Curse of Catonia

Curse of Catonia

Or the Memories of the Stone

John Edward

Chapter One

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. They had come, and they had gone again. Now the scattered remnants of a once prosperous community deified them with statues, mossy and overgrown, their frozen stone faces glaring down on those who passed by. The community had fallen to ruins over an age. Knowledge, hard gained over thousands of years had been lost. The population had been laid low, farming what they could to survive, building up their stores in the hills, fortifying themselves inside their plank homes. They hunted with bow and arrow and the spear and the sword, and it was said that a cancer was growing within this world. Fires burst from beneath the surface of the earth, scorching swathes of green. When the people gathered in their town squares the stories they shared from the outland held no water, as the conditions were so changeable that men questioned their own memories and their own minds. As a contagion of dementia set in, the world could no longer be tracked or traced, the landscape seemed as much a figment of the imagination as a dream, and many could not discern one from the other. A great sickness had swamped this world, this world without name, and no man could put faith in himself or his judgments. Swallowed in insanity and paranoia, families moved to isolation, men became wandering loners, the weak perished in the unforgiving conditions, and travelling through the treacherous terrains they burned up and disappeared like anonymous fading stars in the dead of night. Their souls evacuated to the heavens.

Somewhere, deep beneath the surface world, something stirred.

Anton knelt before a crumbling stone altar in a forest. A great dragons head carved from white marble was over him, a storey high, and it was twisted in an agonising pose, great tears flowing from its eyes. He picked some blue flowers, and rubbed them together with a handful of salt and dirt and placed the offering in a bowl and set it at the base of the paralysed figure.

“Forgive us.” He said to the stone and there was no answer spare the cool wind blowing through the pine needles.

He stood and retrieved his brown fabric bag from the side. Opening it he drew out his map and laid it out on the forest floor. It was disorganised and nearly illegible, as layers upon layers of markings and iterations had been drawn over it where trails and the point they connected did not look like much more than knotted twine. He furrowed his brow to study it but it made no sense to him, though he looked like an intelligent man. He tried to parse through the fog.

“Remember…” he told himself. “Remember…”

He could not remember how he got here. How was that possible?

“What curse is this?!” he erupted, screaming to the woods, holding his head in his hands and falling to his knees, his jaw clenched, moaning in psychic pain, his face locked in a torment brought by unseen forces.

After a while he righted himself, moved again to collect his things and set off down one of the dozen trailheads sprouting from the grove of the monument.

It was days before he arrived back to his home on the edge of the village. How many, he could not tell. He had barely slept, and the movements of the sun were themselves in question as by the time the sun had set in the west another rose around the north and bisected the day and shadows pulled in odd directions he had not seen before and the sunlight hours spanned far longer than normal. He reached the farmlands surrounding the homestead late, walking through a cauterised pumpkin patch, embers still glowing in the soil and burst and melted pumpkins strewn everywhere. It was a great scar across the verdant, undulating terrain. A section of fence had been reduced to ash and he passed through the gap as night was closing in and a large moon was emerging in the sky while its twin in opposing orbit was sunken heavy and deep below the horizon.

He could already tell from the edge of town something was wrong. The heat of the day had grown into an oppressive humidity that was not abated by sunset and he wiped the sweat from his face. Torches were lit and he could see from his place on the paved stone road the fluttering shapes of long shadows spiriting through the night along the tall grey walls of the buildings. There were voices, men’s voices, calling out for someone who was lost. Another cried for help, and signs of struggle and protest grew. Divisions in the town. Old and new grievances brought to bear. A field burned, but by whom? A crowd had formed, and many were armed. The sound of glass breaking. Doors being stove in. Fires were being lit on the eves of some of the homes. People were making their escapes down alleyways and diving into the drains. Anton was inside the courtyard near a horse stable when members of the city guard came roving through, their stance aggressive, wielding wooden clubs with studded metal bands ringing up the barrel to the end. Anton walked towards them with his hands out, pleading with them.

"My wife is in there and my son, what is happening officers, what is going on?"

As he spoke one of them peeled off the storming group and came directly for him and he put his hands up to block the downswing of the club and it came crashing through and blunt impact stunned him and split his head wide open. In a broken heap on the ground with blood dripping into his eyes and down his face he was left dazed and dumb as the marauding mob ransacked the town and over the evening everything and everyone he ever knew was turned to bloody ash.

An old woman had dragged him into an underground cellar and cared for him there for several days. She had stitched the skin where he had been struck by the bat above his right eye, and in time he would have a permanent scar there.

The mob had dissolved and only a few transitory scavengers had passed through, picking at the bones. The old woman had told him that things had not always been like this, that the world used to have an order, and that people agreed upon their ways. Things once understood are now gone. Without preservation our memories mean little. What is experienced alone is never a certainty. We must have witnesses, we must be recognised! By each other now and by those who will live in the future! What will come of this?”

She trailed off while Anton lay sideways on his bedroll staring into middle distance, dissociated from her and his immediate reality with a painkilling potion. His pain was dull, deep and throbbing. A quiet rage was roiling within him.

A day later he exited the cellar without saying goodbye and went to find his belongings. He found his street. Dark stains on road and in the gutter. Where the houses were not burned down every ground floor window was broken, every door kicked in and swinging on the hinges, even the little post boxes had been exploded by clubs or knocked over. He reached his home. The front garden and fence was intact, but beyond there was nothing left. The remains of the standing timber frame, burned black. He stood dumb for a minute, unsure of anything, eyes dancing side to side, irritated, itchy and red. The shock was overwhelming him for this second. They were gone. All of them gone. He turned. He left.

“I will not forget their faces.” He vowed to himself as his marched into the woods towards the river. “I will remember them until the day I die.” He would head for the coastline and the big city. There he would seek the truth behind all this. If they were alive he would track them down, he would find those responsible, he would take his revenge.

At the river he boards a ferry. He keeps a low profile and does not draw attention to himself. For four days his is aboard the boat and he overhears conversation between two hired killers bragging about their spoils from a recent raid. He studies their faces from a distance and their voices and their speech patterns. He makes inquires as to their destination, and the group they work for. The Carey Family. He had never heard of them.

Arriving in Fort Silence he disembarked at the dock, now stinking and hungry, and checked himself into the local Inn. He stayed a night, collecting his thoughts, flicking through the papers reading the latest news, sipping warm drinks and eating biscuits, his appetite slowly returning after the massacre in the village. There was warning out for a dangerous cult in the hills, the Burning Sisters. A fissure had opened up at the seaside, cracking open one of the city seawalls and water had inundated the low section of the fort. Fisherman had seen strange things in the water, creatures not common to these parts. Fear was dripping from the walls of this place. Something was in the air. He continued reading. Civil strife in the country. Possessed citizens roving the lands. The city guard stood ready to defend Fort Silence against any threat, it said.

The throbbing behind his temples began and he felt the searing phantom pain of the club striking his skull as he read along.

“They are coming for you.” A voice said, clearer than day, inside his mind.

His head began to hurt more and he put his face into his hands and it felt like a black and spiked claw was closing its talons around his brain, he shook his head, tried to clear his vision, the claw gripped harder and his breathing became slightly panicked as the sensation was so unexpected, so harsh, and the nails sunk in deeper and he cried out and stood up, the chair beneath him tipping over backwards.

He panted in fear as the spirit dissolved away. He put his hands on the desk and looked at the floor, catching his breath.

He awoke standing the next morning in the office of a not unattractive witch who was busying herself at a table of potions. Looking around himself, he realised he had been transported somehow, and he presented to her like any normal person, reasonably dressed, shaved, put together. Not the same as he had put himself to bed the previous night, quite the opposite. He felt fresh, clean. Unusual.

“Hello.” He said. “What’s going on? Where am I?”

“You.” She began. “Are in a pickle. Not precisely your true location but definitely in a.. let’s call it a bind.”

“What do you mean? What is going on?”

“Have you felt a change in the air of late? As if things are not as they should be?”

“Yes… I’m… My family is gone. They were burned alive. I haven't been feeling right for a long time but I’ve forgotten what normal feels like. The world has changed.” Even as he spoke and he looked around the solid objects in the room seemed to be melting away, stretching and bending before his eyes in ways that shouldn’t be possible, reality warping in and out of solid and fluid form… His head began to hurt.

“For the worse for you and many people. And it will only continue to get worse if nothing is done about it.”

“Why? What’s this all about? My people… my people are all dead.”

“Then you are the perfect candidate.” She said as he turned away and approached a wall of books.

“Which god do you serve?”

“I don’t know its true name.”

“Your god is an IT?” She said, incredulous.

“It is a dragon, a great spirit.”

“You know nothing of what you speak, do you?”

He said nothing, although anger was beginning to burn inside him.

“I know enough. I know that they have cursed us for failing them. I know that is the cause of this.”

“Do you now? Tell me more.”

“A spell has been cast on this world. Things used to be different. There was a common order and a common good. We could set a rule and the rule would remain true, to build a house, to measure a distance. Now… now reality warps and fades before my very eyes… We cannot trust each other… We cannot trust ourselves. Do I believe what my eyes see? No... it is a trick, a maddening game of someone's design. Do I believe anything you say? What reason would I have for that. We were great and prosperous once. Now… Now is the age of shame.” He looked away from her.

She summoned a book from high on the shelf and it floated into her outstretched hand.

“I want to give you something. It is a rare gift.”

“Who are you?” He said, losing patience. “How did I get here?”

“This book contains within its pages a map. A special map. It has markers that are impossible to move even in this time of chaos. Take it. Follow it. Your faulty memory will not stop you on this quest. Whatever you encounter along the way, you must reach the end, do you understand? Unrest is growing. You have seen it. Soon it will spread and swallow all that is left. You feel cursed? It is true. Great spirits watch you, but they are not on your side. Be strong. Your family may still be alive. Look for them. Go.”

The witch’s laboratory seemed to pull in and out before him and streaking light and stars flew around him and suddenly he was numinous sparks. Within moments he reformed back inside the Inn. He looked about the room. A black cat on a windowsill stared at him. The large book with the dark red leather cover was in his hand. The sun was out and the day looked fair.

He stepped into the street, a cool breeze was blowing and carrying with it the salty air of the sea. He walked past a butcher, and a bakery, and a blacksmith hammering steel. An open market was selling trinkets, clothes, fish and food. He passed through all of it, observing the people, feeling strange, feeling at if he were walking amongst aliens, numb and unable to relate. His mind was skipping back into the woods, to the god that would not answer, and would not forgive, for what crime he did not know. It was a mystery to him and to everyone he had ever known. He walked past apple carts and face painters and jugglers, and through the festive din he saw the head of a dragon carved from a stone dragged up out of the ocean, around its base were offerings from the beach and the ocean, coconuts, shells, pieces of plate and staghorn coral, cuttlefish bones, odd spherical sailors eyes like balls of green blown glass, and a rock pool where hermit crabs and starfish lived, and a small purple octopus was perched on a coral, watching skittish bait fish with eyes slotted and cunning. He approached the monument and looking up at the head he realised this dragon was aquatic as it had a blowhole towards the base of its skull.

“A water dragon…” He said to himself. He went to the beach to find an offering that would help shape his fortune.

There was a long staircase descending the face of the cliff wall leading down to a beach. He was halfway down when an uncanny fog rolled in off the flat blue pan of the ocean and hugged against the rock. He was enveloped in the frigid mist and only able to see an arm’s reach in front of him. The stone steps were slippery and he stopped altogether, unable to see, and a silence reverberated around like someone had cupped their hands over his ears and he could only hear the distant sounds of the waves on the absolute edges of perception. Fort Silence… The structure itself seemed to speak to him. Everything was so still he could hear his own heart beating, and his own blood thumping along the arteries in his neck, and the squawk of a seagull floating in and out of time... A black clad assassin dropped from a ledge behind him with a steel blade drawn and he heard the soft landing and the movement of fabric clothes and Anton spun to block the first stab but missed the second which went into his shoulder. He cried out and knowing he had little recourse charged forth and grabbed the contract killer by the wrists and shoved him into the wall, an upwelling of pure fury boiling up and he gripped the man by the head, slamming his skull to the cold stone with sickening cracks, once, twice, now stunned the attacker dropped his weapon but then drew another from his hip and thrust upwards towards Anton's heart, he dodged backwards and then charged into him again, closing all distance, using the weight of his body to control him, he was fast but he was small, Anton was big, broad shouldered, with strong hands, he turned, spun hard, and gripping him with both hands by the collar he threw the killer over the edge into white oblivion. He gasped in shock as he was thrown into mid-air and then let out a scream all the way to the bottom that chilled Anton's blood. He heard a deadened smack as the body impacted the rocks below and then there was silence again.

He composed himself, adjusting his shirt and smoothed his hair. The wound in the shoulder cut only flesh. One of the blades had been dropped to the ground. He picked it up, wrapped the steel in cloth and slid it into his boot.

Back at the monument he knelt down and presented some of his finds from the beach. A perfectly formed nautilus shell, a sand dollar, and a jagged shark tooth the size of his hand. He placed them at the base of it and put his hand against the stone. He closed his eyes and said his prayer.

“I’m not expecting you to answer me. But if you are listening… please know we need you. We need your help. You see us. I know you do.”

The ocean breeze cooed softly around him and the markets continued their bustle. The strange fog had lifted up and evaporated into the sky. The city guard were calm. He stood and returned to the inn.

That night he awoke in a cold sweat in pitch black. He stood up, whirling, a presence in his room. He pulled the dagger from its cloth sheath and held it low and tight.

“Remember…” said a voice.

“Who’s there?” he yelled at nothing.

“Rememberrrrr” it repeated.

“WHO’S THERE? I’LL KILL YOU!” he roared, now beside himself and taking the room apart, tables and pillows flying, looking for the phantom.

“Remember the broken and the lost” it rattled, the voice labouring, hollow and dead sounding.

“WHO?”

“REMEMBER!” The voice commanded, shifting instantaneously across the room to right next to him, he was hit with a wave of frosty air with it’s voice barking into his left ear, harsh, guttural.

He squatted down with forearms propped on his knees, gripping his knife, low to the ground, as the voice might be up on the ceiling. The room was still dark. At that moment the moon light angled around and shone through the window and for a brief second he saw the ghostly hooded face of a fabled death shade which had appeared between his clothes rack and the cupboard, standing still with its head arched towards him at an odd angle. Then cloud covered the light and the room was in darkness again.

Anton shrunk back against the wall stoned silent in fear. The altercation on the stairs was something he knew how to deal with. A shade.. is a rotting ethereal corpus, an anti-being, whose very touch meant death. Cornered and defenseless, he made himself small. Then after a moment all went quiet. The chill left the room. The shade was gone.

The next morning he woke early and made his way into the streets. The sunlight was diffused and slate grey through cloud cover, the general mood not as welcoming as before. He noticed people eyeing him off at a distance, giving him sideways glances. Strange, he thought.

While walking the perimeter of the fort along the base of a high wall he saw a camp and market and a raw feeling grew inside him as he saw the cages. Large, rectangular and made of bolted wrought iron, the boxes sat atop wagons in a line. They were being loaded with people, a sorry and sore looking assortment of all races and breeds. Behind them were larger cages still, permanent fixtures it looked like, where the captures were processed. A flamboyant, clown like salesman was flanked by city guardsmen as he strolled the slave grounds and consorted with buyers and sellers, wearing red and white pinstripe, a pouch full of coins on his hip.

Anton was hit with a severe eruption of pain within his head, stinging, like acid, burning through his nerves like electricity, he crouched down for a minute and pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbed his temples.

"Corrupt sons of bitches." He said to himself. The pain eased. Then he saw it.

His child. The long blonde hair of his son, his fair skin rough and filthy, his grey clothes loose and torn. Thin looking. That was his son. He was alive. At that moment the horses were whipped and the wheels of the cart began turning. He saw the guards. He saw their long swords, the spears, the shields. He saw the slave broker smack the tail of the wagon with his open palm before he set off to his next deal. He saw the buyers, who were surely only proxies for wealthy landholders, inspecting the stock value of the now totally dehumanised prisoners. He was seething with white hot rage but hopeless to act. If he ran down there now, if he pursued the wagon train, he would himself be put in a cage, if not put down like an animal.

"I will not forget their faces." He said to himself, his mantra, his energy, his reason for being. His jaw was set square and his eyes were as hard and cold as granite boulders locked into ten thousand years of glacial ice. They were fixed unblinking on the carts now growing distant over the horizon. "I will remember them until the day I die."