by A. Sparrow
The scene below, in a single glance, told me all I needed to know about the Horus. The damned thing was just another kind of humongous reaper. Only this time there was no need to confine anyone in pods. The souls here were eager and desperate to be reaped.
I had no interest in going or even knowing where it led. Maybe if I was stuck here for eternity I might feel differently. I was lucky that way. Special. I had an out. I had Vermont. God knows what the Horus intended for the poor suckers chasing it. Of course, they had no choice but to hope it was someplace better. The Deeps, though, seemed an unlikely way station for spirits destined for a higher existence.
I could imagine the despair of the people who had counted on the Horus being their ticket out of this existence, who with the storm bearing down, had been so certain their time had come, and yet it hadn’t. Some of them had to deal with the realization that they might never catch the Horus.
I wondered whatever made Urszula’s crowd think that they could ever take such a monstrous thing down. Talk about David and Goliath. What balls, what chutzpah they must have had to go after it the way they did and succeed. Twice! Of course, Urszula had never told me how.
I studied that storm with the awe and respect of a big game hunter scouting a grizzly bear from a hilltop. The problem was, I wasn’t close to being loaded for bear. My only weapon here was a rolled-up piece of paper suited to not much more than shooting peas. I wasn’t counting on taking the same route as the Dusters back to the Liminality.
It was the ugliest storm I had ever seen, a dense and opaque tornado with a central mass of mist and dust held tight to its core. Its surface writhed and boiled. Brownish growths bulged along its shaft, like tumors on a turd. The tower bent and flexed like a rearing cobra. The top, many miles tall, was obscured by a broad veil of fine haze that trailed away.
Its footprint was compact—less than a mile across. Scars traced the history of its passage, dark swirls and curlicues where the bedrock had been scrubbed bare of dust.
As I watched, that herd of humanity regained its form, re-consolidating its frontal mass, trailing a tail of stragglers like a human comet.
Human. Those were people down there. Ordinary folks and probably some extraordinary ones too.
That realization got me jogging towards the herd. These people were my antidote to the emptiness. I didn’t have to be alone in this wilderness. Down there I could find someone to talk to. People who knew Fort Pierce and Cleveland and Vermont. Maybe even somebody I knew from life. Maybe even Karla.
A jog, a sprint, it didn’t matter in a place where one never got winded, so I flew down that long, gentle slope as fast as my body would carry me. As I descended, I noticed other gray smears in the distance—other herds of souls just like the one before me, other human comets slithering out of other valleys, their columns bending to track and converge on the storm, which moved faster than any human herd could follow.
I realized then, that the collection of people below was only a small sampling of the total population of this place, only one of many herds scattered far and wide across this vast landscape. I couldn’t just look at the crowd before me and assume that Karla was among them. It was only one of the possibilities. That realization put a hitch in my gait. I slowed to a walk.
But I kept on going. What else was I supposed to do? Despite my loner tendencies, I still had to be with people once in a while. And emptiness had a way of bringing out my inner extrovert. Being a hermit was no fun in a place devoid of substitutes or proxies for human companionship. No art. No books. No media. Nothing to take the place of a human soul.
So I plotted a course straight for the middle of that long, straggling column, aiming for a spot just behind the reconstituted vanguard, right about where the ranks began to thin. The closer I got, the granular the crowd became, no longer a smear of humanity but a collection of individuals.
When I got close enough to discern faces, I could see nothing special about these people other than them all being gray-skinned. They represented all genders, sizes, ages and races. A disproportionate number had Asian and African features, but that shouldn’t have surprised me if this was a random sampling of Earth’s population.
They were all walking briskly, not an idle Saturday at the mall kind of stroll, but something purposeful, like folks out for a charity walk. Nobody carried anything. There was nothing to carry here. And there was not a shred of clothing on anyone.
This was no big deal. I had gotten used to nakedness in Root. Too bad we humans are not the prettiest of animals, not that any of these folks were morbidly obese. The bodies people inhabited here seemed a compromise between the ideal and the worst case scenario. No one here was built like an Olympic athlete, but no one was a complete and utter slug.
I penetrated the outermost fringes of the procession. This sparsely-peopled zone was the domain of weirdoes—angry people, people who looked dazed, people babbling to themselves or giving me the evil eye. One guy came at me babbling and flailing his arms until some people grabbed him and held him back. It seemed unfair that folks should carry their hang-ups and mental illnesses into the afterlife, but it really seemed to be the case.
I slipped through these outcasts and headed into the main body of the procession. Whispers of “Hashmal” assaulted me from all directions. Some folks stopped in their tracks to let me go. Others shrank away as if they were afraid I might hit them. One lady collapsed to her knees and pressed her forehead against the ground.
My gaze flitted through the masses, searching for Karla. But there were so many souls, and the crowd only grew thicker as I moved towards the center.
The procession had the feel of a pilgrimage. Lots of hopeful faces—some praying, some chanting. A sad-faced man with a slouching posture approached me meekly, greeting me with a bowed head and a submissive smile.
“Hashmal sir, have you lost your cloak?”
“What cloak? Why is everyone calling me a Hashmal?”
“Is this … a test ... your excellence?” he said, his smile forced and nervous.
“Test? What do you mean test?”
Something shifting in his eyes. His lip began to twitch. “Are you not of the Hashmallim? Y-you share their complexion.”
“I’m not gray, if that’s what you mean. I’m not sure why not. But what’s all this hash mall business?”
A slender, kindly looking man came over. “Don’t you see, Ibrahim? He cannot be a Hashmal. He doesn’t know them.” The man had a lilting Indian accent that was a joy to listen to. He touched my elbow and looked me in the eye. “The Hashmallim belong to a higher realm. They enforce the order. And If you have not met them yet, then you probably do not wish to. I would suggest that you leave us … now. They simply do not tolerate—”
“Don’t nobody talk to him,” scolded a dour-faced woman. “He’s anomalous. He’s gonna be purged.”
“Anomalous?” I said. “What?”
“Everyone, please … move away from the impostor,” said a bulky man, with a stern, military air. “Let the Hashmallim come and sort him out.”
The Indian fellow bobbed his head side to side as he backed away. “I am so sorry, but they are right. You cannot stay here. They will come for you”
“But I just got here.”
“I am so sorry, young man, but in their eyes you will be considered anomalous. This is simply not tolerated here.”
“What the fuck? You mean … because I’m not gray … like you guys?”
“So sorry. It is simply how it is. How the powers-that-be … insist.”
The last thing I expected down here was for my complexion to be an issue. At first it frustrated and pissed me off. But as the hostility and fear I spurred spread up and down the ranks, I realized how serious my situation was. A frisson of worry kicked me into survival mode. I sidled away, retreating out of the core of the procession, back through the fringes and the crazies.
Where the valley snaked through a gap through a chaotic collection of dunes of
all sizes, I left the mob behind entirely, climbing to the top of one of the tallest dunes. It stood far enough away from the main flow that if any of these Hashmallim came by to ‘purge’ me, I could see them coming.
I sat there and sulked, feeling sorry for myself. There was no way I could pick out Karla across the half mile wide procession. I wondered if I could recognize her simply from the way she walked. I probably could once, but my memory of such things was fading.
Sitting there, minding my own business, half a football field away from the main flow, I still attracted plenty attention from those who passed. I guess it was hard not to stick out in the midst of all this emptiness. Faces turned my way. Murmurs spread in waves through the marchers. At least nobody came over to hassle me. From a distance, I supposed, nobody could tell that I wasn’t one of those Hashmal dudes.
This shit got old pretty fast. It was kind of like watching the back half of a marathon with all of the elite racers long gone, leaving only the pluggers and plodders to struggle onward. This wasn’t exactly the kind of human contact I had in mind when I came down here to commune with my fellow souls.
On a whim, I scraped Karla’s name in large block letters with my heel into the side of the dune. So many thousands of souls. I wondered if there were any Karlas among them. Was my lame attempt at signage even legible?
And then a shout went up. “Infidels!” The mob began to peel away from my dune, like plastic shrinking in the heat of a flame. Now I wasn’t just anomalous, but I was an infidel? And that was worse?
I looked behind me, and there were two guys standing atop the next dune over, leaning on long, bone-colored staffs like shepherd’s crooks. They went into a crouch when they spotted me, leveling their staffs defensively as if they were warding off projectiles.
They were gray-skinned, like the rest of the mob, but they wore layers of overlapping ceramic scales, much like the armor I had seen Urszula wear in battle.
“Hey! How’s it going!” I shouted to them, not knowing what else made sense in this situation. I waved.
They looked perplexed for a moment, but then their postures relaxed.
“Yo,” said the taller guy. “Better get your ass over here, before the hashers get ya.”
“Pronto!” said the shorter guy, who had a broad and distinctly Asian face. “There’s a squad hauling ass down the column. That’s not good.”
I thought it was a good sign that they seemed concerned for my safety, so I started down the dip between the dunes and scrambled up to them. They took off running as soon as I reached them and so I joined them, keeping pace right behind them.
I didn’t question where we were going. I didn’t really care. I had no idea where we were headed, but it really didn’t matter. I was just biding my time until something came and dragged me back to Vermont. They seemed to know what they were doing. I got no vibe from them that they meant me any harm.
They hummed as they ran, something weird but catchy. Like one of those rare melodies that catches you by surprise, instantly familiar but completely original, totally resonant with some under-explored corner of the human spirit.
We ran back up to the height of the land, where they paused to reassess the situation. A small group of souls had left the main column and were standing on the dune we had just left.
“Hah! Look at ‘em! Afraid to come closer. Probably think it’s a trap. I tell ya, those are the bennies of a successful ambush now and then. The fuckers learn to leave us alone.”
“Who are they?” I said.
“Oh, it’s just a hasher and his goons,“ said the tall guy
“Protectors,” said the Asian.
I had to do a double take at the tall guy’s face. I hadn’t really looked at him full on until now, but there was something terribly askew with his appearance. He was Caucasian in a beak-nosed Mediterranean way, but his skull and cheekbones were warped and displaced, as if he had a skull of wax that had melted partially and cooled.
“What happened to your face?” I said.
“What does it look like? It got crushed.”
“Here, or in life?”
“Here. Yeah, we tangle sometimes with fuckers the likes we’re looking at right now. Some hashers got spells that crush bone, and bone don’t mend proper over here. Lady An helped, but she’s no orthopedist. She just set the pieces best she could and froze them into place. Sorry, I ain’t so pretty to look at anymore.”
“Who you kidding? You never were,” said the Asian.
“Oh shut up, gorgeous.”
“So how come you guys aren’t chasing the Horus like everybody else?”
“Oh, didn’t you hear?” said the warped one. “We’re infidels.”
“Unbelievers? But … what is it exactly that you don’t you believe?”
The warped one spat. His face grew even more distorted. “That the hashers are better than us, and that they mean us well. That the fucking dirt monster over there is some kind of gate to paradise.”
“Well, I’m with you about that storm thing. Does that make me an infidel?“
“Sure does. If you really mean it, you’re one of us, alright.”
“But what about the hashers?” said the Asian. “You believe they’re higher beings? Angels?”
“Don’t know. I’ve never actually met one.”
“Funny, considering your rosy complexion and all, we had you pegged as one. Maybe a rebel.”
“Nah. I’m no rebel angel. I’m just a visitor.”
The warped one snickered. “Visitor, he says. Don’t we all wish?”
“So you’re anomalous.”
“Why do folks keep saying that?”
“Mistakes happen,” said the Asian. “Souls sometimes arrive here a little messed up. We should have known better. Color doesn’t always mean anything.”
“Don’t worry kid. You’re in good company,” said the warped one. “You’re not alone.”
Somehow, I found that remark deeply comforting.
The Asian gazed out across the dunes. “Oh shit. They’re on the move again. Coming after us. Hasher’s got a longbow.”
Without a word or even a glance, the pair again took off running, scales clinking with each stride. I followed off after them without a second thought, trusting my fate would be better off with them than with the wranglers managing that mob.
And somehow, even though we were being pursued by an armed gang, my desire to leave this place became a tad less urgent. The Deeps didn’t seem quite so intimidating now that I had some companions.
Chapter 31: Lady An
We hurtled though the dunes, my mind a storm of confusion. In quick succession I had been honored, worshiped and feared by a mob of souls. They had cast me out and now a detachment of their overseers were trying to hunt me down. All because of the color of my skin.
This probably put a fork in my search for Karla. How was I supposed to find her if I couldn’t go near any crowds? And the fact was, I had long lost heart. I was a coward and a weakling. I didn’t deserve to find her. She deserved better. Though, now that was a moot point.
So I was relegated to tagging along with this odd couple of warrior infidels in tinkling armor. I had no idea where we were going. They spoke very little to me or even to each other. They just hummed and mumbled brief snatches of song that sounded like prayers.
They had a casual, disinterested air about them that I found oddly comforting. I could tell that I interested them, but they were not invested in me following them or not, which made me want to follow them all the more. I was like one of those stray dogs that attaches its loyalty to random strangers.
They gave up their names only after considerable prodding. Taro, the Asian, hailed from Manila. Brian had grown up and passed away in a suburb of San Francisco. Both were clearly veterans of the Deeps, though neither could say how long they had roamed these wastes. Years meant nothing to them now.
Neither were suicides, so they had no knowledge of Root apart from what they had hear
d from other souls.
Taro, surprisingly, had the rougher life. He had entered the Deeps directly, after a criminal and violent existence cut short by an accidental overdose of heroin and alcohol.
Brian’s path to the Deeps was a bit more circuitous. He was more reticent about his lives and deaths. That he had been a pizza chef was about all he would say about his first life. His first death was accidental and had involved a fall from a ladder.
Before death number two, he had spent time on an island swaddled in fog, a place called Lethe, apparently another kind of threshold world like Root. His time there had ended abruptly. After an injury had left him immobile, a man with a scythe had come and cut him in two. There was obviously more to his story, but that was all he would say.
We passed up the rumpled flank of the valley, which was basically a ramp of dunes piled on dunes. We wound our way through a sinuous maze of sand, following their creases, trying to keep our heads out of sight of anyone who might be tracking us.
We kept finding footprints which I could swear were our own. I was certain we were walking in loops, yet Brian and Taro never faltered, fully confident in their navigation.
We finally emerged from the dunes onto to a wind-scoured plateau. There were no boulders or canyons, no place to hide, but at least we could spot any pursuers from afar. We headed for the largest in a group of broad, gentle hills that looked like shields laid flat. The curve of its domed summit was interrupted by lines and indentations where the natural contours had been modified by human hands. It seemed to be some sort of settlement.
We paused when we reached its base, not because we needed to rest, but because the guys were nervous about a swirl of dust on the plateau that was obscuring the view back to the dunes.
“That them behind that?” said Brian. “They using a screen?”
“Wouldn’t doubt it,” said Taro. “Doesn’t look natural.”
“Better get trucking.”
“There!” said Taro, pointing to a dot and another curl of dust on a nearby hill.
“A runner,” said Brian. “C’mon. Let’s get our ass home.”
We slogged up a long, smooth incline. About halfway up, we passed between two igloo-like structures of stone, with exits in the back and slotted windows arcing around their outer walls.