by JL Bryan
She turned to Alexander, whose face was still shifting appearance at least once a second, one face giving way to another. His faces smiled at her.
“Look again,” they said, and the sounds of countless snake rattles grew as loud as a thunderstorm.
Jenny looked. The space in front of the pyramid seemed to unfold, and with each unfolding a burst of images appeared. Ancient Greece, ancient Egypt, medieval Germany, more and more scenes woven together in a vast, animated tapestry drawn from across the millennia. Her past lives, all of them appearing to happen right now, in the present moment, parallel to each other.
Her eyes found a recent life—glimpses of herself on a circus train crossing America, and then in a shadowy tent, the pox all over her skin so that she was unrecognizable under her mask of bleeding sores. A carnival barker: Yes, sir, yes, ma'am, pay a penny and see the world's most diseased woman...a true horror, friends, a true horror...
“Not there.” Alexander lay a finger under her chin and turned her head to a different scene. “Look there.”
Jenny watched Alexander leading an army of the dead toward Babylon, thousands of years ago, Jenny at his side in some kind of horse-drawn wagon. She was dressed in silks and jewels.
Elsewhere, she saw a similar scene: an army of zombies sacking a city in India.
She looked again, and saw herself hurrying down a street in nineteenth-century London, the air heavy with factory smoke. Jenny was bundled in with a coat, scarf and hat, and carrying an armload of books.
“Not there,” Alexander said again. He turned her head to look at another army, both men and women this time, all of them with blue-painted skin. Jenny was one of them, and she blew a plague at an approaching Roman legion.
“Now remember me.” Alexander was behind her, embracing her with both arms. She could feel the heat from his hands on her belly.
She saw the two of them together, making love in countless temples and castles and primeval forests, Alexander ravaging her, her lips crying out in passion and pleasure and pain.
Jenny reached her hand back to his hip, and she rubbed her hand up and down along his thigh. She leaned back against him, her body trembling and aching to be close to his. He kissed her neck, and she could feel every detail of it, the warm texture of his lips, his hot breath damp on her skin.
Jenny turned and kissed him back hungrily. She remembered.
“My lord,” she whispered, but the language she used was a long-forgotten dialect from ancient Sumeria. “My love, my life.”
“My love, my life,” he whispered back.
She ripped open his shirt and kissed the muscles of his shoulders, chest, abdomen. Then she stepped back from him and took off her blouse, her sneakers, her jeans. She took off every stitch of clothing, until she was naked before him, her pale body lit by the moon and stars. Her body trembled and burned with the most painful desire she had ever felt. Her soul swam in an ocean of raw power.
Jenny shoved Alexander back through the door of the temple, and they embraced and fell together on the Mayan blanket inside.
Alexander slid out of his jeans and turned her on her back. He climbed on top of her, and she felt him jab her in the stomach, long and hard.
“Not yet,” Jenny said. She gave him a wicked smile and pressed a hand to the top of his head, pushing him down along her body. He kissed her breasts, then her stomach. Jenny spread her knees wide as she pushed his face between her legs.
His tongue entered her, and her hips jerked immediately, and she cried out. He licked her and sucked at her, his hands on her breasts, her nipples between his fingers. Her body writhed in pleasure at the touch of his tongue and lips.
Jenny cried out again, and again, her scream of pleasure echoing back from the high stone walls of the Sierra Madre.
“Now!” Jenny shouted, and he climbed on top of her. Her hands slid all over his back as she pulled him down on her. She couldn't touch him enough—each touch only made her crave him more.
She felt him enter her, and her fingernails slashed across the flesh of his back. He filled her up in a way that was both painful and unspeakably satisfying. She bit hard at his neck and cheek, drawing blood while he slid into her again and again.
When she screamed again, she though the mountains would shatter around her. For an instant, her entire body felt like fire.
“Netjenkhet!” she cried, and she felt the tidal wave of his orgasm inside her.
He collapsed on her, and they panted and sweated and bled.
“I love you,” Jenny said.
“What do you remember?”
“Everything.” She caressed his face. She was the ancient thing, the nameless being who only play-acted at being poor little Jenny Morton from Nowhere, South Carolina. She had played any number of roles, but she wasn't playing anymore. She was awake and aware, yet still in the flesh. It was a powerful feeling.
She stood and walked out into the humid night air.
“I knew you would remember,” Alexander said. He stood beside her, one hand on her lower back, while she looked down the long, steep stairs to the ruins below. The sound of rattlesnakes still pulsed in her ears.
She had once been regarded as a goddess in this city, or one very similar to it, and blood sacrifices had been made to appease her.
Jenny looked up at the sky. She could see the great serpent there, coiled in its spiral, each one of its massive scales an entire glowing galaxy.
Eons ago, in a time before numbers, long before the universe was stable enough for time to be measured, their kind had existed in the formless void, the endless chaos. They had fed on a raw psychic energy, the most basic fabric of the cosmos. They developed strategies for stealing this energy from each other, strategies that would, eons later, translate into the powers they expressed when born in the flesh.
Among this chaos, the great serpent began to grow. It did not simply steal energies, but devoured the beings themselves, swallowing and incorporating them into the structure of its body. The more it grew, the more it could devour, and it soon grew massive and powerful, though this also meant it moved more and more slowly.
They did not know whether the great serpent was an invader from elsewhere, or one of their own kind, grown to titanic proportions by devouring so many of the others. As the serpent ate and grew, it left more and more open and empty space in the cosmos. The remaining beings learned to fear and hide from the great serpent so that it would not devour them.
In time, those original beings who still remained hid themselves away from the serpent, in the remaining pockets of primordial chaos too small and distant to interest the slow and titanic being. Each scale on its back was a galaxy. Its form repeated throughout its colossal body, from the serpentine shapes of the galaxies to the DNA coils that constructed plants and animals around themselves. Every living thing was its offspring, its parentage reflected in that coiled serpent at the core of every cell.
While the serpent became a highly structured universe, their kind, the remaining inhabitants of the original chaos, lived as forgotten outcasts on the fringes of the cosmos. After an immeasurable span of time, they learned to insinuate themselves like parasites into the great serpent's flesh, and to take the forms of living things. Deep down, their intention was to destroy the great serpent. By defeating their ancient enemy, they could feed on its corpse and restore the old chaos in which they had thrived.
Those humans whose minds could tap into the great serpent's dreaming superconscious were known as shamans, prophets and madmen. They had called the great serpent by a hundred thousand names: Ngalyod, Sheshanaag, Nüwa, Tiamat, Ophion, Amduat, Ouroboros.
Finally, many of the humans had stripped away ceremony and symbolism and simply called it God.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
It was ungodly. I'm telling you it was evil, it was the devil. That man got crushed by that tractor, shoulda died, and the Barrett kid just touches him and reshapes him til he's fixed again. And the Morton girl threatens everyone with he
r, her witchcraft, that's what got the town thinking about witchcraft—
Thank you, Mr. Bowen.
Heather read those lines of transcript again and again. The talk of the devil and witchcraft came from one Sammy “The Steal” Bowen, nicknamed after his signature move from his glory days on the Fallen Oak High School baseball team. Heather knew this from earlier in the transcript, when he'd made a point of explaining his nickname in as great a detail as the interviewer would tolerate.
Sammy was now a fifty-six-year-old peach farmer on the outskirts of Fallen Oak. He'd been interviewed by a CDC physician at the temporary testing center set up at the Fallen Oak High gymnasium during the town's quarantine. He'd shown up for testing and free provisions, as everyone in town had been ordered to do.
The CDC doctor had quickly dismissed the farmer's rambling about witchcraft, as Heather herself had done when Darcy Metcalf first told her about Jenny Morton. But after the things she'd seen, Heather was much more open to talk of the bizarre and inexplicable.
Now Heather sat in Tricia's hospital room, sifting through the investigation data on her laptop—anything to keep her mind off what was happening to Tricia, and her own powerlessness to do anything about it. A couple of months of chemotherapy had brought no measurable results. Tricia lay in her bed now, a permanent grimace of pain etched on her face even as she slept, her skin white as paper.
Heather wondered how she could check out the farmer's story. The miraculous healing had supposedly happened at farm owned by a family called McNare. Their contorted, diseased bodies had been collected and frozen by the CDC, like all the fatalities in Fallen Oak, while Heather and others tried to figure out the cause of Fallen Oak syndrome.
She could try to find other witnesses, if any were still alive. Maybe she could figure out which EMS workers had been at the scene and try to get their account. Or she could call Jenny's father, who had supposedly been healed by Seth, but Heather didn't exactly have a warm friendship with Jenny's and Seth's families. In the past, she'd gone to their homes in the company of armed Homeland Security officials, some of whom had beaten up on Seth. Those were the same federal forces from which Jenny was currently hiding. Jenny and Seth hardly owed Heather any favors—to them, Heather was the villain.
On top of all that, Heather wanted to be discreet. She didn't want Homeland Security, or even Schwartzman, asking questions about why Heather was making unauthorized contact with a person of interest. The Barrett family was actually pursuing litigation against Homeland Security and the CDC for harassment, destruction of property, and assault. It probably wouldn't go anywhere, but Heather was supposed to stay hands-off for now.
Heather looked again at Tricia. A thick knot of drool slid down her cheek, and Heather carefully wiped it away with a paper towel. She had to be careful touching her daughter, because the chemo made her hypersensitive—just touching Tricia's hand could make her scream in pain. Despite the chemo, the leukemia showed no sign of stopping its advance. Tricia's time could be very short.
Despite her past conflicts with Seth, and her personal dislike for the spoiled rich kid, Heather would have to beg him for help, at the risk of losing her job, and maybe facing criminal charges if she pissed off somebody high enough. None of that really mattered, though. Tricia's life was more important than any sense of duty Heather might feel for her job and her government.
“Tricia, honey, I have to go,” Heather whispered, gathering up her purse and her car keys. “I'll try to get Daddy to come sit with you.”
Tricia didn't reply. Her heart monitor was the only sound in the room.
***
“Time to get crunked up from the stump up!” Wooly said. He navigated the tree-lined sidewalk of Wentworth Street, which was crowded with drunken students spilling out from the fraternity houses. “The guys said you're pretty cool. I think you're getting in.”
“Good,” Seth said indifferently. He followed Wooly to the front porch of a three-story blue house with wraparound porches on every level. Metallic Greek letters were nailed to the front of the house: Sigma Alpha Theta. Wooly, an old friend from Seth's Grayson Academy days, had dragged him to the formal pledge events. Tonight was an informal event, keg parties at all the houses. On Saturday, Seth would find out whether he'd been accepted into the fraternity.
“Skunker!” Wooly said, greeting one of the guys who'd attended Grayson with him and Seth. Wooly was shaking hands and clapping arms all around. “Chaderino! Rickster! This is my buddy I was telling you about, man, S-to-the-dog Barrett.”
The fraternity members greeted Seth, and he didn't really bother trying to learn their names. They looked interchangeable to him: polo shirts, khaki shorts, expensive watches, shaggy hair.
“Come on, S-dog, let's hit the bar.” Wooly pulled him forward through the crowd. He nodded at a group of pretty girls in skimpy tops and stretchy black pants. “You should get a taste of that tang. Those bitches are begging to spread.”
“Right,” Seth said. They wove through the mob, Wooly stopping to greet people left and right—apparently he'd been attending parties here throughout his senior year of high school.
Seth was barely conscious of where he was. He'd drifted his way into his freshman year at College of Charleston and let Wooly drag him through the pledge process. He was still waiting for any kind of solid information from the Hale investigators. It had been almost two months since Seth had hired them, but their weekly updates boiled down to “we're still working on it.” Seth had hoped things would move much faster, though to be fair, he hadn't exactly given them a mountain of useful information for their investigation.
If Jenny had meant to disappear, she'd done an amazing job of it. If not, she was in a lot of danger.
Wooly pressed a plastic cup of beer into Seth's hand and steered him out onto the back porch of the fraternity house. Small clumps of students were out here, smoking cigarettes or pot. Wooly pulled him to one corner of the porch, away from other people.
“Time to make the magic happen,” Wooly said. He popped open a brown pill bottle, then dumped out a pair of pink tablets and a few little squares of paper into the palm of his hand. “Open your mouth and get ready to flip some candy.”
“What are you talking about?”
“One tab of Ex.” Wooly pointed to one of the pink pills. Then his finger moved toward the squares of paper. “One or two hits of Captain Syd.”
“What's that?”
“You know, like Syd Barrett, dog,” Wooly said. “Why are you so slow?”
“Acid?” Seth asked.
“Just take it. Acid plus ecstasy equals a candyflip, the best night of your life.”
“I don't think so,” Seth said.
“Come on, S-dog!”
“I'm good, Wooly.”
Wooly shook his head, then popped one of the pink pills. Then he placed a square of paper on his tongue. “Your loss, hombre. I'll save the rest for my bitches.” Wooly returned the drugs to the pill bottle and sealed it. “Let's go inside and flip the motherfucking switches!”
“Do you always have to talk like that?” Seth asked.
“Talk like what, S-dog?” Wooly clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Let's go find some slut puppies to Hoover our hot dogs. This place is like the QuikTrip snack bar of pussy.”
***
Later, Seth wandered drunkenly through the parking deck on Meeting Street. He'd had a few more beers than he intended, mostly to help him talk, since he didn't really feel like saying a word to anyone. Seth had last seen Wooly leaving in the company of a few freshmen girls, whom Wooly had variously described to Seth as “frat groupies” and “easy meat.” Seth managed to refuse Wooly's hundred insistent invitations to come back to the girls' apartment with him. Ultimately, Wooly had called Seth “a total sack-licker” and left without him.
Now, Seth was having trouble remembering where he'd parked, so he walked up every level of the graffiti-spattered concrete garage, looking from row to row for his blue Audi.
; Then he saw another car he recognized: a reddish-brown 1975 Lincoln Continental, with a daisy-colored passenger door. His heart nearly stopped. It looked just like Jenny's car.
He looked closer. Shag carpet, cheetah-spotted seat covers. He even recognized the empty glass Red Rock soda bottle in the floor of the backseat. This was definitely Jenny's car.
Seth leaned against it, looking around, as if Jenny was going to pop up from behind one of the other cars at any moment. If her car was here, that meant she was back in Charleston. All he had to do was wait for her to come back. He smiled.
After a minute, he thought of another, more chilling possibility: maybe her car had been sitting here, in the back corner of the fourth level of this parking deck, ever since the night of the riot. Which would mean she had definitely been kidnapped.
He tugged on each of the door handles, but the car was locked up. He wouldn't get inside without smashing a window, or acquiring some car-thief skills.
Seth looked into the driver-side window and cupped his hands around his eyes to block the fluorescent glare from the overhead lights. On the driver's seat, he could see the narrow paper coupon printed out by the machine at the parking deck entrance, the one that told the attendant when you'd arrived and, consequently, how much you owed. The print was tiny and faint.
Seth squinted his eyes and tried hard to focus, but the printout was just too small to read. Seth banged his fist on the roof of the car. He needed to see that piece of paper.
He looked for security cameras, but didn't see any. Security couldn't be that great in a place that let an abandoned car sit this long, he thought.
Seth balled up his fist, closed his eyes, and punched through the driver-side window, slashing open all of his fingers. He reached his bloody hand into the car and pulled up the knob for the door lock.
