Betrayal of the Light

Six

This is it. The last house. Surprisingly enough, light has barely survived behind its matted windows. Knock.

“Just a second!” shouts a man, his deep voice holding a spec of hoarse familiarity.

He unlocks the door from the inside, at once flooding over me the light and warmth of homely space.

“Come in before you freeze,” he says stepping away from the doorway.

His wide grin and gestures imply him trusting me. Yeah, even his black eyes flared up in recognition of me. I am tempted to smile back and so I do, after a brief hesitation.

Once inside, he grips my shoulders into the tight clench of an embrace, as if I had truly been lost through hell up until now and he thought me dead. I pat him on the back before he lets go of me.

“Good to see you again, brother” I say while he leads me to a couch, strategically placed in front of the fireplace.

I sink into the leather seat eager to wrap around me. This feels more like home.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” I start the conversation, uneasy at the subject. “In my travels I must’ve hit my head, or something. I woke up two days ago under a bridge; alone, freezing and with partial memory loss. I had to ask around The Apothecaries to find my way back to you.”

“Bloody hell,” he says pouring us both a glass of liquid amber. “I knew something was wrong when you have not shown your face around here in two weeks… You were traveling, you said? Where?”

“I… don’t remember,” my eyes shy away from the unutterable answer. “Are we blood related? We don’t seem very alike in appearance.”

“That’s a long story,” he chuckles. “Think you can stick around to hear it?”

I nod and we clink out glasses before I take a mouthful. This potion is so strong, that I immediately feel the blood rushing through my veins.

“We were raised together, although born apart,” he recollects our memories. “As brothers, in arms and fate, until the day we went rogue. We ran away from our mentor, military training and glorified destiny we would have had in the army; away to chase our freedom and make an independent living off hunting bounties. This land is riddled with ‘em, as it is riddled with opportunistic crooks and criminals. Sadly, of your recent years I know little, for you began taking marks on your own, far away from this village and the neighboring ones. I decided to stay behind, as I am less fond than you of crossing guards and endangering my life here that we depend on. You were distant with us for a long time and I left you to it. Now I wish I hadn’t.”

“With… us? Who do you mean other than you?”

“Loreley,” his grin reappears. “She’ll be thrilled to see you again.”

I stare across the room, where my reflection obediently meets me. The scars… the vengeance; they all start making sense. Somehow.

“Who is she?” I ask standing up to leave.

“You will see for yourself when she returns,” he answers, the grin turning to a soft smile.

            Agreeing to return tomorrow, for the hour is late indeed, I leave his place in favor of the same as the night before: scaring the nightmares away in the deep waters of the ocean. They do for a while, but then start again, more vicious; facing me with my fears. For three nights I saw nothing but demons taking shape from darkness to speak words I understood while dreaming, but not while being awake.

This is what I do not stand in neither dream, nor world: the uncertainties… the unknowns. As above, in the dreams roaming through my mind, so below the ink on my arm; I fail to fully comprehend.

So, I return to Damien, days after our first meeting; to seek the refuge he cannot offer.

            “Something troubling you?” he asks standing by the door. “You look the worst.”

            “I have looked worse, trust me,” I reply going inside, rain pouring down my coat. “The nightmares, brother, are the reason of my troubles. None of the last three nights have passed without gruesome thoughts that weren’t mine. Tonight, I hope to not close my eyes; not even for a second. I have grown tired.”

            “That bad, is it?” he asks handing me a drink that looks like the autumn landscape outside had turned liquid on the bottom of the glass.

            “Else I would not complain,” I reply with one eyebrow raised.

            He cannot grasp the torment of seeing himself as a merciless harbinger of death for each night that is to come; the side of him unreachable by reason. These thoughts are obsessive, but they make no sense. Caught inside of my head for endless hours makes me go insane.  Not I, but Death is the doom bringer. How can the threatening chaos, made of passing time, be sewed with the thread of illusion? The worst is that I am inclined to deny my true self in order to keep some shallow sanity.

            “There is nothing I can do to rest at night, is it?” I ask lighting a cigarette from the fireplace.

            “Listen to me when I tell you this,” he answers. “No drink can kill them.”

            Such a shame; he had to ruin my night. I wanted to drink until the demons would stop calling my name… or pass out drunk in a corner; whichever may come first.

            “What do you see when you close your eyes?” I ask emptying the glass as incentive for him to pour me another.

            “The truth,” he answers.

So, this means we must be haunted by the same ghosts. His words comfort me, but not enough to make me speak the truth about mine. The chaos and war inside my head are unutterable. Death might silence both; I hope. Besides, I was searching for an excuse to leave this place ever since I got here.

            “Stay,” he says. “I have things to show you.”

            “What more do I need to face?”

            The words escaped me almost unknowingly. He smiles and picks up a heavy coat from the coach and a lamp with fire burning inside. With darkness creeping up on him, he looks like a lonely spook ready to go at war with all evil.

            “Come on now,” he says. “Today I show you the true face of the streets.”

            We are outside; where the wind has toned down and copper leaves get crushed under our boots with every step we take. The lantern spreads a soft light enough to make us see the dry path, but nothing else unfortunately. My eyes are drawn to the flame, for I see nothing but suffocating darkness around. It portrays his face, weary and sad as never before. He takes a deep breath, but a frozen cloud escapes him; as if he wanted to speak yet changed his mind right after.

            When we reach the grounds of society, we wander through them under a dark, violet sky. Shadows dance over the silhouettes of houses and tress. Even my shadow trembles and dies while hours die. I feel them; the streets while they cry my name within an echo, though I answer not. Instead I prefer listening to Damien, who explains which roads lead to the old library, the castle and other towns. Their streets may not be as gloomy, so I feel a journey ahead of us, soon to begin.

            Between stories of our past, he slips in bits from the history of this town. It was built by men who traveled the oceans from dusk until dawn, trading silk for silvers or stealing the both and killing the crews. This was where their coins were spent, and their heads would find a pillow to rest. The disturbing sentiment of a ghost town that I had was in part justified, as I now find out. Half of the houses were deserted since their owners either died or moved out further from the shore. Rumors have said these realms were cursed on the day the church burned down. Such fools; they thought it cause for every bloody battle, misery, disease, loss and poverty they endured. I would lay the blame with men, not ghosts.

            “The weather will only get worse,” he observes scouting the sky. “You could move back in with me and Loreley, if you wanted.”

            “I need time,” was my only request, before we parted ways.

The nights advance over me, sleepless and restless after every day that I went out in search of that damn church. This was to no avail. The area I crossed out according to the coordinates is a large part of the dense forest. It scatters only around a secluded glade. The first time I set my eyes on it, a shiver ran through my body. I took note of how Damien said the church had burned down, but I refused to even think it had burned to the ground and left not even a trace behind. If so, why did we believe it was still standing in the future? Or, did I arrive too late?

            In the end, I give the search and make it a habit of spending evening at the lodge. Then, when I see this does little to aid me, I stay on the nights I desperately long for sleep. Though, even if I do, it is for no longer than an hour. I timed it on my watch every time it happened. No matter how tired I am, it never exceeds one damn hour. Something keeps waking me up, as if a hand unseen would pull my unconscious body back to reality; dying only to come alive a hundred times.

            That changes one night, when at last, I sleep into oblivion; into a dark slumber where I dream of nothing, as if I were to endlessly lay cold in my grave. Awakening, thus, I felt relieved. Until the disturbing remark of Damien about how I have been sleeping for two days.

            I guess it could be said that I moved in at this point. Having established that I can indeed sleep here, now it remains the matter of regulating it. The change in scenery, from the shutters to the sheets, brought on a change in the shape of my dreams. That is, I now dream our past. At least I remember clearly how I got most of my scars. But, at what cost? Beyond my sleeping guise, dreams have made my scars bleed once again; as if I had not been through enough pain.

            I denied the truth, but at this late hour I can abuse of such luxury no more. If I am not to accept my past and seal my fate, then I will keep running in circles around the same answers I have already found. What more do I want? Who else could embrace it? So alone I feel, afraid of the world that keeps forgetting.