Apocrypha Sequence: Divinity Read online

  As the immense black eyes of the Crocodile God studied him, Makhet tore his gaze from the dusken sun to study the pair of remaining tears in his palm. Their sparkle was mesmerizing.

  "The Hebrew God is jealous and possessive, yet he hides, remaining nameless." Sobek drew his attention from the tears. "During your bloody crusade, did you not wonder at this?"

  "I know his names. Craven. Despoiler. Murderer. These are but a few. Beyond that, the affairs of gods are nothing to me."

  The insects along the banks ceased their droning, plunging the Nile into twilight silence. Shapes appeared in the water, ominous and black.

  #

  I crossed the threshold of Moses' tent as an avenging beast, more animal than man. Hebrew blood covered my arms and blade as I confronted my enemy. He stood before a makeshift altar to his God, in council with Aaron and the elders of the tribes. His family was cosseted nearby. They rallied to Moses at my entrance.

  Two men confronted me but I cut them down in my stride. Power coursed through my body as I had consumed another of your tears. The elders were cowed, yet Moses and Aaron remained defiant.

  Assailing me with petty curses, naming me demon, they did not surrender to fear. In the face of their arrogance, I named myself Makhet of Abydos, son of Egypt, and instrument of vengeance. I spat their crimes in their faces, charging them as murderers and cowards.

  Even bearing my accusations, Moses quibbled, defending his people and his God. Ignoring his futile words, I cast a fistful of your tears at them and the altar to their God.

  Blood for blood, murder for murder, I cried, cursing the people of Moses to an eternity of strife and torment. To suffer as I had, till the end of days, knowing neither peace nor happiness for as long as they followed the bloody God of the Hebrews.

  The tears exploded in a firestorm of light and swirling mists. The Hebrews stood there, shaken. As they trembled and muttered, I strode over and claimed Gershom, the firstborn of Moses.

  I dragged him away as recompense for the lives of my son, my wife, my brother, and father. I spared Moses' life, although my blade wavered over his neck. I chose to leave Moses an incapable, broken father. Instead of death, I condemned him to live the span of his days with one child less, remembering always his crimes against my family.

  I marched through their camp amid a river of blood, slaying all who opposed my flight. None dared the folly of pursuit. For days after, I dragged Gershom through the desert, oblivious to his pleas.

  #

  "You have served me well, Makhet." Sobek advanced onto the shore, displacing mud and reeds.

  Sobek's huge head was greater in size than a man's body. His gargantuan bulk trailed into the water, longer than the grandest obelisk and as white as the snows of the desolate lands to the far north.

  "I served myself, Lord Sobek, but honour you for your aid when all others turned deaf ears to my pleas."

  "You have served and honoured me more than you could know. Finish your tale, disciple."

  Makhet nodded and recalled the last leg of his journey. Nightfall loomed as the sun dipped low.

  #

  I struck for the Sea of Reeds and was soon forced to carry my prisoner. Barely feeling the heat and stinging desert winds, my strength remained constant but Gershom's flagged. When I arrived at the coast, he had wasted away and was barely conscious.

  Even his pitiful condition did not sway my heart. I looked out over the sea and knew you would answer my prayers. Again, I was not disappointed.

  In your honour, I cast the boy into the sea. Into the waiting jaws of your children. I watched his death with a joyless spirit and knew at last my bloodlust was spent.

  Blackness fell upon me as I trekked across sea and desert, knowing my task was complete. With no family to return to, I journeyed to the banks of the Nile, in the surety we would meet again.

  Here I waited, brooding and unfulfilled. With two bloody hands I had exacted my vengeance and yet the Hebrews endure and I am left with nothing. Even my face is gone, altered by your sorcery. With my family dead and no heir, it is as if Makhet of Abydos was never more than dust.

  #

  "Makhet of Abydos is dust now. Makhet, my disciple, is what you have become. For your service, take your honoured place by my side," rumbled Sobek.

  Makhet again studied the two remaining tears shimmering in his hand. With eyes firmly fixed on the receding sun, he placed the tears on his tongue. They were cold like ice, numbing his tongue and lips, and yet they burned his throat as he swallowed.

  "This is my last day as a man?" Makhet asked.

  "Yes."

  "Then I have a final question."

  "Ask it, disciple."

  "Why did you shed your tears, great Sobek. For whom did you weep?"

  "I wept for the people and the Gods of Egypt. That was my sacrifice and you were my instrument."

  Makhet clutched his stomach and doubled over in pain. His already leathery skin began to harden, losing all semblance of humanity as it transformed into a grey-green hide.

  "Know this, my disciple," Sobek continued, oblivious to Makhet's agonising transformation. "Mankind has drifted away from worshipping our creator, lord Ra, instead choosing to worship the younger Gods. Ra has been usurped in his weakened state by Horus and Osiris. His refusal to honour the ascendancy of the younger Gods became precarious for God and man alike."

  Doubled over on hands and knees, Makhet could only gape at the God as he continued.

  "Ra's spite knows no bounds. Nor do his machinations. Do you really think the God of Moses, some nameless Hebrew God, had the power to sunder Egypt and wrest the slaves from its very heart?"

  "But ... who?" Makhet stammered.

  As Makhet struggled with his misshapen body, Sobek opened his jaws in a jagged, reptilian smile—or grimace. The God's black eyes remained unreadable.

  "The father of the sun and the heavens is also the father of guile and cunning," the Crocodile God answered.

  Makhet's torso and limbs expanded and thickened. His grunts of pain deepened as his body grew and sprouted ridges and scales. His few remaining rags of clothing tore away and fell to the mud.

  "I wept for broken Egypt, knowing we, the Gods, would fade with Egypt's decline," Sobek said over Makhet's grunts of pain. "I aligned my fate with the younger Gods and the people of Egypt. Yet, my tears were filled with rage as well as sadness. Your tenacity in striking at the heart of the Hebrew camp, and the God they followed, could yet save us all."

  Belly down on the muddy shore, Makhet's face stretched into a snout, jagged with teeth. Grunts rattled into guttural growls as his tailbone wriggled and squirmed into a long, ridged tail.

  "Nothing is more powerful or more resonant than a curse, bound in blood, with the focussed will of the Gods behind it. Through your retribution, Makhet, and the conduit of my lost tears, that is what you achieved. The Hebrews will suffer endlessly until they renounce their so-called nameless God. For Egypt's sake, hope they realize their suffering is bound to their God and overthrow his worship with all haste."

  Regarding Sobek with black eyes, Makhet slithered into the water, another giant crocodile on the Nile. Numb to the pain of his grief now, like all crocodiles, he would shed tears no more.

  * * *

  Virgin in the Mist

  She appeared in the mist of my bathroom mirror, her eyes haloed by the light, her face on the cusp of a scream or a prayer. My faith was strong when I told Father Morales about her. His faith was stronger when he told the Vatican.

  Now the queues of worshippers, with their candles and incurable diseases, have taken over my house. Poor as I was, I now live on the streets—pushed out by droves of fanatics. All desperate for a glimpse of their vision or clutching for 'holy relics' like my bathroom tiles. Anything to be close to her. The pilgrimage line to my bathroom fills the streets.

  They run my hot water all day for a glimpse of the Virgin's face. And they get it—her eyes ablaze in the fluorescent light, reflecting their conv
ictions, their need. Like Father Morales, and the Vatican Cardinals, they wonder at the expression on her face.

  When I still cared and still had a home, I had asked the first pilgrims what they saw. They had offered only fervour, vagueness, and prayer.

  But I know now. Life in the gutter has made it clear.

  She's laughing.

  At me.

  * * *

  Memoirs of a Teenage Antichrist

  January 28

  Crows gather at my window, especially at night.

  It's a full moon tonight. Thirteen crows are there, staring in at me from the tree. One of them scratches and pecks at the glass. The rest caw amongst themselves. Sometimes, just sometimes, I think I know what they're saying.

  February 14

  I've started having nightmares. Not your usual naked-at-school dreams. These are so vivid, I can practically hear the screams and smell the burning flesh when I wake.

  April 2

  Aunt Lucia believes I'll be ushering in the apocalypse in exactly 66 days. She told me so at dinner this evening. At first I thought it was some belated April Fool's gag, but no, she was deadly serious. She doesn't have a sense of humour. However, she did have a whole bunch of mouldy old scrolls and prophecies and mystical doo-dads to prove her point.

  Word for word, she said, "ushering in the apocalypse". That's too much shit for a sixteen-year-old to take. A thousand years of Hell on Earth for Christ's sake! That's what she said. A thousand freakin' years.

  April 3

  I lied. I'm not sixteen. Not yet, anyway. It'll be my birthday in soon. June 6. I've been told all I'm getting is my birthright: fire and brimstone and the sum total of human sin. Nothing special.

  All I want is to get laid. Is that too much to ask?

  April 5

  I call the crow at my window Abigail. The name just fits, somehow. She visits every night now. Her twelve brothers and sisters lurk in the tree, cawing at each other.

  Abigail sang me to sleep last night. For the first time in a long time, the nightmare didn't return.

  April 6

  Aunt Lucia caught me praying in my bedroom tonight. She flogged me, the old witch, flogged me till I bled and couldn't sit down properly. She was scowling while she did it, but it looked like grinning to me, like she took pleasure in it. Then she lectured me for an hour about my "place" in the scheme of things. If there's gonna be a thousand years of Hell on Earth, I've got a nice little lake of fire in mind with her name on it.

  April 9

  I'm seeing things that aren't there. Black things, shadows, wandering the halls at school, moving between the crowds. Sometimes they pass through people, and when they do, that person faints or dry-reaches.

  I thought I saw these things when I was younger, but it's happening all the time now. It doesn't freak me out as much as it probably should.

  I hear things, too, like people's inner thoughts. Their 'soul murmurings' Abigail told me. I hear other sounds, too, but the less said about them, the better.

  April 12

  I still pray, usually in the dead of night, when Lucia should be deep in her hag sleep. Abigail watches over me, but I'm not sure about the other crows. If they hear me, and they must because their ears are damn sharp, then Lucia comes barging in to check up on me. Never in time to catch me but often enough to keep me on my toes.

  April 13

  People bruise when I touch them, skin on skin. Aunt Lucia and the nannies wear gloves and long sleeves. I remind myself of this because Brendan Amery, the new kid at school, grabbed me. He must have been trying to score points with the popular crowd by beating up on the weird kid. The moment he grabbed my arm, he recoiled as if he'd been bitten by a snake. The bruise sprouted from right beneath his fingers and leached out to the back of his hand.

  He spat at me and said a few things I won't repeat (but I've memorised for later use), which made me do a stupid thing. I pushed him. By the face. He tumbled backwards, holding his face and screaming. I won't ever forget his puffy purple cheek bloating under his puffy purple fingers, and especially the way his eye drooped because of it. And the screaming. There's always the screaming.

  I guess that's something extra to add to the nightmares.

  April 14

  If I'm supposed to be this big bad Antichrist guy, then why I can't I speak to God or the Devil? God must be too aloof to chat. Too cool for school to chat to his opposite number's brat.

  "Dad" ... well, I never had a Dad, but he's flying under the radar, too. I've never had a father-figure (unless you count that sleazy old Brit who keeps sniffing around Aunt Lucia). If Satan is evil incarnate, I guess being a deadbeat Dad is something he has to do. It's part of his nature, right?

  Anyway, it's Good Friday today. Nothing much good about it in my book—I've been sick all day. Speaking of books, I wonder if people will write a bible about me? It would be a pretty thin book!

  April 16

  Easter was a massive disappointment. I had to steal my only Easter egg. School organised a Sunday church service but I weaselled out of it. It's like they're trying to overcompensate for something.

  My palms bled, just a little bit, at lunchtime. Lucia saw me wiping my hands on a napkin at lunch and smiled that tight, smug smile of hers.

  April 20

  I read the Book of Revelations tonight. I had to sneak the bible in from school and hide it from Aunt Lucia. She stared at me like I'd been wicked when I came home, but she didn't say anything.

  Abigail sat on the window sill and watched me read—and what a load of shit it was! Revelations my arse! Dragons. Lakes of fire. False prophets. Plagues. That stuff is so last millennia. If I have my way, my apocalypse will be like all the horror movies come to life. Zombies, vampires (scratch that, vampires are pussies and can't hang in my apocalypse!), and that guy with the hockey mask from Friday the 13th.

  I threw the stupid book into the wastepaper basket in my room. It caught fire the moment it left my hand. I scorched one of my pillows putting that damn fire out! Despite the smoke, Lucia didn't charge in. She never even mentioned it at dinner. I think all those robed loonies she calls friends are distracting her.

  April 29

  God's still not answering me. I stopped trying to talk to the other guy (my "Dad") a while ago.

  May 3

  I don't want to be the Antichrist, not after what Lucia and her friends told me. Bunch of robed freaks. I threw up and couldn't seem to stop. I think I fell asleep on the bathroom floor but I woke on my bed. I don't remember being carried. Abigail was there on my window as always. She sang me back to sleep.

  May 7

  With all Lucia's talk of New World Orders and smiting and punishing the do-gooders, I feel like a pawn in someone else's chess game.

  If I ever have a say in these things, here's a note to self: robes are uncool. Seriously.

  May 12

  Christianity is shitting me. They tried to spring it on us at school today, some lunchtime prayer thing.

  The visiting reverend started praying, but I think he could tell I was annoyed. In fact, he couldn't help but keep eyeing me off suspiciously. Beady little eyes he had, like coals. He ran screaming from the room shortly thereafter, clawing at those coal-like eyes. I think I saw smoke between his fingers. Seems appropriate, doesn't it?

  Abigail was there, looking in, watching out for me.

  We were all allowed to go home early. God really is forgiving.

  May 17

  It's not just the crows that hang around me like a bad smell. A pair of big black dogs (Dobermans, I think) are keeping tabs on me. When I first stumbled across them and they began growling, I thought they were going tear my throat out. They charged at me and I just froze. The world stood still. I mean really stood still, the drizzle shimmering in front of my nose suspended in the air. But the dogs didn't attack me—they ran past me and chased down a nearby guy in a robe. More goddamned robed freaks! A dagger clattered to the ground when this guy bolted.

  I don't
know how it turned out for the dude who dropped the dagger, but the dogs padded back to me with blood on their muzzles. They kind of looked content.

  If I'm supposed to be this Antichrist guy, I want some danger money. Or at least some fringe benefits, you know, like getting laid. I think God's having a good chuckle to himself/herself/itself.

  May 18

  God must be a woman a lot like Aunt Lucia. A man couldn't have come up with such a convoluted scheme to screw my life over. Well, not any man I've ever met. At least I didn't see any robed freaks today. There were the dogs, of course, and the crows, always the crows.

  May 22

  I don't know whether I'm supposed to be AN Antichrist or THE Antichrist. Seems like a lot of work for just one person.

  May 24

  There's so much sin in the world. Wicked thoughts. Murderers. Rapists. Thieves. So much hate, I can feel it welling up, soaking into me so much I have to put my hands over my ears to shut the world out. People are seriously screwed up.

  My birthday is in a couple of weeks. I just want to get laid.

  May 26

  I call the dogs Max and Rex. They let me pat them now. Lucia even allows them to sleep outside my door. I guess things aren't so bad.

  May 27

  Every time I walk past a piece of glass, whether it's a mirror or window, it shatters. Always inwards, too, like I'm some cosmic glass magnet. After the third or fourth time this happened, I stopped to count the pieces while waiting for an adult to come and tell me off.

  666 shards exactly. Coincidence? I think not!

  I wonder if this shit happened to Jesus?

  May 28

  I thought about killing myself tonight. I cradled the pills for what seemed like hours. Abigail was watching me the whole time, her yellow eyes boring through me. And the dogs! They wouldn't stop growling the whole time! It made it hard to focus any kind of resolve.