The Singularity Cycle 02 Song of the Death God

by William Holloway

  Carsten nodded. “Yes.”

  They stopped and stood in front of Carsten’s bedroom door. Karl would go to his room and pass out, and now Carsten would deal with Ava. They shared a moment of purity together just like the times after killing Piroska and the man of clay, and the fateful attempt to resurrect the dog. Things went so very wrong in all of those, as they had today. But here they were. And tonight would be the culmination of some two years of work. After tonight, Carsten’s bold vision would be done.

  ***

  There was a lot he could feel, but a lot more that he couldn’t feel. There were no dreams, just the lazy orange glow of sunlight through his eyelids. His arms were spread and he couldn’t move them. Maybe he was just too weak. He was very thirsty, he wanted to sit up and get a drink of water, but he couldn’t move. He fell in and out of consciousness. This space was a bridge over time and memory for him. He existed, but was only barely aware of it.

  He felt the mattress sag slightly as someone sat down on the bed next to him.

  He heard Karl’s voice. “How are you feeling, Wilhelm? Are you in any pain?”

  Wilhelm opened his mouth to speak and rediscovered the whole idea of pain. Just moving his mouth made other parts of his body hurt.

  “Oh, God, yes… Karl? Karl, how long have I been asleep?”

  “You’ve been out all day. It’s not surprising, you’ve lost blood. Not too much, but your injuries… You’re not going to be pretty after this, Wilhelm.”

  Wilhelm started to laugh, but the pain came. “Ugh, Karl. Shit, it hurts. I don’t care, I don’t care anymore, Karl.”

  Karl started checking and adjusting Wilhelm’s quilt of bandages. “What don’t you care about anymore??”

  Karl adjusted something and Wilhelm felt the tension in his arms give way and they toppled to his side. He had been tied to the bed. It took a moment to sink in, and he experienced the avalanche of why he was here, what he’d done and how he was injured.

  “Karl, I don’t think it’s going to matter if I’m pretty anymore; in fact, I’m not really sure it ever mattered.”

  He didn’t understand it, but he started laughing despite the agony.

  “Karl, I know that I’m too late. I know I can’t do anything to stop whatever Carsten is going to do tonight.”

  Karl nodded and continued checking the bandages. “No, there’s nothing you could do. Even if you were in any condition to do anything, I would stop you if you tried.”

  Wilhelm winced and closed his eyes. No amount of numbness could disguise the pain. “Karl, I’m afraid that whatever Carsten does is going to kill him, kill us, kill everybody.”

  Karl chuckled. “We’re all bad men, Wilhelm. Maybe we deserve death. Have you ever considered that we aren’t really worth saving?”

  Wilhelm inhaled sharply and gritted his teeth against the agony. There wasn’t much argument he could throw at Karl on the last point. By any accounting, Karl and he were damned repeatedly, and maybe Carsten as well. “Ava. Ava is innocent. We are not. Can’t you see that Ava deserves a chance?”

  Karl stood and retied Wilhelm’s bonds. “I’ve seen a million Avas in my life and they never get a chance. Why should this be any different?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

  The first time that Carsten invoked the Principality, it was furious at the affront. It gazed at him like a wolf eyes a young lamb. When it discovered it couldn’t move, that it was immobile, it let out a croaking of such depth and volume it could have come from a whale. It grinned and blood poured from its mouth. Carsten dispelled it and Ava was unable to speak for more than a week.

  The second time Carsten brought it forth, it simply stared with inhuman intensity. Carsten realized it was attempting to mesmerize him, so he dispelled it again. On the third occasion, Carsten induced it to speak. It spoke in an unearthly timbre, solemn and vain. It was angry, but now also curious, and cautiously willing to talk to him.

  It didn’t have a name in the way that could be understood because it didn’t have a sense of self that could be understood. It wasn’t a singular or plural, it wasn’t a noun or a verb. It did not experience time or space. In short, it was a thing, but not a thing at all. If it was anything, it was absolute Darkness, an echo of a time before God said “let there be light.” To know it was to know the universe in a way the mind has a difficult time encompassing. Carsten now understood better why Karl had warned him, why Angellika and Piroska had told him not to. The thing was anathema to reason and order. Cause and effect could exist because it didn’t exist in our universe. It was not from here, it could not be here, not without suspending the laws of this universe. The very laws of our universe forbade such a thing to be here.

  Yet, here it was.

  At the beginning of time, this thing, and things like it, were locked out of our universe, but man gained knowledge that could build a bridge between worlds. Certain proto-men worshipped their memories and shadows, but eventually humanity rose up and killed all of them. It was only by that uprising that man began to live as more than an animal. But accidents happened, synchronicities arose, and memories became whispers, whispers became words, and words found their way onto pages.

  ***

  It was inside Ava, and spoke through her, but Carsten could faintly see the outlines of its form, faintly hear and smell it on this plane of existence. It stood as a rippling column of air, its peak extending through the roof of the small servants’ quarters and out into the night air. It made a faint buzzing sound, not unlike a huge hive of bees, and its smell was like burning hair.

  Its power was huge, and its knowledge greater still. It had judged and found Carsten to be worthy. It knew the past, it knew the present, and could see the future spreading out like a vast interchange of potentialities. The more it fed, the more it could give power to Carsten to violate the very laws of the universe. The more it fed, the more it came into this world, the clearer it was to the naked eye, and the more it could communicate.

  Speaking with it was a difficult process because of its different relation to space and time. Sometimes it gave clear and comprehensible answers, sometimes it answered in Sphinx-like riddles at best. To some questions, it offered no answer at all.

  ***

  Ava stood shrouded in the undulating pillar of air, the silence broken by the sound of the Principality, a thrumming as of a million bees that ebbed and flowed in and out of audible range. She was in the first of the three circles laid out in salt and ash on the floor of the servants’ quarters.

  As Carsten spoke a verse of the ritual, she would croak the refrain in the painfully low registers of the voice of the Principality. Carsten knew Ava wouldn’t be able to speak for weeks after tonight and that her voice could be permanently damaged.

  An hour before, Ava was still Ava, albeit drugged.

  An hour before, the object in the third circle was also far different. It was a six-foot long, flat-bottomed silver basin holding his mother’s desiccated corpse, along with the blood of several sheep. Karl knocked them out one at a time with ether, and Carsten cut them open to drain the blood straight from their beating hearts. It was a brutal, bloody afternoon. Karl smoked his opium cigarettes one after another. At the end, he was pale and tears were forming at the corners of his eyes. Carsten was relieved that, after tonight, their work would be done for a long time.

  When he and Ava started the ritual, his mother’s body was draped over with a pristine white cloth, but as the ritual progressed he could see the change beneath the sheet. The blood soaked into the corpse, filling it out like a sponge, her outline now a crimson shape beneath the cloth.

  ***

  Carsten’s arms ached, and his voice was hoarse. His back and legs were rubbery from standing in this spot, moving only his arms, communicating to the firmament in a broad, sweeping sign language.

  This dance had progressed for hours, since sunset. Today, he had seen the bloody results of his brother’s attack by something, or some effect of his actions. He w
as wearing a weak spot, a thin place where the other side could be glanced from the corner of the eye. And now it wasn’t just from the corner of the eye, and it wasn’t just at night.

  It wasn’t Karl that saved his brother. It was the sunlight falling over his brother’s body. This power, this energy, that place, and the things from it were the opposite of light, the inverse of the order of this universe. They hated the light, just as they hated this universe. To them, our very universe was an intrusion, a violation of an order that existed before matter, before form. What they sought, maybe out of pure spite, was to lend their power, their authority to the impossible. They wished to break the bonds that held together our world, that kept the planets in rotation, that kept the soul, mind, and body in unison. They would give Carsten their power, and he would raise the dead, fully raise the dead to complete resurrection, because this one act, this single deed, was the most impossible, the most violating of the laws of reality, of cause and effect. It was the beginning of the undoing of God’s universe.

  Carsten knew this. He knew this from the books, and he knew it because they told him this themselves. He didn’t care. He didn’t wish to cause harm to the universe or to kill anyone.

  He wished to know.

  Many men think, very few know.

  And every day since he had begun this quest, he came to know.

  Most men seek power to control others, to experience the pettiness of luxury and sense. Some even killed to maintain control. They were ruled by the animal within that sought to control other animals. No different from pigs in a feedlot fighting over handfuls of rotten offal.

  Carsten only sought the things of this world as a means to know.

  And in looking into the form surrounding Ava, he knew. He knew the universe in a way the universe fought against being known. He knew heaven, and he knew hell, and he knew that they were just the tip of the iceberg, that what lay beyond was the Void, the home of Silence and Darkness, the end of order and form, the chaos that was at the beginning and would be waiting in the end to envelop man, his mind, and this world.

  ***

  Haas stood behind his giant oak desk in his strong, oak-paneled office. Behind him were life-sized portraits of himself and one of Bismark. Both of them wore peaked German helmets with golden eagles on the visors, and both of them sat astride stallions in heroic position.

  His chief inspectors sat before him, patiently awaiting his reactions. He was pleased, he was furious, he was triumphant, all at the same time. Wilhelm Ernst was back at home, and had very nearly gotten away with it.

  Karl Kreutz was clever, but not clever enough. Haas knew Kreutz had spotted his men in the carriage parked down the street from the front of the Ernsts’ manse. Haas knew this sort of diversion was necessary when dealing with a man like Kreutz, who needed to place his opponent. So he gave him the carriage, all the while a team of his men were watching the Ernst property from the side. But even they didn’t see the discrepancy. He had been the one to spot it. It took years of observing the human animal in all of its wretched corruptions to become as shrewd as he.

  After nightfall, one of the men at the very rear of the property signaled to the men posted in the garden; they had an intruder. They gathered quickly and efficiently, with a series of discreet handclaps and whistles.

  All of them, with repeating rifles and revolvers, sprinted into the woods, taking a path on the far side of the property, where they couldn’t be observed by his men in the carriage. They emerged from the woods a few minutes later. They walked back calmly, all but one carrying their rifles crisply and professionally. The other wore his rifle slung. They walked right through the very center of the field, to the rear of the gardens, a route they never took. This was all for show. Then they gathered at the rear of the gardens and smoked cigarettes, also something that they never did. They always operated with exact Prussian military precision and discipline. This was completely unlike them.

  Then two of them went into the house while the others dispersed back to their assigned zones. They acted their parts well enough, but Haas knew Kreutz would never walk his men through the field like that, or smoke cigarettes in a group like that, or bring any of them indoors after dark. This last thing gave it away to Haas.

  The man walking into the house with Kreutz was Wilhelm Ernst.

  Of all of the members of Munich society that grew up spoiled and squandered their obscene wealth, Wilhelm Ernst galled Haas the most. The Ernsts were drunks and worse, but Wilhelm was violent. He delighted in injuring the weak and defenseless. It was the low point in his career when he was forced by social necessity to let Wilhelm Ernst escape to Paris after nearly killing an innocent barkeep.

  Kreutz didn’t have any idea that the neighbors allowed Hass to place a team in the second storey of their house with a telescope. These neighbors, the Hausmanns, hated the Ernsts, as did all respectable members of Munich society.

  Although Haas came from a humble background, Germany allowed the talented to ascend to high station. He was regarded and rewarded for his steely efficiency. In the ballrooms and halls of power, Haas was respected. So when he approached Herr Hausmann with the bold idea of watching the Ernst estate from theirs, he gladly accepted. Of all members of Munich society, they were the most familiar with the loathsome and degenerate nature of the Ernsts. While it wouldn’t be possible to get rid of the Ernsts, they would be happy to see Wilhelm in prison—or deported to France.

  But when asked if Carsten could be involved in wrongdoing, they disagreed. Every member of Munich society knew the plight of Carsten Ernst. The poor boy whose mother died in childbirth and father became a drunk. They knew what sort of filth he was subjected to by his reprehensible siblings. They also knew he was a star pupil who would reclaim the Ernst family name. No, they couldn’t see Carsten as a suspicious character. Yes, they did notice the additional men employed there, and if they were in fact personal bodyguards for an eccentric Carsten Ernst, then so be it. At least his men put an end the loud debauches that used to take place at the house.

  Wilhelm Ernst. His very name brought a grimace of anger that twisted into a cruel smile of triumph. Haas eyed his men and they nodded and smiled back. Tonight, they would pluck the weed from the roses and cleanse the stain from their beautiful Munich.

  ***

  The tray with Otto Ernst’s food had sat in front of him for several hours. He tried to eat some of the potatoes, but only got down a few mouthfuls before the sickness hit him and he had to drink. He drank Steinhager gin, and white wine after he drank enough gin to calm the shakes.

  He knew shame, he knew despair, and he knew that he didn’t have long on this earth. It was years since he was able to sleep the night without pissing himself. Now he shit himself, too. But every morning, beautiful Ava changed his sheets and gave him a sponge bath. She never wrinkled her nose while wiping away the cake of shit, never frowned at the vomit on his pillow. She spoke to him like these things were completely normal, like he was still human. Other people might have been comforted by this, but he knew that it was just courtesy, pity, and money that separated him from the gutter.

  The truth was, he longed for the day when he wouldn’t wake up to the pounding agony, shortness of breath, legs that gave out, and fouled bed sheets. He wished he could commit suicide, that he could rid himself of himself, but he couldn’t. He knew pain and disgust enough to know it could always get worse. There really could be a hell, even if God was nothing but a joke to comfort those waiting to die. And it wouldn’t be long now. He could feel it, something in the air, in the sound and smell—a tiny vibration, the faintest of scents. A cracking, a crackling and ripping, and a smell like burning hair.

  Something was growing from the shadows.

  His room was lit by electric lights that had replaced the lanterns a few years ago. He loved how they lit the room evenly, even though his vision was a blur. But lately, the shadows they cast were different. Oftentimes, he saw faces and forms reaching out for him. He cried ou
t, but no one came in the dark hours. He wasn’t sure his voice was strong enough to carry even to the door of his room, much less down the hall to whoever would listen. So he drank more, he needed more to make the shadows desist, but either the shadows were growing stronger, or he was growing weaker.

  Now a new shadow had come, one that didn’t live in the corner of his eye, one that didn’t disappear when he had the courage to look straight at it. It was now undeniable, standing at the foot of his bed. It took several nights for the form to become completely clear, but now he knew her. He could see the shape of her face, her hair, her shoulders and body. He knew that it would not be long before he left this world to join her, and he was happy.

  He’d married Anna, a beautiful girl from another prominent Bavarian family against the wishes of her parents, who thought him a spoiled and irresponsible child. He made promises every morning and broke them every night. She bore him children, each to more promises that he would change, that he would stop drinking like a fool, stop acting like a fool in society, and take the family business as seriously as she did. In the end, he had proved her parents right; he was just a spoiled and irresponsible child.

  The family doctor was the one to tell him the story. She died minutes after bearing Carsten while he drank in a tavern bragging about what an important and consequential man he was. The doctor handed Carsten to her before she bled out, then took Carsten from her dead arms and handed him to Ava’s mother to nurse him, and then Ava together when she was born a few weeks later.

  Then and only then did he grasp the magnitude of his failure as a man, as a husband and a father. He also knew he wouldn’t change. He was a worthless sot, and nothing could atone for these failings. This life demanded justice, and he would give it over in the only manner he was competent to do. He would drink himself to death. Piece by piece, he would die; his only comfort to be the same poison that was killing him. This is what he deserved, so this is what he did. Every day he prayed to an uncaring god that his long suffering would be sufficient, and God had finally decided to lift his self-imposed sentence.