Steven Marshall Horror

- Nemesis of Tranquility-
Featured in Rituals of Terror
by Steven Marshall

Alas, the words come to mind; then forgotten, and I am but stuck within an endless void between them...

It seems as though time is catching up with me, especially now that I'm back home. Soon I may be able to practice my routine nocturnal ritual of sleep again, the way I once did before this nightmare started. No denying that this whole experience has tipped the scales of the uncanny as well as the incomprehensible. Inside my mind, I'm pacing frantically - unable to think with clarity - and constantly enduring a deep-rooted phobia that's rendered me into a catatonic stupor.

All my worst fears have surfaced - ominously culminating, then crashing down uncontrollably. For now, time has made everything right again; but I am certain that this sequence of events will be recurring once more, with no recollection of the prior experience. My mind is repeating this dream like a skipping record.

As the dream starts, I find myself walking inside some unknown park, a place so far from my home; so far do I wander with no direction or cause. It happens a few heartbeats after midnight, when the darkness is absolute. There I am, treading aimlessly along a narrow, twisting asphalt path, with a vague but distinct notion that I've been here many times before.

During this restless wandering, I can faintly hear some distant voices - mere garbled whispers at first - then, so clear, so eloquent, and so familiar. I continue onward in the fog of darkness, closer to the origin of the voices.

Deeper into the woods, I see a bright-burning campfire beyond the dark, billowy trees. I approach with caution - scarcely enough to claim a good view - but far enough to camouflage myself in the shadows. As I reach the top of the hill, I look down and there they are.

They stand in a circle, hands joined together, wearing long black robes. They seem listless and indifferent; hypnotically seduced by the amber-burning flames of the fire. In watching, I, too, become entranced in a spell of my own. As the flames dance, I see a raging inferno of mystery and magic engulfing a pit of suffering and sorrow. In the blue of the flame, I can vaguely identify faces of empty souls crying out - alone and afraid - like me. The flames burn ripe at their pinnacle, while the crowd slowly moves counterclockwise around them.

The longer I listen, the more their esoteric incantations graze across a poetic melody. Then they return to their interminable chanting as if they're struggling in their confusion. I can feel a churning in my innards from the depths of my mind to the core of my soul - yet I have no clue as to the source. And in this midst of confusion, I am somehow experiencing the same mental anguish they are. But within this realm of pain, I am also comprehending the same level of awareness. Then, in that brief spectrum of realization, everyone - including myself - freezes in our train of thought.

Henceforth, the chanting ceases and the crowd turns their heads precisely in my direction; their glassy, dead puppet eyes pierce straight through me and hold me to the spot. Their mouths can't move, but I can hear them; somehow I am telepathically receiving the echoes of their thoughts and fears.

They don't seem to feel disturbed or threatened by my presence, but I am certain they know I exist; that I'm somehow part of this.

I study them for a while when suddenly I hear them chanting an ancient rhyme; the same one I have been trying to decipher ever since this nightmare started.

“From the salt in heaven's tears - across clear, moonlit skies - behind each mystery - inside the vivid memories of the living and dead”... it was like shattered pieces of a puzzle.

They devote their attention to the aura of the flame, as I sit perched in rapt anticipation on the hilltop. Moment by moment, the raging flames wither down - sporadically crackling - as the darkness slowly swallows them. The smoke from the charred wood lingers, refusing to ascend and disperse into the night. Thus, remaining is the essence of fried maple ash and a hazy fog which clings magnetically to the brittle earth like a demon on a virgin's breast.

The more the flames die down, the more drained I become until I drift off into a deeper sleep, still inside my dream. In this dream, my body, my external shell, like the flames of the fire, has no definite shape or anatomy. It exists only until the wind that gives it life steals its soul in return - like the words that came to my mind; then forgotten, left me stuck in an endless void between them!

Tonight there is nothing in the sky except the full, silvery moon. But no dark shadows fall across the evening horizon, no churning smoke or pollution chokes the frail atmosphere. And, best of all, no more nightmares tempting me into insanity.

As I look to the moon, I no longer see a great deformed face on its surface, creeping out of the cosmic ocean of infinity, ready to devour our eternal night light while I watch. And the fog is no longer a massive parked cloud resting from the dire exhaustion of lingering in the sky.

Tonight, I have found the solution in the sanctuary of a higher existence. I now realize I'm not having a recurring nightmare, but the same one . Why is this dream skipping? Every time it ends, it starts all over again! Each time I return, however, I am given another verse of the rhyme...until the flames wither into ashes, and the ashes blow away.

And that's when the doctors had finally given up hope, realizing that this coma rendered me a prisoner in my own body. But now and forevermore, I can rest eternally for I have solved the puzzle and found true peace of mind:

“From the salt in heaven's tears, to the fire of Hell's laughter - beneath bottomless oceans, across clear moonlit skies, - above pinnacles of mountain peaks, below underground lakes - in northern leaf and southern flower - behind each mystery, and the voids between them - within life and death, fact and fiction - amongst the watchful winds beyond Heaven and Hell - inside the vivid memories of the living and dead,” something wonderful happened: those robed figures were not at all members of a cult - but all my deceased relatives waiting for me to come home.

I am no longer dying in a nightmare, for I've become the essence of purification.

“I never imagined that dying in one's nightmare would encompass death itself. Perhaps I've dreamed of this place near the point of death and have become its prisoner in doing so. Here my bloodless form is being held suspended while my other body lies somewhere without hope. There can be no denying this present state is without reality even beyond the real world. If nothing else, I know what it is like to dream. And although a vast universe of strange sensation has inspired a sense of the real world, it is no more real than I am even now. I know there is nothing within this obscure darkness to sustain my footsteps, but those memories still exist in the soul of my mind. And should I venture back there, I would peril straight into an amnesia of darkness, rather than approach that infinite light by degrees of my dying dreams. Otherwise, my thoughts - if they were ever mine - will be forever lost in nothingness.”

Finally, the words come to mind - now remembered - and I am still stuck within an endless void between them.

© Copyright Steven Marshall 2005.
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or republished by any means without the prior permission of the author. This is an original work protected under U.S. law.