Objects of Worship Page 8

  The tendril continues its rapid journey. It rises high in the sky and then crosses above the Godmoat. As soon as it does so, a geyser erupts from the Godmoat, soaking the tendril.

  Coro is dropped as the tendril jerks violently, but he is prepared and lands on his feet.

  Where it crosses above the Godmoat, the gargantuan tendril that sprouts from the dark abyss is severed from Yamesh-Lot himself and drops onto the barren soil just beyond the ring of holy water. A deafening roar escapes from the pit. The limb catches fire, writhes, and burns to cinders.

  Coro looks up at the dark, nightmare-covered sky. He is distracted by flashes of fire and Godlight as the Shifpan-Shap engage in their nightly struggle.

  The sword whispers, and Coro’s attention is taken away from the spectacle, his thoughts reined in to focus on Yamesh-Lot’s plan.

  Coro has forgotten his former existence. He is thus unsurprised by his newfound strength and stamina. He runs across the surface of the Earth, moonsword in hand. He must execute his mission this night, for the nightmares encased within the sword cannot survive the return of sunlight.

  Coro finds a village. But the dogs are woken by his arrival, and soon the whole village is roused.

  The whispers bore into Coro’s mind. He yells in pain. He lashes out with the moonsword; he slaughters every inhabitant of the village, down to the last animal. Alas for his mission, every one of his victims was awake; the nightmares were unable to slip into the world of dreams.

  Coro runs again, driven by the pain in his head, knowing the torment will end only if he succeeds in fulfilling his appointed task.

  The sound of singing reaches Coro; it dampens the raucous noise emanating from the moonsword. Coro walks toward the new sound, seduced. The nightmares intensify their cries, but to no avail. The closer Coro gets to the source of the song, the more the voices of the nightmares are shushed.

  At the mouth of a cave, a handful of the Green Blue and Brown God’s acolytes are gathered; they are singing, in that language only the acolytes know, their tattoos glowing with Godlight.

  The song calms Coro and soothes his maddening headache; his arms go limp. The moonsword drags on the ground as he approaches the five acolytes.

  Coro almost begins to remember his previous life, but, retaliating against the acolytes’ song, the nightmares now shriek at Coro, driving him berserk.

  He attacks the acolytes, but, for all his ferocity, strength, and speed, he is also clumsy. The acolytes move with nearly ethereal grace, slipping out of the sword’s reach every time it comes close to striking one of them. Throughout Coro’s attack, they continue to sing. Their song changes; it becomes higher pitched, piercing. The sacred ballad has segued into an urgent call.

  Coro keeps slashing at the acolytes, never connecting, while the nightmares screech in his mind with increasing venom.

  The acolytes’ song changes again; it slows down, grows deeper, imbued with reverential awe.

  The moonsword strikes something hard, and sparkles of Godlight flash in Coro’s sight. He recoils and falls on his back.

  There stands in front of him a warrior of the Shifpan-Shap: taller by half than the tallest human; her body covered with golden scales; a prominent beak emphasizing her fierce visage; powerful wings feathered green, blue, and brown sprouting from her robust shoulders. She holds a Godmace in one hand, and a firesword in the other.

  She raises the firesword, and Coro knows that it will be a killing blow.

  The five acolytes, the Shifpan-Sho, and Coro enter the cave. The warrior has put her sword in its scabbard, but keeps her mace at the ready; she disagreed with the acolytes about not killing Coro, but she reluctantly deferred to their judgement. With her free hand, she holds both of Coro’s wrists above his head, pushing him along, keeping his sword pointed upward. It sometimes scrapes against the ceiling, making him stumble, but the warrior’s grip prevents him from falling. Two of the acolytes hum sweetly into Coro’s ears, keeping the nightmares at bay.

  With the nightmares silenced, Coro’s memories slowly return.

  As the group descends, the veins of Godlight illuminating the tunnels remind him of the frequent journeys down a similar path in his youth. He relives the pain of his numerous submersions in the Godpool. But the chant of the acolytes calms him.

  The group reaches a doorway; not the one from Coro’s childhood, but similar enough that he recognizes it nonetheless. The eldest acolyte, a very old man with broad shoulders and thin white hair, says to the warrior, “Release him.”

  Without thinking, Coro touches the warrior’s shoulders. Looking at the Shifpan-Sho, feeling the scales on her skin, smelling her foreign aroma, he realizes the folly of his lifelong dream. He could never be anything like one of these nearly divine creatures. The knowledge that he wasted his life striving for something so manifestly impossible shatters him.

  She brushes his hand away, and they all file into the cavern that holds the local Godpool.

  Coro recalls his vigil at the foot of Shifpan-Ur and the despair that led him into the embrace of Yamesh-Lot. At the memory of the villagers he slaughtered, Coro’s heart fills with loathing for himself and for the monstrous entity who drove him to perform such a deed.

  Turning to Coro, the elder says: “Immerse the length of your sword into the Godwater.”

  The two young acolytes are still humming gently into Coro’s ears, but he is overwhelmed by a desperate onslaught of nightmare shrieks. He lashes out, and his sword cuts into the eldest acolyte.

  The Shifpan-Sho warrior strikes Coro with the back of her hand, hitting him on the jaw, knocking him down. She brings up her mace to strike Coro dead, but she hesitates, her eyes reflecting the Godlight that floods the chamber, and she stands down. She steps on Coro’s sword wrist, puts her weight into it, stopping short of breaking the bones, and says, “I should have killed you outside.”

  Coro is crying, hating himself for being nothing more than an instrument of Yamesh-Lot. He wants the warrior to kill him.

  The two young acolytes bend down to Coro’s ears and resume their song.

  Blood flows freely from the elder acolyte’s shoulder. Already infection is setting in; the skin around the wound rots darkly, pungently. The warrior says, “Get in the pool, holy one.”

  “No, not yet. First, let him up.”

  She reluctantly does so, and Coro, his cheeks hot with tears, hurries to the Godpool. Bracing himself, fearful of what might happen, he submerges the sword. The nightmares’ dying screams reverberate through his whole body. The Godpool seethes, and Godwater erupts, soaking everyone.

  Coro expects agony, but instead he is flooded with vivid images and sensations that connect him to every one of the Green Blue and Brown God’s creatures. He experiences their bodies and sensations as if they were his own. Briefly he glimpses his mother — still alive, but old and bedridden — but then the holy effervescence recedes, leaving Coro dazzled, acutely aware of the miraculous beauty of his own body. The sword is still welded to his hand, but now it sparkles with the God’s colours. He feels the Godwater flowing from the sword, mingling with his blood, and he almost orgasms at the sensation.

  The eldest acolyte, healed, his body having shed some of the ravages of age, says, “Now, you must return to the pit.”

  It is daytime; the Shifpan-Shap have once again defeated the nightly invasion. The Moon is at rest in the pit.

  Coro is flying. The wind whips through his hair. The light of the Sun dazzles his eyes. The Shifpan-Sho warrior’s muscular arms hold his back tightly against her chest.

  Coro knows that neither he nor the warrior are likely to survive this expedition, but — after he had given up hope that his life’s dream could ever be realized — he is flying with a Shifpan-Sho warrior.

  He looks down and sees the gaping pit and the moat of Godwater that surrounds it. They have arrived.

  The warrior shifts her weight and moves Coro to her side, holding him with just one powerful arm. She takes the Godmace from her
belt, raises it, and nods silently at Coro. He extends his sword arm, and the Shifpan-Sho turns upside down, toward the pit. She flies downward, carrying them both past the threshold that leads to the darkness at the heart of the world.

  SPIDERKID

  All the spiders in my apartment are araneomorphs, the most common type of spider. The second most common suborder consists of mygalomorphs — hairy, often large species, such as tarantulas. Mesothelae, the oldest suborder of spiders still extant, are quite rare; of the estimated hundred thousand or so species of spiders, fewer than one hundred belong to this primitive family, and they’re found almost exclusively in Asia. I’ve only ever seen pictures. The natural history museum has some specimens on display, but I disapprove of taxidermy. I can’t stomach the thought of walking through room after room of victims sacrificed in the “holy” name of science.

  The body of the female of the common house spider, Achaearanea tepidariorum, measures less than a centimetre, and males are even smaller. Female spiders are generally larger than their male counterparts. The common house spider enjoys humid and dark environments, such as my basement apartment.

  There are two small windows in the apartment, one in the bedroom and one in the kitchen. The only other room is the tiny, mouldy bathroom with cracked tiles and no ventilation. The two windows are just low enough that I can, if I stand on tiptoe, slide them open and closed. I like to keep them open, except when the landlord’s four-year-old twins are outside playing. They like to lie down on the ground and peer at me, giggling. They’re not mean, but I intrigue them. So they laugh.

  The whole house is surrounded by flowerbeds, bushes, vines, and trees. The landlord and his wife love to garden. The compost and vegetation attract myriad insects, many of whom find their way inside. Their persistent invasions irritate me, but the spiders feed on them. Webs hang from the furniture, from the corners where walls meet ceilings. I do my best to keep these intact, to make my home comfortable for the spiders.

  My father held my hand as we walked through the train station. At the age of six, I had never seen such a high ceiling. I couldn’t keep my eyes off it and its intricate web of exposed, carved rafters. Gently, Dad kept reminding me to look where I was walking.

  He stopped at the newsstand to get a paper. He led me to the comics rack and asked me to choose something to read on the train. It would be hours to the coast, where we were going to join Mom. As I took my eyes off the ceiling, a bright red cover caught my eye. It was a giant comic book, the size of a tabloid newspaper, but with a spine and the cover the kind of thick stock used on paperbacks. There was a yellow band at the top with the words SHRUGGING ATLAS TREASURY SPECIAL in black letters. Below that, a blue logo in stylized, creepy letters announced the title: SPIDERKID ADVENTURES. In the middle of the cover a character who could only have been Spiderkid himself was crouched, ready to leap into action. A dark blue skintight costume covered his whole body. The suit was veined with a yellow web design. He wore big goggles to cover his eyes. A black belt with pouches and an empty holster hung around his waist. A string of webbing shot from the gun he held in his hand.

  “I want that one!” I said, and my dad bought it for me.

  I take a break from my term paper. My head hurts, my back aches, and my eyes are sore from staring at the screen all day.

  Until grade nine, I’d always believed that I’d become a biologist, to eventually specialize in arachnology. Images of spiders chaotically wallpapered my room. Books on spiders filled my bookshelf. Spiderkid Adventures dominated my comics collection.

  But then one day I was expected to dissect a frog in class, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even watch my lab partner do it. I ran out of class screaming in terror, and I never lived it down. The incident ensured that high school would be a particularly relentless hell for me — bullies forcing raw meat down my throat during lunch break, that kind of thing. After that, I stopped eating meat, despite the violent protests of my parents.

  I learned that the “study of life” involved killing and torturing, and I had no stomach for that. I didn’t pursue biology. Now I major in history, a much safer subject.

  I check my email before getting up.

  It’s all spam, except for one message that came through my webofspiderkid.net domain. I run a Spiderkid tribute website. It includes a database indexing the appearances of all the supporting characters, a checklist of writers and illustrators, a comprehensive listing of every Spiderkid guest spot in other comics, cover scans, and other obsessive, geeky stuff. My passion for Spiderkid has always allowed me to tap into a secret well of enthusiasm. Managing the website helps me focus on that energy, helps me find the strength to deal with real life. My own personal religion and virtual temple.

  The message is from a lawyer called Laurent Tavernier. It’s a legal warning that I must remove my website, cease-and-desist from posting, publishing, and/or distributing any of its contents, and cede ownership of the domain name to Shrugging Atlas Comics, the publishers of Spiderkid Adventures.

  Shit.

  Spiderkid, of course, is Steve Rand’s most famous creation. By now there have been animated cartoons, live-action TV shows, feature films, novels, and more merchandising than any one person could ever amass, so everyone knows the character by sight. Even though he’d been around for twenty years when I came across the Shrugging Atlas Treasury Special, he wasn’t quite so ubiquitous back then.

  Spiderkid is a daredevil punster who loves being a superhero. His life is a complicated soap opera, but nothing ever triumphs over his relentless good cheer. An instant runaway hit in comic books, it was inevitable that Spiderkid would eventually crawl into other media as well.

  Shrugging Atlas Treasury Special: Spiderkid Adventures — the first comic book I ever read — is the most prized item in my collection. I’ve read it hundreds, maybe thousands, of times. One hundred pages long, it reprints “An Amazing Fantasy” — the first appearance and origin of Spiderkid — and six other stories introducing the most sinister members of his rogues’ gallery: “Duel with the Carrion Crow,” “The Strange Threat of Professor Squid,” “The Face of the Reptile,” “And Call Him the Electric Man,” “The Mystery of Mister Menace,” and “The Coming of the Hellscorpions.” Often, if I’m too tired to read when I go to bed, I’ll take out the treasury and just browse through it to admire Rand’s artwork and to recapture the feeling of excitement and discovery that filled me as I rode on the train, exposed for the first time to Rand’s imagination. Exposed for the first time to the mysteries of spiders.

  I should be working on my history paper, but I’m too irritated and shaken by the email from the Shrugging Atlas lawyer to write anything. I guess I have no choice but to abandon the website. Damn. I put so much work into it. I can’t afford to go up against corporate lawyers; anyway, I don’t want to fight. The website was supposed to be for fun, and that one email is the needle that burst the bubble. I take a quick shower to clear my head. I decide to go out.

  I blow-dry my shoulder-length black hair, and I smile at the blond streaks — the contrast of yellow against black a reminder of Spiderkid’s costume. I brush it back and keep it in place with gel. I carefully apply a thin line of black eyeliner to highlight my dark blue eyes. I learned from my cousin how to make it look natural. She used to tease me about how much she loved the colour of my eyes . . . at least until her parents caught us making out when we were thirteen. Both sets of parents went absolutely crazy. Mine threatened me with boarding school, throwing out all my comics, and getting rid of all my spider stuff if they discovered that Marie and I ever did as much as exchange another email. And Marie’s parents were always stricter than mine; I can only imagine how bad it was for her. I haven’t even spoken to her since then. I hear she has a boyfriend now.

  I dress entirely in black, and I clasp a gold chain around my neck. It’s a handmade necklace by an African artist; on it hangs a jewelled effigy of Nyiko, the heroic spider god of Cameroon whose mythic adventures inspired Ste
ve Rand to create Spiderkid. Marie gave it to me for my twelfth birthday.

  I weep a little, and the eyeliner runs.

  Shit. I have to redo it.

  I really need to go out and talk to some new people. I’m stuck in a sad, nostalgic rut tonight, and I hate it.

  It’s retro trip-hop night at The Fly’s Joint. I get a beer and sit at the bar. I recognize a few faces from campus, but nobody I know. That’s good and bad. I’m dying to have a conversation, but I don’t initiate contact easily. I’m so tired of seeing the same reflection in familiar eyes, though, and I want to meet someone new.

  By my second sip of beer, I’m already feeling depressed. The place is full of people, laughing, drinking, dancing, and I feel like a pile of toxic waste polluting everything that comes near me. The space between me and everyone else in the club expands, isolating me; even the music starts to sound muffled and distant . . .

  . . . And I see them playing pool; immediately my sour mood evaporates, and I’m focused, interested, fascinated. The man is Asian, probably Chinese: he’s tall, with broad shoulders, a squarish face, and black hair tied back in a pony tail. The woman is white, with wavy hair coming down to her shoulder blades, streaked in multiple colours. They’re both dressed in black: he’s wearing shorts and a loose tank top; she’s wearing a short skirt with a bra top. Spiders cover their well-defined bodies: their legs, their backs, their arms, their faces . . .

  My throat feels desperately dry, and I quickly down the rest of my beer. Then I walk toward them; I can’t take my eyes off their bodies, their tattoos.

  When I reach the pool table, they’re both facing away from me, concentrating on the game. Boldly, I say hello — but they take no notice.