Manifest (The Darkening Trilogy) (3 page)

Rolla’s eyes go dark and she goes to sleep with the turn of a key.  Sabetha and I exit and make our way to the back entrance of the apartment, our shoes pattering lightly on the pavement. “Stopped raining already?” Sabetha asks, looking up at the chaotic migration of storm clouds that race across the sky. 

Before I can respond though, I feel my feet grow heavy and my head begins to spin.  I am too old to reach altered states of conscious with anything less than a fortune in drugs, so to suddenly feel drunk, and for no reason, is more than a little alarming.  Panic sets in as I feel out of control of myself for the first time in many years.  All the sound around me drowns in an ambiance of subtle creaking.  It sounds like old wood groaning under pressure followed by a deep rumbling which I can only compare to an amplifier playing a nearly inaudibly low bass note, 18 Hz or so, but it’s not real
sound
.  I stumble and try to swallow but can’t.  It’s as if the air has suddenly hardened around me and I can’t seem to move except with the greatest of efforts.

“Delano?” Her words won’t reach me for another few seconds.  Above us, kharma, the invisible energy of the city, the entropic medium through which our actions and thoughts reverberate, swirls around the dimming streetlight, threatening to completely extinguish the filament’s glow.  A sensation fills me; it’s one I haven’t felt for a long time, and despite the risks I just claimed to love, this emotion is definitely unwanted. 

Fear.

Sabetha’s tone is soft but probing.  “Delano?” 

I choke on nothing and my terror begins to show on my face.  As my sister recognizes it, she is instantly alert.  “What is it?” she demands in a stronger voice. 

But then the feeling is gone – vanished.  The streetlight is still on and the disorienting noises have faded.  I pick up my foot, expecting it to weigh a half-ton but, to my surprise, find that it lifts quickly.  Sabetha tries to catch my eyes as I look curiously down at my three-hundred dollar black
Phobe
dress shoes.  I shake my head and try to get back to the present.  Without an explanation, I go and unlock the door to the back stairwell.

Sabetha is thoroughly confused.  “What is up with you tonight?”

“The consciousness is storming,” I say, referring to the city’s collection of kharma.  It’s something everyone is affected by and anyone aware enough can feel, but to which we sentiners are deeply, often unhealthily, sensitive.  “Let’s just get inside.”  Halfway up the stairs though, before I can reconcile with myself that the past sixty seconds were even
real
, the fear returns.  This time it comes in a sudden, sharp surge.  It’s in many ways like a lightning bolt – but made of kharma, not electricity.  All of my body tenses, my breath escapes me, and I’m locked in place like a corpse with rigor mortis for a minute-long second.  Sabetha whips around and grabs me by the collar as I tilt back, about to fall down the stairs.

“Hey!” She shouts leaning in and shaking me loose. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” I gasp. “It’s fear…”

“Of what?” she demands quickly, ready for a fight.

“I don’t know.”

This is startling news to her.  With varying degrees of detail I can normally sense
everything
around us for at least a block, not to mention nuances of kharma in the collective consciousness for miles.  After a second’s hesitation she hauls me up to the second floor of the three story building, and then drags me down the hall to our door.  It’s a big heavy metal barrier with a matching bolt.  I start to regain myself just as she opens the lock and shoves me into the first room, a short hallway with two cameras hidden in the walls.  The second door at the end leads into our home.

Inside, I stumble towards my room, desperately needing to restore the composure I seldom let crack.  In the bathroom, after splashing water on my face, I look at myself in the mirror, studying my eyes as if looking into a stranger’s.  Quickly, I begin to rationalize the fear away and stand upright, some macho sense-of-self taking inventory of the soundness of my body.  I feel my father’s logic from long ago return:  I’m not hurt, so there’s no need to be upset, is there?

I take in a deep breath and clear my mind of panic.  For a moment I am calm and confident that everything is okay.  But then it comes again.  Just after I let out a composed breath, it hits me like a heart attack and I crumple over.  The sound is piercing now and absurdly loud.  I can feel it in my bones like waves of pulsing energy, a thunderstorm of kharma attacking the air.  Something terrible is happening in the consciousness.

“Delano!” Sabetha’s voice calls over the noise.  She must hear it too.  My need to help her temporarily frees me from my paralysis and I claw my way up from the bathroom floor and grab my khopesh off the wall mount.  It’s a short sword whose blade is straight on the lower half but curved like a longbow to the top.

As I enter the living area, Sabetha is emerging from her bedroom, an assault shotgun held in her hands.  “Someone’s out there!” she yells.  The noise is constant – that kharma-awful noise.  I try to make sense of it but feel scrambled.  I can’t even bring myself to look through the walls and doors to see what’s causing it.  But, when the vibrations begin to shake the floorboards, I finally understand.

Someone is using a chainsaw on my front door.

Sabetha throws open the inner door and I rush to her side, neither of us remotely prepared for the cause of the thunderous rattle and disorienting kharma.  Before us stands a ghastly, obese figure, fumbling over the sundered fire door at the other end of the hallway.  To my disgust, I see that the roughly human shaped figure is wearing a suit of ilk
faces
for skin.  Human faces.  The rubbery layer, stitched together with shoe laces, seems to be the only barrier between its insides and the air, the creature possessing no skin of its own.  The expressions on these borrowed faces are warped and contorted into wretched gasps, and through the empty eyes, nostrils and mouths, a blackened, rotting intestine jiggles and drips.  The sagging, bulbous gut has stretched the stitched seams, and back bile leeks from the frays.  I haven’t seen a flesh-golem like this in two-hundred and twenty-one years.  Still, it’s no more terrifying than anything else I have seen since last Monday, just rarer.  Why the fear?

The figure’s head is divided down the middle by the stitching of two skinned faces.  It’s reminiscent of Janus, the ancient
deity, looking forwards and backwards at once, except these faces look out side to side.  Its elbows and other joints are mechanical with rusty metal balls in sockets, allowing the limbs to move freely in all directions.  Sharpened metal spikes take the place of its fingers and its wrists rotate in spurts like two drills with dying motors.

Secured in its chest with medical staples and sutures is what looks like a very worn-out noise box, once belonging to a child’s toy.  Little holes in the plastic emit a warped kazoo-like breathing noise as the deformed abomination pants from exertion.  Through this noise box, it suddenly cackles in a squealing, high-pitched grunt, like a toddler shrieking through a bullhorn.  Then the warped, scratchy pitch turns into a deep, unnatural rumbling which I must have previously mistaken as a revving chainsaw. 

Suddenly, the golem is alive in a robotic stumble, its hands spinning like multi-toothed drills and arms rotating wildly.  I am locked in place, my mind desperately calling for me to react but my body sluggish.  I’m locked onto the faces, unable to look away from the blackness behind each pair of eyes.  It’s almost as if I recognize each of them. 

Sabetha’s shotgun lets out a roar.  I blink hard at the concussive force and then see the creature fall, landing on the shreds of metal that used to be our outer door.  Sabetha stands next to me for a moment, the shotgun held effortlessly out in front of her like a pistol.  Smoke drifts out of the barrel.  I turn to look at her with a dumbfounded expression.

“It’s okay,” she says, trying to reach through to me. 

“I guess he won’t be trick or treating any time soon.”  I make an heroic effort to smile at my own terrible joke but fail as evident in Sabetha’s pitying eye roll. 

Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I see movement.  The noise returns as the golem gets back on its feet and rushes at us.  To my surprise, Sabetha kicks me in the chest, launching me into the kitchen and out of harm’s way.  When I get back to my feet, I feel a little more like myself.  Nothing like getting kicked in the chest to sober you up. 

My mind instantly takes inventory of the situation.  The inexplicable fear is gone now, the unknown has been illuminated.  There is an intruder, an enemy, a physical thing which I can now destroy.  Its sole purpose as a golem is wanton destruction and as an unthinking opponent, it is as good as dead.  Sabetha is back up against a wall as our intruder stumbles towards her.  She fires three shots, then, seeing its ineffectiveness, abandons the metal and rolls out of the way while it fumbles into, and through, the wall by the guest bathroom. 
Sheetrock, wallpaper and splinters explode in a cloud as it cleaves through the wall and tumbles onto the floor with a jiggle. 

Sabetha arrives at my side and I give her a nod to let her know that I’m okay.  I start walking towards my target as it emerges from the hole, then gesture for Sabetha to flank sideways.  She slips past some furniture and disappears into the living room.  On the way, she removes her leather driving gloves and pumps blood into her fingernails.  They fill up like little glass containers until each looks painted red with the tips growing into subtle points.

I roll my sword in my hand and position myself with my back to the living room.  I wait patiently for the flesh golem to get within forty-five inches of my lead foot.  At this distance, I lean in, presenting my head as a target, then duck low as it lunges for the bait.  With the back curve of my sword, I hook its shoulder and, come up behind it with a pull.  The golem spirals into the living room where Sabetha moves in on cue and rakes both her claws along the golem’s weight-bearing leg.  The abomination is swept up into the air and lands on the edge of our coffee table, launching the contents against the wall like a catapult.

A new feeling washes over me.  I am exhilarated that this fight is trashing the apartment.  These things I have surrounded myself with, the details of my home which have become so mundane over the years are suddenly changing.  Feeling some sense of loss is making the game feel fresh and new.  In the thrill of this sensation, I run at the corpulent intruder and dig my foot deep into its gut.  Unfortunately, the force of moving the golem ten feet across the room causes black bile and guts to explode from each of the faces on its skin.  Sabetha and I find ourselves covered in slop. 

The somewhat deflated golem lands on Sabetha’s baby grand piano with enough girth left inside to break the rear wooden leg.  The black beauty topples onto her flank with a crash and a discordant bellow.      

“Fuck, Delano!”  Sabetha wipes goop from her eyes then punches me hard in the arm.  I spit out some of the stringy mucus that got in my mouth and then pull a piece of purple intestines off my shoulder.  Sabetha walks over to the piano and uses her foot to flop the wheezing carcass off her prized instrument.

A second later, the creature’s arm jolts, reaching for Sabetha’s legs with its drill-like hand.  She jumps backwards, gracefully avoiding it while I throw my body forward like a baseball pitcher and let my sword sail through the air.  I throw blades in a spear-style – no spin – and it lands dead center up to the cross guard.  Sabetha walks over, pulls out the sword and makes a few quick hacks.  I just close my eyes as more and more globs and streaks of this thing’s insides are redistributed over our apartment.

Satisfied that it isn’t getting back up, Sabetha pauses and asks me, “Is there anything else nearby?”

I take a moment and feel out the area around us.  “No,” I reply.

“Good.”  She walks a few feet over to my prized antique
meridienne
armchair and impales the cushion with my sword.  She gives me a challenging look then storms off into her room.  “That was childish,” I call after her, taking my weapon out of the chair and heading for my bathroom.

I
rinse down my sword, treat it with oils, place it back on its stand and then strip down in the tub.  In that order.  I let my clothes rinse at my feet.  A few minutes later I sense Sabetha is suddenly panicking.  With a towel around my waist and my sword once again removed from its stand, I look out from behind my bedroom door.

“That was fast,” I stammer, astonished.  The dark goopy organ stains which once covered the majority of our apartment are gone, as is the deflated corpse. 

“I didn’t do that!” She hisses. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” I answer, not used to the phrase.  “I didn’t feel anything at all.”

“Is it in the building?”

I shake my head.  Just the other two tenants below us.  They don’t ask questions.

Sabetha and I scour the apartment looking for any clues.  We even check the security tapes.  Nothing.  Since the attack, no one came in, no one left, and yet only the two of us remained.  The damage was still there though: a new door for the guest bathroom, a demolished piano, and an impaled antique armchair – but nothing of the flesh golem.