A Lower Deep

by Tom Piccirilli

  Deep in the woods I finally ran out of steam, dropped to my knees, and bawled like a baby. I kept wishing my father were here to comfort me as the fool clicked his heels and tittered. He'd once tried to save me, and for his failure this was his reward. I wasn't certain if I'd be able to steal what remained of his life, especially now in the midst of so much killing and resurrection.

  He broke for the brush laughing and kept going on farther into the forest. I ran after him for a time and eventually allowed him to go on alone. Perhaps he'd be more free this way, untied from both me and Jebediah.

  Snow burned with the opening light of dawn as I fought through the heavy brush and broke onto the path leading toward the church.

  I wouldn't be back.

  I wouldn't.

  Self yawned and said, So what are we going to do in the meantime?

  Part Two

  Mount of the Oath

  Chapter Six

  Cliffs rose sheeted in ice that glared red as the dust of Masada.

  At the top of the mount stood a place of massive triumphs and torments, where blood on the rock never faded. Culled from fervor and faith, MountArmon ascends snowcapped and glinting in the coming dusk, hard and undying as the martyr's soul. There are holes in history that can't be filled, eons occasionally still muttering, and gaps into which the restless can be drawn or pushed, straining empty-handed toward ritual and the hope of redemption.

  Magee Wails is only made an island by the gorges surrounding the mount and the forked river that converges into JamesLake a quarter mile below the towers of the monastery. Those who dwell there are the damned but perhaps not the doomed. This river has baptized ten thousand, and drowned ten thousand more. Within memory there have been hurricane seasons when hordes of escaping rats rode the swollen corpses downstream, as they did the early Christians in the sewers of Rome.

  The first Christian hermits lived on the shores of the Red Sea. They soon joined with the Therapeutae pagan ascetics and consequently moved into upper Egypt to avoid Roman persecution in the third century. Pachomius and Anthony Basilica were the first to be called monks, and their lessons are written in the bronze door friezes and bas-reliefs that surround the monastery's chapel.

  Even from the river's far bank the gleaming honey-colored stone and wood of the service buildings can be seen like flashing threads of silver, grouped around a cloister south of the church.

  Silhouetted against the moon, the steeples, turrets, and angled spires of the abbey appeared to be basilisks appealing to heaven in the falling snow. Empty branches of ash-gray trees partially obscured the large peaked roofs. Sheep were still kept, but more for the symbolism of lambs and shepherd than for any practical need. Bleats poured down the precipice like hymns gone astray.

  The mount is a city unto itself where few have been turned away but even fewer saved. Penitents came from a hundred nations carrying beliefs that sporadically conflicted with one another. Though the shadow of Babel fell on them there were hardly any strangulations or midnight stabbings anymore, and only a few dozen nuns had become pregnant in the last five centuries.

  I'd spent six months here a decade ago recovering from the last sabbat. Once I'd thought the monks and nuns too sequestered from the rest of the world, but I'd learned their distance gave them resolve that could only be weakened by contact with society. This was the final sanctuary where the despondent came seeking refuge from their sorrow and distress, from their knife-wielding ex-husbands, their greasy uncles' paws. Anguish that sometimes still drove them to jump a thousand feet down onto the crags and into the waters until the ice was thick with suicides.

  I was sick again.

  I came starving out of the mountain passes. Every breath rattled deep in my chest and felt like serrated blades sawing at my lungs and catching in my ribs. My phlegm had turned a dark gray and became speckled with blood two days ago. I kept blacking out on my feet and waking up lost in the snowbound forest. Phantoms held at bay for years were invited in to taunt me again. I couldn't protect myself. I talked out loud and saw my father dancing behind bushes. Maybe he was there or maybe I only dreamed it. The bells on his little hat chimed as he peered at me with that hideous harlequin smile, but at least he led me toward the water.

  My vision grew too bright around the edges. I awoke on my hands and knees at the shore of JamesLake, staring into a wavering reflection I didn't quite recognize. Danielle's mournful cries echoed against the precipices of the cliffs and the jagged ledges of my mind. My second self nuzzled at my neck, with my erratic pulse driving against his fangs.

  You handed your heart away, he said. Take it back.

  She deserves it.

  They won't even bury you next to her.

  Sweat streamed off my face. Self licked salt, the witch's bane, from my brow and then spat it aside like drawn-off venom. Black motes of energy flickered against my forehead, spelling out my sins. Ancient words from the Suleimans bubbled over, and I lost control of incantations. Hexes went haywire and the frost boiled beneath my feet until the earth dried and cracked, and the smoldering brush withered around me.

  Self said, Hey, watch it! Lower-caste demons bounced around confusedly and gagged in the smoke, mewling questions and threats, begging for a lick of flesh, their tongues unfurling from their eyes. A few bowed and begged my forgiveness; I could only guess how they'd influenced my life, or what they'd done so that I should be merciful. Sometimes it got like that.

  Dit Moi Etienne, who'd answered one of my earliest invocations, buzzed and worked its mandibles into the dirt, as if hoping to hold on to the world through the storm it knew to be coming. Self took my hands and forced my digits into the proper positioning-interlaced, with the tips of index fingers together in 'a this-is-the-steeple fashion, thumbs pointed over my heart-and growled words to send the imps squeaking back up the boulders. I wondered why he didn't just tear them to pieces, and whether it was a matter of pity.

  They croaked, scrabbled, and cursed him. Talons scratched on the stones, throwing sparks into the river. My familiar waved and blew kisses, carnage in his sharp smile. Sorry, boys, you wouldn't like it here much anyway. No cable. He turned to me and threw his arms up in a patronly manner, cocking a grin. They're big on the Playboy channel. Beneath the mask of poise, however, there was fear. He sliced open his palms with his claws, and I understood that death hung by closely. He kept spitting over his shoulder, hoping to ward off Azreal, angel of death, who can't be dissuaded. I knew because I'd tried and failed before.

  I fell face forward into the snow and gasped, my breath hitching painfully in the center of my chest, and soon found myself weeping bitterly. The ice steamed where I touched it, my fists burning with other charms of my making. He did his best to minister, but the virus had gotten too far inside my head. Too much had already gotten out. I turned and turned again, hearing my mother singing behind me. Danielle gestured and whispered. My father waved and stuck his tongue out at me.

  I tried to keep the pleading out of my voice, that whine working at the back of my throat, but it came through anyway like a scream. Don't let me die yet.

  Self grinned because he always grinned, full of life and the happiness I'd always wanted. You won't die.

  No?

  You can never die.

  Where's the ferry?

  Less than five miles. I can help. He glanced toward the towers, and the muscles in his throat rippled. Fiery glyphs burned as he spoke, fumes of the blood scent wafting from his mouth. I knew what he was thinking: He could rape, maul, and kill one of the nuns in a half hour, and feed me the strength. Let me help, damn you.

  Stay away.

  His tongue snaked over his lips at the thought of the red pouring onto the white, a pair of broken hands clasped in prayer, legs spread wide, the agonized look on the faces of the crucifixes as the various Christs watched. His joy was overwhelming, and I bit down my nausea. Stop it!

  You'll thank me later, you know.

  I wanted to live, and the most clever part o
f his temptations was that I could always shift the burden of my conscience onto his shoulders. He couldn't offer to do anything for me that I hadn't already thought of on my own. That bait dangled, the trap set.

  More hours of insanity passed. Through Self's eyes I saw myself twitching and lurching in violent shrieking fits. My howls swung up the gorge, and perhaps a keen-eared sister heard me, nodding without satisfaction that someone was growing closer to God through penance. It was always possible. They were used to the lamenting, and the timbre of contrition: they flagellated themselves nightly, and most of them still didn't know anything about pain.

  Danielle came to me again as she always did, arms outstretched, skin tan and glistening from the pond where we'd made our love so many times-at once beautiful and betrayed, with a mouthful of blood. She stood superimposed in my vision, dark and glittering, and no matter where I looked or how I thrashed my head she remained directly in front of my face. The world could move but we never would.

  Whatever happens to me, don't let Jebediah finish raising her, I told him. She deserved her freedom and peace. Promise me.

  What?

  I charge you with that duty.

  He hopped around angrily with his lips writhing. You can't do that! Maybe not, but he sounded unsure.

  I can.

  You can't!

  Jebediah would try to raise her again on the next major sabbat, the Feast of Lights, Oimelc, on February 2, now barely three weeks away, and his new gathering would stoke his madness even further than mine had before. He wouldn't be able to do it without me, and I had to resist. They'd help in his scheme to draw the powers of my eradicated coven. His living witches would attempt to raise Christ before it was God's will. They would be destroyed as we were. Or worse, they wouldn't be.

  A ferry with an intricately designed pulley system had been built to allow travelers to tow themselves across the river to Magee Wails island. It was the inaugural trial, the first lesson. To enter the mount one had a duty to autonomy-crossing the waters with conviction and purpose if not wisdom. The surface of JamesLake had frozen in spots and ice floes floated past. Hands would be torn on the thick hemp rope, and more sweat and blood shed into the mouth of the river.

  I collapsed hauling the ferry halfway across the lake. I shivered uncontrollably and stomach cramps like spear thrusts kept me curled with my knees to my chin. Some kind of an unbinding had started that needed to finish.

  Memories twisted with fantasies and we were all there on the ten-by-ten raft as I dry-heaved through the remainder of the night. The cold rope occasionally cracked me across the face like the whips the monks used to beat in their own humanity. I didn't want to die. My eyelashes became fat with ice crystals. For a moment I thought I saw Self praying.

  I went blind from time to time and woke up in the dawn with Self sitting hunched over my brow licking my tongue. My shirt and coat were torn open, and my running blood hissed where it hit the freezing wood. The stink of seared flesh filled my nostrils as his foul breath eased down my throat, sweet and horrible. He'd jabbed two of his burning claws through my chest bone to massage my heart and slowly resuscitate me.

  Archangel Azreal hovered at my feet with a hopeful expectation, waiting. I weakly fluttered my fingers at him. Self caught stray wing feathers and crushed them to powder, turned to the seraph, and said, Get lost, you prick.

  I sank back into sleep.

  That squeal of the pulley dragged at my consciousness, the slow rhythmic motion of the ferry jarring me awake as it was pulled back to the mainland shore. Self had rebuttoned my shirt wrong and my collar tugged at my neck. I turned over and lifted my head.

  Three of them stood on the bank staring at me: the mother who was white as a fish belly with two blots of windburn on her cheeks, the pregnant teenage girl, and the boy with dozens of suffering dead faces leering like balloons tied around his neck. The mother watched me closely, and her ire crawled through her eyeballs and launched at me while her children pulled on the rope together.

  "Don't touch him, Catherine," the woman barked. Her voice was too moist and her tongue slid around in her mouth like a sea snake. "Leave him there." Her nose had been broken several times so that it tilted in every direction. Her lips had been sewn back together not quite properly aligned, and the matted gray scar tissue around her eyes had trenches of crows' feet. Whoever had beaten her must've busted his fist on her chin. That jaw set the entire bottom of her face at a strange and ugly angle, showing nothing but antipathy.

  "We can't just leave him," Catherine said. It took the kids time to haul me back to shore, and they were out of breath when they carefully climbed aboard the ferry. I tried to sit up but couldn't make it all the way.

  At least eight months pregnant, Catherine had to squat down before she knelt to put her ear to my chest. A low growl worked at the back of Self's throat, and he twisted tightly against my throat, sniffing, glancing side to side. My brain ached for Danielle, and whenever Catherine hung against me in a certain fashion, trying to help me to my feet, Danielle's face stood out above her own features.

  "Eddie, help me with him," she said. The boy moved onto the ferry, but he was smart and didn't come near. The wind jerked at those ghastly heads that hovered above him. "He's broiling with fever, Morn."

  "He won't die," the woman insisted, wanting me to die. Shadows swarmed around her hips, all of them bearing her own face. "We could roll him in the river and he wouldn't stay down. Take your knife to him, go ahead, just try to cut his throat."

  "Don't talk like that."

  "The devil takes care of its own. Me, you, your brother, we might be killed here, but look at him, out in this freezing weather all night with nothing but a summer jacket, and he's still alive. Of course he'll live, and so will that freak you're carrying. Put rocks in his pockets. Kick him over."

  I'm taking this bitch out, Self said.

  Inside my nightmares my coven ringed around me again, standing with us on the raft. Herod dipped close and I saw his giant, cheerful, stupid face. Danielle spun in front of my eyes, afraid, and drifted off as if running.

  Self listened hard for a moment and snarled, He's back.

  What?

  He's come back.

  Who?

  My skull throbbed as if Self were using his fangs to dig out infection, or jab it in. I rested my face against Cathy's belly and heard malignant chortling rumble deep within. I knew that laugh, and the sound of it sobered me immensely, slashing through my daze like a billhook. It was Elijah.

  Self crooned, wanting to peel the scar tissue from around the woman's eyes and drop it down his throat.

  Cathy said, "Lie back, don't try to get up. We'll get you there." She began to unbutton her own coat and place it over me, but I shook her off and nearly made it to my feet. I tried again and managed to stand.

  "Who are you people?" I asked.

  Shivering, she blinked twice, her notably thick eyelashes swiping the air. "I'm Catherine Kinnion. This is my brother, Eddie. And my mother, Janice. Don't listen to anything she says." She couldn't help looking around at the heads circling her brother and dangling in the air, sensing they were there. She had no idea about what she was carrying. "We need to get to the monastery too."

  "Take your hands off him, Cathy," her mother said. "Before his stench gets on you."

  "Stop talking like that, Mother."

  "You won't die," I told them. "None of you will die here."

  Kinnion. The name didn't mean anything to me, but somehow she was carrying Elijah, who still wanted me dead. He was now closer to Danielle than I was. I wondered if this would upset Jebediah's plans. As a reincarnate Elijah might care more about raising himself than raising Christ, and it might take years for him to grow into his skills once more. He whispered threats in my ear as he sought to be reborn, and I could almost see his fingers scratching on the other side of her uterine wall, greedy to get at me, hoping to steal my love.

  "My uncle is the abbot," Cathy said.

  "J
ohn."

  "Yes."

  Self pressed his nose to her navel, the milk in her breasts already curdled, and said to Elijah beneath the skin, Hey, buddy, two words for you and your resurrection: diaper rash.

  There are no coincidences. Even in the icy breeze the air stirred with the hint of ozone, the drawing of threads of power.

  The poltergeists perched on Eddie's head and slicked back his hair. He and his mother worked well together, heaving on the rope hand over hand like sailors hoisting sail, hauling us across. The boy said nothing, and I couldn't get a bead on him. He didn't seem troubled, upset, or flustered, and smiled pleasantly when I caught his eye. Cathy rested beside me, patting my knee.

  Kill her now before Elijah takes over completely. My second self's jaws worked in a frenzy, the stink of nuns and monks everywhere. That's what they're going to want you to do.

  Why should the order care about him? What does Abbot John have to do with this?

  He shuddered with impatience and sneered at me, looking so much like my father that I reached out and put my palm to the side of his face. Abbot John will call for blood. Kill her.

  And prove the woman right? We're getting out alive.

  No, we're all dead and always have been.

  Chapter Seven

  The Opus Dei choir chants of the daily services drifted in the wind: part song, part plea. The brothers often lapsed into several esoteric languages preserving their rites and secrets. When we'd almost reached the shores of MountArmon, I fell to my knees once more. With an air of indecision Self snapped his claws together, wondering if he should carve into my heart again, and knowing I'd made another big mistake.

  On the mount sacred oaths were taken to a new degree, and even the most careless promises held power. Swearing to keep someone alive might result in my own sacrifice. Elijah continued his attack from the warmth of the womb, griping about love just like everyone else. The ferry creaked along. Soon the rope became heavily smudged with blood from their wind-cracked hands. We struck shore and the sheep began to shriek.