Ch.165Act 2: Ch.10 – Long Live the King (17)

Click.

<Awakening 6/12 / Destruction 7/12>

The King in the Silver Mask appears utterly indifferent. With his face hidden behind the mask, it’s impossible to know what he sees.

In his embrace, the sun grins wickedly, the two moons collide with each other more violently, continuously giving birth to fire and rock.

I look down at the earth following the falling thunderbolts.

I see arms stretching toward the celestial king. I see houses and buildings caught in those grasps being dragged up into the sky. People hold on desperately before eventually throwing themselves off. While buildings soar skyward, people fall endlessly.

Even the mafia members screamed. Powerful men and strong-willed women who wouldn’t bat an eye at ordinary violence now sit collapsed, wailing.

“The east coast…”

Abashina murmured. She too trembles as she looks at the sky and ground. Not from fear. Not just from sadness. It’s anger. Anger at people being trampled as if worthless.

A rage that only a monster who loves humans more than anyone could harbor. Yet she continues speaking calmly, conserving her anger, tempering it to unleash in the right place.

“Go to the east coast. FBI Agent Scully told me. She said if she doesn’t send a special signal, the Navy will send ships. Military vessels are coming to rescue people, so if anything happens, she asked to send people to the east coast dock.”

Aurora nodded. She clenched her fists and barked at her subordinates who were terrified but hadn’t scattered.

“Stand up!”

The White Hand members looked at their successor. Aurora raised her left hand. Her blood-soaked white glove glistened.

“Stand up. Who told you to sit down! I am Savio now. I am your father and mother. So listen to me!”

The members scrambled to their feet. To people gripped by fear, familiar obedience became a safety belt. Just as a rope tied around the body might feel cumbersome, but becomes reassuring when a storm hits. Aurora clenched her fist.

“Shoot what’s dangerous. Run if you can’t kill it. Strike when advantageous, retreat when not! Don’t try to kill. Do what needs to be done! Anything that can bleed can be killed. Whether person, beast, monster, whatever!

You know about this island! You know all the secret passages. You know every back alley, every hidden corner, and how to see and hear through even the thickest walls!

So fight! Use the terrain to fight, shoot with guns and stab with knives! While you can still walk on two feet, while you can still pull triggers and grip knife handles! Understood?”

“Yes!”

“I said, do you understand?!”

“Yes, we understand!”

“Save the people! Go to the east coast! Officers, assemble!”

Aurora divided the areas. The mid-level officers carefully confirmed their assigned sectors. The lower ranks checked their weapons and made torches.

Flames rise. The kind of fire that primordial humans might have kindled. A clear, tranquil fire lit from chaos that torments, growls, chews, stabs, strips, and tears.

I look at the last blood clan leader with wings spread, the Mother Superior of Pollard Island.

“Abashina.”

“Beast.”

“Will your wings be okay?”

It’s an act. I’m putting on an act. Treating her like an ordinary person. Like a pitiful person caught up in something too big to comprehend. I ask about something extremely trivial and personal rather than something grand. I question something insignificant that doesn’t fit the situation.

Wings? Asking about wings in this situation?

But I had to. Because she’s not a hero. Not a saint either. Not every nun reaches sainthood, after all.

She’s just someone precious to me. Someone I want to cherish. So just as one person does to another, I too had to ask her the most trivial question.

“I’ve always wanted to be human.”

The monster who has lived among humans, who takes blood, smiles. She smiles while shedding tears of blood.

“Eye color. Bloodline. Things I didn’t want to inherit but had to… All of it was overwhelming at times. Even now, I’m not sure.”

If she takes flight, there will be no turning back. What she’s hidden and concealed will no longer be concealable.

She’s already crossed the line. If she spreads her wings and soars, if she can no longer hide behind her black, modest nun’s habit, she’ll be banished from the world she so desperately wanted to return to.

“But Beast, I’ve made my choice.”

An angel fallen alone in a crumbling world.

“Please lead the people to the east coast. The Father and the other sisters are there. Pollard police officers, firefighters, and FBI agents are guiding people to the dock. We need to escape the island.”

A distant, languid sound like it’s time to wake from sleep. The siren sounds are clearly audible. Horns too. There seems to be a specific order. Rear cars first, front cars later.

“Follow the sound of the horns to find the east coast. No matter how thick the fog gets, it can’t hide sound. So, I’ll see you at the east coast.”

“Abashina. Where are you going?”

“I’m going to the slums. There are still people who haven’t made it out.”

Aurora approached. She held gas lanterns and torches. She offered them to Abashina.

“Take these. They’ll help. Just… don’t let them go out…”

“Believe in your goodness.”

“What?”

“Your goodness. I can see it. No matter how buried in mud it is, light cannot be hidden. Believe in yourself.”

Blood-red wings unfurled. Abashina takes flight. In one hand a gas lamp, in the other a torch. Soon she recedes into the distance, like rose petals caught in a swirling wind.

But people cheer. They applaud. The few who understood her gesture shout that everyone must go to the east coast.

Click.

Aurora reloaded her shotgun. She seems to have stocked up on ammunition too.

“You should go to the east coast too…”

“Why would I?” Aurora gestured toward the theater with her chin. “I need to get my money’s worth. Do you know how much I invested before they wrecked this place?”

No sooner had she finished speaking than the theater building writhed. Eyes sprouted from the veins wrapping the building walls. It’s as natural as new buds sprouting when winter gives way to spring. Arms and legs grow haphazardly, and tiny hands and feet sprout rapidly.

“This is insane. Absolutely.”

Aurora gritted her teeth. Her sliding gaze stopped on Pollard’s detective.

“So. What do we need to do to stop this nonsense?”

“Nothing’s changed. Stop the performance and it ends.”

“Then there shouldn’t be a problem…” Aurora looked around somewhat perplexed.

“But where did the grand theater go?”

The ground shook again. As if saying the answer is right here. The entire theater rises from the ground.

What broke through the surface were fingers. Fingers made of skinned humans. White skulls instead of knuckles, human skin instead of joints. Pale, withered fingers grasp the building.

Like peeling fruit, the fingers strip away the theater’s shell. The grand theater reveals itself. A dome-shaped ceiling resembling a flower bud. A ceiling woven by stringing together passionate audience members one by one.

People with hands and feet pierced together like chain mail sing a hymn of ecstasy. They shed tears of joy. Blood of passion flows from their mouths.

“Beautiful day, beautiful day, a winter’s day when flowers bloom and branches sprout!”

But there are no actors. The stage is empty. Instead, only people feeling the afterglow of the performance remain. Those undulating, swaying, singing things are naked people.

“Act 2! Raise the curtain for Act 2, show us Act 2! When will the curtain rise, how long must we wait?”

Stone pillars rise from the ground. Pillars with Pollard’s dead bound to them. But they have no heads. Nothing above the lower jaw.

The dead spread their arms like spring branches. Black bones grow from the outstretched branches. From bones drawing nutrients from R’lyeh’s earth, veins black as oil and sinister as lava bulge out with a thump, thump.

Flesh firmly attaches to the branches. Leaves bloom. Hands. Feet. Hands. Feet. Hands and feet with eyes, noses, ears, and mouths densely attached.

“Beautiful! It’s beautiful, so beautiful! Everything is brilliant and fleeting! So let’s hold onto this present beauty!”

The King in Yellow shines down benevolent sunlight. In the warm sunshine, branches grow more and leaves flourish.

Then birds gather. Birds with human faces like those seen at Arkham Reservoir. Shrike-birds with mouths split wide to below their ears, and eyes darting about like crows searching for jewels.

“It was an excellent play!”

The birds chirp in unison.

“I’ve never seen such a play in my life, to think such a day would come to Pollard Island! It was worth the expensive ticket! Don’t you think so too? Hmm?”

Everyone aimed their guns and fired. The disgusting things burst with bang, bang sounds. The enraged shrike-birds take to the sky.

“Lowly creatures, philistines who cannot appreciate art, base things without a shred of dignity! Ah, I see you’re too busy living hand to mouth to recognize nobility! How sad, how sad! Why don’t you have eyes to see! Why!”

The shrike-birds’ eyes pop out. They peck at each other’s eyes. The birds laugh hysterically while bleeding profusely.

“They say we have no eyes to see! No eyes to see! We have ears to hear, noses to smell, mouths to eat with, but no eyes to see! It’s ironic! Ironic!”

“There’s time before Act 2! Act 2 will open soon! Because the King is merciful, he’ll open the stage for you! Come play, come see! See the truth!”

“What truth.”

Crayfield fired his gun. The shrike-birds became hysterical again, then suddenly glared at one of their own. Before it could scream, they collectively tore at it with their beaks.

“Die, die, die! Die because you deserve to die! Die because you must die!”

“Strip, strip, strip! Strip because you deserve to be stripped! Strip because you must be stripped!”

The skinned bird couldn’t even scream once. The shrike-birds’ feet clutched it and circled around Crayfield.

“See… when skinned, we’re all one family… What does skin color matter? What do ideologies matter? We’re actually all the same beings. Ahahah, ahahahah!”

“I didn’t know. That dividing into sides could be so dangerous! The King told me. The King enlightened me. Ah, O King! May you reign forever!”

Crayfield grabbed a rod. He threw it like lightning. With a thwack, a shrike-bird with a lady’s face was pinned to the wall. It fluttered, fluttered its membrane wings, then breathed its last.

The shrike-birds trembled. They took to the sky.

“If you don’t like it, quit, if you don’t like it, it’s your loss! But Crayfield, you’re human too!”

Aurora fired wildly, screaming monstrously. Click, click. The empty gun rattles in protest, but she doesn’t stop.

“Aurora!”

I embraced Aurora. She reflexively hugged me back.

“Why? Why is this happening? Why is all this happening?”

“Because of the performance.”

Crayfield answered instead of me. He had already taken out a Camel cigarette. The flame from his lighter flickers.

“They don’t want the performance interrupted. So they’re gathering these troublemakers and peddlers. Act 1 is over now. Act 2 will begin soon. You heard what those monsters were saying.”

“Where do we start?”

I asked. It felt like I’d heard a ridiculous joke. Like asking where to light a fire first if you entered an empty villa on a snowy night. But to my eyes, I couldn’t even see what might serve as a match.

“With what’s right in front of us.”

Crayfield moved diligently. He picked up oil cans left behind by Aurora’s men. They were mostly used and appropriately empty. Above all, they were about the size of tin cans, not difficult to throw.

Like hecklers, we threw the open oil cans toward the stage. Those corrupted ones bound head to toe sang hymns, but none of us three looked back. That’s what pranksters should do.

Crayfield walked toward the stage and threw his Camel cigarette. The fire slowly stretched over the oil. The hymn of joy praising the King in Yellow transforms into a painful elegy begging for life.

It’s a clear provocation.

Both the King in Yellow and the beings from the abyss are displeased by Crayfield’s provocation. The altar burned instead of a holocaust, the goat burned instead of a lamb, the impure offered instead of the pure disturbs their mood.

But the expression of anger came rushing from the beach. Aurora covered her mouth.

“Why. Why are you doing that?”

“Abashina is… coming back.”

It wasn’t just Abashina. Cars with sirens blaring along the main road, crowds filling the streets, were rushing this way. Large vehicles led the way, clearing paths again, while smaller cars escorted people. Gunshots rang out whenever shrike-birds swooped over their heads.

Behind them, ships appeared. Ships racing above the fog. They were approaching, pursuing the people.

[Albatross. 1813, Pacific Ocean, Galapagos]

The speaker crackles.

[Dixon. 1820, Southern Indian Ocean. Mayhew. 1844, Western Atlantic. Twin Brothers, 1861, Society Islands]

As if calling roll, the ships reveal themselves one by one. But it’s not the end. More… more continued.

[Unicorn. 1899. Cape of Good Hope, Africa]

“Crayfield, this…”

“Whaling ships.”

Crayfield glared toward the east coast.

“Pollard’s whaling ships that never returned. Ships that sank in the sea. They’ve come back. The dead have returned.”

A crashing sound reaches us. They weren’t mere ghosts. They were tangible things. So they were smashing through obstructing buildings as they approached.

People couldn’t escape. Catherine Scully’s plan had failed. Everyone’s plans had failed.

No one can leave the island.

[Thank you for your patience!]

The speaker crackles again.

[Now, Act 2 begins! Please take your seats, please take your seats!]

Click.

<Awakening 7/12 / Destruction 8/12>