Anna was here to take him home.
She stood as a shadow, forming for days until her features were visible to him. She had not moved, a statue of an angel of mercy until this very moment.
“Anna? Anna? I can see you! Are you here to take me from this place? Have I suffered enough?”
A ripple passed through the shadow and it moved, her eyes roving around the room in confusion, then settling on him, the shell of a man before her.
She asked, “Is that… you? What has happened? Why am I here? What is this place?” Then a look of terror crossed the shadow’s face. Her hand passed over her belly. “Where is my baby? Where is Carsten?”
He gasped. Why did she not know? Had God not told her? Was this his final judgment, that he must tell her that she was dead, and that her family was now seen with contempt?
“Anna… Anna, I’m so sorry, please forgive…”
But his words were interrupted by a silent wind blowing though her shadowy form. She looked around in surprise and her lips moved, forming words, imploring him, begging him, telling him something, but he could not hear.
The wind was blowing her away, through the walls, through the floor carrying her to the rear of the house. She screamed soundlessly, trying to hold her place in this world while the wind of that world took her away.
For the first time in years, he jumped out of bed. His legs gave out but he crawled, grasping across the floor, following the shadow of his dead wife as she was blown by an invisible wind, through the rear walls into the night air. He pulled himself to his feet, gasping for air, heart pulsing to look out through the rear windows at his wife floating through the air, blowing over the gardens and towards the old servants’ quarters.
His heart stuttered and he sank to his knees as she disappeared from view. His breath was shallow and rapid; he could not take much more of this. Piss dripped out of the bottom of his nightshirt. The last thing he saw before passing out was the sky and gardens glowing with a faint purple color and the sky covered with dead black clouds that looked like they were boiling.
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
Wilhelm had slept fitfully through the day. While the sun was on his face, he knew he was safe, but tonight Carsten would play out his endgame with the universe. He could feel it on his broken skin, taste it on his torn lips, and smell it with his shattered nose. Even in the light of day, that place, the other side, was close and getting closer.
And the day had come and gone and the sun was abandoning him.
An hour before her regular finishing time, Ava’s mother appeared in his doorway and crossed herself. The other house staff shouted from the front door for her to leave these people, leave this place. They could feel it too, feel it building potency, the shadows in the corner of the eye reaching further and further into the world of the light.
Ava’s mother was fear stricken and terror ridden. In a whisper she asked him, “Ava, where is she? I cannot leave her to this house.”
He sat upright, the sheets around him spotted red. He looked out the back window at the gardens, their lush green blanched away by a faint purple phosphorescence. He turned his head, the pain in his skin supreme, and shook his head, then motioned out the window.
Out past the gardens was Carsten’s little study. Ava’s mother stiffened and drew in a breath then turned quickly away. He could hear her feet rapping on the marble as she walked past the grand entryway and across the living room. She was going out there.
He heard the click and clack as she opened the big glass back doors and walked out into the gardens. Even in the moments since she was in his doorway the outside world had darkened. It was still very early evening, but at the Ernst estate, the sky was blackening. There was no mistaking it; on the horizon, the sky was still blue, but directly above, the sky was black.
And that was not all. While the omnipresent buzzing and crackling was now directly audible, there were other sounds. It sounded like every dog and horse in Munich was being slowly and painfully killed. They were going berserk.
Ava’s mother got about twenty paces into the garden when it hit her. She stopped suddenly and looked all around her in panic and desperation. The purple luminescence grew more tangible and the sky grew blacker, the screams of the animals a cacophony in the distance. Both of them could hear the carriage horses in front of the house and the shouts of alarm of the house staff as the carriage men fought vainly to calm them. She tried to take a step forwards and her hands went up in front of her. She looked back, directly at him, her eyes terrified, seeking some kind of answer.
He shook his head. Don’t. Just leave. There’s nothing you can do.
Karl stood at the big glass doors at the rear of the house, watching Ava’s mother. She had walked past him like he wasn’t even there on her valiant but hopeless trip out to Carsten’s study to save her daughter. She hadn’t made it halfway across the gardens before the fear took her.
She looked back, not to him, but presumably to Wilhelm. She had just come from his room. She looked like a green conscript walking into a fight he knew he wouldn’t come back from. He had seen that look before on the battlefields in Europe and in Africa. And no, they never did come back, and every haunted gaze lived on in his memory.
He took a long drag of his opium cigarette. He couldn’t feel his feet now, but could still walk, and knew he could still fight like a grenadier. Ava’s mother was no grenadier though, nor were her senses shielded with opium. She ran away like any sane person would, tears of shame raining from her cheeks. He had seen plenty of that on the battlefield, too.
He had seen these things happen before, the night he knocked out Wilhelm and saved Carsten from Ava and that dog. He had bashed it over and over with a shovel until every bone was crushed. It kept moving. He shoveled up the mash and burned it. As it went into the fire one pulpy eye caught him in its gaze. He saw suffering and pain greater than any of the battlefields in his mind.
He took another huge drag of the cigarette and stumbled backwards. He caught the arm of a chair and nearly fell. He had to face it. In a very short period of time, his opium intake had worsened considerably.
One more night.
That’s all he needed.
He couldn’t do this without the opium. No one could. The same animal terror driving the horses into a lather would take any man, regardless of his past. He just had to hold it all together for one more night, and then he could quit. Yes. Quit. It wouldn’t be easy, but he’d done it before.
He looked out at the garden, now completely black despite the horizon showing the evening skyline.
He turned and walked to Wilhelm’s room.
Wilhelm sat on his bed facing the window, his back to the door as Karl came in. He felt more wobble in his step now that he was aware of it. But even with a massive dose of opium in his blood, he still saw the shadows swimming in the corners of his vision. Wilhelm wore no shirt, displaying the patchwork of red spotted bandages over his abraded skin. He really did look like he’d been dragged by a horse.
Karl sat on one of the ornate chairs at the foot of Wilhelm’s bed and poured himself a glass of white wine from the collection of bottles on the table. Wilhelm didn’t acknowledge Karl, but got up slowly and painfully to sit in the chair across from him. Karl poured him a glass of the wine and offered him a cigarette.
Neither spoke, both too anaesthetized and lost in their own thoughts.
Karl didn’t look up when he broke the silence. “I’m sorry for our rough handling of you when we brought you in. You understand that we can’t allow any attention to be drawn to the estate.”
Wilhelm lit the cigarette and sucked smoke into his lungs. “You could have just killed me and been done with it. I don’t know that Carsten would care.”
Karl nodded. “Carsten has the Great Work to consider.”
After a pause Karl asked, “What really happened in Paris? We both know what’s happening here now. It’s no secret, so you may as well say.”
Wilhelm closed
his eyes and shook his head. “I killed a man. Not a good man by any means, but a better man than me.”
Karl nodded sympathetically. “He would have prevented you from doing what you needed to do.”
Wilhelm resigned himself to this cold logic. “Yes.” Then he asked, “Tonight is the night? Whatever it is that Carsten is doing… he finishes tonight? Are your men ready? Do they know what… is happening?”
Karl closed his eyes and rubbed them. A great tiredness settled over him. He looked old, far older than he was. Wilhelm looked over to a mirror on the wall. He looked old, too.
Karl coughed. “I worked with all of them in Africa. They know… they know enough, and they know how much they are being paid. They walk patrols out from the house, far enough away that… they don’t experience it.”
Both of them turned their heads to look out the back windows, past the gardens to the little servants’ quarters in the distance. The gardens were lit by the same luminescence that covered them that last terrible night more than a year past.
Karl leaned back and lit another of the cigarettes with his eyes closed. In one day, he’d smoked more than he had in the entire previous week. He took a long pull and held it out for Wilhelm. Wilhelm took it and asked, “So what do we do now?”
Karl nodded. “Now… now we wait. We hope that Carsten’s lucky stars are aligned… and we wait.”
***
Karin woke to find that none of her attendants were where they were supposed to be. There was no food waiting, no evening attire laid out, not even the clothes to be worn while preparing for the evening. She could hear indistinct shouting from downstairs and what sounded like every dog in Munich barking in the distance.
The house staff were fighting amongst themselves. They were in disagreement as to whether they should leave Ava’s mother or force her to leave with them.
What on earth was going on?
Why would these people leave so early?
Did they want to be fired?
Then the horses started screaming and the shouting turned from anger to terror. The carriage that took them home sat to the front of the property. The horses tore free from it and raced down the street, still in their harnesses! Now the horses in the stables were screaming and kicking their hooves against the doors. Then all the horses in all the stables in the neighborhood began doing the same thing. The dogs frightened the servants, who in turn frightened the horses. Now the house staff were running across the front of the property, away from the house in general panic.
Karin couldn’t help it.
She laughed.
She walked over to the liquor cabinet to pour herself a brandy, downing it, followed by two others. It was important to have a civilized evening. She looked out the window and saw that it was getting dark. Too early? Or had she overslept because the stupid house staff forgot to wake her?
She slumped into a chair and looked over to the clock. Maybe she shouldn’t have shot those brandies like that. The clock said it was early evening just a moment ago, but somehow an hour had passed in moments… was her drinking really so bad? How boring! Imagine being a pathetic fool like Wilhelm, having to quit drinking because he was so pitiful!
Her vision swam for a moment. It looked like shadows were growing out of the corners towards her, slanting, curving in her direction. She ran over to the wall and hit the light switch, and the shadows slithered back to their rightful places, but it looked like they did so too slowly. They slid away.
Then her fat sister, Greta, walked in the door holding a silly goblet of red wine. She was still in her bedclothes and her hair was a fright. Karin opened her mouth to correct her errant sibling, but then she looked in the mirror and saw her own hair.
Greta said, “Where are the house staff? How dare they abandon me, I mean us.”
***
The blood in the silver vessel was nearly all gone. It absorbed into her body, inflating it, and now she sat upright in the vessel between Carsten and the Ava-thing.
The sheet clung to her body, showing the lines of her face, her shoulders and breasts, the bloody shroud fluttering with each hesitant breath. Carsten gestured and shouted, the Ava-thing intoned the refrain, in a dance motionless save for the balletic gestures Carsten made with his arms.
The lines of dark energies flowed from the Ava-thing, extending out into the air of the room, glimpsed only as nightmare shadows, projections of the inability of the human mind to comprehend what it really saw. Some might see a ghost or a devil, some might see their children deformed. Others might simply see the futility of life and crave a gun to place to their temple.
And now, the words were done, the gestures complete. Carsten stood before his resurrected mother, and the Ava-thing stood behind, still bound by the circle. A ripple passed through her body, and a sharp gasp came from her lips.
For the first time, the Ava-thing spoke unbidden. “She awakens. It is accomplished. You have achieved what no man has done since men in this part of the world first planted seeds.”
Carsten looked at his mother’s bloody, shrouded face and back up to the speaker. He had raised the dead, intact, complete. He had channeled the energy of another plane of existence and violated every law of nature. He did this with no regret, fear, or remorse. There was no authority but his own will, and he had not bent to any man, any law, any petty sentiment.
In this, he was like God.
His mother stirred. Her arms came up then dropped, her head tilting then righting itself. She let out a gasp and a moan began building into a cry of pure alien confusion.
Carsten started the process of banishing the entity. All the while, it looked at him with interest, vastly different from the entity that he summoned to resurrect the dog. That one looked at him like a cat watches a bird. This one, albeit vastly more powerful, saw something other than prey in Carsten.
Carsten worked urgently. While it was clear that this entity grew more cooperative than it had been at first, he still didn’t want it present when his mother became conscious, and he didn’t know how long that would take. During a pause in the wording of the banishment, the entity interjected a curious observation to Carsten.
“Human blood is required or the human vessel is incomplete.”
Carsten did not slow down the banishment. His mother was moving, her hands fumbling with the blood-soaked sheet covering her. Carsten continued with the wording, and the Ava-thing gave him an appraising but approving nod before leaving Ava’s body. She promptly collapsed inside the circle of salt and ash, convulsing, hands clutching her throat, blood dribbling from her mouth. She tried vainly to find her voice, but all that came were gurgling rasps and more blood, then she stopped stirring and lay unconscious.
Carsten started instinctively to walk over to the silver vessel, but he stopped. This wasn’t something he’d planned out. He didn’t know what came next. He had resurrected the mother he never knew, and Ava was having a seizure on the floor. He needed to get Ava out of there and work the mesmerism to erase her memories, or she would go mad. No human can house an entity from the outer void and return sane. The memories must be excised, and quickly.
He also had no plan for what to do with his mother. For all of his intellect and discipline, there were some things he simply hadn’t considered.
Could he lock his mother in here, pull Ava outside, and erase her memories?
Questions and scenarios flooded his mind faster than he could process them…
His mother grabbed a handful of the bloody sheet and pulled it aside, revealing her face. She blinked at the light. She blinked because there was animal blood in her eyes. She blinked with uncontrolled, ugly facial expressions, but Carsten recognized the face from paintings, from the faces of his siblings, from his own reflection in the mirror.
This was his mother.
He gasped, loud.
“Uhhnn, where, where… why am I here?”
She turned her head and looked around.
“How did I get here? This is t
he old servants’ quarters, is it not? Where is… who are you?”
Carsten steeled himself. “I’m your son, Carsten.”
Her confusion mounted, and her shoulders heaved like she was going to vomit. “I don’t understand. I don’t know you. There was an old man lying on a bed in front of me. He said he was my husband. I gave birth; I was holding my newborn son…”
“Mother, a lot has happened. I can’t explain it all at once.”
She began shouting. “Where are my children? Wilhelm, Karin, Uli and Greta? Where is my husband? Why am I in this place? Who are you?”
Carsten tried again. “I am your son, Carsten. A lot has happened, Mother. I need you to remain calm and allow me to explain. You’ve been gone a very long time.”
As he said this, she heaved again violently and mud blasted out of her mouth. She looked up at him in panic. Her eyes wide, she looked at her hands and saw that they were covered in blood.
And then her face rippled, a wave passed through her body. She cried out in pain and lapped the blood from her hands like a starving dog. Just as quickly, she began gagging and retching. She looked around like a caged animal and saw Ava lying on the floor behind her in the circle of salt and ash with blood streaming from her mouth.
In an instant, Anna Ernst leapt from the silver vessel, the bloody sheet thrown to the side. She rushed at Ava, drawn by a consuming hunger at the sight of her blood. Just as quickly, she hit the invisible barrier created by the circle of salt and ash that surrounded Ava and Carsten. She let out a piercing shriek of pain, despair and a hunger borne of unholy need. She rushed at Carsten with the same intensity and was again repulsed by the warding.
Carsten looked into her eyes, at her face. It bore all of her features, but it was an abomination.
In less than a second, it tore the door open and was out into the night. Seconds later, Carsten heard the faint sound of breaking glass as it entered the back of the house.
The Singularity Cycle 02 Song of the Death God Page 24