Chapter Ten

“Huh, this isn’t half bad,” said Jason, standing at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole airport, in the very heart of Antarctica.

The heart of the station was a massive metal-plated building up on stilts, boasting 80,000 square feet of space, equal to a strip mall. The former base, a dome that led underground, neighbored it. He had been pleasantly surprised when he looked up the weather in Antarctica, finding that February was actually late-summer. The temperature had to be in the high fifties, barely deserving of a fleece compared to the winter cold in Maine. It was a good thing he was in the center of Antarctica, as the ocean breeze kept the coastal stations below freezing.

Damn, he was actually in Antarctica, the cold white basement of the earth! It was hard to believe he had traveled so far. He had been flying nonstop for a week, but this was definitely worth it. Walking away from the plane, he was approached by Nelson, chewing on a cigarette as always. He had been standing by a black helicopter, already manned by a pilot.

“Welcome to Antarctica, you’ll get sick of it soon enough.”

“Endless daylight with continuous weather in the high fifties? I may buy a winter home out here.”

“Well then I hope you like wet socks. Come on, there is something you need to see and hear.”

Readjusting his duffle bag over his shoulder, Jason followed Nelson with a slight spring in his step, excited for the answers he was about to receive. Plus, he would be riding in a helicopter for the first time in his life. Though to be honest, he would have preferred to stay on solid ground for a while.

It was a two-hour flight to whatever location it was that Nelson wanted Jason to see. Not a single word was spoken by Nelson during the entire flight, though Jason frequently asked him questions on what he had found, only to be denied an answer. Nelson seemed even more tense than usual and refused to give up any secrets. Accepting that he would have to be patient, Jason resigned himself to the view outside. Fields of glistening platinum under the deep blue sky, Antarctica was truly an awe-inspiring place. Jason just wished he could have come in winter and seen the Aurora Borealis, or as one of his fellow passengers had corrected him on the flight from South Africa, the Aurora Australis.

The flight ended when the helicopter reached an isolated camp out in the middle of nowhere. It was situated not on the geographic North Pole, but in the center of the largest unbroken stretch of open land. Tents, trailers, and mobile offices were littered around a single metal shack, but the camp was clearly under the possession and jurisdiction of the BSC. Experts in all fields of study from paleontology to geology were rushing back and forth throughout the camp like frightened ants, clearly excited over some source of information.

“Come with me,” Nelson grunted, climbing out of the helicopter and walking over a trailer stationed by the metal shack.

Jason followed him inside, finding rows of lockers along the walls. Opening up a pair of lockers, Nelson revealed two airtight suits with glass face panels. They actually looked like repurposed space suits, complete with oxygen tanks.

“Put this on, you’re about to see the coldest, darkest place on Earth.”

“I feel like Neil Armstrong in this thing. Seriously, if this were night and the gravity was weaker, I would swear I was on the moon,” said Jason, walking out of the trailer and back out into the camp. The suit he was wearing was snug and had been difficult to put on. Already he was overheating and had to keep the glass face panel of his helmet open to prevent fogging.

“Get all the jokes out now, because our radios won’t work once we go down and our helmets will have to be sealed.”

“Go down where?”

“Down there,” Nelson answered, pointing to the metal shack in the center of the camp, just as two people in similar suits stepped out.

Next to the tiny building, Jason spotted a large humming generator and saw that the door was actually watched by two armed guards. Approaching the guards, Nelson and Jason both had their IDs scanned and were granted access. Measuring twelve by twelve feet, the sole purpose of the shack was to hold a large cast-iron elevator, mechanically controlled by a winch hooked up to the generator outside. With open sides and a dingy exterior, it looked like a relic from an old coal mine, and in the back of his mind, Jason wondered if it was really safe.

“Grab me a mortar and a round from that box over there,” said Nelson, pointing to a metal crate set in the corner.

Wondering if he had heard the professor right, Jason opened the crate and looked down at a row of small mortars, right out of old war footage. They were smaller than the kinds that soldiers would use, able to be carried in one hand, with the bombs being about the size of a water balloon.

“What are these?” Jason asked, carefully handing one of the strange crafts to Nelson and climbing into the elevator.

“It’s a special kind of flare, the only kind we use down here.”

He pressed a button on a control panel on the side of the door and the winch gave a soft whine and the elevator began to descend, dropping below the surface.

“I’m surprised you people use this shaft. It’s summer, isn’t it? We’re in a tunnel made of ice. Doesn’t it seem like a bad idea when the temperature outside is almost double the freezing temperature?”

“Don’t worry, this ice doesn’t melt, at least under normal circumstances.”

His tone was strange, devoid of the bad mood Jason had detected before. When he spoke, it was in a calm matter-of-fact way. Pressing the control panel in the elevator door, he turned on an overhead light in the skeletal frame.

“Doesn’t melt? What are you talking about?”

“To put it simply, energy is forbidden from entering this space. That law strengthens the farther down you go, so drilling this tunnel became slower and slower as we descended. You’ll sense it soon, the dropping temperature in the air. Look at the ice around you, notice anything?” Jason glanced around at the smooth ice shooting up past them. “It’s not disappearing, no matter how deep we go. We’re already well below sea level but there is no bedrock,” Nelson answered for him.

“How is that possible?”

“It’s possible because Antarctica is not frozen due of its geographic location, and neither is the North Pole. There is an axis running through this planet, an abomination that defies all logic and science. It manifests itself in arctic temperatures at the highest and lowest points of the planet. That axis was left behind by something. Think of it as like a vacuum.”

“Damn it, will you please just make sense and tell me what you found in Australia? Why the hell did you bring me here?”

“We found the answer to the origin of the Black Stigmata. We know where it came from.”

“And it came from Antarctica?” Jason stammered, shocked by the revelation he knew was imminent.

“In a manner of speaking. Tell me, do you know about the World Tree mythology?”

“I must have skipped that class.”

“It’s probably the most ancient mythology in human history, and unlike other myths and religions, it has been found in all corners of the globe, believed by ancient peoples who were incapable of worldwide contact. The legend speaks of a tree that holds this world together, binding Heaven and Earth, as well as binding every living thing within creation, acting as both the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life.”

“Tree of Knowledge? You mean like in the story of Adam and Eve?”

Nelson cracked a grin. “While it was been greatly changed over the eons, that story is quite true. 65 million years ago, dinosaurs walked the earth simultaneously with humans. The “humans” weren’t Homo Sapiens of course, but everything is relative. They lived peacefully with all life, a far cry from the way we destroy anything that crosses our path in the name of progress. Anyway, at this time, all of the continents of the globe were joined together to create Pangaea, the single landmass that stretched between the north and south poles. Humans had spread to all corners of Pangaea, united in their worship for the World Tree, which manifested itself in the north and south poles.

The World Tree was the origin of all life, the entity from which the first primordial organisms came into existence. It ruled the world as a mindless yet divine force, commanding the respect and adoration of all living things within its domain. Every creature big and small knew never to hurt the tree… or to eat its fruit. It was a law engraved in the DNA of every organism and was an instinct as powerful as the will to live. But as everyone knows, the very definition of being human is the ability to defy one’s primal instincts.

Whether it was a man or woman, we do not know, we could not get an accurate translation. We got a slightly masculine description at one point, so we refer to it as a man, who we named Adam. According to the inscriptions in the Australian cave, Adam was a being of unparalleled evil. He was a sadistic psychopath who would kill anyone who got in his way and did whatever it took to get what he wanted. Compared to all other life on the planet, he was an abomination. He was the embodiment of the Seven Deadly Sins. I’m paraphrasing of course.

Believing that it would grant him immortality, Adam harmed the World Tree by plucking one of its fruits, and defiled it by consuming its flesh. In the biblical story of Adam and Eve, the Apple of Knowledge gave mankind awareness of immorality and original sin, thereby corrupting them. The truth is that the opposite occurred… Whether it was the blackness of the man’s heart or just the darkness of such a blasphemous act, he corrupted the World Tree when he consumed its sacred fruit. Imagine the biggest and most powerful computer in the world and then give it the most crippling computer virus capable of being written.

The knowledge within the tree was eternally corrupted and became the essence of sin. The World Tree, which had originally been the beacon and symbol of all life, transformed into the omen of eternal death and horror. The most destructive traits in the human soul contaminated the tree and brought about a cataclysmic event, the likes of which the earth had never seen. The volcanoes of the world vomited liquid flames, tsunamis washed across the landscape, toxic gas and ash blocked out the sun, Pangaea was split open like a skull struck with an axe, and plagues of unholy wrath eclipsed the world in rotting despair. The wrath of the World Tree was set loose upon the world in its act of self-destruction.

At the polar ends of the earth, the World Tree sunk into the bedrock and encased itself in a demonic chill, draining the very energy from the environment so that everything around it would be bleak and empty. You’ll see what I mean soon enough. We’ve developed a nickname for the event: Ragnarök, referring to the apocalypse of Norse mythology.

As for the person who started it all, he received a deserving fate. Having been nibbled down to a slender core, the fruit of the World Tree that he had consumed became the first Black Stigmata nail, transforming into a spike of unholy and lifeless iron and containing all of the knowledge of the World Tree after its corruption by Adam. Now knowing nothing but wrath, death, suffering, and horror, the power of the World Tree that he had coveted turned on him. It forced Adam to perform the ritual on himself, ending his life and making him both the first Host and the first Homunculus of the Black Stigmata. Then from that nail and the two he had created, it spread.

After Ragnarök, mankind was driven near to the brink of extinction, and the earth was barely able to recover. It took a long time for mankind to come back from the edge. Considering it took 65 million years for extinction to no longer be a fear, I’d say humanity was cursed by the Black Stigmata and had to suffer on the fringes of existence. It’s likely that the endless creation for new nails continuously whittled down their numbers until there were only enough to keep the species alive.”

By the time he was finished speaking, the elevator had descended several miles below sea level before finally coming to a stop. A passageway had been carved into the ice in front of the elevator door, but looking down through the metal grate floor, Jason saw that the vertical shaft still went much deeper.

“Why aren’t we going further down?”

“We made that mistake the first time. Trust me, you need to keep the elevator at a safe distance. From this point forward, keep your suit shut and make sure you’re getting oxygen. We won’t be able to communicate and our vision will be severely limited. Just a head’s up.”

Nelson turned on the light on his helmet and sealed his faceplate, then turned the nozzle on the air tank on his back. Mirroring the same steps, Jason sealed himself up in his suit and followed Nelson into the narrow ice corridor, trying the control his breathing while his heartbeat thundered in his ears. The distance was only about fifty feet and it went around a slight turn, but Jason was brought to a dead stop with the sweat seemingly freezing to him at the sight. It was not a door, he knew that much. Nor was it a tarp, barricade, window, or any kind of hard surface. It was black, black as the coldest recesses of space. The corridor was suddenly cut off with this darkness blocking the way like a curtain, as if reality itself had been severed. The lights of their helmets shined on it like solid material, unable to pass through it but also seeming… rejected by it. It was not like it was reflecting off something, more like the light was unable to pass by.

This darkness was unnatural; it was unwholesome. It weighed down on Jason’s mind with indescribable dread, the same dread he had felt when he watched that plane plummet from the sky before striking the prison. They should not be there. They had to leave! They had to get out of there now! Turning to Jason, Nelson unhooked the end of a spool of wire hitched to his belt and secured it to Jason’s, then locked the spool with a length of ten feet. A metal rod had been secured into the ice wall by the entrance to the abyss.

“Watch your step and do as I do. But first, secure your wire to that rod,” the professor instructed, speaking through a radio in his suit.

Jason nodded, and with the mortar under his arm, Nelson approached the vertical field of darkness. About to enter the threshold, he got down on his hands and knees and moved into it backwards, with his lower body instantly dropping as if he were hanging from a cliff. As he lowered himself down, any part of his body that passed that black field became completely invisible to Jason, as if Professor Nelson were entering a portal from a sci-fi movie. Giving Jason one final nod, he lowered himself all the way into the darkness, with his light immediately disappearing as if he were passing through a waterfall.

The tightening of the wire told Jason he had to follow, even though every fiber of his being was telling him to run. Taking several deep gulps of oxygen and checking to make sure the wire from his belt was tied securely to the metal bar, he did as Nelson had done and lowered himself into the darkness backwards, feet first. As his feet passed through, he felt the ground beneath them vanish. Even more terrifying, a deathly chill seemed to saturate every cell that had passed the barrier, as if he had submerged his bare foot in liquid nitrogen. He wanted to pull his foot back out, but three tugs on the wire told him that Nelson was getting impatient.

He slowly pushed himself in, wincing and gaging as the unnatural cold passed through his suit and assailed him. Actually, it wasn’t quite the cold entering him, but the warmth leaving him, essentially being ripped away like layers of flesh. He had felt this cold before, back when he was on that mountain in his dream. He couldn’t go through that again, he couldn’t! He would rather die than experience that!

Deciding that he needed some “positive reinforcement”, Nelson’s hand shot out of the darkness and grabbed onto the back of Jason’s suit and he yanked Jason into the abyss. Hitting the solid ground, Jason felt the indescribable cold rip the air from his lungs. He couldn’t see anything; there was only total blackness. Even the dim lighting from the corridor had vanished. It was as if he had been cast into an empty dimension devoid of even a single photon.

He felt Nelson give him a rude kick, as if to say, “What are you waiting for, your slippers and a cup of hot coffee? Get off your ass!”

Jason got to his feet, but struggled on the slanted ground. His blindness certainly didn’t help. But as he stood up, a bright light suddenly ignited high up in the distance. It was the flare he had taken from the shack, launched from the mortar. Shooting through the air, the bright ball of light struggled to remain lit, looking more like a candle in a persistent breeze. What was going on with it? Regardless of its struggle, the sphere was able to light up the environment, leaving Jason breathless.

He was standing in a tunnel five hundred feet in diameter, stretching onwards into eternity. In one direction, the tunnel seemed to expand, while in the other direction, it seemed to fork out into smaller tunnels. It was… breathtaking. But as he looked down at the ground, he noticed something that chilled his blood more than it already was. Every square inch of ice, otherwise smooth as glass, was inscribed with a symbol from the Black Stigmata. With the days he had spent, forced to see those goddamn symbols glowing in front of him like neon lights, he would recognize them anywhere. There had to be trillions of them in this cavern alone! Hundreds of trillions!

Up above, the light further dimmed, and Nelson grasped Jason’s shoulder and guided him back to the exit. Holding the wire he had secured outside, he pulled himself up out of the ice cavern and back into the corridor. Upon leaving the darkness, the deathly chill left his body so quickly that he actually began to overheat. Glad to be out of the abyss, he got to his feet and pulled on Nelson’s outreached arm, helping him climb back into the light. Without speaking, he and Nelson walked back to the elevator and began the trip back up to the surface.

“So that tunnel, that was…”

“A cavity left behind by one of the branches of the World Tree before it completely destroyed itself. I believe you saw all the symbols in the ice?”

“Do you have any idea what those symbols are now?”

“Ideas have been tossed back and forth. Some think it is the language of some ancient alien race that placed the tree here. Don’t you even fucking start. Others suggest that the symbols are a form of Feng Shui, used by the tree and the Black Stigmata to manipulate energy for their own purposes, sort of like antenna for receiving and transmitting power. Personally I find that idea to be the work of drunk theoretical physicists, but I can’t deny that it makes the most sense out of all of them.”

“So what was the deal with that flare?”

“In any other situation, that flare would have blinded you if you looked at it, even from a distance. It was made from phosphorus, thermite, and other gifts from the baby Jesus to produce the most volatile and energetic burn. I told you, energy is essentially forbidden in that zone, so we have to make every reaction ten times more powerful to get at least one tenth of the normal result. Going completely overboard with that flare was the only way to provide any sort of illumination. No other light sources work down there. Why do you think we have to wear these suits? They’re to try and keep us from bleeding to death of the energy of our bodies.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Well we’re still working on figuring out the actual meaning of the symbols. We’re certain that the humans who lived before Ragnarök understood the language of the World Tree. Using the information we’ve gained so far from the cave in Australia, we’re able to begin decoding the sequence of symbols needed to turn victims into viable incubators for new nails. Once we understand the code, there is no telling what we’ll be able to accomplish.”

“But what should I do?”

“Go back home and keep doing what you’re doing. I’ve heard about the number of nails you’ve collected, and while I should call you a dumbass for picking fights with Hosts while still being just an intern… I will admit that you are doing well. How is the situation back home?”

“Everything is going to Hell. Mass shootings and murders are becoming daily problems and everyone is losing their minds.”

“It doesn’t surprise me, I had a feeling things would get worse while I was gone. This same effect is being seen around the globe. The Black Stigmata is growing in strength and I don’t see anything good on the horizon.”

“Do you know when Jason is coming back?” Colleen asked, watching a movie with Christi.

“He said he would be back in a few days.”

“I can’t believe he didn’t tell you where he was going.”

“That’s his job. He may just be an intern, but he takes it seriously and doesn’t spill secrets.”

“He’s been getting checks in the mail, and guys from that company keep showing up to ask him questions.”

“It’s not a company. It’s the BSC, sort of like Interpol.”

“You’re the only person he talks to about this stuff. He won’t tell me anything, and I doubt it’s because of confidentiality.”

Christi hesitated for a few moments, choosing her words carefully. “He wants to keep his work life and his home life as far apart as possible. He doesn’t want you or anyone else getting dragged into it like he was.”

“He still blames himself, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah, and he probably always will. That’s why he’s working so hard. He’s trying to make up for it.”

“Mom and dad don’t understand anything that’s going on. They’ve stopped asking questions and don’t even bother talking to him anymore.”

“Nelson said that members of the BSC, especially former Hosts, are never the same and never really come back. I’m just doing whatever I can to keep him from disappearing.”

“Ready?” the guard beside Nelson asked.

“I’m ready.”

With another two guards behind him, Nelson walked down the sterile white hallway with a roll of papers under his arm, similar to an architect’s blueprints. The facility he was currently in was one of a BSC jurisdiction and had been established in Siberia. While every surface of the corridor was bleach-white, the guards wore dark-grey uniforms with BSC stitched onto the chest pockets and IDs hanging on their shoulders. Walking past the endless line of heavy locked doors, Nelson strained his ears to hear the prisoners inside. Their mutterings were incessant and consisted of all the world’s languages.

This building was a cross between a mental health facility and a prison. The inmates? Hosts who had undergone the drug treatment but failed to break free of the Black Stigmata’s control. When someone underwent the treatment, those who survived were divided into three categories: successful subjects like Nelson and Jason who now had free minds, brain-dead vegetables who would spend the rest of their lives drooling, and Hosts who would forever be slaves to the Black Stigmata. It was a probable ending to the treatment, in which the drugs and the Black Stigmata shatter the will of the recipient, and the Black Stigmata, which would normally be shaken off like a rodeo cowboy, instead secures a hold so deep in the Host’s psyche that they will never be free. They could be a thousand miles from the nearest nail but still act as though one were lodged in their frontal lobe.

For Hosts that fell into that last category, this building would forever be their home and their grave. Once someone was considered a failure, they were forever locked up in this frozen wasteland, kept away from the general public. Had Nelson or Jason failed, they would have ended up in padded cells with their limbs locked in straightjackets or tied down to their cots. Most of the subjects were forever in the psychotic stage, always gnashing their teeth and cursing, having to be tied down and fed through an IV while catheters took care of their bowls and bladder.

The rest had the tiniest semblance of sanity, but were obsessed with the Black Stigmata. Without their straightjackets, they would scribble the symbols onto the walls of the cell in their own blood, over and over again until every surface was covered in a thick red paste. They weren’t even allowed to use toilets, as many inmates had drowned themselves in the water or cracked their skulls open. They just crapped on the floor and the cell would be hosed out with a drain in the corner to channel away the waste. Nelson often wondered why the BSC bothered taking care of these people. They might as well just be put down like sick animals.

Coming to a stop, the guard leading Nelson unlocked the cell door in front of him. Inside the padded chamber, a bald man sat on the floor with his back to the wall, rocking back and forth while pulling at his straightjacket ceaselessly.

“Antoine Jacques?”

“Who wants to know?” the Canadian replied, speaking in French.

“Someone who needs your help,” said Nelson, switching to the same language.

Antoine turned back to him. “I smell death on you. I smell blood.”

“No, that’s just the smell of cigarettes.”

“What do you want? What’s in it for me?”

“You want to write, don’t you? You want to write the symbols?”

Antoine looked away. “They’re screaming at me, begging to be written! I must see them written! I must create them and fulfill them! Just one finger, if I could use a single finger!”

“Well then, you will be able to write to your heart’s content. However, only under the condition that you do THIS.”

The professor then unrolled the large modern-day scroll and held it out in front of Antoine. Even with the only light source coming from behind Nelson, Antoine stared at it with wide eyes, as if gazing at the blueprints for a time machine made by both God and the Devil.

“What is this? How can this be possible?!” Antoine stammered, having both no idea what he was looking at but also feeling crushed under the weight of its meaning.

“It’s your instruction manual.”

The sky was burning like a pool of lit gasoline while an acrid breeze blew across the landscape. The crumbling remains of a city lay strewn across the landscape like severed grass blades on a mowed lawn. All color and nutrients had been bleached from the soil, making it look like the surface of Mars. Bodies had been scattered in all directions like seeds, each one completely untouched by bacteria. Decay did not exist in this world; there wasn’t even enough life to support the recycling of death. These corpses would remain until the sun devoured the planet, forever etched with grins of demented sadism or shrieks of horrific agony.

Jason stood with his whole body trembling, staring at the towering structure before him. Reaching up into the vacuum of space and with a base as wide as a mountain, a spindly tree of black iron dominated the horizon. Its needle-like branches reached out to every spot where the barren landscape met the burning sky, and skewered on the tip of each pike was a human used for the creation of nails.

“What is this? What the fuck is this?! I’m supposed to be free of you!” he swore, feeling more terror at this very moment than at any other time in his life, even all the other times when the Black Stigmata had reared its ugly head.

Just as he had heard it time and time again, a crashing sound like the pulverization of a billion skeletons rocked Jason’s ears, seemingly coming from the tree itself. Jason bolted up in his bed, drenched in sweat. What the fuck had that been? How was it possible for the Black Stigmata to still give him nightmares!? Could it have been the nail from the parking lot? Did he make contact with it without knowing? Had his mind somehow been contaminated? What he didn’t know was that every single Host across the planet had just experienced the same vision. Cured, active, or subjugated, they had all just witnessed the same nightmare. Those who had been awake at the time simply passed out where they had been standing or sitting. In Siberia, at the host detention center, the inmates were screaming like wild apes, shouting curses and prayers to the Black Stigmata.

Having just gotten off his flight in Los Angeles, Nelson was approaching his next boarding terminal when he passed out. Once he regained consciousness, he found himself being examined by a medical crew in the terminal. Considering his new appearance, they had probably assumed the worse.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he grunted, waving them off.

Reaching into his coat pocket, he took out a cigarette and cracked a grin. ‘To think that something as pure as the World Tree could be corrupted by a single soul… We really are out of our league.’

About to light the end, an airport security officer pulled the cigarette out of his mouth. “No smoking in the building. And it looks to me that smoking put you in your condition,” the short woman nagged.

The sun reached its highest point in this unusually warm March day, lighting up Portland and beginning the war against the snow that encrusted the hemisphere. After a freezing winter, people were looking for any reason to go outside and enjoy the warm rays like cats in windowsills.

Sitting between a morbidly obese man in what wouldn’t surprise him to be a diabetic coma and teenage girl on her ipad, Nelson stared at his watch intently, counting the seconds. The plane would be landing in Portland in a few hours.

With no classes on Thursday for Christi and Jason deciding to take a break from his self-defense lessons, the two young lovers were roaming the city with nowhere in particular to go but both having a strong desire to get as much sunlight as they could. They were happy, smiling, and glad to have such a beautiful day.

The woman sobbed as she carved the symbols into her neighbor’s flesh. The forty-three-year-old woman had her unwanted victim tied to her table, trying to scream through the stitches holding his lips together and the layer of duct tape covering his mouth. With a steak knife to cut away at the flesh and a butter knife heated with a candle to cauterize the wounds, she begged for forgiveness as she was forced to turn his body into a canvas for the Black Stigmata.

The sun was halfway to the horizon, but its warmth remained unflinching. Picking the sunniest spot, Jason and Christi were having lunch at a table out front of a popular deli. Christi was nibbling on a ham sandwich on white rye, while Jason was gorging himself on a platter of different animals stuffed between two huge slices of wheat bread. The stack of meat was so large that he felt like his jaw would dislocate every time he tried to bite into it.

Nelson could see the ground below the plane beginning to magnify. The flight had passed the halfway point and now the stuffy vessel was beginning its steady decline. Taking out his phone, he began texting the BSC. “This is Nelson, fill up a cement truck and have it ready in the city.”

In her apartment building over Congress Street in the center of Portland, the woman continued to sob as she carved symbol after symbol into her neighbor’s flesh. With each completed mark, a slip of skin fell down to the floor like a red slug. She had known this man for years, but now the Black Stigmata was forcing her to torture him. Every scratch and cut with the steak knife was perfect, as if she were a puppet on strings. But while the Black Stigmata steadied her movements to ensure there were no flaws, the exertion and effort were all her own, made in order to avoid the psychological wrath of the nail. She was almost done; soon the incantations would be complete.

The sun was touching the horizon as softly as a balloon sinking to the floor days after its inflation. The warmth was gone and the people of Portland had gotten their fill. Now all that was left to do was finish the work they had procrastinated all day against and go home.

Nelson rushed through the Portland jetport, drawing looks of curiosity and shock from the people he passed by. When he wasn’t looking to the exit, he was looking at his watch. He was running out of time!

Jason and Christi strode out of the movie theater with uncomfortable expressions on their faces. With the warmth of the sun gone in the late afternoon, they had decided to see the new Indiana Jones movie that had just come out, the fifth of the series. (That’s right dear readers, this is still a horror story.) Suffice to say, they should have just quit while they were ahead. It was time for them to go home.

The sun had almost completely sunk below the horizon, with just the thinnest bar of light shining through the apartment window. The woman stood over her creation, trembling and unable to produce any more tears. She had just finished the last symbol and had slit her neighbor’s throat, destroying his Adam’s apple. She had seconds to act until he bled to death, and the Black Stigmata was screaming in her brain to add the last piece of the puzzle. Contemplating her fate in Hell, she raised the steak knife and butter knife she had used earlier and plunged them both into the man’s eyes. The knives disappeared into his head at the exact same moment the sun fully disappeared. The sound of the two blades sliding effortlessly through gelatin and flesh was the last sensation the woman experienced.

In a single instant, a two-dimensional shockwave erupted from the woman’s building like a ripple in a pond. Her apartment was reduced to dust simply through its proximity, but the damage didn’t end there. Like a samurai’s blade, the shockwave sheered through every building three stories high or above. It spread out across Portland without anything stopping it or holding back, and not a single structure in its path survived without being bifurcated like road-kill. On the ground around her building, every car in the street junction was sent skyward as their gas tanks spontaneously combusted.

Having been driving down Congress Street, Jason crashed into a parked car and dived to protect Christi as the top floor of the nearby building poured down into the street like an avalanche. Throughout the city, buildings were falling apart like houses of cards and filling the street with rubble. At the very epicenter, just down the road, a bright red light was shining within a cloud of dust with the newest incubator of the Black Stigmata hovering in its center. In the sky above, storm clouds as dark as onyx were stirring and expanding, slowly consuming the heavens in a black maelstrom.

“Christi, are you hurt?” Jason asked, coughing through the dust.

“No, I’m fine. Thank you for saving me,” she replied as he looked around.

His car was covered in bricks and cinderblocks, but they certainly weren’t buried.

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” he said, pushing open his door and helping her outside. People stood like statues on the road and sidewalk, staring out across the open space of the converging streets. Their eyes were fixated on the crimson light, hypnotized by it.

“What’s going on?” Christi asked, looking around fearfully.

Jason was just about to respond when he felt a drop land on his nose. Wiping it away, he stared at the smear of blood on his fingers.

“Oh my god,” he gasped as more and more drops began to fall, each one a liquid ruby made of human DNA.

“Blood… It’s blood…” Christi murmured, staring up into the sky as drops of red pelted her face.

The rate of the downpour increased by the second, with a thunderous monsoon soon washing Portland in liquid horrors. Soaked in gore, the citizens began screaming, but it wasn’t in fear or disgust. All those who had stared at the red light broke out into savage violence, having been twisted by the crimson aura. Screaming without end, men and woman began beating, stabbing, and even shooting each other like it was the end of the world. In the back of his mind, Jason had a feeling it was.

“Christ, get in the car and lay down on the floor. Keep the doors locked and don’t open them for anyone!”

“I’m not going anywhere without you!”

Jason took one glimpse into her eyes and decided against trying to change her mind. “Very well, but stay close and don’t look into the light.”

With their hands locked tightly together, Jason and Christi ran through the street towards the source of the madness. With every step, hundreds of drops of blood showered upon them, with Christi having to stop more than once to throw up. After everything he had been through, a mouthful of blood didn’t bother Jason in the slightest, but they had to be careful, for the chaos that had been born around the red light was spreading like a wildfire. Those initially infected swarmed outwards in all directions, destroying everything in their path and killing everyone they found. Those who survived the onslaught or simply hid as the mindless lunatics rioted were not immune. By simply being within the general area of those infected, the citizens of Portland became contaminated by the Black Stigmata like a zombie virus spreading telepathically.

Reaching Ground Zero, Jason stood in awe at the flameless bonfire before him. The crimson light shining from the dead Homunculus wasn’t just glowing like the radiance light bulb; there was an actual atmosphere of bloody plasma around the twisted carcass. A thick membrane of condensed light swirled around the corpse, forming an undulating prism as large as the building it had replaced. Christi did as Jason told her and kept her back turned to the light, but Jason could not take his eyes off it. He would not allow the Black Stigmata to send him into the psychotic stage, but it was certainly trying. The inhuman dementia was weighing on his consciousness like a bloated corpse, pushing his mind and his immunity to their limits. He wanted to join the mindless creatures flooding the city; he wanted to take part in vandalism, arson, rape, and murder, but as long as he was able to control himself and make the choice for himself, he would never fall to that depth ever again.

“What the Hell is going on?”

He didn’t know what he should do or what he even could do. Who was he supposed to call? Could the BSC even handle a situation like this? The roaring of a diesel engine broke him free from the Black Stigmata’s spell. Looking south, he saw a cement truck thundering down the street towards him, knocking aside burning cars and running over rubble without hesitation. Reaching the wide-open heart of the city, the truck finally came to a stop, and out of the cab appeared Professor Nelson. His appearance was strange, as his head and hands were completely wrapped in bandages. From the looks of it, his whole body was bandaged beneath his clothes.

“Professor, care to explain what the fuck is going on?!”

“Quite simply, it is the end of the world,” he replied calmly, leaving the cement truck to continue spinning its mixer while he walked over with a cigarette between his lips.

“What do you mean?” Christi asked.

“I know it was confidential, but Jason, I hope you broke the rules and told your girlfriend about the World Tree, because I do NOT have the patience to retell the story. Don’t get me wrong, we have plenty of time, but I hate repeating myself.”

“Yeah, he told me.”

“Well then I can skip right ahead. Right now, the World Tree is in the process of recreating itself. When Adam ate the fruit of the World Tree, he forever corrupted it with the darkness in his soul. His malicious will contaminated all the knowledge of the tree and caused it to essentially self-destruct, leaving behind only a single part of it. As you know, that part was the original Black Stigmata nail, which transformed from the core of the fruit Adam ate.

For 65 million years, the World Tree has been trying to reclaim its former strength, feeding on the misery of the world and the souls of people used to create new nails. Every time a nail is created, the Black Stigmata’s power grows. Quite simply, it has now amassed enough energy and created enough nails to begin reconstructing itself. Think of that poor soul up there as like the trillionth customer of a store. In this case, a trillion could actually be an understatement.

When the World Tree originally stood, its root system engrossed the entire planet, from the surface to the core. Those roots may be gone but the cavities remain, and the World Tree is going to use this resurrection to access those cavities and give birth to itself. Think of it as like Jesus Christ using his own corpse as a catalyst to trigger his revival. Once that is done, it will recreate the world in its own image. Originally, the World Tree was the avatar of life for this planet, so it reached out to turn Earth into an Eden. Now that it has been corrupted into an omen of horror, it will turn this planet into a lifeless husk of bleak destruction.

This is the origin of the phrase “achieve death” and why it was always listed with the steps to create new nails. The Black Stigmata was giving us orders to create new nails and then telling us what would happen afterwards. Achieving death means the extinction of all life on Earth.”

“Did you learn this from the cave?”

“Nah, never believe predictions painted on a cave wall. We figured it out by completely decoding the language of the Black Stigmata. Along with equations for the creation of new nails, this prophecy is written into the bodies of every human incubator. Now watch, the show is about to begin…”

In Antarctica and its northern twin, the polar ice caps erupted like Mt. Vesuvius, hurling millions of tons of ice into the air while whiplashing strands of black lightning sprayed forth from the ancient cavities of the World Tree like geysers of oil. Like the storm over Portland, swirling black clouds spread out from the North and South Pole, powered by the ominous cracks of light shooting endlessly from the depths of the planet.

In repurposed mines and toxic waste depositories, vaults and nuclear flasks were ripped open and their cargo set loose. Guarded mountains exploded into mushroom clouds as storms of cursed nails and Homunculi flew through the air like possessed comets. Around the globe, Black Stigmata nails over sixty million years in age were being pulled up from their hiding places, while the quarantined Homunculi were set loose from the ancient pits they had been locked away in by early humans. Bodies that had been butchered and unsuccessfully cremated to try and dispel their evil flew across the sky in pieces, reforming and joining together into the original carcasses. Not a single Homunculus had aged a day; they had all been perfectly preserved by the malicious will of the Black Stigmata forever imprinted into their bodies.
High in the atmosphere above the city of Portland, the nails collided with each other and began to fuse into a solid mass while pushing away the bloody storm that had heralded it. Even after 65 million years, there were not enough nails to fully recreate the World Tree, but there didn’t need to be. As more and more nails joined the morphing metal conglomerate, raw iron was materializing out of the thin air and allowing the mass to grow. It was as if the nails were made of cells, all multiplying to increase their numbers. As the tree began to reach its full size, the Homunculi were skewered onto the tips of its branches, decorating it like a Christmas pine without a single branch or corpse left out.

At last, the transformation stopped, with the final touch being the absence of roots. The very bottom of the tree was instead a long four-sided spike, exactly like the original nails but with the very tip missing. The god-like tree hung over the planet like the sword of Damocles but on a cosmic scale. There was only one piece left out: the corpse that had triggered it. The man whose body had been used to trigger the tree’s resurrection hovered still in his womb of red light, the nails in his eyes failing to move even a millimeter.

Slowly, the tree began to descend, and as its tip dropped below the cloud cover, the corpse twisted and jerked. With a disgusting chorus of squishing and crunching, the body was crushed in midair by a physical force. The limbs were crammed into the torso and the head was sucked in with the nails fully absorbed into the skull. With the force of a black hole, the body was compacted into a solid mass of indescribable density, while measuring the size of an apple. Upon its completion, the flesh of the apple was burned away, revealing it’s core: a nail of no material known to man, but one so dark that light could not escape it. The red light that had originally driven the people of Portland insane could no longer exist around it. It hovered directly in the path of the descending tree, about a foot off the ground.
“The nail, the iron tree, and the cavity from the old tree: these three forces form an unholy trinity that will beckon the end of the world. The cavity represents the World Tree’s body; specifically, it’s corpse. The iron tree represents its mind, and all the knowledge it’s gained since it began its war with mankind. The nail represents its soul, and the unparalleled evil contained within it. In truth, the evil of Adam was nothing compared to this monstrosity, but when he consumed the World Tree’s fruit, he committed the ultimate sin, and the tree transformed to become pure sin. Its reason for existing is simple: to be the horrific end to everything on this planet. It’s like a computer programmed with an insidious will that knows only its own purpose.
Once that nail joins up with that tree, the only thing stopping it from resurrecting are the layers of earth between us and whatever root cavity lies deep beneath our feet. It will pierce the earth like a nail through an eyeball. You know, in BSC records, you’ll find that at least one Host has had a vision of a tree similar to this before each and every tragic event since WWII. At first I thought it was a sign that the Black Stigmata was playing a role in these events, but I realized it was something much simpler: it predicted the horrors about to be set loose and became excited. Every nightmare Hosts had about trees was simply the Black Stigmata being as giddy as a schoolgirl. Considering the frequency that this tree was envisioned, it’s clear that the Black Stigmata was simply excited about its own resurrection.
It’s fitting that it picks today to recreate itself. This is the Spring Equinox and spring is the time of rebirth.”
“Damn it, Nelson, isn’t there any way to stop this? Anything that can be done to save this world?” Jason demanded angrily, infuriated by how little the professor seemed to care about the situation.

“Anything you can do? Hell no. But there is something I can do…” he hummed as he walked over to the nail hovering over the ground.

As he approached it, he pulled away the bandages covering his head and left Christi and Jason awestruck. His head had been shaved bare and every square inch of skin had been inscribed with the symbols of the Black Stigmata. But they were… out of order?

“What did you do to yourself?” Jason gasped.

With his back to Jason, the professor answered. “With the language of the Black Stigmata decoded, rewriting the equations for new nails was easy. I rearranged the symbols and had a Host cut them into me. The original equations were for replicating the Black Stigmata, but these new equations are for sealing it.”

“You don’t mean…”

“I do. I’ll seal the Black Stigmata within my body, the entire sentience. This is my penitence.” He then turned to Jason and Christi with a sad smile on his face. “I never told you, did I? When I was a Host, I tried to defy the Black Stigmata’s order to create new nails. As punishment, it sent me into the psychotic stage and I ended up butchering my wife and son. I wanted to kill myself as soon I realized what I had done, but the Black Stigmata would not let me end my life until I fulfilled its desire. Every time I sleep, I’m haunted with either the faces of my family or that poor girl.

I know I always told you that what you did while under the nail’s control was not your fault. To be honest, I was saying that more to myself than I was to you. Whether or not I am guilty for my actions, this body of mine was still used to torture and kill my wife and son and an innocent child. I can never forgive myself for the crimes that this body performed. I guess that was the reason why I underwent the procedure without anesthesia.”

With the flat tip of the tree just a hundred feet above his head, Nelson picked up the nail hovering at his feet. “It’s time for humanity to be freed of this “original sin” and be given a clean slate.”

He took off his glasses, and before Jason could stop him, the professor swung his arm and buried the nail in his right eye. Immediately, he released a cry of agony and blood poured down his face, but he refused to stop and instead pushed it all the way in. Upon the nail’s insertion, a deafening scream filled the air, forcing Jason and Christi to their knees with their hands over their ears. Throughout the city, every piece of glass was shattered by the ungodly whistle, while in the North and South Poles, the crackling ribbons of black lighting curled back on each other and twisted themselves in loops like snakes being assailed by driver ants. In a thunderous clap, the iron tree overhead exploded like the Death Star and a blinding curtain of light engulfed the entire city, freeing people of their madness. The light eventually faded and Jason looked up at the professor. He stood with four inches of unholy matter piercing his brain, yet he remained on his feet with haggard breathing.

“How ironic. Adam ate the fruit of the World Tree because he wanted immortality, but all he had to do was write sealing incantations on his body. It seems that by trapping my own soul in my body with the Black Stigmata, I’m incapable of dying. No matter how broken an battered my body will become, my soul and the Black Stigmata will never be able to break free of it.”

“So… is it over?” Jason dared to ask.

“No, not yet. I weakened the Black Stigmata but I can feel it regaining its strength and clawing at the inside of my head. I can maybe hold it back for a couple minutes before it completely takes over and my body becomes its newest puppet. That’s why I brought the cement truck, I’ll seal myself up in the mud inside, and once it dries, both it and my body will forever be this curse’s prison. I got the viscosity perfect so it will immediately start to harden as soon as the mixer is deactivated.

After that, the BSC has arranged with the American government to re-open the space program and hurl me out into the cosmic vacuum in the direction of the sun. Hopefully gravity will take affect and I can drag this unholy evil into the nuclear pyre and free mankind forever. Now come over here and help me.”

His whole body shaking, Jason walked alongside the professor to the cement truck and watched as he climbed up onto the back of the cab.

“Turn that lever when I say so,” he instructed, pointing to a control panel.

He then gave the order and Jason pulled the designated lever, stopping the mixer when the side hatch was rolled up to the top.

“Ok, be honest. You’ve been using me as a surrogate for your son, haven’t you?” Jason asked, deciding to be a smartass one more time.

Crawling across the tank of cement, the professor opened up the hatch and sat down on the edge. “What are you, high? If my son was even half as stupid and thickheaded as you, I would have disowned him,” Nelson scoffed with complete honesty.

He then reached into his pocket and drew a cigarette and his lighter. Lighting the end, he took a long puff and looked up at the sky. When he looked back down at Jason, even with blood running down his face from the huge nail skewering his brain, he had the most authentic smile Jason had ever seen on him.

“But even though you spent half my classes with your head on your desk and a puddle of drool soaking your notebook, I’ll admit… you weren’t a half-bad student.”

Nelson and Jason gave each other one final nod of farewell and then the professor dropped himself down into the thick concrete, letting it envelope him and become his tomb and the Black Stigmata’s prison.

One month later:

Jason and Christi were sitting in Jason’s living room, watching the news. It was a live broadcast of the newest shuttle launch for the temporarily-opened space program. As far as the public knew, it was just a quick mission to repair a number of satellites that had supposedly been damaged in the “meteor shower” that bombarded the North and South Poles. A stray rock was even being blamed for the damage to Portland, since nobody at Ground Zero could remember what really happened. What only Jason, Christi, and the BSC knew was that in the back of the shuttle, a car-sized block of concrete sat, waiting for eviction from Earth.

“Do you think he’s aware of what’s going on?” Christi asked.

“I doubt it. He may be immortal, but oxygen and water deprivation has to have left him in a coma. I just hope his soul isn’t rattling around in his head and serving as the Black Stigmata’s punching bag.”

They were both silent as the rocket thrusters ignited, sending out thick clouds of smoke moments before the metal craft launched itself into the sky.

“Goodbye,” Jason said under his breath.

“Huh?” Christi asked.

“Nothing.”

In the next room, he heard the front door open and close and his sister walked into view without the slightest limp.

“Jason, you got mail,” she said, handing him one of many envelopes and moving into the kitchen.

“Thanks,” he said, waiting for her to leave before opening.

“Who is it from?” asked Christi.

“The BSC. Since the Black Stigmata is no longer a danger, I was told that the remainder of their budget would be divided up into severance payments for all employees. I guess this is my last paycheck.”

He pulled out the check, and as soon as his eyes fell onto the line of zeros, his jaw hung slack.

“Holy shit! You could pay for the rest of your college education and still come out well set!” Christi exclaimed, reading it over her shoulder.

“Yeah, there’s enough here even for… maybe a wedding?”

Christi stared at him with wide eyes, and in a single powerful movement, she pounced on him with enough force to send him tumbling to the floor. Jason tried to laugh, but it was hard with Christi sticking her tongue down his throat. They kissed for several minutes before Christi finally stopped and held herself over him with a tender look on her beautiful face.

“I love you,” she murmured.

“I love you too,” he replied.

They resumed kissing, while up in the sky, Nelson’s shuttle became little more than a fading twinkle of light in the clear blue sky.

The End

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