The Sin Monster

The so-called “Sin Monster” was the scourge of New York City in the year 2030 of the Earth-668 iteration of reality. It was created by accident during an explosion at a Mitchell Genetics facility in the borough of Brooklyn.

The facility which birthed “The Sin Monster” was created to house the “sin” extracted from the bodies of the city’s citizens, a procedure invented in the wake of the cloning of Jesus of Nazareth from The Shroud of Turin in 2002. Samuel, a tenant of Emily Henderson, describes the monstrous appetites of the beast in this passage from the short story “Revelation”:

Some kind of creature has risen out of the spilled chemicals. It’s killing everyone that comes within fifty feet of it. If you confess, you’re dead. Your body can’t handle the pure evil of the thing, and your heart just stops.

While attempting to evacuate his landlady from the danger zone, Samuel confesses that he, as an atheist, has never used “The Confessional”—the machine used to extract sin from human bodies. This makes Samuel believe that he and other atheists like him may be the only chance of stopping the Sin Monster. Once he’s sure Mrs. Henderson will be safe, Samuel turns around and runs to confront the beast.

Emily Henderson gets a look at it from a distance:

The creature was within sight. Massive it was—at least seven, maybe eight feet tall. Her bottom lip shuddered. It looked like a man but its skin was darker than the most dimly lit closet corner. There was no face to speak of. Its arms were thick and muscled; overall, it looked like something out of one of her grandson’s comic books.

She then watches as Samuel battles the beast to the death—not falling instantly like the many “faithful” it had slaughtered on its path from Brooklyn, but still struggling to keep up with the beast’s strength.

What happens in the end would be a spoiler, but it must be said that what Emily Henderson witnessed that day would give her cause to travel through time and reboot reality. The current iteration of reality, in which most of the novels and stories by E. Christopher Clark take place, was born thanks to the battle between Samuel and the Sin Monster.