and staring hard into his eyes.

  Baltus remained silent for several moments as he watched her, and her harsh gaze did not waver, but she said nothing else.

  “Would you like to know how?”

  At that, Celia looked away. After what Adam had told her, she didn’t particularly care about the specifics. Yet this man continued to approach the subject with such gentleness that she was confused. Why did he pretend to care about her like she was human—like she was his daughter that he had watched grow from a tiny babe? She was nothing more to him than an achievement.

  “Your birth—your construction—was an interesting process, but I won’t bore you with the anatomical details. You couldn’t possibly understand them. I worked very hard on all my projects, but you’re different from them. You’re special. The most exciting thing about you is how I managed to make you different from Margot and Luci. That was what had me stumped for the longest time. Real humans have thoughts and feelings—emotions and a conscience. That’s why my earlier models were so imperfect. Science, no matter how fantastic it is, couldn’t quite manage those things. I had to result to older methods. Through my studies, I came across an interesting recipe for an alchemic stone. It was said that this stone could absorb the memories, thoughts, and the very personality of anyone that it was kept close to. Then, once absorbed, it could be applied to another.

  “I was willing to try it, but the only problem was that we had to absorb someone’s memories who had no idea of our intentions. If we had used one of us, you might have known what we had in store for you. The same thing had to be done for Adam. For him, we used Hugh, my brother. He never was a believer, and wouldn’t allow us to carry out our true intentions in his house. So we used a stone to absorb the information in his mind, and then got rid of him. You understand, it had to be done.”

  Celia listened, but even though she knew Baltus thought he was speaking in simple terms, she still did not quite understand it.

  “We simply got lucky with the woman we found along the road. She was the sole survivor of a carriage accident—thus the lie. She seemed of good breeding, educated and well-mannered, but she hadn’t the slightest idea of what we were doing. She was perfect for obtaining your personality, and afterward, well, Luci and Margot were so fascinated by her, I turned her over to them as a sort of pet.”

  Celia’s eyes grew wide at this. The woman in the cage… She had been found by the LaCroixs and locked away, thinking they would help her after her accident, but they abused her instead. When Celia had met her, the woman was crazed, babbling so many things, but Celia remembered one specific thing that she had said, and it was not lunatic talk at all.

  “They tied a rock to my forehead and made me think! But I hid my secrets from them.”

  She knew exactly what had happened to her, Celia knew then, and she felt regret for dismissing those words.

  “Understand: if we hadn’t done this, the two of you would have woken up as adults, but with completely blank minds. You wouldn’t have known how to speak or to read or even to lace up your shoes! It’s true you would have been easier to control…but then you would have been much like our servants, and, let’s be honest: they aren’t very good as humans. We needed to fulfill the Sacrament to its fullest by making you as much like God’s own creatures as possible.”

  “I want to know why,” Celia spoke up, trying to swallow down her tears. She kept her head turned away, refusing to look at him as a drop rolled down her cheek.

  “Why what, my dear?” Baltus asked gently—as if he cared about her at all. “Is it about Adam? If he had behaved himself, he might have been able to live. But he was causing trouble and so he had to be done away with. You are the one who is important, after all—”

  “Why am I important?” she interrupted. “What are you going to do with me?”

  The man examined her face, but kept silent as he did so. He was trying to discover something in her expression, but she did not know what that was. They stared at each other, and finally the man spoke.

  “You don’t know? I thought you had found the chapel, read the Sacraments…”

  “They said man was to create man,” she said, remembering what she had read on the plaque behind the faceless statue. “There was nothing about why.”

  “Then you simply did not read far enough,” he scolded, as if he had meant to make her more intelligent than this. Baltus sighed and rubbed his hairless head, hesitating for only a moment before he began to recite his religious creed.

  “There must be order beneath Heaven, as has been demanded by Holy God, but there will come a time when what He has created will reach the potential originally meant by God at the beginning of time’,” Baltus quoted. “Certain signs will come to pass, so as to the order of things. The dead will be as ghosts for 1000 years, cursed by the unmovable curse that can only be lifted once the appointed time has passed. Animals will become as humans, speaking in tongues, and therefore mankind will ascend and become as gods. Man, in time, will learn to create man, as it was foretold by the prophet, but there must always be higher worship.

  “Once man has created man and thus become as Holy God, Holy God will be made inadequate in the face of the earth and a New God must be born. New God will be born of two humans—male and female—which are those that have been created by man. New God will be called the Hallowed, and every face will bow. Amen.”

  Celia felt her chest tighten. Her lungs contracted and refused to take in air. Her mind began to race as her heart beat faster, but she heard him as he continued to explain.

  “You were meant to conceive the Hallowed, my dear, our New God, and everything we did was to push you and Adam together. With human emotions and fears, we realized how you would react if we simply put you into a room and forced you to copulate, so we set up this elaborate hoax. Of course, Maynard had been difficult about it and refused to play along with the rest of us, but it all worked out in the end, I suppose. We wanted you and Adam to come together on your own and thus we kept you apart in separate rooms so that you would want to be together so much more. With the added use of pheromones and such, it—well, those are trifling details. It hadn’t taken long before the two of you could no longer resist each other, but that had been our intention. Truly, any longer and Irving would have burst! He’s very impatient.”

  Impatient? Selfish. A monster. They all were.

  “And what a shame about Anjessica. She wanted so badly to please Irving. She thought that she cou
ld carry the Hallowed in her own imperfect womb, and so she insisted on being impregnated by Adam. As you must know, she was foolish for it. She was not made for the task. Even Luci was human enough to be jealous of you, but she could never hope to birth our New God either. But you, my love, are perfect.”

  Celia stared at the man—her father in some strange way—and finally everything had come together in her mind. She and Adam had been made to fulfill the Sacraments of their obscure religion, yes, but it was not only one Sacrament that they were responsible for. They had been created and forced together—tricked into falling into each other’s arms just so that they would desire each other and crave what was forbidden.

  They wanted us to conceive this child—this New God. Anjessica had tried to give birth to it, but she was not made to carry it. Instead, it had been an unholy monster.

  Celia looked down toward her abdomen. It did not appear swollen in any way, but this meant nothing. It was early. She had only made love to Adam recently, though she’d had plenty of opportunity to obtain his seed. Could it be possible that she was carrying his child—like Anjessica had tried to do? And if it was, she hated the creature immediately.

  Because if it existed, her enemies had won.

  Overcome with grief and anger, Celia leaned her head back and began to cry hot tears of pain that burned her cheeks. She resigned herself to the cage where she had been confined, thinking of Adam, their love, and how—perhaps—it wasn’t even real. Baltus seemed to respect her sorrow, for he said nothing else to her. She allowed him to take samples of blood and to examine her, and she did not try to fight him. Feeling alone and empty, Celia continued to mourn for her lost lover. The white curtains hung around her in the cold room, still and unsympathetic.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It had been a week since Adam’s death, and Celia had spent most of her time in mind-numbing solitude.

  Baltus had come and gone, examining her as a doctor might—prying and poking and taking samples of all her different fluids—and she had lost her will to oppose him. She did not speak to him, for she had nothing more to say, but she spent much of her time in thought. In the silence of the hours that blended day with night, Celia considered many things.

  She was troubled by the thought of her possible pregnancy—just as Baltus seemed to worry himself over it daily—but her concern was not like his. He merely wanted success, whereas she was concerned over her own wellbeing. She kept remembering Anjessica and what had happened to her—recalling images of her brutal demise. It had been terrible, and she did not want that same fate to befall her. At intervals, she would listen to the sound of her own breathing as she concentrated on her womb, but she did not feel any different inside. Baltus had tried to assure her that she was created especially for this task that they had chosen her for, so what happened to Anjessica would not befall her, but what would happen? According to them, she was supposed to birth a New God. What would that be like?

  Baltus had also told her that if she acted agreeably, he would let her go back to the room on the third floor so that she might have some comfort with a bed and her own space. Though she didn’t wish to be there in that room where she had once looked in on Adam, she did not like to be in this underground cell where she could not tell night from day. There were awful smells, strange etchings of human bodies with their insides exposed, and then there were the experiments. Just by looking, Celia had already learned much more than she wanted to know about how she was made.

  In glass globes all around her, Baltus was growing spare human parts from shapeless pieces of human tissue. They grew every day, changing shape before Celia’s eyes, and black crystal spread across their surface like mold. She didn’t understand how this was happening, but she knew that these were to be pieces of a new Adam, and if she could have broken all these jars against the floor and smashed the tissue beneath her feet, she would have done it. She had been a captive for days now, and she was docile, but she was still of the same mind on this matter. There could only be one Adam.

  The hooded man was still wandering about, and though he came down into the dungeons on occasion, he never spoke, and Celia decided that he was not capable of thought at all. Was that how she would have been if not for being influenced by old magic? She thought she understood how Baltus did not consider this thoughtless soldier human. How could he be considered that when the whole pride in creating life is to teach it, and eventually, to have it think for itself? That was why they had chosen her instead of Luci, though part of her wished she could be like them—unaware of what was happening to her.

  Celia had decided what she would do. She would be good, make them trust her. She would let them take her back to that bedroom on the third floor and lock her in tight.

  Perhaps then, she would find an opportunity to kill herself. It was the only thing she could do to upset their plans.

  Sitting there in the damp cellar, secured to a chair where Baltus had left her, she heard the sound of a door opening somewhere above her and footsteps falling on the stairs. She knew that it would be Baltus, for he was the only one who frequented this room. In truth, he rarely left, but he had done so not long before. Once again, she would ignore him. Even if he spoke to her first, she would not give him the pleasure of hearing her voice. Celia looked at the floor, uninterested in seeing him come off the stairs, but when the footsteps hit the bottom, she heard a notorious click of the heel with a slow pace, and she knew it was not that man who was approaching her.

  Celia lifted her head, and was not surprised by who she saw taking gradual steps toward her. She had not seen Luci since the maid had unlocked the door to the roof for them, but she walked toward her now with intent in her black eyes. Celia knew what was coming. Luci had always wanted this moment—hated her enough to seek it out—and no one was here to call her off. Luci’s hand reached into her apron pocket and Celia saw the gleam of the silver knife. Luci’s eyes were set murderously on her. This time, Celia felt differently about this situation. She had always tried to run, but knew there was nowhere for her to go this time. When Luci stepped next to her, Celia looked up without fear in her eyes.

  “Go ahead,” she said, and though she feared the pain that would come, she welcomed death. She had nothing more to go on for.

  Luci stared at her, no expression on her blank face—and when she brought the knife down, Celia winced and closed her eyes.

  There was no pain, and it was within the moment of a breath that Celia dared to look. Luci had not sliced her flesh, but was cutting away at the leather straps that bound her to the chair, never mind that they could be unbuckled. The maid worked quickly, and soon Celia was rubbing her sore wrists while Luci cut the bindings around her ankles. Celia didn’t understand what was happening, and she didn’t get the chance to ask before Luci had finished her task and snapped upright.

  “Come with me,” she said, and without another word, Luci gripped Celia’s wrist in a firm hold and dragged her toward the stairs.

  Celia’s legs were weak, having not spent much time on them in days, but Luci was relentless in her pace, and she could not afford to fall behind. She was reminded of her first night here, when Luci had gripped her wrist so tightly that it had bruised as she’d been pulled to dinner. Luci had been following orders then, and Celia wondered if the maid had been commanded to retrieve her, or if she was acting of her own volition. Celia feared both.

  Luci led her deeper into the dungeon rooms, and Celia could not map where they were going. She had never been this far into the depth of the house.

  “Where are you taking me?” Celia pleaded, as if she expected an answer.

  “The master has called for you. I must take you to him.”

  The master? Luci drew her into a smaller passage, dark and hollow. Stone blocks passed by on both sides of her. That was all Celia could make out.

  Wait. I know this. I’ve been here before.

  She’d been here with Adam, the day they’d been searching for a way out of the h
ouse.

  “You’re taking me to the chapel,” Celia said, as if it would be some great surprise to Luci.

  “He’s waiting there.”

  “Who is?”

  “The master.” This continued reply did not satisfy her. Celia would not tolerate this any longer. She was not a doll for them to toy with, and she would not be dragged about!

  “Stop! Please, I—I can’t do this again!”

  Celia twisted her wrist, and to her surprise, Luci released her. She staggered back a few steps, looking around, knowing that the strange maid would not have released her if this hadn’t been their destination. The doors of the chapel were in front of them, and Luci moved there to pull them apart. Celia just stood there, watching her. Though she should have run, she was awaiting an answer that would not come.

  “Follow me,” Luci said, but it was no longer force that urged Celia to step forward. It was for a lack of a better choice.

  The mountainside chapel was as hollow as the first time she’d entered. Celia could not understand what Luci had brought her here to see. The carving of the Hallowed was suspended above the church, faceless as ever, but nothing seemed amiss.

  “I don’t—” Celia began, but stopped short when she noticed that Luci was no longer the only one standing there. Near the front of the chapel was a tall man with red hair, and he was looking at Celia. His shirt was bloody, but he was upright and walking. He was alive.

  “Hello, my darling,” Adam said, and her heart began to soar.

  “Adam!” she cried, taking a step toward him in her delight—but stopped herself short. Gravity took over, and the weight of realization came crashing down. Something was not right about this man standing there with his arms open to her. He had Adam’s face, there was no doubt, but something was different about his expression. His eyes were wrong. They were harsh and seemed to hide a secret—they mocked her. His mouth was curved just slightly at the corners, like a sly devil waiting to ensnare her. Yes, he looked like Adam, but he was not the man she had loved.