Scarleton Series I : Before the Cult (7 page)

The man
continued wheezing, his chest convulsing. “Please…please,” he
implored. Affright, he tried to speak but he was tongue-tied.

“Why was your
name on the inscription?” the rider demanded.

“I don’t know
what-“

“One more of
those and I will slit your throat!” He paused giving the man a
chance to think it through. “What is the crop? What grows
there?”

The man began
sobbing.

He poked the
man again and he flinched. His sob stifled. “You are a priest,
right?”

“Yes.”

“So you know
the truth.”

“Not that kind
of truth.”

“What other
kind of truth could there be?” the rider interposed sarcastically.
“You work for the man farming it? This God of yours?”

“I know nothing
of a crop or a farm for that matter!” he cried.

“How do you
explain the painting?”

He did not
answer.

“Tell me!” the
rider snapped.

“You are a mad
man,” the man moaned. “I don’t know what you –“

There was
stillness then his voice broke it again. “I just wanna see my
family again, Lord.”

The rider
sighed, slumped his shoulders and then suddenly hacked the man like
he was chopping wood with an axe. He was ferocious and
cannibalistic in his execution. The sounds were eerily similar to
the one shovelling mud with a spade makes. There was a spray of red
haze spewing into the fog. Blood spurting into the riders face and
attire. He hacked the throat and the head multiple times. It was
silent. No screaming, no laborious grunts. Just the sound of that
merciless act, the man’s body shuddering as life jostled out of
him, the gurgling and the shovelling. Then the wretched man widened
his eyes, there was a stare he gave…like he was looking at
something of amazing awe. An enchanted stare, then I knew it was
over.

The rider
turned towards me and sized me up with a couple glances. “I’m Evlin
Macfearson. What is it that you seek?” He grunted.

Surprised he
had even noticed I was there, I blurted. “The crop.”

And that was my
first encounter with Macfearson.

We walked in
the woods, to a destination he only knew. I felt kidnapped by,
caught and trapped by tendrils of his presence, and robbed out of
thoughts of escape. At first it felt awkward but as we progressed
it felt instinctively right, like a decision I had made. One that
really mattered this time, one that would give the meaninglessness
of my existence significance. There was no mention of what I had
seen and he did not bother explain anything. There was an assumed
understanding it appeared. There was not much talk than “watch that
puddle” or “let’s go this way” or “don’t try pushing through the
branches “. I watched curiously and studied him as we went along.
He was surprisingly observant for his contemplative state. He was
fully engaged in two worlds, the mental and the real with sharp
efficacy. All I became aware of, the further we walked, was how my
calves ached and how increasingly lost I started to feel. My
thoughts began to shift from the abstract to the more pragmatic,
like the need for water and rest and how amazing it would be. As
time went by thoughts got darker and morbid, of how maybe I would
be impaled at midnight by this stranger I just met in some cult
ritual.

Why can’t he
just have me dig a grave and rest
, I thought.

Quenching my
thirst ceased to matter at that point. Not even rest in the most
comfy of beds. I desired a deeper release… the kind death can only
offer.

Oh, Death, you
conjuring seductress.

Every entity …
everything …

We got deeper
and deeper, in the uncharted corners of the cosmos. The
paradoxically inaccessible and accessible, the remote and abundant,
the foreign and very familiar, the certain and uncertain, the real
and unreal. A thin cord between the horizon of the existing and
purely imaginative. Whether this is an explanation of my experience
or a statement about the nature of things I am yet to discover for
myself. However, that was the point I lost and discovered myself,
and so I believe.

We reached a
clearing. And as I walked into it, exhausted, a thought fleeted in
my head.

The truth is in
the irony.

The kind of
thought that reaches and calls from the intuitive well within.

“You know how
it starts,” Macfearson explained, the campfire illuminating his
pale face. The truth is there was no way of knowing how or when it
starts, it is something that you notice. It is there but cannot be
put to a timeline, neither beginning nor end. I knew what he meant.
He was speaking of the moment you start noticing it, not
necessarily when it starts because no one can know for certain if
it really did start, no one could remember. “You grow up in a house
where you are always an absent member of the family. They forget
you, at birthdays, the store or even when you at home. The only
time they give you attention is when you have done something really
bad. ‘Silly boy!’ they call you. Your father gives you a beating
and sometimes you don’t know why. Sometimes you can’t remember why.
You do stupid things like drowning puppies and dissecting your pets
so you can better understand what makes them tick. You don’t
understand why but you are driven by energy, a certain curiosity
that always lands you in trouble. Your mind is on a different lane
than your peers and so are your senses. You feel so confused and
out of place. By this point you cannot tell if you are the mistake
or you make mistakes. You are just a dumb child, dumb burden of a
nuisance,” he paused, his face contemplative. Somewhere between
trying to figure out the best way to articulate what he had forming
in his mind and deciding to continue, not out of lack of words but
a state of being overwhelmed by a whirlwind of surging emotions.
Memories as nostalgic as a black and white portrait of a childhood
never lived. The mind buries such things (sometimes in a form of
delusions and illusions) making it hard for one to recall because
it knows their danger and pain. Perhaps that was the reason of his
pause, discerning and delving for the bitter truth. He gazed at me
for the first time since, forwarding his intense aura. Tragically
vulnerable and battered he was, exhausted on site by the weight of
his demons. “Then the neighbour’s kids won’t come play with you.
When they about to play a game of soccer or cricket you never get
picked for the team. If they do you don’t stay long in the field,
they kick you out. Then they start teasing you, calling you names.
You are always a subject of ridicule and annihilation. Annihilation
because they make you disappear. Makes you feel invisible. Then you
isolate yourself, you get used to loneliness not because you desire
it but because it is all that makes sense. At least in that deep
nothingness nothing can hurt you but the problem is that the
emptiness craves to be filled, it eats at you. Of course, right now
your parents are relieved of all the complaining parents because of
the trouble you cause. From then on your life exists on the
periphery.

“Then you start
noticing the feelings. They have been always there but all this
time you did not see it, you only needed time alone with yourself
to notice them. You start seeing things, realizing things. You get
it, right?”

I nodded. I was
losing my composer, this was an uncanny experience. In my life I
had never met someone who understood. Someone who truly knew…

“It is like you
are at a wrong place. A false realm of reality…like the angels had
made a mistake when delivering your soul to a body. That your
existence is a mistake. You feel like wrongly human. The wrongness
consumes you…an emptiness that eats up any human emotion you have.
A nothingness that shouldn’t have any effect at all, because by
definition it is non-existent. A ghost that
you
can only
see,” he stared at me gravely. I had an impression this was one of
his pauses again that he needed to tell me his story without a
reply of any sorts. His inner face had revealed itself, all the
toiling, agony and loss. I became deeply sad just looking at it.
Then his eyes became teary. “You begin to wonder what the point to
all of this is. Who are you? What is the nature of your existence?
Why existence at all? Why life?”

He paused,
snorted and looked away. “Once you realize you are an eagle among
penguins you can’t help but fly.”

I knew what he
meant, only then we were penguins among eagles.

“The truth
is…there is no life before the crop, now we are slaves to finding
it…because there is nothing else that matters really. And that
makes us
deathlings
. I have never lived until the day I set
out for my quest. I am still dead now, but the only time we get to
live is when we get there. Find what grows there!”

“Am I the only
deathling
you have ever met since?”

“No, there is
one more.”

Before I could
ask he answered. “He will meet us here. This is where we sleeping
tonight. He went collecting some wood. We had been hunting the
priest for some time now. We thought in a few hours we would catch
him and get the answers. We saw him at the town at first but he was
uncooperative, thought being here he would have no choice. We knew
he comes here to pray every now and then.” He paused. “But we have
our ways.”

“Do have
sleeping bags?” He knew what the sentence implied.

“Nah, we going
to our house tomorrow. It is just this night.” He shrugged.

“What have you
learned about the fields?”

He shook his
head wearily. “Let’s just wait for Macxermillio, okay?”

I watched the
flames as Macxermillio and Macfearson discussed something a few
feet from the light. Macxermillio had not said much when he came.
He added wood to the fire, offered me pie out of courtesy. He
appeared very cautious and calculating. There was shrewd malice to
him even though I had not witnessed it, a man like him carries his
deeds with him like a smoker carries the smell of tobacco.
Macfearson abided by him, following his orders without a sigh or
question. Every now and then Macxermillio gave me a suspicious
look, like he could see in my soul or I smelled like dog shit.

I could hear
them talking in whispers but could not make out what they are
saying at all, not much of it anyway. When that was the case I
tried to use their tones to discern their attitude or conflict, if
there was any.

“So what
happened to him?” I heard Macxermillio ask, speaking a lot more
loudly but still not easy to make out.

“He didn’t
cooperate.”

“He saw you do
it?”

“Yeah, the
whole thing.”

“Are you sure
that…” Then I couldn’t make out the rest.

“Not
really.”

“What does he
know?”

I saw
Macfearson shake his head from the periphery. “Didn’t say. But he
wants you to tell him.”

Silence fell, I
felt Macxermillio’s cold gaze on the back of my head.

“Okay then,”
said Macxermillio, striding to the fire. He sat cross-legged across
from me. Macfearson joined next to him.

He studied me
for a moment, for an uncomfortably long time. “Tell me what did you
see when that man died?” Macxermillio’s voice was detached and
distant, not what I had expected. I thought he would be
interrogative and fierce.

I glanced at
Macfearson who signalled my cue. “ Um… was like he was realizing
something he had forgotten. Like he forgot to update his will or
take out the garbage so his wife won’t be pissed. Just the
expression on his face. Like when a women gasps and they put their
hands on their mouth…they always seem to widen their eyes like
that. It was like he saw something… something and it’s too late to
do anything about it. I don’t think it was fear. It was all
serene.” I shrugged and shook my head, looking down at my lap. Felt
like I was getting an orgasm, it was just that release of tingling
sensations wriggling through me.

“How’d you
feel?”

“Like cuming in
his face,” I wept, there was a convulsion of shameful emotions
surging in me. Ones I never knew I had and did not want to have,
but at the same time it felt homey and right. It was truth that
slipped through my lips, strange and unlike me at first but the
truest thing I had come to learn about myself. Saying this was as
good as letting go of long held guilt or confession of a burdensome
secret you had kept for so long to a loved one. I had never felt
better and worse in my life. “I wanted to kiss it, take his picture
and cum a dozen more times. Oh… it was beautiful. It was a
disgusting thought but I couldn’t help myself…I can’t help myself.
Like a porn addict who wants to stop. The only difference is that I
don’t want to stop.” I paused and wiped my tears with the back of
my hand and I could feel dirt on it. I realized I had been
unconsciously punching the ground. I could not hold my head up and
or face their eyes. The weight of the shame and the pain was
paralyzing. I felt like a crack-whore, dirty, ruined and helpless.
Hated every inch or thought of my being and my heart more for
sustaining the abomination I am.

Hearts…mindless careless things
, I thought.

Macxermillio
unwrapped something, then gave it to me. It was slim and cold in
the weather. Unwrapped, it was a razor blade. “Takes the edge off,”
he told me.

The warmth of
the fire was comforting like a blanket on a cold night, but the
razor blade was better comforter. The first cut across on my wrist
burned, the blood slowly seeped out. The most elegant thing I had
ever seen. Then the shawl of pain and shame slipped off like the
wind blows a hat off. I wanted more and the more I cut my wounds
seemed to heal. The five fresh scars on my wrist, oozing, was one
of the most enrapturing sights I had seen in the cosmos. It had to
just make one happy. I watched, fascinated as each drop soaked the
ground between my legs, if I could I would have devoured the soil
but I was transfixed.