Chris Holm - The Big Reap

“That’s not fair,” I said.

“Isn’t it? You can’t deny you’ve acted recklessly of late. That your heart has hardened.”

“I can’t be blamed for that. After all I’ve been through. After all I’ve lost.”

“I won’t deny your path has been one of great suffering, that you’ve taken your fair share of wounds along the way. But wounds are a funny thing. If ill-tended, they scar over, grow numb, deaden he who carries them to the sensations of the world around him. Collect enough of them, and so too shall you be. But if treated properly, they reveal new skin beneath. Sensitive, certainly, painfully so, but more capable of feeling than what came before.”

“You’re saying I’ve let go of too much of me. That I’ve become something less than what I was.”

“I’m saying the healing process is both long and painful, but ultimately it’s up to you how well it goes — and how you deal with the challenges it poses along the way. Even flesh twisted by consuming fire can be taught to feel again with time.”

“Save the fortune-cookie bullshit for someone who might give a damn,” I said.

The creature and boy both shook their heads in time. “I think you care more than you dare let on.”

“So okay, I’ve been played — or allowed myself to be. Why? What’s Lilith’s angle?”

The child shrugged. Its monster said, “Perhaps upon discovering your ability to end the Brethren, she saw the chaos created by the recent unrest as her opportunity to clean up a mess made long ago, one that very nearly came back to haunt her when Ana Jovic and Daniel Young attempted to recreate the ceremony she herself devised. She, unlike the Brethren, is not protected by the Great Truce, and therefore can still be punished for her actions should they come to light. Or perhaps her reasons are somewhat more obscure. Whatever they are, they’re known to her and her alone. But if you’re curious, you could ask her when you catch up with her.”

“It’s usually Lilith who catches up with me ,” I said. “She’s not really one to come when called. She prefers to make an entrance — usually of the appearing-when-I-least-expect-it variety. Come to think of it, you and her should hold a contest.”

“I fear her days of wielding such power are behind her,” he said.

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning I’ve taken the liberty of stripping Lilith of her powers. She is human once more. And Lilith’s fate is in your hands: for as ye sow, so shall ye reap.”

“You’re telling me I have to collect her.”

“I’m telling you it falls to you to do what must be done.”

“There has to be another way,” I said.

“There always is, but I beseech you not to seek it, for it will not end well for you.”

“What if I just refuse?”

“Then someone else will be chosen for the task. But I suspect you might prove more humane. It is up to you. Only you can decide what’s right.”

“I wouldn’t even know where to find her,” I said.

“On that count, I can provide some measure of guidance, for you see, your journey with Lilith is a closed loop. It will end where it began.”

“You mean–”

But I never bothered to finish my question. The child-thing and its mouthpiece-beast were gone.

Berlin had changed so much since I’d first laid eyes on it in the last flagging days of the Third Reich. Then, it seemed an apocalyptic wasteland, ground zero for the worst evil the modern world had ever known. The decent people who’d lived there did so in quiet and in fear, scarcely glimpsed because they were as afraid of their own fascist regime as they were of the Allies intent on leveling the once-great city they called home. Now, the city was great once more. A bustling modern metropolis — vibrant, colorful, and lively. A shining example of what humankind can accomplish, a center of art and commerce, of science, of community.

It seemed the child and his grotesque conduit were right about one thing — given time and tending, even the deepest of wounds can heal.

It was amazing to me the building in which I first awoke as a Collector was still standing. It had been redone tackily sometime in the decades hence — a sad, Sixties-modern façade slapped up over the original brick face — but it seemed Berliners found the new façade as much of an affront as I, because it was halfway through the process of being removed. Scaffolding climbed up one side of the building, and on the rooftop sat an idle crane; yellow construction refuse tubes led from upper windows to dumpsters below. For a moment, I wondered where the workers were — it was scarcely twilight, after all — but then I realized it was Saturday, the city awash with the spark of possibility that only ever seemed to fully ignite come weekend.

I wore the body of a young man who’d expired ten hours prior, the result of a congenital heart defect. Dropped over on the soccer pitch, bleeding out inside but not yet dead. Docs patched him up enough for my purposes, and filled him with fresh blood besides, but couldn’t spark his heart back into rhythm. Made the online version of Berliner Morgenpost , which the web-browser in the Edinburgh internet café I used to access it translated well enough for me to glean the salient points.

I hadn’t taken many dead vessels of late. I’d told myself they weren’t worth the bother. Sacrificed my ideals for expediency, and told myself that I deserved the break for all I’d done. Saved the world twice over by my count. Started thinking of myself as a caps-implied “Good Person”. Problem with that is, Good Person is a moving target. And this past year, I found that target moving on without me. Maybe my run-in with the creepy child-thing had gotten to me. Maybe it was the sting of Lilith’s betrayal. Whatever it was, I realized I couldn’t just keep on keeping on — that the path on which I’d stood led nowhere worth going.

The construction site around the building was paddocked with chain link six feet high — new and shiny, just like the city itself, untarnished by the corruption of the ages. The gate was fitted with a keyhole lock. Easier, even, to pick than a padlock, but hardly worth it when I could duck into the quiet, empty alley, and be up and over the fence in seconds.

Which is what I did.

The front door was unlocked. Too many subcontractors coming and going to bother, I suppose. Once inside, I considered searching the place from the bottom up, but something tugged at my gut like swallowed fishing line, pulling me inexorably upstairs.

“It will end where it began,” the child-thing had told me.

I found the stairwell by memory, felt the eerie sensation of decades dropping away. The stairs had been restored to their prewar state, though construction-dusty and unlit as they were, they reminded me of my first visit here, bomb-shaken and powerless. Not sure if those last adjectives were intended to describe the building then, or me, or both.

There were no apartments left intact upstairs. They’d been gutted. All that was left of them was framed-out walls run through with ductwork and electrical wiring, black against the twilight blue that spilled in from the windows on all sides. I strolled through them like a ghost in my own life, passing through the walls and years both, and not stopping until I stood atop the dusty floorboards facing a familiar window, glass broken in my mind, but here so new its gleaming white frame and double panes were still affixed with stickers emblazoned with the manufacturer’s logo.

Bare footprints, woman-petite, disturbed the pale dust at my feet.

I followed them with my gaze. They led toward a large jetted tub.

Delicate fingers looped around the edges of the tub — their owner crouched and still, hiding, hoping I couldn’t see.