32.11

 

“But we have made beauty, too.”

“Beauty?” Hasmed scoffs. “Everything you have made is as dirt to the Creator. What beauty rivals that of the cosmos? Of the once-teeming seas? Of the flocks of the air? Of the mysteries of the earth?”

“There’s Art. Cimema. Theatre.” Roisin looks around at the others. “I’m an artist. So is Paul. Steve’s a playwright and an actor. We bring beauty into lives that would wither without it.”

“Music, too.” Astaroth pipes up. “Such music they make, brother. Imagine all the music of the angels, magnified and sung by an orchestra and choir. Beethoven, for example.” He holds up his hands as if he was a conductor, and it is as if there is an eighty-instrument ensemble in their tiny living room. The opening strains of his fifth symphony pierce the air, drifting across time like a flight of Monarch butterflies as the opening bars ring out. “Da Da Da Dum…”

“Rubbish. I’d rather hear shouting.” Hasmed wipes across the air and the music stops abruptly. “All these are distractions from the glory of God. All these things were given you by the Fallen, to tempt you down the path of Avarice and depravity. All the time spent on these Arts should have been offered up in prayer and worship to the Almighty.” Hasmed makes his hands into points and gouges out his newly-formed eyes, extracting them to drop them on the shabby carpet,

The mantle pulses behind Roisin’s ribs, echoing its brother inside the Angel and marking this as a key point in the turning of the world. She can feel it reaching out, and as if a distant relative  calling her name, the echoing response of Knowledge. “So that’s it? So long and not even a ‘thanks for all the fish?’”

“Fish? Your kind poisons them all.” He reaches into his own chest and Roisin can hear the shriek of the mantle inside her head as he grips it and pulls it free. Exposed to the light it pulses as if in relief, and Roisin once more feels it inside her groin. “You see? You have even corrupted Knowledge with your Arts and your Science and your Lust.” He transfers his grip to both hands at the hood of the mantle.

Astaroth’s face pales. “No, brother. You cannot do this. You must not.”

“It is time for it all to end, and for us to become One with the Creator again.”

“One with everything?” Steve laughs, and Roisin wonders if his mind has finally given up and gone on holiday.

“Do what?” Roisin looks from Steve to Astaroth. “He’s not going to…”

But what they feared is exactly what the Angel of Annihilation does. He pulls his hands apart, each with a tight grip on the mantle. Its shriek echoes through the planes; terror and agony and the ecstasy of death combined in one thin wail that sounds worse than her childhood friend’s brother when he was hit by a car and thrown thirty feet into a Restaurant sign, shattering both legs and his pelvis before dropping him into a patch of stinging nettles at the bottom. It finally stops shrieking when he passes the half-way mark and each section hangs limply from his grip.

When the mantle is split in twain, he holds up the parts to the ceiling and speaks in the tongue of the Angels: “Lord, here is the Fifth seal broken, for thy judgement that is forthcoming.”

“The fifth seal?” Roisin’s eyes open wide in horror. “No! That heralds the Apocalypse.”

Hasmed takes a deep breath. “When All shall be judged, and only the worthy will ascend.” He looks down at her, and he seems very, very tall at this moment. “Which includes you, little Famine-who-was.”

Under his feet the carpet has vanished, the floor has vanished and the downstairs flat, which should have been clearly visible if the residents there hadn’t already run in fear of their lives, has also vanished. Roisin is looking down into what seems like a pit, where there are multitudes of people all pressed together and raising their faces to the light that has appeared far over their heads, and despite the depth of the pit and the distance of the people – or perhaps because the acoustics are perfect – she can hear their words clearly, and they are praying and crying out: “How long must we suffer here, O Lord, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”