Curse: The end has only just begun

by Rich Hayden

  Perfectly suited for sorrow, and of the need to bathe in one’s own misery, a chair was set at the end of the aisle. It offered little in the way of comfort, and kissed the stained wall behind it with its splintered lips. Just wide enough for that rickety excuse of craftsmanship to assume a crooked posture, the row had become so tight that all sources of illumination strained to bleed through. Only small slivers of light crawled between the cracks of the books, but this brightness, too, was dirtied by airborne dust and microscopic filth. It seemed a forgotten place, like a lot in a cemetery whose stones have been washed clean by centuries of rain, those that lay beneath rendered as faceless as their weathered markers by the passing of the ages.

  Amil closed his eyes and faced the wall. As Aphelianna’s key pulled on his neck, it became the only feeling left in his skin, as though it tugged upon his very soul. He silently wished for the jaws of the corridor to close tightly around him. He wished to be swallowed, to be digested by oblivion, for he had already been broken down to near nothing. Like an exhausted creature as it folds and dies among its family and upon the fields that it once used to graze, Amil fell into the chair. Clobbered by sleep, he sank into the underneath of the mind.

  He truly dreamt for the first time since his earthly passing. Yes, he had been visited by the ghosts of his memories, and tormented many times by the unwillingness of the mind to rest since his arrival in the afterlife, but this was different. It was a proper dream in its nonsense, its blissful disorder and whimsical arrangement. Characters from his life, and from his death, made appearances, but they rarely played themselves in this nocturnal sonata. The thoughts of any tribulation did not follow Amil to where he had gone, and the cursed gravity which incessantly sought to drag him into obscurity finally unwound itself from his troubled mind. He floated among this illusion for a time too short. The fragile dream cracked and shattered, leaving Amil with only the sharp shards of the reality he could not escape.

  He awoke, not fully, but he was freed from the clutches of unconsciousness all the same. His perception of what existed around him was foggy, as the walls of the dream were slow to melt away. He felt the pressure of a Draymataya as she nuzzled her head onto his chest and mercifully stole away infinitesimal amounts of the torturous future that awaited the death of his Spirit. He could taste the dusty air, and the spears of light that netted his body helped to crack open his eyes. Amil began to discern the outline of a figure that stood over him, but not until the Draymataya vaulted herself from his lap like a cat spooked by the roar of thunder did he recognize it as a Waste.

  Wastes were normally quite similar to one another in their construction, but this beast wore the marks of excessive punishment. Its bubbled flesh was scorched so deeply that in places the charred bones below were made visible. What little hair it still possessed grew from the scabrous skin in raised clumps that seemed to harbor a will all their own. The matted patches pulled away from the pus fields that birthed them, almost as though they, too, feared the very sight of the Waste. The black discharge, which seeps so endlessly from every fissure of these abominable creatures, dropped in fevered abundance from the hollow eye sockets of the monster. The sight called vomit to rise in Amil’s throat, but all bodily action was frozen once he witnessed as a mass of something unknown shifted behind the vacancy of the eyes.

  Perhaps the most pestiferous example of bestial nature had made a burrow within the ruined skull, or maybe, Amil watched as the Waste’s brain broke down and melted away. But he sensed that this unusually tall Waste was just a shell, a diseased incubator employed by hell to hatch an untamable evil. The cocoon was nearly spent. It shook before him, and soon it would split asunder and purge the abysmal demon beneath, warm with bile and hungry to commit acts that a common Waste would deem deplorable. The Waste began to moan. Its teeth smacked off one another until they cracked, and the sounds of its tormented insides boiled from its wetted mouth. Amil turned away. Like a child, he hid his head in his arms. Defenseless in a ball, he refused to watch. From the broken womb of a mother empty of affection, this new beast would rupture. It had come to end Amil, and, under the darkness of his eyelids, he would give himself to its teeth.

  He heard it emerge, and with his mind’s eye, Amil witnessed its birth. With a murderous tenacity, the hellish creation housed within the Waste began to beat its way out. Fists of barbed knuckles battered the inner skin, and they tore wounds from within, that, between expulsions of septic blood, revealed images of the demonic parasite. It furiously kicked and distorted the body of its host, so much so, that Amil was sprinkled with a fresh film of the Waste’s venomous blood. It stuck to him like glue and was cold to the touch, although a burning sensation burrowed into his skin as the fluid sunk deeper into his pores.

  The Waste had been bent onto its knees, and above its groans of pain, the sharp snaps of bones as they are forced to split could be heard. The imprisoned killer screamed in impatience, and, in harmonious discord, the Waste wailed a brittle lament that acridly spoke of its assault.

  Though squeezed tightly by his hands, Amil’s ears detected the dying cries of the Waste as it thrashed upon the floor amid a tornado of violent convulsions. The chest cavity of the defeated creature swelled with a cancerous mass of something foreign, and one by one, the ribs exploded into clouds of bony shrapnel. The matricidal birth was nearly complete, and Amil couldn’t help but imagine the ill-conceived child as it rose up from the cavity, slicked in black, and adorned with the carnage of a creature nearly as deleterious as itself.

  But then there was only silence. Gasps of heavy breath followed this brief flight of sound, and, from between the gaps of his fingers, Amil peered at the scene before him. Set adrift among the oceans of horror that comprised Aphelianna’s house, and lost within the halls of imagination, Amil’s mind had been taxed of sanity. Overcome by dread, his eyes had been robbed of clear and accurate vision. There was no teratoid fiend, and the Waste had secreted nothing more than its own fluids. It did, however, lay motionless on the floor, beaten into unconsciousness by a book.

  “Thanks for your help,” a winded man sarcastically remarked.

  Amil didn’t say anything in return. He shivered in a cold sweat, but then it occurred to him, he wasn’t sweating at all. His mind had called for his skin to release water, but his body no longer listened. In that moment, Amil recalled the carillon player’s words when he relayed to Amil that his human side would eventually die off. It was strange, and it felt like a new death. Amil had noticed this about some of his friends in The Eternal City. There were those who could no longer cry, breath didn’t leave their lips, and their blood had hardened to putty. Ever stubborn, the mind still experienced all the sensations of being alive, but the body failed to act accordingly. It was a cell in which the ephemeral aura of consciousness was forever trapped.

  “Hey? You alright?” the man asked, his sarcasm replaced by concern.

  Amil’s attention was snapped back to reality, although that was a concept which had long felt loose and rather ridiculous. All the same, Amil set his vision on a slender figure that comically resembled a storybook wizard. He was white, lined with age, and had a graying beard of considerable length. He wore a robe emblazoned with the images of stars and crescent moons, and, in absurd fashion, he was topped by a pointed hat of purple that boasted the same celestial arrangement.

  “Who are you?” whispered Amil, as he was unsure of whether or not to thank the wizard.

  “I told you before, I don’t know,” he responded, in the unmistakable baritone of the centaur.

  “The centaur?”

  “Sure, why not?” he said, solemnly. “You see, I am not just the caretaker of these books, I am of these books. I can be anyone or anything I have read, but I can never be me.”

  “This is your curse,” Amil stated, as he remembered the image of the aged librarian that hung in The Hall of Worship.

  The librarian might have calmly explained his plight to Amil, but with the mention of his curse, he
flung the bloodied book to the floor. As it crashed into a shelf and busted the lowest plank, Amil saw that the large tome was bound in iron, the heavy pages riveted together. It was splayed open like a gutted animal, a smattering of dark blood on the pages. The print inside was archaic, and although the characters were nothing more than ink pressed onto paper, there was an undeniable malice that emanated from the still symbols. If for nothing else, it had made a splendid weapon.

  “Whose book...whose life is that?” asked Amil.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Are we all here?” Amil wondered aloud, as his eyes scanned the rows.

  “All the humans, all the Mortals, all the gods. Everyone. I’m in here too, but I just haven’t found myself yet. I’m not even sure if I would recognize my own life at this point. But I’m sure you feel lost,” he said, with a sneer.

  “What should I call you?” asked Amil.

  “I don’t want any name but my own. Until I find it, you don’t call me anything.”

  As the terror brought about by the quelled Waste started to soften, the invincible curiosity that nestled between every aisle eventually sank its hooks into Amil. He continued to look around, not really at anything in particular, but he started to gather the true purpose of the room.

  “You know what happened to them, don’t you?”

  “Pardon?” asked the wizard, as he removed his wrinkled hat.

  “All the mysteries. Amelia Earhart, JFK, King Tut, Jack the Ripper, all of them. You know how they ended.”

  “Umm hmm,” said the librarian with a smile.

  “Is Jimmy Hoffa really buried under Giants Stadium?” asked Amil as he chuckled.

  “Read the book!”

  “Hey, uh...what happened to the Mortals?”

  “Come on, I’ll show you,” the librarian stated as he walked away from the stilled Waste with no care if Amil followed behind.

  Through the aisles and down the rows they went. Amil shared company with a winged dwarf, a cyclops, and a man who looked to have once been a successful CEO, as the lord of the library seemed to possess little patience for each new shape that he took. Amil’s guide changed form so often that, after some time, Amil barely found interest in the immediacy with which the transformations took place. However, this erosion of awe coincided with their ascent of a wide balcony. It undulated softly, and overlooked a rather busy portion of the library.

  Amil peered out over the railing, a structure comprised of arched metallic ribs topped by a banister of bejeweled oak, and observed the activity below. Down upon the floor, Amil witnessed as a colorful assortment of the wandering dead floated up and down the rows. They fed their darkened brains with the tales of others while seated around tables or sunk into comfortable chairs. He was made to smile as a smattering of Draymataya fluttered about and assisted those in need of help. Many more simply gave the gift of companionship to the lonely, while a few of the curious beings formed groups and conversed amongst themselves in that indiscernible language of bone clacks.

  The balcony, warmed by a carpet of amber and soaked with the cozy illumination produced from the fires of lantern light, had finally curved to an end. Before Amil and his mate, who eerily resembled the Egyptian god Anubis, a barrier stood. It was a pair of doors that seemed capable of turning away an army.

  The barricades were thick, built of layers of steel, fortified by carbon, and wrapped in skins of the densest wood. They sparkled with a glut of hardware. Precious metals had been shaped, manipulated, and blended with one another until they all worked in harmony to reflect a polish so bright that it brought a squint into Amil’s eyes. But this beauteous and elaborate flesh was just a decoration, a mask that shielded the true majesty that lay within. All throughout the doors ran an intricate system of bolts and tumblers. It was a mechanism that took years to contemplate, many more to craft, and for all the pins and levers that aided in the formation of the mechanical skeleton, one truth was certain; a key was required for entry.

  “This is where you come in,” the dog-faced creature declared.

  “I have to use my key?” asked Amil, with a start.

  “Only if you want to see what became of them. Even I can’t enter without a key. It has been many years since I last visited this room, but I will not ask you to so frivolously spend a turn of your key.”

  Amil felt as a pull came through the doors. It was undeniable, and perhaps even unable to be resisted. He thought it foolish to consider using a treasured turn of his key on nothing more substantial than the whims of curiosity, yet he entertained the concept. After all, beyond those spectacular doors was the entire history of a race vanished. The beginning of life, as the incalculable multitudes once knew it, was there, as was the finality of their extinction. They were the precursors to humans, or perhaps they were humanity’s true origin. Whatever the facts may be, they were all there, waiting for Amil to discover them. He imagined that in learning of the Mortals’ end, maybe he could glean the fate of man, or, at the very least, learn of the creation of his own kind. Amil sensed an invaluable knowledge rested just beyond his grasp. It had to be revealed. Amil could not stand before the gate to such enrichment and willingly walk away. His eternity be damned, his quest be lost, and Ali, oh poor Ali, be forsaken, Amil directed his key into the slot.

  The doors parted without a squeak or squeal of complaint or strain. A light from sources undiscovered washed out from within and colored the faces of Amil and the false Anubis. The light was brilliant, but not bright. It was soft, but Amil could still feel as definite warmth came to his skin. Across the threshold, the room revealed itself to be circular, but the walls held no shelves, decoration of wood, or any other cosmetic touch. They were pure white, and not simply from the application of paint, but white like milk, stilled in mid-tumble. It seemed as if the room was alive, like it drew breath. The walls shifted like lungs, Amil knew they did, although his eyes were too slow to capture any of the movements.

  As he stepped inside this living beast, which held the tales of countless deaths as its only treasure, Amil was overcome by what he saw. A book, unlike any other, was set at the center of the room and opened to a page. The last page likely read by the room’s previous visitor. Stretching the breadth of the wide room, and extending for nearly a mile, the massive volume lay splayed out in repose. Freely, it offered up secrets which would certainly require an eternity to exhume.

  The print, a beautiful script, was impossibly small, and called for the assistance of an interpreter in order to be read. In a black ink, the words rested fresh and unblemished over pages that surely eclipsed the weight of some of earth’s heaviest machines. But this fact was of little concern, as an elaborate device that testified to the genius of Arcanus Tyme was employed.

  Using his signature gears, the heart of the mechanism rested beside the book, heavy with an assortment of the interlocking iron wheels. They were fused by rust, along with the levers once used to operate the device. All stilled, and besieged by the metallic cancer. Above this frozen engine rose the more precise pieces used to turn the gigantic pages. Rods, pivots, ball joints, and arms like elongated fingers were suspended above. They were all married together by rubber belts that slept within the grasp of silent pulleys. Two metal plates with rubber sleeves over their tips dropped down from the instrument like a buzzard’s claw. Carefully, they pinched the top corner of a page. Starved of oil, they, too, exhibited signs of rust around their movable parts, and as the forgotten machine hovered deathly still overhead, it resembled a specter that is doomed to forever haunt what others have left behind.

  Amil slowly walked to the edge of the book with the shadow of a jackal’s face at his back. He ran his fingers across the paper and pressed his tips over the unreadable characters. He opened his hands and laid his palms flat upon the inside of the book. With his eyes closed to the words he couldn’t understand of a book he could never finish, Amil stood over the Everything and the Oblivion of an entire existence. As he floated in silence, in blind
ness, and bathed in that mysterious light, Amil absorbed only nothingness from the book.

  “I...I need a book,” he began. “Ali Jett,” said Amil, with the sensation of sorrow wound around him.

  In the same room where he rediscovered himself, Amil sat with the book of Ali tucked under his arm. He was still, entirely motionless at times, as he wrestled with the task of opening the chronicle. He heard voices from the floor below, and the flapping of a Draymataya’s wings echoed up the stairs. Silence nestled with him for long periods of time and bouts of dreamless sleep came to call for Amil. But his fear of what could not be undone served only to delay the inevitable. He would open the book. He knew that a day would arrive when he could no longer hide from the revelation of Ali’s final moments. Amil continued to sit, perhaps for weeks, in that room, sitting upon that couch, unable to open that book of a life now ended.

  Then came a time when Amil decided resolutely that he could not bear to read of Ali’s death. Even if her end came in the most peaceful of fashions, he cared not to know of it. Her death was done, what did it matter? What was there for him to gain from such a woeful exercise? With a defeated sigh, Amil removed a candle from the fixture above him and delivered its kiss to the tome in his hands. He pressed his lips to the name printed on the leather spine, and said goodbye. The pages ignited, and the contents within were soon swallowed by flames. Once the book was fully ablaze, Amil cast it softly down the stairs, disinterested in the consequences of his actions.

  Down the spiral he finally shuffled, and, to his surprise, he was greeted at the bottom. There stood a small boy, his complexion so dark that his birthplace was undeniably rooted in the heart of Africa. He was dressed in clothing no more splendid than spent rags, and wore only one shoe. The muzzle of a dirty gun rested against the skin of his boney shoulder, and, judging from the rest of his frame, the child was dangerously malnourished. Amil knew straight away that the librarian stood before him, but the reason to assume the life of a subject as tragic as that of a child soldier was one that Amil simply could not understand.