“‘Breathe the fumes,’ said Father Haddo.
“She did as he bid her, and began to tremble. All went dark before her eyes, and she tried to scream but no words came. Her mind reeled as she realized she was in motion, but as she tried to struggle against the great rushing all around her she heard Father Haddo’s voice in her ear.
“’Do not move, my child, or you will be lost!’
“Then, just as soon as it began, it was over. They were still, and Father Haddo was holding her elbow.
“‘Be not afraid,’ he said. ‘Look—look and see the majesty of the Ones for yourself!’
“They were standing on an obsidian precipice, and it was night—though not the sort of night that falls on Earth. There were no stars in the luridly black sky, the stars were all beneath her, in some sort of chasm where they appeared to dance like spirits of the dead. Between the stars was something that she could not look at, or at least understand, something not black but darker than that somehow. Something alive. It reached out with an arm that was not an arm and grabbed a star in something that was not a hand. A great screaming filled Margaret’s ears then, and she raised her hands to cover them but Father Haddo tore them away.
“‘Listen!’ he screamed, ‘Listen and see!’
“The screaming continued until the star disappeared into something that was a mouth but was not a mouth, and was swallowed. Only then did the screaming cease.
“‘Do you see?’ asked Father Haddo, in triumphal tones. ‘Do you understand now?’
Whether Margaret did or not, Ghyslaine never found out—but she saw, in that moment. She understood. Her mind folded and rearranged itself in that moment, and suddenly, it all became clear. Even the blancs-mangers in the sewers, considered little more than a nuisance even by the devout, were part of a greater plan—though to call it a plan was to spuriously attribute reason to what was simply will. The Ones knew what they were doing, knew what they desired—knew so completely that every single man, woman, and child was playing their part perfectly, no matter what they did, whether they resisted or obeyed.
With such vast consciousnesses open to her, the contents of the infinitely smaller minds of men were no longer shut. The partygoers, the wait staff—she could read them all as easily as she had read The Vicar. More so, really, for the written word—and language itself, she realized—was really just a barrier to understanding.
They had fallen silent, all of them, as she read, and remained so as she looked upon them, absorbed them into herself as the blanc-manger had earlier tried to absorb Lenin’s bicycle. Their struggles, their intrigues, their desires and dreams—it was all part of the insane cosmos, so she realized as she looked upon them, and did not judge.
But she did laugh. How could she not? She could see everything in proportion, and thus saw that none of it mattered at all. Like the writer, who was so convinced his little scheme of bringing together the Russian and the vicar would effect some sort of change in the world. It wouldn’t. Impregnating his lady-love would do more, really, if he could bring himself to spend in the proper place for such a thing to occur; it didn’t matter to the Ones, however, if he did, or if he kept spilling his seed down her throat—or the Russian’s, for that matter.
As for the Russian himself, his dreams of a proletarian dictatorship were comical, albeit comedy of the blackest sort. For all his investment in the theory of materialism—that the universe itself was naught but matter in motion—he was depending on pure willpower, an Idea, to wish away the Ones. Were he a wizard like Crowley, that might have worked; as it was, he had no chance at ruling the world.
Violet…she was bored, so bored with Maugham. He was a dear, but she was a busy lady with an active interest in the literary and carnal arts. Maugham wasn’t worth keeping around if he was just going to obsess over himself, literally wringing his hands all the time, as she wasn’t getting more than a taste—literally—of his cock. She couldn’t understand it; Oscar Wilde had also enjoyed boys and had still given her what she needed, with gusto, till she chucked him out. She had planned to break things off with Maugham tonight, after the party, but it was going so poorly she couldn’t add insult to injury. She did have hopes of offering him comfort, though—head injury and all—but only if he was willing to put his cock somewhere other than her mouth. Hell, she’d offer to have a ménage à trois with the Russian if only it meant she could just get fucked for once.
As for Crowley…as Ghyslaine turned her attention to the vicar, she realized this was all a part of his scheme. He had planned all along to open her mind to the Ones, make her perform like a trained dog in the hopes that he would show himself to be as grand and powerful as he wanted everyone to believe him to be. As grand and powerful as Haddo in The Vicar before the third act, thus discrediting Maugham’s conclusion, where he was destroyed by means of an enemy lacing his nightly wine and opium aperitif with holy water and virgin’s tears.
Crowley believed he had overpowered her, and was influencing her right now. She saw yellowish-green wisps emerging from his mouth where he muttered to himself, coiling their way to her, but they broke upon her like waves upon the beach. Her silence, however—her awe—he believed himself to have produced. But in the end, he was nothing. He’d squandered his will for a glimpse of wisdom he couldn’t comprehend, and consoled himself with bluster and opium.
Time to teach them all a lesson.
Ghyslaine closed her eyes and inhaled, connecting with the cosmos. Energy flowed through her, crackled along her arteries and up and around her bones; through her lungs and other organs. All she had to do was exhale—she would blow him a kiss!—and then he would truly know the power of the Ones. Transformed into the beast from the writer’s stupid book, something neither bat nor dragon nor hound, but not by his power and will, but by hers.
She raised her fingers to her lips, puckered up, began to blow as her eyes popped open, only to see as she expelled all the wind in her lungs that Mr. Sarkozy, hair wild, eyes glazed, had staggered in front of Crowley at exactly the wrong instant.
“Monsieur,” he mumbled, “do you have any more of that cocaine? I have never had such a potent—bllllrraaaaggh!”
The sound he made as Ghyslaine’s breath hit him in the back was unusual, but not half so unusual as seeing the man’s skin split open to reveal not his insides, but rather, someone else’s. Something else’s, for two massive wings peeled out of his back, a long neck unfurled like a fern frond from his own, still wearing the mask of Mr. Sarkozy’s horrified face until its nose grew and lengthened and it shook the old skin off like a dog shaking water from its ears. Mr. Sarkozy’s arms fell off, flopping obscenely onto the floor at the terrified Crowley’s feet, and the beast reared up on new hind legs both more muscular and differently jointed than Mr. Sarkozy’s had been. At least, Ghyslaine assumed. She’d never seen him without pants.
“Do something!” cried Maugham, as the room erupted into screams, and guests began to clamber over one another in their haste to get to the exit.
“I don’t—I can’t—” stammered Crowley, to Ghyslaine’s delight. If the fat fool went white and began trembling before a mere steed of the Ones, he had no business pretending to speak their word from the pulpit.
Ah, but if she didn’t do something, and quickly, Mr. Sarkozy would destroy all of Maxim’s, and while there was glee to be found in that, she had affection for the place. After all, it was the site of her awakening. Perhaps one day, if they willed it, she would return here and shepherd her own flock…
“Sarkozy,” she said, unfastening her collar. The great beast turned to her, and lowered its head in a bow. “Good, good. Now come here.”
Sarkozy’s new neck was almost too thick for the strap, but she managed to hook it round the thinnest part. His hide was thick, possessing both qualities of scale and leather; she knew she would not choke him. Indeed, the tightness only seemed to help him obey—one gentle tug, and he followed her obediently to the door.
Mr. Sarkozy had often su
ggested Ghyslaine might enjoy riding him—and indeed, as she settled herself more or less comfortably just in front of his wingjoints, she found she did. A blanket, saddle, or pair of panties would have been nice; the feeling of his hide against her cunt was just a bit too personal. Likely she was quite an extraordinary sight without all that, though…
“My child!” Crowley had rallied and followed her into the street, probably hoping to save face, the Russian on his heels. “You have been blessed, I see that now! But you cannot really know their will without an intercessor; this is doctrine! Take me with you! Without me, you shall surely perish!”
Ulyanov waved him away. “She is doing fine! It seems like our whore has overcome her boss; she rides him!” Then to her he said, “Surely, you’ll be a slave of the Ones! You cannot act alone! Dismount and organize alongside me!”
The fools! One was calling her out; the other, calling her names! Should she command Mr. Sarkozy to stamp out either—or both—like a cigarette beneath a boot-heel? No—the thought of letting them live in impotence and fear was too delicious. Time for a sermon, or a political speech, or her own!
“The Ones are not for you alone to know,” she bellowed at Crowley, pointing at him. “Nor are they anything like men or matter,” she said, finger swinging to the Russian. “But, they can and do speak to those who will listen to their will. Have you heard them, vicar? Have you, revolutionary?”
The pair were speechless, agog. Somerset, who watched from under the awning, wondered if his plans were ruined or fulfilled by this unexpected turn of events. Ah, well, it had been one hell of a party, anyway. He strolled out from the awning, flask in hand, a limping Violet on his arm, and stopped, one stride behind his illustrious guests. Extending an arm between the shoulders of Crowley and Ulyanov, he offered the flask to them. The magician snatched it and gulped what he could. Somerset frowned, stole the liquor back from the vicar and raised a toast to the girl without a hint of a stammer. “It’s no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it! Am I right?”
Ghyslaine laughed and kicked her ankles against Mr. Sarkozy’s chest. He began to pump his wings. Crowley and the Russian and Maugham and Violet threw up their arms as dust and trash blew about them, which made her laugh harder, and then she and Mr. Sarkozy were in flight, rising even faster than her poor forgotten brioche in the humid, warm night air.
Kai Monstrai Ateik (When the Monsters Come)
Damien Angelica Walters
DAINA MIELKUTĖ STOOD HER POST ON THE CURONIAN SPIT, KNIVES at her belt and the butt of her spear in the sand, watching the placid waters of the Baltic Sea. Her skin tingled with a sensation of flame without heat and ice without cold—a sign the monsters were waking. Nothing new, this sensation—Daina had lived on the spit for twenty-three years, ever since her sixteenth birthday—but something about it felt different in a way she couldn’t explain, something undefinable underneath the sensation.
All across Lithuania, people would be preparing the midsummer bonfires for the Saint Jonas’ Festival and with good reason: this was the first summer since the end of the Great War, the second since Lithuania once again came under her own rule.
Here on the spit, though, the bonfires held a different purpose. There would be no singing and dancing while the sun set, no making flower wreaths, and no stories. There were only the globėjai, the men and women who volunteered to stand guard, to fight, to kill. Some summers brought luck and there were no monsters at all; this would not be one such summer.
The gentle waves of the sea kissed the shore, withdrew, kissed again, but Daina’s gaze was trained further out. No shadowy movements in the water, no strange ripples, and in truth, her skin would tell her of the arrival before her eyes.
Behind her, footsteps thumped on the sand. She didn’t turn, merely nodded when Lukas stopped beside her.
“Drink?” he said.
She nodded and he pressed a bottle of krupnikas into her hand. She took a long swallow of the honey liqueur, watching the water as she did. After he took a pull from the bottle and tucked it in a pocket, he sighed and rocked back on his heels.
“My head has been pounding all day. I wish they’d come and be done with it.”
“They’ll be here soon enough. I think it will not be an easy summer this year.”
He shrugged. “It will be the same as always, easy or not. The monsters will come, we will kill them, and next summer, we will do the same.”
“Meška girioje, o skūrą jau rėžia.”
“Don’t sell the skin until you’ve caught the bear? Now you sound like my mother.”
“The saying is a true one. Until the monsters come, we cannot say how it will be.” The strange sensation flitted across her arms again, and she grimaced.
“Something wrong?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Does the pain in your head feel different?”
“It hurts like it always does before they come.” He spat into the sand. “Easy or hard, soon enough we’ll know.”
She yanked her spear free and rested it on one shoulder, looking from the sea to his heavily lined face—and he older than her by only three years. She remembered sharing a bottle of krupnikas with him in her small bed ten years ago; a short-lived affair with only sorrow at the end, for love had no place here and they knew it. “Yes, we will.”
She made her way across the beach, to the center of the spit and the village nestled in the trees there. The spit, a curved piece of land ninety-eight kilometers long, ran from Klaipėda down to Kaliningrad in Russia and separated the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea. Nearly a hundred years of monsters, of globėjai, and the reason the monsters chose a segment of the spit roughly one kilometer in length for their attempted incursions was still a mystery.
Some stories said a ragana tried to use magic—for what purpose, it was never said—and opened a door that should never have been opened. Some said the turmoil of man created an abscess and the monsters were akin to pus from a wound that would not heal. And still others blamed the Russians, yet with half the cursed land falling on their side of the spit, it was unlikely. But you didn’t need to know how or why a terrible thing was happening to know it must be stopped.
Their village had no official name, but the forty-three men and women who made it their home called it Pabaigos—The End. The cluster of small cottages and larger common buildings had been built in a natural clearing, and the birch, the spruce, and the pine muffled the sound of the sea. Although Pabaigos had neither mayor nor general, in the last few years, everyone had come to view Daina as the leader. Not a role she asked for, but not one she would refuse.
Her cottage, one of the smallest, was built on the edge of the village proper, and her windows faced the woods, giving her a level of privacy she treasured. As she opened her door, a voice came from behind.
“Miss Daina?”
With a wave of her hand, Daina ushered the girl in; Ieva smiled, though her eyes didn’t wear the same.
“Is something wrong?” Daina asked.
“I…”
The girl’s gaze flitted here and there, settling on the dried exoskeleton of Daina’s first kill hanging on one wall. While she’d killed too many to count since then, keeping the first was a tradition. The body of the beast resembled an oversized, yet misshapen lobster—too many limbs, extending down the length of the body, with too many razor-sharp claws, those in front larger than the rest; a plated, segmented body in shades of blue and black, and a whip-thin tail. Its face was similar to a shark, black eyes and a wide mouth filled with rows of dagger-sharp teeth. A hideous, seemingly mindless creature.
The first kill, her second year on the spit. She had been seventeen—a year younger than the girl standing before her now—full of righteous fury, nary a wrinkle on her face. She remembered the sound her spear made when it pierced the beast, the feeling of triumph. Later, she would understand it was a small monster, an easy kill, but later was not then.
“I doubt you came here to stare at that ugly thing,” Daina said. “So what’s wrong?”
Ieva looked down at her feet, color flooding her cheeks. “I’m sorry for disturbing you, but I feel strange, and I know everyone said I would, but it doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel the way anyone, the way you, described.”
“There’s no need to apologize,” Daina said, fighting the urge to rub her own arms again. “Have you asked anyone else?”
Ieva kept her eyes down. “I said something to Miss Ruta, and she said I was too new to know.”
Daina wasn’t surprised. Ruta, ten years older than Daina, had been irritable for months, and even though she snapped at anyone who asked, everyone assumed her woman’s blood had ceased to flow. But if Ieva truly was feeling something strange—and given that this was her first summer, Daina would allow it could be a misinterpretation on the girl’s part—perhaps Daina’s own suspicion was not wrong.
“I will talk to the others, and Ieva?” She waited for the girl to meet her gaze. “Keep your knives and spear close at hand.”
Under the cover of full dark, Daina moved along the lagoon side of the spit, heading south, her spear resting on one shoulder. The sensation on her skin wasn’t as strong, but it persisted, like a bump on the tongue.
Before she crossed over to the Russian side, she checked over both shoulders. On the spit, they were bound not by country loyalty, but by the enemies beneath the water; still, war brought its own tensions and people were only human. When she drew near a small cluster of cottages, she crouched behind a sand dune and waited, watching, until she was sure no one else would see her passage.
She’d spent the day asking everyone except Ruta if they felt anything different. All the women, but none of the men, said yes. Daina didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all.
Brushing her hair back from her forehead, she crossed the sand with quick, quiet steps, and knocked softly on one of the doors. “Госпожа Avilova?” She kept her voice as respectful as the address.
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