Welcome back to the Atlas, friends.
A prophecy was uttered, and now a prophecy is fulfilled. This series has always been leading up to this moment.
Read on, and find out exactly what the Architect had in mind when they decided to judge the worlds people, and determine if they were…
Deciduous, or Evergreen.
Previously:
Part 1, 2, 3, 4.
Act III: The Longest Night
The Final Drumbeat
Liam just walked away without looking back. To Eleanor the world around her seemed to go mute, her mouth was agape. That he had been so rude, and that he had been so dismissive…
“Come on,” Brodie tugged at her again. “It’ll do no good to just stand here getting soaked. Let’s get home, get dry. Maybe we can figure out a different way to stop this, to save Liam.”
The rain more than anything else gave Eleanor the final nudge she needed. It had slowly turned icier and thicker, and no amount of layers was keeping it out. She was shaking through to her bones.
Turning back, they walked in silence, the only sound was the weather slowly growing more and more fierce. Wind rattled down the streets like banshees, screaming into their ears and nipping at any warmth they had left. The rain hid her tears, though Brodie knew they were there regardless.
***
Brodie’s family and friends gathered in their large upstairs kitchen. His mum started lighting candles around the room using a long taper. The sky outside was rumbling with menace, cast in shades of green and blue whilst rain hammered against the window as if it was trying to come in out of the cold.
People held hands. Some of the children stood wrapping themselves around their parents’ legs. One slightly older boy was trying to act nonchalant, as though the mood in the room was nothing to be worried about. He was trying to pull his sister into a game, but it had no effect.
As the room fell silent, they began to sing. Songs that felt old, some mournful, some happier. All of them felt tinged with the earth. A tin whistle sometimes accompanied them, and one of the Irish uncles had some Uilleann pipes which added a sweeping valley-born sound to the music.
They all knew what to expect, they had been studying the prophecy for sixty years. Now that it was here, they were solemn.
***
Eleanor’s mother stood by the window of her town house staring out from her daughter’s room at the exact same scene that had greeted her daughter that morning. Leaf litter still stood thick over the ground, despite the onslaught of wind and rain. The whole road was grey and gold. Eleanor’s mother seemed not to notice. She held her phone in her hand, rolling it around in nervous fingers. Liam had not answered, and she didn’t know his social media handle to check what he was up to. Eleanor was uncharacteristically not answering her phone either. The nerves were getting the better of her, she was alone, and desperately worried for her children. The whole world was seemingly ending, and they were nowhere to be seen. The storm grew ever more fierce by the second, as did her anxiety.
***
Liam arrived at the warehouse soaked through, but grinning like a maniac. The rave had already started, and the guest of honour had arrived. People were already clapping him, the DJ played a fanfare as he entered. This was his domain and he was master of it.
The warehouse was a temple to the end of the world. Rusted metal, broken glass. Smashed windows were decorated in spectacular lights of every colour. Lasers bounced off every sharp angle, and strobe lights cast shadows in the furthest corners making the whole place feel like a tangled forest. Projections on every surface erased the walls and created a feeling of a party that breached the bounds of space and time.
Lightning flashed outside and sent a pulse of light throughout the palace of his dreams, and for a moment it was rendered in high contrast. The light of the bolt erased anything the party could do. The lights were mute under the gaze of the clashing electrical storm in the sky. Liam looked around and saw a hedonistic cubist nightmare. Faces grotesque as jaws gripped and eyes lost their focus. The movement of people was like that of an underwater kelp forest coloured black and white by the sheer contrast. For a moment Liam felt real fear at what he had done, at what his actions had produced.
And then the flash passed, and everything returned. The music swelled into the room, the colours reaffirmed. Liam was in the heart of a crowd and they were celebrating his foresight and genius. He laughed, and shouting he pulled people into the thick of the dance, leaving his bag with a friend. His arms began to sway like the boughs of a tree in a storm. The movement of the crowd around him was like wind sweeping through grass, responding to his every shape and sway.
A person up in the scaffolds who was controlling the lights watched from afar, looked down at the crowd. He saw a picture of euphoria below and was brought to a tear of happiness before shouting down and cheering with them all.
Liam, however, was no longer there. His eyes were wide and glassy, utterly devoid of life. He was not celebrating at all. He was running away.
***
Eleanor walked through the rain alone. Brodie was beside her, his hand in hers, but she could not feel him. She could not feel anything. Her mind drifted over the city to the water of Leith, to a party that she knew nothing about and yet feared more than anything in her life. The empty streets kept pace with her empty heart, and her empty stomach was as close to letting go of whatever it had left.
She stopped.
The rain gushed down around her, spraying up little clouds of water on the floor about her feet. The sound of it on her coat hood was deafening, but it was clear despite the intensity of the rain that she was gasping for air. The tears were masked, but nothing could hide the way her chest heaved, the way her knees buckled. The way she was falling forward, hands outstretched.
Brodie was there. He caught her and held her strong. He didn’t say anything at first, he was simply a wall. Silent but steady. He seemed to Eleanor to be the only thing in the world that still made sense. And so she buried her head into him and sobbed. Not loudly at first, quiet ragged sobs. But like the storm around them, her crying grew in intensity until even the thunder could not drown her out.
They clung to each other then. Two heartbroken children, in the middle of a world that seemed about to end.
Brodie whispered to her gently. “I know, I feel it too. It’s like…” He looked about for something to inspire the feeling that had grown within him. “It’s like, we can’t stop the rain, but we can hold the umbrella for him, right?” He felt her hands grip his arms a bit more tightly, pulling him closer.
Eleanor pulled back, finding some inner strength again. “Will it make any difference?” She mumbled, her legs now gaining purchase again, and her chest lifting. Brodie smiled sadly. Eleanor looked at him, searching for an answer.
“It… no. It might not make any literal difference,” She admitted at last. “But at least we can show him we care, that his sister loves him!” A fierceness grew in her voice, and with a new sense of purpose that was evident in the set of her shoulders, she stood taller.
“I can’t just leave him. I know we can’t stop it. But we cannot let him go through this alone.”
Brodie looked at her, and his face was set. A shared understanding passed in the air between them. Eleanor looked across the city, under the bruised clouds and sheets of rain. Their destination was not even visible in this weather, but they knew what they must do. The path forward was clear.
Authors note:
It might be obvious at this point, but I am a huge fan of pathetic fallacy, in this case using the weather to attribute human emotions. It is an odd quirk of my life that I have always perceived a persons energy as being somewhat elemental. So it is no surprise that my emotional beats tend, in some way, to include what is happening in the environment.
The Song Begins
Brodie walked fast and hard with Eleanor, unsure what they hoped to achieve, but he knew he couldn’t let her down now. His feet splashed through puddles deeper than his ankles, but at this point it didn’t matter, he was soaked through anyway. The only reason he was wearing anything at all was to protect his modesty, otherwise the clothes at this point served little purpose.
As they walked along the river’s edge, there became an evident second reason to move fast. The threat of the prophecy was making people behave erratically, and the further they got away from the city the worse it became. They had already passed some drug fueled mini parties below bridges, and crowds of people inside wrecked outlets. People had started looting, though the weather made it less appealing for most. The resultant crowd willing to brave the weather were that bit more extreme. People who had managed to find the courage enough to venture outside were not people who had all their scruples in the right place. Twice already Brodie had to just keep walking and avoid eye contact while people approached them hungrily.
As they neared the basin Eleanor stopped them for a moment and put a finger to her lips. The wind roared and the rain still hammered against tarmac and flagstone, but underneath that… There was a beat. A steady deep metronome keeping time to the storm. It had to be the rave!
Their last check on social media before their phones had died showed that the location was all the way over on the imperial dock, in an old shipwrights factory. As they passed Albert’s Basin, they turned right to cross the bridge onto the other side of the dockyards. Closer to the sea, but further away from any protection against the elements. Each step for Brodie was a fight against each attempt to blow them off the side of the earth.
Eventually it became clear they were on the right path. The sounds and thuds of the music were becoming more evident with each passing step. As they turned a corner, they saw at the end of the row a warehouse, larger than all the others, with light pouring out of the upper windows. A lighthouse in a storm, or so it felt.
As Brodie and Eleanor approached the entrance, the bass from inside thumped against their chests, an intense heartbeat that fought against the thunder. The main roller doors were chained firmly and resolutely shut, leaving only a small steel service door guarded by three men. They were seemingly indifferent to being approached by the two teens, and sat in tightly packed bomber jackets, rain rolling down their shaved heads, unbothered by it. Walking up to them, Brodie could feel himself getting smaller by comparison.
“I need to be let in, Eleanor said. She tried to place her voice in the same way she had a few days back, when she had commanded the attention of the nation. Cold and authoritative. “My brother is in there. Liam.”
The closest bouncer didn’t even blink in surprise. He didn’t look at her. He stared at a point in the distant horizon where the grey sea met the grey sky.
“Closed,” he announced, to no one in particular. The word carried weight, like a boulder being dropped into water.
“You don’t understand,” Brodie stepped in, his hood scattering water all over his face. “He’s in danger. The storm-”
The bouncer finally shifted his gaze, landing on Brodie with the indifference of a satellite. He moved forward out into the rain, his shoes making heavy waves in the puddles that covered the ground. Looming large in-front of the two of them he spoke.
“The event has started,” the man said. His voice was devoid of mockery, which made it infinitely more terrifying. “The doors are sealed. No light enters. No vibe leaves. That’s the deal.”
“A vibe!?” Eleanor shouted, stepping forward, her hand reaching for the door behind the man. “If your idea of vibe is a death trap then-”
The man moved in front of her again, his hands behind his back. He didn’t touch her at all, he just occupied the space where she was meant to be, forcing her hand back. A wall.
“The party started at midday, and these doors will remain closed until tomorrow. This is not a negotiation, it is a fact. We are keeping the world out. Walk away, or be removed.”
Brodie at this point was sensing danger, he looked at the man’s fists, scarred white, and ready. He was right about one thing, there was no negotiating with that. These men were here to seal the building shut. The bulkhead on a sinking ship, and they would sooner sacrifice a few to preserve the many.
Turning back to his friends, he called over his shoulder, “Get lost before you get into deeper water than you can handle.”
Eleanor trembled at the realisation of their impotence.
“Come on, this place is a wreck,” She muttered, guiding them away. “I bet there is another way in, let’s just … walk where they can’t see us.” Nervously she looked back at them. Their gaze followed them all the way back out to the road.
Walking around the back of the warehouse via a winding route that took them well out of the eyeshot of the bouncers at the doors, they finally found what they were looking for. An external rusted up staircase on the back of the factory, part of an old fire escape from when this had been an industrial building. It led up the back of the building, well over three stories high, up to a long row of grimy windows that lined the top of the factory wall.
From their position, they could feel the music of the party through the floor, the bass was so intense that even in all this rain you could see rivulets of water moving across the ground away from the speakers inside. Brodie grabbed the staircase bannister, it was vibrating to the music as well, responding to the higher notes like a tuning fork. He gulped, unsure. The whole flight of stairs looked ancient and flimsy. The edges of every step were covered in rust, and a few seemed to be supported by nothing more than hope.
“Eleanor, is this… is this the only way?” She was looking nervously at it too, trying to steel herself against the drop. Was the fire escape safer than the storm? She looked at the rusted bolts, then thought of Liam alone in the dark. It was hard to see much up there. There were windows for sure, and maybe a few of them would be easy to open, but she couldn’t see an obvious entry point. Her stance steeled defiantly.
“We have come this far, we have to at least try. Lets just be REALLY careful.”
Together they climbed step by step, each precariously testing the step in front of them, and occasionally holding each other’s hands when things got a bit too wobbly. The smell of rain on rusted metal met their noses with every step, and the salt in the air from the stormy sea was bitter in the backs of their throats. Brodie looked out momentarily over the top of the nearby building, out towards the north sea, and immediately regretted it. This was not a natural storm, the sight that he beheld would have been breathtaking in a painting describing Dante’s journey through hell. In reality it was terrifying.
When they made it to the top, the platform seemed a tiny bit more stable and they collapsed for a second on the floor. Shivering, they held each other. Eventually Brodie nudged her.
“Come on, we are here now and it’s getting late in the day. I wouldn’t put it past the prophecy to be as dramatic as working its punishment on the chime of the clock.”
Getting up, they sidled over to the window and looked down across the entire dancefloor. It was madness inside. At any other time, it might have looked fun, but in the horror of the moment, with the fear for Liam’s safety held in their hearts, it was a pit of despair, and they were merely witnesses. Looking down like ghosts on the scene below. They tried the window to see if it would swing open, and the next, but none of them would budge. As they went further down the row, Eleanor pointed. There was one window that had been broken in, but the shards of glass around the edge looked like little knives when they caught a flash of lightning.
They ran over to it. The obscuration of the view from the rain hammering against glass, and the fog rising from the dancing crowd was now gone, and they could see the entire scene clearly. Right in the middle of the dancefloor was the unmistakable shape of Liam. His garish outfit stood out even in this place. Eleanor gasped next to Brodie, her hands over her mouth as she saw her little brother in a storm of his own making.
Brodie started bunching up his sleeves over his hand so he could break off some of the glass around the edge of the frame, and was laying his thick coat over the bottom row of glass as well. The music inside was reaching an intense crescendo, with a thumping beat that was building and building. Any moment now that DJ was going to drop the music back in, and the crowd was going to go wild.
“Are you READY!” The DJ roared, his voice amplified to god-like levels.
The crowd screamed as a single organism, pulsing in unison. A shifting wave of sweat and neon, sometimes coiled tightly, sometimes loose, waiting for the drop. The speakers took a deep breath in, a vacuum of silence before the inevitable.
THUD THUD THU-
The sound died.
The sound had been severed like a head from the body. The power was still there, lights still showered, but the sound retreated as if the air itself refused to carry it. In the sudden, ringing silence, the rain against the roof was thunderous, but then it slowed, and a melody began.
A high ethereal note started to whisper through the speakers instead, getting slowly louder. Like a ghostly choir heard through a forest. It resonated in the bones and jiggled the very marrow. A high hum, like someone blowing over the lip of a glass bottle. Like a haunted moan from the bottom of a well. The broken window frame in front of them offered no protection.
An unnatural silent wind started to brush past them, like water through a sluice, sweeping into the factory. It smelled like deep rich compost, and on its breath were carried small golden motes of light, like miniature autumn leaves being carried on a stream.
“LIAM!”
Eleanor’s cry rang out, raw and jagged.
Even above the strange sounds now pervading everything, her cry penetrated. The confusion rippled out from the centre like a bruise as wind swirled around them picking up their hair and their clothes in flapping patterns. Some in the crowd were screaming now, and trying to run for the doors.
In the centre, the focal point of all the chaos, Liam looked up at where they stood framed in the window. His eyes were wide, and for a moment, Brodie saw him. The same boy he had grown up with, the same guy who had always been a strange mixture of bravado and fear. Brodie was sure, even from that distance, that he could see his lip shaking a little as pure childlike terror started to grip him. The person who had shown up on the bridge had evaporated.
“Eleanor?” He called. “Brodie…? Is that you?”
The golden wind swirled around the dancers, people’s screams started to become silent in their mouths as they began to dissolve, their forms breaking apart into a swirling vortex of thousands of glowing, golden autumn leaves. It was horrifyingly, breathtakingly beautiful. Liam hardly seemed to notice. He was still staring up at us. At his sister, his mouth agape, curious.
He started to mouth her name one more time but the sounds didn’t come out. The wind began to take him too. It started at his feet. The garish, synthetic fabric of his trousers changed. The neon colours dissolved into the burning golden hue of a dying birch leaf. The transformation swirled upwards around him and light consumed him. Liam looked down at his own hands. He didn’t scream, he didn’t struggle. He just watched, transfixed, as his fingers lengthened, thinned, and separated into delicate papery fronds.
“Brodie…” Eleanor whispered, he nails digging into his arm, drawing blood.
The wind spiralled tighter, a vortex of pure organic matter. For a heartbeat, Liam’s face remained, a mask of golden light suspended in the air, his mouth open in a last silent attempt to say his sister’s name.
And then he was gone. He broke apart into a thousand pieces. There was no blood or gore, just a soft, dry hiss, like a heavy page being turned in an old book. The boy who had been Liam was suddenly a thousand swirling autumn leaves. They hung in the air for a second, defying gravity and glowing with an inner luminescence, before falling to the ground in a neatly organised flump onto the concrete floor.
The crowd had vanished too. Against the door in the distance was a drift of leaves so thick, the last evidence of a mob trying to get away. The factory was a forest floor, carpeted in thick drifts of yellow. Silent, terrible, beautiful.
Eleanor gasped and fell to her knees, wracking deep breaths barely escaped her as tears silently rolled down her cheeks. A soundless sob.
Brodie put a trembling hand on her shoulder, as he too wiped a tear away. He had been preparing his whole life for this eventuality, but to see it for real. He gripped his chest with his hand. The two of them stood there still and alone as the rain stopped and the clouds broke behind them.
Sun parted the last remaining cover and shone over their shoulders down into the now silent warehouse, casting the unnatural piles of leaves in a bright yellow glow, almost as bright as spring buttercups, but devoid of life. It was over.
***
All around the world, people stood aghast as piles of leaves settled on the ground around them. So many had been taken, and cries of despair resonated down streets, through suddenly empty neighborhoods. The sky broke, and the sun made the world glow. It was beautiful. It was silent.
It was later estimated to be a planet 67% emptier of humans than the day before.
There we are, the prophecy has come true and the worlds population has been judged. But this is not the end. We still have two more acts to go, and I can promise you, Liam will have a much bigger role to play in the second half of this story.