Cain: The Story of the First Murder and the Birth of an Unstoppable Evil Read online

  Abel softened as if noticing Cain’s cruel expression. “We are both sinners, brother.” His voice lulled and pulled at Cain. “All of us, even our children and their children. It is the curse Father brought upon us by partaking in the forbidden fruit.”

  “Of that, you speak truthfully.” Cain stepped forward, severing the space with sharp strides. He had grown weary of the argument. All pleasure deteriorated into impatience and irritation at the sound of Abel’s voice. “So, brother,”—Cain smiled—“shall we have a contest like when we were children?”

  He could smell Abel’s breath and feel the heat of his body. Insects buzzed around their ears, but neither moved. He could see Abel’s calculating gaze analyzing, attempting to understand.

  Cain’s smile cracked. “Let’s see who the real sinner is.”

  As Abel’s eyes narrowed, Cain seized him by the throat. The impact made Abel blink and sputter, but Abel shoved him back a few paces. Cain regained his footing as Abel massaged his throat and coughed. Then Cain rushed toward him, screaming as his shoulder made contact with Abel’s midsection, sending them both to the ground. They tumbled through the towering grass, and Cain managed to roll on top of him and pound knuckles on his face, but then Abel struck back and the two twisted. Abel threw him off and rushed to his feet, stumbling like a drunkard. Cain scrambled up and leapt on him, flattening Abel on his belly. Cain pinned him to the earth with his knee and hammered the back of his head with knuckles hardened by harvest and hatred.

  Abel went motionless. Cain paused, but his hand found a stone and gripped it hard. He poised the object high above and then smashed it into the back of Abel’s head. As black emotions swelled within his chest and erupted as a bestial scream, he bludgeoned Abel’s skull over and over again.

  Eventually, Cain’s limbs weakened, and he fell back. All around Abel’s head and torso lay a glistening pool of liquid, flesh, and bone. No air entered Abel’s lungs and no air escaped them. Cain stared at his brother’s body, at the shape of the crater of collapsed bone and tissue. Nausea and pleasure coiled together, and he wondered if what lay on the ground were truth or fiction. It had been so simple, so quick.

  But there it was. The smell of blood and brain blackened his nose.

  “Murder,” he whispered. The world had not known it possible, but with a stone and two hands, he had proven it was. He had never before felt so powerful and vulnerable at once, but as twilight fell into darkness, panic speared his shoulders.

  What now? He had thought through each step countless times but the tossing froth in his stomach overwhelmed him. He bent, rested hands on knees, and breathed deeply against the rising nausea. He felt as if it would pass, but his body lurched and he wretched bubbling stomach acid.

  He stayed bent, gasping for air and spitting the remains in spider-web streams. The biliousness receded and his body relaxed, but a whispered voice came to him as if from far away. He thought it said, “Bring the body to the river.” Cain stilled himself, wondering if it were anything more than amplified thought. Again he heard the voice, and chills scrambled up his neck. “Bring the body to the river.”

  He straightened and wiped his mouth. Could someone have seen him kill Abel? His lungs squeezed his throat with bony hands. Plants rustled in the wind and insects chirped. The screech of a distant owl pierced the night sky and ricocheted off the hills, but he could identify nothing abnormal. Nothing, except for the itch in his brain and the sweat in his clothes.

  “Bring the body to the river. Take him to the river and wash yourself.”

  He couldn’t seem to pinpoint the direction from which the voice spoke. Though he knew sound behaved strangely in the hills, the displacement unnerved him.

  “You need not fear.”

  He twisted and searched with narrowed eyes for a face, a body.

  “Do what you must.”

  If it were the voice of the Almighty, he could not recognize it. In the long silence, he listened. No more words.

  Cain nodded slowly. Then he stepped to Abel, stooped, and grabbed his garment by the neck with one fist. He began to drag his brother’s body toward the river. He listened for the voice but heard only the wind in the hills and the crackle of thunder. Breath burst past his clenched teeth and his fingers ached with the weight, but all he could seem to see was blood glistening in the darkness. A shadowy trail through trampled grass.

  So much blood …

  The panic pulsed in his head, but the sound of rushing water just beyond the trees met his ears like cool water on cracked lips. He let the body drop. His arms and legs shook like tree limbs in a storm, despite his attempts to still himself.

  “The river,” urged the chilled voice again.

  Cain’s chest tightened.

  “The river, the river, the river,” it droned on and on, buzzing in his mind.

  “Wait,” he whispered. “Just wait.”

  “The river!”

  He shook his head as the anxiety intensified.

  Am I fighting myself, or does this voice actually exist?

  He smeared bloody fingers through his hair as he sensed himself slipping into that familiar abyss where only panic existed. He wanted to beat himself, to rip his hair out, to silence the voice, but most of all he wanted to kill again, to feel that rapturous release.

  He recalled feeling the rock in his hand as it made contact with Abel’s skull. He thought of how the violent blows shook his shoulder, and how his vocal cords tore as his scream pierced the murky darkness. He had felt such power and pleasure. He had felt like God.

  It made him sick.

  “The river!”

  “I know!” His voice echoed through the valley, but soon was swallowed by the roaring river. He ran to the body and hefted it again as desperation invigorated his limbs, but the world felt all too intangible.

  Surely the corpse my knuckles strain against is only as heavy as my thoughts. Surely the voice is nothing more than a reaction to stress.

  With aching shoulders, he arrived at the river’s edge. It was wide and fast and, most importantly, flowed away from the City. The icy water washed his calves, and his thighs as he thrust the body deeper into the river and watched it bob and float along the surface. The current carried it away as Cain washed his arms and face, scrubbing his skin until it felt as if only bone remained. He plunged his head into the water, attempting to rinse the sticky matter that had congealed in his hair and clung like tree sap.

  The voice returned. “Cut it.”

  He straightened as the hair on the back of his neck prickled through beads of cold water.

  “Cut it off.”

  “Who are you?”

  There was no answer.

  “Tell me who you are!” He scrambled up the bank and searched for the source of the voice, but the entire world seemed overcome by rushing water. He let his eyes linger on the shivering stream, and asked again, only softer, as if trying to coax a child from hiding. When he grew tired of waiting, he chuckled anxiously, ran fingers over his matted hair, and walked home as if the world was as it always had been.

  As if Abel were still alive.

  The voice returned. Though his mind was absorbed by it, he let it be. When the volume increased, so did the itch in his mind, and he wondered if the two were connected. But he had little time to spare, so he did his best to ignore it, because it was time to see Sarah.

  Sarah. My sister. My wife.

  When at last he walked through the doorway of their home, she stood by the window. The sight of her shadowed figure stopped him just inside the threshold. She said nothing, but he knew she saw him. She had waited for him.

  He walked to her slowly, unable to breathe. A mental image of Abel lying on the ground, dead, poured snow into his gut. He swallowed as he neared and saw her glowing eyes trace his stained figure. For the first time, the heat of guilt wetted his forehead.

  Her breath was ragged, as if she had been crying. He paused and almost raised his hand to touch her, but stopped. She knew what
he had done.

  His dry voice hammered the silence. “I need your help, Sarah.”

  She stared, but did not speak.

  He turned and headed toward their sleeping quarters, and she followed as he knew she would. He snatched a burning candle from the hall and set it in a holder that his son Gorban had made. The golden flame unveiled her face, and as their gazes met, every minutia was communicated. Sarah grimaced and looked toward the floor as if it would open up beneath her.

  “I need you to cut my hair.” He cleared his throat and whispered, “The blood …”

  After a long, tense moment, she wiped her eyes and nodded.

  He rubbed his face with shaking hands as Sarah retrieved a blade. When she returned, Cain sat cross-legged with his back to her knees.

  She slid long fingers over his matted hair and recoiled from the gore. But slowly, reluctantly, she brought up the blade and began her work. The knife tugged and scraped and sliced, at times causing him to wince, but the pain made him feel alive.

  Sarah was crying again. Part of him ached at the knowledge. The other part felt profound satisfaction that he had done what was necessary. He had no other escape. All logic within him demanded he murder Abel and test the bonds that held them within the walls of the City of the Almighty. Though his soul had at first been repulsed by the thought of murdering his twin, repressing his conscience had been a necessary progression.

  “A step for humanity,” whispered the voice in his mind. He tried to push it away, but couldn’t help but agree. Yes, and who better to take that first step than he? He would take the fall. He would perform as they all expected him to. And he would rise again, stronger than before.

  Or die in righteous rebellion.

  His eyelids and the corners of his lips drooped at the sound of his hair tearing against the dull blade. The flame on the table stabbed the shadows, and as his thoughts spread and interwove, the rhythm of the blade carried him close to waking dreams. Like the swinging he had felt in his mother’s arms so many years ago. The same arms that had held his brother.

  A chunk of matted hair struck his nose. The smell of Abel’s blood filled the air as though his body were hanging in the room, and suddenly the voice spoke again, whispering secrets in the dark. Sarah had stopped. He looked over his shoulder and saw her face buried in red-stained hands. She wept, but not for herself. Cain knew she cried for Abel.

  He stood and walked out to wash his scalp. Even if he had wanted to, he could not have comforted her. It was the chasm between them. He looked at his hands and shook his head.

  I killed you, brother, yet still I feel your hands pushing her from me.

  His fingers clenched.

  If only I could kill you again.

  He lifted a pot of water high and pitched forward, letting the water cascade across his head. As the last drops fell, he lowered it to the ground, careful not to damage it. He wiped the water from his face and breathed deeply. The unexplained buzz drove him to seek solitude, and the whispering sporadically increased in volume until he could perceive words.

  “Kill her,” it commanded.

  He shook his head. That, he would not do. Sarah would tell no one. Not until the time was right. She hated Cain, yet her fate was bound to his. And as much as he wanted her to experience pain for desiring Abel, he could not bear her death. Even as the hunger inside him grew.

  He started at the paradox between his longing for her and the desire to end her life. The thought came to him that the voice, and its urgings, belonged to something else entirely, something new. He could no longer deny it, and the more he meditated on its meaning, the warmer it throbbed like blistered skin.

  He shook his head to rid it of the buzzing itch as Sarah’s cries continued growing until she wailed. He couldn’t endure the sound, so he turned down the road and strode on. Billowing black clouds swallowed the sky. Strangely hued lightning bolts streaked through them and shook the ground with vengeful rumbles, but no rain fell. His eye twitched and his labored breathing brought no satisfaction. Each lungful felt hollow, somehow less than it should be.

  He needed the rain. He had counted on the rain, had waited for a storm such as this. And yet it stalled.

  He found a patch of soft grass underneath a large oak and closed his eyes, but he found no peace. So he stared at the sky and waited for it to wash away his sin. Hours slipped by like waterless droplets in an ocean of thought, but only one thought remained solid like the earth at his back. He closed his eyes and whispered, “Nothing could clean stains such as those.”

  He felt a strange peace in speaking it.

  2

  Lilleth’s footsteps pattered the pathway like a bolting bird’s. Abel hadn’t returned, and Lilleth could wait no longer.

  He must be in the hills searching for wayward sheep. He must be healthy and whole.

  “That’s a lie,” she whispered. She could not evade the fact that he was gone, and never before had he been gone this long without explanation.

  I have nothing to worry about. We’re in the care of the Almighty. Nothing bad can happen to us. He promised we’re protected.

  More lies. She had every reason to believe, but could not. Why? Maybe something in her believed that evil could breach the Almighty’s shield and end their happy, simple lives. Still, it eluded her. The years in the wilderness worrying about the Jinn, those demonic perversions of animal life, had not yet departed her consciousness, and the strangeness of the brooding storm disturbed old fears.

  The world was dangerous. They didn’t live in the Garden anymore, running free in naked innocence. Now they clothed themselves as they rose and went about with care and toil, working the ground with sweat and blood.

  The world has changed.

  Of course it has, she thought. It has been a century and a half since we fled Eden.

  Her throat tensed. Do not fool yourself. This is more than a consequence of the Fall. You sense something different.

  Lilleth hurried. The sky was as dark as night, though sunrise should have begun hours ago. The storm seemed malevolent, yet the Almighty had promised them protection from such forces.

  “While you dwell in me, no danger will reach past the walls I have constructed. Not sickness, not demon, not nature.”

  The recollection of his voice in the wilderness evoked the taste of dust and the feel of wandering. Other sensations came as well, and though she had no desire to return to those days of hardship, she felt an affinity for them.

  She bounded across the grass in front of Mother’s home and called out as she pulled aside the flap hanging from the arched marble entryway and passed within. Dim lights flickered as the flap fell back into place, and she was suddenly aware of the sweat matting her clothes and her breath buffeting the silence. The stone walls seemed to stoop over her, their smooth texture dully reflecting the candle flame.

  “Lilleth, what brings you here at such a time?” Eve sat like a tower on a hill, holding wool and needles in her hand.

  “Have you seen Abel?”

  Eve shook her head.

  “I can’t find him. He’s been gone all night.”

  “I have seen no others since we left the celebration last night.”

  Lilleth hugged her waist. “I wonder if something has happened.”

  For a moment, it seemed shadows obscured Eve’s face. “Come now, you know where we are.” She set down her tools and waited for a peal of thunder to dissipate. “You have no cause to worry.”

  “Of course. I know.” She rubbed her clammy palms together. “But it isn’t like him to be gone so long, and he didn’t explain why he walked off to the pastures last night. Such behavior is strange, even for Abel.”

  “I understand your concern, but we are in the City of the Almighty.” She cleared her throat. “Are you all right? Did you just awaken?”

  “I haven’t slept at all.”

  Eve motioned to the cushion beside her. “Very well, sit and tell me what happened. Then I will make us tea.”

>   Lilleth slid onto the cushion and forced a deep breath. “Last evening as the sun set, Abel acted oddly. He talked very little, especially for such a joyful day. The Almighty accepted his offering with grace and gave him much honor, but he acted as if he had been—” She paused and implied the rest with raised eyebrows.

  Eve squinted.

  “He acted as if he had been rejected. Like Cain.”

  Eve pursed her lips and nodded.

  “And the things he said were strange. He kept mumbling about the storm and wouldn’t respond to my questions. Then he said he was off to the pastures, and I haven’t seen him since. All night I have been awake, staring at the sky and hearing its distant thunder. The darkness of the storm seems wrong and so does Abel’s absence.”

  Eve opened her mouth as if to speak, then stared at the ground. When the silence grew heavy, she said, “Since we have been with the Almighty these past two years, we have been safe from danger. His Spirit is with us at all times, protecting us from beast and nature, from all manner of sickness, even from the Jinn. Abel must be safe … It is impossible for anything to have happened.” Eve sighed, and her tone gained disapproval. “Dear daughter, when will you come to trust that we are safe in his arms? He loves and guards us fiercely. His intention is for us to live joyful, peaceful lives. He wants us to prosper. If he didn’t, why would we serve him?”

  Lilleth took in the words with a grimace.

  Eve smiled. “Do you see?”

  Lilleth nodded.

  “Good.”

  “But could we not look for him?”

  Eve’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  Lilleth pressed her hands to her chest and bowed. “For my sake. I wish to speak with him.”

  Adam entered the room with his tunic tied around his waist and a jug of water in his arms. He bent to set it on the ground next to the fireplace. Lilleth observed her father’s shoulders, jawline, and eyes—so similar to Cain’s.