Curse: The end has only just begun

by Rich Hayden

  “You cannot destroy what has already happened,” the deep voice announced.

  Amil looked at the small hand, and there among the calloused fingers, sat a fresh binding of the book of Ali Jett. It had reappeared, unconcerned with Amil’s wishes, as what it contained was not his to immolate. Amil reached out and took the offering. It felt heavy to him, almost as though a portion of his guilt had been mixed into the ink. He thought to place it back on the shelf, but it would always be there, waiting for him. He had once asked for it, and so he was forever bound to hold up his end of the arrangement. The book would haunt him until its desire to be read had been sated, Amil came to understand. He had pledged to read of Ali, and to appease this spirit, an exorcism of discovery was required. Perhaps the book was the earthly ghost of Ali herself. One condition, however, remained unchanged. The book was not rewritten. That was something which could never be. With a heart heavy, cold from inaction and broken from the absence of love, Amil ascended the stairs behind him.

  He knew full well of the earthly life of Ali, and Amil was painfully aware of the existence she presently suffered, strung up among the Spirit Ripper’s menagerie of persecution. For this knowledge, the pages that resided at the book’s beginning and at its incomplete conclusion were left unread. Instead, he thumbed to the center of the modest volume, where he found, oddly as it may have felt, the end of Ali.

  In the years that followed the suicide of her love, Ali withdrew deep within her own lachrymosity, like a flower left to die among the vacant stretch of a barren field. She indulged a pattern of working less and drinking more. In the nascence of her decline, she spent most of her time at home. Alone, she hosted the sullen company of the quiet stillness brought on by the desolation that Amil had left her. But boredom was soon an ingredient found within her cocktails, and as Ali spent less time inside the chill of her own bed, her responsibilities and obligations were cast into the realm of afterthoughts.

  Her bills mounted, as jobs were steadily lost and only casually replaced by those which paid progressively less. She shunned the customary behaviors of adulthood, and the tolerance for an individual who struggles with addiction was an ability exhausted by her friends and family alike. Feeling barred from happiness, Ali shut out anyone who had the audacity to offer her help. She was forced to move time and again into apartments of smaller and more squalid description as landlords lost their patience with her disinterest in paying rent. Eventually, she bounced herself out of her comfort zone and drifted away from those who knew her best. The lure of low-income housing dragged Ali away with promises of excess money left over to spend on alcohol.

  She moved into a sector of Pittsburgh that proud city dwellers and travel agents hesitate to acknowledge. The neighborhood was a moribund cluster of building that should have been condemned years before. The rows of houses were shanties, patched together with cheap materials and streaked in spray paint. Owing to disrepair, the dwellings became incubators for mold and insect larva. A thin street of cracked asphalt supported her crumbling building, and doubled as the work space for drug peddlers and opportunistic muggers. Her neighbors were comprised of the likes of low-lifes and junkies. Their infectious and virulent diseases permeated the streets and called to the most bereft areas of Ali’s soul.

  No living creature should be made to pay for hell, for such a place holds no privileges, but that’s what Ali had done. Her apartment was a ragged efficiency, which held rooms of yellowed walls and stained carpets. A shower ravaged by mildew crouched down a narrow hall, and a toilet that rattled the pipes with every flush sat above cracked tile. Her cell, as it were, functioned with the same purpose as a hole carved into the ground. It was a space to hide, and to pass out from the battery of chemicals.

  She hadn’t lived there for long, but quickly, this cavity became polluted with empty bottles, cigarette butts, and the occasional jug of mouthwash, a product only employed when the alcohol ran out. In keeping with the traditions of the sick, Ali routinely failed to pay the meager cost required to keep her from the ranks of the homeless. This dilemma was soon resolved by Ali’s realization that her landlord, a disgusting polyp upon the orifice of humanity, was wont to overlook her lack of funds in exchange for a blow job.

  She attracted the attention of those who had deserted the possibility of salvation long ago. She made friends with people that most would consider enemies, and it wasn’t long before Ali reawakened her fondness for drugs. At times, she had sex out of boredom, especially when her TV misbehaved, but with greater regularity, Ali offered what was left of her body to those who could keep her intoxicated.

  Over a period of rank summer months that were colored blacker than any tribulation of her sordid youth, Ali dispatched all shreds of her former self in a cycle of fucking, drugging, and misery. The smell of vomit swam through her teeth, and the trails left behind by tears were coursed over so often that to hide their paths was impossible. She had hit the bottom, but rather than rise and look up from the depths of the abyss that she had dug with Amil’s shovel, Ali simply laid there.

  She had not planned to end her life. No note was written, and Ali didn’t weigh the consequences of what may come of her actions. But even in her bleary state of perpetual inebriation, she knew that what had been done carried the power to be the catalyst for the end of her anguish. Partially unaware of their contents, Ali washed back a plethora of pills with as much alcohol as she could possibly suck down before the invincible hammers of sleep beat her unconscious.

  Ali had wanted to die, yet she feared it. She feared the grip of death so stridently that, as she thought of Amil, Ali couldn’t fathom the determination required to see such an act through. But as she lay on the floor, nearly naked, and bruised from a lack of nutrients, she felt like the end was already with her. In pain brought about by self-abuse and sickness, she rolled onto her side, and the booze in her otherwise empty stomach sloshed with her lethargic action. Grime and small bits of trash from the floor stuck to the skin of her back as the humid day cooked her apartment. As she sensed the life as it spilled from her, Ali extended a thin arm out away from her, and left it to hover in the air. Mere inches above the carpet that her unfocused eyes could no longer see, Ali keep her arm suspended for as long as she could, and pretended that she was no longer alone. Before death took her, and long before a hot week of undiscovered decomposition ate at her body, she thought of Amil. In death, she stole a small comfort in her final minutes as she pictured him beside her.

  With a slam of the book, Amil screamed. It was a scream of distilled madness. A scream only the truly haunted can make, and, although the pain which caused it would never recede, the only thing left for Amil to do was to wail.

  In the end, Ali had thought only of Amil. The gravity of her devotion had pulverized Amil, until all that remained was the stain of his former selfishness, and the smear of shame that he had become. No matter his state, all she had ever needed was him. Amil finally realized that by taking his own life, he had not freed Ali, as was his intention. He had damned her. Amil enwrapped her in a curse as mighty as any that he had witnessed within Aphelianna’s house. There was no one left to blame, for it was his own hand that had bound Ali as a plaything for what remained of Saint Calvino.

  Amil passed through the main hall of the great library, and was bitten by unease as he began to notice the quiet all around him. The towering rows were vacant of those in search of books. The Draymataya were nowhere to be seen. Even the sounds of their wings as they flapped or the chattering of their teeth was totally absent. The furniture was deserted, the tables unoccupied, and all remnants of former activity had gone away. There were no books left out, the desks held no cups or warm lanterns. It was as though the massive room had been scrubbed clean, meticulously organized, and then hastily abandoned.

  Amil came to face a wall as it drew near. He followed the intricate patterns on the surface as they swam blackly up toward the cool touch of the copper ceiling. He felt like a speck. Like a drop of the ink onc
e used to decorate the crimson wall. Only then, the ink was all dry, and to locate a single drop was impossible, for they all had blended together and became one. That’s how Amil felt, like the most insignificant splash of the darkest color. He was another inconsequential soul, corrupted, and lost among the great tapestry of Aphelianna’s masterful annihilation.

  “It’s time for you to go,” suggested a voice that Amil knew as the nameless librarian.

  “Yes it is,” answered Amil. “Where did everyone go?”

  “This is no business of theirs. This was your path to find, and the choice to continue on is yours alone to make.”

  Amil turned slowly, the way the moon does as it shies away from the earth in apogee. There before him was the image of a Waste. It was ugly, and bathed in a putrid stench. Boils irritated its already ruined skin, and the bones of its feet poked through the singed flesh as though crying out for escape. The mid-section was horribly thin, and as Amil watched, the ghosts of internal organs churned in failure as the beast scratched scabs from its neck with the bloodied stumps of its gnarled fingers.

  “Why a Waste?” asked Amil, bitterly.

  “I am you, as you will be, if you are to fail.”

  Amil almost collapsed. He became instantly dizzy and his gut restlessly bubbled, as though a rash bout of influenza suddenly sprang to life within him.

  “Why are you doing this?” questioned Amil, as he looked away in nausea.

  “To test you,” said the Waste. It produced a book and delicately set it on the table next to him.

  It didn’t look all that spectacular. Its binding was ordinary, and although the print on the cover was cryptic, it didn’t appear fantastic. It was quite plain, and were it not for the rusted metal clamps that banded the book shut, he would never have given its appearance further consideration. But as it lay there in stillness, Amil knew it called to him. Like the last of the sirens, it cried out. It desperately pined for him every bit as much as he had longed for its contents. He listened to its silent voice, and as Amil gazed deep into the dark recesses of the locks, he knew that he stood before the last door to Isadora.

  “I want to go on. It’s all I have left,” Amil said resolutely, as he drew his key.

  “Even if it means this?”

  “I don’t care anymore. I have greater desire just to see Ali smile one more time than I have fear of becoming a Waste. I just want this over with,” he admitted.

  Amil slid his key into the first slot and turned the lock. With a squeal, it released the thin band from its teeth and left it to dangle in the air, finally sprung from the bondage it had long suffered. His hand nervously passed over the dark line left behind from the clamp, and as his fingers drifted over the faded cover, Amil guided his key into the second lock. He snapped it open, but before moving on to the third of the five restraints, Amil froze with trepidation, as he couldn’t recall how many twists his cracked key still possessed.

  “She will be guarded. You know that, don’t you?” asked the steady Waste during Amil’s prolonged hesitation.

  He felt endlessly foolish, but the possibility that Isadora would be protected was something that Amil had simply not considered. How could he have been so ignorant? How could he have been so absolutely vacuous to think that Isadora would be left alone, to the whims of the one who would eventually find her?

  Amil sunk his key into the cavity of the third lock, but this was an action that only served to rest his hand. His mind had been halted, and, as Amil wandered around inside himself, it was going to require a prolonged stay at the dark intersection of consequence and introspection before he found the will to move forward.

  “By what?” Amil asked, finally, as his eyes shook in their sockets as they peered into the locks.

  “Krykus, the God of Battle.”

  “What can I do?”

  “I’m not sure. But as I understand it, Krykus avoided being touched by Aphelianna and her curses. It was Isadora herself that enslaved the god. You see, Isadora was never pleased with Krykus, as he destroyed life. He indiscriminately ruined that which she had given life, and although Isadora stood in stark opposition to her sister, Isadora always respected Aphelianna. She understood the duty of her sister, and she felt a bond with her that ran much deeper than blood. But Krykus, on the other hand, was truly despised by both sisters.”

  “Both of them?” asked Amil, a bit perplexed.

  “Yes. I assume that you view Aphelianna as evil, and perhaps now, you are correct. But in times past, Krykus was the one and only god who was purely evil. He took from Isadora and laid the bodies of innocents at the feet of her sister. Maybe that’s why Aphelianna left him alone, almost as though she knew that her sister would have the final say in the fate of Krykus.”

  “What did she do to him?” questioned Amil, as he felt fearful of Isadora for the first time.

  “Before Isadora succumbed to her curse of eternal sleep, she imprisoned Krykus in the room with her. He can only escape if the book is opened, so if you decide to proceed, you must do so quickly. But to his curse, it was quite simple. It has been just her and he since the curses took hold. Krykus has spent an eternity with his lust for blood unfulfilled, and, though he did not agree to guard her, I imagine that the first soul to enter into Isadora’s chamber will have to contend with his insatiable desire for combat. I tremble to think of how enraged he has become after all this time. A true madman he must now be,” explained the rotting Waste.

  Amil absorbed the chilling tale, and in the end, it mattered not. During his quest, he had been afraid for so long that to instill a deeper fear within him was near impossible. As his fingers shook and his grip tightened like a vice as it is forced shut, Amil broke the locks of the remaining three bands.

  “Do you think she’ll forgive me?” asked Amil, with his head down and his hand upon the cover.

  “She? You mean Ali?”

  Amil nodded in silence.

  “You should sincerely hope that she never recovers her memories. But I can assure you of this, if you are the one who frees Ali from the Spirit Ripper and takes her away from that cursed orchard, she will love you forever.”

  Amil unfolded the book to page one and the bindings creaked like old bones as they are forced to move after ages of motionlessness. Up from the pages sprang an ephemeral door. It was built of nothing more substantial than vapors of a vibrant coloring, and, true to the nature of such fluids, the door shifted with the soft tumbling of the air within the library. It emanated warmth, and, as the differing hues bled a new complexion onto Amil’s face, he was overcome, as he stood upon the threshold to God.

  “Hurry! Go through, or close the book!” commanded the librarian.

  Amil said nothing in return, but he wrapped his fingers around the spectral knob all the same. As it shifted inside his palm like putty that refuses to set, the object barely spoke to Amil’s sense of touch. He placed his fingers upon the surface of the door, and though they sunk partway through the outer skin, the door cracked open. A sliver of light cut its way out, and as the ray widened with the swing of the door, the illumination enveloped and absorbed him, until no reminder of Amil Young remained in the library.

  Chapter 4 - Revelations

  The door evaporated as it eased shut. But a feeling of being trapped was not created by the barrier’s dissipation, nor was any other sensation of dread or anxiety. Amil thought of Krykus, but he declined to fear him or the harm that he might have brought, for in the company of God, there is no room for fright. He undoubtedly stood in the chamber of Isadora, and though he could not see her, Amil knew she was there. It was an intangible enlightenment he felt, as if every piece of the universe were as familiar to him as his own thoughts. He experienced a great euphoria, not a high caused by chemicals, but rather, he was elevated in all respects as he shared space with the creator.

  The advancement of life was Isadora’s charge, and, here in this room, untouched by the icy fingers of her sister, Isadora had triumphed. The ground below wa
s lush with moss that grew thick and prismatic in its appearance. Small pools dotted the land, and within their blue and watery embraces, plants of a fantastic description were held. Healthy stalks of green supported wide leaves, and as they unfurled themselves from the bosom of the water, flowers did emerge. They came in explosions of color, and like silent fireworks, they offered their beauty to the air.

  Some were comprised of thin petals, while others took the shape of a cone. Many of the flowers spread themselves wide, like a cocoon which longs to nourish, and more still towered high into the sky, wishing, it seemed, to kiss the stars. Color was a vision that nearly overwhelmed Amil, and as he glanced upon flowers that he could see through, he knew better than to assume that they were simply transparent. They were instead colored by hues that his eyes were not divine enough to observe.

  Ivy and ground cover swam among the ocean of flora as it gave abundant birth to the rise of vines. Up from that rolling sea of nature, large vines crawled into the branches of the trees, but their presence therein was pure. They stole nothing of substance from the trees. In elaborate coils, the vines became the home of fresh shoots, which produced an assortment of velvety treasures. Far above him, on these ropes of creation, fruit dangled in the gentle breeze, and Amil watched as the blossoms opened up to drink of the misty air.

  The trees, the pillars of this towering masterwork of life, were like gods themselves. They were thick at their trunks, and grew knotted and bumpy, but not from disease or old age, but rather, from all the life held within their wooden skins. With sleek bark that was shaded with every variant of cream, the giants explored the upper reaches of the atmosphere with complex networks of branches. Draped in vines and flush with leaves whose veins sparkled with an iridescence of a slow-moving magnificence, the trees nearly obscured the beautiful paradox above.