The God Machine Page 0,18

Donaldson had begun to shake uncontrollably. Now a thick trickle of froth dripped from the side of his grimacing lips.

"Mr. Donaldson, can you hear me?" Absolom asked, hoping to break the spell. "I want you to try and relax."

He'd heard of such things happening to other mediums, but had never experienced it for himself. Evidently, it had something to do with the spiritual energies amassed within the room triggering fits in the overly sensitive.

Absolom stood and was about to call for his wife. There were only five rooms in the apartment they rented in this working-class neighborhood on Durant Street, and she would surely hear him and go to fetch a doctor.

But then Mr. Donaldson spoke. Or, rather, something spoke through Donaldson, as if the grief-stricken man himself was the medium, rather than Absolom.

"I can feel you there, Absolom Spearz," said a voice that sounded nothing like the kindly old man. His mouth did not move, remaining agape, as if frozen in a scream, but the voice issued from between his lips. "I can see you, out in the light. Listen now, and well. I am the god, Qemu'el, harbinger of a new age, and you have been chosen."

All Absolom could do was stare, held in a grip equal parts terror and wonder. He had heard this voice before, as a child. But it had gone strangely silent after the death of his mother, perhaps sensing the anger and bitterness young Absolom felt toward it for failing to provide the last piece of information that would have allowed the boy to save her life.

Donaldson's body trembled, as if attempting to contain some powerful force. The old man's skin had taken on a sickly pallor, an unhealthy yellow made all the more unappealing by the muted light of the gas lamps hanging from gold sconces on the wall.

"It has been too long, Absolom Spearz," the voice continued. "But at last, the time has come."

He knew exactly what the voice was talking about and felt his brain begin to tingle in anticipation. He still yearned for what had been denied to him so long ago.

"I have called to you--and four others of your ilk," the god explained, "you, who have the abilities and fortitude to help humanity achieve its highest aspirations."

Donaldson's body had started to wither, as if the moisture was somehow being drawn from his body. Absolom gasped as he watched the old man's yellowing flesh grow tighter to the bone, giving him a cadaverous appearance.

"My time is short, for this poor soul is already nearly expended. The others will become your new family, and together, you will be the priests of a new faith, able to achieve the greatest of things."

Absolom wanted to look away from the nightmarish visage before him, but couldn't.

"The world will soon be as this body--old, and tired, withering away until it is nothing more than a pale shadow of what it once was, never realizing what it could have been."

The flesh of the man was now like ancient parchment, cracking and falling from the bone to reveal the skeleton beneath.

"What would you have us do?" Absolom whispered, filled with anticipation. "What can we, mere mortals, do to stop the world's decline?"

Donaldson's eyes shrank beneath paper-thin lids, and fell back into the skull, leaving two holes filled with darkness.

"Open your mind to me," the god demanded, and Absolom Spearz obeyed.

Once again he felt the presence of something totally alien blossom within his mind, and then he knew what had to be done. At long last, he'd been given the answer.

"It's wonderful," he whispered. His body trembled with a new sense of purpose as he began to understand the ways in which he would bring the world that much closer to Heaven.

"For these wonders to occur, I must be more than just a voice speaking from the beyond," Qemu'el continued from within its withered conduit. "My divinity must be made corporeal--I must be born into the world that I will deliver unto greatness."

Absolom nodded furiously. "We will do this, oh god. With the knowledge you have given me, I and these others shall bring you from the beyond so that you may heal this ailing world."

"Yes," the god hissed. The old man's skin had withered away, leaving behind the blanched remains of a skeleton in a threadbare suit--but that too was starting to disintegrate. "Only one power will be able to tear asunder the ebony veil that separates me from the world that craves my touch--the power