Midian Unmade (31 page)

Hemmel could have abandoned them, but for what? He had never been without Burdock and the others. A life without the Nightbreed was no life at all. Better to perish with them than survive alone.

He waddled back across to the theater, the Sickle bobbing in front of him. As he charged through the lobby, he nearly collided with Amalek, who lurched out of the auditorium with his arms wrapped around his head.

“It touched me! Oh, dear Vagamel, now I understand—
that
touched me!” Amalek flattened his ears back miserably and yowled, pawing at his snout with his man-hands like a dog that's been sprayed by a skunk. He collapsed and writhed on the marble floor, whining.

And there
was
a smell. The odor hit Hemmel like an arctic draft as he advanced into the inner sanctum of the theater.

Few scents can appall creatures who regularly revel in the miasma of the swamp, the stench of the charnel house, the reek of the grave. But this one curdled Hemmel to his marrow. It smelled antiseptic and bitter—a gust of wind across the glacier left by a nuclear winter, tasting of nothing but ash and ice. It blew from a world in which there would be neither blood nor flesh, ever again. An absolute desolation unknown even to the dead that lay in Midian.

The citizens of the Enclave stood in a circle in the center of the theater. They had surrounded
that
. But Hemmel blanched as he saw, in the center of the circle, the mirror image of himself. The Pariah had duplicated him perfectly, even down to the slight bulge of the Sickle beneath his shirt. Hemmel's gorge rose, and his skin broke out in a feverish sweat.

But he did not have to endure the sight of himself as Pariah for long.

It was apparent that Gisella's meticulous battle plan had already unraveled. Caught off guard by the Pariah's deception, Crocus had not jumped until the disguised intruder had come close enough to lay hands on her. The girl had since leapt to the far end of the theater and ran in circles there, gibbering hysterically, disordered by fright.

Now, while Hemmel watched, Franchesco marshaled his avian squadron against the enemy. As the flock swooped from the rafters, though, the birds seemed to hit an invisible barrier, an impenetrable bubble around the Pariah that sent them glancing off, fluttering and squawking, in every direction.

The attack only succeeded in drawing the intruder's attention to Franchesco's perch. The impostor Hemmel looked upward and shook itself. It lost shape for an instant, then shivered into feathers of gold and silver and bronze, coalescing into the most glorious bird of prey imaginable. The false phoenix took flight, soaring up to circle around Franchesco's chandelier. When it dove toward him, Franchesco batted it away with disgust, flailing so much that he lost his balance and tumbled to the theater floor with a bone-breaking
crack
.

As he lay there, helpless and gasping, the majestic bird glided down to land beside him, craning its beak forward to bill Franchesco's cheek and coo in his ear. Paralyzed from the fall, Franchesco could barely lift his head, yet he so dreaded the Pariah's affection that he pounded the base of his cracked skull against the floor until it spilled grayish-blue cerebral jelly.

Before Franchesco's body twitched to stillness, a vague blurriness, like heat vapor, darted from an archway and assaulted the bird creature from behind. As it flapped and shrieked, Gisella crimsoned to the color of war paint and dug her talons into its hide.

“We know what you are,” she shouted. Hemmel had never seen her tremble before. “How dare you violate our Enclave! Murdering your own kind! Accursed thing, now you will die!”

She snapped her wolf-trap jaws shut on its neck and clung to it as it began to change. It melted out of her clutches, then re-formed in front of her. It opened arms with taloned hands like Gisella's own, enfolding her in its embrace.

Gisella screamed, a sound that made the chandelier crystals resound in an unbearably high frequency.

Heads formed with faces that were the male counterparts of Gisella's own. Their many colors, which changed in exactly the way Gisella's skin could change, pulsed around her as multiple mouths kissed, sucked, licked, seemingly on her everywhere at once in their ardor.

Gisella screamed again, her body convulsing, her skin rapidly losing its color until it turned a lifeless gray.

With their general dead, the rest of the troops fell into disarray. Even the great Desai had clambered out of the pit and was now skittering toward the nearest exit on all hands like a frightened roach.

“Retreat!”
Lantana yelled. She exhaled gouts of purple smoke that clouded the entire room for nearly a minute. Under the cover Lantana had given them, Hemmel heard a stampede of feet and paws and hooves, and someone roughly shoved him against a wall in their haste to leave.

When the violet mist finally dissipated, Hemmel realized that, other than the bodies of Franchesco and Gisella, he was alone. The others had escaped, or else gone elsewhere to die of the Pariah's darkness.

But the monster's sickening miasma remained. Out of the air, the Pariah's energy gathered up into one brutal mouth, its corners turned down as it opened in a hideous, pitiable, earsplitting wail. Even from a monster among monsters, the noise could not be mistaken. An anguished sob filled the abandoned auditorium, the sound of utter despair.

Desperately wanting to flee and yet unable to look away, Hemmel stood transfixed as the Pariah's shape altered again. Out of one half materialized a shape Hemmel had never seen before. This new form had two faces looking Janus-like in opposite directions. The single body beneath possessed supernal symmetry, at the same time glowing with two separate facets like a jewel: on the left a male, its muscles rippling and sex organ thrusting in powerful display, and on the right a female, with soft curves and one lush ripe breast. Though every nerve in Hemmel shrieked and his stomach writhed in abhorrence, Hemmel could still gasp with awe at its beauty. Such a creature could certainly captivate Baphomet, could seduce the darkest of gods.

Yet as Hemmel marveled, the Pariah's other half began to take on a very different shape. It shrank, forming a sort of hairy oblong close to the ground, long and bulky like the body of a pig. A rodent face emerged from its awkward bulk, whiskered, with small ears and teeth so long they propped the mouth partially open. The thing seemed the utter opposite of the Pariah's perfect other half.

Hemmel remembered the legend, the ratlike thing that had so enraged Baphomet that He had split the hapless creature into a thousand fragments of itself.

The Pariah's lover.

The hairy creature cozened up to the godlike androgyne, snuffling in evident delight. And the androgyne wrapped its male and female arms around it in frantic passion. The hog-sized thing, with its ratlike face, suckled madly at the female breast, nibbled the areola with its ludicrous long teeth. The male Janus face nuzzled the hoglike thing's furry neck, while the female face moaned in rising ecstasy. The Janus's male organ penetrated its lover as the creature reciprocated, entering the androgyne's female sex. As the two halves of the Pariah's body stroked one another, writhing desperately, approaching a single climax, Hemmel sensed he was witness to an oft-repeated dance. Tears streaked the androgyne's two faces, and its rodent counterpart whimpered in distress.

How many times had this happened over the centuries as the creature agonized in its oubliette? Perpetually isolated, the Pariah's sole comfort lay in its own illusions. Only its own cursed touch could grant it release. Yet this could never truly satisfy. For even in the gifted multiplicity of its form, the Pariah remained alone.

At last, Hemmel understood. The Pariah did not wish to bring death. As it had in times beyond, it sought love. But it could only offer a love that utterly destroyed the object of its desire.

And any second now, Hemmel realized, he would be next.

He had nothing more to lose—no shelter, no safe hunting ground. Worst of all, his companions, his kin, the only friends he would ever have on the earth or under it, had either died or abandoned him.

And the Pariah—what did it have to live for? He'd be doing it a favor to end its miserable existence. It would not be merely revenge—it would be a mercy killing. But how? Strong as the others had been, they had proved no match for the Pariah's power.

The Sickle stirred, reminding Hemmel of its presence. Of course! Even shape-shifters had hearts. If Hemmel could find it, the Sickle would take care of the rest.

Hemmel felt the Pariah's attention turn to him. The faultless Janus and the glorified rodent dissolved as the Pariah, once again, molded itself into Hemmel's own likeness.

It had to be now. Unleashing a primal yell, Hemmel charged forward with all the speed his ungainly body could muster. For a split second the nauseous smell and the overwhelming urge to flee nearly overpowered him. Then the Sickle plunged directly into the false Hemmel's chest, its proboscis probing for the heart of the monster.

Instantly the Pariah's form softened and expanded, engulfing Hemmel completely. Hemmel panicked. He felt as if he were drowning, being smothered, being drenched in wretched muck. The Sickle, usually infallible in seeking specific organs, foundered. The Pariah's anatomy was unlike any Hemmel had encountered. Its innards melted and flowed and reconstituted themselves in new configurations, easily avoiding the Sickle's prongs.

Hemmel no longer cared about killing the cursed being. Whatever the cost, he had to escape.

At the same time he sensed that escape would be impossible. Already he could feel hands and tongues on his body, a rain of kisses and caresses that made him want to die. Withdrawing the Sickle from its fruitless quest, he turned the cutting tip toward his own chest. Better to end it now, himself, than die as the others had. The Sickle hesitated, then plunged into his chest. The pain made Hemmel cry out, but at the same time he could only feel relief at the thought of ending his proximity to the Pariah.

“Never even know it's gone,” he gasped as the three-pronged claw cleanly severed his arteries. Hemmel felt his heart beat its last as it liquefied.

But the expected oblivion did not come.

Instead, a viscous clamminess seeped like bilgewater through the incision the Sickle had made and filled the empty cavity in his chest. Hemmel felt the substance congeal within him, knitting itself to his aorta. A moment later, it began to beat.

He looked down at his chest and saw that a network of stringy veins now fanned out from the sealed wound, gently pulsing as they circulated blood from him to the Pariah and back again. The monster had replaced Hemmel's heart with its own, entwining them forever.

*   *   *

Burdock stared out at the night, the eyes on the sides of his head straining to catch the slightest movement outside the abandoned warehouse where he and the other refugees of the Enclave had fled. He hadn't been able to rest in the intervening days since the Pariah had driven them out of the Elysian.

If his eyes had had lids, Burdock would have shut them. He was so weary.

Determined to fulfill his self-imposed duty as sentry, he sat on the floor beneath the window and leaned back against the wall, hoping at least to ease the tension in his body. Almost as soon as he reclined, however, he shot bolt upright again.

There was a scent in the air … a whiff of pungent, flesh-freezing coldness, as of steaming liquid nitrogen.

“Don't be stupid,” he muttered to himself. To his shame, he often imagined he smelled the Pariah's vile odor.

He was about to relax when the locked warehouse door nearest him burst inward, swinging with the force of whatever had rammed it. Burdock jumped to his feet and snatched his cell phone from the pocket of his jacket, ready to alert the others. But something about the shuffling footsteps he heard next made him stop. He recognized that shambling gait as if it were his own, but at the same time it seemed totally alien.

The biting stench became unbearable as a misshapen silhouette clumped through the door and approached him.

“Who are you?”
With his phone still ready in one hand, Burdock pulled out his flashlight with the other and flicked its beam over the intruder.

The circle of light darted from one cameo of abomination to another. Here, a pair of hands—one masculine, one feminine—fondled sagging male buttocks. There, male and female faces on a single head took turns languidly fellating the proboscis that jutted from an obese abdomen. Higher up, a chittering rodent nipped at the nipple of a pendulous male mammary. And, above this horrid mishmash of forms, the miserable image of Hemmel, blubbering in desperation.

“Burdock! You have to help me.” The lumpy, misbegotten figure tottered toward him.

Burdock stumbled backward. He had loved Hemmel, but now he couldn't stand the sight or smell of the thing his friend had become. “Don't you touch me! Don't you come near me!”

Hemmel wept as he reached out to Burdock. “Please! Don't leave me alone with—with—
this
!”

It was no use. Burdock ran to the nether parts of the warehouse, stammering warnings into his cell phone.

Hemmel collapsed to the floor, sobbing in resignation. United to him by love and loathing, his new companion snuggled within him like a conjoined twin.

Amorphous, yet formed.

Shunned, but no longer alone.

Together, they were, and would always be, the Pariah.

 

THE JESUIT'S MASK

Durand Sheng Welsh

The trailhead wasn't signposted, was just a clot of shadow off the road's crumbled shoulder. The Mongrel almost missed it, even with the headlights on high beam. The lack of streetlamps or houselights—he'd passed nothing but bushland for the last two miles—didn't help, nor did the fact that the map on his phone had lost its connection during his low-gear ascent up what amounted to an asphalted goat track.