The Reverend

A Fantasy | Part II

On May 19 my latest book, Unseen Existences, was released. Unfortunately it doesn’t have the concluding Fantasy I intended, so I’m publishing it here.

(Here’s the link to Part I.)

The Reverend

A Fantasy

II

The Reverend awoke. He was lying on the ground. It was cold and damp, and the air smelled of smoke. Looking around, he saw that he was in a small clearing in a dense forest. The smoke was coming from the smoldering ruins of what seemed to be burnt wigwams. Remnants of charred blankets lay on the ground. Broken pottery shards littered the clearing. He struggled to his feet. It was twilight and difficult to see anything clearly. Somehow he intuited that it was not just before sunrise, but sometime after sunset. It would be dark soon.

Slowly he began to walk around the clearing. In the smoky air there was an acrid stench. At the far end of the clearing he saw something else smoldering, something he couldn’t identify. The Reverend moved closer. Then he saw what it was. It was a pile of burnt corpses—maybe twenty. Some were very small—the blackened bodies of babies. Maggots crawled out of the eye sockets of one of the skulls. The Reverend jumped back in horror, wretched, and then ran into the woods.

The woods were thick, it was hard to see. He tripped many times, but somehow never fell. In blind terror he ran and ran—maybe a hundred yards, maybe a mile, maybe a marathon. Just when he felt he could run no more, he came into a clearing and bent over breathing heavily, relieved to be out of the woods and away from the burnt village. Suddenly his relief was shattered when he realized he was back where he had started. He was in the same clearing with the same burnt wigwams and the same hideous pile of smoldering corpses.

The Reverend stumbled back into the woods. For hours he wandered among the trees, but no matter how resolutely he attempted to walk in one direction away from the dreadful clearing, his course always brought him back to the same burnt village. Every attempt to depart the awful place only led back to it. Strangely, although hours surely must have passed, it was still twilight. It never grew any darker or any lighter. No matter how much time passed it remained the gloom of twilight just before total Darkness.

The Reverend was exhausted and decided he would try to rest in the woods—he couldn’t bear to stay in the burnt village. He walked a hundred paces or so into the woods, selected a fallen tree to sit upon . . . and to his horror he discovered that he could not sit down! No matter how hard he tried, he could not sit, he could not lie down, he could not fall—an invisible force restrained him. He could only walk or stand in the woods. The Reverend felt no hunger, was slightly thirsty, and only a little bit cold; but he was so terribly tired. He was utterly exhausted and had to rest, but he could not—not in these woods, it was impossible to sit or to lie down. His legs ached.

Then he remembered that when he awoke in the clearing, he had been lying on the ground. With a resignation brought on by an unbearable weariness he retraced his steps back to the clearing, went as far away as possible from the smoldering pile of corpses, laid down on the cold, damp ground, and slept.

This was the Reverend’s fate for . . . how long? There was no telling. It was always twilight. He was never hungry, though a little cold and thirsty, but always so terribly tired. The wigwams, blankets, and corpses were always smoldering. Would their smoke rise forever? Now and then he could sleep, but there were no dreams—only the brief oblivion of total Darkness. When he did sleep, and this was not often, the Reverend never knew how long he slept. Maybe a moment, maybe a month. It made no difference. He always awoke in the same place, in the same twilight, utterly exhausted with the same weariness.

The woods that surrounded the clearing and imprisoned the Reverend were lifeless. No birds, no beasts, no butterflies—no life of any kind. Just an endless forest in the gloom of twilight. For a long time he persisted in trying to escape by walking through the woods as straight and far as possible, but after an hour or so he always arrived back at the same accursed place.

The Reverend wasn’t lost, he was entombed. He was a prisoner. No matter how hard he tried, he could not escape the burnt village. He didn’t need to do anything to survive. He didn’t need to eat or drink—though he was always thirsty. He didn’t need to fashion shelter—he was cold, but he would not freeze. He was so very tired, but he would not—could not!—die of exhaustion.

But by far the worst torment was that he was all alone. He was condemned to bear his misery by himself. In the first days (months? years?) this did not occur to the Reverend because he was so overwhelmed with panic and obsessed with escape. Yet as all hope of escape was finally abandoned, his chief torment was the soul-crushing loneliness. Sometimes in his despair he would wail,

“Am I here all alone? Is anyone out there? Please! Someone help me!”

The only answer was silence.

~To be continued . . .