Babylon Terminal Read online

  Every muscle in my body ached, I still couldn’t put full weight on the leg Eddie had damaged without encountering extreme pain and I was weak and run-down from the beating. But I’d learned long ago to mask my pain or injuries, and hoped I could pull it off this time. “Looking for someone,” I answered in a gruff voice.

  The boy sized me up, thoroughly unimpressed.

  I carefully reached into my jacket pocket for the photograph of Julia, then held it out so he could see it. “This woman,” I explained. “I’m looking for her.”

  His eyes shifted and something in his expression changed.

  Before I could question him further, Amy happily blurted, “That’s Julia!”

  The boy flashed an angry look her way and Amy’s smile faded.

  “Yes,” I said, returning the photo to my coat. “Julia. Is she with you?”

  “No,” the boy answered for her.

  “I’m not looking to hurt her,” I told him. “I just need to find her.”

  “She left,” he said. “Last night.”

  “Was she alone?”

  “She’s a nice lady,” Amy said.

  “Yes,” I said, “she is. Do you know where she went?”

  “No more talking.” The boy held a hand out. “Give me your gun.”

  “That’s not gonna happen, son.”

  He pointed the rifle at me without hesitation, his hands so steady it was chilling. This wasn’t the first time he’d aimed a gun at someone, and he’d likely fired it as well. There was a look in his eyes that wasn’t quite right, animalistic and raw, primal at the edges. “I’m not your son,” he said evenly.

  “You’re in charge then, is that it?” I asked him.

  He nodded proudly.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Chael.”

  “Okay, Chael. Look.” I slid the shotgun into its holster. “It’s put away and—”

  “Give it to us right now,” the little bastard cracked. “Or we’ll take it from you.”

  The horde of children moved closer. They’d already surrounded the car and were at least seven or eight deep all the way around. None of them looked particularly friendly except for Amy. I didn’t kill children and wanted to avoid a confrontation if at all possible, but given the shape I was in, after the beating Eddie had given me, I wasn’t sure I could fend off so many of them even if I wanted to. Still, handing over all my weapons was out of the question. “Do you know what I am?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you know I’m not someone you want to be fucking around with.”

  The flames played across his face, giving him a more frightening look than he probably deserved. “Neither am I.”

  The crowd shifted, closing in around me.

  Amy smiled a nearly toothless grin and reached out her hand. “Come with us.”

  I glanced down at her but didn’t answer.

  Chael’s expression remained defiant. He took Amy’s hand, and together, they backed up, deeper into the crowd, his eyes locked on mine. “Take him.”

  The children were on me before his orders had fully registered, and suddenly there were countless dirty faces rushing toward me, little hands pulling and pushing and punching. Some of the children dove for my legs, buckling my knees with their combined weight and dragging me down, clawing at me, a mass of tiny fists pounding away as I fell. Still trying to believe this could actually be happening, I tried to squirm free, but one of them hit me with a blunt object on the back of my head, and I felt myself slipping into unconscious. My body rose, lifted up by all those small hands as they carried me off into the night.

  And then darkness closed over me as the crowd surged once more, moving as one toward the valley in the distance, and whatever awaited us there.

  11

  I faded in and out of consciousness, but was too weak and disoriented to fight back. Below, in the small valley, several fires burned. The crowd of children silently carried me down a slope and into the heart of the village they apparently called home. I came awake at one point to find us moving through the night and into the town proper, which consisted of numerous squat hut-like structures with rounded roofs and wooden doors. Through the darkness, flames and my blurred vision, I saw countless large posts surrounding the village, the ends sharpened into points with crude but effective tools. Their purpose eluded me at first, as the only protection they could offer the village was from something coming directly out of the sky, but as we drifted down the wide dirt road that ran the length of the small town, it became evident why the posts had been honed to fine points.

  On several, severed human heads were on display—adult men and women both—thrust down onto the points and held in place, the gruesome expressions of most frozen in agony or shock, eyes long dead but still wide with horror. Others who had come before me, no doubt, unfortunate enough to cross into a place they didn’t belong and had no means of escaping. The children paid no attention to the gory trophies, but my worst fears were realized in that moment, and I knew then I had to get out of this place as soon as possible. This may have been a village of children, but these were clearly not innocents. Like damn near everywhere else, this was a place of death and despair.

  As fear and horror throttled me, I struggled to free myself of this nightmare. But there was no escape, and I couldn’t get my body to respond, I simply lay there in their little hands, limp as a rag doll.

  My last thought before I fell again into unconsciousness was if Julia had ever truly left this place alive.

  “Take him to the witch!”

  At first I couldn’t be sure if I’d been knocked out again or simply been dropped to the ground. All I knew for sure was that I’d awakened on my back, and above me, the night sky blurred, drifting back and forth and rippling like liquid.

  “Don’t be afraid,” I heard Amy say, though I couldn’t see her.

  I realized then I was on the ground. Instinctively, my hand reached for the shotgun. The holster was empty. I still had the revolver in my coat but didn’t reach for it. If they hadn’t searched me, it was still there and I didn’t want them to know I had it. I tried to stand but my body wouldn’t cooperate. I tried to speak but the words came out nonsensical and slurred.

  Giggles, whispers and eerie little voices circled me in the darkness.

  And then, despite my best efforts, the night took me again.

  * * *

  Take him to the witch…

  The world returned slowly. My eyes adjusted, and along with the other aches and pains already riddling my body, I now had a dull thumping pain in the back of my skull that ran all the way down the back of my neck and fanned out across my shoulder blades. The night sky was no longer above me, but instead a thatched ceiling. I tried to swallow, choked, then coughed. I wanted to raise my head, but when I tried, the pain became unbearable, so I stayed put.

  Nearby I could hear the popping and burning from a fire, and smelled the smoke along with other peculiar smells I couldn’t indentify. My head lolled to the side and I blinked rapidly until my vision began to sharpen and clear.

  A makeshift fireplace…a fire burning within…a thin sheen of smoke filling the air…and someone kneeling before it, a woman dressed in a flowing black skirt fanned out along the dirt floor, a faded and dirty white blouse and a long veil on her head. I could hear her murmuring in quiet monotone, repeating strange words in a language I’d never heard before, again and again, and slowly rocking her body back and forth as she did so.

  “Who are you?” I heard myself say. My voice sounded foreign, raspy and beaten down, the words slurred.

  Slowly, the woman turned and looked back over her shoulder. A veil fell across her face as well, but it was white and sheer, revealing only glimpses of the face behind it.

  “The children,” I gasped. “They brought me here?”

  The woman turned back to the fire. “Those aren’t children,” she said, her voice deep and sounding as if she’d just swallowed broken glass.

&n
bsp; My head was clearing, albeit slowly, and my strength was returning. I tried again to raise my head, and although the pain was excruciating, I was able to do so. My eyes drifted along the mud walls and the dirt floor, over to where a makeshift wooden table and chairs sat, to the strange talismans covering the walls, what appeared to be human bones along with sticks and stones arranged into various hideous forms and shapes.

  “Who are you?” I asked again, this time more urgently.

  The woman mumbled another of her twisted prayers, then threw something into the fire, which made it burn suddenly faster and hotter, the flames rising in height as sparks flew about the hut.

  “I have many names,” she gurgled.

  I struggled onto my side, but standing was still out of the question. Nausea and dizziness left me weak and disoriented. “Hell is this place?” I growled.

  “What do you think it is, Dreamcatcher?”

  “Where are they?”

  “Out there,” she said, “in the dark.”

  With tremendous effort, I was able to get myself into an upright sitting position, and though a wave of dizziness swept through me, I managed to stay that way. “What are they doing?”

  “Deciding whether you live or die.”

  “You’re with them?”

  “I’m trapped here.”

  I looked around the hut. “You’re the witch I heard them whispering about.”

  “I am Chthonia.”

  “Hell’s that mean?”

  The woman slowly rose to her feet. Small of stature, she turned and faced me. Her hands were badly gnarled with arthritis, the fingers bent and crooked at horrible angles. “Of the underworld,” she said.

  Despite the pain, I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Aren’t we all?”

  “They are legion.”

  I rubbed the back of my neck but it did little to ease the pain. “The spikes out there, the heads, they—”

  “You are violence, Dreamcatcher, why should such things bother your kind?”

  My vision clear, I could see her haggard face beneath the white veil, but there was something wrong with her eyes. Were they closed?

  “Yet your head is still on your shoulders,” I said.

  “They think I can protect them.”

  “Can you?”

  “As with all things, time will tell.”

  “If you’re really a witch, why not use your magic to escape?”

  Chthonia reached for her veil with her mangled hands, slowly lifting it to reveal her face. The skin was pale and deeply lined; her features aged and unhealthy-looking. But it was her eyes that stopped me cold. She had none, only a gruesome swath of pink scar tissue where they should have been, where they’d once been.

  “They took your eyes…”

  “They stole my first sight, not my second.” Her lips, thin and pale, trembled. “There are places where I can still see.”

  “You knew I was coming?”

  The witch cocked her head oddly to the side, as if she’d heard something off in the distance. “I always know.”

  “Julia,” I said.

  “Julia,” she whispered. “Julia…”

  “Is she here?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “They let her leave?”

  The witch gave no answer.

  “Is she alive?” I pressed.

  “She still lives.”

  Relief washed over me. “Did they hurt her?”

  “No more than they’ve hurt you. But she disarmed them. Not with force, but tenderness. She mothered them. She was kind, listened to their childish nonsense with patience and grace, told them stories of the Promised Land, said one day she’d be back for them. They believed her. They think she’s some sort of fairy godmother. And so, they set her free.”

  Julia. Only Julia.

  “And those they don’t set free wind up with their heads on a spike, is that it?”

  “You’ve no idea what they’re capable of, Dreamcatcher. There have been strangers that begged for such a fate, who would’ve gladly chosen decapitation over what was done to them. Few receive such mercies. Fewer still ever leave this place.” Chthonia stood perfectly still, the light from the fire flickering across her horrible eyeless face. “Alive or otherwise…”

  I tried to stand again but my legs still weren’t cooperating.

  “You are in great pain.”

  “You think? I’ve taken beatings before.”

  “Yes…” The witch looked back over her shoulder at the fire and held a hand out toward the flames, as if she planned to press her palm into them. “But that’s not the pain I speak of, rather that which goes deep into your core, that which knows how to break you like no other. Battered bodies and broken bones heal with time and care. This is a deeper agony, a different kind of pain. Isn’t that right, Dreamcatcher?”

  There seemed little reason to answer, so I didn’t.

  The old woman smiled. The few teeth left in her head were rotten, black and fizzing with blood and disease. “Such delicious misery…such pure, ruthless torture…”

  “I have to get out of here,” I told her. “One way or another, you understand? You help me, I’ll help you.”

  “There is no help for me.”

  “Help me get out of this place and I’ll see that you get out too.”

  “An old blind woman, alone, out there, in that madness?” She brought her mangled hands to her face. “Even my magic has limits, Dreamcatcher.”

  “I don’t kill children,” I told her.

  “But…”

  “But I’ll slaughter every single one of them if I have to.”

  The old hag cackled, the gurgling in her lungs now rattling in her chest. “And they call it love,” she said. “Nothing spills more blood or topples more kingdoms. Powerful as it is, hatred pales in comparison.”

  “I have to find her.”

  “So you say.”

  “Am I close?”

  She turned back to the fire.

  “Answer me, witch. Am I close?”

  “Closer than you think. But your journey is far from over.”

  I tried to stand, and this time was able to, though my legs were shaking and I was still light-headed. Staggering, I found my way to the table and dropped down into one of the chairs, out of breath and sore.

  Chthonia gathered a tin cup from the mantel of the fireplace and swept it through the flames the way one might draw water from a well. Whispering her spells and prayers, she moved her free hand over the cup as smoke rose from it, then spiraled away. Turning, she held the cup out for me with a shaking hand.

  I took it, felt the heat from within and looked inside. It was filled with a clear liquid.

  “Drink,” she said. “It will heal you.”

  “What is this? I need water.”

  “What good would water do your kind? Water cleanses. Fire is what you require. Only fire heals.” She returned to the flames and muttered more spells. The fire responded, flashing brighter and stronger as her laughter screeched all around us.

  I had no choice but to trust her, so I drank the concoction, swallowing it down in a single gulp. A bitter taste filled my mouth and a burning sensation tore down along my throat and into my abdomen with such violence I found myself doubled over and sliding from the chair.

  I dropped to the floor, holding my midsection and trying to draw breath. “What have you done to me?” I gasped, choking on the words, the pain growing so severe all my other injuries were forgotten.

  “Through destruction,” Chthonia gurgled, “rebirth…”

  * * *

  Things move in ways I do not understand. The light—our light—artificial or even natural as a flame—bends and dances, creeping along the walls and floors and ceiling. A thief, it sneaks closer, slithering like a snake, wrapping around me slowly, coiling and tightening and making everything wrong, impossible, out of synch.

  Everything spins and tilts and sways, bouncing slowly and steadily, eerily…

  And the
n the sky, red as the flames climbing the walls, flickers up from the bottom of my eyes and rolls overhead, clouds dark and menacing in all that brilliantly angry crimson, they move at speeds unlike any I have seen before, soaring above an endless stretch of empty highway.

  Stumbling, I move down the middle of the road, but I can barely stand, much less walk. The world is not dark but a dull gray, not without light and yet, not of the light.

  I see no one, nothing, only empty expanses of desert and wasteland.

  But I am not alone.

  Something whispers to me and I stagger, turning to find it. In the distance, the witch, standing in the center of the highway, arms outstretched in mock crucifixion, her cackling laughter, so hideous and evil, drifts slowly closer. Flames burn from her twisted fingertips, but she seems to revel in it, smiling as she holds them up before what should be her eyes.

  I drop to my knees.

  Sounds…strange clicking sounds…like a thousand insects scurrying toward me…

  No, not insects…children, it’s the children, walking in unison along the paved road, emerging over the horizon behind the witch and taking up position on either side of her. Except for the dark pools that are their eyes, they’ve all turned a horrifying shade of white, too pale to still be alive. Yet there they are. Have they covered themselves in some sort of powder or paint?

  Canned laughter echoes from the outskirts of my hearing, barely audible over the steady whisper of a strengthening wind.

  The world moves like liquid, thick gelatinous liquid.

  Like slowly congealing blood…

  “Can you hear me?” Julia asks from nowhere and everywhere, her voice urgent and frightened. “Can you hear me?”

  I close my eyes. I don’t want to see anymore. I cover my ears with my hands so I won’t have to hear anything either, but I can feel this strange netherworld unfurling all around me.

  “Open your eyes, Dreamcatcher,” someone whispers, this time the witch. She whispers in my ear, her breath hot and fetid, lips brushing against me, cold and dead. “You’re a man of great power, but that power is leaving you. It’s dying in you, slowly, gradually, like the darkness you hide yourself in, like the life in the lost souls you’ve hunted down and butchered. What you don’t know is that you’ve come to set us both free. So open your eyes, Dreamcatcher. Open your eyes and see…”