Betrayal of the Light

Eight

Though within my slumber I face the same demons, they cannot frighten me anymore. Something holds me far beyond their grasp; always waking me up before the final second of my death. Shapeless, I feel it solely as a stare from behind me, tensing my veins. They pull on my nerves as if they were strings. She sometimes whispers my name and thus freezes every soul in place, even mine. Nerves lose their tension at that moment. But she is an illusion; not meant to roam a world as dark as mine. Out here I am on my own.

The dreamless hours pass broken only by the sound of heavy rain and branches beating on the windows, or the scent of blood; whenever I awake in darkness or during the break of a most murderous dawn glowing red. Seems that ever since I drank that cold potion, that scent got stuck to my senses.

Only once she left my unconscious domains untouched. I still wonder why. That time I was standing alone in the middle of a path cutting straight across a hill. Nothing to see around me but fog merging with damp grass and settling tight around the few tall, lifeless trees. One of them, stray from all the others grew on the side of the road, high atop my journey. The leafless branches reach over my head as shelter from a sun that never shun over these realms. I turn my head and freeze, bound still at the sight of a face, dead and almost fleshless, staring back at me. There was no step I could take, no word I could whisper; all I could do was breathe heavy clouds towards it and stare at the gauges of what once were eyes; watching me from beyond mortality.

Alas, with a force that seemed not mine I took a single step behind; unsure of the ground that might have crumbled under my weight. The body was hanged on one of the sturdier branches, slightly dangling sideways. When I wanted to decode the image, it started to fall apart: every branch turned to black ashes, spreading out around me. In less than a second there was nothing left; neither corpse, nor tree, nor path. At least that oblivion was silent.

“Find the hunter,” I heard a voice, a weary echo from nowhere followed by a tormented scream.

I would have screamed in terror myself if I could, though I deserved that for my arrogance.

The next morning, over a steaming cup of coffee, I repeat the events of the past night word for word to Damien, who seems to grow anxious.

“Is something wrong?” I ask him after I finish my story and place the empty cup on the polish wood where it had left a half-moon stain.

“Follow me,” he replies sharp, expressing no other emotion.

His face is caught in rigid determination, lips pressed in contempt and eyes incessantly scouting, aimlessly hunting. When I break my eyes away from him to shake off the uneasiness of his appearance, afront I am met with a scene growing ever more familiar. As we advance, the scene resembles images which have haunted my sleep the night before. I barely hold back the reactions that are scratching the skin surface to flash over my face.

It was real. Every slither of the horrors I had lived takes shape out of diffuse light right about a hundred yards in front of us. Even the bloody silhouette is hanged from the tree on the hilltop; the same silhouette which frightened me down to my core. I am such a desperate fool; in search of mortality I have surrounded myself with nothing but. What could stand against this crime having stained my hands as well?

I stop dead in my tracks. The damp air fills my lungs to the point they can barely breathe. Time seems just as dense.

“Are you coming?” he asks standing a few feet ahead of me.

“No chance in hell,” I whisper averting my eyes. “We should leave; this place freaks me out.”

“This is the place of your nightmare, right?”

“Right. Last night I stared that thing down,” my finger points accusing towards it. “Rotting flesh was only inches away from my own face, until hearing a voice woke me up… Find the hunter, it said.”

“Are you sure those were the exact words?”

“Yeah. Now go ahead, if you will, I am not getting dragged through this again.”

“Then I have no use for you,” he says in a nervous laugh. “Wait for me back home, Dante. I have to throw a few questions around.”

I let my hand rest and turn my back on him, the corpse and all desolation surrounding us. Shrugging my shoulders heavy of disapproval, I leave him behind to search for silence in the comfort of the lodge, far from that place. I grab a glass full to the brim with whiskey, before throwing a few logs into the fireplace. They send split cinders flying around in a rush. For hours I stare at the flames struggling to piece together as much from the dream as I could, for it slips away with every passing hour. He enters with a rush of cold wind disturbing the fire and seeping right into my bones.

He returns with a fresh scent of moldy cellar walls, bruised knuckles and widened pupils. His heavy breath draws near, as his boots make their distinct noise over the wooden floor. They give me the chill of an abandoned mine echoing earthly remnants of the dead.

“Done roughing guys up?” I ask negligent, emptying my glass in one shot and holding it up.

He stops behind the couch, then grabs the glass from my hand. His footsteps still silent a moment thereafter make me think he probably wants to say something on the side. To encourage this, I raise my chin and turn my head towards him as much as I could, but not enough to meet his eyes. Changing his mind, he goes on walking into the kitchen. I follow him through a gaze.

“Did you find the hunter?” I continue hoping to hit a nerve, but do not. “Did you smash his face in?”

Standing in the doorframe, he parts his lips, but speaks not a word; of neither approval, nor disapproval. He walks over to me and holds out a filled glass.

“That used to be a friend of mine,” he finally speaks, standing in front of the fireplace and turning his glass between his fingers. “Or, better said, someone I used to know; we both did. He retired as a bounty hunter and passed his contacts onto us once he was out. Thanks to him we got a start into our new lives; may the ground be light upon his resting body.”

He spilled a few drops in front of the fire, before downing the rest of his whiskey. Something more happened, but no words sound right at such a moment, so we said none.

Through the night and into the first rays of sunlight I lay awake wondering how he could be more content in his silence, than I ever was in my screaming. I rise at the pace of the sun, making my coffee and his just as it starts glowing brighter. Could it have been death? This is what I keep asking myself with every sip that invigorates my body.

For the first time since I moved in, he wakes up after me. In a disheveled attire, he enters the kitchen and sits down at the table, welcoming the break of dawn by sipping from the steaming cup I had prepared for him. The dreadful thoughts loom in my head, still.

“I could listen to what is troubling you,” he says, on the correct supposition that I skipped on sleep again last night.

“No, thanks,” I say looking around the room for where I threw my coat yesterday. “If I spoke of it, it would become real and reality is the one thing I will face enough of today as it is. Besides, when it comes to my own battles, I ask for nothing; of neither you, nor anyone else.”

“This means you give up?”

“No, brother,” I smile and place my hand on his shoulder. “This means tonight I am going to war. Alone, that is. Though there is no one as sick and twisted as myself to stand beside me, none dare stand against me either.”