The Crooked Letter: Books of the Cataclysm: One

by Sean Williams

Instead, he saw no one. There wasn't a soul on the street outside or on any of the roads nearby. Cars were jammed up in all directions but not one of them was occupied; trucks, buses, motorbikes, and taxis all lay stalled across his path, their engines silent. Some had keys still hanging in the ignition, but the starter motors didn't turn over when he tried them. The traffic lights were dead.

  The city was just like the hospital: abandoned and empty, a landscape devoid of life. He had walked at random, unable to read the street signs and not knowing where to go. Puzzlement and a growing sense of unreality undermined all feelings of relief at his escape from Lascowicz.

  But now, graffiti. He looked nervously around, hugging the stolen nurse's uniform tightly to his chest. Sunlight slanted down through the buildings, cutting thin, dusty slices through the still air. Stone walls rose steeply on either side. The small of his back itched.

  “Hello?” He cupped a hand and shouted. “Hello! Is anyone there?”

  His voice echoed off empty glass windows. Hello there, they seemed to say in response, as though the city was talking to him in his own voice, acknowledging his presence in its domain but not welcoming him.

  Hadrian shivered. Far above, the sky was blue, but the sun eluded him. He felt very small in the empty streets. A creeping suspicion that he—or the entire world—had gone mad wasn't helping at all.

  The feeling that someone was with him was unrelenting. He almost turned to see if Seth was standing behind him, the hint of his brother's presence was so strong…

  “What do you know about the Kabbalah, Hadrian?” asked a voice from above him.

  He jumped in fright at the sight of Pukje crouched on top of the bus shelter.

  “Where did you come from?”

  “Maybe I was always here,” came the faintly mocking reply. “I said I'd look for you. I'm as good as my word.”

  “Do you know what's going on?” Hadrian asked. “Where is everyone?”

  “Who are you? Where did you come from?” Pukje mimicked him, all head and knees. “You're chock-full of obvious questions, boy.”

  “Why don't you answer them?”

  “You haven't answered my question, yet. The one about the Kabbalah. Specifically, the Otz Chiim, the Tree of Life. Do you know what that is?”

  Hadrian shook his head.

  “It's a map. An attempt at a map, really, charting the many worlds that lie next to this one. The ancients occasionally discerned the realms through hints or visions, but their methodology left a lot to be desired.”

  “I don't know what you're talking about, and I don't care. I just want to find someone in charge.”

  “You must understand, Hadrian. There are worlds beyond this one. The concept isn't hard to grasp—and it's more than just a concept now. You can't ignore their existence any longer.”

  Yeah, right, Hadrian thought in exasperation, but I can ignore you. He turned and walked away.

  Pukje's leathery feet slapped to the pavement. Soft footfalls followed him.

  At that moment, a scream, long and high pitched, broke the silence of the city. The instinct to take cover gripped him, and Hadrian didn't fight it. He ducked back to the graffiti-scarred bus shelter and hunkered down in its shadow. The sound didn't come from a human throat, yet it didn't sound like a machine either. It attained the timbre of a shriek, ululating around two utterly dissonant pitches, and made his hair stand on end.

  Hadrian peered nervously out at the street. A long, rippling shadow slid over him, and he tucked his head back under cover. He was reminded of the shadows of airplanes and the way they came out of nowhere, hugging the landscape, then disappeared just as quickly. There was, however, no mistaking the scream for a jet engine rumble or propeller drone.

  A tang of smoke came on a faint gust of wind. The shadow slid off down the street like water down a drain. The scream died with it, leaving shocked, silent streets in its wake.

  For a long time, he was unable to move. His pulse hammered in his throat. When his shaking muscles would allow him to, he eased from his makeshift shelter, sweaty hand clutching tight his brother's remains.

  “What was that?” he asked Pukje, who had taken shelter with him at the sound of the cry.

  “It's a monster, and it's looking for you.”

  “Don't bullshit me.”

  “All right, then. You tell me: what did it sound like to you?”

  “I don't know.”

  “So why not believe me? I know it sounds crazy, but perhaps craziness is what you need right now.”

  “What I need is to talk to someone. There must be a radio or something I can get my hands on, somewhere in here.”

  “Maybe there is, but I don't think it's going to do you much good.”

  “Why not?”

  “Tell me something. Are you a Christian? You're not wearing a cross or ichthus, but that doesn't mean anything these days.”

  “No,” Hadrian said, his weariness rising with every moment in Pukje's presence.

  “What about Islam?”

  Hadrian shook his head. If Pukje wasn't going to make sense, there was no point continuing the conversation. Instead of answering, he walked up the road, away from the graffiti.

  “At least listen to me.” Pukje followed him, as tenacious as a cold. “If you're none of these things, then that's less you have to unlearn. There's no such thing as a supreme being—just things you might call monsters or gods who are, temporarily, higher up the pecking order. They're as fallible as you or I, and usually as screwed up. They're born; they die; they get on with each other or not, depending on the circumstances. Sometimes they fight.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Hadrian turned the first corner he came to, refusing to look at the strange little man following him.

  “Because you need to know it. Without understanding, you're vulnerable. Consider caterpillars—they live and grow, conscious only of the immediate world around them. Does a caterpillar notice the air until it's hatched from its cocoon and takes flight? Does a moth retain any comprehension of the ground after its transformation? What does a pupa dream of inside its chrysalis, while it's mutating?

  “If moths could describe their experiences, if they could draw maps, their maps would resemble the Tree of Life. Caterpillar, pupa, moth. Three different worlds for three different stages. It's the same with humans, Hadrian. Human life passes through three distinct realms in strictly prescribed ways, and this is just one of them.”

  Hadrian rolled his eyes. “We're back to these other worlds of yours, aren't we? I suppose you're about to tell me that that's where you came from. You're an alien or something.”

  “No, not at all. I live here. I'm as much a part of this realm as are the hills and the sky. And besides, I'm not talking about aliens; I'm talking about humans. Some cultures believe that humans have two souls. They're heading in the right direction, as are the ones who believe in reincarnation. Take the Faculties of Plato: id-ego-superego, or kether-chokmah-binah, or brahma-vishnu-shiva. Add the Gilgulim of the Kabbalah, and what do you get? Two heavens, and lives curling back on themselves like snakes eating their own tails, like Uroboros and Jörmungandr in your old stories. That makes monotheism look decidedly unimaginative, doesn't it? Take a left up here.”

  Hadrian turned to confront Pukje, his mind a whirl of caterpillars, monsters, and souls. He felt, like Alice, as though he had fallen through a hole in the ground into a world of madness. “Why should I do anything you tell me?”

  “I helped you find your brother, didn't I?”

  Hadrian's fist tightened around the bone in his pocket. “I didn't ask you to.”

  “True. Do what you want, then. I'm only trying to help.”

  Pukje strolled across the road, bony arms swinging.

  A sudden panic gripped him. He didn't want to be on his own in the echoing, silent city, even if the only company available seemed to be a weird religious dwarf.

  “Don't leave me,” he said, “please.”

  Pukje turned.
“All right, then. I'll stay a while longer, if you really want me to.”

  “Just don't say anything. That's what I want.”

  A malicious smile creased the ugly little man's face, but he remained silent.

  Satisfied that he had won that particular battle, if not the war, Hadrian walked on. Fragments of broken glass covered the sidewalks, crunching underfoot and gleaming in the dull grey light creeping down between the city's looming towers. He felt increasingly as though he was straying across an abandoned movie set.

  At one point, he checked an office building at random to see if it contained more than just a hollow façade. It did, but its interior was as abandoned as the hospital and the streets, the screens on the computers as lifeless as the traffic lights and cars. Its phones didn't work either. Not just a power blackout, then, but a complete shutdown of all modern services.

  It wasn't just the people and the machines who were missing: there were no cats, dogs, rats, cockroaches, spiders, or birds either. The leaves on the trees were browning, as though burned by hot weather. Grass and weeds straining through the cracks in concrete and tarmac lay in shrivelled strands. The air itself smelled lifeless, funereal. It was as though the city had died. Without power, people, machines, and vermin, the buildings had become tombstones, their foyers mausoleums and their basements crypts. Cenotaphs for a missing population.

  But how, he asked himself, could you kill a city?

  The newspaper headlines gave nothing away; they talked of nothing more sinister than Middle East politics and the ailing economy—when he could find one in English, that is. If there had been a sudden military strike using neutron bombs—famed for killing people without damaging a single building—it would explain why the phones and power weren't working, but there would be bodies in the streets, and he would be dead, too. An earthquake would have left some sign of damage beyond the odd smashed window. Any sort of major evacuation would have explained the empty hospital and the abandoned office buildings, but it would also have left the wider thoroughfares empty of cars. The streets, on the whole, were hardly clear for emergency vehicles.

  A biological attack of some kind, then? That theory failed in the face of the same objections. And a false alarm would have brought someone back into the city, if only troops to stop looting. The Rapture? He seriously considered the possibility that everyone had been called up to heaven by God, leaving him behind, the world's only sinner, to fend for himself. And if that wasn't plausible, then perhaps an alien invasion instead…?

  He told himself not to be stupid. There was no point looking for ridiculous explanations when there was probably a reasonable one just around the corner—or if not around that corner then the one after, or the one after that. All he had to be was patient and persistent and the answer would present itself eventually. It wasn't as if he would starve any time soon. There was plenty of canned food and bottled water to be found. While he didn't like the thought of stealing, in the absence of an alternative he happily resorted to it.

  As the morning grew old, he went into an open sporting goods store and stole a pair of sneakers and socks to protect his feet from the ever-present glass. Despite everything, he still half expected security alarms to ring as he hurried guiltily past the abandoned counter and out the door, but they were as inactive as everything else. Nowhere did he see any sign of looting or opportunistic scavenging, apart from his own.

  Through it all, he clutched Seth's finger bone tightly in one hand, missing his brother more than he could bear to think about. The macabre relic encouraged him to fight the impulse to hide and let the world sort itself out without him.

  What would Seth do in his place now? Hadrian didn't know for sure. Make light of the situation, possibly, by suggesting they break into a bar and steal warm beer and cigarettes. He would light a bonfire on one of the major intersections and wait for rescue. They'd be joined by other survivors who would laugh at Seth's jokes and put him in charge. He'd probably get a commendation from the head of the rescue operation and have his picture on the TV news that night. Their parents would hear about it and call each other up to say how proud they were of him: Seth, the oldest and best of their two sons.

  Stop it. Hadrian bit his lip. Seth was dead. Their old grievances were irrelevant. Unless he found a working phone or someone in a position of authority, the chances of hearing from either of his parents any time soon were small. He was sure they would be just as relieved to hear from him as they would have been from Seth—until he told them the terrible news, anyway, and then grief would consume them, as was only understandable. Seth was dead. Someone called Locyta had killed him. The local police force—or someone masquerading as them—was trying to cover it up. Hadrian had managed to get away from them, and had spent a nervous few hours wandering aimlessly around, looking for rescue, while the nuclear accident or terrorist situation or whatever it was had unfolded without his knowledge. He would feel like a dummy, but everything would be all right.

  Sure, he thought. That's how it would end. And Pukje would be locked up and no one would have to listen to his crazy nonsense again.

  The bone seemed to grow heavier as the day wore on. He told himself to be grateful for one thing: there was no sign of Lascowicz or Bechard. That was something he had accomplished on his own, more or less, and he tried to be proud of himself. He had to take what encouragement he could from the situation, because there was no going back. There was no Seth to fall back on any more. There was just him.

  A clock tower, time stopped, cast a sullen exclamation point over a restaurant entrance when his companion finally brought him to a halt.

  “Have you worked it out yet?”

  “Worked what out?”

  “Where everyone has got to.”

  “You mean you know?”

  “I'm pretty sure.”

  “Why didn't you tell me before?”

  “Correct me if I'm wrong, but I tried and you asked me not to say anything.”

  Hadrian ignored the smile on the little man's ugly face. “I knew it couldn't last.”

  “My feet are getting tired. If you plan to walk around forever, I can save you the trouble. You're looking in completely the wrong spot.”

  “Where should I be looking, then? We've tried police stations, fire stations, TV stations—what else have you got?”

  Pukje glanced around and pointed at the building next to them. “In there.”

  Hadrian didn't see anything more unusual than an empty Indian restaurant. The dark windows and empty doorway looked no different than any other shop they had passed.

  “What's so special about here?” he asked.

  “There's something you have to see—assuming I'm right, of course. If I'm wrong, there'll be nothing and we can talk about your theories instead. Coming?”

  Hadrian shrugged, although an instinct already told him he didn't want to go inside. Sometimes it was better not to know.

  Pukje led him through the front door. The restaurant was deserted. The smell of spices was strong. His stomach rumbled at the thought of food, or out of nervousness—or both.

  The little man walked unerringly through the darkness, picking his way between the tables to a Staff Only door at the rear. He pushed it open. Beyond, Hadrian could make out only faint outlines of various things in the darkness. Pukje avoided a stack of milk crates and put his wiry hand on a cool-room door. Hadrian could sense the metallic heaviness of the door and the stuffiness of the space beyond. Without power to keep it cold, the interior of the cool-room was gradually returning to room temperature. The state of the foodstuffs inside would depend on how long they had been sitting there.

  “Yes,” Pukje's voice came out of the darkness, “it's here, underground. Now, I'm showing you this because you need to see it. You're walking around in a daze, and that's dangerous. This isn't a dream, or a game, or something that will just blow over. The fate of at least two worlds depends on what you do next. And on what we prevent our enemies from doing.”


  “By our enemies, do you mean Lascowicz? Or Locyta? Or someone else entirely?”

  “It's hard to tell sometimes.”

  “Whose side are you on?”

  Pukje tugged on the handle, and Hadrian braced himself for the stench of spoiled food. The effort was meaningless. Something far worse awaited him.

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  A voice startled him awake. He blinked and tried to sit up. Knots in his neck, back, and shoulders tightened.

  “Have you been there the whole time?”

  Soft hands touched him out of the darkness, helped him to his feet. He smelt Ellis all around him. Ellis as he had come to know her in the weeks she'd travelled with him and his brother; not freshly scrubbed and perfumed, but between showers, redolent with her own earthy smell. The quarters they'd rented in Amsterdam didn't have a separate bathroom, just two primitive bedrooms with an adjoining door. It was that door against which he had fallen asleep.

  His muscles were fiercely resistant to moving, once freed from their awkward positions. She whispered to him, guiding him. He felt her next to him as she helped him to one of the empty beds. She was warm where he was cold. He wanted to put an arm around her and hold her against him, to embrace her vitality. His heart, which had turned to stone at the start of that long night, began to beat again.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, her breath stale but sweet against his cheek. “I'm so sorry. I assumed you'd gone to bed. I didn't know you were still there. I feel terrible.”

  He shook his head; in denial of what, he wasn't sure. That he would respond, perhaps. That he was still bound up in the rules of her stupid game.

  “Will you forgive me?”

  He could forgive her anything, but he wasn't about to tell her that.

  He felt her stiffen beside him. “Oh, the game! The fucking game. Are you trying to make a point or something?”

  He shrugged. Silence filled the gulf between them. The room was utterly dark; it could have contained anything. She seemed enormously large to the feelers of his emotional radar. He felt like a collapsing star in comparison to her, shrinking steadily down into a cold, black hole.