by Martin Kee
Dale rolled his eyes, flexing his arm. He held both out in front of him, judging the length and angle. “Does this one look shorter to you?”
Marley looked down. “Why? You want me to break it?”
Dale didn’t answer. He just stared at his arms. It seemed that at one point he couldn’t even do this simple action. These days it was harder to remember. Vague images of a twisted crippled arm haunted him, but soon vanished.
“No,” he said after a moment. “It’s just… how long has it been?”
“How long since what?” Marley lifted a barrel sized cup to his mouth and took long gulps. He wiped a hand across his mustache.
“How long since we… since we…”
Marley laughed. “You don’t even know the right question to ask.”
“It’s not that… It was just so long ago. I feel like we’ve been doing this for decades—waiting for the crops to grow, watching the seedlings rise, eating dinner at the end of the day. It seems like decades.”
“Maybe it has been. Does it matter?”
“Well yeah… I think it does. Do you even remember life before this?”
“I remember that harpy in the asylum,” said Marley. “Skyla’s aunt.”
“Yeah…” Dale stared out into the field. Already stalks were beginning to appear, bright green against the raised dirt. “Yeah and then there was that machine.”
“And Skyla was with the machine,” Marley said rolling his eyes. “And then you were in the machine and I was in the machine. And there were guards and we ran through the hallways, fightin’ and punchin’ anything that moved.”
“Yeah…” Dale scratched his head. “Was that real?”
Marley shrugged. “Real enough. They needed our help so we made it real.”
“Melissa needed our help… and Skyla… right. God, it just seems like—”
“Like decades. Yes. I know. Why don’t you start up the stove? Stalks are gonna be ready shortly.”
But Dale didn’t move. He sat in his chair, mesmerized as the leaves unfurled from the stalks, unfolding into wide elephant ears. Whether it was carrots, corn, or potatoes, the crops would be huge, always were. Normally it fascinated him, but today he found it troubling. Beyond the field something large moved behind the trees of the forest, but Dale ignored it for now. It was always better to ignore.
“Just… Don’t you think it’s weird?” Dale asked.
“What is?”
“That you and I have been doing this for so long we can’t remember anything else?”
“Nice, ain’t it?” Marley smiled.
“It is… sure.” Dale scratched his chin. “It’s just… is this all there is?”
“What do you mean?”
Dale took a sip and looked at his glass. “You read the holy books and listen to the priests and they tell you that you move on, that you go to heaven or whatever. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Hell… but this? What is this?”
Marley turned and glared down at him. “It’s a farm.”
“I know it is…” He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Never mind. I’ll start the fire. As if we even need fire.”
The inside of the farmhouse was always as big or as small as they needed it to be. If they felt like a large feast, there were copper pots of every size, some cauldrons large enough to fit a side of beef into. The stove was as wide or as hot as he needed, the burners as large or numerous as necessary. Dale hardly thought about it ever. But today he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I had a purpose once, he thought. I did something important because a lot of people needed me. Now there are days I can’t even remember my name.
He lit the stove and carried a large pot out to the pump behind the house. It was still hard to shake the preconceived notions that he was supposed to be in Heaven or Hell—or someplace. Now he lived on a farm with his best friend, watching corn grow.
“Hey Marley,” he called as he crossed the yard to the pump.
Marley grunted.
“When’s the last time we went into the forest?”
“What?”
“The forest, outside the property. When’s the last time we went out there?”
“Who cares?”
“I do,” Dale said.
Marley’s voice sounded irritated from the porch. “Do you remember how long it took for me to hack away at the wolves and dragons that lived out there? Do you remember how long it took for us to carve away this one little piece of paradise?”
“I do… I really do, but… is this all there is?”
He could hear the giant shifting in his seat, making the floorboards creak in protest. “What more could you possibly want?”
“It’s just… when’s the last time you fought off a werewolf? Or a dragon? Or a banshee? Or simply chased a wandering child off our property?”
“There was that redhead… the ginger. He was stealing our food.”
“Why? Why, Marley? This is supposed to be Heaven. Why would some kid be starving?”
“Never said it was Heaven.”
“Well, then what is it?”
Marley seemed to actually think about this for a moment. “It’s good enough.”
“That’s it?” Dale reached the pump and gripped the handle. A row of trees shuddered, the trunks swaying. Dale stared at them as he pumped water into the pot. “Look around you. We’re stagnant. We’ve been in this same routine forever.”
He looked behind him and saw Marley there, so big his head met the roof.
“Do you remember the last time we had this conversation, Dale?”
“Huh?” Dale blinked. “No. What do you mean?”
“Last week… or maybe a month. We had this exact same conversation.” A large grin broke across his face. “You don’t remember.”
The trees swayed again and Dale put the pot down. “I bet it’s that kid again. I’m going to just feed him this time.”
Dale stepped up to the forest edge, took two steps in, and froze. His feet began to carry him backwards, one step at a time until it turned into a dead run.
“What is it?” Marley said as Dale ran from the edge of the forest.
“I—I don’t know. I got to the edge and… It feels wrong. All of it feels wrong.”
Marley pushed him aside and walked up to the forest, placing a hand against a pair of birch trees. He bent them aside to reveal a mottled blackness, swirling and bulging as it rolled by. He stared wide-eyed, wondering for a moment what he was even looking at before it attacked.
A ropelike tendril shot out, wrapping around his upper arm. It became taut, pulling him in. An eye and several human-looking mouths opened, salivating and hungry. Marley jerked back, snapping the tentacle. It squealed away and a new mouth opened, thrusting towards him with rows teeth the size of bricks.
Marley twisted to the side and the mouth latched onto the side of a tree, snapping it in two. A tongue slithered out, wrapping round the trunk of the broken tree, pulling it into the orifice.
“What is that?” Dale asked, panting as Marley stumbled back to him. “They never get that big out here.”
“No they don’t.”
“You’re bleeding,” said Dale, as they both stared at Marley’s upper arm.
The skin had been sloughed away, leaving a hollow, husk-like emptiness. No blood, just darkness. He covered it with his hand and turned to the cabin. Tiny mouth appeared in the flank of the beast. They spoke in unison. “We taste. We taste the memory.”
“Get inside,” Marley said to Dale.
“But the—”
“Just go!” Marley shouted. “Get inside and shutter the windows. Grab anything you think could be a weapon.”
Dale sprinted to the house, feeling tremors as Marley’s lumbered behind him. Once inside they slammed the doors, barring them with iron and wood. Night descended upon them as the mass of bodies covered the house. Wood creaked from the weight of a billion tiny legs scraping along the walls. He turned to Marley and saw him running towards the back. T
he hallway grew to accommodate the giant.
A window exploded throwing glass and splinters across the floor. It took concentration to create something out of nothing. It was a skill he had never been good at. Others—Melissa, Marley, Hel—they had all been much better at it. For Dale it was always a chore.
I wouldn’t even have a home if it weren’t for Marley, he thought, his hand feeling blindly along the surface of the counter.
Dale felt a handle and gripped it, trying to imagine the object as sharp and big as he could before he looked at it, making it real: a sword, a greatsword. No, something bigger. An axe!
He opened his eyes. In his hand he gripped a meat cleaver the length of his forearm. Good enough.
He spun and raised the blade at a wormy tendril that had begun making its way through the cracks. (“We see her? Who is she?”) The cleaver fell. Meat parted, spilling black blood. The stump retreated with a pig’s squeal. A lump of misshapen marbled flesh bulged into the window, parting to reveal a warped blue eye from within.
A chorus of voices, louder than the crumbling foundation and creaking walls of the house, spoke louder. “We know you! We know you! We know you!”
Dale brought his hands up to his ears, nearly dropping the cleaver.
“We know you! We know you! You’ve seen her! You’ve seen her!”
“Shut up!” he screamed back at it, turning to see that terrible ice blue eye staring through the broken pane. He froze. Maybe they did know him.
Dale lunged, bringing the cleaver down into that pupil the size of his head. He felt rubbery resistance before the blade sunk into the eye. A scream ripped through the house as the cleaver went deeper, sending fluid the consistency of oatmeal over his arm.
He staggered back, leaving the cleaver wedged and sinking into the blue veined iris. It vanished, replaced by a blossom of more tentacles, each lined with a thousand squirming insect arms.
And where the hell was Marley? He yelled, but if there was a response it was lost in the terrible sound of beams cracking and plaster splitting, lost in the terrible mewling cries from a million mouths. “You’ve seen her! Her name is new! What is her new name?”
“Who is who?” Dale heard himself asking.
“Who is the girl, no longer Rhia?”
He could feel the memories bubbling up through him, the voices zeroing in on information. He looked away, calling down the hallway. “Marley, you’d better hurry!”
Another crash and he spun to see a tentacle the width of his leg. It worked its way between two planks of the wall, shoving them aside, splitting them like tongue depressors. He felt for another weapon and found his hand wrapping around a slippery eel. It slid around and up his arm, pulling it in the opposite direction.
“I’ve lost an arm before,” he muttered, clawing at the slimy flesh. “I’ll grow it ba—” He screamed.
There was a snap like dry timber as his arm exploded with pain. It twisted the wrong direction, bringing with it the memories of his life, of his failures—He sits in the tower. There is a semaphore signal from the river. He looks up at the lantern above him. Then an explosion. Water and bodies. So many bodies
The chorus returned, louder now and ringing through his skull. “You live in your sins! You live in your filth! Come to him, tell us Rhia’s new name, where we might find her! Come and join him! He washes away our sins!” the voices sang. “He’ll wash away your sins forever!”
He felt pressure constrict around his waist, and Dale began to sense something new, something even more horrifying. He was losing himself. Minds and thoughts overlapped him, filling the space with scripture and damnation, voices singing “What a friend we have in Jeeeees-us.”
Dale laughed. You’re kidding me.
He struggled to think, his thoughts becoming warped, sidetracked, running off the rails, replaced by church hymns, twisted chanting. Every coherent thought in his mind was being replaced by madness.
“Join us!” they cried, the voices a unified tent revival. “Join us in our crusade. Let us rise up against the demons, casting them into the fire of His divine retribution! Let us destroy them with righteousness upon their doorstep and cast their heads onto the abyss!”
Dale looked down. The black slithering tube had advanced halfway up his chest, the coldness oozing into his shirt. Blackness filled his vision in spots, the chorus filled with discovery.
“Yes! We see her name now! We see the iron gate, the building of her youth! We see Rhia now. Her name… is HEL!”
In his blindness, Dale heard the distant sounds of footsteps approaching. Before Dale felt the last of himself slip away, a new voice reached his ears, “You get off of him!” bellowed the giant. “You son of a bitch! Get off him now!”
There was impact and more pain. Squealing. His body cleaved apart, two places at once. A surge of upward force, and the black slime fell from his eyes. Dale felt himself lifted into the air, but lighter somehow. When he looked down, he saw why, and it was then that Dale began to scream.
Chapter 37
In-Between
NICE AS IT was, the dreamless sleep did not last forever, nor did her solitude. Gil had been running on a beach, her feet in the sand, the salt air on her cheeks. It dampened her hair, making wet strands stick to her neck as the waves crashed along the shore. The city wall loomed like a mountain in the distance, its swirling patina rendering it ghostlike in the fog.
It was nice to no longer be in pain, the agonizing tickle of screws and wires invading her body. She stopped to stare into tide pools, to study the squirmy little creatures there, her own face looking back from the reflection of dark water. She stared at this other Gil, the Gil with ten fingers, two arms, and two eyes, until a small wave distorted the image.
Inside the tidal pool a small fish swam in a circle, glinting silver as the light hit it. Gil scooped it out and placed it in a draining pool, where it could escape to the ocean.
As she watched it leave, she saw something else floating in the water, the size of a house cat. Dense fur covered its body as it floated on its back, smacking what appeared to be a clam with a rock, using its stomach as an anvil. Rhinewall had few animals to compare it to. As the question appeared in her mind, so did the answer, as if spoken to her.
“Sea otter, (Enhydra lutris) a common marine mammal found in cold Pacific Oceans up until the time of collapse and the Dark Age. Distant aquatic cousin to the weasel and ferret…”
Gil stood and turned to see the raven man staring back at her from the shore, his red and black leather cloak glazed in salty dew. She knew she should have been afraid; at any other time in her life she would have been. But this was her dream, and she would have put a stick in her eye before she let someone else frighten her in her own dream again. She simply stared at the tall cloaked figure for a moment. Dark round lenses that reminded her of Skyla’s goggles covered his eyes, assuming he had eyes at all.
“I’ve never seen one before,” she said over the surf. “And I’ve lived here all my life.”
“That is because the animal is extinct.” The voice could have been coming from inside her head it was so close.
“How come I never heard of one then?” She looked back out across the ocean and saw slick gray creatures leaping into the air. They looked like fish without scales. Plumes of spray shot from the tops of their bodies. They were joined by even larger animals, slick and wet and incredibly agile for their size. Together they dove and leaped and splashed, a parade of strange alien creatures making its slow sad procession through the water.
Gil stared as the names popped into her head, as if tiny words were appearing over each creature: Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops aduncus), blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus), bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus), African manatee (Trichechus senegalensis). The parade went on for what felt like hours, the variety of animals endless. Some leaped out of the water and fell with a monstrous splash while others grazed along the nearby kelp. Some left the water, balancing on their tails as they dan
ced over the clear blue ocean.
“Why are you showing me this?”
“You didn’t believe me.”
“This could still just be my imagination,” she said. “How do I even know these ever existed?”
“There is no proof, except for fossil records and skeletal remains, though they would be hard to recover now. Now there are only memories.”
“Why did they go extinct?”
“Many reasons,” he said. “The oceans turned to acid, the forests died, the mountains failed to collect any snow. Many things go extinct, not just animals.”
“Like what?”
“Plants, insects, civilizations, ideas…”
“So then all I have is your word,” she said.
“True,” he said, and the oceans went calm and quiet again, the shapes of jellyfish just visible beneath the surface.
He offered no more information. Gil found this annoying and stormed up the beach to him, an unmoving pillar of leather and glass, the beaked nose tracking her as Gil crossed the rocks. She stood in front of him and looked up at his face, then poked him in the stomach.
“So what are you then? Something to scare little children?” she asked.
“I am Quentin,” he said with a shallow bow. “I am a Physician.”
“We don’t have Physicians in Rhinewall,” she said. “They were banned by The Church. Those, I did read about. I guess that makes you real.”
“I am.”
“But you’re illegal.”
“The Church no longer has sway over this city,” said Quentin. “And just because something is illegal does not make it wrong.”
He straightened his posture, staring down at her from behind that long beak. As she studied him, she thought she could hear something artificial buried behind all that leather, a ticking, like some ancient clock. He waited, offering nothing more.
“Why are you here then?” she asked, looking up at the mask. “Why are you in my dream?”
“I am tending to your body while you recuperate from your injuries.”
“Well, you’re clearly doing more than that,” said Gil. “I’m not awake, am I, so how are we having this conversation?”