The Anchorites: Chapter 63
Erupting from the earth, spinning slowly, hunching its shoulders, rose the mother of all carrion. Its hoary head thrust heavenward like a wicked spear.
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63
“And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth.”
Revelation 12:16
Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather
Matthew 24:28
The train was moving in earnest now. Abraheem felt his body sway as it turned around a corner. Leaning on the control board, he shot a glance at Noi. He could feel her sorrow before he confirmed it. Her eyelids were swollen, and her bottom lip trembled.
Hareed stood on the other side, steely-eyed and watchful. There was no hint of his usual joviality in his set jaw. An image came unbidden to Abraheem’s mind: This is what Moses must have looked like, staring out at the Red Sea.
Havel pushed his way to the front. “Here, Abra, here’s the map.” He pulled the binder out of his pack and set the transparencies on the console. Noi grabbed them. Eager to work, thought Abraheem. She must have loved Brian at some point.
“There is a junction one kilometer in. We will need to manually set the course westward at the fork. This will require one of us to get out of the train and pull the lever.”
“I shall do this,” answered Hareed. A storm brewed in his eyes. No one argued with him. All four of them stared out the large glass windshield. The gloom of the tunnel was broken only by the dim headlights of the train. Abraheem and Havel took seats next to the control board.
“She left?” ventured Abraheem, putting a hand on Havel’s shoulder.
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t know how to bring this up, but the King told me she would not have been allowed into the city.”
Havel was quiet for a long time as they bumped along the track. Then he said in a very quiet voice,
“Please, Lord, I don’t want to be like that older brother, forever searching and never receiving.”
“Here we are!” shouted Noi. Abraheem craned his neck and saw the tunnel split in two directions. The lights were not bright enough to pierce more than ten meters into either path. Hareed stepped off the train and walked to a terminal that stood at the confluence.
“At least we are out of that godforsaken city,” Noi said, taking off her glasses and holding them up to the cabin light.
Suddenly, something shook the ground all around them, and bits of rock and soil rained down, clattering on the metal roof of the train. Abraheem heard a faint yet sinister warbling on the edge of his senses, soft but growing louder. It reminded him of hearing the kids next door play—screaming and calling out each other’s names. The sound grew into a wail, like the wind, then into a scream like a victim’s. Abraheem saw Hareed in the dusty light of the train, switching the track line, straining against the lever.
Just then, the darkness in the eastern path rolled up like a curtain made of feathers, exposing, in its aperture, a single enormous eye. The eye took up the entirety of the tunnel, white around the edges, its iris an amber slit, narrow but widening.
The black feathers rolled and gyrated again, producing a beak in place of the eye. Air blasted from its nares and blew Hareed’s hair and clothes back. Moses, yes, windswept Moses. Hareed stood tall in front of the titan. The beak opened to expose a hard purple tongue and then, fast as lightning, there was a snap—and he was gone.
Hareed was gone.
Abraheem felt the pupil of his own heart dilate. He remembered what those other demons had said about “feeding him to Mother.”
“We have to go! Now!” Abraheem shouted. “Lord, help us!” The beak rolled up and away, exposing the eye once more, and as it spun, fussing in its subterranean confines, the earth shook again—different this time. Hungry now, the slitted pupil constricted, exposing more of the white. Accompanying this, another shriek split Abraheem’s ears.
Rubble fell all around them, and dust blinded their view. Noi was frozen to the spot. The train lurched forward again. But they were moving. How? Abraheem thought. What about the debris, the rubble? Surely support beams would have fallen in their path? Yet the ride was smooth. He wished he could see out the windows.
Abraheem got an idea and moved through the terrified throng of Alexandrians to the back of the car. There, the dust had begun to settle. He pressed his forehead to the glass and strained through the murk. He saw many fast-moving objects flicking in and out of sight. They were coming from every angle. He caught a better glimpse as three long tentacles wrapped themselves around a large metal strut.
“The earth is helping!” he shouted, triumphant. He rushed back to the front once more. The walls on either side webbed outward, creating a network of supports. Something slithered, sending large, snake-like appendages to clear rubble and detritus from the tracks at lightning speed. Hope filled his heart.
“We will make it through!” He looked at Havel and Noi.
“The next junction takes us to the surface,” said Havel, looking up from the binder.
Abraheem barely had time to breathe easy before the train shot out from underground. In a second, the darkness was evicted, lashed away by the triumphant light of a bloody sunrise. Fresh air tore through the dust and sand, scouring the train clean.
The rising sun crested a raised bridge bordering the west side of Alexandria, bathing them in a wash of apocalyptic twilight. The red star rose landside over distant mountains, leaving the seaside in somber darkness. Abraheem opened the door to see more clearly. Wind whipped through the car. His scarf kissed his cheek goodbye as it flew into empty space and away from him forever.
The next moment contained too much. Abraheem’s eyes widened with fear and hope at the same time. Fit to burst, he and his flock were confronted with horrors and wonders alike.
The Library could be seen from their vantage point on the raised subway bridge. To their collective amazement, the Library of Alexandria began to sink, crumbling at its center. What rose from its smoking ruin, Abraheem would never forget as long as he lived.
Erupting from the earth, spinning slowly, hunching its shoulders, rose the mother of all carrion. Its hoary head thrust heavenward like a wicked spear. A bubbling black spiral appeared above the colossal beast, crowning it in darkness. The winds of that primordial vortex churned like the surface of a witch’s cauldron. Abraheem felt a wave of vertigo as he watched the Arch Demon rise to its apex. Four wings opened like a jackknife. The Bird screamed, and from the earth its spawn burst forth to meet it in foul swarms. A terrible voice rang out, sounding far away and yet clear as a bell:
“God can not tell a lie; the kingdoms of men belong to us now!”
Midnight Snack (New Project)
Midnight Snack is a food review blog written by Anna Okkes.
Each week, Anna ventures out into the city to discover new culinary offerings in The Nightward — a speakeasy/pop-up community shunned to the shadows. Follow along as she eats her way through the underground in search of the infamous takeaway: The Yawning Naan.
🔗 https://kckingauthor.substack.com/s/midnight-snack
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Demons, horse lords, knights, mages, love, betrayal, and revenge.
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I spent last summer reading Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and E. R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros. I fell in love with the language of Jacobean–Spenserian prose. I wrote Lanterna Magica as an exercise, but it quickly became a story I wanted to tell.
🔗 https://kckingauthor.substack.com/p/lanterna-magica-e83
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