And all at once, the night sky began to change. All the abysmal blacks and grays dissipated into a mass of purple and blues that spilled across the heavens. The demon still tugged adamantly at the sword though, unwilling to stop.
The new colors that filled the sky floated down to the ground and sat heavily on the earth. I was surrounded in blazing blue. Thin lines emerged and divided all the enveloping cool colors into hues and shades. Smooth fluid shapes flowed around me like how the sea holds a fish. The undulating air rippled and rolled about and took shape, forming into liquid silhouettes. The shapes coagulated further and assumed human forms. Faces appeared. Thousands swarmed around me. Every soul that all three of us had ever taken floated above the demon, furiously breathing down hot and heavy on its demented face.
Waves of torrential spirits hunted the demon and came closer and closer. The demon's red eyes shrunk into small slits of anger.
"Puppet ..." it gurgled, the sword shaking while it talked.
The demon stretched out for me, its pierced throat sliding up the blade toward the hilt, rising like a vampire from the coffin yet constrained by a stake through the neck. The slick sounds of its ascent were sickening. Its chin rose until it pressed against the handle and stopped, straining to either rip the sword free from the soil or pull the hilt through its neck. A jagged fingernail pointed at my chest as it toiled to tear into me, but the surrounding wall of souls captured him. The mass of souls congealed and concentrated into a sapphire sphere. With the demon's hungry fingers inches from my face, it was halted.
A slowly evolving blue casing slid over its body. Little twinges from the demon pushed against the azure barrier as the souls encircled it, coating the demon in a diaphanous shell. Its red eyes shrieked as a stringent blue swallowed them.
"Thank you," I heard.
The demon and its sullied black robes were encased in a thin plastic-like layer. Puffs of its breath fogged the encasing prison swarming around its face. Frantically clawing at the imprisoning blue souls, the demon bit and scratched fervently as it suffocated. Its eyes pleaded for mercy. Air vacated the demon's tiny tight cell and its movements slowed. Its nostrils stopped flaring and its breath no longer fogged against the blue coating. The demon's smothered body limply fell to the ground with the irrelevance of an acorn. But on impact, this ancient corpse fractured apart on the fault lines of its cracked skin. A cloud of dust puffed into the air and its body crumbled into the ash it should have been centuries ago.
Chapter 79
The convict simply nodded and smiled, brushed off his coat and turned away. He found Amber still writhing, though much less intensely, in the agony from the adopted memories thrust on her. Calmly he knelt by her side and stroked her long black hair, trying to comfort her, almost shooshing her like she was a baby.
My borrowed energy faded and my eyes grew heavy. I leaned against my wife's gravestone. I was happy to finally be able to sleep. But as my eyes fell, a white light rubbed them open. I squinted and saw the blurry and corpulent moon close in on me. Its radiance was tremendous. It approached and slowly became elliptical, spreading thin in the middle until it stretched tall and grew into a figure. Limbs broke away and it began to walk across the cosmos, gently gliding along to halt before me. Instinctively, I reached out for it and my hand was embraced in return. A face developed atop the figure and a smile followed. The brightness dimmed and features carved themselves out and revealed my mother's face. The face of tired perseverance. Her sweet and battered eyes gave her away.
"You're done now," she said. "You can rest."
She turned away and left me calm, pure blissful peace, but once she left, she was no longer my mother. The glowing figure walked towards the convict and Amber. Her long hair and gown, both too bright to be a color other than white, rippled in the breeze. Yet the luminosity faded, just as most things fade, and a pale bloody exit wound in her back became noticeable.
"Veronica," the convict moaned to Amber as her spasms became little more than tremors.
I couldn't help but think she knew one aspect of having the gift she so foolishly coveted.
The real Veronica approached them from behind, spilling her stark light all around. Her brilliance burned their shadows into pure black twins behind them.
"I am free now," the convict said continuing to stroke Amber ever so gently. "The demon is dead and we can live happily in eternity together. Finally together. I am here for you."
Veronica's soft hand landed on the convict's shoulder and she said, "You're a fool, Mural. My sins have been rectified, but yours persevere. It is time to confront your choices and your past, dear husband. So, for one last time, please, come with me."
The convict, once Mural, once innocent but mostly not, slowly craned his rotten head around to stare at her in awe, pausing only for a moment to peer through her light. He gazed at her flabbergasted that she would even think of posing such ludicrous notions before his newly found wife. Hadn't he found the only thing he'd ever card about and given so much to find?
Hadn't he found the truth to give his life for, hell, given his life for? And nothing, absolutely nothing, not even God, would come between him and his truth. He would never budge from his past or his instincts and would cling, with all his considerable might, to his every misgiving.
Veronica nodded ever so slightly and closed her eyes. That sad bob of such a graceful head spoke of everything wrong with trying something as impossible as holding the light. It spoke of every foolish human notion of knowing better than fate and the rare few who could actually do something about it. To try and fix it without the scope to see what such actions would do.
Then, as if the light Veronica held had reached the bottom of the wick, her glow flickered, amazingly, into a hot white flash that lit the night into day. But then, blew out. Her brilliance shed her like sand falling in an hourglass. The light repelled in thousands of crystal-like beads that gleamed in the moonlight. Every drop shattered when it hit the ground in tiny cool colored fireworks.
She stood there, before all and nothing and rained all her light down, until there were no more tears to shed. Once all the broken hopes of all her years had fallen, a breeze skimmed the ground and swirled the glowing dust together. Twisting in circles, the debris danced about and slowly turned from white to blue. The whirlwind climbed to incredible speeds, whipping loose grass into the air, until the gust rose up to her mouth. Her moans escaped in azure puffs. The blue light painted her lips like gloss. She leaned in towards him for one last kiss; so much life pulsed between those lips. The convict craned his head almost curiously, looking up at her from his crouch with such hatred that two strange notions gripped her. The first was the most awkward enduring love for him, no matter how decrepit he was. Two centuries passed and he wouldn't allow another woman beyond his wife near that dead heart of his. She was almost proud, save the fact that she was his wife and not the insolent little snot he was crooning over. God, had she ever looked or been as stupid or impudent as this dolt? The answer saddened her. Yes she most certainly had. Oh to her everlasting shame, she had.
There would be a kiss, just not the one she wished for. Not the one that would bring them back together but the one that will rip open the fissure so wide it would be impassable. She would not go where he would be.
Blue light raced from her thinly parted lips but the growing rush forced them full apart. Veronica collapsed, even falling gracefully, as her light blew to the convict in one long exhalation. It surrounded him and as she ended, Mural began.
After two centuries of death, Mural began to live. His face stitched itself together no differently then the gift had done. Skin grew over the exposed bone and muscle. Tuffs of strangled and thinned hair multiplied and thickened. The dull orbs sitting glumly in his head began to twinkle. Broken and decayed bones grew back to life. Coagulated and crusted blood on the verge of fossilization thinned and began to course through softening veins. Even his soul was whole. The convict stood, his broken and teetering hunch
straightening and he became Mural again.
But his eyes betrayed one remaining ailment was left. His heart.
Seconds after his completion, he cast aside both his old incarnations. His chest caved and he crashed to his knees, crying into his palms over a lifeless Veronica for a second time. Raising his head high, tears streaking his face, he looked around the world, unabated by rot and decay. A visible emotional change overcame him. He was no longer the convict and no longer Mural. Though he suffered the memories of both, neither one existed any longer.
Kneeling next to Veronica as she lay dying, he took her hand in his, and then gazed over to Amber, as she shook in the grips of madness, and put his left hand in hers.
In the terrible coldness of their touch, he felt the gifts final twist of torture. Life. He was filled with the warmth of it, while his only reason for living, his whole reason for any of this, lay dying in his hands.
Unable to stand the frigidity of their touch any longer he rose to his feet and dropped their hands. He looked them over with all the intention of one more loving gaze and found he was incapable of even doing that. Though his heart beat, it did so for no one.
Yet his heart was not void of all passion. It clung with the fervor of dangling for its life, to the notion of hate. That single pungent possessing emotion brimmed and pumped into his bloodstream, cursing everywhere, especially in his ears, the whispers of old.
Two separate sounds arose. One for each ear almost.
To his right whispers of purity and love, with a hint of the sting of betrayal came from what should have been his wife. Yet, as he remembered far too well, she discarded those qualities, as well as him, generations ago. He barely restrained his fist from rapping his head to pound out all sense of her.
He didn't have to think long on her though, for the other whispers came from his left and stank of the bitter betrayal. He could sense little else beyond that acridly familiar sentiment. It hurt his heart just to be near.
After only one step into what he prayed would be a clean and unhindered future, the past resurfaced in a twinkling gleam. It blared from his right, just past Veronica, in the black sludge and ashen remnants of his tormentor and brother. The sight panged with a vague memory of youth. From the first time he ever murdered.
And just like the first time, the gold twinkle catching his eye among charred remains drew him in. He reached into the mire and clutched sparkling metal. He pulled out the same gold wedding band he gave to Nathaniel so long ago. As he brought the ring to his face, a leather thong that was looped through the band fell back to the soil.
He gazed, thinking of when he first pulled it from the ashes over two hundred years ago, and then pushed the tiny band onto his pinky finger until it stopped at the first knuckle. He needed this reminder and no other.
With the foreign and deafening sound of a pulse thudding in his head and ears, he turned his back on the two women, on everything, hung his head low and walked into the darkness, steering clear from any and all light.
Chapter 80
A slow breeze united into a swirl, swaddling me into an impalpable blanket. My body fought off dying out of habit, entirely too used to healing. My neck strained to keep my head elevated. I had to look over my body. But my head grew heavy and it fell to the ground where I found the dull blue stone that was the gift. Squinting at it, I saw more blue around it than within. My eyes were drawn just beyond the insipid stone to a tranquil and extreme vastness that no mind could ever hope to contain. The space spanned everything and defied definition. All was blue and warm. It reached across the entirety of my imagination, from end to beginning and beginning to end. It was all and I felt so free.
All the meaning that I was searching for in life and death washed over me in a sudden downpour. The rush washed away my senses and all physical sensation. I felt no weight or texture. I was tied to nothing and every question or worry had no place anymore.
The open expanse was daunting, but I had the courage not to run. I stood my ground and faced what lay before me. Never again would I flee; too many people had died because of my fears. Too many.
The expanses of blue firmament rippled with sapphire souls. A blue light emerged in the distance, punching upwards like it had freed itself from underwater. Navy blue outlines formed around the upwelling cobalt and turned into figures. I was quivered with anticipation. Appearing small and fragile, three silhouettes shaped into small figurines. One left the group and waddled towards me. She was beautiful. Sweetness glistened on her lips and eternal love shone in her eyes. Her face was as pure and perfect as I remembered it, as if forced myself to remember. I hadn't forgotten a single detail.
All the encircling and comforting beauty reached out for me. I dared one last look at the gift again as it nestled neatly on the dark grass. But the gift seemed shorter somehow, more squat than before. It seemed to be sinking; diminishing into the dirt like quicksand, dropping back into where it should be.
My eyes shifted away but my gaze was detained by yellow. My note lay next to it unfolded and open to the air. Crinkled along the edges and piebald with oblong wrinkle spots that had once been my blood stains, the paper revealed nothing. It was utterly vacant of the words I had written. Vacant of my soul. It was just a clean piece of paper. Every letter was safe within me.
I looked back up and into my wife's eyes. Accepting the beautiful embrace she opened, I simply fell away from the world that treated me so badly and the world that treated me so well.
Epilogue
The earth is rushing in. Tons of dirt and multi-colored specks of darkness are caving in all around. Cracks are everywhere, splitting and growing as if black blood were drowning me. The moon is bright and shining. The rustling leaves sound like rattlesnakes; like a warning. I'm slipping away, dirt covering me from above now. I'll be buried soon.
Footsteps. Someone's coming. The moon's disappearing from me, swallowed up by the soil. I'm so alone, always alone. What a sad repetition.
Wait, I see a face. Long raven black hanging over her eyes. I can't tell which one she is. It's no matter though. She knows suffering, whichever one she is, and still comes for me. What a mordant smell greed is, enticing with its sickness, to the brash and unwary. Greed is far too subtle for the brain to recognize and too pleasing to pass up.
Her fingers dig in the dirt for me, scurrying to get a hold of the power to twist fate. To hold my light. She is close to me now. Gray bursts of her anxious breath puff into the cold night air. Her lips tremble in anticipation and her big eyes glisten sweetly.
No wonder the convict wanted her. She is exquisite in the moonlight.
"Beautiful," she whispers as she comes in closer. "Didn't know how beautiful."
Even their voices sound alike. There's a scar on her lip. That doesn't help. She holds her breath and runs her long chary fingers across me delicately.
Pulling me free from the strangling dirt, shedding pound after pound of the earth, she raises me from the black soil to her shadowy frightened face. I calm her fears by lessening the volume of the countless dying voices clawing her mind. Her lips part into a weak smile. I almost feel bad about blasting all that pain into her when we first touched. Almost.
"So you wish to make the same mistakes do you?" another strained feminine voice asks.
"Seeing their pain was not enough so you must experience it yourself?"
It is the other woman! Oh, this should be interesting...
The voice startles the woman as she digs in the dirt and almost drops me. Turning on her haunches the best she could with a leg in a partial cast, we find another raven-haired woman crawling on her belly, hurling hisses, slowly snaking along the grass as time and death catch up with her.
"Must you need Hell to understand damnation?" the woman in the grass continues. Her breaths shorten as a red stain in the back of her dress swells and seeps blood. "Have you learned nothing while pitching a fit on the ground, engrossed in just one touch of the gift's despair?
Must you expe
rience the same torture as your brother?"
"It's mine," Amber answers, and I reward her by lessening the tormenting voices. "You can't have it."
"I do not want it and neither should you. End it now," Veronica gasps and pleads as she pathetically twitches, blood now pouring from her back. "As your brother did. He died to avoid repeating the same mistakes you are about to make. He buried it and now you are digging it up. You are looking for power that is not there - it is an illusion. Fate is uncontrollable. Let it go before it controls you."
"You really are a gift," Amber says to me. I cannot help but be touched so I quell every haunting wail that rattles her head. She turns her back, unabated by Veronica's so called advice and limps away. "I can feel it...feel you."
"No!" Veronica shouted as much as her failing voice allowed. It came out horse and paltry.
"Put it back in the earth! You do not understand. It is not what you think. You will destroy everything!"
Not hearing another word of Veronica's gurgling, blood choked pleas - it is just another voice I must quiet for her, Amber stares at me lovingly, at her little lump of a gift.
Hold the Light Page 34
