The Before

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. It hadn’t burned for five decades to be exact. Not since the last person from the Before came.

The people of the After were elated when Elder Charles first saw the flame dancing in the window. For fifty years, the candle had laid dormant, granting no one passage into the After, and the villagers had begun to think there would never be another from the Before, but that was not to be the case. Understandably, the reawakening of the candle stirred up quite a bit of excitement for the last remaining people on Earth.

Quickly, the village began to prepare for the new arrival. They cleaned up the Befores’ cottage, swiping decades worth of dust away and replacing moth-eaten curtains and blankets. The women of the town cooked a feast that had the children’s mouths watering, and the men straightened up everyone’s wooden homes in an effort to impress the new comer. Each of the six Elders met with the Memory Man to discuss the ceremony that would take place for the person from the Before and the knowledge they would bring.

The Memory Man had never spoken to any of the villagers, he only ever spoke with the people from the Before, but he always blessed the Elder’s with knowledge in exchange for substance when a Before person arrived. Though the common villagers had never heard his voice or seen his face beneath his black hood, they trusted him and the Elders to restore them to their ancestor’s former glory.

When morning came, the villagers gathered around the cabin in the forest, anxious to be one of the first to see the new person from the Before. They waited patiently, muttering in excitement when the candle’s flame finally went out. They leaned forward eagerly when the wooden door began to open, the hinges squealing like the pigs in the butcher’s grasp. The villagers were, thankfully, respectful enough to not actually cheer when the door was fully open, but the children had no such inhibitions and clapped and yelled with abandon.

Natalia Rivera, M.D., was suitably shocked when she woke up in a, seemingly, abandoned cabin in a bed full of cobwebs. However, she was even more surprised when she walked out of said cabin to find a horde of people--dressed like they were in The Little House on the Prairie--surrounding her.

The villagers immediately began talking, each of them crowding around the young woman in an effort to greet her and get her name. Natalia could only stare at the people in confusion, until they suddenly became subdued, looking down towards the ground and clearing a path through the center of the crowd.

It was then that Natalia heard the noise. It was like a hundred voices crying out in stage whispers, their voices hoarse and overused. A high-pitched keening noise like a back-drop to it all, covering up all other sounds.

The young doctor stared down the hastily made aisle, her eyes immediately locking onto the dark form of a man cloaked in black robes and gloves, a hood pulled all the way over his face, his long arms outstretched and reaching towards her. Six older men and women followed closely behind him, three on each of the man’s sides, holding onto his robes to keep him from lunging at her.

“He has not eaten in a long while,” an Elder explained to her, smiling reassuringly despite the writhing figure he was restraining.

Natalia could only stare as the others dragged the cloaked man away, leaving behind Elder Charles and the curious villagers to greet the person from the Before. They all ignored the Memory Man’s reaction.

“Welcome to the After!” The Elder began, waving his hands grandly. “You have been blessed with travel from the Before to grant us knowledge, and we are forever grateful.”

It was safe to say that Natalia was understandably confused by the people and their greeting, and she only continued to get mixed up as the Elder enlightened her with information regarding her sudden appearance.

“You were in the Before until a cataclysmic event destroyed most of human life on Earth, leaving only our ancestors alive. However, all of our history and knowledge was lost to us, sending us back to the beginnings of human civilization. To help us regain our advancements in the world, we were given a candle from the Before. This candle, and the Memory Man who is tied to it, brings back someone from the Before from death every week, helping our village grow. We flourished for years until it suddenly stopped five decades ago. We had begun to fear we would never benefit from your knowledge again, but the Memory Man has begun to dream once more, and we have been blessed alongside you.”

Natalia was incredulous of the Elder’s tale. She had just been in her apartment, sleeping after a day of work, before she woke up in the abandoned cabin. Nothing cataclysmic had happened, no one had died as they were saying.

However, she barely had any time to ponder the dubious information before she was whisked away by the villagers to show her around the town. She stared at each of the cabins and shops they brought her too, nodding along amicably with their inane chatter. But despite the brightness of the villagers’ homes, something lurked in the shadows. In the corners of the cabins or in the tree-line, a human-form twitched and trembled, following her every move. The faintest noise of whispers and screeches played with her mind, toying with her emotions.

The days went by much the same as the first, with villagers guiding her around, but she kept hearing the screams, the same ones she had heard coming from the Memory Man the first day. It would be the middle of the night, and the high-pitched sound would invade her dreams, waking her up with a gasp to discover nothing but silence.

The townsfolk were odd, to say the least. They went about their days quite normally, but they would stare at her in awe when they thought she wasn’t looking. They would gush to her of their gratitude for her knowledge, but they would never ask questions about what she knew, what the Before was like. Their eyes would follow her much like the children did. They trailed her around the streets, merrily signing a nursery rhyme:

“Memory Man wants to play! So he goes and finds his prey! Memory Man wants to eat! So he goes and finds good meat! Memory Man wants a scream! So he goes to bed to dream!”

Understandably, Natalia was unnerved. The town looked innocent enough, but shadows seemed to linger, noises seemed to elongate and warp into something else. Something more sinister. The days stayed frighteningly the same, full of an unidentified sort of dread, until the seventh day dawned.

It had been a full week since Natalia had arrived when she was greeted outside her cabin by the entire village. They stared at her eagerly, almost hungrily.

Nervously, the young woman followed them as they crowded around her, pushing her forward into the village square where a large platform had been set up, a heavy chair on top of that. When the townsfolk pushed her closer, she began to struggle. The screams were back, the hushed whispers that had plagued her were filling her mind, begging her to run and escape. Why she hadn’t recognized their warning before, she didn’t know, but now it was time to listen.

Natalia pulled away from the villagers, batting their hands away when they reached out for her. She kicked out and screamed when they tied her arms behind her and dragged her up to the platform, dumping her into the chair and tying her down. The ropes dug into her skin, pulling her shoulders back uncomfortably behind her. Though the villagers were forcibly restraining the young woman, they all chattered excitedly, broad smiles lighting up their faces and laughs drowning out the person from Before’s pleading.

The young doctor stayed in the chair for several hours as the people relaxed and enjoyed themselves, eating and talking with friends and family, watching Natalia with excitement and ignoring her cries for help.

It was when the sun began to set that the Elders made their appearance. They walked in a ‘V’ formation with the Memory Man at the head. The two Elders on either side of him gripped his shoulders, the Elder’s behind them gripping their own. The villagers cleared a path for them, leading the way to Natalia.

The Memory Man stopped in front of the young doctor, he looked down at her through his black hood, the screams seemed to crescendo with the passing second, growing louder until Natalia squirmed in her seat in an effort to get away from the sound.

Each of the Elders looked upon her with pride, their hands clasping each other’s shoulders. Elder Charles stood to the right of the Memory Man, and he was the one to address the villagers.

“Today, we shall commence with the ceremony of Memory! We ask that you all remain quiet so the Memory Man may bless us with the Before’s knowledge.”

Immediately, all the sound created by the villager’s stopped. It was as if someone had flipped a switch to cut off all human noise. Even the children were silent. Everything was gone. Except the screams.

Natalia leaned backwards in the chair as the Memory Man reached out his ungloved hands, grasping her head between them. The appendages were pale and brittle, dark char covered his fingers and flaked off onto Natalia’s forehead like ash. They were cold, devoid of any human warmth.

He leaned in closer, letting his covered head rest on the doctor’s. Then he spoke.

It wasn’t any language Natalia could recognize, surely nothing that had ever existed on Earth. It sounded of many voices speaking as one, whispering and chanting until they all blended together in a horrifying ensemble.

She screamed as something was pulled from within her. A white mist detached itself from her body, flowing into that of the Memory Man’s and to the Elders on either side of him. It wasn’t a physical pain, but a loss within her so deep it ripped out the very foundations of who she was. All her memories were leaving her one by one, everything that made her Natalia Rivera. Everything she learnt in medical school, every memory of her family, every emotion she’d ever experienced: gone.

They were all stolen from her, given to the Elders by the Memory Man who continued taking until there was nothing left inside of her. No memory or emotion she could recognize, no thought she could make. She was a shell.

The Elders gasped as she fell limp in the chair. They let go of each other’s shoulders and breathed deeply, their eyes alight in ecstasy while Natalia’s laid gray and blank. They stood there for a moment, adjusting to their new memories, their new feelings, before turning to the villagers who waited in silent anticipation. The Memory Man only stared at the Before’s hollowed body.

“We have been blessed!” Elder Charles shouted, raising his arms as the villagers cheered and shouted, released from their vow of silence. “With the memories of the Before, we will be able to heal the injured and sick, we will make new medicines!”

While the villagers stared at the Elders in excitement, the Memory Man grabbed Natalia’s body, dragging her off the platform, towards the forest. No one spared a glance for the two of them. The Memory Man hadn’t eaten in a very long time. It was about time he took his payment.

“We are forever grateful to those of the Before,” Elder Charles continued, his face glowing in pride. “And we shall be blessed again, for the candle is lit once more!”

The townsfolk jumped and cheered, clapping their hands together and holding their loved ones close in joy. The Elders shared broad smiles as they joined in on the celebration. After fifty long years, they were finally receiving the knowledge they longed for since they were trapped away from civilization. Things were finally looking up.

In the forest, where the fading sun rays couldn’t reach and the villagers’ cheers were faint, the Memory Man ate his fill. It had been many years, but his food supply seemed to be returning. The young woman would only satisfy his hunger for a little while, but another would be coming soon. Someone he could drain the memories of in return for their soft meat. Another person from the Before.