No one but the last remaining Brethren, that is; the one that Lilith called Thomed.
After Bellevue, I confess I didn’t relish the notion of going toe-to-toe with another one of Lilith’s oogly booglies, particularly given this one went bamboo so long ago, having disappeared into the jungle not long after the beastly Ricou split from the group. God only knew what I was walking into. And when, as best as I could tell, I reached the end of Lilith’s map midday today and there’d been no temple to be found, just a modest fishing village comprising a few ramshackle stilted huts clustered around a muddy tributary too small to have a proper name, I’d half-hoped I wouldn’t have to, that perhaps Thomed simply wasn’t here. But when, with the help of McCluskey’s travel dictionary, I inquired in broken Khmer (which sounded close enough to Sanskrit to my ears to make me worry I might wind up inadvertently summoning a Rakshasa demon) as to whether there were any ruins nearby, their dogged insistence that they could not understand me, coupled with their refusal to meet my eye or stand in my presence for ten seconds before gruffly shouldering past, indicated that I was in the right place after all. And given all I’d learned about the Brethren these past few months, locating Thomed’s little hidey-hole from that point was a breeze. I just forced myself to walk in the direction my instincts screamed I shouldn’t, and within hours, I was there.
The question was, was Thomed?
I stepped gingerly through the remains, the ground an uneven hodgepodge of roots, fallen trees, and long-eroded manmade blocks. My eyes peeled and wary, my ears straining to pick out any sign of life, or failing that, of prior occupation. But aside of the teeming wildlife of the jungle – a living vine that proved to be a tree-bound python, the rustle in the bushes of a chocolate-brown wild boar, a monitor lizard basking on the crumbling stone face of a long-toppled god – I caught no sign of him. And so, against my better instincts, I squeezed past the cascade of thick, fibrous roots that hung like organic draperies in front of the ancient temple’s sole remaining entrance as if the very land itself wished to bar my entry, and stepped into the stifling dark.
Once my eyes adjusted, I realized the darkness of the temple’s interior was far from absolute. Shafts of golden light pierced the roof at regular intervals, the cracks through which it passed framed by encroaching plant life. And inside, too, the plants had taken hold, draping nearly every surface with roots and vines and, nearest the stagnant, black-watered puddles that graced the stone floor here and there beneath the roof-gaps overhead, fresh shoots sprouted up from the crumbling rock, leaves stretched skyward toward their Maker’s light.
The room was pillared, but unfurnished, and otherwise unadorned. Many of the pillars had toppled long ago, and in some places the ceiling had followed suit. I crept slowly deeper into the temple’s murk, mindful at every turn of any sense of motion that might signal Thomed’s attack.
At the head of the narrow, ruined room, I discovered a lone statue, moss-dusted and vine-bound. Not of a god, it seemed, but of a worshipper, cross-legged and eyes closed, its stone hands clasped in prayer or meditation. I had the strange sensation of embarrassment at interrupting its long penitence, for clearly it had sat in that same place so long that the temple had crumbled around it. The statue sat on a patch of jungle earth just large enough to accommodate it, from which sprouted countless vine-like growths that stretched upward toward the scant light leaking through the ceiling cracks above, winding like braided rope around the stone figure as they climbed. The effect was such that it appeared this praying figure had sprouted from the ground itself. I couldn’t tell if the growth had pushed up through the temple’s stone floor, or if the temple’s architects simply left this square of jungle bare. Though I had no idea why they might’ve elected to, the latter seemed the likelier option, since everywhere else plant life pushed through, it left cracks and stone debris in its wake, whereas here the borders were crisp and clear, a perfect square unmarred by broken rock.
I didn’t realize until its eyes opened that this statue was not a statue at all.
A sudden glimpse of yellowed whites amidst the cracked gray flesh I took for stone, surrounding irises and pupils rheumy with age. Yellow again as lips split to reveal the not-statue’s teeth. The simple acts of eyes and lips opening shook free a thick layer of dust from the being’s face, which drifted like ash onto its vine-strewn lap.
It took me a moment to realize this statue, this man, this whatever, was smiling.
“Oh good,” he said, with a voice like snakeskin dragging across dead leaves, “you’re here.”
“Thomed?” I ventured. He nodded, loosing yet more dust from his face, his hair, his head. As it fell away, I realized beneath the inch of collected filth he was wizened and emaciated, a living skeleton wrapped tight with age-cracked flesh. It, and his hair, was near as gray as the dirt that coated it. It was clear he’d been sitting there for a long while; centuries, perhaps. “You’ve been expecting me?”
“I’ve been expecting someone for quite some time,” he said. “Though not you specifically…” He tilted his head by way of polite inquisition. It took a second for me to realize he was asking my name.
“Sam,” I told him. “My name is Sam.”
“Sam,” he repeated. “Well met.”
“That remains to be seen,” I told him.
“True enough,” he replied.
His voice was accented, but only slightly. How that could be, I didn’t know. If he’d been sitting here half as long as it appeared he had, he couldn’t possibly have the grasp on modern language to understand me.
I said as much. He smiled wider and replied, “It is surprising what one might learn if one simply takes the time to listen.”
“To what?” I asked.
“To everything. To nothing at all. To the soul-song of the universe.”
I took a careful step toward him, my right hand inside my pants pocket, gripping tight the timeworn bowie knife I’d traded a fisherman McCluskey’s watch for two days back. Thomed didn’t move a whit. Bound tight with vines as he was, I wondered if he could. But I remembered the deceptive strength of his fellow Brethren, and decided I’d err on the side of caution.
“Do you know why I’m here?” I asked.
“I do,” he replied. “Just as I know about the knife you carry, and as yet wish to conceal. You’ve come to end my life.”
I thought about protesting the fact. I didn’t see the point. “Forgive me for saying so, but you don’t seem too broken up about that.”
“If it is my Maker’s will that I should cease to be, then I shall cease to be. If it is not, then She will spare me. I am prepared for either eventuality.”
“That’s awful accepting of you.”
“Yes, well, I’ve had some time to think upon the matter, and to come to terms with either outcome.”
I cast my gaze around the ruins, warm and silent in the waning afternoon. “Exactly how long have you been here?”
Thomed fell silent for a full five minutes then, his face screwed up in thought. I began to wonder if he’d ever answer. But eventually, his eyes opened once more, and he said, “One thousand seven hundred sixty-seven years, three months, two weeks, and four days.”
I snorted in surprise and disbelief. “What, no hours?”
He flashed age-dulled teeth once more, a brief, kindly smile. “I fear the time is hard to tell when one cannot see the sun.”
“I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I think your math’s off. It puts you here a good eight hundred years before the culture that built this place.”
“Your assumption is fallacious,” he replied.
“Yeah? How’s that?”
“You assume I came to this temple to worship, when in fact this temple came to me.”
“So you built this place?”
“No. I seek neither the comfort of shelter nor the vanity of monument. Simply peace.”
“You mean to say whoever built this place built it around you?”
“I do.�
�
“Why? You, like, some kinda god to them?”
Thomed laughed. “Actually, and to my great surprise, the temple builders hardly seemed to notice my presence here, save for the fact they seemed compelled to not disturb me. My suspicion is that they were drawn to this place for much the same reason I was.”
“Which is what, exactly?”
“I assume you noted the strange silence that fell over the jungle as you approached this place?”
I did, and said as much.
“That’s because this is a special place, one of beauty, of reverence, of reflection. It has been since long before I happened by. Since long before humankind discovered it and sought to honor it with their temples. The trees know it. The animals know it. I know it. In the centuries that followed my kind’s abhorrent ritual, I found myself lost, despondent, rudderless. I had not foreseen our ritual resulting in such senseless devastation; I blamed myself and my fellow Brethren for the resultant loss of life, and felt truly crushed beneath the weight of it. And so, ashamed of what we’d done – what we’d become – I struck out on my own into the wilderness. Perhaps it was an act of self-flagellation on account of the terrible, consuming hunger I experienced, or the destruction we Nine caused. Perhaps a cowardly flight from all that reminded me of what we’d done. Whatever it was, it somehow – across my decades of ceaseless wandering – led me here. I was so taken with this spot, so certain it was where I was supposed to be, I never left. And now I expend no small amount of effort to protect it, to dissuade those who might wish to desecrate it, to ensure it remains unspoiled.”
“That’s why it’s so difficult to find?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“What makes this place so special?”
“Cambodia is a nation of fertile spiritual soil, soil in which many religions took root, and, oddly, intertwined, flourished together as one rather than waging war against each another. Here native animism blends seamlessly with Hinduism and Buddhism, despite their many differences, creating something at once new, and very, very old. Whether this syncretic nature is some aspect of the land imprinting its character upon its people or the other way around, I do not know. But regardless of the cause, the cultures that have sprung up here have an astonishing ability to reconcile the irreconcilable, to hold two contradictory beliefs at once and to find solace in their inherent contradictions. For life itself is contradiction and compromise. Life is reconciling the irreconcilable. As, I’ve spent some time discovering, is death. So this seemed the perfect place for me to try to reconcile with myself and my God what I’d done.”
“Sounds like you’ve been at it a while. A very specific while, to hear you tell it.”
“I count my days of waiting as best I can. It seems important that someone should.”
“Days of waiting. Waiting for what? For me?”
He shook his head, slow, sorrowful. “Waiting for acknowledgement. For absolution.”
“From whom – God?”
His expression showed surprise. “Who else?”
“Look, I hate to tell you pal, but before you and your Brethren buddies staged your little breakout, you were condemned to hell. Seems like when it comes to God’s forgiveness, that ship has sailed.”
“That is but your opinion.”
“Yeah? What’s another?”
Thomed looked me up and down. “One of the many apparent contradictions on which I’ve ruminated is the notion that a loving Maker would condemn Her children to an eternity outside the light of Her good grace for the sins of their infancy. If our souls are, in fact, immortal, why would our Maker confine Her judgment to the first twenty or fifty or one hundred years of life? Put another way, why would a loving parent punish their child for any longer than it took for that child to learn its lesson? And my conclusion, long coming, is that She would not. That absolution lies not beyond our reach, no matter how far gone we seem – at least, so long as we stretch forever toward it.”
“That presumes our Maker is a loving parent,” I said. “Which, I’ve gotta tell you, some days is pretty fucking hard to swallow.”
“True indeed, my friend. But what you describe is the very essence of faith. I have faith in the inherent decency of my Maker. I only hope my Maker has the same faith in me.”
“I’m not your friend, Thomed, I’m your executioner. I’ve been sent by hell to kill you.”
“As I said, Sam, this is a land of contradictions. Here, it is possible that you are both. But I understand your point. You claim my time is nigh, and for your sake I do not wish to belabor the point. As I recall, a certain measure of remove is necessary to retain one’s personhood while functioning as hell’s emissary. So, please, do what you came to do. I will not stop you. Whatever happens is the Maker’s will.”
He closed his eyes and raised his face up to the heavens. His expression was one of peace, not fear. I stepped toward him with purpose, and rested my left hand upon his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” I told him. “It’s nothing personal.” And then I plunged my hand into his chest, or tried.
Because that’s when Thomed and the temple disappeared.
22.
I found myself in a field of heather. The sun hung bright above, warm against my skin, but not so much so as to make me sweat, and a gentle breeze rustled the trees that dotted the rolling landscape. Wildflowers dusted the distant hilltops with party-bright confetti, sprinkled in among the heather’s soft purple, and filled the air with their sweet perfume. And there was not a soul, nor sign of human habitation, in sight.
I spun around in confusion, a spindle at the center of this swirling, idyllic landscape. Where was I? What was I doing here? What in hell had happened to the temple? To Thomed?
“So many questions,” came a voice from behind me, inhumanly low and rumbling, “and for each an answer, if only you care to listen.” I nearly jumped out of my shoes. Instead, I turned to face the source of the voice.
What I found in a space I knew for sure was empty just moments before were two beings. One was a hulking beast some fifteen feet tall, with an eagle’s head and wings to match, and eyes of flames. Thick-muscled arms, each as large as my own meat-suit and velveted with close-cropped silver gray – fur or feathers, I knew not which – terminated in taloned hands. Haunches as big and powerful as a plow-steed’s stretched from broad torso, feathered black. Its feet were lost to me beneath a sea of undulating heather. Its skin seemed to crackle with electricity, blue-white arcs rippling across its surface and charging the air around us with the ozone scent of a felled power line or recent lightning strike. And as I looked upon it, its face changed, shifting as if in response to my gaze. Now a lion. Now an ox. Now an eagle once more.
The other figure was a child. What kind of child, I had no idea. It seemed at once a boy and a girl; blond-haired, and brown-, and black-; fair-complexioned and dark as fertile soil; a child of four, of eight, of ten, dressed in robes, in jeans and ringer-T, in country tweeds. But unlike the massive beast, whose visage shifted, the child’s appearance didn’t seem to. Instead, it suggested the impression of a thousand children, a million, an entire human history of them, all beautiful, all smiling eerily with unnerving, unnatural knowing, and all occupying the same space.
“My name is Legion, for we are many,” I muttered.
The enormous bird-beast laughed – a bass-filled chuffing that shook the trees and set my meat-suit cowering. “Is that what you think of me?” it asked.
“I was talking about your friend,” I said.
“My friend,” it said, “is who you’re speaking to. This creature is but a trusted servant, which lends its voice to one whose voice you cannot hear.”
“So you’re mute, then, is that it?”
“Not mute,” said the creature. “Merely beyond your capacity to hear.”
“Like a dog-whistle,” I snarked. Blame the nerves.
“If that helps you,” said the beast, now lion-faced once more, the child smirking mischievously beside it. “A d
og-whistle that could liquefy your insides.”
“So he’s what, your spokesman?”
The child nodded. “Though perhaps a better term is conduit,” said the beast, its now-ox-mouth awkward around the words, “or, best yet, attenuator.”
“Not much of a looker,” I said. “But on the other hand, he has a lovely singing voice.”
“Your use of humor in the face of fear is peculiar. Reverence is by far the commoner response.”
“Yeah, well, I guess that means I’m no commoner,” I said, “and anyway, it seems to me there’s two likely options as to who you are. One of ’em’s in charge of hell, and the other’s responsible for the platypus. The former deserves no reverence from me, and the latter’s gotta have a sense of humor. Now, you wanna tell me what I’m doing here?”
“A better question would be what it was you were doing in Cambodia.”
“My fucking job, that’s what.”
“Were you, now?”
“You’re damned right I was.”
“But why?”
“I go where they point me. That’s the gig. That’s my forever. You don’t know that, then what the hell are we all doing here?”
“Ah. I see. So you were simply following orders, then.”
“That’s right.”
“It amazes me that your kind was given the greatest gift in all of Creation – free will – and yet you’re all so willing to forsake it at the slightest provocation.”
“The slightest provocation?” I repeated. “Is that what you call being damned to hell for all eternity? Because it ain’t been exactly a basket fulla kittens.”
“No, I suppose it wouldn’t have been. Still, Samuel, I’m surprised that you, in particular, would succumb to such weakness of character. I would have thought that with all you’ve experienced, particularly given the target of your maiden collection, you’d be reluctant to rely upon that old chestnut. Many a war criminal has pled the same, to no satisfactory result.”
The Collector 03 - The Big Reap Page 27
