Chris Holm - The Big Reap

I didn’t realize until its eyes opened that this statue was not a statue at all.

A sudden glimpse of yellowed whites amidst the cracked gray flesh I took for stone, surrounding irises and pupils rheumy with age. Yellow again as lips split to reveal the not-statue’s teeth. The simple acts of eyes and lips opening shook free a thick layer of dust from the being’s face, which drifted like ash onto its vine-strewn lap.

It took me a moment to realize this statue, this man, this whatever , was smiling.

“Oh good,” he said, with a voice like snakeskin dragging across dead leaves, “you’re here.”

“Thomed?” I ventured. He nodded, loosing yet more dust from his face, his hair, his head. As it fell away, I realized beneath the inch of collected filth he was wizened and emaciated, a living skeleton wrapped tight with age-cracked flesh. It, and his hair, was near as gray as the dirt that coated it. It was clear he’d been sitting there for a long while; centuries, perhaps. “You’ve been expecting me?”

“I’ve been expecting someone for quite some time,” he said. “Though not you specifically…” He tilted his head by way of polite inquisition. It took a second for me to realize he was asking my name.

“Sam,” I told him. “My name is Sam.”

“Sam,” he repeated. “Well met.”

“That remains to be seen,” I told him.

“True enough,” he replied.

His voice was accented, but only slightly. How that could be, I didn’t know. If he’d been sitting here half as long as it appeared he had, he couldn’t possibly have the grasp on modern language to understand me.

I said as much. He smiled wider and replied, “It is surprising what one might learn if one simply takes the time to listen.”

“To what?” I asked.

“To everything. To nothing at all. To the soul-song of the universe.”

I took a careful step toward him, my right hand inside my pants pocket, gripping tight the timeworn bowie knife I’d traded a fisherman McCluskey’s watch for two days back. Thomed didn’t move a whit. Bound tight with vines as he was, I wondered if he could. But I remembered the deceptive strength of his fellow Brethren, and decided I’d err on the side of caution.

“Do you know why I’m here?” I asked.

“I do,” he replied. “Just as I know about the knife you carry, and as yet wish to conceal. You’ve come to end my life.”

I thought about protesting the fact. I didn’t see the point. “Forgive me for saying so, but you don’t seem too broken up about that.”

“If it is my Maker’s will that I should cease to be, then I shall cease to be. If it is not, then She will spare me. I am prepared for either eventuality.”

“That’s awful accepting of you.”

“Yes, well, I’ve had some time to think upon the matter, and to come to terms with either outcome.”

I cast my gaze around the ruins, warm and silent in the waning afternoon. “Exactly how long have you been here?”

Thomed fell silent for a full five minutes then, his face screwed up in thought. I began to wonder if he’d ever answer. But eventually, his eyes opened once more, and he said, “One thousand seven hundred sixty-seven years, three months, two weeks, and four days.”

I snorted in surprise and disbelief. “What, no hours?”

He flashed age-dulled teeth once more, a brief, kindly smile. “I fear the time is hard to tell when one cannot see the sun.”

“I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I think your math’s off. It puts you here a good eight hundred years before the culture that built this place.”

“Your assumption is fallacious,” he replied.

“Yeah? How’s that?”

“You assume I came to this temple to worship, when in fact this temple came to me.”

“So you built this place?”

“No. I seek neither the comfort of shelter nor the vanity of monument. Simply peace.”

“You mean to say whoever built this place built it around you?”

“I do.”

“Why? You, like, some kinda god to them?”

Thomed laughed. “Actually, and to my great surprise, the temple builders hardly seemed to notice my presence here, save for the fact they seemed compelled to not disturb me. My suspicion is that they were drawn to this place for much the same reason I was.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“I assume you noted the strange silence that fell over the jungle as you approached this place?”

I did, and said as much.

“That’s because this is a special place, one of beauty, of reverence, of reflection. It has been since long before I happened by. Since long before humankind discovered it and sought to honor it with their temples. The trees know it. The animals know it. I know it. In the centuries that followed my kind’s abhorrent ritual, I found myself lost, despondent, rudderless. I had not foreseen our ritual resulting in such senseless devastation; I blamed myself and my fellow Brethren for the resultant loss of life, and felt truly crushed beneath the weight of it. And so, ashamed of what we’d done — what we’d become — I struck out on my own into the wilderness. Perhaps it was an act of self-flagellation on account of the terrible, consuming hunger I experienced, or the destruction we Nine caused. Perhaps a cowardly flight from all that reminded me of what we’d done. Whatever it was, it somehow — across my decades of ceaseless wandering — led me here. I was so taken with this spot, so certain it was where I was supposed to be, I never left. And now I expend no small amount of effort to protect it, to dissuade those who might wish to desecrate it, to ensure it remains unspoiled.”

“That’s why it’s so difficult to find?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“What makes this place so special?”

“Cambodia is a nation of fertile spiritual soil, soil in which many religions took root, and, oddly, intertwined, flourished together as one rather than waging war against each another. Here native animism blends seamlessly with Hinduism and Buddhism, despite their many differences, creating something at once new, and very, very old. Whether this syncretic nature is some aspect of the land imprinting its character upon its people or the other way around, I do not know. But regardless of the cause, the cultures that have sprung up here have an astonishing ability to reconcile the irreconcilable, to hold two contradictory beliefs at once and to find solace in their inherent contradictions. For life itself is contradiction and compromise. Life is reconciling the irreconcilable. As, I’ve spent some time discovering, is death. So this seemed the perfect place for me to try to reconcile with myself and my God what I’d done.”

“Sounds like you’ve been at it a while. A very specific while, to hear you tell it.”

“I count my days of waiting as best I can. It seems important that someone should.”

“Days of waiting. Waiting for what? For me?”

He shook his head, slow, sorrowful. “Waiting for acknowledgement. For absolution.”

“From whom — God?”

His expression showed surprise. “Who else?”

“Look, I hate to tell you pal, but before you and your Brethren buddies staged your little breakout, you were condemned to hell. Seems like when it comes to God’s forgiveness, that ship has sailed.”

“That is but your opinion.”

“Yeah? What’s another?”

Thomed looked me up and down. “One of the many apparent contradictions on which I’ve ruminated is the notion that a loving Maker would condemn Her children to an eternity outside the light of Her good grace for the sins of their infancy. If our souls are, in fact, immortal, why would our Maker confine Her judgment to the first twenty or fifty or one hundred years of life? Put another way, why would a loving parent punish their child for any longer than it took for that child to learn its lesson? And my conclusion, long coming, is that She would not. That absolution lies not beyond our reach, no matter how far gone we seem — at least, so long as we stretch forever toward it.”