Once, we were two.
The first was a dirty starving boy, dying alone on a forest floor. He watched the moonlight spill down through the leaves, felt his blood pool beneath him and wondered if he should pray.
The second was a spirit of hunger and malice. An unseen devil fresh in the world, seeking the refuge of a body.
And I was one and both the same.
Twisted threads, two tales entwined.
Here is how it happened.
***
I lived in a single room with my mother and older sister, in a building with many such families. Only the poorest lived this way, although I did not realise it at the time.
Our village lay in the shadows of the Parang mountains, several days ride from the nearest city. In truth, the “city” was no more than a mining town, but to a peasant boy like me it was a metropolis.
My father was a soldier. I do not remember him, only the three of us awaiting his return. I cannot recall his voice or his face though I always wished I could. I would have my sister describe him over and over and neither of us would ever tire of it. When our mother finally told us of his death I was as confused as I was upset. How could he be dead? I had never met him. Did this mean I never would? Death was new to me then, and I do not think I really understood it.
It was so long ago. Details once crystal clear are blurred by time. There were always soldiers passing through, I remember that. We were often at church and often hungry. My sister began to work for a local farmer, not long after the news about our father. My mother was already out every night and we had no other family nearby, so it was not unusual for me to be home alone. There was no other choice. Sometimes I would wake when my mother returned. She would sit beside our bed in the candlelight, counting out pennies. Many times she had bruises. Many times she cried.
We survived, somehow, scraping a living from day to day. Then my sister fell ill. Winter was approaching and a relentless cough shook her small body. She was already frail, from the hunger and unceasing cold. We cared for her as best as we could.
The image of her lying on the bed is etched in my mind, ghostly pale skin framed by her long dark hair. She would drift in and out of consciousness, shaking and calling out in her sleep. When she woke we would try to make her drink water or eat what little we had. I remember rubbing wax on her lips as they had cracked and begun to bleed. My mother still had to work or we would starve, which was already close enough. When she was out I would sit beside my sister and talk to her, or read her one of the few books we had. I would try to find games I could play alone, or watch the soldiers pass by through the window.
My aunt Nina came from the city to help us, although she would not stay long. She was older than my mother, loud and strong. Of all my mothers family she was the only one who ever came, although I never found out why.I remember her whispering with my mother one night as I played.
“Gravida?” she said.
I did not know this word.
“Da.” my mother replied.
They were silent for a long time after that. When my mother was at work I asked my aunt why she could not stay.
“There is war,” she answered, “and I will fight in it. A woman can pull a trigger as well as a man, you know.”
“But you might get killed.”
She paused, I think, remembering my father.
“I might,” she said, “but our people can no longer live like this. If my life is all I have to give I will give it. The animals who rule now have taken everything from us and still it is not enough for them. We need to be free, and defiance is the only weapon we have left.”
She was gone before my mother returned.
I never saw her again.
A few days later my mother made me fetch the priest. My sisters breathing was failing and she would not be woken. He came to the door and I let him in. Some of our neighbours were behind him, crossing themselves and muttering prayers. He knelt by my sisters bed and read from his bible, I do not remember the passage. My mother watched him in silence from the corner of the room, tears filling her eyes. I had closed the door and stood watching, not knowing if there was something I should do. I was afraid.
The priest tried to speak to my mother but she did not look at him at first, just stared at the bed. He had put a hand on her shoulder when she suddenly laughed and met his eyes.
“I do not know why I asked you here,” her voice was sharp with pain and anger, “Can you help her? You come running to our grief like a pig to a trough. Yet you have nothing for her but words and I have heard them before. Get out. Get out and do not come back.”
As he left he paused beside me and met my gaze.
“Pray for her.” he whispered.
I was not sure if he meant my mother or my sister.
We sat beside her after that, for how many hours I do not know. One time she opened her eyes as I held her hand and cried out, “Tata!” She did not speak again.
All night I prayed for my sister but it was not enough. She died at dawn the next day, a week before her 7th birthday. Her name was Antonia.
There is a fog of grief over the following weeks. My mother became almost catatonic at times, staring in silence at the walls or her own hands. We did not go to church. She no longer left for work and there was no food. I did not know what to do. She was being sick in the morning yet told me not to worry, then to stop asking. Sometimes I would be woken by her crying in the dark.
“Nu mai.” she would say. “Nu mai.”
In time it would fade to a whisper.
“Nu mai.”
One morning she woke me and told me to get dressed.
“We are going to escape this place,” she said, then she smiled and held me tight. When I was ready she took me by the hand and we walked away from the town into the forest. She did not speak very much and I struggled to keep up. Night had fallen by the time we stopped. I had asked her many times where we were going and she had not answered.
“I love you Dorin,” she said, taking my hand, “I love you and its going to be alright. We are almost there. Here, you go on ahead.”
She gestured to a path between the trees. As I walked on she struck me over the head and left.
***
The spirit came to me as I drew my final breaths.
It recoiled from even moonlight, advancing in the shadows of the clouds. A shapeless poison in the still air between the trees.
I could feel its touch, at the edges of my awareness. I had passed through fear and panic and sadness. Too weak and wounded to move, I simply watched and waited.
It spoke.
“I have a choice for you.”
It was a lie of course. I was chosen. I did not choose.
“I can save you from death. This need not be your fate.”
Was it a dream? I thought. The pain had faded, leaving behind a numbing cold.
“I can give you life of a different kind. But you must do as I command.”
Strange, I thought, it speaks with my voice.
“You must answer me, now. Before you are beyond the veil. Do you wish to die?”
I did not wish it.
My vision dimmed and I fell away from the world to the sound of falling rain.
The spirit seized my heart.
Beneath the crescent moon I was born again.
***
I was consumed by a terrible fever for several days. When it finally broke I found my mind was clear and my wounds had healed. I was changed.
It did not take long for me to realise I no longer needed to breathe. I checked my pulse and found that while it remained it was incredibly slow, maybe only once every few minutes.
The boy I had been would have panicked, I think. But I felt almost nothing. There was a new distance from such emotion. Something had given me another life and I was beginning to learn the cost.
I lived alone in that forest for over a year, feeding on what animals I could. Insects and worms at first. A wounded bird and eggs from a nest. Rabbits and rats. I did not feel revulsion at these acts as you may have expected. I felt only the need then a blurred disassociation from the act itself. In fact, there was no taste at all until the bird, where my mouth and throat were filled with the iron tang of its hot blood.
Slowly, ever so slowly, I grew stronger. I ceased eating flesh as it left me bloated and swollen for days. Instead, I simply drank the blood as best as I could.
I tried to speak to the spirit that I carried many times. It did not answer. No matter how desperate, wounded or lonely I ever was, the demon only ever spoke when it served its own purpose.
Despite all that had happened, I still thought of myself as a boy, behind my eyes. But I was not naive to the truth of my circumstance. I knew that I was a monster. I knew I could not go home. It was no great mystery how I would be treated, or what they would do to me. No-one had wanted me even when I was human, they would hardly accept the return of the beast I had become. I wished to try, of course I did. To see my mother and tell her I was sorry. To beg her to forgive for me for my failings and take me back into her arms. Then I would catch my reflection in the water of the river, or see the blood crusted beneath my nails, and know it was hopeless.
Sunlight became harder to bear, from a mild discomfort in the earliest weeks to genuine pain after a month had passed. I began to hide in the day, only emerging at the darkest times to hunt.I had grown much stronger than I had ever been before. I felt no pain at any injury and bled little or not at all. I did not suffer from the cold or indeed any physical malady other than hunger. I slept a great deal, for days or even weeks depending on how heavily I had fed. When I could not sleep or hunt I lay in a cave or the hollow of a tree, searching my memories for anything to sustain me.
When a year had passed, the voice spoke to me again.
“These animals are no longer enough.”
In the last month the hunger had grown unbearable, never fully subsiding no matter how much I consumed (even after the feast of a wolf who had, much to his surprise, fell victim to me).
“The town has what you need.”
As I rolled in the dark, clutching my aching belly, I heard these words and knew them to be true.
I did not want to. I would have hidden in those caves until the end of time if I had been stronger. But I could not bear it. The gnawing, burning agony of the hunger. It drew me from my isolation, a little closer to the town with every night. I was tormented by the thought of eyes upon me. I could almost feel the revulsion, the hate, the fear. The thought of my mothers eyes. Yet I could not resist. Eventually the time came when I sat on the grass slope overlooking my old home. I watched them, these people I had once known, go back and forth about their lives. But now I did not think of their names, or their families. From half a mile away I saw the pulse in their veins. I could hear their hearts beat.
I can try to say, this wasn’t me. I did not want this. But if you are not your thoughts, or your actions, then what are you?
After a second night of pacing, near delirious with fever and wracked with painful spasms, the voice came to me again.
“You can die of this hunger and we shall both suffer the fires of hell, or you can feed on these people and they will surely go to heaven. They are righteous people are they not? Churchgoers? What are a few of their years compared to eternity for you? How can this be wrong?”
I could not resist any longer.
“I will choose them for you.”
***
I still dream, when the sun is high and my sleep is deepest. One afternoon I dream of music played on broken strings, in caverns beneath the sea. There is no sunlight here, no light at all. Only the endless dark inside the earth. I do not miss it, says the voice from the depths. In the end it is only light, and we are even less.
***
The rest of that night is difficult to recall. It is like trying to remember a nightmare. I have only flashes, of panicked faces and fearful screams. Blood. Always blood. I found I could not enter homes that I had not been welcomed into, but as the night was young there were still plenty of people in the streets. So I lost all control. A dozen or more were dead before I could stop myself. Men, women, children. It mattered not. I was soaked crimson from head to toe, my stomach swollen to bursting. I could hear shouts, an alarm being raised. I fled back to the forest, running until dawn before collapsing into a sleep of several weeks.
When I finally woke I scoured what memories I had, as painful as it was. Desperately trying to remember those faces. To remember if my mother had been among them. I still try, from time to time. But I never could.
The next night I turned my back to my old home and began to walk. I knew now I would be hunted and could never return.
I had become something evil. A plague upon the land.
***
There is a bond to the world, which only becomes conspicuous by it’s absence. I did not feel it in life, but now I know it is gone.
It is the touch of the earth in sunlight. Lay your hands on the grass, listen to the wind. You are part of this. It speaks to you every day whether you hear it or not.
It knows your name.
Life reached for me even as I died in that forest, but I did not heed its call.
***
Which lives are worth more? Which loves are worth more? Rich or poor, young or old. If I kill one instead of the other will my guilt be less? I asked myself this question a hundred times. A thousand. I could not answer. In the dirt they were all the same.
I haunted the world and saw the secrets. I watched others grow and change as I could not. I walked from sunset to sunrise, past towns and cities. Always I was fighting the hunger.And eventually I would succumb. I still could not enter homes uninvited but it was rarely necessary. I did not appear to age or grow in any way, so I still looked like a child. People would think me no threat until it was too late. I was too strong, too fast.
They could not escape.
Part of me was still a frightened boy, who tried to look away when I fed. To pull back from the horror of it, hiding in a quiet corner of my mind from the blood and screams. But the hands were mine. The teeth were mine.
I could not escape.
***
It became increasingly difficult to gauge the passing of time. 30 years perhaps, between my rebirth and when I first met him. My aimless wanderings had carried me out of Europe to a seemingly endless forest in the east. Leaves had begun to fall and the air turn crisp. I thought of the gold of the autumn leaves, the green grass and blue sky. There are not so many colours at night.
As morning approached my path took me alongside a small river. Around a bend, in the shelter of a heavily forested hillside, I found a house alone.
“What is this thing I see, pretending to be a boy?” A tall and heavyset man, between 50 and 60 years old, called out from the doorway. “Ah…I know your kind. What a sad sight, a child taken so.”
He stood with his arms folded and a wry smile on his face.
Your kind, he had said. He knew what I was.
“You have a hunted look about you. Well, you are welcome to sleep in the barn, if you wish it. Goodnight … or should it be day?” He turned with a smile and closed the door behind him.
The sun was rising. I was so surprised at his nonchalance I did not know what to do. It was foolish of me and careless when I look back on it, but I sensed no danger from him and the spirit did not speak. So I stayed.
I passed the day dozing in his barn, under the wary gaze of his cows. About an hour before sunset the barn door was flung open and last rays of daylight surged in, racing across the hay covered floor to the tips of my toes. I pressed myself back against the wall, desperately trying to pull away from the light. The old man stood in the doorway.
“Now, do not mistake me.” he said, “I do not pity you. I pity the child you were. I should not wish to see what remains of that boy suffer any more than is necessary. But I am not a fool. You may never enter my home, or feed on my animals. If you follow these rules, you are safe here as long as you wish it.”
He closed the door and left. I slumped down, still shaking. Did he really mean it? I had wandered for so long the thought of even a barn for longer than a night was appealing.
I decided to take the chance.
He did not return to the barn the next two nights. I hunted a few rabbits, then either slept or watched his home. On the third night I awoke as the sun went down, to the sound of his voice calling me. He sat just inside the door of his cottage, a bottle and glass beside him.
“Come, come.” he said, “You have settled in I hope? Come and lets talk. It is a lonely life for me here, and for you too I imagine.”
I did not speak much that night. In all honesty I don’t think I said a word, but he was talker enough for both of us. I admit, I was spellbound by him. He was originally from my home country (though much further to the north), and to hear my native language after decades of silence was intoxicating. When I finally worked up the courage to speak it came out as a throaty whisper.
“What is your name?” I asked. My voice sounded so strange to me. Of course, I hadn’t heard it in years.
“Ha! It is not wise to tell a demon your name.” he replied with a smile and a laugh, “Besides, there is no-one else here. Why would we need names?”
“How did you know what I was?”
“Ah, I saw someone very much like you in the far east. It is not something one easily forgets. There is an air about you, a way of movement, if you know how to look for it.”
He did not demand anything of me. He did not threaten or curse me. He did not fear me.
To have company felt like plunging into cool water after years in the desert.
We developed a routine as the weeks passed. I would hear him return from his daily travels a hour or so before sunset. He would eat and change his clothes, then be at his door with a glass and a smile. We would talk for a few hours until he had to sleep and I had to hunt.
After a month or so curiosity got the better of me and I asked him where he went in the day.
“If I was a woman they would likely call me witch. It is as good a name as any, I suppose. I travel to the local towns and villages. I help those who need it, they pay me what they can. And so they live and I live.”
Slowly I became more comfortable, both with him and myself. We shared stories from our lives. Eventually I told him how I had been changed. I knew he was interested, though he had not pressed me for it. As I spoke of my past a great shame began to fill me and I stumbled over my words. He stopped me with a raised hand.
“Do not speak of intent, or guilt, or wishes. These are fantasies and excuses. You put your life before theirs, that is all. Do not try to justify your deeds with words. These lies will eat at you, like the tide eats the coast. I saw it the first time I laid eyes on you. Every recovery begins with honesty my young friend, so start with that.”
There was no anger or judgement in his words. Just the truth as he saw it.
He taught me many things as the seasons came and went, knowledge he had learned in 50 years of traveling the world. I tried to thank him many times but he would not have it.
“No need for thanks!” he would tell me, “If only kindness in this world were treated as a duty not a gift, what a place it would be.”
Every time I thought of leaving he told me to stay. To live on wild animals and kill no humans for as long as I could. That, he said, would be thanks enough.
“It costs me nothing to show you kindness, to give hope where there was none. How could that be wrong? Who you are does not matter.”
When he tired of talk he taught me to play games like dominos and chess. The board would be set on a small table in the doorway each night as the sun fell. I would sit outside and he inside, no matter the time of year. He thought these small things might help me, distractions for my mind when I began to struggle. We must have played thousands of matches.
“Some flowers only bloom at night,” he told me over the chessboard, “some birds only sing when the sun is down. You can still find a place for yourself. Remember this.”
He wanted to help me. No matter the risk to himself, no matter how long it took.
“You cannot go back to what you were, you understand? So do not deny your past. Accept and learn and move on if you can. Or regret will be a leech growing fat on your heart.”
Every night, just a few feet apart. So close I could hear his heartbeat, feel the heat from his body and taste the scent of his sweat in the air between us. Yet if he had ever been careless and given me the chance I do not believe I would have harmed him. I had only taken animal blood for months yet the hunger was … less. Ever present, painful, but dulled. Its razor edges blunted, I think, by companionship.
“Can you always help people?” I asked him once.
“Not always. And even when I can, I sometimes I make mistakes. Just because you’re smart doesn’t mean you’re always right.”
“Are there medicines for everything?”
“No, not everything. If I can do nothing I sometimes give them a sugar pill and tell them it is medicine. It works more often than you would believe. Is this wrong? Maybe. It is less than a truth and more than a lie.”
“Do you think you could … if there was a medicine…”
He looked at me in silence, a sudden sadness in his eyes.
“No, I do not think so. I know of no cure for what ails you.”
I had thought as much, though it did not help me hide my disappointment.
“Why do you live here?” I asked him, “You are careful to never leave tracks, never bring anyone back. Are you hiding?”
He did not answer immediately, but sat deep in thought before speaking.
“You think I am a good man, perhaps? Because you see me now. In truth I am no better than you. I have blood on my hands and guilt enough for a dozen lifetimes. But I do not wish to speak of it. I have tried to grow something here from the ashes of my sin. I will only know if it was worth it the moment before my death. If my conscience is clear, I have succeeded. If not … so be it.”
I tried not to think of him dying. He had become as much family as I had ever had. I did not wish to be alone again, though I knew it was inevitable.
When his time came I saw him fall. Collapsing just inside his home, clutching at his shoulder.
I ran to him but was halted at the entrance.Our eyes only met for a moment before he closed them.
I wanted to take his hand. To tell him he was a good man who had surely earned forgiveness.
But I could not cross the threshold. And I could not find the words.
I wish I could say he looked at peace.
***
I dream of a line of men. They walk screaming into a black river, helpless against themselves. The water rises, their eyes wild as one by one they vanish beneath the surface. They had their chance, says the voice.
***
I tried to stay away from people, I did. To sleep as long as I could. To hide. But the hunger pulled me back.
I cowered in caves till the pain made me scream at the dark. I walked till I collapsed through a thousand nights but I could not escape it.
The writhing fire inside could only be quenched by one thing. And I was not strong enough to refuse.
I crossed oceans, travelled the world as if it was something I could outrun. Many tales I will not tell. I was a hopeless fool.
Wars passed, the world changed but I was the same. A parasite. A ghost. A demon. All of these and none of them. It was a loneliness like no other, I think. A life of glass. I felt as if I stood in a river, watching the waters rush past, carrying life and shaping the world as it went.
I thought often of suicide but the voice would always be there, reminding me of the eternal fire that would face me after death.
There are no gods, I realised at last, only devils and time.
***
I dream of an empty mansion in golden fields. The deserted halls grey with dust, still and silent in the starlight. The picture frames on the walls are empty. The furniture decayed. Stairs lead up beyond my sight, windows show cities and mountains of worlds other than my own. I hear the voice, echoing through the halls. They all lead here, it says. They all lead to dust.
***
A hundred years had passed since my rebirth. For the first time, I tried to live in a city. I could no longer hide in the countryside, so crowds became my safety. To be around so many people, so much blood, was maddening at first. More than once I almost lost control.
At times I stayed among the homeless, at times in the houses of victims. People are always so keen to help a lost child. With time on my side I amassed enough money and experience to live comfortably. I became proficient at hiding in plain sight. I relocated every week. I had learned to plan my movements with the greatest accuracy and to the finest detail. It was out of necessity of course. Even the faintest shaft of sunlight at dawn or dusk now instantly blistered my skin like a live flame. I had no doubt that any more than a few seconds of daylight would be fatal.
So the years passed.
And this is how she found me.
I had been sleeping in an abandoned home in the suburbs, curled on mattress in the hall away from all the windows. A voice woke me.
“Tu parles francais?”
I sprung to my feet in shock, ready to fight or flee.
“Hmm. English?”
The speaker was a woman at the far end of the hall. She leaned against the wall, relaxed, though her eyes were locked on me.
“Do you speak english?” she asked again, a trace of amusement on her face.
Run, the demons voice was urgent in my mind, get away from her now. I began to back myself towards the stairs. I could escape that way if I had to.
“A little.” I answered. “Romana.”
“Ah! Tu esti roman. Ar fi trebuit sa ghicesc.”
She hadn’t moved, just smiled.
“A child.” she said, watching me edge away, “I’ve heard rumours of you for many decades. A demon concealed in a boy, haunting the country. Fascinating.”
She was tall with dark red hair and looked 19 or 20 years old. I watched her hands and eyes, waiting for her to make a move.
“I know what you are,” she said, “because, in a way, I’m like you. I was changed for anothers purpose, two centuries ago.”
Get out of here, the demons voice again, get away from her before its too late.
“The thing you carry with you is probably telling you to run. There’s no need. See you around.”
She winked, then slipped back out of the door without a sound.
I stood there in the hallway, staring at the door, mind racing. I often think of this moment. Whether I should have left. Whether it was all worth it.
I had recently fed so the spirits sway over me was not as strong. It fought against the pull of her mystery and lost. I chose to stay.
She was true to her word. I saw her again the very next night.
As I searched the city for a new place to sleep I caught glimpses of her, following me. Then when I was alone in an alleyway I heard her voice.
“Good,” she said with a smile, “you’re still here.”
“Who are you? What do you want?”
“My name is Caoin. And I would like to help you, if I can.”
It is strange, how painful it is to remember these simple moments. Strange that I hold them so close in spite of it. Her voice pervades it all like music, tying every image together, waking me from every sleep.
“Are you a singer?” I asked her once.
She laughed.
“You could say that, I suppose.”
She was not exactly like me, of course. She was not possessed in any way, or driven by any cruel hunger. Long life had been given to her with a duty centuries earlier (the details of which she kept secret). This task carried a burden, which after a time she could no longer bear. So she fled and tried to live her own life. A decade or so ago she had heard rumour of me and sought me out, another near-immortal like her. And she had found me.
At our next meeting she brought me fresh clothes and key to a safe apartment.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked her, “Why do you want to help me?”
“Atonement, I think.”
“For what?”
“I’ve done terrible things in my time. When I realised I did not age I sank into every vice I could find. And it was not misfortune. I sought out my addictions, anything to fill the hollow. I lost everything I was, because I saw no consequence in my actions and a world arrayed against me. It took me decades to claw my way back.” her eyes bore into me as she spoke, “And this is how I will help you. Because I know the path back. I know how to live again.”
Did I believe her? I don’t know. But I wanted to.
“The spirit you carry.” she said, “Your curse. It deliberately picked the weakest it could find, didn’t it? I’m not trying to insult you, listen. It chose a helpless dying child. Someone already crushed under grief. Why did it do that?”
I expected the demons voice to rise in anger but it remained silent. It had not spoken since my first meeting with her.
“I don’t know.” I replied.
“You do. Don’t listen to it’s lies. Don’t listen to its threats. Think for yourself. Why did it choose the weakest it could find?”
“It does not matter. I cannot change it.”
“It chose someone weak because it has no real strength. Its strength is in corruption, manipulation. It controls like any other addiction, through isolation and fear. It must keep you weak. Do you see? This life it has gifted you is quite the horror, isn’t it? Relentless insatiable want.”
I knew it was true. I had always known it. But I did not wish to face it because I did not believe it would ever change.
We continued to meet every night for almost a month. I had fed only on animals and my hunger was growing.
“I know the need you feel.” she told me, “It can be fought. Beaten. I know it because I have felt it. If I live to a thousand, I’ll never see a bottle or a needle without feeling it. I’m still afraid, every day, that it will be the day I fail. I just tell myself, it can be tomorrow. It can always be tomorrow. As long as its never today.”
She was not religious but still saw value in it. I remember her reading to me from the bible, a single quote she had circled in pencil a hundred years before. “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”
“You don’t need to be a believer to take heart from those words.” she said.
You do not suffer alone. You are strong enough. You must take your chance.
Many more nights passed as we talked from sunset till sunrise.
“You thought this other life was a gift when it was offered.” she said, “Just like I did. But it takes more than it ever gives. You will never grow, never have children, never have peace. So listen to me. Trust me if you can. You must try to find a way to live, not simply exist. That is how you fight back.”
“You only offer what I cannot have.”
“Says who? That voice in your head? Listen to mine instead. I prefer the future to the past. It can be anything you like.”
I had lived twice the years of a normal man, yet I was still a frightened boy.
She stared into my eyes, alive and unafraid.
“Let me try.”
So I did.
We walked the crowded streets together, hand in hand. She showed me the art she saw in the world. The movement of the stars and the ocean at night. I listened and learned and changed. With every smile the hunger faded, with every touch the voice grew fainter. She helped me read again, a skill I had almost lost. Taught me languages.
Once after a light snow she invited me up onto the rooftops. With her tiny old stereo playing she taught me to dance, our feet leaving trails in the dust of white. We danced forever in a night. The music and her voice drowned out the things I could never have. The stars in her eyes replaced the things I could never be. She gave me what the demon within never could despite its lies. She gave me life.
It had felt like a beginning.
Then she vanished.
I heard her singing one night, her voice carried on the wind. A lament of beauty in loss.
When I searched for her the next day she was gone.
No letter left behind. No word or clue.
It is only a moment in time like any other. The blink of an eye, the beat of a heart. Yet to me it was everything.
My chance.
I think, perhaps she is happy where she is, starting afresh.
Or perhaps she fled and hides away, tormented by guilt.
Perhaps she never existed and I have finally lost my mind.
Perhaps.
What did I feel for her?
Love?
How like pain it is, in the silence.
***
I dream of a garden in the desert, ringed by crumbling walls. Behind them angels sleep, slowly dying in the sun. Feathers fall as wings begin to rot and blacken. Their breathing grows shallow. Can you hear it? They weep in their slumber, defeated by time. There is no forgiveness, says the voice, in this life or any other. I wonder. Are these the dreams of the boy, or the monster?
***
Emptiness.
I am a broken thing now. A shadow of a shadow.
I killed a young girl, the first time I have fed since Caoin left me. I was consumed and blinded by hunger and grief. Excuses. I am a weak and hateful creature.
This girl had screamed as she died. A single word, a desperate cry for help.
“Papa.”
Papa.
Tata.
Father.
Beneath a crescent moon I observe her body.
“No more.” I tremble as I speak.
Liar, says the voice.
“No. No more.”
Then you will die. We will die.
“Yes.”
You will rot and die and we shall both burn.
“Yes.”
Fool. We are one, our fates shared and we will face the fire together. You know this to be true. The flames are all that awaits us and they are eternal.
“You have taken everything from me and called it charity. I will listen no longer.”
Do not defy me. You are alone. You are not strong enough.
“Defiance is all I have left.”
***
At dawn, I will walk into the sunrise. Feel the light one final time. Perhaps I will hear my name, in the whisper of the leaves.
***
I dream of myself as the boy I was.
I play with my sister in front of our home. Our mother calls to us both, a smile on her face. My father is returning.
I see him.