Once-God

The Stranger. Eater of Bone. Desert-creature of death, glutted on an ancient people.

ONCE-GOD

a Susurrant Horror story

The desert was always a trap. Its landscape stretching to a horizon which is always out of reach. Impassable.

The air has never known humidity, and all is arid. My throat claws at itself as I swallow. Too little left in my flask.

I am a fool. How did I think I could escape this way? There is no life here.

Save for one other thing of life, beyond myself. It does not appear to be life at first, merely a dark blot which whispers at the ground from above, and then disappears again. I crane my neck to see it, but the glare of this world is a desolate mirror and I see nothing. The sky burns me and I look away. But I know it is there. Whatever it is, it slides across that mirror easily.

Watching me.

I have fallen so many times that my white cotton is scratched apart and coated in the substrate of this place. There is blood, and the thing of the sky appears for longer each time.

It watches me silently.

I am so tired.

I lie down, just briefly. Perhaps night will fall soon – perhaps it will fall early. And then there will be a reprieve.

--

I awake, and there is a hideous scratching close to me. I start in alarm, and silence falls. The darkness which only existed behind my eyes was not enough of a repose: the still-burning sun above is stabbing fire. Dark has not fallen.

The thing has settled upon the ground, however, and it watches me.

It is a hideous thing.

It stands almost the height of a man, crest-feathers sharp and red as the blood it hunts. Great winged shoulders quietly raise and lower, as though it is testing its own weight upon the desert floor. And still, it watches me, eyes aflame with amber from above a great, serrated beak.

I have heard of such creatures. Born of the desert and destined to return to it, never to sight the ocean or the towns or humans, save for those frail enough – depleted enough – to be consumed.

And I am depleted. By the Sisters, I am so depleted.

I watch it, in turn, and struggle to my hands and knees. It does not move save to rotate its stretched neck ever so slightly as if in confusion. Or frustration.

I am so thirsty.

Where is my flask…

It is there!

Too slowly I reach out to grasp the container where it has fallen, but there is a flurry of red and black and amber. The dust and sand of this place is kicked with a hail of feathers, and the flask is gone.

Still, the thing observes me, though from another spot. It looms.

The flask is nowhere to be seen.

“Horrid creature…” I intend to say, but the desert has reached inside of me and all within is now excoriated and dry. The bird-thing would not have understood me, even if it knew my tongue. Nonetheless I lash desperately and insolently at the sand. “Horrid vile thing!” It comes out as a cacophonous grunting.

Something glints in the distance. Just a touch, but enough.

I am dizzy, and my mind feels stretched but…there is something there. A great distance, but something beyond the shimmer.

I begin to crawl, flask be damned.

The horror-bird merely observes, and watches me pass its red-dark bulk.

It is not ready for me, I think.

Or perhaps it is curious to see how I will survive, or try to.

The crawling is slow and laborious and my hands are thunderous pain, melting into the silicate. But I crawl onward, that strange shimmering a clarion call of salvation. It begins to emerge from that shimmer, twisting into something real. Not water – not the water I desperately need – but a building.

It is a tower, an ivory pearl in this place of death, with ornate glass panes atop its apex. It is almost a…lighthouse. A lighthouse in a place where there is no water. This feels cruel.

There is tapping behind me. Something hopping, and following. But I ignore it. If the beast is ready to eat me, then let it. I will fight blood and tooth, but it can try.

The lighthouse door – wide, black marble - is open, and I find enough of my wits and desperation to stand tall once more and stagger toward it. After some ambling the ground begins to become more compact and level out, as though there is real flooring underneath.

The shade of the tower swallows me, and I am thankful. It is not cool – not really – but it is enough of a reprieve. My fingers and hands crack and flake with painful blisters now that the immediate terror of the desert is averted. Now I just need water. Water…

But there is no water to be seen.

Only books.

They stretch a great distance along the edges of this place, rows after rows. Dust and sand have settled upon them all, but they subsist. Thousand of books, likely. And yet I barely see them beyond the blur of my water-starved mind.

“There is nothing…”

I cannot collapse. I fear that if I do so, I will never stand again.

And I will not give it the satisfaction. Not yet.

It watches me from the entrance, the portal between dizzying light and cool shadow making it seem an ominous silhouette only. Its serpentine neck bobs and twists from side to side as it inspects the place I have entered.

Idly, I trace my fingers across the coarse and weathered cover of a book which has been discarded in an upturned position, unlike any others. I blink through dehydration but the text inscription is impossible to decipher, a scrawl of strange lettering. Strange, yet somewhat familiar. If I am right, it is the alphabet of the Vaturu.

The Vataru. That ancient tribe which was swallowed by the desert long, long ago – before even the Sisters became as sacrosanct as they are.

With mere curiosity I open the tome, expecting to not be able to decipher any further.

And yet…there is more legible scrawling at the margins.

This is the alphabet of the Sea-Cities. The scrawl of the Holy Sisters. This…this I can read. What wanderer came here before me, to this ancient and eternal trap?

“The Vaturu – strange. Strange words they write here.

Don’t like it.

Thought it might be useful. Can read some of it at least.

But just religious doctrine.

Keep looking.”

I furrow my brow, and flip through the pages beyond. There is no more legible scrawling.

But there is something else here, to the floor: I see it now, as my vision has become to acclimate to this place.

Clothing. Tattered, shredded, mottled with dark dried blood, and some sort of odd, glue-like paste, like candle-tallow. Another book amongst this disarray, which I collect.

I am so tired.

“Vataru are gone.

Long gone.

This wind never even touched their dust. Too new.

They write of gods, and what happens to gods after the Vataru are gone.

None left. None left to believe.

Once-gods, they call them.

Small things, once-divine.

I think that thing which watches me from outside.

Once-god?

What does it want with me.

It is hungry and I am so thirsty.”

Who was this man? What became of him, as he ebbed away? I have never known anyone understanding even a sliver of the Vataru language.

I frantically look about and see there is a trail of ancient, dried blood. Speckles and fragments only.

I follow it.

There is another book there, scratched and torn by great talons.

I hold it with exhaustion, tremblingly.

“It is a god.

They had a name for it, but never wrote it. Drinker of Bone is all I can see it referred to. Sometimes the Stranger.

It was their last god.

The one who saw them out. Saw them go.

It endures now the Vataru are gone.

They knew their end was coming when it grew so large it began to blot out the sun.

They knew they were fading. They knew it would take them into itself. Guide them to some peace.

I know I’m fading too.

Maybe…”

The words do not finish, but they do not need to. The thought is indelibly written in what was not written.

The light from beyond the library door is obfuscated and I turn to see the vulture-beast silently observing me. As I look, it begins to shuffle toward me. It had once seemed ragged and bizarre, but there is now a certain dignity to that movement. Elegance. Divinity.

As it comes closer, I realise how tired I am.

As it nears, the shadow fades and its red-crest is blinding with scintillating colour.

“Keeeer,” it begins. It is a palimpsest of noises: a mewing, high-pitched whistle, but underlying it there is a sonorous gurgling at the thing’s lower throat. The two contradictory notes overlap. They are alien. I have never heard anything quite so curious.

Quite so…inviting.

“Keeeeeer.” Its amber eyes are aflame, as though it contains the entirety of the golden desert: it has brought the heat inside this place of repose.

I close my eyes.

There is nothing to drink. This is no place of water.

I am fading.

I am far from the Sea-Cities. Far from the Solemn Churches of the Holy Sisters. This thing – if it is a god – is not my god. But it is likely far older.

If the traveling scribe is right, then it has ushered a great and old civilisation into a place of peace. Perhaps it might do the same for me…

“Keeeeer.”

The Stranger begins its work. Gently, and then with insistent fury. The pain is terrible and I try to wince through it with dignity but soon this hall of shadow is filled with my desolate screams. The once-god gorges upon my blood and drinks my bone. My thoughts are frenetic, barely holding together, but I realise that the strange tallow-liquid is perhaps the remnant of human-fat and oil left behind once the blood and bone is all gone.

All gone.

All gone.

My final thought flashes with urgency.

Please, let it be true. Let it be a god.

Let this pain turn to something better.

The deep fear churning amidst my dying stomach is that this is just a bird. A predator, and I have given myself to it for naught.

Please let it be a god.

Author’s note and interesting addendum:

The inspiration for this story came from the lammergeier (also known as ossifrage or bearded vulture), a bird which primarily eats bone and exists in various places in Asia and Africa.

In 2008, archaeologists discovered one of the oldest known musical instruments in the world - the Paleolithic ‘vulture bone flute’ from the Hohle Fels cave, believed to date back some 40,000 years.

The idea of an ancient, bone-eating creature - possibly being a god itself, or possibly not - being intertwined with human history was the thought process behind this short story. I hope you enjoyed ONCE-GOD.