Inkdrinker
Scribe
Sepulcher: a stage enlived by ghosts.
Posts: 908
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Post by Inkdrinker on Mar 27, 2015 22:55:16 GMT -5
The man felt a smile creep across his face, reveling in momentary remembrance. Webb: he found solidarity in the syllable that had been his name. But it was fleeting and bittersweet, unmatched satisfaction blending into unrivaled pain. Almost as soon as he had remembered, he forgot; peeling off the scab of identity all over again. Now he was hollow and aimless, haunted by loss, but unknowing of what had been lost. He had been something, but now something was him. There was something inside of him, something old, something powerful. Had it always been there? How many times had he thought these same thoughts? The infernal puzzle maddened him, though he did not know why, which only drove him madder still. He trod the path of that tired, vicious circle for longer than the imagination could bear.
The light: buzzing, hissing, sharp blasphemy. It fermented inside his body, inside his mind, cutting and clawing its way to the outside world. He could not contain it, only expel: birthing beams of unstable energy, jagged and hungry. It was tearing him apart, along with everything else, in an ancient, demented quest for retribution. What had sparked this biological need for burning vengeance was lost to time, but the light raged all the same. It was there, stitched into his breast, its hot breath on the back of his mind.
Searing blood dripped down from empty eye sockets, crimson tear drops playfully dodging the white-hot cracks in his face. He laughed a laugh of dementia, the barrier between pain and pleasure having been worn so thin and threadbare so as to almost not exist at all. Blind and babbling, he wandered where he would, forming new passageways when it suited him and using old ones on a whim. He walked until he had to crawl and crawled until he could walk again. Ambling and rambling through mazes of his own creation, he was looking for something he could not remember, furthering a goal he could not possibly understand.
He cringed with every footfall, his ears ringing, but at least they blocked out the noise of his thoughts, reverberating into an endless cacophony inside his skull. The man's body was slowly turning itself inside out, trying desperately to deport a foreign presence that had overpowered it completely. Out of habit he pressed on, for his will had long since deserted him and he knew nothing else. There was movement or there was not: an absence of purpose, a void filled by thoughts, thoughts led to pain, pain to movement. Another coil in the endless spiral.
Webb: that had been his name. The man smiled, then he forgot.
Akaj awoke early in the morning, earlier than anyone else in his household, as he always did. He was lying on his back, still under the silky sheets, gaze fixated upon a not-particularly-remarkable patch of ceiling. Uneasy at first, he began to sort through his thoughts, sifting the important from the trivial and freeing himself of unnecessary worry. Gradually he slipped into tranquility; time to rise.
No one else yet stirred in his household, it was as close to silence as one could get in the Grand Cavern. Akaj used this time to meditate and to reflect, before the children were upon him with their endless energy. He never recalled being so hyperactive, himself, but events were often distorted through the lens of memory.
He dressed simply and sedately. There was no rush nor need to linger: just an ordinary day. Akaj buckled his belt with a frown, the thing seemed to be getting smaller every day. The physically docile environment of his work, combined with overeating as a tactic to combat stress, was not doing his waistline any favors. He sighed, absently resolving to think about his health more. Most people had the opposite problem, he thought, not enough food to go around. Akaj felt guilt rise in his throat, to have been so greedy. He soberly muttered prayers for those in need.
Akaj wrapped himself in a loose robe of a color some said the sky used to be. The dye was actually made, very tediously, by crushing beetles. Akaj could never escape the association. Where others merely saw a pleasant hue, for him it only brought to mind those countless mashed-up beetles. They had never done anything wrong, those beetles. In the old days, he was told, they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. But now they were cultivated like a crop, bred to be as bright and juicy as they could be. Poor little beetles, trapped in an industry they could not possibly understand. Doomed from the very second of their hatching. Sometimes Akaj would come across some such beetle, whether wild or escaped, they particularly cared for the southern balcony. Akaj never shooed them, never stamped or smashed. He simply smiled and let them be. They were just beetles, after all.
Millicent, their housekeeper, was the next to rise. Her footsteps broke the silence as she made her way to the kitchen, to prepare breakfast, no doubt. Akaj had always made a point of employing humans, it was the least he could do for them, after all. The practice had earned him the ire of many more conservative iamo, of course, but Akaj did not care. He did not need any more of their paranoia, greed, and short-sightedness.
He called himself a negotiator, though his official title shifted with every new project. Managing his family's assets was almost a full-time job in and of itself, but Akaj somehow found the time to settle labor disputes and negotiate trade agreements on the behalf of others, as well. He had not ended up in the hierarchy of the church, as he once thought he might, though he was not exactly unhappy with his position.
Akaj sat in meditation until Millicent approached him, tray in hand, at the usual time. Any coldness or hesitation in their relationship had long since bled away, thankfully. She knew his routine and he knew hers, where the boundaries were and how to tell feigned disturbance from the real thing. Millicent had fair hair and a fresh face, but old, tired eyes. Akaj met them, nodding wordless approval of her offerings and bidding her back to the kitchen to whip up something suitably saccharine for the kids.
He would wake them soon, for they were loathe to be woken by anyone else, save their mother. Unfortunately, she was very far away indeed, sorting out some nasty business with the Taro Assembly, so the task fell to him. When he was finished with his own breakfast, a regionally traditional spiced broth and an infinitely less traditional recipe from the surface: a scramble of eggs and various surface vegetables grown in artificial greenhouses made possible by sunstone. He had acquired a taste for it when Millicent had made it for herself, upon receiving the first of her new wages. Surface ingredients were, somewhat ironically, more expensive than most surfacers could afford. It was an issue many campaigned on in their communities, the promise of better access to old comforts unifying them, regardless of income, with the power of nostalgia. Such a strange thing, thought Akaj, to be nostalgic for something one never experienced in the first place.
There was no door to the children's room, though this was not unusual in traditional iamo architecture. Akaj remembered it as blessing and as a curse, never entirely alone. You had to earn your solitude in an iamo household. Akaj gently stepped into the room, his gaze falling over the sleeping twins. Two little bodies, softly breathing and entangled. Akaj smiled.
“Iqn, Halaj, time to wake up,” he whispered. They peeled open their eyelids regretfully and separated.
“Not yet.”
“Yes, I'm afraid so.” They stretched and wriggled out from beneath the bed-coverings. Akaj helped them dress, then shepherded them to the dining room. Akaj had Millicent making them whatever they asked for, within reason, while their mother was away. Sweet bean paste and bat sausage was the order of the day. The twins ate voraciously, whatever residual sleepiness they retained falling away almost instantaneously. When they were finally sated, Akaj sent them along to their lessons and went about his own business.
Hungry, hungry, twisted, gnawing. The man gnashed his broken teeth together and flitted his black-stained tongue about wildly. There was pain, but there had always been pain, it was no greater than it had been the minute before or a hundred thousand minutes after that. But it was a different kind of pain than it had been before. His flesh still burned, the light still pierced, but there was something new, something brooding and gastric. It pulsed, bloated and knotted in on itself, wriggling indecisively in his gut. An alien desire to birth gripped his flesh. He needed to excise the new or the old, for to be caught in between was perfect agony.
The man shambled on with guttural noises and ghoulish posture. There would have been bile, had he any left, instead he drooled only light. He was close now, though to what, he did not know. Mind clogged with filth, nerves on fire, screaming. Internal deceit. Black gums, white light. Sallow, sunken flesh leaking dazzling void. Almost there. Another footfall, another pulse, another surge. Strange things swimming under wraps of flesh, warped and weathered. A being at war with itself.
Then, in a staggering anticlimax, there it was: a sea of other, weaker lights, the mycological stench of thriving, vigorous rot. A cacophony of decaying reverberation, thousands of denizens breathing and whispering and shouting in tandem: the city.
Akaj stood alone on the balcony, halfway up a tower bridging cavern floor with cavern ceiling. It was a place to think, to be in solitude and yet at the nexus. The whole city was splayed out below, coursing like a river over every inch of the Grand Cavern. There were other towers too, no doubt with other solemn observers looking over the same luminescent architecture. Oldtown, Hightown, and the iamo districts bled less light, but did so more mindfully. The newer, ramshackle, human dwellings, leaked light haphazardly, with no sense of delicacy or beauty. Surely they knew such a precious resource was not to be wasted, thought Akaj. They had lost so much, yet still took so much for granted.
An earthenware teacup sat ignored on the railing, steaming merrily for its own amusement. Akaj was absently aware that he had lost track of time. How long had he been out here, stewing in his own thoughts? He pondered for a moment, then determined he simply did not care. The work could wait, at least for another couple of minutes.
Akaj adopted a wide stance, spreading out his arms across the railing and exhaling. His hand brushed up against the teacup, causing it to teeter precariously. He scrambled, trying to snatch it before it fell, but his efforts were in vain. The teacup slid off the railing, spilling its foggy contents across the cityscape and eventually shattering, undignified, on the streets below. Akaj cursed, to have been so clumsy. The embarrassment lingered even after the realization that there was nothing to be done. Someone else would clean up his mess. This had always made him uncomfortable, he hated to be a burden to others.
Looking up again, something at the far end of the cavern caught his eye. It was not just another light, it was something more. He could not look away, it was like nothing he'd ever seen before. The lights of the city were sourced from fire or sunstone, but this light was more pure, seemingly the source of itself. Perhaps this was starlight. Enchantment quickly gave way to pain, so sharp was the light, so focused, that it cut through everything else and began to burn a little hole in the center of his vision.
With remarkable self-control, Akaj reeled away, covering his eyes, but the light only seemed to grow brighter. He stumbled inside, but the light would not fade, it had gone like a needle through his eyes and stabbed itself into his very mind. It felt as if a great wasp had stung his brain, it's payload spreading like venomous wildfire.
Completely blinded, he collapsed, crawling on his hands and knees. Akaj moaned in pain, feeling around in an attempt to locate a water basin. He had to wash it out, the burning nothingness that had lodged itself between the folds of his mind. The water would not have helped, even if he had found it, what ailed him was something deep and incurable. All from just a glance.
Akaj writhed helplessly on the floor, screaming prayers for mercy and for his family. Others must have seen this obscene light, he prayed for them too. No one came for him, save the sound of his own voice, bouncing off the walls, but soon even his echo abandoned him.
Stone bathed in impossible fire: a great blaze, cold and sterile. Being devoured by the flames felt like nothing more than drowning in cool water, some even embraced it. But to gaze upon the light was to stare into the heart of an uncaring star. At first there had been noise, commotion, screams, but now all was silent. The city had accepted its fate. The man who had been Webb stood at the epicenter, vaguely aware that this had been his doing. He had been growing steadily less aware, less conscious, with every step, and he had been walking for such a long time. Now he was nothing more than a husk, unaware that it had ever been more. He felt no poetic remorse, suffered no grim realization. What thoughts he had were dull and broken, barely thoughts at all.
The light would not let him rest, not even for a moment. He dragged his weary body forward as it bade him, carving a path of destruction and silence. The world seemed a much more peaceful place when he was done with it, no more bickering, no more fighting, just silence.
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Post by James on Mar 28, 2015 4:24:15 GMT -5
Eating their ice creams as they walked along the harbour, the pair discussed the end of the world. They cared little for the strange glances of staggering locals, wandering out of darkened clubs and alleys. Collingwood knew the stares were for two grown adults eating ice cream at nearly five in the morning rather than the contents of their conversation. If anyone did come close enough to hear talk of the Apocalypse, their ears were filled with a slight buzzing, easing them to cross to the other side of the road to seek a kebab from one of the beachfront takeaways. Of course, Collingwood suspected some of the glances came from the sight of a tall, black man walking alongside a pale skinned, middle-aged woman. Liberalism was a lake on a mountain, roaring rivers and trickling streams spreading out across the country. The coast was the last place to be graced, the seaside towns the bastions of English conservatism.
“Ramsgate’s not exactly the most glamorous place for the world to end,” Collingwood said, staring around at the town. For every bar that was filled with thumping music, another building was boarded up. A trickle of teenagers flowed from one bar to the next, seeking an owner who had lax ethics, their trousers slipping down as if a different type of gravity was exerted on them. Only the harbour grabbed Collingwood’s attention, the street lights reflected in the rippling water like a starry night. The degradation of the town hadn't yet reached the water.
Then again, perhaps that was exactly why Ramsgate would be the perfect place for the world to end. His family had holidayed there when he was young, during the final flourishes of the English seaside resort industry. What amazed Collingwood was everything was the same. The pharmacy still sat where it had, as was the bakery and the ice cream shop. Some stores had changed their name but still looked identical to those before them. Some shops had died, perished on the altar of the supermarket. Nothing replaced them; they were merely boarded up and left as a tomb. As each store failed, the high street grew quieter. Ramsgate was a dying town. It just didn't know it.
Elizabeth stayed silent for a moment, her tongue running around the edge of her cone. “It’s where Craig said the Apocalypse was going to be. If anything, that makes it more unlikely it'll happen here.”
Collingwood allowed the old unspoken argument drift by him and out to sea. Elizabeth’s views on seers, prophecies, fortune tellers and palm readers were well known to his ears, even after their parting with the formation of the BSI. He could still hear the lectures. Magic was a natural force, like gravity, and had to play within the laws of nature. It couldn’t control time. It couldn’t see into the future. People had their whole lives laid out in front of them, each choice affecting every other, rippling on until people found themselves stunned at how so much had changed in a decade or two. Magic couldn’t predict that. Collingwood thought otherwise; he had seen otherwise.
However, they had been in Ramsgate for two days now and the only sign of the Apocalypse was when several men in shorts dived from the tall cliffs into the swirling tides. Magic or not, Collingwood fancied humanity’s chances of doing something stupid to cause the end of time.
“If we’re certain Craig’s just having one of his flutters, why are we here? Why did you call me?”
“Because he predicted the Apocalypse,” Elizabeth shrugged. “When a flamboyant gay man, who does have an uncanny knack of picking Grand National winners, tells you the world is going to end, you play it safe. I don't know about you, but I'd feel pretty bad about not checking it out if he was right.”
Collingwood’s laughter was drowned out as one of the clubs’ doors opened. Two men came barrelling out, grappling with each other without ever managing to throw a punch, the ballet of the drunk. Collingwood's hand dropped, inching to his waist, before he noticed the sounds were the result of a Saturday night. It had taken years for him to train his reactions, to overpower his instinct to form the perfect response. He didn’t want to do nothing, giving time for some unseen foe to gain the upper hand but nor could he whip out his handgun on unsuspecting pub brawlers. This was Britain, not America. Now, his hand moved exactly to where it had to be on hearing sudden sounds. Even then, Elizabeth’s reactions were better. She hadn’t even flinched. It made sense. If Collingwood messed up, there would have to be a Type-2 governmental cover up. If Elizabeth got trigger happy, the entire veil between natural and supernatural would come tumbling down.
While carefully constructed walls had been placed around their personal friendship, the veil was why their relationship had deteriorated at a professional level. The Bureau of Supernatural Investigation was tasked with what was unofficially known as the Gandalf Order: keep it secret, keep it safe. The same could be said about Elizabeth to an extent. Pragmatism, or perhaps pig-headedness, was the problem. Elizabeth wanted to only hold the veil up to prepare the world for magic's triumphant return. The government saw how much money and effort that would take, recognised the revolution in life which would have to occur, and thought that sticking its head in the sand was the better solution. The BSI was there to make sure the ostrich didn't get slaughtered.
They finished their ice creams and meandered down the ageing wooden stairs, stepping onto the third quay within the harbour. This was the seventh of their potential eight apocalypses, all of the others having perfectly natural and sordid explanations. The Bed and Breakfast mysteriously bought with cash was some businessman hoping to set up an underground brothel. The string of petty thefts were a bunch of teenagers setting up their own gang, the Ram Horn, which Collingwood felt they would later regret. Due to the pair's mysterious patronage, the local police force had more success in two days than they usually had in a year. The next potential apocalypse was a boat that arrived a week ago with suspect papers and a well-placed bribe to the harbour authority.
“I bet it’s drugs,” Collingwood said, the swaying wharf drifting beneath his feet.
“I’ll go for human trafficking then. £50 for drugs, £100 for slaves?”
“What? How is that fair?”
“No one bets against heroin.”
Their prey was at the very end of the quay, looking like an oversized Audi that stumbled into the sea. It was sleek and white, curving upward to house a cabin that bankers could snort cocaine from without having the powder contaminated by the sea air. An open palm pressed against Collingwood's chest, Elizabeth holding him in place as they stared in the darkness. The boat was only visible due to the light of the nightclubs and street lights from nearby, the harbour growing darker with every step away from the shore. In their dark clothing, for all investigators needed good coats, they were probably invisible to the brawlers and would be seducers only a hundred metres away.
Elizabeth began to mutter, mumbling Finnish words under her breath. It had always been her spell-casting language of choice. Supernatural creatures were more common than Finns in their line of work, and both had a surprising knack for Latin. Spell-casting in Finnish gave her an edge; no one knew what she was planning. However, Collingwood was aware of what his former partner was doing. They had worked together long enough before. At all times magic moved through the air unseen. Elizabeth watched it like an engineer in a wind tunnel, seeing how the air moves past a Formula 1 car. She was looking for the tell-tale sign of it clinging to organic life.
“The boat's empty,” she said, biting her lip. “I think that rules out human trafficking.”
Collingwood took a step forward, moving to stand level with the vessel. “Called it.”
“Only one way to find out,” Elizabeth said, taking a single step before leaping past Collingwood and onto the ship itself. He followed, joining her on the small deck reserved for coolers and fishing rods.
The ship was spotless. Collingwood supposed it was new, recently bought with ill-gotten gains. He ran a finger along the edge of the boat, feeling no unevenness of paint or the nicks that a crate might cause as it was dragged onto land. It felt fresh and yet there was something hidden just underneath. It wasn't something most would feel; the sixth sense a muscle trained by dealing in the supernatural. Closing his eyes, he could feel something tarring not the boat itself but its Platonic ideal. Something inside was corrupting the perfect abstract of a boat, which now felt scarred and broken. The realisation causing a shock, his hand retreating from the surface.
“I know,” Elizabeth said beside him, her hand on his. “I feel it too. Either this is some really bad heroin or there's something wrong here.”
She readjusted the necklace and bracelets she wore, various protections against all manner of attacks, and moved to the door of the cabin. Keeping close behind her, Collingwood eased his gun from its holster, feeling its reassuring weight against his grip. The door jammed, staying resolutely shut until Elizabeth ran a finger along the lock and a gentle click rang out in the silence. Collingwood felt his heart beat quicker. One never knew what waited behind a closed door; he envied the people who never thought about it.
Walking inside the cabin, they were plunged into darkness. Elizabeth slowly made her way to a bin and felt around inside it, the rustling of paper reaching Collingwood's ears. She clicked her fingers, muttered a word under her breath and the paper caught alight, bathing the cabin in a gentle glow. The feeling of wrongness grew stronger. The concept of a ship now felt intrinsically bad, like something only a demon could create. It clouded Collingwood so much it took him several seconds to notice the artwork that made up the wallpaper of the room. Numbers and symbols swirled together to form pictures and diagrams: a raven made of letters, a snake composed of numbers, a woman borne from radial geometry. It was macabre but nothing Collingwood hadn't seen before. Troubled minds led to poor interior design choices. Instead he looked across the counter tops and the table, seeking the dark artefact or caged evil that must be present in the boat. There was a menagerie of the mundane. Coffee mugs swarmed a small sink. Maps covered the table, showing off various coastlines and oceans. A half eaten cheese sandwich was left somewhere just off the coast of New Zealand.
“Well, besides the questionable choice in wallpaper, I'm not sure this is the most dangerous place I've seen,” Collingwood said, turning to look back at Elizabeth. She stood rooted by the door, her eyes following a route along the wall.
“It's not wallpaper; it's the Book of the Dead.”
Collingwood stared, his eyes flicking back to the strange shapes scattered all around the cabin. “It doesn't look very Egyptian.”
“The Egyptian version is the Hawkman of the Book of the Dead.”
“So what's this version?” Collingwood learnt long ago to roll with Elizabeth's nonsensical referencing system.
“Batman.”
The symbols took on a new significance to Collingwood as he moved closer, eyeing one part of the wall. For a moment he saw numbers and letters coming together, a form of a woman briefly appearing, but then his eyelids grew heavy and the woman seemed to shift into something altogether different. He took a step back, his gun still clutched in his hand, and saw a large crow staring back at him. Around the bird, fire rained down from clouds, setting a forest ablaze.
“Badb,” Elizabeth said, appearing beside him. Collingwood jumped. “She's an Irish goddess who predicted the Apocalypse. An ancient Craig if you like.”
There was something wrong with Elizabeth's voice. The beat, the rhythm of irreverence had vanished into the night. She sounded serious. If anything, that was more unsettling to Collingwood than the pictures gathering in around them. She moved past him, her fingers tracing the wall, following the symbols as he tried to piece together the story. Men seemed to battle with great giants and serpents. A woman with a baby at her breast wandered through a garden of skeletons. Over and over again, great waves flooded the scenes, as if the churning water served as punctuation.
“What's with all the flooding?” Collingwood offered into the silence.
“The end of the world is usually due to water. It says something about Christianity that it needs to go all fire and brimstone compared to the slow reclaiming of the universe by a primeval sea.” Elizabeth's finger paused over some twisted animal with the head of a crocodile and the mane of a lion.“Ammit.” Her voice was so quiet Collingwood took a step closer to her. “The Devourer.”
“Of the world?” Collingwood said, his gun suddenly seemed slick with sweat.
“Unfortunately not. Ammit swallowed the unpure dead. The Egyptians didn't see this life as the real deal. The afterlife was where you gained true immortality with a just and kind ruler in Osiris, though I guess it's not only the Egyptians who think that. If you were found wanting at the time of your demise, Ammit was there to stop you living what was really your real life. She was there to devour you as you escaped the womb to the promised lands. Except this isn't some primitive proving ground for eternal reward; this place and all its beauty and flaws matter. And someone's trying to destroy it.”
“How?”
“It's a spell, Tom. An incantation to summon the end of the world,” Elizabeth said, her finger once more running along the wall.
“But not all of these stories can be real.” Collingwood rotated on the spot, looking at first Celtic goddesses to Viking warriors, floods rising high over Polynesian boats. “They can't all be right.”
Elizabeth paused, nodding as she stared at a bearded, robed man watching the non-Elect be thrown into a pit of fire. With her voice still cold, she explained that the spell wasn't trying to summon all these figures. It was summoning an atmosphere, an ideal. It was creating the concept of an Apocalypse not as myth or legend but as a reality, a reality that could be latched onto by something horrible. As a side effect, the boat was being changed, no longer just a vehicle, but a vessel of the damned. The incantation had such strength it corrupted the very ideal of a boat itself, twisting it into some mutated form that would never be the same. The room was evil.
“So if the figures aren't being summoned, what destroys the world?”
“If I had to hazard a guess, probably that,” Elizabeth said, pointing to the roof.
Whereas the other figures took careful glances to form, lost in a sea of individual symbols, the scene depicted on the roof was instantly visible. Looking up, Collingwood found his mouth going dry. The solar system was in front of him, every planet recognisable from the memories of old school textbooks. Squeezing each sphere were huge appendages, wrapping tightly around each planet as even more disappeared out of the picture, seeking worlds unseen. Even the sun was lost in a cocoon of tentacles, Collingwood almost picturing the light flickering from view, lost from the universe for ever more. His eyes followed the appendages, seeking their origins like an explorer hunting for the Nile's source, lost in twisted mazes and wrong turns until he stumbled upon the figure. With wide wings and a huge snout, it looked almost like a dragon. However, the body was vaguely human with powerful legs and round eyes, the tentacles growing out of where arms should have sat. It stood where the Earth once was.
“What is that?”
“I don't know,” Elizabeth said, not looking away from the roof. “But I had really hoped Lovecraft just had a hyperactive imagination.”
Once Collingwood saw the creature on the roof, it was very hard to look away. His eyes would shift down, seeking guidance from Elizabeth, and then they would fly back, taken with the notion that as soon as he would look away, the creature would move. It stayed still. At least for now, it was still a drawing, still just an incantation. The summoning hadn't been completed and that gave Collingwood a purpose, something solid to work from. Stop the summoning, save the world, and then try to bleach the image of the ship from his mind with copious amounts of whisky.
“So the boat is the summoning spell itself?” he said, more to himself than to Elizabeth. “Right, we destroy it. Tear it in two. Job done.”
She pushed him aside like a paper doll, his bulk bouncing against the counter. At his protests, she turned back and with her eyes looking wider than ever before, telling him they were coming. Collingwood was through the door following her in a second. He lifted the gun up in a slightly more readied position. In the darkness, he wondered what type of person would try and destroy the world. It seemed like an alarmingly long list of religious fundamentalists, eco-terrorists, and crazy people who just wanted to watch the world burn. Imagining tattoos and coloured teeth, or long beards or longer dreadlocks, Collingwood followed the leap made by Elizabeth and landed back on the shifting quay, his eyes latching onto the shadows walking closer. They stopped at the sound of the twin thuds.
The harbingers of the Apocalypse looked too normal. They wore jeans and t-shirts, one carrying a handbag slung across her shoulder. Collingwood eyed them in the meagre light from the street, his gun lowering several inches. Elizabeth remained still as the two young women and three men stared back at them. They were barely beyond adolescent. Young people shouldn’t ever be at a point where they want to destroy the world instead of saving it. Collingwood was taken with the ridiculous observation they all had different colour hair, black, brown, red and blonde to compliment a bald-headed compatriot. Yet in the pause, the moment of hesitation when the two groups chose who was the lion and who the gazelle, Collingwood saw the flash of anger and the mumbling lips from Mr Black Hair. He was tall and stocky, his face still marred by the lingering remains of acne. The man couldn’t have been over twenty-five and he flung out a palm toward them.
Dropping to the wharf, Collingwood felt the force of the attack brush against his head, a freight train of power travelling above him. While the lions and gazelles watched each other, the poacher acted. Even beneath the blunt spell, the assault dragged Collingwood several feet along the quay. It caught Elizabeth squarely in her chest. She was blown back as if the wharf had exploded, lifted from her feet and thrown like an unfavoured toy into the sea. The night was silent for a second and then a splash broke the through the atmosphere. Collingwood was on his feet in a second, barely taking a moment to aim before several bullets flew across the gap between the two groups. There was a mist of blood, a high-pitched scream and the sound of nightclubs emptying to descend on the harbour to see what was happening.
The others moved forward as their leader crumpled to the ground, clutching his stomach. Their youth slowed Collingwood’s reactions, rusting the cogs of a previously well-oiled machine. They were at his hands and arms before he could fire the gun again. The weapon slipped free of his wet palms, bouncing across the wood of the quay into the sea. A fist whipped inches wide of his face. Another pushed deep against his stomach. Collingwood felt the breath within his lungs forced upwards.
A decade had passed since Collingwood last boxed. Supernatural creatures didn’t tend to resort to fists often and lurking beasts weren’t off-putted by an upper cut. Still, the knowledge they were attacking him with physical force over magical was a comfort to seize upon. He went loose in their arms, a dead weight they suddenly had to support, and then he snapped away, twisting against his attackers. They stumbled. He steadied his footing on the shifting quay. A wild punch was thrown by one of the men, Bald, and Collingwood slipped outside its path. He took a step closer. He jabbed; his fist caught the man’s jaw. Swinging his legs around Bald’s, he pushed hard and sent the man clattering to the ground.
Brown Hair went after him, directing several punches to Collingwood’s ribs. He rolled with the blows. One, two, he jabbed with his left fist at Brown Hair’s unprotected head. There was a crunch. The punches stopped and the man clutched at his face, blood already flowing from his nose. Collingwood went to kick out at Brown Hair and then grunted loudly, something sharp stinging his neck.
“Fucking hell, she just bit him!” cried a voice from the street. Collingwood furiously rubbed his skin, spinning around to face the Red Haired woman. His eyes searched her teeth, seeking a lack of fangs which sent a flood of relief through his body. Vampirism wasn’t something he needed to deal with right now.
At least fifty people had swarmed out to watch the fight and Collingwood felt his chest pound a little faster. He wasn’t sure how much they had seen. The Misters couldn’t handle an entire town. Red Head came at him again, her fingernails honing onto his eyes. He dodged. He moved back. She kept coming. Lifting his arms in self-defence, Collingwood resisted the urge to send a punch her way, once more wishing his parents hadn’t instilled so much of an old fashioned upbringing. It just felt wrong to hit a woman, even one trying to destroy the world. Red Head attacked and he conceded, a frantic dance emerging until he saw his moment. She was short. He was a foot taller. A lanky leg reached out, sticking out behind her and he pushed. Toppling over his limb, Red Head disappeared from view, accompanied with a splash.
Breathing heavily, Collingwood shifted, settling his stance as Blondie smiled at him. He knew she had been watching the way he refused to fight back against Red Head, knew she was ready to take advantage of that. Lifting up his fists half-heartedly, Collingwood’s eyes began to flick around the quay, looking for something to gain an advantage.
“Sitoa.”
Spinning on his feet, Collingwood saw the drenched figure of Elizabeth at the end of the wharf, water dripping from her clothing, arms outstretched. The moorings of several boats began to unravel, pooling on the quay as knots were undone by some unseen sailor. They dragged themselves free from their prison and reared up like angry snakes. Darting around Blondie, the ropes began to swing closer and closer to the girl until she was being embraced by the fibres, pulling her into their loving touch, holding her tight against their latent strength. She struggled, writhing as the ropes dragged her to the floor. Pinned like a fly in a web, Blondie began to scream. It was the last thing Collingwood wanted with the baying crowd watching from the shore.
“Someone could have seen that,” he hissed as if a stranger had nearly stumbled across an illicit kiss.
“Where’s the magician?” Elizabeth said, breathing heavily. Water trickled from her hair, dropping with a steady beat on the wooden quay beneath them.
Collingwood went to jab his finger at the bleeding, hunched over figure of Mr Black Hair, but the spot was empty except for a pool of dark blood. Specks of the fluid stained the wood, moving left until Collingwood caught sight of the stains smeared across the white paint of the ship that housed the Apocalypse. The motor roared into life. The vessel was pulling away from its mooring, the ropes cut. Eyeing the gap, he wondered if he could get enough pace to make the jump.
“Don’t be stupid,” Elizabeth said, grabbing him by the arm. Her other hand pointed at a small speedboat, her fingertips shaking. “Get in.”
There was no time to argue, no time to suggest an alternative or to regroup. Collingwood sprinted across the quay, nearly leaping into the tiny speedboat, his hands reaching out on either side to steady the vessel. Elizabeth sliced the ropes holding it to the wharf with a word, following him into the boat. As every second passed, the white ship grew a little smaller; already reaching the mouth of the harbour and the sunrise that was beginning to push against the horizon. Her finger running against the motor, Elizabeth began to softly chant, soothing words gently stirring the engine into life. The boat jolted forward without warning.
Collingwood had spent a lifetime in pursuit. As a left back, he had to race back to defend after overzealously pushing forward when his team had the ball. His years as a police officer involved less running than people thought, but still more than enough to cover the diminishing hours spent on a sport field. Then once Elizabeth pulled back the veil, it felt as if Collingwood never stopped running: from monsters, from paperwork, from the press, from his colleagues, from his family, even from himself. All of it was in pursuit of mere survival. Not once had he chased someone with a boat. It all felt a little too 007.
The sea was choppier outside the confines of the harbour, the boat riding through the crest of each wave. It parted the white crown of each swirl, bouncing up into the air, threatening to overturn. Collingwood held his breath with every lurch. Growing larger again, the ship was slowing in the middle of the Channel. With the salty spray stinging his eyes, Collingwood thought he saw a shadow on the deck, its arms raised to the sky. Mr Black Hair clearly no longer felt the need to steer; he had arrived at his summoning spot.
Looking back, Ramsgate was now visible in the early morning glow. Despite the fate of the world hanging in the balance, Collingwood still shuddered to think how many people might be watching from the shore. His eyes were still locked on the sleepy coastal town when the wave took their boat and nearly turned them right over. It was far larger than any before. Elizabeth’s mouth was agape, her hand falling from the rudder of the speedboat as Collingwood felt the warm fingers of the sun disappear into shadow. A part of him wanted to run, to hurl himself into the sea and disappear forever. If he didn’t look back, if he didn’t turn, then nothing had happened. He never listened to that part of him before and with a grim determination, he realised he never would.
The scene took his breath away and threatened never to return it. Breaking through the surface, like mountains rising up from the sea, were the tops of a pair of leathery wings. They seemed too large, designed to fly a country, not a being. Remembering the figure on the roof of the ship, ensnaring the solar system, Collingwood tried not to think of the monster that was about to appear above the waves. The image kept pushing at the corner of his mind, forcing itself to be seen as his brain rebelled against him. Then a blast of seawater banished everything from his head except an icy coldness, and the speedboat was driving straight toward the ship and the ancient horror it was summoning.
“Do you understand how the summoning's working?” Elizabeth said, her voice creaking with strain from having to yell above the waves. Collingwood nodded, his mind going back to the interior of the ship, Elizabeth telling him about ideals and realities, about how the notion of the Apocalypse was drawing the monster out of its slumber, like a drunk smelling bacon.
“Good,” she said. “Stop it.”
They were nearly level with the ship now, Mr Black Hair still standing on the deck, unmoving, eyes locked on the wings slowly escaping the sea. Feeling at his holster, Collingwood remembered his gun had disappeared over the wharf. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to poke the bear with a stick. Right now this thing is distracted and unstable and I’d like to keep it that way.”
Nothing else was needed to be said. After so many years together, friends no longer feel the need to fill the silence between them. Words can be left unsaid. The principle still applied even when you were facing the end of all life rising up out of the sea. Elizabeth aimed their little speedboat straight, the waves growing larger and wilder. Collingwood hardly noticed. His mind churned over how to end the ritual. The boat pulled up along the white ship and he was reaching for the side, throwing a final glance at Elizabeth behind him.
“Good luck,” he said. It struck him a second later, he was saying goodbye.
Elizabeth shrugged. “I'm not sure if luck is really relevant anymore.”
In a spray of water, the speedboat sped away and Collingwood was clambering onto the ship. Mr Black Hair still uncaring, faced away from him. The wings were now nearly free of the sea and an internal clock ticked louder within Collingwood's ears. A man with no gun against a magician bringing the Apocalypse to bear, he really felt he had one shot. He charged him. Dropping his shoulder, he launched himself across the deck to knock Mr Black Hair off-balance. It felt as if he had tried to tackle a stone wall. All the force of his leap rammed straight up his shoulder, jarring his neck, a stabbing pain shooting up his left side. Collingwood fell sprawling to the floor; Mr Black Hair remained standing, his stance unchanged.
Only then could Collingwood see the paleness of the man's skin, bright blue veins appearing like cracks on a statue. Climbing to his feet, his left arm hanging limply by his side, Collingwood prodded the man's face. The skin was stiff to the touch. Mr Black Hair had got his wish. The world had ended, just at a far more subjective level than he intended. Walking round the dead man, the ship beginning to rock with a steady pattern, waves rushing like a heart beat, Collingwood stepped inside the cabin and stared at the collage of annihilation spread out across the walls.
The makeshift fire Elizabeth made was still sitting in the middle of the room, quietly crackling in the paper bin. It seemed like a decent place to start. Here and now, Collingwood felt like fire had been given short shrift in the reputation stakes. Life came from water. Life was sustained by water. Water was a small percentage of blue Powerade. Fire was evil. It burned and maimed; it caused homes and memories to be lost. However, Collingwood thought as he stumbled over to the kitchen, searching for anything to serve as an accelerant, water could also be a bitch. It hid jelly fish, seaweed and the end of the world. Fire meanwhile gave humans cooked meat and the power to read by night.
Dousing the room in the fuel for the small cooker, Collingwood tore the picture of Ammit from the wall and stuffed it in his pocket. Petrol splashed against the wall, smearing the drawings of ravens and lizards, skeletons and bloated corpses. There was no ceremony, no pause or hesitation as he grabbed the paper bin and used it to light the floor. Heat surged against his skin instantly. Flames danced upwards, leaping from one spot to the next, the entire room awash in red and orange. Already his lips felt dry, peeling under the pressure. With one final glance at the crumpling of a Mayan temple, Collingwood turned from the room and sucked in the sea air of the open deck. He almost wished he stayed in the inferno.
Tentacles erupted out of the water at random, darting like missiles through the air to strike the small speedboat whizzing in and out of the spray. Crouched in the boat, one hand on the rudder and another shoved high into the air was Elizabeth. Her mouth moved up and down as she yelled and screamed words Collingwood couldn't hear. He gripped the side of the boat, calling out about a stray tentacle charging her from behind, but she had already reacted. She sliced it in two. Fire spiralled out of her palm. It sped through the air, burning the monster's wings. Waves churned back. Water rushed forward to slow the creature's ascent. Twice, lightning flashed through the air and struck the top of the god's head that was crowning through the sea. Nature had once been declared a battlefield, but now it was a willing participant, trying to save the lives that lived within it.
All of Elizabeth's attention was locked on the monster and even from a distance, Collingwood could see the strained muscles and creased forehead. She probably hadn't even noticed the cabin of the ship was now alight. There was no way he was going to distract her from her battle, to be the cause for the slip that could send her under. With one final glance at the woman who dragged him into the entire messy supernatural world, Collingwood hurled himself into the embrace of the sea.
For the third time in an hour, the air fled his body. The cold sank its teeth deep into his skin and he gasped for air. Whereas in a swimming pool where the initial plunge was always the worst, the sea merely got colder, clutching at his legs, pulling him down. Collingwood always was a decent swimmer – did well in school, carried it on for fitness for a couple of years before allowing it to slump. In the cold sea, a primordial evil birthing next to him, he couldn't even tread water. He was being sucked down. His eyes dipped below the waves. A faint orange glow was all that remained of the ship.
Beneath the surface was alarmingly more clear. Down, far further than Collingwood would ever want to swim was a sickly green portal. Round and stretching for as far as the eye could see, its presence made him want to turn his insides out. The water tasted wrong; it smelt of decay and maggots. He wanted to claw at his eyes, to become Oedipus walking blind through the countryside to not see the portal and the son emerging from it.
The god, for Collingwood decided it was the only word to describe it, was still forcing his way through the portal, not even the tops of legs appearing to the world. Language simply didn't have a word big enough to describe its size. Level with the god's head, Collingwood could see a single eye staring back at him, the other too far away to be seen. Its skin was grey and translucent. In the water, it appeared almost invisible, leaving the round white eye as if it hung suspended from a great fishing rod above the surface. Inexplicably, Collingwood thought it looked angry. Its anger grew in his own head, first a pinprick of pressure that expanded until it felt as if his entire brain was being pushed back into a small corner of his skull.
Reaching for the paper in his pocket, Collingwood pulled out the drawing of Ammit. It was soaked, the ink running and the picture impossible to see. He thrust his hand out toward the eye, showing it the page. He had no idea why. Maybe it was to say that the summoning was breaking, to give the god a chance to flee back into the portal. Perhaps he just wanted to show it that humans were perfectly adept at coming up with numerous ways to be destroyed, that no matter how bad it would be to them, they could think of something worse. He didn't really know; he just did. Somewhere above, muffled ten feet of water, the ship exploded.
In France, dotted occasionally through tourist spots, are mock guillotines that people can take photos with, pretending to have had their head sliced off with the use of a well-placed wall. As a child, Collingwood was terrified by them. He thought the blade might come down if he or his parents stuck their head into the round hole. Crying, he wouldn't let either of them do it, their holiday snaps always several photographs lighter. The guillotine fell now. The portal collapsed and in the blink of an eye, the god's body had been sliced in two. Black blood poured into the sea. It stained deeper and quicker than an oil spill. The wail that escaped from the god's mouth was so loud Collingwood felt his body being pushed back by the shockwave, floating away as he saw the creature begin to sink to the floor, its wings once more slipping beneath the water.
Like a creeping sensation slowly climbing over his shoulder, Collingwood remembered how long he had been under water for. His lungs were burning and he hadn't noticed, so transfixed by the eye that was now lifeless and sinking to the sea floor. The edge of his sight was darkening, the blackness growing larger and larger until he could hardly see. His eyes felt heavy. His throat stung. From his loosening grip, the picture of Ammit floated away. Slipping further into the clutches of the sea, Collingwood allowed himself to drift. It hadn't been a bad innings. He always knew it would end like this. No matter how hard he fought, magic was always going to beat him one day. The only question had been for how long could he delay the inevitable and if the answer was 'until he could stop the Apocalypse', Collingwood considered it a job well done. He had won.
Feeling queasy, his head so light that it threatened to drift away from his body and float to the surface, Collingwood was surprised at the current that ensnared him. He didn't know the Channel had currents so strong. It pulled him away from the dead god. Everything was dark now. Picturing his parents' faces, he was glad to see they were smiling, safe and with another couple of decades in them. He thought of Julia, Anita, Bosse and everyone else he had met from the last five years. They were safe. Then, as he felt himself floating upward to the sky, he saw Elizabeth, still on the boat, a hand held high and sweat trickling down her face.
There was air. It slipped into his nostrils and down his raw throat. His lungs ballooned out and wind whipped across his head, scratching at the skin. Nothing made sense. He was in the air but he was still wet. Opening his eyes, the cliffs of Ramsgate were growing closer, hurtling toward him. Suddenly feeling wide awake, his hands flew out and Collingwood felt the waves slipping through his fingers. He was sat atop a great tsunami, rushing toward the coastline and in front of him, still weaving back and forward in her speedboat, was Elizabeth. Breathing quicker, Collingwood braced himself for the cliff's violent kiss. Then the wave was falling away, dipping lower and lower until he was deposited gently on the beach. The sand felt like soft velvet against his skin.
Coughing up water in between huge gulps of air, Collingwood laid sprawled on the beach, feeling the sand against his fingertips. The morning had taken full control of the day now, the sun softly beating down on his exposed skin. It felt like heaven.
“Tom?” Elizabeth yelled out, clambering out of the speedboat as it lodged itself on the foreshore. “Tom?”
Collingwood tried to tell her he was fine, but his throat felt bloody and his voice came out as a scratchy whisper. There was nothing to do but wait for Elizabeth to wade through the sea, her shoes sinking into the sand as she ran across the beach. Her hair struck to her skin, her breasts heaving beneath her shirt as she knelt beside him. She looked far older than ever before, wrinkles digging deep into the surface of her face.
“I'm okay,” Collingwood said, spluttering out another mouthful of salt water. “Did we stop it?”
“No ancient eldritch horror, no destruction, no Apocalypse. Colour me surprised, but the white man who wears a turban and does palm reading for a tenner was wrong.”
Laying on his back, Collingwood looked up at the clearing, beautiful, blue sky. A seagull flew across his view, a piece of toast in its mouth. “Who would want to destroy this?”
“I don't know. I suppose we won't, your sparring partners have probably ran for it. But you know what, Tom, that's okay. We don't get all the answers every time, but we stopped Japanese's biggest porn star from killing us all and that has to count for something.”
They laughed and once they started, they couldn't stop. Somehow they had saved the world and now they were sprawled across the beach, on a beautiful day, in a dying town, laughing. Collingwood laughed so hard his throat began to burn once more, his lungs struggling to suck in enough air. They were so loud, stomachs straining, that they covered the sound of the stampede until it was drawing close to them. Collingwood's laughter ceased immediately.
A crowd was rushing toward them. Young people weaved in between local reporters, police officers and doctors, even several pensioners bringing up the rear. Everything came back to him. People had seen the fight. They saw Elizabeth bind Blondie. It would have been impossible to miss the god rising up the sea and Elizabeth's battle with its tentacles. The entire town would have seen the great wave rushing toward them and probably heard the wail of the dying monster. Collingwood had no idea how the Misters were going to handle the fallout.
“Oh I hate prophecies,” Elizabeth said, climbing to her feet. She rubbed her forehead as if trying to massage a wrinkle in time. The crowd was nearly on them. “The Apocalypse will happen in Ramsgate.”
“What do you mean? We stopped it.”
“Predictions are always about wordplay. In Ancient Greek, Apocalypse means uncovering. It wasn't the end of the world; it was about lifting the veil. Ramsgate was never where the world ended. It's where the revelation of magic is made. There's no turning back now,” Elizabeth said, people beginning to swarm them. Questions were yelled with increasing speed and volume. “Welcome to the new world, Tom.” |
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