by A. L. Mengel
But in the past, she had stood there.
She had seen George.
She had watched him.
And next to her was the one immortal who would secretly keep tabs on the others. But Antoine had little interest in George. Other than his death and what it meant for the immortals. As for Delia, her mind’s eye was like looking at film: she was there, once again, to experience what she had in the past.
And the scene replayed in her mind.
The stifling heat.
The humidity.
Those are the two factors. The sensations that she felt that drowned out her thoughts of Monsignor Harrison back in the conference room in Rome and brought her to the past, in Miami, an ocean away.
She could feel the tall, rugged presence of who had been standing next to her, on the cement driveway, looking up at the tiny yellow stucco house.
Tramos.
IV
TRAMOS THE CONQUEROR
EMALETH CRIED for three days and three nights.
She would pace across the wood planks of the front porch, usually in the morning, and then finally find her rocking chair on the side of the house. She would rock back and forth in her wooden rocker, holding her coffee by her knees; they were clutched together as she rocked.
The chair would squeak methodically against the silent humid morning, and that was usually the only sound, save the occasional passing bird. She hung her head low, and held her steaming cup of coffee, in the steel cup, just between her legs. She would close her eyes and listen to the silence. She could feel the steam from the coffee across her face, but she opened up her ears on those mornings after Henry had died.
A creek babbled in the distance.
And she was amazed at how much she could hear when she ceased her sight and opened up her ears.
But Daniel never returned.
He had promised. He had said he would come back to their little mountain ranch, but he never did. Emaleth never knew what had happened after the night she saw Daniel last, but that was the last time she had seen him.
She remembered the night.
It felt so long ago.
And maybe it had been.
Emaleth couldn’t remember either way. But she could still remember what happened that night, even if she could not place the time.
Despite that, she could still look over and see her bedroom curtains blowing in the wind, as she remembered that she had left her window open that particular night.
And she could still feel the cool wind against her naked body as she lay in the bed; her bosoms heaved as the wind cooled her sweat, and she remembered pulling the sheet up and over herself. There were many details about that night which she could remember, as if they had happened yesterday.
And then, after she had settled back in to try to get some sleep, he had appeared.
She heard him outside the window. He had called in to her. “Emaleth!” He had said. Her eyes fluttered open and she drew the sheets up to her chin.
She snapped her head towards the window.
There was a shadow standing in the frame; it appeared thick, but muscular, most certainly a man.
It was he.
She recognized the long, flowing golden hair from the marketplace. He peeled off his shirt as she reached over and turned on her bedside lamp. The warm glow revealed a cemented chest of roping muscularity. “Let me in,” he said.
He grasped the windowsill with his hands, as his arm and chest muscles flexed while he spoke. She heard the wood creak as he grabbed it. “You remember me, I am certain. You have seen me, and I have been watching you. So I know you will let me in. You must let me in!”
She sat up in bed and looked over at him. “You’ve come calling to me? With no shirt? What are your intentions, dear sir?”
He smiled.
Emaleth shook her head and swung her feet out onto the floor. She winced. It was cold. She pulled the sheet around herself to cover her naked body. Wrapped in the sheet, she walked over towards the window and stopped a few feet short of the windowsill, just out of his reach.
“Haven’t you seen enough of me tonight?”
“Never enough!”
He smiled and looked down, but continued to grasp the wooden ledge. She watched his arms, and then his chest, as the muscles roped against his skin as he moved. “Did you honestly think I wouldn’t come and visit you? That I wouldn’t want to see you after what we experienced? All you need to do is invite me in, and I will be there with you…”
“…I don’t know, it’s late…”
“…keeping you warm, Emaleth. It’s such a cold night! Will you banish me out here to freeze?”
And Emaleth paused for a moment, and looked over at his bare chest. She could see the muscles move under his skin as he leaned in as far as he could. “If it’s so cold, then put your shirt on!”
He laughed, drew his arm upwards, and flexed his bicep. “Then I couldn’t show you this.”
His bicep expanded against his taught skin, like a rock in his arm, it pressed outwards, threatening to tear. Her mouth dropped open as her sheet dropped to the floor.
He stopped moving and looked directly at her. Her nudity, her nakedness, her vulnerability.
And then he climbed through the windowsill.
Once he was inside, he stood next to her, towering over her. She felt his heat, looked up and into his piercing blue eyes. “Take me,” she said.
He picked her up and carried her over to the bed, laying her down and straddling on top of her, dwarfing her. She watched as he sunk down on top of her; she gasped at his size, his weight, his muscularity. She grabbed onto his arms and screamed out as he drove himself into her, and when she was near climax, she felt the pierce in her neck, but she was powerless beneath him. And when he plunged his fangs into her neck, she felt the hot wet warmth of her blood spilling onto the sheets, and she felt herself disconnecting as the room turned black…
…and the next thing that she remembered was awakening to darkness. She looked around for the man, but saw nothing.
“Hello?” She called out against the silence.
Do you not remember me?
She stopped in her tracks. There was silence but she heard someone speak to her.
“Hello? Are you there?”
Look into your mind.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on the rough stones she had been standing on. They were cold, wet, staggered and their dull points dug into the souls of her feet. She shook her head, tried to press on, to find her way back, and then the voice came again.
Look deep within yourself.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “Who are you? What are you saying to me?”
And then the mysterious, hidden voice was revealed: as he stepped into the light, and it was him.
The same man, the same one who had taken her.
She remembered now.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“You have known me as Daniel,” he said. “But my name is Tramos. I have been known as Tramos for many centuries.”
She took a few steps back. “Centuries?”
But then Emaleth woke with a start.
She was still holding her steaming coffee in her lap. Had she been dreaming?
Of Tramos?
She must have dozed off, for it was still the same summer morning, when she had been sitting in her squeaky wooden rocker, crying, hanging her head down low, close to her steaming coffee, and wishing and waiting for his return.
As the sun set on the fourth day, and there was an insurmountable feeling of dread that overcame her; she parted the curtains and looked out the window. The same trees rose from the yard, the same garden reached out towards the mountains on the eastern side of the house.
But he had been gone far too long now.
Emaleth paced across the floor, as the cold stone made the soles of her feet dusty. “Where are you? What are you in my life?” She looked up the ceiling. “Are you my tutor? My lover? Why have you left me?
Where have you gone?”
*****
Tramos always thought he had different origins.
But his last memories were of Cairo.
And long days of hard, back-breaking work. Hoisting large blocks of stone, on massive wooden carts, in the searing, hot desert sun.
When he finally slept, he dreamed of his life in Europe. He couldn’t place where he was from, but that’s what he had felt. He could not remember when he had come from, or when he had last seen his mother and father. But living as a worker south of Cairo transformed him into the hardened physical warrior that he was destined to become.
“Daniel!”
He could remember a voice calling his name.
It was feminine. Could it have been his mother? And had that been his name?
The next morning, he woke as the sun rose from the eastern sky. “Daniel! Wake up! Get up now, it’s time!”
He rubbed his eyes and pulled at some of the grit. As he opened his eyes, he saw outside that the storm had come. A giant, billowing dust cloud was approaching.
He swung his legs out of the bed, onto the sandy floor, and dashed over towards the opening of his tent. He looked towards the east. The giant sand cloud filtered the sun, and other workers would scatter and scurry towards their workstations, securing whatever they could, with whatever they could find.
Daniel walked out to the dusty sand yard.
His mother and father were standing there, along with his little brother. They stood and watched him in silence in the morning sunlight.
“Go out now, Daniel,” his father said. “Go, make your living. Your life. It is time, my son.”
He closed his eyes and shook his head.
And then they were gone.
*****
Darkness befell the land where there was no measure of time.
There was a certain time, and a certain place, that an angel rose from the ashes; tearing through the thorns; rising from the field of skulls. It had been in the days of the altar. The days when Antoine was burned, and Darius had navigated the sea of souls to rescue him.
Angry, dark clouds swirled in the sky.
Lightning flashed as winds howled. Tall, dark mountains rose from a dark and barren landscape like sunken sea-ships rising from an evaporated ocean.
Thunder crashed followed by a flash of lighting, bathing the sky in green. A chorus of wails emitted from below. As he looked downwards, he saw a putrid lake…a sea of souls…pasty white limbs thrashing from the water; the screams wafted upwards as he looked outwards.
The land of the three suns.
The dark light that shined throughout each day and night; the rings of fire that burned incessantly downwards on the beach of the putrid sea; the bodies, some of whom had escaped the clutches of the ocean, littered the beach, surrounding the rings of fire, decrepit, motionless, but moaning.
There was a man crawling on the beach, naked, pasty white, emaciated; his head was looking downwards towards the sand. He crawled a few steps, slowly, and then collapsed.
“Can you save me?!”
He looked down at the man on the beach. There were other bodies in the sea; some appeared lifeless and washed up with the surf and were scattered on the sands. But this one body - this one man with thin, pasty white limbs, crawled from the waterline to the dry sand. He raised his arms up. “Water! I thirst! Please, bring me water!”
And then he prepared to step off the perch he had been standing on. He felt his wings spread and reach across the sky, as he lifted off of the stones, and was carried over the sea.
As he flapped his wings, he heard a hum, if not a chorus, without discernable words, but he remained focused on the body.
His coffin lid opened.
The images that followed were blurred.
Hazy and undiscernible.
“I saw light, indiscriminate light…” Darius opened his eyes as the lid was propped open entirely. Had there been someone there? He waited and looked downwards. The shadows that covered his body were not dissipated by the light.
And then there was a shadow.
Movement across the field of blurred images; the feeling, welcome, joyous, something unexpected. The coffin lid had opened. And Darius spoke. “I had been buried. I had not expected to leave the dark, solitary box.”
But then the coffin lid opened.
And the light spilled in…
*****
Darius chose not to sit up.
He felt paralyzed, watching upwards, his eyes open for the first time that he could remember since he had seen the room at the chateau.
But I was lying in there! I was in there for weeks!
And then, in the dark solitude, he examined himself. There were the days before his transformation, which did not figure in to his decision.
Was I selected for the gift? The dark gift? Was I destined for the darkness from birth?
A dark figure appeared in the hazy light, hovering over the casket. Darius looked up, but did not see anything except a dark spot against the light.
Darius tried to speak, but was unable to. He reached up to his throat, opening his mouth. He tasted dry, hot air. Was the coffin lid really opened? Could this be a dream?
And then the darkness extended through the light – as if there were a shadow; an arm reaching out towards him. A finger coming closer, down to where he lay on the pillows and in the satin, deep in his grave in the underground mausoleum.
And then he saw Tramos.
He saw the same morning he always remembered.
The same sunlight shined through the windows, as the wind blew the curtains inwards. Darius huddled under the sheets and pulled them up to his nose. He was still mortal, still yet to be transformed, still a young man, and in some respects, still quite naive in his ways. He had the same brown hair, but it wasn’t tied back. He lay in bed, shirtless, his arms behind his head, waiting. The small tufts of hair under his arms caught the breeze that blew through the open window as his sweat dried. He looked over towards the door, still closed, but he heard rustling through the house.
Bacon was cooking. He could smell that.
But then the sounds came from the window.
He snapped his head around and saw a silhouette of a man in the window. The sun shined behind him, and his hair was long and flowing. Darius could tell from the shadow that he was large and muscular.
“Do you remember me?” he asked.
Darius held the sheet up towards his nose but waited. He could feel his hot breath against the fabric as he heard Tramos pull against the window frame. It creaked under his weight.
Darius snapped his head over and looked towards the window. “Are you coming in here?”
Tramos looked up and raised his eyebrows. “I did it for days in demon form. You won’t let me enter in my human form?”
Darius sighed and leaned back on the pillows. As Tramos entered, and found his way into the room, Darius raised the sheets and moved over to one side of the bed. “If you’re coming in you’re coming in here.”
Tramos removed his clothing.
He stood in front of the bed, nude, muscular. His chest was that of a sculpture in Rome; his arms, powerful and roping. Darius caught himself staring at the powerful immortal standing before him. He clutched the blanket up closer to his face, looking up at him as their eyes locked.
And then that same face, which had looked down at him as he lay in bed so many mornings before he was transformed, the face that was locked with his as Darius lay on his back, in the bed, underneath Tramos, was the same smiling face that looked down at him as he lay in his coffin.
The vision started to clear.
And Darius recognized the flowing hair, the warm smile, with perfectly white and straight teeth. “You are welcome here,” Tramos said, as Darius reached up and shielded his eyes from the light.
“Rise,” Tramos said. “Rise and be with me here in the light.”
Darius’ face shifted. “Who…you’re evil…I know you are evil. You h
ave shown me so many times!”
Tramos smiled, reached out and placed his hand on Darius’ cheek. “We all can find our redemption. And grow. I have done that. And so can you.”
He closed his eyes as the light found its way into the casket. He pulled down the satin sheet, untucked it from the sides of the coffin, and tossed it aside. Darius sat up and saw Tramos right next to him, smiling at him. Darius covered his face with his hands, shaking his head.
I am…
Tramos reached and placed his hand on Darius’s shoulder. “Your voice will come to you…in time. Just open your eyes, Darius. Let them adjust. Let them see this new world that you are in now.”
He opened his eyes.
Tramos had been a clear vision. The first vision. The only thus far.
Crystal and sharp, his face was the same face which he remembered. But even so, there was something different about his face here.
For where he was, the brightness, the light, and the feelings that washed over him since the coffin lid was opened, were very different from what he had remembered.
What type of world was this?
They were levitating in pillow white clouds, and there was a light breeze blowing.
“Come out of your casket,” Tramos said. “Rise, Darius. Rise.”
He and Tramos were concealed by a veil; pure white, pastel blue, powdery and flowing. And when he stepped outside the coffin, he felt the shimmery rainbows which danced around his feet.
“Take off your shoes,” Tramos said.
Darius bent down and unlaced his shoes. He tossed them in the casket and pulled off his socks, and immediately started laughing as he felt the shimmer and the rainbows envelop his feet and glide through his toes.
He threw his head back and laughed.
Tramos smiled. “You will come back to them, to those you loved in life,” he said. “You will rise from your coffin, which is already buried in the mausoleum beyond the cemetery. But you will take a different form.”
Darius coughed. “I…won’t be the same?”
Tramos shook his head. “To them, they will see you as the same Darius…but you are like me now. You are celestial. And now it’s time for you to earn your wings!”