schlock.co.uk - In the Tower of the Ape God

So he put it in his backpack next to a can of spray paint and listened to the clink of stone on metal as he climbed hand-over-hand out of the hole, back to the surface of the razed lot.

Steven was there to tag construction equipment and break things. At 19, he was in the dangerous in-between of ‘no longer in school’ and ‘not yet employed’, something his parents were always on him about. They wanted him to get his act together, move out, find a purpose. They said it was getting to the point where living at home would soon become embarrassing for all parties involved.

But try as he might, Steven couldn’t seem to focus. Which is why he got into tagging—cruising Playa del Rey in the dark hours, climbing up things he shouldn’t climb, sneaking into places he shouldn’t be, with no goal but to spray some words and let the world know he’d been there.

His parents were asleep when he got home from his latest adventure. In the safety of his room, Steven stared at the tablet he took from the pit. He was no geologist, but the smooth black rock didn’t look like anything he’d seen before. Maybe it was synthetic, he thought. Materials science had come a long way, after all. Not that he knew much about it.

He tilted the tablet into the light, watching the glyphs turn gold and then black again. They were cut so cleanly as to appear etched by machine. Only he felt, without knowing why, that somehow they weren’t.

The tablet gave off a faint sensation of energy—like electricity, pulling up strands of hair and crawling over his skin. It took him a while before he could bring himself to put it away on a high shelf in his closet where no one would find it.

Steven woke to a sharp crashing noise in his room. He sat upright, heart pounding, and turned on a lamp.

The alarm clock read 7:15 AM.

He rubbed his eyes and cracked the blinds near his bed.

And then he saw it: the tablet was lying on the floor of his open closet, cracked in half.

He climbed out of bed and picked it up, angry that his new treasure was broken before he even figured out what it was. And he noticed it felt inert now, like it was dead in his hands. The electric sensation from before was entirely gone.

Steven looked in the closet, confused. How had the tablet fallen all on its own? After a cursory investigation that yielded no clues, he placed the pieces on his dresser, then pulled on a sweater and trudged downstairs, still half-asleep.

The house was quiet. It was only when he got to the living room after making a cup of coffee that he noticed something was terribly wrong. On the stone facade of the family fireplace, which extended from the hearth to the ceiling, were his parents, their faces twisted as if frozen in agonising screams.

But they were not in the flesh—not simply pinned to it or hung like a picture—they were both somehow part of the stone itself, like carvings or statues.

Steven dropped his mug. Hot coffee exploded across the linoleum floor as the fireplace roared to life. Strangely, its flames were of a pure sapphire, and Steven noticed the logs inside were thin, bent, and gnarled. If logs could look evil, these were the ones.

‘Behold,’ said an impossibly deep voice, cold and menacing. It filled the whole house, coming from everywhere at once. It was accompanied by a smell—pungent and thick, like the hide of some unclean beast.
Steven stumbled backward toward the foyer, steadying himself on his mother’s prised credenza.

From the shadows of the living room emerged a tall, mountainous figure. Its posture was bizarre—hunched, slouching, with arms that hung nearly to its knees. Its face was like that of an early hominid, neither ape nor man—something in between, perhaps, yet distant to both. Coarse, dark hair sprouted from leathery black skin, covering its hands, face, and arms.

But this was no wild animal. It was dressed in a long flowing robe of intricate design and had embroidered slippers on its strangely shaped feet. Its face (which was twice the size of a man’s) wore a solemn expression.

Steven urinated in his pyjamas as the figure spoke in that horrible voice again.

‘Tell me—who are you, and what is this place?’

Steven stuttered through his name. ‘And this is my p-parent’s house, in P-playa del Rey. What have you d-done to them?’

‘Your family is… preserved,’ said the ape-creature, looking at the anguished human faces carved into the fireplace. ‘Perhaps one day I will release them. But there is much work to be done first. Come, “Stee-ven”. Remove your crude clothing and kneel before me.’

Steven wanted to protest, but the stern expression of the ape-creature made him think twice. So he began stripping his clothing off, and when he was finished, he knelt by the hearth as instructed. The monster walked behind him, and Steven shuddered as he felt its shadow pass over him.

‘Close your eyes, Stee-ven.’

Steven did as he was told. His heart was pounding. Nervous sweat pooled on his brow.

‘No doubt you have many questions,’ the being continued. ‘Have faith they will be answered in time. But first you must be formally brought into my service.’

The ape-creature reached for a thin metal rod that was sitting unnoticed in the fire. He pulled it free, revealing a glowing hot glyph at its end.

It was a branding iron.

‘Prepare yourself.’

The ape-creature pressed the brand into Steven’s spine. Skin crackled and popped, producing a grotesque plume of greasy smoke. Its odour was rank—a potpourri of heat and death.

Steven’s scream was the type that breaks mirrors, but the ape-creature didn’t flinch. After a few seconds he pulled the brand away and held it up, turning the smoking glyph in the firelight.

‘It is done,’ he said finally. ‘Understand that I am your master now—your only master—for all eternity.’

Steven collapsed to the floor, writhing in agony.

‘Why?’ he cried.

‘I am the God called Mog. I require your assistance.’

The ape-creature bent over his tormented victim and grabbed his jaw with a massive simian hand. Warm tears rolled down the boy’s face as Mog turned it from side-to-side, examining his skull.

‘Interesting,’ he muttered at last. He pushed Steven back to the floor of the living room, where he lay trembling in a foetal position.

‘Listen to me,’ said Mog, his voice like the rumble of a truck engine, ‘I must reconstruct my Tower. But I am weak. I need you to procure some items for me. Do you understand?’

Steven moaned from his place on the ground, trying to reach a hand behind his back and touch the spot where he’d been branded with that awful symbol.

It was no use.

Over the next few weeks Steven’s neighbours noticed him coming and going from his parent’s home at odd hours of the day and night. He looked tired. Sick, even. They whispered that his once lush hairline was suddenly thinning, and looked like that of a man twice his age. His dramatic weight loss was also remarked upon, with one observer stating he looked like ‘a skeleton in rags’.

But for all the neighbourhood gossip about Steven, not a single soul mentioned the ominous black tower rising slowly from the roof of his family’s house, extending many storeys into the air and yet casting no shadow upon the ground.

Nor did they remark on the tiny chimney puffing coloured smoke into the air, or the strange light that shot from the tower’s apex across the sky at night, like a lighthouse casting its beam out to the cosmos.

They didn’t notice these things because the Ape God put a spell on them. Mog’s work, he told Steven, must be conducted in secret. It wouldn’t do to alert the neighbours.

At least for now.

For many weeks Steven worked to bring his master the items he required, though they seldom made much sense to him. Glass bowls, bird feathers, animal droppings, dead rodents, and once a paint bucket filled with sea water. Steven brought these items to Mog, questioning nothing, until finally he worked up the courage to confront him about their purpose.

He climbed the spiral staircase of the tower until he reached a small room near the top, where he found his master staring intently into a basin of mercury, dressed in his usual silk robe and point-toe slippers.

He hesitated at the threshold for a moment, wondering if he should speak first—but he was spared the effort.

‘Come in,’ said Mog. ‘It is time we talk candidly.’

Steven found a seat on a small cushion against the wall. Mog looked tired, like he’d been concentrating too long. He stood from behind his basin and went to the tower’s solitary window, where he stared out at the starry sky.

‘I have at last ascertained our whereabouts in time,’ he began, looking solemn. ‘For 300,000 years I have slept inside that tablet. Now I wake to find my people—and our entire history—forgotten.’

Steven felt a dryness in his throat. He was afraid to speak, but forced himself to ask the question he’d come for.

‘Master, I have worked hard to please you these last few weeks, and have kept my questions to myself. But I’m still confused—who are you, really? And what are you doing here?’

Mog sneered.

‘All those aeons ago I was God King to a people called the Urrum. One of the few who knew the old Earth magic—the mysteries passed down from the First Ones.’

Mog paused, tracing a crooked finger across the pane of the window.

‘But even the oldest magic could not save my people.’

Steven shifted in his seat. ‘Save you from what?’

‘From the Engineers. The sailors from beyond the stars.’

Steven felt a strange sensation run up his spine.

‘Their grotesque vessels hung above us for decades before we knew what they wanted. They were unable to survive our air, I think. So they abducted us with their machines, performed experiments.’

‘Jesus,’ whispered Steven.

‘And ultimately they bred creatures designed to walk among us and deliver their message for them. Twisted beings—half us and half them.’

‘Hybrids,’ said Steven. ‘What message did they bring?’

‘They told us the Engineers did not like our magic, and offered a better way,’ Mog grunted. ‘Mathematics. Logic. What they called science.’

‘So what happened?’

‘We told them that magic is a part of Earth and is sacred to every creature that climbs from her womb. We rejected their geometries and formulas, and told them to leave.’

Steven could see a flicker of pain in the Ape God’s face.

‘Then they attacked us with many strange weapons and sent their hybrids in overwhelming numbers. More landed every day, spreading out over the Earth like insects on a festering carcass. It soon became clear the Engineers intended to annihilate our entire race. That was how they planned to destroy magic on Earth—by replacing us with their own creations.’

Mog walked over to Steven and bent down to meet his eyes head on. The Ape God’s face was enormous, and Steven could smell his sour breath as he spoke. He tried not to gag.

‘In the end, when all was nearly lost, my hierophants helped me create a spell that would trap my soul in a tablet. I ordered them to hide it away in a quiet place, where the Earth magic was strongest.’

Steven thought back to the demolished apartment building, the lot where he found the tablet. Could there really be anything so special about that place?

‘Which brings us to you and I,’ said Mog, drawing himself back up.

Steven stood too, pushing himself up on shaky knees. He was a full head-and-a-half shorter than Mog.

‘I appreciate the history lesson,’ he said. ‘But what does it have to do with me?’

Mog put a heavy, long-fingered hand on his shoulder.

‘Because, my obedient Steven, you are going to help me rebuild what was lost. And to do it, we must destroy the hybrids, and erase them from this planet.’

‘I understand, Master. But where are they? And what do they look like? I’ve lived on Earth for nineteen years, but I’ve never seen one.’

Mog’s lips curled into a sinister smile.

‘Why, Steven—you see one every time you look in a mirror.’

Eventually, most of the neighbours concluded Steven’s family had simply vanished. They were never seen in Playa del Rey again. Some people said it had to do with witness protection, or fleeing an insurmountable debt. Others said they were abducted by aliens.

But there were subtler changes in the neighbourhood which eluded even the most curious among them. The sunlight shifted ever so slightly in Playa del Rey that year. Shadows were a little darker. Clouds moved a little slower. And the tide stayed out at times inconsistent with existing charts.

If they had been more observant, the people on Steven’s street would have noticed that birds and other wild animals never went near the family’s old home, preferring instead to take wide routes around it. These animals, of course, had a perfectly legitimate reason: they could see the silent, black tower that stood like a monolith of doom on its roof. They could smell its foul, multi-coloured smoke, and hear the tortured screams that echoed within.

They saw it because Mog’s magic was not designed to fool them.

It was designed to beguile the invaders until he could muster the strength to kill them all.

IN THE TOWER OF THE APE GOD Sean Cahill