We Are Monsters (21 page)

Chapter Forty

The wafer was tasteless and stale. It sat on Angela's tongue like a piece of Styrofoam. She sipped cheap wine from the chalice to wash the host down and coughed on the wine's acrid taste. Even so, she wanted another sip.

“From this, the Body of Christ.” The wavering voice sounded caring and wise.

“Amen,” she said, and opened her eyes. She blinked, and almost screamed.

“What the fuck is going on?” she said, taking a step back.

The row of women around her all sucked in air at once.

The noise startled her and she swiveled her head to both sides.

The women, approximately five on each side, were identical in appearance. Their young, beautiful faces featured pale, flawless skin with full, naturally pink lips. Their blonde, gossamer hair gleamed in the kaleidoscopic sunlight streaming through the stained-glass windows lining the walls overhead. Their shocked eyes were of the purest blue surrounded by the same pristine white as their flowing cloaks. The room was silent as though they had inhaled every sound.

“An ugly word spoken by an ugly girl,” one of the girls said and averted her gaze.

Angela looked down and realized that she was the only one wearing black. She stood out like a stain.

“That's not necessary,” the priest said. His old, wizened face peered out from beneath his hooded robe. He was weighed down by so many sacramental ornaments it looked like he could hardly stand. They tinkled as he shuffled forward, centimeters at a time, relying heavily on his shaking staff. “Let's leave Sister Drake alone.”

“Pardon me, Father, but why must you always protect her? Does it not discourage her growth?” one of the sisters said.

Angela was shocked silent. Her mouthed gaped open, but she was unable to make a sound.

“We are all children of God. It is his will how and when we grow.”

“Then it is our growth that suffers,” another said. “As you are forced to spend more time with her than with anyone else.”

“I provide attention to those who need it most.”

One of the women clucked her tongue and stomped her foot. She turned towards Angela and said, “Why must you shame us, Sister? Why must you continue to shame yourself?”

The two rows of identical women turned as one to stare at her as well. They stood in the same position, they held the same expression. They even blinked their perfect blue eyes in unison.

“I don't…I don't…I don't know…” Angela stammered.

“Well, of course she doesn't. She never does,” a sister said. “Ugly words from an ugly girl.”

“Please, no more of that,” the priest said. He waddled up next to Angela, placing a delicate hand on her arm. He was almost a full foot shorter than she was, his back frail and hunched over. He trembled like a baby bird. “Leave us for now.”

The sisters all huffed and turned in the same direction, marching together towards the center aisle and the back exit of the cathedral.

“Come, child. What's troubling you?” the priest said when the women had left the room. His eyes were hidden behind bushy, grey brows that resembled storm clouds. His voice was a dying wind.

Angela began shaking harder than the priest's palsied hand. She scanned the cathedral, noting the ten-foot-tall, stained-glass windows featuring satanic figures glowering down. Below each one was the Greek word
Apokalypsis
. Where it had been bright and sunny just moments before, the light had grown dim.

“I don't know…where did… How did I get here?” she managed to say.

The priest's polite laughter was a wheezing cough. It appeared to pain him, although he maintained his determined smile. “No one understands the mystery of our calling, Sister, until our purpose manifests.”

“That's not what I mean.” Angela attempted to pull her arm free from the priest's gentle grasp, but he clamped down. His fingers dug painfully into her bicep, pinching a nerve against the bone.

He eased his grip as soon as her eyes registered pain. His face seemed to recede into the shadowed hollow of his hood. “It's not our place to question the Lord's motives,” he said. She could no longer see his lips move, and his voice had become deeper, as though someone else's.

Angela spun in both directions, searching for some familiar sign, some familiar face. The priest's hand remained clamped to her arm. His grip as unyielding as granite.

She stopped squirming and turned to face him. All she could see were the faint whites of his eyes from the dark depths of his hood. “You need to help me,” she said. “I'm very confused right now. I…I was just somewhere else. And now I'm here. And I don't know how I got here. And I don't know where
here
is. Something is wrong with me.”

“Oh, dear.” The old man caressed her arm. His wizened face reemerged from within the hood. “You're having another one of your spells, aren't you?”

“I-I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Here, come with me.” He turned her and began to guide her back towards the pulpit.

Angela resisted and pulled her arm free. She began to back away. “Look, I just need to—”

The priest's hands shot out from his sleeves and grabbed her once again, this time by both arms; his fingers felt capable of crushing bone. “I sense a deep unease within you, Sister. That is the mark of corruption. Come, it's time for you to atone for your sins.”

The priest forced Angela back past the pulpit, guiding her towards a dark wooden door hidden behind it. She dug her feet into the ground but it did no good. The priest's deceptive strength kept propelling her forward.

“Dr. Alpert!” she screamed. “Dr. Drexler! Help!”

The priest's wheezing became a cackle. His gnarled hand left her arm for a brief moment to turn the knob and open the door, then she was thrust through, falling forward into the blackness beyond.

Chapter Forty-One

The man lying on the table was going to die. There was nothing that could be done to save him. The bullet had shot straight through his eye, blasting shards of orbital bone into the softness of his brain, bits of which still oozed through the softball-size exit hole in the back of his head.

“Please…” The man's lips were smeared with blood. It splattered from his mouth every time he spoke. “Let me die,” he said, just before he did.

“He's gone,” a man said. “The children may have him now.”

The dead man's head jerked backwards as small hands pulled it by the hair from behind. A hand released his hair and slipped inside the exit hole, entering the pulpy wetness and emerging with a fistful of grey flesh. Clumps of brain-infused blood drained out from the frayed wound, pooling on the tabletop around the man's head. Another set of hands scrabbled from behind the table to scoop it up.

“Hey!” Eli said. He reached out and grabbed the blood-soaked wrist before it could enter the head wound again. “Stop that,” he said, circling around the table.

The children were compressed together, as if they shared a single body. Thin arms rose up from the writhing mass like a malformed spider reaching for something trapped in its web. Their sightless, black eyes roamed in random patterns. Wet tongues lolled from gaping mouths set to gorge on handfuls of gelatinous flesh. They cried for their carrion food with keening caws that made a mockery of human speech.

“Let go of him, Doctor. Let them eat.”

Eli turned. Dr. Francis was wearing military fatigues.

Behind him a woman sat clutching her hair in clawed hands, crying. “Please don't let him have died in vain,” she said.

Eli let go of the boy's wrist and the hand sank back into the skull with a slurp. The children mewled from the recess below.

“One more should do it for today. Eh, Eli?” Dr. Francis said.

Eli spun around. He was in what looked like a small operating room. The ceiling and walls were off-white. The table and instrument tray were metal. The crying lady was sitting on a rubber-cushioned bench. Dr. Francis stood by the door. The children were all crouched in a recessed pit behind the operating table, the head of which, Eli could now see, was angled down in their direction. To offer them easier access.

There was a large window on the left-hand wall, which looked into an adjacent room. Dr. Francis circled around the feeding children to stand beside the window. “Who should it be?”

Eli looked through the window. It was tinted like a two-way mirror. The room on the other side was long and narrow. It looked like a converted racquetball court. Against the far wall stood a row of people lined up next to each other, shoulder to shoulder. They were blindfolded, and their arms were restrained behind their backs. A man wearing military fatigues stood off to the side, holding an assault rifle. The man glanced towards the window and then looked away. Eli recognized his face. It was Sergeant Wagner, the platoon leader from his tour in Vietnam.

It felt like a cold hand had seized Eli's heart and squeezed. Shocks of electric pain traversed from his core down to his extremities, causing them to tingle.

This must be some hallucination caused by my concussion,
Eli thought.
I must have passed out.

But the scene before him seemed so completely real he even felt a disconcerting sense of vertigo from questioning its authenticity.

Or perhaps it's finally happened. I've lost my mind.

“Dr. Alpert?” Dr. Francis said, slightly concerned. “Which one should we offer next?”

Eli began to concentrate on his breathing. He tried to calm his racing heart. When he spoke, it took every bit of his will to stay composed. “I think we're done for the day.” He wasn't sure what they were doing, but he wanted whatever it was to end, and could not give in to what must be a trauma-induced dream or psychotic delusion.

“No!” shouted the woman from her seat. Several of the children mimicked her scream. Or, perhaps, they echoed her desire to continue. “What's the point of stopping now?” she wailed.

“That's enough,” Dr. Francis said. “That's our decision to make.” He pressed a button on the console next to the window.

Seconds later a young soldier appeared at the door.

“Take Ms. Winniker to the waiting room, please,” he said, and the soldier whisked her away.

Her wailing was silenced the instant the door closed, leaving only the slurping sounds of the children spooning brain matter into their mouths.

Dr. Francis peered through the tinted window, crossing his arms over his chest, scratching the mound of grey whiskers on his chin. “We should at least give them one more. The effects have been negligible so far.”

Eli peered through the window. There were seven people lined up against the far wall. Despite the distance and the black blindfolds obscuring the top part of their faces, Eli thought he recognized several of them. Two of the girls, in particular. “What do you hope to achieve?” he said, squinting to aid his inspection.

“Excuse me?” Dr. Francis said.

Through the window, Sergeant Wagner pulled his jacket lapel close to this mouth. His amplified voice streamed through the intercom to the right of the window. “What the hell's taking so damn long? Stop pussyfooting around in there. Are we doing another or not?”

Dr. Francis and Eli locked eyes. Dr. Francis cocked his head in hopes of prompting a response.

During the silence, the children began keening for more food.

Dr. Francis shut his eyes in apparent disappointment. He pressed the intercom button and said, “Yes, the one on the far right.”

“Roger,” Sergeant Wagner said. He stalked forward, setting his legs in a shooting stance. He raised the assault rifle and began to take aim.

It's not real,
Eli thought, even though he could feel the beating of his heart. Both in his chest and in each temple. He curled his hands into fists and could feel the scrape of his fingernails dragging across each palm. He leaned forward and strained to see the person selected to be shot. He could swear it looked just like…

Sergeant Wagner tilted his head, eyeing the sight at the end of the barrel. He adjusted his feet and secured the stock against his shoulder, his elbow cocked as he prepared to shoot a woman that looked just like Miranda.

Chapter Forty-Two

He first abolished time. It had always caused him distress. Without time, he wouldn't have to worry about being late anymore. Not that he had anywhere to go. Actually, that wasn't true. He had everywhere to go; he just wasn't sure where to start.

Next he got rid of the patients. He didn't kill them, just sent them away, cast them out of his reality. Into which one, he didn't know. But the hospital was much nicer without all the noise.

Learning how to manipulate his environment would have taken much longer if he hadn't dispelled time.
A millennia,
he thought, but couldn't be sure. Because time no longer existed, it was impossible to tell. In his reality it had all happened in an instant, which still felt rather strange. No,
strange
was not the right word. It was a weak word. Strange did not begin to describe how Crosby felt.

Powerful, was more like it. Omniscient. Omnipotent. Yet, ultimately words are inadequate. They are incapable of describing the act of becoming God.

But, if he were God, what, then, was the beast? It was part of him now. He could hear its harsh breath just beneath his own. He could sense its shadow shape inhabiting his very skin. Its reptilian consciousness cast a dark pall over his liberated mind. Overlaying his thoughts with discordant images. Painting his vision in decrepit colors. Distracting him with instinctual impulses to create chaos, to destroy.

No matter how much control Crosby felt like he was establishing over his abilities, he knew that the beast held power as well. It was as if they had equal stakes in the power they somehow shared.

Was he becoming like them? Like the demon-possessed people he had pledged to destroy?

No. They did not possess the same power as he. He was certain of this. They had been taken completely by surprise when he was called into their meeting. If they were like him, they would have been able to see, as he was able to see. To see inside his soul, as he had been able to see inside theirs and perceive their sins.

He took a last look at these lesser demons in human disguise. Dr. Alpert. Dr. Drexler. The social worker, Angela. The fat director with all of his sycophant followers.

Perhaps they could be reformed through purification. That would be for them to decide. It was no longer his concern. He closed the door on their catatonic faces staring into the darkness of timeless eternity and began to walk the hall.

The quiet was disconcerting. Each footfall was the only one in this existence, its hollow resonance reverberating across the vast emptiness of this infantile creation.

It may get lonely,
Crosby thought. Such as God must have thought before he made the mistake of creating man. Fleshy creatures with the seeds of demons lodged deep within their corruptible souls. God had been betrayed; Crosby would not be.

But still. It would get lonely.

Then he had an idea.
Careful,
he thought, clapping his hands atop his head as if to clamp the idea down.
Ideas are how new universes are born.
An image of living on a double-bacon-cheeseburger planet popped into his mind, and he flinched, expecting it to come true.

Nothing happened. He giggled to himself.

Underneath, the beast quietly growled.

But I could. I could if I wanted.

He shook his head.
No, this will do for now,
he thought, marshaling his runaway imagination and heading towards the recreation room.

When he arrived, he clapped his hands.

It was alive. The mural, it was alive as he somehow knew it would be. A verdant garden from the beginning of time. A cool nocturnal breeze blew across the bushes and rustled the leaves of the great apple tree. The man and woman sat against the trunk of the tree, gazing at the endless stretch of stars above. They stood when they saw him approach, unabashed in their nakedness. The woman raised her arms overhead and yawned, standing up on the tips of her toes. The man crossed his arms and shifted his weight onto his other foot. They both were beautiful. Innocence incarnate.

The beast's ragged breath grew louder as he walked closer, nearing the boundary between the rec room and the verdant garden beyond. He stopped at the edge and stood. The breeze ruffled his shirt and caused the few wispy hairs on his head to flutter. The crisp night air smelled of apples.

The woman reached for him. As did the man. It was the first time he had ever felt wanted by anyone in his life.

Did I create this?
he thought.
Are we to begin again?

He stepped forward, his feet sinking into the soft grass, and reached out for his original creation to receive him. For the circle to become full.

The man and woman stared in wonder at his clothes, pulling at the shirt buttons and feeling the fabric of his pants.

Crosby issued a husky laugh. He found that he couldn't bring himself to disrobe. He pushed their playful hands away and they stopped probing him.

The moon overhead hung low, its blue light nearly as bright as the sun. It cast a double shadow—one much taller and more animated than the other, with clawed hands ending in sharp talons—behind Crosby as he walked towards the tree. He saw the shadow of this other arm reach up beside his own as he grabbed a ripe red apple from one of the lower limbs of the tree.

From overhead he heard a soft hiss. He looked up and saw the flickering of the serpent's forked tongue, its slitted eyes staring at him with ancient indifference.

And then it all became clear to him. This was his chance to eliminate evil once and for all. To undo the original sin that placed all of humanity on this treacherous path. His divine purpose was grander than he would have ever imagined.

The snake bared its fangs and hissed.

Deep within him the demon growled.

The man and woman shied from him, their faces contorted by fear.

“No,” he said, dropping the apple and holding his empty hands out to disarm them.

He didn't see the snake slither closer. He didn't sense it strike. The next thing he knew its fangs were buried deep in the side of his neck while its body wrapped around his throat.

The man and woman screamed, turned and ran.

His shout caught in his throat as the snake constricted. He staggered to his knees, clawing at its body with his hands, and gasped as the bright-blue light from the moon turned to black. A depthless pit of darkness that set his inner shadow free.