Debris of Shadows_Book II_The Forgotten Cathedral

by Tony LaRocca

  It meant nothing to him.

  There was no question that the same person had painted both works. Their brushstrokes, style, composition, and range of tones were too similar. But as to what message the unmasked image revealed, he had no clue. All he could see were random parts of the church and its lawn.

  He looked at the pieces that he had cut. Maybe some answer lay among them, but that did not make any sense. He picked one up, and examined its jagged edge. He sifted through the scraps, chose another, and put them together.

  They fit perfectly.

  He looked back at the pair of paintings, and sighed. He pressed his hand down on the top canvas, and dug the blade into the exposed surface of the second.

  When he was done, he had twelve scraps from each. He placed the ones from The Forgotten Cathedral on a tray, and put them together like a jigsaw puzzle.

  A convoluted shape popped out at him, created by the newly combined outlines of the tombstone, arch, columns, and window frame. He stared at the winding symbol.

  It still meant nothing.

  He heard the rustling of branches from above. “Patience,” he muttered under his breath. He picked up the tray, carried it upstairs, and laid it in front of the tree.

  “All right,” he said, “I’ve done all I can. Does this mean anything to you?”

  The tree’s bark flowed like clumps of moss floating on the surface of a stream. The face of a young girl pushed out from its trunk. She did not look the same as the woman who had chased him through the catacombs, but she did look familiar.

  “Sister Theresa?” he asked.

  As if in reply, the rune in the shape of a squiggly letter S — or was it a sloppy number seven — carved itself into her forehead. Her eyes gazed down at the tray, but her lips did not move.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” said Matthew. He pointed at the completed puzzle. “Does this mean anything? Because if not, then I destroyed my uncle’s paintings for nothing.”

  She continued to stare at the composite shape. Then she looked into his eyes, and smiled.

  He heard a rustling noise behind him. He turned, and saw that the vines had spelled out a new word:

  GLYPH.

  The roots began to buckle and squirm. He stepped away from the tree, and held his breath. Would the poor girl be released? He remembered her hand, and how it had instantly turned to rot when it had touched the luminescent fog. Had this woman somehow found a way to disperse the glowing, putrefying ceiling of mist?

  The sound of low thunder, like that of a bowling ball rolling down an alley, rumbled from beneath the enormous trunk. Its roots parted, and pushed a bark–covered ball to the surface. Then they knotted closed once more.

  The bark unraveled itself, revealing what looked like a ball of resin. Matthew could make out a cluster of black dots trapped inside.

  They were wasps.

  The tree shook and writhed. Its leaves stretched until they were almost transparent. Their serrated edges merged and sealed, forming giant balloons. Their stems plumped into fat, dark tubes that ran along the bottoms of their branches and into the back of the trunk.

  A milky, yellow liquid flowed from cracks in the bark. It had a sharp, acrid smell. It dripped over the translucent sphere, and the hardened sap began to bubble and dissolve.

  The girl within the trunk opened her mouth. Hundreds of thread–thin stalks, all different lengths, filled its cavity. They reminded Matthew of corn silk. The branches squeezed and pulled at the leaf–balloons, sucking in air, and pumping it out through their stems like floral bellows. The girl’s bark–encrusted lips puckered, opened, and closed repeatedly as the gossamer strands within vibrated.

  She sang.

  The once–dormant wasps took to the air. They zeroed in upon the maze wall that encircled the tree. They devoured it, rendering it back to Structural Sand. Then they transformed the crystals once more. When her song was complete, they swarmed into the girl’s mouth, and nestled amongst the slender reeds.

  They had created a door.

  It was constructed from plain steel, with a lever for a handle. It was the kind of door that would be at home in an office building, hospital, or military base. Matthew walked up to it, and tried its handgrip. It turned easily. He faced the tree.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Please, I beg you, look after the girl.” He held his hands out. “I don’t know if you’re a monk, a Cyleb, or even Mother Nature. But I hope we meet again.”

  The branches pumped their bellows once more. “We will,” whispered the tree, “but it won’t be me.” Her voice sounded like a cross between leaves rustling in the wind, and a high–pitched catgut violin. “Don’t believe her, Matthew. It won’t be me.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he said. “How do you know my name?”

  The girl’s features receded into the bark as the tree returned to its natural state. He swallowed. Despite all that had happened, he felt a pang of sadness. Whoever she was, he would have liked to talk with her more.

  He turned the handle, opened the door, and stepped inside.

  The world spun around him. A brilliant, flashing light stung his eyes, and then everything fell dark. His stomach flopped to its side as if his focus of gravity had pivoted from below his feet to behind — or beneath — his back. He lay in the blackness for a few moments. Then a parade of geometric patterns spun behind his eyelids. Searing pain shot through his shoulder, as if someone had pressed a glowing coal against its joint. He cried out as his eyes popped open. He whipped his head to his left, sure to see a blackened wound.

  His shoulder was whole.

  He was lying on a hospital cot. He wore a blue gown that was open in the back. He reached up with a shaking hand, and pulled its loose collar to the side. He stared at the unmarred flesh of his shoulder.

  His translucent skin, like everything around him, was a pale, orangish–yellow.

  The walls of the room had been laminated in pristine, ceramic tile. A faint, amber glow shone upon them, though he could not see its source. An odor that was a cross between mint and ammonia tainted the air. There seemed to be no artificial light, just a smoky, golden haze. Every few seconds, a machine to his right let out a muffled bleep. After a pause, another one behind his head responded in kind. A camera with a blinking red light hung a few inches from the ceiling, next to what looked like a military–grade laser turret. Its muzzle was pointed at him.

  “You’re awake… sir.”

  He opened and closed his mouth. His cheeks ached, as if he had laughed and laughed his facial muscles into spasms. The woman who had spoken stepped into view. She was the same person who had chased him through the crypt and tunnels, but now, she was flesh and bone. Her platinum hair was styled in a coif that enunciated her sharp, angular features. She folded her arms across her chest, and stared down her nose at him, as if he were a wayward child. Her irises swirled and flared with a sapphire glow. She sighed as if she had forgotten something important, but tiresome. Then she brought her fists to her side, and stood at attention. She wore a white lab coat that sported a caduceus patch on its breast pocket. Embroidered underneath was the zigzagged number seven.

  The amber haze tinged the edge of his vision, as if he were at the center of a smoldering fire. He examined his shoulder again, and, as realization hit him, choked back a cry of shock.

  His body, the color of the setting sun, glowed with an internal radiance.

  He squeezed his arm, poking and prodding at his skin. He could see the bones beneath his taut, leathery flesh, both within his shoulder and fingers. There was no pixelated divide, his joint was complete. He stared at the light that streamed from his pores, like that of a diseased flame.

  “Where am I?” he asked. The voice was not his. It was the voice of an old man.

  The woman tilted her head, and raised her eyebrows. She took a step back, her face impassive. She swallowed, as if it were taking tremendous effort to continue to hide her earlier arrogance. “It will take some
time for your memory to return, sir,” she said. “You’ve been inside for so long.”

  “Inside what?”

  “The Cathedral. My Sage.”

  Matthew stared at her. “Yours?”

  The corner of her mouth twitched. “As you commanded, of course.” She touched the scribbled seven–S–like symbol on her uniform with the fingers of her right hand, and then raised them to her eyebrow in a salute. “Cyleb Zeta reporting, sir.”

  He blinked. The name meant something to him, he was sure. He felt a tightening in his chest and throat. Whatever his mind had been made to forget, the name was charged with an emotional response that his subconscious could not deny. “Stand at ease,” he said. She put her hands behind her back. He tried to remember. What was the other command? “Rest.”

  Instead of relaxing, her body grew more rigid than before. She stood straighter, and placed her hands on her hips. “It’s good to have you out of there, sir,” she said.

  He reached around the back of his head. He was somehow hairless, but his bare scalp was wet. He held his fingers to his nose, and sniffed. The medicine–like odor that he had smelled earlier stung his sinuses. It was the iatric fluid of an immersion tank.

  He looked at his translucent hands, and the fiery muscles beneath. He flexed them. He had only ever known one man whose internal organs could glow in such a manner, but what that implied was impossible.

  “Where am I?” he asked again. “I mean geographically.”

  “San Domenico,” she said. Her face remained expressionless. “California.”

  “And we have a Sage there? Here, I mean.”

  “Yes, sir. As I said, the Cathedral.”

  “And I have been inside of it for…?”

  “Time is relative,” she said. “It moves much, much faster within. As far as the real world is concerned, you were only inside for eighteen months. But to your relative time, within your own frame…”

  “Yes?”

  “Twenty years.”

  He bit the inside of his cheek. “Well,” he said, “no wonder my memory is so faulty. I assume that it will come back in time.”

  His mind spun. Since dying and being painted into an artificial intelligence at the age of four, his shoulder had never been whole. It had always been fractured, always pixelated. He rubbed it, watching his luminous muscles move beneath his skin. Even the Sage in NorMec had not been able to join his two parts without a seam. But was that all a false narrative, created by this reality? Had he ever really been there? He felt panic rise within him, like a wave surging into his chest, and he forced it down. Learn, he told himself. Learn what is going on here, before you decide how to act. You cannot exist outside, that is impossible. This must just be another part of their Sage. He cleared his throat. “You must have retrieved me for a reason,” he said. “Well, I’m here.”

  The woman cocked her head as her eyes narrowed. The door behind her opened, and an elderly man walked into the room.

  Matthew leapt to his feet, and instantly regretted it. His legs felt like useless, rubber twigs. They splayed out from beneath him. He grabbed onto the cot’s side rail for support as he fell to one knee.

  The couple ran to him. They each slipped an arm under a shoulder, and pulled him up.

  “Easy now,” said the old man. “Don’t try to take it all at once. Your muscles have atrophied somewhat, it will take time before you can fully use them again. Come on, back onto the bed.”

  Matthew stared into the face of a man he had loved and missed every day since his childhood, one who could never be forgotten. He took a deep breath. It can’t be, he thought. It’s impossible. He allowed himself to be pulled onto the cot. His throat felt as if it were full of gravel. He looked up, and allowed himself to smile.

  “Yes, Doctor,” he said.

  “Oh, so you remember him,” the woman said with a smirk. She turned away.

  This is not real, warned the voice inside of Matthew’s addled mind. He swallowed, trying to bury the tide of feelings that threatened to drown him. “Bear with me,” he said, “I’ve forgotten so much. I just don’t understand.” He knew that he was babbling, that his attempt at composure was an obvious sham.

  “Don’t worry, Malachi,” Grandpa Benjy said as he placed a kindly hand on his shoulder. “Everything will be fine.”

  “Yes, General Jaeger,” said the woman who had called herself Zeta. She sniffed, and a smile came to her lips that belied the whirling blue ice within her eyes. “Everything will be fine.”

  Part III

  Chapter 17

  Ralph the Deadly Dionysus Squid stared at his reflection in the wall–length mirror of his living room. He was not really deadly, not by a long shot, but the name was catchy. Who knows, he thought, it might even make a good title.

  The skin of his head had peeled from his crown to his neck to reveal a blanched but transformed skull. Its features had stretched and pinched themselves into the classic theater mask of comedy. The back of his cranium however, had become a conglomeration of tiny masks of tragedy. He knew them all. One was Becky, taken years ago by ovarian cancer. Another was his brother Herb, drowned when he fell into their backyard pool at the age of three. Another was his nephew Frank, who came back from the war as a shell–shocked zombie. Lost friends and family, sick children he had performed for, his tumor–ridden cat… They all rippled and flowed towards the sides of his comedy mask, where they dissolved. Then they bubbled back into existence at his neck and shoulders, growing as they repeated their march towards the front.

  In contrast to his bone–white features, his round torso and the mass of tentacles that sprouted from it were slimy and black. He could count ten of them, each ending in a stubby tip.

  He leaned against the mirror, and slid down to the discolored rug. Were the old stains reasserting themselves, or were they just from the passage of his oily body? He could not tell. He could hear Asher snoring over the screams that came from outside. He sighed.

  He had realized his horrible mistake the moment his transformation had begun. He had tried to shake the scrawny monk awake, but it had been no use. Exhaustion mixed with sleeping medication had put the kid into a virtual coma.

  A barking roar, made by something that sounded like a cross between a seal and a motorbike with a bad muffler, echoed from down the street, followed by a cascade of broken glass. A pang of guilt stabbed through him. I’m sorry, he thought, I really thought that I was helping.

  “Asher!”

  The cry of desperation came from outside. Others repeated the name, forming a chant. Ralph slithered his way to the front door, and shouted at the top of his lungs that the monk was here — he was here! But his voice was a tiny, garbled thing now, lost amidst the thunder and chaos.

  He stretched for the doorknob for what felt like the hundredth time, but his longest tentacle fell just two inches short. For a deadly squid, he was not very menacing. His appearance — masks, black tentacles and all — might have been terrifying if he were not only two–and–a–half–feet tall. A baby might find him scary, but only if it had been extremely sheltered.

  He scuttled to the coffee table next to the couch, shimmied up its leg, and slapped Asher’s face again. His tiny tentacle made a spitting sound as it tickled the boy’s cheek.

  “Hey,” he said in a voice that even he could barely hear. “Please, kid, wake up.”

  The monk snored on. Ralph sighed, and slumped back to the carpet. He shouldn’t be too hard on himself, he decided. It was just the same old story about a certain road, and the good intentions that paved it. If that wasn’t a classic example of tragic comedy, then what was?

  Matthew raised the back of his cot, and watched his captors — or were they his underlings — in silence. For the most part they ignored him as they checked various computer screens, and conferred with each other in low, inaudible whispers. Every few minutes the woman who called herself Zeta turned her head to glance at him before returning to her work.

  Don’t believe
her, Matthew. It won’t be me.

  He pulled back his blanket and gown, and studied the amber glow that emanated from his thighs and shins. The claim of atrophy was ridiculous. Immersion tanks used a combination of electroshocks and iatric fluid to keep their users’ muscles active. If he really were General Jaeger, then why would his subordinates, especially ones who claimed to care so much about him, allow such a crucial system to malfunction? Unless, of course, his weakness was just a lie, meant to foster the illusion of dependence.

  He swung his legs over the edge of his bed, pulled himself to a standing position, and clutched the side rail.

  “General,” said Zeta as she rushed to his side, “let me help you.” The old man who was the spitting image of his grandfather looked over his shoulder at him, and gave a knowing wink. What conspiratorial secret they supposedly shared, Matthew had no clue.

  “Thank you,” he said, “but step back, please.” The woman complied, her face a mask of wary suspicion.

  He slid his right foot a few inches forward. His muscles did not hurt so much as they felt weak and useless. Bullshit, he told himself. You have been running, climbing, and jumping through this Sage for years. There is no reason why your legs should not work now. Walk. He took another shuffling step, and then another. He reached the end of the rail, and let go. He swayed for a moment, but forced himself to remain standing. Beads of sweat trickled down the side of his face. “Which way is the rest room?”

  Zeta raised her pencil–thin eyebrows, and pointed at a door to his right. He took tiny, staggering steps. Every muscle in his body shook. You will not fall, said a voice in the back of his mind. You were crawling up the roots of a tree not two hours ago. These crippled limbs are an illusion. Keep walking.

  He hobbled along until he reached the bathroom. He glanced up at the turret that hung beside the security camera. Its barrel had silently swiveled to follow him. He entered, and locked the door.