THE HEAT SEEMED TO SEEP FROM THE SKY AS THOUGH IT SLIPPED DOWN THROUGH BETWEEN THE CLOUDS.
Even with the occasional breeze, I could find relief only in the sparse shade offered by those few trees still standing straight. Looking at the jungle from afar, I had made the earlier mistake of assuming that sea of green stood as a single unbroken canopy, like an umbrella sheltering those that called the forest floor home. Yet a day’s march into the heart of it had seen to my unfortunate enlightenment. Trees that at first appeared straight in stature were anything but, instead twisted and warped as though victim to frequent storm. Having done my research before embarking on this exhibition, I knew better, and was thus forced to wonder why it was the woods appeared so falsely. The university’s reports had made no mention of it. Few of these ill-standing trunks and branches offered protection from the sun, while in fact most seemed to almost irk away from it, as though they preferred the darkness the braver of their kind offered. Were it not for the conviction with which the locals told their stories, and just how long it had taken me to get here, I might have turned back for search of cooler places.
Slicing through a nearby low-lying vine, I listened carefully to the sounds of those living things around me. Though I was now alone in the sense I’d left behind any of those willing to follow me, I was far from companionless. To my left I could sense as much as I could see the willowy movement of creatures not so unlike me. Monkeys, as I well knew them from the university’s texts, suspended high in the air, and shifting slowly where vine allowed so as to gaze down at me in shameless curiosity. These were not to be feared, or so I was told by both the faculty and locals alike. They are inquisitive and rarely anything more, Dr. Rumfort had said. Still, I could not help but stare back in what I hoped reflected more of my amazement than it did my worry. In some ways, I felt I was seeing a version of mankind that might have been. Like I’d discovered cousins unknown, not related to me in any individual sense, but by something greater. It was strange to think that soon anyone in London would be able to see one. With the Zoo soon going public, the world would broaden for those otherwise stuck under the capital’s smokey skies. A good thing I thought, staring into the wide eyes of a nearby cousin.
Though it seemed that even I was not enchanting enough to hold their attention for long, for after another moment of quiet study, they retreated deeper into the green, moving with ease in those areas hidden from the sun. Perhaps I should follow them, I thought amused, watching until I could no more.
Turning back to the path-to-be, I cut through the last of what separated me from that which I had sought for so long. All at once, unexpectedly, the oversized knife gave way to open air and no resistance as the vines parted into a clearing. Struck into a state of awe and disbelief, I pushed forward until the realm of twisted trees lay behind me, and in front of me, stood a story made real.
I could remember the first time I had stumbled across mention of the ancient city. In a text dated from 410, written collectively by the higher clergy of the Amadaks. The traveling priests had spoken of ruins ancient even to them. Laden with theistic fervor, they had praised the city the first of God’s creations, yet spoke also in aversion to things they had not seen but rather felt, though many of those later pages had been long lost. The next prominent discovery was that of a tome from 671, in which Limitanei soldiers spoke of entering an abandoned city unlike any they had ever before. They described structures of peculiar construction, and a seemingly senseless layout. A city too large to exist, as though scaled up from any human model by a factor of 10. They too referenced a disquiet, their scribe writing that the men could not even sleep within the city’s border. And finally, almost 500 years later, the diary of one Captain Sebastián García, recovered with what remained of his ship at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. He and his men had ventured further into the city, or least made record of it, than either the priests or soldiers had in their times past. His account introduced painted images that could not be explained nor accurately described, saying only that they elicited strange emotions from those of his crew that viewed them. He’d written that they had spent a total of 3 days and nights within the city’s confines, but that time had almost moved sluggishly, and no one could quite recall just how many times the sun had risen and set again. It was clear that at first they had hoped it was the lost city of El Rey Dorado, and though a lack of gold and treasure soon dissuaded them of this notion, it did not take long for the crew to tender ideas of their own. It was written that some claimed the city was from times when mankind was too different to recognize, while others said that it was a city of spirits, and not intended for those still living. Regardless of what they had thought though, the sketchings of Captain García had matched with the earlier description provided by the Limitanei soldiers. The overlap was simply too much to ignore. Buildings exceptionally large and advanced for construction technology of even the 13th century, let alone when it really came to be. The proportions, if accurate, seemed a better fit for giants than humans. Spirals peaked each building to a height even I had not believed, for such free standing structures would not last long, even today. He had spoken of roads wide enough for ships to sail through. Doorways round in appearance yet measuring twenty men laid sideways across. The fantastical nature of these descriptions had ensured the disbelief of many of my colleagues, but something even I could not fully articulate had held my attention all these years. Something of what it might be that whispered to me from the most inventive parts of my mind. Enough so that it was not long after reading the diary when I began my search for the funding that led to where I stood now.
To find all of it was true.
First to steal my attention were the spirals that surely should have been visible from the mountain-side village I had stayed at the weeks before, but were somehow not. They were completely unweathered in appearance. They not only touched the sky, but pressed deep into it. It was an architecture without an Earthly influence I could place. Nothing resembling Baroque, no hints of anything Islamic, nor Greek or Egyptian of any time period. Something for a lack of a better word, unworldly. Though it stood in stark contrast to the blue sky it invaded by more than just its aberrant proportions and style. It also felt somehow threatening. Like a totem erected in warning, or perhaps in some dark practice. I had once briefly studied the old Norse ways of totemism and remembered now how some Viking warriors used to sow fear in the peoples they pillaged by placing ungodly statues throughout Cumberland and the greater north. It was almost like that, but not nearly so barefaced. Like the unease it caused was not intentional, but simply derivative. Like me and people like me were not worthy of being a part of its purpose, even one so menial. It was now that I began to wonder if the unease my ancient guides had spoken of was something more then medieval superstition. Unable to look much longer I readjusted my gaze to see the whole of the city instead.
To call it a city was a failure of description. Yet try as I might there was no more apt a way to define it. Perhaps it is easiest to say that in the same way an ant hill is both a city, and not a city, so too was that which laid before me. Those spirals which had so totally held my attention until now receded into colossal buildings of varying and nearly perverted shapes. I had not so long ago stood in the halls of Westminster and marvelled at the sheer size of my nation’s government, but what I saw now dwarfed that by some good measure. My first thought, dully, was that it was simply impossible I was the first to re-find what I now stared at. Something of this magnitude just could not remain hidden, no matter where on Earth it may be. It seemed there were enough raw materials, albeit unidentifiable at the moment, to rebuild any English city twice over.
And that wasn’t even to speak of the roads. They were precisely as Captain García had described them. Vast far reaching arteries of a dark material that looked near enough to asphalt in appearance, or at least from the distance I currently stood at. Another thing that just simply could not be. Even with Rome’s greatest years in mind, I was certain there was no larger divide than between this city’s buildings and anywhere else known to mankind. The entirety of the Royal Navy could likely hide among its towers.
Shivering despite the heat, I returned my blade to its carrying case and edged slowly forward, falling soon into the shadow of the first of the great constructions. As I neared the base of it, I could more clearly see the material it was made from. From a distance it had appeared softly beige, but it was in fact darker than it led on. Closer, it looked like a sand rock of sorts, but was nevertheless distinct from anything Arabian, or Middle Eastern, I had ever seen. It was smoother, too smooth, without the lines or signs of age that was otherwise to be expected. The building closest to me jutted straight up for maybe one hundred meters before immediately angling itself perpendicular again with the ground. This overhang lasted perhaps ten meters before another sharp change saw it turn once again upwards, but this time at a strangely diagonal angle. What it did then I could not see from where I stood, but this general process repeated itself at least a dozen times, making for an overall shape that seemed to defy what was structurally legitimate. Not even in my wildest imaginings could I have guessed what this might have sought to achieve.
When my feet left behind the forest floor and entered what might once have constituted city grounds, I sensed my anxiety worsen. The ground below me was indeed a kind of asphalt, rather than stone. In it I could even see the tiny pebbles one would anticipate finding, yet when I bent down to touch them, I found there was no texture to it whatsoever. Like it had all been sanded away. I walked slowly at first for it was peculiar to walk on, like it were polished wood rather than hardened concrete. This too was free of wear.
In another long moment I was within touching distance of the first building, standing still right where the impossibly large door ended and the smooth sandlike rock began. The door itself was wood, which once more seemed to mock my understanding of basic construction. Wide enough to house a grounded blimp, I could find not a single break nor grain anywhere. It was as if it had been crafted out of a single monstrous plank. To the touch, it was cool. The kind of cool that a limestone in winter might hold, not wood. I pulled my hand away quickly, despite the fact it was the first cool thing I had touched in days. I supposed it made as much sense as the rest of the city did, but there was something in that damp cold that pushed my nervousness too close to the unmanageable. I cleared my throat once and looked the great door over a final time before turning back to the road, and deeper into the city.
It is eerie when one is alone on an otherwise commonly crowded street, but to be truly isolated in such a foreign space was something else entirely. My footsteps rang out around me hollowly, and yet I doubted the sound reached the closest buildings for they were so far. Whether or not the road I was on was typical or atypical of the city I could not say at that point, but it stretched so far in the distance that the strange steeples looked like nothing more than toothpicks against the slowly darkening sky.
I walked cautiously for perhaps a half hour before turning around to see how much progress I’d made. To my surprise, the forest I had struggled so to cut through seemed far. Much farther than my slow pace should have allowed for. Confused, I struggled to pull my timepiece from my waistcoat and nearly gasped aloud when I saw that it read a quarter past ten. By my best recollection I had arrived sometime shortly before eight. Feeling my heart redouble its efforts, I decided to camp for the night and explore further when the sun could aid me better. It had also fallen further than reason told me it should have, illuminating only a sliver of the faraway horizon. A sudden coolness in the air I had certainly not felt in the mountains seemed to sweep through the abandoned city too. I found myself reaching for my jacket for the first time in weeks, afraid to really question why.
Moving quickly to the shelter of one of the towers, I built a small fire and pitched my tent as fast as I could. It felt strange, like making camp on Oxford Street following some sort of apocalypse. I did not feel as though I were being watched, but wanted greatly to be out of sight, with the canvas of my tent between me and the strangeness all around. Thin though that barrier may be. Following a tasteless meal consisting mostly of cured meat and stale biscuits, and the rest of my second to last canteen, I scuttled the remaining flames and buttoned myself in for the night.
Sleep, if it could be called that, overtook me quicker than anticipated. I hesitate however in calling it sleep for never before in my whole life had I dreamt anything so lifelike. Something so real, part of me wonders if through some impossible medium I did not just live it. And though I could swear to its vividness, to the point where I almost trust it more than my own memories, the specific nature of what I dreamt was foggy. Perhaps just too real to be remembered in any great detail. Ludicrously, I recalled seeing a strange and ancient people, without being able to say how or why I knew that. I recalled a practice or ritual of sorts, and a chanting almost too malformed in nature to be heard by human ears. In what dark language they hummed their hymns I could also not say, though the feeling of unbridled fear it caused I remembered well enough. But perhaps worst of all, and what against all reason I remembered best, was that which they prayed to. It was the image of a beast that which thankfully cannot be described in words. A great work of art, if it could be called that, spanning perhaps half as high as the distance between me and the first level of the towers. The monster it pictured was captured in dark colours, and a giant by its own right. Humanoid in only the vaguest of terms, it towered over those that prayed around it so barbarically. Where this took place I could not say. I had no energy for remembering my periphery as every ounce of me was busy fighting the fear climbing up from out my throat. But I do recall feeling as though it were inside. Somewhere in some black and grand chamber perhaps, with a roof or walls too distant or unimportant to remember. What I did in this dream, beyond witnessing the horror of my darkest imaginings, I do not remember. Nor could I say how long I felt it lasted. Only one other thing was clear to me, and it may have very well been what startled me awake. In the waning moments of the nightmare I turned to the painting of the beast one last time, inexplicably drawn to its single eye. Lidless, and cold beyond the darkest interpretations of the word, it seemed almost to look right through me. I do not ever remember feeling as inconsequential and infinitesimal as I did then. I think I held ants in a higher regard than this painted devil held me. However, I think it was what happened next that worried my heart enough to wake.
The eye blinked.
I awoke more tired than I’d been heading to sleep the night before, but unreasonably relieved to find the sun up and trying to worm its way into my tent. Some of the front buttons had come loose during the night, and through this gap of canvas I could feel the heat I had come to expect from this part of the world. That morning however I welcomed it. I packed up my camp with a dry throat, using more water than I should have to try and wet the sandpaper feel of it. When I realized it was futile, I gave up, and made peace with the fact I was to be uncomfortable for some time to come.
My march further into the city yielded nothing more unique than what I had already found. Each tower was identical to the last, right up to the strange materials they were built from. All smooth and seamless, the level of uniformity yet another reason for wonder.
It didn’t take long before I was able to fully understand the city’s true indistinguishability. Having gawked long enough at tower after tower, and no closer to understanding any of it than I was at my arrival, I chose one at random to approach again.
Standing in the shade before another great circular door, I braved a second touch of the false wood. It was still cool, but I managed to hold my palm against it longer this time. What, if anything, was inside, I could only speculate. I realized then my mistake in also presuming that great circular thing before me was in fact a door. In a place of such peculiarity, I wondered if dismissing all assumptions was the wisest approach. Perhaps this thing had some other significance, and was simply a differently coloured wall. I pondered this over for some time, running my hand across the surface of it, pushing randomly to see if at anywhere it felt different or had any give. I was about to abandon my study of it when suddenly I felt something. I was nearing the opposite side of where I had started when I noticed just the slightest bump on the material’s surface. Immediately frightened, I pulled my hand away and stepped back, searching for what I had felt. Try as I might though, my eyes could not decipher any visible difference in the material. I tentatively stepped closer again and retraced the general area. Sure enough, I found it again. A slightly raised line, yet invisible to the eye, that I could trace from the ground to about two meters up. From there it turned immediately left for about another meter before once again joining with the ground.
It felt like a door.
My heart beat hard anew, but this time for a different reason. It my excitement I dropped the heavy pack digging little trenches into my shoulders and traced the entirety of the invisible frame a second time. Then a third time. Finally, hoping to all things good I was not about to make a mistake, I placed both my hands flat on the surface of the strange matter and pushed as hard as I could. With one fluid and time-defying motion, the small panel swung inward.
Holding my breath, I dared not move. Through the door it was dark. Some part of me responsible for warning urged I flee that new obscurity with all my might. But the emotions of mine that did not yield to such fear were overcome with a curiosity no book or lecture had ever offered me. I had with me a simple lighter, with fuel enough for some careless burning. Thinking more with my heart than my head, I reached for it in my pocket, igniting the flint and coil with two short snaps. The flame itself was not strong enough to reveal much of what the strange building had opened to show, but it was enough to push away the heaviest of the nearby shadows. What I saw forced my breath to catch.
Both the floor and wall of the tower’s interior were nothing like that which lay outside. Both were a material closer in appearance to glass than stone, and made of a black so dark it seemed almost to suck the light from my lighter. It shone like obsidian might when so tested, and reflected back to me a great sensation of desolation. I could almost feel as much as see the vacuum of the room. The absence of anything at all.
Careful not to make much sound, I stepped forward slowly, so that I was no longer just in the city, but now in one of its absurd buildings. The nothingness immediately engulfed me. As if I’d gone from one foot on Earth, to the next in outer space. Careful not to step out from the sun’s light that pushed in, I turned to view the inner side of the door. It too was this ebony glass, just as seamless as its counter part outside. With no small amount of irresolution, I shuffled inwards yet another step. The light I had was certainly not enough to illuminate the chamber through to its other side, but the echo of even my softest footstep was enough to inform me of its enormity. Braving only one more moment of staring into the nothingness, I walked backwards until I was in the safety of the day’s full embrace again. I took a moment to calm the remainder of my loose nerves before searching my pack for the materials I had packed for situations just like this. I retrieved my retractable metal bar, two strips of oil soaked linens, and a pair of pins. Careful not to squeeze the fuel from the wraps, I tied both in opposite directions around the bar, pinning them together when they could wrap no further. Using the lighter still clutched tightly between my fingers, I set flame to the makeshift torch, attached my canteen to my hip, double checked my pen and notebook, and let the darkness swallow me once again.
Using what momentum I had, I strode forward in an ebbing confidence until the sun’s light was little more than a glow some ways away. Even in my fresh courage, I neither saw nor sensed any object in the foreign room besides my own body. Each footstep reverberating around me like sonar, reminding me of how alone I was.
But then that changed.
Slowly at first, but then with increasing certainty, I began to realize I was nearing something. Far from being able to tell what, I knew only that I was still some ways from the building’s other side, perhaps closer to the room’s middle. What eventually rose from out of the shadows forced an icy hand around my heart. Not because of any outwardly malicious appearance, but rather its connection to memory. A fresh memory.
In what I supposed was indeed the room’s centre were two large columns of stone, each divided down the middle until perhaps just a meter from the ground. Were it not for the nightmare I had escaped only hours ago, I might have wondered at their purpose, but I knew. I feared and despised knowing more than I had ever loathed anything before, but I knew. In my dream, the painting those archaic peoples had prayed to stood upright by way of two stone supports, identical to the pillars I now stood before. I struggled for a way science might explain how I’d come to see something like that in advance, but arrived only at the concept of déjà vu. And that sounded weak to even my own mind. To think on it for long was to invite a panic I was not sure I could recover from.
Unable to ignore the trembling of my light source, I gripped the torch firmly with both hands and stepped closer, seeing something in the stone I had not in my dream.
There were carvings. Images of men, and of the city. I recognized the chamber I now stood in. I recognized the beast’s stone silhouette. It was easier to look at this way, though admittedly not by much.
There were other things in the stone I did not recognize, and perhaps for that I should be thankful. Images of open water, the night sky, outlandish birds surely carved out of proportion and of fire. It appeared almost chronological, each carving having just enough of the last in it to blend them all together. If it told a story of sorts, it was one I had little interest in reading. Nevertheless, the scholar in me pressed for my own copy. I set my torch down against the stone so the flame licked upwards toward the carvings, and began sketching some of what I saw.
I managed to depict three of the first scenes when I noticed that the flame of my torch still wavered. Free of my hands, I stared down at it blankly, wondering what inside a vacuum could cause it to move. When it didn’t stop, I set down my notebook and pen, crouching to see it closer. It was then I felt the slight breeze.
It wasn’t a strong enough current for me to think it came from the outside, but I couldn’t deny there was a movement of air towards the base of the stone. I reached out to touch where it met with the glass-like floor and found a small gap between it and the ground. The space was small, not even large enough for me to press my fingers through, but the discovery was astonishing nonetheless. It meant that there was something below.
Thinking back to how I’d opened the building itself, I threw my weight against the pillar, but to no avail. Knowing it was unlikely, I tried pressing some of the images to see if perhaps they hid a mechanism of sorts, but none did. After a moment of that I reached for my torch again, and began circling the stone. I think some small part of me hoped I’d find nothing. That way I’d be able to leave under the impression I’d done all I could. But what I found almost halfway around nearly had me laughing aloud, despite my persisting angst. Buried into the opposite face of the stone at about the height one would expect, was a lever. An ordinary lever, made of simple wood rough to the touch. It seemed strange, but it was nearly a kind of relief in itself to suddenly find an object so normal. Something so obvious and humanistic.
I set the light down again to check for protrusions in the stone, but save the carvings, there was nothing. The small space that hinted at something greater was the same on this side too. Feeling as though I were finally getting closer to the purpose of this place, I gripped the lever and pulled it downward.
Without so much as a squeak, the first of the stone pillars rotated outwards, away from me. I had to quickly grab my torch to stop it from falling. As though it floated above the glass, the massive stone moved with an effortlessness I doubted even the best of modern architects could match. I stepped back to watch it slide into its final position, revealing a set of stairs that descended into darkness. What of these I could see were also of a shape and size relatable to me, something that further calmed my most tenacious nerves. Not wanting to waste a moment, I held the light out before me and started the stairs one at a time.
While the proportions might have been encouraging, their depth certainly was not. When after the first hundred steps I had not yet reached the bottom I assumed my counting had somehow gone awry. After the second hundred my breathing came raggedly, and a damp cold had settled in the air around me. There was no mistaking just how deep I was. When finally I counted three hundred I stopped to consider what I was experiencing. At perhaps half a meter per step I was more or less one hundred and fifty meters below ground without an end in sight. I felt as though I should have been surprised, but I sensed only a growing unease in me again. No ancient people had the tools for such excavation, and yet this discovery was likely among the lesser of all mine in the past day and a half. When at last enough of my breath and stamina returned, I continued my plunge into the Earth at a slower pace. There was, precisely, five hundred steps to the underground hall. And hall seemed indeed the best description for what I found.
When I could go down no more it came almost as a surprise. Not unlike regaining my land legs after a journey at sea, it took me a few moments to find my balance. What stretched out before me was a corridor of stone, doorless as far as my window into the darkness allowed me to see. It was precisely my height, not an inch taller, and perhaps just wide enough for two of me to stand shoulder to shoulder. I advanced warily, wondering at what ancient Pharaoh or King might be buried so deep below the surface. Not ten steps in, carvings appeared once again, lining both walls to my side with their fantastical stories. I avoided focusing on any one of them, first hoping to see what I was being lead to.
To my disappointment, the answer came after only another moment of walking. The hallway ended abruptly, with nothing besides more wall. It too was littered with stories, though I also paid these no mind in the moment.
Frustrated, I dropped my torch once more so that I could ensure the wall ahead was not some hidden door. I felt for irregularities in the stone, strangely hoping for some sign that it did not all end here, but save the carvings, the wall appeared to be just that. I stepped back, almost in disbelief. I simply could not fathom why a people would go through the enormous effort of creating something so seemingly significant, only to have it hide nothing at all. I reached for my quickly waning canteen in preparation of the climb up, when I realized the same error in my way of thinking. I brought far too many of my own presumptions to a place too foreign for them to have any real value. It had been clear from the start the city did not operate like any other I knew. To try and understand it, I had to think as they might have. For if they indeed buried things of value, perhaps there was value in this hallway after all. And on some level, I think I did actually understand. Gold and trinkets might have an immediate worth, but if industrial society had proved anything, it was that information might be the most valued thing of all.
I approached the carvings on the last wall again, but this time to see what it was they depicted. I noticed with some curiosity there was only a single line of symbolization here. Whereas the long walls were covered from ground to roof with images, the corridor’s end was blank, save the one strand that also stretched from top to bottom. Beginning with that image closest to the ground, I started sketching what I saw.
The first picture contained a man surprisingly recognizable to me. He held a sword of sorts, and seemed to be cutting his way through something. He wore a hat and carried a pack more modern than anything else I’d seen in the carvings. The second image was of the same man, but with his back to me. Over his shoulders and head the city’s great spirals rose up, unmistakable in their looming presence, captured well even in stone. In the third the man entered the city, his movement caught from a profile view, not unlike some Egyptian hieroglyphs I had studied. At this point I felt the beginning of something I couldn’t quite recognize stir in the pits of my stomach. It was not until the forth image though that I recognized it for the feeling of horror it was.
The forth carving was of a tent nestled below the overhang of one of the monolithic towers. The man in it was building a fire.
I tried swallowing but found I could not, nearly choking on my own saliva instead. I went back to the first image and stared at the man’s hat and pack until I could no longer. I tried telling myself the similarities were simply too vague to have any meaning, but I could not sell myself the lie.
In the fifth picture, the man entered one of the great buildings, and in his hand he held a torch. Now my panic threatened to overwhelm me. Creeping in from my periphery I could see as much as sense a spotted darkness coming closer. Only because what remained of my composure screamed in warning did I not embrace that fainting sensation. It scared me just how much I wanted to.
In the sixth image the man descended the very steps I had only just reached the bottom of. He stood alone with his torch, facing the same barren corridor. From there, it took no small amount of effort to crane my neck up at the seventh carving. Though what it showed I couldn’t tell at first. It was the same man, seemingly where I was, but touching something on the wall before him. Turning away from the carvings for a moment, I restudied the wall in its entirety, seeing nothing more than I had the first time. Confused, I raised a hand to lightly trace the seventh carving I could not fully grasp. There was a sudden and sharp pain at the top of my middle finger and I immediately withdrew my hand, stepping back in shock. For a long moment I stared in dismay at a dark smudge on the stone portrayal of me. Then looking between the droplets of blood dripping from my finger, and the carving itself, I realized in growing terror I now knew what the stonework illustrated.
At the sight of the eighth picture I vomited violently into the corner. In it the appalling painting from my dream had returned to its place in the grand chamber above. And as I stood there, struck dumb with the impossibility of it all, somewhere, distantly, there rang out the muffled boom of something inordinate sliding into place.
I do not think I fully understood what the remaining carvings showed, but their general meaning was all too clear. The empty cavern of what I now saw as a voracious tomb was not to be empty for long. The demented beings from my dream could be once more seen surrounding their pictorial demon, as they had in my vision.
However the last of that wall’s dark prophecies was almost certainly the most dreadful. That magnificent lapse of God’s prudence, who’s very image had shaken me to my core, could be seen stepping out from its pictured home. The simple thought of it on Earth was enough to spoil what remained of my sanity.
In my haste to flee from what the wall promised, I tripped carelessly over the pack I had lain behind me. Sent sprawling out onto the cold stone of the occult corridor, I hesitated in getting to my feet, as my ears picked up on something that should not have been.
Above me, a great drumming filled the air.
THE FROG CROAKED.
It was a grating sound, a false call just a little too treble to be believed. It came from the plastic monstrosity that lingered by the door, awaiting those returning home with its hoarse welcome. Ben couldn't quite remember where exactly Sarah had bought it, though he often hoped that whatever store it had been was now out of business, paying penance for stocking such a dumb thing in the first place.
Twice he had tried to ask her to throw it away, and twice she had smiled that twisted lip grin that made him pause just long enough to lose his window. She knew, and he knew that she knew, but they danced around that poorly hidden truth all the same. It was an unspoken game of amusement reflective of a larger one their marriage had fostered for almost ten years. One Ben was reluctantly thankful for, though that was not a truth he would ever say out loud.
Setting aside the groceries he held, he stared down at the ridiculous motion sensor with some contempt. It’s empty eyes looked up at him like windows into a coal mine. He wondered for the slightest of moments if Sarah would notice its absence. He could tell her it had grown legs and decided they were far to trite a couple to announce day after day like some versed footman. She would smile at that. He would smile too.
But then he knew she would go and buy a new one.
He couldn't help but laugh as it croaked defiantly, catching his heel as he moved into the kitchen. One day he would find something that annoyed Sarah equally as much, and then he would watch her struggle to tell him.
From inside the kitchen he could see almost as much as he could feel an angry wind whip outside. It pressed against the glass of the window, forcing the pane to creak the way glass did when stressed. An almost crunch, like a boot only lightly stepping on gravel.
He set about the familiarity of unpacking a day’s groceries when he noticed another sound. One not quite natural to the home or his ear, which was likely the only reason he heard it through all the other sounds. Without stopping, he turned his ear to where it seemed to be coming from, only half listening.
When after a moment it continued, he put away the loaf of bread in his hands, and set out to find whatever it was, only partially aware that’s what he was doing. Thinking of things he had to do, he wandered into the hallway of the home. The front door had acquired a rather nasty squeak--- not half so irritating as the frog of course--- but he’d promised Sarah he’d oil it all the same. And the bedroom closet was to be emptied to make way for god knew wha---
He stopped.
Whatever noise he’d been searching for had ceased, and save the whistling wind outside, a quiet had settled over the house again.
With a noise meant only to mark a mild curiosity, he returned to the kitchen to find a home for something called a sapodilla that Sarah had insisted he buy. Deciding after a moment that the countertop was as good a place as any, he left it where it was. It was a rather strange thin---
The noise came again.
He blinked, running a hand through his hair. Normally such a languid sound wouldn't have warranted a second thought, but something about this particular noise caught just enough of his attention to make him pause.
It was a faint scratching, like a bushel of delicate branches tied together and slowly dragged down the inside of a wall. Or the tips of someone’s fingers moving gently down a page.
He moved to the hallway again, tilting his ear upwards to the ceiling.
Again, it stopped.
A frown slipped across his face then, one that lingered a moment as he took a careful step back into the kitchen, his eyes glued to the ceiling. He waited.
The sound came back.
”What the---"
The words stopped short in his throat, turning into a half cocked yell as something loud slammed against a window somewhere deeper in the apartment. With a movement somewhere between a run and walk, Ben moved so that he could peer into the living room.
On the opposite end of the room, he noticed something on one of the windows.
Eyeing it the same way he’d eyed the frog when Sarah first brought it home, he shuffled further into the room.
A bizarre feeling overcame him as he neared the window, like there was a little cloud of anxiety nipping at his heels. Or an uneasy rain pouring down from above.
Now only a few feet away from the glass he could see the mark for what it was, and in that moment he felt something cool squeeze at his heart.
It was a handprint of a dark scarlet colour, clear as day against the grey backdrop of the swelling storm. Like a kid had dipped a hand in a bucket of paint before high-fiving the window.
Unable to really understand what it was he was looking at, Ben made another noise. This one a little more timorous than the last. What he knew to be most odd was that he and Sarah lived on the tenth floor. Save a prank loving window-washer, he had simply no idea how such a thing would have come to be.
As he stood trying to wrap his mind around it, another sound exploded through the apartment. A similar crashing noise like a bird unable to see glass for what it was. Coming from the kitchen this time, Ben followed it and abandoned his half run for something a little faster, sliding on his socks as he tried to stop.
Like an unworldly greeting, another hand caught in mid wave had been slapped onto the window. Red like an evening anger, thin tendrils of something trailed down from the tips of its fingers, forming lines that better resembled veins when seen in context.
Try as he might, Ben was unable to stop his heart from dragging itself up and out of his throat. Like the most natural of drums, his heart beat in his ears.
The loud sound came again, this time from the bedroom.
Now unapologetically sprinting, Ben stumbled into the tiny room, forced to grab ahold of a dresser to slow himself.
He spotted a third hand, no less cardinal than those that had come before it. Surrounding it like little islands on a map were droplets of whatever substance they were. He stared in mixed horror and fascination, unable to keep pace with what was happening.
A silence lapsed then that Ben strained to listen through. He was sure a forth hand would follow. He was sure in a way he couldn't quite put to words; a certainty that stretched beyond bone to the skeleton unseen.
But no such noise came.
Though a frog did croak.
THE MOUTH OF THE VALLEY OPENED INTO THE HILLS AND EXPOSED A RATHER WEARY-LOOKING PATH THAT LEAD UPWARDS.
It disappeared with the beginning of a forest line, that itself disappeared into a high mountain mist. I had never seen such beauty in a landscape before, but perhaps that was because it had been awhile since I truly looked.
I felt a peace I had not for some time as I gazed up at those northern peaks. I think it came from knowing what the next few hours were to bring.
That it would all finally be over.
The raw green of the trees that covered the countryside gave the land an almost armoured look. I could find no break in the leafy shield. It was the very image I had long ago seen in some of the old texts, stashed away in a building once called a library. Until today, I had always thought those pictures were to be the closest I’d ever come.
My father walked ahead of me on the trodden path that had yet to turn uphill. We’d left early in the morning from where we’d spent the night, waking before the world had. I hadn't really been given the good night’s rest he’d promised, but I didn't mind much. I was eager beyond words to finally see the end of our road, and the walls that held back the world.
We walked on as a sliver of dawn slowly grew into something more, bringing with it the light of day. After some time the flat path did end, and the walking became hiking. My father maintained a gradual pace I was happy to keep, able to enjoy the view of nature on both sides of the path we followed.
We soon left behind the sun too though, as the trail led underneath a green canopy that stretched above. It wasn't dark under the cover of those great trees, but neither was it light. The awning of foliage did well to block out the sun.
More than once I caught a glimpse of animals as they leapt around in their wooded domain around us. In this world they were a rarity I found fascinating, though I knew my father would insist on going after them if I voiced my curiosity out loud, so I did not. Rightfully so, animals had learned well that the few humans left were no longer their friends.
A little less than two hours after leaving, our path left the natural rooftop behind and opened into a deceivingly massive clearing. Were it not for the great stone walls some distance ahead, I wouldn't have believed we’d finally found our haven. But there it was.
We had reached the walls.
It felt surreal, suddenly seeing the fabled thing with my own eyes. I stood still, frozen like a deer eyeing the barrel of my father’s gun.
Surrounded on all sides by forest and grassy plains, the famous ashen walls surrounded something of their own. I could just see over them from where I stood to the towering stone buildings that comprised the world’s last functioning society.
I was transfixed with the timeless legend come to life before me. The old books couldn't have been more right in their descriptions. It held a simple vision of strength, and intelligence. Potential. I was so engrossed with the sight I almost didn't feel the trembling of my hands. The place radiated hope.
Though there was an aspect of it that frightened me too. Underneath the somber skies, the town inside looked as though it held some dark truth. I couldn't quite describe what it was, but my awareness of it left me rather stricken. I tried to laugh, sure I was just simply in awe, weary from months on the road, but the instinct remained.
”They said it would have this effect on us the first time."
Reluctantly I pulled my gaze from the walls across the clearing to look up at my father.
”It makes me feel... small," I said, my voice little more than a whisper. ”And yet important."
”And terrified?"
I looked into the eyes of the man who had first told me the Haven was real, who’d lead me across country in hope of leaving a broken world behind.
I nodded once.
He smiled, but there was nothing behind it. Just a pain in the emptiness of his eyes that never failed to hurt.
”Some say that the wall itself is alive," he said quietly. ”That the only reason this place survived the bombs was because it could push them out of the sky as they fell."
I looked back to the uncanny walls, wondering if perhaps it was. Nothing in my life had ever been more inexplicable. I felt both safe and in danger simultaneously.
A pain appeared in the back of my skull, a headache that had followed me all the way from the east coast. I clenched my jaw and ignored it though, knowing it wouldn’t be long until it would leave me forever. Beyond the wall they had medicine.
”Time to go," my father said.
We walked side by side to the only gate in and out of the Haven. Its large reinforced frame was far from a welcoming entrance, but it called to me all the same. There was a smaller door inside of the larger one that became clear as we neared.
When we fell underneath its shadow, I imagined us taken underneath the wing of an enormous raven. I laughed softly to myself. No matter how otherwise dreary, my inner storyteller just refused to sit quiet.
My father turned then and pulled my hood over my head, hesitating a moment to make sure I understood the seriousness in his expression. I nodded, unsure at that point if I could trust my voice.
He hammered his fist against the wood of the smaller door and stepped back, motioning for me to do the same.
A moment passed, though no response came.
I shuttered against a growing wind that whipped around the clearing, pulling my jacket close against my chest. The clouds above had turned an angry grey and looked as though they were only moments away from drenching the two of us.
When it became clear no one had heard his first knock, my father tried again, slamming both fists against the door this time. The boom that rang out was unmistakable.
But still, no one answered.
With an angst he hid poorly, my father stepped to the door once more and his fists rang out against the wood with a pleading urgency. Slow at first, but then desperately and without pause.
When he looked back at me, the concern on his face couldn't have been clearer.
My heart leapt to my throat.
When the last of his knocking died to an echo a fraction as formidable, he sank to his knees in the shadow of that great wall.
I stumbled backwards until my foot caught on a root protruding just enough from the grassy plains that lay before the walls. I fell gently into its softness.
The first drops of a rain fell then, pattering lightly against the tall blades of grass that hid me from my father.
I stared up in disbelief at what was the world’s last Haven.
There was no one home.
THE VOICE FIRST SPOKE WHILE ALBERT WAS WALKING HOME FROM WORK ONE EVENING.
Like thunder unsuspectingly close by, it had boomed from no one place, sounding as though it were everywhere at once.
”Albert couldn't help but wonder why it was that tomatoes were red," it said.
It had been a woman’s voice. A melodic and soft-spoken one that articulated each word it spoke just so.
A moment earlier, he had in fact been wondering why it was that tomatoes were red. Though that didn't bother him so much as the reality that he’d been completely alone. He’d looked this way and that, but save a breeze that pushed dead and dry leaves around so that they scraped along the pavement, the only thing capable of making noise was his heart as it beat in his ears.
He was not used to surprises.
It took some doing, but later that night he was eventually able to convince himself the wind had simply carried a coincidental conversation unusually far. A once in a lifetime occurrence that was surely never to be repeated.
So when the voice spoke a second time, he found it slightly harder to apply the same logic.
That second time though, he was not on his way from work, but to work. It was early, and the sun had only just begun to climb to where it would sit for the day. Again, like a whisper carried in the wind, it had reverberated all around him like the pores of his skin were a speaker of sorts.
”With every passing day, Albert grew more and more frustrated with his work, believing that what he did had little value beyond the four stained walls of his office."
He hadn't been able to stifle a yell that second time. Not unlike a boxer recovering from a punch, it had taken a moment for him to collect himself, and think about what the voice had said, and where it was coming from. He’d checked his ears, not really sure what he was looking for. He’d looked behind him, to an empty street. And he double checked the street that lay ahead, equally as empty as the road behind.
It was then the thought first crossed his mind that the voice had come from inside his head.
But still, he had the strength to reject the notion. He couldn't begin to understand how that could be, and therefore it just wasn't possible.
That was until the voice spoke for a third time, not an hour later as he sat among many of the same faces that trained to the city day after day.
”And yet Albert continued to go to work, despite that belief that withered just a little more of his soul each time the conductor announced his stop."
In the distance, a voice yelled the same name Albert had followed outside for years.
Only just able to hide his panic, he’d hugged his briefcase close to his chest and shouldered through the crowded car to the marginally less crowded outside. Even with the fresh air and some time to think, he was no longer able to tell himself it was coincidence.
When the voice return for the forth and fifth time, he'd been at work. Again, it had told him things he already knew. And in those moments, he’d watched his colleagues closely for hints that any one of them heard what he did, but the only expression common among them was one of boredom.
It had been a hard conclusion for Albert to come to, but there was no mistaking it then.
There was a voice in his head.
One that for some reason, talked about him like he wasn't there.
Over the course of time, Albert slowly grew used to the voice. It took a while before his heart no longer leapt to his throat when it erupted from that place of nowhere, but the day did come when he no longer feared it. That original unease gave way to a curiosity until that’s all he felt towards it. Ostensibly, it was harmless.
Sometimes it would talk about what he felt. Other times, just about what he was doing. Almost like it was taking notes, or cataloguing.
On some particularly grey days, he even welcomed the one sided company of it. He came to think of it as a companion. A friend that no one else could see, and that only he could hear. On some days it would speak ten times, and on other days not once. But always it talked about things that happened, or things that were happening.
It never addressed the future.
Or that was until the day it told him he was going to die.
”Completely unbeknownst to him, Albert’s death would arrive fashionably late, something Albert himself had never been in life."
He’d been at the library that day, reading a book about new automobiles from the west. It had taken a minute for the words to sink in, as he was a man quite fond of cars, but when it did, his heart had iced over like that very first day.
In all the months he’d been listening, Albert had never tried talking back to it. The way it spoke made it seem like it had no interest in that. It was purely descriptive, and he’d come to terms with that fact.
The future was ahead and unknown, and there was no harm in simply hearing about things that were.
But that changed the moment the voice hinted at things to come.
”What?!" he’d yelled, looking up to the ceiling as if that’s where the voice hid. ”What do mean my death?"
Receiving more than a few odd stares, and a call to be quiet from the librarian, Albert dropped the book in his hands and raced outside.
”Hey! That’s not fair! If you--- look I don’t know how this works, but if this goes two ways... answer me!"
Looking to a cloudless sky, he’d waited.
But no response came.
That evening his heart had beat fast enough to shave years off his life. He went over the words again and again in his head, looking for some way they were not what they seemed to be. But there was nothing to reason with, no metaphor in it he could hide behind.
They were as clear in meaning as they’d been in sound.
The voice thought he was going to die.
Unbeknownst to him, it had said.
Well, clearly not.
And that’s were Albert found himself now.
Sitting at home, mulling over a single sentence in a state of worry that bordered on anger. It wasn't fair of the voice to talk about things yet to happen. That wasn't how Albert had come to understand it. He felt betrayed, like the voice had broken a contract. An unspoken one he had to admit, painfully aware of the irony there, but an agreement he had believed existed all the same.
”Albert’s life would end in a way not so different from how it had begun."
Albert shot up straight, tilting his head to listen as if that would make a difference, when of course it would not. The voice had never spoken so soon after last saying something. He began shaking his head, a feeling of unease settling over him.
”What? Why would you say that?"
”Fifty three years ago in a hospital room not twenty miles away, Albert had entered the world with a loudness neither the doctors nor nurses had been prepared for. He would part with a similar thunder."
All at once worry gave way to real fear, the kind that tended to gallop alongside the darker inklings of one’s mind. It was such a vague thing to hear, an empty warning that could have meant any one of a hundred things. And yet all those at the forefront of his mind were far from pleasant.
”Stop that!" he cried. ”Go back to narrating!"
”Had he been able to understand it, Albert may have even seen the necessity in his death. He may have been able to accept it."
Albert’s mouth fell open.
”Accept it? Are you mad?!"
He got up from where he sat alone at his dinner table and ran to the front door, throwing it open so that he faced the road he'd lived on almost all his life.
Rain fell softly, and the light from his home spilled out into the street to make a bubble-like aura where the closer drops were easier to see. They glinted like little shards of glass.
”You can stop this!"
”Albert wouldn't quite know what exactly killed him, though a small part of him would understand all the same. He’d heard the stories like anyone else. Steel behemoths that moved on tracks so powerful, there were no limits to where the monstrous things could go. He wouldn't remember it, but not all that long ago in a war intended to prevent the one marching towards him, he’d seen one of the monster’s oldest ancestors. Clunky beasts that broke quickly and moved like drunken cattle. This new breed though bore no such resemblance or weaknesses. Twenty one years had seen to perfecting the sinister machines until they were honed weapons of the sharpest kind."
A numbness overcame Albert, only just stronger than the panic that beat from the inside of his chest. While he did not understand the specifics, the connotation was clear.
Something was coming.
Back in his home and just out of ear range, the first reports of the invasion were coming across the radio. Not far from where he was, a telegram would arrive to those charged with keeping the citizens of his town safe. But it would come too late.
In the distance, a scream ripped through the night.
”The last thing Albert would see was the green tint of an armour so thick no bullet could pierce it. In the split second before that armour would shutter, and rock to and fro as it spat out its missile, Albert would wonder why it was that things in this world did not change."
Albert tried to breath but found each breath catching in his throat. The voice was making less sense by the minute, but there was no mistaking the familiar little pops sounding off in the faraway.
Gunshots.
Albert was seconds away from rushing back inside when he noticed movement at the end of his street. It was dark, and the rain made it so that his eyes couldn't focus well, but he didn't need his vision to know that the vehicle that turned the corner was not one meant to be there.
It made clanky noises no normal truck would make.
”Mr. Kowalewicz, what is that?"
Albert turned his head to see who had spoken.
It was Adam, his neighbour’s son. A boy no older than ten who often sold kabanos at the weekend markets. He stood in the middle of the road, facing whatever it was that had come to confront them.
It was then that Albert understood.
With a motion no less than instinct, Albert moved faster than he had in decades, picking up Tom and using his momentum to throw the boy from the road to the canal that ran alongside it.
There was only a single second for Albert to turn and gaze down the street at the monster that stared back. One last thought crossed his mind as the beast’s long snout came to a halt, aimed directly at him.
He wondered why things didn't change.
With a thunder that cracked out and shattered a silence not to return to Albert’s town for six long years, the tank fired.
Albert heard the voice speak two final words.
”The End."
THE PLACE WE WENT AS WE BALANCED THE LINE BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH WAS NOT A PLACE EASILY ESCAPED.
To do so, one would have to navigate a maze unlike any other.
Entering it on the other hand, was easy. Pass through a single door; follow the call for violence.
And we had followed, obediently.
We’d followed until it took us to a part of our minds that burned with hot hate. Where the inside walls of our heads were scorched with the will to do one thing alone; destroy those that threatened our home.
And so we had.
That charred desire to slay was what pumped the energy into our arms and legs to push those invaders back. It was the flame that inspired our minds to chase them.
Then end them.
As the remnants of that old enemy were herded and surrounded, we’d laid them to waste with a merriment that only pulled us further away from that balance. And in that new place, malevolent hands were all too happy to hold us down.
Like a candle left by a window though, eventually they were stifled.
And with them, so was our need to fight.
But still, we were stuck.
We walked in shock as a different kind of ghost to the ones we’d labeled enemies. The shutters of nearby and empty buildings slammed and rattled in the growing wind as if to applaud our victory, but among the mountains of dead, we did not feel as though we could claim any right of that sort.
Still, we could not climb out of that place.
A pained silence had taken to us all, interrupted only by the low moaning of the injured.
Healers rushed from those who were dead to those who were dying, and some were saved while most were not.
Eventually the instruction came to gather our dead, but it was unneeded. Until the natural darkness of night fell, we’d separated our fallen from those who had taken them from us. They lined the grass with a peacefulness that did not even hint at the cruelty that had led them there hand in hand.
The living fought off exhaustion until they could no more, and yielded finally to rest.
Though there were a few healers that still ran to and fro as the blackness hid from us a crimson ground. Everyone stayed ready to be called again, but somehow I knew no more of the enemy would attack that night.
Then came the mourning.
There were cries of confusion, and rage. Of incredulity and sorrow. They pushed from us our lingering silence, instead filling the night with heartache.
When I could stand no more, I found a place on the rise that overlooked a lake. The water was a solid sheet of ink, and although I could not see it, I knew red leaked from the beaches.
At first I sat in silence, alone. Before long though, at least a hundred others joined me, all to stare out over the calm waters. Some suppressed sobs, but for the most part, we were wrapped in the quiet of closure.
That was until a man pressed something into my hands.
”Use it," he said.
I looked to the case he pushed between my bloody palms. An instrument that did not deserve to be held between fingers like mine. I suddenly hated myself for even touching it.
”No," I answered.
The man leaned close until his face was only inches from mine. His voice shuttered with rage, the anger that had fuelled his fighting not yet far gone.
”They need this. Let them forget the world as it is for a moment and just give us some peace."
Beside me, a woman squeezed my arm from where she sat. In her eyes I saw a hope that broke my heart.
Once I had thought my home the safest of them all, but I could see now it was a lie. We were no better off than any other of this world. A world where if one dug even just below the surface, they would find darkness.
A song came to mind then. One of my childhood I had forgotten until that very moment. It was the tune from soldiers of old, before their marches into the same silence that rested in those lining the shore below. It had been sung throughout the walls of old and new town alike as the dead were bid their final farewells.
I looked again to the musical instrument I cradled. My symbol for joy and everything good in the world. From it, I had brought happiness to places that had forgotten its very meaning. Smiles from faces almost permanently etched with the expressions of worry and fear.
A wolf howled somewhere, and others answered its call.
I opened the case.
’Give us some peace,’ he had said.
So I tried.
The sun faded, the night drew near;
Tomorrow we’d march, tomorrow we’d fear
That I her love, and she my own,
Would meet only again at death’s throne.
For the King had called, and so I went
Into the horizon, to lands misspent;
War he wanted, so war we fought
Until claimed again as death sought,
To take what would be his before its time,
To take from me what was mine;
What I would spend with her alone
Until time itself atoned,
For the crime of parting us tomorrow,
For the crime of being time itself;
So, as she feared, and I lay quiet,
I turned to her with a smile.
I knew what needed to be said --
Words that spilled forth as if I bled;
And with those words she began to cry
As to her I sang - A Darker Lullaby.
SOME OF MY EARLIEST MEMORIES TOOK PLACE IN THAT HOME.
Perhaps even my first memory, though it was hard to know anything for sure after so many years. Everything that old had a way of changing, and with whatever glass my mind’s eye looked through, those years were tinted. Foggy like a pair of glasses going inside during the winter.
Had I been asked to recall one specific memory from within those walls, I’m not sure I could have done it. That said, I did savour an almost reminiscent comfort the small bungalow seemed to ebb as I walked by. Distinct memories or not, the home was familiar in the sort of way that needed no specific remembrance. The smile on my face was proof of that.
Under the strength of a sun that seemed a little brighter than normal, I craned my neck for one last look at the house before moving on.
It was a gorgeous day for a walk.
Before long I came upon my first school, the scene of many far more divisive memories than the home I’d just left behind. What I could remember was convoluted, leaving a nervous smile on my face that to anyone looking might seem to be slipping. From my first ill-fated romance, to the one and only physical fight of my life, that school had dealt its fair share of blows. The face and name of my opponent from the fight that bygone day were fragments that had long since left me, but the face of my mother as she’d answered the school’s call stood as clear in my head as the blue skies that stretched above me. Despite the near rabid fear that still clung to that memory even after all those years, I laughed heartedly.
Turning a street corner to forget that old centre of the universe, I ended up on a road that brought back my smile in full.
Cutting straight through a deceivingly plain park, the gravel trail was one responsible for the remainder of my memories that concerned my mother and her temper. As I thought back through the catalogue of stories that had all started along the worn path, I could almost see my mother’s face of outrage soften over the years, until eventually little more than a poorly hidden smile. Despite some of those drunken evenings I was lucky to survive, and the numerous cruiser taxi rides home, I couldn't think of anywhere I had ever felt as free as I did in the park surrounding me.
It seemed a lifetime ago.
At the very end of the path there was a hill that climbed up rather steeply. Though I couldn't see it yet, I knew there lay a series of studious buildings up top that would be busier because of the sun above. I couldn't help but groan as I reached and climbed up that slope again, though I was far from hungover, and my knees didn’t so much as squeak.
Perhaps such thing was just instinct.
Unable to spot my cell of a room they’d dared to advertise as ’luxurious,’ I was able to find another of importance. One once belonging to a woman who oddly felt nearby, despite the fact I walked alone.
The early memories of my wife and I stood bright in my head like a dying star surrounded by its children. Time spent with friends. Evenings spent together. Trips to the beach and feeling the sun in the sand as we’d trade work and responsibilities for swimming and eating. I wanted very much then to stay and remember those times, but something in the back of my mind told me I mustn't be late for where I was going.
I couldn't help but think again how wonderful a day it was for walking.
I quickly forgot about the school that had seen me into adulthood though as I wondered onto another street.
In a house that could only be called a house like a smartcar could be called a car, Jacob had been born. And as much as I liked to complain, the home that had seen my son brought into the world was one that had served us as well as we’d had any right to back then. Peeling paint and mouldy basements aside, we’d laughed more than we’d cried there, and like words carried in the wind, something told me that was no small thing.
I was still laughing when it fell out of sight and quickly out of mind.
It was a few moments of quiet walking before I could say with some certainty where I was again.
There was a thick smell of salt in the air accompanied by the cry of a few hungry seagulls, but I would have known even without those tells.
A part of me asked why all of a sudden I was at the ocean, but it was not a question I felt I needed to answer. In fact, I was happy to let it fade until it was light enough to be swept away by the seaside breeze and forgotten about entirely.
The home before me now remained my favourite of all I had ever lived in. When we’d first laid eyes on the place it had struck both of us as the kind of home we’d been looking for, despite not once having put to words what exactly that was. My memories of this place were so plentiful they almost leapt forward on their own accord, but my feet kept walking and I could do little to slow them down and think each old thought through. In the moment before passing out of my home’s shadow and leaving it to that old corner of my mind though, I chose to remember the birth of my daughters, and the look of absolute surprise on my wife’s face that followed those nine long hours. A moment I remember laughing harder than any other coming before, having had helped her paint their room a dark and very irreversible blue.
As the sea disappeared I returned to streets of concrete and winds that felt cool against my skin. I didn’t pay much mind to the fact the sea should have been hundreds of miles away.
I was more interested in how the light in the sky was dimming, the sun having had fallen behind a row of houses that lined either side of the road I walked.
On my right now stood the hospital they’d first brought me to, a building of angry grey rooms that had at times stretched for miles, and men and women of tired smiles easily wiped away. Why I was here now I couldn't begin to guess, but I felt my own smile slip from my face as I tried all the same. I hated the familiarity I felt when I looked up at the ugly building that was St. Mary’s. Memories that seemed too young to be true hounded my mind, and I looked away in pain.
I did not want to think about it.
To my relief the hospital was soon overtaken by another home I could vaguely recognize, one that although I did not like, I still much preferred to the stained curtains of St. Mary’s. In a memory that was nothing more than the snippet of a conversation, I thought I could hear the voices of my children telling me I’d be better off closer by.
I wondered what they meant by that.
As I neared the building, I noticed curiously that the lights in my room were on. I had trouble bringing to mind why that might be when I myself was outside of course, but decided after a moment my wife was busy doing something important inside. I reconsidered though when my eyes fell to the parking lot that stood between me and my home. There were at least three cars nearby and I frowned, recognizing all of them. Why my wife and children were inside without me was something I did not know.
Perhaps they were planning a party.
A gentle breeze returned as I left behind that last place I could not remember so well.
The street that stretched before me now was one I did not recognize at all, and after everything, that surprised me most. It was long, and although I was staring right at it, I couldn’t quite make anything out. It was like everything more than a few feet in front of me lay behind an opaline curtain that was slowly being dragged back as I walked forward. Some part of me didn’t think that was normal, but I wasn't sure anymore.
Oddly recognizing a feeling as though I were in the company of others, I followed the road with some curiosity as that milky curtain got nearer and nearer. I wondered if I was speeding up, or it was slowing down.
Just before reaching it, I let out a tired breath.
What a walk it had been.
I STOOD BRACING THE COLD, WATCHING A GROUP OF MEN AND WOMEN INSIDE A TAVERN ROAR WITH LAUGHTER AT SOME JOKE MADE BY A GREYING MAN ATOP A BAR.
He had the air of a performer about him, and stood wide legged and defyingly nimble as he wooed the crowd with his boisterous words and flailing arms. I almost laughed myself as he took on the persona of a rowdy drunk, stumbling to and fro on the worn wooden table. More than once he came close to falling off, but pulled back at every last minute to the wild approval and applause of all those that watched.
I pushed through the tavern doors to silently join the crowd at the back, happy to shrug off the wearisome weight of the cold. I sent a quiet thank you to the person charged with keeping such a hefty fire as the one that crackled away to my left.
I watched the man and his act for a moment more before turning away in search of an owner or barkeep. The performance itself was not terrible, nor was the man’s acting, but as I looked around into the faces of the tentative audience I noticed more than a few strained smiles. Their laughs came just a little too hard, like they wanted to enjoy the act more then they could. I wondered for a moment if they were so starved for entertainment they were trying to fool even themselves. A unique kind of sadness settled on me seeing people so deprived of true laughs and smiles.
Behind a second bar opposite to where the man was now waltzing with an invisible partner, an older woman wearing a large white apron leaned forward on the countertop, her eyes also fixed on the actor. She was smiling as the man continued to speak in a slur of words I barely recognized.
She didn't laugh though as the rest erupted into another bubble of howling, so I made the assumption she was the woman in charge, having seen his performance enough to know it well. I stopped right before her and dropped my pack onto the floor a little harder then I intended, finally free of the weight digging tiny trenches into my shoulders. She turned away from the man to glance at me. I saw surprise flash across her features, but it was quickly suppressed as though she did not often show her feelings. She spoke as she straightened herself.
”I don't know your face," she said.
I tried to smile, grimacing a little when she pulled away. The road had a way at exposing a rawness in anyone that traveled it for more than a few days.
”I'm new here," I said, hoping to keep it simple. The mere thought of a proper bed was enough to weaken my knees and I didn't feel much like bantering with anyone. I paused a second to consider how much money I had left, and if a room was something I could even afford, but swiftly felt the weeks of exhaustion pile together. The thought was washed away in a tide of fatigue.
”New? What does that mean?"
Knowing it had probably been naive of me to think I would be left unquestioned, I couldn't stop a sigh from escaping. A new face wasn't something that one saw often anymore. I tried to shrug as if to say it didn't matter but only one of my shoulders moved. I pointed to the lute case on the ground then, too tired to think of anything else.
”I'm not from around here, I was--- I just came to the city today."
At first her brow furrowed together with confusion, but then with a speed too fast for my dreary eyes to really register, she jumped in the air like a child receiving a long awaited gift. Her voice was shrill as she unintentionally announced to the room who and what I was. I felt any hope of a few hours sleep dwindle away to nothing.
She gasped. ”A musician! Really?"
A sudden lull overcame the room and those that were focused on the actor only seconds before whipped around to see who had spoken. Someone near the first bar shouted with displeasure, but all else had fallen to a stillness as quiet as I had ever heard.
The room quickly seemed to take on an air of mixed hope and disbelief.
With a hidden strength that surprised even me, I raised my head and nodded once stiffly, looking around at the people glancing back and forth between me and the woman. A round of cheering swept through the room with my curt acknowledgement and I was half pulled half dragged towards the performance bar. I almost cried out when a stranger picked up my lute behind me, though when I saw the awe and care in her touch as she handled it, I held my tongue.
It followed me through the crowd of people until both my instrument and I were pressed against and up onto the makeshift stage. I expected an angry glare from the man who had been entertaining the people until my arrival, but found nothing but the same stunned delight in his eyes. I offered him a tired smile and a hand as he climbed down all too willingly to give me his stage. I found it was getting harder and harder to remember the days when musicians fought for crowds, and not the other way around.
I felt their gazes more than I saw them as I bent down to open the rust covered case and pull out the faded wooden carving in held inside.
It was not the best, far from it in fact, but it was all I had.
At first glance it was clear the instrument had been around as long as some of the oldest in the tavern, but if one took the time to dig a little deeper into her craftsmanship they would find the intricate woodwork of a proudly made tool.
One certainly made with heart if little else.
I ran a hand down the neck as softly as I could. Despite her aged appearance the audience seemed to drive forward to get a better look.
My weariness didn't abandon me entirely, but it did dull some and fade to the back of my mind as I considered what I was to play. I decided on something that would take these people as far away from the unnerving walls of their city as possible. Far away from those grey skies that trapped in an angry cold.
As I did every time I played, I ran through a scale, letting the notes ring and extinguish themselves in the freshly hushed tavern. It was nice to feel the people hang on tightly to each note, their attentive silence adding a kind of emphasis.
As I came to a decision in my mind, most things faded into nothing and I let myself fall back into the reassuring warmth of the familiar; the simple act of playing.
From an emptiness, I started boldly, jumping away into a series of quick paced notes that seemed only eager to get faster. I let myself border that line, keeping the speed in check while making it obvious the song yearned for something more. And before long, it got just that. My fingers looked more like they were dancing along the frets than singling out the notes they were.
I didn't need to look up to know the people were already long lost in the song, but I did anyway, noticing the strain from their smiles disappear like the sun outside as it fell behind a faraway row of houses.
I was able to give them almost two hours of uninterrupted repose. Two hours where even the darkest of their thoughts were dampened by the hum of four gentle strings.
I stopped when I felt the weariness return and travel down to my fingers, leaving them just numb enough to tingle lightly. All musicians worthy of their salt knew that it was better to leave the stage then stay and make mistakes, and so I did, before I could.
As I stopped, I was glad to see more than a few people shake themselves from whatever trance they had fallen into. The whole tavern felt different, like it had ridden itself of a small but persistent pain. When I stepped from the stage there were a few calls of those disappointed, but mostly just looks of gratitude.
It was all I could do to safely put my lute into its case before the full weight of my fatigue slammed into me.
With the last of a long fading resolve, I stepped down from the bar and into a hushed crowd. A pair of hands steadied me when one of my legs stopped short of moving as I expected. I tried to smile my thanks to the stranger but found with some surprise I didn't have the strength to lift my head that far.
In a quiet moment before my weariness crept forward triumphantly, I stole one last look from those peaceful faces peering down at my own.
I smiled softly as a wolfish wind howled outside.
FIVE BOYS SAT UNDERNEATH A GREAT TREE AS IT SHIELDED THEM FROM THE WORST OF THE AUGUST SUN’S HEAT.
The first, and the oldest, stood suddenly with a look of worry. The other boys watched curiously.
”Suppose so," he said, before leaving the other four without so much as a goodbye.
The remaining boys shared a look amongst themselves as their friend vanished into the bright light they’d been trying so hard to avoid. Just enough of that dreadful sun broke through the leafy shield to leave those still resting in a sense of twilight.
”How ’bout that," said Tommy, the second oldest of the boys and almost always first to say something. ”Where’d ’ya think he’s off to?"
Little John, named so because he was by no small margin the youngest and littlest of the boys, spoke up.
”’Reckon he’s gonna visit his daddy. Heard from my ma yesterday he needed help ’fixin that ’ol truck in the bush."
Tommy thought about it and nodded. They’d all passed that run down car every day on the way to school. There was no doubt in their minds it needed all the help it could get.
The group fell into a familiar silence again, one in which only the light rattling of leaves set their thoughts apart from the noises of the world.
The silence came to an abrupt end as Tommy stood up.
”Can’t argue that," he said.
Little John blinked and raised a hand to shield his eyes from a stray ray of light.
”What you say Tommy?"
Tommy ignored him, neither responding nor looking at Little John, instead taking off in the same direction as the first boy, leaving behind the tree and its haven. Three boys watched him go.
After a moment passed, Little John turned to Sam, the third oldest of the group.
”Now where’d ya think he’s gotta be?"
Sam made a face that could have meant anything.
”Think his brother ain’t well these days," Sam said. ”Probably ’seein to it he’s where he ought to be."
Little John nodded, more to himself than to what Sam had said. It made sense, he’d seen Tommy’s brother in town not two days past. He’d looked about as pale as a sick ghost fighting through a blizzard as his daddy would have said.
As another quiet lapsed between those sharing the tree’s shelter, all three boys returned to thoughts of their own. Most were muddled by the worst of the heat that simply could not be escaped, but every so often a convincing memory would come along and distract from even the most sultry moments. In one of these particular aberrations, Little John recalled a time in which he and his younger brother had gone swimming in a nearby quarry that had dried up a summer earlier. Lost in that memory, he could picture the way the water lapped against the beach as kids jumped into it from surrounding ledges that towered over the little canyon. He remembered the dusty grove that blocked the view from those driving by, and the countless afternoons spent caught in an everlasting breeze that had on more than one occasion lulled him to sleep.
How Little John longed for those afternoons, free from a heat that tethered them all to one lonely tree.
He was about to suggest visiting the quarry, if for no other reason than to make sure it hadn't miraculously filled itself, when Sam got up.
”Makes sense to me," he said.
Little John asked if Sam was leaving, but the boy stayed quiet, looking out to where the sun beat down on its domain with a wicked resolve.
Georgie, the forth oldest and final member of the group, leaned over to Little John.
”Who’s he ’talkin to?"
Little John shrugged, watching Sam with some interest.
”Maybe the heats got ’em."
Georgie shrugged, settling back into his nestled place at the base of the tree.
Little John stood up then, waving a hand in front of Sam’s face and whistling loudly.
”Sam, what ’cha ’doin?"
Sam said nothing, ignoring Little John like he was asleep.
Little John looked down to Georgie who just stared back flatly.
On the outside, Little John shrugged and sat back down, trying to make it seem like he didn’t care much. On the inside though, a feeling he couldn't quite put into words had begun to climb up from his stomach. It was cold like the water of the quarry had been two summers previous, and in a way almost as murky too. Like as a feeling it couldn't quite decide for itself what it was meant to be. There was worry, but also something closer to fear.
Suddenly uneasy, Little John scooted across the dead grass until he was a little closer to Georgie. If Georgie noticed, he didn’t say anything.
Without warning, and like the two boys before him, Sam suddenly marched away in the same western direction. The sun swallowed him up as he pressed through the more adventurous of the tree’s branches, and before long neither Little John nor Georgie could see him anymore.
”Georgie, what’s ’happenin here?"
Little John waited for Georgie to answer as he strained his neck to see if he could make out Sam’s silhouette, but Georgie didn’t answer. When Little John turned to look at him, he saw that Georgie had quietly stood up.
His heart leapt to his throat. Hastily Little John pushed himself away.
”’Comon now Georgie, cut that out."
Like Sam, Georgie stood flat faced and unblinking. The boy looked like someone had reached in and stolen his spirit.
”Guess so," he said.
Little John swallowed. ”Guess what Georgie? What you ’talkin about?"
Georgie said nothing, turning to face the sun.
”Hey--- don’t do that Georgie, what’s wrong with ya?"
Taking three steps forward, Georgie walked by where Little John was sitting and out from underneath the tree.
Profoundly unsettled, Little John clambered to his feet, looking all around him.
He was alone.
His breathing came sharply as he twisted and turned trying to make out anything at all in the world outside the tree, but the light was too bright to see clearly beyond a few feet.
He ran a shaky hand through his uncombed hair, almost embarrassed how shaken he was.
”It ain’t funny!" he yelled.
With no response to his little outburst, Little John took a careful step towards the edge of what the tree’s great canopy covered. Without moving any of the low hanging branches, he searched the wall of light for any shapes or figures. To his growing dismay though, he found that there were none.
Coming to the only real conclusion there was, Little John braced himself for whatever his friends had in store. With a trembling hand, he parted just enough of the branches to slip through.
In that moment before he broke out into the angry sunlight again, Little John knew that he was about to face something unlike anything else. If asked, he couldn't have said why he felt that way. In fact, the distant sense of alarm came from a part of his mind so dormant he couldn't immediately recognize it for what it was. Little John brushed off the instinctual warning as nothing more than a symptom of children’s pranks, when in truth, part of him knew it was something more.
At first the light was overpowering, drawing tears to the corners of his eyes. After a moment though, his vision cleared enough for him to make out the scene before him.
Startled by what he saw, he took a step back, feeling the tree brush against his back.
Without facing him, all four boys stood not ten meters away.
Though they were not alone.
They formed a half circle around a tall man clad from head to toe in a black so dark, Little John thought it had no place being under a sun so bright. The stranger towered over his friends, and though the sun that lay behind him was overpowering, Little John could make out most of the details of his face.
In the instant his eyes met Little John’s, Little John knew the man was not from the same world he was. With a certainty he had never felt before so furiously, he knew he stared back at a creature that simply did not belong. At first glance Little John could understand how someone may confuse the stranger for a man, but anyone with eyes that looked for longer than a moment would have known clear as day that wasn't the case. In a way that defied all Little John had ever learned in school, the man was see-through. It was like he’d been spun into existence with a material the world had yet to discover. Like he was as much glass as he was flesh. Through him, Little John could make out the peaks of the town he’d spent his entire life in.
The see-through man grinned then. A malicious smile that stretched from ear to ear, revealing a set of pointed teeth that drove a rabid fear right into Little John’s heart.
Wordlessly, the man raised a thin hand to his face, covering his lips with a single extended finger.
Had he had the strength, Little John would have screamed then. He would have wailed loud enough to rip holes in his vocal chords, and frighten the birds in the next town over.
But any sense of composure he had was gone. Vanished completely by the sight of the thing before him that was taking his friends.
Without warning and in an eerie unison, the four boys began walking away towards the horizon. With an ache that threatened to overwhelm him, Little John knew he would never see them again.
The revolting stranger lingered behind a moment longer, looking down at Little John through hungry eyes.
In that moment the world fell away.
For what could have been years, the see-through man stared plainly. Eventually he did turn away to join the four boys slowly disappearing into the sun, but not before ensuring he would live forever in Little John’s head.
The boy sank to his knees as he was left alone.
The branches of a great tree tickled the back of his head as they swayed with the wind.
When the rabbit cries, it is the fox that first comes running.
There was almost an ache in the trees as they blurred by the running man. They seemed contorted, writhing with an unseen agony of sorts, as though each were sick with an illness that forced them to arc away in shame. Their symptoms the wounds of visible sores that marred bark once so smooth, festering now like the pockmarks of some human disease. Their long years of life were nearing an end, and the man thought that perhaps they knew it. Something they were certainly not alone in.
There was a routine misery in the air, one that seeped deeper with each heaving breath the man took. It slithered under his skin, leaving more and more of his soul withered and black with each corner of his mind it trailed by. He knew that very soon he and the trees would share that state of terminal living.
Though he wondered for a moment if perhaps their cowering came not just from the pain, but also fear. Maybe the man was not alone in the terror he waded through. Maybe the trees were not bent with sickness, but were in fact cowering.
In fear of the thing that lay behind.
Or perhaps they were simply just trees, suppressed by the winds that cut through their canopied home, bent with time and not feeling.
To a man eyeing his own mortality, it made no difference.
He had enough fear stapled to his own heart that he imagined it resembled more a rose than it did an organ. Each thorn a breath of horror taken in his run to flee from the thing that followed.
A thing that had a name he hadn't yet been able to draw to words.
At times it seemed that death was so close in his wake only the desolate silence of the forest separated them. A very hollow and thin veil, no thicker than a hair’s breath. In it he could have sworn that he could hear the breathing of what followed only meters behind. A whist inhaling, not of breathlessness, but antiquation. Though just when convinced the shadows had outrun him, just as they seemed to leap forward and engulf all, they would fall back to trail alone in the corners of his vision. In the unseen spaces that taunted him with shapeless movement.
Where he ran, he hadn't the faintest idea. He knew only that forward, even in it’s journey, lay a fate far greater than in meeting with what lingered behind. There were few things in his world he knew as certainly as that.
In truth, he knew very little of what followed. Only what his instincts screamed. Only one name from a legend so long forgotten even his forefathers had doubted it’s validity.
Lamia.
Not a title, though nor was it a calling. Simply the word of his people to describe a thing of shadows. A thing birthed from the darkest parts of fear.
Something that had been here before.
What followed was no materialization of any imagination. No man was so unsound as to ever dream of that. No, it was something older, something far too old to be from the minds of simple men. Something he and his people had sourly forgotten.
Only if by forgetting could something be swept from existence he thought in haste. If only his world was one so easy, like he’d once believed himself. Though the warmth running down his forearm was proof that his world was not nearly as serene as it seemed. Time had made his people gullible.
As the air in his chest began to burn as though a simmering fire, he could no longer find the strength to keep his arm cradled at chest height. What little might he’d had bled out onto the leaves as they brushed by, leaving a silky path for the thing that followed.
His life’s blood shimmered under the moonlight like little pools of ink in hands of those cowering trees. The man knew that what followed did so only because his heart betrayed him so. Unknowingly pumping his life from the veins it was purposed with keeping, like honey to the hunter.
He’d not been able to fully see what it looked like, and only glimpsed from the corner of his eye a horror that walked as man did. Though it had lumbered in a perverted way, as though sick and in pain like the forest it hid in.
But he had not needed to gaze in it’s eyes to know they were there. Without seeing, the man had felt something he’d never before. Something he could compare only to instinct, as though mankind was not completely unfamiliar with what lay behind, only unaccustomed. It was a sense so primal and controlling it seemed at heart no different than hunger or thirst.
Flee.
This sense hiding in him, perhaps in all humans, until the moment it wasn't anymore. Until the moment he’d found the thing that followed.
At last he sensed that his will to live no longer outpaced the will of what followed.
He knew there came a time for all men where the spirit was simply too dim to go on burning. Where no matter the fear riddling a heart, or the desperate cries of the mind, the energy to imagine escape was simply not there, left instead in small inky pools on the leaves of troubled trees.
As the man slowed, he heard only the underbrush behind him shuffle softly a moment.
Nearby a rabbit stumbled, and a fox looked up.
On-going. Updated Sundays.
There had been another.
Or so his doorman was trying to tell him, with an infuriating sluggishness. He watched the man's decrepit mouth fumble, almost comically, as the words he tried so hard to sugar-coat kept evading his narrowly-minded mental grasp. Finally the doorman’s blinded hunt ended, and he announced it blatantly, with an equal amount of apology and fear in his falling gaze.
”Sir, you've been robbed."
There was a moment’s hesitation before he followed the news with a reticent hush and receding step.
”Again."
The owner of the manor, Mr. Paladin Hadar Dahab, acknowledged his servant with a single prolonged, nearly thoughtful, hmm. As per usual, Mr. Paladin refused to disrupt ritual and handed his doorman the travel weary leather case, one that had been comfortably suited in his grip for the last half day. His placid face gave not even the slightest indication to the mountainous rage that had his heart trembling. The moment’s hesitation was his part to play now, and it was a solid minute before he had accommodated for the fury. His tone was colourless as he began another of his rituals, one that had been recently adopted by both him and his doorman.
”What did he take?"
”A signature pen this time, sir."
Mr. Paladin nodded, accepting the inconsequential theft. The pen meant nothing. It was the vulnerability it symbolized that constantly brought him to his knees.
”Everything has been examined and recorded?"
The doorman nodded once, a stiff and formal confirmation, traditional in this situation.
Mr. Paladin pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling right on queue the intensifying pressure behind his right eye. He hated the unknown and inventible more than anything, and it seemed to him these days that his thief was both. There existed a tenacious relationship between him and this intruder.
”Cameras?"
”Looped, or faked, same as the last set."
The doorman helped Mr. Paladin shrug off his jacket before hanging it on the same venerable rack it spent the majority of its life on. He looked back once, almost with envy. If only shedding his rage were as simple.
”Show me where."
The doorman nodded swiftly and stepped forward underneath the front door, leading Mr. Paladin through his own house.
Emerging into his grand hall was one of the very few things that brought Mr. Paladin relief. He was always moved by the colossal set of stairs that greeted him upon his returns home. The wide marble steps always polished to a gleam, complimented totally by gold trim that kept the smooth white rock contained.
He didn’t stop in his walking to look, but knowing the upward pathway existed, and was firmly rooted in place, helped dim the anger inside.
The two sets of shoes echoed throughout the manor as he was led deeper inside his apparently open home, the floor material never changing from its crystal appearance and sound. After the fourth robbery, at least the forth he was aware of, he’d had the masons install the loudest floor possible.
Little good it had done.
The air changed, and Mr. Paladin could have announced blindfolded that he was now walking through the vast archives of his library. It was the only other place he felt even remotely at peace. Truly at home when within the confines of paper walls. He inhaled once deeply, allowing the passing peacefulness to take control for a second. Then the air was once again humid and the comfort faded.
The walk concluded when his doorman halted before a single mahogany desk in one of his many offices, pointing to the scene with a slight tremor.
”It was a standard golden, sir. Used for the signing in 07."
Mr. Paladin sighed with a heavy indignation. He knew his possessions better then anyone, and had long ago begun the long weary process of putting them all to memory. He would not lose to this thief because of a lacking effort.
”I know which pen it is," he snapped annoyed.
The doorman bowed low, unwilling to let Mr. Paladin see his eyes.
With a gentle and practiced hand Mr. Paladin began his inspection of the desk, searching for anything and everything as he did time and time again.
He ran the palm of his hand along the serene wood, feeling for any irregularities. The first natural disruption was his world map; spread almost from corner to corner covering well over half the surface. On it he scanned the delicately hand drawn work for a calling card or signature. He found none.
He moved on, facing now a journal wearing its age like it did its cover. He blew off the dust, ignoring the doorman’s cough, and flipped meticulously through the pages, ever searching. With a dissatisfied exhale he moved over again. The eternally dark professor’s lamp stood towering over Eastern Europe, spilling its shadows across half the world. His exterior check found nothing, and with what once could have been a glimmer of hope, he flicked the switch. Light dashed out and onto the world, illuminating cities he knew personally would never see the light of day.
But other then the light lie, there was nothing amiss.
He fell back and sank heavily into the uncomfortable arms of his chair, the thief had yet to leave a clue and he knew there would be no mistakes. The person doing this was in many ways like him. He imagined his home the workplace of this other, and the thefts the work.
They would continue to be impeccable crimes because, like himself, the thief lived for little more then ruthless attention to detail and perfection in a warped world. The only progress he would see would be invitation.
Mr. Paladin thought about this as he let his head slump to the back of his chair, so he was now staring at the softly rippled ceiling above.
An invitation from his thief would need to be earned, and had perhaps already been sent. The worthless losses meant this was a game, and when Mr. Paladin put himself in the shoes of one such being, he realized he would soon initiate another stage of it all together.
The question of how troubled him though. What grand ploy was needed to bring in someone like him?
He straightened his neck and hunched over the desk once again, anticipation building subtlety in his lower chest. He followed the western coast of Africa with his eyes, passing Namibia, Angola, The Congo and Gabon, looking for his mark. He traveled west, coming to the coast of Salvador, Recife and Fortaleza, looking for some sign or misplaced border. He would not leave his home defenseless for a second longer then he had to, and he would follow every possible lead, no matter how unlikely.
His gaze bounded across the Atlantic Ocean and he found himself staring at North America with the same sense of hope his ancient ancestors had.
It was as his eyes brushed the words ’Labrador Sea’ that he felt the small sense of hope and fear in his chest flower into something so much more dominate. The small irregularity in text had his diaphragm disobeying his brain, causing his breaths to come in anemic and shallow pulls.
He hated looking weak in front of his doorman, but there was no form of control to be found.
He cleared his throat once, and then again. Still the words were shaky.
”Bring me the diamond magnifier."
The doorman leapt to obey, leaving Mr. Paladin alone in his study, alone with his thoughts.
His thoughts raced faster then was understandable, leading him to places in his mind that evoked only fear.
But it was simply a dot on a map.
Probably nothing.
But it hadn’t been there before.
Certainly a spill of some kind.
It was his doorman.
Impossible.
He was ill?
No.
Dream?
No.
It was-
No.
He was playing a game in which he had yet to learn of his opponent.
Yet to learn the rules.
The fleeting sound of shoes on his crystal floor brought him out of his head, and by nature, he looked to his watch, surprised to see an entire 10 minutes had gone by.
The doorman reentered, and stretched out his hand, dropping the magnifier into Mr. Paladins open palm. The mans face was cardinal with effort, and his cheeks expanded and contracted quickly, marking his hurried run.
Like a bat out of hell Mr. Paladin dropped the expensive device onto the map, and shifted it so its monocular eye looked down upon the words ’Labrador Sea’.
With a haste that hurt, he closed his left eye and hovered his right above the sight.
There, in the middle of the water, rest the anomaly island. Two devastating words and a question that Mr. paladin could almost feel physically.
Having Fun?
He read a second time.
Then a third.
Fun?
Could it truly be a game?
The answer ’no’ came instantly to mind, but strangely went no further. Mr. Paladin couldn't sound the vocal word itself, finding his throat constricted at just the thought.
Fun?
No, not fun. But... he had been bored a long time.
”Are you ill sir?"
The quavering voice startled Mr. Paladin, and forced his consciousness back into the study.
”Yes," he answered truthfully, hoping the regal answer would coerce his doorman back into silence.
Without waiting to find out either way, he stood quickly, ignoring the instant lack of blood in his head.
In a absurdly confused tone his doorman mistook the answer for the further need of his services.
”What's next sir?"
It was almost an unfortunate reality they seemed determined to live in. A place of denial. A place from which they were unable to acknowledge that life did not need to move to be just that; life.
Little did they know how truly vital the colour green was to them. Sure, they knew green made them happy. That green was a nice colour, calming, and a prettier sight than the aridity of concrete. But they did not know the extent of those primal feelings.
Nor why.
They did not know that in fact those who lived surrounded by green, and those that planted and tended to life, were far happier than those that didn't. That there was a happiness, an unexplainable and yet scientific happiness, to the colour green.
Though maybe there was a reason to their blindness.
Perhaps it was that hiding behind this shield of not-knowing made it easier for them to see the world they lived in torn down and paved over the colour green countless times over. To hear about and watch entire systems of life destroyed to meet the materialistic needs of a modern society.
Maybe had they known then how important the green was, not only to the planet they all shared, but also to the physiological wellbeing of their peoples, they would have hesitated before cutting into the stems of Earth.
But realization like that was too much to expect. They had forgotten their once so revered feelings for the things that grew, and had replaced them instead with the simple want for ’things’ in general.
Inside this colour were the very substances that had sustained them for years. Had evolved them, and evolved alongside them.
The frightening truth was that they were forgetting their histories. That they were forgetting the colour green had always meant life, and that they needed it.
And so they grew tired of their cities of concrete, but could not understand why.
Because little did they know, how they loved the colour green.
It was the way her fingers trailed the edges of her smile.
The way she looked out over them as they traced soft teasing circles near the corners of her mouth. There were few sights he could imagine more divine.
He watched one finger in particular linger behind the others, one that demanded a lustful and uninterrupted attention. He noticed the velvety colour of her nail as it dragged alongside the border of where skin met lip. She pressed hard enough so that the delicate finger left behind the thin white line of pressure.
With an attention he never spared for anything else, he caught the difference between this new line she drew. Separating the perpetual beauty of her flushed skin from the secret smile she still slowly ensnared. Ever so close to climbing the svelte ridge that glistened with a deep scarlet, darker than any red he had seen before.
It lulled him forward.
The soft parting of her mouth then was enough to pull from him a yearning so deep it could be only primal. Time became suddenly ignorant of itself. He saw everything.
There was that brief second, that infamous and almost exalted second where her lips stuck together. Stretching, but not splitting. As though each was unwilling to part with the other.
But then they did open. Hovering separate, housing a thin horizon-like darkness between them. The distance between each only enough so that her lungs could draw in the very breath he longed to be. More than anything he had ever wanted or would want again.
Still, her fingers sketched a painting the man had utterly lost himself in. The fair canvas one more precious than any Degas or Michelangelo.
And there was a sense that stemmed from her, one that was quietly infecting him. One he had always denied existence of, but was now the very feeling he found himself drowning in. No simple word of any language could give justice to the sensation.
In that moment, there was nothing else. Even from within the confines of his chest he felt the trembling of his heart, and it was dangerous.
She leaned forward.
The motion spilled the length of her hair out as it was dragged slowly over the crests of her shoulders, draping down her front to cover the fingers that moved still. Like curtains, the new raven wall hid from him the sides of her face. But it was her lips he watched. The lips, and the eyes.
Fallen gently overtop her hand like the fresh fall of snow, the raven hair was a black deeper still than the red of her lips. It was the shadow to the fire.
She moved closer.
He let his eyes climb the face hidden behind the hair, passing the smile and its circling defendants. From underneath the ebony he was then met with a look he would have happily accepted as his last.
The unadulterated blue of her gaze tempted his heart to beat from existence. Had there been anything left for him to surrender, it would have been given without thought. But already, there was nothing left to give.
In her eyes he noticed the ring of a darkened blue that encompassed her blazing hue of cobalt. The blacks of her eyes were steady as they focused on him, alone in the sea he himself was adrift in.
The only thing to come between his window into eden was a thin line of smoke from the cigarette trapped in her other hand. It trailed upwards from the embers as it happily ate away at itself, as if yearning to be close to her. Just as he.
The thin wispiness of its fading trail left him alone on one side, and her on the other. Almost as though a manifested representation of the veil he had lived behind his whole life.
But now, it was thin.
So thin.
The smoke was clearing, and on the other side lay a beauty so intense it consumed all that braved even a glimpse.
Still, she leaned forward.
It was her voice that broke him. Like a dagger of the sharpest kind, it was soon cutting all the way through. In one side, and out the other. And in its wake it brought an in-quenchable thirst. It replaced all he was.
His whole body started to tremble.
The whisper of her voice was a beauty in and of itself. Soft and exotic, but by no means meagre. Drowning as he was, he found the melodic innuendo more tempting than the call of any siren. But underneath the satin of her voice there was a tone a more careful man may perhaps have noticed. A darker lullaby to a melody more appropriately disguised.
But he did not notice it.
He awaited every word to roll from her tongue as though it were the words of Aphrodite herself. The way they rolled from her lips. Emphasized. Dragged out so that each syllable spanned what to him felt like an age.
Smoke escaped her lips as she spoke, but did so as if reluctant to leave.
When she finished speaking he did not hesitate to offer to her all he could. Not ignorant of the consequences, but simply uncaring. Common sense had fled long ago to make way for biology’s most exploited flaw. One she wielded with a finesse better than any other.
She moved to touch him then, her hand crossing the space between slowly. Outstretched, the fingers of her left hand strayed away to once again trace circles, this time on him. He leaned into her hand, obeying it’s soft command to close his eyes. But as her left hand made promises it would not keep, the other moved too. But it was to be unlike her first touches. It carried an intent far more malicious.
The second touch was indeed almost bittersweet and perhaps a little ironic. It reached his heart in a way her hands and voice did not. Where her skin was warm, this touch was cold. Where her words ambiguous, this route was direct.
The pressing knife matched the same gentleness as her left hand, almost to the point where the man did not notice its intrusion. With a slick and experienced guile it was pushed smoothly until her left hand was not alone.
His eyes opened to find the blade but saw only handle, the steel buried enough to be hidden from him completely. He could actually feel it in his heart as it wore out its last few beats. It was icy, but not painful.
His eyes closed again, but not yet in death. He focused his fading senses on the left hand that still danced along his cheek, but even that had grown cold.
His life’s blood poured out from the small wound, dripping like rain from the woman’s soft hand. It collected alongside the bottom of her palm and parted with the same reluctance everything else had. The beads that fell passed through a lone ray of sunshine from the above window but he did not need to see to know the red of his heart’s life did not match her lips.
When at last he could feel her no more, the knife was pulled away. As were her touches. His head hung low in death but she raised it one final time to brush her lips against cheeks that had yet to cool.
Her lips marked him with an unmistakable scarlet.
Almost in apology.
The small hand in my own was strange.
Holding the hand of another person was strange enough, but that of a child’s was somehow different. It was not a bad feeling, just unusual.
The tiny hand belonged to a boy named Thomas. A stout boy of eight proud summers, or at least that's what he’d had me believe. Thomas held himself with the courage only a boy could possibly possess. Not oblivious to the problems he faced, but sure they could be overcome. It was a sureness I came to both envy and weep over.
Thomas and I met one evening at a tavern that hardly deserved the name, in a nameless city. It was among the poorest I had seen throughout my travels, where I thought more people were living on the streets than in actual houses. I had finished a performance for the disheveled men and women of the tavern, and was fighting my way towards my room when the younger boy pushed through two rather boisterous men and grabbed ahold of my hand. When I glanced down to see who had the nerve to actually stop me, I was shocked to find the wide and young eyes of a boy, glaring upwards at me through the gaps of unruly hair that hung low around his face.
”You can’t be finished!"
The pure ferocity of his gaze made me burst out laughing. I drew the looks from nearby people but paid them no mind, focusing instead on the child. I had spoken to very few in the last years.
His glare only intensified as I laughed and with a small flourish he ripped his hand from mine and tucked it underneath his arm, standing in a way I had never seen a child stand.
”You cannot be finished!" He said again.
I contained my amusement this time and tried to look both as stern and serious as I could.
”And why is that, young Master?"
”I’ve yet to hear my favourite song."
I nodded solemnly, like this was a problem I often faced. He didn't appear pleased.
”That does indeed put you in a situation."
He nodded equally as gravely as I, pursing his lips as if to make it obvious he was remedying a solution. He turned to me after a moment seemingly lost in this kind of thought.
”I haven't much, but I’ll give you it all if you play me ’Oh The Mountains High’."
Although an earnest offer, I felt a sudden sadness overcome me. I was long beyond the point of feeling anger at the way of things, but moments like the boy’s offer were a sullen reminder. I agreed to play the boy his song, on the sole condition he not grow up, which left him utterly confused but happy nevertheless. Both him and the men and women listening around gave a small cheer.
Ever persistent the boy had followed me to my room after I retired from the floor for good. His knock on the rotten wooden frame was so quiet I almost mistook it for some bird outside the window. When I opened the door I saw him standing with his hands cupped, holding enough half coins to buy a grown man hefty meals for a week. Quickly though and without hesitation he shoved the small pile of gold into my hands and brushed by me into the room. If he was even remotely nervous or shy, it didn't show.
”Payment for more songs," he said.
I wondered a moment if he knew I wouldn't accept the money, so thinking myself clever I stuffed the coins into my pants pocket and shrugged as if I agreed to the deal. The little boy didn't even flinch as what must have been months of work disappeared before his eyes. The iron resolve in a body so small and young was inspiring.
I smiled after a second and handed the lad back his gold.
”Young Master, I cant take your money, but perhaps a few more songs are in order."
The genuine surprise on his face forced away my seriousness. I couldn't help but smile again. It had been almost as long as the boy was old since I’d had even a conversation this long.
”You’ll play for free?"
I bowed my head. ”Unless it offends you."
He actually seemed to think about it, but decided after a moment that it didn't.
”Things usually aren’t free," he noted.
”No. I guess you’re right."
Unfortunately with little surprise to me, he revealed later that evening that he was alone in the city. Fearing the answers, I asked where his parents were, and although he spoke no words the stoney look he gave me was answer enough.
I was in the city looking for yet another name on my list, and as I searched the young Thomas followed me.
For the most part he was a quiet companion but also a useful one at times. He knew more about the streets and those that dwelled on them than anyone else I stopped. He explained to me the way things worked under the local rule, but also of the workings underneath the city surface. It was his advice to check the underground market that finally lead me to the son of the man I sought, old enough to be facing down death himself.
With a disappointment I was getting used to, I crossed the seventh name from my page.
Thomas and I walked back to the tavern where we had first met. I was due for another show if I was to eat, and although not the only musician in the city, the crowds had been getting bigger each evening. Before going back inside though, Thomas stopped me by the door.
”Does this mean your leaving soon?"
I realized I had given no thought to what would happen with the boy when I found what I was looking for.
”I, ah... yes. I have someone else now to find."
”Outside of the city?"
I nodded.
”How far away is he?"
I really didn't know so I shrugged, I feared though that it would be far.
”Can you take me with you?"
To say I was taken aback would be an understatement. I hadn't even pictured what traveling with a companion would be like. Nobody wanted to travel. The boys strength certainly outweighed his age, but for all of it he was still just a boy. With my hand frozen on the tavern door, I truly thought about it though.
He would be a burden no doubt, but that wasn't why I hesitated. More often than not the roads I took were far from friendly, and it was no place for the average person, let alone a child. Were I to finally die in one of the ambushes, or injure myself to the point where I could no longer walk, it was a sure death sentence for the lad. Even as rough as the city life was, it was still better than anything I could possibly offer.
I was about to tell him that even though it probably didn't seem like it, his life was considerably safer than one traveling with me. He didn't need the answer vocalized though, he saw it in my eyes.
When he looked at me again I didn't see any anger, only disappointment of his own. It was no great feeling denying him what he saw as a way out, but it was for his own good.
”I’m sorry," was all I managed.
He nodded and pushed by me, heading into the tavern. I grabbed ahold of his arm before he got by.
”Stay after the show, I’ll play 'The Mountains High'."
He offered a weak smile and nodded.
But he didn’t, and I never saw him again.
I searched all the districts for a week after that night, looking in every place he said the homeless children gathered. I didn't find him in any of the hideouts, and whenever I described him to others they would laugh and tell me all the city children fit that description.
Thomas had disappeared.
The day I finally lost heart in searching I returned one last time to the tavern, only to gather my things and leave. As I always did before setting out again I opened my lute to rap it in cloth. This time though, wedged between the strings was a half gold coin. There were letters roughly scratched on the surface.
It read, ”nothing is free."
I stopped by the smith before leaving that day, paying for a small chain and a hole to be punched near the top of the coin.
I left wearing the wise words of an eight year old.
You think you understand death.
Understand what it means for the life in someone's lungs to leave and never return. But you don't. Not until you've seen it. Really seen it. Not until it gets under your skin and lives inside you, controlling everything you do. From then on it owns you. Sometimes distantly, just faraway enough so that you at times come close to forgetting it’s there.
But it is.
Always.
Try as I might, the trembling of my right hand refused to cease. I worked through the old drills in my head over and over, just as the Master had taught me, but they did little good.
My nerves threatened my very life.
I wondered briefly what the old Master of Arms would say if he could see me now, but I quickly ended that thought. The rawness of his passing had yet to fade in even the slightest way. Working myself up would only guarantee that these next few moments would be my last.
The man and his friend closed in, blocking from me the view I had of the city I meant to be in. Less than a league away and I would have been clear, perhaps even welcome. But if I made the city tonight, it would not be without the blood of these two men on my hands.
I had heard the rumours just as everyone else had, that these roads were falling one by one. It didn't seem all long ago that I stood near this very place, wondering with the old encryption Master at a sect of priests as they passed our caravan. They seemed like memories of someone else's conscious. Still, I was surprised. Time had lost its precision for me, but I doubted it had been much more than a year.
It was amazing to me to see truly how little time it took for the ugly in desperate men to manifest. Had the day been two years ago, and someone tried telling me that bandits lay outside the city, I would have deemed them mad. But here I was, staring two of them down, wondering how many had fallen to their crude axes before me. The thought stirred an anger that replaced some of the shakes.
Was to kill a killer a murder?
I hoped not.
The smaller of the two stayed a few feet behind, holding his ax by its crescent moon. He spoke as if I were not there.
”You take this one, Gally. I’ve just about done my arm in."
The larger man shrugged and advanced on me, his presence one far greater than mine. His weapon was most certainly not designed to kill, but the blunt triangle of a wood ax together with the force I'm sure his massive arms held, was no doubt enough to snub the life in me. If I was to survive this, it would be with speed and surprise, not brute strength. Perhaps the man would underestimate my childlike appearance.
”Sorry lad, I would let you go but we cant have you running off and scaring away business."
He didn't strike me as being sorry.
His boots made a splash as they reached the same puddle I was standing in. I waited until he was just out of arms reach to pull out the Master's blade. He halted a hairsbreadth too far away to strike, eyes wide and fixed on the sword.
”Eh Jem, look at this!"
I watched the other man nod eagerly. ”Aye, that’ll do nicely."
The Gally man continued his advance, raising his coarse weapon above his head. There was a second before the frenzy of action took place where I pitied anyone having to meet their end under that foul a bludgeon.
His step was matched with my own, but as he lurched forward I feigned a jump to the right, instead ducking left to where the mans side would be exposed to me. I saw the surprise in his eyes, knowing that was the only move I’d get away with.
The thing about being underestimated, was that it only happened once.
Quickly, and with every ounce of power I had, I drew the sharp blade against his side just below the rib cage, knowing my adolescent arms didn't have the strength to stab him. I watched it cut through the cotton shirt like it was air, and bite viciously into the flesh underneath. He screamed as the gash opened, spitting his sides.
As I pulled away out of his axe's arc I knew that regardless of who won this fight, that man would die. But the wound wasn't enough to end him right there. He whipped around to where I stood a few feet to his side. The fury in his eyes enough to let me know he wasn't willing to walk away.
Slowed, but savagely resilient he marched to me as the cut bled, staining the side of his dirtied shirt a wine red. He paid it no mind.
When he was close enough again he swung the axe in another violent curve, my upper body standing quiet clearly in the middle of its aimed trajectory. I dove backwards in an awkward half fall and jump, wincing as something in my chest snapped loudly.
Knowing there was little time to worry of it, and even less to do anything, I scrambled quickly to my feet, trying to dodge the return backhand of the man’s strike.
I was close, but not fast enough.
The edge of the axe clipped my right cheek, cutting deeply a wound no longer than my little finger. I gasped at the searing pain that erupted in the right half of my face.
I pulled away then, staying several long strides outside the axes range. The vision in my right eye began to fade with what I hoped was just swelling, but it felt almost as if I were crying warm tears.
The man’s face had taken on a blanched look, and I saw in his eyes the panicked realization of how severe the injury was. The twisting motion he had made with his torso had doubled the amount of blood pouring from the agape gash in his side. He looked pleadingly to his friend, who stood back, staring wide eyed at the blood. The smaller man made no move to help.
Gally met his end as he looked away from his companion to where I had been standing. I had dashed forward though, at his moments distraction, levelling the sword in front of me as if it were more a lance than blade.
From a motionless point I had almost no chance of being able to stab the man effectively, but with a running speed behind me, I was able to ensure that the blade passed straight through him. It was a sensation so odd that later I couldn’t find the words to describe it.
I pressed the hilt of the weapon against my chest, holding it firm with both hands. Slamming into him wrought my own lungs of air, but after the initial shock I recovered enough to see that the sword was hilt deep in the mans lower stomach. My surprise though didn't come close to matching his, as he gazed down at the weapon draining the life from him. It was a horrific scene to look upon.
He didn't even attempt another swing at me.
When he began to fall backwards I pulled with all my might at the exposed hilt, just managing to dislodge it in time.
It slid free with a gruesome noise, coated thickly in red.
With a small thump the man hit the ground, convulsing in death as I stepped over him. With his presence no longer hiding the second man from sight, I advanced on the bandit named Jem, taking advantage of the state of shock he seemed to be in.
He was probably close to forty summers, but no bigger than I was at fifteen. The axe he held trembled in his grip, but he stayed firm, his eyes narrowing in what may have been anger. He waited for me to take the offensive, and unwilling to lose the sense of momentum I had, I did exactly that.
In what the Master had once called a poor man’s shuffle, I placed my right foot ahead of the other, angling my body so that only my side was vulnerable. It forced me to fight single handed, but I remembered feeling more at ease training this way than any other.
We circled each other a moment before I tested for any sort of defence he might have, jabbing quickly for points of weakness. I saw almost immediately the man had little, if any at all, actual training in one on one combat.
I faked an obvious opening in my own defence and the man took it, failing to see the trap. He swung his axe downwards and I easily side stepped, coming into his guard with a simple maneuver of footwork. There was no time for him to counterstrike, but he made a desperate attempt anyway.
Switching stances so I could use both hands I brought down the blade hard into his shoulder. With a sickening crunch it buried deep into his upper chest.
The man gave a scream of unmitigated pain and dropped his axe. Forgetting me, he fumbled and clawed at the sword stuck in his shoulder, his life’s blood emptying out around it.
After a minute he gave up trying to pull the weapon free and instead stumbled a few feet back, his scream morphing into a noise so much more haunting, and even though he was still alive, I couldn't bare watching any longer.
As he continued to wail, I fell to my knees and crawled to a nearby bush, violently throwing up the little I had in my stomach. A set of convulsions not unlike the death throws of the first man wrought my own frame as I tried hard to batter away the unconsciousness. My mind was fighting to pull me into the blackness, but as tempting as it was, I pushed back. I clung tightly to the throbbing pain of my face, and the sudden balloon like feeling in my chest. I let it keep me tethered to the wakeful world.
After perhaps another five minutes of doing my best to hide from the ghastly moans, they choked a moment, and ended all together.
It was another hour before I racked the courage to drag myself out from the small shrubbery and face what I had done.
The scene almost made me wish I had simply let them kill me. At least then I wouldn't have been forced to see the carnage I was staring at now.
The first man lay contorted where I had left him, his limbs tangled together with angles that set my teeth on edge. The second man had found his way to the forest line, finally succumbing to the buried blade a few feet from where I had first spotted them.
Neither moved any more.
I cannot recall when first they began calling me harbinger.
Time had long ago released all constraints it once held over the passing of days. Perhaps, had there been light to gage with I could have guessed, but for us, light was a privilege that had been long absent. The name came from the mouth's of the young and old alike, almost as an esteemed title to swell the breast and lift the nose. They passed the word with no ill intent, nor a desire to see me pain. It was said with simple fact, for harbinger was a name I deserved above all others. Above even the name bestowed upon me at birth.
I had descended humanity into the darkness of an age foretold only in fiction. I alone had shown the primates of Earth an ability to wield a power they had no business interfering with. The power to pull from an atom the promise of unmitigated loss, a destruction far more complete than any other to come before it. A more superior conquer than Alexander. A more ruthless invader than Columbus. The mere fantasy of believing humanity could control was in itself a hubris that had seen to our end. Had seen far beyond what was capable of mending, despite the hopes and momentary dreams of many.
It was a name I had earned, one to ignite the sun and strike away darkness with its warmth. But not a glow of comfort. The warmth was of a twisted kind, diseased and ill natured. A warmth that corrupted all its whispering rays touched. To lead to an impurity that changed the very nature upon which man kind had evolved for millions of years. A warmth that altered the very structure of what it was to be human. A warmth that invited death soon after its deceiving embrace.
But the end of life was not seen as it once was either, as death had morphed to a concept most no longer feared, nor was it any longer a state held revered above its counterpart. Death was not necessarily a thing tempted or yearned after, but it was almost like a reward, to be given after a hard life lived. (Idle life that would easily flee from veins, in what could be considered blessing).
For that’s exactly what had become of life. Hardship preceded by hardship. A gift that I, the harbinger, had granted with the dark knowledge and intellect that came from ambition and good intention. Traits I had learned to fear above all others.
But yet we lived.
Secluded underneath a ground that would no longer have us, for mother earth had rescinded all fruits she once offered. The rain seemed sometimes to shy away from the ground it fell towards, like it knew how poisoned it had become. Vegetation was warped in its growth, fatal to those that dared taste its contorted offerings. As was the little life that lingered with a painful resistance and hunched essence. Mutated in a way that bore shame on the entire human race, but one more than any other.
Me.
From my mind the knowledge and key to this irreversible end had come. Had flowed forth all too eagerly. Had perhaps I taken a moment to think of what I was building, or looked beyond the words and numbers to what they came together to build, we may have escaped the nightmare. But perhaps is only a word to curse those who look back, wishing a different past as their own. My imagination does not deserve even that faint glimmer of comfort, but only the wholehearted guilt I promise myself night after night. I toppled the green kingdom of life in all its forms. In all its beauty and all the beauty it ever created. I ignited the flames that quickly enveloped the family tree of humanity. Three and a half billion years of work, burned away in hours. Earth’s history wiped away like it hadn't lasted a quarter of all of time it has (rewrite). What little remains cannot in good faith be called life for it is a pile of tangled, mutated, and backwards bending limbs. And it is ugly.
So very ugly.
The thought clawed maliciously with the same desperation of a cornered animal.
It held his hand, stopping him from delivering the speech he'd spent perfecting during the long hours of the previous few nights. It was so close to exposure that he could almost taste it's essence.
It was a tease.
He knew this despite its hidden nature. It was almost as if his mind could only see the darkened silhouette, and the dancing of its shadows. He tilted his head sideways, hoping the action would knock something loose, but it did nothing.
He was frozen now, with a storm of panic brewing deep in his stomach. The stage lights suddenly seemed to surge with power, to the point where his obvious weakness was reflected back to him through the uncomfortable eyes of those in the front row. His awkwardness was becoming contagious.
He found some comfort in the strength of a podium as it shielded his lower body. He willed it to grow taller and hide him from the unbroken stares, but the aged wood had long ago stopped growing.
The thought returned for the quickest of seconds and he almost screamed with frustration as it receded again. He was sure about one thing only, and it was that the thought, the one jockeying the very brink of his mind, had the power to win him this thing. The power to calm the jittery nerves and restore his voice that heʼd once had absolute control over.
Distant memories now.
The fear that now bled into the panic didnʼt come from his inability to speak publicly, but instead came from the realization that if he couldnʼt persuade these people in front of him, he had no hope of saving his town. Who would listen, or rather endure, the mumblings of an old man trying to fight the apparently needed change? He had lived his whole life rooted in the belief that power came from community, but now when his ideas were needed most, to earn the votes like he had all those years ago, he was failing.
But there was this thought!
The one just familiar enough to recognize from all those years ago. It would save him.
He dropped his weary eyes to the paper in his hand, watching with mild curiosity as his fist curled into itself, the paper being engulfed completely.
It was only then, freshly unarmed, that he stepped out from behind his shield and reached for the thought with everything he had. He smiled when the familiar warmth of confidence found its way back into his old bones.
He opened his mouth to speak, knowing the words that came forth found only listening ears.