Cain: The Story of the First Murder and the Birth of an Unstoppable Evil

by McPherson, Brennan

  “I will not—”

  She dug her fingernails into his wrist. “I swore to never let you hurt like that again. I would rather die.”

  Seth stared into the eyes of the woman he loved and wondered what he had just asked of her. That she lay down love for self-interest? That she let him die to live alone, when all her life was enfolded into every detail of his?

  He couldn’t ask her to do what he himself could not do, so instead he leaned in, wrapped his arms around her, and kissed the side of her head.

  And with that they entered the Garden, and Calebna followed with wringing hands and damp brow.

  57

  Calebna’s clammy fingers stuck together. I had claimed suicide was courageous, though if I had been honest with myself, I knew then that I should endure the pain. But how easy it can become to close your eyes and exhale, never to struggle for breath again.

  Movement gathered like a buzz at the edge of Calebna’s awareness, sharpened to a bitter tip trained toward that singular goal he had come to accept only after days of struggle. I must become a martyr for a hope I shall never own.

  For their redemption, if not for my own.

  God forgive us. God keep us. God save us all.

  As they walked the hallway of deadly vines, Calebna remembered the words of the voice in his dreams. The voice of the man he now knew was dead. The voice of the man whose body still walked among men. The voice of the man he would violate his vow to kill.

  “The pain will last but a moment if you succeed, but if you fail … You must not fail.”

  This is not my father, Lukian thought. He had known since Cain stepped out of the Fog that something had changed. But now he knew there was nothing left but a manic monster trapped in human skin.

  Such power. Lukian examined the black vertebra set under his father’s skin and those silver-within-silver eyes. Strange but provocative. He wanted it. Only he couldn’t understand how to gain it. The boy had yet to return, and he ached for its presence. The creature was not his brother, or if it were, it was like Cain, hollowed out inside and replaced with something altogether different. Something evil.

  I will steal your power no matter the cost. Just come back to me.

  A new thought struck him. What if the boy was inside Cain? After all, why would Cain’s eyes shift from silver to brown and back again? Why would he have grayed skin? And how else could he have such strange power?

  Cain was wringing his hands and glancing about. Sweat beaded across his skin and stuck the tunic to his body. Mason stood with Gorban, Adam, Eve, Jacob, and the others, and Lukian wondered why they stared at him. He remembered the blood still glistening on his skin from his encounter with the boy almost an hour ago, and he tried to brush it away, though it was thick and sticky. He grimaced and flicked his hands. Still they stared.

  He plucked another fruit and ate it. He tried to clean away the blood with the juice of the fruit. It did help, though only a little.

  He asked Cain, or whatever was inside him, “What are you searching for?”

  Cain hushed him with a hiss. He seemed to be listening, and Lukian thought he heard a slithering sound, as if the Garden were opening again. Cain’s face seemed to become shadowed, his silver eyes glinting. Sweat dripped down his neck and his hands shook.

  “What is coming?”

  Cain did not respond. He only stood there shaking.

  The trees, brush, and vines at the edge of the orchard creaked and separated, opening a pathway through which walked familiar shapes, but Lukian’s eyesight darkened upon seeing them.

  Cain, or whatever was inside him, cried out, “The Enemy! He’s cheated!” and screamed a string of profanities.

  These three figures should not be here, Lukian thought. How could it be?

  Eve called out the names of her youngest son and daughter as she ran to them and threw her arms over their shoulders. “Is it real? Are you alive? But I saw you dead. I saw them close your tombs. And you! How are you here with them, Calebna?” Eve gripped her children as if afraid they were phantoms.

  “God took us away to show us a glimpse of what was to come,” Seth said.

  Ayla smiled. “And God has brought us back to you.”

  “Praise the Almighty.” Eve cupped their faces with her hands.

  Calebna stepped toward Cain, and the family watched in stunned silence.

  Cain pointed at them and shifted back, though his eyes were locked on Calebna. “You don’t belong here.”

  “You thought to leave me for dead, but the Almighty directs my course,” Calebna said.

  Cain spat on Calebna’s foot. “You’re a charlatan. A bloodstained hypocrite.”

  “I will not deny the truth. I was going to kill myself there at the altar. I was going to lay myself down on the same stone upon which I laid so many other offerings.”

  Cain’s face was twisted tight. “You’re worthless. Your own God abandoned you.”

  “You can no longer shame me. I know that I am no holy man, and I’ve come to pay the price. What about you? Why don’t you finish what you started?” Calebna opened his arms and pointed to his chest. “Strike me down. Destroy the bloodline as you intended from the beginning.”

  Cain’s silver eyes flashed, and he stepped closer, hand poised at his hip as if ready to grab a veiled weapon. Suddenly Cain cried, “He knows!” and Calebna lunged like a bolt of lightning, right hand clutching a knife extended and plunging into Cain’s chest. Cain screamed and swung his arms wildly. Lukian caught the glint of cold metal in Cain’s hand as well, then silence, broken only by a crackling in both men’s throats.

  Then came screaming and a flurry of motion. Seth, Jacob, and Mason ran for Calebna while Gorban sprinted to his father. Mason tore the men apart, and Seth dragged Calebna away while Jacob pawed at Calebna’s wounded chest and screamed his name.

  Cain was gasping on the ground in a growing pool of red, and Gorban stood near, pale faced and staring at his father. Some of the women screamed, others collapsed with their arms over their heads as if the Garden would strike them down.

  Lukian stood in a cloud of euphoria. He stared at the blood on Cain and wondered how it could be. He looked at Calebna, whose blood spilled out the corner of his mouth as well as down the side of his chest.

  “You’re going to be all right,” Seth said as he bent over Calebna. “You’re not going to die.”

  Calebna replied, “I have peace,” and clutched Seth’s hand. He coughed and the veins in his neck bulged with the strain. “He told me what to do. He told me it would be all right, that it wasn’t really him, that he had crippled it.”

  Ayla was pulling Seth’s arm, her eyes pleading as she said, “We need to get him out of here.”

  “What do you mean? Who told you that?” Seth said.

  “Leave.” Calebna squeezed Seth’s hand.

  “No.”

  “You promised.”

  Seth’s eyes grew with recognition and he struck the ground. “Don’t speak like a fool.”

  “Don’t add your sin to the foundation.”

  Seth raised his voice. “Tell me who told you.”

  “You already know.” Blood sputtered in Calebna’s throat.

  The pool grew around Seth’s feet and trickled toward Lukian, who knelt and watched the liquid come, first like a creek, then like a river, lastly like an ocean.

  “He’s dead,” Gorban said in seeming disbelief as he stood over his father, Cain, but the words were distant as Lukian plunged the tip of his finger into streams of red. He heard the silver boy’s voice. First distant, then beside him, lastly inside him. “You have work to do.”

  58

  Sarah woke in pain to a world spinning with colors, to swirls of green and brown encircling a spot of white so brilliant it seemed to stab her. She closed her eyes and grabbed the skin of her forehead with her cold fingers.

  Where was she? She remembered the smell of blood on Cain’s breath and those silver within silver eyes.

  No,
she thought. Not Cain. A silver-eyed monster.

  She stood and held her belly with trembling fingers. Half-eaten fruit lay like severed heads amidst the flowers, and the smell of death was as thick as it had been the night all this evil was born. Wind whispered through the thorns, and she thought she heard far-off Music. It trickled through the vines and rattled the leaves, and she closed her eyes and strained to listen. It went as quickly as it came. Like innocence in an infant. Like beauty and love and all the good things of the world. It was a different Music than she had heard before, and she wondered if there could be something just beyond what was visible. A Light hidden under branch and leaf. A diamond buried in the crust of the world. A seed lying under scorched ground.

  Then she stepped on a thorn and her blood joined the scattered red. Just ahead was an archway leading through the Garden. It hadn’t shut after Cain. Had he been in a hurry?

  She nursed her foot and made her way slowly forward, careful not to touch the vines or the deadly flowers. With every step, she felt her strength revive until at last she saw clearly and moved boldly. She rounded a bend and passed the trees with faces. They watched, but she ignored them and struggled through brambles. They grabbed her arms and legs and clothing, and by the time she escaped, she was scraped and bleeding. As the Garden’s clamped mouth opened to the orchard, she saw a confused mass of people scattered about. Jacob knelt by a man she recognized as Calebna, and whose chest was wet with … blood?

  She clutched her mouth and whispered, “Dear God … Calebna. Calebna?”

  Her mind was reeling in an attempt to absorb the sounds and sights, and how it all could be. Not far from Calebna lay another figure drenched in blood, and as Gorban turned and met her gaze, she recognized the wounded man.

  “Cain!” She screamed and ran to him, wrapping her arms under his shoulders. “You’re bleeding.” She looked up and searched Gorban’s expression. “What happened to him?”

  “He’s dead,” Gorban said.

  But that couldn’t be. She had just saved him. How could he have died? How could …?

  But she knew. She knew and she beat Cain’s chest and screamed at the bitterness of it all.

  Gorban tore her away. “What are you doing?”

  “He did it,” was all she could say. “He did it …”

  Now there truly was no hope left to resurrect the man she both hated and loved. Mason approached and lifted her. She leaned against him and struck his chest with her fists. “None of this should have happened.”

  Eve knelt, paler than a pillar of ivory, and Adam stood close by shaking his head and rubbing his eyes. Terah and Jacob wept, and everyone and everything else became a blur. Mason held her, and for the first time, she truly wept for Cain.

  Seth pressed his fingers to Calebna’s neck and felt nothing. The man’s chest no longer moved, and the blood no longer seeped out of his wound. Seth stood, grabbed Jacob’s shoulder, and shook him. “Quick, make torches.”

  “What?”

  “Make fire.”

  Jacob looked at Calebna.

  “Cry later. Your father died to save us, but we will only live if you make fire. Now.”

  The boy nodded, and he, Machael, Kiile, and several others broke branches and bundled them together. A bonfire was lit, and torches lay in the hands of nearly half of them. Jacob shuffled close.

  Seth pointed. “The Garden.”

  Jacob nodded and cast wary glances toward the globes that seemed to stare through green slits, and the vines that slithered here and there. Seth’s sister Sarah was still weeping in Mason’s arms, and the wails of all the others soared through the canopy above.

  Eve knelt next to Calebna, but she did not weep, and she did not look at her grandson. Instead, she stared at Adam, who knelt beside Cain and silently cradled his firstborn son, as if to repent for turning his back on him all those years ago out of pride and shame. But it was too late. Cain had claimed to be a reversal of the curse, but instead had become the fulfillment of it. The sin of the father had cultivated the sin of the son, and on and on it would go, a seemingly endless cycle from the first to the last Adam, just as he had seen through the vision the Metronome offered.

  Ayla laid one hand on Seth’s forearm and held a torch in the other. “Is it over so soon?”

  “Is what over?” Jacob’s eyes hardened.

  “It is just beginning,” Seth said.

  “Did you know this would happen to my father?”

  “I still don’t know all of what has happened,” Seth said.

  Jacob’s voice rose. “Why didn’t you stop him?”

  Seth glanced at the boy. “Why did you leave your father behind? You knew he would die alone in the Temple, so why do you grow angry now?”

  Jacob turned and waved as if to dismiss the question. “It does not matter. I have lost him again.”

  Seth started two more torches and handed them to Eve and Terah.

  “What will we do with their bodies?” Ayla asked.

  “Mother?” Seth laid a hand on Eve’s shoulder.

  She turned, and her eyes were like wastelands.

  “We need to leave.”

  She nodded and stood, but her gaze shot over his shoulder, and Seth turned too late to see what she looked at. He felt the familiar sensation of metal piercing flesh and remembered the attack of the machine—that Abomination from the world beyond—and grunted and doubled over.

  Thrust into his abdomen was a knife. He walked his eyes up the arm that held it to sharp features and silver eyes, and wondered if somehow Cain could still be alive.

  Then he realized who it was and gasped for breath as Ayla screamed, “Lukian!”

  The Music had found a new Instrument.

  59

  The Abomination savored the violence, wishing it had time to drink Seth’s blood. Its aspirations had been destroyed, but it could still salvage a portion of the glorious future.

  I will not fail you, Father. I will not let the Enemy win.

  It cursed the complexity the Man had woven through the streams of Time. It could not kill them all, for that, too, would shatter the glorious future. It must choose its victim carefully, one and no more. So the Abomination pulled the knife out and stabbed Seth again and again. The man’s insides rolled out over Lukian’s hand, and the brutality would have continued but for the hand that grasped Lukian’s neck and threw him to the ground.

  The Abomination forced Lukian’s body to turn, but already those huge hands grappled him with frightening strength. It was Mason, and as the bloodthirsty Abomination forced Lukian to stab Mason once in the shoulder and once in the thigh, the man broke first Lukian’s left arm, then his right. Mason snapped Lukian’s neck, and the Abomination spoke to the darkness. “So ends Lukian, son of Cain, grandson of Adam, slave to Sin …”

  Gorban’s eyes were wide with shock as he watched Lukian stab Seth with the knife he had retrieved from Cain’s motionless hand. But the sight of Mason breaking Lukian’s body swept him up into action. He grabbed Adam and Sarah and jerked them along, pulling them toward the entrance of the Garden, though Eve called Adam’s name and Adam tore out of his grip to run to her.

  “Keep moving,” he said to Sarah, who had glanced at Cain’s motionless figure.

  The others were already setting fire to the Garden, and when he found Keshra and Peth, who had torches in their hands, he grabbed them and they ran together with Sarah toward the entrance.

  Gorban stole Peth’s torch and threatened the vines with it. The plants slithered away, and as they pushed their torches forward, they found that by grouping together they could make their way safely. As they exited the Garden, they glanced back to see flames consuming the canopy and belching black plumes.

  Sarah knelt in the sand, but Gorban said, “We cannot rest yet.”

  “What about the others?” Peth said.

  “We can do no more,” he said. “We must get out of the desert heat.”

  “Where will we go?” Keshra asked.

 
; Gorban knew that she had years ago lost what little love she had left for her husband, Lukian, but to see her dry eyes was disturbing nonetheless. They all saw the madness overtaking Lukian after his children were murdered by the Jinn, but what if that same madness could overcome Keshra in the loss of both her children and her husband? He suppressed his fears. “We will flee east, far from the desert, far from the City of the Almighty. And if they have any sense, they will follow.”

  Gorban pushed Peth and Keshra, and Sarah stood but did not follow. He turned to stare at his mother, and Peth and Keshra walked several paces before noticing.

  Sarah’s eyes were filled with tears. Gorban felt the tightness in his throat, the longing he had for the love of his father that now neither of them would receive.

  He approached and they embraced.

  “We must go.” He gazed at the flames licking the Garden canopy.

  “I know,” she said.

  “And we must never return.”

  “But I will never forget him.” She offered him her hand, and he took it in both of his and knelt.

  “I will never ask you to,” Gorban promised.

  60

  Mason held his wounds, which burned with a scorching pain. Seth was still alive, if only barely, and he lay in Ayla’s lap. The woman wailed, and as the others formed a circle around them, Mason approached.

  “Don’t leave me, Seth,” Ayla said. “Don’t leave me.”

  Eve’s gaze looked to be carved from a glacier while Machael, Kiile, and their sons, daughters, and wives gathered around. Jacob and Terah wept for the loss of Calebna, and Ayla wept for what she was losing.

  Flames grew about them and the heat nearly singed their skin. Soon the entire Garden would be aflame, and if they did not flee, they would be as well.

  Adam heard Eve’s call, ran to them, curled his arms under his final son’s body, and lifted him out of Ayla’s lap. Mason, bleeding from two knife wounds, lifted Calebna’s dead body over his shoulder and joined the rough line following their patriarch. When they exited the Garden and walked a distance away, Adam set Seth on the sand, and Mason set Calebna next to him.