"This is the evil that is older than humanity, but is reflected in our children's eyes. The evil we can't grasp, cannot punish, cannot destroy. The evil that contaminates souls as well as bodies, nations as well as people … the sinister forces that rule the world of our dreams, our nightmares, and our sober, trembling reality."
-Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces
CHAPTER 2: NECHISTYE SILY
JACK LAFFEY
2 YEARS EARLIER…
PASADENA, FEBRUARY 28, 2018
There was a weird sort of storm churning in the air, turning the sky pinkish red, nearly blotting out the sun and inculcating everything with a sort of latent electricity. It was potential energy, something was about to explode. Those that still lived here were huddled up inside, hiding from the dust, which was being blown in massive westward gusts coming in from the Mojave. In SoCal they called these the Santa Ana winds, a name that had nothing to do with Saint Anne, the biblical mother of Mary. It was a minced oath, a corruption of the original Spanish term for it: los vientos Satana. Even today, the old folks from San Diego to San Bernadino, from Barstow to the sea, called these Devil Winds.
That is, they would, if they were still alive.
Since Third Impact, Devil Winds were far more common than they used to be: after all, LA was a desert city now. In any other era, LA would be called post-Apocalyptic, before the term had ceased to be something thrown around lightly. Its population had dropped by more than 90 percent since the Second Impact, leaving rows upon rows of empty suburban housing, occupied mostly by a weird mix of refugees from the uninhabitable zones of the world fresh out of the Jerry, Cherry, Perry or Kerry camps, placed there by uncaring or overworked social workers, to eke out an existence somehow, and the destitute and abandoned of America: the druggies, the gangsters, and the often mutilated, scarred and traumatized veterans of the Third World War. Why these people came back from their aquatic afterlife no one knew. Jack certainly didn't. The cults told him you chose to come back. If that was true, Jack Laffey had a serious case of buyer's remorse.
He drove through the abandoned streets of Pasadena, a former rocket town turned into an abandoned hellhole by war and neglect, seemingly possessed, the windshield wipers of his shitty beater of a pickup truck found abandoned in the Disneyland parking lot six months ago working overtime, struggling to wipe away the incessant dust. This storm was worse than usual. At times, the truck threatened to flip. It didn't help that he was slightly intoxicated on a number of substances. He had managed to find some meth after all this morning. A sign of God's favour?
Pasadena was not alone, all of LA and most of the surrounding cities from the Mexican border to just south of San Jose were empty. LA was hit hardest. The centre of the city was completely irradiated from a nuke, either Chinese or Russian (though there were, of course, the usual 'false flag' conspiracy theories…) launched just a few days before the Valentine treaty was signed. It was, somehow, the only American target hit, killing the majority of the pre-Impact city. Five million civilian casualties may sound bad, but when compared with India, Bangladesh and Pakistan's combined one and a half billion dead, it barely even registered.
The water that did exist here was largely irradiated and undrinkable, but even that sort of water was rare these days. Without the constant maintenance of the aqua-ducts and the massive post Second Impact climate change that afflicted the entire Pacific Rim, LA was turned into a sun-baked hell-scape, its lush lawns and golf courses rendered into not even a memory. Those that survived the Impact, the war, and the Aftermath fled eastward, Steinbeck style. Except this time, they did so in reverse. Men like Jack were the Muleys of the new world, graveyard ghosts left to slowly go insane.
Half the buildings Jack passed on his now were caved in, half collapsed after years of neglect and the near constant desert winds. They had long since been stripped of anything value. Copper wire and methamphetamine were the only two exports of value from this part of the world these days. That and old studio memorabilia, shipped out to East Coast museums to be gawked at by a generation that viewed Hollywood as a relic of a better time, and not a physical place. The famous sign was somewhere in Kentucky now, the hills where they once stood were bare.
Access to the East Coast, the most liveable region of the United States, was severely restricted for west coasters. Once you were in California, you couldn't leave California, legally at least. And crossing the Mojave was suicide these days, as it was nearly three times the size as it was in the pre-war era, stretching all the way to the Rockies in the west and San Francisco, which was technically still part of California's habitable zone, in the North.
Aside from that, California was a doomed land in a much more literal way. Geologists said that any day now the San Andreas Fault, hanging by the weakest of threads after two Global Impacts and several nuclear detonations, would let go, causing the whole irradiated mess of a city to slip into the Pacific like the doomsayers had been predicting for years, even before the wars and the Impacts. Everything in SoCal, therefore, was doomed to a watery grave, probably sooner rather than later. There were no evacuation plans. Anyone who lived here would go down with the state. That was fine for most, nobody who lived here cared much about living anyway.
That suited Jack just fine. He hadn't cared much about living since the Battle of the Dnieper. He was the only one in his unit to survive, somehow, not for any particular reason, but through pure luck. Or maybe the Will of God. No matter. That God was dead. His mind was already on the afterlife.
He had, of course, been bitter for years, especially when it was revealed that that the Second Impact was caused by that bastard Ikari, but since he had numbed himself to the pain. It wasn't worth thinking about. At least, that's what he told himself.
The biker meth he was high on was of absolute shit quality. Materials were harder to find, and their production standards had been slipping recently, and most meth was adulterated to hell. No matter, Jack was glad to have it. He hadn't been able to find for nearly three days. Since 2I and the wars following it, Jack had been addicted to a cocktail of different recreational substances, ranging from opiates, which he took daily just to keep the itch at bay and to keep the constant migraines left from the concussion he suffered in the war from driving him to suicide, to amphetamines, to keep him awake, and tub-brewed tequila, (agave was all they could get to make booze now-a-days) to keep him from thinking too much.
The booze, which he did have in plentiful supply, the drugs, the dust, and newfound religious fervour caused him to drive erratically. He swerved, serpentine, across the dividing line, barely dodging the abandoned cars that lined the streets. No traffic, thank God. No harm, no fowl. Occasionally he would let out a short yelp in a sort of mad ecstasy. In spite of everything, Jack was in a state of euphoria. Today was the day he finally committed. Today was the day he finally drank the damn thing.
He pulled up to his place of worship, an abandoned Daycare or Elementary school of some sort, taken over by squatters belonging to the Tenshido Temple of Final Salvation faith, a radical breakaway group of The True Tenshido Revelation Church, itself a breakaway from the Southern California Tenshido Ecumenical Council of Churches, which was itself a poor attempt at regulating and organizing the various folk religious practices that had arisen in the seedier Jerry camps among the rabble of shell-shocked and frightened Japanese refugees. The worship of the Chosen Children. The New Trinity.
Few remembered Instrumentality, and among those that did, did so to varying degrees. Jack remembered it only vaguely. A few scattered memories of floating, warm and comforted, as if nodding on heroin, before waking up, wham, in the ocean near a beach ninety miles from where he lived, six or seven months after he disappeared. Some relief agency fished him out. Apparently he was a fairly late returnee. By now, it was generally accepted that most people that were going to come back already had.
Since then he had been searching for meaning, some sort of larger context to fit his life into. He wasn't alone in that. The ones that could remember, and even those who didn't flocked to the cults forming. Usually, but not always, they were led by someone that was "Clear," as the slang called them. The ones that could remember everything.
All of the Clears told pretty much the same story. And they all rationalized it pretty much the same way too: three Children becoming God, destroying the old world and creating the new. The Angels, they said, which were depicted in the media as a "minor extraterrestrial threat," as if aliens were commonplace before the War, were the messengers of the last God. The new God, or gods, killed all of the Angels, they said, and took over. That was why everyone disappeared. The world reset.
With that kind of consistency across hundreds of cults, it was hard not to take it seriously.
Still, every different group had their own little twist on it. In the Perry Camps (the Filipino version of the Jerry Camps), an originally tiny group of Clear refugees from the ruined island of Luzon formed Iglesia ni mga Angheles, mixing the story with Christianity and their own folk beliefs. It spread rapidly throughout the camps and had probably the most mainstream support, even on the east-coast, as the white-bread sounding "Angelic Church." They were as sanitized as a cult could be, and had nothing of value for Jack. The bastards even tried to make him give up the meth!
In the Hispanic areas of SoCal, which were far rarer now than they were before Third Impact, it was fairly common to see images of the Virgin of Guadalupe painted with pale, almost bluish hair on the side of buildings. Many of the remaining Catholic churches in the Southwest had converted completely to include recent events as a fulfillment of the Book of Revelation (a woman clothed in the sun with the moon at her feet...), much to the chagrin of Rome.
And then there was Tenshido. The Way of the Angels, formed in much the same way as the INMA, but they seemed more… real somehow. Maybe that's because they were formed by people that actually saw angels. Honest to God Tokyo-3 residents. Ones who had lived in the Holy City, which now lay abandoned and silent. There was a bit more legitimacy in that, Jack thought. If anyone was going to save Jack's soul, it was going to be them.
He climbed out of his truck. The parking lot was empty. To Jack's knowledge, he was the only one in the cult with a car. It wasn't like they weren't plenty of cars lying around, but for some reason they all refused to just take one. He was also the only member of the cult that couldn't speak a lick of Japanese, and he was one of only two or three white people. He was also the only one who lived offsite, opting to sleep in abandoned houses, moving from place to place like a hermit crab.
It was near impossible to breathe in the sandstorm, so he pulled the collar of his T-shirt (Oakland Raiders and Budweiser logos. Holes, blotches of ancient pizza grease, possible bloodstains, none of which were put there by him. Found in a long-since abandoned Goodwill. Not even the scavengers wanted it) over his nose and mouth and covered his eyes with his forearm. He rushed in headlong, trying, almost in vain, to battle against the wind to get to the door. There was a door with a broken window, the protective chicken-wire mesh inside the only remnant of it. Above it was painted, in garish, pastel colours a smiling rabbit, under a smiling sun, surrounded by similarly smiling flowers. "WELCOME, FRIENDS!" it beckoned. The House of God.
He bowed reverently when entering and removed his shoes. This may be a thoroughly American cult but it was Japanese to its core. Jack thought it was better to respect their traditions, such as they were, than make a fuss. The halls were dark, and there was no sign of anyone. He made his way through the hallways, slowly. The path to the inner sanctum was always changing and it was dark and hard to see. No real source of illumination but the window, which stood out in the distance. There was a school desk there, broken. It cast a long shadow. Even in here there was dust, which shifted across the floor in miniature tornados. The dust inundated the ancient paint-job, making it look significantly older. They reminded Jack of ancient hieroglyphs in some tomb. They probably weren't even that old, twenty, thirty years, tops. Everything was dirty now in California, and had been for some time.
The walls were completely covered in illustrations, some predating the war and some put there more recently by the cult. The Chosen Children were popular depictions. The artists differed in quality. Some were professional, even beautiful depictions of the Chosen Children, the nightmarish angels, and the mysterious "Evangelion" weapon, their Vahanas. Some of these icons were little more than stick figures, or scrawling, erratic, Japanese graffiti Jack couldn't understand. Some were beautiful, full sized murals. Regardless of quality they held little significance for Jack. They were just part of the scenery now.
What really interested, or rather, terrified him were the murals left over from before the war.
It was that fucking rabbit again. He had seen it many times, but now he was seeing it with different eyes. It was the daycare's mascot, he presumed. It was dirty pink, and usually two to three times the size of the tallest child. A protective spirit? A totem? Why do the children crowd around him? There was something vaguely malevolent about him. He wasn't lifted from pop-culture, he was an original character, probably painted by some kindly teacher to spruce up the place in happier times. But… there was something dead in his eyes. It was the eyes that scared him. They seemed to follow him, no matter where he went.
As he moved down the twisting corridor he found more depictions of it. It merged with the graffiti, illegible Japanese messages written, often in blood red paint, often partially covering the mural underneath. Here the rabbit played hopscotch with a young Mexican-Americanboy. There the rabbit skipped rope with a pack of girls. The dead eyes were there as a constant in each. In one, he pushed a little girl down a slide. His head was gone, the drywall having fallen off due to neglect.
"WELCOME FRIENDS!"
In the distance, he heard droning voices and a slow, steady drum beat. He was nearing the Center. The holiest place on Earth outside of Tokyo-3. The Clears called it "Terminal Dogma."
It was then that Jack got the Fear again. His chest tightened and his heart threatened to explode. He sank down to the floor and waited for it to pass. Too much crank, he thought, I've sinned. He had an urge to flee. To leave this place, he wasn't worthy. Something awful would happen if he stayed. He was sure of it.
But he pressed on.
The voices got louder as he neared Terminal Dogma. There were more twists and turns here, and it was too dark to see even the murals anymore. He used his hands to grope the walls, trying to gain his balance. The Fear grew to an intensity never before experienced. Something was watching him, following him. But he couldn't leave now. That was out of the question.
Eventually, he turned down a short hallway. At the end of it there was a set of metal double doors, painted red. There were frosted glass windows set into them. Jack could see nothing through them, except the intense orange light on the other side. It almost looked as if the interior of the room was on fire, as the orange light flickered and played, casting inhuman and constantly shifting shadows. Above it the word "GYM" was written. The voices and the drumbeat were loudest here. He had reached Terminal Dogma.
The wall on one side of the hallway was painted, once again, with the Rabbit. Like a shepherd, he led a small crowd of children carrying bats and balls and other toys away from a distant city (presumably LA) and towards the awaiting doors. The other wall was painted, much later, with an Apocalyptic depiction of the Third Impact, the ghostly form of the one they called Lɪʟɪᴛʜ rising from the earth, looming over it. It was a strange juxtaposition, but oddly appropriate.
His palms were numb and sweaty. This was it. The point of no return. He steeled himself and pushed open the door.
Inside it seemed deathly silent. No one was drumming, no one was speaking. Where those sounds had come from, Jack had no idea. It was dark in the room, the only source of illumination being a small bonfire built in a pit dug at what had once been half court, which filled the room with the smell of wood-smoke. It had at one time been a standard school gym, smaller than usual, with basketball hoops low enough to accommodate children. The Rabbit loomed largest here, painted larger than life on the back wall, perhaps 15 feet tall. The firelight played and danced on his face, giving it an almost animated quality. But the eyes were dead as ever.
Below it, the words "GO JACK" were written in massive block letters, which were affixed to the wall. It frightened him, before he realized that the school team was probably called the "Jackrabbits" at some point. Most of the letters must have fallen off due to neglect.
There was a small group of worshipers, all Japanese, numbering maybe twenty five to thirty in al. They were on the floor, either rocking back and forth, or rolling slowly from side to side. Some muttered or mouthed incomprehensible words, others were silent. Jack knew why: The Sacrament. Jack had never done it himself, he was always too afraid. There was a heavy dose of hallucinogens involved, but this was not the part that had previously terrified Jack. It was the fact that these hallucinogens were mixed into a cup full of the blood-red seawater, called "LCL" by the Clears.
LCL, they said, contained the souls of the unreturned. They had all been in it once, and by drinking it they could regain a connection to the lost spirit world of Instrumentality. They called it a "synch." This was this particular sect of Tenshido's holiest rite, and everyone had to do it eventually.
Today, it was Jack's turn.
He skulked up to the altar built at The Rabbit's feet. There were three idols, dolls really, sitting on pedestals. In the centre, on some sort of dais, were the figures called simply "Red" and "White" (their names were sacred and unpronounceable, and unknown to members as low-ranking as Jack) by the Clears. They were the Divine Syzygy, the True God of this world. Below them was Lɪʟɪᴛʜ, personified as "Blue," half dead Goddess of the last world half new Goddess, who had sacrificed Herself at Third Impact to give birth to the new one. Directly in front of them was a chalice of some sort, simple brass but reminiscent of a communion chalice, filled with the mysterious dirty-red liquid.
Jack stopped, and began to tremble. Run. His body told him, leave this place, and never return. "GO, JACK." But he couldn't. Not now. It was too late.
"You here drink?" asked the priestess, in broken English. She was an ancient woman, shrunken and wizened, and no taller than five feet at the most.
"Yes." croaked Jack. His throat was dry. Don't drink it. He thought, Turn and run.
"Okay… you drink before?" she eyed him suspiciously, looking him over.
"No."
"Name?"
"Jack Laffey."
She nodded, grimly, and pointed towards the cup. When Jack turned to walk towards it, the woman was already standing behind the altar. She began to chant something in Japanese, her voice quiet at first, growing louder each time she repeated her mantra. By the end, she was shouting, her voice too young and clear for her decrepit body. Voices in the dark corners of the gym, at first unseen by Jack began to chant. Some ululated. Some cried. Some moaned in almost sexual ecstasy. The drum beat started again, at a frantic pace, coming from nowhere in particular. Jack couldn't find the damn drum.
She handed the cup to him. He bowed in thanks, accepted the cup, and drank. The priestess screeched, showering him in what was probably flour or rice.
It tasted like blood.
Nothing happened at first. It was slightly anticlimactic. But, suddenly, he realized his hand was too heavy for his body. He wanted to detach it somehow, but he could not. The drums became faster than ever. He looked back at the priestess. Her face was looming over him, and it was then that Jack realized he was laying face-up on the floor. The woman smiled, and her face melted away.
His rifle was out of bullets. He had taken shrapnel in the side, and he was bleeding heavily. Panicked, he wondered if his arm was still there. His legs were numb, and his head pounded. A concussive shell had gone off about 10 feet away from him, blinding him temporarily and making him unable to walk. Instead, he crawled through the mud and freezing rain to a nearby line of trees, some shelter from the iron storm coming at him the distance.
He leaned against a tree, trying to block out the world, just for a moment. Blood covered his face, and dripped into his mouth. Everything hurt. He had been here before, in his dreams. But this time, it seemed more real. There were bullets exploding around him, Russians just over the ridge. The Fear was more intense than it ever had been, Jack was certain that he was about to die.
It was then that he noticed the whimpering. It was the boy again, no older than 15, the bottom of the barrel of Russian reserves, which had been chewed up and pushed back by the meat-grinder of advanced German and American firepower, including the Bundeswehr's top-secret mechanized walker tanks, invented in the final, desperate days of the Cold War, only intended used, or even revealed, in some final, apocalyptic battle. The Russian army, still reeling from Yeltsin's cuts ten years earlier and the pitiful death of Soviet power, was no match for these squat, stocky devices, which the Americans called "Robocops" if the Germans were around and "goose-steppers" if they weren't.
The boy wore a tarnished, bloody olive green uniform which was obviously far too big for him. He was pinned against the massive stump of an ancient oak which had been decapitated by mortar fire. His hands were pinned above his head by spike-like shrapnel, in a mock crucifixion; whether the shell it came from was American or Russian, Jack hadn't a clue.
"Voda." He said, "Voda…" Water… water. Jack noticed the intestines hanging from an open wound torn into his stomach, just barely peeking out from under his jacket. The boy was doomed.
Jack had seen this child so many times in his dreams, but now there seemed to be something… different… about him. Still, Jack did what he always did. He slowly picked himself up, his head still feeling as if it were split open, his legs still shaky. He raised his rifle, then realized, once again his magazine was empty. Instead. he put his hands around the boy's neck. H took a deep breath, trying to calm the boy a bit, and squeezed. He saw the fear in the boy's eyes, but he refused to look away from them. He would give him that at least, a man's death. Even if he wasn't yet a man.
Those eyes had never left him, not for twenty years.
But then, something changed. The fear in the boy's eyes went away, and his struggling stopped. They went placid, almost calculating. The drums were back.
"Jack." said the boy, in perfect English. There was no strangled sound. The voice seemed to be ever-present, surrounding him completely. All around him were unseen forces grabbing at him, threatening to pull him into the earth.
The battle seemed to stop. No more bullets, no more driving rain. Just him and the boy.
Suddenly, the corpse talked. "You never talked to me like this before." Said Jack.
"You never listened" said the boy.
Suddenly, they were standing at a ruined pier, shattered by the waves somewhere in El Segundo, near the Airport. Behind them was a blood red sea, the stained moon casting an eerie glow on the water. The sand was stained, and there was a heavy, iron-y scent in the air. This was the beach he was found on.
"Why are we here?" asked Jack.
The boy said nothing, at first. Then, in a voice far too low for him he asked, "Are you glad that you came back?"
"There must be a reason for it." Jack replied.
The boy smiled, sickly.
Blinding pain, worse than anything he had ever experienced. The walls of his mind crumbling, giving in to some external pressure. The drum beat grew louder, slowly enveloping Jack and drowning out everything.
He was being carried through a small village. There was a bell ringing, somewhere far off in the distance. It was slightly muffled, as if filtered through something. He saw nothing, there was only darkness. He could feel something foreign on his back, but it was impossible to turn around and see it.
There were muffled, whispering voices outside. He could half make them out. There was something strangely foreign about them, as if they were in a language he didn't speak, but still somehow comprehended the meaning of, internally, like reading a book in a dream. He couldn't make out the words, but he knew exactly what was being said.
"…bullshit that there's no military honour guard. The poor boy gives his life for his country and this is what he gets? Suka Blyat! It's a crime."
"Don't swear at a funeral." said another voice in an angry whisper. The voice was that of a very old man. Under his anger was palpable sense of weariness. "the Unclean Force will hear! Do you want a domovoi on your hands?"
"You and your superstitions!" said the younger voice, dismissively. But there was an instant of silence, either respectful or scared, before he began his whispered rant again. " The Americans are behind this, with their one-sided 'Valentine' treaty. The bought UN stooges say we get to bury our dead, but no 'displays of militarism,' allowed! And the Kremlin goes with it! After those criminals drafted him!"
Grimly, the other man spoke. "My father died in the Great Patriotic War. He got no Honour Guard either."
After some incomprehensible yet clearly abbreviated ceremony, he was seen off by the small crowd of babushkas and old men. Somehow he knew that this was not the only funeral in the village today. Somehow he knew that the subject of this funeral was one of the now-extinct class of young ones in the village, sacrificed to the altar of a pointless war fought for unclear purposes. A terrified and knee-jerk reaction to a greater tragedy that required unity, not discord. A war at the worst possible time, a suicide attempt on a global scale.
"I knew him once, as I knew all of you." Said a voice Jack presumed was a priest. "Quiet boy. Pious. Thoughtful." He paused for effect. The eulogy, exactly twenty seconds long, was complete. "In a blessed falling asleep, grant, O Lord, eternal rest unto Thy departed servant," a pause, presumably to read from a crib note, "Vladimir Serafinyich Yakor, and make his memory eternal!"
And the small crowd answered, half heartedly, "Vechnaya Pamyat'! Vechnaya Pamyat'! Vechnaya Pamyat'!
There was some shifting as he was lowered into the ground haphazardly, as if they were rushing. He felt the grave dirt on top of him, the voices, which were already shuffling off to go to the next gravesite, were snuffed out. Struggling, Jack managed to turn around in the coffin. He finally saw what was behind him. It was boy he killed, well into decomposition. His face was gone entirely, replaced by a skull, wearing, disturbingly enough, a paper crown. In his half-skeletal hands he clutched a small icon of a divine figure plunging a cross-tipped spear into a menacing serpentine demon, St. Michael the Archangel.
Jack screamed in terror, for the first time in years. But no sound came out. Once again, he felt his mind being pried open, more violently this time, his memories probed by external, unfriendly forces. More of his carefully constructed walls broke down. His thoughts, once filled with little more than the duelling yet equally base urges of self-destruction and self-preservation, were replaced and rewritten. Memories that did not exist previously were introduced. Though tomes of new information were introduced, one thought, one dark revelation, dominated more than any other.
"Tʜᴇ ᴡʀᴏɴɢ Gᴏᴅ ᴡᴏɴ."
"I hate him." Thought Jack, referring to the wrong God. The boy whom he now had a clear picture of in his mind. He had no reason to, but he did.
He was sitting on the pier again.
"You were tricked." said the boy. "And you know it."
He was deep below the ocean, reconstituted, moulded back together and stitched up. He swam towards the light. He was breathing what seemed like liquid blood, stark naked, ripped from The Source, reborn into the world.
Free from the grave.
"Fʀᴇᴇ? Nᴏ" said a voice, the Boy's voice. "Yᴏᴜ ᴡᴇɴᴛ ʙᴀᴄᴋ ɪɴᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ Bʟᴀᴄᴋ Iʀᴏɴ Pʀɪsᴏɴ, ᴍʏ ғʀɪᴇɴᴅ. Aɴᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ʟᴏᴄᴋᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴏᴏʀ ʏᴏᴜʀsᴇʟғ."
Already the memories were slipping. He swam, pathetically, against the waves. Eventually a net ensnared him and dragged him up, he was on the deck. He vomited profusely, bloody discharge covering the deck of the commandeered fishing boat flying coast-guard colours. He tried to remember where he was. He was drunk, under some overpass in Chino, or maybe Ontario, and then he was… gone.
"Don't worry, that's normal." said the soldier, referring to the vomit. "Welcome back. Let's get your name, date of birth, and place of primary residence, please."
He answered and was towelled off. He was groggy. He had to remember… something. What was it? Had he been to heaven? Was this heaven? Or was it Hell. The water certainly looked angry enough.
On the bow of the ship stood the Boy. The God that Lost. The God he had to serve.
He remembered now. He remembered everything.
"You were tricked, and you know it." Jack looked down and saw himself sitting on the edge of the pier, grasping some sort of government form, which he quickly discarded. He stared headlong off into
"Yes." said Jack
"Are you angry?"
"Yes." He said, again monotone. His mind was not his own, any longer, and he liked it that way. There was no love from this God, but there was order. There was a purpose.
"Do you regret your decision to return?"
"Yes." Jack's eyes were dead. Like the rabbit.
"Do you want to go back?"
He looked back at the Boy, and remembered. The boy smiled again. His eyes were dead like the Rabbit's too.
"Is this heaven?" he asked the Woman.
"This is the Instrumentality of Man."
"Oh…" he looked at his hands and realized he had none, at least, not really. "I don't like it. I don't feel like…" he struggled for the word. "Me."
"No. You are not you. Not entirely. Your AT Field is breaking down, and soon any vestige of individuality will slip away."
"Oh." There was really no response to that. And what, exactly, was an AT field? "Uh… is this heaven?"
"I can offer you a choice." She said, ignoring his question. "Live in the world, filled with all the pain that living entails, or remain in Instrumentality."
"Which is better?"
"That's a relative term."
He thought for a second, "I don't know, man… the world… it hurts so much. The dreams… I think I'll take heaven."
She frowned. "This existence is not heaven. This is oblivion." She looked at him, with a ghost of a smile. "If you decide to live, anywhere can be heaven, because you're alive." She took his hands in his, comforting him. Like a mother. "Make your choice. Do you wish to live, or do you wish to die?"
Death. Death was pain. He had been surrounded by death for a year. Lived in it, breathed it. Death was the bloodsoaked mud that soaked through his boots. Death was the shrieks of soldiers, as they lay with their legs blown off by landmines. Death was no release, it lingered for days, permeated everything. He remembered that Russian boy in the war, which he slaughtered. How long it too for him to finally die when he crushed his windpipe. How he tried to plead with him. How his guts hanged out of his stomach. That was death. This was no real choice. There was only one option. "I want to live."
And so, he did.
"Humans, individually, are weak." said the boy, who once again stood beside him on the pier.
" Together, they are strong. That is what you rejected. I was human once. Many humans, a whole council of them. Once, we fought amongst ourselves, we quarreled. But now we are united into the Soul we always intended to become. We are one mind now, and we are strong. You have now been united with us. You will be the Vessel of Salvation. You will allow us to complete what we started."
"Why me?"
"I was invited." Said the corpse.
He was lying on the streets, again, cold and shivering. No open houses here, he thought he could score in this neighbourhood. He was wrong, and he was out of crank. His skin was itchy, and his head hurt. The blisters on his feet had popped again, they burned horribly. His gums were bleeding again, and pretty soon his teeth would fall out. He hadn't gone to the Tenshido building in a few weeks, it had been a long bender. Maybe he should go back? He lit his last cigarette. In a few days. Maybe he could score tomorrow.
There was a fight somewhere nearby. Gunshots. He hoped a stray would fly this way and hit him right between the eyes. End it all. Maybe he should do it himself. Was suicide a sin in Tenshido? Were there sins in Tenshido? The Priests talked a lot but he couldn't speak Japanese. Maybe I should drink the LCL, join for real. They said you saw shit after you drank it. Revelations, real life changing shit.
"Fuck it." He said, out loud. This was his last chance, no revelation, and he was ending it all. He had a gun. It would be quick. But he had to be sure there wasn't something left for him to do. Some purpose.
He was overcome with anger at the Usurper, that had ascended to the Highest Throne only to climb back down again. Who had doomed them all to a life of pain and separation. He stole godhood, and then rejected it. It was a sin of the highest order: "How art thou fallen from Heaven, oh Morning Star."
The final walls broke down, he was overwhelmed. Any resistance offered was feeble, and, probably token. Jack, really, did not wish to resist. Not anymore. Not now, that he knew that the false God, the Demiurge, had tricked him into rejecting his place in paradise. He was angry, for his own reasons. This anger paled in comparison to the righteous rage he felt from that exterior force now living inside of him. He submit to the rage, and let it carry him.
It was then that Jack, as an entity, died. He was one with them now. A vessel for God.
He awoke with a start on the cold floor of the gym. The fire had gone out, the drums had stopped. He could hear that outside the wind had died down, and the fire was out. The altar was put away. He wasn't in Terminal Dogma anymore; it was just a school gym now, stripped of all significance.
His body, not his own anymore, felt thirty years younger.
He walked over to the priestess, who looked far more like a human in the light. In perfect Japanese, the entity once known as Jack, and now known only as SEELE said, simply, "Thank you for watching over me."
The fact that he was speaking Japanese seemed to shock her, but she merely nodded. With that, he bowed, and walked out of the Temple, towards his truck.
The second scenario had begun.
He knew now what he had to do.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
The possession scene was hard as hell. Witchy shit is hard to write, and so I had to do it three separate times. It was derivative Faustian drivel at first, then a bunch of random incomprehensible symbolism, then something at least releasable.
I feel as if I took a massive risk with this chapter, especially with all of the good reviews I've gotten. For those of you hoping for a completely down-to-earth story in the vein of Bagheera, I'm sorry to disappoint you. However, I encourage you to stick around, because there will be things in this story for you too. I promise the next chapter will be far more grounded in reality than this one. It also won't be an OC chapter.
Either way, I'm glad this chapter is over. It was hard as hell, and I'm still not entirely proud of it. If you see any grammar/spelling mistakes or weirdly-phrased nonsense or continuity errors please contact me immediately. I want to know, I want to fix it.
Till next time,
Folk Devil.