About a certain return

Part 12

Right now you are engulfed by his world, you are beside Gramon, you are gramon, you are gramon...

– Don't listen to those Voices! They are temptations, my child. Temptation is like a feline. Soft, mild and attractive. Try to pet it and it got you. This how the Sin takes shape. Nothing will be as it was before and changing your habits is a sacrilege. You are offending your Goddess, my child! Listen to my advice, reject the Voices! was telling me one of those unbearable creatures!

He was closely following the stretcher and nobody was driving him away when others joined us, on both sides, pilgrims with large dark hoods from which only the eyes or the eye sockets were glowing...

"You are in a crucial moment. Remind you The Truth Way and look for it! Choose the Truth Way! If all the footpaths start in the same way, you pick up the right one!"

"It's not correct", said another. "The Truth is right but the way to it is winding. You will have to pass through the maze. Only at its end you might be able to see something."

"You cheaters! The truth is of no use to you, young man! What's the Truth? A word. Nobody knows its meaning. Not the truth is in question, the truth is important only for a logical demonstration. It's all about The World of The Holy Spirits, young man. You must go towards sainthood. There you will live in Truth, not only talk about it...", "Nonsense, how can you believe in something you don't feel?" "Oh but you feel it! But do not know.", "Tell me only one thing, only one up of our existence Truth...!", "What's the use of it? There's nothing to be done for you. You are already lost."

They were chatting, the disgusting ones...

Right now you are trapped in Gramon's world, you are a gramon, you are... "Get lost!" I shouted, but I don't think they have been impressed by my cry, by my shout's sufferance.

"Spurn the Voices! Do not accept any of them, my son".

The ghostly pilgrims vanished and their image was replaced by the well-wishing smile of father Orian – I knew him since childhood. "Oh, he looks so well like father Daniel! But, what is he doing here? The souls corrupter..."

– You thought your adviser has left you? Now you need your teacher, you lost pupil of my school! I will protect you on your way to the Temple...

He had a high, acute voice as opposed to the Voices I heard before, but he had special calming warmth.

– Help me father, to be able to open my mouth and communicate!

Strange, but father Orian didn't understand me.

– This night you will enter the Temple as you wished. Why did you listen to a demon's voice? You've been ungrateful to me, your teacher, despising the education I offered you, mistrusting your destiny that you might have followed peacefully, with the will of the Benevolent Lady.

We were still crossing that square, the crowd was surrounding us and I could already see The Great Arch towards the Temple's pyramid. A lot of madmen built themselves temples. I never understood this freedom of perpetuating the existence of a superhuman hero that lives in an exemplary story, a real fairy-tale. In the Paradox! "Someone else cannot do it", it's the name of a successful story with countless versions, amazingly daring...

On top, the pyramid's tip was joined by a huge chimney glowing in a light that engulfed everything in a hallucinating blue and turned the pilgrims into repulsive apparitions. I think they all had ritual masks.

Oh, they wrapped me around the mouth with a cloth! I strongly mumbled to make myself heard by father Orian.

– I cannot, he said, I'm not allowed to. It's part of the ritual before the Resurrection. I certainly told you about this Great Mystery of Life and Death Night, the Darkness' Highest Sacrifice Night for the Resurrection of the Light... It's you that will have the unknown glory to be the Lord's House.

I didn't see clearly at all: The old man went mad or it's no longer him?

In front of the Great Arch, the human row stumbled, they put me down, and all those who intended to enter the temple prostrated themselves that is knocked their heads to the ground.

– We salute you, Great Arch of the Great Temple, Passage to The World of Truth, beyond Life, Matrix of the Holy Wisdom! We salute you Great Warned of the Great Temple's Great Arch, Right Fist of the Holy Justice! We salute you Great Gate of the Great Temple, Shield of the Holy Truth and you Locker of The Great Temple's Great Gate, Hand of the Good Fate, said in one voice and all together the disgusting creatures. I had the strange feeling that they kept on vanishing and reappearing, that they were with me but I was, in fact, alone...

– I recognized you, grumbled in boredom a rattled voice. The Ceremony of the Resurrection will soon begin. Come on!

Where did father Orian's well-wishing beard vanish? He was worshiping another God. Or was he struck by the plague? Suddenly, his image among the crowd of harmed people seemed doubtful to me.

They cut the strings that attached me to the stretcher and I stood up with difficulty as my arms were still tied up to my body. I was, at least I thought so, huge. I was touching the door frame with my head. I looked around, I was inside a quadrangular tunnel only a bit higher that a normal man's height, as I considered myself to be. It was built on a slope and looked rather long. From the gate's shadow appeared, pitch black, as I've recognised them, the two masks that threw me in the raving. They hugged me and one of the masks asked me in a friendly way: Are you ready to give up your rights as a free spirit and join Lord Gramon's Order?

They were really cheeky! Whoever took my "rights" into account? And what wry rights had I? Gramon? Who was he? The demon? I answered: "No!" What can they do to me?! So I said: no.

– I am ready!

"I didn't say that, It's not me that... It's not me who said this!" Why should I be so determined to gains some new masters? All sort of wretches dream themselves to be gods in this world. Die you buffalos! Even faith dies, everything! Sacrifices, Rituals, Mystery...mumbo-jumbo! Physiological disorder, mania, repression, changing personality...

I could hear old songs, see graphical signs on the walls, strangepaintings....Humans with animal heads, men in evening suits or naked, all sortsof sings around them like a crooked scribbling...All the people that I knew andbelonged to different civilisations, were using the same language, and the samewriting...And If I changed the signs? "ibn antis"...Did I got back to my childhood?I was taken to the end of the tunnel. A white-yellowish light pointed theentrance into another world, from which the sound of music was coming...it wasn'ta dancing music but only echoes, litany... "Ouu-rr Looord haas Ree-su-rre-cted"! Andsuddenly I had this vision that the drawn images were trying to get out oftheir shape. They wanted to transmit something to me but I couldn't understandanything... only sounds of consonants, whistled from the throat..."Ibn ast", theywere telling me, they were threatening me... I started to growl on my turn. Asmy mouth was tied I seemed to utter the same sounds... "Do I have anything incommon with these chaps? Do they have their mouths tide as myself?" I thought Ispotted Mamma Culina! With a hat on her head, she seemed young, very young... Shegot out one hand from the stone wall and stretched it towards me, she almostgrabbed me and she had such claws! "No, no..." No, what? It started a lament overand a terrifying tension was pressing me but we got out into a lit chamber andall the mourning stopped. What a relief! In front of me, dressed in sparklingclothes, radiating with joy was the dariels' Father in person. I liked so muchthe Father!