“Dad, where are we oooof…” Jordie was stopped short by his father’s arm slamming across his chest.
“We’re here, Jordan. Take off your shoes.”
“Take off my shoes?”
“We have no time for this, son. Take your goddamn shoes off. You’re making too much noise.”
Jordan quickly slid off his sneakers and stood there in stocking feet. He tried hopping from one foot to another but couldn’t think of a way to do it without feeling foolish and wound up standing there uncomfortably, cold seeping into his toes.
“Ok, so what’s the next move, pops?”
“Don’t call me that, Jordan. The next move is to get to a passage on the other side. That tunnel will lead outside the city limits of Pompeii and you can escape.”
“It will be great to have you — wait a minute… don’t you mean we escape?”
“No. Just you, Jordan. I’ve been here too long.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve heard of prisoners who can’t function in the outside world once they get out of jail? It’s like that with me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to.”
“But what will you do here? Just keep running up and down dark tunnels until you drop dead?”
“I have few alternatives. If I leave here, I die. Ok, it’s time for us to go… use the sneaking steps I taught you when you were learning to hunt rabbits… remember?”
“Yes, I remember. Dad?”
“What is it now?”
“I was just thinking this is a helluva reunion.”
“Do yourself a favor and forget about this, Jordan. Pretend it was just a bad dream. Now shut up until I tell you it’s safe. Strict radio silence and that’s an order. Let’s go.”
Jordie felt a rough hand grab his wrist and try to tug his arm out of his shoulder socket. Barely catching himself in time, he rolled his feet back to front in step to the frantic pace his father insisted on using. Jordie could feel a draft and sensed they were no longer in the claustrophobia-inducing tunnel, but rather a more open space. He tried to crane his head around to see the walls, but it was too dark. The only sound he could hear was the wild thumping of his heartbeat in his ears and occasionally a rough intake of his own breath. Were it not for the hand clamped around his wrist, he wouldn’t have known his father was there at all. He didn’t know how far they’d gone before the bright lights came, but the sudden flare of the spotlights caused both Jordie and his father to freeze in place. It was only a matter of seconds before his father started off again, at a full sprint this time, but still, too late. A net dropped over them and Jordie caught a glimpse of white figures with upraised golf clubs, of all things. His vision went to stars, then black.
***
Jordie awoke with a massive headache and his back freezing. Tied tightly, he managed to turn his head enough to see his father bound face up on a stone slab. The room was naturally lit by an opening in the rock ceiling, giving him enough light to more closely inspect his father’s features, to compare against a mind’s eye vision a decade old.
His father’s face was expectedly lined and the growth of beard lent him an aspect of madness, which was exacerbated by his father glaring at him. “Are you happy now, Jordan?”
“Don’t be mad, Dad. I’m not sorry I found you. I missed you terribly. So did Mother. She pretty much lost her marbles after we got the letter about you.”
“I’ve had a long time to get used to my life being over. I never expected you would come, Jordan, but it’s nice to see what you look like all grown up. I guess.”
“What did you mean about dying if you leave here?”
“As long as I’m here, so the tale goes, I’m under the protection of Isis.”
“So?”
“Are you really that simple? If I leave that protection, I stop living.”
“The temple’s the only thing keeping you alive or something?”
“Did you ever see one of those warbirds that I flew up close, Jordan?”
“Just in pictures. I always wanted to, though.”
“You don’t really know the size, but think it through. No one can crash a plane that big into a structure that close to the ground and walk away unscathed.”
“Those were the scratches on the columns?”
“I’d imagine. I didn’t get out to check the handiwork of my passing. I was too busy trying to get clear of the plane before it blew. I rather regret that I was successful.”
“So now you’re undead or something?”
“I wish I would have been there when you were growing up so you wouldn’t have said something as dumb as what you did right there. No, Jordan. My otherwise fatal injuries have no effect here. Think of it like time stopped the instant before I was injured and will stay stopped as long as I stay on the temple grounds. As soon as I leave, that moment will pass and the moment when I become fatally injured will commence.”
“It all seems so unreal.”
“Yeah, tell me all about it.”
“What are they doing now, Dad?”
Jordie heard footsteps, followed by Luca’s voice. “You have something they need, piccolo.”
“Luca, you fuck! You set me up!”
“Si. I did this thing. How you say? Nothing personal, just business?”
“I’ll just business my foot up your ass if I ever get out of this.”
“You are angry at Luca? Why? You say you want find your father and did Luca not bring you to your father?”
“Let me out of here and…”
“Piccolo, I say you can trust Luca in all things. Is still true. I tell you that you have much larger worries than me.”
“Why, what’s… Dad, what’s he talking about?”
“I already told you. They want eyes. Theirs don’t work, so they need new ones.”
“Si.”
“See, Jordan, when Vesuvius blew, everyone thought that Pompeii was buried and so it was. It was not, however, destroyed. Some survived, but they were forced below, in the dark. With disuse comes atrophy and eyes need light in order to be used.”
“What… what are you saying?”
“Or perhaps sight is the price paid for survival. These people are followers of Isis. They claim protection from the god, maybe the same one that created the vortex that pulled my plane down, but that protection costs.”
“A whole lost civilization… wow!”
A new voice entered the conversation. “Not quite lost, spider child. Perhaps hidden is a better word. We live in the world below. We wait until the time is right, until the divine Isis commands us to rise and then we will take our place above. For now, we prepare.”
A light came on, almost as bright as before but not as harsh. Jordie looked at white skin, pasty like the grub worms he’d seen back home. His eyes followed the skin up and found a tangle of a bird’s nest. Up from there what he guessed was a nose and higher a much larger tangle of hair. In between the hair and the nose resided two bumps, slightly more pinkish than the surrounding skin. Jordie shuddered involuntarily as the deep voice behind him intoned.
“Barkesh is next in line for sight. He is very excited.” The figure so named made a “mooksh mooksh” sound and started snuffling around, like a pig seeking truffles.
Jordie struggled against his bonds and the massive head drew nearer. “Struggle if you must. The bonds are quite tight, spider child.”
“Dad…”
“He cannot help you.”
“Luca… don’t let them.”
“Sorry, piccolo. Is a living.”
“It won’t work, whoever you are. Eye transplants rarely take, even in clean operating rooms.”
“It is true that we are not as successful as we would like, but we have little choice. Prepare yourselves in whatever way you see fit. We will commence shortly.”
Jordie heard heavy footsteps walk away and the snuffling head made a few more snorting noises, then also withdrew.
&n
bsp; “Luca?”
“He’s gone too, Jordan.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Don’t panic, Jordan.”
“They said they’re going to take our eyes!”
“Not our eyes. Just yours.”
“Why just mine?”
“They’ve already tried but they don’t want mine.”
“They don’t?”
“No. I discovered what they were up to before they found me. I… modified mine.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I scratched up the corneas with a field knife.”
Jordie heard a snick and then the sound of a rope being cut. His father freed himself, before walking to stand over Jordie, hefting the knife in one hand, as if testing the weight or balance.
“What are you waiting for? Cut me loose!”
“They leave me little dishes of food sometimes, Jordan. I feel like I owe them.”
“Dad!”
“I’ve been around them for so long, they’re almost my people. We’re in the temple of the same god.”
“They’re not your people, Dad. I am. You asked me why I came. I came because I love you and I never gave up hope.”
“You’re my own flesh and blood, this is true.” His father paused. “I didn’t bring you into this world to be an organ bank.”
Jordie felt the pressure on his bonds tighten, then loosen completely as his ropes parted.
“This is your one chance, Jordan. Get out of here and tell no one of this place.”
“I don’t know the way.”
“You waste time. Go back to America and stay there. Don’t come back. Ever.”
“Goddamnit, Dad.”
“You have no father any more, Jordan. Now go, before I change my mind.”
Jordie took one last look at his father, framing him in his mind, then ran for the nearest tunnel opening. He tried not to think of the shock and intense hurt of this betrayal and how he’d have to trick himself that his father still loved him, tried not to stop in the coal black tunnel and fall to his knees crying, tried to hold back the thought that he was going in circles, endlessly, hopelessly. He was concentrating so much on putting one foot in front of the other all the way to Texas or at least out of the walls of this wretched temple that he almost missed the muted sounds drifting through the rock walls. It sounded like a drunken party and as he tried to trace the noise, he saw a tiny crack of light.
Above him was a staircase, slick with mold and slime and other things he’d rather not think of, but it still might be his portal to freedom. He ascended, choking down panic and revulsion and summoning up patience enough for his fingers to find the seam of another trapdoor at the top. Wedging his fingers in, he heaved against it, straining with adrenaline fueled by fear. It took him several tries, but he finally levered the door up. Sunlight flooded into the stairwell.
A hand pulled him up and his eyes traced up the arm to a woman too beautiful, too pure, to behold. Her voice was melodious in a way symphonies could only wish to be and it broke his heart to hear it. As transfixed as he was by this deliverance, his mind caught her words as his body obeyed a deep instinctual call and went into rapture. “Welcome traveler. Fear not. Isis cannot reach you any longer. You are in the Temple of my brother Apollo and are safe now.”
Jordie barely felt himself being lifted up, so entranced by the sound and vision of divinity was he. His lips trembled and his vocal cords ached as he strained to make them form words. Hating himself for the harsh and terrible noise his speech would make after such exquisite magnificence, he still had to ask his question. She must have anticipated this. Before he could being to exhale his horrible cacophony, she laughed, the notes from her tongue the sweetest tinkling of piano strings that would ever exist. She smiled down at him and said, “I am Artemis.”
SON OF BONES
by
JOEL V. KELA
The prophet who called himself Enoch limped through the ruins of the dead city, following his spirits as they flitted ahead of him. He crossed from shadow to shadow, trying to avoid the worst of the rubble. Beyond the broken spines of skyscrapers and crooked utility poles the sun bore down out of a pale cream sky, and heat shimmered along fractured pavement. Wind hissed through the steel-and-glass canyons, setting his rags to boil around him like black seaweed.
He was thirsty.
He stopped in the shadow of a bus flipped against a bridge and drank from the old milk carton dangling from a string around his shoulder. He wiped his beard and lifted the jug to eye level. Only a line of water sloshed at the bottom. No matter. He let the jug fall back. What had his old rabbi said? HaShem will provide. Enoch looked up at the sky and squinted for the sight of black birds — like Elijah of old.
Enoch’s son had loved that story, and Enoch had told it at many a bedtime, back before the world broke. Yet even now Enoch knew it was true. HaShem always cared for His prophets. Behold, I am going to rain bread from heaven for you.
Enoch whispered, and Rua appeared.
The spirit rose in the shadows like a filament coming to life, and the radiance of her face choked at his breath, even after so many years. “My love,” he said, and she smiled as only an angel could.
Rua was his oldest spirit, sent to him by HaShem even before the earth’s doom. Rua served the anointed prophet, and to her was given prescience, insight, and secret knowledge. She was a true Watcher, as was Arakiel. Yet only Rua remained with Enoch at all times. Enoch had no true claim on Arakiel — but even that great prince came when the need grew most dire.
This was not such a time.
Enoch passed his hand through Rua’s cheek, and his flesh tingled. “Water, my love. And with speed.”
The spirit bowed her head and dissolved before his eyes.
He felt her moving, out and away from him. To the west.
When he ducked beneath the bus he saw a plastic shopping cart with sides bleached like bone. Beneath it lay a twisted blanket, with flowers on it. Some still pink.
He nodded and sat down. A boot protected his left foot, but he’d not been so lucky for his right. He’d bound it with rags and string, but the glass and the gravel had worn away at it over the last couple days. He tore strips from the flower blanket and wrapped his foot, tying it off with the last of his string.
As he climbed over the bridge and down the culvert on the other side, his mind filled with thoughts of the Colony. The faces of the rebels danced before his eyes, how they had mocked and spat. Cast him out. His own adopted children — fed by his hand and guided by his revelation. Him. Stripped and beaten and driven away — all at the word of that flaccid priest.
Enoch’s anger coiled like a snake within him. The holy power rose, pressing against his tongue. He scrambled up the far side of the culvert and onto a pile of rubble, summoning Ugly as he went. The spirit resisted him as always, a cloud of black ink that bucked and twisted against Enoch’s leash. But by the time Enoch stood atop the rubble, he had Ugly bound — trembling and spitting — but bound nonetheless.
Ugly was one of Enoch’s rephaim, spirits of the dead, and this one hated Enoch with all the fury of its black existence. And why not? The man it once had been was caught trying to steal the colony’s power generator. Enoch had commanded the thief be tortured to death, and as Enoch had served him justice in life, so now the man’s spirit served Enoch in death.
Enoch grinned and twisted Ugly tighter, facing east and raising his hands. He let the power rush forth like a flood, praying in Hebrew and binding the spirit to his words. In his mind he drew up a picture of Sarah, pretty backstabbing Sarah, who had spat as they dragged him out through the gates — past the fat priest who mumbled nonsense and sprinkled water.
When Enoch finished chanting, Ugly snaked away to the horizon like lightning. Enoch’s curse went with him.
Enoch slumped back against the rubble, his mind dizzy and heart singing. Let them account for that. Let them deny the truth when it kills her. The Colony would
see its mistake in rejecting him. They would beg for their prophet to return — him, to whom was given even mastery of unclean spirits in service to HaShem. He would drive out the rebels and their priest, and shepherd the righteous into the age to come.
Once Enoch’s strength came back, he turned to descend the rubble. And froze.
Down on the pavement stood a boy, maybe eight or nine years old, clothed in rags. His face bore a mass of blisters, and the bones of his shoulders protruded like baseballs. His face showed only awe, and a shiv of steel and tape lay dropped and forgotten at his feet.
Goosebumps ran up and down Enoch’s arms. The boy bore the look of Enoch’s own son, who had died so many years before. Enoch’s boy would even have been about the same age… if his damn mother hadn’t gotten them both killed.
Enoch stared at the boy. He had long waited for a disciple, his own Elisha to receive the mantle. He’d imagined someone older. But this could be even better. Guide my hand, O Adonai.
The boy stared up at Enoch like he understood.
Tall Man strode up behind the boy. While also one of Enoch’s rephaim, Tall Man was cleaner and more cordial — in life he’d been a Christian preacher. The spirit bent down and peered at the boy. Finally he looked up to Enoch and nodded.
Enoch smiled and extended his arms. “Come with me,” he said. “And you shall eat.”
***
As they picked their way into the outlying neighborhoods, the boy only grew in Enoch’s estimation. The boy kept his eyes low, and when Enoch tested him with hours of silence and unreasoned commands, he scrambled to obey.
It was not just for the hope of food and water, either. The boy clearly sensed Enoch’s power. The call of HaShem lay heavy upon him, and Enoch wondered to see it.
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