by JM Guillen
“It was.” He chuckled. “I wouldn’t have come otherwise.”
“Well, apparently we did it.” I kept the words casual, with just the slightest jibe.
“You did it, Ysabel.” He paused. “I still don’t rightly understand how.”
(—but am intensely curious. If she has the knowledge to do such things—)
“I’ll tell you all about it.” I winked at him. “Later.”
He nodded, scratching at his black beard.
(—her talisma is missing. How could it have—?)
I was certain we were safe now. No matter how fierce the storm grew, we would easily outrun it in Captain Argent’s ship. He would be a fool to travel toward the storm, and airships could typically outpace the slow, methodical movements of the sorcerous thunder.
Yet, he wasn’t charting our course away from the monstrous thing.
I didn’t understand.
“That bloodstorm is getting close. Aren’t you worried that we’ll get caught in it?”
“We’re on a tight schedule. In a score of days, we are due in a port city in Nimjemin.”
Nimjemin! I would cross the Arual Mountains. I knew the Nimjeminese didn’t even speak our language or use the sovereign letters. They were one of the easternmost—
East.
“Toward the storm?” I felt terror trickle its way down my back in small shudders. The storms devoured reality itself, ate away at the world, leaving only madness and blighted desolation behind them.
Captain Argent nodded. “I think we’ll skirt the edge. But generally, yes. We need to hurry, little ’Bel.”
I grinned every time he called me that.
I was still talking, more thinking out loud than anything. “The nearest Nimjeminese port would be… what, Sijil?”
Captain Argent turned toward me, his eyes intent. The tiniest bit of bit smile played at the edge of his mouth.
“Ysabel Dartange, I have a question for you.” His tone was the starkest seriousness.
“Um, yes?” I glanced from the storm to his verdant eyes.
“Would you like to go on an adventure?” His smile turned cunning.
“Well.” I couldn’t stop a cocky grin of my own. “Will I see the vast wonders of the world?”
“Yes.” He chuckled. “I think I can promise that.”
“Will we do impossible things?” I nodded toward the storm.
“Absolutely.” He gazed into the storm as well. “What is impossible for others is just another day for folke like us.”
For a long pause we watched the sinister lightning.
“Someday…” I looked up at him, hating how shy my voice sounded. “Do you think you can get me to Teredon? My father set off for her gates, and I’d like to see him again. Assure him I’m hale and hearty.”
“I imagine we can do something like that. With the wind at your back, the whole world opens up to you, ’Bel.”
“Well then.” I gave a mock salute. “Aye aye, Captain. I’d like to go on an adventure.”
“Excellent.” He peered over the bow of the ship at the swirling storm. “Because an adventure is coming.”
In the face of that storm, there was nothing else to say. Its horrors bent reality. It was the font that had spread ruin across this world.
But yes.
In that moment, I was ready to say yes to whatever adventure came my way.
Soon the bloodstorm boiled before us while Captain Argent held a straight course. In moments, we would be swallowed by the gloaming, on our course to Sijil.
I had never been more alive.
###
Notes on the work
In Ysabel’s tale, it’s difficult to list all the links to the other strands of the Paean. The Liber Noctiis poked its head in, and we saw a conclusion to a battle begun by Michael Bishop about a quarter-million words ago. There were more subtle hints, however. The city of Dhire Lith was mentioned, somewhere we will visit in future works. We learned a little about strands and bounds—facts one Thom Havenkin would find helpful, and we even saw a certain guant, barefoot man.
Ysabel’s story tells us a lot about Cæstre, and we learn a little about what the world was like before the Shroud fell. We learn that some worlds have been fighting back against the elder darkness for centuries.
This is important, going forward. Things on Rational Earth aren’t getting simpler, after all.
As the final note in the first chord of our Paean, the next story will introduce one of the most important young women in Earth’s long history. It’s a short story but an intense one. Pay attention to some of the creatures depicted and think on where you’ve seen them before.
The end is nigh.
September 1, 2015
Missouri, United States
In the world that was, I had been a silly college girl enjoying typical college girl fun. I went out drinking in a completely irresponsible manner but still somehow got reasonable grades, while living on campus in Fitzgerald Hall. I planned to change schools and be a computer programmer, at least, that was my thought.
Stupid. That all seems so stupid now.
I received the papers almost three weeks before the Event. I wish I could say that there was something miraculous about the delivery, but there really wasn’t. The time for mail call came, bringing this large manila envelope with my name on it. It had six different stamps on it, and looked like it had been through hell.
“Grace?” My roommate looked at the package, furrowing her brow. “Looks like someone mailed you a telephone book.”
I was busy; I had a website I was working on. I can’t even say what it was now. I glanced over at her, pushed some dark brown hair out of my face, and took a quick peek. The only thing that really caught my eye was who it was addressed to:
Graciéla Juarez
Fitgerald Hall
Room 108
99 Houx Street, Warrensburg, MO 64093
“Graciéla.” I gave the smallest of frowns. No one called me by my Mexican name except my abuelita. That made it even stranger— I hadn’t heard from my grandmother, from any family, in years.
I looked the package over, but it only got more mysterious. It had apparently come from someone with the initial of “D” in Oaxaca, Mexico.
“Thanks, Michele, will you set it by my bed? I’m curious, but I need to finish this.”
“Fine by me.” Michele stepped to my bed and thumped the package down on the floor.
The papers would remain there for exactly eighteen days, completely forgotten.
That’s an important part to remember. A strange package from an unknown person shows up at my door, addressed to me by a name that I never use. Yet for some reason, in that moment, it simply didn’t seem important. I set it aside and forgot all about it. In the moment, I thought that it was nothing, probably a prank.
I was wrong. I was what we all were. Nothing. I was nothing in the stupid, petty, world that was.
Then everything changed. Then came the Tainted and the dreams. I can still hear the dreams, those echoing, sideward dreams. Sometimes I still wake up with the taste of them in my mouth, and I understand what terror is.
When the Event happened, it all clicked. Everything made sense. I could tie everything into one pretty bow. Everything horrible that had ever happened to me had a purpose.
I HAD to have an alcoholic mother; it taught me to rely on myself. I HAD to be raped by Jake and those guys; it made me strong.
I even HAD to lose Kenny Curbeau.
Oh, Kenny. I cried over him for weeks. He had been one of the last good things to happen to me, or so I thought. Even after we broke up, I would still catch myself missing him, catch myself fantasizing about the guy he had been when we first got together.
It doesn’t matter anymore. That world is gone.
Mostly.
I saw Jake Harleton, one of the guys who raped me, the day after the Event. He was dead eyed and chewing the neck out of that stupid purebred dog he loved. He was covered in
his own filth and shambling.
I’m not sorry I laughed.
2
The world came to a whimpering end on September 18, 2015.
It didn’t end in fire or ice; it ended in madness and darkness. There were wars and rumors of wars, but that wasn’t the cause of it.
No one knows the cause of it.
Lots of folks refer to it as “the Wormwood Event” because of the shadowed comet in the sky. It’s been said that roughly a third of humanity was changed, lost to depravity. It’s an unfortunate coincidence that the number corresponds to what it says in the Bible will happen at the end of days: “There shines the Wormwood Star,” or some such. Of course, some idiots out and out believe it was the rapture. They think that that the souls of the afflicted were taken, and, well, those monsters are what we have left.
They believe we now live during the Great Tribulation.
I quit trying to figure it out; I just gather information. This is my attempt at recording the events of those first days. Maybe in the future we’ll know what happened, be able to piece things together.
…If there is a “we” left.
At first, I thought that I could use the Internet to reach out to the rest of the world. I thought surely there were people out there, bloggers and journalists, who were trying to make sense of all of this. Because of my interest in computers, I began collecting data to put out on the Internet myself.
Except the Internet didn’t last long. In the beginning, it was there to give us all reports of what was happening, but that didn’t matter as much as one might think. The reports were confusing and some outright wrong. Even the ones that were right were so misleading as to be of little use.
Most stories have “the Event” starting in the middle of the night— but that just depends upon where you were. It seems to have been simultaneous, worldwide. The time range of the occurrence however— no one can agree on. In Kyoto, Japan, the Event was timed at forty-seven minutes. However, there exist equally valid reports in Kenya that claim the Event lasted for four hours, maybe more.
The oddest thing is both might be entirely true. No one can tell.
Most of the world, however, claims something more along the lines of what we dubbed the English Baseline. In London, researchers found that the Event, which they named “our collective trouble,” seemed to range between forty-five minutes and an hour in most places. No one knows or understands the cause of the odd time ranges.
No one is trying to.
We have larger problems. Still, however, in the spirit of understanding, I’m including everything I can.
During that time, we, as a race, lost. People all across the world were consumed by nightmarish, disjointed dreams, dark waking dreams that made horror movies seem tame. In that state, some people attacked others, barricaded themselves into closets, or chewed out their own tongues. Across the globe, every plane crashed, cars slammed into each other, and surgeries failed. Three nuclear power plants went up, one in France, one in Spain, and one in India.
Millions died during the English Baseline.
Other things happened too, strange things we cannot explain. In Bolivia, mass migrations of whales and dolphins beached themselves, dying even as we were lost in our own madness. In Mexico City, strange fires started during la Pesadilla, fires that were raging across the city before some of us awoke.
There are patches of vegetation, some of them miles in diameter, that simply died, leaving eldritch glyphs in the earth.
Of course, we didn’t know all this as we groggily dragged our way out of our racial fugue. It felt like the world’s worst hangover combined with an exhaustion that seeped into the bones. I remember not really knowing what was real and what wasn’t, and that was how I almost died.
See, humanity did not all climb out of their harrowing dream. It broke the minds of billions of us, leaving twisted monstrosities where our friends had been. I don’t believe they were raptured. I can’t imagine a God who would take the souls of his beloved and leave such abominations in their place.
Billions more of us died at the hands of those who were once our friends, lovers, children. Those... those things literally shredded into us while we were still half-asleep, unknowing what had happened.
I was lucky.
As far as I can figure, Michele was in our shared lavatory when the Event occurred. I myself had been tip-tapping away on the computer keys, as I did six nights out of seven.
It was an exciting life.
Like every other member of humanity, I cannot remember the moment that the Wormwood Event began; only a sensation that was like a spike of darkness and horror in my mind. I remember screaming, and I know that I stumbled from my chair and knocked over my small bookcase.
They weren’t dreams nor were they hallucinations. Albeit my mind seemed awash in some kind of psychotropic drug while simultaneously adrenaline and fear poured through my veins like molten lead. I remember that it seemed as if the world melted around me. I also remember a spidery darkness that lurked behind all things, a Nothing that had teeth and fangs and hungered for me in the primal ways of a predator.
I must’ve screamed because later, my throat was hoarse and sore as if I had gone to a concert and wailed for hours on end. Also I must have clawed at my own body fiercely enough to leave broken streaks in my skin and collect bloody flesh beneath my broken fingernails. I tore out fistfuls of my own hair, by the way my scalp bled.
When sanity resumed, our dorm room was a wreck.
Books were scattered all over the place, and one of our windows was broken. There was blood on my computer desk and my keyboard. My computer was on, and it seemed as if I had typed in the dialog box. Five nonsense words were repeated over and over:
“ifn om pet Tomn TAK!”
I sat staring at the computer, feeling as if I had gone on the world’s most outrageous bender and was still trying to work a handle of vodka out of my body. I thought for a moment about sitting down and seeing if I had done anything else on my computer when I heard the scratching.
It was coming from our bathroom door.
“Hey, Michele?” I stumbled my way toward the lavatory, not quite in my right mind. “I think I’m sick. Are you okay?”
For a moment I heard only quiet from the other side of the door. Then, the scratching began again.
“Michele?” I knocked gently, leaning against the wall so that hopefully the world would stop spinning. “I don’t remember anything.” I made a sound halfway between a chuckle and a sob. “How could you let me get so drunk?”
Then she roared and began beating against the door. It was sorrow and rage and bent fury. Just at the sound of it, my heart thundered in my chest.
With her very first strike, I heard the wood splintering from the frame. I stumbled backward at the shock of it and then slipped and fell onto our hallway floor.
In the distance, somewhere else on our floor, I heard a blood-curdling scream. It was the most terrifying sound I had ever heard— it was in no way human. No sooner had the scream ended than another just like it came from behind my lavatory door.
“Michele?” This time, my voice trembled, softer than a child’s whisper. I stared at the door, and Michele —or something— beat against it again.
The door cracked in the frame.
Then there was shouting in the hallway, and I heard several people run by my outer door. In the distance, I could hear police sirens, maybe ambulances, but all of the sounds seemed very far away.
Michele struck the door again, and this time her fist tore through it.
Now I was the one screaming.
I could see her hand, and long wooden splinters pierced through her skin. Dark scarlet blood dripped from her arm down the thin plywood, but Michele didn’t seem to care. I remember seeing the bangle bracelet that she always wore, and for some reason, my mind seemed fixate on the metallic silver.
Somehow, seeing that bracelet made everything crystallize in my mind.
I knew thi
s was very, very real.
As if the plywood were tissue paper, Michele began to tear through the holes that she had made, giving no regard to whether or not the wood ripped her skin. I scrambled backward across the floor, unable to take my eyes off the growing hole. Her skin looked strangely pale in the light of the hallway, and the blood that poured from her wounds seemed much darker than it should.
Michele kept making a low, bestial growl as she tore the door part. For a moment, I could see her face peering through the hole. It looked as if she was covered in her blood, similar to the way that I had clawed through my own skin.
Then I realized that she had clawed out one of her own eyes. The other one peered balefully at me, an entirely black orb devoid of human emotion. Slowly, my trembling hand came to my mouth in mute horror.
This was not my friend.
I heard screaming in the hallway again, but this time it wasn’t the animalistic roar from before. It was obviously one of the other students, crying out in terror. And pain. The sound was like a slap in the face, and it snapped me out of the horror that gripped me.
I needed to get out of here.
“Bye, Michele.” My voice fell in a hollow whisper. I scrambled to my bed, grabbed up my satchel, and dumped it. I threw some clothes into it, along with my cellphone and charger. In a moment I had my computer as well and was rushing for the door when something snagged in my mind.
That package. I literally hadn’t given it a second thought in days, but now I knew I couldn’t leave without it. I tossed it in my satchel and ran for the door as Michele tore and chewed the lavatory door to bits.
I never saw her again.
3
We still really don’t know what to call them. Like so many others, I spent my spare moments frantically tearing through the Internet trying to dig up information. It was difficult, finding places where I could get service, all the while on the run. Twitter absolutely exploded. For a long time I struggled to tell fact from fiction.
