Fiction By John Everson

• "Only Believe" is a futuristic sci-fi/fantasy tale with heavy religious overtones that was first published in a small perfectbound anthology called The Cosmic Unicorn in 1995.

"Only Believe"

Originally published in The Cosmic Unicorn
Spring 1995

 

t was dusk when the man stumbled across the border of Sanctuary. He'd been running a long time; his gait was a shuffling, palsied, forward hurtle. Once inside the Green he dropped to his knees, and, like a pilgrim on a foreign shore, collapsed fully to kiss the ground. But he didn't get up.

Jaremy happened to be in South Quarter when the man shambled in; he saw the disbelief on the stranger's face when he hit the Green. Jaremy felt as surprised as the stranger looked – it had been months since anyone from Outside had entered Sanctuary – and that occurrence had changed everything. He tried to ignore the ice in his belly at this latest intrusion, which part of him could only take as an ill omen. He shook his head, lay down his rake, and carried the limp form to East Wing. After making the man comfortable, he went to the chapel. “A man has been delivered to Sanctuary, Mother.”

Jaremy shifted from one foot to the other, uncomfortable with her gaze. Mother Geena was bleeding today, he could see from the marks she left on the handrail. She didn't rise from kneeling, merely watched him over her shoulder, waiting for him to continue. Her hair was dark, cropped short and straight to fall just below her ears. Rafe cut it for her once a month with his pruning shears. She was just a slip of a woman, he thought to himself. To go through all this pain . . .

“I set him up in East Wing, Mother. He seemed in pretty good shape, considering.”

“Bring him to me when he's been fed and rested,” she answered him softly, her thin, girlish voice barely above a whisper. “He must have come from a very long way.”

She turned back to stare at the statue of Christ on the cross in front of her. “Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,” she murmured. He dipped his head a moment before turning and stealing quietly out of the chapel.

* * * * *

he wanderer's name was Krieg, and he woke in a bed. Sunshine warmed the white sheets near his head. Through a window, he could smell the clean, fresh scent of summer. Roses, he thought. This had to be a dream. Since Ardmore had fallen, piece by ripping piece, into the sky, Krieg had been running. He ate whatever was green (or nearly so) and still attached to the earth – which was to say, not much. And the last time he'd seen roses, he'd been a child.

How could he have run through hell to arrive here, in a fairy tale room of sunlight and flowers . . .

He remembered watching rain streak past him through the Zone, headed east. It never touched the ground, just squirted in an obstinate silver streak sideways through the air like a high-powered hose spray. The deadly water scoured everything from the earth that dared stand above the ground. It had been all he could do to keep from involuntarily lifting off and joining the storm. But he'd held on to a raw beam of steel still jutting out from a concrete foundation until the ripping, stinging rain suddenly stopped.

He walked until the rocks around him began to drift, sloughing like drunken sailors about the field. He hugged ground for awhile, hands in tornado drill position to protect his head. When he, too started to rise, he kicked out his feet, slapped at a passing rainbow convergence, and his feet hit the dirt once more – this time running until he got to a lone tree he used as an anchor. Everything around the tree looked gray. Gray rock, gray earth, grey sky. He could see the unhinged rainbow traveling due south – away from the squirting rain.

He stared closely at his anchor, unable to discern if the lone sentinel was dead or alive. Even the tree's bark seemed the color and texture of broken slate. A butterfly landed in its nearly barren branches a couple feet above. Its wings were vibrant, glowing orange and violet against the anemic sky. In what looked like time lapse photography, the wings dulled, turning a musty ocher. The insect slowly fanned and then held its wings close as they shrunk and blackened. The butterfly continued a diminution process, shrinking quickly and quietly in upon itself. The quiet was what really kept his attention riveted. The absence of a scream was more powerful than the exclamation of pain that should have accompanied such a violent transformation. With a lurch, the disfigured butterfly rolled off the branch and landed on his head.

He shrugged it off, running his hands through his hair in disgust afterward. The butterfly hit the ground a gray caterpillar and began crawling towards the tree. He touched his hair again and realized what had been wrong the first time. His bald spot was gone, filled in by a thick patch of fuzz. Realizing suddenly that he felt somehow lighter as well, he looked at his belly. His paunch was sucking in.

A Growback Zone. He pushed off from the tree and began running again, hoping he cleared the zone before regressing too much. He couldn't deal with being a teen again. Acne sucked.

Krieg opened his eyes again, but remained deep in thought. Some cultists preached the world had begun the change when the number of people who believed in gods became less than those who did not. Sort of a seesaw theory of religious physics. Like the cries of street preachers – “Repent because the end is near,” – they were largely ignored. Krieg himself thought the idea was so much rubbish. The physical laws of the universe were changing – an unfathomable change, granted – but what did that have to do with belief or disbelief in fickle deities? Scientists theorized that apparent collapse of the very laws of nature was a cyclical change, perhaps last occurring at the shifting of the magnetism of the poles millions of years ago.

The strange thing was in the way the Change spread. It seemed to hit the most populous areas first, sending incoherent refugees fleeing into the country. But the Change followed, and city by city blinked off the map. Krieg figured Ardmore, the last town he'd lived in, was one of the last to go – they hadn't received a radio or television signal in months. Then, one morning when he awoke to the screams, he knew Ardmore's time had come as well. After throwing together a bag with as many essentials as he could find in 30 seconds, he had dashed out the front door of his house, just in time to see the other homes on his block alternately implode, explode, or simply lift off into empty space, disintegrating as they went.

He ran north, ignoring the wails and horrendous blasts and crunching destruction behind him. He had no plan, no idea of where he could go – there was nowhere. But he refused to die with the town. Out in the open, if need be, but not under his own roof.

A week in the ever-altering NFW Zone (named by a hysterical news commentator who'd cried “Nothing Fuckin' Works!” as the desk and room around him began to melt on-air before the transmission itself abruptly winked out) had nearly killed him. Miraculously, he avoided the deadliest scourges, but when he saw the distant border of Sanctuary, he laughed aloud.

“So that's it then,” he chuckled blackly. “Now it feeds me mirages. Either I'm completely cracked, or that's emerald poison.”

He'd picked up his pace anyway.

His memory after that point grew foggy. Apparently the place was no mirage; someone had found him and brought him here to this surreally sunny fairtale room perfumed with extinct flowers.

“So, you're awake.”

Krieg drifted out of his thoughts to flash a stumpy little man his teeth. “For the moment. Where is it I've awoken? Who are you?”

The man grinned a craggy smile and tossed him a t-shirt and sweat pants.

“Put those on, we're going for a walk. We call this place Sanctuary. It used to be some kind of monastery or convent, I think. My name is Jaremy. I found you kissing our lawn two nights ago.”

“Two nights?” He pulled on clothes, noting that someone had stripped him before placing him in bed.

“Krieg,” he offered, extending a hand. “Didn't I have anything with me when you found me?”

“Just the clothes on your back,” Jaremy replied. “And there wasn't much left of them. Come on.”

Jaremy led him down a dark panelled hallway. Their footsteps clicked oppressingly loud on the blood red tiles.

“We don't use this wing much, so we put visitors here,” his guide explained.

“You get many?”

“Visitors?” Jaremy frowned. “Not in a long while.”

“How many live here?” Krieg asked.

“23, counting Mother.”

“Mother?”

“Mother Geena. She keeps Sanctuary alive,” the man answered matter-of-factly. His heavy voice seemed to drop another notch at this admission. Krieg shot him a glance.

Krieg shot him a glance.

“What, is she the cook or somethin’?”

Jaremy didn’t laugh.

“Her blood . . . her faith, holds the world together here.”

He stifled a chuckle. So he’d stumbled into one of those “end of the world” cults. Cruel but appropriate irony that they should be the last to snuff out.

They left the dismal building through a heavy wooden door and crossed an acre-wide expanse of rich, green grass to a small church. While only the size of a peasant house, its roof sloped on a steep peak and a tiny bell spire poked up from the center. A cross hung above the double white doors in front. Krieg could see now that this had indeed once been a religious retreat. The church was built in the middle of the compound, and flanked on four sides by long two-story brick buildings. From the number and symmetrical spacing of the windows, he guessed they were intended as dormitories.

“What do you do here?” Krieg asked.

“We serve the Mother.”

“Well, yes, but . . . what do you do?”

“Oh. I tend the grounds. Several of us do. Most work on the farm. And there are a couple of cooks, some keep the Wings clean, everyday stuff . . . well, here we are.”

They stood at the rear of the chapel, as simple an affair inside as out, Krieg noticed – a half a dozen wooden pews on either side of a center aisle which led to a small alter and a woman kneeling before a larger than life statue of Jesus Christ.

“Leave him here with me, Jaremy.”
Her voice drifted through the air soft as a whisper, but still bright, light and musical as a windchime. He walked down the aisle to stand at her side and extended his hand.

“Krieg Batsi, ma’am.”

Dark, wide eyes met his own.

“Geena,” she answered. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your hand.” She extended a pale palm by way of explanation. Krieg could see the floor through its center. A smear of blood etched the puncture hole in sharp relief.

His face drew back in concern. “Isn’t anyone here a doctor?”

She didn’t reply. Instead, gritting her teeth, she rolled to a sitting position and slowly removed her step-in shoes. Similar holes marred both feet, as well as her other hand. While they didn’t seem to be old wounds, neither were any of them bleeding dangerously. A tracing or a trickle of fresh blood surrounded each.

“This is the price to be paid for Sanctuary,” she said. “He only asked that men believe. They did not, and now more must be offered.”

She noticed something in his face and smiled, as if at some inner joke. Her tone softened further.

“You don’t believe in a god, do you?”

For some reason, he felt ashamed.

“No.”

“Neither did I once. Before I came here.”

There was a long pause; Krieg searched for something to say.

“How long have you been at Sanctuary,” he finally blurted.

“Six . . . eight months, a year? I don’t know. Time moves slower here it seems.”

“When was the last time you had a visitor from outside?”

“The last ‘visitor’ – she smiled again - was myself. And I don’t think I arrived here by chance. I don’t think you got here by chance. He must have chosen you for something – or you would never have gotten through.”

Her thin eyebrows crinkled and she abruptly turned back to the altar. “I really must continue my prayers now. Enjoy Sanctuary while we still have it, Krieg. Sometimes I wonder how much more I can . . .” She hesitated, as if wanting to say more but unable to complete the thought aloud. Then she began praying. “Our father, who art in heaven . . .”

He left to find Jaremy.

* * * * *

ver the next few days Krieg met the other refugees in Sanctuary. If Geena – or The Mother, as they all referred to her – was really responsible somehow for holding things together, Krieg secretly wondered if they were worth it. Like Jaremy, they appeared earnest and friendly enough, but they also seemed to lack spark, imagination. They did their tasks to ensure that life moved along and thought nothing about why they did them or if they would still do them tomorrow.

At dinner one evening Krieg sat next to a balding, bespectacled man named Kris, who reminded him of a shopkeeper he once knew. That shopkeeper had been ripped open by a gust of the Change. His guts had plunged through their fleshy prison to wriggle spasmodically on the street while Krieg and he had been in the midst of conversation. One look at the slimy red snaking intestines and one second of his dying friend’s screams had been enough. Krieg had run. Fast.

“Do you believe there’s a god holding this place together because of Geena?” Krieg asked Kris.

The man chomped away at a hunk of barbecued pork for a moment, screwed up his eyes and pondered.

“The Mother does something that keeps this place together. If it’s talking to God or whatever, I don’t pay no mind. Long’s she keeps doing it!”

Krieg had already asked several others the same question, and received similar responses. The farmer farmed, the chef cooked, the launderer washed – and Geena prayed. And that was how things worked.

In the afternoons, Geena rang the churchbell and the members of Sanctuary came to sit for a few minutes in the cool air of the chapel.

“Let’s thank God for another day,” she would say, lifting her arms towards the sky. Krieg found himself admiring the way the long white t-shirts she always wore draped and rewrinkled themselves around her shoulders and chest as she began the noon prayer.

“Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses. As we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, amen.”

The whole chapel reverberated with the prayer, but Krieg noted that Geena was the only voice announcing the words with vigor. Everyone else seemed to say it . . . woodenly. And afterwards, they streamed back out to pick up their chores wherever they’d been left off, without apparent concern. There was no spirituality visible. This was not turning out to be the cult he’d thought it was – the only believer here seemed to be Geena.

One day after the prayer, Krieg cornered Jaremy outside.

“Do you believe in God?” he asked the gardener without explanation.

Jaremy looked pained by the question. His head slumped – just a bit – and he answered quietly.

“I hope there is a God, Krieg. But I do not believe in him.”

“Does anybody here believe in God?”

“That is why we have Geena.” The shorter man turned, grabbed the rake from its resting place against the wall of the chapel, and stumped off to the field, obviously perturbed by such a penetrating question. Geena had asked questions like that, Jaremy remembered. And look what had happened to her.

Krieg shook his head. This whole crowd was nuts. The last of the Sanctuarians – as he had begun to think of them – had left the chapel. He walked back inside. Geena was back at her kneeler on the altar. He could hear her mumbling the “Our Father.”

“Is that the only prayer you know?”

She jumped a little, startled to hear another voice. Turning to look at him, her face lit up.

“Oh, it’s you. I thought you’d be back at the farm by now.”

He crossed the church and sat beside her on the kneeler. “I thought I’d stay and talk with you instead. So is it?”

“Is what?

“Is the ‘Our Father’ the only prayer you know.”

She laughed - a delicate, breakable sound.

“Pretty much. I told you, I wasn’t religious before.”

“Neither, it seems, is anyone else around here,” he answered.

She sighed and wrung her hands together. He noticed they didn’t seem to be bleeding today.

“I know. That’s why I stay here. Someone needs to make sure He doesn’t stop looking at us. James, he had these – she held out her blemished hands – before I came. I miss him so much,” her voice trembled. Krieg put his arm around her.

“It’s alright,” he said, pulling her closer. “I think God will let you take a break once in a while.”

She looked up at him then, her eyes wet with tears and, he thought, longing. All he could see were black pools of need. He bent to kiss her, brushing his lips on her forehead. And then the eyes sparked and she pushed him away roughly.

“No, no. Don’t you see. I can’t. If I think of you I can’t think of him. This is what happened to James. No. Look.”

She held out her hands.

“When these don’t bleed, things start falling apart. You have to leave me alone.”

She turned and slumped over the kneeler cushion sobbing.

He touched her shoulder tentatively, but she pushed him away once more.

‘Whatever,’ he thought, and left the church.

Geena didn’t take meals in the main hall with the rest of the Sanctuarians over the next few days, and Krieg stayed away from the chapel.

But he couldn’t help but notice that things were going wrong. Kris got hit in the head by a falling barrel at the farm – though he was in the middle of an open field at the time. Emily, one of the cooks, was laid up after a pot of boiling water mysteriously lifted off the stove and crashed to the ceiling. It took three men on ladders to heave the pot out from the rut it dug into in the old plaster. Similar odd (though not as harmful) accidents were occurring to everyone in Sanctuary. Splotches of telltale Outside gray were taking hold on the perimeter of the Green.

* * * * *

rieg pulled on two shirts before heading to the chapel. Though it was the middle of August, as near as he could figure, it felt like snow in the air. The wind gusted around him as he walked across the browning lawn. It was looking like time to run again, he frowned. But first, he’d talk with Geena.

“Let’s thank God for this day.”

Geena didn’t sound at all thankful, he thought as he took a seat in the last pew. Her voice shook as she led the daily prayer. The usually quiet bunch of Sanctuarians were whispering to each other as they filed out the aisle afterwards. Krieg stayed behind, watching Geena as she dropped back on her well-worn kneeler and bowed her head.

“Go away, please,” she said, not even turning to meet his gaze.

“Will that help?” he asked softly. “I haven’t seen you in a week – and things don’t look any better.”

“No they sure don’t” she yelled, jumping up and thrusting her hands out at him. “Look at these. Look!”

The holes were gone. He couldn’t even see a scar where they had been.

“I started thinking of you and he left us. Now I can’t concentrate hard enough to call him back. What are we going to do?”

He grabbed Geena’s hands and pulled her into an embrace.

“We’re going to enjoy whatever little time we have,” he said, searching out those dark pools once more. This time she let him kiss her.

“Come back to my room with me,” he said, stroking her hair. “It’s quiet there. More comfortable. We can talk.”

She hesitated a moment, and then shrugged. “Why not? I’m no good here anymore.”

They made love in his bed with a fumbling desperate urgency that somehow couldn’t fulfill either of them until the supper bell rang. And all at once a frightened look came over her face.

“It’s O.K.,” he whispered, kissing her earlobe. “They’ll live without you for awhile.”

“No they won’t.” She sat up. “Don’t you get it? If nobody really believes, God looks away and everything falls apart. None of them believe in anything more than their work and that somehow, I help keep things together. They don’t pray, they don’t catch God’s eye. And now I’ve lost it completely. When I first saw you I . . . Well, I couldn’t concentrate. And now . . . Listen.”

Krieg smiled stupidly at her. She shoved him away.

“Just listen to the wind!”

Over the past hour the wind had turned from gusts to gale, thin whistles of air now as loud as sirens. Somewhere in the complex a window smashed. Somebody yelled in pain

“Oh God, no!”

Geena jumped out of the bed and pulled on a t-shirt.

“It’s no use, Geena, don’t go out there,” he pleaded.

She wouldn’t listen. In a second she was out the door and sprinting for the chapel.

Krieg pulled on his own shirt and pants and hurried to catch up to her.

It was a nightmare outside.

Rocks were whizzing through the air like newspapers in a tornado. Windows were sucking in and popping out all across the compound. Something exploded behind him. He turned to look and saw East Wing wrench itself free of the ground, leaving behind a trail of pipes and plaster. A hunk of concrete the size of his fist opened a gash on his forehead, knocking him to his knees.

He could barely see the chapel now. Blood ran into his eyes, and the wind whipped a wall of debris around him. “Geena!” he yelled, but couldn’t hear if there was an answer. The church bell, which had been ringing spasmodically in the storm adding to the feel of utter mayhem, abruptly made a loud clunk and was still. He crawled across the yard, his face and sides stung with swarming pebbles, glass, and debris. When he reached the steps the belltower was gone – along with the windows and doors. Braving the death flying all around, he dove through the entrance. Geena was near the altar. She was lying on the floor, the statue of Christ shattered across her chest.

He ran to her side, ignoring the deadly spray of matter careening through the holes left behind by the stained glass windows. Her eyes were open. A smear of crimson stained her lips.

“Geena, it’s O.K. I’ll get this off of you.”

Her eyes blinked once and focused. She looked as though she were trying to smile. But it came out a grimace of pain.

“Only . . . . believe,” she whispered. And the light died in her eyes.

He put his hand to her neck and found no pulse.

For the first time since the world fell apart, he began to cry.

He sat down next to the dead girl, and stared out the violated church entrance. Sanctuary was ending, being eaten. The gray spots approaching. Krieg realized that he couldn’t run any longer. There was no place to run any more. But it wasn’t in him to give up either. He couldn’t sit here holding the hand of a corpse and wait for the walls to cave in on him. He grasped at the only way out he could imagine.

“All right God, you win,” he yelled above the winds.

“Look at me! I believe. I’ll be your worshipper. But give us back our Sanctuary!”

The gray marched forward. He heard another of the Wings rip free of the earth. The sound was frightening in its intensity. A screaming howl of twisting metal and exploding rock. He dropped to his knees on the floor.

“Please,” he said, clumsily clasping his hands together. “Please. I believe.”

“God, I believe.”

He stiffened once, as his prayer was answered, and then began to cry in earnest.

Blood oozed from fresh punctures in his hands and his feet. He stared at the ruin of his hands for minutes before moving. Then slowly, he reached down and pried off his shoes. His head bowed in acceptance, and shook away the tears.

* * * * *

utside, the wind died. The sun cut through the gray. The Sanctuarians came out from their hiding and began to put things in order. Jaremy stared across the field at the shattered church, the ruined complex, the destruction so close to being total. He shook his head in wonder. So close to the brink . . . pain filled his voice and he mumbled softly to himself, “Should have just let it go . . . Father Krieg.”

Inside the chapel, Krieg closed his eyes in concentration, and began to pray.

“Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name . . .”

 

THE END