Events from “Words of Power”
Notes by Anthony
The boy tucks his knees under his chin and wraps his arms tightly around his shins. He rocks himself back and forth on the living room couch. The quilt his grandmother made lies heavy over his shoulders and around his legs. The television is on. Static hums on the screen. It is so loud. It should wake his parents. Any minute now, they’ll stumble sleepily into the living room in their pajamas. They’ll yawn and try to hide their frustration and ask why he has gotten out of bed. The boy will try to explain what he has seen, but they will tell him it was just another bad dream. He will grow out of it soon, they will promise. The monsters he sees can’t hurt him. They aren’t real.
But his parents don’t come. The television screen splinters as the hum grows to a deafening roar. The plastic casing splits apart and static snakes across the room. It leaves jittering, jagged cracks in reality. The static buzzes in his teeth and skull. It rips through the carpet and across the walls. Family pictures and yearbook photos rattle in their frames. Their restrained, frozen smiles distort into manic grins. The boy clutches himself tighter. His therapist had recommended grounding himself in the sensations of his body and voice when he couldn’t tell the difference between reality and the night terrors. He tries to sing over the static. He doesn’t recognize the song.
The world is collapsing around our ears / I turned up the radio, but I can’t hear it
It feels like the universe is exploding inside his skull. An ocean of static fills him with songs and stories. He tries to find meaning in the buzzing haze. It reminds him of the inkblots his therapist had shown him. Could he find some hidden picture in the static? Anything that reminded the boy who he was and why he was here? Great masses dance across the living room walls, crashing into one another like armies. Three collide, forming a great wounded body poorly sutured together. The boy follows one mass as it splits apart from its brethren and settles. The suture at its edge quickly collapses in on itself. Gravity shifts and the boy plummets towards the festering wound. Trees cover the land like scar tissue. They are chopped down, and small settlements bubble forth like infectious pustules across the lowland and fall into ruin, again and again. A number of large buildings remain. They are fed by nearby railways until those, too, fall into disrepair and silence.
The boy lands inside a warehouse. A large man and his three associates face off against four intruders. But no, they aren’t intruders, are they? They had been invited, thanks to Thaïs’ phone call and George’s quick-witted tongue. The boy doesn’t know why he knows their names. The large Russian man is Nikoli. The boy remembers him. Static cracks open the warehouse walls. Beyond, in the pouring rain, muddy cobblestones are awash in blood. Nikoli, his body the same but his eyes young and terrified, flees down the steps of a red gingerbread house-like palace as a hideous woman stoops in the doorway. She howls in rage and shuffles back inside. The boy doesn’t want to see what she does to the poor men still screaming inside. He rubs his eyes. The walls reassert themselves.
George and Thaïs don’t get far in their negotiation until Nikoli recognizes the strange man hiding poorly in the back. The boy, too, stares at the strange man in the denim jacket. He looks familiar, perhaps? The boy has seen those haunted eyes before. The boy can’t remember his name. Nikoli tells the strange man it is too close to sunrise to see OTCAL and Samal, but they are welcome to stay in the warehouse until night falls. The strange man confers with Thaïs and says they have a place to stay. Nikoli agrees to meet them in Daingerfield Island that evening.
The boy climbs into the trunk of the black SUV as the group is driven further west to a beautiful ranch. Thaïs gives the three men a quick tour. She tells Ben, a small and nervous-looking man who stayed close to the strange man in the warehouse, that there is food in the fridge and Normandin can help him find anything he’d like. There are Johnnycakes he can heat up in the microwave. She recommends that he put paper towels around them to keep in the moisture. Ben follows Normandin upstairs. The boy is wants to follow Ben and make sure he is safe but finds himself following Thaïs as she leads the other two men to a bedroom in the basement. There are no windows. Thaïs remarks that George’s energy matches the green bed, while the strange man fits with the burnt orange. The strange man’s face twists at the name of the color. It reminds the boy of when he used to throw tantrums to avoid going to bed, overwhelmed by fear and frustration at the unfairness of it all.
He is scared, the strange man says. His sire, Immanuel, is going to burn. The strange man is sure he is going experience it, because if something bad happens in the world, it seems inevitable that it will invade his mind at some point. He is confused and afraid and hungry. That last admission seems to shock the man, and he grabs at his mouth like he can shove the confession back inside his throat. Thaïs says she has horses on her ranch, and the strange man can feed from the brown one with white spots or the grey one, but not the black one. She leaves, and the strange man says goodnight to Ben, telling him they are safe now, so Ben needs to eat and sleep and not keep watch. George gets into the green bed. The boy sees George pretends to fall asleep. The boy is familiar with such tactics from many nights of feigning sleep under his parents’ worried gaze.
The strange man undresses and huddles under the covers before jerking upright. He shouts the name “Immanuel” and flees to the bathroom. A haggard man, Immanuel, appears in the bathroom mirror. Immanuel tells the strange man that he is surrounded, but Damien is safe. The strange man says he is meeting with Nikoli and Samal that night. Immanuel says it is important that the strange man see Samal, the sleeper from across the river and the sea, but Immanuel doesn’t know if Samal or Nikoli can be trusted. The Temple will be found in a field. The strange man needs a blood signature to access it, but they will not have that without the Gateways. The Temple will be the only way to stop the lady in the lake. There are other Temples, as the Mechatine likely made more than one. The Mechatine can make any truths true and will try to alter fate to stop them. The boy notices how Immanuel repeatedly addresses the strange man by name, but it only resonates as faint static in the boy’s ears.
The strange man offers to stay with Immanuel, and the boy joins the three of them in a barn. It is burning. Cows low in fear or lie dead or dying from smoke inhalation. Outside, men in futuristic black body armor point guns at the barn. A grey man in black robes – like a roman toga, maybe – tells Immanuel it will be easier if he comes out now. Immanuel shouts that it won’t be this way, Shadaal, not this time. The strange man holds Immanuel’s hand and they run towards the burning wall. The strange man falters just short, and Immanuel shrieks as the flames consume him whole. The boy and the strange man clutch their hand as the flesh sizzles. They stumble back from the mirror, and the strange man crawls under the covers and tries to cry until falling still.
Time passes, though the room does not change. The boy watches as George rises up from the bed and turns to the strange man. George remarks that he smells something burning, and the strange man waves his injured hand out from under the burnt orange blankets. The strange man is sad. His sire, Immanuel, had been hunted down and chose to die rather than be captured and reveal the strange man’s face. The strange man hadn’t asked for any of this, but he feels that Immanuel’s death is all his fault. George says he is sorry, and the strange man takes comfort in that simple expression of sympathy. George and the strange man dress and leave the bedroom.
Ben sleeps on the living room couch. The strange man stares at his exposed neck. The boy watches the artery in his neck rhythmically pulse. The beat is hypnotic. The room splinters. Static fills the cracks. They are in Ben’s apartment. The door flies open as intimidating men in futuristic black armor burst into the room. They shoot Ben as the strange man jumps out the window and into the night. The boy watches as a grey man bites Ben’s neck and drains him dry. He points for his army to follow the strange man. The scene shifts, and the strange man calls Ben from a payphone near a park. The air begins to burn as Ben pulls up in a beat up Oldsmobile. Ben races across the street to the strange man and is struck by a passing car. The car speeds off, and the strange man abandons Ben on the sidewalk as he crawls into the trunk of the Oldsmobile to flee the rising sun.
There is Ben, again, driving the strange man home from the radio station. The strange man looks vibrant, his face rosy and hale. Immanuel is suddenly visible in the headlights of the Oldsmobile. Ben slams on the brakes and the car screeches to a halt. Immanuel disappears and reappears at the driver’s side door. He rips the door open and tells Ben to go home and forget what he has seen. The strange man shouts for Ben to drive, but Ben calmly unbuckles his seatbelt and walks away. The strange man fumbles for the handle. As he falls out of the car, Immanuel is there to catch him. Immanuel opens his mouth and bites the strange man on the neck. The boy feels weak. The scene blurs. Time passes. They are in Ben’s apartment. They are in the strange man’s apartment. They are at the radio station. The strange man asks why Ben abandoned him. Ben doesn’t remember. Fury and betrayal and hunger roil in his gut. The strange man and the boy leap for Ben. They tear through his jacket and into the soft, hot flesh of his belly. Blood soaks their clothing. They feast on his liver. Intestines spill out onto the floor. Ben chokes and cries until they pull apart his lungs to get to his heart. It beats once in their palm as they sink their teeth into it. The boy doesn’t want to be here anymore. He tries to sing.
And there’s no other place / That I’d lay down my face / I’ll be dreaming my dreams with you
The static dissolves. The boy is back at the ranch. The strange man yells that he is going to see the horses and flees the room with George in tow. The boy doesn’t know what he just saw. Nightmares? Alternate pasts? Parallel Universes? Clearly, Ben is alive in the here and now. They never killed Ben. They never abandoned Ben to die. The boy resolves that he will never choose a future with Ben’s blood on his hands. Not again. He follows George and the strange man out to the pasture. The two men, though clearly uncomfortable with the large beasts, are able to feed on the horses. The hunger subsides from their eyes.
A second woman, Desirée, arrives at the ranch. The boy follows Thaïs, and Desirée confesses to Thaïs that she doesn’t trust George. She is worried because her boyfriend, Elijah, is scheduled to have a meeting with Barnaby tonight. Barnaby Willcox, apparently, is a Ventrue, and he is suspicious that Elijah hasn’t aged in ten years. Elijah has rescheduled, but Desirée asks Thaïs to come with her and settle things with Barnaby. They grow quiet as the strange man approaches, followed by George in a cowboy outfit and boots, complete with a Stetson and piece of grass in his mouth. George struts about and asks how he looks in a convincing all-American John Wayne cowboy accent. Ben and the strange man erupt in a fit of giggles. The boy feels relieved. He hopes that George will continue to be a good friend to Ben and the strange man and make them laugh.
Desirée and Thaïs enter one car, while George, Ben, and the strange man enter another. The three joke and practice their cowboy accents until the strange man takes the Stetson in his hands. He looks thoughtful. He confesses that he is scared, and he doesn’t really know who he should trust or what the right decision to make is. But he knows that the people they are meeting believe him to be a prophet and will one day be this omniscient time-travelling savior, so he will do his best to act the part. He asks Ben and George to support him, and they agree.
At Daingerfield Island, Nikoli stands near the duck pond. The strange man jokes that he has seen this scene in Cold War spy films before and approaches Nikoli. Nikoli says that taking the strange man to OTCAL is dangerous. Bringing such a large entourage risks unwanted attention. The strange man stands firm, however. Ben is part of him and sees the visions. The others have appeared in the visions, and he knows they will help them. The boy knows that the strange man is lying about George being in those visions. A little girl, Joan, appears next to them. She looks sad. She asks if all are coming, and the strange man agrees. She acquiesces to the will of the prophet and disappears from view. One by one, the boy watches as each of the gathered people disappears. As the strange man vanishes, the boy sees the entire group once more, but they are silhouetted in a grey, ghostly aura. Joan tells the group to stay close to her. They will be traveling under the eye of the Tower, and while it is not all-seeing, they can’t allow it to spot them.
They walk through Old Town Alexandria until they reach a tiny plaque in an alleyway stamped with the word “OTCAL.” Joan pushes on a brick and unlocks a door to a nondescript storage room. The strange man and George take note as she opens a cabinet, moves a pink bottle of cleaning fluid, and draws a strange symbol in her own blood on the back wall. A physical door materializes, and the group steps into a well-furnished library. Joan and Nikoli choose to stay behind, but the rest follow the strange man down the hallway. They enter a large room filled with glass cases enclosing ancient parchment covered in strange writing. Tubes lead from the cases and carry wires to the center of the room. Thin television screens on the walls broadcast ones and zeroes that flip back and forth at seemingly random intervals. Electricity thrums in the air. The strange language on a panel slowly resolves in his mind: Quiet Cry City Wind Rises Towers Hide Blood Blade Caine’s children rise again. Another panel: World Cold Up from under the ground Storm Lightning Twisted Fall
A grand sandstone pillar towers in the center of the room. The wires and computers all connect to it. The strange man opens his mind to the entity within. Static builds at the corners of the boy’s vision. The strange man’s eyes and mouth emit a strange, soft blue light. The entity, Samal, says he has waited a long time to look upon The Prophet. Samal admonishes The Prophet for bringing the eye to this chamber, but as the fullness of time has reached its zenith, there is nothing the eye can do. The Prophet asks for help, and Samal tells him that the Gateways will open. The world will change. The Elders will try to stop it. They will fail. They cannot stop those entombed for millennia before man. Creatures of darkness will fall to earth.
Samal thanks The Prophet for having saved him long, long ago. He instructs the Prophet to find the Temple. It is in a place of verdant grass, where human battle stained the ground with blood. The Temples will follow the nodes where the lines cross the earth. The Temple is not the only Temple. The Mechatine may have built three or four more after escaping the Cataclysm. They blame the Prophet for that and seek revenge. The Prophet asks if he caused the meteor to hit the city. Samal says that it would have hit anyway and it stopped a greater evil from ripping apart the fabric of the universe. There are certain fates that the universe cannot come back from. The Prophet asks about the lady in the lake. Samal says that the Grandsires will rise from the ground. They will consume their children whole. Even now they stir and hunger. Covet. Music keeps her asleep, but dancing wakens her. She will join in the final fight, and none will survive her.
The Prophet asks when, or how, he will save Samal, but Samal tells him that the information would risk their fragile future and past. Time has worked so far, but it is still able to be changed. The Mechatine are foul creatures and can make any truth true. The grey ones are the Mechatine. The Prophet reveals that he had been confronted by a grey one at his radio station, but not killed, and the grey ones still do not know his face. Samal does not have an answer but wonders if there might be a Mechatine on their side. Samal says that he is tired and must sleep. The blue light fades from the strange man’s eyes and mouth, and he staggers over to the journal to write down their conversation.
The boy wanders between the glass cases. Static hums in the back of his mind. His teeth hurt. Inked symbols buzz under the fluorescent lighting. Out of the corner of his eye, the boy watches the strange man set down the journal and back away from the glass cases. He hits the wall and slides down. The strange man tucks his knees under his chin and wraps his arms tightly around his shins. He rocks himself back and forth. The boy turns away. There is information here. Powerful information. They can’t lose this opportunity, no matter what it costs. George stands before a panel. The boy reads White Lamb Sacrifice Caine Shoulders Sin One Above Forgiveness until the static reaches out from the ink and draws him in.
The boy is on a mountain. The air is thin, and the boy gasps for air. His breath puffs out in billowing grey clouds from the cold. There are eight men and women before him. Though the leader shouts confidently to urge the others on, his breath does not condense to fog. The leader reaches the summit and finds a long-haired man nestled deep within a cave. The man appears asleep but for an eye in the middle of his forehead, gazing directly at the intruders. The boy yells for him to wake up, to fight back, but the sleeping man is utterly impassive and at peace as the leader bites his neck. The remaining seven feast on his guts. The swirling snow surrounds the boy, and he is in another place. It is blessedly familiar, thought the boy has never been here. A church in some European city, maybe? He recognizes the spindly, pointed arches and vaulted rib ceilings from art history class. The boy peers down an open crypt. The pit descends far below what any sane human would have dug for their most revered saint. The leader from the mountain stares up at the boy from the bottom. He winks with the sleeper’s third eye.
The boy stumbles back and bumps into Thaïs. She stares up at a beautiful dancer. The boy tries to focus on the text, but the ink of another panel behind Thaïs swirls and overwhelms his sight. A large, muscled man in ancient armor embraces another man on a battlefield and holds him close. The earth cracks and swallows them whole as a phalanx of soldiers in metal breastplate and helmets descend on them. The boy recognizes the static in some of the soldiers’ eyes. They have seen too much of the universe and it left them cruel and hungry for power. The soldiers and their leaders salt the earth around the lovers and their ruined city.
Thaïs breaks the boy’s line of sight as she runs to her friend, Desirée, who had collapsed in front of another panel. Thaïs pulls her from the room and into the library. As Desirée comes to and wipes the bloody foam from her mouth, Thaïs calls for the big man to come help. The boy stares up at the panel alongside George. The static coalesces into a crescent moon And on the second day the Children of Caine will return to the first city and call out the names of those who drank the blood of their fathers to drink the blood of Caine and be destroyed. The Dark father will fight the Dark Mother. The sky will tear apart. Heaven and hell will rise up and
As the boy stares at the panel, he is aware of the strange man getting up to see what Thaïs and Desirée need in the library. The strange man could keep his eyes down and head straight through the hallway to the library. He could walk away from the twisting symbols and static. But the strange man tells George that this all feels like a movie. The protagonists get into the secret headquarters and have access to all the information they would ever need to solve the mystery, but the second they leave they are never able to return. In a movie, this is because protagonists need to strike out on their own without relying on their predecessors. But the strange man can’t afford for an unknown screenwriter to save them. The strange man looks around for anything that reminds him of The Voice. He needs to know more about the entity that has gifted and cursed him with these visions. His eyes land upon an unassuming panel in the far corner.
I never said that The Voice whispers to the strange man and the boy and they are lost in the swirling ink. The world turns to static in their mind. Jasmine chokes their lungs. The bark of a tree root digs into their burned hand. The world calls them a bastard and dancing fool, but the earth grounds them. It tastes like truth, even if the rest of the universe does not recognize it. All of them will know it in the end. Static burns their throat as the NAME carves itself on their tongue.
The boy watches the strange man collapse onto the floor. The universe explodes in the strange man’s skull. An ocean of static fills him with songs and stories. He tries to find shelter in the buzzing haze. It is all too much. The past and present and future collide like three great landmasses within his mind. The strange man is trapped in the festering wound. He travels across time and space only to relive his final deaths again and again. He tries to separate himself from himself, preserving the core of soul in a bubble far away from the horror. Manifesting (recalling?) a younger version of himself who only dreams these terrible things but does not experience it firsthand. The strange man dies and is reborn and is driven mad by the stress, but the boy watches from far away. The boy tastes copper and hot, dry air. He hovers above an endless desert. The Voice calls it the Land of Nod. Below him, an old man with a strange symbol on his forehead wanders, hunting for an opportunity. The old man’s anger and loneliness threaten to overwhelm the boy’s fragile sense of self. The boy tries to ground himself and sings
Wandering stars / For whom it is reserved / The blackness, the darkness / Forever
Wandering stars / For whom it is reserved / The blackness, the darkness / Forever