Debris of Shadows_Book II_The Forgotten Cathedral

by Tony LaRocca

  “Out where?” she asked, her chest wracked with sobs. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ll explain as we go,” said Marianne, “but you need to move it. You’re safe for now, but I don’t know how much longer that’s going to last. You can do it, I know you can.”

  Tish sniffed, and clenched her jaw. She could feel the muscles in her neck throb. “Fine,” she said, as she pushed herself to her feet. “What choice do I have?”

  “Thank you,” said Marianne. “If you feel along the wall to your left, there should be a safety gate blocking a ladder. Actually, it’s just some handhold bars sticking out of the cement, with no side–rails. I need you to take tiny steps to the side until you find it. If your feet reach the end and you don’t feel the gate, you have to let me know. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re going to make it, Tish. I know you will.”

  She did as instructed until her fingers touched a steel mesh. She slid her hands over its surface. They found a lever that ended with a rubber grip. She pulled it up, and, accompanied by the screech of rusted hinges, swung the gate open. She grabbed onto its tubular frame for support, and felt along the wall for the horizontal bars. She clutched onto one that was even with her shoulder, and stretched her toes across until they reached another. “I found them,” she said.

  “Great. Now you just have to climb down. And whatever you do, be careful with that stylus.”

  Tish blinked. “Are you kidding?” she asked. “I have no shoes on, and I can barely walk. How far is it?”

  “About thirty feet.”

  “Thirty feet?” Her eyes widened in the darkness. “Are you serious?”

  “Unfortunately. You have to, kid, you have nowhere else to go. All we’ve got now is each other.”

  A lump surged to her throat. Her eyes burned, and she wiped them off on her arm. She sniffed again. “I don’t want you,” she said. “I want my mom and dad.”

  The voice in her ear sighed. “Sweetie, I told you —”

  “Stop calling me that!” she shouted. It felt good to shout. “I’m not your sweetie, you don’t even know me, and you hurt me. You’re not my mommy!”

  Marianne seemed to think this over. “No,” she said. “I’m not your mommy, but I am a mommy. And you may not believe this, but I spent a very, very long time in the dark too. So I know what you’re feeling, but I also know you must be even more scared than I was. I’m sorry, Tish. I’m sorry that you’re here, and I’m so sorry about your mom and dad. But all you can do now is move. Come on.”

  “I hate you,” Tish muttered as she grabbed the rungs with both hands, and began the climb down. She had to take one step at a time, and the round bars made her feet ache. She dropped from one to the other, hand over hand. “Did you hear me?” she asked in between her pants and grunts. “I said that I hate you.”

  “What?” The woman sounded distracted. She laughed. “Oh, I don’t care. I’ve been hated by people much more important than you.”

  Tish continued her descent. “You’re mean,” she said. “I’ll bet that your kid hates you too.”

  “I’ll bet so,” said Marianne. “I wouldn’t blame him if he hated me, after everything he’s been through.”

  Tish heard the strain that belied the woman’s voice, and a flush of shame crept into her face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was being a meanie.”

  “Keep being a meanie, Tish. Meanies are tough, and don’t fall.”

  “At least I’m not a jerk,” she said. “Jerks used to hurt my feelings all the time.”

  “Bullies are like inflamed hemorrhoids: If they weren’t pains in the ass, no one would have any reason to notice them.”

  Tish snorted out a laugh. “What?”

  “Nothing, I forgot that you’ve lived a sheltered life. Just be careful.”

  “I am,” said Tish. “How much — oof!”

  Her leg swung down, but there were no more rungs beneath her. She had picked up speed and not realized it. She clung onto the bars while her foot floundered against the cement, searching for a purchase. “I can’t hold on,” she said, her voice a whisper.

  “Tish, what’s wrong?”

  She strained to pull herself up, but it was no use. Her arm muscles felt like knotted rags. She hung for a moment, then dropped.

  She landed a fraction of a second later, stumbling on concrete. She staggered into the wall, and ran her hands across it. Her fingers found the last rung. It had been mounted three feet above the floor. She laughed.

  “Are you okay?” Marianne shouted in her ear.

  “I’m fine,” said Tish, “just an idiot — ow!” She had stepped on something sharp. She knelt, and massaged the arch of her foot. Nothing was stuck in it, but it hurt. She picked up the object. It felt like a piece of circuit board. Resistors, or whatever they were called, stuck out of its surface. “There’s a broken computer down here.” She felt along the floor, and found scraps of metal amidst a scattering of screws, gears, rubber gaskets, and other debris.

  “Yeah,” said Marianne. “Remember a few minutes ago, when you said that I was mean?”

  Tish swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, I am mean,” said Marianne. “I did a mean thing. It wasn’t intentional, but I had to try. And when it didn’t work, I tried it again.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Well, I couldn’t activate the elevator, and I desperately need one of those things that you have tied to your arm. So, I tried to get the robots to climb down the ladder. Twice.”

  Tish swallowed. “You killed them?”

  “Yep. Poor Alpha and Bravo.”

  “Wow, you are mean.”

  “Yep. So, be careful. Can you shuffle instead of walking? I know it will scrape your feet, but it’s better than stepping on a rusty screw or a piece of glass.”

  “Okay,” said Tish. “Meanie.” She shuffled her feet along, occasionally stubbing her toe on a piece of metal or plastic. “I don’t even know where I’m supposed to be going.”

  “Well, you’re at the end of a hallway, so there’s only one direction you can go. If you hit a wall, try to feel across it. Just make sure that you’re going away from the ladder.”

  “Where am I?”

  “You just climbed down the elevator shaft, then you were alongside its pit. You’re now moving through corridor N22E07.”

  “What good does that do me?”

  “None, I’m just reading off of the blueprint. Are you clear of the robot guts?”

  “Yes,” said Tish, “I think so.”

  “Okay,” she said, “just be careful.”

  Tish walked down the hall with her left hand stretched out in front of her, while her right guided her along the wall to her side. A low, mechanical hum echoed from the darkness. She continued down the passageway until her extended hand touched steel. “There’s something metal,” she said. She explored it with her fingers, and found a handle. “It’s a door.”

  “Open it.”

  She twisted the latch, and pushed. An intense, flickering, emerald blaze assaulted her eyes. After a few seconds, she realized that she was not alone. She squinted at the milk–white creature that floated in the tank before her, and took a few steps back.

  “Come in,” said the bathing thing and the voice in her ear simultaneously, and Tish realized that it was not a thing at all. It was a woman, or rather, what seemed to be the remains of one. She wore a breathing mask that covered her nose and mouth. One of her legs had been cut off at the knee, while the other ended at her pelvis. She only had one arm, which ended in a stump. A makeshift, mechanical claw protruded from her wrist. Her hair, long, thin, and white, floated in the oil that surrounded her. Her mastectomized chest was a twisted mass of scar tissue. One of her eyes was a milky orb that resembled the whites of eggs, while the iris of the other glowed with a sapphire light. The veins beneath her blanched skin glistened with a silvery translucence, as if energized by an electric current. A long, throbbing cable ran from
a computer bank to a network of glowing wires that protruded from the base of her skull. Tish absentmindedly reached back, and touched her own puckered lump.

  The blinding light and rumbling hum came from a machine that squatted on the floor. Years ago, Tish’s parents had taken her to see Urchins Unaware in concert. While the teenage heartthrobs had sung and danced, colored lasers had whipped back and forth behind them, slicing geometric patterns into a wall of artificial fog. The green needle of light that shone from the side of the machine reminded her of that. A rectangle of cloth, measuring about three by four feet, sat before it on a tripod. The roving beam licked the canvas from one side to the other, sweeping it from top to bottom in less time than it took for her to blink. The result was a strobing sheet of jade light. She could almost make out a figure crawling within its glare, but she could not tell who it was.

  “My name is Marianne Proctor,” said the scarred woman. She met Tish’s gaze with her incandescent cerulean eye. “I’m also known in some circles as Sister Theresa, and Zeta, or Zed, in others. And this,” she gestured to the brilliant, flickering painting, “is Matthew, my son.”

  Chapter 21

  To Asher, it seemed as if Tish’s body had folded in upon itself until it vanished into a point of nothingness. He dropped to one knee, and touched the smooth, gray depression that had once been the crypt. No Life Sands remained in her wake. There was nothing to resurrect.

  What had he done?

  He looked at his hands. Glowing lilac veins dug their way from his wrists to his fingertips. Every inch of his flesh itched, as if maggots were burrowing through his capillaries.

  Had he actually tried to take back his wasps while they were healing her?

  He remembered the searing agony and humiliation of the Magistrate’s punishment, back in the monastery. Now here he was, inflicting punishment upon his own charges. His throat grew tight with shame. What would Brother Jacob say, or even Brother Leo, for that matter? He swallowed, and ran his hand over the hemisphere in the floor.

  “I didn’t want this,” he said.

  He searched for the millions of souls that had been a part of his mind for so long, but they were gone. He could no longer feel their lives, just the frigid, violet, liquid mercury of the Magistrate etching itself throughout his brain.

  He held the crown up to the light. It was all that remained of the child that he should have protected instead of terrorizing. It no longer mattered to him, his burning need to possess it had vanished.

  Its composition had changed. Instead of silvery glass, it had transformed into stained, yellowish bone. Its pitted surface was that of a decomposing relic. His stomach churned, threatening to bring on another violent bout of sickness.

  What’s wrong, boy? The Magistrate’s basso profundo resonated within his skull. He looked down, and examined the glowing splotches of purple bile that stained his chest and stomach. Is breakfast not agreeing with you?

  The deep tones chuckled from the back of his mind. He shot a look down the tunnel at the raging fire that consumed the tree and its roots. Oh, don’t worry, said the Magistrate, I’m sure that your friend Theresa escaped with the girl. It’s just your art gallery that will burn. Unless, of course, you installed sprinklers. Safety codes exist for a reason, you know.

  “Escaped?” he asked. “Then they’re alive?”

  There was no answer. Something dripped from his nose into his throat. It tasted like spearmint mixed with grapefruit juice and ash. He thought of his wasps. Were they still his to command, or did they belong to the Magistrate now? He sang, directing them to rework the freezing, violet acid into his body, to add it to his DNA. He gagged as they ate through their sacs, up his neck, and into his skull.

  Clever, said the Magistrate, but I wouldn’t do that if I were you.

  Asher barked out a scoffing laugh, spraying lilac spittle from his blistered lips. “Like you care what happens to me.”

  Bursts of light, like fireworks, exploded throughout his field of vision. He forced himself to continue his song. Rewrite me, he thought to his children. He visualized the purple ice that spread throughout his cerebellum, and sang his wasps to weave it into his chromosomes. What did the Magistrate think and feel? Who was he, what was his story? The Chosen Prince was in his head now, no different from any of his other charges.

  His feet pounded across a battlefield of rock and sand. Bullets whizzed by his face like hot, angry hornets. The whistle of an incoming mortar shell filled the air. He leapt off the edge of a small cliff, and threw himself into a gully. A musclebound second lieutenant shrieked like a baby as the ordinance exploded. He rolled, shielding himself from the rain of blood, shale and shrapnel —

  A scalpel sliced through his cornea, splitting it open. They had put him under anesthesia, but all it had done was immobilize his muscles. He could see, he could feel. Weren’t they monitoring his brain activity? Didn’t they know? The razor–thin knife slashed down again, severing his optic nerve. The pain was beyond anything he had ever imagined possible. He screamed in silence as —

  He laughed in the stupid girl’s face. She thought that her history of tragedies made her entitled to anything and everything, just because she had once begged him to stick it into her. But what he really found hysterical was that though she demanded it from others, she herself had no empathy whatsoever. Did she ever once —

  Something warm squished beneath his heel. He looked down at the brown, steaming turd he had stepped in, and let out a chuckle. How could he not? Here he was, one of the most powerful creatures ever to walk the earth, but dog shit could still anoint his feet. There was something poetic in that. The men under his command joined in, suddenly finding the moment hilarious. His laughter died, and so did theirs, and he pushed the sense of isolation that bloomed in his chest into the pit of his stomach —

  The avalanche of memories poured faster through Asher’s mind until they became an unintelligible waterfall. Devour and rebuild, he thought, focusing on his children through the sensational maelstrom. He burped, and luminous, violet smoke poured from his lips. His body had become a juxtaposition of fire and ice.

  He walked towards the church’s cellar, his head in his hands. He looked down at the remains of the man who had broken through the wall, but the figure no longer resembled a statue. He looked like a giant doll, a plastic store dummy with a shattered head. Here was someone else he had betrayed. There was no hope of resurrecting him now.

  “I guess I got carried away,” he said. “I was so certain that I was right. I know that’s not an excuse, but I’m sorry. Whoever you were, you deserved better.”

  He crawled over the prone figure and into the basement. The walls, formerly rough cinder block and brick, had become two–dimensional. It was as if he had crawled onto the set of a play. Their texture and grout were now only wallpaper glued to a flat surface. He ran his hand across it —

  He floated above a luminous ocean composed of turbulent, glowing sand. Its waves crashed against each other. Most of their particles collided and dropped to the center of their crests, but some fell to either side. The ones that passed through formed fractal geometric patterns that built upon themselves, etching finer and finer sub–iterations within their boundaries.

  We did not have exact blueprints for every building, said the Magistrate, especially for those that were hundreds of years old. So we drove the waves of quantum possibility against each other until we were left with the most likely probabilities. Once we had those seeds, the rest was just extrapolation. Thus, we were able to derive the scrolls for structures such as this church.

  Asher yanked his hand away, and instantly returned to the stage–set cellar. He bent down, and put his hand on the dummy’s plastic leg.

  The man’s life spread before him in a line of glowing blobs. Don’t you recognize your friend Roger? sang the bass voice. Or at least, he was as much a friend a sociopath like you is capable of having. These are the pivotal events in his life, the ones crucial for calculating the
others in–between. You can scan back, and experience his mother squeezing him out, wailing, into the world. You can see his favorite virt, the time he keyed a teacher’s car, his wedding night, the elderly neighbor whose lawn he mowed for free, his daughter’s birth, the time he crapped his pants in school, his first smoke, the sick little sister he read to every night, his pubescent shoplifting sprees, the first time he was hungover, the girl in physics class that he jerked off to, whatever you like. It’s all here. He died cursing you, you know. Go ahead, look at the moments leading up to you smashing his brain apart with a flashlight. I’ll wait.

  Asher let go of the plastic limb. He thought that he should cry, but he could not. All he could feel was emptiness. He put a hand to his face, and pressed his fingertips into eye sockets that were smooth and empty.

  This is what you wanted, boy. You have my eyes now. This is how I see the world, in terms of what was, and what most likely will be. I am, after all, the Magistrate. How else could I judge?

  The monk pulled his hand away, shuddering. “What will happen to me now?” he asked.

  Look at your arm.

  Asher complied. His skin had darkened. Patches of its surface had broken out in scales. He ran his blackened fingertips across them. They were soft, and folded back at his touch. Daggers of ice stabbed through his temples. It felt as if frigid worms were carving paths through his frontal lobes.

  I did warn you. It’s just a matter of time until you are erased, and then, I’ll be on my way.

  Asher probed the two empty holes in his skull. He slumped to the floor, sitting with his back to the fake wall. “Why do you need me?” he asked. “Why don’t you just leave now?”

  The Magistrate laughed again. Look at you, he said, sobbing and pathetic. There is healing to be done, the Ophanim’s true work on a much greater scale. Not just for one city, but for an entire sick world. That is why you and your brothers and sisters were created. This place is just a dream, one that you will never wake from now. You are such a disappointing waste.