by Rich Hayden
“Who were they, these people on the walls?” asked Amil.
“Fools, mostly. Here they would come, and with them they brought offerings of gold and silver. Down the well their money went, along with their hopes and prayers. They scribbled their wants and needs upon the walls, all in an effort to impress and assure me of their sincerity. Although, to be quite honest, I cared not for their vandalism,” the man said.
“You’re a god?”
“Oh no, certainly not. I was, and believe me, there is quite a difference. I was called Duke Vinzenz, the God of Fortune! This room was a part of my holy property here in The House of the Divine. It was one of the very few that was open to the common person, and here they would come to ask me for things. Oh, the requests I got were many. Some were most trivial, while others were predictably extravagant, and more still were so grand that not even a god could fulfill such a demand.”
“Did you ever answer their prayers?” asked Amil with trepidation, as he sensed a malevolent nature emanate from Duke Vinzenz.
“I certainly did, and not for the pictures they painted or for the money they cast into my well, but for the conviction that they displayed. And at other times, I enjoyed granting the meekest of prayers and ignoring the ones that mattered most. Perhaps that was a bit wicked of me. But to use divine power in a predictable manner or pattern wouldn’t be very much fun, now would it?”
“I guess not,” Amil offered, with heavy breath.
“Do not attempt to humor me, you cannot know of these things.”
Amil stiffened. He felt abject vulnerability, as though he were nothing more than the muddy ground as it lays trampled under the hooves of raging beasts.
“But,” continued the Duke, with a load clap of his hands, and a change in direction finding his speech, “For as divine as I may have been, and for as insignificant as you now are, I must say, I have missed the exchange of a proper conversation.”
Being called insignificant stung, and ordinarily, he probably would have countered the remark with a shower of expletives, but there was something about the way in which Duke Vinzenz said it that stopped Amil. It wasn’t so much of an insult as it was the truth, and although he didn’t understand the real implications of the remark, he felt that he could learn a great deal from the resurrected god.
“How did you get here?” asked Amil.
“Ah, now there is a question worth answering! You see, this house was once the home of all the gods in the known world. Long before the fall, we lived here and presided over the common people. We each had our own roles and powers, and certain behaviors were expected of us from the other gods. We worked in conjunction, and formed a symbiotic circle that forever preserved our way of life. But there is always greed and unrest, yes? Someone always wants a little more, harbors a jealousy so heavy it could drag the whole world into oblivion. You look like a bright man, and so I’ll continue this little exchange for a price. I’ll give you one guess to tell me who is responsible for all the ruin you have found thus far,” he taunted, with one finger pointed directly at Amil.
“Aphelianna,” was the whispered response.
“Aphelianna! Correct you are. Of course, the Goddess of the Dead. I imagine she has grown more and more unpleasant as time has slipped away. She put me here, you know? Cursed me to lie forever still under the weight of my own silver. Bereft of the one thing that I always cherished most, the excitement of verbal exchange.”
“I met a woman. She stared into this forest of stone and asked me if I had seen her son. I saw her likeness in an art gallery, I saw yours too. Was she a god?”
“Oh wonderful! You can string together more than four or five words, and here, I was growing concerned for the health of our conversation. But, to your question. Yes, she was a god. Her name was Katrina, and she was the Goddess of Nature. Her son held quite the fancy for Aphelianna. A pity for us all, his feelings would prove to be,” said Vinzenz.
“Who was he, before he changed?”
“Changed? Now that sounds exciting! I suppose Aphelianna has done something terrible to him? Something that probably makes my own curse appear pleasant by comparison, no doubt?”
“Yeah, he’s become-”
“No! Don’t tell me, not yet. First allow me to tell you of Saint Calvino. He was the God of Love. He could form a union so strong between any two people that not even another god could break their blessing. But imagine his distress when the object of his affections showed little interest in suave Saint Calvino. He was angered, oh so bitterly angered, and all his rage spilled out and onto Aphelianna one day.”
“Was he in the gallery too?” asked Amil.
“We all were. Our dignified likenesses were hung proudly above eternal candles as a reminder to the common person of our supremacy. His was a fine rendition. The artist accurately captured his boyish handsomeness, and properly conveyed the debonair nature that Saint Calvino carried so well.”
Amil thought of the dapper young man who leaned easily against a stagecoach. He felt his knees tremble, and suffered a sensation of nausea as he thought of the Spirit Ripper. They were one in the same. There was no use in attempting to confirm this fact with Duke Vinzenz, Amil’s gut told him the ugly truth.
“He’s a monster,” muttered Amil.
“A monster you say? Well what may be a monster to you could very well be kin of another. By what definition do you call him a monster?” challenged Vinzenz.
“He’s hideous. He’s diseased and deformed. He captures women as they flee through the orchard and he ties them to the trees. I saw them. Some are nailed up, too, and most of them are naked. He tortures them, and the crows...” Amil’s words tailed off, as he couldn’t hold back his anguish as he thought of Ali.
“Torture you say. Hmm, by what means? Does he touch them, force intercourse, that sort of thing?”
“I don’t think so,” said Amil, through a cough. “I don’t think he can. He’s genderless, it seems. Just his being there is torture enough. I met a woman who had been hanging there for hundreds of years.”
“Oh, what a pity. Do you know how long I’ve slept upon that bench?”
“What did he do, to Aphelianna, I mean?” asked Amil.
“He raped her. Ah, now there’s a snappy little attention getter, no? You see, as he matured, our dear Calvino had quite an appetite for the ladies. But there was something about Aphelianna that captivated him so. He did indeed love her truly, as his now ripely insane mother surely disclosed to you, but Aphelianna didn’t share his affection. It vexed him, ate at him, that as the God of Love, he could not charm the one he truly desired.”
“Is he the cause of all this? All this suffering?” asked Amil, as he struggled to properly articulate the miserable severity of the new world that he had found.
“Oh, certainly not. Aphelianna had already committed herself to treason. I like to believe that the act of Saint Calvino just served to hasten the emergence of her fury. And now, as you have cast a dull light on his curse, I find it hysterically ironic.”
“What?” Amil asked, with a pinch of impatience.
“Well, isn’t it obvious? He feasted on women, and now he is condemned to simply look, but never to touch. He may collect as many presents as he can, but not one does he have the power to open. Aphelianna really outdid herself when she cursed Calvino.”
“What do you mean, cursed him? And cursed you?”
“You can’t really kill a god. Even Aphelianna doesn’t possess such power, but you can silence them forever. A war with one was a war with all, and so the Goddess of Death rained down a litany of curses over the lot of us,” explained Vinzenz.
“Aphelianna, she told me that she was cursed, that she longed to be free of it.”
The mild amusement that Duke Vinzenz wore across his face turned to absolute ecstasy with this last revelation. For he looked upon Amil as not merely a man lost and wandering about the land of the dead, but a soul bound to the impossible conditions of Aphelianna’s charge.
“She gav
e you a key, didn’t she?” Vinzenz asked slowly, with a wide smile.
“She told me that if I freed her from her curse, that I could save Ali.”
“Oh, how utterly delightful! A love that transcends the grave has compelled you to make a pact with the most monstrous creation ever to traverse this or any other world. She wants you to find Isadora, and you may, but I must attempt to dissuade you,” Vinzenz warned, with a wag of his finger.
“Why? So I can leave Ali as a pet for that fucking thing? So I can wither into one of those fucking Wastes?”
“Spunk! Fire! This is getting most interesting.”
“Alright, enough! You said you owed me, now tell me what is going on, and tell me where to find Isadora!” said Amil, as he grew tired of Vinzenz’s cryptic explanations.
“Perhaps I have already repaid your charity. I have informed you of more than most mortals will ever know. What more do you suggest that I do for you?”
“Just tell me where to find Isadora!”
“You have already asked so many questions, and I have answered them all. Like all the rest, you should have thought more clearly, chosen your words more carefully, and then maybe you would already have what you desire,” scolded Vinzenz.
“Please, just answer me one more question,” Amil begged.
“Well, alright,” Vinzenz agreed, with a grin. “Ask away.”
“Where can I find Isadora?”
“Behind that door,” he stated plainly, and pointed at the door behind him.
The Duke revealed the location of Isadora’s chamber, and Amil rushed to the other side of the room and thrust his key into place. He gave the knob a twist, but it remained locked, and the door offered no give to his fevered tugs.
“It won’t open!” he shouted.
“Just give it another try, it’s a rusty old thing, you understand. Just give that magical little key another twist and I’m sure the presence of Isadora will be open to you.”
“Still nothing. It still won’t fucking open!” said Amil in a panic as he spent another use of his key.
“Yes it will, try again,” Vinzenz commanded.
For the third time, his instrument was guided into the socket, and once again, the door remained locked. He withdrew it and slipped the object back under his shirt. With a rage in his eyes that could rival the wretchedness of a thousand nightmares, Amil turned to Vinzenz, and stared down the disingenuous God of Fortune.
“It won’t fucking open,” he barked, between clenched teeth.
“Oh yes, terribly sorry, I forgot to mention that. Oh, of course! I’m a bit embarrassed really. I usually have a memory like an iron trap, as they say.”
“What? What is it?”
“That door will open, as easy as any other, but it requires no less than one hundred turns to break its locks.”
“You tricked me, bastard!”
“Of course I tricked you, you gullible fool. I don’t want you to find Isadora. You may believe that this is a most wretched world, and by all estimations you would be quite correct. However, give Aphelianna what she wants, and you will gain the true meaning of hell. You’re on your own, now,” Vinzenz offered in an uncharacteristic whisper as he slipped away through a door.
Amil banged his fists upon the door and kicked wildly at the ancient wood with the ferocity of a wild mustang, but all his efforts were in vain. It wasn’t going to open, that was a plain reality to absorb, although the acceptance of such a fact was a trial that nearly shattered Amil. Isadora waited on the other side, but he was forced to step away and place his depleted faith in another path.
For a moment, he collapsed into a pile of human defeat and ran his hands over his face. Disheartened, he tried to make sense of all that had happened. It was a torturous exercise. For as he thought of Vinzenz, Calvino, and all of the other tiny fragments of a long saga that he had been given, Amil suffered a sensation of absolute confusion. It was as though he were wrapped up within a riddle so vast that to escape it was only to die.
Upon rising from the floor, he dragged his body across the room and tried every door. All but the one that supposedly led to the chamber of Isadora remained unlocked, even the one which had brought him to The Wishing Well in the first place. But rather than explore another sinister portion of Aphelianna’s house, Amil walked back to the well and knelt before its base.
As his arms wrapped around the brick, he did something that he had scarcely done as a resident of the earth, he prayed. His prayer was not offered to an earthly god, or to any divinity that he had crossed so far. No, his plea was whispered only to Ali. He begged her forgiveness and wished for life as it once had been. He pledged his eternal love, and vowed to free her of her torments. He would spring this insipid trap, and he and Ali would forgo the tethers of death.
Born from the depths of his pain, Amil screamed into the void, and not until the echoes of his perverse amen had dissipated, did he leave the well. As he stepped away from the dead cavity, Amil spat upon the ground, chose the closest door to his position, and crossed over.
Part 4. The Dead Atrium
In keeping with the order of chaos within Aphelianna’s mansion, another elaborate arrangement of decay and hopelessness greeted Amil. He found himself walking into the heart of a massive atrium, and the chill of silence that filled the room caused him to shiver. With his neck craned, he saw that glazed glass curved around the perimeter of the ceiling. This translucent ocean shifted around the decoration of fine metalwork, which aided in the support of a central section of windows. High above, and up against this convex sea of glass and painted steel, three oval windows were recessed. They were as holes, three vacant eyes that stared down upon the emaciated and ravaged remains of the room’s forgotten glory.
Born from a spiral stairway that crawled up a far wall like ivy, a balcony wrapped its way around the upper portion of the chamber. In sorrowful disrepair, it sagged under the advanced crumble of the pillars which supported it. Damage was prevalent upon the tired walkway. Whatever railing the balcony once sported, an assuredly splendid ornamentation indeed, had long ago rotted away and was lost. The columns themselves, elaborate newels that were once draped in an arrangement of crafted iron and silks, all stood chipped, and in great need of restoration. The skeletal steel, which gave the pillars their strength, lay exposed from the many cracks and lack of masonry. The metal bones of the pillars were heavily rusted, and in crimson trails, the dried paths of their tears streaked what little stone was left around them.
On each side of Amil, wide stone archways had been built into the walls. The arcades were placed evenly apart, and extended along each side of the atrium. Around their borders, ornate reliefs of woodwork were affixed. These decorations, once employed to welcome a traveler in, hung like warnings, and told of the malice which hides in the black beyond. Like the balcony elevated overhead, the brickwork of the passages fared no better in their present state. The stained wood, which before was so elegant a decoration, hung in rot. Within the vacant mouths of each shallow arcade, along with spider webs and a generous film of grime, one door each was housed. But this was a discovery that was not immediately clear to Amil, due to the remains of a growth once unbridled.
It seemed that before an abundance of nothingness strangled the life out of the atrium, a burst of unchecked and malignant growth had taken place. The browned and brittle remnants of a colossal vine could be seen everywhere within the large hall, and the stench of its advanced decomposition filled the dusty air. The vine entwined itself with nearly everything in sight. The many stems and shoots, which once had so brazenly clung to the intricate steel adornments, lay meek and feckless upon the rusted surfaces.
As Amil walked among the carcass of the vine, he was taken aback at the resemblance that the plant shared with Virginia creeper. He could still make out the definition of the tendrils, and most of the jagged leaflets were grouped in the common assortment of five. Little thought was dedicated to his familiarity with the vine. Surprise was something t
hat was becoming harder to come by, and this felt like a cruel coincidence. It made him think briefly of home, and what home had come to mean. But there was no joy in his recollections, for all his earthly memories felt like pins.
Amil cut a wide orbit around the room as he walked over the floor. It appeared to be made of shale, horribly cracked and buckled upwards from strain. He stopped to observe a statue. Loosely draped by the arms of the ever-present vine, it rested upon a bench that lay tucked in a corner of the room. The dull gray sculpture was of a woman, and as Amil began to peel the layers of dead flora from her, a sickening realization was his to swallow. Strange though it felt, he gleaned a sensation of life from inside the statue as he stroked her concrete skin. With this act, he was made to remember another portrait. He had only seen her once, in a picture, framed by moonlight and placed within an enchanted scene of lushness and beauty.
Only a mild quiver of existence was left to jerk inside the stony figure, but its presence was undeniable. It was of the faintest nature. The rhythm in which it flowed was pained and labored, but it pervaded, and assured Amil that this woman was once much more than chiseled rock. He looked into her gray eyes and viewed her curse. She was alive, as much alive as he, and fully aware, of this he was sure. For all this time, she had been made to watch the slow ruin of the atrium and devolve into a cold inanimateness along with it.
Amil truly didn’t understand his own motions in that moment, but he picked up a piece of torn silk that lay nearby, and draped it over her shoulders. Almost as though to relieve her of the cold that permanently dwelled in her cement skin. He then leaned in toward the girl and rested his head against hers. He wasn’t sure what purpose this might serve, but he sensed that she may take a small comfort from his gesture. And in a moment of naked honesty, Amil felt as though he, too, needed a warm embrace. No matter how diluted this version of sensitivity would prove to be, it was something he had to feel.
For as real as the life within her motionless body felt, Amil expected to sense her compassion, or at least her reaction to his touch. Instead, he only absorbed a certain feeling of dread. She made her warning felt, but it was taken slowly and with foolish curiosity. It was all that she offered to him, and it was as clear as her body was rigid. She was speaking to him, not in words, but with sensation. For proper language hadn’t the tongue to describe the horrors she felt. It was a scream, a blaring shriek that made no sound, but it pummeled through Amil all the same, commanding him to flee.
