by Weston Ochse
A scrub bush held the bodies of six mutilated sheep in various positions. Boy Scout’s eyes fixed on the ignoble slaughter and he slowed to a complete stop as he tried to make sense of it. He couldn’t breathe. He felt a tightness in his chest. The scene was alarming and he realized that the reason it affected him was because it was so reminiscent of a notable passage from Blood Meridianby Cormac McCarthy. ‘By and by they came upon a bush that was hung with dead babies. These small victims, seven, eight of them, had holes punched in their underjaws and were hung by their throats from the broken stobs of a mesquite to stare eyeless at the naked sky.’ Although these Afghan sheep were far from the babies killed by the Comanche war party in the book, there was an equity of the tragic, a validation of innocence. The murder of the lambs and sheep were no less recreant than those of the babies.
He inhaled as the image faded. His hand went to his chest where he’d been shot soon after, but there was no wound because it had all been in his mind.
He breathed through his nose for a moment, ignoring the look of concern on Poe’s face. “Historically, does Seventy-Seven have any insight into the daeva?” he asked, remembering the conversation he’d just had with Preacher’s Daughter.
Poe shook his head, his expression not dissipating. “Not really. That area has been a black hole to us. Our mandate has always been to protect the homeland. We’ve been known to project forward when we need to, but those missions are infrequent at best.” He raised a finger. “That said, we did get a load of data from the Black Dragoons. I’ve made it all available to Preacher’s Daughter. She’s been sifting through it.”
“If there’s something to find, she’s the one.”
“One smart soldier, that’s true.”
Boy Scout detected more than admiration in the comment, but left it alone.
“Here’s my issue. I want to get this thing out of me, but I’m concerned for its existence. As strange as that seems, I’m filled with the need to ensure it survives.”
Poe’s face hardened. “Do you think this influence comes from the entity itself?”
Boy Scout hadn’t thought of that, but it made sense. After all, he was sure that it didn’t want to die. Was he being influenced? A creepiness filled him as he realized that his actions might be influenced by the thing inside of him. He couldn’t help believe that Sister Renee might have some input. He didn’t want his actions influenced like they had from the move to Pendleton. If they were, he couldn’t be a leader to anyone. Everything he did might be suspect, unless he did the opposite of what he believed in. If that were the case, his instincts—which had been honed after more than twenty years of military service—were suddenly useless. Which meant he was useless and nothing more than a font to contain the conscience of an entity that once might have been a giant—a giant that had just sent him a message in the memory of chasing Narco in the fugue.
They were truly up against a being that lacked any shred of human empathy.
Then the obvious question was: did the giant have human empathy? As a son of God who had loved the daughters of man, could it be reasoned with? Did it try and send him a message? Or was it all in his mind? Hope suddenly colored his worry.
He stood. “Thanks, Poe. I think I need to make a phone call. I might have a way of helping myself.”
Poe nodded and Boy Scout was out the door.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Astral Plane
BOY SCOUT CALLED Sister Renee and asked her for another meeting in the astral plane. He thought she sounded strange on the telephone, almost like she was drunk. Several times she slurred her words, but she agreed to join him. He was so eager to see her that it took him more than forty-five minutes to slow his breathing and clear his thoughts enough to unlock his chakras and pop forth into the astral plane.
The first thing he noticed was the dark sun. The second was the entity. Each seemed to be the antithesis of each other, yet each represented an unrelenting danger. He’d been told not to allow the gravitational pull of the dark sun to draw him in. For a brief moment, when the Berber had almost killed him, it had. Boy Scout wondered what was on the other side. Was it truly a dark sun, or was it a black hole, pulsing as it drew everything in, a gateway to yet an even different dimension?
Then there was the entity, now twice the size it had been, as if it was showing off that it had become a giant. It glowed, pulsing as though with each inward breath it became lighter, then darker on the exhale. But that couldn’t be right. One didn’t breathe in the astral plane, they just were. What would happen if he touched it? Would he learn everything he wanted to know, or would it suck him in, eating him from the inside out as he’d done the boy? Or would it be both?
Yes, each one represented an irrevocable future, and it was his fear that he’d be forced to choose.
“Where were you?” Sister Renee asked.
He turned and saw her aspect, noting that it wasn’t as clear as it should have been. It seemed as though he was seeing her through frosted glass.
“It took me time to get into the right mode,” he said. “Are you okay?”
“I’ve had better days.” Then she asked him, “Does it ever get any better?”
“Does what get better?”
“The killing. You’ve killed so many and I wonder how you deal with it.”
He flashed to the Afghan colonel with the garrote around his neck.
“I see the person I killed every day,” she continued. “Sometimes she’s sitting on the couch next to me. Sometimes she’s standing at the window of a restaurant staring at me from the outside. Sometimes I don’t see her but I know she’s there.”
“Wait—what killing? What are you talking about?”
“There are things I haven’t told you. Things Kamaris made me do before he took complete control.”
“What things?”
“It was like he was trying to dehumanize me—to tenderize me, to make it easier.”
“What did he make you do?”
“I killed a cat.”
“You killed a—what are we talking about? Sister Renee, are you okay?”
“One moment I was petting it while sitting on a bench on one side of the yard, the next I was holding it underwater in a bird bath. I didn’t even remember moving, yet there I was, holding it under as it clawed at me.”
Boy Scout was unprepared to help her. He’d been so keen on getting help from her that he hadn’t even considered she might be in trouble. The slurring of her words. He wondered if she was self-medicating.
“But that wasn’t you. It was Kimaris. It was the demon who took control.”
“Then there was the old woman.”
“You killed an old woman?”
“We were standing on a train platform, her and me, in Istanbul. I had an intense hate for her when I saw her. The slowness of her movements, the crookedness of her body, the smell of her as if she were already dead. We were waiting for the train and she’d just looked at me and gave me a toothless crone smile. When the train came, I pushed her off the platform.”
She pushed a woman in front of a train.
“What makes it different is that I remember doing everything. I remember hating her. I remember wanting her to go away. I remember pushing her. Before, when Kimaris took me over, I never knew what was going on. So, tell me, was it me, or was it the demon? Am I an evil person at heart? Is that why it took me over? Why it chose me?”
“What did Father Emmett say?”
“I never told him.”
She never told him. He wondered if that would have made a difference in Father Emmett being taken over. He wondered if the demon had made Father Emmett kill something or someone.
“All this doubt is what it wanted,” he said. “It wanted you to think it was you. I think you were right. I think that demon was beating down your spirit, making it easier to take you over, to get its hooks into you.”
Her aspect looked like she was praying, but through a frosted window.
“
There’s a fantasy author and military historian named Myke Cole who wrote an essay about PTSD. He says it’s like the weather. Anyone can experience it anytime, anywhere. Like the soccer mom going to pick up her kids from practice, and she sees a dog get hit and killed by a car. It might not affect her at all, or she might not be able to drive down that road again. She didn’t do a thing, just witnessed. But now her mind has problems filing it away, so it leaves the experience front and center.”
“Like the weather, huh? Then I’m a fucking tornado.”
The curse startled him, but he continued. “The idea is to find ways to deal with what you’ve seen.”
“What do you do to keep sane? How do you keep from slitting your wrists?”
Worry grew. “Sister Renee?”
If anything, her image was even more blurred as if she were being erased.
“Sister Renee, what did you do?”
“I made the woman go away.”
“I’m going to call de Cherge.”
“It’s too late.”
“What did you do?”
“What I should have done a long time ago.”
“What about the church? What about Heaven? If you killed yourself—”
“What about Heaven? What is it? Is it what’s on the other side of the dark sun? Is the astral plane purgatory? I thought about this for a long time, and then you came along.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. A simpering giant of a man who can’t deal with the fact that he has travelers.”
He bristled at the comment, but let it slide in the face of what he was discovering. “I think I have one of the sons of God inside of me.”
Her aspect looked up. “I knew it was something powerful—something substantial.”
“Then why did you kill yourself? Or are you—”
“Oh no, I am very dead. Split my veins from stem to stern, as they say.”
“Then why?”
“I can’t help you from where I was, but I can help you here.”
She’d sacrificed herself for him? “But the dark sun,” he said. “Without the cord it will draw you to it.”
“For the last bit, I will need you to help.”
He wanted to go back in time to the meditation grotto. He wanted to never have spoken to her. If she hadn’t known his plight, she never would have done whatever terrible thing she did. Still, he asked, “What is it you want me to do?”
“Take me to the entity.”
“And then what?”
“I will touch it. I will merge with it.”
“You’re going to what?” he asked.
“I saw what you needed. I saw what I needed. I made a choice. Should I continue living life as a victim, or could I die and become a champion? I survived Kamaris, so there was no way a human entity could deceive or even conquer me.”
“What’s to keep you from wanting to take me over? What’s to keep you from wanting to live my life?”
“My sense of right and wrong.”
“What’s to keep it from consuming you?”
“The power of the Lord that flows through me.”
“But what if you’re wrong?”
“Then the pain will still be gone. Now take me.” She reached out and touched his essence. Boy Scout felt the deadness of her, like a static-filled leech. The sliminess of the blood made him want to vomit. But beneath it all was a hatred so powerful it seemed like it could jump-start a star.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Astral Plane
SO MUCH PASSED to him from her.
The woman she’d pushed off the platform, turning and grinning.
The cat in her hands, ragged and dripping.
Looking in a mirror, madness in her eyes as she stayed locked inside of herself. Kimaris in charge, his grin on her face like the final lick on an envelope before it’s sent away.
A straight razor cutting narrow marks over and over, counting the days, providing a scorecard for all to see that the demon was winning.
But it was like Kamaris knew it was going to leave. Why count the days unless there would come a day when it was no longer be necessary to count? The thought struck him like a starburst in a rocket shower—one spark of wonder amidst a fireworks show of information. And then he felt her impetus.
He moved towards the entity and she moved with him. Where before her aspect had been that of a figure seen through the fog, now it was as if she’d been scribbled in by a mad child. She was coming apart. He felt the need to hurry, and in that need he moved too close.
As he approached, the entity reached out and grabbed her. And, of course, it knew what she planned. It was inside of him and probably saw everything he did. It had probably been waiting. Probably luxuriating in the idea of a new essence with which to merge. For one brief moment, Boy Scout saw the image of an Englishman wearing something out of a Kipling novel, his pudgy face sporting a mustache that all but hid his mouth, eyes encircled by round glasses.
Two words echoed through the connection, Oh my, and then he was gone.
Boy Scout tried to pull back, but was caught in the connective current.
Sister Renee’s aspect began to unravel as the scribbled lines of her took on a life of their own. But there was a control afoot and as they unraveled, they moved around the entity as if to bind it. Strings of her essence wrapped around the entity until it was almost hidden beneath the strands that were Sister Renee.
“Now this is different,” she finally said.
“What is? What’s going on?” Boy Scout demanded, unwilling and unable to remove his connection to her—to it.
“I didn’t know what to expect. I thought it might be darkness, but it’s not. It’s pure light.”
A thought worried through him. “What do you mean, pure light? Is it all white?” he asked hurriedly. “Is everything white?”
“The floor, the ceiling, the universe, everything.”
“You’ve found the Sefid,” he said. But how?
“Is this The White you told me about?” she asked.
“Yes. Somehow you found it. I thought only the daeva could, but that actually makes sense. If they created this thing, then maybe that’s another avenue to The White—a dimension separate from our own that only they have continuous contact with.”
“It’s as if… Wait, is that darkness up ahead?” Wonder slid to worry. “What is that? Is that the sound of a monkey?”
Boy Scout remembered when he’d first encountered the creature in The White. He’d been able to escape it because it he’d had time to form.
“Hurry, Sister. Imagine your body forming beneath you. You need to run. You need to get away.”
The mating call of a monkey came from somewhere behind him.
The memory of spinning towards the sound. He’d been so dizzy he might have fallen, only there was no ground. He was now upside down in front of the nightmare creature running towards him. In the split second he took to take it in, he saw a giant spider with more than a hundred legs coming toward him. Instead of central eyes, it had a face that was constantly changing into everyone he’d ever known.
Again came that sound of a monkey, impossibly loud, echoing, emanating from the lips of his mother’s best friend, Rebecca. Then from the mouth of his drill sergeant, Sergeant First Class Reddoor. Then from the mouth of a girl he’d dated three years ago, Connie. The same sound, but different faces.
“I can’t,” she said. “Oh, Boy Scout. What have I done? It’s her face. It’s the woman I killed. Why is she making monkey noises? What is her face doing on this giant—?”
Then nothing.
He checked his connection, but he was still holding onto their comingled essences.
“Sister Renee?” He tried again. “Sister Renee?”
Not knowing what happened to her, his mind went to what he knew best—what the creature had done to Boy Scout and how it had played the memory, in vivid high definition, of when the world exploded inside The White and the entities had entered into him.
The mating call of a monkey came once again, but this time much softer. Then another and another. There seemed to be dozens of monkeys. Then he saw them. The spider creature had blown to bits as well, but instead of reforming into a whole, it was now hundreds of smaller spiders, all rushing towards him. He’d barely started to reform his own body when three of them crawled up his essence. He batted at them, but he only had a single hand. He struck one and it flew off, shattering into even smaller spider monsters that came back at him. One got onto his back and he tried to reach for it. That was the moment when one skittered onto his face and climbed down his throat.
He gagged, trying to rid himself of it. He could feel its greasy spider legs, pulling itself deeper inside of him.
Then another spider entered his mouth, following the first.
He fell to his knees, back arching in dry heaves, trying to spew them from his system. But it was to no avail. They held to his insides, going deeper, clawing at his insides for purchase. Then everything switched. Gone was the pure white of Sefid. Boy Scout felt himself slow and his body become someone else’s… something else. Something ancient.
Was this what was happening to Sister Renee? How could it? She didn’t have a mind or a body.
“Boy Scout,” came the words as if they were trying to free themselves from the bottom of a well.
“Yes. Sister Renee. I’m here. What’s wrong?”
“I was so wrong.”
“How were you wrong? What’s happened?”
“Oh, Boy Scout,” she said. The words seemed to come from far away. “This thing—this—”
He waited for more, but she’d stopped mid-sentence. “What is it?”
Then she was there, and shouting, her voice a universe made of noise.