But it would only tear the wounds afresh. Maybe, in the end, it would be better if she came to believe you never loved her at all.
He nodded. And perhaps I never did.
Cain’s body swung, convulsing, but his body jerked and stilled. Sarah thought him unconscious, but his body lifted and the vine around his neck slackened.
She crawled away with a start. His eyes were open to silver gemstones. No white, no black, only iridescent silver. His hand tore the vine from his throat, and he descended until his feet touched the ground.
Sarah screamed, ran for the guarded entrance, and cut her hands on the thorns. She cursed and commanded them to let her through, but the way would not open. The green globes bobbed close and stared.
“Stop looking at me,” she yelled and punched one. It recoiled and the others squinted. Deliberate footsteps sounded behind her, and she spun.
It was smiling at her.
“Who are you? What have you done with Cain?”
“Come now, you know me, as I know you.”
“Get away from me.” She rushed up the hill and slid behind the Tree. She breathed hard with her back to the trunk, examined her hands, and wiped the blood on her dress. The wounds throbbed, and she wondered how deep the thorns had gone.
“You’ve met me in the dark halls of your deepest thoughts.”
The footsteps seemed to echo. She twisted and heard them from differing angles.
“I’ve watched you curse when you thought yourself alone. I’ve whispered in your ear and you’ve repeated lies.”
She held her breath and twisted, but the branches hid all but a few feet in any direction.
“I am the darkness within darkness that you fear. I am the child of Sin.”
A fruit thudded to the ground next to her, and she jumped and screamed.
“Are you hurt?” it mocked.
God help me, she prayed. If you exist, if you ever existed, deliver me from this place.
“I can feel the pulse in your throat as if it were pressed against my teeth. Come before I grow angry. You won’t like me angry.”
She could not escape. She could bide her time trying to dodge it in the grove, but she had seen the monster’s rage, and of that she was most fearful. She placed a hand on her abdomen and shivered. If it beat me again, it might take you from me. But I won’t let it do that. No, dear child, I would endure anything before that.
54
Cain gazed into the boiling darkness beneath the layers and felt it his final home. Like a pilgrim through the lands of Sin, he realized the darkness just over the edge was his final bed, his resting place. Though shame would have stilled him at any other moment, he knelt and prayed with a fervency reminiscent of Abel.
God, if there is nothing you can do to stop what I’ve set into motion, only keep Sarah safe. Do what you will with me, but if there would be anything you would have me do before I die, I would do it.
There was no response, though the silence seemed to speak in its own way. “Come and bear the consequences,” it said. “Experience the everlasting darkness prepared for you in the fullness of Time.”
And so he jumped. For a moment, the sensation of falling into that darkness was similar to falling into the streams of Time. But the darkness peeled back to a Light so violent it penetrated his very soul, and he crumpled into himself in the attempt to guard his eyes from the burning fury, though every shifting shadow was eradicated in its presence.
“My son.”
Cain shivered at the familiarity of the Man’s voice, but there was no anger or disdain, only sorrow and relief, as potent as mixed wine, and he wondered at it.
“There is no hope left to prevent the evil you’ve born and borne, but there is hope. For you have severed its connection to the streams of Time, and its power is diminished.”
Cain opened his mouth to speak, but found his tongue too parched from the heat of the Light. He was dust and emotion, barely held together by the residue of Time quickly curing.
“I heard your words and have given you one last chance to change the outcome, to mitigate at least a portion of the pain.”
And after? he thought, for he was incapable of speech.
“And after,” the Man replied, for in the Light were no hidden places, “you will go to the place I have prepared for you.”
He shook with fear, but though there was ambiguity in the Man’s answer, he sensed justice in the Light which rightfully burned him away. For Cain was Sin—broken, bloody, brutal Sin. Whether the place prepared was darkness or Light, Cain thought either would be equally terrible.
“Hurry along,” the Man said, and to Cain’s surprise there was a humor behind the words.
You laugh at me?
“You’ve no need for a cloak such as pride. Nothing could hide you now.”
What could keep me from burning away? How could anyone endure this?
“Blood,” came the answer. “But not blood such as you’ve drunk. My blood. For I bear Abel’s wounds. I hold Sarah’s scars in my hands. I feel the teeth of the serpent at my heels, the same serpent which fed at your throat.”
Cain nodded, feeling that familiar resonation of Truth, but realizing now that it came from the Light. Indeed, the Man had spoken to him all along, even as he had thought it his own wisdom. Why? Why would you bear such suffering?
“For you.”
Cain’s vision swam as he wept in the pain of the Light. Emotion threaded itself through him, and he realized it was the emotion of the Man—the sorrow of an eternity of separation, of love and loss. Of true divinity. And he realized now that much more than power differentiated God from man.
“Go, quickly,” the Man said. “Back to the place of darkness, for that is where men’s dreams are formed. It is a place the Abomination could never touch, a place I have blinded it to. There you will find a guide to show you how to weave the fabric of the future into mortal minds and to speak to them in visions. Because of your faith, you will be given a small portion of Time in which you may give men dreams, but afterward you will continue on to the place prepared for you.”
Cain nodded, though he wanted to stay, even as he felt the dross of his life dissipating in the heat and sensed there would soon be nothing left. Obediently, he walked where the Man directed, and came to the darkness.
There he met another familiar figure.
“Hello, brother,” the man said, and the words fell like silk on his ears.
The Abomination watched the woman walk from behind the tree. So courageous. What beauty. Now I know how I will kill her.
“What are you happy about?” Sarah asked.
The Abomination approached and struck her, but her only reaction was a flaring of the nostrils.
“I’ve not found such strength in the others. You’re a formidable woman.”
She chewed her lip to stop its movement, but kept her gaze on the Abomination’s.
“Why have you stayed with him all these years?”
Tears moistened her eyes. “What have you done to Cain?”
“I thought you knew him.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“You don’t care.”
“You know nothing of what I care about.”
“He is gone. You were a fool to stay, a fool to hope. Such tragedy …”
She wept silently, and her beauty was magnified through Cain’s silvered eyes. To see the world colored through another’s emotions was a strange experience, one that the Abomination thought it would never tire of.
“In truth, I pity you. To love someone so absorbed by hatred is a bitter fate. If only I had come sooner. Maybe you would have been spared the pain.” It raised its finger and pressed it into her forehead, then skipped the barriers and plunged through the fibrous pathways of her brain, plucking infinitesimal sparks and scattering them until all darkened and she slackened in its arms.
It laid her unconscious body on a bed of flowers and heard, as if carried by a sudden wind, quiet Music. The Abominat
ion smiled, rested a hand on her abdomen, and recalled images from the rivers of Time. Hollow men in white coats, wearing masks and controlling machines alien to this millennia, turned a lens that clicked to the rhythm of the Music until it magnified an embryo on the surface before them. They gazed through the lens and, using the machines, cut and spliced twirling helixes together, adding and detracting, changing and molding.
The Abomination did similar work on the child in Sarah’s womb. But the Abomination’s abilities were more sophisticated and more primal than those of the men in the vision. It smiled, sensing the child struggle for life. But the changes were too rapid, too violent, and the soul could not remain. It slipped away, and in its place came …
Emptiness.
The Abomination withdrew from her womb and whispered, “My dear Sarah. You will wake, and you will live, and the child inside you will grow. But after it is born with little horns, I will come for it, and for you. Then I promise you will feel pain such as none you’ve felt before, but in the vastness of eternity, it will be only a moment.” It caressed her unconscious face and kissed her motionless lips. “Merely a moment.”
PART TEN:
REDEMPTION
When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. … The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.
—GENESIS 6:1–2, 4 ESV
55
Seth woke sweating.
“I’ve been watching you.” Calebna’s voice was low, though sharp. Seth forced his fingers to relax and realized he had been holding his breath. He sat up and tried to steady the shaking from the nightmare. Calebna sat like a tombstone by the remnants of the fire they had risked, and all was quiet silver under the moon and stars as Calebna rubbed the necklace by his throat.
“Who is it you talk to?”
“The dead.” Seth looked at his wife’s sleeping figure, then at the puffs of clouds migrating through the sky.
“Dawn is many hours away.”
Seth nodded, pulled the cloak over his shoulders, and cinched it in his hand. The two sat hunched in the chill of autumn, and Seth’s mind sucked on thoughts like wet cotton. He knew why Calebna couldn’t sleep—why neither of them could sleep. It was the dreams. “I saw eyes,” Seth said.
Calebna scraped the ashes with a crooked stick, drawing meandering black lines through the gray.
“They were on fire.”
The stick dropped from Calebna’s hand. “I keep thinking of Terah, Jacob, and Ben. What if they don’t want me? What if they tossed what little love they had left?”
“I don’t think such a thing is possible.”
“Then why did they leave?”
“I think that fear, not hate, drove them away.”
“Then their love was never love at all.” Calebna stood and stared westward, toward the City they had left for a hope hidden behind danger. “When we arrive, promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“Promise you will do one simple thing after all this is over with.”
Seth waited for Calebna to continue, but the man didn’t. “What?”
“I’m waiting for you to promise,” Calebna said.
“But I don’t know what you—”
“Just do it.”
Ayla shifted next to Seth, then settled back into heavy breathing. “All right, I promise.”
Calebna hung his head and heaved another sigh. He sat and drew with his fingers in the slag. “Do you think God did it? Do you think he let Cain murder my father—your brother?”
“I think he could have stopped it, but didn’t.”
There was long silence marked only by the scratch of Calebna’s fingers in the dust. “We buried him. We buried God.”
“It seems a habit of man to try to swallow what he can’t understand,” Seth said.
“Better we had choked on it.”
“I think we all did.”
Ayla moaned and thrust her arm out in search of Seth, who laid his hand in hers. Her fingers curled around his and squeezed.
“How long until we reach the Garden?” Calebna asked.
“Three days.”
“Seth?” Ayla said.
“I’m here.”
“I dreamt I was pregnant,” she said. “And the baby looked like you. I didn’t give birth. I just knew what it looked like.”
The fear of his nightmares burned anew. “Was it a boy or a girl?”
“A girl. She was perfect.”
Relief. “Then it certainly was your daughter.” Seth closed his eyes and drank in the darkness, wishing he could stay and forget all he had seen. Wishing he could abandon all he had been called to do.
“Did you dream?” Ayla asked.
His smile fell. “I dreamed.” And he opened his eyes again.
56
The Abomination smiled at Sarah’s unconscious figure outlined by blue flowers. It shifted as if to leave Cain but found itself fixed. Again it tried to detach from Cain’s body, but failed.
It closed its eyes and searched for the womb from which it had been born, the same hole the Abomination threw Cain into so often, but the void was gone. It snapped branches and ate fruit after fruit after fruit, but nothing changed.
The meaning came slowly. I’ll kill your family. I’ll flay them alive and drink their blood. I’ll tear their limbs off one by one, and I’ll kill Sarah last and most painfully. It waited, listening, hoping against hope that Cain was still there, somehow hidden from its sight.
But Cain and the void were not misplaced. They were simply gone. Vanished.
The Abomination thought of the layers—those gateways to other worlds—and the rivers of Time that ran through them. Could it be Cain had found a way to osmose the barrier?
But there was nothing other than the layers and the Waters flowing through them. The Abomination had searched them time and again with meticulous intensity. It found nothing else. There could be nothing else.
Unless …
It cursed Cain and sprinted for the orchard in his body.
The desert sands drank the moisture from Seth’s feet and burned it from his tongue. If it had been the middle of the summer, they might not have made it so far, but when the frozen months came near, the sands could be safely traversed. Soon the dunes would frost at night, and the sun would burn less at midday, but always it remained a land of extremes.
Ayla stumbled and fell shoulder first into Seth, who caught both himself and her. She mumbled an apology, and he waved it off with a limp wrist and licked his flaking lips. A shadow sprinted past, and Seth winced at the sun to find the moving shape beneath it.
A bird, he thought.
Then another shadow or was it several?
“Look,” Calebna croaked, and pointed from atop a mountainous dune.
They hurried up on hands and feet and saw in the distance an oasis undulating in the heat of the desert.
“It’s dancing,” Ayla said.
“Is it real?” Calebna asked.
Seth stumbled forward and they followed. Of course it was real. He had seen it in countless dreams. It called like strange Music, and for reasons he could not explain, he felt he could do nothing but walk toward that singular point.
The Garden. A place of beginnings and a place of endings. Like the East is to the West, or the summer is to the winter, each singularity no more or less an equal and opposite expression of another. The Garden of Eden to this new perverse substitute.
Contradiction. The word bowled down the hill of his mind, gaining speed and size as if rolled of snow. As they neared the Garden, it began to remind him of that world beyond the Sands of Time. Perhaps it was the movement of the trees and undergrowth, so tightly woven together that it seemed any movement should crack
limbs. Perhaps it was the memory of an endless shoreline, and a forest filled with Music, though there was no moisture here, and apart from the rustling of wind through the leaves, he sensed no violent Music, though he knew violence grew within. Contradiction.
He wiped his face and itched the stubble. His body stunk, though he had long since let the upper half of his tunic beat at his thighs. He thought of what awaited them and worried at what he couldn’t foresee, for there was darkness amidst the prophecies, valleys of shadow cast by Death.
As they entered the shade of the Garden, he sensed for the first time the glow cast by the plants. It sickened Ayla’s pale skin and made her cheeks appear sunken. She caught him gazing at her and said, “What?”
Seth shook his head as vines slithered toward them and extended sharp points. The hair on his neck tingled as he remembered the entrance to the Shrine of the Song. He lifted a finger and pressed it against the vine’s tip, feeling a sharp pinch and watching the vine drink a drop before slithering away. Ayla had already done the same, though Calebna hesitated and only followed after a nod from them both.
“This place feels evil,” Calebna said.
“It is,” Seth said.
“What do we do now?” Ayla took in the surroundings with rapt attention.
The Garden opened to receive them, and Calebna took a step back, for it seemed at first that they heard the tinkling of chimes.
“We change the Music,” Seth said.
Ayla grabbed his hand, which had that chilled sweat feel in the cool breeze wafting from the Garden. “It’s just like the Shrine.”
“Yes. But I won’t fail again by pushing you into darkness and danger. No, this time you will stay here,” Seth said.
“But I perceive that you will have need of me before the end,” Ayla said.
He laughed out of love, for there was no humor left to fuel it. “I will need you safe, not dead beside me.”
“Nothing could make me let you do this alone.”
Cain: The Story of the First Murder and the Birth of an Unstoppable Evil Page 25
