Necessary Monsters

by Richard A. Kirk

  The rooftop was suddenly flooded with sunlight. Moss was taken by its transformative effect on Imogene's skin. It drew out some freckles on her face. Her lips, chapped from the journey, regained some color. He stroked the bruise above her left eye; caused by the stone that Jansson had struck her with or by her fall into the gorge.

  "Did you plan that?" asked Moss. They both laughed.

  He knew that she had come this far for him alone. Despite her bad temper, her ability to get under his skin, and her occasional, well more than occasional, foul mouth, he glimpsed for the first time a life beyond present circumstances, one not haunted by Memoria, or even Irridis for that matter. Moss could not bear the thought of leaving her alone on the rooftop, but this time it was what she wanted. He would not convince her otherwise.

  "I'll hide myself and yell bloody murder if I see anything," she said. "I promise. Then you can come and save me, if you want."

  He laughed. "Try not to hurt yourself with that thing then."

  "Go fuck yourself, Moss."

  "If you see anything—"

  "Go."

  Moss put his hands on the doors and pushed. They opened into a dark interior. Eddies of dust rose into shafts of light falling from openings between the rafters. Pigeons burst into the air, and resettled on high ledges, clucking and cooing. The age of the buildings settled around Moss, deep silence, and the smell of ancient wood. Moss pushed the doors shut behind him.

  Once his eyes had adjusted, he became aware of seven figures facing each other in a circle. His hand felt for the gun, but there was no response. As a group they floated, unbound by gravity, toes drawing cursive in the dust. He released the gun. They were too still to be alive, yet Moss had the sense that they were uncannily aware of his presence. He stepped into the circle, accompanied by the ocellus. Wood faces looked down, blank but aglow with a luminescent, milky wash. Their hands, positioned in a suspended discourse, were articulations of tarnished brass and silver. Insects had made lace of once-beautiful gowns. He had no doubt that these creatures were Memoria's handmaidens. Their suspension was proof of her presence, as was a commencement of soft canine panting.

  The dog that Elizabeth had ridden, crouched, muscles tight-packed, in a trapezoid of daylight. Blood and foam flecked its snout. It watched Moss intently. He heard a young Memoria in his head. In mythology there is a dog that guards the entrance to the underworld. Here he was. Moss's pulse drummed in his inner ear. To deliver the ocellus home meant dealing with Memoria. He would not turn away from the creature that had been the cause of Oliver's death, the creature that had murdered Irridis, and haunted Imogene. His heart threatened to burst with the tragedy of what she had become, raised from death in his hopes, to a wraith, pale and raving. And now, closing a terrible circle, she would die at his hand. Moss met the dog's eyes. There was a score to settle here. This time he would not falter.

  "Where are you?" The words reverberated, but no answer came. The dog soundlessly curled its dewlaps from yellowed canines. Its eyes took on a fixed stare. The creature was dying. Perhaps it had shared a symbiotic relationship with Elizabeth, or perhaps it was the victim of some injury visited by Memoria.

  "You don't belong here. Why did you come? I told you to let it go." Her voice animated the air like the flutter of wings.

  Moss spun. "Why are you hiding? Are you afraid, without your creatures to protect you?"

  "I told you to stay away."

  "Why did you kill Irridis?" Moss persisted. The dresses on the suspended forms rustled on currents of air.

  "It was a necessity, a duty I was born into."

  "Was it duty to torment Imogene?"

  The voice laughed cruelly. "That was the price of John Machine's wickedness."

  "How could murder be a duty?" Moss played for time, turning in a circle, trying to discover where Memoria was hiding.

  "I was the last Attendant of Little Eye. The last in a long tradition, always a child of magical propensities, each ritually deafened to prevent them falling under the sway of Starling's voice. It was an honor."

  "How did that become murder?" Moss became aware that the dog had ceased to breathe.

  "In the evening before my deafening was to take place, a regiment came. They raped and massacred the sisterhood to which I belonged. I hid and survived, eating insects and drinking water from the swamp because the cisterns had been poisoned. I knew I had to leave but it was forbidden for Starling to leave Little Eye. So I decided to free myself of the burden of duty." The voice seemed to flow across the room. "I stabbed him and hid the body in a shallow in the earth. I was interrupted in this task when John Machine arrived, full of his lies and empty promises. I didn't know I'd failed to kill Irridis until that day in the Cloth Hall."

  "When you tried again."

  "Where is it?" asked Memoria, with impatience.

  "What?"

  "Aurel's dark stone."

  "Hidden," said Moss. Among the pigeons, he thought.

  "Nothing is hidden forever," said the voice. The tone of her voice told Moss she was tiring of the conversation. A cicada whine reverberated through the room. It took Moss a moment to realize that it came from the floating women. Something moved around Moss's limbs like tentacles. He swatted at them, remembering how easily she had entered his body as he stood in the closet in the Blackrat Bakery. The air grew colder. He saw a flash of silver, like a fish catching the light in dark water. Memoria appeared several feet away, coalescing out of the air. She was emaciated and wore a white shift with long sleeves. It was rent and bloody. The skin of her face and neck were colorless. Moss could see the ghostly movements of the bones beneath her skin. The dust made vortices in the air behind her. He could see that supporting and concealing her broken and wounded body had taken a disastrous toll on her energies. All trace of the child he had known was gone.

  She let a drop of spittle fall to the ground. It was a perfect sphere of lightless black. It landed audibly, leaving a black circle no larger than a penny. Moss felt a movement in the air, a stirring of his clothing, and heard a low whistle coming from cracks in the wall. Without looking down, Memoria placed a yellow toenail at the edge of the circle and pulled, expanding its circumference to that of a teacup. The wind increased, tugging insistently at his clothes and hair. Dust and feathers vibrated and tumbled toward the black circle.

  "I mean to have it," she said. Smiling at him, she pulled the circle further. He looked up as pigeons fluttered the air, confused and panicked by the force pulling them from the rafters. The air rushing into the black circle grew shrill. The dog's body slid. The ocellus appeared amid the birds. Breathlessly, Moss fought to free Jansson's gun from his pocket, but he fumbled. It hit the floor and rattled toward the hole. The ocellus moved inexorably toward Memoria's upraised hand.

  Moss leaped forward even as Memoria's fingers were closing around the ocellus. He seized her around the waist and threw her to the floor. She landed on top of the hole with a curdling scream. Moss brought his foot down on her wrist. The bones snapped like sticks and her hand flew open, sending the ocellus across the floor. Moss scrambled and seized it in his fist. He heard Memoria rise behind him. The wind had ceased. Throwing himself forward, he grabbed the gun.

  Memoria crossed the space between them and slashed his face with the pale fingernails of her remaining hand. He was raising the gun when he was suddenly pulled backwards by the mechanical women. Fighting himself free, he pulled the trigger, and saw Memoria convulse. Brass fingers curled into his mouth and nostrils. Nails scratched his face in a horrifying repetition of Memoria's attack in the carriage. He was wrenched from his feet and landed on his back with such force that he felt all of the vertebrae in his back pop like a string of fireworks. Screaming, he fired several shots in rapid succession. One of the bullets tore through the nearest face, exploding it in a shower of wood and carpenter ants. One of his legs came free. It was all he needed to push himself to his feet. Slashing spasmodically, a creature drove at his eyes. He ducked and fired blindly
. Another tore at his thigh like a frenzied animal.

  Imogene ran through the doors and came up behind two of the creatures that stood to the side, swaying, their arms flailing without control. She moved with the grace of a cat. In one clean arc she swept the sword through their necks. One of them dropped into a kneeling position and remained still, its head lolling on a wire. The other's head toppled and thumped across the floor. The body remained upright. Face contorted with revulsion, Imogene kicked it between the shoulder blades and impaled the monster from behind. Moss watched in awe as she pulled the blade clear. Three remaining sisters flailed on the ground kicking their legs and screaming. They smashed their heads against the flagstones until they disintegrated into splinters and fell still.

  Moss ran for the doors that had been flung open by Imogene during the attack.

  "Moss," Imogene shouted after him. He burst onto the roof and stopped short. Several feet away, Memoria's body was hunched on the ground, her entrails pulled through a hole in her back. Her head lay several feet away.

  Imogene appeared in the doorway holding the sword. "I killed her," she said.

  AUREL

  "She came out of the door," said Imogene. "I thought she'd killed you." Moss stood on the roof looking up. The ocellus hung in the air. In spite of the horrors of the last few minutes they were no closer to fulfilling their purpose. They had been looking at the monastery; perhaps they should have been watching the ocellus more closely. Maybe it was the only way to pierce the illusions of the island. He spat a mouthful of blood on the ground.

  "She would have," he said.

  "I'm sorry."

  "She would have killed me. What you did," said Moss, still watching the ocellus, "was what had to be done. It was necessary. I don't blame you for that. The Memoria I thought I loved, the girl who fell off the seawall, died that day. The thing that replaced her was a vile simulacrum." He looked with loathing at the emaciated form on the ground and rocked it with his foot. "Maybe she was never real. Maybe she was simply the corrupted root of this, monster. What do we owe the people we once loved if they're revealed to be something else? I don't know."

  Imogene dropped the sword and covered her face with her hands. "I didn't even have time to think."

  "And for that I think we should be grateful."

  "Look."

  The ocellus was moving.

  They followed the ocellus to an alcove that collected shadows and dead leaves. A door had been left ajar. Inside, a staircase spiraled downwards, exhaling a dank odor that Moss found anything but inviting. It was lit by a faint bioluminescent slime that seeped through the walls. The way was narrow. Moss followed the now faintly glowing ocellus. Imogene followed with the crow balancing on her shoulder, poking at shadows with the sword. The staircase was filled with recently torn cobwebs; otherwise it looked as though it had been unused for years, maybe centuries. After several turns, Moss slipped, barely saving himself by grabbing the curved railing at the last second.

  "Watch your step," he said. "The ground is wet."

  "Disgusting," said Imogene.

  "Did you see that?" A reflection of light had caught Moss's eye down the curve of the stairs. It had been so subtle that until it occurred again he was not sure it had been real. "Hey," Moss shouted. He ran carelessly down the steps.

  "Moss, what the hell are you doing?"

  Moss reached the spot where he thought he had seen the light, but there was nothing there. He looked over his shoulder to make sure Imogene was following him and then plunged down the stairs again. After a few more turns they came to the bottom. Instead of a door, there was an arch made of thick roots. In the back of his mind, Moss wondered how long someone would have had to spend to train the roots into such an elaborate form. As he moved closer, he realized that the roots were alive and moving, slipping through loops and knots. The arch had opened for the ocellus and it was now closing. Without thinking, Moss jumped through. The arch became a rapidly narrowing aperture. Imogene thrust her arms through. Moss grabbed her wrists and pulled, but the roots closed around her elbows until all he could see was her forearms and hands flailing in a wall of tendrils.

  "My arms are breaking," she screamed. Moss grabbed her hands and pushed them back through the opening. For a second he could see her eye appear at the shrinking hole and then suddenly he was alone. He kicked the wall of roots.

  "Imogene," he shouted. "Imogene!" There was no response. He tried to pry the woody tendrils apart, but they had formed a tight, impenetrable barrier. There was no choice but to continue. Several feet away, something rustled. A figure stepped forward, tearing its body free of centuries of cobwebs and grasping roots. The ocellus dimly lit its oversized head. Moss held his breath as it ambled toward him. At first he thought it suffered from some kind of affliction that caused its skin to hang in shreds. It took him a moment to realize that the creature's skin was a rind of thickly layered paper, teeming with sowbugs and millipedes. Its eyes were embedded in dark sockets; the mouth was a ragged slit lined with tiny teeth. The creature shuffled on hoofed feet trailing filthy peelings. It came to a stop close enough to Moss that he could smell its mildew-laden exhalations. "Is Aurel buried here?" said Moss, wishing he had the sword. He settled for the gun, which he pulled from his pocket.

  The creature moved its mouth for sometime before whispering, "Not here, but I can take you there."

  "How far?" asked Moss.

  "Not far. Don't be frightened," said the creature.

  Moss's only options were to remain, or follow this strange individual. He wondered fleetingly if Irridis had been aware of what he had asked of his friend.

  "You won't need that here," said the creature. Moss was startled. He had forgotten that he was holding the gun. Nodding, he tossed it onto the floor.

  "Where is the grave?"

  "This way." The creature cupped the ocellus with long fingers and took several steps. He stopped and looked over his shoulder.

  "Are you coming?"

  "Yes," said Moss.

  The paper creature proceeded with an odd side-to-side gait, leading them on a wandering path of passages, empty rooms and staircases. Moss gave up trying to memorize the way after a few minutes. Convinced they had just passed through a room for the second time, he gave in to impatience.

  "Where are you taking me?" Not thinking, he tried to grab the creature by a peeling shoulder, but his fingers dug deep into the decaying paper.

  "As it happens, we're here," it said, stepping back, appearing only mildly inconvenienced. It peered back at Moss with unblinking black eyes. They stood in front of a high, partially draped door. "Are you sure of this? Are you sure this is what you want? Perhaps you would rather simply leave well enough alone. We are made of such delicate fiber." It twitched its head to the side. In the soft light of the ocellus, its hands were bejeweled with restless insects. It opened its fingers and released the ocellus.

  "Open the door," said Moss.

  "I hope you find what you're looking for." With this, the creature pulled back the drapery. The door opened with a whisper.

  They stepped through the door into the base of a wide sinkhole. Concave walls of limestone soared up around them like a melting cathedral. The floor was a sea of ferns. In the center, partially obscured by a veil of drizzle, Moss could see a stone bust. It was obviously ancient, marred with cracks and crusted in lichen. He walked toward it through knee-high fronds, followed at a slower pace by the paper creature. The bust—one head with two androgynous faces—rested on a plinth of fossil stone. Moss circled it under the creature's watch. He had no doubt that their destination had been reached. Elated, Moss looked up. A circular patch of sky was filled with darting swallows. Running water had cut deep fissures into the steep limestone walls. Although Aurel's grave was a place of great peace, it was also a place that was disappearing. Frost and rain would eat away at the collapsed cave, until one day it would be just another steep-walled ravine. Moss was humbled by this thought. It asserted a true perspective.
Existence was a fragile thing; their time was brief.

  He had been standing for some time, letting the falling water cleanse his face, when he realized the paper creature was no longer moving. It had expired on a mossy slab, away from the light, having completed its brief task of guiding Moss to the cave. Its form had already begun disintegrating into a pool of water. Moss wondered how many years it had waited, dormant, in the silence of the tunnel. Remembering the disturbed cobwebs in the entrance, he wondered if Memoria had come here. He thought not. It was more likely that she had intended to, but was interrupted by their arrival.

  "Moss." Imogene stood in the doorway that led into the cave. Her face was sweaty and her hands were covered in scratches. She still held the sword that she had used to decapitate Memoria. "Do you have any idea how hard it was to cut through those roots? They kept growing back. It was no easy task following you through all those twists and turns back there either." She followed Moss's path of trodden ferns to the bust, pausing momentarily to take in the pulpy form on the slab. "So this is it? Aurel's grave." She pointed at the ocellus that floated above the statue.

  "Yes," Moss said, as he leaned against it. Running his hands over the bust, he wondered what he was missing. Why would Irridis have wanted to risk his life, and Moss's, to bring the ocellus to Aurel's grave? Moss worked on the principle that it was a symbolic gesture. He had heard of just such a tradition in certain religions. Setting stones on a grave was a way of remembering and marking the dead. But this seemed so unlike Irridis. What bothered him was that the ocellus was not inert; it was the epitome of condensed energy, like an egg or a seed.