Half Discovered Wings

by David Brookes

  So there was a sky in Hell.

  He’d never expected it, never really thought about it. But a sky there was, black and revolving as if he was inside an eye of a tornado, looking up. Clouds spun head hundreds of miles above. He found it easier to think when he wasn’t looking up, and so lowered his gaze and examined the forsaken landscape around him.

  Pain in him and all around him. What on Earth was this place? For miles and miles, people writhing, screaming … They hung from huge spiny bushes, like the mice he had seen speared by butcher birds onto thorns; they hung, chains pulling their feet, from racks that were made of bloody bones. He saw skulls, alive and screaming. Some still had the luxury of their eyes, and others even had skin. They were the lucky ones; some people hung from nooses by the neck, swinging, choking but never dying; others were lanced by spikes fixed to the ramparts of huge black-stoned towers, crying out. They clutched at the bloody spikes through their chests, or groins, or faces. Every wound was open, raw, wet. All around him: pain.

  Teague was inside a huge courtyard with distant walls on two sides, taller than the hollowed-out skyscrapers he’d seen as a child, black and forboding. They were barely visible through the haze and forest of sharpened steel poles.

  Behind him the courtyard was open, and disappeared into a starless void.

  A whorl of shadows swept around him, and he watched them wind upward from the ground until they were all he could see, making his dead heart beat like a hammer against his ribs, his dry mouth crack with fear. The shadow consumed him until his vision accounted for nothing in such darkness, and it fell inside him, through his mouth, his eye-less sockets, up his nose, into his ears, and it was like a new heart within him.

  I am Charos, the shadow told him in whispers. I keep this realm.

  ‘You are Erebis?’ he asked, referring the Devil of his near-forgotten youth.

  I am his servant. I harvest.

  Teague didn’t need to ask what Charos harvested. He had never heard of such a creature in the tales. The priest who lived in Niu Correntia had never said the name before, the name of the shadow-being in the Devil’s servitude that reaped the new souls, which filtered through the ether from the world of the living. Charos was in him now, it was him, and yet he knew that simultaneously it was inside a thousand other souls in this great courtyard, by the two towers of the castle of Hadentes.

  The courtyard of the dead, it told him. Where the souls are reborn.

  Suddenly his thoughts of injustice were shattered, and pain consumed him. His soul was being torn into pieces—

  You deserve Hell, Charos said in his head. You are Hell. This is where you belong.

  ‘I—’

  You deserve Hell!

  The shadow filled him wholly, and he felt his will vanish. His soul or whatever insubstantial matter he was made up of now began to dissipate, crack into pieces, and he was multiple-Teague; four separate shadowmen pulled apart by Charos and encased in darkness, each equal and the same. Each of them looked at their own hands and saw smoke and shadow, somehow pulled at by a windless atmosphere.

  They looked up and Charos stood before them. Clawed feet dug between the stones, closed wings hung like a cape from its shoulders. It separated itself and took the four Teagues in different directions. Every Teague had the same mind, and shared the same eyes.

  ~

  The Tall Tower, said Charos, which joins the walls of the castle of Hadentes.

  The first of the four versions of Teague was led through the torturous courtyard, amidst screaming bodies. Charos pulled at his soul, dragging it through fire and coal. A semi-corporeal chain linked them. Up the stairs to the ramparts they went, black slimy steps lined with living marrow and tormented souls, twisted creatures kept from a restful death by the demons that tortured them. Every time the pain became bearable enough to stop screaming a new hell seemed to beset them, something to provoke even louder screams.

  The whole place was spiked with gnarled nails that hung craggy from floor to ceiling. Teague walked by them, not touching the nasty black things until a body – one of the many that surrounded them – was flung from across the stairwell by something and forced him back … They were not spikes on the wall but severed fingers, their nails sharp, twisted, and bloodied. Souls all around him were being tormented by innumerable dark miscreants, obscure and spiny, or blood-red and dripping, or made of fire or smoke or slime.

  Blood streaked his naked legs, and it wasn’t all his own; the skin on his feet was raw from glass or rocks on the ground. The pain seemed intolerable. Everlasting agony already a part of him, Teague was forced along the west wall to the first tower and then around it, up the southern wall, which was awash with wet blood that his smoky form swam through, until they reached the Tall Tower

  The eternal residence of the Lustful.

  The blood had no effect on him, though he could smell it. His curse had been taken away for this place, and he was no longer a true theriope, drawn into anthropomorphic transformation by the scent of gore. He was merely an ethereal representation of himself; a soul? A self-generated figment? Whatever he was, he was far from his body, made of only his thoughts and his pain.

  Charos forced him onto the huge spiral staircase and pulled him down the twisted steps, through the darkness and mass of twisting bodies.

  ‘How do they all fit?’ Teague asked.

  It is always big enough for them. They all experience Hell, as they should.

  ‘Why should they?’

  A new and sudden pain crackled down his body, through what his mind still called his bones, through his bloodstream, every vessel. His arteries, his veins, his capillaries, all flooded with pain; no, not just pain, but fear. It flooded Teague’s being until he was made of it, like he was made of the pain.

  Do not ask questions. You cannot convince me of anything other than what I was made for. I harvest. I do not consider such things. I am Charos.

  He wanted to fall to his knees with agony, but the black creature before him wouldn’t grant him that; his dark guide, his steersman through the underworld, and never-relenting tormentor.

  Remember! said Charos. Remember your sins, and be penitent.

  ~

  A week before the death of his mother, the young William Teague leant back against the cold alley wall and looked up, past the bricks and tile, at the moon. That near-round disc eyed him unremittingly, as if in accusation.

  ‘I’m doing nothing wrong,’ Teague said, crossing his arms in defiance.

  The alleyway was narrow and dark. No light could slant down between the rooftops to meet him. He was alone and in shadow, but – thankfully – a second shadow soon joined him.

  ‘Lucia,’ he said, as she approached.

  She came quickly, brushing down her bodice and pursing her lips as she met him. ‘William,’ she whispered. ‘Here again?’

  ‘I couldn’t stay away.’ Taking her waist, he pulled her to him, and breathed in her scent: perfume and leaves.

  With his fingers curved around her thighs, her painted lips pressed against his in that alleyway under the moon. Her scent and touch galvanised his senses, enflamed his blood and nerves. She allowed herself to be pressed against the cold wall, breathless, her legs around his waist.

  ‘You know, these aren’t my normal working hours,’ she said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Still, so long as you’re carrying your purse, you’re worth staying up for.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  Lucia smiled. ‘What’s the matter? You sound like you don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘Kiss me.’

  Her smile did not sit right on her face whenever he asked her to kiss him. She usually made a rule about no kissing. Maybe it was the moon this time, shining on a face already beginning to glimmer with sweat. They hadn’t even started. He wondered if she had come from another job, another man somewhere.

  She held his face in her hands, aware that his thoughts were drifting. She hate
d it when he was in her, but not thinking about her. ‘Hey. We don’t have to talk. Just do what you do best.’

  Right. Right, what he did best. She looked at him with such narrow-eyed passion and hunger that whatever it was that beat inside his chest, whether he thought it dead or alive, suddenly was caught up in that same fire. Already, Teague knew, he was lost.

  ~

  In the realm that the Father had called Hadentes, Teague’s second soulform had been led away from the courtyard to the black western wall that adjoined the Tall tower. Here they stopped, and Teague looked up. The ramparts were hidden in the swirling black clouds above them.

  Charos held up a clawed hand and a space in the wall dissolved. Beyond it Teague saw a gaping wilderness, red with fire, and right in front of him stood a gargantuan black tower some distance away, taller even than the walls they had just passed through. Molten metal dripped from the cracks, which quickly solidified into terrifying shapes reminiscent of deathmasks and broken skeletons.

  He was led through the wilderness for what seemed like days, and the tower didn’t seem to get closer. They arrived at a gaping chasm, the true depths of which Teague couldn’t determine, for thick fog lingered at its edges like water. Charos led him to its nearest bank, where a small boat made of black bones waited for them.

  The river Achronne, said Charos. I will lead you across.

  The boat seemed to be painted with concentrated pain; touching it made Teague feel dizzy with it, and again he was sick, twice by his feet.

  Row, ordered Charos.

  ‘There’s nothing to row with,’ Teague managed, choking on the burn from his own hot bile. The anguish wouldn’t go away, despite the grogginess.

  Charos held out another claw and Teague’s smoky body exploded into a torrent of blood and organs. His bones spun and collected themselves to form two bloody oars, which lowered into his hands. His chest gaped, but yet he survived; he was still half-alive.

  Row, said Charos.

  ‘I can’t…’

  You have already paid me the fee. You may as well make your way across. More pain will greet you if you do not row.

  ‘What fee…?’

  Charos held out its cracked hand, and in it were Teague’s bloody fingernails.

  Row!

  For eternity Teague rowed with no strength, and inside him he felt the additional pain of hunger that had been steadily growing since his arrival. He didn’t bother asking for food. They crossed over the river of mist, the depth of which could not be gauged; if he stepped out he might set foot on the same rocky ground that the cliff walls were made out of, or he might tumble for all eternity down a chasm of spikes and fire that would burn his soul until the armies of heaven saved him after aeons of suffering.

  The one hope they missed, Teague tried not to think: the hope that the Final Battle will be waged and we’ll all be set free, or vaporised.

  Charos burst into flame and was suddenly all around him, a hundred red eyes admonishing.

  That false hope will be gone soon! Do not think it again. There is no end. Settle yourself into your torment; it will be all you ever know!

  The bank was finally reached, and the boat of bones vanished. The oars disappeared from his grasp, and while he climbed onto the rocky embankment he doggedly clung to his organs.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked.

  The second tower: the Square Tower of Sinners. Here reside the Gluttonous: those that grow fat on their greed, as you did; those that horde, the miserly; those that hunger for more, the insatiable; and those whose hunger never stops, the obese.

  All around him were creatures that sat with lolling tongues, who clutched swollen bellies and belched garbled laughter. Some fed on the souls that inhabited the towers, growing ever more grotesquely fat, and others broke the souls apart, hoarding the pieces and scowling with gored lips.

  ‘I have no place in this tower,’ Teague said. ‘Please…’

  You think that you do not belong here? Maybe your memories betray you.

  Perhaps Charos was right. He was in complete agony, and he could see and feel the experiences of the other three Teagues. His pain was fourfold, the others having found their eternal home in other places, and suffering for their sins. But gluttonous? Had Teague been insatiable in life? He had been a healthy man. His parents had both been hard working, especially his father, and his physical appearance had shown that. Teague himself had once possessed a physique that was impressive to any man or woman, and he’d known it. Now his body was gone, most likely still rotting in the same place that Gabel had left it, a hole steaming in the head, burned right through and cauterised. His flesh had probably been half eaten away by now, by the bats and the rodents.

  How long had be been in Hadentes? How long had his mortal vessel been lying there, in the mud and leaves, in the forest by the town? Had Gabel felt anything for the loss of his friend, muttered any last words? Had there been a funeral?

  Of course not! Why would there be?

  You are learning! said Charos. Like everybody here, you learn fast. You are learning that your iniquities carry consequences.

  ‘I already knew that they would,’ he groaned. ‘I knew it…’

  But you didn’t stop?

  ‘No.’

  Why not?

  ‘Because…’ And there Teague’s thoughts stumbled. ‘Because … that’s not who I was.’

  Then Charos surrounded him in smoke and laughed. Remember your sins, and be penitent!

  ~

  Teague felt drained. Not of energy, though it was sapped, but of money; he felt that he was growing poor, whilst Lucia was growing rich. She’d asked him to return to the alley on several occasions, and he had. Had she only wanted him for his money? She knew how he felt. Was she taking advantage of him, or genuinely wanting to see more of him?

  He clicked his tongue as he waited, watching the fading sunlight. He was in his ancestral home, which the Teague bloodline had occupied for over a dozen generations, going back even to before the Conflict. Niu Correntia had been built around that isolated home and two others, one of which was home to the current mayor’s family. The other belonged to the church.

  The previous month had been a strange one. He had no idea what he had become, the “gift” his mother had given him. Now long dead and buried, she lay in a small plot of land in the corner of the church graveyard closest to the Teague household, not thirty feet from where he was sitting. Grass had begun to grow over the grave, and as Teague looked out the window in that direction, two small flowers quivered in the cold wind between the sparse blades of green.

  When she’d called him to her deathbed he’d expected a frail old woman dying from tuberculosis. Instead he’d found a woman full of strength and power, beckoning him to her side, whispering so that he would have to lean closer … After she’d sunk her teeth into his shoulder, she’d said:

  ‘Blood for blood. Smell and transform. Taste and transform. The gift your father left me I now leave to you.’

  In the month or so that passed since her death, Teague had been through the painful transformation three times. Each of those nights he sat in his father’s old oaken chair and looked at his furred hands, watched the light reflected in his smooth black claws, clicking his toothy jaws together as he swiftly changed from man to beast.

  He’d felt certain urges, but had passed them off as grief. He had been in such pain the whole week after his mother’s demise. It felt like his heart was being plucked from his chest with each breath.

  The third transformation had been much later than the last, after he cut his forearm whilst repairing the roof. The smell of blood, even his own, was all it took.

  That third night was when he recognised the pain for what it was: a hunger for something he had never tasted. He thought that it might be blood, or meat, for was that not what animals ate? But he had sniffed the salted meat from the cellar, and it wasn’t even close. Not meat, even the fresh kind.

  He had put his claws to his head at
the thought. It was an evil notion, the eating of another’s flesh … But he had let it go, consumed by joy that the hunger was for something else. But for what did he hunger…?

  The moon grew smudged and waxy as it reached the horizon, and the sun rose in its place. Teague had reverted back, knowing now his deadline as he felt his face, feet and hands become human again, and the fur and crab-like plating darken and drop from his skin.

  But now, as Teague thought over all this, the sun began to set once more. He thought of his mother, and his eyes flicked over to the bloody handkerchief that he’d nailed to the wall beside the mirror.

  The light turned red, then disappeared. The sky turned a deep navy blue, and the clouds sat quietly amidst the darkness, still reflecting the last hint of dying sunlight.

  Then blackness. The leaves outside rustled in the wind as Teague waited in the chair. He had moved it a few hours before, so that he could watch his own transformation in the mirror, something that hadn’t occurred to him that whole month in which he’d been human. Maybe his mind grew superior as it approached that of a theriope.

  He snatched up the blood-soaked handkerchief and pushed it against is face, breathing in the smell of iron and rot. Teague felt a twinge in his stomach, a tiny knot that began to unwind, like the uncoiling of a serpent. Itchiness of the skin, burning behind the eyes. His hands began to shake violently until – suddenly – the fourth transformation started.

  Pain: like electricity down his spine and in his arms, then legs; like static that burned between his muscles. Convulsions … The gland under his tongue went into overdrive and saliva sprayed across the room as he tried to keep seated through the anguish. His eyes rolled back in his head. His gums bled as the teeth grew, pushing through gaps too small for them.

  An endless minute later, Teague felt his heart, now shaped differently, begin to slow its beat. His eyes still stared at his reflection and, though what he had seen had shocked him, most of the metamorphosis appeared to have been internal. His bones had turned to dust inside him and moved in clouds to different positions, and the skin had changed shape and stretched in new places. Now the theriope looked him in the eye from inside the glass, and all Teague saw was his mother in the last moment of her death: vulpine and savage, armour-plated and rat-tailed.