The Footsteps of Cain

by Derek Kohlhagen

  “I...I thought I was...helping you....” he said, his voice small. He was taken aback when Shaleer burst out laughing, as if he had just told the most wonderful joke.

  “Helping me?” Shaleer said when he could, wiping his eyes. It appeared at first that he wept from mirth, but then his demeanor changed and it was plain that the tears came from another source, somewhere inside himself where rage and despair and self-loathing had rotted him for most of his life. “You killed me! You cursed me! You trampled any chance I ever had of becoming whole. I am a fraud of a man, and for the longest time I thought I would remain a fraud, until the end of my miserable days!”

  The tortured man clutched at the sides of his head and squeezed his eyes shut. Waves of grief and self-pity rolled over him, drenching him.

  “I tried to end it,” he moaned. “I sat in my home with a knife in my hands, almost tasting the sweetness that death could give me, yet unable to summon the courage to draw it across my own throat! Even at that, I have failed! And as I was spurned by woman after woman, and my life spiraled further down into the abyss, it became clear to me that the forest had sent a host of evil spirits to strangle all happiness from me. And all the while, valiant, gallant Ejelano was showered with all the gifts of the world. The people’s love for him would know no bounds! You could never see past the glare of your golden life to the despised Shaleer, who slunk about the village like a rat.”

  He looked over at the cowering Lena.

  “Like a dog,” he said.

  “No...NO!”

  “But then, Ejelano, I had a vision,” Shaleer continued, turning back to him. “A beautiful vision where I would finally be relieved of all this...this humiliation, if only to myself. I could take the one thing from you, who have so wronged me, that you can never take back. I could have her.”

  He gestured toward Lena, who now was sobbing uncontrollably. A smile, almost blissful, spread across his face.

  “You can’t repair her. You can’t remake her. You can never lie with her without knowing that she was mine, first. By taking her I’ve paid you back tenfold for all that you have robbed from me, and reclaimed myself as the man I was always supposed to be! You can’t imagine the peace I feel at this moment, like a second sun has sprung up within my breast. I can see its rays everywhere I look!” Shaleer spread his arms wide and tilted his head back, euphoric.

  Clarity had started to penetrate Ejelano’s shredded mind. He saw the spittle on Shaleer’s lips and chin, and the unholy zeal in his eyes. He didn’t know how long ago the insanity had gripped his former friend, but now there could be no doubt that it ruled him completely. Shaleer’s mind was gone. Ejelano could see him in all his naked wretchedness, his tainted humanity. He’d stewed in his own fetid juices for so long that he’d actually convinced himself, deluded himself, that Ejelano was the source of all his abundant misfortunes.

  Feeling was once again spreading to Ejelano’s limbs with a dangerous vigor, fueled by a sparking fury.

  “I defended you!” he said, his voice trembling, his eyes white-hot. “I spoke for you, to anyone who looked down upon you! And all the while they were right! They knew what I did not, that there was nothing redeemable in you, no sliver of goodness or morsel of virtue. Behind your back they told me this, and still I persisted, still I insisted that you were misunderstood, that you were raised by those incapable of love. I was the only one who comforted you when I saw the marks of their anger on your body! I was loyal to you when all others abandoned you! And yet, here we are, and you have burned every bond between us and trampled the ashes! I can see now that I should have left you alone in the forest, all those years ago...I should have shed my pity and let you starve, so the world could have been rid of you, before you grew to be this evil thing. I can only blame myself that I have not seen it until now!”

  “Evil?” snorted Shaleer. “You know nothing of evil. You flaunt your virtue, as if you can only gaze at ‘evil’ across the expanse of the great waters. How can you know of something unless you’ve been close enough to touch it? My wreck of a life has led me through the caverns of this ‘evil’ of which you speak but know nothing of. The great truth is that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are words used conveniently by those ruled by self-interest and ego. You’ve always had both of these qualities in abundance, and your sense of morality has always been ridiculously self-indulgent. There is no ‘evil’, you fool! There is no ‘good’!”

  Shaleer stood, motionless, locking eyes with him, until it felt to Ejelano that it would take a spear to shatter that gaze.

  Then he said it, with greasy sweat on his brow, his own blood oozing down his face and Lena’s crimson virginity on his phallus.

  “Well, perhaps there is. I can tell you from experience that what lies between your woman’s legs is very, very good.”

  Ejelano’s skills as a warrior were renowned to the people. When instructing the younglings, he always emphasized control above all things. Control of the weapon. Control of the fear. When the enemy has taken away control by inserting distraction or anger into your brain, you have given him tremendous advantage, and with all probability already lost the battle.

  Control. It was something that Ejelano prided himself on.

  Yet, in that fraction of time that it took for him to comprehend the words Shaleer had just uttered, the focused, controlled man that he knew was completely and utterly destroyed. The man he had been, the man he had grown up to be, was slain in an instant. What remained was an animal, untamed and driven by a pure, killing instinct. Uncontrolled. His whole world vanished into a miasma of blood-lust, and he sprang on his prey with all the terrible power and fury that his body commanded.

  So blindingly swift and savage was his attack that Shaleer was completely caught off guard. He barely had the time to twitch before Ejelano was on him with all his thunder, knocking him to the ground and sending a deafening roar throughout the small house and into the forest beyond. Ejelano’s fists rose and fell like hammers, slamming into any part of Shaleer he could find, painting himself with Shaleer’s spattering blood. He gave into his rage totally, letting it guide and amplify his blows with the adrenaline it shot through his body.

  He was might personified. He was death’s agent. He held nothing back, and thought of nothing except the utter destruction of the man below him. Lena’s terrified screams were distant to his ears as he used every ounce of himself to strike the life out of the man he’d been foolish enough to once call his life-brother.

  So entrenched in his bloodthirst was he, that he didn’t even realize Shaleer had seized his hunting knife from its sheath on his thigh until he felt his own blade sinking into his left side. A fire ignited inside his abdomen as the knife bit deeply into his yielding flesh. All at once he could feel a sticky fluid sliding down toward his leg, and immediately he ceased his attack to wrest away control of the knife before Shaleer could twist it and amplify the severity of the injury.

  Ejelano’s superior strength served him well. He held Shaleer’s wrist fast with his right hand, and pried Shaleer’s fingers off the knife with his left. Preoccupied with the knife as he was, he left himself open to another attack, and even though he sensed the blow he could do nothing to prevent it. Shaleer’s free hand slammed into his chin from the other direction, sending spots of color across his vision and spinning his head around. Time seemed to slow as he found himself looking at Lena, who was weakly crawling off the bed in a vain attempt to aid him. The fear in her eyes was not for herself as she reached a hand toward him, as if she was trying to send him any and all the strength she had left in her drained, abused body. Her horror hit his mind like smelling salts in his nostrils, and all at once his senses sharpened again. Time resumed its proper progression, and he snapped his head back to his opponent.

  Shaleer sent another blow toward his head, but this time he was ready. Ejelano drove his head down under the blow, which flew harmlessly above him. Then, still gripping Shaleer’s other wrist, he forced Shaleer’s arm across his bo
dy to steal away his leverage. As Shaleer was just realizing his vulnerability, Ejelano screamed in pain as he pulled the knife from his body and held it high above him, raining his own blood down on the one who’d burned his life to the ground.

  Ejelano would remember that moment in crystal clarity, for an unthinkable expanse of years afterward. It would be the last clear memory of his mortal life that would seep from him, before his mind was drowned by the tides of time. Lena...moaning his name. The feel of the knife in his hand, his own blood running off the blade. The strain of his other hand on Shaleer’s wrist, forcing him into submission. Shaleer’s broken face, ruined by the force of his fury, staring up at him.

  But above all, he remembered Shaleer’s eyes. They were not on the knife, but on Ejelano’s own. There was no fight left in them...no defiance. Ejelano would always remember how Shaleer’s body went slack right before the knife came down, how he had given up, and how in the end it didn’t feel so much like sweet vengeance as much as the slaughtering of an sick, pathetic animal.

  His knife pierced Shaleer’s throat, where life’s rhythm was the strongest, and then there was a river of blood, his life-brother’s blood, on the floor. Shaleer’s eyes went wide with pain and shock, but he never made a sound beyond the gurgling of his last breaths. His eyes left Ejelano’s and focused on something else on the ceiling. Ejelano watched as tears welled up in Shaleer’s eyes and ran down the sides of his head into his blood-crusted hair. Afterward, Ejelano would wonder why Shaleer had wept. Was it purely for himself? Was there any remorse in his heart? Ejelano searched for it in his eyes, hungry for anything that resembled redemption for the friend he had loved.

  There was nothing. Shaleer’s eyes became fixed, and one last, long breath bubbled out. Then he died, right there on the floor. There was no glory, no honor, no grand purpose to it. To the world at large it was just another life lost, on another patch of dirt.

  For Ejelano, it was the beginning of the end.

  * * *

  Chapter 28 – Ejelano

  As he stared down at Shaleer’s silent form, suddenly Ejelano was weeping too; great wracking sobs shook his entire body. He wept for the friend he had lost, ever-tortured in a world without mercy until his soul had grown twisted and blackened. He mourned the life that Shaleer had taken from him, the future, once so luminous, that had now grown blurry and uncertain.

  He stood shakily, his mind cloudy with despair and his hands coated thick, shoulders heaving. The noisy thoughts of what he had witnessed...what he had done...dropped into the background, leaving a great emptiness in their wake, a void hostile to reason. Color paled in his vision, and he retreated into himself from a world that had given in to catastrophic entropy.

  And then he felt her hands on his, on his chest, his face. His muted senses heard her calling his name, crying. He yearned to descend into that soothing void of his mind, let it wrap around him until there was nothing left of him, but she would not let him go.

  “Ejelano....”

  No.

  “Ejelano...please....”

  He pulled her hands away from himself, staining them with Shaleer’s blood.

  “No,” he moaned aloud, and stepped back.

  His eyes fell on her. Through his tears, he looked for the woman that he had known, the joy-filled girl he had climbed trees with as a child. He tried to envision the face of that girl in the tree, tried to compare it against this broken woman before him. Yet, he could not see her.

  Confused by his hesitation, Lena pursued him, reached for him. Again, he stopped her.

  Deep within himself, where the last shard of the man he used to be lay encased in the monster he’d become, he felt a penetrating pang of shame. Shame, because the rest of him could only look upon his beloved with revulsion. Disgust. His Lena, his beloved, now only appeared to him as a wraith of a woman. Damaged. Used by another man. Part of him knew the truth, that it was only the shock of what he had done, the haze that had fallen over his mind that made him see her as such.

  Given time, he would remember her face as the one he’d come to know as well as his own, the soul to which his was entwined. But in that moment, he was blind. He had forgotten himself, and so he had forgotten her as well.

  “Ejelano?”

  Lena, her panic rising, again tried to come to him, to draw comfort and acceptance from him, and to give her own. After the torment she had just endured, she craved his embrace. Her eyes were imploring. Accept me!, they screamed. Love me!

  Suddenly she blinked, and he saw understanding creep in. She knew he was not seeing her as he saw her before. It concentrated her pleas to a laser point of urgency.

  “Ejelano, I am here! I am your Lena! Please, open your eyes to me!”

  He could not. He held her away from him, firmly. The closer she came to him, the more stifled he felt, suffocated by her pleading. He searched within himself for a way to once again let flow the currents of his love, but all he found was dust. Dust, and darkness.

  She could no longer bear the pain of him pulling away, now that she recognized why he did so. Lena threw herself at him, clung to him, gripped his neck to try to get him to look at her. She clawed at him with her fingernails, clinging to him like a cat, each stroke sending a prickling pain through this body, his mind. He strove to pry her hands away, but her desperation gave her a strength and dexterity that thwarted him. She slipped inside his hands each time, moaning his name, stealing his air. He could not endure it. He had to breathe. He needed to get away.

  He laid his hands against her body, and gave her a final, frantic shove. He pushed harder than he meant to, but at that moment the measure of his own strength was a stranger to him, so intent was he on escaping her.

  The instant he hurled her away, he realized what he’d done. Time slowed again as he threw his arms out to save her, but she was well beyond his reach all too quickly. Her face was obscured by her hair, sent tumbling about her head as she staggered violently backward.

  Then he saw the carving stone, rising up behind her like a jagged black tooth, out of the ground.

  Her body flew toward it, closing the distance before he could react. Then she lost her footing, tripped over the torn remains of her ceremonial dress. Her hands instinctively flew out to find a stable surface to use to break her fall, but there was none to be found, and she fell victim to her momentum.

  “No!” he screamed. “NO!”

  Lena’s head struck the carving stone heavily, with a sickening crack. It was a sound that, along with the vision of Shaleer’s face before his bloody knife fell, would nestle itself in the folds of his fragmented brain. He would hear it over and over in his walking nightmares, echoing through the arctic labyrinth of his mind for eons.

  Lena’s body rebounded off the stone and came to rest on the ground, where she lay silently, horribly still.

  Immediately he was there, kneeling and pulling her into his arms, where he cradled her tenderly in an embrace that he couldn’t summon for her just a moment before. He gently brushed her hair back, so that he could see her face. At first he thought that the blood on his hands was wiping off in her hair, but in a lightning strike of terror he realized that there was way too much to have come from him. He finally cleared her face of her thick locks, now increasing soaked in her own blood. There was so much. Too much. He put his hand over the wound, willing the bleeding to stop.

  “By the forest,” he whispered, his tears falling in her hair. It was the only sound he could manage. “No...no no no no no no....” He repeated the word over and over, as if doing so would bring him the power to take back what he had done. “Lena, please.”

  Her eyes fluttered, and opened halfway in a daze. Her pupils contracted, and she focused on his face.

  “I understand,” she said softly, laboring. “I understand why you don’t want me. I’m ruined...ruined by him....”

  “No, my love...I am the greatest fool,” he answered, matching the volume of her voice. “It was your body he had, not your soul. T
hat part of you will always be mine, just as mine will always be yours....”

  Her face relaxed in great relief, and a smile lit up her face, despite the steady flow of her blood that seeped through his fingers.

  “Then you will still have me...as I will still have you....” she sighed. Her tears flowed as freely as his. Ejelano rocked her back and forth on instinct to soothe her...to soothe them both.

  “I can hear the forest speaking to me,” she went on, her eyes becoming distant. “I’ll have to answer its call soon...how wonderful it will be, to play again in the leaves....”

  Ejelano’s anguish was unbearable. “I am so sorry, so sorry...please don’t leave me....” he croaked.

  “I will wait for you...beyond the rivers of this life...on the edge of the darkness....”

  “If you go without me, I’ll follow you.” His thoughts were on his knife, his heart lifting only so slightly at the prospect of going with her into death.

  “No, love....” Her eyes once again focused on his with meaning. “That is not your path. You were meant...for other things. Promise me....”

  “I can’t do this without you....”

  “Promise me.”

  He paused, then nodded through a fresh wave of grief. He would do anything she asked.

  “I’m not strong enough for this...I can’t let you go!”

  “You...must. But only for a little while.... Remember, the scope of eternity is...broad....” Her voice was losing strength. Her words came through so softly that he had to lean close to hear them.

  “I would walk across the world for you, for the length of that eternity. I will love you that long, and beyond,” he said, his conviction drenched in his tears. “By the trees, I would.”

  “The trees....” she breathed faintly, shuddering. “Yes.... When you think of the trees, think of me. Go to our tree, and I will meet you there, as always...I will wait for you there, by the tree....”