There is Music like cruel noise, as if all is only painful percussion. No singing, only shredding screams and gargling gutturals, and the tug of …
Ayla. Her arm against his, so beautiful and thin and strong. And her fingers. They are cold.
Pain. He bends and gags and nearly vomits, but she jerks him up, and he stumbles forward.
“Hurry!”
“I am,” he says, or does he merely think it?
Light stabs through the darkness. His heartbeat washes the Music from his ears, and jungle air is thick in his throat. She is kissing his face with those beautiful lips, so soft, so perfectly formed. She is telling him of how close they are, and that if he just stays awake, it will all be fine.
He hopes she doesn’t stop, for the pain is unbearable, but her voice and lips are gone, and they are rushing forward again. His toes grab sand and he falls into Water, and the last thing he thinks, as Time engulfs him, is how Ayla’s fingers feel as they slip out of his.
Then there is only the Music, rumbling and shaking the Waters with thunderous peals.
PART EIGHT:
THE RETURN OF CAIN
But when you see the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not to be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let the one who is on the housetop not go down, nor enter his house, to take anything out, and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. … For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect.
—MARK 13:14–16, 22 ESV
40
Cain studied the way Lukian’s eyes bored into him. Was it disgust, or hatred? Mason’s arms hovered at his sides, tensed, and Cain’s other sons, Kiile and Machael, stood alive and prepared for violence. The Abomination had wanted them, too, but Cain would give it no more.
Do they sense what prowls inside me, and how it lusts for the very warmth of their veins?
Mason edged toward Lukian. Kiile nudged Machael and said, “Is it him?”
Lukian shook his head. “Cain is dead.” He lifted his bloodied hammer. “And even if he weren’t, there’s no place for him anymore.”
Cain laughed, and by doing so, let the Abomination slip past. “I see,” the Abomination said through Cain. “You were doing well without me? I thought you were in danger, but now I see.”
Cain thrust the Abomination back and wiped away the moisture that beaded on his face. Mason’s fingers twitched. Kiile shuffled left, then right. Machael stared with those half-open eyes. Lukian wrung his hands on the handle of his weapon while the children waited for their elders to react.
“It’s an illusion. A demon from hell,” Lukian said.
“You’re right. I have changed, and return more than a man,” Cain said. “Days ago, in the darkness of the wilderness, I died. But then I rose again, crawled before the Almighty’s throne, and bled the life from his veins. I’ve brought a bit of hell back with me.” His eyes widened as he fought against the Abomination’s demands for control. This is my time, he thought, my own. “You know the truth, but some have yet to admit it. The Almighty is dead. And I am returning to claim what is mine.”
“And that is?” Lukian said.
“Your worship.”
Their legs were rooted like plants awaiting harvest, their rosy cheeks plump with blood. He quelled the pale thirst and wondered if they sensed his struggle.
“Are you insane?” Kiile said.
“Bow,” Cain said.
Lukian spread his feet and gripped his weapon with both hands, and Mason drew up his knuckles. Kiile and Machael pointed their weapons forward, and their boys did likewise.
The Abomination’s laugh was loud in Cain’s mind. It said for his ears alone, “Resistance can only be met with violence,” and Cain’s nostrils flared. “Would all of you rather die than follow my commands?”
“You abandoned us, but we survived your absence,” Lukian said.
Cain said, “Where are your children?”
Lukian didn’t respond. His face reddened.
“When you found their bodies mutilated on the ground, why didn’t you breathe life back into their lungs? Why didn’t you heal their wounds?” Cain said.
“Shut your mouth.”
“So angry.”
Lukian lifted his hammer high and burst into a sprint. Cain readied himself as Lukian swung, and just before the hammer struck, he grabbed it by the head, stopping it midswing. Lukian pitched forward as his hands slipped, and he tumbled to the ground.
Kiile yelled, and Machael and a few of the younger boys dashed forward. Lukian scrambled to his feet, brushed them off, and faced Cain, who held the hammer by the head as if it were a toy.
Silence. Mason, Kiile, Machael, and the others stared. No one moved.
“You have two choices.” Cain tossed the hammer toward Lukian. “Bow to me”—he snapped his fingers, and eyes lit the Fog like stars in the sky—“or die.”
Lukian grabbed his hammer and raised it. There were fingerprints pressed into the metal where Cain grabbed it.
“Think of your wives. Think of the children too weak to stray from the Temple,” Cain said.
“You’re a coward,” Lukian said.
“No, Son. I am God.”
To Calebna, the Temple seemed alive with whispered prayers. The boys, including Jacob, stood in a corner of the vestibule with arms crossed, and the women sat like seeds scattered from the sower’s hand. They were blinded by the simple fact that God had not saved them as Calebna had claimed. To them, Philo was not just a corpse, he was the embodiment of God’s abandonment. It didn’t matter that the boy had run headlong into danger. Philo’s motionless body was the final emphasis to their bitter question: “Why have faith in a dead God?”
And Calebna stood in front of them as the last remnant of that faith.
I lost control, Calebna thought, and Philo and Tuor died while I abased myself before the Almighty’s shadowed throne.
After all the sacrifices I spilled before your feet, after all the love I lavished on your name … Is the presence I sensed nothing more than the imaginings of my mind?
Almighty God, if you truly exist, then kill Lukian. Take his life before he steals my family. Remember me before I disappear.
Gorban crawled to Sarah, who lay curled into herself. Calebna was surprised he felt no hatred toward the wife of the man who had caused all of this.
But we are both scarlet letters drawn in the blood of our kin. No one could have stopped him from killing my father. I know this now for certain. Cain and Lukian, alike in so many ways.
And what of me? What of my father?
Abel had walked between the lines Cain had trampled, and for all this time, Calebna had tried carrying on his father’s legacy, as he saw Lukian carrying Cain’s. But he could do it no longer. Calebna was no holy man.
I’m the worst of them all. I’m a dirty man who thought himself clean.
Kill Lukian. Kill him quickly.
Terah returned through the archway, passed Calebna as if he were a ghost, and handed Ben to Keshra, of all women, the deepest insult. As Terah knelt beside Philo and pressed her face into her brother’s bloody breast and wept, Ben gazed at her with disturbing solemnity.
Her opinion of me is ruined by grief. And bitterness. Or are those two separate? My brothers are dead and I feel … nothing.
He glanced at Gorban, who examined the red and brown soaked through the bandage on his leg. Peth came out again and replaced the soiled fabric, and Gorban cried out as the wounded skin tore with the fabric, but soon clean wool secured his leg, and the two lay in each other’s arms.
Calebna stood a while longer, and as the flavor of failure made bitter his soul, three hollow knocks turned his gaze toward the Temple doors, and the last knock resonated long and hard, like a gong sounding the passing of an age. He blinked as if waking from a long dream, walked to the towering doors, slid the iron bars from the handles, and pus
hed the doors open enough to reveal a host of bloodied men.
Lukian, Gorban, Mason, Kiile, Machael, and their boys shouldered past him. Then a voice he knew all too well made the hair on the back of his neck prickle.
“Hello, Nephew.”
From behind them entered a familiar figure leading a host of Jinn. The women screamed at the sight of the beasts, and some fled the room, but the familiar man lifted his hand, and all the world seemed to hush.
Calebna blinked. It looked just like Cain, but there were details amiss. The skin looked as if it had been cured and dyed a dusty gray, and black vertebral marks shot down his arms and lined the top of each finger like snake bones. His lips were a deep shade of red so as to appear black, but his eyes were iridescent silver. They shone in the dim torchlight like marbles polished round and popped into his eye sockets.
Calebna waved his arms, and his voice was angry. “You let demons defile the Temple of the Almighty?”
“This is no Temple anymore.” Cain laughed. “It is just a cage for fools. And you’ve caught yourselves for me.”
Calebna shivered. Gorban’s hand slid to the weapon at his side, but Cain’s glare swiveled toward him. “Release your weapon,” Cain said.
Gorban didn’t move There was dangerous silence.
“The beasts behind me will rip your throat out if you do not obey me.”
Sarah grabbed Gorban’s arm. There were tears in her eyes, but they seemed not to come from fear. “Do as he says.”
Eve also came up beside Gorban and laid her hand on his shoulder. He let go of his weapon.
Calebna gazed at them, a tattered and broken people, driven to the edge by starvation and demonic pressures. They were at their weakest, and the demon, or man, that looked like Cain had chosen this moment to appear. Such a thing could not be a coincidence.
Cain spread his arms. “What you see is truth. I am Cain, and I have returned for my family.”
Calebna’s legs shook with the effort to stand, and he found his mind fighting to disbelieve. His eyes narrowed as he took in the differences between what he saw and what he remembered. If you truly are who you appear to be …
“I have come to save you from yourselves. To save you from the world my father corrupted.” Cain paced. “Tell me, where is he? Where is Adam, first among men?”
“He is sick,” Eve said. “Since you left.” And her gaze bored into Cain.
Cain said, “Go then, and bring Father here, for I have returned to establish the New Religion and usher us into our glorious future.”
Eve motioned for Machael to retrieve Adam, and so he left, though not before hesitating with his hand perilously close to the weapon at his side.
“We have reached the threshold to our future as a race. Immortality is within your reach. All that is left is to accept the invitation. You need only pledge yourselves to me, and I promise I will give you everlasting life.”
Lukian turned his back to them and rolled his shoulders, and Calebna wondered what had happened on the battlefield. He scanned the men who had returned and realized none of Lukian’s children were present. He knew how volatile Lukian could be. If the man’s children had been murdered, there would be nothing that would stop him from exacting revenge on everyone he thought responsible.
But why would he not look at Cain?
Calebna observed the Jinn standing in the doorway. Did Cain control them? Was he in league with them? He looked back and said, “There is only one Tree of Life, and it is guarded by a cherubim and a flaming sword. You say you will give us immortality, but you lie. It could never be so easy.”
“It isn’t easy,” Cain said.
“Then what is it?”
“An alternative to death.”
Silence.
Cain said, “I have been to the depths of hell and ascended to the throne of the Almighty. I have met the Devil and killed God. Look at you—gathered in your Temple, so afraid, so weak. You worship the dead, but I am the Living Death. I killed God and I became God. And now your God speaks.” He offered them an open hand. “Follow me or die.”
41
Seth opened his eyes and strained to grasp at the smallest bit of light, but found nothing. He brought his hands to his face and felt his eyes. They were open, but he saw nothing. His mind registered the stiffness in his back, and his nose was assaulted by vile smells. He twisted and threw out an arm, but his hand smashed against stone and he cried out.
Shapes and forms joined in his mind. He pulled his hand back, massaged his wrist, and winced, but in the blackness he was unsure his facial expression had changed. He carefully touched flat walls to his left and right, and with difficulty and no small amount of shimmying, edged his arm above his head and found a ceiling.
He was alone in a small, enclosed space filled with darkness. His mind raced, recalling strange images of an ocean, a forest, an underground labyrinth, endless vats filled with tortured creatures, and a machine. Melodies bloomed over remembered instrumentation, and though the sounds were no more than phantoms, he knew their shapes held meaning. It was a great Music, and he and Ayla had been drawn by it into the underground labyrinth, and followed the machine until …
He patted his stomach. He didn’t feel any wounds.
I could be dead, he thought. Is this what death feels like?
But he had already died before washing up onto the Sands. The machine had attacked him, and he had bled and lost consciousness in the Water. If he weren’t capable of dying again, then what did the wound mean?
He shifted onto his back and tried to clear his mind. His breath reflected hot and stale, and the smell of death permeated every inch of space. He pushed against the walls and screamed until his voice tore like a dry garment, but no answer came.
He slammed his feet against the sides, then scooted his legs up until his knees were against the wall in front of him. He held his breath and pushed until his head swelled with blood. The wall popped free and light stabbed his eyes. He gasped and recoiled, curling his knees up and covering his face with his forearm.
He slid his arm away and his eyes struggled and ached. There was an ocean of blue, and in it floated white islands. He wondered if he was high above, looking down at a vast sea. His eyes regained their focus.
“The sky,” he whispered.
He grabbed the stone cover that he realized was above him and, as he leaned up, pushed it until it fell to the earth with a thud. He stood shakily and hopped onto the brown grass that cracked like dry bones. He straightened and looked at the stone tub that had encased him. It sat like an empty stomach belching stench as if filled with dead rats.
“A tomb?” He rubbed his temple with two fingers and waved the reek from his face. He spun on his heels and, for the first time, noticed the Temple on the hill behind him.
The whole world seemed dead. The trees were burnt husks, hollow chaff of a world that was no longer. Though the Temple was here, this was no longer the City of the Almighty. This was something else entirely.
His eyes traced a line over two identical boxes sitting next to his. He stared at them for a few blank moments. They were tombs, sealed shut as his had been.
Ayla!
Seth ran to the closer of the two and pressed his ear to the top. There was no sound, but that meant nothing. He tried to pull off the sealed cover, but couldn’t. He dug his fingernails under the edge until he bent his nails back. He grabbed a stone and smashed it against the seal. As he made his way around, pounding the seal as he went, pieces of the stone broke off and stung his skin. He tossed his tool, pulled the lid up, and flung it away. The tomb was empty.
Who would seal an empty tomb? Had another dead man woken like me? But it was sealed …
A high-pitched, muffled cry prickled the hair on the back of his neck. He turned and ran to the third tomb, his heart hammering his lungs like they were bells. He smashed the seal and threw the cover to the ground, and there lay Ayla curled into herself. She screamed and squinted against the brightness. But a
moment later, she stood, threw her arms around him, and sobbed into his shoulder.
“You’re all right,” he said. “I’m here.” He rubbed her back and arms and kissed her hair. “I’m here.” Upon feeling the rise and fall of her chest against his, all doubt fled, and he believed. He cried and laughed at once because she was alive. Because they were both alive.
“Was it real?” Ayla said.
“I was there. The Water. The jungle. The Song.”
“I thought you were dead,” she said.
He hushed her. “I’m here. So are you.”
“I see it when I close my eyes.”
“It’s gone. And we’re alive. Everything is going to be all right.”
She pressed her face into his neck, and he looked out on the dead grasses and trees, the shriveled flowers and brown pall. He swallowed and his throat pressed against Ayla’s head. Memories returned from before he awoke in that place beyond the edge of Time. The longer he thought, the more he remembered. And the more he remembered, the more he trembled.
I lied to her. Nothing is all right. I’ve escaped my dreams only to land in my nightmares. “God, wake us up,” he whispered.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He kissed her hair and held her tighter. “Nothing.”
42
Cain crouched, plucked a blade of grass, brought it to his nose, and sniffed. His heightened senses constructed a list of the few animals that had brushed against it: a mouse, a fox, and a wild dog. But the smells were days old, and little was left of their delicate forms. He rose and scanned the rolling hills. There were patches of green here and there, the first visible signs of life during the last two days of travel.
“The curse spread quickly.”
The Abomination. Cain was struck by the oddity that no one but he knew of the Abomination’s existence. No one but he knew that he was possessed by the very son of the Devil.
He lifted a hand to his chest and clutched his breast where a pain had developed the last two days. The pale thirst was strong, and grew stronger every day, but to feed was to nourish the Abomination. That, of all things, was what he most feared, and so he waited.
Cain: The Story of the First Murder and the Birth of an Unstoppable Evil Page 19
