Sects in The City.

 1.

The mere rudiments of invocation were all that remained necessary. A casual pirouette transformed her body into a set of compasses and the circle was drawn in one elegant movement, unbroken, almost perfect. The candles were lighted and the incense ignited, instantly billowing a pinkish grey fog with the scent of sandalwood. She took the ceremonial dagger in her right hand and slashed the palm of her left. The blood was collected in the silver chalice and then the preliminary banishments were uttered with the ripe blade glinting in the candlelight as it cut through the thick, scent-filled air. The barbarous names she incanted by rote, even though the meanings were well understood by her. This was a matter of expedience not devotion. Such haste was perilous, given the normally complex nature of such a performance. What she was doing was akin to dialling a number on a telephone while running through traffic. Unlike the phone, however, one could not simply apologise and hang up if connected to the wrong number.

The temperature within the room dropped rapidly and somewhere outside a heavy sombre bell began to rang. At the edge of the swirling, smoky, scented air a shapeless shadow began to manifest. It had worked. Something had taken the bait. Sister Atrophia gave a sharp exhalation of relief.

“Welcome, what should I call you?” she asked, courteously. It was always best to be civil, she'd known other sorcerers who'd been too domineering, too arrogant with the entities they called up and, without fail, every one of them had eventually been humbled in the most explicit and often ghastly and terminal manner.

“Cypocraphy will suffice,” came a rough whisper, like the sound of a million crawling insects against hollow wood. “You should be grateful we responded to this paltry and frankly insulting performance.”

“That I am, Cypocraphy, thank you,” Atrophia said, instantly aware this was going to be a hostile negotiation which would cost her dearly.

“What you want is possible, but what do you offer for our assistance?” the shadow hissed, becoming solid, taking shape outside the circle. It chose the form of an irregular sphere, four foot in diameter, floating in the air.

This Cypocraphy was a cunning one, she knew whatever she offered, other than what it wanted, it would reject, so she started small. “I have a dog, you can have that.”

The thick contemptuous chuckle sounded like a man drowning in treacle. The orb began streaming light across it's surface, symbols and numbers ran across the darkness beneath, like some kind of interactive chalkboard warped into various dimensions. “You wish five of your kind dead and you offer us nothing but your pet?”

“Well, you get to keep the dead too.” she answered.

Silence. She thought for a moment she'd blown it, that the creature would take offence and leave but it just hovered there, rivers of complex mathematics swirling across its exterior.

“Try again,” it demanded; a rasping sigh of boredom.

“I offer my brother.” Atrophia stated, trying not to sound nervous. She knew that Cypocraphy would not have come if it wasn't willing to accept what she offered, the trick was not to offer too much. That's how the game was played. The entity knew everything about her including what she was willing to sacrifice. If the ritual had been performed with due diligence she would have known everything about it. She had instead just cast a line hoping for a bite. Luckily there were rules to this. If she offered something that it would accept it would not refuse. The trick was not to offer too much.

“A fallen priest does not have the value it once had, nor is Samuel yours to give,” Cypocraphy replied in a voice which reminded her of a chainsaw cutting down a tree and, somehow, her mother. This manifestation was a slippery one, which was not beyond her expectations, but it did provide some annoyance being that time was of the essence. Atrophia had deduced that the thing was not interested in meat and spirit, which meant it wanted something it could own. Over the years she had collected some curious and unique things, objects that only her peers or creatures such as Cypocraphy would be interested in. Most of these things were not up for trade, no matter the jeopardy she was in.

There was one, a talisman of protection, a religious oddity that had served her well but would not mitigate the cultists who would soon be beating on her door. “I have an artefact, the Crying Virgin of White Cart Water. I assume you are aware of it.”

“Ahhh” Cypocraphy sighed in satisfaction. “A daring suggestion, one might consider it blasphemous.”

“If one believed in such stuff.” Atrophia added, goading the creature, she knew it was interested. Cypocraphy changed colour and the symbols twisted and warped into shapes, into repeating images of fish, a rainbow school swimming around the surface and inwards, vanishing into nowhere and blooming again.

“Acceptable.” The entity responded. The negotiation was concluded.

2.

During the mid-sixties Glasgow was not the prettiest of places; a city of soot black stone and tiny windows. Its infrastructure was as dirty and eroded as the filthy silted banks of the polluted chemical slick called the River Clyde. It’s police and council were corrupt sectarian organisations in a cold war with each other and their political rivals, each a haven for all manner of secret and not so secret societies. Large families were crammed into small concrete boxes, some reached the sky but none were ever high enough to escape the miasma of disease and poverty. Nevertheless many attempted to free themselves from the gravitation pull of deprivation. There were a few who did, but most, if not pulled back down to the pavements with a thud, just ended up in a close orbit circling around and around whatever sickening heart that centred the place.

One of those who never quite achieved escape velocity was Charlie “The Reverend” Hopkins. He knew Glasgow was and had always been a toilet. They'd been calling it “the once proud city” in the papers and on radio since he was a kid back in the forties. He reckoned they'd always called it that. The place hadn't ever been proud, not in his estimation, From all he'd been told by his old folks, it was a wretched pit when they were growing up too. Tenements filled with cholera and scarlet fever. Unlike his folks Hopkins did not just accept this was his lot in life and being a canny streetwise lad with a little academic pretension he discovered that Glasgow had two underworlds, one criminal, the other, supernatural. It was not long before he realised that these domains were not mutually exclusive but had a tendency to overlap.

He kept the gangsters at a distance, working with them when it was convenient, usually for drugs or artefacts of power. The others, those denizens of shadow, became more familiar to him. From Paisley to Easterhouse he knew all wraiths that haunted the tenement closes, he traded with the various tribes of alleyway bogles, even left gifts for the few remaining kelpies of the Clyde in return for safe passage across the bridges. By 1970 he had abandoned the day, and his rented home, to dwell in an old disused foundry down by the Whiteinch waterfront. From there he began to expand his arts, which led to rumours of “the Whiteinch Warlock”, originally from schoolkids, but expanding into the consciousness of the district. While most of these rumours were the lurid nonsense that grew more exaggerated with each telling, there was no doubt in his mind, if not those of the people of Whiteinch, that his powers were prodigious.

At two in the morning on the third of April 1974, Hopkins committed to a ritual which ramified across the district as a series of disturbing events. Children woke up screaming from nightmares of clicking shadowy tree people. Passing the Burgh Hall, baker Thomas Addleston swore he heard the sounds of horses from within the abandoned building. Agnes Moore claimed that she heard awful singing from St Paul’s church and that there was a strange light streaming out of its windows. There were many stories of such odd phenomena that night, but the oddest of all went unremarked. At twenty to three on that morning Charlie “The Reverend” Hopkins disappeared from the face of the Earth.

What returned, thirty four years later, certainly had the body and memories of Charlie Hopkins, but there was also something else looking out from behind those bleak grey eyes. This was no separate entity but rather a consciousness so warped and stretched by unspeakable experiences that it could no longer be contained under the meaningless name it had been given by Charlie’s parents. It stood on the raw wet tarmac of a domestic car park and wept for all it had lost and had endured while laughing with mad joy to find itself on somewhat familiar terrain. It was struggling to his feet in this state of overwhelming absurdity, snivelling and giggling when a voice disturbed him.

“You awright, pal?”

It whirled and snarled like a feral animal as it located the voice. A young man, with short brown hair and a look of genuine concern stared at it. The thing that had been Charlie Hopkins nodded, thinking to itself how perfect the youth was, how blankly ignorant, how naively compassionate, perfect. It decided that it had found his first disciple. “I am fine,” it replied.

The boy nodded uncertainly. “You sure?”

“No,” it said, laughing, understanding who he was now, understanding everything. “I am The Prophet.”

The boy frowned, staring into his eyes, staring behind them, deep into the vast reaches that lurked there. And as The Prophet stood on both feet for the first time in decades, the first disciple took to his knees, in bewildered, terrified awe.

3.

The cabinet was highly varnished and sealed with a large ornate brass combination lock. Atrophia sighed as she rolled the numbers to a click and opened it. From inside she pulled out a child’s skull. The white bone was stained under each empty eye socket, each having thin brown lines running down the shape of the nose bone all the way to the tiny teeth. The skull was a holy treasure of her order, something they had in their possession for three hundred years before she was even born. Once the skull had belonged to a nine year old catholic girl called Ruth, who had been bullied and pressured by her demented priest into joining the Convent of Apobiosis, so she could reveal their witchery. Her evidence would condemn them all to be burned at the stake. Her ruse was discovered easily and she was strangled by the Abbess. Her frail tiny body was cursed and thrown into the White Cart river, not far from where the fanatical priest preached his stale sermons. The child’s body had been left as a warning and while it was one that worked, the drama had not ended there. Fished out of the water and prepared for funeral, the child’s corpse became something of a miracle, since its eyes would not stop weeping. Nor had they ever since, so the story went at least. That was not the interesting thing as far as the Apobiosist nuns were concerned. What made the skull a sacred treasure was the magical potency of those strange supernatural tears. Two drops ingested led to a striking hallucinatory state wherein one’s entire sensorium dissociated from consensual reality to instead apprehend the psycho-geographical domains commonly known by fools as “Heaven” or “Hell”.

It was from there that those sisters of necrosis built up a large compendium of entities to commune and trade with, and from there constructed the techniques of magic that Atrophia had employed in order to call forth Cypocracy, who hovered patiently, waiting for the skull to be placed in the offering circle.

Atrophia almost hesitated but a deal was a deal. Upon placing the Crying Virgin of White Cart Water on the floor she used a spare candle of red wax to draw the offering circle upon her wooden floor tiles. There was a breeze of satisfaction that came from the odd spherical entity. “Thank you,” it replied in a seething growl. “I sense an urgency to conclude this matter, no?”

“Immediately, if you please,” Atrophia agreed.

“And then we are done?”

“Then we are done,” she replied.

There was no sound from it as it disappeared, the skull vanishing from the floor along with the entity. She stood there in the haze of incense, hearing her heart thumping in her ears, feeling it thump between her breasts, waiting. Had it tricked her? No, that was impossible, what was left of the Convent would scour the baleful wastes of its domain and harrow it from existence if it had. The creature would fulfil the…

From outside, at a distance she heard an explosion which was no louder than a car crash. She looked out of her window to see that a vehicle was indeed the source of it, though the car was in flames rather than crumpled by another. The burning driver’s door swung open and a figure wrapped in flames staggered out while the screaming from within grew louder. It tried to do something before it fell to the ground and quietly burned while from the side of the streets other witnesses and gawpers made noises of shock and horror. She had no doubt they were the disciples of The Prophet and she realised that Cypocracy had fulfilled its end of the bargain. There was a tingle of pleasure that cut through her relief and a cold feeling of trepidation that crawled up her spine. What would she tell the others?

There was no doubt left that the Convent was now at war.

4.

Upon the roof of a burnt skeletal husk of a car, abandoned after a joyride on spare ground and torched, The Prophet sat cross legged and eyes closed, seeming to inhale the entire morning through his filthy nostrils. The three sat on the damp grass, waiting with some anticipation for him to speak. The Prophet slowly opened his eyes and said “We live in the wasteland of an ancient splendour, slaves to the machines of progress we invented to serve us.”

He climbed off the remains of the car. “This… thing,” he continued, spitting the word, “is a complex but pertinent symbol of debased age. A machine that poisons, that is dangerous to both its user and the world beyond. A symbol of status and convenience. From this ruin we shall build a new church.”

He nodded as he proclaimed this, as if he could already see the building around him, gazing up at imagined pillars. The First of The Three examined the remnants of the car. Tiny cubes of glass glinted like diamonds inside the rusty interior and he fiddled with the charred steering wheel. It came loose and he threw it casually into the long sickly grass.

“Yes,” The Prophet said approvingly at his action. “Make it pure, rid it of it’s previous trappings. It shall be the altar of our temple.”

Encouraged by this, the other two began tearing out the gutted innards, throwing springs and chunks of burnt foam out into the grass, while The First began to try and unlock the boot. Using a blackened metal strut from inside the car, he levered the lock until it snapped, which did not take much to effort. The lid swung open quite easily and The First gasped as he saw what was inside. Bones, burned bones, small bones, several skulls and rib cages, little humeri and ulnae, tibias and fibulae. “Faither,” he stammered. “check this oot.”

The Prophet looked into the makeshift ossuary and laughed. “A sign! This object has been made sacred before we discovered it. Auld Wurm has blessed us. Close the lid. Make its metal gleam my disciples.”

The Third of Three nodded as he planted his hands on his hips. “We’ll need steel wool and baking soda.”

“I have no interest in such mundanity. Get it done.” The Prophet ordered, he scowled and looked towards the city. Staring back at him was a tall woman who stood at the edge of the grounds, watching them. She was too far away to recognise, to see her features, but her long curly hair was as red as her strange gown. The Prophet grinned when he spotted her and left the three disciples bickering over whether to start scrubbing the skeleton of the car clean without equipment of to purchase cleaning materials. As he walked towards her she stepped off the pavement onto the grass.

“What do you think you are doing?” she asked. She was pale under those long wavy locks, perhaps in her forties she wore dark lipstick and a deep frown.

“Minding our own business, you?” The Prophet asked, sarcastically.

“The car is my business,” she replied.

“And the contents? Was that your business too, hmm?” The Prophet said, mockingly. He attempted to stare into her soul to capture it as he had the others in his growing flock, but behind those brown irises was nothing human, just a void, a black hole that threatened to suck his own magnificence into its infinite emptiness. He staggered backwards, shocked but impressed.

“Neither your implied threats nor your paltry attempts at magic will work on me, old man,” she sneered. “This land belong to us, be off with you and take your idiot monkey slaves with you.”

“I don’t think so, woman. Here is where I shall build my temple, for I am The Prophet.”

She laughed at that. “You’re too pale and sixteen hundred years too late to be Mohammed you old nutcase. Get lost, don’t make me tell you again.”

Without warning, he caught it. There, a thread of life, a thin strand of history unspooled from her mind into his. “Donna, is it?”

She made no sign of recognition. He continued. “Yes, Donna. Troublesome girl, mummy and daddy did not know what to do with you, did they? All those dead budgies and drowned cats. They knew it was going to lead to trouble. They did not know what you knew, eh? You’d seen it, remembered it from before you were born, the great writhing Wurm that devours space and time like the worms devour our bodies when we die. Hmm?”

“What nonsense is this, you fool?” the woman protested, scoffing at him but with a hint, just a hint of uncertainty.

Yes, he had her. He would reel her in.

5.

Atrophia thumbed through the contacts on her phone, she located the number of the Hegumena of her Convent, Exesa. The phone at the other end connected immediately.

“Atrophia, are you safe?” The Hegumena asked. There was no worry in the electronically simulated voice, which was not unsurprising, Exesa was a cold woman who acted as if her emotions had been surgically removed.

“I am, matron. We, however, are not. I was almost abducted by the vermin earlier. I managed to escape but they were not far behind. Drastic measures had to be taken.” She emphasised the last part.

“I see. They took Disruptia and Putredyne, earlier. Both are presumed dead. Wait where you are, we shall send some of the Militants to collect you. The rest of us are going to Laithewaite Hall.”

“Good idea. I assume then that we are striking back?”

“Of course, this Worm Prophet and his cult need extinguished and quickly,” Exesa stated, as if the answer was obvious. “Such blatant heresy is...” she stopped and sighed, “...inconvenient.”

“Yes.” Atrophia agreed.

“Good. The sisters have been dispatched and will be there shortly, are you sure you are safe?”

“I think so.”

“Fine. Now what were these drastic measures?” Exesa queried.

Atrophia explained about the ritual, the creature who responded and the offering with some trepidation, given that she had given one of the Convent’s most sacred artefacts to the entity. She was expecting anger, admonishment perhaps, but instead Exesa just snorted and said “Oh well, can’t be helped. We shall speak soon.”

Atrophia disconnected and while biting a ragged line of skin at the edge of her thumbnail, walked over to the window again to look at the burning car. The previous inferno had simmered down to a struggling blaze and a thick greasy smoke rose languidly into the night at the edges of the doorways she could see dripping liquid cooling into hardened pools, a cocktail of melted plastic and human fat collecting below.

She was thinking of Disruptia and Putredyne and the rest of her sisters that had either succumbed to the Heretic or been murdered by his cult. The Convent had thirty one nuns before he arrived and now they were down to nine, nine, while his insane cult had grown to dozens. Nor were their murders restricted to the Convent, they’d killed countless men, women and children across the entire West Coast, yet no one had stood up to them, not the police, the gangs, none of the other mystic sects, no one. It was as if they and their barbarity were invisible.

Sighing, she strode into her bedroom and removed her clothes which proved slightly difficult with her lacerated palm. Throwing her bloodstained blouse and denims onto the bed she caught a look at herself in the mirror and almost instinctively pulled in her stomach. Getting old, getting unfit, weak, getting saggy. A bit like the convent, she thought. She opened the wardrobe and took out her robes. They were crimson with black arched panels along the skirt and bust with golden yellow threading along the short sleeves and rigid black collar. She slipped it on and pulled back her greying black hair into a ponytail before putting on her habit, which was a large black skullcap with a thick web of red lace netting that covered her face. If the Militants were coming, she’d best dress for the part, just to remind them of her authority.

She was ready, all she had to do was wait.

6.

Clouds of flies buzzed around the room, bloated fat things. They ran up and down the corrugated iron walls like shadows of pestilence. They scrabbled across the seating, crawled over the corpses and chunks of human and animal strewn down the aisles, they were everywhere in the stinking place, everywhere, that was, except the altar. What was once an old burnt-out car gleamed from the light of several battery operated torches hung from green rusty washing poles purloined from tenement gardens and used as pillars in the depraved Temple of The Worm. Behind the altar, The Prophet stood, his eyes wide and keen. He was stark naked, a withered leathery flesh covered only by symbolic tattoos drawn on by the disciples with biro and sharpie, made permanent with darning needles.

Most of his flock were on their knees, averting their gaze but two, both were bald and muscle-bound. Between them there was a young man, badly beaten so his tears ran down eyes so swollen they were reminiscent of slit plums. He kept muttering to himself “please… please...”

The Prophet gazed at him and nodded in satisfaction. He grabbed a large potato sack from behind the altar, it was filled with something that was seeping and covered in flies. “It is good that you beg,” he began “You have seen the error of your ways have you not, George?” He said as he approached the sobbing man.

George didn’t seem to know exactly what was happening, perhaps because of concussion and shock or perhaps because an hour earlier he was heading to work before being assailed and abducted by these madmen. He was finding it difficult to focus and the reechy, fetid atmosphere of the room kept making him want to throw up. “Please,” he repeated, “What do you want?”

The Prophet gazed at him with a look of perplexity, “For you to repent your foul sins. You have denied The Worm his gifts, given them to base creatures to violate and degrade.”

George was confused. “What?” he mumbled.

“We have been watching you. You steal the dead from the morgue where you work, not to sacrifice to God but to enrich yourself by selling his property to witches,” The Prophet said, spitting the last word at him.

It was then it dawned on George. He’d been careful, very careful, no one could have known his service to the nuns, the few bodies he’d given them were all for incineration, all smuggled out in the most secret and professional manner. The last time they had even warned him to be more careful. “I...” he said, but could think of nothing else.

“You have sinned George, but we are not like the monsters you serve, The Worm will offer you redemption and salvation,” The Prophet said, almost gently. He pulled the sack forward and opened it. “Behold, this is our pyx of communion.”

George gasped as a swarm of flies bloomed from inside the sack, the noise of their infernal buzzing only made more nauseating by the rotten stench that wafted out from within. The dog inside the sack had been dead for quite a while, its grey tongue lolled out from yellowing fangs. From his best guess he would have said it had been an Alsatian, but most of it’s fur had gone and the discoloured flesh was slipping off. The Prophet reached into the sack and pulled the dead dog’s head forward, the top of its skull had been removed and the shrunken remains of its brain crawled with foul thick purple things which sprouted spiky black hairs. These plump monstrosities were some kind of maggot, engorged enough to resemble caterpillars. The Prophet plucked one from the brain and it wriggled between the long broken nails of his dirty thumb and forefinger. “This is the Eucharist, the flesh and body of our God.”

A glance from The Prophet and the two men who had been holding George grasped at his head tightly. George knew what was about to happen and clenched his teeth as tight as he could, panic-breathing rapidly through his nostrils until snot ran out in thick strings. With his other filthy hand The Prophet pushed at his cheeks with such strength the insides grated off his teeth. “Open yourself to the miracle of the infinite, accept this, and you will be redeemed.”

George was determined not to open his mouth, but with a nod from The Prophet, one of the men did something to the back of George’s neck, he wasn’t sure what but it felt like he sliced it open with a rusty knife, George’s scream was involuntary and upon opening his mouth The Prophet jammed the disgusting maggot-thing inside. Before he could spit it out his mouth and nose were forced shut.

“Swallow,” The Prophet demanded.

George refused, he could feel the vile thing wriggling inside his mouth, spiky against his tongue, worse he could taste it, something that reminded him of sour milk and of burning, septic meat. It was oozing something, some thick liquid that tingled and fizzed inside his jaws. It was moving down the back of his gullet, he felt like vomiting but could not and wanted to faint as he sensed it slither down his throat. Inconveniently and without instruction from him, he gulped it down.

7.

They were twins, Venality and Iniquity. Both were well over six foot, muscular and with an air of masculinity despite their generous feminine curves. They were as mean as feral dogs and as attractive as butterflies. Both had long blond hair braided all the way down to the base of their spines, and both wore frowns that seemed to chill the air around them. Once, Atrophia had watched as the twins chased down a degenerate known as Connor Boyce, a few nights after he had raped Sister Anhedonia. They had kept pace with him as he ran though the darkness of Kelvingrove park, each only had a penknife with which they jabbed him and slashed at him as he ran, they toyed with him for an hour until he had finally lost so much blood that he had fainted. After that he was just another subject for the Convent’s experiments. When they had dumped his pale blood-soaked body into the back of the transit van, neither had even broken a sweat. Nor did they ever break into a smile. Sombre, quiet, preferring only to be heard by their acts of violence, both had arrived at Atrophia’s flat to escort her to Laithewaite Hall. She declined to think of it as the safety of Laithewaite Hall, given the buildings occult and savage history.

Upon opening the door, Atrophia thanked them for coming, to which both gave an abrupt nod in response. Venality, who could be differentiated from her identical sibling by a topaz jewel piercing on her left nostril said only “Come on sister, we have work to do.”

“Yes, of course,” Atrophia responded.

Iniquity was sniffing the air, suspiciously. From the doorway she gazed over Atrophia’s shoulders and into the room. Finally she looked into Atrophia’s eyes and said “asafoetida?”

“Something like that,” Atrophia responded stepping out the door.

Neither of the sisters required more information and the three walked down the spotless stairwell. Cream tiles, glossed and well kept since the building was constructed in the late 19^th century, adorned the walls. Atrophia was proud of her home, proud of her close.

As they stepped out into the street Atrophia could smell the scents of burning rubber and plastic and flesh. She glanced only once to where the strobing blue lights of fire engine, police car and ambulance had convened. The car was a black skeleton under the streetlights. The worm priest’s disciples lay on the ground on long sheets, grotesque burnt offerings to whatever would have them.

She climbed into the back seat of the sisters car, an Audi, black as night, but what type she neither knew nor cared. The seats were comfortable. The three of them made off, not a word spoken between them.

Through the city they travelled, a smear of late night take-aways and sodium lights, shuttered shops tagged with graffiti of the desperate unknowns, before heading onto the M8 and northwards past the city centre and out into the abandoned land where Laithewaite Hall stood, a foul accumulator of the worst mankind could be.

Inside the fusty, dusty hall, candles had been lit, since its broken windows had long been boarded over, darkness suffocated the edges so the walls could not be seen, allowing the place to appear like an ominous vastness, its once laquered flooring swallowed up by the endless dark. Exesa had found some plastic chairs and was sitting on one, her grey hair pulled up into an elaborate bun on her head. On the others sat Decedia, blond, tired and still as portly as ever; Sacromery, who was cleaning her long blood-red nails with a thin needle-like knife; Anhedonia, almost motionless, expect for those haunted eyes, that rolled towards them, she was a gaunt black-haired horror; Deleria sat on the ground, her auburn bob tied back with pins, she was playing cards with Dolorous, both were young, vibrant, both short, both eager for whatever insanity they could be part of, all of them were waiting silently for Exesa to speak.

The Hegumena stood and gave a cold, meaningless smile. “And so, we are all here.”

Sacromery sighed. “For all the good that’ll do us.”

“Oh shut up for fuck sake.” Dolorous barked. “You’ve been complaining since Exesa told you her plan.”

“That’s because it’s absurd.” Sacromery retorted, she looked to Atrophia, as if for agreement. “The Hegumena wants to petition The Duke.”

Atrophia felt her stomach fall, like she was on an aeroplane that had dropped thousands of feet. “The Duke? Is that… wise?”

Sacromery spread her hand towards her and looked around at the others smugly and pleadingly together, “See?”

“Oh be quiet, Sacromery,” Exesa groaned. “Of course it’s not fucking wise, we know that, yet our only other options are to disband and go into hiding, die, or join the heretic.”

“I still think we could just bide our time and kill the wretch.” Decedia said with a shrug.

Anhedonia shook her head only slightly. “We petition The Duke, we are done otherwise, these pretences at bravery are a waste of time, desist. We all know this is the only chance we have. This priest of the Auld Wurm is no charlatan, he is something we have not seen in a long time, an avatar for that rotting chaos that burrows through history.”

That settled it. No one argued with Anhedonia, because Anhedonia had staggered back out from what fools called Hell on many occasions, she had always brought back foul and strange treasures from that strange occluded realm.

“Can we even construct the labyrinth?” Atrophia asked.

“Oh yes.” Exesa said. She walked to her chair which had a wooden box under it, one that Atrophia had only noticed as Exesa pulled it out from under the chrome legs. She knew what was in there, but Exesa opened the latch and the lid and showed her anyway. The tools of surgery, the weapons of autopsychotomy. They gleamed gold in the flickering candlelight.

“And a subject?” Atrophia asked. That was the difficult part. They could have all the tools they needed but without the right sacrifice, one of the disciples, then it would all be for nothing.

Exesa smiled, saying nothing as Inquity and Venality returned from the darkness with a foul smelling man, who looked like a tramp. His mouth had been stapled shut, a row of metal punctuations ran across his lips like a railroad track, his mad eyes wide and defiant. “This one was caught earlier this evening by our dear Deleria, snooping about in her back garden.”

Atrophia took a deep breath. “And we are really going to do this?”

Exesa stared into her eyes as she plucked out the long ornate scalpel. “Well, Atrophia, you are.”

Atrophia took the blade. “Very well, hold him down.”

Neither the staples nor the constant rumbling traffic from the motorway flyover that crossed above the Hall could quite drown out his screams.

8.

His wide eyes stared out to an unimaginable distance, far past the horizon, the edge of the sky, out beyond the rocks and dust at the edge of the system, out past the perimeter stars, further even that the boundary of space-time. Gibbering strange terrified incantations, his body drenched with tears and sweat, George witnessed the impossible enormity that writhed through dimensions tangential to the universe of which he had been only been dimly aware. It was a segmented monstrosity, darker even than the void dimensions through which it burrowed, slick with the gelatinous sheen of time.

The spinning whorls of galaxies looked like flat cracks of light on a black wall and were tiny in comparison to this dreadful majesty, The God Worm was revealed to all his senses, even ones he never knew existed.

When he returned from that empty place, he reeked of shit and piss, everything he was had leaked out of him, all his joys and terrors, dreams and memories, even his name was lost, he knew only that he was a tool of the infinite beast and its prophet. He gazed up at the beloved figure though blood-fogged eyes and said “Master, I am yours to command.”

The Prophet caressed his wet face and said. “Show us where the witches dwell.”

And so it was that The Prophet began the purge of the Apobiosist Nuns. One by one the women fell to their knees or to an early grave. They were not weaklings, but suffered from a form of ideological poisoning that frustrated the Prophet, who tried his best to convert them from their path towards eternal oblivion. All in all five joined them, the others had not gone quietly and by the time they had focussed their attentions onto Atrophia, thirteen of his own flock had been slaughtered by the vicious harridans. He had even lost his fourth disciple, she had been found with her throat slit and missing her eyes and tongue in the Car Park of the St Enoch’s Centre. They had sought to provoke him but they did not understand, too comfortable, fat and decadent, too wrapped up in their trivial humanity, they could not grasp the stark asceticism his faith required of him. It took months but then time was irrelevant. It’s end was near and the city would soon be his.

9.

To construct the Labyrinth took almost unique skill and talent. To keep the subject alive through careful skinning, without damaging the nerves, to unfold that system, along with the circulatory system, to unwind and unthread the human in such a precise and meticulous way, had, even by the Apobiostics, only been successfully performed four times in three thousand years. Atrophia had trained for the task for the better part of thirty years but still felt the shakes along her fingers as she sliced through epidermis and dermis with the deft and gentle caution of an artist. It was a slow, methodical and messy process, with constant risk of death by shock or exsanguination, either of which would have brought an untimely end to the ritual and thwarted the attempt to invoke The Duke. She managed to flay fingers and arms, leaving raw twitching muscle surrounding bone and wrapped in a red webbing of veins, without too much trouble. Delicately, as if unravelling fine wrapping from a present, she removed the skin around the skull and within a few hours the subject had been stripped of every inch of flesh, which lay beside his raw body like discarded confetti, soaked in a puddle of blood.

With the preliminary task completed satisfactorily, she moved on to the far more difficult task, to unspool every available nerve fibre, vein and capillary, every part of the intestines outwards into the complex pattern required. The real labyrinth inside each and every human spread outwards with just enough haste that the heart and brain would stay alive long enough for it to be completed.

She dared not gaze at the wide lidless eyes drowned in the insanity of the aesthetic agonies she had inflicted upon the subject. Any momentary connection whether of pity or empathy may have stayed her hand or caused some instant of human error ruining everything. It took hours to release the almost intangible filigree of the nervous system, after that the circulatory system and innards were much easier. By dawn the subject was a threaded map upon the floor, unfurled and exposed, and finally with a gasp, the subject died. His last breath captured in a green glass phylactery and placed at the centre of the carnage artwork Atrophia had created, between the ribcage, at the solar plexus.

After a call in the language of Entropy, there was a small glow from the bottle, a single pulse that was so weak that it failed to illuminate even the ribs it nested in. It was enough, and a collective sigh of relief echoed from the nuns.

The ritual had been successful, all they had to do was wait and see if The Duke deigned to respond.

The temperature decreased rapidly, and from somewhere else a bell was struck, an ominous deep sound that echoed through the room but seemed to reverberate backwards inside their skulls. Each of the nuns looked at one another with nervous anticipation and all turned as they heard a quiet clicking noise approaching from one of the dark corridors. Two blazing eyes cut through the blackness, as a great black dog paced out of the empty gloom. The beast was as big as a lion. Its fur was darker than the shadows it emerged from, glossy and sleek, taut around its powerful, muscular frame. Excesa gasped and took to one knee. “Your excellency, we are honoured.”

The dog seemed disinterested, sniffing the stagnant air and then gazing at the eviscerated remains. “Impressive,” it said in a deep inhuman voice which was oily and aristocratic. “Who is the artist?”

Excesa glanced at Atrophia, who, along with the others, were all now bowing and averting their gaze from the enormous canine. “Sister Atrophia, one of our most skilled...”

“Ah yes,” The dog said and then looked over at Atrophia who could feel sweat trickle down her spine. “A busy girl, hmmm?”

“Your excellency, you would be so...” Excesa began but the dog cut her off with a laugh, sharp and sardonic.

“Hah! Cypocraphy. Well, well, well. An old name. Tell me Atrophia, why would you petition one such as that?”

Atrophia gulped as she scurried through her mind on how to address The Duke. She knew the formal terms but was worried that her intonation, or a hint of nervousness may offend it. “Desperation, your Excellency.” she said.

The dog seemed to be nodding. “Indeed? And did this desperation extend to this magnificent exenteration?”

“It did.”

“I understand. Your order has been diminished by the vessel once known as Charles Hopkins, correct?”

“The Prophet of the Worm. I do not know his name.”

“Yes. A fool. He walked out of this world once, a long time ago, and witnessed something the human mind is not meant to experience, a creature known as the burrower behind the stars. It is of no concern to me.” The Dog uttered, dismissively.

She could tell The Duke was playing with her, it would have not have come if it was as disinterested as it was pretending. All she had to do was find the correct thing to say.

10.

The Prophet stood watching the fire crews drag the blackened immolated remains of his disciples from the burnt out car. His face may have appeared inscrutable to his two disciples but the annoyance exuded from his filthy flesh like sweat. He listened, not taking his eyes of the proceedings as one of them reported what she had previous gleaned from a witness, now deceased.

“He said that there were three women, all in fancy dress, like they were going to a ball or something. They took a car and rushed off in that direction.” The disciple said as she pointed down the road with an index finger thick with clotted blood.

The Prophet gave a tiny nod. “I see. Did you know this Atrophia had such power?”

The disciple shook her head, a clump of long wavy hair fell from her balding head. “No, but I rather suspect it was something else that did her bidding.”

“Magic, then,” The Prophet said.

“I would assume so. If she and the others were in their garb, there is a chance that...”

“They wish to make one last stand against us, yes?”

“Yes, your eminence.” The disciplw said, she grinned through rotten cracked teeth in which bits of bloody flesh were stuck.

“Where would they have gone?”

“To one of the places of power, Laithewaite Hall I would guess.” The disciple answered.

The Prophet breathed a deep satisfied breath. “Good. We shall gather the others then, and give them the deaths they so desire.”

“Yes, your eminence,” the disciple answered, but there was something behind her sycophancy that The Prophet sensed, doubt perhaps, maybe a hint of contempt, or a wish that he would be the one to die.

“You have been with me almost since the beginning, a true and faithful disciple, but now I release you and give you back your name, Donna.” The Prophet said and the spell broke.

Donna was suddenly aware of everything that had happened, the betrayal of her Convent, the abysmal degradations she had endured, the rot she had taken into herself and all the fury and anger burst forth, she did not thank The Prophet for her release, instead she just pounced, her cracked bloody nails and spindly fingers flew.

The Prophet merely pulled a large carving knife from the back of his filthy trousers and forced it into her gut even as her talons scraped the thin loose scabrous flesh from his cheek. She made a gasping noise and stumbled backward, only the hilt could be seen sticking out from her stomach. She made a small laugh and went to say something, but The Prophet did not hear her, he and the other disciple were already walking off.

11.

The silence in the room was a tension so dense it threatened to drive Atrophia insane, which was the exact opposite of what she needed. What she needed was her cognition to be as sharp as the razor she’d used to construct the labyrinth, a gleaming tool that could cut through this dreadful moment of waiting. Instead of some perfect remark, she uttered, almost as an escaped thought, “If you are so unconcerned why did you bother turning up?”

The collective gasps were like a bomb resounding through the silent darkness. The burning eyes of the dog flared as it stared at Atrophia. “Perhaps merely to appreciate the aesthetics of your craft. Maybe to watch your convent’s end.”

The voice was like ice but Atrophia had decided the creature was being deliberately evasive. “Maybe, perhaps, these are not definite.”

“Few things are and those that are do not remain so for long.” The Duke retorted.

“Still not an answer,” Atrophia said. “Do you require us to beg for your help?”

Excesa shouted “Atrophia! Hold your tongue.”

The Duke laughed. “Such audacity. I shall put it down to continued desperation. That you wished my help was a given, my little artist, the question is, at what cost?”

Excesa stepped forward. “Your excellency, if I may?”

The flames in the great dog’s eyes flared once more and a deep rumbling growl of anger resounded through the room “You may not!”

Excesa was knocked back with the force of the answer, landing hard on the filthy floor. This caused a few titters from the other nuns, but despite the injury to her position, she decided it was probably best to stay where she was.

“Well?” The Duke asked turning its attention back at Atrophia, “What would you be willing to give to save your little order?”

Atrophia had no answer to that question that she could think of, though she was quite certain that The Duke knew exactly what it wanted from her. Again she had to think of the correct words, this demon was no opportunist, it did not manifest without knowing exactly what it would gain. What did it want? What did she have that was unique? The answer came, it was obvious. Had been obvious all along. That is why the dog had spoken to her and only her. “You want my talent.”

“Indeed,” The Duke answered with some satisfaction. “You have a singular gift, one that could never be given the appreciation it deserves in this mundane and dusty realm. Come with me, and I will save your sisters from this diseased cult.”

Atrophia had heard that the Aristocrats of the other planes had a predilection for unique mortals, they were status symbols, curiosities. It was considered both an honour and sheer bloody good luck. It was considered that to be a member of one of the Courts meant immortality and unimaginable luxury. Though she suspected that one would be reduced to the position of something akin to a pet, or an entertaining novelty. No-one had ever come back to explain what the conditions were, though there were tales of wizards and artists who had themselves become great advisors, even powers in those other spheres.

“Then, we have a deal, your excellency,” she answered, her stomach fluttering as she did.

12.

They strode through the city, a miasma of flesh that even the most mentally obliterated of the vagrant dregs avoided, screwing their noses up at this horde of fetid humanity. There were two dozen, perhaps more, The Prophet did not need to count his disciples. The family of his writhing vermin God followed silently, compelled by his morbid aura. Though the back streets and rubbish strewn alleys they headed, horrifying those in their path. They were gaunt, filthy and depraved. Out past the borders of the centre, along the long abandoned roads, where the buildings had all been torn down to be replaced by patches of wild grass and mounds of fly-tipped waste. They marched along beside the grand pillars of the motorway that roared high above their head until at last, they reached their destination. Laithewaite Hall.

The Prophet knew that here, more than most other places, reality was pliable, thin enough for leakage into and from other domains. As they stood outside the entrance, a police car slowed, the men inside stared at them suspiciously, thought better of it and sped off. He smiled, even the laws of man were wise enough not to interfere with what was about to transpire. Tonight there would be a reckoning for the Heretic witches. He was a forgiving soul, those who would take the sacrament would be spared, those who did not, would be food for the worms.

Casually he let his left hand float into the air by his shoulder and turned to see the glinting of various wielded weaponry. With a satisfied smile, he closed his eyes, inhaled the night air, heavily laced with the bouquets of petrol and sewage. Exhaling, he nodded and strode forth, climbing up the filthy cracked marble stairs that had once, he assumed, been a sign of elegance.

Inside he could smell the burning wax from candles, see flickers of light from the main hall and sense something… something he could not quite put his finger on. While perturbed, he marched into the hall with the supreme confidence of one chosen by God, his flock beside and behind him. Immediately he knew something was wrong. It was not merely the great supernatural dog that gave him pause, but the women. They had fire in their eyes. It was not a metaphor. If it had not been for the beautiful delicately designed atrocity spread out across the floor, The Prophet might have been concerned, but the artwork of meat and sinew captured his eye and his heart in a way that he did not expect.

“It… it is wonderous!” He gasped.

“Indeed so. It takes a unique eye to appreciate such talent Mister Hopkins,” a voice said, inhuman, demonic, flattering and terrible. He was in no doubt that it came from the dog.

“That is the name of a dead thing,” The Prophet insisted, his ire rising, his wits returning.

“All I see is many dead things, Mister Hopkins,” The dog said, as it padded towards him. As it grew closer, The Prophet was struck by the enormity of the beast. “What little power you managed to collect from that blind monstrosity before you were flung back into this realm is all that is keeping you and your gang of degenerates here from being corpses and you have spread that power too thin. That you are all rotting inside and out, is no gift but a consequence.”

“Silence demon!” The Prophet commanded. “We are infused with the spirit of the Dread Worm, the true God, he demands that we...”

“The thing has no thoughts to make demands with, you fool. You are poisoned, deranged and infectious. You are a sick ghost of diseased flesh and demented mind.” the dog interrupted. “You are precisely what the Convent of the Apobiosis was established to deal with, you and your followers are a plague upon this land.”

“I am The Prophet of the Great Worm!” The Prophet insisted, but his voice trembled slightly.

The dog laughed, laughed! At him! “That beast is not the only thing that can share its power. You may have dwindled their number, but I have granted the nuns my own gift tonight, one that will purify this world of your disease before it extends further. Ladies...”

The Prophet saw the nuns move, they flashed across the room like balletic lighting, and with inhuman grace they danced as their weapons slashed and spun. “Kill them!” The Prophet demanded as one by one his disciples were torn to pieces by knife and scissor, scalpel and scythe.

They fought back but whatever magic the dog had granted them was too much, the nuns flowed and weaved leaving traces of themselves in the dim light, moving so quick that any blow that went to hit them only cut through an after-image. They spun and dodged and weaved, dropping legs and arms and heads onto the floor, spraying blood and clattering teeth everywhere. In disbelief he stood paralysed watching this slaughter happen all around him, a blur of elegant butchery. Within seconds it was over and he found himself surrounded by blood drenched witches, all of which had their weapons pressed against his flesh, at eye and neck and heart and lungs. He looked at the remains of his followers, so easily destroyed and for the first time since he could remember, he felt fear.

One of the witches, older than the others, with chunks of meat in her veil, whispered to him. “On your knees.”

He did as she said. He could feel the ache in his knees as they bent, the bones grinding together beneath the flaking skin. As he knelt he felt cold, and trembled. He was empty inside, his mind a vast chasm in which wind blew but stirred nothing. He had been forsaken. Bending forward, to beg his Lord for guidance, he whispered, “Please.”

One of the witches smiled and said “Of course, that is why we are here.

13.

With one deft swipe, Venality separated the Cultist’s head from his neck, a thin squirt of discoloured blood spurted out, it’s smell noxious. The head bounced onto the floor.

“There,” The Duke said. “As I said, of little consequence.”

Excesa stammered. “Your excellency I don’t know how we can ever repay you...”

“You cannot. Payment had already been negotiated and agreed upon, is that not right… Atrophia?”

“Doris, my Lord.” Atrophia said. “If I am no longer of the Convent, I have no right to that name.”

“Doris?” The dog said, with mocking disbelief. “Come now, do you think I am going to introduce the greatest flesh artist of a dozen generations to my peers as Doris?! I expect the Convent shall survive such an affront to their precious rules, is that not right, Hegumena Excesa? Sister Atrophia sounds so much more… alluring”

“Not Sister,” Anhedonia interjected. “She sacrificed herself to save our order, brought forth a great power to help us in our hour of need. Saint Atrophia, if you please, Your Excellency.”

Atrophia felt her cheeks blush. There was several voices all agreeing at once. “Saint Atrophia, Saint Atrophia.”

“The sisters are correct, Your Excellency, her name is and always will be Saint Atrophia.”

“Saint Atrophia of the order of Apobiosis. Yes, I like that very much.” The Duke. “Make sure to honour her.”

“Of course.” Excesa said, curtseying.

“Well Saint Atrophia, are you ready for your long and bright future in the Dusk realm?” The Duke asked.

Atrophia nodded but said nothing. Without anything to mark their passing, both she and the dog were simply gone.

14.

It still sits there, does Laithewaite Hall. Abandoned, falling apart and avoided even by the council and greedy land prospectors. It is a place with a long sordid past, one it can never shake, a historic scar on the face of Glasgow, a dilapidated remembrance stone, for the worst humanity has to offer. There is nothing that resides near it, save for the patches of grass and rubbish and above the ruined hall, traffic roars day and night from commuters who do not see it below them, nor even care. Occasionally one might look out of their window and see the flicker of a ghost of a murder victim, or the wraith of Mad Laithewaite, but these sightings are very seldom, and almost never reported.

There are tales however, that have spread, that on a certain night each year, several robed figures are seen. The rumour has it that they all hold candles while they stand outside the door of the ruined building. Some kind of short ritual is said to take place and bouquets of flowers are left on the doorstep, before the figures disappear into the night. Who they are, no one can really say.