Soon, the bodies of the multitude that should never have been corporeal in the first place began to come apart as well. They continued to pray, while God revealed his face, and he was Death.
In that last second, Wilhelm felt a burning on his face, and a pulling, a terrible ripping. The winds tore his skin, and he knew it was only a matter of seconds until he joined the multitude in their horrible fate. But the burning on his face turned into a fire hotter than the Darkness of this dying world. He opened his real eyes in the real world, and looked straight into the early morning sun. And then he felt himself falling.
He fell straight down and crashed on the bed. He had been suspended several feet above the bed until the first rays of the sun hit him. He was bloodied, like he had rolled in broken glass… or was flayed by the winds of a world being devoured by a house that looked just like this one.
***
Ava screamed. She screamed with all the intense confusion and despair that a human being can experience. Hers was a version of life where memory was gone and only shadows and flashes of the terrifying and unnatural remained. She was in a constant, debilitated haze from the laudanum, but didn’t even remember that she had consumed it. She awoke every day knowing she was missing time, and every day experienced this fear again for the first time. But nothing could completely blot out the reasons Carsten erased her memories every night. He used her to channel entities of completely alien consciousness, of such a malevolent wisdom, that nothing could stop the flashes of what she saw through their eyes and what they saw through hers. She couldn’t concoct these visions, even in a fever dream or night terror. They were an intrusion of the detestable and the perverse into a mind that understood neither.
But here it was, right in front of her. Not a dream, not a flashback but a real life vision of hell. Wilhelm was asleep above his bed. She knew he would be here, but didn’t know why she knew he was here. He hung in mid-air about four feet above his bed in a deathlike sleep. His clothes and his body looked like he had been dragged behind a galloping horse. He bled profusely from many scrapes, and new ones appeared by the second. He was being buffeted somehow by a silent, invisible wind coming from underneath him. She couldn’t hear the wind, and only he was touched by it, but the blood from the thousand lashes on his body, was falling upwards and the drops splashed against the ceiling, spreading out and disappearing like water absorbing into the dry earth.
She screamed, dropping the towels she was carrying. She screamed again and again because her feet couldn’t move, because she couldn’t run to help Wilhelm, to pull him down from the air. She screamed because she knew, even if her mind could not articulate it, that something evil, unnatural and disgusting was happening, and it was happening now for real. Right in front of her with her eyes wide open. No laudanum, no absinthe, no reassurances from Carsten that everything would be okay. It was here, right in front of her, devouring a person. And she knew it was hungry to devour her and to devour Carsten and to devour the world.
***
Karl was on his feet running before his mind was fully engaged and asking the fundamental question: what am I running towards? He passed Carsten’s room, scanning the windows as he ran, checking for the Munich police, checking for… whatever else could come at them. He wore his pajamas and carried one of his big Colt revolvers. He slept with his boots on, a habit he had picked up in Africa.
The screaming was from a girl, younger than Karin or Greta, therefore it must be Ava. She wasn’t in Carsten’s room because she got up at dawn and began cleaning, or rather re-cleaning the things she forgot that she had already cleaned because she could no longer remember even basic items like what day it was or even what time of the day it was. The screaming, now continuous, came from the direction of Wilhelm’s room.
For Wilhelm’s sake, he’d better not have hurt Ava, or he will be handed over to the Munich police after a bloody beating. But it seemed unlikely Wilhelm could be conscious. Karl had smoked enough opium with him to knock out any man, then made him drink enough laudanum to knock out any two men. Wilhelm shouldn’t be capable of opening his eyes, much less attacking Ava.
As Karl exited Carsten’s wing of the house and passed the front doors and big double staircase, he scanned all the angles intruders could hit him from. No, nobody there. If there were intruders, if there were police, he would know. With intruders there would be gunfire, for police there were warning signals. The men would knock over strategically located faux decorations filled with metal plates. This made a terrific racket heard all over the property. He wouldn’t be taken unawares by the police.
But there was no gunfire, and no racket. Just Ava’s screaming and the shouts of the house staff converging on Wilhelm’s rooms. Two maids and Ava’s mother trailed him, shuffling as fast as they could in their prim uniforms.
Ava stood in the open door of Wilhelm’s room screaming like an African toddler about to be taken by hyenas.
His mind flew through the possibilities.
Maybe Ava had crossed the line into pure dementia and was screaming just to be heard.
Maybe Wilhelm was dead. Lying there, turning blue.
Now that was a distressing thought, and completely in line with the tendency reality had taken to usurp their plans.
He clamped a hand over Ava’s mouth, picking her up off the ground and holding her arms to her sides, but that didn’t stop her. She kept screaming like he wasn’t even there.
And then he saw.
Wilhelm was suspended in the air several feet above his bed. It looked like something was flaying the skin off his body and splattering it against the ceiling above him. Something he couldn’t see. He dropped Ava, kicking her out into the hallway behind him and rushing into Wilhelm’s room, slamming the door to face the impossible spectacle.
Then the sunlight beamed through the window on Wilhelm. He fell back to the bed and the blood from the air dripped down on top of him. In a moment that even opium could not dispel, Wilhelm opened his eyes and looked into his. And in those eyes, Karl saw despair.
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
Carsten sat next to Wilhelm’s bed, looking back and forth between the tattered and bleeding Wilhelm and an ashen-faced Karl. Karl was dressing Wilhelm’s wounds, just as he had learned through years of service in Africa. Wilhelm was only semi-conscious, and that was probably a very good thing. His sheets were splattered with blood and his skin looked like he had been dragged behind a carriage. Carsten had seen those sorts of injuries before, and that was the closest approximation he had. But these were different. They looked like burns and lacerations at the same time. Karl’s description gave some justification for this. He said Wilhelm was suspended mid-air above the bed and looked like he was being torn by the winds of a silent tornado.
Carsten understood that there were side effects to his experiments manifesting in the material world. Uli’s paintings were the most obvious. Then there were the shadows moving across the walls that hadn’t been cast by anyone or anything but were still there, still moving. Blessedly, they only came out at night. Sometimes, in the midst of a ritual, every dog in Munich began howling—sometimes a mournful howling, sometimes an insane and feral cacophony. Sometimes the horses in the stables joined in.
But this was different. This was an actual physical attack on someone. This was an escalation to a whole new level of the synchronistic events that sought to bar his path.
What if it had killed Wilhelm? What if it had been Ava or his father? Or Karl? What if it had been him?
Karl took a big drag of his cigarette. He ordinarily only smoked those at night, but he was in shock. Karl was a brave man, but no human could be expected to face these things and stay sane.
“Karl, are you going to be all right?” Carsten asked.
There was much to do before nightfall, and now both Karl and Ava were incapacitated. Logistically, this should be OK; he had planned ahead. Everything that needed to be in place was in place. Months had gone into this final night, months of c
hanneling spirits with Ava’s body, months preparing the implements and binding the entities. Months spent asking those entities how to finish the ultimate task, the resurrection of the dead. Whole—mind, body, and spirit must all be brought back. The body was ready for its resurrection, and the soul located. If those two steps were uncorrupted, then the mind should come back as well.
Everything was in order.
Maybe the fact that everything was in order, and the stars almost in complete alignment caused this… event. Maybe whatever Wilhelm did to regain his memories, combined with being back here, had caused it. Whatever it was.
“Carsten, forgive me. My nerves are not what they were. It’s the flip side of the opium. When you’re on it, you’re fine; when you’re not on it… you’re not fine.”
Carsten nodded. He had noticed this in Karl’s behavior. “It’s only one more night, Karl, and then we will all take a well-deserved break. Are you going to be able to quit, or will you need to go to hospital?”
Karl shook his head and offered a wry smile. “I’ve quit before. More than once. You get sick and you stay sick for about a week. But I can do it.”
Carsten tried a reassuring laugh. “So, it will be me chaperoning you then this time, eh, Karl?”
Karl also tried a reassuring laugh, but it was tense, and scared. “Just keep the whiskey flowing and the whores lined up, and I’ll be as right as rain.”
There was a long pause, and Karl continued to clean Wilhelm’s wounds with alcohol and apply bandages made of clean rags. It was an ugly, messy job. There was grit in the wounds. Neither of them had to say it; this grit wasn’t from here. It was from over there, wherever over there was.
It was also terribly painful for Wilhelm, even though he was still numb from smoking opium and drinking laudanum. If not for these, he would be writhing in agony.
Wilhelm’s eyes opened, and they saw each other. It saddened Carsten, but he knew that Wilhelm was no more than a well-meaning fool trying to atone for his myopic life and shallow dreams by imposing his idea of “right” on his younger brother. Carsten was well within his rights to be offended by Wilhelm for all of these reasons, but the best he could muster was pity. Pity and resignation for Wilhelm. In a choice between the Great Work and Wilhelm Ernst, the Great Work was far more important.
“Carsten…” Wilhelm whispered. “Please, please stop, it hurts, oh God it hurts, Carsten…”
Carsten walked to his brother’s side and gently held his hand. “Shhh, brother, calm down, it’s going to be OK. You’re safe now.”
“Carsten, please… stop, stop now…” Then he cried out in anguished pain.
Karl looked over to Carsten. “It’s bad, and it’s going to hurt. If we don’t get this dirt out of these wounds, he’ll get an infection.”
Carsten nodded. “We’ve got to finish, Wilhelm. It’s for your own good.”
Wilhelm gasped through gritted teeth. “Carsten, that’s not what I’m talking about, you know that…” He inhaled sharply. “It’s what you’re doing out in the servants’ quarters.”
Carsten held his brother’s hand and nodded. “Wilhelm, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m doing something greater than you can conceive, greater than almost any man could hope to conceive. When I’m done…” and he trailed off. Explaining this to Wilhelm would be like explaining a locomotive to a pig.
“Please, Carsten, you see what’s happened to me. You know it’s because of what you’re doing…”
“No, Wilhelm, I don’t know that,” Carsten said flatly.
“And Uli and Lombard, they painted you. They painted you, Carsten. They painted what you’re doing, what you’re doing to the world. Can’t you see? Can’t you see it’s sick and wrong? Can’t you see it’s evil?”
Carsten pulled his hand away from his brother’s. He stepped back and he allowed himself to judge Wilhelm as he really was. A waste, a man who produced nothing but his own excrement, a man who aped and mimicked but did not create, a man who did not work, a man whose character would not have him survive if it weren’t for the shelter of his money.
Carsten allowed himself to taste the anger, allowed it to flow over him. He could push aside Karl and stomp Wilhelm to death. Feel the bones cracking and listen to the mewling. There is no real justice in the world except the justice of the strong. I am strong and Wilhelm is weak, weak and pathetic in every way.
But it would not be worth it.
Greta and Karin knew he was here by now.
Maybe Father, too.
And Haas….
Wilhelm complicated things. That’s all. Complications were to be expected, roadblocks where there were none, obstacles to be surmounted, challenges to be met. Nothing more, nothing less. He let the anger pass and allowed the cool ice of control to flow over him. He was in control. Not the bleeding fool on the bed, not synchronicity, not circumstance. He was in control, and all of these things would bend to his will.
Carsten asked, “Tell me about this Lombard. Who was he?”
Wilhelm winced as the alcohol seeped into the scabbed crevices of his shredded skin. “Oh God, God, Carsten… he was a Frenchman, a bad artist who became a genius, just like Uli. Painted socialist crap, then started painting like Uli. After the change, after you got back from Prague with that damn book!”
Carsten was taken aback. Wilhelm knew a lot. “So, Uli started painting well, and that’s the fault of my going to Prague? Interesting. I wasn’t aware that the world worked that way. So how did this Lombard become a better painter? Was that my fault as well?”
Wilhelm’s breathing increased in tempo as he strained against the pain and against the black unconsciousness that he wanted to succumb to. “Carsten, no. Please, please listen to me. He went to a psychic medium, a séance. A Gypsy of unearthly beauty. She told him to construct a device. It cast shadows on the wall, shadows that walked, shadows that gave him visions. He painted them. God, he painted them and it was just like Uli!”
Carsten and Karl glanced at each other clandestinely. Yes, this was the answer! This was how Wilhelm got his memories back. This was the answer! And the psychic medium? A beautiful Gypsy? One that supplied real information of the supernatural? How could that be anyone but Angellika?
“Tell me what else you know about this Gypsy psychic medium.”
Tears of pain were now streaming down Wilhelm’s face. “Nothing, only that her name was Angellika and that Gilles changed after building this device. He became like Uli. Mad, a hermit having visions.”
“Where is he now, Wilhelm?”
Wilhelm shook his head. “Dead. On the same day that Uli hung himself. He eviscerated himself. He cut himself open. He pulled his own entrails out and continued painting!”
Then Wilhelm exhaled and his eyes closed. The pain was too great and consciousness was leaving him. Carsten stood over him and shook him, but he didn’t move. He reached up to slap him, but Wilhelm’s eyes opened wide. He spoke before Carsten even had a chance to put his hand down.
“Carsten! The device! It showed me the shadows, and the shadows took me to the place where the souls go, the place where the sky is covered with the black clouds. Uli was there, hanging upside down. The psychic medium was there, being drawn into the house. God, Carsten, this house is there! You put it there! And it is devouring the world, pulling it all inside, into darkness. Such blackness to destroy the world…”
“Where is this device, Wilhelm? What is it? What does it do?”
Wilhelm cried out in a long sustained lament of pain and despair. “It’s just jagged pieces of metal turning in a frame. A zoetrope. But it casts shadows, shadows like the ones that come out at night here. And the shadows take you to the place.”
Carsten stood up and closed his eyes, trying to wrap his mind around what his brother knew—things that he didn’t know himself. “Wilhelm, how much can you remember from when you were here a year ago?”
Wilhelm closed his eyes too, but tears still flowed. “Everything.”
“I had decided to stop you. I figured it out. You were following instructions in that book, and it was causing my dreams and Uli’s madness. Just by being in proximity to what you were doing. I looked through the keyhole. You killed the dog. Then you did the ritual… the sky changed colors. The stars in the sky were not the stars of this world!”
He paused to catch his breath, which was now ragged with strain and pain.
He continued, “And then it came and turned Ava into a fucking monster. That beautiful little girl, twisted and hideous! She attacked you and then Karl knocked me out from behind. I crawled back to the house and found Uli. Later on, Karl tied me to a chair and you mesmerized me.”
Carsten’s expression remained hard. “You’re my brother, Wilhelm, but you are little more than a fool. I couldn’t allow you to know what you did. It was for your own sanity, for your own protection.”
Wilhelm said softly, “I know. I am a fool.”
***
After these words, Wilhelm lost all consciousness. Carsten knew it was futile to try to get more information from him. The man was drugged, traumatized, and wickedly injured. It was incredible that he could speak at all. He certainly was a man possessed of his mission, but unfortunately for him, he was a foolish drunk. His goal was hazy. He knew only that he had to stop Carsten. How exactly and why exactly weren’t important.
Karl looked better, but still shaken.
“Karl, I’m sincerely sorry that you had to see that. You’ve come through for me again. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Karl didn’t try to feign laughter. There was no reason to disguise the state he was in. “Well, you certainly wouldn’t be doing any of this. But you’d still try, and probably get yourself killed.”
The Singularity Cycle 02 Song of the Death God Page 22