by Wayne Hill
“Raised in the Drumcroon facility together — living in NTB rooms, programmed by Matheson and Brogan — we were a family. We lived to make the doctors happy. They were our elders, and the only parents we had ever known.
“The extensive alterations to our genomes, our abominable mutations, kept us bound to one another and placed an almost insurmountable barrier between us and humans.
“The children were four girls and three boys, including myself. The doctors bred us in those ratios for psychological reasons, and the girls were a calming influence on us boys.
Matheson and Brogan seemed to have thought of everything. Their intention was to use the seven of us as breeding stock, prize bullocks and cows. They planned to use the seven of us as a control mechanism, a natural check on the prisoner population. And they also intended to, somehow, keep us a secret from the Believers and the other Guardians. We were to be tools. Tools engineered to kill those who had forfeited their humanity by being condemned by the Believers at their courts. We, the seven in-humans, were to be used to kill Them, the plague of sub-humans. We were the beasts killing Christians in the Colosseum; we were the Biblical flood drowning the impure — Matheson and Brogan’s Final Solution.
“We watched as these humans turned up, spilled out over the island, and went about their lives. At the time, I remember our over-riding feelings were of disgust at these pathetic creatures that infested our land.
“We were brainwashed from birth to think that we had always been here and that these humans had deceived our kind, trapped and killed our parents, and that the good doctors and the rest of the Guardians had saved us from these savages.
“When the doctors had wound us up enough, they finally unleashed the seven Dehas upon prison planet Earth. We decimated the settlements worse than biblical plagues, and the carnage was such that, in parts, the very earth itself was stained red for many months. Our brainwashing was complete. I ran through entire colonies hacking limbs, ripping hearts from chests, and putting heads on stakes. The air was filled with clouds of blood, fragments of exploded ribs; the ground littered with blue intestines leaking excrement, pieces of yellow spongy fat, rope-like tendons and chunks of twitching muscle. I disembowelled people, decapitated people, and skinned people alive. It was a massacre on a massive scale. Pure butchery.
“We were tricked into genocide. Kill the enemy, kill the humans responsible for destroying our race. We rioted like gods, revelling in our new-found freedom, exploring our powers. We dealt death and visited our wrath upon them.
“The Dehas saw humans as animals, no smarter than a chicken or a squirrel. We slaughtered them like food animals — and knew that they would kill us if they could. People were weaker, less intelligent and, as time passed, we cared less and less what we did with them. So, we hunted them, we butchered them, and we ate.
“Adults we put in clay kilns, potted and seasoned with wild garlic; children we gutted, stuffed with rosemary and mint, and roasted on spits.
“We laughed and killed and ate the stupid creatures we were told destroyed our kind.
“We laughed at their screams.
“We re-lived the false memories of our past — the seven — my love and me. We killed for years and years with no idea of the truth. The prison population dwindled, on the brink of eradication, despite record numbers coming to the planet. The Guardians were clueless, to begin with, but they eventually discovered Matheson and Brogan’s deeds and brought them to the light, and to the attention of the Believers. They were tried and executed. This was a turning point for prison planet Earth, and for us. When we discovered the deceit of our foster parents — how they had manipulated and used us — we were devastated. How would you feel if you were to discover your real creators, your parents, were power-hungry sadistic murderers? That they chose to abuse their power and intellect to create real monsters — us! — and then sent them into the world to kill for fun.
“My love and I awoke from what we had done and felt deep shame and sincere remorse. We saw the truth and were forever changed by it. We were damaged by what we had done — the lives we had taken, the unspeakable horrors that we had perpetrated. To wake up one day and realise you are the real monster, and that the humans we killed were the real victims, was almost unbearable. We saw that — my love and I — painful and world-shattering though it was. But the other five never awoke, refused to see, and they remain enslaved by the NTB illusions even now. They cannot believe that it was all an illusion — that they are the evil ones. It would be too much for them to bear.
“Soon after our awakening, Aurum and I found Idra.
“She had washed up on the north coast of the island, wearing a cadet uniform not too dissimilar from the one this poor soul was wearing —” here Talon pauses to gesture to the girl in the hammock. “She had been repeatedly raped and then left for dead by the worst of my dark family, Caelum the demiurge.
“Her story was just one of many similar cases happening all around the coast. Caelum and Gaudium, my brothers, started to see the humans as vessels to carry their seed and to build our ranks. They brought women to chambers deep inside the earth and subjected them to unspeakable acts. Kept in a place between life and death, a fearful realm of pain, after they had born children, the women were either discarded or eaten by their offspring.
“You know the power and intelligence Idra holds, Tommy, or, at least, have some idea. She used her powers to escape — through the sea of deformities that inhabit the deep tunnels of this island, she fought her way to freedom. I had helped dig most of those tunnels. They were based around old, disused service tunnels that the Guardians had once used to transport prisoners. At the very heart of those tunnels is the throne room, where the other Dehas dwell. I chose to reject their subterranean life, their life of false revenge — a lie of a life. With my love, I chose this life. We settled in the cliffs near the sea. I tunnelled, created more caves. And rather than slaughtering new prisoners, we helped them. We saw them as orphans, like us. Lost kin trying to find some peace. We helped as many as we could, took them to safety, and killed many Barrenites. We never left witnesses alive. But the evil under the land is ever growing, ever intensifying. The ramifying tunnels run deep, so deep I’ve forgotten just how far they stretch — but they are supported by the bones of the dead, bones and skulls.
“In the deep throne room sits their king, Caelum, seated on a throne of carved bone and marble, sealed with the blood of innocents. To him are brought sacrifices: people torn apart for his pleasure. In the same cave is the Dehas’ round table — a huge black marble table, around which we created our laws. That cavern calls to me. As do my kin. Despite all my resistance, they keep calling to me in the insane labyrinths of my dreams. If I’m honest, there is a part of me that wants to be with them, and that urge only grows stronger the older I become. I itch to descend into those deep, hadean tunnels and reclaim my throne. To become what I am supposed to be. To trap light. I know it’s unimaginable for you, Tommy, but part of me is pure evil — all it wants to do is kill. I fight this urge, this instinct, and imprison it afresh every single day.”
Tommy stares at Talon as he strops his blade fingers together, making metallic schink-schink noises.
“And Aurum, Talon? How did she die?” Tommy asks with quiet curiosity.
“It was my brother Gaudium who ended my love’s life. In a time, long ago, I considered Gaudium my closest ally,” scoffs Talon.
“The final month of pregnancy, we were to be a new family of three. We wanted to build our own clan and to try to redeem our past transgressions. It was not to be. She staggered from the woods one day with one of Gaudium’s arrows lodged in her chest. I tried to pull the arrow out, but my blades accidently cut the arrow too close to her wound and I couldn’t grip it with my fingers. I clamped the arrow in my teeth and pulled it out. I could taste her blood, sweet and perfumed. Aurum had been collecting herbs. I couldn’t save her. I wasn’t there for her when she needed me most. I will forever blame myself. N
o matter how fast I am, it’s never fast enough. Fate always wins the race of life.”
“I’m so sorry, Talon,” Tommy says.
“ I knew the baby was still alive inside Aurum as she lay dying. And so, I cut our baby out, but in so doing, I had to further hurt my Love. I killed Aurum to save our child. I killed her, I ended her life as she held my hand and stared into my eyes, she looked upon our baby only once before passing, she held on until that moment.” Talon says.
“Daria,” Tommy whispers, with tears brimming in his eyes.
“Yes. My very own Angel.”
“And then you killed Aurum’s killer?”
“I left my Angel with Idra and Thankwell and hunted for three weeks until I finally found Gaudium. He was killing a small group of prisoners. They had no weapons and no idea what was going on. He was torturing one of them when I swept down upon him.”
There was a lengthy silence as Talon drank. The silence was briefly broken once by a heart-felt sigh from Talon, then he resumed his drinking. Tommy waited a time for Talon to continue, but curiosity bubbling like Idra’s tonic on the fossilised bone hearth, Tommy asks,
“How did you kill him?”
Talon thought awhile. “He just seemed to come apart in my hands.”
“Good. He deserved to die for what he did.”
“It felt like the right thing to do,” Talon replies. “Later, I thought about how much he loved Aurum. My anger blinded me to the thought that such thing could have been anything other than murder. As he was dying, he tried to tell me it was an accident and that he was sorry.”
“So, what was the truth?” asks Tommy.
“I couldn’t say. I was too angry to find out. He just fell apart in my hands,” Talon says, tears falling unashamedly from his eyes. “Let me tell you more.”
“Okay, Talon. Please be calm, though. Don’t be like me in the forest, or I might have to smash you back,” Tommy says cheekily, wanting to lighten the mood more than anything.
“That would be unwise, young Astilla,” says Talon, drinking more tonic. “I was known as Secretas,” the demon continues. “There’s a rhyme I remember from childhood. The seven of us used the rhyme to tease one another, in a light-hearted way; but we also used the words to hurt one another, when we felt mad. We never really understood what the words meant: ‘One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold’; and I’m presuming I was ‘seven for a secret never to be told.’ Although, there was an alternate version of the rhyme and the doctors fused the two versions into one poem to give us our names. This version was: ‘One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a funeral, four for a birth, five for heaven, six for hell, seven’s the Devil (his own self).’ So, Matheson and Brogan fused two nursery rhymes to create a mutated verse which they then used to name their mutated offspring. Then they chose to name us in Latin, a long dead language, perhaps to add to our mystique or, perhaps — and I think this is more likely — because they were elitist, pompous arseholes. But, anyway, our names came about like this: ‘One for sorrow,’ Tristitia is derived from the Latin for sad; ‘two for joy,’ Gaudium is Latin for the joy; ‘three for a funeral,’ Funeralna comes from the Latin for funeral; ‘four for a boy,’ Puer is Latin for boy (although, Puer is very clearly a girl!); ‘five for heaven,’ Caelum is Latin for heaven; ‘six for gold,’ Aurum is Latin for gold; ‘seven for a secret never to be told,’ Secretas is Latin for unknown, a secret.
“Tristitia, Funeralna, Puer, and Aurum were the females; Gaudium, Caelum and I — ‘the secret never to be told’ — were the males. What more could we have known? A name said lovingly is simple to acknowledge. A name declared harshly is simple, too. We were not to blame for our hidden darkness. For a while, we were as all human children — children who wanted to obey the wishes of their parents and saw one another, not just as brothers and sisters, but as loving friends.
“At a far later date, in the cold chambers of the Guardians NTB learning pods, we were shown what we had done, what our parents had created, and what I had to acknowledge as our true label: laboratory-created abominations of Nature. After the execution of Matheson and Brogan, the Guardians gathered us up to console us. They tried to convince us that we were the result of loving experiments combining Brogan’s innovative dream extraction with Matheson’s knowledge of genetic engineering. But we didn’t believe them. We had been lied to enough in our lives to recognise more of the same. I could see that I was the devil to those Guardians testing me at the compound. They tried to hide their revulsion, but I saw it plainly. To them, I was worse than Frankenstein’s monster. He was a monster made from the amalgamation of dead human body parts, sewn together and then reanimated. He wasn’t real, like us, though; he was just a story by the ancient author Mary Shelley. How I loved that story. I thought the monster a child. He was merely a flesh golem whereas I was the fusion of a thousand nightmares made flesh. Later in my life, I found human literature a great solace to me. For hundreds of years, I contemplated their diverse works. I devoured all I could find, but few words stuck with me like those I first read in Frankenstein: ‘Did I request thee, maker, from my clay/ To mould me man, did I solicit thee/ From darkness to promote me?” These words — from John Milton’s great poem Paradise Lost — rang true for me so many times. And, though my creators were far worse than Victor Frankenstein, I never wanted them dead. I neither thanked them nor condemned them. They were twisted individuals that wanted to be gods. They tried to control their creations, as every parent does to some degree. Children raised to chase unrealistic standards are ubiquitous. It seems a common theme in all families: you (the child) will be more than me (the parent).
“People don't necessarily fear truth — whether it be the truth behind their lives or the lies that are contained within this truth. People only fear the unveiling. They fear turning the rock over far more than those dark, squirming creatures that are hidden beneath the rock. I’ve had a long time to analyse my life, and now I’m content. With the help of my child and my friends, I have purged my brain of lies and the world seems a much less barren and cruel place.
“But my curse of longevity is to also say farewell to the ones that I have helped. When all light from my world is far away, it’s the truth that keeps me stable.
“I was drawn out of my reality and imprisoned into this nightmare form against my will. I realise that I am to live on for some time, I may even live to see the Sun destroy the Earth, but when I die, I’ll go back to my reality, back to the radiant Mandala,” Talon lifts his head to drink the dregs of his tonic and sees the confusion in Tommy’s eyes.
Tommy thinks Talon is probably drunk. His story made sense, for the most part, but seemed to jump about a bit and make less sense towards the end. Talon had drunk nearly all Idra’s tonic.
“Would you like to see what I'm talking about?” says Talon suddenly.
And before Tommy can react, Talon’s palm is on Tommy’s forehead.
Tommy leaves everything he knows behind — his aching body, his fears, his hopes, his future, his past — and is transported from this agreed reality into something other.
He shoots through a portal in Talon’s head and plunges into where Talon originated, to where all life had its origin. Tommy finds himself in a neon pool, pulsing with pure life-force. He is part of this force as it spans out — stretching and interconnecting, immeasurable and abundant — and its branches are everywhere. As it moves like a ghost through the multi-verse, Tommy clings to the energy. He wants to become one with this source energy. It feels like home. He feels like he belongs inside the radiant Mandala, the true Barbelo: The Source
10
T
alon helps Tommy load provisions onto Slash for the remaining trip to the Forever Stairs — the huge and ancient concrete stairway which leads from the ocean to Tommy’s final destination: the Lanes. Thankwell had given him a few pots of herbs and spices — Seasoning makes food better, the big man’s voice booms in his memory —
and three fresh whiting fish. Indra kindly donated some of her pipe herbs and a bottle of her famous tonic. Talon, who has given him so much already, gives only advice. The two of them are alone on a small quay, Tommy having already said his goodbyes to Idra and her giant son.
“Death follows a certain rule: don’t follow, lead,” he muses mysteriously. “Astilla is a good name for a leader of men. Perhaps you can change the lives of people there in the lanes for the better. But, Tommy, always remember what you saw on that cliff top and stay one mile from the coast. The Barrens belongs to those who live beneath. You have a chance at a normal life, amongst your own kind but, if anyone asks who you are, tell them you are Astilla, of the northern cliff coastal clan. I doubt the prisoners would respond well to the son of the person who banished them. Take care, young Tommy. You will be in our thoughts forever, my friend.” And with this, Talon pushes Slash away from the quay’s rickety, wooden jetty.
Talon’s terrifying plate-bones glint in the moonlight. His smile, thinks Tommy. What a horrendous parting sight. Remembering Talon’s tale of the rampage of the Dehas — imagining those flesh-rending jaws being the last thing a dying person sees — he supresses a shudder. He watches the spiky nightmare of Talon’s silhouette walk along the rickety jetty and disappear into the darkness, as Slash sails into the night, disappearing into the gently rolling, moonlit waves.
Tommy sails westward, the vast ocean to one side and the terror of this island to the other. He feels the dark oceanic depths yawning beneath him, as silver-tinted clouds drift above him. Looking landwards, he thinks about the Barrens and its population of — What did Talon call them? — abominations. Someplace under there are those rat-bastard believers — those hooded priests — their black souls as empty as the dark matter of space. We’ll meet again. I promise it. And I’ll make you pay for those cadets — for all your victims.
