by Greg Chapman
Shal-Ekh could barely contain his surprise at the Great One’s words, his flesh flinching.
“My Lord?” he said.
I hear their blood Shal-Ekh, running like a river, like a geyser, rising up to splash my face. It torments me and I can no longer tolerate it.
“But My Lord, they are abominations, sinners; blaspheming against you. Should we not punish them?”
Okin stretched out his hand, sweeping it across the entire night sky.
What do you see, Shal-Ekh?
“The night and the stars.”
When I see the sky, I see harmony, light and darkness in their rightful places. The way things should be.
Shal-Ekh nodded but failed to see the Great One’s meaning. “Forgive my ignorance, O, Great One.”
Okin turned to look at his child, the Great One’s eyes luminous as a billion suns.
You are blind to my purpose for you Shal-Ekh. I needed you to open your eyes and ears, to see my plans for you and speak my words, but I fear that you have failed me.
“I could never fail you, My Lord,” he said. “Tell me how I can prove it to you.”
Okin stood, his gigantic form blotting out the night. He peered down on his chid and smiled adoringly.
You still have faith Shal-Ekh. Now hear me—one day soon I will need you to go into the city of the humans.
Shal-Ekh scrambled to his knees, a forlorn look on his face.
“Why My Lord? The humans are nothing but cattle”
Yet their purpose is no less important, no less significant. They at least try to create order out of chaos.
“Yes, My Lord. What do you need me to do?”
When I call you, you will go to the city. You will be walking through the forest of the Skiift and there I will have left for you a sign—a tool if you will. When you see it, you will know what to do for I will have told you about it in a dream. After you have remembered what to do you must go to the human city. There will be a vacant room in a vacant building that I will show to you. Leave the sign there.
Shal-Ekh clasped his hands together in reverence. There were tears on his cheeks.
“Of course, My Lord, I will do these things for you. But did you not say that you would return?”
Okin sat down and the earth rumbled.
My children have forgotten themselves, Shal-Ekh. They’ve rejected their true flesh, become impostors of themselves—Flesher against Flesher, tribe against tribe. I must show them that their flesh is weak, that it is simply a cloak that shrouds the soul.
“How will you show us O, Great One?”
I will return. A door will be opened for me through the human city. For a time, the door will be locked to me, then a key will appear, or a schism and everything will begin to unravel. The Flaeschama will crack, the forest will wither, and the crypt will be rendered unto dust.
“Yes, My Lord,” Shal-Ekh chanted. “So shall it be.”
Okin reached down and cradled the Stygma prophet in his palm.
You are a good servant, Shal-Ekh. You have always done what I have asked, but what I have asked of you has not always been the right way. Therefore, I must correct my mistakes.
“I welcome your return—I await your arrival.”
Good. It will happen soon. Prepare yourself, prepare your kin. The war is ending, and this dreamscape will become the norm.
“Oh, yes, My Lord—so shall it be!”
And the dream ended and Shal-Ekh awoke in the pit. He waited, for centuries he waited. Fleshers died, over and over. He slept, he dreamt, but the Great One never came.
Then Shal-Ekh felt compelled to go to the Forest of the Skiift and there, he came across the sign, a ghastly omen. In that reckoning, Shal-Ekh recalled a dream and found its words on his flesh—orders from the Great One.
And the door was opened for Okin to return.
17
The three men stood silently in the half-light of the basement, surrounding the monster tied to the chair. Vorn wanted truth, Bryce wanted blood and Niles—well he was prepared to sell his soul for both. Bryce knew that was why the billionaire did all his dark business down here. Niles didn’t want anyone to see how he really earned his wealth.
The room was cold and cramped, devoid of colour, despite the treasures on the shelves. Bryce stepped up to the creature and smashed his right fist into its face. The wet sound—and the sound of Nero’s chuckling, echoed around them
Nero spat blood on the floor.
“Is that all you’ve got asshole?” the outcast said.
The bounty hunter gritted his teeth, no matter how hard he punched, kicked and gouged, only the barest of marks would appear on the creature’s skin. He’d been at it for almost an hour with little result.
Bryce delivered a blow under the creature’s ribs. Nero winced beneath the sharp jolt of pain, but once again, came up smiling, blood running in dark strings down his chin.
“You’re not much of an interrogator,” Nero said.
“Oh, yeah? “I’m just getting started.”
Nero sniggered. “And here I was thinking you were ready for a nap!”
Bryce looked to Niles, the mogul had taken a seat to watch the show with a glass of scotch in his hand. He’d given his man-for-hire the nod to continue and Bryce went to his duffle bag and produced a knuckle duster, tarnished from years of misuse.
“Now you’re talking!” Nero said.
Bryce was unsettled by the creature’s resolve, like it was willing him on instead of trying its hardest to get him to stop.
“You don’t really want me to hit you with this,” the bounty hunter said. “All you have to do is tell us your name.”
Bryce glanced at Vorn who watched, from the shadows in silent disgust. Bryce knew he abhorred bloody violence, which was disturbing in itself, given the occultist’s own dark predilections.
“I might not be ready to tell you,” Nero said. “Maybe you should give it a try anyway.”
Bryce didn’t hesitate, swinging his fist across Nero’s face once more. A strip of skin was torn away by the blow and hit the floor with a wet slap.
“Jesus!” Bryce stared at the bloodied knuckle-duster and the damage it had wrought.
Nero laughed, the patch of meaty flesh around his eye socket gleaming in the overhead lights.
“Oh, you got me!” he cackled. “That was a good one!”
“What kind of fucked up freak are you?” Bryce said, more horrified than afraid.
“Christ, Colton—how hard did you hit him?” Niles said. “I need him to talk—not dead.”
Vorn stepped out of the dark and stooped to observe the flesh on the floor. From his cloak he produced a thin dagger, like an elaborate letter opener and picked the skin up from the floor. He stared at it closely.
“I hardly even hit him,” Bryce said.
“I would say that your fist had very little to do with this,” Vorn said. ‘I think our uncooperative friend here has some sort of skin condition.”
Nero chuckled again. “You think? Shit—you are a genius!”
Vorn flashed the creature a furious glance. “What are you?” the occultist said, his resolve beginning to wane. “Tell us and maybe Mr Colton will cease his thuggery.”
Nero puckered his lips and offered Vorn a wink. Niles was on his feet a moment later, getting in the creature’s bloody face.
“I noticed your skin was cracked when you first came in here, like you were sick or something,” he said. “What if I ordered Bryce to knock a few more strips off on purpose?”
Nero shrugged. “Hey, whatever gets you wet, old guy—I don’t give a flying fuck!”
Niles thrust his forearm into Nero’s face and the beast’s nose fractured, fresh blood flowed and splashed into Nero’s mouth, which he promptly spat onto the billionaire’s silk shirt.
“You fuck!” Niles raised his fist.
Nero turned to Bryce laughing. “He hits harder than you!”
Bryce pushed past Niles and landed another steel-plated r
ight to Nero’s head. The creature’s cheek bone cracked and the flesh around his nose and mouth tore away, making a smile without lips.
“I’ll fucking kill you freak!”
Bryce hit Nero again, more and more flesh falling in bloody chunks. But on the fourth blow, Nero fought back—with his pointed teeth. Before Bryce could react, the beast chewed through his leather jacket and pierced his arm. In an attempt to pry himself free of Nero’s jaws, a long strip of flesh was shredded from Bryce’s arm and left dangling from the beast’s mouth. The bounty hunter fell, his own blood being shed now. Vorn and Niles could only watch in horror.
“He fucking bit me!” Bryce said.
“Jesus—get some bandages or something,” Niles said in a panic.
Nero sat bleeding and masticating Bryce’s arm flesh.
“Mmm tasty.”
Bryce, in inexorable agony, reached into his coat with his good hand and produced his .44.
“I’m gonna fucking kill it!”
Vorn stepped in between Bryce and Nero, his face pale. “No! Wait!” he said. “Look at it!”
Even as Nero was swallowing the last of Bryce’s flesh, a transformation was occurring. Before their very eyes, Nero’s face began to repair itself, the wound that Bryce had first delivered ceased to bleed and scab in seconds, then fade, paler and paler until it was as if it was never dealt. The fractured nose was re-set by invisible hands and the mouth, which was a ragged mess, regrew lips and cheeks in a rapid weave of viscera.
In moments, the violence Bryce had perpetrated upon Nero—all evidence of it—was gone.
“Holy shit!” Niles said.
Bryce, the shock catching up with him, vomited on the floor. Vorn leant in to stare at the creature’s reanimated face.
“Fascinating,” he said. “Utterly fascinating.”
“Pretty cool, huh?” Nero joked.
Vorn scrutinised every inch of Nero’s flesh. It was untainted, perfect in every way. But there was something else he could not quite put his finger upon.
“How the Christ did it do that?” Niles said.
“Yes, that is the question isn’t it?” Vorn replied.
Nero turned his eyes to Vorn, and the occultist noticed the irises had altered, where before they were a golden-brown shade, they were now greenish-blue.
“A physical change has occurred, but how I am not certain,” Vorn looked to Nero. “Was the change voluntary on your part?”
Nero smirked and looked away to study Bryce’s arm and the pool of blood spreading on the floor. Vorn saw the creature’s desire and decided it was best to remove temptation.
“Niles, please take Mr Colton to the infirmary—he needs that wound tended to.”
“What are you going to do?” Niles said as he hauled Bryce to his unsteady feet.
“Just leave the beast to me, Niles. Now please, before Mr Colton bleeds to death.”
Niles shouldered Bryce out of the basement, their forms receding into darkness. When Vorn was sure they were gone, he turned back to the beast. Nero was staring off into space, unconcerned, unnerved, completely inhuman.
Vorn dragged Niles’s chair over so he could sit closer to the beast.
“That was quite brash of you,” Vorn said, his voice wrenching Nero’s gaze away from the blood.
“Brash? You obviously grew up in a school for boys, didn’t you? Bugger any of your roommates while you were there?”
Vorn tisked. “You’re attempts at humour only highlight your insecurities. I can’t help but find your innate human characteristics interesting, considering you are anything but human.”
“Fuck me pal, are you trying to bore me to death now?”
“You are a remarkable creature,” Vorn said. “And your abilities are very unique. How do you repair yourself? You obviously eat human flesh and it regenerates you, but I noticed you acquired Mr Colton’s eye colour. How did you accomplish that?”
Nero turned back to the trail of Bryce’s blood coagulating on the floor. “Why don’t you roll up your sleeve and I’ll show you?”
Vorn retrieved a medal on a chain from beneath his vest, an amulet of pure bronze. There were no markings on it, but it was perfectly flat and round. The occultist placed it over his head, and he saw that Nero couldn’t help but watch with interest.
“What’s that?” the creature said.
“Just a trinket of mine,” Vorn replied.
“You got a thing for jewellery, have you?”
“Certain very rare types, yes.”
“It looks a bit shit if you ask me.”
Vorn glanced up at Nero, a dark smile on his asymmetrical face. “Yes, but it’s anything but ordinary.”
Despite Nero’s dismissal of the object, Vorn could see that the creature’s eyes betrayed him. He could not take his eyes off the object, the shine of it catching his eye. Vorn began to turn it over between his fingers.
“What’s your name and where do you come from?” Vorn said with an even tone.
“You can’t hypnotise me,” Nero said trying to be sure of himself as his eyes were locked on the disc.
“I’m not trying to hypnotise you.”
“What’s it for then for fuck sake!?” Nero said as he squirmed in his chair.
“I’m asking the questions,” Vorn said. “Now, tell me your name.”
“Fuck you!”
Vorn smiled. “You know, this disc, well I couldn’t ever tell Mr Harper I have it. If he knew it was in my possession, he’d stop at nothing to take it from me, even if it meant his death. So, it’s probably wise that it’s in my hands and not his. Do you agree?”
Vorn smiled as Nero frowned, simultaneously confused an enamoured with the flat, unremarkable bronze medallion.
“It’s just a piece of metal…” Nero uttered. “It doesn’t even have anything on it—”
Words or letters scratched onto the surface of the disc, carved by the air itself. Nero gasped as the markings were written in some obscure code and then rewritten—translated—to human English. He swore it read:
What’s your name?
Vorn held the disc up to prove that was what it read. He knew what Nero was seeing because it was in his mind’s eye too.
What’s your name?
The disc spun inside his brain, each side bearing the same question:
What’s your name?
The disc rotated again and again, faster and faster, blurring and sharpening with the speed of a strobe light:
What’s your name?
What’s your name?
What’s your name?
Nero screamed, powerless against the demand. The disc was a living, breathing sun, twisting and flaring.
“Nero—my name’s Nero!” he shrieked.
The disc slowed its rotations to reveal a new question. The whole world had stepped aside, and reality now only encompassed the boundaries of consciousness. The question began to spin anew:
Are there others like you?
Are there others like you?
“Yes—for fuck’s sake!”
Where?
Where do they live?
The disc exploded with fire, branding the words on Nero’s brain.
“Ahhh! In the Flesh Home! Stop!”
Where is the Flesh Home?
“Under the ground…oh, fuck! Please!”
How do you acquire the characteristics of your victims?
“What…? I don’t know! Fucking stop please!”
How do you acquire the characteristics of your victims?
The disc felt harder as it turned on its horrible axis, the edge of the circumference like a thousand razorblades, slicing Nero’s brain in two.
Nero—how do you acquire the characteristics of your victims?
“I don’t fucking know! It just happens—we’re just monsters for fuck sake! Stop! Please!”
The disc ground to a halt, levitating in Nero’s head like the moon in an autumn night sky. Then the medallion was plucked out of his mind by Vorn’s
hand and the basement was wrenched back into view.
“Now that wasn’t so hard was it, Nero?” Vorn said.
Nero’s face was drenched in sweat, his eyes and ears oozing dark blood. Vorn put the disc away and Nero breathed a sigh of utter relief.
“You will take us to this…Flesh Home, won’t you Nero?” Vorn said.
Nero nodded, his head like a great stone on his neck. He was spent.
Vorn rested a tender hand on Nero’s shoulder.
“There’s a good boy.”
18
The blood trail led Vorn to the en suite, which looked like a murder scene committed by kindergarten children.
Bryce was deathly white, eyes rolled back in their sockets, while his employer desperately tried to staunch the flow of blood with needle and thread.
“What on earth are you doing, Niles?” Vorn said, more appalled by the billionaire’s lack of dexterity than the gaudy display.
“Ah, Jesus—I can’t stop the fucking bleeding! That freak must have bitten through half a dozen veins! All I’ve been able to do is plug one of them!”
Vorn dared a look at the ragged sinew of Bryce’s forearm. The sink and floor were slowly welling up with the bounty hunter’s essence and going by the vacant look in his eyes, Vorn thought it wouldn’t be long before there was no more to give.
“Did you give him anything for the pain?” Vorn said, prying open Bryce’s slack eyelids to assess his level of consciousness.
“Yeah—I gave him some morphine.”
Vorn glanced at Niles. “From your medicine cabinet?”
“That’s none of your fucking business, Vorn,” he said. “Now we need to stop fucking around and get this bastard to a hospital!”
“No, that won’t be necessary—give me the needle and thread.”
Niles gladly handed it over and stopped to see his blood-spattered reflection in the mirror. He immediately tore off his shirt and threw it on the floor, desperate to separate himself from the horror.
“What are you going to do? Can you even mend him?” he asked Vorn.
Vorn clasped one of the veins in Bryce’s eviscerated arm and attempted to sew it, but the blood was like a sea.
“I used to be quite adept at this sort of thing once believe it or not Niles.”
“What are you talking about?”