Thy Fearful Symmetry

by Richard Wright

  Calum's eyes were full of tears, his mouth moving silently, like a fish dying on dry land. Soon, the ex-priest would take his place in Hell, and suffer for the infinity that was to come.

  Ambrose’s eyes widened delicately, and he jerked his head up to look at Pandora.

  “He's dying.”

  She nodded sadly, not understanding, and put a gentle hand on his arm. Ambrose shook it off, and slapped the ex-priest's cheek. Pandora gasped, but Calum's eyes focused. Ambrose placed his hands on either side of his friend's face and leaned close.

  “You see me,” he whispered.

  Calum nodded weakly.

  “You hear me.”

  Calum nodded again, barely a twitch of the head, his eyes crossing as he tried to focus.

  “Then know that God has a name, and it is YVWH.”

  No human being had ever heard the word pronounced as Ambrose pronounced it, because no human being had a throat capable of making those noises.

  To hear that word was to die.

  Calum stiffened in Ambrose's arms. The light vanished from his eyes, and he was still. Ambrose laid him carefully down on the ground, stroking his bloody face. “There's nothing else we can do,” he said, swallowing an unfamiliar mix of emotions.

  “Yes there is, my friend,” said a voice behind him. Ambrose looked over his shoulder.

  The fog was gone, revealing horrors that he had last seen in Hell. Leviathan stood at the head of a legion of damned things, and he was smiling.

  “You can suffer,” the demon said.

  On his back, Malachi stared up at the stars.

  No, they weren't stars. Storm clouds hung low over the city, blocking out the sky. Malachi was watching bright sparks flicking on and off in his own eyes.

  Pain hit him, his back a sheet of flame where he had skidded along the road, tearing the leather of his coat, his t-shirt, and the flesh of his back. Before that, there had been flight, Pandora's bodyguard deflecting his efforts to strike a second blow by hurling him away.

  Malachi shifted where he lay between burning tenement buildings, knowing the dead were approaching. Sharp, broken things scraped inside him, slicing and spearing flesh, and he arched his back as he tried to scream. What came out of his mouth was a gurgle, and he realised there was fluid in his lungs.

  Holding still, aware now of dozens of leaden footsteps marching his way, he tried to conjure up Stacey's face. Nothing. When he tried Melissa, he was horrified to discover he couldn't picture her either. They had abandoned him. He was not worthy of them, even in memory. Malachi had failed them in every way.

  Closing his eyes, still too proud to show the world his shame, he felt tears form behind them. His struggle had been worthless. In hunting Pandora down, he had left Stacey to her fate. Again, he thought about the miracle of his healing, when his eyes and arm were restored. Surely, if he had stayed with Stacey, he could have begged the same favour for her from whichever angel sliced them up and sent their souls for judgement. If he had never begun this doomed quest for revenge, he might have gone to Heaven with his wife. They might have had eternal life together.

  Now, he could not even picture her face.

  Melissa was another matter. Having let her die, convenience outweighing her value to him, he had sworn to achieve her goal. By killing Pandora, he would save the world. In that too, he had failed.

  Malachi writhed, relishing the agony as he fought to breathe through the fluids inside him. It felt like drowning.

  Sudden resolution swept through him. Death was coming, and he could lie in wait for it, or race to achieve something worth the memory of two perfect women before it took him.

  Jaw gritted, he rolled to his side, letting his bloody vomit splash against the kerb and his coat as he pushed himself up on arms he could barely feel. Something sharp, a shattered rib, pressed hard from the inside, slicing through the flesh to poke into the air. Malachi blacked out where he stood, but it could only have been for a second, because when the lights came back on he was still standing, hot blood drooling from where the bone poked out above his belt.

  The dead were only a few feet behind him. Malachi shook his head, which only made his balance worse, and staggered up the street like a Glasgow drunk.

  The fog was gone. Pandora and her bodyguard stood before a phalanx of insanity, wind howling around them. They looked small, faced with such horrors.

  Forgotten, the burning sword rested on the ground behind them.

  Malachi stumbled forward, gravity doing most of the work, each agonising footstep only barely in time to stop him collapsing on his face. Pandora was his to kill. No demon was going to do it for him.

  Dead men and women followed him, and Malachi knew he would be joining them soon.

  Ambrose scooped Calum's body into his arms and stood. Pandora stepped up beside him, and they faced the armies of Hell.

  Behind the furred things, the maggoty behemoths, the fallen angels, the scaled ones, and the monkey-demons, the Church of St Cottier was no more. Where it had once been, there was now a hole in the ground, wreathed in ice vapour. By abusing its sanctuary, he and Pandora had made the building a weak point in the universe, which had eventually melted to nothing. Now that weak point was a gateway to Hell, conjoining the mortal plain with the realm of the damned and allowing free passage between each. While God claimed the devout for his own, embracing them in Heaven, Earth belonged to Lucifer.

  “Leviathan,” he said, fighting to keep his voice steady as the naked demon smirked. “You're late.”

  “I thought you'd fled, my sweet. I thought I'd have to scour the past to find you.”

  Ambrose shrugged. “It didn't work out.”

  “No crucifix to help you this time.”

  Ambrose scanned the gibbering ranks behind Leviathan, noting the hate with which they looked back. Leviathan was all that held them in check. When he gave the signal, they would slaughter everything in their path, he and Pandora included. “I'd need a lot of them,” he said, desperate to keep the demon talking.

  “You'd burn before we did. I can smell the sin on you. You've been a very naughty boy, Ambrose. I'd love to hear what happened.”

  “It's a long story, but if you've time…” Pandora was taut beside him.

  “I think not. I'm going to enjoy your brief and futile struggle.” Leviathan lifted a hand, and the horde behind him shuffled in anticipation. “Goodbye, Ambrose. Goodbye, angel-whore.”

  Cradling Calum's body, reluctant to put it on the ground for his former comrades to feast upon, Ambrose prepared to die. At least Pandora was with him. Her hand brushed his arm, and he wanted so badly to tell her one last time that he loved her.

  A voice from behind him broke the moment. “I love touching reunions.”

  Ambrose turned. Inspector Gemmell, the man he had last seen in a church that no longer existed, stepped forward, the burning sword in his hand. “Mr Eidolon, you can go on your way. There's nothing to see here.”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “No,” Gemmell peered at him intently, and Ambrose saw the strain on his face, the effort of will it took for him not to turn and flee. “Are you?” Ambrose got the message loud and clear, he just didn't understand it. The Inspector wanted them to escape.

  “Inspector Gemmell!” Leviathan was delighted, and he lowered his hand without signalling his army to attack. “I had hoped to run into you.”

  “Then it's your lucky day, you pimped up arsehole. I've been looking for you too.”

  “Really?”

  “Aye. I'm placing you under arrest. Do you want me to read you your rights?”

  As Leviathan's lips twisted to a snarl, Pandora took to the air. Ambrose followed, too stunned to do anything else.

  Soaring towards the black clouds, they left one mad human to face the legions of Hell, as an army of dead men approached from the rear.

  Sprawled on the ground where he had fallen yet again, Malachi raised his head to watch Gemmell level his sword at Leviathan, fe
eling as though the fog that had filled the street had found a way to enter his head and body, slowing his thoughts and diluting the power in his limbs. Increasingly dizzy, the bubbling in his chest worsening with every breath, he still had time to admire the man’s stupidity and bravado. Malachi related to it. What else, if not shades of that same ill-conceived courage, had led him to death in the middle of a road, perhaps an hour from the end of the world?

  Behind him, a low collective rumble of moans underplayed the hundreds of shuffling footsteps bearing down on him. That would do, then. Pandora was gone, and he would not have another chance at her.

  Malachi was about to rest his head in the slush and close his eyes, preferring to face what the next life had for him than live with his monumental failure, when movement caught his eye. Summer walked calmly over to where he lay. Without a fuss, she sat down cross-legged, staring quietly over his head at the dead people almost upon them.

  Let her die, Malachi told himself, closing his eyes.

  Another one? Where that voice came from, he didn't know, but he forced open his eyes again, and took in Summer's expressionless face. Despite knowing that it was shock resting her features, Malachi saw peace there too. Overlapping the scene in his mind, he saw Stacey, the scarred side of her face buried in the pillow, and there was sweet peace on the whole half. Overlapping that, he saw Melissa, but there was no peace there, only pain as her heart was ripped out in front of him.

  Malachi had a jagged history of abandoning women when they most needed him. Even now, he should be with his wife. Pandora was gone, all his efforts had been futile, and in pursuing her this far he had betrayed the woman he loved.

  Again.

  If he lay down and accepted death, he would be abandoning Detective Sergeant Jackie Summer too. Third time's the charm.

  Malachi scowled, shoving himself first to his knees, and then to his feet. Swaying, he looked at the woman in front of him, who gazed back with a slight, sad smile. “There's nothing we can do,” she said. Black spots danced in front of Malachi's eyes, and he pulled his knife from the pocket of his leather coat. Don't faint, he ordered himself, and was surprised when his body paid attention. Some of the nausea dampened down, and he felt less like gravity was his enemy.

  “There's always something we can do,” he said, the wet rasp of his breathing infecting his speech, making him feel like he was trying to talk underwater.

  Turning, the world spinning for a worrying fraction of a second after he had stopped, Malachi faced the dead.

  There were dozens of them, the first rank only a few feet away, and when he saw the front row he cried out.

  Melissa reached out for him, her jaw slack and her eyes dull. Bloodstains streaked her clothing, and death lived in her flat, dry eyes.

  Malachi could still do something for her, it seemed. He could make sure that this time, he killed her properly.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Calum fell, and threw his arms wide to stop himself. There was nothing to grab, only a sensation of warmth that wrapped him tight as a linen shroud.

  Something had happened.

  The monkey-demons had thrown themselves at him, and Pandora had swept to his rescue, fierce and beautiful. Ambrose had been with her, fighting back the ranks of the dead.

  Calum had been crying.

  Opening his eyes, he couldn't tell if he was falling or not. Around him was a void of all colours, and no colours, that smelled of roast turkey, spent fireworks, human faeces, paint stripper, and a thousand other odours. While his body tried to convince him that he was plummeting downwards, his eyes told him he was floating peacefully in one place.

  There were voices, some near and some distant, that moaned and wailed. There was no sense of torment but rather a feeling of absolute abandonment.

  A burning sword had plunged into his chest.

  Calum looked stupidly downwards, searching for the wound, but there was nothing to see. Calum had no chest, or legs, or arms, or body. Calum had no head, or eyes. Calum was nothing but a tight ball of essence, plunging through a strange limbo.

  Limbo.

  Fear sparked in the chest he no longer had, sending ugly black jags through the rainbow void. Whether he was actually falling was moot. Metaphorically, he was plunging to hell, where he would meet his eternal tormentors.

  Something chewed on the back of his panic, trying to make itself known, a memory of…

  Calum was at the wheel of the Mondeo when it careened off the road and into the tree, and despite the tearing whiplash in his neck, he still saw Clare shooting from the passenger seat, shattering the windscreen as she was catapulted out.

  Falling. He had to remember that he was falling. Colours danced discordantly around him, so chaotic that it was easier to remember the past than stare at the present.

  Drink-fuelled, he was in the student union bar, his girlfriend Clare at home and his tongue down Sandra Leslie's throat. Retreating to the car park, oblivious to passers-by, they did their inebriated best to fuck each other's brains out. Clare never knew, and never had a chance to find out.

  Ambrose had said something, something so important that Calum had died in hearing it. A name. Names had power. An important name.

  Taking his vows, Calum had known that he would be a bad priest. Men like him were not worthy of service. How long before he grew restless, and betrayed the God he had known existed ever since the first moments of waking after the car crash?

  How long did he have in this void, snapping in and out of his lowest memories, before he dropped into Hell? Was he going to a literal place? What name had Ambrose killed him with?

  Calum remembered when…

  No. Struggling to stay in whatever moment of time he hurtled through, he strained at the memory of Ambrose leaning over, gentle hands on his cheeks.

  “Then know that God has a name. It is YVWH.”

  Calum's soul flinched, a bright blue contraction, as though the word could kill him all over again. It didn't.

  Freed of mortal lips and tongue, Calum formed the word in his mind. Blotting out distractions, he made it crystalline.

  Gnat-like, not knowing what he was supposed to do afterwards, Calum summoned his God unto him.

  Leviathan stared after Pandora and Ambrose, the cold radiating off him growing more intense. Gemmell gritted his teeth, tightening his grip on the sword's hilt. The flicker of fire dancing across the metal played enough warmth across his fingers to stop him dropping it, but he had to force his shoulders not to shiver and make the blade shake.

  Leviathan snorted, and looked down at him. Gemmell stepped back as those cold, arrogant eyes scrutinized him. “Would you care to repeat that, Inspector?”

  Gemmell swallowed. When he had picked up the sword, his anger had been vast. Having helped Malachi to find a weapon to kill Pandora, he had watched him plunge it into the chest of an ordinary man. Now, that man was dead, and it was partly Gemmell’s fault.

  That the whole world was dying, that angels, demons, and dead men walked the streets around him, didn't matter. It wasn't an excuse. Guilt and horror had mixed in the pit of his stomach, and in a shaking voice he told Summer to get somewhere safe. Then he had picked up the discarded sword.

  Glasgow, his city, had been raped over and again since nightfall. Ordinary people had been driven to extremes, before having their lives snatched away just because those bigger and more powerful had decided that it was their time. Somebody had to pay, and it was Gemmell's job to make that happen.

  “I said you're under arrest. I'd read you your rights, but I don't know if you're entitled to any. To be honest, I don't give a rat's arse.”

  Leviathan snorted again, this time with mirth. “I expect you would like us to come quietly?” The wind whistled around them, as the twisted army behind the demon shuffled with anticipation.

  “Actually, no. I'd like you to resist arrest. Every last fucking one of you.” Gemmell's voice was fierce in the gale.

  Leviathan stepped forward, until hi
s chest was just inches from the tip of the blade. “I'm going to relish tearing you apart.”

  “You going to share me with your friends?”

  Leviathan glanced over his shoulder. “I don't think so, sweetling. There isn't enough of you to go around.”

  “They're really going to sit back and watch me kick your arse?”

  Leviathan was delighted. “You have such a suspicious mind Inspector!”

  Gemmell flicked a glance over Leviathan's shoulder. “Better tell that big guy there, then. If he gets any closer, we're going to be a threesome.”

  Leviathan frowned, half turning to look, and Gemmell thrust forward with the sword.

  The void was a storm of rage that blasted around Calum where he floated, awed and frightened. That incomprehensible wrath was aimed at him, and his soul cried at the stabs of hatred and accusation that lashed into him. The emotions were too much for his tiny being to endure, a torment that would drive him mad with guilt and self-loathing. He wondered whether he was in Hell after all, and this was to be his eternity.

  No, he knew the void for what it was. He had been there before, once in the wreckage of a car, when the vast, rich colour had suffused him with love and the will to live, and the second time in a dream.

  Calum was at the heart of his God. YVWH had come to him, but not in servitude or query.

  Calum tried to project his thoughts outwards, but they were slapped back at him, and he knew his voice was too small against his God's rage. Pieces of him started to dissolve before the storm, and he felt himself lessen with every second that passed. Soon, there would be nothing left of him to make his case.

  What was his case? What was he to do? Ambrose had given him a word, knowing that true names have power, but Calum could not make himself understood. He was a mite on the back of a being made of everything. Perhaps he would have been able to bargain, to plead, if he could only make himself understood.