New Title 1

by Dru Pagliassotti

  “But why wouldn’t you want to serve God?” Andy asked, troubled.

  “Or ha-satan,” Amon hissed, its ears flattening against its bony skull.

  “Having freedom of choice means being free not to make a choice,” Todd pointed out. “Like Schrödinger’s cat, I find it more comfortable to keep all my possible states of being in existence at once, rather than collapse them and perhaps discover I’m dead.”

  “Do you know what he’s talking about?” Jack asked, turning to his friend. He thought he’d seen Schrödinger’s Cat play at a bar once, but he didn’t know what that had to do with life or death. It hadn’t been the bar outside Reno.

  “But if you reject both God and Satan, what gives you the power to pass through the other planes?” Andy asked, ignoring him.

  “Science.” Todd smiled. “Postmodern magick. Or quantum magick, if you like. The metaphors work either way.”

  “That’s bullshit.” Jack shook his head. “If you were using magick, my wards would go off. The only thing jangling them right now is your familiar.”

  “Your wards are old-fashioned. They detect...particles, not waves. Absolutes, not possibilities. In postmodern magick, the practitioner understands the signifier is empty and endlessly iterative, but as long as it’s treated within its discursive context as if it were material, then at that moment, for all practical purposes, it’s material. It’s a case of hypostatized signification.”

  Jack wondered if his leg was being pulled, but Andy acted like he understood.

  “All right, Edward,” his friend said. “Play your word games. But remember what I said earlier. Hell is the absence of God. There is no in-between. If you’ve chosen to remove yourself from God, then you’re in Hell, whether or not you’ve consciously chosen to serve Satan.”

  “I don’t perceive the world in terms of binary oppositions. Your religion sets up a false dichotomy.”

  “Just because you choose not to accept an opposition doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. A blind man can argue all his life that there’s no such thing as light, but those of us who can see know better.”

  For a moment Jack saw Todd’s cheek twitch, as if Andy had scored some kind of point. Then the theologian turned away.

  “It seems to me that the more important question is why that giant snake is here and what we need to do to stop it.”

  “It comes from the bones.” Amon gnawed at its long, skeletal paw, sending flakes of burnt skin scattering across the floor. “The bones screamed and the worms answered.”

  “Worms, plural?” Todd asked. Amon worried at its paw, rolling its eyes up at him.

  “We saw a field and worms in our vision,” Jack told him, starting to pace across the floor, kicking books aside to see their spines and covers. “And a bone staircase and a series of doors slamming shut.”

  “What vision?”

  “An angel’s vision.” Andy stared at Amon, then at Todd. “But maybe you know something about the anonymous message I received. It seems like the kind of hint a man trying to stay neutral might send.”

  “I can take you to a bone staircase,” Todd said, calmly. “There are several, along the paths I walk.”

  “We also saw worms burrowing through flesh,” Andy said, holding the bigger man’s gaze. “That could be a metaphor for the earth, or it could have more direct significance. Either way, I think the first thing we need to do is find out why those bones were buried in the north campus.”

  “As you wish.”

  “Looks like this used to be the local history shelf,” Jack said, tilting over a fallen book case and picking up a narrow burgundy volume titled California Hills University: The First Quarter-Century. “Guess we’d better get to work.”

  XI

  The four coryphaei stirred, hearing the wakened cries of the kine rippling through the limis. They stretched and felt old barriers crumble and fall. Vertical lids slid open to reveal pale, nictating membranes over half-blind eyes.

  Domitor was the first to move, as always. He uncoiled and mustered his muscular body, exulting in his new freedom. The kinecall ebbed and flowed against the delicate membranes of his mouth and genitals.

  A split second later, Viator lifted her narrow head, running a tentacular tongue through the nearest quasiverses, tasting gravitational wells and particle waves.

  Beings have passed, she said, surprised. How did they not awaken us?

  Beings? Carnifex yawned and stretched out razor spines. Bladescales rippled down the length of her body. Did they rouse the kine?

  Domitor drew himself up, lifting and fanning a frill of sensory membranes. They trembled with screams of breed-readiness. The kine cry of blood and fecundity.

  They are only kine. Auctor watched the other three through narrowed eyes that ran the length and breadth of his massive bulk. It would be unwise to rush off blindly at the sound of their bleating.

  Neuter, Carnifex hissed, taking a swipe at the larger coryphaeus. Auctor sidestepped into a quasiverse where the killing blades slid by without drawing blood. The assassin spat and lowered hollow, venom-tipped fangs in a challenge. Go back to sleep, if you are too cowardly to act.

  Be still. Domitor quelled Carnifex and regarded the other male warily. The Verminaarch had given each of them a specific duty. Auctor’s was to record. Domitor felt his own urge to rush to the kine and fertilize them, but his other duty was to keep the small tribe alive. Do you have a memory to convey?

  The last bloodcall to awaken us closed the pathways and bound us to thelimis. How long have we slept?

  Domitor tilted his head toward Viator, who was the most sensitive to the multiplicity. She was already flicking tentacle-tongues across the paths.

  The stars have barely moved, she reported. And the paths that were closed have opened again.

  Then we do not plunge into the unknown. Let us silence the kine and finish what was started, Domitor declared, lifting his sensory frill until it was crown of vibrant red vessels around his skull. We go!

  With a surge, he pushed himself through the tight loops and spaces of the multiplicity, creating a new wormhole. Carnifex chuckled and surged after him, eager to share his breedblood.

  Viator turned her narrow head, regarding Auctor from one hooded eye. Her tongues swept the paths again, tasting, gauging, evaluating.

  The opposition lingers, she murmured. Auctor heaved himself forward, onto the first path. The thousand eyes that covered his bulk were busy scanning, watching, and recording.

  Yes, he agreed.

  They followed Domitor and Carnifex more cautiously, side by side like hunters in strange territory.

  XII

  Alison Kirsche was sure she was going to die.

  She’d been watching television with her new boyfriend, Peter, enjoying some time together before the dorm cohab restrictions cut in, when the shaking had started.

  They’d both given each other startled looks and lunged for the doorway at the same time that shouts had filled the dorm halls.

  For a wild minute the hallway was full of students shouting, whooping, swearing, and laughing as they braced themselves in doorways and watched their possessions tumble off bookshelves and desks. Earthquakes were scary but exciting—the ultimate roller coaster ride.

  Then the power cut out. Emergency lights flickered once, strobing a flash across the hall that revealed faces twisted with dismay and annoyance, and then they, too, fell dark.

  Another jolt hit, and another. Excitement turned into panic. Students began screaming, lurching for the exits or stumbling back into their rooms for flashlights and lighters.

  Peter wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her out into the hallway. In her panic, Alison couldn’t remember if you were supposed to stay inside or go outside in an earthquake. But most of her dorm mates were heading outdoors, and there was safety in numbers.

  The emergency alarms didn’t go off as they pushed the side doors open, but the students in the front of the crowd screamed and plummeted two stories down t
o the sidewalks below. The students immediately behind them grabbed the door frame and howled for the pushing to stop before they lost their grip. The outdoor stairway had broken away from the wall, leaving a three-foot gap of space between door and stairs.

  Over her friends’ shoulders, Alison saw nothing but darkness: a terrible, deep darkness, like a horror movie.

  The power was out all over Vista Hills.

  “Wait there,” one of the jocks shouted. He jumped to the crooked emergency stairs, grabbing the iron railing to steady himself. Students cheered as he wrapped an arm around the rail and held out a hand. “Come on. One by one.”

  Another man jumped across, grabbing the stairs as they creaked on bent and broken braces.

  “Women first!” someone urged. For a moment the male students looked panicked, but the idea caught on, and Alison found herself separated from Peter, pushed forward with other women. For a moment she felt a twinge of feminist guilt, and then she brushed it aside. She wanted out.

  They evacuated quickly but efficiently, making the jump with hands guiding them from behind and catching them in front. Alison’s legs were shaking by the time she walked down the shuddering, tilted metal stairs to the ground. Some of her friends were kneeling next to the students who’d fallen, crying as they tried to help them. One girl was on her cell phone muttering “C’mon, c’mon, put me through, damn it!” like a prayer.

  Flashlight beams and moonlight revealed blood and broken bone. Alison choked back bile and turned in circles, wondering what to do. Broken glass cut her bare feet.

  It wasn’t fun or exciting anymore.

  Then the ground jolted again, harder than before, and in the distance something sounded like it was crashing and falling. She sucked in a sharp breath, her heart pounding. More students stampeded down the rickety stairwell, shouting each others’ names, pulling out cell phones, yelling for campus security, and trying to move the injured students out of the way. Cries from the other side of the dorm indicated that students were leaving from other doors and windows, too.

  “Ally!” Peter found her, grabbing her shoulder. She jumped, her heart pounding. “Have you seen any of the RAs?”

  “No. Omigod, you scared me.” She shuddered, rubbing her arms. She’d been wearing a T-shirt and pajama bottoms in her dorm room, and now the cold December air was cutting through the lightweight cotton as if she were naked. “Maybe they’re on the other side of the hall?”

  “Let’s go.” Peter took her hand and started off.

  “Wait!” Alison yanked her hand back, flinching. “I cut my foot.”

  “Damn.” Peter turned and dropped to a knee, looking at it. Alison winced as his thumb ran over the cut. “Yeah, it’s still bleeding. There’s too much broken glass here—you can’t walk around barefoot.” He hesitated. “All I’m wearing is socks, but you can have them if you want.”

  Alison bit her lip, then nodded gratefully.

  “Thanks.”

  He pulled off his gym socks and Alison slid them on, wincing as they rubbed against her cut.

  They turned the corner and saw a group of students holding flashlights and cell phones. Alison started to run forward; then the giant snake burst from the ground, right beneath the knot of people.

  “Holy shit!” Peter swore, freezing. Alison stumbled, transfixed by the sight.

  The monstrous creature’s pale, scaly flanks were streaked with dark stains. It arched like a sea serpent while the students who hadn’t been crushed immediately screamed and scattered. Then it plunged back into the earth, ripping through a concrete patio as if the stone weren’t there. The impact shook the earth and shattered brick planters. Carefully tended trees and bushes smashed to the ground as the snake’s long, massive body slid up from the first hole and vanished down the second.

  Alison found herself on all fours. The ground quivered beneath her hands and knees as she watched the slaughter like a movie—like some kind of late-night monster film on television, the kind she’d always watched with a combination of fear and pleasure. For a moment she could believe this was just another Tremors sequel.

  But this serpent was pale and sleek, not brown and rubbery, and it was covered in small, writhing, scalelike cilia that looked like nothing she’d ever seen on a movie monster. The creature moved gracefully through the ground, as though dirt and rock were no more substantial than sea foam.

  Worse, the screams that followed its destructive passage didn’t stop, the way they did in movies when the scene changed. They just went on and on.

  That was when Alison realized she might die. Tonight, in college, at nineteen.

  She crawled over to the lawn and vomited.

  Something touched her shoulder. She spat, looking up. Peter’s face was a pale circle in the moonlight.

  “What was that?” he asked, his voice shaking.

  “I don’t know.” She spat again and wiped her mouth, then cleaned her hand on the grass. She blinked away tears. “A monster?”

  He nodded because they’d both seen it with their own eyes, and neither of them was stupid enough to say that monsters didn’t exist.

  The screams and groans and shattered bodies around them proved that they did.

  “I want to go to the chapel,” she said, before she realized she was going to say it. “Please. Let’s go to the chapel.”

  Yes—the chapel. The only safe place when monsters came. Her mind flew through the last fourteen weeks of Dr. Todd’s class. Of course. God had inspired her to take that class so she’d know when it was the end of the world; so she’d have time to prepare her soul before the apocalypse.

  Giant snakes in the earth. What else could it be but the apocalypse?

  “Okay,” Peter replied shakily, even though he’d always teased her about her beliefs before this. “Let’s go.”

  Clutching hands, they pulled themselves back to their feet and began to cut across campus as it shook and shuddered beneath them.

  XIII

  “All right, here’s something,” Jack said at last, squinting at the black type. Another jolt had caused the police car outside to tip, and now the headlight beams hit the ceiling, making reading more difficult.

  Andy lowered the book he’d been flipping through, and Todd lifted his head.

  “‘When Thorvald and Gale Gudrun died, their only nephew—Karl—traveled from Brainerd, Minnesota to examine the ranch here. He decided to sell the 130-acre site to Dr. Garth Andersen, who represented the California District of the Unified Lutheran Church.’ A couple of quotes. Hmm. ‘Karl Gudrun himself stated that he made his gift “to sanctify the memory of my aunt and uncle and to provide youth the benefits of Christian education in a day when spiritual values can well decide the course of history.” ’ One hundred and thirty acres? The campus isn't that big.”

  “It sold off some of the land to raise money for construction, back when it was still a college.” Andy held out a hand, and Jack handed him the book.

  “Is there any indication of how the owners died?” Todd asked.

  “Nope. Old age?”

  “It wasn’t old age,” Andy said, reading. “They were only in their forties, according to the birthdates given here.”

  “Amon!” Todd called out. The demon slinked out from the shadows, scraps of charred flesh trailing behind it like dark streamers. “I need a favor.”

  Amon scuttled across the floor and crawled into Todd’s lap, pressing its knobby head against the theologian’s sweater.

  “What can I do for you, beloved?” it asked, its dark tongue flickering out to wipe its beak.

  “Hey!” Andy frowned, looking up. “Get that thing out of here. We don’t need a devil’s assistance.”

  “Do you plan to read books while Rome burns?” Todd asked. His large hand touched Amon’s skull with apparent affection. “Amon’s specialty is telling the past and future. Now that we know what we’re looking for, he can search hell for an answer and bring it to us.”

  “And if they’re in heaven?”<
br />
  “Then your friend Jack can conjure us an angel.”

  “I generally avoid conjurations,” Jack said. Conjurations of any kind were dangerously close to black magick, and conjurations intended to compel another being into service were especially risky.

  Todd ignored him, lowering his head. “Amon, beloved, can you tell us how the Gudruns, who once lived in this house, died? Does it have anything to do with the field of bones?”

  Amon placed three legs on Todd’s chest, their claws snagging in his sweater, and thrust its beak into Todd’s mouth like a baby bird seeking a meal. Then it withdrew, its muzzle shiny and dark. It twisted, stepping from the theologian’s lap into nothingness.

  Todd lifted a hand and wiped his mouth with his wrist. Blood streaked his dark skin.

  Jack looked away, revolted. At least with the devil gone, his protective wards settled back down into watchful passivity.

  “I’m concerned about the wisdom of working with you, Edward,” Andy said.

  “Amon says the same thing about you,” Todd replied, his voice thick as blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. He swallowed and dabbed at his lips with a handkerchief, then wiped off his wrist. “Sorry. Tongue.”

  “Andy,” Jack said uneasily, “here’s something for you to think over.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Todd doesn’t set off my wards, and neither do those giant worm-things.” Jack jammed his hands into his jacket pockets. “Why not?”

  “I don’t know why your spells wouldn’t register Edward’s magick. The...worms...could be some kind of natural phenomena...although I doubt it.”

  “You don’t suppose they’re working together, then?”

  Todd laughed softly, behind them. “Why would I work with a worm?” he asked.

  Andy and Jack exchanged looks. The professor jerked his head slightly to one side, and Jack lifted a shoulder.

  “If Edward is really what he claims to be—someone who stands between God and Satan—then perhaps his power doesn’t set off your wards because it’s neutral,” Andy suggested, after a moment.