Wonders of a Godless World

by Andrew McGahan

  She spent the afternoon roaming the wards, too unsettled to stay in one place. The hospital was equally unsettled around her. The nurses, the cooks, the other staff—everyone was going about their routines as if it was a normal day. But to the orphan it was all pretence. It wasn’t a normal day. She felt that a facade had been fractured. The volcano erupting, the duke’s attack, the witch’s self-inflicted injuries…each of those occurrences had sent ripples of apprehension through the wards—but even so, the hospital had carried on. This death, however, this murder of the virgin, was far worse. This the staff could not deny or explain away.

  Something was very wrong. The inmates sensed it. They refused to behave. They left their rooms, they threw away their food, they ripped their clothes, they yelled. The nurses ran to and fro, trying to maintain control. It was the orphan’s job to help them, but she did nothing, even when nurses snapped orders at her.

  The townsfolk sensed it too. All afternoon a crowd built in the front driveway, people who had walked all the way from town to stare at the hospital. Some were there a few minutes only, some for hours, gathering into groups, muttering. At one point the orphan stood out on the porch to look at them. A dozen faces turned silently to look back at her, and she retreated again, afraid without knowing why.

  But the strangest thing of all was that everyone, staff and patients alike, avoided the crematorium. The hallway that led there may as well have been a dead end. As far as the orphan could tell, no one went down it all day. No one, it seemed, cared about the last remaining patient there. No one wanted to attend to his needs, to feed him, or to wash him—or to be alone with him in the darkness.

  The orphan did not enter either, not during the day. There were too many eyes about, watching. She went that night, when the inmates were finally asleep and the nurses had all gone home. The hospital was not completely unvigilant even then—the old doctor was still in his office, the lights burning, and the night nurse was sullenly patrolling the front wards—but no one guarded the crematorium.

  And what an alien, shadowy, silent place it had become. In the dayroom there was no longer any noise or glow from the television, and from the bedrooms there came no snore or murmur of sleeping patients. It was all quiet and emptiness. And it was only now that the orphan wondered why that emptiness hadn’t been filled. Other wards were overcrowded, she knew. Yet no one had been moved here.

  She opened the door to one of the bedrooms. The two beds in there had been stripped, but one still bore dark stains on its mattress. She noticed something else in the shadows, an object against the wall. She went and picked it up. It was the archangel’s book. The cover felt smooth from the boy’s endlessly stroking fingers, but when she opened it, she saw that the pages were matted together with the virgin’s blood.

  She dropped the thing, and passed on to the foreigner’s cell. He was a pale, lonely shape underneath the sheet, and she hung back in the doorway, watching him, trying to decide how she felt. Was she angry? Was that the reason she’d come? To ask him why he hadn’t told her what had happened in the archangel’s room? Why he hadn’t warned her? Yes…but it was more than that.

  How could he have let it happen in the first place?

  His voice, when it came, held no apology or regret. Only a calm air of inquiry. You think I should have stopped it?

  Yes, of course he should have stopped it!

  That would have meant entering the archangel’s mind. Taking control of him. Yet you made me promise not to interfere like that again.

  Yes, but—

  Anyway, he was not controllable by then. His failure with the virgin had fuelled his madness beyond measure. Twice more he assailed her, after you were gone, and twice more he failed, and each time he had to punish her all the more severely for the sin. Until, willing as she was, she could no longer survive the punishment.

  And her—floating in her shadows, looking at the world through her little window. She was like me, orbiting in space, safely out of reach. But then she wanted escape from the safety, she wanted to feel a human touch again. She wanted re-entry. The archangel was her atmosphere, and she threw herself into him, too hard, too fast. And so she burnt up, orgasming with the pain even as she died.

  Inevitable really. I didn’t cause it. And I couldn’t have stopped it. Why, then, am I somehow to blame?

  The orphan had no answer. She’d been inside the minds of both the archangel and the virgin, and knew he was right. Or that he might be right. But to call her here afterwards, to do the things they did, while the corpse was so close by…

  I know. But I had no choice. I knew if I told you, you would alert the authorities, and then everything would change for us.

  And she had alerted the authorities—or at least the night nurse—as soon as she’d found the body. But what did he mean? What was going to change?

  The world has not been blind to events here. The duke, the witch, and now the archangel and the virgin. It has all been noticed. The old doctor is wondering. The nurses and the other staff as well. The police are wondering too.

  Unease rose in the orphan. Wondering about what?

  About me. About what’s happened in this ward. And you’ve seen the crowd gathering in front of the hospital? They’ve been wondering most of all. No doubt the townsfolk have always whispered tales about this place and its inmates, but now they’re whispering about one particular inmate. A man who sleeps, but doesn’t. A man who has come to their little town and is spreading havoc and death about him, even though he cannot move or speak. They are remembering old stories their grandparents told them, about undead spirits and devils. They are not educated people. Words like comatose won’t satisfy them.

  Yes! It was true. The orphan had seen it herself, in the eyes of the men and women out on the driveway. The fear. The hostility.

  They’ll be back tomorrow. More of them. That’s why I did not hurry to tell you about the virgin. I knew this would be the result. Those people will demand action. They will make the police, or the staff here, do something.

  Unease became alarm. Do what?

  At the very least, they will have me sent away. But even worse things are possible. Violence comes so easily when crowds are involved.

  And now she was angry. But not at him anymore. She understood why he’d acted the way he had. He’d had no choice. Not if there was a chance they might send him away from her. That couldn’t be allowed to happen. That wouldn’t be fair. And if they hurt him…it was too awful to think about.

  Yes, but now that there are the two of us, perhaps there are actions of our own we can take. We may not be defenceless.

  She stood straighter in the doorway. What kind of actions?

  On my own I am helpless. If they came for me now I could not stop them. But you and I together…You saw what you did with my body, with my blood. That was your power. And together, perhaps, we could do much more.

  Ah, but she wasn’t sure. Had she really done it? The blood may have moved in his veins for natural reasons. She couldn’t be positive…

  There’s only one way to find out.

  What way?

  We must devise a test. A test that will leave no doubt, a test that will tell us just how potent you have become, and how well we can protect ourselves.

  She moved to his side, staring at his sleeping face, and a now familiar thrill awoke in her stomach. Yes. Her loyalty and her love may have wavered a moment when she was scared, but she reaffirmed them now. Completely. Whatever he wanted her to do, whatever he needed, she was ready for it.

  Good. I know just the place.

  She took his hand, and they were away.

  25

  And oh, how marvellous it was. To be soaring again—high in the atmosphere, two shadow shapes, the wind a thin shriek in their ears, their real bodies left behind unwanted and forgotten in the crematorium.

  The orphan didn’t know how far they had come from her little island, all she knew was that they had flown from night into daylight, and now the w
orld was unrolling below her in all its multitudes of colours and textures. There were the vivid blues of the oceans, the greenish-blacks of the forests, the brilliant whites of the deserts. There were the tablecloth wrinkles of sand dunes, the knife cuts of river gorges, the piles of shattered crockery that were the mountain ranges. There were sheets of cloud that shone like mirrored steel, and other clouds that were monstrous fists, clenched and raised against the heavens. There were great waves out at sea that reared and rolled and crashed without ever coming in sight of a shore. And everything, land, water and air, glowed as if the light came not from the sun, but from some source internal to the planet.

  Then they flew into nightfall again, out-racing day. Lights sprang up across the globe, cities and towns that formed spider’s webs of orange, surrounded by darkness. Ships moved at sea, their courses marked by lines of luminescence that streaked this way and that across the ocean like foam. Bright flashes brewed and flickered in thunderheads, and above the storms ghostly flares of green and red streamed into space. And over it all, set in a night deeper than the orphan had ever seen, the stars hung unrecognisable, shaded with subtle hues of emerald and ruby and sapphire.

  On and on it went. Forever. But this wasn’t like their earlier flights. There was still the wonder and the joy, oh yes, but the orphan felt that she was older now, and beyond the simple amazement of those other times. She had been a child then, not knowing anything, not even about herself. But now, even as she revelled in the freedom of the air, she was aware of a deeper, steadier, more fulfilling purpose.

  It was because of him, of course. No, it was because of them, him and her—the foreigner no longer foreign, the orphan no longer orphaned. They had joined together, physically and mentally, and now they were flying together to face the dangers that threatened them, their fates their own to decide, their defence their own responsibility. That too was a grown-up thing. And a good thing.

  Meanwhile, their ghost selves were stark naked!

  She’d never noticed it before. On the other flights she’d been too preoccupied to really look. But now she saw that their forms were not merely the amorphous hints of bodies she had supposed. The foreigner was identifiably himself. His face was a dark veil without real features, but his limbs were clearly outlined, glowing faintly, and every inch of him was familiar to her, right down to the wisp of smoke that was his cock. He was beautiful, a real archangel, made by no god, and serving none.

  And she was beautiful too. Not the slow idiot girl of the earthbound world, but a wraith, streamlined by the upper winds, a shadow that sparkled as if shot through with its own stars. Still herself, still round and short and plump, but free of weight now, free of awkwardness, a goddess of fertility on the wing.

  And ah…what would it be like to make use of these bodies? Were they capable of genuine touch and sensation? Could they turn to each other, even now, and set each other’s shadow nerves afire with pleasure, and in climaxing become a bolt of orgasmic lightning, arcing across the night sky?

  The foreigner laughed. There’ll be time enough for that. Later.

  The orphan felt her skin burning in the cold, half from shame, half from a desire that didn’t care about shame at all.

  We’re close now. Look.

  They were descending, she realised, and a pang of loss hit her. She did not want to return to the ground. But it was the foreigner’s mind that guided them, not her own, and she could sense the resolve in him.

  She looked down. They were far from any ocean now; the world here seemed to consist of desert wastes and bleak mountain ranges. Their destination was a tangled region of narrow valleys, where few lights shone in the night, and where, on the higher peaks, there gleamed crusts of ice and snow.

  They fell lower, and the dry mountain air felt more chill even than it had high above. The orphan shivered. She knew this place. Ahead she saw one steep valley which seemed to brim with blackness—a long, spear-shaped expanse of icy water.

  Yes. She had been here before.

  As shadows, they dropped and then alighted on the valley floor. Beside them was a river bed, rocky and shallow, empty except for a trickle. On either side, walls of stone tilted away to frigid heights. And before them rose an immense pile of broken rock, blocking the valley from side to side. The orphan looked up, remembering, and there above the landslide she could see the great scoop that had been cut from the mountain, seemingly as fresh as it had been that night ninety-two years before.

  Yes. It was here that my immortality began.

  The orphan shivered again, from dread. How was it possible that anyone could have crawled alive from under that fallen hillside? The weight of it oppressed her even from without. But to be buried there, crushed beneath it all…

  It shouldn’t have been possible. It couldn’t have been.

  But it was.

  She glanced at the ghost beside her. What did he want here? Why had they come to this place, of all places?

  To see if, together, we can release the waters.

  The shock of it almost made her laugh out loud. He wanted them to try to shift the landslide? To move a whole toppled mountain?

  Not all of it. And there was no laughter in him. You can feel it yourself, the pressure the dam is under. There are billions of tons of water—the whole lake—pushing from behind. If we weaken it enough, the landslide will fall. And if we can do something like this, then we need not fear anyone, or anything, ever again.

  She heard his sincerity. He believed that this was necessary, and possible. But the orphan was not convinced. To call a breeze, to make blood flow, that was one thing. But to shift so much rock, so much weight!

  Come. I’ll show you.

  They lifted once more, soaring up the dam wall, over stone and scree and dark clefts where small bushes grew, until they gained the top. Here the landslide had formed a rampart a hundred yards across, beyond which the heap fell away again. And there, on the far side, was the water—a great lake, wide and black, running away to lose itself in the far reaches of the valley.

  Even now, so many decades since the landslide, this lake remains one of the most remote and unexplored bodies of water anywhere in the world. No boats sail here, no people swim, no houses or docks or parks line its shore. There is only my old village here, buried far beneath. And once in a while, a few lonely tourists will come to marvel at the sight. Or structural engineers, to study the dam and to worry.

  They descended to the surface of the lake, sank through it, and slid down the wall until they stood again on the valley floor. They were drowned now, encased in silent, unmoving, ice-like darkness—a vast tomb of captive water. And holding it back was the dam. The orphan, her vision piercing the black depths, saw it rise before her, the submerged rocks covered with a slime that somehow survived at near freezing.

  You feel the pressure? You feel the water pushing? Does the landslide seem such a big thing now? Does it seem immovable?

  It didn’t. Even in ghost form the orphan could feel the tremendous potential energy of the lake, all those miles of water behind her, wanting to run free. And all that weight was remorselessly probing and pushing at the jumbled rocks of the dam.

  There is a balance, for now, between rock and water. The lake is not rising. Water oozes through the dam to feed the stream on the other side, and that outflow matches the inflows from further up the valley. It all might stay like this for centuries yet.

  But if we upset the equipoise…Do you see those giant slabs of rock at the base of the landslide? Do you see how much of the heap rests on them? Do you see that if we push hard enough on them, at just the right angle…

  The orphan saw. The foreigner’s mind illuminated the pile in all its complexity, and the lines of stress were as visible to her as the cracks in the walls back at the hospital. If the slabs at the bottom shifted, and the full force of the lake fell upon a point suddenly weakened…then, oh yes, it might happen.

  Will you help me?

  Of course she would. There wa
s never any question. Only, she was afraid. So much water, so much stone, the fury that would be unleashed…

  It will be glorious. Push now. With me.

  How? She had no hands, no arms, they were only shadows.

  Just do it!

  She tried. Focusing upon the slabs, she desired with all her might that they would obey. She felt his mind in tandem with hers. Together, they willed it. Pushing. Clutching. Wrapping themselves around the rocks, compelling them, no matter the weight, no matter the pressure—demanding that they shift.

  Nothing moved.

  More! cried the foreigner.

  The orphan felt that her very brain was contorting with the effort. She heard the desperation in his voice. And it came to her, even as she strove, why it was that he had chosen this place in which to test their powers. Nowhere else but here, she saw, could he hope to extract payment for his many deaths. There was no point in returning to the lake that had suffocated him with its poisonous fumes. That disaster had left no trace of itself, no damage he could rectify. Likewise, he could not return to the thunderstorm that had roasted him with its heat. The lethal downdraft no longer existed and never would again. Nor could he return to the ocean in search of the wave that had drowned him. It had passed away. And as for his fall from space, and the atmosphere that had burnt him—well, it was everywhere. Always. Beyond challenge.

  No, only here was there anything tangible, anything limited, anything of the scale that he could attempt. Only here was there a memorial to his sufferings and indignities. Only here could he act. He had the knowledge to do it. Far better than she, he saw exactly where the force needed to go. If only he had the strength.

  More! he cried again.

  And the orphan gave it. She ceased trying to push the rocks. Instead, she surrendered herself to him. Out of understanding, out of pity, out of love. She saw his need and, in response, gave him the totality of what she was. He accepted it all. She filled him, and he swelled with her power, and he struck.