Prologue
The tattered tome lay in the dusty depths of the candlelit church, hiding between two battered copies of the bible. A single Latin word was inscribed on its cover: Mortuus. I flipped the book open and an orange light licked out from between the pages, yet I couldn't glance away from the words burning themselves my mind.
“God give the dead a tranquil slumber, lest they be chained to this world of temptation. God give the living the wisdom to let bygones be bygones, and to let the power of the land remain in the soil and in the trees, not in reviving the souls of the departed. God give me the wisdom to tell the tales of the damned, lest others fall into the path of temptation. Darkness breeds darkness, even when it used with your holy Light in mind. I beg you to forgive me of my arrogance in my dabbling. Necromancy is a poison that must be purged. I gaze at my withered journal, and the fires call to me, screaming at me to burn my guilt. But I cannot hide from you Lord, thou know me too well...
Entry 1: Dinner at Death’s Door
A cyst had formed on the holy land, and it was my purpose to purge the blight. I was finally allowed to climb out of Catacombs, past the long dead fathers often revived; past the dust and cobwebs; past the pungent rotting smell of death at every curve, and into the light of the Church. A taste of divine ecstasy pulsated through my body. Fresh scents and the strong thrumming of life called to me to draw upon its energy -- to channel it into my own machinations. All it would take is a little pull, but I resisted the temptation today. In each object lay some of the light of the lord, the candles blazing, the marble pillars shining, the gold cross gleaming.
Amongst the pomp of the church stood the Tainted father. The stooped and withered father looked minutes from the pearly gates, yet there was power in this man. The life force he channeled would have combusted a lesser human. None dared take his power, lest he grant their wish and shove a sliver of it into them burning them quicker than the fires of Hell. His eyes were like two dark coals as he stared at me, and he reached into a sack that screamed with God’s power. Out from it he drew a single a catalyzed phoenix egg. Flames danced across its surface, calling me to use them. He gave me the egg, and when I touched it my arm spasmed as something unseen burrowed through my body, making its way into my brain.
The father’s voice was raspy and quivering with age as he addressed me: “Go forth into the world, tainted acolyte, and take upon the mantle of sin to purge the world of it. The Lightbringer comes, but we can delay his rebirth. A farmstead outside the city will be the first step in your twisted seminary.” The father smiled at his own joke, and laughed softly to himself. I didn’t understand his humor then, but I understand it now.
***
A house stood above a sea of thick brown mud empty of any kind of life. Energy had been drained from the land like blood from a gutted pig, pooling around the small farmhouse in a maelstrom of energy hidden to the naked eye. This was not the occult cavern that I was expecting, instead it was rather plain.
The front door twitched in and out of existence, blurring between reality and somewhere else. I picked up a glob of mud, and chunked it at the door. The makeshift projectile flew between two invisible forces, bouncing exponentially quicker and blurring into a maelstrom of brown until it burst out and bored into the hill behind me. A time reflector: cute. I could have summoned the forces held in the phoenix egg, drawing forth enough power to untwist time like it was little more than a tiny string that had fallen, but I didn’t. I chucked another piece of mud at the side window, and it thunked against the house. Grunting, I shoved the window up and toppled into the room headfirst.
Everything in the house was spotless, but it smelled like a mix of overripe cheese and thick vomit: the smell of bodies left to moulder. A picture caught my eye. A man smiled at the camera sandwiched between what looked like his wife and daughter, but his eyes stared forward: emotionless as a zombie. The mother’s slight grimace was captured, but the daughter -- ignorant of what was going on -- grinned from ear to ear like a radiant beacon of joy. Glass chimed from behind a wooden door, and I heard the murmurs of a conversation. The squelching thunks of my muddied boots against the hardwood floor dragged on to the doorway. With a sharp breath, I plunged into the room.
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The daughter stared at me with gaunt, withered eyes as she poured tea for her parents. Her eyes had sunk into her head, and her skin was pale. Hair fell as she moved, falling to the ground in thin little wisps. A polished shotgun lay against the wall. The father had no jaw, with slobber and blood dripping from his mouth onto the floor. His wifebeater was dyed red with crusted blood, and tea dribbled through his teeth as he tried to drink. He tilted his head upwards, but it just spilled out through gaping hole in the back of his head. The mother was worse. Her whole face had been sliced away by the shotgun leaning oh so carelessly against the wall. The father, the unholy spirit, both the beginning and the end. He murdered his wife and he murdered himself; now his daughter grasped at a guise of normalcy while spiraling ever downwards into The Void. I’d have to purge them all, lest they drain more energy from the world.
The girl’s voice trembled, “Will you join us for tea mister? My parents were being loud earlier, there was screaming, but they’re ok now. Daddy said Mommy and him were fine earlier, and now we have tea to make it alll better.” Something new wiggled at my consciousness, and I hesitated to end the job. She pushed the china cup towards me. I stared at it for a second, pulled up a chair, and sipped lightly. Staring at the cup, I didn’t know what to do. No struggle, just a single cup of lemongrass tea in a tiny cup for me. I pinched the tiny handle, and raised it to my lips. The tang wasn’t too strong, just enough to let me know it was there.
“Tastes nice.” I muttered looking down at the cup. Could be poisoned. Could be a toxic strain. But my long buried conscience told me this was the right thing to do. Nothing but the fires of Hell awaited this girl, this sinner, this lovely daughter so enamored with her family.
“My mom got it from the garden out -- well there was a garden,” she sipped her tea.
We sat in silence for a few minutes. Each time I thought about talking, my heart lept into my throat preventing me from uttering a word. Must be a spell. The parents didn’t move their heads, just mechanically slurped down the tea as their daughter refilled it. Eventually the tea ran out, and the daughter started to sniffle.
“Are you going to take them away?”
I couldn’t look at her, “Yes.”
“I could make another batch of tea, can it be just a little bit longer, just a little bit mister, nothing long.”
I wished I could say yes again. I wished it more than anything else, yet this was an aberration towards God’s plan curving it into unknown paths.
I tried to present this nicely to her, “Well, mommy and daddy need to go somewhere nice now.”
“No -- you cant --,” she started coughing, and her body trembled under the strain. Maggots wormed out of her mouth, and she tried to scream. She’d given part of her body as price for the enchantment. “Please mister,” she wheezed and dropped to the ground. Her flesh rippled, and a plague of bugs squirmed out. Crickets, cockroaches, flies, maggots all had a slice of her. The parents were nonplussed, and grabbed anything that got too close -- shoving the squirming into into their gaping mouths. I clutched my egg and yanked on its power. Everything in the room froze mid step. Her parents screamed one last time as light burst forth from them, like the bugs had from their daughter. God’s energy laughed as it burst free.
***
I dug three graves that night, crunching through a healthy layer of grass surrounded by flowing blue streams on top of a hill with not a house in sight. The flowers grew without a trace of my fetid art to plague them. The girl had taken power from the plants, the animals, and finally herself. Her presence on the Earth had been wiped away, like the cyst it was. Save for the picture of her in my left pocket. On the back of the picture I wrote doubt.
Does Morality lies in lies, or relative relativity?
If there’s an upward up, then is up up?
If there lies a place further down,
Will God Frown?
Do I deserve Hell, if with its fires:
Fay meets fate?
What is Heaven if it’s forged in Hell?