The Semaphore

Antigon liked war. A long, long time ago he fought in one. Not the War—he was at that one too, though it did not go as well as he would have liked—but a smaller war, a war in a desert, back when people still used guns.

He liked guns. He killed a lot of people with guns. He also killed people with bombs and with knives, and with his bare hands. He liked it, though he was not allowed to say that then. He liked the fear in people's faces when they knew they were going to die. The heat that spilled from their bodies when he opened them up. He was sad when the war ended. He could not even remember who had won or lost. But that did not matter. He fought for no one but himself, and in that way he was victorious.

Back then he was still called Alexander. It was a name that now meant nothing to him. The life he lived as Alexander meant nothing to him. It was insignificant compared to the life his Keeper gave him. His Keeper showed him meaning, showed him what it meant to stand for something. Before his Keeper found him he was lost, a creature with no purpose. His Keeper gave him purpose. His Keeper gave him a reason to kill and permission to enjoy it. His Keeper showed him that killing was righteous. It was glorious. It was divine.

After the war—the war in the desert with the guns—Antigon returned to the place he was born. A small village in the hills of New Hampshire called Hay's Cross. Antigon hated that town with its small, soft people and its aversion to war. He hated the way the people there thanked him for serving, as if they knew anything about how and what he had served.

He missed the stench of burning oil, the desperate wailing of mortally injured people, body parts scattered across cracked pavement, children crying for their dead parents. He asked to return to the desert, but the war was already over. They told him he should be happy to be home, that he should find someone to settle down with and start a family. The thought of this made Antigon want to kill even more.

He looked for other wars. He found work as a mercenary, and travelled the world killing people for money. He had no need for the money. He had need for the killing. He had need for tearing people open. It was during this time he discovered his preference for a knife. Knives were more intimate than guns. They put him there, close, to the smells and the heat. He could hear the small, private sounds of dying. The knife afforded more versatility, to kill in different ways. The knife was perfect, and he was skilled with it.

It was also during this time that he was given his new name. Antigon was a term used by the mercenaries to describe a site at which all targets had been neutralized. The name caught on quickly. It was more fitting than Alexander.

But the companies he worked for were not as happy as he. They found his joy off-putting. He was good, but even mercenaries had certain rules, and Antigon had broken too many of them. He was sent home, again, to wallow in the small, peaceful village of Hay's Cross. For nearly a year he was lost. He dreamed of red and purple and white and yellow—the colors of people's insides. He dreamed of the expressions on people's faces when they saw death approaching. He woke up each morning, sweating and engorged, clasping his knife in the dark bedroom of his little house in the peaceful village, birds chirping outside, mocking him. It was too much.

If he did not do something, he felt, he would turn to dirt. So he made a plan.

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It was a simple plan but a good one. He sold the little house he had bought with the money he made as a mercenary, packed what few belongings he had accumulated—none mattered much besides his knife—and set out into the woods. The woods of New Hampshire were thick and sprawled north into Maine uninterrupted for many hundreds of miles. But Antigon was not interested in the woods. He was interested in the people who travelled through them.

Hikers mostly, walking loudly with their bags and brand new boots; hikers who smelled like deodorant and detergent and pot from a mile away. Usually they traveled in pairs, but sometimes they were alone. It did not matter to Antigon. In every case they were sluggish and soft and could not get away. The first ones he killed were a man and a woman, walking along a trail on New Hampshire's northern border. Antigon watched them through the trees, his knife in his hand. They stopped for lunch, and the woman went off into the trees to urinate. The man drank water from a thermos and took a picture of the trees. Antigon came from behind him and cut him open from throat to groin. The blood came out, and the smells, and the heat. It was the first fix Antigon had in a year, and it was proof—whatever proof he required—that he was doing the right thing. When the woman returned he did the same to her. Then he burned their things and secured their bodies under the greasy surface of a pond; the longer he could go undetected, the more time he would have.

His efforts to conceal the bodies paid off. Three years went by in those woods without anyone trying to stop him. He killed every hiker he saw. But the woods were big, and sometimes it would be days or weeks between killings. So Antigon found ways to make the killing more fulfilling when they did come. He found ways to stretch out the sensations that he sought. He discovered methods that heightened the expressions of fear, that elevated the pain and prolonged the suffering. This was the most important part. He kept his knife sharp and ate little, since hunger augmented his senses. He could have lived in this way for the rest of his life.

Then something happened.

Antigon never left the woods, and knew nothing about what went on in the world. All he knew was that the hikers disappeared. He wandered through the woods for months and saw nobody. He travelled further south, nearer to population centers, but still there were no hikers. He wondered if finally, after all this time, people had found out about him. Would they come looking? He would kill whoever tried to stop him. But no one came for him. He was alone with the grating birdsong and a clean knife and a need to kill that festered like a wound.

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Then the music started. Antigon did not like music to begin with; he had never heard a song he liked. But this music was worse than most. It was fast and thrashy and atonal. It was loud. It played all day and night, and even if Antigon plugged his ears with clay from the streambeds and covered them with his hands, it did not get any quieter. He figured he was being punished, that God was punishing him for his love of war and killing. He did not believe in God, but that did not mean God was not real. And what other explanation was there? The music tortured him every hour of every day, following him through the woods as he wandered in circles, his bloodlust unchecked. He considered killing himself everyday, and he would have, eventually, but he feared in death he would never be able to kill again.

Then one day in the fall, Antigon saw a man in the woods. It was the first person he had seen in many months. The man stood beside a pond—a pond into which Antigon had hidden many bodies—with his back to Antigon. He was not dressed like a hiker: he wore nice clothes, dress shoes and a long scarf looped around his neck. His hair was wild and gray. Antigon watched him from the bushes for a while. The man seemed unperturbed by the relentless music, his shoulders relaxed, staring out at the greasy pond with one hand in the pocket of his slacks and the other one fiddling with something that Antigon could not see. Antigon readied his knife, nearly drooling at the prospect of taking a life after so long. He crept through the bushes toward the man, silent, a predator passing along undetected. The man stared out at the water.

"Chalo-wē," said the man, so quietly that Antigon should not have been able to hear it over the incessant music.

Antigon ignored the strange word, and smiled as he brought his blade down, anticipating the rush of hot blood, the terror on the man's face as his death encroached, the smells leaking from the inside of his body…

But then there was sound, which cut through the thrashing music. A bitter note, as if plucked from an untuned guitar. Something seized Antigon's wrist, causing him to drop his knife. When he looked up he found a white thread, as thin as wire, looped tightly to his arm, rendering it immobile. He followed the thread with his eyes, where it extended upward, disappearing into the sunny sky.

With his free hand he groped out for the man, intending to strangle him or beat him to death. Another sour note played, and another white thread looped around Antigon's other wrist. Then his ankles were snared as well, and he was lifted from the ground, suspended five feet in the air by the white threads, like a marionette.

"We've been busy," said the man then, still looking out at the pond. His voice was deep, and cut through the loud, angry music directly into Antigon's ears. "Very busy and very distracted. We've missed so much."

Antigon struggled against the white threads, snarling at the back of the man's head. He envisioned breaking free and tearing the man's skin off, pulling out his organs one by one. But the threads held, unyielding, and soon Antigon started to tire.

"I'm an admirer," the man said. "We are ambitious and tireless in our pursuit. But we are also unfocused. We could be doing such great work. We could be moving toward something instead of just wandering in circles."

Antigon spat and cursed. He tugged so violently on the threads that they cut through his skin and his blood gushed and dripped on the forest floor.

"But I can help with that," said the man. "I want to give us purpose."

The man turned then. Antigon was alarmed to find that he was wearing a mask. It was long, like a beak or the snout of an animal, ending in a point in front of the man's face. It appeared to be made of bone, and had no eyeholes or other openings. The man's hand was covered in tattoos, complicated white lines and strange shapes. He took a step forward, his mask turning up toward Antigon.

"I have been chosen," said the man from behind his long mask. "For a very special chore. A chore that will—that already has—reshaped the course of human enterprise. And I would like to bring us in, to have a hand in the completion of this chore. We are perfect for it in ways that are too numerous to list."

Antigon flailed against his restraints.

"Of course we are too soft right now," said the man in the long mask. "We are too delicate in our current state."

Antigon's vision swam with fury. He envisioned smashing the man's skull with a rock. He envisioned twisting his neck until his head separated from his body.

"So we will have to do something about that." The man in the long mask opened his hand, revealing a thick leather collar with a metal clasp. He reached up to Antigon and affixed the collar around his throat.

Antigon twisted and gnashed his teeth. He spat at the man and called him every obscene word that came to his mind. The man ignored his resistance, buckling the collar tightly and stepping back to admire it.

"A perfect fit," he said. "But of course I had it made especially for us."

All at once, the shackle of white threads on Antigon's wrists and ankles released, and he fell to the ground. In an instant he was on his feet, rushing toward the man in the long mask with his hands outstretched, longing to gouge his flesh and rip him to shreds.

And he was nearly upon him when he felt his throat catch, his breath blown from his body, and was flipped backwards with all the force of his own fury.

"We do not bite the hand that feeds," said the man in the long mask, standing casually over Antigon. "We do not strike out against ourselves."

Antigon sat up, panting, his throat throbbing and his vision blurred. He looked up at the man in the long mask. His rage burned at a feverish pitch. He touched the back of the collar on his throat. There was another white thread fastened to it, leading off behind him. When he turned to see where it went he found that it disappeared into the narrow doorway of a white tower that stood among the trees where it had not been before.

Antigon clawed at the collar's buckle.

The man spread his fingers apart, revealing a series of thin white threads strung between his fingertips. "We will start from the beginning," he said, moving his fingers so that with each one a different, ugly note issued forth.

A flash of white whipped toward Antigon, lashing his body. His clothes flayed and fell from him, and his skin split and bled. Antigon howled, enraged, exposed on the ground in front of the man in the long mask. Another white tendril leapt toward, striking him harder, sending runnels of blood down his flesh.

"We will start from nothing," the man in the long mask said.

He moved his fingers faster, and the white tendrils whipped Antigon harder and harder, slicing his skin and severing chunks of flesh from his body.

Antigon writhed against the leather collar, pain flooding his body. The white tendrils flayed him, each assault more punishing than the last. The autumn air stroked his exposed muscle, the tendons inside. His consciousness teetered. He bled onto the ground, diminished with each blow from the white tendrils until his bone gleamed in the sunlight.

The collar tightened around his neck and dragged him backwards into the mouth of the white tower. A dark shape opened beneath him—a grave, it seemed—and he felt himself fall, still suffering the tendril's relentless blows, down into a dark red and through it into the warmth of a low fire, which cast dim light, and then finally the blows ceased and he found himself in a small room with stone walls and a fire burning on the floor.