Mr. Shivers (27 page)

Connelly looked down at him for a minute or more. Then he stooped and picked up one of the black stones. As he did he heard
the scarred man say, “No. Don’t.”

“Shut up.”

“No…”

“You shut the hell up.”

“Look,” the man whispered. “Look.” He moved one hand and tried to point into the waters.

Connelly knelt at the bank. Then he looked into the brook and saw something. Flickering images, trapped within the waters
like rays of light within a prism. Then they swelled and grew until he could not look away.

Screaming. A great fire, a city burning. The sky rained daggers and knives and up in the clouds he heard the roar of engines
and the bellow of explosions. He watched as some twisted black wreck swam smoking to the earth and erupted as it touched the
ground. Great, hulking machines toiled across miles of mud, pausing only to spout fire that arced across the country. The
seas boiled with vast iron ships that spat long spears to rove through the waves and bury themselves in the sides of crafts
the size of islands.

Someone wept. He was in a forest of barbed wire and he saw a crowd of people shuddering beneath blankets thin as paper, their
arms like twigs and their faces like skulls. Rivers of blood rolled through the gutters and he heard the barking of dogs and
the howl of commands and somewhere there was gunfire and gasping. Then the horizon lit up as though it had been kissed by
the sun and he watched as the sky boiled and the atmosphere evaporated. A wave of fire so hot it was invisible swept across
a city that crumbled into dust.

The world went dark. Died. Then lit up.

Cold illumination, blue and bland. He saw cities grow cement tendrils and heave themselves up from red earth, glass towers
growing from their centers to touch the very clouds. Chrome and red stars swarmed through the cities and lights flickered
on and before his eyes the buildings rose and fell, each time outdoing the last until all was dwarfed by their construction.
The glass obelisks glared down upon him and he felt tiny and meaningless at their feet. The cities belched poison into the
rivers and seas and immense chimneys arose far in the distance and from their crowns came pillars of smoke thicker than any
mountain. Then the bases of the towers filled with fumes and fire and he watched as several rose up into the sky like fireworks
and disappeared behind the penumbra of moisture that made the roof of the world.

A millions voices droned. A billion. More. Metal stars wheeled above, whispering along. Everything speaking all at once. A
crowded world delivered in tremendous violence, a world that sipped war’s offering and was fueled by its captures and casualties
to ascend to heights that Connelly had never guessed existed.

A dawn. A rebirth. Bought with terrible sacrifice, a great suffering to drown out all others. But one that would give birth
to a new age.

And for that age, a new Death. Something that had been forged in desperation and beaten hard until it was inured to all pleas
and did not know the meaning of mercy. Something that would bring this suffering without hesitation and so usher in the future.

Connelly looked up. Something stood across the river from them. Something familiar. It gestured to him, calling him.

“Don’t,” whispered the scarred man at his feet. “Don’t do it.”

Connelly looked back down at the thing on the riverbank. He lifted the stone in his hands and took a breath.

“It’ll be worse,” the scarred man said softly. “So much… So much worse.”

“Bastard,” said Connelly.

“Just die. Just die and leave it. Don’t go across to it. Let it be.”

“Fucking bastard,” said Connelly. He lifted the stone higher.

“No,” said Shivers. Blood sputtered from his mouth and lips. Connelly saw a wild fear in his eyes, the same fear he had seen
a lifetime ago in Memphis when Death had seen him and perhaps had seen the future as well. “No,” Shivers said again. “No,
don’t. Don’t!”

Connelly brought the stone down. It struck the scarred man on the eyebrow and his head snapped back and his eyes went sightless.
Then Connelly lifted the stone again and brought it down again and again. And again and again.

All other things fell away. The sound of the stone on blood and flesh echoed into the chamber and the mindless action seemed
simple and crude and glorious. Connelly thought there was a song in it, wild and primal. And somewhere in it was the rhythm
of the world.

Savage and perfect. Hungry. Endless.

He kept hitting him long after he was dead. He could never be dead enough. Not ever.

Finally he stopped. The stone clattered to the ground beside his feet. He wiped his brow and held his hands before his eyes
and watched them tremble with joy and exhaustion. Then he looked back at the thing across the river.

It beckoned to him again, calmly waiting. Patient enough to wait out ages. Connelly looked into its black eyes and over its
scars. Looked at its thick beard and long black hair. Then he imagined he saw something under all of it. Under all of the
scars there was a face he knew. A face like his.

A predecessor slain, a mantle won. A torch and sword to bear among the coming billions, passed down as it had been before.

The figure extended its hand to him.

Connelly nodded. “All right,” he said softly. “All right.”

And he waded across the river.

Mr. Shivers

Dawn falls across the country.

The sun’s warming fingers reach down into the plains. What little growth there is stretches to its touch but goes ignored
by the shifting thread of people that wanders by it, heads bowed. They have traveled far but will travel farther, maundering
the edges of these cracked lands as they search for a place that can sustain them for a little while longer.

The people are many and know countless countries and many creeds. They know no nation and no course, no government and no
law. They navigate by hunger alone and in doing so survive another day. They are pilgrims and nomads, drifters and wanderers,
bound to nothing more than whatever fruits the earth is willing to offer. From the Great Lakes to the Pacific. From where
the Rocky Mountains form their long wall to where the Atlantic swirls its muddy waters. They have walked there and called
these places home and made their names and then moved on.

They have seen much and they will see more. They have been here before. Have always been here. Will always be here until the
world fails and only then will they be truly homeless and pass on.

From somewhere among them comes word. Rumors of the scarred man who still moves among their ranks, bringing with him his coat
of night and his grim smile. We have seen him, some say. We have seen him treading the very ground we tread now. He’s come
back. Come again.

The whispers grow as the dawn rolls across the land. He comes from the west, they say. Comes striding from the west, eyes
forever fixed on the east. A great, tall man with wild hair and a thick black beard, scarred from head to toe. But he is different
now. Not half so wicked, not half so savage. He has grown to be a huge thing, blank and dour, his face expressionless yet
grim. He is a new man who walks in a different way and so leaves something different in his wake.

From a cabbie comes word that with each step he takes one can hear the footfalls of thousands falling in line, an army marching
somewhere in the shadows behind him. When he sets up camp and starts his fire the smoke forms shapes in the air that suggest
a crowd of people huddling with him, millions of them, gray and cold and hopeless. The gypsy-folk whisper that when he slumbers
in the fields his chest makes sounds of screaming steel and from his nose and mouth comes a thick black smoke, like burning
oil. And a street-preacher claims that when the scarred man passed through St. Louis the entire city was struck with nightmares,
envisioning a great fire, and that fire spread and consumed the blind eye that made the world.

They say that in his pockets he does not hold the fates of single men but the fates of cities, of countries, of the world.
To him we are as ants, scuttling around the face of our hill. With a wave of his hand he scorches the sky and merely by closing
his eyes a whole city may perish. He brings the new way. He brings the new world. He brings tomorrow, and so we grieve.

Others listen. The word spreads. Soon it is among all of them, all the drifters, all the travelers. It seeps into towns and
bleeds into the cities. Jumps among ports and swims down rivers. And as the story spreads they become aware of a growing darkness,
a sense of deep dread as the ground beneath them moves and revolves and twists itself into a new form.

Things are changing, they say. Time is moving on and leaving us behind.

They quiet and for the first time they stop walking. They stop shifting all at once and stand where they are and lift their
heads. The people in the cities and the people in the farms, those at work and those at rest, men and women, young and old,
they all stop and turn to the horizon, to the east and to the west, toward what is brewing there and what hides behind the
next second or month or year.

Something is close, they whisper as the clouds darken above them. Something is near.

Listen. Listen. Do you hear it? Listen.

Mr. Shivers

A thousand and one thanks to Carrie, Carla, Ashlee, Jameson, Josh the ever-ready cameraman, my astoundingly patient family,
Cameron and DongWon for taking a gamble and giving me a shot, and anyone else who tolerated me, even when I was pretty much
intolerable.