PART THREE
The Man Behind the Skull Mask
CHAPTER 18
Dead Inside
THE ODD MONOLITHIC STRUCTURE speared out from the countryside like a dark thorn. Statues of angels, seven maidens draped in tunics carved from stone, lined the stairs of the pyramid-shaped temple, their expressions frozen in mourning, their hands extended to heaven—pleading for salvation. Mute prayers cursed to forever fall upon the deaf ears of an indifferent universe.
Snow slowly descended upon the barbarian and the boy as they ascended the stone stairs. They stepped beyond the final step and reached the top of the pyramid. Before them, a flat, barren platform, the floor smooth like glass. And in the center stood the mirror, the frame of the seven-foot-tall mirror sparkled like shimmering diamonds.
“My story—no—all stories begin with the mirror,” whispered the barbarian as he reread the first line of a large blood-red book with a glide of his finger, his hand shaking the whole way, his breath escaping his lips in a white puff. The wind rushed through his black matted hair, unkempt beard, and animal fur garments—lifting them with a quiet whistle before dying out completely. Eric Ashcraft’s blue eyes rose from the text and he set his sights ahead, to the mirror. “Ordin’s mirror…”
He glanced down at the child by his side.
“Why are we here?” he asked. “Do you intend to go back? Back to your homeworld?”
The boy removed his royal purple cloak—revealing his raven black hair, olive-colored eyes framed by dark circles, and pale skin. Able smirked. “I have no home to go back to. You should know that by now, barbarian.”
Eric clutched his two glowing crystals that hung from a silver necklace around his neck, one red and one blue. “We should not be here, Able.”
“Oh?”
“We should not have come.” Eric closed the book—Able’s book—and huddled himself. “This place is sacred. Ordin and the Maidens will be displeased. We will be punished, no doubt. Ordin will curse our dreams with—”
“Ordin, Ordin, Ordin,” Able whined mockingly. “Ordin save me. Ordin forgive me. Ordin tuck me in at night and powder my ass. Must you always prattle on like some infantile buffoon?” The former child emperor stepped forward. “Ordin is dead. The Seven Maidens are dead. Soon, anyone whoever worshiped them will be dead and buried and rotting in their graves. Your worthless gods forgotten to the ages. Only we will remain. Only we matter.”
“The dead still matter to the living.” Eric bit down on his lip and looked away. “They matter to me at least.”
“Yes, the dead still exist in the memories of those who can remember. Whether we want them to or not.” Able stopped in front of the mirror, his smug smile reflected back as his two crystals dangled from his golden necklace. “And I wager I can remember more of their faces than anyone who’s ever lived. One thousand years’ worth. No, I wager even more if we’re counting my past lives. That’s a lot of faces. Enough screams to drive you—”
“The screams…” Eric gripped the book, squeezing it tightly.
“You better start getting used to them.” His arrogant expression faded. “Because you’re never going to stop hearing them. Never forget—we are the only two beings who are truly alive in this hellish prison of names chiseled on a sea of endless gravestones.”
Hell, thought Eric as a seething dread filled his gut, I’m in hell. Perhaps I did die back there in that horrid dungeon cell. And this is my punishment for my sins against Ordin, for turning that poor old woman into something blasphemous. An eternal nightmare spent alone with this monstrous child.
“Do not dwell on any one name for too long.” Able glanced back over his shoulder at Eric, widened his eyes, and bared a twisted, gleeful smile. “Or you’ll risk going mad.”
Eric returned his gaze, now a burning glare, to the immortal tyrant. “How many of those names did you chisel in yourself?”
Able laughed. “Does one count every drop in the rain?” He turned back to the mirror, raised his right hand, formed a fist with a row of golden rings, and knocked on the glass. “Knock, knock, Mother. Your favorite son is here. Time to come out and play.”
A long, awkward silence followed, only the faint beating of snow was heard.
Eric stepped forward, shaking his head in disbelief. “Don’t tell me you actually believe…”
Able frowned, scrunching his nose and pursing his lips sourly, at his reflection. He knocked again, but the glass only gave out a wobbling sound.
Eric held up the book. “Then you weren’t lying. In your story, you said she came to you.”
Able folded his arms and tapped his foot impatiently. He knocked again.
He swallowed the lump in his throat. “Her ghost.”
Able sighed at last. “You think me mad, don’t you?” He placed his hand on the mirror. “Of course, you do. Just like all the others.” He swiped his hand down, running his nails across the glass with a shriek. “Children playing adults. Pretending you know how to behave. How to be sane and civilized. But when you know the truth…” He hugged himself, digging his nails into the soft flesh of his arms. “Madness becomes as warm and comforting as mother’s milk.” He kicked the mirror in a sudden spout of anger. “If you won’t come out—Mother—then I’ll force you out!”
Eric watched in horror as Able began the ritual.
The immortal ten-year-old fished a piece of soft limestone from his pocket and, using it like chalk, he drew a circle around the mirror and another around himself. He sat down in his circle, folded his legs and closed his eyes. He slid a small dagger out and plunged it into his left palm and out the other side—letting his blood spill onto the floor and seep into the circle. It was different from the ritual Eric had performed on the old woman in that dungeon cell two nights prior, the ritual that gained him immortality but cost him his village. This one only had two circles. A mere summoning spell. A spell to summon the dead…
No endeavor could be more foolish, thought Eric, more sacrilegious. Utter madness. The dead are dead. Souls return to the Source, to Ordin and the Seven Maidens in the Dreamtime, after they are released from their mortal flesh. Only through reincarnation, taking new form and flesh, can they return to this realm. What you seek is impossible, Able. You will only bring wrathful spirits upon us. Dark whispers and hungry ghosts… Demons.
For a time, nothing happened. Able remained still and quiet.
Eric took a step forward, reaching for the boy.
Suddenly, Able’s eyes shot open—blank as sheets of white cloth—and he began chanting feverishly in a foreign tongue. His body lifted off the ground and he hovered a foot in the air. Red electricity coiled around him as if he was enshrouded by serpents of pure light.
Eric shrunk back. “Madness,” he whispered. “Sheer insanity.”
Both circles, around Able and the mirror, lit up with crimson light. The wind howled and thunder cracked in the swirling dark clouds above. But as quickly as the light show came it faded away.
A vein in Able’s forehead pulsed, blood trailed down his right nostril, and he descended to the ground. He awoke from his trance with a jarring cough and dry heave, his dark pupils returning to his eyes. “No,” he gasped, clawing at the stone floor. “It’s not working. Something’s wrong.” He glared up at the mirror. Nothing had changed, only his and Eric’s reflection stared back. “Aargh, I don’t understand, it’s always worked before…” He pounded his fist down. “She wouldn’t just—damn it!” Again and again, he punched the ground until his knuckles oozed blood. “Why won’t you come out? Why? Tell me why damn you. Mother, please… I need you. Now more than ever. I can’t go on like this anymore. I can’t…” He clawed at his scalp, smearing blood over his face. “There is no state of being I ought to be. No reason to sway one way or another. Just empty meaninglessness all around. I am drowning in an ocean of pointless bliss and despair. The sensation is quite hard to describe, the feeling of wanting to burst into tears and laughter at the same time. The absurdity
of this tiny inconsequential existence—an eternity trapped in this small wretched body. I can’t...”
What Eric saw next shocked him beyond words—Able sobbing like a little boy.
Tears streamed down the immortal tyrant’s cheeks, snot drooping from his nostrils, and mixing with his blood.
Once again, Eric stepped forward and reached out for Able. And, once again, he regretted it.
Able’s sobs mutated into a vile, twisted cackle. He arched up and bellowed his laugh to the heavens. “Oh well, if you won’t answer my call then I won’t answer yours. Fair is fair, after all. Besides, I have him now.” He jabbed his thumb back Eric’s way.
Eric frowned.
“You heard that right.” Able glared at the mirror, his bloody reflection. “I’m done being your legacy. I have my own now. Fancy that. Your prodigal son is all grown up. Time to move on.” His gleeful tone shriveled to a spiteful contempt. “So long, Mother.”
With that, the immortal boy rose to his feet and headed down the temple steps.
Eric just stood there, still processing.
Able glanced back over his shoulder. “Coming, barbarian? You still have much reading to do before you reach my final chapter. And trust me, it’s going to be a page-turner.”
Eric clutched the book to his chest as he turned from the boy and gazed into the mirror, into his reflection, into his frightful eyes.
***
Cold, indifferent blue eyes stared through the eyeholes of a skull mask. Eric gazed into his reflection in the mirror, as he had done so many years before, and smiled. “I am a man born from a child. A child older than the oldest mountains.” He removed his hand from the glass and glanced back over his shoulder.
Mr. Glasses was standing behind him on the temple platform, donning his trademark plague doctor mask and thick circular glasses, fiddling with a remote control as a red orb zipped around him in the air. A robot with cat ears and a digital cat face stolen from another world. The city of New Republica to be more specific. The mirrors had opened the universe up to Eric and his partner in crime. Entire new worlds to explore and pilfer. New magics and technologies to discover and plunder. And so, they had become highwaymen of the stars.
“Oh?” asked Mr. Glasses as he pressed a few buttons in a random order. “That’s fascinating, Eric, really.”
Eric turned his way, adjusted his tricorn hat, placed his hand on his hip, and admired the show.
The robotic orb buzzed above, flashing an angry cartoony cat face, and hissing a fit.
Mr. Glasses toggled with the joystick and the orb spun erratically. “Mind helping me out with this confounded contraption? I can’t seem to get it to listen…”
The orb zapped him in the ass with a jolt of electricity. He jumped up like a cat on a hot tin roof.
Eric laughed.
Mr. Glasses massaged his rear end. “Pesky little devil. I still don’t know why we bothered to steal this thing. It won’t answer to a single one of my commands.”
“Answers…” Eric’s laughter died as he spotted the Maidens, the statues lining the stairs of the temple, frozen in prayer. “Only children need answers to their questions. And when they find none, they simply make them up.” Able had come to the mirror for answers—just as so many had before him. But mirrors and statues will never answer us, no matter how hard we beg and plead. “There are countless gods who demand our prayers littered across the seven worlds. Their names and stories and commandments may differ but they are all the same. Silent. Yet they are still prayed to, still asked questions. Madness.”
Mr. Glasses struggled to get the orb under control, finding little progress in his efforts. “Blasted bucket of bolts. I swear, I’m gonna chuck you down the first well I find.”
“But there are no answers,” said Eric, walking past his partner and heading down the stairs. “Only questions asked in the void. A truth that bears a hefty price. And that price is death. For Able, it was the death of his sanity. For me, the death of my faith. In that way only are we the same. Dead inside.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “Coming, Mr. Glasses? Tomorrow we have a date with royalty. And I think it’s high time I finally had a face-to-face with our dear king, the so-called ‘Demon of the North.’”
“Yes, yes, hold your horses.” After a series of button smashes the orb ceased its chaotic flight and obediently hovered over with a purr. “Hah, got it.” He pushed the joystick forward and the little red robot floated down the stairs after Eric. He removed his plague doctor mask and wiped the sweat from his brow. “Now that’s more like it…”
Mr. Glasses was almost pleased with himself until he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror.
His reflection coldly glared back at him, still and motionless.
“I wonder…” He cleaned his glasses with a handkerchief.
His reflection didn’t.
“What will you do, Eric, when the void finally answers you?” He put his glasses back on. “Which path will you take?”
Impossibly, dark water filled the mirror, turning everything but his reflection black. At first, his reflection just kept coldly staring ahead, but then, in a horrid gasp and an explosion of escaping air bubbles, the Mr. Glasses in the mirror seized his throat. He struggled and convulsed, kicking and thrashing against the water, clawing at his neck and leaving red streaks. More jerks and twitches followed until his eyes bulged and turned bright red. Then it was over and Mr. Glasses’ body was limp, floating with a placid gaze. But the show was not truly over. Not yet. After a long dead silence, the corpse’s flesh started to rot. The skin turned a sickly yellow then darkened and shriveled. Small patches of dead flesh peeled off and floated away, little by little, then faster and faster. The hair became nothing more than loose strands, clinging to the scalp like straggling broken spider webs. The eyeballs burst in their sockets, leaking black sludge. Once its glasses shattered the corpse sprung back to life, shrieking a soundless scream and beating its fists violently against the glass in muted thuds. As the corpse decomposed into a skeleton it clawed at the glass like a wild tiger until its boney fingers broke off. Then it resorted to banging its skull against the mirror until it too caved in and crumbled apart. At last, the skeleton dissolved completely—leaving only black void.
Mr. Glasses adjusted his glasses and frowned. “Always the comedian.”
CHAPTER 19
The First Dragon and the Last Unicorn
THE DREAM CATCHER hummed and pulsed like a vein filled with bees and wasps instead of blood. The dyed blue rope and dried leather sinew strands spiraled inward from the wooden willow tear-shaped base. They formed a spider’s web design of an eye. The dreaming eye. The wind picked up, catching the bird feathers and strands of multicolored beads. Gray clouds swarmed, blanketing the night sky. Lightning struck the huge towering dream catcher. The raging storm threatened to rip the dream catcher from the two trees to which it was bound.
The two chimera slaves—ape-ish creatures that stood upright like men with the heads of animals—dragged the heavy chains of the iron-barred circus cart. One chimera had the head of an eagle and the other a jackal’s, and together, donning Egyptian garbs, they mirrored the gods of old. They wailed and grunted unnatural sounds as they put their backs into the effort, positioning the animal cage in front of the dream catcher. Lightning struck again, setting the treetop ablaze. Panic erupted among the other strange beasts imprisoned within each of the caravan wagons. They howled and screeched and roared all at once—the blinding flashes of light, the scent of roasting wood, and the heat of lashing whips of flames driving them mad. They slammed and gnashed against the cold rattling bars. A futile effort. The bars held fast. But that did not stop them from protesting. Their chorus of hoots and calls blended into sounds eerily similar to human screams.
The horrid crack of a whip struck louder than thunder. The beasts fell silent and grew timid. An old hunched-backed, goblin-sized woman stepped into the dying moonlight. Her hideous features framed by wrinkles upon wrinkl
es and sharp twisting antlers that pillared out of her head and past her matted gray hair. Her purple gypsy dream cloak, filled with stars and crescent moons, caught in the wind and reflected the moonlight. She hunched over her crooked walking stick she used for support as she hobbled to her two chimera slaves, whipping their backs and driving them away from the dream catcher.
“Back, you fools! Unless you’d like to be swallowed up,” said the old woman. “Portals work both ways.”
The two chimera slaves spoke in muddled voices, like animals straining to form human words. “Ba-ba.” The sole audible word that came out.
Lightning struck once more, setting the dream catcher ablaze with blue light.
Baba grinned a shark’s smile at the spectacle, exposing her sharp teeth and black stained gums. “Out from the darkness of the dragon’s belly the light came forth and so shall it return.”
A rift of light opened in the pupil of the dreaming eye. A figure emerged, falling into the cage with a loud thud.
“Now close the door and lock it,” Baba squealed, cracking her whip. “Hurry.”
The eagle-headed chimera did as he was told and locked up the angelic winged figure inside.
“Good,” said Baba.
The dream catcher grew still and silent and the rift enveloped in on itself. The wind died and the night sky calmed.
Baba hobbled over to the cage to examine her catch of the night, moistening her crusted lips with a snake’s glide of her tongue. She stared through the bars, her eyes glowing with moonlight like crocodile eyes through the mist of some prehistoric river.
Sharon stared back, lifting her head, parting her hair, and exposing her new yellow bird-like eyes.
“Wake up, child,” said Baba with a warm, affectionate tone. “It’ll be feeding time soon enough.” Her lips peeled back, baring her jagged teeth and dark, discolored gums. “And we wouldn’t want you to miss it.”
The Crow Behind the Mirror_Book One of the Mirror Wars Page 17