He saw Eve peering up at the storm from inside. When she saw them, she called out. “What are you doing in the storm?”
“Seth fell at the well. He is having trouble walking,” Ayla yelled.
Thunder pealed and shook the ground. “Is he all right?”
“I think he’s sick.”
Eve came out and braced Seth’s other side. “Come inside and rest. We’ll dry your clothes. Tea is ready.”
Seth nodded thankfully as they ushered him dripping through the doorway.
Eve glanced at Ayla. “Lilleth is here.”
“And Abel?”
“He never returned last night. She came here this morning to ask if we had seen him.”
“Have you?”
Eve bit her cheek and shook her head as they passed into the lounge, where Lilleth lay on a cushion and gazed into the fire as if lost in thought. Eve and Ayla helped Seth to one of the cushions, and Lilleth noticed them with wide eyes. “Brother, are you not well?” Her sparrow voice sounded strained.
Seth nodded and smiled, then winced. “I’m fine.”
Ayla mumbled something directed toward him, shook off her soaked clothing, and helped him do the same—though not without a bit of roughness, he thought. Eve handed them cotton rags to blot their hair and skin with, and soon they donned new dry garments.
Eve removed the tea from the flames and poured a cup for each. Seth accepted the wooden vessel and breathed deeply. Chamomile, mint, and lemongrass, brewed overstrong. Eve returned the pot and slid it from the flames, either ignoring or not noticing Lilleth’s glare.
They blew on their tea and sipped without speaking. Ayla twisted her wet hair behind her head, Lilleth wrung her fingers, and Eve sat cupping her tea with both hands. After a while, Seth smoothed the coverings on his legs and said, “This storm is unusual.”
Eve nodded and Lilleth seemed to whiten a shade, though it was hard to tell in the firelight. The only sound was the pitter-patter of the rain on the roof. Lilleth would not look at them, and Eve stared blankly, the creases in her face deepening.
Seth caught Ayla’s gaze, and they exchanged curious expressions. He cleared his throat. “What has happened?”
Eve glanced up. “Nothing. Nothing has happened. Adam is looking for Abel. He left this morning and has yet to return.”
Ayla addressed Lilleth. “I assumed when I saw Abel leave the celebration last night that he was going home.”
Lilleth hugged her knees and rested her chin on them.
“Lilleth and Abel returned home after the celebration, but afterward he left for the fields,” Eve said.
For a moment, it seemed to Seth as if clouds darkened the flames in the hearth, though he did not know why.
Ayla addressed Eve, since Lilleth seemed in a strange mood. “Seth fell at the well earlier this morning. I found him on the ground, moving as if lost in a dream. After a while he awoke, but he’s been injured.”
Eve glanced at Ayla. “Injured?”
Ayla’s voice gained an edge. “Yes. He has bruises and cuts from where he struck rocks.”
Eve furrowed her brow at Seth. “Why would you do such a thing?”
“I think I was dreaming.”
“Do you not remember?”
“I remember sitting on the edge of the well.”
“I meant your dreams,” Eve said.
“You never did say,” Ayla said.
Seth sighed and wiped his face. He sensed their gazes, but he suddenly felt weary and a little sick. “I’m unsure what it means, if anything, and I know it might sound strange coming from me, but I’d rather rest than talk right now, if you don’t mind.” His head throbbed, and he rubbed his temples. The pain came in waves.
Eve folded her hands in her lap. “Of course. You should rest.”
“I will be fine.” Seth felt Ayla’s hand on his leg. He breathed deeply and leaned back to ease the pressure, but his swollen joints and muscles pained him, and the cushions offered little relief.
The silence returned, and Ayla shifted. “Do you have any idea what it might be?”
“Sorry?” Eve said.
“Do you have any idea what might have happened to Seth?”
Eve shook her head. “It is new to me, whatever it is. Perhaps …” Her eyes dulled. “No, I have never seen or heard of anything like it.” She turned toward the fire and seemed to fall back into heavy thought.
Ayla stood, as Seth knew she would, and cleared her throat. She never could abide silence. “Thank you for the tea. Is there anything I could help you with in return?”
Eve smiled, but somehow looked wearier. “There are bowls and clothes needing to be washed. You may finish them.”
Ayla spun away, and Eve called after her saying she could stay and rest, but she had already vanished. Seth’s brow wrinkled as he tried to find a comfortable position to rest.
“Adam is looking for Abel.”
The significance rolled in his mind. He rubbed his forehead and sighed. Surely he needed rest, but he was afraid of what might happen if he slept.
The dreams …
Thunder rumbled the house, and the sound of rain increased to a roar. Wood creaked with the winds, and the buildings howled. It sounded strangely orchestrated, as if a part of some subtle Music too discreet to be fully known.
Exhaustion took over, and he closed his eyes. As he drifted, he pictured places Abel might be, and reasons why he might not have returned.
Then he dreamed a series of nightmares he would not remember.
9
The City was washing away. Cain could hear it as he smashed their jars and broke their furniture. The winds screamed at their house. The rain pelted the earth, flying through the tented arched windows and gathering into puddles on the floor. It was so loud he didn’t notice Sarah until she grabbed his shoulder and shook him.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“What needs to be done.”
“Destroy our house and our things? Why?” Her fingers needled his arm as he pulled away. Her red hair was disheveled and her face was dotted with water from the storm. He couldn’t remember a time she looked so haggard. “What’s going to happen to me? What will our children think when they find out what you’ve done?”
He grabbed a small table and lifted it above his head. She released him and shuffled back, her eyes black and wide.
Do you think I would kill you too?
He yelled and smashed the table on the ground, its fibers exploding. Sarah screamed, pressed her hands over her ears, and shut her eyes. “Stop it. Stop!”
“No.”
“You’re a monster.”
“What if I am?” He could feel the blood hot in his cheeks. “What if I am?”
Her voice warbled and she sank to her seat, cradling her face in her hands. He was surprised at her reaction. At how much she seemed to care. He wondered if he were making a mistake.
What if she really does love me?
But the buzzing in his mind made it difficult to focus. The voice was mumbling, then speaking.
No, not just speaking, it was shrieking.
“She only cares because you’re all she has left, because Abel is dead, and when you leave she will have no one left to love her, no one left to hold her or to keep the darkness at bay. Your children are all grown and no longer need her. She uses you, she always has.”
He shook his head. She had loved him once. And with Abel gone, there was no one else she could love. But then again, that was the point, wasn’t it?
She was shaking. She was wailing. Her body was alive, but the sobs were the sound of a soul falling to pieces.
My wife’s soul.
His eyes softened. He wanted to kneel and scoop her into his arms like a child. He wanted to hold her and bring her to their bedroom and press his lips against hers with all the passion he felt in his chest.
“But you can’t stop now. It will all fail if you stop, and you know it. She has to believe you hate her. She has to deta
ch from you. If she doesn’t, she will either die at the hands of your family, or follow you into the deadly wilderness. Everything you have done will fail if you comfort her in this moment. Break her. Break her!”
He grabbed the broken remains of the table, lifted it high, and smashed it on the floor. “I am a monster. I killed him, and I’ll kill anyone who gets in my way. I am a monster.” He beat the floor with the wood. His chest heaved with the intensity of his breathing, and he dropped the remnants. Sarah was no longer looking at him, for her eyes were hidden behind her hands.
He rushed into the other room, grabbed his satchel, and came out, stopping one last time to look at Sarah’s crumpled figure. Lightning boomed overhead and seared the image of the room in his mind with white silhouettes. He had to get out of the City while he still had time. Wanderlust burned his legs, and he could resist no longer. Everything had been rushed. The broken remnants of their furniture and pottery lay scattered about the room.
Details that will distract and confuse. Misdirection.
The voice returned. “They will think she fought with you. They will think you left her like the worthless whore she is, and they will look on her with sympathy. Then, when you return …”
Cain’s hand extended and his throat constricted painfully. He nearly risked everything in that moment to speak words of comfort, to whisper he loved her and to hear her say it back, but thunder pealed and muted him. His cheeks flushed as fantasies fell and disappeared like ash. Desire for her tender touch cracked and bled shame, and a sudden craving to beat her rose in his chest. He turned and flipped up his hood instead. He hesitated, caught between rage and some longing he could not describe. Then he strode out of the room and into the storm, leaving Sarah alone on the floor.
If someone had seen him walking in the storm that night, they may have thought the wetness on his cheeks was only rain. But it was not.
10
Adam strained for air. He had to get back. If Cain really did it …
He stumbled forward as the tears on his cheeks became lost in the raindrops pattering his face like tiny wooden paddles. Lightning flashed and thunder rattled his teeth, and the long grasses, which before had swayed so blithely in the breeze, were wet hands grasping his legs. He struggled on. He fought the world to get back to his family, to find them safe. But when he reached the last hill and looked down on the buildings, his heart coughed and sputtered.
Adam mumbled a quick prayer and made for Cain’s home. He slipped down the hill and fell on his palms, splashing mud in his eyes. He scrambled up, flung the muck from his hands, wiped his face, and grit his teeth. He loped on until he saw their house. As he entered Cain’s home, he recognized a scent he had missed when last there. The faint, though unmistakable, smell of death.
He breathed deeply.
That’s the smell of your son. The last sign you’ll ever have of him. Abel is dead, you fool.
Sarah sat in the same position he’d last seen her in, though all the furniture had been broken and lay scattered among shards of pottery, and there was no longer any fire in the fireplace, though three candles burned to her right.
The room bore the signs of long-bred violence, and she seemed to cower in the shadows.
“Where is he?”
She did not respond.
“Sarah, where is he?”
She rubbed her arms.
“Is he gone?”
She nodded.
He tried steadying himself against a table, but his arm pushed off a broken piece of pottery and sent it clattering across the floor. “Did he really do it? Did he really kill my son?”
Her warm alto was frosted with shame. “Yes.”
He breathed raggedly, his wet clothes producing pools on the floor. He watched a droplet grow on the end of his fingertip and saw it change color. The forbidden fruit hung and swayed, and Eve reached for it and broke it off. After she took a bite, he received it from her one mouthful lighter. Oh, how it felt to puncture its skin and let the coppery taste fill his mouth. It tasted of death. The same smell that hung in this room, only one hundred fifty years later.
Sarah wept quietly.
How could she have said nothing? How could she live here with that serpent and not warn anyone? He strode to her, grabbed her shoulders, and shook her. “Tell me where he is.”
She guarded her face. “I don’t know.”
“You’re lying.”
“I thought he was going to kill me.”
“You’re lying!”
“I wish I were.” Her jaw clenched, and her red hair twisted about her head like a motionless fire.
He turned away, and all he could think of was Abel, his son. Lost. Dead. He felt the terrible weight of the mistakes he had made, and yet could not admit, for fear they would crush him. He struggled to convince himself the house was not collapsing about him, that the world itself was not being mercilessly pressed between the hands of the Almighty, whose eyes pierced the heart of every man.
But surely his Lord knew his intentions and forgave him. Because Adam’s darkness was not that of Cain’s—a remorseless, all-consuming evil.
“Dear God,” he whispered. “How could you have done nothing?”
After all the service Adam had given the Almighty, after all of the sacrifices he had made, God had let his son, his most beloved child, die. Could the Almighty be loving and still let that happen? Could Abel live under the Almighty’s protection and yet be killed?
His throat burned. There was only one conclusion such unshakable facts pointed toward. He opened his mouth and let the words fall from his mouth like forbidden fruit. “God lied.” And they, too, tasted like death.
11
The rain fell like a volley of arrows. Eventually, glowing faintly through the storm-filtered light, Cain saw the eastern portion of the inner wall of the City of the Almighty. It reminded him of the spine of a great beast, long slain and removed of flesh and fur. He bent to see the Temple on the hill, but the hood of his cloak hugged his skull. There was a red flash as electric flames wormed through the sky, and the rain transformed, momentarily, into a million flaming spears stabbing the earth.
He turned up the path that led to the Temple entrance and rubbed a hand over his scalp, attempting to relieve himself of the buzzing sensation. The pressure corralled his thoughts through a diminishing space, until at last every part of his conscious mind was occupied by mundane facts that repeated endlessly.
Make each step the same length. Make each stride vary as little as possible so that the numbers you’ve counted will be measurable. You need to know how many steps it takes to get from your house to the Temple.
But his true goal wasn’t in numbering his steps. He didn’t care how far it was. He only wanted to escape from the hellish itch in his skull. It was as if the silver boy were grinding its teeth down the edges of his mind. Scraping. Cutting. Devouring.
He planted his feet before the doorway, and with his left hand, grabbed the handle of the polished marble door of the Temple. He gazed up at the gilded image carved into it of two winged angels guarding their faces. It was heavy on its hinges, but the gap between it and the wall widened, and he slipped through. The door swung shut behind him, and inside was blackness.
The violent storm had been the first indication that everything had changed. The darkness of the Temple was the second. Water dripped to cold stone as he flung his hood back, rummaged through his satchel, and pulled out a rope and flint. He coiled the rope, laid it on the ground, and dropped the flint on top of it. Then he patted the wall until he found a torch and grabbed it. He returned to the flint and struck sparks until the torch’s head warmed to embers. He dropped the flint, tended the embers into a flame, and watched the light reach into the corners of the basilica.
As the flames reached their full strength, he realized he was not alone, and the buzzing in his mind died away. His breath stilled and sweat broke out on his forehead and palms as the Man stared at him with golden irises. His hair was long
and white, and concealing his mouth was a voluminous beard.
“Hello, Cain.”
That voice. It was deep, earthy, familiar. Questions long-suppressed bubbled to the surface, but he dared not speak. He knew the importance of this moment. He had expected the Almighty to be here, of course, but the darkness had distracted him.
The Man knows. Why else would the Temple darken for the first time since we arrived two years ago?
“Where have you been?” the Man asked.
Cain rubbed his temple out of habit, but realized there was no itch, no voice. Only silence. He knew he should be relieved, but the voice’s absence disturbed him.
The Man straightened. He rested against a staff, but his eyes were as intense as a morning star. “Speak, son of Adam. Where have you been?”
Come now, you have long prepared for this moment.
Cain cleared his throat. “I have been home. With Sarah.”
“Is that all?”
“Could that ever be all?”
Golden irises shifted over him. The man’s beard clung to a slight frown, but no clear emotion revealed itself. “Do you think I do not know?”
“You know all things.”
“Tell me,” the Man said.
“I do not know what you want me to tell.”
“Be free with your speech while you still retain the capacity.”
Cain wondered at the Man’s words. Did he threaten?
“Where is your brother?”
“I do not know.”
“I saw you both walk to the fields.”
“Am I my brother’s keeper?”
The Man bent, and the words he spoke next were so small he nearly missed them. “What have you done?”
Cain stared, suddenly feeling the heat of the torch scald his hand. Show me who you are. Will you try to suppress me like a tyrant? Show me your true self. I am dying to know it.
Cain: The Story of the First Murder and the Birth of an Unstoppable Evil Page 5
