Steph Bennion - Paw-Prints of the Gods

The sound of footsteps in the corridor outside sent her scurrying back to her own bed. Her mind was in no mood for sleep and there she lay, frantically contemplating the myriad of thoughts buzzing around her head in the darkness of her room.

Ravana was out of bed and standing by the mirror when the nurses came to wake her. She still felt very tired, but this time it was a weariness through being awake all night, her head full of unquiet thoughts, rather than the dull drowsiness of what she now accepted were tranquiliser tablets. In a way she was more alert than ever and this morning had noticed for the first time just how grubby her white room actually was, with peeling paint and mouldy cracks wherever she looked. Her headache remained, but the brief conversation with Artorius last night left her strangely elated, for now she knew she was not alone.

The nurses were both visibly disconcerted by their patient’s apparent cheerfulness. Ravana’s first words that morning threw them completely.

“Who was the little boy I saw a couple of days ago?”

Her question distracted the nurses long enough for her to slip the latest dose of pills out of harm’s way and bury them in the plant pot with all the others. The tablets had reacted badly with the soil and the potted blooms were shedding petals fast.

“What boy?” the portly Jizo said automatically. “There’s no boy here.”

“He is no concern of yours!” Lilith snapped. “Why do you ask?”

“Just curious,” replied Ravana, noting their wary reaction.

Her own suspicions were aroused when in a break from the usual routine, both nurses decided to accompany her to the bathroom and on to the waiting grey monks in the interview room. More unusual still, today they were greeted by the distant sound of singing relayed through crackling loudspeakers. A small choir were putting their heart and soul into what sounded like a church hymn, though the words were strange:

“In your head be it,” murmured Ravana. She had heard the hymn before.

“We are a little early,” Lilith told her, seeing her raise a quizzical eyebrow. “The monks wanted to see you straight after the service broadcast.”

“Service?” asked Ravana. After what the nurses had told her, it should not have been a surprise to learn that hospice life included religious services, but this was the first real confirmation that the medical centre was a church-run affair. “Can anyone join in?”

“Only the devout,” Jizo replied. Her triumphant sideways glance at her colleague suggested that while she herself qualified for such worthy status, Lilith did not.

The singing continued unabated. They arrived at the interview room, to find the two chairs on the far side of the desk unexpectedly vacant. Lilith invited Ravana to take her usual seat and then waited with Jizo at the door, presumably for the arrival of one or both of the monks. For a while Ravana was content to sit gazing longingly through the window at the distant sandy beach. After several minutes passed and neither nurse spoke, she could take the silence no more and decided to pose the question that had been on her mind since yesterday.

“Why does Brother Simha have twelve fingers?”

Jizo looked up from pulling the legs off a spider, scooped from its web near the door. Her leer had become an apprehensive stare. Ravana shivered at the sight of something alive squirming in the pocket of the nurse’s grey habit.

“Does he?” remarked Jizo, looking uncomfortable. “Can’t say I noticed.”

“Polydactyly,” Lilith replied smugly.

“Yes!” Jizo cried. “Poly-what-she-said. Some sort of dinosaur.”

“A rare congenital medical condition,” Lilith corrected, regarding Jizo with disdain. “Some people are born with extra fingers or toes.”

“Like the dinosaur,” her colleague persisted, unwilling to let go of an idea. “With big claws dripping blood and guts from all the tiny animals they’ve ripped apart and…”

“You’re thinking of a Pterodactyl,” Ravana hastily interrupted. Jizo’s wild macabre imagination made her feel sick. “I think they had wings.”

“Exactly! The extra fingers and floppy skin enabled them to fly.”

Lilith gave the weary sigh of someone who wished they were anywhere else but here. Ravana opened her mouth to ask something else, then realised the singing had stopped. A tramp of footsteps in the corridor outside sent the nervous nurses back to their positions by the door. Moments later, the monks arrived.

The two grey figures swept into the room in a blur of cloaks and scarlet sashes. They slipped silently into the waiting chairs, leaving Lilith and Jizo to disappear through the door and close it behind them. Ravana’s headache flared as the usual wave of panic crashed over her, a fear which like yesterday remained as she stared into the dark recesses of their hoods. This time she faced them with a clear mind. It dawned on her that the random emotional shapes their presence brought to mind were being generated by her implant, yet the images were quite unlike the shadowy pictures glimpsed whilst in her room. Her mind went back to the nightmare vision of twelve grey figures reaching towards her with their outstretched hands. Ravana turned her gaze from the seated figures and shuddered.

Brother Simha, the monk with lions upon his sash, nodded to his companion sat at his side, then leaned forward to level the blank stare of his hood at Ravana.

“zz-raavaanaa-zz,” he hissed, his voice cold and unwelcoming. “zz-wee-aaree-moost-coonceerneed-aaboouut-yyoouur-meemooryy-zz.”

“zz-yyoouu-aaree-noot-weell-zz,” rasped Brother Dhanus, who wore the customary archers on his sash. “zz-teell-uus-aaboouut-thee-booook-theen-yyoouu-caan-reest-zz.”

Ravana stared back, her fear growing by the minute. “What book?”

The formless shapes in her mind reverberated with angry spikes as each monk spoke. The thought of what she may have done to generate such dreadful passions terrified her. Their hatred bore down on her, threatening to swamp her with fear and drive her into insanity. She was on the verge of tipping past the point she could take no more, when a tremor passed through their linked minds, a flicker of apprehension. A sudden realisation hit her with all the force of poorly-maintained rocket booster.

“Those tablets,” she gasped. “You’re using selective mind wipes! There’s something you want me to remember. But there’s more you want me to forget!”

“zz-yyoouur-miind-muust-bee-freeeed-zz,” said Brother Simha, his voice grating painfully upon Ravana’s ears. “zz-yoouu-muust-beeliieevee-zz.”

“zz-aall-thaat-iis-paart-dooees-beeloong-zz!” cried Dhanus.

Ravana stared at the monks in disbelief, wide-eyed with terror as she finally remembered the dreadful encounter with the mad priest Taranis in the Dandridge Cole . She and her friends had witnessed the dreadful unveiling of the half-human, half-alien cyberclones the priest called his disciples, created to spread the word of the Dhusarian Church throughout the five systems. The twelve clones had turned upon Fenris, Taranis’ accomplice, reaching out with their hands to destroy his mind in a moment of pure rapture. Brother Dhanus’ words were exactly what the twelve had chanted as their victim fell lifeless to the floor. Now she saw both the monks sported the spindly six-fingered hands of the alien clones.