by Adam McOmber
A cold fear spiked my gut as I watched June descend the stairs on the day of the fights. Her long white dress brushed the toes of her walking boots. And the rubber breathing mask glittered like a jewel over her mouth and nose.
“June—what are you doing?” I said.
She smiled at me through the clear rubber mask. “You always wanted me to get out of the house, Freddy.”
“Something’s going to happen, June, sometime soon,” I said, thinking of Hounds’ plan. “And I don’t want—”
At that point, my father came in, loud in his work boots. He stared at June, pointing his maniacal pencil at her like a scepter. “You’re wearing my property, girl,” he said.
She smiled at him. I’d never seen June smile so much. “That’s right, Daddy. And if you shut up about it, I’ll sing your stupid bear songs with you on the way to the show. How about that?”
The three of us became an odd procession, passing under Ethelsgate, singing together about Sackerson the blind and Harry Hunks the marauding god while my father made triangles in the air with his pencil, as if directing a marching band.
9.
The Gardens was packed that day. I only got glimpses of Mayor Munsen in his dark suit and necker-tie, gray hair rippling back from his brow in an elegant display. He made his famous gestures as he passed through the crowds, speaking to what he called his “citizens.” Even in that drunken turmoil, Munsen held sway, believing so firmly in order that everyone around him momentarily believed in it too. A fight broke out between two filth-covered men, and Munsen simply walked over to them, put his hands on their shoulders, and asked them to be brothers, which, amazingly, caused them to stop.
June nearly swooned at this. “The mayor’s going to surprise us,” she said. “He’ll show us how to change. Maybe even today.”
“I don’t think the mayor understands anything about change,” I said darkly, scanning the crowd for Hounds.
The bear scheduled to compete that day was Harry Hunks, which made sense. Only the biggest and the best for Mayor Munsen. God of the people should meet god of the bears. When the Bear Master’s men led Harry forth, my flesh turned cold. One of his paws was the size of my head, and one of his black eyes was the size of my open mouth. A cloud of flies traveled with him, and he swung his big head from left to right, trying to knock the buzzing creatures away. The men held him in pole-harnesses while Hounds worked to fasten the collar at its maximum extension around the bear’s thick neck. When Hounds was done, he turned and seemed to see me in the crowd. My father and I always sat in the same spot, low and to the left, for better view of the ring. Blood sometimes fell on us like rain. Hounds did not nod or gesture. He only stared, perhaps remembering how I’d touched him in the fallows. The hook above his eye glittered. And I was seized by fear.
“Is that the one you like?” June asked, the sound of her voice muffled by the rubber breathing mask. “He is attractive, Freddy.”
This was the day. Of course, it was. Munsen was here. The crowd was larger. This was the best day to let them go.
“June,” I yelled above the cheers, grabbing her hand, “We have to go.”
June craned her neck, searching for Munsen, stopping only long enough to say, “Don’t be stupid. I haven’t had my chance to talk to the mayor yet. I want to wait until after he sees the fight.”
“There isn’t going to be a fight,” I yelled, pulling at her.
I looked back toward Hounds. He was gone. And something had spooked the Bear Master’s men.
A woman holding a jaundiced baby started to scream. I turned to see blind Sackerson rise from the crowd, nostrils flaring, jaws agape. His eyes were nothing but two hairy slits in his skull. Sackerson stood on two legs and roared, and at first people seemed unable to comprehend what was happening. This was Sackerson, after all. Sacred Son. They’d watched him week after week from afar, and yet now he stood among them, close enough to smell his barn rot and see the shining insects in his hair.
“Fucking shit,” my father yelled, standing from the bench and dropping the maniacal pencil.
Sackerson reached forward with one big paw, taking a chunk out of the screaming woman’s face. The bloody hole seemed a second mouth, also screaming. Amazingly she held onto the baby, crushing it to her chest as she backed away. I finally managed to pull June out of her seat. Her body had gone stiff. “Freddy,” she said, “what—”
“Don’t talk,” I yelled. “No time.”
And then we both saw Munsen himself, pushed by the swell of the crowd into the arena where Stone, newly escaped from his own cage, towered. The bear swayed and Munsen swayed. Munsen’s mouth hung open in surprise. Then in a single smooth motion, Stone took Munsen’s lower jaw off his face, and the mayor was suddenly a fountain of his own blood. His orating hands hung limp at his sides. His fine necker-tie became a sluiceway. He remained, silently staring at us all for a moment, and then a sound rose from the exposed hole of his throat, louder than all the other screams in the crowd put together. The sound increased to a near-inhuman volume. It was such a frightening noise. Even Stone was momentarily stunned. Munsen’s body had become a siren, transmitting a final message. He wasn’t from the city. He didn’t belong in the city. How had the city done this to him? And then Stone was on the mayor, tearing.
“Run,” I yelled to June before I saw the crowd had already swept her away. I panicked, fighting bodies to look for her. And finally I saw. June had been pushed from the arena and was running across the fallows toward the four white office buildings that stood in a half-circle, faster than I’d ever seen her run, white dress raised above her knees, hair snapping against the wind. She was closely pursued by the vast form of Hairy Hunks, god of the bears. His oceans of flesh rose and fell as he bounded, front legs leaving the ground, then back legs, roaring at June in excitement. Half the metal collar still hung from his neck.
Without pause, I scooped up Father’s maniacal pencil because it was the only thing within reach that might be useful as a weapon, and as the crowd fell away, I raced after her. June slammed through the glass bank of doors on Sanaco 1 at the far end of the fallows. Harry Hunks shattered the glass as he shoved his body through the entrance. A lifetime seemed to pass as I ran, moving across the fallows, breath scorching my chest. Screams rose from the Gardens behind me, but Sanaco 1 was silent, all cracked walls and broken windows, blue letters hanging from the side. I hoped this place was not June’s tomb. I had time to wonder about my father. Had he been killed? And Hounds—where had he gone after he’d set loose the bears? Then I was at the broken door, refusing to slow as I crossed the threshold.
10.
It’s hard to find the language to explain what I found in the lobby of Sanaco 1. Spaces in the city were built on a human scale and were meant to house humble acts of living. The largest room I’d ever been in was the dining hall at a local eating house called the Golden Stag, but that was dwarfed by Sanaco’s lobby. At first, the space struck me as not a room at all, but a new kind of outdoors. There was no end—just a cold sprawl of white and gray tile, buckled in places from what looked like old flood damage. Plants had broken through the floor, long weedy growths that had turned white from lack of sun. Water stains ran down the walls, and great banks of lights had fallen from the ceiling, shattering to pieces among the plants. A mechanical staircase rose from the center of the lobby, leading up to what appeared to be a second level with a floor of glass. And when I looked at the staircase, I thought escalator, though I’d certainly never heard that word before. At a different moment, this kind of word salvage would have driven me mad. How did I know the names of objects that I had no reference for? Had Mother filled my head with names before I could even speak, and now they bubbled up from the cracks?
“Escalator!” I yelled at the metal staircase, though I’d intended to call my sister’s name. Neither June nor Harry Hunks was in the lobby. All remained silent. And then from down a long, broken hall behind the escalator came the echo of sharp footfalls. A w
oman appeared in the distance, and I nearly forgot why I was in Sanaco 1, despite the desperate situation June was in. The woman’s black hair was folded into a careful bun, and she wore a pair of clear plastic eyeglasses that reminded me of June’s breathing mask. Her suit was of the same quality as Munsen’s, undamaged and whole. And instead of looking at me, she read through a thick sheaf of papers as she walked, as though she weren’t afraid of tripping over the debris or plant life in the lobby. As though those things weren’t even there.
“Mamma,” I said, because that’s who it was. It was Mother walking toward me. Yet somehow death had changed her, washed her clean. “Where’s June?” I yelled, feeling an emotion almost like joy.
Mother looked up sharply, surprised by my voice, and though she was still some distance away, she said, “How did you get in here?”
She didn’t recognize me. That much was clear.
She had no idea who she was talking to. I was just a meaningless filth-covered boy standing in the ruined lobby.
“What happened?” I said, running toward her, and when I got close enough, when she saw my face, a wave of what looked like nausea passed over her.
“How?” she said again.
“I’m looking for June,” I said. “June came here.”
The name of her daughter seemed to register, though not in the way it should have. It was more like she’d heard the name long ago. The name was a piece of flickering memory. She sifted through her papers, reading until she found the proper one. Mother read it twice, lips moving, before saying, “June was killed by a bear.”
My throat tightened. “Where?” I said, looking again at the emptiness of the lobby.
She read further. “The Gardens,” she said, “near where she was seated with her father and her brother. Her brother held her head while she died—” Mother looked up slowly. “Freddy?”
“Of course I’m Freddy! Don’t you remember? What happened to you, Mamma?”
Her hand went to her face, exploring the ridge of her eyebrow, the edge of her mouth. “They used my image,” she said, more to herself than to me, “my face. They thought it would be—funny, I suppose.”
“What does that mean? Funny how?” I said, growing angrier now, thinking of June alone somewhere in the awful white monster of a building—alone and afraid, pursued by Harry Hunks.
Mother—except she wasn’t Mother—“the woman” put her papers on the floor and got to her knee in front of me. “My name is Rebecca Stroughton,” she said. “What was your mother’s name?”
“Her name was Mother,” I said, feeling sick with confusion. “Your name is Mother. Mamma.”
She closed her eyes. “And what is your surname, Freddy? What name do we share?”
I didn’t know what a surname was, so I didn’t answer. Instead, I scanned the room again, wondering if June had somehow made it up the silver escalator. “I was at the Gardens,” I said, careful with my words, wanting this woman to understand. “Hounds set loose the bears, and one of them killed Munsen while one of them went after June—”
The mayor’s name appeared to register. “Munsen caused this?” she said.
“The mayor.”
“He isn’t a mayor. He’s just a man who never wanted to play properly.”
“Play what?”
Rebecca Stroughton took a breath. “I sat with you when she died—the woman who looked like me. I sat with you, and I even cried for you. Everyone thought it was ridiculous that I should cry over something like that. But you were so tiny there in your crib—so real.
“Real?” I said.
“You had to see her die. So you would form a certain bond with your sister. That was their reasoning, as much as there’s a proper reason for anything. Someone thought it was a good idea. ‘Let’s see how he grows up if he watches his mother die.’ That was how someone decided to play.”
“Stop saying ‘play!’” I yelled, backing away from her. “What does play mean? What does ‘real’ mean?”
Rebecca Stroughton reached out. I didn’t want to be touched by her. And then, from some distant corner of Sanaco 1, I heard June. She screamed. Then came a roar from Harry Hunks. The world, which had been sinking quickly into shadow, slammed suddenly back into focus.
“Freddy, don’t!” the woman with the Mother face yelled. “There’s no one up there.” But I ran from her, up the escalator, taking two metal stairs at a time, following the sound of June’s voice.
11.
I’m not sure when I gave up searching. It’s strange to think that a place could be as big as Sanaco 1. So many empty rooms. No artifacts. Nothing to name. It was big enough to lose a sister. Even big enough to lose the god of the bears. I’ve tried telling myself that June’s screams, the ones I heard so clearly when I stood in the lobby with Rebecca Stroughton, might have been old echoes, ghosts of sound. But even ghosts are too much to ask for in a place like this. The walls aren’t even soft like Hounds said. No, the walls flicker. And the worst part, the very worst part—there’s nothing behind those walls, not even darkness.
I stopped looking for June. I clicked the pink eraser of my father’s maniacal pencil, releasing lead from the tip. I found a good long space of wall—one that wasn’t flickering (at least not yet)—and I began to write, hoping that one day someone from the city would find my writing. Maybe even Hounds would find it, if he ever realized what he did was wrong.
Maybe Hounds will read this and know something of what happened. How June got lost. How I got lost. How the walls started to flicker and fade. And I couldn’t find my way back downstairs again.
I think the lead is running out now.
I’ve clicked the eraser too many times.
I should stop writing, but I’m afraid because I’m almost certain that when I stop, Rebecca Stroughton will be proven right. That’s why her mother-face looked so sad. She knew. It was clear to her. There isn’t anyone up here. Not even me.
The Re’em
Upon the death of German monk Ulrich Gottard (drowned in the pale and churning waters of the River Lech), a manuscript is delivered to the Roman Curia for consideration by the Holy See. Lord Protector of Cromberg Cloister, Father Benedict, writes in his letter of submittal that he deems the document a distressing epistle due, in part, to its bizarre and heretical nature. “It is most certainly a renunciation,” Benedict writes, “however unusual, however obscure.” What is perhaps most troubling to the Lord Protector though is the reaction the manuscript incites among the younger initiates of his German cloister. Like the drowned monk himself, these youths are said to be delicate and romantic. “Troublesome searchers,” Benedict calls them, “the sort that might wipe tears from their eyes at Matins.” He notes that these “followers” of Gottard began to meet secretly in a dimly lit chamber beneath the cloister’s chapter hall. It was there they attempted an interpretation of the manuscript, treating its passages as if they were some holy writ. The group began referring to itself as the “Re’em.” “These boys cling to one another,” Father Benedict writes. “They hold each other in such dreadful high esteem. And together, they find meaning where meaning is not.”
The narrative set forth in Ulrich Gottard’s manuscript—now well known in higher echelons of the Roman Church—unfolds over a series of days during a visit to the Holy Land soon after his taking of First Orders. An amateur geologist as well as a man of God, Gottard begins his writings with a description of certain curious formations of volcanic alkaline rock in the arid landscape surrounding Mount Sinai in Egypt. Gottard notes that the rocks had, in places, fused together and formed what looked like the arches of a “black and imposing architecture, crumbling on the stony hillside—as if left there by some ancient and unknown race.”
It was in one such glittering vault of blackish stone Gottard encountered the creature that would soon overwhelm his thoughts, as well as the thoughts of his future acolytes. “The animal stood upon its four legs,” Gottard writes, “and was the size and approximate shape of a Calabrese
stallion. Its coat was pale in color. The hair of its pelt was longish, matted. This was not a domesticated beast, and yet its state did not bespeak brutishness either.”
Other attributes of the animal’s appearance were entirely unique. For unlike a horse, the creature was possessed of a cloven hoof and a short leathery tail. It watched the monk’s approach with a serene and thoughtful gaze, “as a sovereign might regard his subject.” The creature’s most striking feature was the single braided horn that protruded from the center of its head. “The horn,” Gottard writes, “in certain light, appeared semi-translucent and at other times, looked as though it was made of stone. There were even moments it gleamed, as if forged of silver.” The monk soon begins referring to the creature as a “re’em”—an animal mentioned in the Vulgate of St. Jerome (Canst thou bind the horned re’em with his band in the furrow? Or will he harrow the valley after thee?)
Upon returning to the village near the mountain, Gottard ascertained that such creatures, though uncommon, were at times sighted in the area. Their home—a valley some distance west of Mount Sinai—was accessible if accompanied by a suitable guide. Gottard, unable to banish the strange encounter from his thoughts, produced coins from his purse, and a guide was brought forth: a tall young man, dressed in white linen, introduced only as Chaths.
Gottard writes that, upon seeing the young man for the first time, he felt what might well be called an uncanny sense of recognition. It was not that Gottard had met the guide before, but in Chaths he saw something of himself. “He did not resemble me in appearance. His eyes were dark. His brow, delicate and smooth. Yet all the while, I felt as though the villagers had produced, not a guide for me but a mirror. There was some evident tether stretched between the two of us. It bound us, as a man’s reflection is fastened to him but is never precisely the same as him.”