Children of No One

by Nicole Cushing

  “Who’s up there?” came the trembling voice from the chamber below. “Are you Angels?”

  * * *

  “I-I’m an Angel,” a voice calls out from up above before letting out a cough. “I’ve come to take you out of there.”

  If this is Judgment Day, is he being given a second chance? A pleasant thought, but something isn’t right. He hasn’t heard this Angel’s voice before. He’s never before heard Angels cough. “If you’re an Angel, then how come I don’t hear your bells?”

  There’s a long pause above. Then whispering. Perhaps more than one Angel up there?

  “I’m just an apprentice-Angel. I haven’t earned them yet. But I need to come down and get you out of there.”

  “My brother’s dead.”

  “We’ll take him out of there, too. But first let’s worry about you. We dropped a ladder down there for you. A rope ladder for you to climb up. Do I need to come down there to fetch you or are you strong enough to use it?”

  He is strong enough. It’s weird. He’s never felt anything in his hands like the texture of this thing that’s been dropped down the hole for him to climb up. It’s both firm and shaky at the same time. When his foot finds a step, it yanks the whole thing down and makes it crooked, and he has to flail his hands around to find the next step. In the end he stops trying to step up the thing—too many failures, too easy to get tripped up—and relies on his hands alone.

  And then he’s out of there. He feels the shifting of various presences around the hole as he emerges. They make room for him, but still seem to surround him.

  He calls out to the Angel. Falls down to his knees in penitence. “Thank you for rescuing me. I promise I’ll never blaspheme again. Is there any chance…any chance at all…that I may have manna?”

  Another voice speaks. Not the first Angel who dropped down the climbing-thing, but another. “No more manna,” he said. “No more manna, ever again. I suggest you go and try to find others of your kind. Pass on the news to them. The Angels will never bring any manna, ever again.”

  He kneels there, incredulous. Angels bring food. That is Reality. That has been Reality for a very long time. To say otherwise is like saying there’s no ground under your feet, or no walls towering over you. To say otherwise is to say it’s all coming to an end.

  One of the Angels grabs him by the wrist. “Now go! I command you. Run! Go tell the others what I have told you.”

  What choice does he have but to leave his brother’s body behind? What choice does he have but to obey?

  * * *

  “No more manna?” Mr. No One said under his black gator mask. “I don’t recall that subject coming up in our meetings.”

  “I wasn’t making it up,” Kitterman said. “I told him that because those were my instructions from Mr. Krieg.”

  “Maybe,” Krieg said, “I don’t have to keep you informed of every detail of my plans, No One.”

  “That’s not being a good collaborator.”

  “Maybe not, but it is being a good artist. And who said you were really my collaborator? Maybe you’re just another member of my audience.” He chuckled. “Maybe you’re just another of my art supplies.”

  “Maybe I’m just your cash cow.”

  Krieg sighed. “How unkind! Do you really think I’d be down here at three in the morning, indulging you in this little ritual, if I was just interested in you for your money? Seriously, if I just needed money, I’d milk a sap like the Good Mr. MacPherson down there.”

  MacPherson didn’t care for Krieg’s insults, but he didn’t say anything. He was having too much fun. The body down the hole wasn’t cold, the way he’d expected it to be. When he found this to be the case, he’d put his head down to the lad’s chest and heard something hammering. When he’d found this to be the case, he put his ear down next to the lad’s mouth and heard the faintest whiff of breath. The boy was wrong. His brother wasn’t dead. Only half-dead. How delicious.

  That’s when MacPherson started to sweat. Tremble. Started to lick his lips. That’s when he stared up at the hole to make certain no one was looking. He’d never before had such an opportunity. He put his wrinkled hand over the youth’s soft lips. He took his other hand and pinched the youth’s nostrils together. He doubted the boy could hear anything, but just in case he whispered this: “We haven’t much time. You’ll need to go quickly.” He took a deep, appreciative sigh. “But not too quickly.”

  * * *

  The Angel had appointed him to be a Prophet of Doom, and he dares not argue with Angels. When he doesn’t find any of the others by walking, he begins to jog. When he still doesn’t run into any others, he begins to scream.

  “No manna anymore. The Angels have spoken. No more bells! No more food! No more bells! No more food!”

  A distant voice echoes against the walls. “You lie,” he thinks it says. “You lie!”

  * * *

  “MacPherson! We don’t have all day. You’re not down there diddling the corpse now, are you?”

  MacPherson gulped. His spine quivered. The magic moment had passed. It made the whole trip worth it. But he’d not say a word about it to Krieg. He had the feeling Krieg wouldn’t like it if he crossed the line from audience to artist, especially if he borrowed his art supplies.

  MacPherson craned his head up to the top of the hole. “I’ve just been trying to plan a way to get him up out of here. I don’t think I can lift him all the way out of here on that rope ladder.”

  “You should go down and ’elp him.”

  “It’s almost four a.m. now,” Kitterman said. “The peak of the eclipse is at four. I don’t think you’ll have time to move him.”

  “And do we really need to move him, No One?” Krieg asked. “I mean, your issue is with having a consciousness in the room that’s not an altered consciousness. The dead kid doesn’t have a consciousness at all. I don’t know what all your fuss is about.”

  “I just ’ad a feeling. Call it intuition. Something didn’t feel quite right. I thought ’e ’ad to move ’im. But now that intuition’s gone. A funny thing, really. Something’s changed down there since Mac-Pher-son went down.”

  Then Kitterman’s voice again. “You gentlemen really don’t have the time to discuss this further.”

  “If we’d brought hacksaws,” Krieg said, “we could just bring him up here one piece at a time.”

  “No time for that either,” Kitterman said.

  “You can put the kid down now, MacPherson,” Krieg said. “We’ll just leave him down there. A corpse should at least give the place a little ambiance. Now, no more table-setting, let’s go down and do this.”

  “Very well then,” Kitterman said. “I suppose I’ll stand guard up here? Make sure no other whippersnappers stumble onto this place?”

  “Works for me,” Krieg said. “No One, you want to go down there first? That way I can help you get started down the ladder?”

  “I’m not going to need a bloody ladder,” No One said. MacPherson thought he heard the flapping of wings. Then another image flashed through his brain: a crow with a piece of torn flesh in its beak, swooping down to land on a barren landscape. Then the crow wasn’t the crow anymore, but it was Mr. No One—in his black vestments and black gator mask, right there in front of him.

  “Let the magick begin,” No One said. “Already, the Great Dark Mouth is becoming incarnate within me!”

  “Looks like the drug’s getting a second wind,” Krieg said. “It looked like you just…”

  “Get down ’ere, Krieg. This is the appointed time.”

  “Hey, listen. I might be letting you run this ritual, but I run Nowhere. Show a little respect.”

  MacPherson trembled as Mr. No One raised his head like a baying wolf and roared. “Get. Down. ’ere.”

  Krieg started climbing down. “You really ought to be mindful of who you piss off, No One. I don’t care how big a temper tantrum you have, I could still make your life pretty miserable.”

  Mr. No One growl
ed at him.

  MacPherson didn’t care for the tension between them. Tried to diffuse it. Approached them. “So is this the part where we join hands in a circle?”

  Krieg let out a laugh. “That money didn’t buy you much in the way of brains, did it, dipshit? There’s only three of us. The best we could form is a triangle.”

  “We don’t ’old ’ands,” Mr. No One said. His voice grew more gravelly. It didn’t sound like No One anymore. It sounded like No One after twenty years of smoking. “One ’olds ’ands in a ceremony if one is attempting a magickal act that would be considered, in alchemical terms, to be one of coagula—that is, of putting things together. Invoking the Great Dark Mouth is just the opposite. It is an act of solve—which is to say, dissolution. Invoking the Great Dark Mouth is an act of taking things apart…be they the bonds between molecules or the bonds between family members. Therefore, we are to stand as far apart as possible. This is one reason why it is preferable to ’ave a large room. Krieg and Mac-Pher-son…I want both of you to go to different edges of the chamber, while I stand in the middle of it.”

  MacPherson went to the end of the chamber closest to the dead boy. No, not just the dead boy, the boy he killed. He liked looking at him. If the ceremony got boring, it’d give him something to do.

  “Now, take off your heat-sensing goggles,” No One said. “To invoke the Dark we must eschew all implements of vision.”

  MacPherson had forgotten No One had mentioned this before. Alas, he wouldn’t be able to look at his trophy. He removed his goggles and felt, for the first time in Nowhere, real trepidation at being bathed in total darkness. The absence of light was absolute. The dark seemed bigger than him. Bigger even than Krieg or Mr. No One. Bigger than all three of them put together, bigger than their lives and plans and loves and hates. The dark seemed to soar over him and crawl under him and slither around him and gallop through him. The darkness seemed hungry for him, but not just him.

  It occurred to him then, perhaps for the first time, that Mr. No One just might be right and Krieg (his idol, his hero) might be wrong. This was an uncomfortable thought he tried to push out of his brain, but couldn’t. How surprising, that the supremacy of sadism (a belief MacPherson had been invested in for three decades) could be questioned by spending just a few hours with Mr. No One. Krieg would’ve undoubtedly been horrified if he’d found this out. In spite of their collaboration on Nowhere, it seemed pretty clear that Krieg saw Mr. No One as a competitor.

  That was the funny thing: on one level, Krieg and Mr. No One were just two artists embroiled in a battle of egos. In this way, they were scarcely different than any other two creative types he’d ever known. But at another level, their conflict transcended ego altogether. In spite of his protestations that he was just following market forces, it seemed abundantly clear that Krieg had an actual artistic devotion to sadism. How else could one explain the way he’d transformed life itself into a torture for the Wild Children of Darkness? And who in their right mind would argue that Mr. No One was anything but a true believer in nihilism? So committed was he to that cause that he gave up his own name and poured what was undoubtedly a small fortune into Nowhere, Indiana, so that it might be rendered even more unpredictable than before. So that it could become like a living creature, in and of itself. A Great Dark Mouth that would consume them all as an appetizer and the universe as a main course.

  “Now, gentlemen, ’ave you removed your goggles?”

  “Of course I have,” Krieg said. “I’m playing along, fair and square.”

  “I have, too,” MacPherson said.

  “Very well, then our ceremony shall begin.” He clapped his hands three times. His vestments rustled. His voice now boomed. “Great Dark Mouth! Blessed Jaws of Doom who dost rise out of Nothingness to make us and our world one with Nothingness. I ’umbly do beseech thee to take possession of me, thy most ’umble servant. Enter me so that Thou might enter the plane of existence. Enter the plane of existence so that Thou might consume it. Remove, Great Dark Mouth, the Three Masks of Existence. Remove the Mask of Light, reveal the dark underneath! Remove the Mask of Life, reveal the cold underneath! Remove the Mask of Meaning, reveal the Nothingness underneath!

  “Now we raise up to you the six-said chant: ‘Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal.’”

  MacPherson joined in. Each time he said “Reveal” he drew in a breath, and each time he said “Remove” he let one out. And so the chant began to synchronize with his own respiration. In this way, the magick began to feel much more tangible. Much more real. No longer did it sound like the mumblings of an English madman. Now the ritual had a home in his lungs, and he felt a coldness in his chest as the magick began to make itself at home there.

  “We invite your four avatars: the serpents and stallions and spiders and crows. Let them slither and gallop and crawl and soar over us. And again, for the second time, we raise up to you the six-said chant: ‘Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal.’”

  MacPherson heard snorting and whinnying behind him. How could this be? He had his back up against a wall. He dared not let his hand wander back there. MacPherson felt the itch of a dry, cold mane against his neck and puff after puff of cold air against his cheek. He began to think of running, then remembered that he’d have to find the ladder in the pitch-black chamber if he were to have anywhere to run to. The ladder and the escape hole were in the middle of the room—near Mr. No One. He’d have to make it past him to get up there.

  All he could do was hope that Krieg was right. All he could do was hope Mr. No One was insane, and that the whinnies and snorts were just hallucinations. That the drug he’d been slipped had somehow resurged in its potency. And so this was the direction in which he shoved his thoughts. I’m just high, he thought. None of this is real. It’s no more real than a movie or a book. Just a story my head is conjuring at the suggestion of certain words said by Mr. No One. Just a story my head has no resistance against thanks to the work of the drug.

  “We invoke the names given you by our forebears in magick. We invoke the name Kuk. We invoke the name Erebus. We invoke the name Azathoth. Let the power of these names flow into this chamber. Let the power of these names flow through us. Let the power of these names bring ’unger to the Great Dark Mouth. And again, for the third time, we raise up to you the six-said chant: ‘Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal.’”

  MacPherson said the words. He was terrified of what would happen if he didn’t. He thought he heard Krieg say them, too. What must he be thinking of all this? Was he worried, too? Was he feeling the same sensation of something crawling up his leg? Did he hear the same sound of fluttering wings overhead?

  MacPherson began to wonder if he shouldn’t ask No One to stop it. Perhaps he could say he needed to use the restroom. Surely, No One wouldn’t want him pissing on himself throughout the ceremony.

  Then again, maybe that’s exactly what he wanted. To frighten him—to frighten both him and Krieg—to frighten them to the point of humiliating them.

  “We invite you, Great Dark Mouth, into our very consciousness. Let the figments we believe to construct Reality be your first feast. Feast on our figments, and leave behind only shadows! Eat our consciousness, and leave behind only fever dreams! And again, for the fourth time, we raise up to you the six-said chant: ‘Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal.’”

  MacPherson didn’t want to say the words, because increasingly they were beginning to take hold. His brain was boiling from the heat of magick. He began, once again, to feel vertigo. He fell, but did not seem to hit the ground. He vomited, but had the sense that he was vomit, too. The Great Dark Mouth was eating the construct he’d previous considered to be his mind, and his body was being coughed up like a bit of chicken bone or a crab shell accidentally swallowed.

>   The Beast was now here. The Feast, now begun.

  “We invite you, Great Dark Mouth, to animate the hallways of Nowhere. We reconsecrate this Temple of Suffering to you, the God of Nothingness. To you, the one true God. March triumphant through these hallways, take possession of them, and use the mere figment of suffering as fuel for your conquest. And again, for the fifth time, we raise up to you the six-said chant: ‘Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal. Remove. Reveal.’”

  Now there was nothing but falling and blackness. And even the words “falling” and “blackness” seemed to be fading from MacPherson’s awareness, seemed to be losing their meaning. All words were now like foreign ones. Jumbles of symbols. Down. Dark. Down. Dark. Sick. Sick. Sick. Sound. The sound of Krieg barking something. Then a mechanical whirring.

  Light.

  Light, and the trance begins, slowly, to fade. He sees Krieg and he sees Mr. No One and he sees them gesturing angrily at each other.

  Light. He sees light. But he still feels the Presence of the Great Dark Mouth.

  * * *

  Somewhere in the marrow of his bones, he knows the role of a prophet is a lonely one. He knows the truth he tells is so terrible that none of the other boys will want to believe it. Somehow, instinctively, he knows no other boy will ever want to join forces with him now. No other boy will step into that role vacated by his brother. But an Angel commanded him to take on this assignment, and this gives it meaning. And meaning is the fuel that makes his legs run and his heart pump. He may not have food or water or companionship, but he has a command from an Angel. Who else can say the same?

  So he persists. He continues to scream warnings about the end of things: the end of manna and the end of bells. And then he hears a buzzing. And then the world is different. Something stabs his eyes. Did he keep running and running into a different world? There are things looming high on either side of him. He knocks his hand against one and hears the distinctive wood-and-metal sound.