The Colors of Alemeth - Vol. 1

  Mr. Brisk turned to me abruptly, his face exploding with rage. He shook the broken hand of the statue in his own hands and shouted, “You stupid brat! You don’t know what you just did! You don’t know what I’m gonna have to pay for this!”

  I ran as fast as I could, passing my brother and his friends, who were still laughing, and didn’t stop until I got home.

  The guilt made it difficult to fall asleep that night. I kept cursing at my brother for using a ten-year-old girl like that.

  I woke up in the middle of the night with a hand covering my mouth. I opened my eyes to find Mr. Brisk’s cruel gaze. He took a finger to his lips, gesturing for me to keep quiet, but even if I’d wanted to, I wouldn’t have been able to scream because I was paralyzed with fear.

  He grabbed me by the neck, dragged me effortlessly to the window and stood there. He held the back of my neck with one hand and covered my mouth with the other, as if he wanted me to look at something.

  I didn’t see anything until I noticed the shadows of the trees moving. Several hours had already passed since the start of curfew, so there couldn’t possibly be anyone.

  “I’m tired of your little pranks, kid,” whispered Mr. Brisk loathingly. “The statue you made me break belonged to them. You’re gonna stop making my life a living hell or I swear I’ll tell them it was you. And I’ll ask them to take you underground with them.”

  There were beings jumping in the darkness. I couldn’t catch them with my eyes because immediately after stepping out of one shadow they’d hide in another. But there was definitely something dark walking around.

  Then three figures jumped into the street from the trees. They were people covered in black cloaks, and their faces were hid under hoods. Undershadows. They walked in line, quick but smoothly, to the left side of the street. The one in front stopped right behind a manhole, bent to remove the lid and disappeared down the hole. The others followed, and the final one closed the manhole behind him, leaving the street empty again.

  I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe. I could only turn my eyes from the manhole to Mr. Brisk standing beside me.

  He whispered, “You have been warned.”

  It was only on the next day that I admitted to myself that the enclosure was infeasible, first of all because I had to go to Sunday masses. They were mandatory, and I hadn’t been granted any special leave by someone with that kind of authority – doctors, judges or other high-ranking officials in the Institution.

  There were no excuses, because nobody was exempt. Those who were lawful of course. Institutionalized. But those who weren’t, were hiding.

  There were no traffic excuses because no one drove during Sunday mass. With a church every three hundred meters, most people walked. And whoever needed to take a car would go earlier. There were no I got stuck somewhere excuses because simply there was no one to keep you stuck. Everything stopped. Medical services—with the exception of a few emergency services—were suspended, television stations closed, radio broadcasts were interrupted, the post office, restaurants and clothes shops shut their doors, and public transport stopped running. Everything was suspended except for the Brigades; the Brigades never stopped.

  You would’ve expected me to have a leave of absence to rest at home for a few days after being stabbed by a piece of metal, but no: for the Institution, it was even better if I went. A miracle could happen, and I could be cured faster.

  When Sunday arrived, I asked Rhode and Ezekiel to drive me to church, with the pretext that I was still debilitated from surgery, when really it was the fear of my persecutors.

  I’d seen them outside my house the past few days and saw them the entire way to Sunday mass.

  I tried to remain calm. They would never attempt anything during mass; there were too many Brigades around.

  We entered the Cathedral of Carmel, swiped our institutionalized cards and sat on one of the wooden pews.

  The beginning of the service was always the same. The bishop would approach the altar, followed by two priests and three deacons. He’d stop in front, in the middle, facing the crowd, with the priests behind him, the three forming a small triangle. On the left side, the deacons held the Bible and other utensils used during the service and waited on their feet near a marble table. A dozen monks formed a line behind the altar, a mirror image of the line of armed guards at the entrance.

  At the time, the bishop was nearly sixty years old. He was a tall and relatively fat man, with bulging green eyes resembling those of a chameleon. We had met through my husband, and he was the one who married us. We visited his city house regularly, even on Christmas day and Easter. Despite that, we were never close, probably because I was his friend’s wife—or just a woman, really. We chose him as Alem’s godfather—securing a place at the Heart of Carmel, the most prestigious school in the city. And after my husband’s death, he guaranteed he’d take care of Alem if anything were to happen to me. During the services, he wore a red cassock with the great Faithful Cross—a golden cross with three large ruby circles on the left, right, and bottom ends—embroidered on the front and a red hat, tall and long, featuring the same cross.

  The hooded monks behind the altar raised their voices in a low and respectful chant, and the faithful listened solemnly, heads bowed and eyes closed.

  “People of Carmel,” said the bishop in a strong and firm voice, helped by a microphone, “we are here united on this Sunday for the celebration of the existence of God and Jesus, our Lord, in our lives. For the Faith.”

  “We are the Faith,” replied the cathedral in unison.

  The priests each took a Bible out of their attires and opened them in the palms of their right hands. The bishop knew the page number by heart and uttered it. In the audience, we all quickly opened the sacred book with a rustling that echoed through the church.

  It was hard for me to concentrate during Sunday mass—honestly, it was the only time I attended church. I looked up and couldn’t help notice the overwhelming beauty of the detailed frescos painted on the ceiling of the colossal building. As always, the candles were lit throughout the corridors that separated the pew rows and connected the entrance to the altar. A red carpet ran along the central corridor, which began at the entrance door, and ended on seven marble steps that lead to the white and haughty altar, like a stage. Well, it was a stage. On either side behind it were two gold columns, thick as centenary oaks, that rose almost to the ceiling and united at the top to form an arch. More columns, as thick as the others, rose in the corridors that separated the rows of pews, but these went straight into the ceiling and were adorned with little details and protuberances, like angels, saints and crosses.

  When the cathedral was built during the middle of the second millennium, the drawings engraved on the churches’ stones didn’t have to adhere to any rule yet; they depended only on the artist’s impeccable taste. However, the subject had to appeal to the Institution. But when the Institution became more powerful worldwide, every religious symbol that had been drawn and engraved in every church, cathedral, monastery, temple, mosque, synagogue and convent all over the world and of different religions were altered to the symbol of the Institution: the Faithful Cross.

  The Cathedral of Carmel’s frescos were full of these crosses, spread randomly. The ceiling was high, so it was difficult to fully see its details but I managed to spot a cross, right above my head, that was faded, unclear, almost erased. My Faithful Cross.

  A coordinated motion woke me. The faithful people around me stood from their pews and kneeled on the wooden support in front of them for the beginning of the First Prayer.

  I kneeled as well, and with the Bible open on the bar above the kneeling support, I flipped through the pages to catch up with the mass.

  Rhode, who could see I was lost, discreetly pointed to the verse we were about to read.

  The congregation started singing. In unison, and with hands held in prayer in front of the chest, everyone chanted, the words spilling mechanically with
different inflections, making the moment seem like a concert in which all of us were the choir. Nothing else was audible.

  When it was over, the bishop announced that the theme of the day would be lying.

  “I’m worried,” I whispered to Rhode.

  “What is it?”

  I didn’t know how to put it so I just let it out. “I’m being followed.”

  She nearly looked at me but managed to keep her gaze ahead.

  “What are you talking about?”

  It certainly wasn’t the time, but the desperation that came with keeping that to myself was smothering me.

  “They are trying to get to Alem.”

  The bishop was reading a passage into the microphone. “‘You people are from your father, the devil, and you want to do what your father desires.’”

  “He’s in danger,” I continued.

  She looked at Alem for a brief second. “You’re scaring me.”

  Rhode turned her eyes to the stage and didn’t move them from the bishop, who was showing off all his authority. She was my age, brunette, with a nose full of freckles and hair cut to below her jaw—anything shorter wasn’t allowed for women. Her fixed gaze at the altar was calm and confident, as if she wasn’t violating any of the Ordus rules by chatting in church, especially as a woman and during mass.

  “Who’s trying to get to him? Why do they want him?” she asked.

  Her question made me regret having brought up the subject.

  “Not here.”

  On the other side of the corridor, an impatient red-faced woman softly scolded who I assumed was her child.

  The bishop was still talking. “‘I tell you that on the Day of Judgment, people will give an account for every worthless word they speak'. ‘You shall not lie’ is one of the Rules, and if God wrote the Ordus, our manual of Rules, it was for us to obey them.”

  “Are you sure you’re not creating monsters in your head?”

  “They’re after him,” I replied.

  “But why? What’s going on?”

  I didn’t answer, and for the first time during our conversation, she looked at me for a response.

  She whispered even softer, “Is that why you left Umbra?”

  A buzz erupted all around us when the little boy who was reprimanded started running toward the altar through the central corridor. His mother, trying uselessly to remain discreet, was calling him, her face twisting, and her voice soft. When the boy reached the altar, the astonished gasps became louder, but the bishop and priests remained calm and almost indifferent. The guards rushed to grab the boy, but Zalmon gestured with his hand for them to hold their positions.

  The boy stopped immediately in front of him. He was giggling, but his face showed some anger as well. He pulled down his pants and underwear and started peeing on the altar. Inside the cathedral, the only audible sound was that of liquid hitting the stairs of the altar. Everyone sat in silence.

  When he finished, his mother began to cry. She looked to the floor and shouted, with her hands covering her mouth, something to the effect of he’s possessed.

  “Take him to the Correction Center,” the bishop ordered the Brigade captain over the microphone.

  The boy ran toward the entrance like a bull, but the guards caught him easily.

  His mother kept crying, affected by the congregation who, louder and louder, uttered words like possessed and horror.

  Everyone knew the boy’s inevitable fate, which was why the woman was crying. Some people kept their heads low with guilt, revolt and frustration, but others had fiendish smiles of pleasure.

  The bishop descended the stairs, imposing, stepping over the urine without even looking down. He paced through the corridor with firm steps, the train of the great cape dragging behind him, and passed the hundreds of paralyzed people watching in silence to take the boy.

  Rain and wind lashed against the dining room window of the Mansion of Frogs, as our house was named – an allusion to the most famous animal in Umbra; though my husband, Irá, thought it came from a lake full of frogs in the backyard.

  Outside, the sun was setting, leaves were fluttering, cars were passing by and the men in dark blue suits watched.

  I was starting to asphyxiate in the bird cage of fear. Nights were moments of brief relief, because I believed that if Defectio attempted anything during curfew, the Night Brigade would succor me immediately. However, it was at night that Umbra awakened… and that meant I was more vulnerable to attack.

  When Rhode and Ezekiel knocked on the door to have dinner with me, I was a nervous wreck once again but tried to disguise it.

  “Be careful, at this pace he’ll be bigger than you any day now,” said Ezekiel when he saw Alem.

  Rhode took him in her arms and lifted him in the air, facing her. He could barely open his eyes yet but did it for her and formed a shy smile that melted her heart.

  “Are you gonna tell us what’s going on?” she asked.

  “Later. We have all night.”

  I avoided the subject as much as I could. By the end of dinner, we were all so drunk that we only remembered the curfew when the warning bells chimed at ten o’clock in the evening. One hour from then it would be unlawful to be in the streets, unless you wanted to be considered a Transgressor and die at the gallows.

  “I think you should sleep over. Are you okay to drive?” I asked Ezekiel.

  He made a goofy smile in reply.

  “You see?” I said.

  “No, we have to go,” he said, suddenly more serious.

  He tried not to look at the ceiling, to the upper floor, but I knew what he was thinking.

  “I sleep here every night, in my bedroom, the bedroom I shared with Irá, the bedroom where everything happened. I’ve never seen any ghosts. You could also sleep down here if you preferred.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way… it just seems like it was yesterday….”

  “Are you afraid of sleeping in this house because of what happened to Irá? Ezekiel, please…,” said Rhode, slightly annoyed.

  “I think I hear footsteps upstairs,” I whispered.

  Ezekiel froze, looking at the ceiling as if waiting for something to happen. No one moved for a few seconds until Rhode and I burst into laughter. Ezekiel wasn’t amused.

  “You shouldn’t joke about these things, you know.”

  “Relax, there aren’t any ghosts in this house. Have you seen all the alarms I’ve got?”

  Rhode laughed again, but Ezekiel appeared to sulk.

  “Now seriously, do you really think there are such things as ghosts?” I asked him.

  “I know a story…,” he started.

  I rolled my eyes and laid Alem next to me on the sofa to change his diaper – a fact that Rhode highlighted, simply to ridicule a bit more Ezekiel and his ‘crappy stories’.

  “It happened to my coworker’s husband. They’re not umbriferos. As far as I know, of course. He and another guard were patrolling on horses at night when they saw a beam of light coming from the Gray Cemetery on top of the hill. My friend’s husband stayed with the horses at the bottom of the hill while the other guard went up to where the light was coming from. He said that when he got to the top he saw three lit black candles and nothing else, since it was too dark. But a moment later, he saw a figure sitting next to the candles and approached it. He pointed the flashlight at the figure. It was a young girl in a white dress sitting on a tombstone with the candles in front of her. He told her it was long pass the start of curfew, so he would have to take her to a Correction Center. She replied, ‘Don’t worry, I’m leaving in a moment’, and then leaned over the candles to blow them out. At that moment, his flashlight failed, and he stood in complete darkness. He immediately unholstered his gun, but the flashlight turned on again. The girl was no longer there, only the black candles, extinguished.”

  “And so what?” asked Rhode, amused. “Do you want me to explain that story to you very quickly? The girl was up to nonsense over there, got
caught, and took advantage of the flashlight failing to sneak away behind some tombstone. If it was that dark, it must not have been hard.”

  “But my coworker says there was nowhere the girl could’ve hid herself.”

  “And your coworker was there, I suppose?” asked Rhode.

  “No…,” he replied, slightly offended. “But her husband told her.”

  “Her husband, the one who stayed at the bottom, right? So it was the coworker of your coworker’s husband that said—“

  “Okay, so you don’t believe the story. Of course it could all be made up, but… what if it isn’t?”

  Stupidly, I shuddered.

  “The Mysticismi niche has proof that those things are real,” he continued, lowering his voice because the topic was Umbra.

  “The mystici are a bunch of lunatics,” blurted Rhode.

  We were drunk, despite the fact that women weren’t allowed to drink alcohol, and the conversation continued. It was implied that they’d be staying the night.

  It was better for me, anyway. I hated sleeping alone, especially since Irá died, soon after I became pregnant.

  In cases of widowing, the Institution forbade the woman to ever remarry, which meant that love was over for me. I didn’t see the sense in this rule. I don’t think anyone did. But the Institution gave no explanation.

  And no one asked.