The old ones, the oldest ones. The ones even he could not try to touch. And now that so many others have gone, their shapes become more apparent. Cant you see, stranger? Cant you taste them, invader?
I'm no invader, Abby thought, but she knew that was not the case. She looked further, deeper, but saw only taints on the empty blackness. What were you?
A god and a demon, and now barely a memory.
And if I promise to remember? Will you help me then, will you tell me where the man is?
I'm here hurting I'm here nowhere, and you want me to give you a place?
An idea at least, Abby said. You'll become my memory, I promise.
If there could be laughter in Memory, the thing uttered it now. It was a hollow sound, dry and empty and devoid of character. Don't offer what you can't deliver, it said. I'm way beyond Memory now. Too old, too faded ... too terrible.
But you can tell me, cant you?
The thing was quiet for a time, and at last Abby sensed something starting to drift closer. I could hold you here, it said. The pain would go, the hurt would go, because you would be my own memory ... my own waning dream ...
I exist, Abby thought, and she suddenly had no fear. I'm a part of the world, no longer just faded history. I have friends.
And I can never be a friend, the thing said.
Darkness grew out of darkness, a bulk formed from void, and it was growing closer. Abby began to feel its weight, its gravity, and it was tremendous. She sensed age, eons of time, and an endless stretch of experience and knowledge. A god and a demon, the thing had called itself, and she shrank back at its approach. It was not only size and weight but import and presence. She began to think she had been fooled. If this were only an echo, the true source of this Memory must be terrible indeed.
Yes, terrible, it said, and then it laughed for real.
Abby fled, but as she drew herself back out of Memory and into reality again, the thing she had touched gave her something. Whether intentional or accidental, she fell back into her own body with an image, and a sense of place, and an idea in her mind that showed patterns and designs where there had previously been nothing.
Abby cried out and sat up in the old church. It was fully dark now — the street lamps around the ruin had gone off — and rain pattered down through the open roof. For a few seconds the terrible weight of that thing was all around, pressing down on her body and squeezing breath from her lungs, blood from her veins. She felt the fire of her soul deep inside lessened by the presence, and she screamed against being snuffed out. But then she was alone in the church again, eyes blinking back Memory even as it faded away like an old dream, so complete and solid upon waking and little more than an echo once life and time took over once again.
She was alone, and all that watched her now were the eyes of a ruined Christ.
* * *
She hurried from the church. The streets of Baltimore were all but deserted now, occupied only by shuffling nighttime people. A bum pushed a loaded cart down one street, pausing here and there to snatch up something from the gutter and stuff it into one of his already bulging bags. A police cruiser drifted by, wheel hissing along the wet concrete road. It slowed as it passed Abby, but she walked with purpose and confidence, and the cruiser moved on. Three women passed her going in the opposite direction, none of them looking at her or saying anything. They were well dressed and seemed intent on keeping themselves dry with oversized umbrellas. Abby paused and turned to watch them go, wiping rain from her eyes as though that would make her vision clearer.