Requiem 4 Read online

  I managed to raise the light in order to better study my surroundings. Whether I faced forward or back, I couldn't say. Yet the air was thick with the sweet, pungent odor I'd encountered in the mausoleum. A trail wound through this field of rubble, coiling at impossible angles. Odd glyphs and symbols etched the stones along the way. Something glistened at my feet. A black, tarry liquid followed the trail, slicing it like a ribbon of petrol. This was the source of the smell and the same liquid spattered across the mausoleum ceiling. Where was this coming from? Unwholesome images stabbed at my mind. For this did not appear to be a mineral phenomenon, but the secretion from a living thing.

  Another sound, vaguely human, rose in my hearing. I tried to call out for Retig again, but I seemed to be babbling. Yet it persisted, a shrill yet plaintive cry. I turned, attempting to locate the source of the sound, only to see that my entry point had disappeared. My heart leapt inside me, panic spiking me to the earth. It was then that I realized the entryway I was looking for had now become a wall. The very rules of matter and perspective were distorted here, unsound, as if a single step could take one up a wall or traversing through an entire corridor. Now the tunnel entrance lay tilted, contorted at a nonsensical angle to the wall. The dark mucus smeared this surface. Its droplets pattered the earth, defying gravitational logic as they went. Even more astounding was that someone was sloughing through this opening.

  “Preach! You shouldn't have—” The words were shrill, helium in their pitch.

  An arm. Then another shown. Spindly, elongated by the gravitational anomaly, clawing at empty space.

  Someone's upper body lolled through the wall, for what I had previously discerned as the actual entry had been swallowed by the wall itself, as if an angle of mortar or a block had relocated or suddenly appeared in its place.

  I squeezed my eyes shut hoping to recalibrate my unraveling senses. When I did, the brittle insect-like buzzing rose in my hearing. It was all around me. Permeating the stone and moss and mushrooms. Yet the more I listened, the more human it sounded, as if some collective plea were being issued by a vast army or ghostly megalopolis. The ruins were alive with their murmurs.

  “—left us! No!”

  I opened my eyes to see Birch. He hung upside down. Or was it sideways? His arms flailed at empty air.

  “You left us! Why’d you leave us?! Preacher, come back!”

  This struck me as odd. Had I left them? No. They’d commissioned me to go. Birch himself was adamant about me going. I was the holy man, the shaman. Remember? I was that one member of the unit who believed in the ineffable, who invoked a power beyond his own. I would stand between them and the mysteries they denied.

  “They’re coming!” Birch cried, an almost inhuman sound. “They’re coming! Preacher!”

  Who was he talking about? Were the Requiem members on their way? With great effort, I willed myself towards him. As I reached out in an attempt to take hold of Birch, he stopped writhing and grew still, suspended in the stone. His eyes were fixed on some distant point behind me.

  “My God. They're here.”

  So great was his rapture that I turned to see the object of his wonder. The path dipped and rose at precipitous angles, compounding my perspectival misalignment. Looming at its end stood a large cylindrical structure. At first, I believed this tower to be tilted, frozen in mid freefall to earth. Only to realize it was but one of four similar towers wheeling about a spherical axis. At the core of this centrifugal hub light blazed through a portal or archway. As the towers turned, orbiting around this burning globe, I could make out a figure, a humanoid shape, silhouetted inside its dazzling center.

  If I had been summoned, this was my destination.

  A moist snuffling sounded nearby. I tore my gaze away from the ominous figure awaiting me at the end of the trail to find Birch dithering. His bulging eyes were latticed with wet ochre, his lips frozen in a mad sneer. Glistening black tendrils coiled into his flesh, nesting under nails and in cavities. Like some monstrous amoeba absorbing him into its clutches, Birch’s body folded and disappeared back into the rock. Only a slight fissure remained in the stone.

  My lamp clattered to the floor.

  The background thrum rose, sounding more like a chant than the chirring of insects. I stared at that fissure in the stone. Was this my escape back into the mausoleum, or the way to hell itself? No. I had already entered hell.

  Perhaps I had never left it.

  He's the one who saw it. Birch's words reverberated in my head. He's the one they want.

  Birch was right. They wanted me. Someone wanted me. Whether alien or divine, I couldn't say. They had called, and I had followed. But what manner of entity was I even dealing with? MiChap training had not prepared me for this, it had only awoken the possibilities; the spectral hierarchy was just a shadow of a reality none of us ever truly believed or imagined. Including myself. We were just going through the motions. And now the bill for our impiety had come due.

  I shook myself of the thought. Toughen up, Lax! I'd made it this far. Now my team needed me. They wouldn't go down without a fight, and neither would I.

  I touched the crucifix on my chest and returned my gaze down the snaking trail to that alien device gyrating at its end. I stood staring. Then I drew a deep breath and removed the tablet from my belt. I turned it on and scrolled to the Prayer Against Malefice from the Greek Ritual. I had never used this prayer before. Supposedly, the old priests recited it before exorcisms. I couldn't think of a better time for it and hoped to hell it worked. Still, I regretted not having taken up Djema’s offer for her pistol.

  I inhaled deeply again, focusing on the words I was about to recite rather than the twisting road ahead of me.

  “Kyrie eleison. God, our Lord, King of ages, All-powerful and All-mighty.” The words were like gravel in my mouth, like the pitiful plea of a dying man. “You Who made everything and Who transforms everything simply by Thine will. You Who in Babylon changed into dew the flames of the furnace, protected and saved the three holy children. You, the salvation of those who turn to Thee. I beseech Thee to make powerless, banish, and drive out every diabolic power, presence, and machination; every evil influence, malefice, or evil eye and all evil actions aimed against Thine servant Aguste.”

  If there was a God, something holy and purposed for good, surely even my paltry efforts would summon his response. He had bound himself to such rituals.

  I glanced up from the tablet. Each step seemed to vault me exponentially closer to the towers, as if I was willing myself forward. The voices rose and fell as I went. And with them came personages—ghosts, familiars, phantoms, of all Types whirled amidst the ruins. These were not simply quantum anomalies. Nor were they entities I was confident I could confront. My skin bristled with their passing. Apparently my magnetics had no effect upon them. Some watched in silent, baleful witness, while others writhed in fetid delight. Legions of souls. What was this place—a purgatorial keep or a terrestrial kingdom? I struggled to keep from stopping and gazing upon them, and instead continued forward, reciting the ritual.

  “O Lord, I beg Thee to reach out Thine powerful hands and Thy most high and mighty arms and send the angel of peace to protect me, body and soul. May he keep at bay and vanquish every evil power, every poison or malice invoked against me by corrupt and wicked—”

  A dark shape whorled overhead, jolting me from my reading. I looked up to see the cylindrical towers rotating above me, framed against the skittering clouds like the monstrous limbs of some great beast. The orb at its center, however, remained stationary. What mechanism or technology governed this device, I could not say. Was it even of terrestrial origin? Or perhaps I was not in an actual space at all but traversing some psychological terrain, a nightmare evolved of my own dissonance. Either way, the journey along that gnarled path and its phantasms had brought me to the entryway.

  I stared at the figure inside. It appeared human enough and even bore a likeness to Retig's frame. So I called his name, but t
here was no response. The figure stood unmoving.

  The massive spires rotated silently overhead, wheeling about this centrifuge, with myself and the stranger at its center.

  I took several steps into the room only to discover that the light was, inexplicably, emanating from the exterior rather than the interior of this structure as I had first calculated. A foggy glow cocooned this place, blurring its perimeter and giving it the appearance of a boundless space. The soft lapping of water was the only sound I heard. I turned to look back at the entryway, a motion meant to ground me and recalibrate my senses. Thankfully, the doorway remained where I had entered. It was a sign of good fortune that I hoped to leverage.

  I returned my gaze to the figure. Nearby, lay the T-braces Retig had worn, twisted and bent. The figure stood before a pool whose black waters fingered into an amorphous shoreline. A thin blanket of algae and insect husks lolled in the coves and inlets. Oily bubbles rose intermittently from its depths carrying with them a mystic phosphorescence.

  “Welcome, Preacher.” It was Retig's voice. “She told us you would follow.”

  His features were vague, silhouetted against the cold blackness of the strange pool. Yet his metal teeth glistened between his beard.

  “Retig,” I croaked out the name. “You—” My heart raced inside me. “Let's g-get out of here.”

  I stuffed the tablet back in my belt, and turned as if preparing to leave.

  He chuckled. “Sorry, Preach. Afraid I can't do that. You've made it this far. Which confirms her interest in you.”

  The disorientation hammered me again. I feared I was hyperventilating and looked for somewhere to steady myself. “Her? What are you t-talking about?”

  “Mother. She has special plans for you.” He wagged his finger at me and smiled mischievously. “Lucky boy.”

  I looked sideways and swayed. The spectral forms I had encountered along the way were gone. Apart from the gentle lapping of the black pool, we were seemingly alone in this chill expanse.

  “Let the dead bury the dead.” Retig gestured outside the dome. “Us? We’re anything but dead. You could say, we’re more alive than ever.” He glanced behind him, to the pool. I could make out the pistol at his side, still holstered. Yet his uniform appeared frayed and ripped in places. He leveled his gaze at me again. “You don't get it do you? She's of another category, Aguste. A superior genus. Summum vitae. Something the ORSAG boys could've never dreamt of. Something Requiems could never stop.”

  I swallowed hard. The prayer for protection suddenly seemed pitifully weak. Rites and rituals. Who was I kidding? I must take this into my own hands, flee, escape this twilight dimension, return up the path, up to… what? If I couldn't run, then perhaps I could charge him and wrestle one of his weapons away from him. Yet with his training and his bulk, Retig would brush me aside like a gnat.

  He reached up and touched his face. As he did, I glimpsed something moist and sinewy stitching his flesh. “She's been busy. Watching. Waiting. Waiting for the vacant ones. They spotted her once, you know. It was a chance encounter. But they didn’t know what the hell it was. Fools. In the Black Sea during the Turkish Uprising. She took an entire warship before they could even blink. Remember that? They were pronounced MIA. And she moved on. Like she always did. Moving from stone to forest. To the sea. From ages past. Before we even arrived. Seeding the world, spawning new life forms. And then new people. Ones who needn't suffer empathy or false hopes. A race that could survive, that would not destroy itself, but could flourish and, eventually, push out into the stars.”

  I gaped. “Retig. This is m-madness. We can leave. Whatever they've done to you...”

  “Done? They haven't done anything. Just expanded what was always there.” He tapped his temple with his index finger. “We were lied to, Aguste. Can’t you see that now? Brainwashed by the system. By science. How easily they poisoned us. They wanted to be gods, and we reverenced them. We proclaimed their glory. Fools! We were all fools. They weren't gods or wizards. They were humans. Too blind to see what was right in front of them. You were right, you know. You were right about there being something more. It's just more than you ever guessed.”

  He glanced back at the pool.

  Mother.

  “No.” I made the sign of the cross and removed the tablet from my belt. “I'm not...”

  He chuckled. “That won't work here, Aguste.”

  “They're lying to you, Retig. Can't you see?” I opened the tablet, and fumbled about in the cleansing ritual for some word of command, some prayer that might challenge this spirit and break it's hold.

  “We're a new order,” Retig said, unflustered. “An evolved species. Impervious to the machinations of the faithless.”

  “I'm not faithless. See?” I held out the cleansing ritual and then I pressed my palm atop my crucifix. “I-I...”

  He laughed now. “You think a few prayers and some holy water will stop us? This is why she likes you. Mother hasn't savored your kind before. You're as close to a real man of God as she's ever gotten.”

  He stepped toward me, not a threatening gesture, save that now I could see his flesh was webbed with black veins; a lacework of worm-like threads roiling under his skin.

  “Lost units,” he said, his eyes sparkled with cold glee. “Down through the ages, she found them. The Roman Ninth Legion. The Bermuda Triangle. The Dong Xoai column. The Lost Colony of Roanoke. Requiem 4. She gathered them all, amassed an army. Her children are many—Tir, Bellona, Vahagn, Fielding, Naomi. She feeds them and they grow strong to our cause. When the time comes, they’ll be released upon this world. Then we’ll see what UniGlobe and its puppet masters have to say.”

  I shook my head nonsensically. The room had started to whorl about me. He was mad, possessed. I was no longer speaking to a man, but to a spirit. A demon. A Type Five, capable of quantum alignment. Completely self-aware and able to manipulate human hosts. It was trying to get into my head, I was sure of it.

  “Behold the c-cross of the Lord.” I read randomly from the cleansing ritual. “Flee bands of enemies. The Lion of the tribe of Juda, the offspring of David, hath conquered.”

  He was laughing again. This time, I could see him moving towards me.

  I stepped back and raised my voice, as if that might arouse the powers I appealed to. “We d-drive you from us, whoever you may be, unclean spirits, all satanic powers, all infer... infernal invaders, all wicked l-legions, assemblies and sects. In the name and by the power of—”

  He was almost upon me. I drooled on myself. I stumbled back and fell to the floor. My tablet tumbled from my grasp. Its light cast a wan shadow on the figure that now stood over me.

  I lay paralyzed in fear at his feet.

  Water lapped the shoreline nearby as bubbles burst, filling the air with a foul odor. Something stirred beneath the surface of the pool, accompanied by a growing effulgence. Retig saw it too.

  “You see?” He looked down at me, his eyes sparkling with madness. “They're coming for you.” Then he knelt down at my side, bringing with him that sweet, tarry smell. He took hold of my crucifix, ripped it from my neck, and flung it into the outer dark. “You won't need that anymore, Preach.”

  When he turned, his weapon flashed in the light of the tablet. I seized the butt of his pistol, and tore it from his holster. Despite the fact that I was shaking so badly, I managed to release the safety, press the barrel into his forehead, and hold it there. Apparently, the move was enough to mildly surprise him, for he stiffened and remained still.

  “Let him go,” I said. I pressed the pistol harder into his flesh. “Whatever you are, you let him go. Do you hear me? Come out of him you foul spirit! Christ compels you. Are you listening? The power of Christ compels you!”

  A smile crept across his face. “That's not how it works, you idiot.”

  He slapped the gun out of my hand. The blow was so hard that the pistol spiraled across the floor and I cried out in pain. As I lay gripping my fist, water splashed and something
moved in the periphery of my gaze. A vague form climbed from the pool. I attempted to scramble to my feet to see what monstrosity was rising from the deep, and to flee this hellish place. But Retig had his hand on my chest, pinning me to the floor.

  “The old god leaves!” he proclaimed. “His followers lose faith, their power wanes. Just like you lost faith, Aguste. You were weak. Now you have made way for the new gods. Behold, they arise! And we will rise with them.”

  I bellowed, attempting to throw him aside. Grabbing his fingers, I wrenched them back. Further. Further. Several snapped, but still he laughed in my face. Suddenly other hands took hold of me. Dark shapes encircled me, pressing me to the earth. They looked down upon me, their eyes possessed of an unearthly life. Djema, Cali, Lincoln, and Birch. My unit. They had arrived. Like Retig they were cocooned, impregnated by something other. Or were they possessed? My God. Either way, now they had a new mission.

  I wrestled helplessly against their grip, sputtering curses and imprecations. Yet my cries were ignored. In fact, something like reverence had passed over their features. They released me and stood, silent, mesmerized by the one who came.

  I pushed my body up on my elbows, hoping to flee. Instead I froze. The group parted and behind them, it rose. No spectral goggles were needed to see the approaching form. Whether crawling or gliding, I could not tell. As much as it retained the semblance of human form, this entity remained alien. The spectral hierarchy seemed pitifully inadequate to categorize what type of being we had contacted. Type Four? Type Five? Who knows? Maybe it wasn’t a Type at all; like Retig had said, it was a superior genus, a new order. No prayer or act of contrition could erase my duplicity and empower me to stand against such a presence. No rite or ritual could stop its advance. Like an inkblot in water, it spread as it came, sending fine black tentacles coiling into a bipedal semblance. It stopped at my feet, an odd quivering mass.

  I gaped in morbid fascination. The voices had returned. Only this time, they became a chant, an invocation.