Curse: The end has only just begun

by Rich Hayden

  “What the fuck are they?” asked Amil, as he watched them jerk around in terrifying motions.

  “They are called Wastes. They are what’s left after a human being truly dies.”

  Amil closed his eyes and bit back his panic as he refused to accept Aphelianna’s explanation.

  “Will I, will we all become those things?” he asked, with the thinnest of voices, almost too afraid of the answer that might come.

  “No. Some may wander this land for eternity and escape the fate you see before you, but most will find their way to this end. It is the nature of your kind. But do not fear, for after the sum of one hundred human lifetimes, these creatures will die completely and evaporate into time. Do you see the ones upon the ground? They’re the oldest, their suffering is nearly ended. However, there are a few exceptions, the ones whose agonies will never be lifted. Would you like to know them?”

  In silence, Amil trembled.

  “They are the ones that have failed my challenge,” she plainly stated as she stared into one of the beasts.

  “No, take it back, take this fucking key back!”

  “Discard it now and you will hasten your descent into their ranks!” she warned. “You wished for the ability to cheat fate, but did you assume your failure would not come at a cost? What cost is too high? Bring me my sister’s key, and I will honor my promise to you.”

  As he felt a fresh vitality in his body, Amil clutched at his key and turned away from Aphelianna. He heard the Wastes scream as he stepped away. The howling grew in intensity, and it told of their desire to devour all that they once were. But, at least for a time, he was safe, as not one of the beasts dared to cross before Aphelianna’s feet. They may have been monsters, but they still held the capacity to fear, and, before Aphelianna, they were terrified.

  His mind was crushed under the weight of what had been asked of him. An incalculable number of rooms might house Isadora, but he was given only a paltry 37 opportunities to find her. Had he lived for a thousand years, Amil would have felt no better about his odds of escaping what was assuredly the most torturous fate any one being could be forced to endure.

  As devastated as he was, his focus was newly narrowed. For as he passed into the orchard once more, Amil could sense that he was being shadowed by a Waste. He looked around with widened eyes and tried not to let the images of strung females distract his vision as he scanned the grove. Under the gloom of the sky and the blackness of the crows, he witnessed the Waste as it staggered out from behind a tree, mere yards from his position. As Amil looked into its absence of eyes, he knew the savage hated him. His existence represented all that it would never be, and possibly, all that it had failed to be. It wanted him dead. With all the fury of the last shreds of consciousness that it held, it wanted him to feel the anguish that it was made to suffer.

  Amil performed the only action that felt right in that moment; he ran. He tore through the orchard and allowed the low-slung branches, and all their coiled fingers, to lacerate his skin. He tripped on a root and split his chin open on a rock, but shot back to his feet, as physical pain had been eclipsed by dread. He tried to maintain a straight path, but the screams at his back muddled his mind, and the deceitful ways of fear sent him off course. He thought of the Spirit Ripper and where it might be hidden, but he barreled ahead, fully unsure if any amount of running could carry him to salvation. In a moment of unsteady relief, Amil saw the mansion with increased clarity as it peeked above the tops of the trees, but as his flight though this menagerie of agony was nearing its conclusion, his stride slowed.

  Though he knew the better of it, he stopped his flight altogether and looked around for any sight of Ali. She dangled a few rows over from him, and, with nothing more than a brisk and nervous walk, Amil made his way over to her. He kept a respectful distance, as he couldn’t bring himself to bother her any more than she had already been troubled. But he had to see her again. To look upon her face one more time and lose himself in her eyes, for this could be the last time that he would ever do so.

  She never looked his way, but Amil stared at her all the same, and, as he did, the strident brutality of the world around him slipped away until it was nearly gone. He thought of her laugh, and he remembered all the wonderment of their life together that he had so ignorantly taken for granted. And then, in the most woeful of all settings, he felt oddly protected. To look upon her face gave him a small measure of comfort, but Ali knew no such protection or joy. She only retained the ability to suffer. It was a sensation which served to strip all dignity and self-regard from him, and as he closed his eyes, Amil almost welcomed an eternity of punishment.

  “I swear to you, Ali. I will save you, I promise,” he whispered between his teeth, a river of tears dammed behind his eyes.

  As Amil made his plea to Ali, the curious Waste that had pursued him leapt from behind the shelter of a withered tree. Its flight through the air was unimpeded, and the force with which it left the ground was violent enough to start Amil on a path to a new and horrid death. But in a moment of profane intervention, the Spirit Ripper made its presence felt and caught the wretched beast in a net of its twisted nails.

  With the strength of its long arms, the Spirit Ripper threw the waste down onto the ground and shattered its spinal cord upon the lumpy surface. It sent its nails to work and tore Amil’s stalker asunder, as though it were comprised of nothing more substantial than a loaf of warm bread. The Waste was cleaved with shocking ease, and lay limp upon the soil in two savaged halves. Pieces of the being still twitched in pools of its own septic blood, and a moan faintly echoed through its hollow throat, but it lacked the means and desire to track Amil any further.

  As Amil watched the Waste shift upon the ground, he knew that it would not die. Not even the Spirit Ripper could fully relieve it of its suffering. That’s when it became chillingly clear. The master of the orchard had not punished the Waste, but, rather, it had saved Amil’s new life. He turned his vision to the Spirit Ripper. Mere feet away, it hung in the air like a piece of clothing left to twist on a drying line and stared back at Amil with its one infected eye. In silence, it seemed to beg for release. After interminable seconds, it abruptly disappeared into the thicket with nary a sound. Once relieved of the Spirit Ripper’s unsettling presence, his bewildered vision settled upon one of captured women.

  “Perhaps he desires to see you succeed as well,” she ominously said.

  Chapter 3 - In the house of Aphelianna

  Part 1. The Hall of Worship

  The mansion rose before him, mightier and larger than the vast expanse of human imagination. Aphelianna’s house welcomed Amil with a cold indifferent silence. The structure looked to have been built out of heavy brick, although the true composition of the stone undoubtedly owed its resiliency to forces far less common than sand and mortar. The sky above was bleak, and littered with smears of clouds that hung in the air in a dark undulation. Enough light was shed, however, to give him a fair view of most of the house before its uppermost details were swallowed up by the atmosphere. The mansion’s figure had been formed from strident angles of brick that ran in sharp lines around the edifice. The curve of rounded rooms added definition, and balconies held in restraint by railings of iron hung from the outer walls. They drooped like tired mouths, opened, and hung slack by the weight of sharpened teeth.

  The whole of the ground level revealed itself to be windowless. However, the floors above boasted a wide assortment of crafted glass and iron. As high as his vision could reach, Amil stared into darkened panes, as the edifice towered in the gloomy sky. Some of the windows were rendered banal by the dull shape of a square, while others would have made a spider blush given all the intricacy put into their construction. Metal veins decorated the larger windows, while a wide palette of color brightened the more involved panes, although these hues had faded with time. Some of the casements held back dusty curtains, and others were laced by woodwork, arched by design and warped by weather. Sculptures of foreign beast
s with skins of rust, and renditions of elaborately dressed people, bled from the stone walls. In silence and stillness, they reached out into the air, as though they were the guardians of the mansion’s many eyes.

  There was one oddity that troubled Amil the way no sinister creature of iron ever could. Not one window, nor any corner or fragment of glass, was cracked, broken, or opened to the air outside. It seemed an innocuous observance, but given the age of such a structure, and with the years of neglect that it had surely endured, it was this small curiosity that knotted his stomach. As unease tussled at his gut, Amil came to surmise that the fortified seals of each window did not simply keep the weather at bay and shut out unwanted light, but, rather, the perfect glass and the stones that surrounded the panes were made to ensure that nothing ever escaped.

  Though there was more to be discovered about the hardened flesh of this palace of the dead, a repetitive task of daunting proportions was Amil’s to master before he would be able to glean the finer details. A set of steps, near one mile in width, ascended to the mouth of the mansion. They were of a substance that noticeably shared it lineage with marble, and, as they rose from the ground in a sharp incline, their numbers easily topped one thousand.

  Amil set his foot upon the first step, and, as he did so, the ingredients of his memories separated and then reassembled themselves. It was a sensation that his conscious mind could not quite comprehend or properly capture, but as he climbed, his life was relived one step at a time. Due to forces unknown, but heavily felt, he was unable to tarry upon any one portion of the staircase for too long, though he wished that he could have, in some instances.

  In rapid succession, his time on earth was thrown back at him with the subtlety and reverence of a strobe light’s flash. He was given a second look at Fog Lake, and all the nights spent with the company of high school dropouts, cheap beer, and easy girls. He revisited the roasted fields of Sarasota, and could taste the salty air of the beaches of the Carolinas. Amil heard the cheers of a crowd as they packed a Major League stadium, and he could taste the food from every Thanksgiving dinner that he had eaten. He delighted in the trivial joys of everyday life’s little miracles, and hurt with the reanimation of all his bad days, bike accidents, and personal mistakes.

  But his march through the memories of Ali became a fresh hell that Amil was not prepared to traverse. Every step was like a spear thrown his way. He saw all her smiles, heard the sugary ringing of her laugh, and looked again into the blue of her eyes. He felt her touch and sensed the weight of her body as she lay next to him.

  Like an old movie, the end arrived with all the pain and fury Amil knew would come. This encore of mutual failure and tragic consequence hurt as much as the original act once had. He witnessed all their arguments and fights, and he watched himself strike Ali’s face. He stared down the bus that nearly ended his life, and saw as Ali mournfully sat at his bedside with unconditional devotion. Under the oppression of such memories, he cried during his ascent and longed to be free of these painful reminders. But as he wished for this swell of agony to stop, the taste of metal swelled in his mouth, and his ears absorbed a deafening blast. For a fleeting second, the heaviest blackness imaginable fell over him, but with one last step, he was hastened back to his senses. Before the mansion’s entrance, he stood.

  Though the building that loomed before him was awesome in its grand scope and menacing in its purpose, Amil turned his back to the mansion. From the summit of the great staircase, he looked out upon the new world he was forced to accept. His stare swept out over the pestiferous orchard. All the trees seemed to run in perfect lines, the prisoners they held lost to the limitations of the naked eye. The mass of crows and the twitching of their wings gave the tops of the trees a proper look, as they fooled the observer into believing that the branches were flush with leaves.

  Past the scene of Ali’s torment, Amil looked upon the tiny speck that doubled as Aphelianna’s fountain, and stared at the long road beyond. From this vantage point, it looked smooth, but this illusion was a passing wonderment, as Amil became befuddled by its true size. It twisted and coursed its way over the land for so long that the fence and the barren fields beyond were placed too far away for common vision to absorb. Upon the horizon, all that his eyes were permitted to see was the omnipresence of the sky as it coiled around the world in a never-changing cloak of despair.

  With nothing left to do but move on, Amil turned to the challenge before him. Double doors sealed the entrance to the house, and they stared down at him like a suspicious pair of twin divinities. They each stood one hundred feet tall, and worked in harmony to form a point at the top of the threshold’s center. Their skins were wooden, but each door was ornately dressed with an assortment of silver hardware. Though the decorations had tarnished, so much of the precious material was used that they still garnered admiration. For as beautiful as the metalwork was, the hinges that supported the doors were as formidable. Cast from the heaviest iron, they were all twice the size of a man and held in place by bolts whose weight clearly eclipsed that of the blocks that comprised the great pyramids of Egypt.

  A handle, which boasted an inlay of archaic characters that Amil was unable to read, curved out toward him like the figurehead of an ancient ship. He wrapped his clammy fingers around the object, and, with little effort required, the door opened. It swung out slowly and with a fluidic ease that made not a whisper. Nothing more than an enveloping darkness seeped out, but with no options left, he stepped inside.

  Though its source was unclear, a dim light that permitted limited vision eventually cast the entrance hall in an amber aura. At first, nothing more was illuminated by the light other than the dull stone of the walls and the surface of the floor below. The planks were milled out of a reddened wood that stretched the breadth of the hall in an uninterrupted dominance, and as Amil’s shoes continued their clack over the dusty boards, he wondered how long it truly was. The ceiling might as well have been constructed out of pure blackness itself, for the room was so high that his eyes were denied a gaze at its true proportion. As he started to fear that the hall could be as long and desolate as the road outside, a vision of the mansion’s enigmatic nature presented itself to him.

  Like a gallery torn from the nightmares of a madman, an unsettling display of artwork greeted Amil. Each wall held a row of portraits, and while none displayed overt malice, there was an undeniable chill that bled from their frozen and ghostly stares. These paintings, which caused his heart to flutter, were spaced evenly apart about every ten feet or so, and each rendition was softly illuminated by candlelight. It was a curious light. The paintings were all paired with just one candle, which rested in curved bronze fixtures at their bases, but the flames knew no expiration. The waxen sticks were short, but they never seemed to shrink. There were no pools or drips of wax to be found, and the light itself never flickered. It continued to burn, unconcerned for the laws of science and reason.

  With an outstretched hand, he was about to test the reality of the flames until he recalled his experience with the water of Aphelianna’s spring. His fingers hung before the minute fire, and he could feel its familiar warmth, but Amil knew better than to trust his senses in such a place. With a tremble, he withdrew his hand. Leaving the mystery of the candles to the realm of the unimportant, he put his sights to the subjects of the cured oils, whose recreations were shackled within thick frames of ornately bejeweled wood.

  He set his eyes upon a dapperly dressed young man who leisurely leaned against a stagecoach. He wore a top hat, and the shine of his shoes could only be compared with the brilliantly smooth complexion of his face. A sly smile peeked out from the side of his mouth, and an unlit cigarette dangled from his hand. Across the hall from this worldly gentleman, a painting of another man stood in quiet defiance to the cosmopolitan nature of the first portrait Amil studied.

  This second fellow had obviously cleaned up a bit for the mysterious painter. But for all the artistry that went into the recreation,
his usually disheveled appearance could not be completely obscured. His face was shaved, his clothes were straight, but there was something about this sharp image that didn’t fit the serious face. He sat in a wooden chair whose comforts were noticeably few. As his freshly combed auburn hair caressed his cheek, the subject intently studied an odd assortment of mechanical parts that lay upon the desk before him. He had a small gear in one hand, and he looked to be researching its origin within the volume of a massive book that lay open across his lap.

  Amil continued down the hall, and he witnessed more and more of the strange paintings. There was a man that had crafted a great bell, and a woman with a warm smile who knelt among a bed of flowers. Another young female subject was held inside a lush and beautiful atrium, her body framed by the moonlight at her back. An older man stood erect with a book tucked under his arm and a pair of scratched glasses upon his nose. There was a woman in the next frame over who stared off into the darkness of a dusk-filled forest of evergreens. Another representation was of a man whose wide eyes appeared capable of reading the thoughts of an observer. He held a large silver coin between two fingers. It was as though he were dangling the promise of an impossible proposition, as the silver of the coin shined from the oils like the brilliant glow of a full moon.

  So many portraits lined the walls that after some time, Amil simply paid them no mind. After all, he did have a task at hand, and if he took the time to study every painting, he might never reach the end of the hall. He walked on, and the rhythmic light of the candles continued to streak his advance. It became a hypnotizing sensation, but this trance would eventually be broken the way glass surrenders under the punishment of a hammer, as one painting in particular gave off a deathly chill.