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Prague, 22 September 1994
Dear silent friend,
Once again I will force you to bear the tremulous handwriting of this pathetic old man.
Time has yellowed my fingers and your pages in equal measure. But I know you will not complain in finding yourself soiled by my memories once again, after such a long time, after the hiatus of decades of life, spent far away from the ancient leather of your cover. And I hope it did not bother you to try the tickling of my pen again. Not more than three spots of water and ten sheets before this, you still were curiously waiting for the hand of a fourteen-year-old, full of dreams and watercolours.
As I write, the mist rises from Moldova and lingers among the ancient gothic spires, guardians of forgotten secrets, while a pale September sun, as a master of alchemy, transmutes in gold water and heavens.
There is this little kestrel who, for a few days, has been picking on the attic's glass at dusk, while I perform my little preparatory rituals before everything happens like every night. The graceful winged evening’s maid urges me to once again cast my gaze on the hundred towers city, but these eyes will no longer be able to patiently stand on the surface of the mystery.
I discovered a terrible law that links the green colour, the fifth chord and the heat. I lost the joy of living. Power scares me. I will write no more. Such were your feelings, Gustavo and I still remember your trembling voice when you confided in me, the last time we met, before the great war swallowed everything and everyone, forcing us to interrupt our occultist studies. Only now that the layers of reality have finally crumbled before my eyes, like a sedimentary stone on the sides of a primordial river, I can grasp the true meaning of your words. The anxious joy of discovery, mixed with the ancestral vertigo of sidereal abysses, has overwhelmed me and continues to overwhelm me every night I leave.
And, just as in the layers of rock are the remains of creatures lost in time, even these levels of reality are not devoid of surprises .. and encounters. By now, I'm sure they saw me, but I cannot help but go back. Of all, I know that the faceless child already waits for me, every time closer, just beyond the threshold. He craves my warmth, my vibration and, this time, I do not know if I will manage to continue playing the game of deceiving him, while I persevere to the end. Certainly, I cannot draw back right now that my human life ends and, at the same time, I’m experimenting one, a hundred, a thousand lives.
Forgive me, dear diary, for having forced you to bear my poor ravings again. Perhaps, we’ll never meet again. The kestrel flew towards the old city. It's time to leave.
Gustav shivered as he read these words. Dust layered the deep brown of the mahogany desk. His friend's embittered bones lay stretched out prostrate upon this alter of knowledge, skeletal fingers reaching for the ink well, skull looking outwards in eternal yearning. As in life so in death.
Gustav flicked through the wilting pages of his friend's diary musing on the fourteen-year-old words and watercolours of his master's ledger.
Even as a lad he was taking flights of the mind. reaching outside of consciousness to the great unknown. Gustav shivered and hastily bundled a selection of his masters books into his army issue knapsack and fled from that place, from that grinning skull.
He walked on across thick slick fields of mud which sucked at his boots like leaches as his feet ached from the endless march. Diffuse silver light shone from a crescent moon, partially veiled by the perpetual heavy mist of this place. Slow melodious thumps played a funeral dirge behind his eyes, muffled strangely by that same viscous mist. Wearying he slowed, and felt the mud pulling at his legs as the scene crystallized before him. Figures coalesced from the shifting mist and the muffled thumps intensified to a cacophony of booming explosions. Soldiers fought hand to hand, in the swirling mist of no man's land. He watched as a silver beacon of light erupted from the face of the nearest man, bayonet blade rising triumphant in a halo of blood as his countenance was decimated. One eye left in the mess of face, winked in a spasmodic death twitch. Gustav stood frozen, he sank down in the mud slowly as the dance of death continued all around him. One man was gouging another's eyes with thick sausage fingers, meaty arms grappling, muscles tightening as he squeezed gurgling life from the smaller man. Wild eyed spirits of yesteryear inhabited both the killing and dying as mud fountained skywards in rhythmic explosions of shells.
Before his eyes a cavalcade of horror crystallized from the surrounding mist. Daemons danced among the corpses, Drudes and Alp tore chunks of flesh from the dying, lapping from the blood streams of the gutted before dancing to the music of their screams. Incubi and succubi stalked the plains, taking the forms of dear loved ones, enticing soldiers with kisses before wrapping them in passionate embrace. He watched as he sank down to his waist. Uncountable forms of diabolical spirit roved and reaved across the battlefield. A shrieking eight foot woman with parchment skin tight across death's head face, inhaled souls escaping from the mortal coil. Her hands twitching in strained orgasm as she inhaled each misty ethereal chain. At her waist a belt of dismembered baby's heads swung, cracked flesh patterned black blue with bruises. Sallow fruit picked of pith and stone by the crows that danced around her. His guts wrenched as he vomited and sunk further in the mud to his chest. Arms engulfed with sucking filth as the mist parted and a figure strode toward him. Eerie silence fell as a child approached head in hands as if weeping. He felt an overwhelming desire to comfort this child, so out of place. He sunk to his neck now, straining upwards for the light as the child stood above him. It removed its hands. A flat desert of flesh where eyes should be, as a high keening sent icy drips of terror through him. The faceless child dived toward him as he sunk finally beneath the surface of the killing fields.
An electric pulse seemed to thrust Gustav into consciousness, almost like his brain was rebelling against the nightmare. It seemed far too real as he steadied his breath, breathing slow and deep. He shivered all over, sweat clinging skin to sheets. Katia stirred beside him, he looked down at her as she sighed fitfully in Prague's humid summer swoon. Her delicate chin framed a perfectly wicked smile as she pursed her lips in a smirk at some poor sap in her dream. That smile made him weak all over, she could crumble his foundations with a raised eyebrow or twist his arteries to pump raging blood with a flick of her hair. Long brown hair shimmered in the dim light and he reached out to feel its satin softness with the side of his fingers. Her eyelids flickered as he studied her and the blood started to rise unbidden in a multitude of places.
He pushed the sheets away and rose from the bed, stumbling through the wide double doors, suddenly aware of how parched he felt. Cold marble soothed him through the soles of his feet and the heavy velvet drapes stirred in the cool night breeze. He stood there a moment drinking in the night before filling a tall glass from the tap and quaffing the water in one long gulp. He filled it again as he stared at the quivering ruffles of the drapes. They seemed to undulate like snakes in a field of wheat, the movement calming in its entirety, but with a sinister undercurrent. Suddenly, a fluttering movement caught the corner of his eye and ice slinked a rivulet down his spine as he turned to see his masters bound leather diary open on the cabinet. Pages flickered in the breeze as his heart slowed back to its normal pace. I must have left it there last night before bed. Yes, I am becoming delirious in this heat, I must have left it open. He walked over to the book to put it back in the bag and was caught like a fly in the web. An old wrinkled face grimaced up from the pages, a face that had not been there before. His master's arms were outstretched, beckoning or pleading? He did not know which. He shook his head and screwed his eyes and when his vision cleared the page was empty.
This was the place where it had all began! His masters loft apartment seemed just as he had left it. Dust lined the book shelves in the entrance hall as he walked up the spiral stairs leading to the study and the skeleton of his dear departed friend. He really must contact the police but first it was time to finish this once and for all. This daemon that had inhabited his friend’s dreams and now had its sights set on him didn't know what it had tangled with. Gustav took a deep breath as he opened the doors to the study, the book he needed must be in there somewhere!
Ancient oak swung fitfully on creaking hinges as the doors opened. Dim light traced a beam from the skylight in the dust-laden air. Motes of speckled white formed a curtain from nothing as the sun peaked from behind the clouds before vanishing in hasty retreat. It seemed the Sun had seen something it would rather not. Gustav paced slowly down the aisle of book shelves which led to the center of the study and the mahogany desk. The skeleton lay just as he had left it. Splayed out on the deep darkness of polished wood. Empty sockets staring off into distances unknown. He let out a long slow breath as he pulled the diary from his knapsack. That night time night-terror rose unbidden in his mind, an old wrinkled face grimaced up from the pages. He was sure of it now, that creature diabolical, daemon of Hades, had somehow trapped his master in those pages. It was up to him to find a way to reverse the summoning. He didn't know if it would bring his master back but it had to be done.
He placed the diary on the edge of the desk and turned to the shelves that he knew so well. Somewhere among those weathered tomes there must be a book strange to his eyes. He studied the spines.
The True Art of Alchemy
Gilding the Spirit for Flight
The Rite Of Exorcism
He needed something more specific than any of these books. A niggling thought at the back of his mind was telling him that this needed a more esoteric approach. Wherever this daemon came from, the standard Exorcism just wasn't going to cut it.
A gentle tap-tapping echoed through the study, his head snapped to the side as the echoes faded and he stared at the desk. Had a bony hand moved closer to the diary? He stood frozen, seeming to sink as in that filthy field of mud so far away. Faces of dead friends flew before his mind’s eye, so many dead friends! Soldiers, men of brave endeavour they had called them at the commendation ceremony. Men of the 6th, men of brave endeavour! He shivered in an icy draft as the hairs on the back of his hands stood up on end.
A loud tap-tapping. He looked to the skylight, a kestrel tapped frantically at the glass. Glistening bird eyes struck his heart like a nail as wings arched buffeting the glass and the beak increased the intensity of the tapping. Suddenly and without knowing why he knew this bird, he saw it soaring out over the battlefield, ethereal wings widening in yellow sky, shielding him as he ran from mustard gas. He lurched out of his stupor, almost unable to move with the ice in the air. He looked around for the long wooden pole to open the skylight, to let his master’s spirit guide return home.
"WHAT IS THIS SOLDIER? STILL FUMBLING FOR YOUR RIFFLE I SEE !"
The loud familiar voice of his drill Sargent barked at him as the air seemed to almost solidify in the intensity of the chill. He turned his head slowly losing the use of his arms which flapped limp to his sides as the skeleton turned its head toward him and an infinitesimal light glimmered in those dead sockets. The voice rasped out again, different this time, slick as flesh parted by blade, brittle as fingernails raked down stale wood.
"YOU ARE MINE. YOUR SOUL IS IN MY HANDS. I COLLECT YOU, AS I DID YOUR MASTER WHEN THE WINGS OF ANGELS LEFT HIM BEREFT OF THEIR DIVINE ARMAMENT."
The bones disintegrated into a yellow dust, falling into themselves, mingling with the motes of dust dancing in the air. It moved in a sickening spiral as Gustav felt himself sinking.
Sinking again in blood laced fields of death, inhabited by the daemons of war.
The pages of the diary flicked open in the mounting cacophony of spiraling dust, pages pin-wheeling in a frenzy. Rust colored now, the living dust pulsed with a red light before diving toward his open mouth, stretched impossibly wide in a silent scream from paralyzed vocal-cords.
Gustav saw the faceless child diving into him as he sunk finally beneath the surface of the killing fields.
The pages of the diary flickered to rest in the stillness, settling open. An old wrinkled face grimaced up from one of the pages, while a young man stared mournfully out from a darkened field of wraith-like soldiers, utter hopelessness glinting in the grey of his eyes.
A young man walked into the room looking around as a smile widened on his face. Velvet drapes stirred in the warm breeze from the open window.
"Where have you been Gustav?" A querulous voice asked as a beautiful chestnut haired woman bounded up to him wrapping her arms around his neck before burying her head in his chest. Infinitesimal lights glimmered in dead eyes.
"KATIA."
The end.
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