JOSEN dug deep into his gut for the strength to ignore the deep freezing rain that drove rusty nails through exposed skin. The night was unlike anything he ever experienced. When it rained, it froze. When it froze, the rain vaporized. When the moon shun on its beautiful nocturnal world, it hid behind roaring clouds, deep and gray. A rolling mist covered the ground like a deep snow as quickly as it sped away like a child fearing darkness. Lightening crossed the sky in a dance of blue, green, white and red. Deep beyond the shadows of an abandoned village, packs of wolves howled and roamed building uneasiness under the magnolia of a deep full moon peaking through. The wind’s spirit, filled with malice, said his name. Josen, it whispered. Josen, it spoke. Josen, it shouted.
Abandoned buildings, many collapsed from the long decay of time, lined in unison flanking the swirling dust that made the barren trail. Wooden shutters beat against two-story homes surrendering to a tango of malicious wind. Naked trees with thick white bark, twisting away from the suspended milky moon, stood guard, like royal knights protecting long abandoned homes. Rusted street lamps, standing ten feet tall, ran the trail spanning fifty feet in between.
Josen kept walking north on the trail that bent and twisted around rolling hills. He was sure the path would terminate into the mountain that loomed over the horizon. Perhaps the trail went around the mountain, or even through it. Calculations went through his mind wondering if he had the courage to cross through.
A dim light dancing two houses to the right forced Josen to be decidedly languid. Strange. The house stood erect, fully intact as if the final nail was hammered to fasten the shim that afternoon. The shutters bolted tight to the house, spread wide open. The three-step porch sparkled with a russet gleam, the windows were strong and untouched and even the poplar seemed recently crafted.
Light danced wildly in the window of the second floor. It was calling to him, like a beacon, or a trap. Josen felt apprehensive and solicitous when he closed his eyes with a noose suffocating his courage. Was death sitting on a rocking chair waiting for him; perhaps worse, if not sinister? What that could be, Josen wasn’t sure. Decidedly he whispered fear out with an exhale drawing on strength to calm his pounding heart; then he approached.
Time froze, the wind calmed, the trees stood erect and even the moon’s penetrating horror was covered by a gray cloud that sprinted, yet never moved. The thud of each step displaced dirt that suspended in air. Lightening crawled along the distant horizon like a sapphire web. Red lightening against an illuminating pale background, an untouched trail of dust defending against a vicious rain, the scene was a sight to behold.
Josen slowed at the porch’s introduction step, steadying his right hand on the balustrade style railing. A flame bargeboard hung over the porch, slightly curved like the top of a spade. A buttress of brick bookend the wooden footing running parallel to the great mountain that loomed to the north. Two pilasters flanked the wide wooden double doors with sidelights bunched in between.
The wood that made the porch’s first step bent, moaned and shouted stirring doubt. He white-knuckled the railing as the second wooden plank squealed just as dreadfully. Josen leapt over the final step, miscalculating the height trying to shift his weight forward. The railing collapsed and Josen’s efforts became futile as gravity assured his decent, crashing through the three wooden steps.
After the cloud disappeared in his mind, he leaned against both elbows starring at the porch. A few scrapes, nothing more. He pulled himself up, slapped his thighs and ran his right hand over his shirt to extract wood shards, dirt and dust.
He examined the heap of broken wooden once he scaled the challenging ascent onto the 17th century porch. A shadow moved in his peripheral vision that disappeared when Josen swung around. It was nothing more than a scary bedtime story told to children. All he saw were heaps of wood, naked trees and dust swirling like a Midwestern tornado that whispered names. Calm yourself, Josen heard. The invading thought came from an angelic woman’s voice like harps strung with hereafter absolution. Where are you, he whispered. With you, the voice assured.
At the base of the left sidelight, a crowbar leaned against the wall. He picked up the curved end with his left hand, swung powerfully into the doorknob dropping the rusted metal rump with a deafening clung. The door opened with a whine.
Arcades divided the room’s center that could fill twice a hundred bodies, walls lined with crimson tapestry illustrating a history of the house’s origins; a knight confronting a three-headed lion; a king holding his son soon after birth; a wizard with a hat twice his length holding a wand exploding in slate gray. Once the front door eased shut, the tapestries lining the walls lacked the drift to sway.
Flanked by statues of angels twisted around pointing up, the fireplace was lined in silver inside a cobblestone dance of brown with a diagonal crack that breathed cold air. A ledge, no longer than a foot, penetrated the cobblestone with an engraving, Israfil. Tapestry hung above the fireplace with the outline of a standing man; the only place where the moon failed to illuminate. Need light. Explosively, flame cracked and splintered logs on a metal grate with eight tentacles while black smoke billowed up the chimney’s passage.
Swaying to the beat of Josen’s pulse, the tapestry over the fireplace was a familiar image. A man with jet black hair parted over the middle, a scar over his the left eye with a bulky frame and a strong beard wearing green and gray mail. The star at the sword’s hilt and a cerulean glow at the blade’s edge ran vertical from the left hip. Josen’s gasp echoed when he realized he was starring at himself.
An everlasting light shined through mist and fog. White rolling hills climbed dove and flatted out in depending on the shift of the wind’s strength. Ghosts, invisible to a mortal’s eye, floated and faded through the hills of glory.
Behind the Yahweh, deep inside the Throne room of Firdaws, stood Raphael, flowing with long golden curls over a gown, peach and white.
“The time has come, Your Grace,” Raphael said harmonically, converging into light descending through the soft white floor.
Alarm blended into Josen’s veins when stressed wood bent to the weight of whatever roamed upstairs. Slowly, Josen crept towards the spiral staircase pulsating with a white glow. The touch was cold, but alive. Unlike wooden floors, the stairs, made of metal, covered his careful approach.
The upper floor was covered in a mist of dust. Save for a light in the room ahead, shadow blanketed the oddly narrow hallway. On the right, seven doors ran the entire length with exhausted sconces directly across each door. An old eight-drawer tiger maple chest, held rusted cooper medallions and a bible, charred on the ends, between the stairs and first door.
While he passed the seven doors, he noted a symbol on each door’s center. The first door was a standard cross. A five-point star on the second, the symbol of a burning torch on the third, a Phoenix resting on a burning nest on the fourth, a dove with outstretched wings on the fifth, the cross of Peter on the sixth and the number “7” on the seventh. For certain, Josen was unsure where the seven doors led, but he had a theory when he broke through the open room.
The desk was plain. Four stumps for legs, a rolling cover that curved at the middle, a black pen in a jar of black ink, an unlit candle cradled with a gold plated holder, two stacks of paper, a rabbit’s tail and several sealed envelopes sealed with acanthus seal scattered over the surface. The room is bare still with a simple four poster bed with finials at the four corners lacked its mattress.
A swirling wind captured stacks of old papers, floating, diving, flipping and bending. Josen reached out and grabbed the nearest one and read:
To my dearest love,
I felt everything press against me like a truth I wished to suffer no longer. For an eternal dimming of hope lost, the life that we longed for, together, died the moment of choice to defuse fates from each other. I will see you soon, my love. For eternity with you and the fulfillment of begging becomes an eternity I prayed.
Your truest.
The letter left his grasp and quietly floated back to the desk in the far corner. Letters, they’re all letters. He read more. Some letters were of love and despair, of separation, of dancing, of light and darkness, or war and peace. Some were of seduction, back-door dealings with obvious manipulation. Some were boring letters catching up with family or friends in or after battle. This letter in particular, Josen read.
Israfil,
The Knights of Rosewood broke the defenses of the Illish Commoners without even losing a mount. Our victory was glorious. Then strange happened. The full moon went to a radish hue and the fish in local streams died. A black shape was reported seen by a Commoner so I dispatched three Guardsmen. None have returned. On the morrow, I will ride to the Illish for their declaration of surrender…
“Familiar, are they not?” a voice purred behind him.
She was beautiful. Her white gown failed to mask her absolute perfection behind the candle near the room’s sill. Her smile was faint but her autumn hair flowed like a fire around her shoulders.
“These were written by someone I do not know,” Josen said stubbornly.
Her faint smile grew enlightening his heart towards boundless eternity. Overwhelmed, Josen relaxed his left hand dropping the crowbar with metal slapping old wood. The feeling of perfection warmed his body relaxing any sense of awareness. He didn’t care anymore. She did that to him.
“Oh but you know them all too well,” she sung.
“It does have, familiarity,” Josen admitted. “Who is, Israfil?”
“Where are they familiar, Josen,” the angelic glow asked ignoring his question.
“I, I don’t know. I’ve, read these before but can not tell you how or where.” He felt as if his own pen traced the contours of the paper, the loops, the dots and the underlines, the capitalizations.
“Yet, did you not wonder why you fluently read French, when you’ve never spoken of it until you read these very letters?” She said with a blank grin, a hollow mockery. It was then his senses returned and his caution beat like a drum into his mind.
It was true; he didn’t know a lick of French. He read it fluently enough anyway, like it was his first language.
Her bare feet glided slowly towards him with her ghostly white gown trailing. To be sure, he didn’t know if she was real. Most likely of all, she was dead. It was almost like he hung off a cliff to plunge hundreds of feet into the shallow waters just to prove it was a dream.
“No, my angel. This is not a dream,” she said reading his thoughts.
“What is this,” he asked slowly examining the details of the room.
“It is your crossroads. A choice of two paths set in front of you like before,” her voice sang. “You shall be Israfil or his opposite, his prisoner.”
“Who is…” he began before being interrupted.
“He is the keeper of the fallen, the warrior of poets, the gentle healer, one of seven and even, matchmaker,” she said with a grin he didn’t much care for, along with stupid riddles. “Close, my love,” her singing voice rang in his ears like floating in space. Only balance can dictate choice. Good and evil, life and death, water and fire, hatred and love.”
Then it dawned on him as he blurted out, “heaven and hell.”
She nodded in approval.
“I don’t understand. What are my paths?” he said acting the fool, suddenly wondering the point in all this.
“Your paths were always set before you. You see both in me.”
“If it were my choice, both of my paths would have you at my side.”
“I know, my love.”
He wanted to touch her more than ever; to close his eyes and press his lips against hers. His hands wanted to slowly and affectionately run down the sides of her face. His feelings were on display was like a neon in total darkness.
“But…” he started shaking out of his daze.
“Our paths separated long ago. Your feelings for each other failed to be realized. Only dreams and memories will become a dwindling motivation,” her smile reverted to one of internal pain. She displayed her own emotion identical to his rising conflict when he noted that she referenced them in third person as if it wasn’t truly her.
Pressed aside the blanket of passion, yet the expanding hole in his heart, Josen worked every effort to detach his feelings from his mind. She distracted him from that end. Whatever was at work here, knew that the image of her would weaken him, or awaken him. It would expose him to the simple truth that he would fight for what she represented in him, love, life and peace. He would die for her with a smile on his face accepting the ultimate sacrifice for her. It would be the perfect death for him to die for something rather than live for nothing.
Some would sacrifice themselves for the good of the many. Not he. The many always included the wicked and evil that needed to be culled to cleanse the land. Sacrifice meant nothing in the end. You die, and the world remains as is with a high proportionate of wicked. But if you live, perhaps another fifty years, you can resume the clean.
“Both include you, but they do not,” he said with realization in his eyes. “If I save you, many die. If I save many, you die. But why should I save the many when the wicked hide behind innocents?”
“That’s a choice you’ll have to live to either accept or regret. Yet, it’s a path you have yet to understand. I’ve always loved you, Josen. I always will. But the choice is one of simple truth. Your path will dictate truth, lies or perception.”
“But perception is truth.”
“And that perception is yours,” she countered.
“I can’t choose. I will not choose something I will not understand,” his voice rose in demand.
“I know, Josen. But choice will come upon,” she said with depression. “Your road will cross with another. It is then you’ll understanding your purpose and your choices.”
It was almost like Josen was watching from a small hole in the room. His feelings were his own, but they were too strong. Something was horribly wrong. He loved her, but she died long ago. Yet, here she was as angelic as ever, playing his means to her own end.
He feared she’d disappear if he looked away. A part of him was filled with suspicion. Another simply didn’t care and wanted to extend this moment for eternity. Even so, while he understood the point of greater good over one, he didn’t understand the point here. She was already dead, he reminded himself. How would a choice in the living world affect her, if that was even indeed, her?
Warmth crept across his face. Her hand glided down the stubble of an unshaven face. His eyes, watered and red, closed. She touched his entire body with the swiftness of a thought. His heart’s pace quickened. The salvation of his peace blanketed him. Weightlessness brought his heavy black boots off the ground guiding in a slow circular current.
“Before you choose, Josen, know that I will always love you, no matter what future holds for us. You are the eternity that fulfills me making me rich like a Queen’s King.”
When he opened his eyes, she smiled like she always did, deep and lovingly. Yet something was terribly wrong. Her steel-gray eyes looked deep inside his when suddenly the open window invited a gust of wind dissolving her to nothingness.
“Move it Russ, we’re almost there,” the tall man said to his short counterpart.
“We’ve been walking for days,” the stocky man in a white sling complained. “I have more blisters building upon blisters swimming in my own puss. Plus that damned bore beat the hell out of my arm. I fear it’s broken.”
The two travelers struggled over rolling hills, tackled by dense underbrush of the forest’s floor. Russ had tripped over roots that moved conspiring against their path towards the abandoned village they heard for refuge. “Plus,” Russ continued, “I’m starving. I can’t wait for stale bread, beans, garlic and onion. I’m making us a feast tonight to make up for all the damned walking.”
Gregor smiled at his complaining counterpart, “that sounds like a fine feast, Russ. But we must not make any noise or sights or they’ll catch us. Remember, we have their gold and they’re not far behind.”
A howl, so loud, stopped the companions. Gregor pulled out a two-foot blade and circled. “A pack, probably five,” he guessed.
“Then why are we stopping,” Russ said with a whisper. “Only fools would stop when being chased by a pack of wolves.”
“We won’t make it,” Gregor said warily.
Snap. Both men twisted towards the snapping branch. Shadows beyond shadows of a pale moon light meant nothingness. They stood inside a small clearance, surrounded by dawn redwood monsters with massive brush that could hide a full grown man standing. They stood back-to-back slowly circling.
“We could at least try,” Russ said with a whisper.
Gregor ignored his frightened companion. Truth be told, Gregor was just as scared, but instinct and training prevented him to die without a fight. His eyes darted around when leaves shuffled ahead and patches of underbrush swayed.
Three sets of red ruby eyes glowed. Gregor lifted his blade and crotched in a defensive stance.
“Umm, Gregor,” Russ said plainly. Gregor ignored his fat friend while three gray skinned wolves calmly walked into the clearance. Russ didn’t even notice. “Gregor,” Russ said louder. “We have company.”
“No kidding. I see the three mangy beasts. I can take them.” Russ grabbed Gregor by the wrist and swung him around. A figure, cloaked in darkness, stood with his hands grasped around the front of his waist flanked by two black-skinned wolves with crimson eyes. The three wolves behind him howled loudly.
“Who are you,” Gregor shouted defiantly. The black shape’s laugh echoed off the trees throughout the night sky then slowing to a deep boom. “Speak now, I asked you a question.”
The voice was low, evil and demonic. “It matters, not.”
Suddenly, sprawling lightening reached down and exploded an endless tree behind the black shape igniting a fire in the brush. The black shape, bent at the elbow, lifted its palms up. A powerful wind circled around the black shape, growing fierce knocking the companions backwards onto the flat of their backs.
The wolves aligned behind the methodically approaching black shape like the tip of an arrow. Gregor stood again in a defensive stance and his blade pointing at the eventual death. Even if he penetrated the black shape’s defenses, the wolves would pounce on him easily.
“Run,” Gregor whispered to his fat companion who was quick to comply.
Russ sprinted north towards the tall black mountain. Even the roots that unburied themselves, twice tripping him, couldn’t stop his hysterical sprint.
In one swift motion, Russ twisted towards Gregor’s yell that quickly went to an eerie silence. It was a fatal pause. A large weight pounced on him then a warm sensation trickled out of Russ’ neck. An instant later, a booming command forced the fangs to dislodge. Russ rested on his elbows to see the black shape glide towards him.
Russ’ sobs made his words nearly incoherent while blood filled inside his throat. “What, do, you want?”
The laugh, again, was deep, booming, penetrating dead bark, bouncing off a heaven that no longer existed. Russ stood up and pulled a small dagger from his sack in a final stance of futility. The wind picked up again, swirling around Russ and the black shape. He felt a tightening grip around his chest, legs, and arms and inside his mind.
The grip tightened, and tightened, around his entire body, forcing him to gasp mightily for a successful breath. Veins popped from his skin and blood began to rain from his nose and eyes. A sickening giggling came from Russ’ mouth with lungs filling with blood. Russ’ entire body felt of blinding pain. In the span of ten seconds, Russ’ body turned inside out and only a pile of meat and tissue steamed from where Russ stood. The wolves casually walked over and feed, howling to the night sky in unison.
The howls edged closer, perhaps from the floor below him. He stretched his arm grabbing the crowbar tight end to bend. His eyes narrowed and his blood became thirsty. As anger and hatred filled his veins, the room went from angelic white to blood red. Screams of innocent women and children shouted at him, feeding him like a sapid meal.
Panting and whispered barks spiral the metal staircase. With both hands gripping the crowbar, Josen positioned himself behind the doorframe of the open room. Hiding made no difference, Josen realized. They could too feed off hatred; his hatred. They coursed a feeling of dread, evil and death throughout his veins sustaining him. Relentlessly he brushed the feeling knowing his new found strength poured from the wrong well. But it was unlimited strength he would need.
Something whispered to him, “Kill her, Josen. It’s the only way to achieve your peace.”
The hatred twisted his blood to black, until a reddish hue illuminated from chest. Fire spread beyond the corners of the world, savage men rapping and murdering women, mothers cooking and eating their own daughters, priests ripping limbs off sons. The Mountain north burned, a beast with seven heads and ten horns rises while life boils beyond the great northern mountain burning forever. Trumpets, oiled and polished, sat in the laps of the seven dead muted forever.
The three wolves, and their red ruby eyes, stare through Josen when his teeth clashed and the house shook. Picture frames shattered on impact, stumble wood collapsed crashing tables, and unlit candles fell onto the wooden house when the floor took to white flame. Porcelain statues flung created black holes in walls. The loud bang from the eastern quarter of the house meant imminent collapse and all the windows exploded inward carving Josen’s skin like a feast for an entire court.
Pulling love and light, it was hatred and black that became of him. Walls made of wood, bent and splintered. Stacks of letters swirled and exploded to flame. Josen felt the presence and feed off it, commanding it. Or was it he that was feeding it?
When the wolves resolved their calculations, they moved in. Josen slowly opened his eyes, never moving, watching two gray-skinned wolves flank him while the center wolf remained fixed until all three stood within perfect distance of each other.
The reddish light that came from his chest grew stronger. He felt the rebirth of control when the three wolves spit linear fire into his chest. Painfully, Josen leaned his head back and fire exploded from his mouth, through the house and deep into the heavens. It was like a link, the three wolves linked to Josen and Josen linked to heaven with fire.
Walls caught to the flame, black smoke encased the red light from Josen’s mouth to heaven moving with the strength of a hurricane. Red lightening sprawled throughout the sky with thick black clouds swirling around the eye that hid the red moon. Shattered glass from pictures of dead families sliced through Josen’s trickling blood from broken skin.
It was love and light that disturbed this ceremony. From the eye in the clouds, came a bright ball of white light, down the flame and into Josen’s body causing him to spasm upright. The red light from his chest turned a light shade, firing through his body and into the wolves cooling their ruby red eyes to black holes of death. Their collapsing bodies awake Josen when his tired legs gave out forcing him to fall backwards. He was Josen no more.
Once he stepped outside, the world had changed. The world boomed with thunder, illuminated with red lightening and spit blood for rain. Three figures, one tall and slender, one short and fat and another wearing a cloak of all black, stood at the base of the trail with a black wolf flanking the three.
“I don’t assume that you would join us, would you, overseer of the Raquia?” The dark shape thundered.
A slight grin crept along Josen’s lips while he flipped the crowbar in his left hand.
The wolves began barking loudly, their thirst for blood overwhelming them. The first one leapt to him with fangs aiming for his throat. Josen sidestepped and brought the crowbar on the wolf’s head with a sickening crunch. Flopping awkwardly onto the porch, the wolf never moved again. The second wolf prowled towards him, more cautious than the first, with fangs exposed and a fierce growl. The wolf leapt after losing its patience. Josen flipped the crowbar and jabbed the wolf through the snot. It twisted and tugged violently helplessly. Josen leaned closer and looked deep into the crimson eyes as life began to fade in the beast. With a quick jolt of the crowbar, the beast fell silence with a twisted neck.
Josen defiantly stood before the black shape and the two soulless beings that flanked him.
“Always, you fight valiantly. But the time is now when our reign begins,” the black shape said lifting his hand creating a void of total darkness, total power to obliterate light. Blue lightening caressed the dark void, no bigger than a small car, when the black shape flung the dark energy. Josen reached back and made a throwing motion unleashing a ball of white light.
The explosive power when the black energy and the white light collided destroyed upright structures to mere dust and rubble with a corresponding shockwave. Nothing remained standing until the dust calmed and an unnatural breeze swept the suspended particles away.
Josen, buried under rumble, dug his way out and realized whatever remained, lay dead or hidden. The house behind him, showed no signs of existence as if it disappeared like the black shape and the two walking dead. The sky turned purple and dark blue, an announcement of a rising sun to the east. But it was the west that Josen looked.
With white gowns flowing and auburn hair drifting, the powerful shine of light glowed. She returned, but Josen realized all this time it wasn’t her. Or it was her, but a different her.
“You did well, Josen,” she sung.
“What happened?” Josen asked mystified.
With a soft chuckled, she simply said, “you will learn in time. Your journey has just begun. Just remember, my love, I will always be here.” With that, she faded with the breeze when the sun broke the horizon and a white light penetrated Josen’s chest once again.
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