Forfeit Souls (The Ennead Book 1) (4 page)

“I didn’t know this was considered life.” I wasn’t averse to the idea of staying twenty nine for the rest of my existence, but I wasn’t so sure about the company. I had never been much for the guys who told you just how cool they were. It wasn’t my crowd. Luckily for me, I wasn’t with Mike much longer,

He stopped at a corridor, pointing down it. “You gotta go have a chat with Gallu. I’ll wait here for you.”

I followed his finger and looked down the corridor, it was dark and I couldn’t see its end. “At the end of this corridor?” I pointed, making a joke at his expense, though I doubt he caught it. He was treating me like a child, so I was more than willing to oblige him, by acting ignorant.

“Yeah, this corridor.” He assured me, speaking slowly, as though I was dense. “You’ll be fine. She doesn’t bite, glow boy.” As I left he added. “Christ, aren’t the Brits supposed to be well educated?” I doubt he thought I could hear him.

I walked down the hall, my red glowing skin reflecting five times, in the walls to either side of me, the ceiling and floor and then again in the door I walked toward.  I stopped for a moment looking at the elongated version of myself in the wall. Aside from my incorrectly reflected height, and the red glow to my skin, I still looked the same. I could still use my driver’s license, my face had not changed, and it was still topped with a mop of dark blonde hair.

The only difference in my face was my eyes. The once blue eyes that had stared back at me were now completely black. It was unsettling, but I preferred it to the red of Jack or Mike’s. I smiled then and saw them: the pointed teeth where my cuspids had once resided. How very vampiric, I thought with a laugh. I had no thirst for blood, so I knew that I could not actually be a vampire.

I turned back to the tunnel and continued toward its end. The image of myself that walked toward me as I approached it split in half as the door opened into the room that Gallu waited for me in. I wondered what she would look like: if the voice or the name would more appropriately fit her.

The circular room I entered looked like its walls were covered in dull brass plates, except for the side opposite me, where Gallu waited. She sat in a golden throne atop a ten foot platform.

She was spellbindingly beautiful, as she sat in her gilded throne. Light radiated outward from her, causing the brass to shine like gold. Her dark red hair flowed down her back, moving ever-so slightly like a flame lapping at the air. Her eyes were closed and she sat poised in the chair as though she were on display. She was more stunning than any air-brushed model I had ever seen between the covers of a magazine.

I stood in the middle of the room and waited, but she did not move, she seemed to be a porcelain statue. I cleared my throat, hoping that it would speed up the process – not that I had anywhere to go – and at the sound she opened her eyes and the entire room seemed to be gilt.

“Paul,” she said quietly – though I could hear her quite clearly – while her mouth widened into a smile. “I am pleased that you were able to come.”

I wanted to laugh. It was an odd comment. As though she had invited me and been worried that I would have flaked. A bit odd considering what I had become in death.

My manners told me that I should have responded with “I’m pleased to be here,” but my thoughts assured me that it would most certainly be a lie, and so I just nodded with a cautious smile. I knew nothing of the woman in front of me and was still not entirely sanguine about my current prospects.

“What has happened to me, if you don’t mind?” I asked, as I stood before her.

“Paul,” she said – like I was a small child – as she descended the stairs toward me. “I am Gallu. Forgive me for my failing manners. As for what has happened to you, you have been chosen to become a member of the Asakku. In your life you may have heard of the Grim Reaper?” she asked tilting her head to the side. “The Asakku serve that purpose. You will now be charged with the millennia old task of reaping souls.” She held her arms out to me. “Welcome to the fold.”

I didn’t move toward her outstretched arms as she most likely wanted. I was too fixated by her eyes. It was as though the sockets held two glass orbs that were filled with flames, light radiated from them but so did malice and deceit. “Are you the Devil?” I asked quietly, I was not afraid. I was already dead… I wasn’t sure there was much else she could do to me, but curiosity burned within me, the flames in my mind burned more fiercely than those in her eyes.

She laughed and smiled coyly. “I am somewhat of a lesser evil.” The flames in her eyes flickered as she laughed. “Tell me about yourself Paul,” she probed, her voice seemed sticky-sweet.

There was something about this woman, or demon, that I didn’t trust. “What would you like to know?” I asked, annoyance seeping through my reserve, “
Vital
statistics seem to be out.”

She just smiled at me like I was being a petulant child. “Fine. I’ll ask specific questions.” She said in a teasing tone, I almost thought she would stick her tongue out at me. “How tall are you?”

“Five feet, nine inches.” I responded curtly. It seemed a stupid question. Why would she care about my height? What was she playing at?

She just continued to smile, “When was your birthday?” It was another nonsensical question.

“October third, nineteen-eighty.”I was beginning to sound like a military recruit, barking answers to his Sergeant. Name, rank and serial number might be coming next.

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

I balked at this question. “I believe you mean ‘
did
I have a girlfriend?’ and the answer is no.”

Her eyes narrowed as the corners of her mouth turned up. “A handsome young man like you? I find that hard to believe.” She snickered. “Haven’t found the right girl?” she postulated.

“I had found the right girl, she just didn’t think of me in that way.” I thought back to the night I died – to how mad she had been when she’d left. “It doesn’t really matter now does it?”

“I guess not,” she frowned. “I do feel terribly sorry that you did not get your happy ending. Though none of us really do.” She sighed, though I didn’t feel any sincerity in her words. I could not believe that she had ever been human.

“Was she pretty?” she asked, breaking into my scrutiny.

“She was gorgeous.” I said, hearing the irritation in my voice. “What does this have to do with anything?” She was toying with me and I didn’t appreciate it.

“I just like to know my employees.” She smirked as though she was pleased with my annoyance. “You should go rest now. You will be extremely vulnerable for the next few months.”

“And how much longer will I be a glow worm?”

An evil smile spread across her face, “Give yourself a few months and your skin will harden, hiding the fire that courses through you now.”

I set my jaw and waited to be dismissed again. I wouldn’t give her any more enjoyment by asking questions of her.

“Go.” She said waiving me away, “Mike will tell you all that you need to know.”

Mike
, I thought,
great
. I’d rather sleep through the rest of eternity than spend the time it would require to get answers out of him. I walked back down the dark hall, seeing my four reflections, and wondering if I would ever see the girl, who thought of me only as a brother, again.

“She’s a babe, isn’t she?” Mike said as I got closer to him. “I have never seen a human woman who could compare.”

“I didn’t really notice.” I said gruffly, I had noticed, but the evil she exuded was a greater deterrent than her beauty’s pull.

The lewd thoughts that were racing through Mike’s mind were evident on his face. He seemed content to be lost in his fantasies and I was more than willing to oblige him. Mike was probably going to be a thorn in my side for the entirety of my stay here.

“There you are.” I heard Jack’s voice from behind me. “I’ll take him from here Miguel.”

Mike turned to say something but clamped his mouth quickly shut. He just shrugged and turned down a side passage without a backwards glance.

“Ignore Miguel.” Jack said in an annoyed tone. “Everyone else does.”

I had to laugh at that.

“We call this place The Basement. It is our home and sanctuary, it may seem like a maze now, but you will soon know all of the intricacies of its corridors.” Jack hit me on the shoulder.

Learning the maze of tunnels did not seem like an easy assignment, but ignoring Mike was not a difficult task, as I would soon find out. I didn’t see many of the other Asakku for the first few months I was there.

-Joellen-

The canopy of the bed became my only focus. I stared at it hoping that my thoughts would compel whatever forces were holding me to this earth to let me go. For a while I laid there only thinking,
death
,
death
,
please give me death
.

Destiny is a cruel mistress. I wondered how I had come to be the one who was chosen for this end. Had I betrayed fate in another life? What was her quarrel with me now?

The canopy ceiling gave way to a dusky sky, the purple velvet turning to a purple, moonless night. I didn’t know where the faint light was coming from, but I didn’t care. I was too depressed to care. I simply stood in the dark, utterly alone, waiting to die.

I heard the soft melancholy notes of the piano as they floated past me in the wind, and the canopy was back. I don’t know how long I had stood in the desolation that was my mind, but the subtle tones of the piano pulled me from my self-loathing.

I didn’t move at all, I did not even blink, but I could see Demetrius hunched over the keys in my peripheral vision. He moved slowly with the melody that wound its way up toward the higher keys and then slowly found its way back to the basso’s notes.

I closed my eyes with one last wish for death and the piano faded into the back of my mind until it was barely present. I opened my eyes again and was no longer under the canopy.

The sun shone down on my face as I lay in the grassy field. Faint movement to my left was the only clue that I had to any other presence in the pasture. I closed my eyes again and listened, the faint gurgling of the stream that flowed through the cleft in the green fields drowned out most other noises: the faint call of a Stellar Jay and the quiet lowing of the Jerseys, Holsteins, and Herefords that surrounded me. They barely broke past the laughing sound of the stream.

It was summer. That was the only way to account for the dry grass and the mildly warm weather. Rain was the mainstay for the quaint town of North Bend, Oregon, but I wouldn’t complain. This was a happy memory. It was probably one of the few summers that I had spent on my grandmother’s farm.

I opened my eyes again and looked at the oddly blue sky, clouds passed over my head in a number of shapes and sizes. dog… rabbit… heart… skull… how macabre.

“Jo,” I heard a voice call, it was so far away that it sounded as faint as a whisper. I sat up in the low grass and looked back toward the farm house. My grandmother was standing at the fence calling for me. “Jo,” she yelled – whispered – again.

I smiled up at her and waived, acknowledging that I had heard her, and ignoring the fact that she never called me Jo. I had started up the hill toward her when she started to fade. It was as though she was slowly becoming transparent. I ran toward her, but she faded completely as I reached her. Then other things began to fade… the house… the trees….

Where the cows had once been there were dozens of chairs, sofas and ottomans upholstered in the hides of the animals they replaced. Then, in a flash of blinding light, the valley was completely void of anything man-made, and aside from the black crows that flew past me in the dim light of dusk, I was the only living creature there. A brilliant flash of light surrounded me again and the entire valley was charred and burned.

One of the crows hopped from branch to branch on the burnt carcass of the tree next to me cackling like a storybook witch as I knelt and picked up a handful of the black sand that I stood in. It fell through my fingers and I watched as the grains found their way back to the ground, sending out ripples in the dune as though it were a pool of water.

The cackling crow leapt from her perch and flew at me, her black wings fluttering noisily toward my face. I threw up my arms to shield myself.

But I was still in the large canopied bed. I saw Demetrius and Father talking quietly near the hearth. I closed my eyes trying to forget them but I could hear every word they said as though they were sitting right next to me and talking in normal voices.

“She’s no longer in danger of being harmed. I do wish that she would come out of this soon.” Father’s voice rang in my head in the same manner as a tuning fork. The high-pitched reverberations made the place in the very center of my head twinge in pain.

“Those of us who do not choose this life are entitled to a period of mourning.” Demetrius’ voice was low enough that it did not cause the same painful spasm.

“But not this long!” I mentally winced at the sound of his voice.

“Unlike your children we left people we loved behind without a chance to say goodbye. Memories plague us in death.” Demetrius’ tone was filled with detest.

Death.

I sat in the stiff, straight-back pew listening to the quiet tones of the organ as it played through the drearier hymns. I looked to the faces on the table in front of me. It was wrong. My father and grandmother both stared back at me from behind glass in frames on the small table in front of the two caskets that rested behind the pulpit. They had died two years apart. Was my memory that confused?

I looked about the church and I was alone. No one else had come. Anger surged through me. Did no one care?

When I turned back toward the altar, the caskets were open and I heard a faint tapping noise, a quick succession of four taps followed by a pause and then four more. Turning to my right I saw a white, bone hand rapping out its impatience. The hand was connected to an exposed arm and I followed it upward to the empty-eyed leer of a bare skull.

“Jo,” the whispered yell called out from behind the unmoving jaws of the skull. I could do nothing but stare blankly at the skeleton that had risen and was walking toward me.

“Jo.” It called again

I stood to run, but there was nowhere to go, another skeleton had barred my exit. This specter was charred black and as I looked back now, they both were. The church had vanished and I was standing in the black sand again, two caskets in front of me and a charred skeleton standing to either side.

The cackling crow circled over my head again, landing on the left casket. She hopped along the wooden box and into the open top. Cackling resonated from the coffin.

I tried to move toward him, to shoo him away, but the skeletons barred me, holding each arm with bone fingers that dug painlessly into the flesh of my arms.

The crow jumped out of the casket with a gold pocket watch in his mouth. It was the watch I had given my father when I was ten. He had worn it every day until his death and it had been buried with him. I reached toward the crow, trying to grab the bauble from him.

Only one skeleton held me know, the other had released my arm, but my remaining skeleton captor clenched onto both of my arms, holding me from behind. The second skeleton walked toward the crow with its fleshless arm and hand extended toward the avian thief.

The crow obligingly dropped the watch in the skeleton’s hand and he quickly pinned it to his rib bone, turning back to me with his eyeless leer.

I found myself staring at the canopy again. It was as though my memories were mingling with hallucinations. Or were these dreams? My eyes did not close. How could one dream, if one did not sleep?

“I don’t know how much longer it will be.” Demetrius’ voice sounded distant, sad.

A faint voice, somewhere else, asked, “Have you tried rousting her.”

“She’s non-responsive.” Demetrius replied angrily. “It’s not as though she’ll just waltz out of this. She’s more or less comatose.”

“But can’t you try?” I recognized Father’s voice now; it was quiet, as though he wasn’t in the room.

“Your impatience will not end well.” Demetrius barked. “She will come out of it on her own, and when she does she will be better for it.” I heard the clacking half ring of an old telephone receiver.

I was in a bright pink ball gown now, my junior year prom dress. I looked about and saw my high school gym. Its floors covered in black paper, black plastic hanging from the ceiling in a circus tent like manner. The DJ at the far end of the room was dressed as a court jester and the songs that he was mixing were carnival-like and heavy in their accordion parts, almost Parisian. People in brightly colored leotards started climbing up and down the walls, a juggler lit his batons on fire as he peddled around the gym on his unicycle.

A man in a tuxedo and a carnival mask stepped from the black, “Jo,” he called in a whisper.

I stepped back to avoid being run over by the juggler, only to fall back into the arms of a clown. He was wearing a deer head with lit silver candelabras protruding from where his horns should be.

The man in the carnival mask seemed to be floating away from me; he was still calling me, “Jo.”

I struggled to get free of the deer-headed clown, but was helpless as we began to waltz and I realized that, though I desperately struggled to be free of him, my movements seemed like I was waltzing with him. He swirled me about in the dark of the gym and I closed my eyes, giving in. Giving up.

My feet sank into the floor and I opened my eyes again. We were waltzing in the charred valley, the skeletons were twirling next to us, as we spun around the caskets. The circus had followed us here and fire breathers had joined them.

Pillars of fire rose up from oddly stretched necks, lighting the blackness that surrounded me.  Faces marked by insanity crowded in about me. Each one asking for the next dance. I was being spun about frantically.

The room stopped spinning and I wasn’t sure that it ever had been. I was still staring at the canopy. Its tufted purple velvet ceiling and cascading curtains seemed to be the lining of my casket. I wished it were so. I was depressed enough that I couldn’t enjoy the delusions that my depression seemed to be causing. It was pathetic.

If I could just go back to where I was before, if I could just have my life back
. Life or death: I would take either. Anything other than this shamble of an existence. If I could go back to London, start my trip over again.

London

I was on the street in London again, standing about as though I was daft.  Men and women bustled past me carrying their things and whistling Christmas tunes. Snow was falling about me and I felt the flakes on my bare arms. I was still in the black gown. It was just another hallucination-like memory.

The people that passed me, bundled in their winter coats with scarves and mittens, gave me odd looks, a few stopped mid-step to stare openly at me. I just ignored the delusional characters of my shattered psyche, and walked down the road, waiting for the black sand to swallow up this peaceful scene and send me back to that hellish charred valley.

“Silver bells, silver bells.” A large man in a blue winter coat with a knit stocking cap sang as he walked toward me, “It’s Christmas time… eh, excuse me miss. But you’re going to catch your death of cold.”

It was amusing that the people in my delusions would be concerned. Was it my subconscious attempting to tell me that I needed to find a shrink? I scoffed at the thought and just continued walking past him. There was no point in responding to my own hallucinations, no matter how polite they were.

“Don’t worry sir.” A familiar voice said from behind me. “She’s just experienced a very traumatic event, a death in the family, I’ll take her home.”

I felt a jacket go over my shoulders, but it didn’t make any difference, the snow was not cold to me. Why would snow that I hallucinated be cold?

Strong arms directed me from behind and I allowed them to lead me without question. They would only lead me to the desecrated valley. I did not dread it anymore. Prolonged exposure had made me numb to it.

The hands directed me down a side street and stopped me.

“Go home, Jo.” Demetrius’ voice whispered in my ear. Was I imagining him now too?

Home?

I was not home, but the canopy was above my head again and I settled back into the black valley within moments.

I was alone, no more cackling crows or circus performers or skeletons. Only the black sand and the burnt husks of trees surrounded me. I sat down and dug my hands into the black granules. I would endure eternity here, alone.

It wouldn’t kill me
. I laughed uncontrollably at the thought, the malicious sound echoing across the black hills around me.  Nothing would kill me. It was sick, in a way, that now death was all that I wished for.

I stood in the sand. I walked in the sand. I sat in the sand. My existence was consumed with the black sand of the emptiness of my being.

I stood staring into the dark horizon, when I felt a hand on my face.

“Jo,” a voice far above me called out. The voice was sad.

I looked to the purple velvet of the sky, but it wasn’t there. I was met with two eyes as dark as a moonless midnight, glittering silver as though laced with stars.

“Jo,” Demetrius said, but I didn’t respond. I stared at him without recognition. I suppose that anyone looking at me would assume that I was, in fact, dead. “Are you ever going to come back to us?”

The question was not for me. I didn’t know who he was speaking to, but it surely could not have been me. I returned to the black sands of my mental tomb. It was safe here. I sat in the black sand watching the nothingness of it all pass me by.