How the World Ends (24 page)

But how? How do you know my name, how do you see me? You are just a man!

I try to fight the urge, but I can’t, so I reach my head up to cry out in that most natural way of the world, but when I do, I notice arms around me, lifting me, hoisting me up like one would carry a small child who has fallen down. The arms are strong and all of sudden I am so weak, not like I have been, not like a thief in the night who can’t help wanting the cover of darkness to protect him, but weak like a poor man who is too tired and hungry to resist the kindness being shown to him.

And then I feel the tears splashing down on my naked face. It yanks my very soul from its hiding place deep within me and I cannot help but surrender to its passion.

…

Michael

There is a moment where it feels like we are home again. I mean Home again. It a place that has become mythical in my mind – the place where my consciousness passes onto when I lose control of my dreams and slip into a sleepiness that I cannot contain. It is but a moment, but everything is changed after that.

Gabriel feels it too. We stop arguing and look with wonder at the high window in the lighthouse. And then there is no lighthouse, just as there never was, and we see a sight so unbelievable I have to dredge the depths of my forgotten memories to comprehend it.

I have to think back to the time when the love for my friend meant I couldn’t tell the world that he had forsaken me with his strange notions and unnatural thoughts. I couldn’t admit it to myself that he could be so different as to want to explore the world of these mortals. And so I renounced my own grace and made up the tale of him being sent away from us until such a time as he would turn back to the light.

And then the story changed. The hearts of men are not so different from ours. They understand pain and fear. They took my friend farther from me, so far that I could not find him, even when his brother showed him to me – my fault, all of it, and yet none of it, since I had done nothing.

And so I myself have walked the world of men. Watching, invisible from their midst. Myself and Gabriel only, alone among these monsters that have revealed our weakness.

So here we are, on our knees, and the sun is shining brightly all of a sudden on two men, one carrying the other, both looking like death warmed over.

Jonah falls to his knees also, and sits my best friend Lucifer down gently on the newly grown grass in front of him.

The silence is broken only by the sound of the gentle lapping of water on the lakeshore.

As we kneel there wondering what to do.

Finally Gabriel rises. He is himself again. He steps over to Lucifer pulls his brother to his feet at long last and wraps his arms around him.

Chapter Four – The Truth about Evil

Corporal Rogers

It is just after dawn, but no sun has risen. The night simply un-darkens into a non-night that is meant to pass for day.

I have never seen anything like this before. I could never have imagined it in my head, and though I can’t bear to look away, I know that if I do, it will stay with me and haunt me anyways. It doesn’t even feel like death, seeing them dissolve into ether before my eyes.

As a soldier, I have become accustomed to death – I know that it can’t mean the end. I know that we all die and move on. I have to believe that, the moving on part, I mean. I need to believe it in order to stay focused on my missions, but my belief makes it no more or less true.

This is not death, what I am seeing now. This is just the absence of existence, and it is not what was intended for us to ever witness, I am sure. I am not really a “faithful” man, and I have never asked for any intervention on my behalf, but surely this world is truly abandoned by God, if we are left to perish like this.

I stand on a low rise just outside of town, where the two women went down yesterday to try and spread the message. They never came back, but through the binoculars, I can see too much – enough to make me cowardly enough to stand here and simply watch. Craven. Frozen with fear, and disbelief.

A light grey misty smoke is wafting throughout the streets down below. As people creep out of their homes, and they inhale the mist, they simple… cease. They become nothing. And I am too afraid to approach them, to yell out, to warn them. I keep a watch for Susan and Amy – but I don’t have too much hope that they are still alive. Nothing can compare to this feeling of desolation.

Jones and Dyer are behind me, wishing they could see what is happening, but I know they are glad I have the only set of binoculars. The distance means that it just looks like people are drifting into the fog – as if they are simply lost. Maybe that is closer to the truth than anything.

“We gotta get outta here, Rogers,” Jones says to me.

“Call me, Ralph,” I say, wishing I know Jones’s first name, myself. “Families are all changed now, so we need to use our first names.”

“I’m not sure that makes any sense,” Dyer says.

“That’s what I mean,” I say in reply. “Nothing is the same. Everything we know is gone. And if we don’t save something, everything will be gone. Literally gone.” I hand him the binoculars. “Watch if you dare.”

He takes them from me – powerful lenses in a black plastic casing.

He takes a second to get the focus right, then sucks in his breath and drops the glasses to the dirt below. He shakes his head a few times before tears smart from his eyes and he turns to retch in the bushes to the side of us. “That’s not possible,” he cries out. “This isn’t real!”

And he starts running, waving his arms and calling out “
Stop, Stop, Stop!”

And when he gets close enough for anyone to hear him, he… I can’t see him. I can barely remember him.

“We have to get away from here,” Jones says, in little more than a whisper. He is shaking with the effort of standing still. “Ralph, I can’t bear to be here anymore.” He is leaning towards the grey dimness of the town, but he is pointing to the hills behind us, where we walked from a few days ago.

“What was his name, Jones?” I ask, unable to take my eyes from the space where he had existed only a moment ago.

“I don’t know,” says Dyer, his arms falling to his sides, hanging his head with grief and shame. “I can’t remember, or I never asked. Why didn’t I ask him his name?”

“Who was he, really?”

Jones looks at me like I’ve gone mad for a moment, and then his vision glazes over slightly, and his grief is gone. We go back to silently watching the mist as it moves through the town.

I have never seen anything like this. But I know I have to find a way to fight it.

…

Rachel

I begin to miss him the day after he rode out alone. I know why he has to do this, and I know that I could not have kept up with him – that he wouldn’t have allowed me to suffer the way he will suffer, but it does not make it any easier. It hard for me even to watch our children run and play: to me they look like little versions of him. It pains me to think of the possibilities that have been erased from his life because of his choices and the circumstances that lead to them.

Or is it any choice that leads us to these places? Was it choice that lead me here, or simple necessity? Would I be dead if I had been able to choose differently? Was I capable of choosing any differently? These thoughts lead me nowhere.

We clean up after the night of the gathering and start the real business of planning the future of this community. It seems odd that Jonah is not here to have a say in the fostering of his dream, but it also seems fitting that he should be out there – leading others to us.

It makes me wonder further what sort of place this world could be. When the world turns upside down and we are forced to look at it from a completely different perspective, what are we supposed to see? What if it still looks the same?

Gwyn cries out as he slips on the gravel of the driveway and scrapes his knee. I jump up to run to him, but Jewel is there with her hand outstretched. Gwyn takes it and my daughter pulls him up and kisses his knee. They look over at me and the strings of heart sound out in joy while a hundred miles away the loneliness of life without Jonah keeps me from smiling with more than half of my face.

I hate myself for preparing myself unconsciously for the fact that he might not come back.

I turn to the arguing farmers and go back to the diplomacy of an infant civilization. Just as at every turning point in history a wife has had to learn to forget the plight of her husband and deal with the matters that he has left behind.

And, I think to myself, those that he has not been wise enough to foresee.

…

Jonah

I am tired, so very tired. It seems that my blood has been half-drained out to cure a fever, and now it is a toss-up to determine which condition will kill me more quickly. And which is more fruitless to consider, since there is no time.

I see my body as if from the eyes of a stranger, hanging nearly out of the saddle, Ernest trying to compensate his gait to keep me from falling. A good horse will do that. He needs a treat when we get back, I think to myself, with the part of my brain that doesn’t change no matter which world it lives in.

I look back and see Michael and Gabriel riding on Merry – looking less like lost souls all of the time and more like the warrior angels that they are. And I feel the beat of wings overhead – Lucifer. He seems to shine with the glory of the morning, and I can see how I have been mistaken about such a great many things. The light serves to blind me to all but a fervent hope that if we ride hard and fast enough then we might make a difference. As if all of the dalliances and complacency of my past might now be overwritten by a sudden urgency.

We ride farther and faster, ever eastward. Overhead the light of my new friend shines as bright as a star falling from the heavens. We eat up the ground and the landscape rolls past us to the east. There is no wind and the illusory darkness of the morning is lit only by the brightness burning overhead. Nothing seems real.

I feel myself get weaker and the darkness closes in on my vision. I struggle to keep my eyes fixed on the horizon and my hands gripped on the saddle horn. Ernest senses the exigency and opens up his stride so that Merry begins to fall back further behind us.

…

Corporal Ralph Rogers

My name is Ralph Rogers. I have referred to myself as Rogers for so long that my first name seems as if it belongs to someone else. Like my inner self and my outer self have been separated for so long that we are different individuals. Nearly. I can feel the burning of
Ralph
in me and I want so much to do something – to intervene in the devastation I am witnessing.

But I know the futility. I can see the mist, I can feel Jones’s hand on my shoulder, as if he knows that I am hurting with the pain of inaction, and I can hear the voice deep inside me calling out:
Wait, just a little longer and dawn will come.

But it must be nearly midday now – and no sun has risen that can contain this destruction. This is not something we can conquer with our normal weapons. It is like an affliction of the spirit. We hang our heads in despair.

The gloom seems to watch us. The mist has no victims, but it seems to sit like a presence intent on luring us from our higher ground. The vacuous sky seems in league with the very nature that would normally protect us, and seems to reach down and pull the greyness towards us. Or are we walking towards it?

My mind seems to grow numb and I cease to feel Jones beside me. I am alone, swallowed up by the very grief that seems to come from living. I am compelled to give in to the despair that grips me – like a mechanical force that can somehow operate on a spiritual level. I am too far gone to be frightened, but a stab of pain enters into my new world, and I turn to see what could be this new devil that has stolen me from my silent emptiness.

Oh, the light!

It is the light of thousand lamps, a new star that has joined with the hidden sun in the demise of all that would bring darkness. My eyes burn with the pain of living in that light, and I shade them with my hand, which seems almost translucent – as if I am halfway between one place and another – trapped here or being drawn back to there – I cannot tell.

The silence is a scream that is caught before the air can escape my lungs, and I begin to choke on it. It is more than dying, and now I remember what is happening to me.

I have walked into the mist and I must be seeing death come for me.

My feet begin to sink down and I see that all around where there should be a roadway is a slick muddy river of black slime. I slide down into the muck and feel... nothing.

Chapter Five – Why They Follow

Private Jones

The light comes from far away and is near to us more quickly than I can imagine should be possible. It comes upon us and I turn from the vision of the town that has sucked Rogers into it and stop wondering, for a moment, whether I should follow him down there.

And I hear thunder – a great pounding that shakes the ground with its might. And I am so afraid. It is worse than the silence – because I know that even the silence which has ended so many lives down there cannot stand up to the power of this storm that approaches. I know in my mind that the pain it brings will sweep over me and keep me out of reach of the mist that is closing in on me.

It seems like a choice – the light and the storm, and the viciousness of its fury at the dull quietude of the greyness – or a simple choice to give in, to surrender to the inevitable facts that have invaded my mind with their simple reality. Live and hurt or sink away and feel no pain.

The thunder grows nearer and my fear grips me in a lock of inaction. I feel it come nearer and I cannot move – and the mists slide ever closer to me with the breeze. I begin to slide down the hill, slowly, ever so slowly as with the lightest breath of wind the greyness wraps around my very will and tears the reality of my position into shreds as I slide downwards.