EPTHere are the first two chapters of a story I'm writing, any feedback is much appreciated!
Who was Malen Merlock?
What am I thinking right now? A straight forward question to be sure, one for which an answer would usually be readily available if not already known, but at this particular moment there’s more flexibility to the question than you would think. I don’t mean that the answer is at all difficult. In fact the answer is quite clear. What I mean is that the question in question can be asked in more ways than one.
My name is Joshua Halal. Right now I am atop a twelve foot ladder under the motive guise of obtaining a few hundred books from what could very well be the last library in the world. What I'm really doing is a surveillance of all the people who bothered coming here today of all days.
First off we have an old woman ,with dyed red hair and dark fading green eyes, sitting down on an oak bench reading a supposed copy of Crime and Punishment, what is she thinking? The question is the same as the one asked before. The same can be said for the middle aged man with his middle aged coat sitting at a distant table sipping smuggled coffee, what is he thinking? Again the question is identical, because we are all thinking about the exact same thing. Everyone in this library is consumed by the same idea.
In fact, I can almost say for certain that for the next 23 hours or so, all of humanity will be of like mind and like thought. Even the books echo our concerns. Open one, turn the page as many times as you like. Every word of every page of every book in the world has only one thing to say and that one thing is a name, Malen Merlock. Who is Malen Merlock and why can we not help but remember him?
As I said, all the books in the world are essentially dead; Malen Merlock’s name is their hastily written will. Every word ever written has been replaced his name, so why would anyone come to a library if all the books were ruined? Habit maybe, but it’s far more likely that these people are just curious, like me. I descended the ladder at that point having discarded the veil hiding my intentions. I pretended that I came here to collect a few books so that I could naturally draw myself into a conversation about Malen Merlock. Why? To assure myself that I’m not the only one who cares, even though I know I’m not. The books are of course ruined and anyone who came here had to have been fully aware of that. Strangely enough there are more people in the library today than there were back when all the books were intact. A bitter sweet thing for the librarian I’m sure.
I imagine they were obliterated by Malen’s little apocalypse, the librarians I mean, most of them closed down their libraries almost immediately after the crisis, a lifetime of gathering and appreciating any or every sort of text, gone. I happened to know the man who ran this particular library. His name was Samuel Haddock, a weathered gentleman in his late fifties. He had inherited the library from his uncle, a man who spent decades trying to fulfill his collections and then share them with his humble community. I imagined that the old building with its rickety steps and teetering shelves meant the world to Haddock. I approached Sam’s desk to engage in shallow conversation while I stared into his heart. He was wearing a stained white shirt and long jeaned pants that dragged past his feet. His skin sagged like the moon in the sky and his face had the complexion of a shrivelled bag.
His eyes were simply dead, there was nothing left to see within them. As we spoke he began to viciously tear apart a stack of his books off to his side without turning his gaze away from me, some of them were common and some of them were rare, I wish I could say it didn’t matter to him, but it did. An especially tortured gaze fell across his face while he tore in half a 100 year old copy of the book Heart Of Darkness, in the background I hear our conversation drone on. For a moment I feel his pain, then I look at the growing pile of rubble at his feet, he had let the shredding of classics just fall to the floor, all the withered pages and their endless proclamation of the name Malen Merlock. I left Mr Haddock standing there, a force of destruction meant for the husks of the things he’d once loved. This was the third time Mr Haddock had become as such; it would certainly be the last. One man can only endure so much loss.
The library was to close in an hour for the very last time; this would be my last chance to find a kindred spirit. I spoke with everyone in the library and when the time came I spoke to them of Malen Merlock. The topic was considered unmentionable despite its immediate and constant relevance. Everyone wanted to talk about it, but no one would, they were scared. The mere mentioning of his name was imagined to be the greatest of taboos, in some countries it was even considered a crime to do so, but no one here in the library could refuse me. After all, we were here because we were all asking the same question. Who is Malen Merlock?
Nobody knew much of what had really happened three years ago, but we all had our bits and pieces of the puzzle. By the end of the day I had several recollections to add to my own. I had learnt the following in the form of rumours, first hand experiences and word of mouth.
2053- March 29- Malen’s day: Every word in the world is erased and replaced by the endless repetition of Malen’s name, there is no ground zero, humanity blinks and their words vanish.(No one disputes the date, everyone remembers the 29th very clearly).
Immediate repercussions, damage is as follows. (Some firsthand accounts from everyone gave me a good understanding of how devastating the calamity was.)
1: Everyone is essentially deleted, we can no longer be considered living by old world standards now that all physical and digital logs are destroyed.
2: History, Literature, Philosophy all of academia gone in an instant, humanity is just about set back to square 1 in several fields.
3: Security of any sort becomes nonexistent, governments are left in shambles without any sort of organization or efficient communication and radical sects of society all across the world use the ensuing disorder to throw several coos, Governments are toppled within days of the dreadful event. People are left to fend for themselves. All flow of information is cut and almost all nations become completely isolated from one another.
The next 6 months are utter chaos, everyone struggles desperately to rebuild while criminals ceaselessly rampage throughout the world. Various high maintenance facilities are left to decay for a time, a single nuclear facility in the west melts down causing widespread panic and destruction.
September 14 2053: Israel, my current home, is the first country in the world to get back on its feet. They manage to stabilize most of the Middle East; Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt recover with Israel’s aid. (The old lady volunteered for the Red Cross so she was able to see much of Israel’s relief efforts first hand.)
In the year to come most of the world, with the exception of the Americas, managed to acquire some semblance of sparse order. (The man with the weathered coat and I had fled from the west and crossed much of the eastern world to reach our families in Israel so we were able to attest to the validity of this statement.)
2054: March 29th: It is confirmed that anything we write down will turn into Malen's name within three days (it was the first official announcement our government had made since its reformation) as of yet no one has an explanation for the phenomena.
Around this time most religions in the world centring around a religious text began to worship Malen Merlock as a god( I had heard this from the librarian himself, Mr Haddock said that his nephew had converted a month before, Mr Haddock watched him done a hooded cloak and walk away, he hadn’t seen him since)
That was all I had gotten the chance to learn because at exactly eight o’clock Mr Haddock hurried us all out of the library. My informants scuttled into the shadows cast upon the surrounding forest by the setting sun. The library was built deep inside a sparce forest atop Mount Carmel, so it wasn’t likely that anyone would have seen them enter or leave it. Nonetheless they’d taken enough of a risk by simply obliging their curiosity and coming here, so I’m not at all surprised that they didn’t stick around to exchange numbers.
I on the other hand, chose to stay a while longer; I felt that I had nothing to hide. There shouldn’t be anything terribly wrong about wearing you heart on your sleeve. I watched Mr Haddock take his time closing up the library. When he was done he walked up to my side and asked “Would you like to stay?” Until that moment I hadn’t noticed that he was holding a long club like stick with a ragged towel wrapped across its broader end, it was a make shift torch and the library was made up of mostly hard dry wood.
Mr Haddock calmly asked again” would you like to stay?” before I could answer he turned away and gazed affectionately at his home, I gave him a moment, he took it and held it for a while, I didn’t mind, I had nowhere else to be. After around ten more minutes had gone by he lit the torch and I prompted him with my answer “Yes, I would like to stay here.”
“So would I” he said. With that final Omission he threw the torch into the worlds last library, he may or may not have thrown himself in along with it, I wouldn’t know, I had left the moment the torch was thrown. For all intensive purposes I now considered Mr Haddock, dead, but Malen Merlock wasn’t. No matter how many of his tributes burned, his ranks would not be dented; his was the only true written word.
few minutes later the woods were alight, the blaze was spreading fast ,the flame would spread outwards from the east side of Mount Carmel, all the way to the populated city of Haifa, Within the hour, people would die and astonishingly enough, I couldn’t bring myself to care.
I found a shortcut down the mountain; it would take me straight to a Kibbutz on the outskirts of Haifa. A Kibbutz is a small tight nit community of Israelis who now share and once cultivated a piece of fertile land. They had naturally formed themselves decades ago out of the peoples desire to make Israel a more beautiful land than they already thought it was.
The path I followed was not a thing itself, it was a product of contrasts; it was distinguished by its trail of soft red sands bordered on both sides by barren earth. It had the look of a broken shoal fearlessly dividing a Red and a dead sea.
When I reached the Kibbutz I was shocked to see that no one seemed at all concerned of the fire, children were playing, farmers were working, everyone was going about their lives.I asked them if they knew about the fire, those Israelis didn’t know me at all, yet they began packing almost immediately, If I was still living in Canada I doubt anyone there would have believed me. Then again all of my wear, that consisted of a once white shirt a torn pair of shorts and a single slipper, was covered in ash.
A seven and a half foot tall ox of a man asked me in English who had started it; I told him in Hebrew that it was the fault of our dear friend Mr Merlock. The man paid no mind to my strange response. His immediate disregard of my answer led me to believe that the man thought me mad and I wasn’t sure if I could assuage him otherwise.
While I was thinking about how to do so he had already set out to help evacuate his family, fellows and friends from their home.
After just half an hour the community was ready to abandon the kibbutz, everyone but I had helped pack, all were hurried away as the entire community was swept up into a caravan. They offered me a place of course, the people here were ever so kind, even to one as miserably strange as I, but I couldn’t bring myself to make an obvious choice.
Me and even Mr Haddock I suspect, had spent what little passion and enthusiasm we had left today in that library, and what had I learnt from those who shared my curiosity? Nothing I didn’t already know.
No one knows more about Malen than I, and I know nothing. What’s the point of going on without any hope of obtaining a shred of truth? That was the one hand, on the other there was everything else in existence, the whole of potentiality.
Sometime during my faulty decision making process the caravan had already left. I Had It's departure.
Meanwhile a great black cloud had now risen above the town and a devilish glow could be seen on the horizon. I started searching frantically for a reason to stay, I didn’t want to go, but a few acres of empty farm land and a touch disappointment was not worth dying for . I surveyed the village one last time before I fled. I surveyed the small cozy homes of certainly beloved neighbours, the worn down stables of left behind goats, the poorly painted sheds of dedicated farmers and the spiralling playgrounds of children that certainly existed somewhere here within the realm of their imaginations.Finally I saw the familiar sight of a massive ancient dried to the bone Carab tree, its trunk was longer than the grasp of an eagles wings, its branches jutted out sporadically into the air like how a foreign coloured liquid would spread out into water. The tree must have been over three hundred years old.
It had a heart carved into its bark. Within that heart there was once a claim of love between a boy named Daniel and a girl named Ester. I knew the memory of it was once there because five years ago I visited this place with my family. My thoughts drifted to them for a moment, my proud but broken uncle and his ceaselessly nagging wife, I could only pray to nothing that they would be safe. The fire's glow could be could be seen flickering just above the tiny hill that blocked my sight from mount Carmel, my whole body was shaking and twitching like a decapitated goat, I wanted to forget all about the mighty flame I had allowed to be born so my thoughts drifted back to the memory of the Carab tree. The original sight was wearily touching, I’d never met either Ester or Daniel and I never would; they had been dead for over a hundred years and their inscription had of course been erased and replaced.
Malen had even stolen mankind’s ability to make a lasting statement. We can no longer proclaim our love a century after we have died. We can no longer pass on our knowledge to others, or even appreciate the words that are passed down to us. Malen Merlock has stolen mankind’s immortality and for that I can never forgive him. Something snapped inside me then, as the blaze rounded the last hill and closed in on the all but empty town, a chain that had been holding me back broke, I felt like a rabbit being placed into a magicians hat. The world began to go velvet black, the light of the flames were the last to vanish from my sight
The next thing I knew I was making ceaseless passage through pure darkness, .I was wracked with compulsion, I was compelled to walk on and on without my sight and I was compelled to stay as calm as the sight of a far away dying star despite my growing fear and discomfort. For an eternity of treading I was made to bear the hungering blackness in soot stained apparel, I bore on until, miraculously, another's thoughts came to me.
“People have a habit of asking the same questions again and again. The nature of pondering hasn’t changed much since what ever dawn or beginning you consider valid. No morning will ever pass where someone somewhere does not ask themselves what they should have for breakfast and the reason for that is because we will always feel like we have to eat in the morning, the question is inevitable simply because of who we are and how were born. The same applies to slightly more complex questions, such as why we are alive; we wouldn’t ask the question if we were dead. We are interested in the things that concern us and almost everything concerns us and even the things that don’t are undoubtedly concerned with our sheer curiosity. Yet despite the highly probable fact that we are all likely to ask the exact same questions at one point or another, we have never all been concerned with the exact same question at the exact same time, at least until now.”
Those words echoed in my ears until the absolute darkness had vanished. In its place was a dense fog, a rickety boat called the Traveler, the steady rumble of a disregarding sea and several shaded figures surrounding a man staring over the edge of a boat at his own unrecognizable reflection. My face rippled before me, I was compelled to know that the rugged beard currently weighing down my chin was over three months old. On the day of the fire on mount Carmel I was clean shaven, I cant remember the last three months of my life and I find myself incapable of concern.
A steel hand grips my shoulder and turns me towards the endless peripheral pit fall that is the space concealing a face beneath a hood. A voice streams out from somewhere within the cloak. “ Well be reaching the shore of British Colombia in a short while, are you sure you still want this?” I am compelled to nod. I watch as the distant silhouette of a city reveals itself to the starboard. The boat drops me off at an abandoned harbour. Before I get off the boat the man with the steel hand bids me farewell and hands me a gun. Then the boat and the crew drift away into the fog. When the Traveler was far enough I threw the gun back into the bay. I was finally back in the west.
I had to find my way to the far side of town to reach my old apartment. I traveled as fast as I could, but the fog clung to the city like a rotten bandaid and the journey was disorienting to say the least. Then there was a war to deal with. Men in cloaks of the same kind as the crew of the Traveler threw insults and gun fire at hunkering shapes in the darkness. I did my best to stay hidden but I was compelled to feel completely safe. So I passed through the heart of the city in plain sight whenever I had the chance. As I drew closer to my apartment bits and pieces of the story came to me regarding the war that raged all around me.
“Due to the ensuing chaos of March 29th the Palo Verde 2 reactor melted down and destroyed much of the US. Almost everyone in the States either died in the following month or suffered from intense degenerative mutations. These mutants fled north as far as they could to get away from the reactor.”
The fog lifted and when it did I wished it hadn’t. Bill boards, graffiti and signs all payed tribute to Malen Merlock. Much of the city was wrapped in bullets markings, my old home was dying.
Another piece of the story came to me.
“ In Canada a month after the calamity a prophet had arisen to unite all the religions. He preached the name of Malen Merlock and so did the Bible the Koran the Torah and every other religious text out there. A month later there were no more varying religions or non believers. There were converts and corpses. The prophet Alan Barell had carved an empire for himself out of the devastation. Two months after the establishment of the dreadful nation Alan Barell declared war on the mutants who had fled all the way to Canada's border to escape from their former home. So began the war of the west and it has raged ever since”
Before i knew it I was home. My old apartment suffered similar wounds as the rest of the city, some bullet stains and the accursed name appearing here and there but otherwise it had fared pretty well. I began to ascend the building, my apartment was on the top floor.
Around this time I was gaining some semblance of control, I had gone from completely unconscious for the past three to months to simply unable to control my thoughts and actions. What had happened to me? Why had I been unable to even think for myself? It alarmed me, it would alarm anyone, but whatever had been controlling me had also granted my wish. I was here , I was finally learning about him and the horrors he had caused. When I reached the top of the stairs I was compelled to sprint down the hall. The door at the very end was my old apartment. When the calamity had hit I was locked in that room finishing up a book that had taken the past three years of my life to write, imagine my surprise a day later when I found that all my work had vanished and in its place was a name. A name that mocked my very being. As I reached for the knob of my apartment I was compelled to turn left. To my surprise there was a door that had never been there before when I had lived here. This was the door I had to open.
The inside of the room was completely bare. There were no windows, there was only a single blank space, and a book that occupied almost all of it. I turned to leave, I was compelled to turn around and pick up that book. At this point I knew that this was my choice, I could refuse the compulsions, instead I entered the room and shut the door behind me.
The book was old, thick, leather bounded, and had a large broken emerald like jewel at its core. I opened it to the first page and saw a single word. Malen Merlock. I was disheartened, what did I expect? I was compelled to turn the page , I sadly obliged the urge, and when I did god I saw words, real words, the name on the front page was just a title. This was Malen Merlock's story and it was recorded on what was probably the last book on earth.
I began to read.
Chapter 2
“The year is 2053 the date is the first of march, it’s also a Monday and it will be exactly six o’clock by the time I finish this sentence.”This for those who care to know, was the 5th time I’d had to state the time in its entirety for Mr. Cooper.
He glanced at the clock to verify my claim and appeared notably relieved to find that I’d spoken the truth, his face contorted in my direction. His eyes turned a more sympathetic shade of blue and his lips quaked as if to split his face like a horizontal bolt, but despite a noticeably colossal effort Mr. Cooper could not bring himself to smile. There was too much uncertainty in his world to smile, instead he asked me for the 8th time ,where we where, I wearily obliged him “very well Mr. cooper, we are in your house located in downtown London next to Scotland yard and you have lived here for the past 20 year’s”.
He still appeared somewhat suspicious and opted to take a glance outside the door to see the truth for himself; he returned to the room once again noticeably appeased. Well, in actuality he simply seemed less exceptionally worried. Mr Cooper was the embodiment of paranoia. He wore only the clothes he’d owned for more than a decade because he refused to trust anything that had appeared to him after a certain point in his life. As a result everything in his home, himself included, was a thing of antiquity.
He sat down and spoke to me with a sudden faint air of confidence. It had probably blown in the from the window he just opened, “Mr Merlock you do not need to assure me of my past, I am well aware that I have lived here for the past 20 year’s, I know who I am, at least I know who I was, but I don’t know who you are. You showed up at my door an hour ago demanding to hear about my current predicament, what exactly do you do to warrant such a demand?”
I told him I was a private investigator, hired by someone who had undergone a similar experience as him but to a lesser extent, I described my employer, a middle-aged man, no wife no children, a man too stubborn and too lonely to let a grievance lie. Mr Cooper cut my story short with a decisive chuckle, he was shrewd to be sure if perhaps somewhat disturbed, and he knew a well constructed lie when he heard one, but he silently offered to humour me while I finished my tale;
In actuality I was not a private investigator, nor was I psychology professor or even a journalist, I was none of the purposeful men I’d claimed to be time and time again to men like Mr Cooper. I was simply the owner of a somewhat acclaimed delivery service. It was not my place to question Mr Cooper , but I would do so nonetheless. After all, he was my only lead.
As I finished giving the details of my makeshift motive the brief tranquility on Mr Cooper’s face disappeared, he asked me if there was anything standing behind him, I didn’t bother to answer .I hadn’t come here to accommodate a mad man. I motioned towards the door with full intent, but just as I was about to leave, Mr Cooper’s hand reached out and clasped my wrist, as tightly as a bow string ,tore open my palm and forced his own atop it.
Something cold divided the skin of our hands.
His grasp began to loosen and Mr Cooper pulled away. Where his shrivelled claw once lingered there was now a very small black leather bonded book with a magnificent emerald at its core. I turned it over in my hands again and again; even for its size it was eerily weightless. The covering was cold to the touch; it’s texture was that of a chalk stick without substance. It was a monstrous thing.
I could’ve run then, like I always do, but I was forever a victim of my own relentlessly inquisitive nature. It had been my curiosity that always led me from one tragedy to the next and that same quality had brought me to this house, to this book, to this hopelessly tortured man. Yet still, I have always found it impossible to refuse myself a mystery. I wanted nothing to do with that book, but my curiosity failed me as it always does, lesser men would go on living at that moment, I would have no such luck.
An eternity of contemplation was cut short when Mr Cooper, in an oddly intense act of tenderness, steadily raised my chin with both of his hands. He did so until our eyes were set squarely on one another, the worry in his complexion had all but devoured his appearance;
His face had shrivelled like a hide as if to pronounce the shape of his skull. His hair appeared as anchored wisps, swaying as they please but in a bound manner. His eyes had become the size of globes ,as their surrounding flesh had dissolved into ghastly sockets, the same eyes had now turned to the colour of frost, they bulged like an admission of death; he broke our stare briefly to glance longingly at the black book clasped tightly in my hand. Why anyone could ever desire such a wretched thing is beyond my understanding.
He turned back to face me, he strained to give me the dark recollection I craved. He had willed his gaze to muster a faint intensity, but his voice Shattered as he spoke betraying what little strength he’d gathered.
Mr Cooper began to talk
” The last thing I recall was a pitiful squeal, it cracked the sky and refused to stop ringing in my ear’s, but the sound of it was so pathetic, so miserable, it was the kind of screech you’d imagine having on your own death bed, moment’s before passing away in shame “
Cooper stopped speaking briefly to glance at his clock for assurance. It was a weary clock; its surfaces were stained in dust, grime and the ash of cigars smoked in Mr. Cooper’s youth.
Its dimmed hands fiercely clacked, crawled and grinded across its brightening yellow face at a stubbornly steady pace. Its pendulum swayed lower with each stroke as its axis creaked direly. Even the clock’s inner workings could be heard dying by the second, its many gear’s groaned sorrowfully, almost as if they aspired to come undone at a moment’s notice. The clock was proof that Time was not kind to all it’s bearer’s, even its most faithful .I tried to imagine why Mr. cooper wouldn’t even bother to clean it, perhaps he feared that even the slightest influence would corrupt its capabilities. Even now in its sorry state, it serves Mr Cooper dutifully; for the time is 6:35 and I have no doubt that the clocks one constant proclamation is truth at its finest.
Without turning away from the great grandfather clock Mr Cooper continued to speak” I don’t remember anything after that scream, everything slipped away, and when I came too I was drowning in the canal. I could see the waters surface a few feet above me. I dragged myself to the nearest shore and heaved myself out of the water, for a while I lay there on the beach, confused as a doe that had just taken an arrow to its flank.
When I got up I turned east and saw the sun coming up, I began to wonder how long I had been unconscious and why I had been drowning in a canal. At that moment I noticed that there was something clenched tightly in my hand, it was a book, the book you’re holding right now; I don’t know how I didn’t notice it right away. I must have been somewhat overwhelmed at the time; I thought it best to retreat to the insufficient comforts of my home to ponder what had happened”
Mr Cooper paused to take a large breath. I took the moment to rejoice, the story was true.
“Shortly after I arrived, I learnt that the book was not the only thing Id acquired during my senses leave of absence.”
Mr Cooper unwounded his sleeve to reveal an ungodly wound; the damage began at his fore arm and spread out like a twisted wedge all the way down to his elbow. The affected flesh looked more seared than scared and as terrible as the wound was, it was not alone. Mr Cooper removed his shirt to reveal a body adorned in similar scars. The sight forced a gasp out of me. The wound’s entwined like vines across his torso his arms and his back.
At that moment Mr Cooper appeared to be in excruciating torment, he was almost too weak to whimper half a sentence “The book is more than it seems, it -“he fell to the floor faster than I could catch him, his eyes were set on the empty space to my right. The old man clutched his heart and picked himself up as far as he could go. He could only make it as far as his knees. I helped him back up and sat him on his chair. He stayed there for awhile, head in his hands, heart on his sleeve. He kept desperately muttering over and over, “forget, forget, forget, forget, forget”.
I loomed above him pondering how best to make my exit. I was certainly afraid, but I didn’t leave. When Mr Cooper spoke again his voice was but a whisper, I can say no more. Trust only the book, nothing and no one else, not even yourself.
With that I was given leave to run as far and as fast as I could. I didn’t, I stared at the house for a while pondering my next move. Mr Cooper had said that he’d first blacked out at the bridge by the pier. I turned to the city clock tower. I had a fewer hours till my next delivery. I had come to Mr. Cooper’s house on my old delivery bike in hopes of simply knowing that their was more to my world than people, streets, packages and secrets. I now have that assurance and so much more, for the first time in my life I am holding a true mystery in my hands. It all begins with the turn of a page and a trip to the pier. This was the first moment I’d had to myself since entering Mr Coopers house, yet still I felt as if I’d put off opening the emerald book. I sit down on the cobble steps leading to Mr Cooper’s house and open the book. As I do so the sky slips away, everything fades into darkness, but only for a moment.
When my eyes open less than an instant later I am compelled to believe that I am a child again. Sure enough my hands and feet are half their size and my now deceased father is very much so alive at this particular moment . I am compelled to feel calm despite the fact that I’ve just been flung back into my childhood. The clothes I am wearing are all the colour of formal darkness .There is dirt on my cheap dress shoes because I am standing before an open grave. The grave belongs to my Uncle, My father grasps my shoulder as I am compelled to cry, he says something I thought I would never forget but somehow did in my own time” Son, your uncle was a bastard. Everyone who ever died or will ever die is a bastard and we don’t mourn bastards because they couldn’t find a way to go on, your uncle was only 32 years old, your mother was only 28, they shouldn’t be dead but they are and we wont mourn them for failing us” He said all this with tears in his eyes. He would have tears in his eyes again when he died in a years time. The darkness pulls me back.
I wander the darkness for another instant. When I open my eyes again I am still in darkness albeit a less oppressive type. There is a horrible stench in the air. I am compelled to realize that I have a torch in one hand and a lighter in the other. The flames reach out to the torch and light floods what I am compelled to believe is a cavern. I find the source of the stench, it is a carcass and I am compelled to learn that it is in fact Mr Cooper’s carcass. His head is still connected to his spinal cord but neither are connected to his body. His ribs are bursting out of chest; his organs are spread across the room in tiny heaps. I am moments away from mourning him when I recall the words of my father. I do not mourn him and I am compelled to look away.
The emerald book is on the floor; I pick it up and search for an exit. A large passage way is blocked by a tablet like stone, I run it down. Light pours into the cavern. I am atop a mountain; I am compelled to believe this mountain is in fact Silver peak, the largest mountain in Ontario. Atop the mountain it is very cold. Warmth emanates from the book and I am physically compelled to open it. The entire book is blank except for the last page. The last page reads the following description. “The entity exists within the mind of every living creature simultaneously. It is a precursor to existence, it is not conscious and it will do everything in its power to keep itself from awakening. If you realize what It is, so will It, for you and It are one and the same, and once it finds you, it will hunt you.”
I am compelled to stay calm.
The darkness pulls me back yet again and another scene unfolds. I am seeing the world through the eyes of another man, this man is standing within what I am compelled to think is my old apartment in Vancouver. The man is holding the emerald book; I am compelled to think that he has just finished reading It .I am also compelled to realize that this man's name is Joshua Halal and he hates me more than anyone has ever hated me before. He turns to my old mirror which is now broken and looks right at me/him and says this” Malen , I know your there, listen you cant change moments from the future or the past, but there are moments when you are acting within your own time. You don’t have to obey the compulsions when you’re in the present, you will just feel like you have to”. He looked at me almost pleadingly” You have to see the truth for yourself, don’t be fooled by the book, its using you.” The mirror shattered into a thousand shadowy shards and darkness took me once again. Within the darkness I am compelled to feel calm, I refuse and a cold torrent of terror floods my thoughts. For now I am not a slave.
