Stranger

Catacombs

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  "To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die."

  —Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

  
  
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  "When you get to be as old as I am, memories begin to lose their focus. Look at your family's picture-albums: back through time, the photographs become grainy, less sophisticated. At a certain point, they become black and white, and then they end. Now imagine they don't end there; rather, they had just begun. They become daguerreotypes, and then portraits, medieval illuminations, marble busts, bronze telamons... a crude outline gouged into a cave wall. I can't remember everything that happened, not anymore. Just bits and pieces. And what I've lost along the way."
  
  I. THE MOUNTAIN OF BAAL
  
  There is no god called Ba'al, and there never was; Ba'al is just a word. Imagine a small coastal village, maybe no more than a few huts settled around a source of fresh water. Every night they gave thanks to the well that kept them alive, and soon a being would enter into their midst, a stranger, an interloper who saw opportunity in their need. The people left offerings for the being, who grew stronger, shifting like a white flame in the shadows. Language was born, and the well they called Sidon became a city; the protector of the city became Sidon-Ba'al. And like a light being switched on, the shadowy figure would flicker into focus. A demon becomes a god.
  
  

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  There is a block of sandstone in a desert ruin. This stone could be anywhere, but today we find it in the ruins of Tyre, of Byblos, of mighty Carthage, each brought low at the height of its power; we find it further east, in places where the sun beats down with the relentless hammer stroke of some celestial smith. The carving is ancient, predating antiquity; it depicts a well, surrounded by kneeling supplicants. Seated on the well is a figure, vaguely man-shaped but crowned with horns. The figure's eyes look back at you, timelessly, just as they do from the many-splendoured citadel of Abydos—as they do from the carvings that flanked the Ishtar gate. The dust of centuries has left it faded, but now it grows sharper in relief, clearer by the day, as though carved again by some unseen hand. This is how the demon survived.
  
  Forgotten, he journeyed to Mt. Carmel, where Elijah had tread; with the river Jordan at his back, the Stranger climbed the mountain so that he might see the Ancient One, who had no name but Ba'al—a name that the Stranger shared, for it meant master. In the past, the Ancient One had been called Aš-šùr by men, and also Enlil, Marduk, Melqart, and Dispater. He was paleolithic in his age, as old as one could be, and like the Stranger, he had refused to adapt. He did not look like a man—whereas most demons had assumed a humanoid appearance, the Ancient One was a seeping shadow, crowned with dusk, tangible by whim. Beneath star-pointed eyes yawned a mouth, out from which crept a hundred flies. They spoke—the Ancient One was surprisingly congenial, for something that had spent so much time in solitude. It was not a long conversation. The words exchanged, whatever they had been, and in whichever tongue, had a profound effect. When the Stranger descended the mountain, he was changed, and ready to go into the world once more. For the first time in centuries, he felt a pang of hunger.

  
  
  II. CARTHAGO DELENDA EST
  
  I do not remember falling; only one of us does, it seems. Nor do I remember what came before. There was a span of time in which the years were indeterminate—in the Pit, where there is no day or night, only eons of anguish, time has a way of bending sideways. What we had done before was immaterial, for all we did then was mourn. The choirs were silenced; the watchers closed their eyes; we were as far from Him as we had ever been, as we could ever be.
  
  

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  After a time, I walked the earth. I endured the deluge, and I took on many forms. Men worshiped my idols and yielded to me burnt offerings—and in recompense, I kept away others like me. I remember Lilith, Moloch, the sons of Belial and the nameless demons of the winds; the world was a place of chaos and fear, where men huddled around fires in pockets of hope.

  
  
  III. KYRIE ELEISON
  
  Forthcoming.
  
  IV. SIMULACRA
  
  Forthcoming.
  
  
  
  
  
  

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