by Scott Hale
The boy rubbed his throat. “What if you could have some of it back?”
“Don’t you fucking dare.” Edgar started forward, kicking the chains on the ground out of his way. “Don’t you fucking promise me—”
A red, blinding light broke across the ballroom. Edgar screamed, quickly covering his eyes.
“What the hell is that?” he cried, burying his face in his palms.
“Come and see,” the little boy said.
Edgar splayed his fingers, letting in some of the now dimmed light. The little boy slipped in between the double-doors and disappeared.
Edgar looked back at the spiral staircase and then at the chains at his feet. He couldn’t have run away, even if he had wanted to. So instead, he followed in the boy’s footsteps, through the crack in the doors, and into the vermillion place beyond.
Edgar didn’t need the boy to tell him they were no longer in the mansion, and if the boy had told him they were no longer on Earth, he would have believed that, too. The ballroom floor extended a few feet, like the gangplank of a ship, and then dropped off into the gigantic chasm in front of him.
Out of that infinite expanse of impenetrable black ran massive slabs of rock that stretched in every direction, far beyond what Edgar was capable of viewing, let alone comprehending. But he didn’t see all of this because of the boy’s candle. No, it was the vermillion veins that illuminated the place. The billions of vermillion veins that ran across the walls, pulsating blips of red light, like tiny heartbeats, every time they pushed through a bit of the liquid inside them.
The little boy blew out the candle and set it at his feet. He stood beside Edgar and said to the red darkness, “We’re here.”
Slowly, the gigantic chasm became illuminated. The vermillion veins were not only on the walls, but inside the chasm as well. The liquid inside them started to move, causing the abyss to be lit up, layer after layer, as though to give Edgar time to comprehend what he was seeing.
First, there were buildings. Skyscrapers, like Chapel, and smaller buildings, businesses, schools, apartments, and homes. There weren’t just a few of them, either. There were millions of them. Billions, maybe. Destroyed, obliterated. Packed and piled together with the innumerable amounts of airplanes, automobiles, ships, and tanks that surrounded them. The further down the lights activated, the harder it became to make sense of what he saw, but even from this height, Edgar could tell that there were literally oceans of material goods below this cityscape crust. It was as though a great knife had swept across the Old World and scrapped the scab that was humanity off it.
But it was difficult to see everything. Parts of the chasm had yet to light up. There was a massive patch of darkness in particular, one of which was at the center of the chasm that was making it hard for Edgar to take it all in. Rational thought had abandoned him some time ago, so he proceeded further down the ballroom plank, to try to look around that dark obstacle before him.
But then that dark obstacle lit up, the vermillion veins that laced it finally coming to, and he, both in mind and body, reeled. The darkness hadn’t been a wall or more buildings. No, it was something else, something organic, something alive.
At the center of the chasm, an enormous creature sat, rumbling atop a mountain of bones. Miles in width and stature, the winged beast was covered in tendrils and tentacles that were longer than some of the buildings it had undoubtedly devoured and deposited here. Several sets of arms sat at its sides, much like the Arachne, and though its head was down, and a halo of mist surrounded it, Edgar could see that the creature’s face had several mouths, and several thousand eyes.
Edgar backed down the plank. He reached for something to brace himself against, but there was only the boy. “What… what…” His eyes darted back and forth between the beast’s flesh and the vermillion veins running from it, into the chasm, and up the walls. “What is it?”
“That’s God,” the boy said. He held Edgar’s hand, as a son would to calm a father. “That’s God, Edgar.”
“N-no.” Again, he followed the veins, from the beast, to the chasm and the walls. Again, he looked to the entire continents contained within the chasm. “No, no, no. No. That’s not… not God.”
“How many gods have you seen lately, Edgar?”
Hyperventilating, Edgar dropped the boy’s hand. He ran to the ballroom door, which was now shut and locked. He beat his fists against it, repeating over and over, “That’s not God. That’s not God!”
The boy sighed and said, “Don’t feel bad, Edgar. You’re only mortal. You imagine the unimaginable in a form you can comprehend.”
“God doesn’t look like that,” Edgar shouted.
“God has always looked this way.”
He turned around slowly, afraid to look at the beast in full. It seemed to be sleeping, but what would it do to him if it woke?
“This is the Vermillion God, Edgar. The true god. The only god.”
“It’s… it’s feeding off the earth.” He pointed his twitching finger at it. “A God doesn’t need to do that.”
The boy shook his head. “No, those are Its veins. The liquid inside them is its blood. The earth is feeding off God, not the other way around. Part of the reason why the Nameless Forest hasn’t fallen into complete chaos. Same for the world, too, I expect.”
Edgar touched his lips. “I drank its blood. I ate from… it.” He thought back to the feet of vermillion veins he had regurgitated lying in the ballroom. “No, fuck you. I don’t believe you.”
The boy cocked his head. “Do you know anything else that can do as we have done?”
The Vermillion God stirred, sending a river of skulls down the bone mountain.
“Through hell, we find heaven,” the little boy said. He went to the nearest vermillion vein on the wall.
“It had to be you, and it had to happen this way. Your family would never accept the god that sits before you. But ironically enough, it is Eldrus, not Penance, that must accept God, because Eldrus is the only city that can truly save this world.”
The boy bit into the vermillion vein. He moaned as he guzzled the liquid inside it. Pulling back, the red drink dousing his face, he plugged the tooth holes with his hand and said, “Amon thought he had to break you to use you. I would have done things differently. But he did break you, and yet, now you stand whole before me.”
“Far fucking from it,” Edgar said, images of his family flashing through his head. “I am nothing now. There’s nothing left of me.”
“You are only you, who you were always meant to be.”
Edgar threw up his hands. “I was never meant to be a murderer. You and Amon made me one!”
“Maybe.” The boy shrugged. “But we also brought you here, to the one place where you can actually make a difference to your city and the world. This is God, Edgar. How many atrocities have been committed in the name of religion? How many could be avoided if you all could just agree on the existence of a god and what god wants? If humans were rid of that problem, they would be rid of others as well. Religion is not the root of all evil, Edgar, but it does have a longer reach than most things.”
“Sorry. Humans already have a god.” He felt lightheaded, hungry, as he stared at the tempting drink staining the boy’s cheeks.
“They like to think they do. The people of the world have lost their way. Now, they worship the little heretic in Penance, along with the great deceiver, the Mother Abbess, both of whom only tell them what they want to hear.” He let go of the vermillion vein and sprayed his fingers in its red blood. “Does the world not deserve better than that? Amon tried once, but the world was too big, too complex, too ignorant, and he failed. The world is different now, and God is willing to give it another chance. Give everything another chance. If you’re good to God, Edgar—” the boy held out his bloody finger and beckoned Edgar over, “—don’t you think It will be good to you?”
Edgar shuffled towards the boy and closed his eyes. Unable to resist the vermillion desire, he low
ered his head.
The boy gently touched his lips.
Edgar opened his mouth.
The boy stuck his finger inside his mouth, and from it, Edgar drank the blood of God.
“Let’s give them what they’ve always wanted, Edgar,” the boy said, petting him. “After everything, they deserve it.”
Threadbare hadn’t changed much since he last saw it. The only difference now being that, as he walked through the gates, everyone dropped to their knees, to pay him respect as the new king of the Nameless Forest.
Everyone, except, of course, the woman who probably hadn’t ever knelt for anyone. Lotus.
She hurried through the rows of her prostrated people. “Welcome back.” She grinned and said, “Edgar, you look terrible.”
Edgar opened his arms, and Lotus went into them. He dropped his head against her neck and started crying so hard his body shook.
“Get us out of here,” he said between the sobs.
Lotus held the back of his neck. To the boy, she said, “What did you do to him?”
“The Nameless Forest is yours to govern, until we call on you to do otherwise,” the boy said.
Lotus nodded.
Edgar straightened up, and said, “What?” Looking at Lotus, after hearing that… being in her arms was no longer a comfort to him.
“I’m your warden,” she said. “You can’t rule here and Eldrus at the same time.”
Spit getting in the way of his words, he said, “But I need you.” He knew he looked pathetic, because he felt pathetic, like a filthy rag, something that had been used to clean up shit and left to wither in the sun. “Lotus, I need you. Please.” Out of everyone left, she was the only one he still had any connection with.
Lotus took him by the shoulders, looked him dead in the eyes, and whispered, “Not here. You’re their king. They can’t see you acting like this. Let’s go, Edgar. I’ll make you feel better.”
Lotus led Edgar through Threadbare, encouraging him along the way with nudges and nods to look like the king everyone thought he was. With red eyes, quivering cheeks, and a death-mask smile, he waved to his new subjects—and hated every moment of it. Was this what it meant to rule? Was this why his father had hated it so? Blood Drinker, Heart Eater—that’s what they called Sovn, the once-king of Eldrus.
Edgar had thought the titles ridiculous, but now he wasn’t so sure. His father had gained a reputation for his indifference towards almost everything, but it hadn’t been indifference, he realized that now. It had been numbness, and he felt that same numbness now.
They returned to Lotus’ home, where she and Edgar, among other fluids, had shared their first drink. With the boy, they sat down and had one more.
“Here, drink it quick,” Lotus said, putting a cup in front of Edgar. “You don’t want to taste it.”
Edgar poured the alcohol directly down his throat, but he was sure he wouldn’t have tasted it either way. He dug his nails into his wrists; didn’t feel that, either.
This is what I wanted, Edgar thought, watching Lotus pour him another drink. At the expense of everything, I can finally make a difference. He drank that drink and snapped his fingers for another one.
Everyone I love is dead, and I’ve seen God. There’s nothing left for me, and there’s nothing I can do.
“What now?” Lotus asked. She took Edgar’s hands from across the table and blew on them to warm them.
The boy went to the window and leaned against the wall there. He kept to the sunlight. He seemed to be enjoying it. “We’ll go back and pick up where Amon left off. You’ll wait here, keep everything together. When we’re ready, we’ll call you to Eldrus.”
Edgar eyed the bottle, hoping for another drink. “The Nameless Forest will listen to her, maybe, but not me.”
“They will. We’ll start sending aid and support to the Forest, now that there is some stability.”
Lotus nodded. “You come from a better off place than we do. We recognize we live in hell. We’re not so stubborn to shirk our chances for a moment in heaven.”
Edgar poured himself a drink when Lotus wouldn’t. “What about the Arachne? Don’t think they’ll listen to me.” He went to pour another cup, but his hand was shaking too much.
“They’ll take some persuading, but even they will follow us.” Lotus took his cup from him. “Anansi heard you were coming. It scared him enough to mobilize his forces. If it wasn’t for you, Edgar, they would be here now, eating us.”
“If I had never come here, he wouldn’t have mobilized.”
“Not true, trust me. I lived with the Arachne when they still held territory in Blackwood. I still have some friends amongst those freaks. I know how to make them listen, to make them fight for you.”
Lotus stood up, set the cup down, filled it, and came around the table to stand behind Edgar. She started massaging his shoulders. “You need to rest. It’s a long road from here to Eldrus.”
The boy leaned away from the window, flecks of vermillion glowing in his pupils. “Can you do this, Edgar?”
Edgar took the cup and slid it closer to him. Monotone, like Auster, he said, “If I don’t, it will all have been for nothing. I know that’s what you want to hear, that I will try to salvage this, make things right, and that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to use you, like you used me. I’ll use you, all of you mother fuckers—” he looked at Lotus, “—until everything is better, and then I’ll turn on all of you. And not even God will stop me.”
“Sounds fair,” the boy said. “I imagine the Vermillion God could make it up to you before then. It could bring them back, if you wanted It to. If you could… live with the questions they would ask you.”
Edgar shook his head and leaned over the cup. He paused, confused by what he saw reflected inside it. The ghost; he saw the ghost in the surface of Lotus’ black drink. This was the first time he had seen himself since just after the murders of his family. Had he looked this way the entire time, when he had gone to bed with Lotus, or when he had spoken with Father Silas? Or did it go back further than that? If the ghost were sitting here in his place, would he see Edgar reflected instead? Or had there never been an Edgar? Was he just a lie he told himself, about who he was and how he could be different from those monsters that surrounded him?
At first, it made sense to blame the vermillion veins, but now, he wasn’t sure. They were rich with the blood of God, and what is God if not a stark reminder of what you are and cannot be?
Edgar raised the cup to his lips and drank the ghost inside. He saw no reason not to let it haunt him just one more time. After all, he had been happy when it did.
PART TWO
THE GRAVEDIGGER’S DILEMMA
CHAPTER I
The Gravedigger had dug too deep, and now there was no way out.
“Will,” he shouted, pushing the shovel into the soil until it stood up on its own. “I hear you kicking around out there.”
The Gravedigger waited a moment, watching the light waver on the rim of the grave. He could smell the land burning, and the little of his house and barn that loomed over him looked as though it were melting. His house and barn were haggard things; large but run-down, and painted in that faded, murky shade only the poor would know.
“Dad?” His son’s voice sounded far away, worlds away, from his place in the ground. A mess of blond hair and a sunburnt face looked down into the hole. “Now how’d you manage that?”
The Gravedigger sighed and rested his arm atop the shovel. “I got a little lost in my thoughts. It don’t matter none. Get me the rope, so I can get the hell out of here.”
Will grinned, his rosy cheeks cherubic. He was thirteen, almost fourteen, and soon would come the time when he might drift away, from himself and from his family, in search of things he already had and knew, but refused to accept.
The Gravedigger had done it, and so had his wife, when they were younger. It had taken them both a long time to come back round, and the Gravedigger was an impatient man, so h
e took these moments when he could, so that he could revisit them when he couldn’t.
“Hey, Will,” he called out, as his son started to walk away. “The rope, not your mother.”
A snort, and then: “What’s the difference?”
The Gravedigger cocked his jaw as he heard another set of footsteps. “Wife?” he said, shielding his eyes as the sun shifted his way.
“Husband?” she responded, affectionately.
“Our son is trying to get me to dig myself into a deeper hole than I’m already in.” He felt a fat bead of sweat slither down his face. Winter had coaxed summer back out of its slumber, and now everyone was going to suffer for it.
“Will, go back inside,” the Gravedigger’s wife said. She appeared over the plot and waved. “How’d you manage this, Atticus?”
Twenty-five years he’d known Clementine, and for fifteen of them they’d been married. Their hometown of Gallows, which the Gravedigger was currently seven feet below, had seen it coming. Childhood enemies turned adolescent sweethearts, Atticus and Clementine had become something of a symbol of hope for those around them who lacked it. Some would’ve been honored by this; Atticus and Clementine, however, thought it was the dumbest thing they’d ever heard, and made sure to make fun of those who looked at them all starry-eyed any chance they could.
“Get me some rope, please. Tie it around that stump up there and toss it down,” the Gravedigger said.
His wife put a finger to her chin. “Where’s that at?”
“Well, there’s the house, and then there’s the barn.”
“Which one do we sleep in again?” Clementine crouched down, her hair—her namesake—catching the sun and coming alive.
“I know which one you’ll be sleeping in if you leave me down here.”
“If I leave you down there, I don’t think you’ll be in any position to make me. Now that I’ve got you where I want you, I think I have some requests.”