by Cora Choi
Chapter 20: A World of Fear
The massacre continued for three days. The air was thick with dust and ash. Broken chair legs, torn curtains, shattered glass—the island looked as though pirates had marauded it. The stench of bloating bodies and drying blood filled the air. The screaming and shrieking seemed endless.
Not yet accustomed to being invisible during the day, I kept myself hidden in the shadows. I watched the book burning from behind trees, from under the eaves of buildings, or from the roof. I felt as if I were the only soul in the world who gave a damn that these tales of love, courage, and wisdom were disappearing. Fury eventually gave way to just sadness as I watched one familiar book after another being tossed without hesitation into the fire. Now that all the members of the Order of the Crane were dead, the book burning continued in a more strategic fashion, for all the members of the Order of the Shrike could now focus their energies on hulling up the books from the library. As all those books burned, I felt as though the world was losing those stories and their characters forever. However, I was wrong. Four nights after my death, I met another phantom for the first time, Ahura Mazda.
The sun had set. As I dared to poke my head out from the shadows and step onto the road, I was amazed to see a wizened old man in a long robe and a tall hat. I thought only members of the Order of the Shrike now inhabited the place. He took slow steps, as though contemplating the sky and earth. As he walked, it was clear that his dark green robe, which shimmered like the Stauros Sea on a calm summer day, was not made with the craftsmanship of the locals. He was undoubtedly from a faraway land, and perhaps from a different time.
I froze when he saw me and approached me. I felt my jaw jerk open with shock when he began speaking to me, telling me that he was Ahura Mazda, the great god of Zoroastrianism.
He explained that the book that contained his story had been burned, and now he had to tell it himself to keep the story alive. He asked me what book I was from, and I had nothing to say. He thought it was just as odd that I wasn’t a character from a book as I thought it was odd that he was. After all, he looked like a living being. As old and wise as he was, he knew everything and told me how Stauros Island and its sea held the living, the dead, and everything in between—which is what we were.
“Dead by day, alive by night—that is how we are,” he explained.
“You mean that’s how you are,” I said.
“And you,” he added.
“But I’m dead—completely dead. No living person can see me,” I said.
“When the sun leaves the sky, it is with the energy of the moon that this island breathes life into everything,” he said.
“Including me?” I asked. “Even if I was never in a book?”
“My dead friend, including you,” he insisted.
The next evening, after sundown, I tested out his theory by walking up to one of the members of the Order of the Shrike who’d chased me up to the roof right before my death. He caught my eye as he was walking to the outhouse. I waited around the corner while he hung his lantern on a hook next to the door of the lopsided shack. He then opened the door and let it swing shut. I was still for a few seconds before I crept quietly to the door. I opened it, but the brute didn’t turn around.
“Don’t you see I’m busy?” he snarled, as he continued to relieve himself.
“I was only going to ask you to join me up on the roof later on,” I said.
“Join you? Why, I’ll punch you, as soon as I . . .” He looked over his shoulder and stopped midway through his sentence.
His mouth was agape. He recognized me. If the light from the lantern by the door had been brighter, I’m sure I would’ve seen the color drain from his face.
“No!” he gasped, turning to face me. His eyes grew larger as I took a step forward.
“Yes!” I said, not taking my eyes off his. He tripped over backward and fell with a fantastic, gloppy splash into the pit of excrement.
I was satisfied. Ahura Mazda was right. When night fell, people could hear and see me as though I were alive. That incident also made me realize that I was vulnerable at night and had to keep my distance whenever I saw a lantern or a lit torch. The last thing I wanted was for the Order of the Shrike to know I wandered the island day and night as a phantom. There was no limit on what they would do to get rid of a member of the Order of the Crane, alive or dead.
Ahura Mazda soon introduced me to a host of other characters who, after their stories had been burned, had reincarnated as phantoms. I met the headless knight, the monkey king, and dozens of others who seemed to materialize out of thin air. I knew who all of them were, for I had read their stories. They seemed to be intrigued by each other, and by me—the only one among them who was not a character from a book.
Despite my being different, they welcomed me. As much as I wanted to belong to a community, my situation was not like theirs. I had a mission. There would be serious repercussions if the story of the Slayer of the Shadow of Fear were to disappear and the Slayer himself were never found. I had to take every moment seriously, which was not the case with the other phantoms. As a result, I never fully ensconced myself in their group.
Occasionally, however, I did participate in their meetings and any decisions that needed the cooperation of the entire group of phantoms on the island. The first such meeting was a vote on what we would call ourselves.
“We’re not ghosts, really,” said the headless knight. “But we’re not real men, either.”
“Or women,” added Demeter.
“What should we call ourselves?” asked Siren.
“Simulacra,” I said, remembering my Latin lessons.
“What’s that?” they all seemed to ask at once.
“We’re a likeness of man—a similarity, something he might aspire to be but isn’t, at least not yet,” I answered.
They all agreed that was the most dignified name to call ourselves. However, the name didn’t last, for over the ages we were observed by the living—from members of the Order of the Shrike who peered cowardly out their windows to the hapless sailor who stopped by the island unwittingly for a respite. And they gave us a name: phantoms. That name stuck with us over the centuries and eventually became the most convenient name for us to use to refer to ourselves.
We learned to be discreet and careful about not frightening the living. It was for the good of all of us. Thus, when the phantoms caught wind of my reputation as the Demon of Stauros, I upset quite a few of them, who blamed me for marring their reputation, changing it from do-gooders to evildoers.
