“Enough!” Frank bellowed, pushing forward. “Enough of this hateful place, enough of its evil deeds. We will suffer no more sacrilege.” He charged ahead, holding the flamethrower up. Purifying flame spurted out and engulfed Fisk, who bent over like a primate and roared in pain and demonic hatred. Starsmore kept the spurt of flame going far longer than he needed to, but it was best to make sure.
“Die, thing of evil!” Frank yelled as Fisk collapsed and started to disintegrate. “Get back to the hell from which the Ruiner spawned you!”
Still he kept the flamethrower gushing fire. I shared his anger at all the loss and suffering, but it was time to stop before the whole house went up. As rotten and mouldy as the boards were, eventually they would catch. I went up to him and gently rested a hand on his arm. “He’s finished, Frank. You got him. You’ve done enough.”
He extinguished the geyser of flame, but turned on me, aggressively. “Enough? How is this enough? The Exalted has shown me, I cannot be content with Tanya until I’m content with myself. I must prove myself worthy of the Exalted. This is a place of blasphemy and it must be purged!”
“Okay, Frank, okay. But let’s get out of here first.” The poor man had probably been in a constant state of anxiety over his marriage for ages. Like with Thomas, I wished I’d noticed sooner.
He didn’t hear me. My voice was being drowned out by another. “Can’t you hear that?” he asked.
“Hear what?” Troughton asked.
“The voice. His voice. I can hear His words.” He gazed about at the sagging ceiling above us, in wonder.
“The Exalted?” I asked.
“Of course. His voice is like the wind and the rain, like birdsong and the howling of wolves, like a tree falling in the woods, that only I can hear. He cannot abide this place. I know . . . I know what He wants me to do.”
Turning in dizzying circles, he ignited the flamethrower again. “This place of evil must burn!”
“Run!” I yelled to Troughton. He was already on the move. A spurt of flame shot out as we pelted down the corridor, back towards the stairs, singeing my back. I felt a tingling and curious numbness and wondered how much damage had been done. No time to inspect. Keep moving.
“The big guy’s cracked,” Troughton panted. “I knew he was devout, but this?”
The house was starting to catch. Smoke slowly filled the air, making breathing a struggle.
“It’s something about the house,” I said, stifling coughs. “Has to be. The Fallen is dead.”
I glanced back. The section of corridor where it turned towards the dead end was being devoured by flames, licking up the ceiling and spreading along the walls towards us. From the middle of this conflagration, Frank’s immense silhouette lumbered towards us.
“Maybe . . . Ruiner cult rituals?” Troughton said.
Despite the urgency, we stopped at the top of the stairs. The grotesque decorations had returned, twice as many as before. Charms in the form of esoteric symbols, made from woven plants, from broken objects, from organs. Hideous effigies dangled by their throats, many wearing the red demon mask, most obscene or made to look like they were dismembered or deformed.
“The room. Where Frank first started acting strangely,” I said.
“With the sacrifices? What about it?”
From among the encroaching flames, Frank’s voice intoned, “Now Purify all sin. Now burn the sinner. Now reap the ashes . . .”
“We have to go back there,” I said.
Troughton paused before he responded. “It’s gotten to you too, hasn’t it? You’re losing your mind.”
“No. If this is about Ruiner rituals, that’s where we can put things right. If this is about Frank, that’s where we can make him confront what’s happening to him.”
He nodded. The fire was almost on us. We could feel the heat. Sweat poured into my eyes, the air stung my throat.
We ran to the room, a few feet away, Frank stamping towards us.
We stumbled in and slammed the door behind us, putting our backs against it, and stared at what we had found. The room that had held the defiled remains of the murder victims was now empty. A single window illuminated the stark reality of it.
“So much for that idea,” Troughton scoffed. The door shook as Frank pounded it. The strength of the two of us was no match for his—soon the door would collapse. “Still, last ones standing. Guess you and I aren’t afraid of much, huh?”
“You were afraid of something, but not anymore, I think.”
He nodded slowly. The door shuddered as Frank tried to open it, pushed his full weight against it. Troughton and I pushed harder to compensate, our feet struggling for leverage on the soft wood of the floor. “I was afraid of being discovered,” he said.
“But you confronted it.” I looked at the room. It wasn’t just empty, it was bare, it was clean. There wasn’t the slightest sign that dismembered body parts had been strewn across the room less than an hour before.
“What was in here wasn’t real,” I said. “If we just confront our fear of him, and show him that what he fears isn’t real . . .”
We exchanged a look, and stepped away. The door burst inwards.
“The Exalted renews!” Frank yelled. Then he stopped, looked at the room as though it was an old friend, someone who had been absent from his life for so long that recognition came slowly, and with doubt.
“What is this?”
“It wasn’t real,” Troughton said. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but it’s not a Ruiner cult. Why would they create fake evidence of their rituals when the real signs of them would be everywhere?”
Frank pulled his mask off. His bearded face was limp with astonishment and anguish. “I almost . . .”
“Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “You’re not the only one to . . .”
And that was as far as I got, because at that moment the flames reached Frank’s back, and his fuel tank exploded.
He cannonballed into the room as Troughton and I were both blown back against the far wall by the unstoppable, blistering force.
I was left lying face first on the ground, struggling for consciousness, struggling for breath, struggling to ignore the pain that covered every inch of my body so that I couldn’t bear to move. I lifted my head. Troughton was in a sitting position, propped against the wall next to the window, uniform burned away in patches and red raw flesh beneath.
Frank had been blown apart and partially charred pieces of him were scattered across the room.
My ears rang, head spun. My nose was full of strange smells—charred meat, smoke, mould. A cigar my grandfather used to smoke, my favourite drink, and the scent of lavender.
I heard my brother’s voice, calling to me in the corn fields.
“Troughton,” I rasped. “Troughton.”
He lifted his head, looked at me, then got to his feet with unbelievable ease. He ran across to me and gently turned me over.
“Go. Leave me,” I told him. “Everyone who puts their trust in me gets killed.”
“Well then, it’s a good thing I don’t trust you. Now get up.”
“No. I’ve failed you all. I accept my death.”
“It’s not real. It can’t hurt us if we confront our fears.”
“How can I do that? My fear has already come true.” They were nearly all dead. Their own fears coming true. Except none of them had feared death. For all their flaws, they were the bravest people I had ever known. Frank was willing to throw his life away to fight corruption. Fisk would have seen the final purifying flame as a blissful release after the horror of being Fallen.
I heard my brother yelling “slow poke, slow poke”, saw him running through the hay, saw him stumble and drop, and fall into nothingness, into the ravine at the edge of the field.
Troughton slapped me awake. “It’s not real. Confront it.”
I forced my eyes open, not remembering when I had closed them, saw the ceiling being devoured by the fire. Realised the truth.
>
“This is my fear,” I whispered. “None of you feared death. I was afraid that I would get you all killed.”
“So get up.”
I forced myself to sit. As I pushed myself up, the devastation around us seemed to fall away. The flames dwindled, seemed almost to retreat. Frank’s remains were hidden within the sifting shadows left behind.
With help from Troughton, I made myself stand. The room appeared to melt. Opposite the doorway, which flames and smoke were fleeing through, was an inbuilt cupboard space like the one we had found downstairs, which we had struggled to open. Aligning the spaces in my head, finally realising our earlier error about which side of the house was on our left and which was on our right, I figured out that this cupboard was directly above the one downstairs.
I stepped towards it, gripped the handle, and pulled. It opened without resistance.
I couldn’t see within. The sun was rising on the opposite side of the house, and this side was still dark. From above, I could hear hushed voices.
I reached inside.
“What..?” Troughton asked.
“Shh.” My fingertips brushed the back of the cupboard. I felt around, dust and webs coating my hand. Then I felt it: the rung of a ladder.
I gestured for Troughton to follow, and clambered in.
The ladder led up to a hatchway barred by a thin, light piece of wood that lifted as I pushed. Preparing for the worst, I unholstered my pistol and then sprang though the hatch.
It was an attic space, covered in worn carpets, knitted blankets and soft out-of-shape cushions, in shades of brown and red. A small, very thin woman in rags stood in the middle of the room. Judging by the red in her eyes that shone out from behind strands of long black hair, and the points of her teeth, she was Fallen. She stood facing me in a defensive, defiant, posture. Behind her, bundled in blankets and cushions, was a young boy and a woman, dark haired, grubby, terrified. It was like waking up. Not from a dream, but from a debilitating fever.
“What’s going on here?” I demanded, climbing up into the attic. For a terrible moment I brandished the pistol at them, then thought of what I had learned that evening and lowered it.
“I’ve sworn to protect them,” the woman said. “I’m all they have.”
My arms flexed, fighting with me to raise the gun upwards. “You put nightmares into our heads,” I accused. “You killed my men.”
“No. Really, I didn’t. Your men are safe. Even now, they’re coming. To enforce your doctrines.”
Sure enough, I could hear their footsteps throughout the house, presumably following the sound of the conversation. Troughton lifted himself into the loft behind me.
“As for nightmares,” the woman continued, “all I did was bring to the surface what was already there. So much paranoia and hatred. So much hurt and fear. So much self-loathing. How can you bear to live in such minds?” The glow behind her eyes briefly shifted from red to green.
“I . . .” I began, unable to think of a retort. She was right. All the brutality and ugliness that had been unleashed that night, had already been within us. It hadn’t come from her, it had come from the world we inhabited. The world we enforced.
“What about them?” Troughton asked. He was keeping his gun trained on the Fallen woman, but looking around her to the mother and child. “What are they protecting?”
She peered at him guardedly. “I don’t understand.”
“If you’re protecting them, why do they need protecting? What are they hiding?”
Behind us, footsteps on the ladder. Then Fisk and Moriah entered. I heard Starsmore below, grumbling about the chute being too small for him.
“Spill, lady,” Fisk growled. “Why did we have to go through this shit?”
Because it had to be exorcised. Because something had twisted our minds.
The woman didn’t respond. Behind her, the soiled faces of the boy and older woman stared out from within their bundle of blankets, trembling. The boy moaned faintly, and the mother stroked his head and whispered words I couldn’t understand.
The smell of lavender wafted through the air again, but this time I was sure it wasn’t some echo of ancient traumas, it was real. I sniffed the air.
“Gyscarl,” the Fallen woman murmured knowingly. She cocked her head. A tangled and wild plant was growing out of the unfinished walls, bearing red flowers above long stems and narrow leaves. “It has a similar smell to lavender, but it’s a powerful narcotic. We are, mercifully, unaffected.”
“But we aren’t?” Moriah asked. His mask was off and his face, though sore, was not infected with a life threatening disease. “Is that what you’re saying? So that’s why there was so much messed up stuff on our minds for you to draw out?”
Again, no answer, just a coy smile.
“This Dezkary bitch don’t want to give us nothing,” Fisk said. “She’s obstructing and she’s a danger. We should Purify her.”
“No!” I yelled. A vision of a family tumbling like reaped hay flashed across my mind. “That’s not necessary. The danger has passed. We find what we came here for and leave.”
A heard two more sets of steps in the room beneath us, but paid little attention, except to sip the relief of knowing all the men were alive.
The woman gazed at Fisk with amused contempt.
“What?” he asked. “What’s that fucking look for?”
“I’ve never been to Dezkary, you paranoid moron.”
Gyscarl. The name wandered through my mind in search of something to connect with, but all that it would summon were slideshows of long days in the fields, and an abrupt end to innocence.
“Was that you? Downstairs? The Fallen?” Troughton asked.
“Sort of. Sometimes. What you saw was an augmented reality.”
“So when we shot you and you wouldn’t go down . . . that was because it wasn’t real?” I asked.
She shrugged and said, “why else?” But if that was the case, why were red blotches seeping through her poorly stitched rags? This woman was not generous with the truth. She was hiding possibly dangerous secrets. Extracting them would be a challenge.
As I assessed our options, a shot buzzed past my head, close enough to make the air whip my skin, and hit the wall behind the woman’s left side. The mother and child screamed.
“Liar!” somebody screamed. “I can see the wounds. You were hit and you cheated death. You’re a consort of the Ruiner. You’ve twisted our minds with sorcery. World, what did you do to me?”
The previously unflappable young-looking woman stared open-mouthed past my shoulder. Billy and Gibbs stood side by side in front of the hatch. Gibbs looked pale and shaky, and on the verge of throwing up. Billy was wild eyed, and manic, and trembling with anger. “Answer me!”
The woman put up her hands. “I didn’t use sorcery. The plants exacerbated your fear of the danger you would face as a Purifier, and I used my psychic abilities to make that seem real. But it was just a trick. A way to deter you without harming you.”
“You call this not harming me? I don’t know what’s real anymore. I was dead. I was dead. And there was no light beyond, and there was no coming back, and now, and now . . .”
“Stop this, Billy.” Moriah said. “We’re all okay, that’s what counts.”
“How can you say that? After the mind fuck she put us through?”
Fisk’s eyes turned towards Troughton, and they met each other’s gaze for a decisive moment. “Well, I don’t remember any of it,” Fisk said.
Billy sneered. “You fucking liar.” His arms began to tremble more fiercely, his finger tapped at the trigger.
“Put the gun down, Billy,” I said.
“No!” he snapped. “I’m going to kill her, and her pet immigrants.”
His muscles twitched, just a fraction. A tendon flexed in the wrist, shoulders stiffened. It was enough to tell me what was about to happen.
I stopped struggling with my own reflexes. My arms jerked up, the gun found its mark, the bullet
fulfilled its purpose.
*
I knelt down to the mother and child, now weeping in each other’s arms. The Fallen woman was squatting next to them, offering what comfort she could.
“Translate for me?” I asked.
The mother chattered at me at high speed, and the Fallen woman listened intently then turned to me. “She said, ‘thank you kind man, thank you brave man. Thank you for saving my son.”
I swallowed my shame.
“Now tell her what I say.” She nodded companionably, but her familiarity faded when she heard my message, and she hesitated before passing it on.
“Whatever secret you are hiding, whatever reason you have for being targeted, for secluding yourself here with the protection of Fallen, you must surrender it now. Because I have a duty to fulfil: obligations that I can’t go against, no matter how much I might like to. And if you don’t tell me what I need to know, I will have to take you and your son far away from here, to a place where very cruel men, very cowardly men, will find their answers any way they can.
“Please,” I said, hoping that my sincerity would show, and not come across as manipulation, “don’t make me do that terrible thing. Just speak to me.”
The mother sobbed when she heard my message in her own words, and rocked the boy, who sucked his thumb blankly. She gabbled through tears and spittle, at times talking hurriedly, at times letting her words be drawn out into inarticulate wails. No translation was needed. From within the depths of the many-folded red and orange blankets, she produced a book. It was leather bound and heavily thumbed, and radiated a promise of devastating ramifications. The cover bore the title: “Sanguinem Mittere.”
As I took hold of the book, the Fallen woman stared in dismay and gripped my wrist so hard it hurt.
“Don’t let it fall into the wrong hands,” she warned.
*
When I reported back to Andreas, he was stooped over a desk, studying reports of national troop movements. I knocked on the open door of his office and stood to attention as he looked up.
“Please don’t do that, Turcotte,” he said, and waved me in.
I entered and took a seat at his desk.
“Sir . . .” I began, not sure of the next word.
He raised a hand to silence me, and stared at me for a long while with his inky black eyes. “I heard about Billy’s incapacitation. It wasn’t your fault.”