Heart Cinder

The past night’s trauma was fresh in his mind. Despite keeping his eyes shut for a few blissful hours, Martin remained painfully awake looking for dangers, some real and some only in the furthest realms of his imagination. The other bunkmates were staring at him. The closest man to him asks, “Frederic Martin, you ok?”

“Yeah, Chevelle,” he says, trying to separate the dream from reality. “You're a good friend. How many summers has it been?”

“Too many, old friend,” Chevelle says, ending in a mournful laugh. “Do you remember anything?”

“No, I dreamt of the man with two ravens. One raven looking to the past, the other looking to the future. The raven eyed man is watching the present so the birds don't falter. But the one raven watching the past has gone blind.” His friend's disappointment is palpable. Martin gave a reassuring smile. “The memory fatigue is too bad. I still can’t remember the old world. What do you remember?”

His friend scratches his head. “Nothing that makes sense.” The man sits up and pulls a note out his backpack. “The old man wants to see you.”

The news caused Martin to chuckle. “I’ll go see if the old man is awake.”

His friend shrugged and laid back down, “Nobody sleeps anymore.”

Martin heads for the bathroom to splash cold water from the sink to help abate the tiredness. Looking up from the sink with bloodshot eyes, he stares into the mirror. Nothing stares back. He sees nothing but the reflection of the bathroom. Something is wrong. His mind tries to grasp what is missing but the memory is locked behind a wall of memory fatigue. After a moment of frustration, he gives up. He heads over to the old man.

Martin knocks on the open door, “Old man Winter, I heard you have a job for me.”

Winter looks up at him through spectacle glasses. His movement is like a poorly maintained machine coming to life. “Yes, Mr. Martin. Please come in. I need a package delivered to New Hope.”

“Must be important,” Martin remarks. “New Hope isn’t a short journey. It goes through the less friendly version of the wasteland.” Winter puts a heart shaped silver locket on the table in front of him.

“You gotta be kidding me. That’s the package?”

Winter nodded. “Take it or leave it,” his tone gave a finality to the offer.

Martin scoops up the necklace. “It'll be there in six hours.”

The outside of his community and the start of the Southland is marked with a chain-link fence. Up in the distance is the upturned asphalt of a six lane highway stretching across the horizon. Its pavement is broken by a myriad of cracks where lava seeps to the surface. Before he left, he checked the ashfall. Excessive ashfall means a firestorm is approaching.

The ashfall is light and the firestorm on the horizon is drifting away from the ancient skeletal remains of a city. He pulls out a dossier from his backpack. The dossier pages were hand-stitched from old encyclopedias, tour guides pamphlets, and postcards that were worn, faded to dark yellow, and crumbling. The area outside of the fence fell away into a dense swamp. A miasma of decay hung over the area like a foreboding shadow of some great deity. Twisted gnarled alien plants sprouted from the water surface. Amongst the plants were vibrant colored flowers that always seem to shift the spectrum of color based on the angle to the sun. Becoming deeper hues of violets and blues. The world was so alien, so different. Yet little things remained from the old world. A storefront peaked through the thick underbrush, the red of a rusted stop sign overgrown with ivy, the husk of an automobile like the rock in the middle of a stream. These remnants formed the world's ancient skeleton. The framework that supported its bloated body. There was a deep rumble, a horrible croak from deep from within the swamp.

Despite his best effort to enter the swamp quietly, his boots made a splash. He gives a prayer that some otherworldly force keeps prying eyes away. But as the reeds crunched underfoot, he knew there was no such luck. He rushes out into murky waters. But every step was a struggle not to sink deeper into the muck. The shifting muck made his footing precarious and forward momentum toppled him over. Before he knew it, the swamp is rushing up to claim him. That’s when he notices the figure.

The man is thin and frail, barely a skeleton; his flowing black robe had gold trim and laced with golden sigils of a complexity beyond Martin’s understanding. Despite standing in and being surrounded by murky water, his outfit is dry. Then Martin’s face is pushed beneath the stagnant water, eyes and nose stinging, chest heaving.

As Martin breaks the surface, he finds no signs of the hooded figure. He casts weary glances all around him. There is an all too familiar bellow being carried on the wind. He stares into the sky and sees something that causes him to shrink back. High up ahead is the silhouette of a bat. His prospects were going from bad to near fatal. Does he face the swamp where every step is a struggle or head towards the ancient city streets. It didn’t take long to reach a consensus.

He continued to stumble over roots and reeds until he found himself inside a half submerged structure. It took a second for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. Wood had all but rotted or burned away leaving behind only material that wouldn't decay, like stone or metal. In the corner opposite of him are two red eyes hanging in midair illuminating the darkness. A lifetime of woes had sharpened his reflexes. Every movement is taught by a near miss with death. Death is an old friend of his and this is the game they played. For the second time in just over an hour he saw the hooded figure staring back at him. Then in a momentary distraction, the unfocus of his attention but for a moment, the man is gone. He questioned if he even saw it.

He put as much distance between him and the eyes trailing behind him. He burst onto the blackened city streets where there are signs of a recent firestorm. Now the nightmare from earlier is perched on a street light watching the city streets intently. Once it saw him, it swooped down talons grasping. Martin almost saw it too late before he dove out of the way. The creature passed so close that one of the leathery wings brushed against his skin.

It only took a heartbeat to pick a building and run for it. The entire way there he is haunted by the sound of beating wings. For a moment he thought he had escaped. But then the creature came crashing through the front entrance like a massive explosion tearing through the building. Despite his best efforts, the creature had him cornered. Behind the monster, the hooded figure is patiently waiting for something to happen and watching intently. But what is the man waiting for and why did the beast not notice him, he could not answer. The man is also looking through him to a set of double staircases descending into gloom nearly twenty meters behind him. His feet descend the concrete staircase and pass into safety behind two solid metal doors.

The flashlight previously buried in his backpack illuminates the darkness and causes the shadows to dance. But with every shadow he questions which is trickery and which is something unnatural. He is in a large gathering area with a subway train at its heart. Massive tectonic upheaval had pushed the train on its side and spilled out the only decaying remains of the old world not burned away by the firestorms. He could spend a lifetime going through the artifacts. Seeing pictures of places forgotten by history but even with intellectual curiosity, he couldn’t linger.

A breeze brought a chilling touch and a voice upon the wind. ‘Help me’ , the voice cried. The compass on his belt begins to spin of its own free will. The radio in his pack had turned on and began to crackle. Through the static another voice starts begging for help.

Soon numerous other voices joined the chorus. As the voices became more frantic and desperate, the crescendo of screaming intensified to a feverish pitch and items began to thrash about. A porcelain doll is thrown against the wall, shattering it. Yet through the haze of panic and fear, he saw his companion throughout the journey watching him. Bemusement upon his face. In a blink of an eye, he is gone. It didn’t matter. The unearthly denizens of this place were trying to drive him away, drive him deeper into the dark.

The voices had chased him through the winding metro tunnels until he reached the older section. Bioluminescence spores hung heavy in the warm and humid air. Water trickles from the ceiling. Yet the voices were more quiet here. There is a campsite undisturbed by the tectonic shifts that had collapsed entire sections of the metro. This particular part of the metro had been home for some of the people of the old world. Though he is at a loss why anyone would choose to live down here. There is a hastily scribbled note laying next to the campsite.

‘There's a man of golden laurels goin' 'round takin' name and he decides who to free and who to blame. Not everyone is being treated all the same. He had a golden voice preachin' down. Telling me come and see. And I saw and behold a pale horse. The man’s name is Death and Hell followed with him.’

The dead whisper to him, “Forgive me if you, please. Pray unto my lost soul. Don’t let me die alone.”

“Sorry,” he whispers back, “I wish I could.” He picks up the note. You can’t put a price on history in a world without memories. He continued onward until he saw a light at the end of the tunnel. Stepping through the light, he could smell the fresh air and feel the sunlight kiss his skin. A feeling of appreciation for his new found freedom washes the experience in the tunnels away.

He stands before a massive stone edifice built into the side of a mountain and buried under tons of ash. There he found his dark passenger, his companion on this journey. Perched upon his shoulder are two ravens. One raven is blind to the present and future; It watches the path behind him. The other is looking to the world just beyond sight. The raven eyed man continues to watch him.

“I dreamt of you. Raven eyed man, Man of the Golden Laurels, Death.” Almost not by choice he handed over the heart shaped locket. “What does the locket mean?”

“Your journey is over,” the raven eyed man said, taking the locket. He opened the locket to reveal a picture of Martin. “This locket carries a message for the past, your past. So that the transgression of the father doesn't affect the son. Now there is hope.”

“But what of me?” Martin asks.

“Now, you’ll rest,” Death said, gesturing to the world just beyond sight. “Follow my raven home.”

“It’s beautiful,” Martin said. “It’s everything I thought it would be.”

“There are many memories here, many forgotten. People your heart has known about for a very long time. Now you’ll come home.”