I turned to him. “I thought it would help him. I thought his father just fucked him up.”
“His father was the one thing that kept him in line,” explained Merill. “His father deeply wounded his mind, causing him to fear authority and the pain it would bring. Those nurses just reinforced that. But they weren’t the cause of his psychosis.”
“What caused it? What causes a man to be homicidal?”
“Nothing caused it,” said Merill flatly. “He’s always been violent. He killed his own mother. No trigger, no cause.”
“What?” I said.
“What a fucked up kid,” said Katie, but her heart wasn’t in it. Her face was pale and her voice was weak.
Max slowly scanned the room and then stepped forward. “Ah, Mr. Keats. I wanted to thank you for your kind service. You played your part perfectly.”
“How do you know my name?” I asked. I had told my real name only to Katie. Max at one point thought I was a doctor. Merill even gave me a look, now knowing my real name.
“Really, do you think me so unaware?” he said, his voice arrogant. “I’ve known everything about you since you entered my mind.”
“What’s wrong with you?” I said with disgust.
“What’s wrong? What’s wrong? Everything is right. Very right.” He sighed, turning his head. His eyes fell upon another patient, one that I knew. It was the young man who had stared at me with angry eyes in the patient wing. That familiarity did not save him. Max merely flicked his wrist and knives nailed the young man against the wall, blood spurting and staining the floor the floor. The young man’s eyes went dead and his jaw slack. Max flicked his wrist back and the knives returned to him. Max turned his head back to us, challenge in his eyes.
I couldn’t take it anymore. There was no response besides action to that. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my gun. Without hesitation I aimed it at Max.
“Take this, you son of a bitch!” I growled, pulling the trigger.
Nothing.
I pulled the trigger again.
Nothing.
Again.
Nothing.
“Dammit!” I said.
Max laughed. “You think you can kill a god? You have helped give birth to a new god, a new divinity. I dub myself a deity, blood and knives my aspects. Think of me as the God of Knives. The Greeks would call me that.”
I wanted to say that this was a stupid name, a horrible title, and not even a good album title, but his eyes were full of anger and the knives just a wrist flick away. Instead, I targeted my next response at Katie and Merill instead.
“Run!”
I turned around quickly, grabbing Katie’s arm and pulling her with me. We ran for the double doors, hoping that we took Max by surprise. I got to the door, pushing Katie through the sole working door as I looked back. I forgot that Merill had a limp and saw him struggling to hobble away from danger. Max smiled as he watched Merill attempt to escape. I made two steps toward Merill to grab him before I found it was too late. Max nodded slightly and a knife drove through Merill’s working leg, the point of the knife sticking out of the front of his thigh.
Merill hit the ground hard. He tried to lift himself but another knife punctured his lower back. His face looked up at me, our eyes locking. His eyes were sad. There was an understanding that passed between us. He knew he was about to die and that no rescue was coming. There was nothing I could do for him, his wounds were too serious and Max too close. We both knew it.
He croaked, “Leave me, save yourself!” but we both knew he didn’t really mean it. He didn’t really want to give his life to help us, but he had no choice. He knew he would die here, regardless of what he wanted. He spoke heroically, saying he would distract Max only because he knew he could not avoid it.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to him, as I turned around and ran through the door, already feeling the weight of regret.
I caught up to Katie in a damp, dark hallway which felt like another bridge between wings. She gave me a funny look and asked about Merill, but I just shook my head and started running. The pain on my face was enough of an answer for her.
We passed through another set of double doors, these barely on our hinges. One of them fell to the ground in our wake, but we kept running. A sign on the wall identified this as Wing F. This wing was different from the others. Whereas the others were renovated (before the recent destruction), this wing was in disrepair. All along the hallway, the doorways were boarded up. Old, splintering wood held each door closed. We stopped to catch our breath. I looked at the ground. It was covered in dust, but that dust had been disturbed. I saw multiple footsteps and some streaks that I guessed to be wheels. A gurney, maybe?
Behind us I heard the screech of a door, probably in the corridor between the buildings. “John?” called a familiar voice, “Kate? Where are you? Your god commands your presence.”
I looked at Katie, our eyes both wide with fear. She mouthed, “Max.” I nodded and we ran. This wing was based on a single main corridor. We ran, looking for a place to hide, but all the doors were boarded up. As we ran, I considered grabbing one of the boards and yanking it, so that we could get into one of these rooms. But I wondered what that would gain us – a dusty room with broken furniture? Besides, the wood fragments and the disturbed dust would tip Max off to what room we were in, so we’d need some way to board it up from the other side. Hell, I wasn’t sure a boarded up door would stop him at this point.
“What are we going to do?” panted Katie, jogging beside me.
“Need… someplace to… hide,” I panted back. So much running had my muscles aching.
The hallway leaned left and we followed around this bend, screeching to a halt at a pair of double doors. I couldn’t stop in time because I skidded on the dust, so I turned sideways, ramming my shoulder at the doors. I suffered excruciating pain as I met complete resistance and bounced off the door, falling to the ground.
“Locked?” asked Katie.
I glared up at her. “I think my shoulder is dislocated,” I said as I got back to my feet.
“What are we going to do?” asked Katie.
“I don’t know,” I said, genuinely lost. I could hear Max’s voice far off but coming closer. I hated myself for not having an idea. We had come so far and run so long, only to find ourselves stymied by a locked door, the result the same as if we had never struggled.
I kicked and banged on the door. “Dammit!”
“That’s your cunning plan?” asked Katie. “Hit the door? I thought that’s what you originally did when you rammed it with your shoulder. Obviously it didn’t work the first time.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not exactly helping either,” I snapped back.
Katie slouched against the door, pouting. I knew I should say I was sorry, I knew I should say something, but at the moment I just had other things on my mind, other concerns. For example: we were really screwed right now.
Let me tell you, under the right circumstances, there is no more beautiful music than the sound of a door being unlocked.
Katie stepped away from the door and stood with me, staring at the door as its bolts were undone, wondering what was on the other side. We knew we had near certain death behind us, what was lurking behind the door as an alternative?
The locks were unbolted and one of the doors slowly opened just a crack. A familiar face looked out of the crack. It was the female patient I had seen before, her dark hair covering her face, her eyes just barely visible. I think I could see just a faint smile as she looked at me. This was just for a second, then she disappeared, her presence only marked by the receding sound of quick footsteps.
“Friend of yours?” asked Katie.
“Is that jealousy I hear in your voice?” I responded.
“You wish,” she said. “You know some strange people.”
“It got the door open, didn’t?” I said, pushing the door further open. “Let’s just get on the other side of this door and lock it.”
It was a wide room with white circular walls. Strange markings had been drawn on the walls with paint. A few standing incense burners circled the center of the room, but none of them were lit. Two had been knocked over, spilling ash and incense on the ground. In the center of the room stood a table covered with a blue cloth. On it sat a large book that Katie was stepping toward.
I looked around and saw debris all over the ground. I think there were more markings on the floor, but I couldn’t confirm with the rubble. It was strange, I could feel wind inside the room. It was faint, but noticeable. I scanned the walls, but the room had no windows. I found myself looking at the ceiling, and that’s where I found the problem. The ceiling was high to begin with, but circumstances had conspired to make it much higher. Sky high. A huge hole had been blown in the ceiling, opening it up to the night sky. It looked to be almost a perfect circle, the sides sheared away. There was a fair amount of rubble on the ground, but not nearly enough to make up the mass that would have been at the hole. The hole was immediately above the center of the room, a twenty foot radius with the table at its center, but there was no rubble in that area.
In a moment I figured it out. This is where the pillar of light was. The pillar itself created the hole as it pushed out or maybe even disintegrated the ceiling. This place seemed quiet now, but now I knew that some very heavy mojo went down here.
I approached the center of the room, looking around. Katie had opened the book and seemed pretty engrossed in it, so I took this moment to figure things out. Around the table had been draw a pattern of white lines, each connecting to a small three foot circle. Each circle was on a different side of the table. There were five circles. With disgust, next to each circle I found something that used to be a person. In a normal situation I would have screamed, stepped back, or somehow had a reaction, but I had seen so much death, that I just couldn’t bring myself to have a reaction to it. Some other day, some other time.
Each person appeared to have been killed in a different way. I had not noticed the bodies at first because the one closest to the door had been incinerated into the shape of black ash scorched on the floor. I had seen that before. One person had his neck snapped and his body broken. Another was ripped to shreds, one’s head had exploded, and so on. I felt no desire to catalog the ways these men have met their deaths, for each the way had been horrible. The one fact of note was they all wore strange ceremonial robes. Underneath those robes were the white coats of doctors.
Without fanfare or ceremony, I went through the pockets of the body that was missing the head. I found a wallet and a clip-on nametag. The nametag said “Dr. ASHBORN,” and that question was finally answered. The megalomaniacal doctor had met his end a long time ago, probably before I set foot in hospital. One of the Five, his own creations, had killed him and his associates before leaving the hospital. I dropped the wallet and the nametag. I didn’t need to know anything more.
“Katie, this is a pretty fucked up place,” I said, though I realized the irony of saying that after all we had been through.
I waited for an answer, but she was engrossed in the book. I reached out and grabbed her shoulder gently, but she didn’t respond. I shook her arm gently, “Katie?”
I stepped up beside her. The book was a large tome, big and wide like an atlas. It was leather bound, but not with one piece of leather. It was made of multiple pieces of leather stitched together like patchwork. The pages looked old and full of strange text. In the brief glance I gave it, I saw that it was written in languages I couldn’t understand and full of strange diagrams. I turned my attention back to Katie, forcibly pulling her away from the book.
She was dazed for a moment but snapped back to consciousness. “Huh?” she said.
“You okay?”’
“Yes,” she said, but she didn’t seem sure. “It was… speaking to me…”
I was about to ask her what she meant, but there was no time. The doors flew off their hinges, flying a few feet before crashing to the ground and skidding. Max stood at the door, glowing gold and smiling.
I cursed. I had hoped the door would delay him for at least a minute, giving us some sort of warning. What I expected to do in that time I had no idea. Hide and seek perhaps?
He strolled into the room, looking around like he owned the place but had not seen what the new tenants had decorated it with. “Hello again, John, Kate,” he said nodding. “Nice place you got here. Is this your inner sanctum sanctorum? You ran here so quickly, I wondered what you had here. Nice place, though. Needs cleaning up, however,” he said, poking a knife at some debris.
“What do you want from us?” I asked.
“Oh John, dear Mr. Keats,” he said, “I thought that would be obvious. I shouldn’t really need to tell you. But since you had the audacity to question a god, I figured I would give you an answer before I get to work.” I didn’t like the sound of that. I tensed, but didn’t know where to run. He continued. “You are going to die, of course. I’m sure you knew that. That’s the easy part of the answer. But what happens before that, now that is special. The world has a new god, a God of Knives. But unlike the utilitarian gods of old, this god is an artist. An artist in the flesh, an artist with the blade. I admit that I flexed my muscles too quickly with my new godhood, killing so quickly, just as a thirsty man drinks deep from his first draught. It satisfied a basic hunger, but did not satisfy aesthetic, it does not satisfy the deeper hunger for art.”
He paused, kicking a random pebble. “So that is what you are. The two first works of a great art career. The first two works of a blending of divinity and art. You should feel honored. As Michelangelo made the Sistine Chapel to praise Jehovah, I shall make you both art to praise myself.” The knives flexed in a fan around him.
“What about Ashborn?” I asked, trying to buy time.
“Ashborn?” he said, faltering. “There will be time for Ashborn. My consciousness has not yet filled all of reality yet, but it will soon. I am still growing into my godhood as it were, though I am far beyond a normal man. I will take my revenge on Ashborn soon enough.”
I reached down to Ashborn’s body while Max looked at me with interest. I picked up the nametag and tossed it at Max, the nametag sliding across the floor and coming to a rest at his feet. “Too late on Ashborn, somebody beat you to it.”
His eyes darkened for a moment, red light appearing in their depths, which quickly faded. “No matter,” he said, “No matter. I wish I had the opportunity, but it is gone. It wouldn’t do for a god to hold a grudge. That is such a petty emotion. For a god there is only wrath.” His eyes glowed red again, and his knives flexed and breathed in their fan around him, quicker than before.
Lost for any other action, I pulled out the gun again, pulling the trigger. It clicked, but nothing happened. It was as if the gun failed to function.
Max laughed. “Do you really think that will work on a god? I simply will it not to function and it does not.”
I looked at the gun I held in my hand, useless.
“Now,” said Max, “let’s begin.”
“Here’s your godhood!” screamed Katie, swinging herself around, tossing something big. I saw that it was the same book from the table.
Time slowed as the volume sailed through space, tumbling end over end, white sparks shooting off it as it turned. We all watched it with interest, even Max. He did not move or dodge, even though he watched the book’s whole path. The book sailed through space to hit Max in the face. He moved his head slightly as if a balled up piece of paper hit him, but otherwise the book bounced to the ground in front of him.
He smiled at us. He took a step forward, grinning.
Then the radiance around him flickered like a failing light bulb. In a moment it disappeared
. The knives all dropped to the ground with a clink. Max’s expression changed dramatically. Now his face showed fear and dismay.
I knew I had my chance.
“Does this work on a god?” I asked as I raised the gun and pulled the trigger.
This time there was a reaction. There was a deafening noise as the gun jerked in my hands, the muzzle spark exploding from the front. A single bullet flew from the gun, straight at Max. Without resistance, without magic, without any special effect, the bullet flew at Max. A single red spot appeared on Max’s forehead where the bullet entered.
Then there was silence. Max’s eyes were wide as his body fell to the ground with a thump. His body lay there, inert, unmoving.
Silence again. I stood with my arms still out, ready to take aim if he got up again. But after a few moments, nothing happened. I finally relaxed, letting my arms drop.
That was one helluva book. Was it the one that Ashborn had stolen from Max? I turned to Katie. “What was that?” I asked. She shrugged.
I looked back at Max’s body. I suddenly knew there was a problem. That same golden radiance now flickered around his body, once again like a light bulb, this time turning on.
“Oh fuck,” I said.
I expected Max to get up. I expected him to say something. I expected something bad to happen.
In retrospect, it was very bad.
Max did not get back up, but the golden light got brighter. It kept getting brighter. I stepped closer and looked at the body. Golden light was pouring out of the bullet hole in his forehead like it was leaking water. Instead of the unearthly chorus we heard before, there was a staticky buzzing noise. The buzzing was growing louder, but I could just make out behind that a deep voiced, distorted chanting. With each second the light was growing brighter, the body was a very bright gold. As the light grew brighter, the buzzing sound also increased.
“I don’t think it’s going to stop,” said Katie behind me.
I nodded. This was bad. I can’t describe how we knew we were in danger, we just knew. Something in the sound triggered some type of instinct in us. Things were simmering to a boil and the pot was about to overflow. I grabbed Katie’s arm and we ran through the doorway. We had to get away. We just had to get far enough away that we would be safe.
The Lost and the Damned Page 29