A Latent Dark

by Martin Kee

  “None, sir,” said the taller of the two. “We checked inside and out.”

  Lyle looked out across the yard at the scattered wood behind the house. He had seen this entire thing before and it was starting to irritate him. Twice now he had come so close catching that little brat. He dropped the stub of the cigarette and crushed it under his heel.

  “Check the barn,” he said.

  The two men marched down the hill and into the barn. Lyle offered the pilot a cigarette, which the man accepted. They looked down at what was left of the two corpses at their feet. One soldier was untouched except for three neat, clean holes bored through his chest. The other man’s torso was hollowed out from the neck down. All that was left was a waxy husk—no blood, no entrails, the flesh simply ceased to be.

  “I assume we wouldn’t have come this far if you didn’t think we had power to make it to Rhinewall,” he said.

  “We might be able to drift in a little on the breeze if we have to, but I think we can make it without a problem.”

  “You’re a fine pilot Randy,” he said, kicking a small rock under the vehicle.

  “Thank you sir.”

  “Wife and kids?”

  “Still single, I’m afraid.” The pilot grinned, the top half of his face impossible to read under the instruments.

  “Ahh, well,” said Lyle. “All in good time I suppose.“

  Movement from the barn broke off their conversation. The soldiers were returning with a third man. He staggered between them, as if they were friends dragging him home from a night of heavy drinking. His arm hung around one of the men’s necks. His other arm was a twisted mess that didn’t seem to fit anywhere.

  So this is the informant, thought Lyle. The man’s piteous outline was unmistakable from the description in the note. Quite a sacrifice on Sarah’s part.

  He reached a gloved hand out and patted the man’s face, grabbing him by the chin. Dale’s head lolled from side to side.

  “Wake up,” he said and slapped the man harder.

  As if drugged, the man’s eyes rolled from the back of his head. He gave Lyle a confused look. His mouth hung open stupidly.

  “I take it you’re the informant,” he said, hissing at Dale. Recognition struck the man like a cold shower. His eyes suddenly focused on the Reverend and his entire body seemed to jerk awake.

  “She…“ he stammered. “They… they were… I had her.”

  “You had who?”

  “The girl… I… I had her… Soldiers were following me.” Dale became more alert and stood upright, brushing dust from his clothes.

  “I’m waiting,” said Lyle.

  Dale cleared his throat. “The girl, I followed her, Sarah told me there was a reward on her head.”

  Lyle nodded.

  “I know her,” said Dale. “I think I got her to trust me, but there were two idiot soldiers following me. They made a hell of a racket—”

  Dale stopped as he noticed the two corpses for the first time. Lyle reached a hand around his neck and grabbed him by his hair. Dale winced.

  “Those idiot soldiers are dead because of you,” Lyle hissed into his face.

  “They… they were starting to spook her,” Dale said, trying to explain. “I confronted them and told them to back off. I thought I could probably get her to trust me. They could move in when I signaled them.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I… I fell asleep.”

  The Reverend released him with a rough shove and took a step back. The man was almost too stupid for words.

  “You fell asleep.”

  “Look,” said Dale, the words spilling out now. “She knows me. She didn’t feel comfortable sleeping in a strange place. I thought that if I could keep her there, you know. Just coax her. Maybe let her feel secure. We agreed to sleep in shifts. I was going to signal the soldiers when she was asleep.”

  “So what happened?”

  “She won the coin toss.”

  “The what?” Lyle laughed incredulously.

  “She insisted we flip a coin to decide who went first,” Dale said. “I lost.”

  Lyle laughed in his face. “Oh, I’ll say.” He slapped Dale’s shoulder and squeezed. His hand was like a vice made of bone.

  Dale chuckled nervously.

  “So,” Lyle said. “You thought you could trick this girl into sleeping alone in a house and then split the reward with the soldiers. Do I have that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then you decided to risk the entire operation on a coin toss.”

  Dale only nodded.

  “Are you a gambling man, mister…”

  “Dale.”

  “…Mister Dale?”

  “I was,” said Dale. “I don’t anymore.”

  “Except when you might be on the verge of doing something that matters,” Lyle said.

  “Look,” Dale said, “Sarah told me that she knew the girl and that you were looking for her. She mentioned a reward and said something about her being missing. If I’d known—”

  “If you had known what?” Lyle said. “If you had known that you were betting against a witch?”

  Dales confused eyes narrowed.

  “If you had known that you’d end up getting these men killed? If. You. Knew. What?” said Lyle, his face inches from the man.

  “Look,” Dale said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m sorry about your soldiers, but they must have known there’d be risks or they wouldn’t have followed.”

  Lyle slapped him. Dale’s mouth fell slack. The soldiers grabbed him by the arms.

  “Those men did what they had to do,” said Lyle. “They were doing exactly what they needed to do until you ruined everything for them.” Spittle flew from his lips.

  Dale said nothing and Lyle stood back again, arms crossed.

  “What happened then?” said Lyle. “How did they die?”

  Dale’s face went white as he cleared his throat.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said.

  “Try me.”

  The entire evening had become a murky jumble of confusing images to Dale. As he described the scene to the Reverend, his mind organized the information in the only way that made any sense, the way one makes sense of dreams upon waking.

  “I think there might have been an animal living in the house.”

  “An animal.”

  Dale nodded. “A bear or something. I don’t know. It was huge… it attacked them and I got away. I hid in the barn.” His eyes shifted uncomfortably between Lyle and the corpses.

  If it had been anyone but the Reverend, they might have believed Dale. After all, who would believe that a giant shadow had leaked from the corner of the room and killed both men, ignoring the girl as she ran past? Dale didn’t even believe it himself.

  Lyle listened intently to the man as he continued to come up with excuses and stories. When Dale finally fell silent, Lyle looked at the soldiers on either side of him.

  “I want you to burn the house,” he said. “But first, pay Mr. Dale here. I’ll tell the lab to expect three bodies.”

  The man in the white suit turned without another word and grabbed the ladder leading up to the aerolore. The anchor made a loud metallic clunk and retracted back into the hovering framework. Dale looked down at the two soldiers and winced.

  How are they not even bleeding, he thought. Was that really a bear—

  Dale was distracted from the observation as a bayonet blade emerged from his chest, pushing the fabric up in a crimson tent.

  Three bodies, he thought just before he collapsed.

  Chapter 25

  A thick, gnarled oak rose out of the fog that morning and Skyla collapsed against it, panting and sweaty. She took one last look behind her, still seeing the house in her mind, still imagining that something was chasing her. It was there every time she blinked—a lumbering hulk.

  Instead she saw nothing but fog, heard nothing but the rustle of soft grass. There w
as a crook within the roots of the tree, deep and twisted. Hefting her backpack from her shoulders, Skyla slipped down into the hole, curled into a ball, and slept.

  *

  She slid through a warm, dark tunnel, the ground squeezing her painlessly through the earth. It felt like being born, she thought, but with less screaming. The ground rushed up suddenly, meeting her feet with a tenuous realism. She stood at the top of a hill, overlooking a vast, gray valley. The air was so clear she found she could see the opposite hillside, dozens or perhaps hundreds of miles away.

  A crowd of people stood facing her, their numbers stretching off over the slope of the hill and out of sight. So varied were their outfits, she wondered if she hadn’t stumbled into a costume party by accident.

  --which is silly because I am dreaming this.

  They looked at her with anticipation, waiting for her to say something, all their eyes pleased yet surprised that she was there before them.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi,” the crowd echoed back. Skyla shifted her weight self-consciously.

  She turned and saw the building again, infinitely massive and square, shimmering against gray mountains like a mirage before vanishing over the horizon. It was surrounded by still black water. A wolf howled from somewhere in its courtyard.

  When she turned again to the crowd a man had approached her. He wore a strange canvas hat which conformed to his head, then extended above his eyes with a long, round bill.

  “Are you real?” he asked. There were a few nods from behind him.

  Skyla couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah,” she said. “I am. Are you?”

  The man in the red and white cap had such a comical look on his face, she couldn’t help but giggle at him.

  “Yes,” he said.

  He leaned toward her and extended a hand. She shook it and saw the man smile. He had a wonderful, handsome smile.

  “What’s that building?” she asked.

  “That’s where we all have to go,” he said, releasing her hand and placing his in his pocket. “We’re all waiting for the boatman.”

  “Why are there so many of you?”

  “Well, he hasn’t been by for a long time. We’ve been waiting for years, some of us even longer.”

  A woman yelled up through the crowd, “The soul eater got him!”

  Several heads nodded in unison.

  “What’s a soul eater?” she asked. “And where is this place?”

  The man looked at the people near him, and they shrugged. When his gaze met hers again, he frowned. “You mean you aren’t dead?”

  “What? No! At least, I hope not,” she said.

  Her hand went to her face and she could feel the goggles now, closed and sealed over her eyes.

  “The soul eater,” said the man. “That’s up for debate. If you asked some, they would say it’s a god. Others believe it is a machine.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s a little of both, to be honest,” he said.

  “Is that why you can’t get to… that building?”

  He nodded.

  “What’s in there?” she asked, turning to look down over the cliff and across the water. Cold grey clouds swirled over the top of the structure. They were in the shape of footsteps, it seemed to her.

  “Eternity,” said the man.

  “You mean heaven?” she asked.

  He only shrugged.

  The earth shook and she turned back toward the crowd, seeing the way they too rippled along with the shockwave. They acted as if they didn’t even notice. A few heads turned and pointed into the distance casually, the way tourists might point at a landmark or a passing airship. As they turned, their shadows fanned out behind them like flared feathers. They were pointing at a giant.

  It was as tall as a mountain, its head lost in clouds miles up. Massive birdlike creatures circled it just below the mist, diving and twisting. Skyla calculated that from this distance, the birds might have been as large as buildings or airships.

  “That?” she asked.

  “No,” the man chuckled, turning back to her. “That’s nothing. So do you think you can stop it?”

  “Stop what?”

  “The soul eater. We simply can’t get to eternity while it exists. It is consuming everything. Look.” He pointed off beyond the horizon.

  Beyond the titan was something she hadn’t noticed before. The horizon was closer in some areas of the landscape, simply falling off into blackness. Except this wasn’t blackness or darkness, it was simply nothing, less than vacuum and night. This was emptiness so vacant it defied adequate description.

  The massive golem took another step, its leg moving ponderously over the ground, kicking boulders and decapitating low hills as a shockwave rippled out from where it stepped. She saw trees—full-grown redwoods—not half as tall as its big toe. The wave rolled through the crowd and Skyla felt her stomach lurch as she rose several feet into the air and sank back down again. That one foot would have crushed the entire Industrial Wedge, she realized.

  The head and shoulders passed between clouds and a shaft of radiant light revealed details that Skyla had not noticed at first. Thick hairs and moles the size of houses coated the rough shoulders, which were as cracked and irregular as granite. Skyla gasped as the sunlight passed through the clouds, illuminating a section of flaking skin.

  Skyla saw people. They were woven together, creating a layer of bodies that coated its hide, giving it texture. It was people she saw, not hairs and flakes of skin. They waved gently in the wind as the titanic creature lumbered across the landscape, slow as a thunderhead.

  “Why is it covered in people?” she asked.

  “It’s people all the way through,” he said, smiling.

  The ground shook again and she saw one of the birds circle away from the massive shoulder. It came towards her, tumbling through the air with massive swipes of its huge wings. As the raven flew over the crowd its shadow eclipsed them sending the world into darkness.

  Orrin shouted, “Run!”

  *

  She sat upright, panting with no idea where she was. She cringed, expecting to smash her head against rafters that were no longer there. Pulling the goggles up with a click, she squinted, dazed.

  The dry riverbed vanished over the horizon where the ocean sparkled like a million gems. It stretched to infinity in either direction, its glassy blue surface marred only by the small white waves just visible at the edges of the beach. A circular city wall similar to the one surrounding Bollingbrook, cut into the ocean and vanished underneath, giving the city of Rhinewall a crescent shape. It was filled with crisscross patterns of buildings and streets.

  Tiny ships sailed into and out of its port, leaving thin wisps of white water that spread out into lazy V shapes. On one wedge rested a copper dome on a hill, its surface a green patina from years of sea spray and fog. Something protruded from the dome like a telescope.

  But Skyla was unable to get a good look before a hand covered her mouth.

  She never heard the footsteps that crept up behind her. She never heard the door of the carriage slam. Later she would think back and surmise that it was, in fact, the door slamming that woke her. Or maybe it was the footsteps of the soldier that translated to the titan in her dream. Maybe Orrin really had tried to warn her.

  As the black-plated hand covered her mouth and muffled her screams, all Skyla could think about was how she wished she had never stopped running.

  Chapter 26

  The forest gave way to strands of eucalyptus trees which shed their bark along the ground in dried, papery husks. As they parted and the ocean finally appeared, John gave a sigh of relief. He’d honestly wondered if they hadn’t been going in circles.

  “There used to be a railway here,” said James. “Ages ago. It connected the city to Bollingbrook.”

  “It went through the Wilds?”

  James gave him a slight grin and then took a swig of water from his canteen.


  “It became unusable even before the Wilds appeared. There was plenty of tension already and when Rhinewall began trading more and more through their ports, it was forgotten. The Wilds just ensured it would never get repaired again. Once the Wilds appeared over a decade ago, the archbishop of Bollingbrook held that it was the result of the Rhinewall Tinkerer’s Guild meddling with things they didn’t understand.”

  “That seems counterproductive,” said John.

  James shrugged. “Rhinewall does its trading by sea now. They bring in goods from the Tzarlands, India, Nippon. They aren’t hurting.”

  John felt the rough fabric of his shirt, made in Bollingbrook. He followed James down the slope, slipping on the loose ground as rocks and dirt raced him to the beach below. He landed on his ass next to James, who stood staring at the ocean.

  “It’s something isn’t it?” said James.

  “It is.” John wiped dirt from his hands and looked at the man.

  James faced the vast expanse of water with the determination of a man confronting an old foe, his body tense, his hands balled into fists. The muscles in his jaw were taut and flexing. After a minute of silence, with nothing but the roar of crashing waves, James took a step forward. Stopped.

  “Are you alright?” John asked.

  James hesitated then nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving the water. He lifted his arm and pointed up the coast. There John saw the wall of the city, a vast vertical slab rising a hundred feet or more from the water. Sharp spikes and clusters of pipes and rods lined the outside. The city ended a few hundred feet into the ocean where it sank dramatically, its walls standing guard against any entrance by land.

  “Looks like about ten or fifteen miles,” said James. “But they’ll never allow anyone in who just wandered in from the beach. That or we’ll be confused as refugees from Lassimir if any of them made it this far. I’d rather not end up in a prison camp.”

  “They’d do that?”

  James nodded. “Rhinewall isn’t the place it once was. It’s been twenty years since I’ve even been this close.”

  “But they’re part of the Catholic Diocese,” said John. “I’m sure I could talk to someone. I’d just need to get in to see—”