Ancient Illusions

by Joanne Pence

  “What piercing cold I feel!

  My dead wife’s comb, in our bedroom,

  Under my heel.”

  Ceinwen shuddered. “No more poetry from you!” She grabbed his arm. “Let’s get away from this spot.”

  They eventually stopped for lunch. When they started out once more, they spotted one of their blue ties on a tree trunk up ahead.

  “Shite!” Ceinwen cried. “Did you tie that on the tree? None of this seems at all familiar.”

  “I agree.” Michael put his hands on his hips looking around them with dismay. “This isn’t working. I think we need to give it up. This forest is too big, too crazy. We tried, Ceinwen. I don’t know what more to do.” He searched for another blue tie to lead them back to the park entrance. “There it is,” he said, and started walking toward it.

  “I see it, too,” Ceinwen said, and headed in a slightly different direction. Then both stopped.

  “We’re both right,” Ceinwen said.

  Then they saw a third tie. Slowly, as they pivoted in a circle, they saw that they were surrounded by trees with blue ties … with no way to tell which would lead to the entrance.

  “We are so screwed,” Ceinwen murmured.

  “They’re playing with us,” Michael said grimly. “This damned forest, or whoever’s in it, is having fun. But they won’t get away with it. Let’s go that way.” He pointed to the tie he first saw, and walked toward it, Ceinwen following. It led to another tie, and another, and soon, Michael stopped.

  “I think we’re going in circles,” he said.

  “Don’t say that!” Her breath came in short, unsteady bursts.

  “Have you noticed that there are no animals around? No birds, lizards, squirrels, not even ants. Nothing lives here. Nothing at all.”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “That explains the quiet and the thickness of the ground cover. It’s as if nothing decays. It’s all static.” His dark eyes searched the forest. “Alchemically speaking, it’s an anomaly—an impossibility, in fact. In alchemy everything that is not ‘perfect’ will change—not only animals and vegetables but also rocks and minerals. In the process of turning cheap metals into gold, the alchemist’s job is to speed up nature’s slow progression. It’s just as coal, over time, becomes diamonds. But here, in this forest, we have the anti-alchemy. Nothing changes. This is wrong, Ceinwen. Completely wrong, and unnatural.”

  “What can we do?" Ceinwen asked. “I refuse to give up!”

  “We won’t. We’ll stay put,” Michael said, “and stop traipsing all around like rats in a maze.”

  “In other words," she whispered, "if the demons want us, we’ll be here waiting for them?”

  “Right.”

  She swallowed hard, then nodded in agreement.

  They built a warming campfire, a part of them hoping that it might bring a forest ranger or some other person who might be able to show them the way out. They quietly sat facing it, eating just a little of their food, knowing they needed to preserve as much as they could. Ceinwen leaned against him, needing to feel his warmth.

  “I wonder if there’s ever been a forest fire here,” she said.

  “It doesn’t look like it,” Michael replied, drawing her close.

  “That, in itself,” she murmured, “makes this a strange place.”

  Ceinwen was awakened by a loud knocking sound. She saw Michael putting on his shoes and a jacket, and quickly did the same. “I hear it, too,” she whispered.

  They crept out the tent and aimed their flashlights into the trees. They saw nothing, but the knocking stopped.

  Michael put more logs into the fire pit and lit it. “I don’t know why I’m even trying to sleep.”

  “I agree. This is an incredibly sad place. Ever since we’ve come in, I feel as if some weight is pushing down on my shoulders, and a pressure behind my eyes as if tears should fall.”

  “It makes sense—the sadness of all the lives lost here.”

  “That’s probably why there are no fires,” She said. “It’s too damp from tears shed.”

  “From loneliness,” Michael added. “People who came here to die believed there was no hope, no one for them. Little did they know how often someone was left behind that grieved their loss.”

  “Sometimes,” her voice was soft, but her gaze intense as she said, “people build barriers around themselves that stop others from getting close—and they don’t even realize it.”

  He made no response, but added kindling to the fire.

  Jianjun had made it clear to her that Michael had allowed her into his life to a remarkable degree. At the same time, despite their new physical closeness, she could feel the emotional wall Michael kept around himself. She wondered if she or anyone could ever break through it.

  Having learned a bit about his past from his mother’s diary, that his mother had died when he was young, and that he had been raised by his cold and strange father, helped Ceinwen understand some of the reasons for his hesitancy to let anyone close to him.

  She reached over and took his hand. He glanced up at her, and looked as if he were about to speak when he suddenly started, his gaze fixated on something over her shoulder. She spun around and gasped.

  It wasn’t a black blob-like shape or a mouth with sharp, bloody fangs as in the past. But it was an entire being. It looked like a young man, and it also looked dead.

  Michael and Ceinwen stood. He pushed her behind him.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “This forest is supposedly haunted by ghosts of the people who have killed themselves here, people who have died with such strong passions such as jealousy, rage, and hatred, that their souls are unable to pass on. Instead, they seek vengeance for the cruelty life bestowed on them.”

  One by one, other creatures stepped out of the dark nearer the fire and moved toward Michael and Ceinwen. Both male and female, they were wraiths. They looked frightening, perhaps evil, perhaps dangerous, but they also appeared completely downtrodden. Most of them had killed themselves by hanging, but few of them knew how to tie a noose in a way that would snap a neck and bring instant death. Instead, they dangled from the rope until it strangled them, which meant their faces were bloated, their eyes and tongues bulging, and their heads at strangely lopsided angles.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Ceinwen said, backing up, her hand reaching for Michael’s.

  “When I give the word, run,” Michael said. “Now. Go!”

  The two ran from the wraiths. As soon as they dared, they stopped. Running in the dark was treacherous and more than once one or the other stumbled and nearly fell. They saw nothing around them. The thick canopy of trees that blocked the sunlight now blocked the moon and starlight. They switched on their flashlights and saw…

  The dead, even more of them, now surrounded them.

  Once the flashlights were switched on, the rotting corpses began to move. The wraiths stretched out their hands, palms up, as if begging for something. But what? Surely not food, water, or money. What could the dead possibly want from them?

  “We have nothing for you,” Michael said. “Leave us. Go!”

  But they moved closer.

  One reached out and touched Ceinwen’s hair.

  “No!” She shouted and struck the creature’s arm with her flashlight.

  It recoiled, but others charged forward, reaching for them, touching their faces, clothes, bodies as if they couldn’t believe Michael and Ceinwen were there, and alive.

  The two fought, wielding their flashlights like cudgels to get the wraiths to back off. Michael forced his way through them using his fists, his arms, his body to break through the crowd.

  Ceinwen stayed as close to him as she could, fighting off anyone—anything—that tried to attack from behind.

  Suddenly, Michael grabbed her arm. “We’re free. Let’s go.”

  They kept their flashlights on this time and didn’t stop running until they crossed a small stream. Looking around them, it seemed
they were finally alone.

  “My God,” Ceinwen cried.

  “They didn’t hurt you did they?”

  “Surprisingly, no.” She took a deep breath. “We just seem to be getting deeper and deeper into this damn place. And now, we've left our food and…” Ceinwen’s light focused on a yellow tape. Their tapes had all been blue. “What’s that?”

  “Let’s find out,” Michael said, turning to follow the tape as it stretched from one tree to the next.

  “And hope it doesn’t lead us to our death,” Ceinwen added. “I’ve come to realize, you can’t trust demons.”

  They followed the tape, despite Ceinwen’s sense of a rising panic. She felt her heart beating faster and heavier, her lungs working hard to simply breathe as the air seemed to thicken and the forest to weigh down ever heavier on them. She continued to follow Michael.

  “I see a bit of light,” he said.

  He switched off his flashlight. Not until she did the same could she see what he was referring to.

  It was the last few glowing embers of a campfire, one that had been allowed to burn out rather than safely extinguished. They crept toward it. At first, they thought the camp had been abandoned. Not until they were near did they see two bodies, their arms around each other.

  “God, no,” Ceinwen cried. She and Michael rushed forward.

  It was Rachel and Seiji, but not as they had looked while alive. Rachel wore a kimono, and her hair had been pinned up in a Japanese style. By her hand, lay a dagger.

  Seiji wore the rich, colorful robes of a samurai … or a daimyo.

  Blood streamed from the area around Rachel’s heart, darkening and nearly hiding the cut in her clothes where the knife had gone through.

  Seiji’s robes lay open down to his belly, and the slice across it showed he had performed hara-kiri. But his neck also had a gash where someone had severed the artery.

  “I don’t understand this,” Ceinwen cried, falling to her knees beside her friend. “Did someone kill them?”

  Michael shook his head. “Cutting open one’s belly is a slow, painful way to die. Often a second person cuts the neck, making death quick. I can’t help but suspect Rachel did that for him, and then killed herself.”

  “No, not Rachel.” Ceinwen reached out and touched the girl's hand, but it was icy cold. “She was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. She couldn’t do that to him, or to herself.”

  “Perhaps not, but the demon Snow Woman could do it.”

  Ceinwen’s tears flowed. “How could they do this? It’s crazy.”

  “Is it? They couldn’t live in his world, and not in Rachel’s. We can only hope they’ve found a place to be together.”

  He helped Ceinwen stand, and then led her away from the horrific scene.

  “Maybe…,” Ceinwen swallowed hard, “maybe Rachel will live if we take her body back to ‘our’ world?”

  He shook his head. “The people who died in the strange part of Idaho where the pillars existed were also dead in our world.”

  “Are you saying there’s no hope for her? Or him?” Ceinwen cried.

  He brushed back her hair. “And Rachel would have known it. She saw it all before.”

  “No! I won’t accept that.” Ceinwen pushed him away and started back to Rachel and Seiji, but stopped. She couldn’t face them either. She turned to Michael. “I thought I was protecting her.” The words were like a desperate sob. “I convinced her to go places, do things, she never would have. If it weren’t for me, she might still be at Oxford, studying and awing people with her brilliance. Instead this. I feel as if I killed her!”

  Michael put his arms around her, trying to offer comfort. “I also remember Rachel saying that in the land of her dreams she was happier than at any other time in her life. She knew things we don’t, Ceinwen. She went places and made discoveries we have not. Especially if this is part of those strange islands with the blessed hsein of Chinese alchemy, where people can live forever, maybe the good in those two young people overcame the demons in them.”

  Ceinwen lifted her head and studied his face. “It’s too much, Michael. She shouldn't be dead!”

  “In the end,” he whispered, “it was her choice. All we can do is pray that she found the life she hoped for.”

  “Pray?” She let him lead her away from the bodies. “Do you believe in prayer, Michael?”

  “Of course. You can’t have seen the things I have and not be a believer.” He kissed her lightly. “We’ve got to keep going, to find our way out of here. We can’t help them now.”

  Chapter 50

  Another day passed with Michael and Ceinwen walking in circles. Their food was gone and they had no choice but to drink the water found in streams. They hoped no dangerous parasites were in it. They tried to find their way out of the forest, or even back to the campsite the wraiths had driven them from, but could find neither. The gloom and suffocating atmosphere of sadness in the forest of the lost was weakening them more than the lack of food.

  It was as if the forest were conspiring against them.

  They gathered logs and built a fire as the sun was setting. Not that they could see the sun, but the ever-shaded forest simply grew increasingly dark, until all light vanished completely.

  Hungry, tired, and scared, they lay in each other’s arms to sleep, in Ceinwen’s case hoping, and in Michael’s praying, that they would find a means of escape the next day.

  Michael didn’t know how long he’d been asleep when he opened his eyes to see a large figure standing near.

  It looked like a troll or an ogre from a child’s book of mythological tales. Its eyes glowed red; the canine teeth were as long as a wolf’s, and its forehead was huge and bulging, with two horns growing from it. The skin was blue and a thick pelt of fur covered its chest and shoulders.

  He sprang to his feet, staring at the monster, then stepped between it and Ceinwen.

  “I want the pearl.” The demon spoke those words in a low, hideous voice that reverberated in the pit of Michael’s stomach. It reached out its hand, but instead of a hand, it was a paw with long, curved claws.

  “Who are you?” Michael asked.

  “Can’t you see us? We are all around you.”

  “I see nothing but one pathetic blue monster. You are nothing and not worth giving up the pearl.” He glanced down at Ceinwen. To his surprise, she was still asleep. Hadn’t she heard their voices? Or was he dreaming? Was this another nightmare?

  “Then we will take the pearl from you and kill you and everyone you care for.”

  “You can’t touch me.”

  “But we can touch them.”

  Michael stepped closer to the beast. “No. She has my protection. The protection of the pearl.”

  “But the others don’t. Your father doesn’t. Nor does the woman you love. Irina.”

  “Irina is dead.”

  “No. She isn’t. We’ve found her. We’ll torture her until you give up the pearl.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Oh? Look.”

  A vision of a woman walking on the sidewalk of a bridge over a river filled Michael's head. She wore a heavy coat and a warm woolen scarf covered her head. He couldn’t see her face. The water was a river, and across it, to his surprise, was the Peter and Paul fortress which contained the burial place of the Romanovs, the last Russian dynasty. He’d visited the spot several times in St. Petersburg.

  “That’s not her,” he whispered, his heart pounding. “This is all a trick. A vile trick.”

  “Is it? Do you dare to test us?”

  In his vision, the woman stopped and leaned against the metal railing, her head bowed. The Neva River was wide, and the bridge high. A jump would most likely be fatal.

  “Stop it! I don’t know who the woman is, but whoever she is, there’s no reason for your madness to kill her.”

  “You still don’t believe us? Say her name, and you’ll see. Say it!”

  “Irina,” he whispered.

&nbs
p; “Louder!”

  “Irina!”

  The woman peered over her shoulder as if she heard someone call. It was the face, older now, but still the face Michael had remembered all these years. “No. You’re causing my mind to play tricks. Of course it’s her face I’m seeing. It’s her face I expect to see. But she’s no more Irina than you are!”

  “Well, you thought she was dead, so why not make your dream come true?”

  She turned back to look at the river, and then her hands tightened on the rail. She leaned forward as if to boost herself up.

  “Stop it! Let her go,” Michael said. “We can negotiate this.”

  “Ah, so you do believe us.”

  “I don’t want to see her killed. Not even in a dream.”

  The demon laughed. “Let’s ‘negotiate.’”

  “Bring Nakamura Seiji and Rachel Gooding back to life and I’ll give you the pearl,” Michael said.

  “There’s much I can do, but power over life and death is not one of them. But you shouldn’t mourn for them since you are dead now as well. You’ve entered our world.”

  “Demons lie, and that’s what you’re doing.”

  “If demons lie, it’s because they’ve learned it from humans. From people like me.”

  “You?” Michael didn’t understand.

  And then a swirling cloud appeared, wrapping the demon in a haze. When it ceased churning, the clouds drifted down to the ground and vanished. In place of the demon stood a small, thin, gray-haired man with a shattered eye.

  “I didn’t mean to trap you here,” he said softly. “I’m quite sorry. Still, I do want to take the pearl from you.”

  “Hearn?” Michael asked.

  “Not exactly. A form of Lafcadio, perhaps.” He put a hand on his narrow chest and looked down at himself. His features were Caucasian, but he wore a man’s kimono in brown and black. “I don’t really know myself. All I know is I used to ‘play’ with alchemy. That was a foolish thing to do.”

  “You turned into a demon?” Michael asked.

  “I’m not sure what I am anymore. But yes, a demon is one form. It usually frightens people into doing whatever I want. You surprise me, cousin.”