Kronos Duet excerpt
Here's a sample from my novel Kronos Duet. Gareth Pugh and his daughter, Adrianna, have reached Stonehenge, in a time period where it was almost surrounded by trees. Paranormal energies pull Gareth away, into the body/mind of Rasputin.
When they broke out of the trees into a clearing, the sight shocked her. Not fifty feet away, the massive standing stones of Stonehenge dwarfed them. She felt their menace, a claustrophobic, predatory closeness.
Gareth urged the pony forward. It obliged for a few steps, then drew up, its ears twitching. Another press of the heels and a few coaxing words and the pony repeated its action, coming to rest as if by force of ennui.
Adrianna felt an undeniable repulsive force; the more they determined to push forward, the more strongly it resisted.
“It’s me,” said Gareth. “They, or it, can feel my desire. I told you, didn’t I? Those stones, even the ones not from Wales, comprehend hiraeth.” He dismounted, grinning.
“Har har,” she said. Her father’s humor was seldom of the knee-slapping kind. And right now, she felt more than a little jealous of His Psychic-ness. How come he got to sense everything so much stronger than her? How come they talked to him, and only whispered to her?
“How come you have all the fun?” she asked, dismounting.
“Not fun.”
He looked back at her, reminding her of the cats when their night eyes glowed in lamplight. “It’s just my calling. Some people collect garbage, some people drive cab. I go loony.”
His last words dropped into the still air like a pebble into a pond. He walked on, through concentric circles he had set in motion, at each step becoming more obscure.
It had let him in, conceding the stage to him. And it and was no longer menacing her, only waiting. Quite prepared to crush the soul, she thought, like a mountain falling on a rabbit; but content, for now, to watch.
She could feel that, at least. It was more aware of her insides than she was. She could feel its presence, and could sense the oddest things that she knew were not her imagination. Like her father’s figure, flickering like sun upon water as he closed on the largest trilithons. Like the barely perceptible noise, as if of wind passing them, as if the planet itself were a ship that moved them through doldrums, with a cosmic breath drawing across its timbered sides.
Her father’s body reappeared and she drew up, realizing that she had crossed fifty feet in what seemed a microsecond and yet, a year.
“Glad you stayed away from the drugs as a little girl?” Gareth was grinning again. He seemed overjoyed, half in, half out of a blissful trance. “You need all the brain cells you can muster for this place...”
His gaze slowly shifted upward, as if gradually pulled, or directed, and his mouth drew into a Cheshire cat smile. Adrianna searched upward. What was he seeing?
Despite the sunlight that drenched them, she felt the chill drift across them like waves of mist. She hugged herself, then jogged to the pony, and tugged the blanket out of the saddle. Well wrapped, she returned to her spot, not trusting enough to advance as boldly as her father. She watched him wend amongst the standing stones, appearing, shadow-like at the side of a trilithon, then gone, to reappear at some unpredictable spot.
Eventually, he became aware of a pattern, a fogged choreography of sorts. He began mouthing words to his footsteps and winding through a curved line of small upright stones like a cat through human legs. His shoulders hunched against the cold. He pulled his crossed arms tight around his chest, stopped, shivered forcefully, willing warmth into his thin body, then pushed himself forward again. He thrust his numb hands into his jacket pockets. And...
He had not expected this. The cold had gone. But so had Stonehenge. And he was in a menacing blackness where he hardly dared open his eyes. Somehow, he knew, he would be shocked. He felt weaker than ever before, not up to any challenge. He could feel very little, anymore, that he could name. He reached into the air, blind as a mole. He was an embryo, not even aware of his nails growing.
His heart thumped violently and black fear conquered him.
Now she recognized the sound of wind… Maybe it was the sound of spirits in the stones. Her insides laughed at the thought, gave her the impulse to jump. Something so absurd, and yet concrete, visceral. And if time-travel, then why not that?
She began to walk now, urged on gently, pushed by a quiet beat. She searched for him, listened for his voice Her stomach clutched and she pushed herself first left, then right, straining to move faster against the beat That controlled her.
‘Think,’ she said. ‘You will have to outwit it, be quick and slide yourself there, where he is, before It even knows.’ Where was he last? The Aubrey Stones, that’s what they called them. Good, she could think properly if she tried. Her foot struck against hardness. She stood at the edge of the circle of Aubrey Stones. Her eyes strained ahead, followed its curve until it was intercepted by a standing stone. No dad.
She spun, stared the other way. Nothing. She fought down panic, swallowing dryly. BE CALM, she told herself through tense jaws. She managed to draw a deep breath. Minutes passed with not the slightest sign of him. He was gone, and she had not managed to follow.
Why did he not call her to him?
She waited, tense-nerved, fearing the place’s menacing presence. Her eyes scanned an indifferent sky, the flint-gray of oncoming winter. She had lied to herself in her urge to be brave. To commit to him; she had denied her intuition of foreboding.
“Stupid cow!” she cried, as if the turn of events were her fault.
He awakened to feel his horse teeth bite into cake, sending sweet custard dribbling down his ragged beard. But he’d never had a beard – how was this… Then the face smiled up at Yusupov, his fingers crossing his thick lips, and Gareth was all but gone inside this incredible, lustful power. He listened through the ears, watched through gluttonous eyes.
The man licked his fingers, wiped his beard straight, licked his fingers clean. The cake’s saccharine sweetness utterly annihilated the tea. Grigory Yefimovich Novykh, the infamous Rasputin, wanted wine, something to cut through the fatty richness. Then maybe some more cakes.
It was gluttony, one of the seven sins – but what could he do? They called him Rasputin, ‘The Debauched one,’ but there again, what of it? His taste for life, for women, for God, it was all a kind of gluttony; he was never sated: From the moment of birth, greedily sucking air. The hunger of the limbs for touch, the muscles for action, the tired body for sleep – each a momentary addiction. God could not condemn him for his huge self. God had made him. ‘Enough of him for everyone,’ as his wife Praskovaya would say.
If she could defend his lusts, then what man or woman could condemn him?
“Wine, then.” He said it generously, as if doing Yusupov a favor. That was how you did it. It made them happy, made them feel superior, that it was their wine, their food, on which you were besotted. More victuals, more drunkenness, more pleasure than your lowly self could afford – it was your duty as a peasant (even a Starets like himself) to be awestruck and rendered stupid by their wealth. But it was wasted on the rich, all this money and food and sumptuousness. He was drowning in God’s pleasures.
It was no sin. Just enjoyment. And God might punish at will after death, if He was so inclined.
But there would be no punishment. Rasputin knew this. God had made him superhuman, larger, more powerful than others, for a purpose. For Mother Russia for Mama and Papa; none of it for himself. He was just the vessel. And the vessel needed fuel, sex...
Grigory wanted Yusupov’s wife. And he would have her – perhaps not tonight, but soon.
“Good. Wine is good.” He held his glass out, spying his warped reflection in its ruby contents, watching the wine rise as Yusupov refilled the glass.
Why was this little prince so nervous? He was not a well man: Always disconnected from the earth, as if ready to flitter off at any moment, to flee at any threatening movement. Prince Yusupov couldn’t help it. He was a sick man – a pervert who preferred boys’ backsides over a nice, curved woman’s rump. Little, bony Yusupov. There he went again, slopping wine on the tablecloth in his haste to leave the room. Grigory was sure the man would blow apart – some internal pressure, like in a steam boiler, straining against his insides.
‘Garrettpyoo.’ The voice in his head was back, asserting itself. Perhaps it was one of those brainless demons, talking to itself in the dark. That was harmless, but distracting.
“Grigory wants no company.” He shook his head violently, sucked down the wine, drained the glass.
Yusupov faltered with the bottle part way to Rasputin’s glass. “Grigory, my wife was so pleased that you accepted our invitation, she...”
Grigory glared at Yusupov, uncomprehending. The voice, this Garretpyoo, had momentarily stolen his attention. “No,” he commanded, and the voice inside dwindled, then submitted to death, as if crushed under an avalanche. “You go, all you brain visitors. Grigory is getting drunk.”
Rasputin’s mind returned to the important things. He raised a stiff arm, thrust the emptied glass toward Yusupov’s face. The prince stood gawping – a most feeble man, clearly not making his wife happy. But a sinister fellow too.
“You say... about your wife, your lovely wife...?”
Yusupov was pale. Not a well man. Twittery. A buggerer of boys. Now there was a sin. Bugger his wife – a good thing. Why skinny boys, square boys? No breasts. No twat.
Yusupov had sprung to the foot of the spiral staircase. He smacked his palm on the banister, as if hitting let out some of the steam from the boiler.
Hit me.” Grigory rose, laughing, banging his chest. “You want to punch? Punch me. Come, my friend. Hit me. I make you well again.”
Yusupov stared, a frightened rabbit – no brains.
“I make everyone well. I touch. They heal. Mama and Papa know. Alexei, Tsar’s son, knows. Even you hit me, it makes you well.”
His eyes followed Yusupov up the stairwell.
“Come back! We drink, then sing gypsy songs, yes? Then your wife join us and sing...”
Humming, he returned to the table, stuck his index finger into a cake and licked off the custard.
“Go away!” he barked. Garrettpyoo again.
“No demons. Almighty God, be my friend. I drink tonight. I need rest from the voices. You know this my Father. Demons, go! In the name of Almighty God!”
Yusupov returned, twittery and stiff-necked, like a mad wading bird in a river.
“You drink with me, yes?” Rasputin indicated the chair opposite. “My stomach is burning. Give me sweet wine, some Madeira. That will ease me.”
He struggled to his feet, feeling leaden and dizzy. He rattled his head, stretched his neck from side to side. There was a beautiful crucifix there, on the shelf: a crystal crucifix… He would have one like it for himself. His daughters could pray with him in front of it. His rough hands stroked the ebony cupboard as he would a woman’s stomach. Almost rich enough to taste, this furniture.
Curtains, rugs, antique furniture, Chinese vases, ebony cupboards, tables covered with fabrics. There was a Persian carpet before a fireplace; a white bear skin hanging in front of a huge cupboard; a samovar on the table.
“You have too much vanity, Prince Yusupov,” he thought aloud. “How can the Kingdom of God be within you when it is so cluttered with furniture?”
He turned away from the crucifix, to see Yusupov staring at him. The man was blanched, and trembling, pointing a stiff arm at him; and at the end of the arm, a pistol.
“Grigory Efimovich, known as Rasputin, you should look at the crucifix again and pray for your soul.”
The pistol shook in his hand, reflecting gaslight from the table lamp.
Rasputin felt fear tighten in him, suck the moisture from his throat so that he could not swallow or speak. Then it was gone, replaced by a wave of warmth. He felt benign. He felt pity for the pathetic little man and sadness over what he was about to do. Was this how Christ felt at his betrayal? Rasputin would submit. This little man must fire his gun, and then we would see...
The shot sent him backwards into the polar bear skin. Its stale fur was the last thing he smelled as he fell, his face sliding downward against its bristles.
Gareth had yelled an obscenity, just before the bullet hit. Now he was stunned into silence, his inner ear straining for the hum of Rasputin’s blood through veins, for the liquid thump and wash of his heart.
Silence.
Once awake in Rasputin’s mind, he had felt his own self crushed. The weight and force of this man’s spirit was incredible. His appetites alone blotted out most of Gareth’s consciousness, so that all he had been able to do was remind himself who he was, that he was still, somehow, somewhere, aware of himself.
The bullet had done its work, silenced the massive orchestra that was Rasputin’s mind. Now Gareth had to worry about freeing himself. And he felt horribly feeble, blood- and oxygen-starved. His mind, strangled to the rim of unconsciousness, now roused its abused cells, until thoughts gathered together again, like ants repairing a ruined anthill.
No pain, and really no fear yet. Not enough strength for fear to coalesce; only the sense of exhaustion striving to comfort itself.
Then the man was kicking him. Yusupov, kicking, at his guts, his head. Then on his knees beside him, grabbing Rasputin’s shoulders, lifting and banging the head against the floor, crying his rage and terror through a reedy whine. Yusupov. Murderer.
Gareth suffocated again. Beneath water, pressed by a great weight.
Rasputin’s eyes were stuck shut, as though he had forgotten how to use them. Then the left eye was twitching. Then the other eye twitched, and both sprang open onto Yusupov’s effeminate face dribbling spittle, keening out noise.
He was Rasputin again, and he shook his finger in Yusupov’s face, felt the man’s lips curl behind the words.
“You BAD boy!”
When they broke out of the trees into a clearing, the sight shocked her. Not fifty feet away, the massive standing stones of Stonehenge dwarfed them. She felt their menace, a claustrophobic, predatory closeness.
Gareth urged the pony forward. It obliged for a few steps, then drew up, its ears twitching. Another press of the heels and a few coaxing words and the pony repeated its action, coming to rest as if by force of ennui.
Adrianna felt an undeniable repulsive force; the more they determined to push forward, the more strongly it resisted.
“It’s me,” said Gareth. “They, or it, can feel my desire. I told you, didn’t I? Those stones, even the ones not from Wales, comprehend hiraeth.” He dismounted, grinning.
“Har har,” she said. Her father’s humor was seldom of the knee-slapping kind. And right now, she felt more than a little jealous of His Psychic-ness. How come he got to sense everything so much stronger than her? How come they talked to him, and only whispered to her?
“How come you have all the fun?” she asked, dismounting.
“Not fun.”
He looked back at her, reminding her of the cats when their night eyes glowed in lamplight. “It’s just my calling. Some people collect garbage, some people drive cab. I go loony.”
His last words dropped into the still air like a pebble into a pond. He walked on, through concentric circles he had set in motion, at each step becoming more obscure.
It had let him in, conceding the stage to him. And it and was no longer menacing her, only waiting. Quite prepared to crush the soul, she thought, like a mountain falling on a rabbit; but content, for now, to watch.
She could feel that, at least. It was more aware of her insides than she was. She could feel its presence, and could sense the oddest things that she knew were not her imagination. Like her father’s figure, flickering like sun upon water as he closed on the largest trilithons. Like the barely perceptible noise, as if of wind passing them, as if the planet itself were a ship that moved them through doldrums, with a cosmic breath drawing across its timbered sides.
Her father’s body reappeared and she drew up, realizing that she had crossed fifty feet in what seemed a microsecond and yet, a year.
“Glad you stayed away from the drugs as a little girl?” Gareth was grinning again. He seemed overjoyed, half in, half out of a blissful trance. “You need all the brain cells you can muster for this place...”
His gaze slowly shifted upward, as if gradually pulled, or directed, and his mouth drew into a Cheshire cat smile. Adrianna searched upward. What was he seeing?
Despite the sunlight that drenched them, she felt the chill drift across them like waves of mist. She hugged herself, then jogged to the pony, and tugged the blanket out of the saddle. Well wrapped, she returned to her spot, not trusting enough to advance as boldly as her father. She watched him wend amongst the standing stones, appearing, shadow-like at the side of a trilithon, then gone, to reappear at some unpredictable spot.
Eventually, he became aware of a pattern, a fogged choreography of sorts. He began mouthing words to his footsteps and winding through a curved line of small upright stones like a cat through human legs. His shoulders hunched against the cold. He pulled his crossed arms tight around his chest, stopped, shivered forcefully, willing warmth into his thin body, then pushed himself forward again. He thrust his numb hands into his jacket pockets. And...
He had not expected this. The cold had gone. But so had Stonehenge. And he was in a menacing blackness where he hardly dared open his eyes. Somehow, he knew, he would be shocked. He felt weaker than ever before, not up to any challenge. He could feel very little, anymore, that he could name. He reached into the air, blind as a mole. He was an embryo, not even aware of his nails growing.
His heart thumped violently and black fear conquered him.
Now she recognized the sound of wind… Maybe it was the sound of spirits in the stones. Her insides laughed at the thought, gave her the impulse to jump. Something so absurd, and yet concrete, visceral. And if time-travel, then why not that?
She began to walk now, urged on gently, pushed by a quiet beat. She searched for him, listened for his voice Her stomach clutched and she pushed herself first left, then right, straining to move faster against the beat That controlled her.
‘Think,’ she said. ‘You will have to outwit it, be quick and slide yourself there, where he is, before It even knows.’ Where was he last? The Aubrey Stones, that’s what they called them. Good, she could think properly if she tried. Her foot struck against hardness. She stood at the edge of the circle of Aubrey Stones. Her eyes strained ahead, followed its curve until it was intercepted by a standing stone. No dad.
She spun, stared the other way. Nothing. She fought down panic, swallowing dryly. BE CALM, she told herself through tense jaws. She managed to draw a deep breath. Minutes passed with not the slightest sign of him. He was gone, and she had not managed to follow.
Why did he not call her to him?
She waited, tense-nerved, fearing the place’s menacing presence. Her eyes scanned an indifferent sky, the flint-gray of oncoming winter. She had lied to herself in her urge to be brave. To commit to him; she had denied her intuition of foreboding.
“Stupid cow!” she cried, as if the turn of events were her fault.
He awakened to feel his horse teeth bite into cake, sending sweet custard dribbling down his ragged beard. But he’d never had a beard – how was this… Then the face smiled up at Yusupov, his fingers crossing his thick lips, and Gareth was all but gone inside this incredible, lustful power. He listened through the ears, watched through gluttonous eyes.
The man licked his fingers, wiped his beard straight, licked his fingers clean. The cake’s saccharine sweetness utterly annihilated the tea. Grigory Yefimovich Novykh, the infamous Rasputin, wanted wine, something to cut through the fatty richness. Then maybe some more cakes.
It was gluttony, one of the seven sins – but what could he do? They called him Rasputin, ‘The Debauched one,’ but there again, what of it? His taste for life, for women, for God, it was all a kind of gluttony; he was never sated: From the moment of birth, greedily sucking air. The hunger of the limbs for touch, the muscles for action, the tired body for sleep – each a momentary addiction. God could not condemn him for his huge self. God had made him. ‘Enough of him for everyone,’ as his wife Praskovaya would say.
If she could defend his lusts, then what man or woman could condemn him?
“Wine, then.” He said it generously, as if doing Yusupov a favor. That was how you did it. It made them happy, made them feel superior, that it was their wine, their food, on which you were besotted. More victuals, more drunkenness, more pleasure than your lowly self could afford – it was your duty as a peasant (even a Starets like himself) to be awestruck and rendered stupid by their wealth. But it was wasted on the rich, all this money and food and sumptuousness. He was drowning in God’s pleasures.
It was no sin. Just enjoyment. And God might punish at will after death, if He was so inclined.
But there would be no punishment. Rasputin knew this. God had made him superhuman, larger, more powerful than others, for a purpose. For Mother Russia for Mama and Papa; none of it for himself. He was just the vessel. And the vessel needed fuel, sex...
Grigory wanted Yusupov’s wife. And he would have her – perhaps not tonight, but soon.
“Good. Wine is good.” He held his glass out, spying his warped reflection in its ruby contents, watching the wine rise as Yusupov refilled the glass.
Why was this little prince so nervous? He was not a well man: Always disconnected from the earth, as if ready to flitter off at any moment, to flee at any threatening movement. Prince Yusupov couldn’t help it. He was a sick man – a pervert who preferred boys’ backsides over a nice, curved woman’s rump. Little, bony Yusupov. There he went again, slopping wine on the tablecloth in his haste to leave the room. Grigory was sure the man would blow apart – some internal pressure, like in a steam boiler, straining against his insides.
‘Garrettpyoo.’ The voice in his head was back, asserting itself. Perhaps it was one of those brainless demons, talking to itself in the dark. That was harmless, but distracting.
“Grigory wants no company.” He shook his head violently, sucked down the wine, drained the glass.
Yusupov faltered with the bottle part way to Rasputin’s glass. “Grigory, my wife was so pleased that you accepted our invitation, she...”
Grigory glared at Yusupov, uncomprehending. The voice, this Garretpyoo, had momentarily stolen his attention. “No,” he commanded, and the voice inside dwindled, then submitted to death, as if crushed under an avalanche. “You go, all you brain visitors. Grigory is getting drunk.”
Rasputin’s mind returned to the important things. He raised a stiff arm, thrust the emptied glass toward Yusupov’s face. The prince stood gawping – a most feeble man, clearly not making his wife happy. But a sinister fellow too.
“You say... about your wife, your lovely wife...?”
Yusupov was pale. Not a well man. Twittery. A buggerer of boys. Now there was a sin. Bugger his wife – a good thing. Why skinny boys, square boys? No breasts. No twat.
Yusupov had sprung to the foot of the spiral staircase. He smacked his palm on the banister, as if hitting let out some of the steam from the boiler.
Hit me.” Grigory rose, laughing, banging his chest. “You want to punch? Punch me. Come, my friend. Hit me. I make you well again.”
Yusupov stared, a frightened rabbit – no brains.
“I make everyone well. I touch. They heal. Mama and Papa know. Alexei, Tsar’s son, knows. Even you hit me, it makes you well.”
His eyes followed Yusupov up the stairwell.
“Come back! We drink, then sing gypsy songs, yes? Then your wife join us and sing...”
Humming, he returned to the table, stuck his index finger into a cake and licked off the custard.
“Go away!” he barked. Garrettpyoo again.
“No demons. Almighty God, be my friend. I drink tonight. I need rest from the voices. You know this my Father. Demons, go! In the name of Almighty God!”
Yusupov returned, twittery and stiff-necked, like a mad wading bird in a river.
“You drink with me, yes?” Rasputin indicated the chair opposite. “My stomach is burning. Give me sweet wine, some Madeira. That will ease me.”
He struggled to his feet, feeling leaden and dizzy. He rattled his head, stretched his neck from side to side. There was a beautiful crucifix there, on the shelf: a crystal crucifix… He would have one like it for himself. His daughters could pray with him in front of it. His rough hands stroked the ebony cupboard as he would a woman’s stomach. Almost rich enough to taste, this furniture.
Curtains, rugs, antique furniture, Chinese vases, ebony cupboards, tables covered with fabrics. There was a Persian carpet before a fireplace; a white bear skin hanging in front of a huge cupboard; a samovar on the table.
“You have too much vanity, Prince Yusupov,” he thought aloud. “How can the Kingdom of God be within you when it is so cluttered with furniture?”
He turned away from the crucifix, to see Yusupov staring at him. The man was blanched, and trembling, pointing a stiff arm at him; and at the end of the arm, a pistol.
“Grigory Efimovich, known as Rasputin, you should look at the crucifix again and pray for your soul.”
The pistol shook in his hand, reflecting gaslight from the table lamp.
Rasputin felt fear tighten in him, suck the moisture from his throat so that he could not swallow or speak. Then it was gone, replaced by a wave of warmth. He felt benign. He felt pity for the pathetic little man and sadness over what he was about to do. Was this how Christ felt at his betrayal? Rasputin would submit. This little man must fire his gun, and then we would see...
The shot sent him backwards into the polar bear skin. Its stale fur was the last thing he smelled as he fell, his face sliding downward against its bristles.
Gareth had yelled an obscenity, just before the bullet hit. Now he was stunned into silence, his inner ear straining for the hum of Rasputin’s blood through veins, for the liquid thump and wash of his heart.
Silence.
Once awake in Rasputin’s mind, he had felt his own self crushed. The weight and force of this man’s spirit was incredible. His appetites alone blotted out most of Gareth’s consciousness, so that all he had been able to do was remind himself who he was, that he was still, somehow, somewhere, aware of himself.
The bullet had done its work, silenced the massive orchestra that was Rasputin’s mind. Now Gareth had to worry about freeing himself. And he felt horribly feeble, blood- and oxygen-starved. His mind, strangled to the rim of unconsciousness, now roused its abused cells, until thoughts gathered together again, like ants repairing a ruined anthill.
No pain, and really no fear yet. Not enough strength for fear to coalesce; only the sense of exhaustion striving to comfort itself.
Then the man was kicking him. Yusupov, kicking, at his guts, his head. Then on his knees beside him, grabbing Rasputin’s shoulders, lifting and banging the head against the floor, crying his rage and terror through a reedy whine. Yusupov. Murderer.
Gareth suffocated again. Beneath water, pressed by a great weight.
Rasputin’s eyes were stuck shut, as though he had forgotten how to use them. Then the left eye was twitching. Then the other eye twitched, and both sprang open onto Yusupov’s effeminate face dribbling spittle, keening out noise.
He was Rasputin again, and he shook his finger in Yusupov’s face, felt the man’s lips curl behind the words.
“You BAD boy!”
Published on February 12, 2014 17:30
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Tags:
excerpt, kronos-duet, rasputin, stonehenge
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