Divine_Scream (22 page)

“Ignorance and haste,” said the King. He took us through the last sweeping corridor into an inverted room. Bricks bled into each other and super-heated inside like cores of magma burned within. It took us several moments to realize we’d come to one of the inner chambers of the fortress. The Disturbance Paradigm had reconfigured the shape of the room and made all the stone brick unstable, volatile. Our mouths dropped open in shock.

“It wasn’t the banshee who caused this,” said the King. “It was your beloved gift. He did this while you were sleeping off your failure.” All the remaining slivers of the Lung Spike embedded in our skins stung deeper at that moment. The King beckoned us on. “I will lead you to the hinges so you can begin your work.”

Hollowness expanded through us like a soul-devouring disease. After an anxious rush down several more warped passageways, the Silent King, not breaking stride, spoke again: “Before you enter the Space, I want you to consider something. I will make an exception this time and your third grant can be a new gift. This Jared Kare and the rebel banshee have caused more disruption than they are worth. Once the Paradigm is handled, I can send you another gift—male, female, young, old, or in-between. That will suffice your needs, I’m certain.”

We bowed our heads in thanks. We would not risk going the next hundred years empty handed. This was a generous offer from our King.

We continued toward the space when a voice hailed from a hall filled with pulsing orange-red rubble.

“Fathers,” the voice said.

One of our children. Amaen. Flesh a ghostly white, he was so bloodied and disfigured we might not have recognized him but for his voice. Dirt and crumbles of mortar caked his wounds. A large one in his neck coursed with fresh scarlet spillage. We rushed to his side, the ten of us surrounding him in a protective circle.

“There is no time for this!” the Silent King hissed.

Amaen choked on some blood. “My brother and sister are dead, Fathers. The walls folded and chopped them into…” His voice broke at the word. “Pieces.”

Our bodies trembled. We didn’t know what to say, what to do.

“Before it got very bad, I had time to check the prisoners and oldest Gifts. They are frightened with the size and scope of this disturbance, but they are alive. Some are trapped behind walls, but they are alive and still serviceable… we didn’t fail you Fathers… we didn’t fail.”

With a violent twitch, Amaen clutched the Fourth and the Seventh’s wrists and his body twisted for a breathless second before the last of his life poured from his neck, and then he went still. We could say nothing. We could feel everything. It had taken several miracles to bare children in the Deeper Unseen. Now all three were gone.

“Stand and continue,” ordered the Silent King. Tears bloomed in our swollen eyes and the King noted this with an impatient sigh. “You may have other children. Take another woman as a gift this time. I will let you choose anyone. I will even alter the schedule once more so that can happen. But you must obey now. Tend to the hinges and take your new gift after this resolves.”

Quietly, we resumed our trip to the Space.

When one dies in the Deeper Unseen, banshees from another territory lead their souls onward. Had this not been the case and we could see the one who came for our Amaen, we would have ripped her throat out on the spot. We could do nothing, however, except brood and cry and feel sick at the stomach from the faint sweet smell of the unseen banshee’s breath on the air.

“I know you’ve suffered here.” The Silent King’s voice softened. “But I don’t wish to create a new Assembly and waste more time… so hurry your steps.”

We all looked back to our fallen child. The death of our other children had not yet hit us. We weren’t choosing to let it have access to our minds. Many assumed we were grooming our three offspring to join us someday. Even perhaps
the children
believed that. And yet, such a notion couldn’t have been farther from the truth. We wanted them to have real
lives. The Assembly would never lack members. If all ten of us fell, another ten would soon rise up. As we traveled these bending halls and corrupted rooms, the job ahead of us already penetrated our minds with a complete and absolute dread.

First would be the pressure. All of the hundreds of thousands of times we stepped into the Space, there was no becoming accustomed to the sensation that an organism must endure there. The skin becomes a brittle paper stretched over miles. The muscle, organs, and bones become water and the blood becomes a noble gas—inside our veins would be a highway of emptiness that provides no relief for the crushing forces above, beneath, front, around, back, and inside. When a physical life form forces itself between the hinges, only the nerves have tangibility.

And they are all boiling in acid.

They are all on fire.

They are all frayed.

Cut.

Ripped.

Shredded.

Raw.

Second would be the madness. What holding the hinges open does to our minds, if one can imagine, is really a sense of ultimate love lost. It is beyond even the loss of Amaen, Raithy, and Dureen, our young ones. There can be no explanation of the heartbreak experienced in the Space; one had nothing to direct the feelings to, but it was there and it was very real. Love attained by the void and love lost simultaneously within it. We’ve long called this “falling for the ghost,” because it seems like something real—it made our hearts warm, it made us quiver with desire and hope to nestle it within our arms like a superb lover. But we couldn’t. It didn’t exist. It has NEVER existed. The whole sensation of adoration and the need for utter devotion was a farce. In the Space, holding the hinges apart, keeping the dimensions from colliding, this and this most of all, wore on us; that feeling of perfect happiness, of being content, once and for all, was so elusive, it was enough to make us sob in the abyss and hope for more. Always more.

Third, and lastly, would be the soul. Our job imparted another pain on us, beyond the physical and the emotional. The next ruthlessness was something few could understand because in many dimensions few believed such a thing existed… but the soul can suffer the worst. Some might mistake this as a projection of emotion, but they would be wrong. The soul was something more meaningful on a cosmic scale and its relationship to the universe was at stake and what caused suffering. The way ones might appreciate their “grain of sand” status in the universe, but have no idea the millions of nuances beyond that, no idea how large they really are compared to nothing. Physical matter can be cut in halves forever and a soul can go forth into the light and become energy, which is useful, purposeful, and necessary. But to be reduced to nothing? Zero? Nil? Less than dust? Holding the hinges apart brought one closer to realizing that bleak concept. One became the void. You aren’t a particle. An atom. An election. Proton, neutron, lepton.

You were the emptiness.

All that mattered was the tangible, what was left behind. Like fingerprints in setting concrete, these would be indicators of your fight, your life.

Children were like this. A reminder of your
once upon a time
.

As we approached the opened area of the fortress, which was so different from how we remembered it, this truth sunk in and vengeance clawed to the surface.

We wheeled around on the King, surprising him. “No!” we all said in a unified roar.

His irritation with us found a new pitch. “What?”

“We wish for direct corridor access to the beach, where we will collect our gift, Jared Kare. That will be our third grant.”

He anxiously waved his hand to move along. “So be it, but you cannot be certain you’ll reach him in time, Assembly. You might end up with nothing.”

“You are right in that, our King, but the risk is worth the prize. He’s the only one we want. The only one we can have. Nobody else will do. He is the Gift we will have.”

The Space between the dimensions opened.

The Silent King watched us rush into the vacuum. “This calamity is partially your fault. So I ask that you keep the amount of lives lost unexpectedly to a minimum. I principally don’t wish to change the schedule for millions of people. If you succeed, your grant will be given on your return.”

We gave our thanks, but it was silenced by the chaotic scream of oblivion and its forever war on all of existence. A moment later, we became that war.

Like a heavy hand on her throat, pulling her from the realm of sleep, Banch flew up into a sitting position, a soft comforter slipping off her naked body. She let out a squeak of bewilderment and immediately felt rawness throughout her neck. She recalled, though she wished she could forget, letting free the Divine Scream. While it wasn’t a scream she’d done many times, she knew it shouldn’t have caused the coarse feeling inside her mouth and down her throat. This was a backward sensation, like using a muscle in reverse, an against-the-grain uncomfortableness.

A scream had been negated, and she was unnervingly certain she knew which one. Some force had literally reached inside her and plucked the many strings of her vocal cords to counter the effects.

Few beings could control such things.

“The Kings,” she whispered, wincing at the pain that came with her words.

Jared!

Kicking the beige comforter off, she scrambled to her feet, head filling with leaden heaviness (
now
that
was an
effect caused by the Divine Scream
). She’d never had such a failing of control. Never shared her entire self with another soul in such a reckless fashion. It was the first scream a banshee learned before leaving the Mother’s cup; it was the scream that defined you, made you relive your entire life, like how people used to do with slideshows or photo albums, but this was
experienced
by another person,
all in one orgasmic blink.

After sharing herself with only two other long forgotten souls, Banch had never expected to use that scream again. It had happened almost involuntarily. She’d only slept with a few men in the Deeper Unseen, and for how old she was, that practically made her a virgin in the cosmic scheme of things. But Jared was no different in that way. He was very inexperienced, and yet, they had been perfect together.

But Jared wasn’t here. He wasn’t in the bedroom and the bathroom was empty.

What have you done, Jared?

She could almost hear the stern lecture from a sister banshee.
Don’t be dense, Utumm Resona, you know what the human has done. He felt your plans, the fatigue of going on, when the light is so close at hand and yet you’ve never yourself stepped into it and left all the suffering of the worlds behind. He knows your intentions now and he means to stop you, because he is in love with you.

Banch grasped her forehead. It ached with questions. What had he gone to do?

He cannot bear knowing you’ll be gone forever.

Her eyes warmed with tears. “No!”

Time had resumed. That meant the Assembly would recover soon and Jared would be powerless. It was inconceivable to imagine his torture in the fortress, being able to do nothing to stop it. She breathed in silently, feeling so small and powerless—if he was taken, she had no choice but to go on with her plans—the Assembly wouldn’t allow her to return to the fortress and they certainly wouldn’t allow her to provide Jared any sort of reprieve. They’d make sure she would never get to him again.

She went to find her clothes and discovered them neatly spread over the coffee table. Banch picked up the note. Read it. Read it again. Closed her eyes. Opened them and picked up the tube of lipstick.

Oh Jared.

No.

How would she know if he’d made it? She had no clue how long she’d been out before the Chronos Scream was canceled. Why had the Silent Kings intervened in the actions of another? The Assembly couldn’t have asked for this as one of their grants because they were in a state of suspension like the rest of the world. That meant the Kings had to consciously meddle in her affairs. They wouldn’t even do such a thing if it meant their own safety. It was their choice to let fate unravel on its own.

Unless the universes were at stake. That would be the only cause.

Quickly, Banch got dressed. Her skirt fit a little looser now after being torn off. It was impossible not to feel like an absolute fool now for getting… so caught up with her lover.

The TV turned on and startled her, blouse halfway dragged over her head. She pulled it down and watched a sandy-haired news anchor. The camera tilted at a strange angle and suddenly the news desk sat in a meadow full of wildflowers. The anchor stood up and looked around, mouth agape and his blue eyes wide.

The walls shook in the hotel room, sucked inward, and an awful noise surged from below.

Disturbance Paradigm.

“Oh damnit!”

Banch ran for the door and slammed into a beveled stone wall that appeared from nowhere. The opposing force threw her back into the armrest of the couch. The black fabric in the couch quivered as though it had become a living beast. Its molecules were destabilizing. She couldn’t believe the disturbance had reached into pieces of furniture. This was something unlike she’d ever seen. This was awful. Many people would die if this thing wasn’t righted. The Assembly had its work cut out for it.

The lights in the sushi roll lampshades flickered in different shades of color. Burning red. Radioactive green. Molten orange. Soaring blue.

It wouldn’t surprise her if life itself ended for everything in a matter of seconds, but she wasn’t waiting to find out. She found an opening between the shifting walls and squirmed into the hotel hallway.

The carpet rumpled under her feet, bunching together. She tripped and slammed to the floor on her elbows. The jolt got her teeth clicking. In the hall the canned light overhead continued to pulse in unnatural cadences and colors. It disoriented her but she staggered into the lobby. Beyond the reception desk everything rolled off into a cobalt abyss of streaking starlight. It almost reminded her of the light the dead would venture into, so calm and vast and embracing.