HAUNTED: Chapter Seven, SUPERMAN

CONTINUED BY FM

Charlie’s face shattered. Arctic wind struck my face, its ice crystals shattering to molecules. I could feel every last one of the crystals, every last one, individual, miraculously different in shape. Sharp little Exacto blades that broke against me and disintegrated across my cheeks, my lips, my open eyes, bringing no pain.

I have never known pain.

I dove, the furnace in my chest pulling me earthward, slave to my will. I dropped, a thousand times faster than gravity’s paltry pull could have begged for.

The clouds parted.  My flight leveled off. A living rocket, I took it all in with the pleasure of a boy at play:

A virgin landscape rolled to meet me, a blur to human eyes, but not to mine. I could see everything, every pellet of snow, every defiant ridge of ice. Nothing could escape my vision. As easily as I could see a frozen mountain loom in my path, I could see through it, I could see eternity.

The snow and ice and stone shattered against my fists. Not wavering in my path, unimpeded, I drilled through the mountain  as effortlessly as  a bullet shot through a wedding cake.

HAUNTED

I saw them. Emerging from where the wall meets the ceiling. It was late at night in the hotel room. Was I awake?

Thick, like black oil, their robes spreading as they came outwards and down. As if rising up out of still water. A lake under a moonless sky or the dead calm from a windless night.

I was awake, watching, as this darkness expanded and grew hungrily, moving out and then down towards me. I lay on the bed, conscious that the heaviness had come, the injection of something evil, smothering my breath, my movement, everything. Paralysis. They were moving closer. No scream would be heard.

Even though inside I could feel every instinct curdle in horror, I had no power. I had nothing but my eyes to see them come from the walls. There were four, without faces, in robes and they had come for me.

Part One of Round Robin by GidgetWidget

CONTINUED BY SIMON SCOTLAND

They moved in complete silence, no sound of footsteps as they approached my unmoving body. Then they leaned towards me and whispered from the darkness, a quiet sound but one that shook me to the very depths of my soul, ”the keys shall remain lost” I could not tell if the words were spoken out loud. Then they embraced me into the darkness.

I died.

Life…returned…slowly…painfully

I breathed once more.

I opened my eyes as my lungs screamed for air. I felt a sheet,  covering me from head to toe. It reminded me of silk, a face from my past flickered across my memory, I smiled for the briefest of moments. I tried to remove the sheet but as I tried to stretch my arms, I found that I could not. I seemed to be in some kind of box.

My mind struggled to come to terms with what exactly was going on. Thoughts of the dark figures flashed into my head, but I had no time to contemplate about who they could be and what their words meant. Before I could answer those questions, I had to deal with the matter of my own survival. All I needed to know at this moment in time was; I’m in a box and I need to get out.

But that wasn’t all. The box (a coffin?) was being moved.

THE GRIM REAPER and THE SYMBOL

The Reaper is present, but do not fear.

There is a Tree of Life, but encased within a Coffin. We can only live within the space given to us. Life begins from the roots and ends at the Key to the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Bell will toll when the time comes to depart.

And the Reaper shall come for us all at the end.

THESE ARE SEVEN IMAGES IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

Key

Death

Saint

Virgin

Gate

Rope

Coffin

THEY ADDED TWO MORE:

The Tree of Life

The Crown

Seven Tragedians were commissioned by The Crown to each write the story behind the first seven images. Each story was lost in the burning of the monastary, 15th Century AD.

All, except for two, smuggled out by a woman (or so the story goes) and her story is an oral one known only to her descendants.

After the First World War, a scroll was found in the Convent rubble, nearly destroyed. Dating back to the early 15th century, it reads:

I see the Keys, both are needed to unlock the mind from its shackles of what we want to see and allowing us to see what is.

~

The Keys are of light and dark, perfectly balanced. The Coffin is merely the resceptacle for our bodies as they slowly turn to dust. But the Tree of Life keeps our spirit alive in those who live on.

The only scholar who recorded a modern history of the images, never published his findings. Some said he was crazy, others feared his work and in the end, neither survived.

In a letter he sent to his sister on December 21, 1980 all he wrote was, “I know Her. She is Death. Unlike him, she only taketh away.”

He was found December 22, a rope around his neck, hanging from the bridge over the little river outside his hometown. In his pocket, on a napkin, this was written: