The dreams.
He glanced at Ayla who still lay with her face to the floor.
“Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t, Seth.”
He turned and straightened, and Ayla stilled. He stared at the Almighty’s empty throne, but no retribution came. Nothing happened, and that nothing was more terrible than any punishment he could have endured.
“I’ve seen this before,” he said. “I’ve seen it all.” He clenched his fingers into fists and swallowed the stone in his throat. Ayla’s clothing quivered against the floor as she let out a shaky breath, but still she did not stand.
He touched the sleeve of the Almighty’s stained robe. Some of it still glistened, but more had crusted and flaked like rust. A groan escaped his throat. He laid his face in his hands and let the horror flow until he stumbled and fell to his seat. He rested his head on the floor and let tears stream from temple to Temple.
“No.” The roar of his voice echoed through the chamber. “He’s dead.”
He thought of the remaining pieces of his dream and had to shut them out. He would stop it. He would stop it all. They wouldn’t die. He wouldn’t let it happen.
But how?
Ayla’s sinuses bubbled as she sniffed. She remained prostrate, perhaps because there was no longer a reason to move, because she believed her husband and dared not look at the proof lest grief crush her.
For who could endure the death of their God? Who could see the ultimate reduced to nothing but lifeless matter? They had put their trust in the Almighty and it had been destroyed. But by what? Had Cain killed the Almighty? Was that why Cain had murdered Abel—to show them they had been duped by a false God?
It was true that only Adam and Eve had walked with God in the Garden. What if they had been fooled? What if their memories had somehow been twisted against them? Or what if they had never seen God at all?
“No,” Seth whispered. “No.” He scrambled to his feet, grabbed the crown in both hands, and threw it across the room. It clattered and skidded to a stop, and he noticed then an item that hadn’t been in his dreams. A goblet on the throne’s armrest. He lifted it and liquid sloshed over the rim. At first he thought it wine, but then the smell of blood reached into his awareness. He grimaced and dropped the cup, splashing the redness across the throne. “He lied to us.”
Ayla straightened until she knelt. “We should leave.”
“He’s dead. Our God is dead. It was a façade. A trick.”
“Listen to yourself. You would have given your life for him, and now you toss his crown like refuse.”
“What does his name mean? He claimed to be the Creator of the world, the Creator of our souls, and yet he is gone and his Temple is dark and his robe is stained with blood.”
She struggled to her feet. “He’s not dead.”
“Then how do you explain what you see?”
“I don’t know. Just stop it.”
“I already tried. Why do you think I’m here? Hours ago you argued for the impossible, that suffering could find us despite his promises. Now I say you were right, and you can’t even bring yourself to look at the proof.”
She shook her head.
Rage swelled like a bubble in his head. “You won’t take her from me. I won’t let it happen.”
Her voice shook. “You’re scaring me.”
The images wouldn’t leave his eyes. It would happen exactly as he had been shown.
He remembered a detail, a momentary flash amidst the flood of images, and its meaning quickened his blood. He turned to Ayla, his eyes wide and clear. “We need to get out of here.”
“What?”
“Run. Go!”
She turned slowly, her eyes narrowing. He could see she was hurt by the sharpness of his voice, but he didn’t care. He wanted to push her, to throw her out the door and get her as far from this place as possible.
A blinding flash lit the room, as if they had been struck by lightning. Ayla screamed, and a high-pitched ringing smashed into Seth’s ears, though it sounded like a thunderous Word. And in the space of one fleeting moment, Seth knew that their lives had ended, and that their story had just begun.
17
Mason was dreaming, but the words spoken by a familiar voice seemed to grab hold and pull him halfway to consciousness.
“She’s drowning in the quarry. You must run to the quarry as soon as you wake. If you disbelieve me, she will die. Do you want to carry that weight? Then get up and run. Run!”
He woke with his feet swinging, then landing, now sprinting. The entrance of his single-room hut was already filled with water, and he splashed through puddles as he whipped out the doorway and into the storm. His matted hair slapped his shoulders like waterlogged snakes, but he knew where to go, even with his eyes closed.
He skidded to a stop at the edge of the thirty-foot drop and searched the water below. He didn’t think the quarry would be so full already, but the voice in his dream had told him it would be so. By the time his mind had roused enough to question why he would obey a voice from a dream, he was staring at his mother’s head bobbing above the surface of the water, then sinking underneath.
He tore off his tunic, sprinted, and jumped into the quarry. Air and rain buffeted his face as he fell and plunged deep. His legs hit the bottom and jarred, though not hard enough to break, and he swam to the surface, then dove and searched with his hands for Sarah. He felt a body, cold, but real, and grasped it. He breached the surface and thrust her face above the water, but she wasn’t breathing, so he swam the rest of the way and tugged her up the ramp.
He lifted her head and struck her back with a flat hand, but she didn’t breathe. Instead, she vomited. After the initial shock of it, he realized it was better she vomited, not worse. She coughed, then began gasping. He picked her up as gently as he could, and she hung in his arms, cold and heavy, and her eyelids fluttered closed. She began to shake.
“Don’t stop until you bring her home. You can’t bring her anywhere but her home. If you do not bring her home, she will die.” The voice had been right about her being in the quarry, so why should he distrust it now?
He paused, then sprinted up the staircase, feeling the burn in his thighs as he crested the top and turned for her home. Time blurred in the space between thunderclaps. The sheet over the doorway stuck to them as he pushed through, and he had to angle sideways to slip past with her in his arms. The storm muffled as he walked into the kitchen and set her on the floor. There was a trail of dark fluid twisting out the room and down the hallway.
He looked at his mother and brushed the hair from her face. She was shaking and her eyes were closed, but she was still breathing. He stood and followed the trail to the closet, where he found the source of the blood—a body with a curtain draped over it. He slid the curtain back.
Lilleth? He dipped and pressed his ear to her chest in search of the rhythm of life. There was none.
His skin tingled as he returned to his mother. Had she done this? Had that been the reason she had come to the quarry? His mouth was dry and he tried to swallow, but it stuck in his throat.
“Bury the evidence,” the voice said, “and make sure no one can find it. Do it or your mother will die.”
So many questions Mason could not answer. But he would not let his mother die.
18
Eve was in the lounge when Abel’s firstborn, Calebna, entered. “The crops are shriveling.” Calebna was breathless, as if he had nearly drowned in the water that dripped from his long hair.
“What do you mean?” Eve’s voice was harsh, and Adam stiffened. She could feel his fingers tighten around her hand. She remembered the pain of Abel’s entrance into the world, and how her hands had dug into Adam’s, but Abel’s murder overshadowed any pain she had yet felt. And Adam?
“I mean that everything green and growing in the City is decaying,” Calebna said. “And our fruit is rotting. Some blight is taking it.”
“What about the fish? Our animals? Are they alive?”<
br />
“Most. But many show signs of sickness. Some have lumps across their bodies. Others have been consumed.” He paused. “There is more.”
“Speak quickly, Son of my son,” Adam said.
“Mason found Sarah in the storm. It seems he risked his life to retrieve her from the water that destroyed the southern half of the City. Gorban informed me only moments ago that all attempts to wake her have failed. Mason took Sarah to the Temple, seemingly in hopes that the Almighty would heal her …”
“What? What happened? Speak!”
Calebna jumped as if startled. Eve could see that he was shaking. “The Almighty is gone. I would not believe it until I saw it with my eyes. The Temple is dark, and when we entered, we found the torn and bloodied remnants of his garment on the throne, and beside it were Seth and Ayla’s prone bodies. I am sorry. They are dead as well.”
Eve whispered, “Dead?”
Adam toppled a table and shouted. Eve studied the desolation in Adam’s eyes as Calebna brushed the wrinkles from his tunic and looked anywhere but at Adam.
“I am sorry,” Calebna said again.
Adam slid to the floor and held his face. He was weeping, but out of anger rather than sorrow, Eve thought. A chill clambered up her back as she remembered the prophecy the Almighty offered them in Eden—that through one of Eve’s sons would come a reversal of the curse. When Cain had been born all those years ago in the cave, she had thought him the Savior the Almighty spoke of, and perhaps Adam had thought Abel the same. But Cain had proven himself born of evil seed, and both her other sons were dead.
That is why Adam weeps, she thought. He knows now there is no hope, for not only are our children either dead or false, but the Almighty himself has abandoned us. And can a promise be any truer than the character of the one who promised?
She turned toward her grandson. “Show me.”
Calebna led the mother of all mankind under the last vestiges of the storm to see the bodies of those she loved too deeply to express. Somehow she remained upright. It didn’t affect her like it had Adam. Like an underground lake, her soul lay quiet in darkness. Though the tears didn’t flow, she remained filled by them, and that was perhaps the most painful part.
Calebna’s brothers, Philo and Tuor, arrived as Eve clutched the Almighty’s torn and bloodied tunic. Together, the men hauled Seth and Ayla’s bodies out of the Throne Room and into the antechamber, where they laid beautiful tapestries over their pale forms.
Eve exited the Throne Room, saw the bodies, and ran her fingertips over their covered faces. Though she knelt staring for what seemed hours, no one spoke. They merely watched, as if waiting for her to determine their direction. How should they react? Surely there must be some explanation?
But there wasn’t. So she stood, turned her back on the Temple, and walked home. When she returned, Adam sat with his back against the wall, and his eyes held some goal in the farthest distance. When she spoke, he would not respond, and Eve understood what she had seen in his eyes.
Can one die inside and yet remain living?
Yes, she thought. And it seems Adam has.
PART FOUR:
INTO THE HEART OF DARKNESS
These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm. For them the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved. For, speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.
—2 PETER 2:17–19 ESV
19
It had started slowly. For many days Cain simply traveled. The sounds of the world became amplified in the absence of human speech, and the itch in his mind disappeared beneath the roar of nature. For what seemed an eternity, all that remained was earth and sky, the breath of lungless leaves, and the quiver of wind over water. Music. The whole of Time seemed contained in an eternal Song, and he joined in its exaltation.
Then all had flickered and pieces of the Music fell bit by bit into little pockets of blindness. Eventually he grew accustomed to the strangeness, but the pockets widened until a great nothing rolled out, swallowing everything and turning back upon him until only the void remained.
“In the empty chill, I finally know the extent of the bondage I welcomed. Slavery tastes bitter, and I would fight the gates of hell to stop it from burning your beautiful lips.” He had taken to speaking to Sarah in the void. “A habit born out of necessity,” he explained, so she wouldn’t think him odd. He imagined her nodding in response, half believing, half mocking. “Yes,” he said to her. “I know you think it strange, but it is true. I need to talk to you.”
She pursed her lips and said, “Whatever helps.”
“I’ve wondered if I lost myself long ago and imagined all this as I’m imagining you. If maybe killing my brother simply broke me, or if maybe I imagined murdering him, and that all this is only a dark dream.”
“You know this is not a dream,” she said. “And you don’t look broken.”
“But I feel it.” He thought of the silver boy forcing his body along. It seemed like many years since last touching his soul to his body. He grimaced. My body. Not that silver devil’s. Desire grows and aches in my chest. I long to feel the dirt beneath my feet and the breeze on my cheek, or even the sensation of pain.
He reached through his memory for any vivid sensation and grasped the musty smell of sweat. He held onto it like a broken rose.
“Look at you,” she chided. “You should be ashamed. You even think that dwelling on the smell of your dirty body is an accomplishment.”
He stared at his gray hands in the void. Slowly, he nodded. “I am ashamed. It’s good you’re still at the City and have no idea what I’ve become.”
“So stop it.”
“What could I do?”
“You chose this path.”
“I killed Abel because I had to. I tried to find another way, but you pushed me to it.”
“Still fighting the truth?”
“You have no understanding of the truth I’ve lived.”
Sarah’s flamed hair seemed to crackle. “And what of me?”
“I’m not saying you haven’t suffered.”
She flicked her wrist as if to dismiss him.
Cain pressed his palms against the sides of his head. “Can’t you see that I need you?”
“I’m not your toy, a child’s rag doll to be soiled and discarded until next I fit your fancy.”
He bowed his head and opened his mouth to respond, but the words stumbled over each other.
“Speak.”
Angry phrases flittered through his mind like rats, but he pushed them aside and said, “I am sorry.”
She scoffed. “This must be the first time in your life.” But the words lost their edge.
He pressed his eyes and felt the anger slip away. “I wish I could explain what kept me from expressing it. I wish I could understand why I couldn’t kiss you or slip my fingers into yours. I simply couldn’t. But I wanted to. I still want to. If you were here, I would hold you tenderly. Remember before I left? Remember how I held you?”
She nodded and held her expression. “I remember more than that.”
He bit his cheek, remembering how he had struck her and broke their home and yelled at her as she collapsed and wept on the floor. He stared at her, sensing again the invisible wall between them. Even in his imagination he could not do what he most wanted to do.
“Do you miss me?” he asked.
She rubbed her eyes.
“Does anyone miss me?”
She nodded and a smile creased her lips, then crumbled. She turned and her image dissipated like fog in the wind. He searched the darkness, but found nothing. The emotions came like aftershocks to an unfelt quake, and in the safety of solitude, for the first time since childhood, he wept. He was no longer a man. He was a boy finally realizing that for nearly a hundred and fifty years, not
hing had been enough.
I just want to satisfy the restlessness. Everything feels wrong, as if pieces of the world have been fabricated and replaced without me knowing. What is this longing? This thirst?
The blackness crept so close it felt as if it were inside him, and he rubbed his hands over his arms, but generated no warmth. Faintly he remembered the smell of sweat, and he longed for it again.
The silver boy’s words returned. “Not all, but more.”
Cain felt as if he were awakening from a long dream. He hadn’t given all of himself to the silver boy. He hadn’t offered complete control, and if he had overcome it for a moment, why could he not push it away for an extended period of time? He thought of how long he had been confined in this capsule of nothing, and the possibility that he could have been lulled here brought flames to his neck. The pockets of blindness, had they been the beginnings of the void around his soul as the silver boy displaced him and took over his body?
“Let me out!”
“Would you quiet yourself?”
He turned and saw Sarah wincing and covering her ears.
His mouth twitched. “I thought you left.”
“I came back.”
He shook his head, questioning if he really were seeing things. “Why?”
She sighed and folded her arms as if wondering whether to speak her mind.
“Tell me.”
“You’re a fool. You want out? Then leave.”
“You’re saying I can?”
“The world needs you. Our sons—Lukian, Gorban, Mason, Kiile, and Machael. They need you.” She turned and walked away.
“Wait.”
“You promised. Or don’t you remember?” She waited, then nodded. “You always were a liar.”
“How do I escape?”
She placed a hand on her abdomen and stared at it, then smiled and whispered, “Just wait, little child. I’ll take care of you. And he’ll never touch you.”
His eyes widened.
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