The next morning awoken to a gray and lifeless sky, steady drain of desert drizzle running against the window and down the walls of the fortress. A swollen head and Giles nowhere in sight, the door propped open slightly and peering at Jesse there from the shadows The Gray-Eyed Cat, eyes seeming like that of an oracles, seeing some unknown fortune in this doomed soul. Jesse blinks and The Cat slinks off, leaving Jesse there amongst the wreckage of liquor and love lonesome and with the flickers of dull autumn light playing there against the canvas of his skin.

Jesse peers out the window for many long minutes, casting a glance back to his pistol as it lays by the fireplace and tucking it away in its holster. He rubs at his eyes and stands shakily, walks out and amongst the fortress walls seeming so lonesome here in the aftermath. Phantoms seeming to sing and dance amongst the dull gray rains, a sort of cobwebbed despair riding there amongst the lines of eve and enceinte, a veil of loneliness impenetrable. To the courtyard where he halts with his hand on a pillar of wet adobe, feeling the wetness there beneath his fingers and looking out amongst the red mud and washouts of blood still running there from the bunkhouse. Feathered vultures of deathly blacks and whites line up there on the battlements, watching him with omen seeing golden eyes. He closes his eyes and listens to the rains fall down and feels the droplets against his hair, runs a hand up to where his bandages have peeled off in soaking strips. He finds the skin there tender but healed and so he strips the remainders of the linen off, feeling with his fingers the mottled skin.

He walks to the center of the courtyard, looks down into a puddle of water tinged with blood there amongst the mud. Seeing there his own reflection, frankenform deformity on one side and fair enough on the other side, eyes still ringed red from crying, the rain running in rivulets and streams down his pale skin. In his eyes there the essence of a killer, when he looks into their pools of gray he finds he recognizes them not, instead thinking them to seem to belong to his father. He blinks and the thought is gone and he walks off in a daze into the main keep of pale-red adobe, through its ironwood doors on which are engraved lions and roses, dancing devils and desert shrikes with their pray impaled on the thorns of saguaros. He stumbles through the halls with his arms wrapped around his filthy rags like a misfortunate phantom, down forgotten and cobwebbed hallways in which scorpions watch him from their perches with arachnid eyes and coiled stingers, down into the back reaches of the fortress where the lightless hallways lead into the red rock of the desert itself.

He hears faintly echoing down the hallway, ringing about the adobe like the howls of a forgotten banshee, the sounds of a man crying. He halts, looking down into the winding darkness and rocking on his feet.

“Hello?” Jesse calls. The sobbing halts, and an eerie silence falls over the wells of the fortress. Soon a new sound comes echoing through the walls, a sound of laughter jittering and insane.

“Who are ye there?” The Crier calls, voice rendered ghostly and duplicating through its echo into a sound a hundred fold its origin, warping into senseless warbles only vaguely human.

“Who are you?” Jesse calls, beginning to walk steadily down the shadowed hallway, winding down further and further into the earth. Dripping from the rough hewn eves rusty colored springwater.

“I ain’t nobody.” The Crier calls, falling into another chorus of laughter. Another, stranger laughter following him, primal and high pitched.

“That ain’t an answer.”

“Come and see me and I’ll tell ye.” Jesse soon finds himself in a corridor so narrow he has to duck his shoulders and shift sideways to fit through it, feeling the jagged rock brush his skin and hair, and just as soon as it begins the corridor opens into a circular vaulted chamber enormous in scale and in the eves of which swoop golden bats, glittering in the light streaming through a hole in the ceiling like forlorn fireflies.

All along the blood colored walls of this chamber engraved strange and ornate carvings, depictions of astral bodies and their paths, far off planets and constellations and solar systems adorning the walls coupled with more earthly illustrations of beasts truthful and mythical, great leviathans of land and sea with hydralike heads peering out of embroidered gemstone eyes of sapphire and purest white diamond. At the far end of the chamber a sweeping illustration of The Dark Tower, standing a stark and oily blackstone instead of red to match the rest of the chamber. In the center of the chamber what looks a well without its pump, a stone circle engraved on which is a scene of The Devil dancing with pitchfork and fiddle in hand. Covering it a grate of red gunmetal rusted and ancient looking.

“You stuck in there?” Jesse asks, pulling his gun and clicking down the hammer. The sound echoing through the chamber and distorting into a sound much like The Criers laughter.

“Locked away in here.” The Crier says. Jesse walks towards the well, creeping along with his boots splashing against the wetted redstone. He comes to its edge and peers in, gun at his side, seeing there two sets of eyes glinting down in the darkness. One set pale blue and the other set yellow, tiny, and decidedly inhuman. The Inhuman grins and displays there a set of white simian teeth, the teeth of a captive monkey.

“And should I keep ye there?” Jesse asks. The Crier laughs flashing a row of crooked brown teeth.

“Well, that’s up to you. I’ve been down in this oubliette long enough that I wouldn’t mind a few more years. It’s homely, it is.” The walls of the oubliette rhodophyted, covered with red algae of a gorey aspect like dripping intestines.

“It don’t look homely.”

“Maybe not to you, knight.”

“And how do you know I’m a knight?”

“I know a lot of things. I heard the shooting last night.” The Prisoner coughs.

“And the crying.” He says. Jesse pulls his gun and aims it down at The Prisoner.

“Maybe I ought to keep you in here. Or just kill ye where you stand.” The Prisoner cackles.

“But if you free me, I think ye’ll find I have much to say.”

“And does any of it matter to us?”

“Not to them, but to you.” Jesse brings his gun back and holsters it, leans down and pulls off the heavy alloy grate with a heaving gesture and flipping it off onto the redstone. When he’s finished The Prisoner hoots and The Monkey follows, cackling in primates tongue. The Monkey leaps up onto the walls, using the algae as a sort of rope, and climbs up to near the top of the oubliette. When it does it sticks out one long and hairy arm up to Jesse, who takes his hand after a hesitation. The Monkey reaches his other arm down and The Prisoner takes it and is then heaved up by the surprisingly strong creature, the three pulling each other a strange hominid chain up until they all stand in the chamber and Jesse finally gets a good look at the two prisoners.

They stand there a decrepit mockery of a carnival, the man dressed in filthy harlequins clothes of red and white checkerboard, face painted in colors to match and atop his head a coxcomb hat from which dangle three faded brass liliripes, the monkey of brown fur and capuchins face with a series of tiny golden rings across it’s slender fingers. The Fool himself has the long beard of captivity grown, black and white and utterly filthy, swarming with flies and crusted with what Jesse hopes is food.

“Yer a strange sight.” Jesse says. The Fool and The Monkey look about the chamber in a grinning daze, taking in the fresh light of freedom.

“Ten years, we’ve been down in there. Ten years, but now we’re free!” He says, and breaks into a wild sort of jig, running around the chamber with his monkey on his shoulder and jiving atop his long toed shoes, prancing about like a ridiculous checkerboarded circus pony until finally he tires and collapses there onto the floor. Jesse holsters his gun and walks over to him, looking down at The Fools elated expression with a furrowed brow.

“Free. Oh, finally free!” The Fool says, The Monkey hooting and chittering alongside him.

“Why were ye down there in the first place?” Jesse asks. The Fool looks up to him as if he has forgotten his existence entirely and sits upright, clearing his throat.

“Murder.”

“Oh.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“And will you judge me for it?”

“I don’t suppose I could.”

“I can smell the blood and gunsmoke on ye, I can. It was an honest mistake any which way, and so long ago I don’t even remember if he were black or white or even a man at all.” The Fool scratches at his chin, scaring off the flies nested there.

“ I don’t even remember what he did which caused me to go about murdering him.” The Fool says. Jesse shifts on his feet as The Fool looks him up and down.

“Why, yer a strange sight than even me. Say, your name, it’s Jesse, ain’t it?”

“That it is. And how would you know that?”

“I know a great many things. A man as old as me gets to knowing more than he’d like to.”

“Is that so?”

“That is so. And you travel here with four and one companions, don’t ye?” Jesse feels a chill go down his spine.

“I do.” The Fool hoots.

“An old trick of mine. I was a jester once, if you’d know that.”

“I could guess. And what’s yer name?”

“My name? Well. I don’t suppose I remember it.”

“Oh.”

“But this here is Merry.” Merry grins.

“As good a companion as any.” The Fool says.

“What should I call you then?”

“Nothing. Don’t call me anything.”

“And why shouldn’t I?”

“Because I request you not too, and because a comedian never wants to be called anything. If anyone knew who I was, how could I make them laugh then?”

“Well. I don’t know.” The Fool is standing now, trotting about back and forth with his hand on his chin like an eminent philosopher.

“I’ve had a great deal of time to think down there, young knight.”

“I could tell.”

“And perhaps ye could. Once upon a time I worked for a Great King, if you would believe that.”

“King Peter?”

“Perhaps him. Although I don’t remember-my memory is too sharp to remember trivial names like that.” Jesse scratches at his chin.

“Did he keep you here?”

“No. It was a murder, as I said. Do you listen?”

“Well.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter now. He cast me away from his court, and would you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because he learned my name. He could never find me funny after he learned my name, could never laugh at my expense. It became all too personal for him. Much easier to laugh at the nameless buffoon than the named and desperate man.”

“I suppose.” Jesse coughs into his hand.

“I ought to be heading away now.” Jesse says, walking towards the exiting corridor rather quickly.

“I’ll meet you at midnight, young knight! In the witching hour! I have much to tell you, and I am in dire need of company!” Jesse doesn’t respond, and he is up and out of the chamber to the sound of The Fools ricocheting laughter.

The day spent drained away again in the top tower of the castle, looking out over the desert with bottle of whiskey in hand, The Fools words seeming to carry still and ring through the halls of Jesse’s mind. The rain still coming down gray and endless, flooding the corridors of the canyon walls in great waves of rust colored water, sweeping away the ancient illustrations of primitive pigment and flooding the caves which once housed their neolithic forms. Faintly amongst the canyon walls the sounds of far off and somber talking, perhaps an illusion of the wind or perhaps an omen of the riders still on their heels. A rifle slung across Jesse’s lap as his eyes dart out the window, caressing the gunmetal there. Far off cracklings of lightning ringing through the sky, strange cloud shapes reading like tasseography in his mind. There the shape of the face of his father, the shape of his guns, the skeletal hand of the reaper. The shapes shift and are gone, replaced by new and stranger omens. Dogs and horses, huntsmen and the hunted, journeys yet to be taken. A sizzling of lightning there in the shape of a noose, a noose which is undoubtedly tightening.

He closes his eyes and feels himself begin to drift off, hears then a knock at his door. He spins and drops down the hammer on his rifle, walks to the door with it slung over his shoulder and his bottle of whiskey still in hand. He takes a swig, drops of the amber fluid flowing down his chin and dropping to the floor.

“Who is it?” He asks. A long silence.

“I said, who is it?” He asks, bringing the rifle up as he puts an ear to the door. Behind there sounds of ragged breathing, alien and unlike any he knows. A faint sort of hissing sound like that of a snakes. He pulls back and raises the rifle but before he can shoot the figure is walking off down the hallway, bootsteps ringing along the walls. Jesse lowers his gun, shaking, and takes a long drink.

Jesse leaves the turret before midnight only once, to visit his brother in the infirmary where he finds him unconscious but his wounds already beginning to heal, wrapped in bandages and with Giles LeClerc watching over him. Jesse meets eyes with Giles and they look at eachother a long moment without a word and then Jesse is back out the door, up and into the turret where he waits the long and agonizing hours till midnight alone.

Outside as it grows dark igniting of lightning and chiming of thunder, the storm seeming to mark the hours and toll it away with it’s rising fury. Shades of electric violet sweeping across the desert, illuminated within their casts strange and aliens shapes of beasts and men there, waiting, waiting, and watching. The canyon walls and valleys of this place so ancient and foreboding, this land under The Devils Thumb most certainly. The sweeps of the desert with serpentine essence, as if once long ago a great beast had carved this place under the movements of its slithering hide and cursed it to desolation in the process, the lightning an echo of its wake and the clouds overhead like the shadows of a great thunderbird trailing close behind.

He looks at the grandfather clock which ticks over there in the corner, golden and ornate, and sees the hour of twelve has struck. He stands and looks a long moment at his rifle, an even longer moment at his pistol, and decides to leave them both. He walks down the hallways and finds the back rooms of the fortress there cast strangely in this lightningborne strobestorm, flickering and the ancient inscriptions and graffiti of long gone travelers seeming to dance there through the flashes. The hallways seem stranger here, longer and narrower and beating inwards with the thunder like the walls of a great arterial heart, and as he travels further into the fortress the aspect only increasing. He finds along his brow a thin ream of sweat and in his mouth a dry cotton, soothed not by the lighting of a cigarette with its cherry glowing like a bloody red ruby in the darkness. Paranoia rising that iron grip, every sound amplified as he travels down and down towards The Fools oubliette and that strange chamber, hearing there echoing through the walls the mad cackling of the man and his pet.

He comes to the chamber and finds marking its entrance a door whose existence he does not remember, a great arched thing of blackest of ironwood on which is engraved The Tower and twinings of roses. It’s handle made of red-gold gunmetal engraved into the shape of a lions grinning maw. Jesse halts a second, looking at that handle, throws his cigarette to the floor and ashes it beneath his bootheel. He pulls open the door, finding the metal there homely underneath his hand.

Therein The Fool awaits, standing against the far wall and his eyes illuminated by a band of quicksilver moonlight, glowing like pale diamonds and with The Monkey there on his shoulder with tricksters hands whirring. His face here seems strangely younger, his beard shaved off and his skin cleaned, as if he was a young man again instead of a castaway prisoner. In his hands is a fiddle of dark wood and gleaming string and bow. Jesse stands there on the opposite end of the chamber and brushes at his hair, staring into The Fools mad eyes.

“Ye came to hear my story, Jesse Abel Black, so come to me, and come to hear it well.” The Fool says, his monkey echoing his words in primeval chirps, the words distorted coming out of his apes tongue like the garbling of a defective parrot. Jesse says not a word, steps forth over the red stones and to the oubliette on which’s edge he sits, discarding his riders hat next to him and looking to The Fool.

“Then tell it.” Jesse says. The Fool begins to laugh, at first slowly and then a mad cackling like a hyenas which rings about the domed walls in staccato fashion. Then, suddenly, he halts, and begins to play his fiddle. Jerky strings of D and E, played in bursts as The Fool begins to dance with a mad grin on his face. His bell toed shoes and coxcomb hat rattling as he spins about, dervishing and dipping madly before the inscription of The Dark Tower there, the band of moonlight through the ceiling climbing steadily up towards the fresco. Jesse runs a hand through his hair and spits, unphased.

“I tell here the riddle of The Dark Tower, the story of all that was and all that is, the story though I claim not to know of all that will be. For it is you, Jesse Black, who will one day be called to this tower of legend, whom will one day try to climb it’s height. Do you wonder, Jesse Black, what lays there at the top?” The Fool plays notes to accent his speech, jiving over the words with his fiddle to solidify their dealings of fate. Jesse closes his eyes and therein he sees the doors of fate, golden and impossible in number, and he sees them all close before him. There, left, is only one-and this door is not gold, but rather of purest black gunmetal.

“I wonder.”

“And will you find what lays there, Jesse Black? Will you see?” A long silence, the taunting screeches of golden bats in the rafters.

“I will.” Jesse says. He spits.

“I must.” The Fool laughs.

“Then I tell you the tale, most of which I am sure you know but some of which I am sure you do not. I have forgotten none of it in all these years roaming this earth, none of it at all.”

“Then tell me.” The Fool strikes up a tune on his fiddle, standing there in the shadow of The Dark Tower’s fresco and looking upon Jesse with mad eyes rendered youthful. The doors of fate laughing now, the call of the true door ringing in Jesse’s mind madly.

“It begins with the first of kings, and the last of truest heart. Knight-King Arthur himself, wielder of the blade of white, the truest of God’s servants. Him the tamer of the barbaric lands, the founder of our once good kingdom and the unifier of the thirteen lesser kings.” The moonlight now creeping to the base of the fresco, illuminating there thirteen crowned figures with blades raised as one to the sky.

“It is of these thirteen that The Round Table was formed, the first of the line of knights from which you yourself stem, and the first of two of King Arthur's lines. This line not of blood but of tradition, the tradition of the peacekeeper and the killer and the gentleman, a line polluted but once great. King Arthur's second line that of the blood of his sole child, the line of kings blood.” The moonlight raising with almost supernatural speed, as if called upon for this purpose by a higher power, creeping up the fresco and illuminating magnificent gemstone depictions of a great journey across sea of sapphire, mountain of white diamond, desert of topaz and bloodiest of rubies.

“King Arthur The Mad, some called him, the possesser of the greatest of Gods gifts. An insanity to pursue The Tower, you see, of visions much like you now possess. The visions not those of a prophet or a messiah, but rather of a damned man. It is from Dullwater itself that he set forth with the first of knightly Bands, across the desert and the sea and the untamed wilds.” Jesse feeling a chill go down his spine, watching The Mad Fool play his fiddle at increasingly frantic speeds and his face seem to grow younger and younger, flickering and deforming like a devilish construction of melting waxwork. Merry The Monkey the whole while now watching from the rafters, watching and laughing.

“And it is in this journey that Arthur found his baptism, as you do now, a baptism of blade and flame and betrayal. Four of the knights dead of sword, four dead of arrow, one dead of hanging, claimed as a traitor. And, that leaves four.”

“But we’ve five.” Jesse mutters. The Fool laughs.

“And what makes you think, good knight, that this is your band?” Jesse winces, meets eyes with The Fool who seems now shrunken, cast in his oversized harlequins clothes like a man cloaked in castaway rags and his face so young as to look almost a boys.

“It was those four that found The Tower hidden in the mountains and amidst a field of lightning and ash, and it is there they found its guardian.” The moonlight creeping up now, depicting steadily the form of a great hydraic beast embroidered in rubies of purest and goriest scarlet, a beast of four legs, seven heads, and ten horns, it’s lizard faces long and peering out of wicked golden eyes.

“The Dragon, the first of the beasts. Two of the knights were slain here in battle, dying right before The Towers gate. And that leaves two, Jesse Black. King Arthur and the last of his vanguard, the only one who survived this fable. For it was this last knight which slipped his dagger between the shoulderblades of Arthur as he blew his horn, The Horn of Jericho, so he could crest The Tower itself. And crest it he did, climbing all two hundred and twenty two steps to find what lay there at the top, just as you will.”

“And what was this knights name?” Jesse asks. A smile illuminating The Fools face as he melts down now, turning into nothing more than the Godly wax of his creation, a puddle of molten and bloodless flesh from wich his boys face peers. That face begins to laugh a wildest of laughs.

“His name, Jesse Black, was Cain.”