The Singularity Cycle 02 Song of the Death God

by William Holloway

  She reached into her apron and pulled out her keys. She and Carsten alone had keys to his quarters. She opened the door and let her eyes scan over the room. She had already cleaned here today. She walked through the other rooms of the quarters. She had cleaned them all. The bed was made and the sheets creased in her exacting fashion, the porcelain of the sink spotless. This was her work.

  She looked at the clock. It was already noon, and her work was done here. That was why she was working in the kitchen with her mother. She fell to the floor and wept softly. She pulled out the locket from around her neck and opened it to look at Carsten. She closed it and kissed the front. She smiled and laughed through her tears. Carsten had been her best friend for as long as she could remember. He would be home soon. He would know what to do. He always did.

  ***

  Greta and Karin sat in tense anticipation in the salon of Karin’s quarters. A cable had come from Paris to their agent at the Neue Pinokothek from his associate at the Gallerie d’Arte Voltaire. This was the third update and the first one since the showing.

  The first cable stated that the proprietor of the Gallerie d’Arte Voltaire, a man named Renaud, had speculated that the showing of Uli’s works would be monumental, and that they would be making a lot of money.

  The second cable announced an infuriating development. Wilhelm was now involved and would be sponsoring the showing and giving a talk on the genius of his late brother Uli. What the cable didn’t mention was how much of their money Wilhelm would be stealing, but the message was clear enough: Wilhelm had hijacked their plan. It even contained a line saying how much Wilhelm appreciated their thoughtfulness in this matter.

  How on earth could they have known that their stupid drunken older brother would find out they were selling Uli’s grotesque artwork? Wilhelm was enough of an embarrassment at the funeral, blubbering like an infant, trying to be the center of attention. It was mortifying.

  They were ecstatic when he finally returned to Paris afterwards. Uli turning into a laudanum-quaffing lunatic was embarrassing enough, but Wilhelm Ernst turning into a weeping woman was… pathetic.

  Greta and Karin tried to re-kindle the old atmosphere of parties at the manse when the last of Uli’s mess was cleared out, but Carsten would have none of it. On the very first occasion, he stormed into the house and kicked out the group they were entertaining. They would have laughed him out of the house, but he was backed up by the granite-faced Karl.

  When one of their party told the carriage driver that he was stepping outside his place in society, Karl walked right up to him and threatened to throw the man out physically. All of them were stunned. None of them had ever been threatened by a lowly house worker before, but none doubted that Karl would follow through on his threats.

  On that day, it became eminently clear that things had changed completely. Carsten was now the undisputed authority. He held their father’s ear and most importantly, their family accountant’s respect. He was the studious one, the golden child. And every bit of Uli’s money was now going to him! No more parties for them, it seemed.

  That little bastard!

  So when Greta came up with the idea of selling that ugly rubbish Uli had painted, they felt no need to inform Carsten. They hadn’t thought of telling Wilhelm. Why should they? The idiot was given more money than any of them. Why, after the way they were embarrassed by Wilhelm, and then by Carsten, those two practically owed them the money!

  Needless to say, the sisters were ecstatic at the arrival of the telegram from their agent at the Neue Pinokothek telling them exactly how much money they had made.

  To the esteemed sisters Ernst, Greta and Karin:

  It is with sadness and alarm that we must inform you that the Gallerie d’Arte Voltaire in Paris has burned to the ground and that the cause has been assumed to be arson. The fire occurred the day before the exhibition of Uli Ernst’s works. The entirety of the inventory of his paintings was lost in the fire. The proprietor of the Gallerie d’Arte Voltaire died in the fire.

  It is at this point that the news becomes far more difficult and hard to conceive. According to the gendarmes of Paris, Wilhelm Ernst is the arsonist. He is also being accused of the murder of Renaud. Wilhelm has disappeared and his whereabouts are unknown. The police in Munich have been sent an extradition request from the courts in Paris.

  You have our deepest and most sincere condolences in the matter. While we are loath to consider that your brother may be guilty of this heinous act, we advise that you acquire legal counsel for him and implore him to turn himself in so that he may clear his name. Nonetheless, be advised that the Chief of the Munich police considers Wilhelm to be very dangerous.

  Greta and Karin never made it past the first paragraph of the letter. They threw it to the floor and screamed as they tore apart the house and terrorized the staff. Then they got dressed and went out to drink, just like they did every night.

  ***

  Carsten and Karl sat in Carsten’s private salon. On the table in front of them was the letter that sent Greta and Karin on a rampage the afternoon before. Ava was dead asleep on Carsten’s bed in the next room.

  As was expected of them, the house staff cleaned up after the sisters as they destroyed their home. Carsten had come back from the university library with Karl just as the screaming reached a fever pitch. The house staff were gathered at the base of the stairs in terror at one of the worst tantrums the sisters had ever thrown. They looked sheepishly at Karl and Carsten and proceeded up the stairs to bear the brunt of their wrath. Carsten looked at Karl and couldn’t help but smile.

  “This is an interesting development.”

  Karl wasn’t smiling. “When they’re done, I’ll go up there and try to put together what happened. I’ll keep my men out of their way, as always. Shall I send Ava out with a meal for you?”

  The smile fell from Carsten’s face and he sighed. “Yes, Karl, and check in on my father, too, please.”

  The letter was torn and badly mangled, but Karl had inspected all the debris before the house staff were allowed to discard it. Carsten took a sip of his red wine and sat back. “What does this mean for us? We knew they were going to try to sell the paintings, and we were going to let them get away with it. Does this change anything for us?”

  Karl nodded. “The police will arrive tomorrow or the day after. They will search the house for Wilhelm. I take it this Chief of Police mentioned in the letter is the same one that expelled Wilhelm from Munich?”

  Carsten closed his eyes and rubbed them with the back of his hand. “I can only assume so or there wouldn’t be a presumption of guilt.”

  Karl leaned forward. “Is Wilhelm stupid enough to come back here? He would understand that the police would search for him here, wouldn’t he?”

  Carsten looked down and shook his head. “Yes, he’s that dumb. I shouldn’t feel sorry for him, but I can’t help it. In a way, I wish that I could have helped him. He wasn’t such a lost cause; he actually wanted to do the right thing, but…” Carsten trailed off.

  Karl gestured towards Ava passed out on the bed. “This mind erasure, it’s far from perfect.”

  A dark expression crossed Carsten’s face. “We’re assuming that Wilhelm did it, that he killed this Renaud person, that he burned down the gallery?”

  Karl said, “It’s always been my job to assume the worst in people. More often than not, they prove me right.”

  Carsten looked perplexed. “Could he have remembered? Could the paintings have triggered his memory to return?”

  Karl shook his head. “I don’t think so, not entirely, not with any kind of sufficient force. Ava knows that she is missing time, and it’s driving her mad, but she can’t put the pieces together. She’s not dumb, in fact, she’s much brighter than one might expect of a housemaid. I don’t think Wilhelm has the discipline or the presence of mind to have put everything back together, even with the paintings.”

  Carsten nodded. “I have to agree with you. It would m
ake more sense for Ava to begin to understand than Wilhelm, especially with her mother telling her every day that the house is haunted and that I’m the spawn of Mephistopheles. Wilhelm couldn’t have done it, not just with the paintings… If he did, he must have had some kind of catalyst, something that we don’t know about.”

  Karl shook his head. “What are the odds of such a thing? How rare is this magic of yours? Mercifully rare. Impossibly rare.”

  Carsten looked at Karl and tried to formulate his thoughts. “Karl, what I am doing is against nature. It is against circumstance. In the margins of both books I have read of events confounding the Great Work, events of such absolute synchronicity that it cannot be mere happenstance. The writers of these notes talk about being confounded by the gods, others speak as if reality itself attempts to bar their path. After what I’ve seen so far, I have no doubt of this phenomenon.”

  Carsten folded his hands and looked out his back window into the gardens beyond. He continued, “We are reaching the end of the calendar set out in The Song of the Death God. The final rituals remain waiting for the correct alignment of the stars. Soon, I think that the very trees will uproot themselves to prevent me from achieving my goal.”

  Karl asked, “How long until this alignment?”

  Carsten answered, “Just a matter of days, and when that happens, I will have done what has not been accomplished for two thousand years.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

  Rudolf Haas didn’t like these Ernsts at all. They were a degenerate lot, and it was no surprise that the likes of Wilhelm Ernst came from the them. The father was a disheveled drunk, capable of no coherence at all. Haas knew him from decades before, when he was already an unambitious, lazy man, but his wife’s death had sent him over the edge. Now he lived to drink and hadn’t been seen in society for years. The sisters, Greta and Karin, were reprehensible at best. It was hard to even look at them without contempt. People like them didn’t belong in Munich; they belonged in bordellos in Turkey or opium dens in Shanghai.

  The only sympathetic one was the youngest son, Carsten. He was sober, reserved and articulate. But something about him was more unsettling than the entire lot of them. His gaze was too hard, too knowing and cold. And regardless of what the house staff pretended, Carsten was definitely in charge here.

  Four of the house staff clearly answered only to him, and their captain was the carriage driver. His name was Karl Kreutz, and he was a smart and hard man. He wore the uniform of a carriage driver, but had indentations on the breast of his jacket corresponding with holsters for large caliber revolvers.

  When they arrived and searched for Wilhelm Ernst, they found Kreutz’s quarters next to Carsten’s. As he’d suspected, Karl was no mere carriage driver; he was aide-de-camp to Carsten Ernst. He had an expensive wardrobe and a gun cabinet with enough revolvers, shotguns and repeating rifles for several men. There was also the faint but unmistakable smell of opium. The Ernsts couldn’t take care of themselves, but they didn’t need this kind of protection. Few people did, especially at the level provided by Karl and his men. These men were more likely to be found in mercenary regiments than in a house staff in Munich.

  Why on earth would Carsten Ernst need a man like Kreutz?

  Haas didn’t indicate that he suspected anything about their relationship, but it was now his principal interest. Wilhelm Ernst wasn’t here and his family hadn’t seen him, but something else was going on here.

  The Ernsts sat on couches in the large living room and the house staff stood along the wall behind them. They had questioned all of them individually. The father was mute, staring at the floor, the sisters stupid and venomous. Carsten was articulate and precise, delivering concise and intelligent answers to every question. When the maids were questioned, it was clear they didn’t know anything about Wilhelm. They were disgusted by the sisters, but feared Carsten. When pressed on this, they described him as the model of civility, but beneath it was a terrific awe.

  Karl’s three men claimed to be groundsmen and delivered practiced lines about their duties. When asked casually about their past employment, it turned out they were all veterans of war and had spent time in Africa. They weren’t carrying guns when the police arrived, but their belts had marks where holsters hung. These were no groundsmen; these were armed guards.

  Haas wanted to ask Karl Kreutz many questions, but he knew the man wouldn’t talk and no amount of beating would get answers out of him either. Haas also didn’t want Karl to know he suspected anything. Karl did a very good job of preparing for their arrival, but Haas had been a police inspector for decades.

  Haas’s first inclination was that Carsten was running an opium smuggling operation. The guns and the trace smell of opium in Kreutz’s quarters gave some credence to that notion, but it made no sense. Before he went to the Ernst estate, Haas sent police inspectors to the offices of the Ernsts’ accountants. He wanted to know how much money Wilhelm had, and to cut off those funds immediately. In the process, he learned the financial status of the Ernsts. Their only income was the foundry, but that was an enormous amount of money. No, Carsten Ernst was a studious young man, and that sort of criminality was beneath him. But something else was afoot, and Haas couldn’t let it go. He would wait and he would watch, and eventually he would find out.

  ***

  Wilhelm walked with his hands in his pockets and his head down. At the train station, he purchased a wide-brimmed hat and pulled it down as far as it would go. He forced himself to walk slowly, to try to look as casual as he could. Maybe it was just fear, but he couldn’t shake the notion that people glanced at him and then looked again as if they were trying to remember where they had seen him before.

  He saw the poster as soon as he disembarked the train in Munich. He saw his name in large print. He saw the words “wanted” and “murderer.” He walked out of the train station as fast as he could. Luckily, he had no luggage, just the single carry-on bag. Everywhere, policemen scanned the crowd, scanning for him. If he made it out of that train station, it would be a miracle. He knew that there was a hope, but it felt like a remote one. The poster showed him as he looked when he left for Paris, sporting a moustache he found to be woefully out of fashion.

  He walked past the last policemen at the train station and onto the street, to a line of carriages waiting for fares. He chose the nearest one with enclosed seating and gave the driver his destination. There were modestly priced hotels near the taverns he frequented when he still lived in Munich. The police would expect him to be dull enough to go straight to his home in Munich, or to a pricey hotel. He wasn’t going to make that mistake. He would also need to exchange Francs for Marks. Wilhelm had to consider that his only money was the money in his pocket.

  When Wilhelm got to his room, he cleaned up in the washbasin and changed into his one extra set of clothes, then lay down on the bed. It wasn’t cheap and filthy, but it definitely wasn’t up to his usual standards. He exhaled and looked up at the ceiling.

  As Wilhelm drifted off to sleep, the last thing he consciously noticed was a sensation of being pulled by an invisible tide towards the direction of his family home on the far side of Munich.

  ***

  Carsten lay looking at the ceiling, going over the minutia of tonight’s ritual in his head. The Song of the Death God was an inherently tricky text, basically a transcription of a man’s testimony given while being tortured. He read The Song of the Death God over and over and knew that if not for the notes of the others who had come before him, he would not be able to do any of this. In fact, if it hadn’t been for The Immortal Body and its notes, he wouldn’t have even been able to start. The Immortal Body was something of an unintentional primer for the ideas in Song of the Death God. Both books were glimpses into the truth that these primitive folk religions were the same whether Romani or African Animism. Some of the phrases of the rituals were even the same, the same dissonant ugly words of a language from a time before man could rightly be called human.

>   All of the writers of the notes in the margins of the books said it, and it was obvious. This necromancy was but a small piece of the whole, and the books contained only a piece of a piece. With the help of the other explorers writing in the margins of these dusty old tomes, Carsten believed that he had solved the ultimate aim: the complete resurrection of a human being. What bothered him was that the other writers spoke about the animation of the dead, at least in humans, in purely academic terms. None of them wrote about having actually done it themselves. They spoke regarding their suspicions of practices in very early Egypt and Sumeria, of the Picts and the Gauls, but nothing concrete.

  Carsten smiled. Of all the people in the world, this information had been revealed to him. And of all the people in the world, he wondered if any others had the resources and resolve to do this. This knowledge could have fallen to weaklings and cowards, men who lacked faith in themselves and the will to execute their vision.

  Men like his brothers.

  Men like his father.

  Men who thought that money was more than just a tool. Men who thought that women and sex were to be obsessed over, and friends followed into distraction.

  He would have none of that. He would complete the Great Work.

  Ava whispered in his ear, “Carsten, my love, what are you thinking about?”

  He kissed her deeply. “Thinking about how much I love you, how happy we are going to be after I’ve finished with my studies and can present my findings to the community of science. We’ll be able to get away, just you and me. Who knows, Paris, maybe London…”

  Ava’s chest shuddered. She was going to start crying again, but Carsten knew that ever-increasing adversity in all things was to be expected as the clock wound down to his triumph.