Songs for a Deviant Earth

by Luka Petrov

  Hamish could count the encounters he’d had with his sister on his fingers—nine, in total, since the night of the boat and the tree. They had quite purposely brought them to separate dining halls, engineering the times when they crossed paths. But the secret, the one thing the monks did not realize, was that no matter how obedient he was, no matter how much they beat him or told him, he didn’t believe any of it. Hamish was like a human stone, quietly biding his time, waiting for life to rearrange him into the shape of some different formation. And one day, he hoped, life might just do that.

  They had trained him as a soldier, teaching Hamish how to use a rifle, short-hand weapons, and techniques for staying awake very late at night. They put him out on watch many nights, dressed in a black leather mask, looking out for passing boats, those who would wish to pillage the island’s meager food supplies. Hamish was not an easy man to teach. Despite his ‘easygoing’ nature, information did not sink in immediately. But now, over the passage of ten years, he had become an object of war, both in stature and skills, prepared for a battle that had not yet started. Hamish would spend time within the armory, cleaning his gun and rehearsing his techniques upon the others. And it was only then that one day in the training room, the young monks confessed his sister was next on the list, the new sister to be groomed and bedded by the glorious Abbott.

  Hamish’s favorite weapon was the Ross Rifle, a straight-pull bolt action .303 inch-caliber rifle. This type of rifle was used in the First World War, but the close chamber tolerances, lack of primary extrication, and overall length of the gun made it unsuitable during war time conditions, therefore the rifles had been withdrawn from their line of usage. It was an intricate machine, there were other guns that were faster and had more endurance, but this one was his favorite to use. Perhaps Hamish saw a little of himself in this gun. The monastery had acquired them after they were retired during the First World War and kept a stockpile of them until they needed them.

  The education that Hamish had received in his youth had not properly informed him of the nature of sexuality; furthermore, the monastery had offered him no education whatsoever. It went against purity and reason for them to teach such things, what with no temptations existing outside of the island. What he had heard, he had learned in dribs and drabs, overhearing the blasphemous speak of other monks. He knew it meant something evil, awful, a carnal exchange of bodily activity. And for the old Abbott, the leader of their monastery, to be doing such a thing brought him an inner hatred, a kind of unfathomable rage he kept buried.

  But as the sweat dripped down the forehead of Hamish, it was not the nature of what the Abbott planned to do to Siobhan that shocked him. It was the laughs of the monks, the way they grinned, the way the saliva flew from their clapping jaws. That was enough for him to raise his rifle to their heads. He did it without thinking as though it was a reflex and an outright attack on his sister.

  Bang! Hamish fired a shot at the temple of Brother Michael’s head. Brother Michael never saw the shot coming, he was too busy relishing in the fact that Hamish’s sister was the next prize of the Abbott. Hamish loaded the rifle and pulled it, then shot Brother Michael. The long range rifle overpowered the short range that Hamish stood from Brother Michael.

  The single bang ran around the stone walls like a ricochet of sound, the splatter of Brother Michael’s skull covering every person in the room. Hamish loaded and pulled again. The second shot took one of the younger monks in the heart, sending him to the floor. With a great instinct, Hamish reloaded and fired again with greater accuracy. Soon, all were dead in that small stone hall, without so much as a second thought from his simple brain.

  Hamish knew that their bullets were treated like gold, though there was a great stockpile of them kept within the armory. His other instinct, one based on pure survival, told him to take one of the large backpacks reserved for late skirmishes and fill it full of ammunition and other smaller guns. He packed a Wesley Revolver and an Enfield No. 2 Pistol Revolver, making sure to get the correct ammunition. He maneuvered the rifle between his backpack and back, wedging it there while strapping another around his shoulder. He held each of the pistols in each of his hands, loading the chambers before leaving the armory.

  Every inch of that bag was packed with the cardboard cases, making it a heavy weight on the back of any normal man, but this pale-skinned goliath was anything but. With some of the dead bodies still gurgling around him, Hamish walked down the hallway of the chapel, the place where so many chants had been chanted, so many candles lit, and did not look back.

  Meanwhile, in the other section of the building, the older sisters prepared Siobhan’s face with powder and blush. There was still, even at their age, a look of rotten jealousy to the way they observed her, as if staring into a looking glass of what could’ve been. She saw nothing of that while gazing into the candlelit mirror. She saw only the look of a woman who had been held captive long enough to make her an object of a great desire. She had seen and heard things in that place, even been a part of them, that she wished would leave her mind. But now, the thought of meeting the Abbott in the privacy of his room somehow seemed to be the worst.

  It wasn’t long before the eldest sisters had shuffled her into a habit of the purest silk and pushed her up the staircase toward Abbott’s private room. It was a cramped stone stairwell that made her feet feel as if she would trip at any moment, the smell of incense growing more intense with each step she made. In her bones she knew to turn back, to free herself from the scenario; after all, she was older and stronger. But that bullet in her leg from all those years ago had left her with a deathly limp, one that would always get her caught. So, she walked on, goaded by the words and the pushes of the elders behind her, until she had reached the doorway. It was dark red, just like the door of the doctor’s in the house she’d always known. But this door had an aura surrounding it, perhaps one that only Siobhan could see. It bore an aura of darkness, of horror, just like those cursed places she’d seen in the past, the places that plagued her nightmares.

  Hamish moved down the labyrinth of stone halls at some speed. He knew the place like the back of his hand, his feeble intelligence doing nothing to affect his navigational skills. The gunshots from earlier had awoken almost everyone in the building with many of the executioners now roosting around corners to defend themselves. But somehow, with the agility and second sight of a wild beast, Hamish turned each hallway without them knowing. Bullet after bullet he fired into them until every guard was dead. All that was left was the sound of screams, most of them by the nuns who roamed the hallways desperate to run out of a place they were never allowed to leave. Hamish wiped the blood and viscera from his face, looking as calm as he did upon awakening.

  Siobhan had entered the room of the Abbott, a dark and stony rounded building with sheets of red velvet draped across it. Large chapel candles, white and made from the island’s bees, gave an almighty glow to each segment of the ornate room. It had more of the feel of a dungeon than anything else, with wooden steps beside the tall four-poster bed. The Abbott sat in the dark of one corner, his voice like glass and moisture. He looked as if his body had been covered in formaldehyde, preserved by some of the chemicals. “Please... sister… lay yourself down,” the old Abbott directed with a gesture of one gnarled hand. She did as commanded, the horror of the place filling her with disgust. She lay there, sinking into the old mattress, the gloom of that space surrounding her.

  Hamish walked up the stairs to the Abbotts room, his footsteps heavy on the stones. He loaded another series of bullets into each of the pistols before moving quicker with each step. Incense filled each of his nostrils, the same smell the old man made as he passed them in the dining hall, always keeping his watery eyes on the girls, always punishing the men for the smallest of discrepancies. Taking one more step upward, the albino giant was confronted by the sight of two haggard nuns. Their screams alone caused him to take a step backward and nearly trip down the stones. As they continued to
scream, banging on the door of their master, two bullets were fired into them in quick succession.

  The gunshots made Siobhan rise from the bed in shock, her pink eyes opening wide. The Abbott was already clutching his chest, his wrinkled neck twisted toward the door. It was then that Siobhan discovered the tools that the priest had kept hidden just beneath his knees—a large velvet pouch of blades, probes, and torture tools. The Abbott was fascinated with piercing the skin of the girl he was about to bed and watching the blood escape from her body. Several of the nuns had the scars of their nights with the Abbott, all along their inner thighs, his favorite location to hid his deep desire. Before she could react or speak, her brother entered. He stood before her smiling, his pale white face covered in blood. Tears were welling in his eyes. Hamish stepped toward his sister, about to reach out to embrace her. Then came the frightened gurgle of the Abbott, the scream for help.

  Hamish turned the gun to the wrinkled creature in the corner while pulling the trigger of his rifle. The old man writhed in suffering, not quite dead, the bullet hole puncturing his lung. Hamish fired again, the smile still wide on his face. Finally, like a mummified corpse, the Abbott crumpled to the floor. The siblings embraced as silence finally overtook the monastery. With their arms wrapped around each other, it was the first time in years that they had held one another. Together they descended the staircase, moving out toward the front of the building. “Let’s be careful,” uttered Siobhan, picking up a rifle from one of the dead executioners. Her brother showed her how to load it, and he lurched forward, lowering himself for her to take bullets from his backpack.

  When they reached the shore, it was the darkest part of the night with only the distant glimmer of the green lights painting the landscape with a colored fog. They moved far away from the tree and the Ark, treading through the wet sand toward the dinghies at the front of the shore. The stone buildings of the convent hovered over them, heavy with ominous decay, remnants of a life they were leaving behind. As they pulled the ropes away from the wooden dinghy, they found the inside to be filled with rainwater and decay, but the lonely vessel was their only hope. With their long paddles of ancient wood, they turned and revolved them in the water, rowing with all their might. Soon they were off and into the deeper water, drifting along the rippling waves, both siblings with rifles on their backs.

  7. Imprisoned Spirits

  By the light of the aurora borealis, the stars, and the moon, they found themselves guiding their ship on a familiar course. They were unaware of how close or far away they were, save for the fact that a distant land mass was punctuated by the light of the horizon. Hamish rowed for the both of them—his strong white arms now filled with scars and caked with the blood of monks—moving at an incredible speed. For some minutes, Siobhan lay back on that crooked vessel, her wide eyes staring up the stars, white hair finally released from its habit. Above, the constellations were brighter than ever before, the lightning flashing like a strobe light. They barely spoke words, instead exchanging glances of understanding that communicated their shared realization: the further away they were from that island, the better.

  It took some time before they reached the shore, both of them being careful to pull their boat up into the corners of the rocks for later use. Siobhan and Hamish embraced once more upon reaching land, the area giving them a sense of familiarity. It was the Isle of South Ronaldsay, where once before they had been taken and shipped away for the purposes of safety. Now even the rocks looked glum and displaced, various shipwrecks having washed up on the shore. Hand in hand, they walked up the moist bank of sand and earth, stepping onto the grassy knolls. Before them was the flat landscape of their childhood, an entire world left behind.

  When they arrived onto true land, where the roofs and shapes of buildings once were, it was as if they had arrived upon a different Earth. Nothing of their memories remained the same save for the occasional detail. Everything was burnt and broken, a civilization laid to ruin. “This is th’ place we used tae go tae schuil,” said Hamish, looking over the building now charred to smithereens. Siobhan looked up at it with a nod, pondering over what it was ever worth. She walked them along the path to the doctor’s house, the dwelling barely standing. Only the red door and its frame now existed, the rest a burnt-out series of beams. When they walked across the fields, they found dead grass and skeletons of livestock. The area had become so contaminated that nothing since could grow there.

  What they saw was a land ravaged by the blackouts, a land poisoned by white fungus and bluebells. Whenever they walked to the edges of the islands, places where they had once played as children, they could hear that hiss, the very same sound they’d heard by the boat. They knew to walk away immediately, to get far away from the sound that rung around their eardrums. Every time the lights hung over a place, they made it rotten in some form, and this island was now rotten to its very core.

  They traversed a little further, walking along the ruins, stepping back toward the pathway to their boat. Suddenly Hamish spoke, his voice cracked by emotion. “If thay hadn’t taken us, we could’ve died wi’ them,” he muttered, wiping his mouth from the tears that ran down into it. “Thay took us sae we didn’t have tae see the end.” His sister clung onto his arm, nodding her head. “Either way, we left when we did. There was nae other chance but the one we took.” But there was no telling what exactly had reached the town, what exactly had killed it and the people within. All that could be known was that it represented all that was left of the old world, a place once alive, now destroyed.

  They headed back onto the boat, the siblings piling in with a few things they’d found from exploring the remains of the buildings—a broken alarm clock, a wrench, a saw, a few blankets. They had found bullets, but not those suitable for their weapons. They had stashed them in the hopes of trading them with others. Their teachings from the island had prepared them to store as much as they could as long as it had some value to someone. Wading out into the waters in the small wooden boat, the siblings moved toward the islands lit by the green horizon.

  Briefly, she held her brother’s arm as he pushed the paddles down into the dark water. She could feel no great pain in his movements, no sense of suffering. From all those that he had killed, the people’s lives he’d taken away, Hamish appeared to feel no remorse. His gleeful half grin, skin still spattered with blood, gave his sister a shiver of the spine. She had hated them, yes, but enough to kill them? There was a moment somewhere on the birth of their trip, a point where she would have mentioned it. And yet that moment never came. Instead, she felt a safety with him, her brother, this ivory goliath, a machine of muscle and brawn, capable of such acts. They kept rowing, her arms clinging to his. In her mind, she set those horrors aside, exchanging them for the pleasure she was receiving. Sometimes the mind was better left sunk under the tide.

  Out on the water, the black waves lashed, crashing against both their boat and the shore. A tall lighthouse, long since deactivated, stood tall, a beam of solid stone. The two of them responded to it with vague smiles, excited by a sure sign of life in a real place. They waited for a while, paddling toward the sand and the rocks, until their tiny boat was right on the front of the beach. When the tide was out, they got out and pulled the hull, taking only the strength of Hamish to pull it into the protection of the land. Together they took a moment by a rock pool, Siobhan washing the blood from her brother with salt water, scooping the dirt from his ears and fingers. Once he was clean, they walked up the slopes until they reached the top of the hill, climbing with their hands over the rocks. Deep breaths and footsteps filled their waking moments.

  At the top of the hill, they examined the lighthouse. Looking up at the towering feature, they took in the white cylindrical building with a black lantern and ochre trim. This lighthouse was once responsible for building and maintaining the southern islands. The energy source of the lighthouse was solar power, and it illuminated the sea at night, even during the blackouts. “Ye think we can stay
in this thing?” Siobhan asked.

  Hamish, gazed up at the later of the lighthouse, “Aye, I believe this will be a fine dwelling for now. We can git food by fishing. I pray there is a fishing pole in this der thing,” Hamish responded. The two walked up to the door of the lighthouse, which was locked. Hamish, realizing the door was bolted shut took one of the guns from his backpack and shot the lock, rendering it useless. “Well, now we can git in,” he sheepishly said.

  The pair entered the lighthouse, the cement floor felt cold through their shoes. The steps leading up to the living quarters were made out of wood, and creaked as they walked up them. The stairs led up to where the occupant would have lived as they oversaw the lighting of the sea.

  Gazing out of the windows, it was apparent that it was now low tide. There was no electricity, other than the solar-powered orb that would light up at night. In the living quarters, stood a modest queen-sized bed. There were several remnants of the former occupant, family photos in frames were hung on the walls and on an chest of drawers. Photos of a much happier time. The ceiling of the living quarters was beautifully ornate, with wood carvings leading to the middle of the circle. A metal ladder of steps led to the place where the former occupant would have kept watch.

  Both of them stepped onto the metal ladder, climbing up to the watch tower. Standing seventy-five feet above the water, the twins were able to see for miles. They could see the many islets that clustered together, culminating into the Orkney Islands. For the first time, there were able to see where they had grown up and how magnificent the archipelago was, for the first time they were able to see the forest for the trees. They watched the sun set on the horizon through the west-facing window. The bold, brilliant, and rich red and orange hues immersed the the twilit sky, the governing star of Earth distributed its light source over the water. The thinness of the clouds veiled the half-orb in scarlet. The glowing sun gave its final illumination in the bloody sky, lighting a quivering path across the water as it bathed the ocean’s meek waves and the wispy clouds in burning red before descended and gave way to the starry sky.