“It’s beautiful here, isn’t it, Aaron?” asked a young voice.
Aaron looked down to see Stevie sitting in the sand beside him. The boy had a plastic pail and shovel and was busily digging a hole in the wet ground.
Aaron glanced into the hole and saw that it was far deeper and larger than he had first imagined. I’ll bet there are tunnels under here, he thought for some reason. Miles and miles of tunnels.
“Did you hear me, Aaron?” Stevie asked, drawing his attention away from the hole.
Aaron looked into the boy’s expectant face. “I’m sorry, Stevie,” he said. “I guess I zoned out for a minute there.”
The little boy was only wearing a pair of bright red swim trunks, and Aaron could see that he was getting sunburned. If we aren’t careful, he thought, the kid’ll get sunstroke—just like that time when …
“I just said how beautiful it is here, that’s all,” Stevie interrupted his train of thought. The child continued to work at his hole. “I don’t ever want to leave.”
Aaron laughed as he knelt down beside the boy. The surf flowed over his bare feet, so warm. “We have to go home sometime,” he said as he ruffled the boy’s blond hair. “Don’t you want to see Mom and Dad again?”
Stevie turned and pointed up the beach. “They’re over there,” he said. “I can see them anytime I want.”
Aaron looked up and saw Lori and Tom Stanley sitting in beach chairs beneath a large, yellow umbrella, a red and white cooler between them.
They’d bought Dr Pepper, he unexpectedly recalled, the first and last time they had ever used the red and white cooler. Something had been left inside it after the beach trip, and it had spoiled, leaving behind a nasty odor. They were never able to get the smell out of it, so they’d thrown the cooler away. Aaron tried to remember how long ago that had been. It was the same trip that Stevie got sunstroke.
Lori and Tom waved happily from their beach chairs, and Aaron tentatively waved back, suddenly overcome with a sadness he couldn’t comprehend.
“Don’t feel sad,” his foster brother said, filling his pail with sand. “There’s nothing to be sad about here.”
“How did you know I was feeling sad?” Aaron asked.
Stevie did not answer, and continued to dig in his hole—making it larger, deeper.
Aaron stood and gazed out over the ocean. Dark clouds were forming off in the distance—perhaps a storm coming in. “This all seems so familiar,” he said, more to himself than to Stevie, as the wind ruffled his dark hair.
“And is that so bad?” the boy asked.
Aaron glanced at his little brother and saw that Gabriel now sat beside the child, tail wagging as Stevie patted his head. “Hello, Gabriel,” Aaron said to the dog.
The dog wagged his tail in response, panting happily. He had been running in the water and was soaking wet, sand sticking to the fur on his legs.
“What’s the matter with you, Aaron?” the child asked. “Everything here is so perfect—so peaceful. Just let yourself accept it.”
The sky was darkening as the clouds drifted closer to the shore.
“I want to,” Aaron replied, a feeling of pure joy beginning to bubble up within him, but he forced it back. “I really, really do—but this feels wrong. Like I lived it before.”
“But you were happy then, right? And you can be that way again. It’s a gift for all you’ve had to endure.” Stevie was suddenly standing in the middle of the hole he had been digging. “Let me take your pain away.” He stretched his sunburned arms toward his older brother, a smile on his face.
It seems simple enough, Aaron thought as he watched the gray clouds billow offshore. They seemed to be changing direction, leaving the sky over his head perfect, unblemished by the storm. All he need do is accept this time, this place, as his reality, and everything would be fine.
But it wouldn’t.
“This is all wrong,” he said aloud with a furious shake of his head. He gestured to the ocean and the world beyond it. “This isn’t right, this moment has passed. It’s a memory from three years ago.”
“Stop it, Aaron,” Stevie demanded. “Don’t spoil what I’ve made for you.”
Aaron stared at the angry child as the clouds again tumbled in from the sea, low and dark, pregnant with storm. A distant, threatening rumble of thunder shook the air. “This is all a dream—a nightmare, really.”
“Aaron!” the boy screamed, stomping his foot.
“What are you?” Aaron asked, a powerful wind suddenly whipping at his clothes. “Stevie never talked like this—he barely talked at all.” Aaron looked at the dog, who continued to wag his tail happily even though the wind was blowing sand into his lolling mouth. “And this isn’t Gabriel. It just looks like him.” Aaron stepped closer to the child. “I’ll ask you again,” he said grimly. “What are you?”
It was suddenly black as night on the beach, and arcs of lightning coursed across the sky as thunderclaps boomed. The ocean had been whipped into a frenzy by the tempest, with waves crashing violently on the shore.
“You can be happy again!” the child shrieked over the storm. “All you need do is—”
“What. Are. You?” Aaron spat. From the corner of his eye he could see the ocean waters, in the distance, begin to froth and boil.
“I have existed since the fifth day of creation,” Stevie said in a chilling voice not his own.
Something moved beneath the roiling waters. Something large.
“I was that spark of uncertainty in the Creator’s thoughts as He forged the world—that brief moment of chaos—before Genesis.”
A monster emerged from the depths of the sea, skin blacker than the darkness that now surrounded them. It seemed to be at least a hundred feet tall, its wormlike body swaying above the storm-ravaged sea. Hundreds of tentacles of varying degrees of thickness and length grew from its body, writhing in the air as if desperate to entwine something in their embrace. Aaron could not pull his eyes away from the nightmarish visage as it undulated across the thrashing sea toward the beach.
“The darkness of the ocean became my dwelling,” said the thing that resembled his brother. “And there I thrived, hidden beneath the waves—until the Lord God sensed my greatness and sent His angelic messengers to snuff out my glorious light.”
The monster was closer now. Large, opaque sacks dangled hideously from its glistening body, swaying like pendulums as it lurched closer to land.
Aaron was unable to take his eyes from the horribly awesome sight, surprised that he could even think, let alone speak. “You’re so wonderful that God decided to take you out?”
The Stevie-thing ignored his question. “The ocean was my domain, and any who dared transverse them were subject to my wrath—and I soon developed a taste for the lives of those the Creator sent to destroy me.”
The enormous sea beast loomed above Aaron. Even from this distance, he could see that its mass was covered in rows of fine scales that glistened with the colors of the rainbow. If it weren’t so outright hideous, he might have found it beautiful. There was a blinding flash of lightning, followed by an explosion of thunder—and the pregnant clouds opened up in a deluge of thick, driving rain.
“That’s what has kept me alive over the millennia, and what will eventually free me from my prison beneath the sea.”
The viscous torrents coated Aaron’s body, forcing him down upon the sand. The ground could not absorb the thick, milky fluids, and they pooled around him, ever rising.
The beast reached the shore, hundreds of tiny muscular appendages propelling the nightmare up onto the beach. “I sense in you a power that both frightens—and excites,” the monster said, its voice now coming from two places—his little brother and the thing upon the shore, a perverse stereo effect echoing through the air. “Never have I encountered one such as you.”
Aaron fought to stand, but he felt the ground beneath him shift, rising up to hold him fast. The foul rain continued to fall, coating his body in a layer of slime
. “What is this place?” he frantically asked the doppelgänger of his brother.
“It could have been your individual paradise,” the entity explained, its voice a disgusted rumble. “Like a bee to the flower, I used the promise of personal heaven to lure you to me. A place where you would have been content until your final days.” Stevie shook its head in disappointment. “But you have rejected it.”
“It’s not real,” Aaron spat, attempting to keep the fluid that rained from the sky and flowed down his face from entering his mouth. “It’s a lie.”
The thing that had taken on the guise of Stevie scrambled from its hole and walked casually toward the gigantic behemoth that had emerged from the sea. “Be it lie—or truth,” it said, approaching the front of the beast. The creature responded to the strange child’s approach by opening its cavernous maw.
The rain of slime was falling all the harder now, and Aaron felt himself violently sucked beneath the surface. His arms became trapped in the rising mire that accumulated upon the ground, and he thrashed in a futile attempt to free himself from the hungry earth, but to little avail.
Stevie had entered the mouth of the sea monster; the circular opening was ringed with razor-sharp teeth. It reminded Aaron of the mouth of a piranha fish. The boy stood there, peering out as it slowly began to close. “It all ends the same,” he said from within the monster’s maw. “You within the belly of the beast—food for Leviathan.”
The final words ringing in his ears, over the storm’s rage, the great beast snapped closed its mouth, reared backward—and threw its mass back into the roiling sea.
Aaron struggled; it seemed as though the harder he fought, the faster he was pulled deeper. It all ends the same, he heard the inhuman voice reverberate in his mind, his head beginning to sink below the surface. He tried to scream, to bellow his belief that this was all some twisted mind manipulation, but it was cut short—abruptly silenced as a mixture of the sand, and the slime that fell in torrents from the black sky, flowed into his mouth and down his throat. You within the belly of the beast, the monster had gurgled. Food for Leviathan.
••••
The beast that was Leviathan reclined its massive shape against the cramped confines of the cave wall, where it had been trapped for countless millennia. The monster was content for now, for many of the digestive sacks that dangled from its body were filled with angelic life—brimming with power that would bring the dark deity to eventual release.
Its latest feed—the half-breed—the Nephilim, fought mightily to be free of Leviathan’s hungry embrace, his mind filled with panic.
“Your struggles are futile.” The monster wormed its way into Aaron’s frenzied thoughts. “Take comfort in knowing that the power that resides within you—now flowing into me will be used to reshape the world. Through the eyes of my minions I have seen what the Creator’s world has become: a place teetering daily on the brink of chaos.”
Leviathan showed the young man within its belly disturbing images of the world at large. Scenes of war, wanton violence, and death flashed before the Nephilim’s mind’s eye, a world seemingly touched by madness.
“This is what God has done,” the beast growled. “I can do better. When I am finally free from my prison beneath the earth and sea, I will use your power, your marvelous strength, to push this place toward pandemonium. And then I shall mold it in my glorious image.”
Thousands of Leviathan’s black-shelled spawn writhed eagerly beneath the protective cover of its scales. It would be they that would carry out the will of the beast, changing and twisting the existing fauna—from the inside out. The idea of being unleashed upon the planet made them chitter in happy anticipation.
The Nephilim continued to fight, refusing to allow the digestive nutrients to begin the process of his absorption. This annoyed the great beast, and again, it delved into the captive’s mind. Indelicately it tore into his memories, and found the recollection of a life most mundane—or it was, until the power of Heaven inside his frail human shell awakened to pursue some long-forgotten, ancient prophecy of redemption.
Leviathan had no time for prophecy; it had a world to conquer.
The one called Aaron thrashed and bucked as Leviathan picked unmercifully through his memories. The beast saw the awakening of the angelic nature, the resurrection of his pet—imbibing the lowly animal with a life-force that it was currently finding most delicious—the death of his parental guardians, and the furious battle with the leader of the Powers’ host, Verchiel.
The monster writhed within its prison of rock. Long had it anticipated Verchiel, and those who followed him, to seek out and attempt to eradicate the glory that was Leviathan in the name of God—but it never came to be. For some reason, it had been spared this attack. Leviathan continued to exist, feeding on prey that would allow it to survive, drawing those of an angelic nature to it. Like the cunning anglerfish, the sea beast psychically dangled the tantalizing promise of bliss before the pathetic creatures of Heaven, and it was only a matter of time before they were ensnared, resting inside its ravenous digestive sacks.
When it was finally able to emerge from its underground prison, Verchiel and the Powers would need to be dealt with. And they would feel the ferocity of Leviathan’s wrath and know its insatiable hunger.
The picture of a small child—the Nephilim’s sibling—flashed within the monster’s mind. It was the boy-child it had used to bring the Nephilim here to Blithe. But the Nephilim saw through the ruse, and attempted to free himself—unsuccessfully.
Leviathan would do everything in its power to keep the half-breed as his own. The life-force within him was strong, intoxicating, and it would serve the behemoth well in its eventual dominion of the world.
It could sense that the Nephilim was thinking of the child again—the child in the clutches of Verchiel. This agitated the Nephilim, made him struggle all the more, interrupting the pleasures of the digestive process. Leviathan was annoyed, and again forced his way into the angelic being’s thoughts. It would need to assure the youth that any hope of rescuing his brother from the clutches of the Powers was futile.
“Give up,” said Leviathan to the Nephilim. “Your struggles are all for naught.”
The great beast painfully recoiled, the mental activity of the angelic being frantically struggling within one of his many bellies, causing renewed discomfort.
In the youth’s mind there was a thought, an image of a blinding light, a light so bright that it could pierce even the most infinite of stygian depths. And the light, that horrible, searing light, had begun to take shape, becoming something that filled the ancient deity with a feeling of dread.
The light in the Nephilim’s mind had become a weapon, a weapon Leviathan had not seen since the fateful battle that had trapped it in the underground cavern.
The light had become a sword—the sword of God’s messenger.
••••
Aaron was drowning.
He tried with all his might to fight it, to keep the foul liquid from inside his body, but there was a voice, a calm, soothing voice that attempted to convince him that this was the wrong thing to do, that the fight would only prolong his pain.
Then the silky smooth tones inside his head, which promised him the end to his suffering if he would only give up, told him that his little brother was dead, that the angel Verchiel had destroyed the child soon after he was taken, that the fight was all for nothing.
And there was the overpowering sorrow of this knowledge, combined with the weighty sadness he had already been carrying: the death of his parents, being forced to flee the life he’d built for himself—to leave Vilma—it was all too painful. He had almost started to believe that it was best for him to submit, to allow the milky solution to fill his mouth and flow into his lungs.
But then the sword was there—the mysterious weapon seemingly forged from the rays of the sun, piercing the darkness of his innermost misery, burning away the shroud of sorrow and despair that enveloped hi
m to reveal the truth.
The truth.
Aaron screamed within the membranous sack, expelling the foul liquids that had managed to find their way into his body. The sword was in his hand, as it had been that night in his dream, glowing like the new dawn, revealing the true nature of the nightmare that had taken him captive. He drew back the sword of light and cleaved his way through the fleshy, elastic wall of his prison. In his mind he heard a scream—the shriek of a monster in pain.
The fluid immediately began to drain from the open cut in the digestive organ, and he was able to breathe. The stench of the air within the sack was foul, but it was what his aching lungs craved nonetheless. He gulped greedily at the fetid atmosphere, like a man dying of thirst, coughing up remnants of the invasive liquid.
The fleshy chamber, in which he was still imprisoned, began to buck and sway, bellows of rage and pain thundering around him.
He had to get out, to escape the grabbing, organic confines, and he threw himself at the gash he had cut into it. It was what he imagined birth to be—squeezing his head through the slice—which had, miraculously, already begun to heal. Aaron tumbled from the wound, falling a great distance, before landing upon a floor of solid rock with a jarring thud. Stars exploded before his eyes, and for a moment he thought he might lose consciousness, but he shook it off, scrambling to stand, the weapon of light still in hand.
He looked around and saw that he was in a vast, underground cavern. The place was eerily quiet except for the distant thrum of the pounding surf. Thick patches of a luminescent fungus grew on the walls, throwing a sparse and eerie green light about the sprawling cave.
The blow came from behind. His mind likened it to the approach of a freight train, hitting him with such force that he was thrown through the air to land against a far wall. His head was ringing, and the bones of his back and legs screamed their protest as he struggled to regain his footing. He was bleeding from a dozen places, but still managed to hold on to the sword of light and brandished it as he fought to stand erect.