Jack

Chapter Eight: Tethers

The boy's eyes flickered open and shut. Images shifted and changed, reversed and collapsed-lost their touch. Planes of reality, like the scattered pieces of a puzzle, drifted around him, lost in infinite blackness. A soaring sensation overtook him. His arms spread, as if wings in the wind, to bring him higher and higher. Suddenly, it struck. 

Reality. A haggard face peered into the sunlight. It was badly burned. Red, aching, and stiff, Jack rose from his waking dreams and walked, step by step. His memories often left him drained and wanting; hungry, perhaps, or aching to rip out the throat of a child. How ironic it was then that he had dreamed of his own juvenile conquests in the land of the living. 

The air was tinged with red, as if blood had burst into powder and taken to the sky. Darkened hues seemed tinged with a deeper, indefinable darkness, as if to suggest a midnight void beyond. An inward hiss rang in Jack's ears. He knew what it meant. He sat down warily. Suddenly, the noise of a bell sounded loudly in his head. He heard the word "understand," and from then on, all was reality, yet all was false. 

He heard the stampede of horses, he heard their panting, and he saw the flecks of spit fly from their frantic mouths. He saw riders lost in a haze of glory. The illusion flew through him as a wave, twisting and dissolving into a tender scene of a suckling babe. Its guardian of blood raised her head and smiled. Such a loving, peaceful face broke the tension in his soul; down to his core, he was suffused with light. It filled and renewed him.  

The woman, still clutching her child, walked to him and placed a small hand upon his brow. Jack felt a shiver run through him. She kissed his head and at once she vanished. Ghostly specks of dust showered in all directions, sparkling like droplets of water in the heat. A silver rainbow seemed to form in the aftermath, awe striking. 

He looked up and saw spiraling down toward him a star. It shined with the light of a thousand suns, burned with the fiery might of an inferno. It came alive, dancing and twirling effortlessly across the sky, full of joy and poise. It dropped suddenly to come to rest in his hands. 

Jack peered into its depths and saw many things. What he sought to bring to life, he did. He took the touch of a woman and gave it to himself, reveling in the sweet tickling sensation that graced his skin. He took a warrior's anguished cry and breathed deep. The horror and doom it gave him brought another shudder-this time of delight. His mind's eye burned bright, and Jack closed his eyes. He saw fire and blood. 

A man screamed desperately for his friend to get cover as cannons rained hell. The open battlefield was full of charging soldiers, fleeing cowards, and the pain of the dying. The man's companion dived to the side as a shower of dirt and debris erupted like a volcano inches from his previous hiding place. Jack drank in their terror like wine.  

They sprinted from trench to trench, hiding like frightened rabbits. Sweat and filth stained their faces. They clutched each other and whispered words of reassurance. Quickly, they embraced. A thick blanket of death hung upon the horizon. 

They gathered their weapons and charged, two men making a final stand. As one fell, the other turned back to glance upon the last of his lifelong friend; he too fell silent as the roar of a gun lay him down to rest. 

The men lay solemnly in a crater of ash and trampled grass as war waged around them. Silence poured into Jack's ears and terrible loneliness gripped his heart; he was startled by the pain. As the last man uttered a final breath, Jack could see his weak attempts to grasp his brother's hand one last time. Crystal tears broke upon his face; he screamed in defeat, cursed the world-and died.  

Jack's eyes opened and before him stood two apparitions. Arms braced around each other, their ethereal forms drifted closer to him sitting on the ground. Sentinels of mist and shadow, they towered over him. What seemed like a frosty gust of wind radiated from them; in a fraction of an instant, they were simply gone. The sweet terror and despair that flowed like honey in his mind was replaced by unease, a tension. The air was changing.