Debris of Shadows_Book II_The Forgotten Cathedral

by Tony LaRocca

  He collapsed against the sink, his withered fingers clinging to its cold, metallic basin for support. He raised his glowing head, and stared into the mirror.

  The taut rictus of General “Clown–Face” Malachi Jaeger smiled back at him.

  He pulled back the collar of his blue gown, and examined his shoulder once more. It was whole, without any divide or pixelation. He tried separating it with his will, but nothing happened. It was like trying to command his hands to fall off. He dug his fingers into his glowing flesh, but his joint and muscles remained absolute.

  He splashed cold water onto his face, and looked again at his reflection. Glowing, ancient eyes met his. The general’s — the real general’s — facial muscles, distorted by the energies that flowed through them, had set his face in a permanent grin. He touched the swollen knots of his likewise–distended cheeks.

  He had never noticed as a child, but in many ways, the hairless, austere face resembled his own.

  Knuckles rapped upon the door. “Sir,” Zeta asked, “are you okay?”

  He turned his head from side to side, watching his fiery counterpart do the same. “I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  He crouched, grabbed onto the stainless steel sink, and pulled himself up. His thighs burned and ached, but still, he had done it. He repeated the motion. These are my legs, he thought, I command this body. He continued to squat and stand until he no longer needed the sink. He looked down at the amber legs that shone through his hospital gown.

  They, like the rest of his current body, were a lie.

  He pulled open the door to find Zeta standing inches from its frame. He looked into her imposing gaze.

  “Excuse me, Cyleb,” he said.

  The sapphire lights in her irises flared. He felt a moment of confusion. Hadn’t he known someone else like that, with dark eyes the color of earth that flashed with gold?

  “Oh,” she said as she backed away. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Are you really?” he asked. He walked across the room. At first, his legs moved with stiff, faltering jerks, but after a few strides, his gait was almost back to normal. Zeta and the man who looked like his grandfather turned to stare at each other.

  “Sir, I —”

  “Shush,” he interrupted, putting a finger to his lips. “I am not General Jaeger. You know that. So tell me who you really are, and why all these lies?”

  The old man raised his hands. “You have to believe me. You were inside the Cathedral for so long that your subconscious became attached to your false persona. In time, your mind will heal.”

  “Really?” asked Matthew. “And you have been watching me all this time?”

  “We have,” said Zeta. “Every moment, since you went in to uncover the source of the sabotage. Once you found and neutralized it, we retrieved you.”

  “Then what is my name?”

  “What?”

  Matthew looked back and forth between their faces. “The persona that I created,” he said. “What is his name?”

  “Matthew,” said Benjamin.

  “And what’s his last name?”

  The woman who called herself Zeta stepped forward. “Sir —”

  “This persona, who are his parents? Who are his grandparents? Why do you insist on lying?” He pointed a glowing finger at the old man. “You are not Benjamin Dvorkin, though I wish so much that you were.”

  A smile touched the man’s lips. “And why do you say that?”

  “Because in the outside world, Benjamin Dvorkin has been dead for over a year.”

  The man chuckled, but a muscle in the woman’s cheek twitched. Matthew turned to her. “You didn’t know,” he said, “did you?”

  Her icy, blue irises swiveled around their pupils as they narrowed. “I think that you’re suffering from delusions, sir,” she said. She strode across the room. “I think that if you slept, you would feel better. And then, you will thank me.”

  The one pretending to be Benjamin rose from his chair. He walked to Matthew, and took his glowing hands in his. “Malachi,” he said, “look into my eyes, please. I’m your old friend. We’re all friends, here.”

  Matthew met his gaze. “If you’re really my — or rather General Jaeger’s — friend, then why are you lying to —”

  A needle pierced his neck from behind. He flung his hand up to grab it as an icy liquid flowed into the back of his skull. His legs went dead, and he collapsed to the floor.

  The woman loomed above him, syringe in hand. She knelt, and pulled him into a sitting position against the wall. “Sleep, sir,” she said. “When you wake, everything will be better.”

  The room, bathed in the amber glow of his skin, began to fade. As if from far away, he could hear a rhythmic ticking, like clockwork. A figure scuttled back and forth in the shadows. It was the size of a Labrador, with a segmented body and fluttering wings.

  The woman leaned in, and brushed her lips upon his. “I will fix you, Lyubimiy,” she said as the numbing darkness swallowed him. “I promise.”

  Roger ran alongside Helen through the twists and turns of the city’s streets. Their once orderly grid of avenues and boulevards had become labyrinthine and chaotic, forcing him to navigate by instinct. He glanced at his wife out of the corner of his eye. Her head continued to transform from one shape to the next. Sometimes he caught a glimpse of her original face, just for an instant, before its features melted into a sea of confusion.

  The sound of hooves clopped against the pavement behind them, accompanied by an electronic whir. A centaur loped by, but its conglomeration was not a mixture of horse and man. Instead, the creature was a steampunk, cybernetic giraffe with the head of a fish. Its glistening, puckered lips whistled something that sounded like a sea shanty as it passed. It snaked its long neck back towards them, and reared in surprise. Then it galloped off, changing its tune to The William Tell Overture.

  Roger turned to Helen. Her ever–changing face became a question mark. He tried to laugh, but all that came out were chokes of smog and soot. He looked at her flayed arms, and inwardly winced. Was she in pain? She did not seem to be.

  He turned his attention back to the streets around them. The air rang out with a mixture of cries, laughter, and wails from both near and far. The population of San Domenico had de–evolved into a menagerie of surreal mutations. Would anyone recognize them, or help them if they did? All that mattered was finding their daughter, but how could they even begin to explain their plight?

  “Asher!”

  A naked man ran through the intersection ahead. He was at least eight feet tall. With every step, his gangly body swayed like a weeping willow caught in the wind. His long, flowing hair and beard formed a mop of silver that ran to his knees. Their strands glistened and reflected the colors of the rainbow, as if they had been spun from glass. He had no eyes on his face, just two wrinkled patches of skin on either side of his nose. He stopped, raised his hands to his mouth, and shouted the monk’s name once more. Dozens of pebble–sized eyeballs coated his palms and the undersides of his fingers.

  He stuck his hands into the air, and swung his arms in circles. One set of eyes found Roger and Helen. He stopped his windmills, and ran to them with long, trotting steps.

  “Hey,” he said, “have you seen him?” A maniacal edge lurked beneath the surface of his voice. “Have you?”

  Roger stared at the man. “Tish,” he coughed.

  “Tush? What about my tush? Wow, you can speak, with a head like that?”

  “Tish,” Roger barked. “Tish, Tish, Tish!”

  “What the hell is a Tish?” the old man asked. “Wait, you mean the girl? What’s her name… Cole?” He thrust one hand into the filthy, roiling fumes that composed Roger’s face, while the other scanned Helen up and down. “Wait — Roger? Helen? Is that you?” He took a step back. “Jesus, it is, isn’t it? It’s me. It’s Vincent.”

  Roger hacked and sputtered, doubling over from the pain. “Tish,” he said again, his voice like
a belch of coal dust from a smokestack.

  Vincent stretched to the sky, and cracked his back. “You’re looking for your kid?” he asked. His eye–encrusted hands turned left and right. “All right, that bastard monk will just have to wait.”

  Roger shot his wife a look. Her face was a mask of ever–shifting turmoil. She slid her talon–hands into the exposed metallic bones of her arms again. He mixed his wisps with her glistening fingers. He could understand her apprehension. Something did not seem right.

  “Do you have any idea where we could get started?” Vincent asked. “Who she liked to hang out with, where she liked to go, even what she might look like now?”

  Helen’s features melted and reformed. They became her daughter’s face, the way she remembered it from before the Shadows fell, before Asher and his obsessive, false promises of perfection.

  Vincent leaned down, and stuck his palms in front of her visage. “Right,” he said. He lifted his hands high into the air again. “I don’t see her exactly, but there is a playground on Spruce Boulevard. We can start there.” He took off, his long, lanky legs making giant strides, his hair and beard swinging back and forth. He kept his arms above his head, turning his hands from side to side. “You would not believe how much I can see this way,” he called back to them.

  Roger followed, with Helen at his side. He coughed, the ashen billows of his body churning with every step. He held the roiling smoke of his hands out in front of him. Was this really all that mattered to me? he thought. Didn’t I think my life was anything more?

  “Over this way,” said Vincent. He aimed his palms at a row of trees to their left. “We can start looking there. I see a few kids. At least, I’m assuming they’re kids.”

  Tendrils of panic and anticipation wormed through Roger’s chest as they turned the corner. What if she was not there? It was not as if she had any real friends amongst the other kids, the poor girl. He should have been there for her more. He should have —

  A monstrous, automotive leviathan leapt from behind the nearest building. Its skin was a mishmash of flesh interwoven with metal and fiberglass. It stood ten feet tall. Its single eye was a swiveling headlamp, its face a chrome grill that glinted in the morning sun. An eight–valve engine, with lungs and a heart entwined throughout its pounding pistons, spun within its torso. It pinned him down with the treads of its whitewall tires, knocking Helen away with a savage lash from one of its steel arms. Its grill parted, revealing a jagged mouth of gleaming razors. It bent down, and bit Roger in half.

  Although he was a mixture of smoke, coal, and ash, he could feel every tearing, crushing bite as he was devoured. Over the thunder of the engine, he heard Vincent cry out in fury.

  “No fair, no fair! You said that I could have the next one!”

  The engine roared in reply.

  “Julia,” the hairy man shouted, “you fat, lying, gluttonous cow!”

  Roger’s gaseous body, trapped within the machine, traversed its pistons and valves. He was smoke. He was fire. He coughed and belched, regurgitating himself over and over. His brain hurt as it had never hurt before. The oppressive buzzing of the insects, both his and Julia’s, filled his mind as they tried to rework him into her patchwork jumble.

  From somewhere outside, he heard another shout of rage. He churned, still in shock. Their kind, elderly neighbors had always seemed a bit off, but he never would have imagined either of them capable of violence, especially Julia. He streamed back and forth amongst her workings, fighting against the wasps’ attempts to merge his self with hers. Some parts of her were still organic. He needed to find one, a heart, lung, or kidney.

  Something that he could mess up real good.

  He twisted his body through her various hoses and tubes until he found a valve that opened and closed on something soft, wet, and meaty. He did not know what it was, and he did not care. He coiled, compressing himself into as tiny a space as possible. He built up all the pressure within his smoky body that he could, until he could not stand the pain any longer.

  Then he exploded.

  The vein–covered membrane ruptured, revealing the street beyond. He coiled and struck again, tearing the rent open wider. The enormous vehicle writhed around him as he propelled himself towards the daylight. Julia’s steel hands clutched at his wisps as she tried to stuff him back into her body. He slipped between her claws and strove for the sky, shredding the bleeding organ in his passing.

  A fan within her machinery whirled into life. Its vacuum sucked him back to her intake, pulling and stretching his anatomy of smoke and ash.

  Don’t leave me Roger please I’m sorry I’m sorry I can’t be alone please I’ll give you comfort I’ll give you pleasure I’ll listen and laugh and be your friend and make you feel as if you always have a home just please please don’t leave me alone.

  Her words and the panic that fueled them buffeted his thoughts like the winds of a hurricane. He could feel the frantic wasps within them both, devouring and re–sculpting their Sands as they tried to dissolve him into her storm. He felt as if he were drowning in a sea of frustration, fear, and exhaustion. He would have to destroy the fan, and make his escape again. The compression and explosion trick had worked against flesh, why shouldn’t it work against machine? If he could just find a weak spot, one of its bearings, or even a magnet…

  But how had it worked? He had no muscles, not anymore. He had no locomotive power, but still he was able to choose his direction. Even before being eaten by Julia the sedan, his body of smog and billows had been able to walk. How was that possible? Unless…

  Stop! his mind cried out. He squeezed and held the wasps that had tweaked and molded him since the dawn of Asher’s brave new world, the same way he had compressed his own smoky self. You are a part of me. You are mine. You are my new muscles. And like the muscles of my old body, you can react automatically, or you can be focused on and controlled. Well, I’m controlling you now, so STOP!

  His captured insects slowed their frenzied cycle of feeding and regurgitation, but it was too late. The swarm of Asher’s children within Julia continued to work on their own. Rivulets of her mind seeped into his, and he felt her dread of loneliness work its way into his heart. Her emptiness, the sadness that tore at her from morning to night, her need to —

  He clamped down on her maelstrom of emotions. They were not his, they were hers. He needed to make her understand.

  He fought his way through the gales of her pain and confusion. Julia, their plump, overly friendly neighbor, whose jolly smiles were just a mask for her aching isolation, and resentment towards an arrogant husband whose idea of fun had been to constantly humiliate her. Her obsession with model cars stemmed from a time, long ago, when she had felt needed, wanted, and loved, and she flaunted her collection beneath his sneering nose, because…

  A rising tide of other memories rose to drown out hers.

  They were not alone.

  The sea of voices called to him, each with a story that they needed to tell. One had belonged to a ballet dancer, proud of his timing and grace, and how he could stretch his slender body to its limits. Another had been that of a math teacher, another a policeman’s, and another an electrician’s. The list went on and on. Roger could not help feeling swayed by their need to belong. It was good that they were not alone, that their minds were all thinking as one. It was right, because the Ophanim loved all the soldiers of WesMec… except that there had never been an Ophanim. She was a lie, her Church was a lie, and in their hearts they all knew it, because God save the West…

  How many of us are trapped in here? thought Roger. He heard another cry from outside. He tried to focus. He had to escape. He had to find Tish.

  Julia? his mind shouted against his captor’s cyclone of hysteria and despondence.

  Roger? The woman’s thoughts tripped and tumbled over one another amidst the background cacophony of the others’. Roger I’m sorry I can’t help it I can’t control it there are so many in me now and they’re all hungry
help me Roger please make them stop I’m so sorry I’m sorry I just didn’t want to be alone.

  Listen to me, he thought. All of you, listen. The wasps, Asher’s children, they’re ours, at least for now. We can control them, they don’t have to control us.

  Roger I can’t I can’t I’m afraid I’m so hungry I’m sorry I hurt you I can’t help it I can’t —

  Yes you can, Roger cut in. Tish, Julia. I have to help Helen and Tish. You can control your wasps. It’s like breathing. Your body can do it on its own, or you can concentrate and do it yourself. You can even hold your breath, if you want. But you have to take control now, you have to help me. Remember little Tish? She loved you, she thought you were her friend. Help her now. Do it for Tish.

  Her storm of panic began to quell. For Tish, she thought.

  One by one, the chatter of the other voices fell silent. He slumped, and exhaled a mental sigh of relief. For Tish.

  Vincent pushed Helen down to the pavement. She raked his face with her talons, but he pinned her shredded arms to her sides with ease. He looked back at the assortment of machinery and souls that had once been his wife.

  “It’s not fair,” he said, “she has so many. Do you know how many people are inside of my heart?” Helen’s ever–changing head whipped back and forth. “No, of course you don’t. Well, I’ll tell you. There’s only one. It’s just me.”

  He looked at the sky, and screeched from the back of his throat. He coughed, and spat. “I want to be with her, but she doesn’t want me. Everything is coming together. Everyone is going to be one with someone else now, but even my own wife doesn’t want me.” He knelt on top of her, digging his gigantic knees into her stomach. “You don’t want to be alone, do you? I wanted to be a part of her, but she won’t let me. Anyone but me, even your husband.” She felt wetness on her arms, and realized that his many eyes were crying.

  Her face formed into Tish’s. It was all that she could think of.