The Man With No Name

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. An average passerby would take no notice of this candle, despite the oddity of its presence. Not because one is easily accustomed to strange lights in the depths of the woods, but because a normal glance would skip right past the light, unseeing, as though nothing were there at all. Pupils would refuse to contract, eyes refrain from blinking, and yet the face of the unwary visitor would alight for all to see, no longer sheathed in the safety of shadows. A spotlight for none but the predator to see.

It is lucky, therefore, that the woods around the abandoned cabin had so few average passersby. So few of any passersby, in all honesty. So, the question of a light in a cabin becomes similar to that of a tree falling in the forest. If no one is around to see it, and those who are do not know what they see, is there really a light on at all? Here, my friends, I assure you, there is. For there is one man who sees it. One man for whom the candle flickers, for whom the light illuminates the darkest of truths. This man is the man with no name.

The man lurches into a sitting position, coming awake in a panic. Fear grips him like a fist around his heart as his mind scrambles to make sense of the situation. There are no memories offering to help. Tall, ominous shadows rise around him, stretching into the blackness, swaying slightly, but he cannot remember the word for trees. Nor does he understand what a forest is, or the gravel clinging to his hands as he stands. The man does not know where he comes from, or why he is here. And so his surroundings dim, fading into shades of blackness to hide from him what his mind cannot comprehend. Darkness claws at his eyes, forcing everything else from his vision. Except, in the distance, a flickering catches his attention, floating alone in the sea of darkness. The light of a single candle winks at him, the only proof that he has eyes at all. A candle. This is a word he knows. The only word that he is able to parse out of the assault of information he cannot process.

A certainty grips the man, forcing him to his feet. The man knows now that he has lost his memory. He has lost the words that assign sensation, sights, smells, to meaning, but, in a last desperate effort the man’s mind holds onto the image of the candle, the one now flickering through the trees he does not know from the cabin he cannot name. The candle. One foot plods into the grass as the man stumbles forward. The light flickers. Then again, with the next step, the glow seeming to shiver in time with his pace.

Something flickers in the man’s memory as he stumbles over an invisible obstacle, a small nudge to the back of his mind. He glances down at his wrist, unsure as to why, but he cannot see through the dark. There is a brief sense of hollowness, as though an answer he had hoped to find had not presented itself. It must be close to midnight, with all this darkness. Or perhaps later, the darkest time of the night. The man halts abruptly, staggering. Time! That was what he wanted to know, the hour that brought about his near blindness. Raising his wrist, the man frowns. There is no glint of gold through the dark where a... a something should be. Something to do with time. But nothing is there. Nothing at all. No gold, no fingers... no hand.

The man screams. He remembers vividly the sensation of gravel stuck to his palm as he had pushed himself off the ground. He remembers curling fingers he could not see mere seconds ago, before the memory. Reaching up to touch his face, to be certain, the man feels the space where his finger should be pass through his nose, a stub of wrist slamming into his cheek. The man cannot remember what pain is, but he cries out all the same. He does not know if there is blood, if his wrist has been severed or has simply ceased to exist but the shock pushes the man to resume his desperate stumbling through the darkness.

The candle. Another image appears briefly to the man, clouding the darkness for a mere instant. There's a figure in that cabin. Guarding the light. Keeping it from the man with no name. The man shivers as the memory of evil passes through him. Not a person or an act, but the pure essence of evil, one that transcends the fabric of reality. That must be what is holding that candle, what has stolen the man's memories. And now his hand. He must reach the candle, blow it out to release the hold it has over him, free himself from the dark before the blackness consumes him.

A sound echoes through the nothingness behind the man, a banging thud that comes from everywhere and nowhere. It reverberates deep in his chest, clinging there with claws of spite and anger. The man steps again, quicker, and another bang rings out, this time followed by a softer thud in time with his jarring feet. He runs, hobbling, blind except for the flickering candle light that seems still so far away. The heart beat thuds match his uneven gait.

THUD thud, THUD thud.

The man trips, coming down wrong in the invisible underbrush. But no, his foot didn't come down wrong. His foot didn't come down at all! There was no foot. His left leg simply stopped at the ankle, all feeling and knowledge of having a foot gone with it. Screaming, the man lurches to his feet, limping horrifically as he pushes forward, ever forward, towards the candle. The thumping starts again, louder and more insistent. Had it stopped? The man could not remember. All he knew was he had to hurry, to reach the candle.

Lifting his mutilated arm to fend off a branch, the man instead felt the whip across his tear stained face.

THUD thud. THUD thud

There was no arm, just emptiness to the shoulder. Sobbing at the growing crescendo of thuds surrounding him, faster, louder, more insistent with every piece the darkness stole from the man, he fell to his knees, crawling where he no longer had calves.

THUD thud, THUD thud, THUD thud

Pulling with an arm that was his last remaining limb, the man knew what a grotesque sight he must be, or he would, if he remembered what it meant to see.

There it was, the light, almost upon him now. He had to make it, he had to blow out the candle before there was nothing left of him to blow with. The thudding was right on top of him, heavy and demanding. Hungry.

THUDTHUDTHUDTHUD

Heaving through the rocks the man's fingers dug into smooth cold wood, the candle light rising slowly to meet him as he lurched pathetically into the cabin with a roll. Heaving great gasping breaths the man with no name and almost no body looked up at the figure guarding the candle. Despite holding the glowing candle mere inches from his face, the figure remained a shadow; taunting, laughing at the deformed shape at his feet. The man made a final, desperate lunge.

The man reached out a hand and grasped the shadow, at last facing his captor, ready to fill in the life that had been stolen. His fingers gripped; chilled, shivering flesh against pulsing shadow, corporeal through the evil that sustains it. Only something was wrong. The flesh was not his- not his fingers, or hand, or skin. The man was looking at the hand that extended from his own body and saw only a writhing darkness, muting the flickering light that came from the small, frightened boy held in his grip, huddled against the wall of the cabin. The boy’s eyes darted around the room, huge and uncomprehending as the child felt the shadow that was the man with no name encompass him, blind to the light of his candle.

The man pulled back, this was not right, this lost child was not the evil light that must be snuffed out for the man to regain his freedom, his memories!

"But it is", a long dormant voice whispered in his ear, "This is the way out. Don’t you remember?"

And then he did. The man with no name had had a name. The man with no body had a body. The man with no memory had had a memory. Until he had walked into that cabin and his living soul had lit the candle. Prey under a spot light, the man remembered the darkness reaching for him, consuming him, becoming him- until the man had lost his name and the candle it’s light. The darkness laughs, the sound coming from the man, the body that is not a body. And the man knows that he has sustained the darkness all this time- months, decades, the man does not know- feeding it with his memories, a host sustaining a parasite with his soul.

The hand that is not a hand reaches out once more, no longer belonging to the man, and grasps the child around the neck. Frozen, the boy cannot cry out, cannot struggle as the candle that he cannot see lights his face, flickers, and fades, flowing into the darkness. The boys memories fill the space where the last memory of the man vanishes, pulled forever into the darkness, his name one last whisper as the edges of the darkness sharpen and expand.

The man with no name was no more. The boy with no name looked down at the body that once was his, curious about its origin but not overly concerned. All around him was darkness, but he thought maybe he liked the darkness. A memory of a similar forest presented itself in his mind, but the second it appeared, it was gone. Perhaps he should go home, he considered, but he couldn’t remember what that word meant anywhere.

Turning away from the body in the cabin, the boy with no name saw another figure in the corner. More than one, in fact, bones shrouded in clothing, all in various states of decay. For an instant he was afraid, but then he could not recall why he should be afraid. The skeleton closest to the boy, rags mostly intact, had around it’s left wrist a golden watch, round face frozen to midnight. The boy turned again and walked into the woods, forgetting that he had ever seen the figures in the cabin. He was not concerned. What even was a watch, anyway? The only thing he could remember was a candle, glowing in the window. He had to find that candle. Only then would he be free.