The Umbral Wake

by Martin Kee

  Through the smoke and steam two figures stood, both of them clearly human. One man wore a long cloak and a top hat. Gray sideburns exploded out from either side along his face and he looked as though he had been in a fight. It was the owner of the curio, and beside him stood the nice man…

  Hands grabbed Scribble by the shoulders as he heard Gary panting behind him. His voice was barely a squeak.

  “It’s boys, Scrib… Oh sweet God Jesus, it’s boys!”

  Harold Montegut leaned over to Felton, whispering something in the man’s ear. Felton pointed to Scribble and he felt himself lifted into the air. As he rose, he could see the tables, not covered with machines, but boys, some younger than him. The soldierboys attached braces and joints to their legs and arms, screwing cages over their unconscious bodies. One boy screamed, his voice lost in the grinding of metal. The braces stretched, pulling his legs longer and thinner. Probes and wires slid under the skin like worms. Screws entered flesh with a high-pitched whir.

  And he and Gary were next.

  He turned to Gary as a naked soldierboy placed a hand over Gary’s mouth. His only friend went limp in the soldierboy’s arms and it carried Gary across the floor to another table. As it turned, Scribble could see the child underneath, could see the pieced skin, the stretched limbs, now aided by strange prostheses, the dead eyes staring straight ahead. Gary was laid onto a metal table, the motion gentle, the way a mother might lay her child to sleep. A blade came out, shearing away his clothes. Another mechanized arm lowered, a nightmare cluster of wires in its hand. Gary twitched.

  This was not a physical abnormality that kept Scribble from speaking. All of Scribble’s scars were on the inside. But as he watched them transform Gary there on the factory floor, he found his friend’s name clawing its way up into his throat. He reached for Gary as the plate went over the boy’s face, screwed in place with metal claws.

  Scribble’s first word since infancy was a wail, lost in the thrum and hiss of machinery. Leather hands shoved him into Harold’s arms where he collapsed, sobbing into the man’s vest.

  Chapter 44

  In-Between

  “WELL, THIS IS familiar,” Dale said, hanging one arm over the boat. “Although, I think I prefer having legs.”

  Marley reached over and lifted the clothing that collapsed just below Dale’s waist. He winced. “It’s healing… slowly.”

  It was a lie. Dale knew it was. The viscera and flesh were still just as black and shredded as before, cauterized in shadow. Marley reached a hand up to pull the sleeve back from his shoulder. A sooty trench went deep into his arm. He could see bone. The giant reached into a tackle box along the side of the bench and pulled out a fishhook and some yarn. He then sat back and began stitching up the gash.

  Skyla sat in the back of the boat, looking out over the water. Dale watched the scenery pass by through her transparent figure and thought, Maybe we are all just ghosts to one another.

  “You know, it’s funny,” said Dale. “I always imagined that I’d just dissolve of boredom on that farm. I never expected to be chewed in half by… whatever that was… a congregation maybe?”

  Marley shook his massive head and leaned back against the boards. “I don’t know.”

  “Shadow puppets,” Skyla said and both men looked at her. “They are shadow puppets. They don’t even look real to me, just husks.”

  She continued to stare, and eventually Dale propped himself up and hand-walked over to Marley.

  “Pick me up. I want to look.”

  Marley placed Dale’s torso up onto the bench. They stared out over the still water at the asylum, a flat building that stretched across the horizon. On the opposite beach the figures all stood like vacant effigies along the water.

  “I can’t imagine an argument alive that would make people follow him,” Marley huffed.

  “He can be persuasive,” said Dale.

  “They aren’t following him,” said Skyla. “Not anymore. They’re just… hollow.”

  They stood along the shoreline, connected at the legs, torso, and feet, a wall of suggested human shapes. They stared over the water at the asylum with lips that moved in unison. Their song drifted over the water like a fog. “Rhia… Rhia… come out, Rhia…” From somewhere in the asylum a dog howled.

  The army moved like men in a three-legged race, husks controlled by invisible hands. Skyla noticed little details on each member of the congregation. Even with their bodies melding into one another, the residual damage was clear.

  “That one looks like a suicide,” Dale said, pointing to a man with a deep red rope burn around his neck.

  “Not the only one,” muttered Marley, pointing to a woman who stood naked. Her wrists had been flayed open from palm to elbow, the tendons exposed. The man next to her was clothed, his shirt stained red from a gash across his throat. It formed a bib that bled into the teen girl beside him. She stared with empty sockets, a hole the size of a coin visible through the center of her head.

  “Never understood cutting,” said Dale. “Once you’ve gotten a bayonet through the chest, you understand that it really is one of the more unpleasant ways to go. It hurt a lot. Unless you clip the artery just right or keep the blade sharp enough, it’s just grueling—”

  “You aren’t getting me,” said Marley.

  “I get that they have poor judgment in suicide implements,” Dale said.

  “They are mostly all suicides,” said Skyla. “Killed themselves. Just like Father Thomas was considering.”

  Dale gazed back across the water at the army. More of them piled in from the cliffs, massing along the water, staring vacantly at the asylum. Naked bone jutted from their limbs in the shape of axes, swords, guns, flails, pikes, and hammers.

  “Jesus,” said Dale. He let out a long whistle.

  Above the army, milky clouds parted. Spears of light slanted through. It bathed the sea of dead in a parody of a gospel painting. Jesus rays. The light seemed sick somehow, twisted. It reminded Dale of the eyes of a blind old man, the cataracts filtering everything useful from the light.

  *

  The asylum was more or less the way Dale remembered it, the long, square, unremarkable architecture, sprawling in all directions, home to a billion souls, their only sin: apathy. The gates opened as Marley slung him over his shoulder and carried him out of the boat. Garm, a lhasa apso greeted them. It slobbered and barked from a mop of matted hair, its eyes alight with the hate of a hundred hells.

  “Nothing changes here,” Dale said over Marley’s shoulder.

  “Why should it?” the giant replied.

  Skyla split off from them as they approached the doorway. “I’m going to see my mother,” she said. “I’ll meet you there.”

  To Skyla it was as easy as stepping into a room she chose to be in. To Dale and Marley it was like watching a magic trick. She slipped in and out of view, reappearing in one random window and vanishing behind another. Eventually, she was simply gone. They both exchanged a glance, saying nothing. In the land of the dead, Skyla was the shadow.

  Marley stooped through the front, squeezing his massive shoulders inside. “Not even going to widen the doorway for me?” He bellowed as he twisted his way inside. “Fine way to treat guests.”

  Lotti sat in her admissions desk, staring at the two of them through thick-rimmed black glasses. She offered a congenial smile as Marley approached.

  “Welcome back. Here to check in?”

  “Here to speak to your boss. She in the cafeteria?” Marley charged past, not bothering with the guestbook or any sort of formality. “There’s business she’s been ignoring.”

  “She’s busy but—hey, come back!” Her chair still spinning, Lotti raced across the floor to block his way. She stood in front of him, staring up through her glasses. Behind her the voices and empty plates clanked and clattered in the cafeteria. “You can’t go in there without an invitation.”

  “We’ve already been invited once,” said Marley, sweeping her aside with a
massive arm. He looked down at the receptionist. “Do you even know what’s going on across the water?”

  “That doesn’t change the rules,” she insisted. “You can’t break the rules!”

  Marley ignored her with a deep bark of a laugh and shoved the swinging doors.

  From the corner of his eye, Dale thought he saw something simmer within the receptionist, some ancient magma cauldron of power. Her gaze followed them until the doors blocked her from view. Dale called out, “Sorry.”

  The cafeteria was the same endlessly mundane landscape he remembered, a cross between a hospital lunchroom and a mental ward. He peered over a sea of heads, all milling about in a line for what seemed like miles. People moved around him, shuffling in their slippers and bathrobes. He turned his attention to the servers at the counter. They worked mechanically, scooping colorless slop into trays. It almost seemed to have a rhythm. Endless rhythm. Endless apathy.

  One of the servers, a girl with bobbed black hair turned his way. The mask of white makeup on her face crinkled, the silver ring in her lower lip turning downward with her frown. Their eyes met and Hel spun on her heel.

  Marley lunged forward, Dale swinging against his side.

  “You! Rhia! Get back here!” Marley yelled as he shoved his way through the patients.

  Bodies flew aside, crashing into walls and benches as he lumbered past. The clatter of metal trays and falling silverware rang in his ears. People yelled. They threw food, utensils, and plates at him. Marley ignored them, ignored the hail of oatmeal and corn, focused instead on the swinging double doors. Slamming them open with a fist, he squeezed his bulk through, deaf to Dale’s protests at being jostled.

  The throne room was silent except for the noises of cracking tile and decaying architecture. Outside they could hear the faint calling of Rhia’s name over the countless slithering snakes that composed the walls.

  “You’re in here, Rhia!” He bellowed, his voice bouncing off the walls. “Or is it Hel this time?”

  “Go away!” came a small voice.

  Marley stomped forward. “You’ve got an army at your gates your majesty,” he said. “I thought that as the queen of your little tin cup kingdom, you might find that interesting.”

  “I’m not a queen. I said go away!”

  They found her behind stone bed sat at the center of the room, an ancient thing chipped and crumbling from eons of neglect. Marley saw that the stone pillars too seemed worn, cracked, the steps of the dais rubbed smooth by foot traffic. The chamber looked less and less like a throne room, now an abandoned train depot. Rhia/Hel was standing at the other side, her head tilted to the side, listening.

  “I hear my name,” she said.

  Dale tapped Marley’s shoulder and he lowered the man down to the platform. Dale hand-walked over to Rhia. She stared at him in shock, black lips parting in a frown.

  “What happened to you?” she asked Dale. Then up at Marley, seeing the stitched slash on his arm. “And you?”

  “What happened to you?” Dale asked. “And what happened to this place? It hardly looks like the throne room of a goddess anymore.”

  “I’m not a real goddess any more than you are a real cripple and he isn’t a real giant. Reality is only as good as you have the energy to believe in it. I only have so many things I can give my attention to. Keeping an aesthetic appeal to a room I hardly visit falls low on my list. It’s hard enough to do without being reminded of my shortcomings, or my name by you two.”

  “There’s an invasion underway,” Marley said.

  “I know about it,” she said.

  “You do?”

  She nodded, still looking up at the walls, listening. “Of course I do. Orrin’s flock has been keeping track of everything up there. I’m just surprised that you do.”

  “Not up there. I mean across the river.” Dale could feel the frustration heating his cheeks.

  Rhia blinked. “The river?”

  “Or the lake… the water.” Dale fought the urge to shake her. “There is a standing army waiting to invade across the river. That’s who is calling your name.”

  “I… I don’t understand,” she said. “An army? Here?”

  “We came here with Skyla to warn you.”

  Rhia/Hel shook her head. “Wait… wait, wait, wait. You must be mistaken. Sure, there’s an army. I’ve been watching Rhinewall.”

  “This has nothing to do with Rhinewall.” Dale could hear himself yelling. “We’re trying to tell you there’s about to be an invasion here.”

  Rhia/Hel turned to see him for the first time and winced, her eyes wide. “Dale… What happened to your legs?”

  “That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you. There is a mass of… puppets. They almost killed me. They wounded Marley. They are waiting to invade, probably are already doing so. They are right outside.”

  “You aren’t talking about the Vatican fleet, are you?”

  “What Vatican fleet?”

  Her eyes shifted between them, and she slowly turned to the far wall. A window appeared, displaying the jagged line of foot soldiers, all of them armed and waiting. They stretched for miles, up the sloping landscape, vanishing over the hills. It was a sea of bodies.

  Marley pointed out the window. “That invasion.”

  Rhia only stared, her mouth hanging open. “How? How did they find us?”

  “We were hoping you could tell us.”

  She studied Dale more closely now, Rhia/Hel stepped towards him and looked at his legs. “When did this happen?”

  “At our farm,” Marley explained. “Something broke in, took part of my arm, and part of Dale’s… everything.”

  “It’s the same army that’s out there,” Dale said. “That’s what we’ve come to warn you about.”

  “It… took part of you?” she asked, her eyes glancing out to the army across the shore. Her name could still be heard, ringing out in song from across the water. She shuddered. “What did it ask?”

  “It asked for your real name…” Something flashed in Dale’s mind as he looked at the girl. “Hel…” he said. “They didn’t know your name was Hel. It didn’t just take my legs, it took a part of me, took my knowledge, took my… being…” He looked at Rhia. “They didn’t know your name here was Hel. They were looking for Rhia.”

  A brick fell from the ceiling, shattering on the floor. She looked at it, then at them. “I’m not sure how much longer I can keep this place together.”

  “Why not?” Marley asked.

  A corner of her lip twitched. “I… I made a… miscalculation.”

  “A miscalculation?” Dale looked up at her. “You mean a mistake?”

  “You could say that. I’ve had an awful lot on my plate.”

  Another tile fell from the ornate ceiling. It splintered in a cloud of dust.

  “What sort of mistake?” Dale asked.

  She gave a dry little laugh. “I was joking… sort of…” She turned again to look at the army. “I just didn’t expect them to take it so seriously.”

  “Take what seriously?”

  “The note.”

  Marley crossed his arms. “What note?”

  She didn’t meet his gaze. Her eyes remained fixed on the massing bodies. “We had just destroyed the machine, the Confessional. You two were too busy running through the hallways, killing soldiers… but Skyla brought the Reverend through here. She had promised to rescue him… naïve as that was.”

  “She what?” Dale blinked. “I didn’t even know she could bring people with her.”

  The girl turned from the edge of her stone bed, acting as though she didn’t even hear him. “But he was too heavy… his shadow… There was talk of him weighing her down on purpose, stranding her… I was worried Skyla might end up trapped here… so I intervened.”

  “You didn’t kill him, did you?” asked Marley.

  “No,” she said in a sheepish voice. “I wanted to send a warning. I wanted them to stop using the Confessionals. I thought maybe if I
could convince them they were wrong, that what they were doing was wrong, I might be able…”

  “To change their minds?” asked Dale.

  She nodded. “Orrin tells me that it didn’t work. They’ve launched an intervention of sorts, it seems.” Rhia/Hel pointed out at the army. “That out there, is one prong of a two-pronged attack.”

  Dale looked out the window. “You mean The Church is behind that?”

  “Probably,” she said. “But that isn’t the only invasion.”

  “But the machine was destroyed,” said Marley. “What does it matter now?” He pointed a finger as big as a club at the window. “How is that happening?”

  She gave him a condescending look. “Did you really think that was the only machine they were capable of using?”

  Dale glared up at her. “You knew there were more.”

  “More!” She laughed bitterly. “They are everywhere! There are so many, we don’t even know where to begin. You think that Rhinewall was the cutting edge of technology? You think that their tinkerers were the grand geniuses of the Vatican?”

  Rhia walked across the room, waving at a wall. An image appeared of a large blue and green sphere. It took Dale a moment to realize they were looking at a globe. Not a hand-drawn map like he was used to seeing—this one turned, rotating in three dimensions.

  “That’s the world?” Dale asked.

  As they watched, a hemisphere of the globe rotated into darkness, the night consuming that half of the planet. Inside the night-covered landmasses, Dale saw lights, millions of them, spreading out like cobwebs over the landscape.

  “What are those?” he asked.

  “Cities,” she said.

  “And that’s where we used to live?”

  She laughed. “No, keep watching.”

  The planet spun as night fell over the oceans, and soon a large black continent came into view. But as night swept over the land, it remained shrouded in darkness.