Suddenly a thundering "Boom," could be heard in the distance and the ground starts to shake and crack.
"He approaches!" The spirits call. "Run!", they cry.
The ghosts scatter like roaches, retreating into the shadows. The infantile cries intensify into deafening screeches, and the ground begins to shake more violently. The spirit of an man stands in the path and beckons for us to follow him.
"Quickly! We have to go!", he shouts.
We follow him, sprinting down the stoney path.
"Hyde, can't you just disappear?", I ask.
"I'm trying!" He replies. "I can't do it! It's like something is holding me here... like I'm tethered".
"Over here," the old man shouts as he shoots into a small cave hidden within the foothills of a steep mountain.
We follow the ghost, and Lehana cups her hands over her stone necklace and blows on it gently causing its luminesce to fade. We shuffle around in the dark cave, prepared to run at a moment's notice. My heart begins to beat rapidly. "Is this fear," I start to think. The earth begins to shake with the ferocity of a medium-sized earthquake and rocks tumble from the mountain's jagged surface, crashing into the ground below. Suddenly the vibration stops, and there is silence for a moment... no crying, no rumbling earth, we have even ceased our breathing; then... without warning, we hear it, a sound so loud and so powerful that it rattles the earth we stand on and sends us to our knees.
Its voice was unlike anything I'd ever heard. It was not a symphony of words like God was known to speak with, but a distorted and horrid call of one-thousand beasts crying in agony all at once. The roar goes on for some time, shifting from a guttural scream of anguish to a ferocious growl imbued with the intensity of an unfettered rage.
Stone structures crumble and the beast's call grows distant.
"What the hell was that thing!", Kayuta shouts.
"Quiet!", the old man whispers in a hushed but stern tone. "Do you want it to come back? That thing eats ghost like a whale eats krill but I'm sure he'd have no qualms about devouring people that are still alive as well".
"It... lives here", Itoro said solemnly. "I've heard it before. While I was..."
"Dead," I say.
He nods and says, "The first time I thought it was a dream, just something my mind was conjuring up to deal with the of death, but... when it happened again, and I saw its face... its... faces, I knew..."
"Knew what?", Lehana asks.
"That I could've never thought up something so horrible," he replies.
"They say that thing has been here for as long as here has existed," the old man says. "It never stops moving; it never sleeps, never rest... it hunts us endlessly, aimlessly... tirelessly consuming soul after soul.
"Why do you run?", I ask.
"Pestilence!", Hyde says angrily and with a hint of something akin to embarrassment.
The old man's mood seems to change, and he laughs for a moment before saying, "That's a good question. After all, what do Dead men have to fear? Well... we fear what all men do. We fear the unknown. Everything that dies comes through here at one point or another, but most things do not stay. I've seen people ascend to what we can only hope is something close to heaven, and I've seen others dragged down into what we know with every fiber of our being, to be hell. The ones who linger, who are deemed unworthy of either fate, the children... the morally abstruse... we remain here, forever on the run from that thing, hoping to be saved by God".
"My teachings never mentioned such a creature," Lehana says.
"War did," I reply.
"What did he say?", she asks.
I gesture for her to hand me her necklace, and I use its light to venture out of the cave. I turn to her and say ,"He told me that this place is not just God's waiting room, it's also where he keeps his garbage and that that thing, the first beast, is the garbage disposal.".
The old man laughs again, this time hysterically. "That sounds about right.", he says. "After all the time I've spent wondering, it turns out I really am where I belong." He bursts into more hysterical, laughter falling back against the side of the cave and slumping down onto the ground. "So, I gotta' ask, what brings living people to God's dumping ground for the damned?".
"We're looking for Death," I reply.
"Death?", he asks. "Well you'll find a lot of that here, but couldn't you have also found it topside?".
Hyde interjects and says, "Very much so, but we're looking for a person named 'Death', tall guy, creepy voice, carries a scythe."
The old man sits for a moment and ponders what he'd been asked. "A lot of souls pass through here, too many for me to have met the person you seek."
" We'll never find him; we came to this horrible place for nothing!", Kayuta shouts in frustration.
The old man stands up and leaves the cave, but before he gets out of earshot, I call to him and say "Have you noticed a change in the weather here."
"Well... that's another story," he replies. He points off into the distance. At first glance, we see nothing but miles of boundless darkness, but after a while, we see a small flickering light off in the distance. As I squint harder, I realize that I am staring at lightning flickering in storm clouds.
I look at Hyde, and we share a nod. "This way" I call back as I exit the cave and begin walking towards the storm.
YOU ARE READING
Holy blight (draft 2)
Fantasy"You must thank him for this air... as you don't deserve to breathe, and in shame you walk the earth, because you don't deserve to leave. A horseman doesn't sleep because they don't deserve the peace And a horseman never dies because they don't dese...
