Xanthic lifted a heavy wooden frame which acted as a case full of books in his two hands and placed it across the door with no discernible effort and then came to me kneeling by my side. He took my injured hand in his placing one on top. I expected a miraculous healing through a warmth or pulsing light as in any low budget sci-fi movie and as my nerves lifted he snapped his palms together and with a bullet of pain my finger pointed in the same direction as its sisters. I was compelled to offer my employer my thanks for his oh so delicate handling of my injury when a crash shook the building as if a mountain had been flung with force against us momentarily causing a cessation of light and power. The lights came back on a moment later and every face was a mirror of mine which was terror sweet terror. Then with thunder and pain the lights extinguished permanently.
Heat radiated through the missing side of the cottage, torn from its foundations by a fist as large as the building itself, as strong as steel and as insubstantial as smoke. The fire ate at the trees, it devoured them whole taking all that they were and ripping them from life though light as bright as the first millisecond of all of creation when the first -dots of matter, before atoms formed, collided and formed; then into the waste of smoke, boiling thick and sooty, leaving choking smog and dirtying everything in its wake. What was left of the hovel offered as much protection from the outside aggressors as waving a stick against the armies of Hell. Or as it transpired a stick can be a very effective thing to have when all else seems lost. We all pulled together and tried as best we could to stand behind everyone else, which transpired was an elderly lady. I hated myself at that point, cowering behind frailty and frozen in fear as a leg as tall as the ruins stepped over the scattered remains and crushed the floor in front of us as the air burned as the crushing cloud of foul darkness like a Devil's rear after an all you can eat curry house blow-out. And like a wave crashing with enormous and unrelenting momentum, in poured Titanesque smoke sprites and at their rear, like a hunter urging her baying dogs to the blood, stood Mary revelling in the destruction.
*
The heat remained the same but the oppressive pressure dispelled causing my ears to pop and ring; if they were my ears. At first it was hard to focus going from rolling black waves to unending light but they weren't my eyes to adjust. I was leaning over a wooden railing fence as if there were no cares in the world. I could still sense the figure beside me and out of sight. The maleness of him burned hotter than the sun that baked earth.
"Why?" came the voice, it was deep and strong; confident.
"Because," it was Xanthic's silk which slipped through the air like cream after the thick granite of the former word.
Haze caused illusions of the sun and as an eternity passed I watched great lakes appear in every dip and contour of the stretching forever. After an age measured only in the numbness of the mind rolling though every thought and memory until nothing in all of experience could be conjured into ethereal existence behind the eye of the memory, the granite tone rolled through the endless barren desert. It had strength enough to disturb the dust which had been unmoved for millennia causing small spirals of bleached saffron shaded tiny grains to form and fall back to the baked earth in new locations for the first time in aeons.
It said. "Say the word."
"I need assistance, there is an........ occurrence." Xanthic's voice was still cream but faltering like it had curdled.
An explosion of flies buzzed their wings as if angered and evacuated the space to our side and swarmed around us darkening my view; if it were me controlling the body I would have covered my face in my arms before screaming and running for the safety of anywhere the filthy insects were not. But it was Xanthic who resided within this body which I was merely a traveller and not a muscle moved, not a fluttering eyelid, quivering finger or spasmed nostril came from the stony cool body nor was there any convulsion of throat or stomach as the huge flies buzzed right in front of our eyes so close I could see every facet of the complex eye as the sun reflected off the numerous surfaces; thick black hair covered the body of each one ending in a point as sharp as any barb. They stank. Then, with a speed of action akin to a dragonfly evading a striking bird but without the grace or beauty, they darted off individually in all directions but as a universal whole in the same way they had originally come.
Xanthic stood and rolled his shoulders as if releasing tension or a freeing stiffened muscles and pulled at his coat so the collar realigned onto his neck. Then with just a single step he started on a journey of well over a thousand miles.
Time rolled on with every footstep and Xanthic kept a steady gait swinging each leg with a measured stride across the flat dry earth that stretched onto forever under the wide open sky. As we walked Xanthic's aura-sonus opened up into a sweeping instrumental with a scope of sound that made the immeasurable acres of dry earth under the infinite dome of sky even more expansive. The orb of light travelled from left to right over and over training its light through the sky and leaving a darkness almost as bright with an abundantly full night teeming with stars of yellows, greens, blues as bright as any shining gold and dim reds that stood as titans next to pin points of iridescent white. The stars formed constellations unfamiliar and dazzlingly clear within the void. We walked on, Xanthic seemed not to tire even after I lost count of the number of circles of the Sun. I lost count of the lost counts and we walked on, one leg following the other for a number as great as all those stars in the sky.
The was a tree, it could be seen from several days away and it was the first difference anywhere and with an anticipation I only ever experienced as a child waiting for the day I could open the present under the green plastic tree set with coloured lights and gaudy sparkle. Around the tree buzzed a cloud of insects, so thick was the air with the creatures that their presence was seen over a day away.
Xanthic slowed as he drew within a mile and squared his shoulders striking more of a swagger. The shade of the barren branches burned to nothing in the zenith of the Sun's passage. The flies screamed loudly as we arrived and flew around maddened and angry with razor sharp wings cutting the air until they bunched up together in a mass of seething bodies which formed a whole. From this whole of black insect bodies stood a man both solely there on his own and a crawling mass of flies all at the same time. The rags he wore were from the finest of materials cut by skilled tailors to form clothes of the highest quality and all in black. Wide hair that fully covered his head ran around to form a beard as thick as the skeletal tree trunk. Black pupils stood out from the clean white eyes.
"Speak." it said.
"Help me." came Xanthic's reply full of bile as the unfamiliar words came out of his throat.
The intensity of the buzz grew amazingly as they figure burst into millions of individual filthy insects that exploded once more far across the landscape and then pulling back into a seething mass that flew away towards the never-never where the land met the sky. With a sigh Xanthic placed one foot in front of him and we walked on.
I would love to describe all that I saw, the wonders of the star filled sky and alien planets that lived there in the ink bottle space or even the beauty found in the grains of dust beneath Xanthic's worn boots; one could imagine they each once belonged to mountains impossibly high that were worn down by wind and rain over unintelligible time and now each as small as a speck trodden even smaller by the friction of the heel of each boot. I got used to those stars, looking for each every night and watching them rotate above us. As we walked the constellations drifted apart and created shapes a new. The red stars disappeared from the night only to be replaced with time by the once small bright white dots which grew, mellowed and then themselves expanded in crimson.
The flies hung low on the land around a log fallen across what once could have been a stream but now no more. I went with Xanthic's body without option but with a dread and fear in wherever my stomach was within my body far away. The man was already there sitting on the log and Xanthic stood directly in front. From this ang
le I could see his full form, one of muscle not developed from lifting lumps of metal above his head but from prolonged activities and arduous work. They formed shapes under his clothing as he looked up at us and through teeth as white as bleached bones he asked a question.
"Are you ready to say the word?"
"Something is disrupting the agreement and..." Xanthic did not finish before my fear was realised and the flies that were always there instead of the man flew off once more.
The journey continued, the pace much slower and each step felt laboured and on the verge of failing to maintain our verticality. The Sun which arced across us each day drew cooler and at night I was saddened by the slow decrease in the stars and even forming a tear when the last one failed to display in the cold empty sheet that hung above us. At the end of it all was an oasis with a small bridge over a trail cut through the parched soil. There were the flies.
"Say what you know I want to hear." came the voice, the first sound I had heard in a million life times that formed the walk through the desert.
Xanthic was exhausted, I could hear it in his body that everything it did it did with effort. I knew he was broken and I tried to give him my strength, my energy and my youth with which to continue and to be strong in this encounter. I willed him to have that cocky tone and confidence in his voice that annoyed me so deeply like finding the very last chocolate saved in its box and savoured all the more by the wait to consume, turns out to be a coffee cream. But it did not, it was dry and said with the sound of the last breath escaping a dying man; and after all the walking and the endless time I had to imagine what word could possibly be conclusion of this strange conversation he uttered one that never crossed my mind; he said.
"Father."
00:50
Confusion, terror, pain, searing heat and deafness caused by a cacophony of sound replaced what came before and my body, inhabited by my consciousness once more retreated into itself to escape the overloading on all my senses. The air, that did come to my parched lips survived only an inch from ground, was too hot to comfort the convulsing lungs that spasmed in their attempt to draw in live giving oxygen with which to sustain my vital needs. Then calm, the terror I experienced which was drove all common sense and higher brain functions to be forgotten like last week's gossip magazines lifted as if a window within my mind opened and a cool fresh wind blew through clearing the cobwebs and dust of inability and doubt away to be replaced with a crystal clear resolution of the immediate future. It was time to lay down in tranquillity and dream upon the tides of space into the forever never.
A bolt of lightning cracked through the pressurised din of the thick swirling soup above and the charcoal and steel cloud reverberated with the merest flash of pure gold before darkening into a funeral of slate. Again the gold ruptured the myriad gray and it lifted like a reversed wave pulling up before crashing further down as the raging tip of the wave broke and fell upon us. Through the pockets of clarity between the waves of oppression came screaming. The girls were alive, at least for now, and close by. Successive bolts of light echoed through the living ash cloud and it began to pull back, lifting itself away like an octopus pulling back from a predator moving its snaking arms to protect its whole.
There, as a rush of cold air bit my face and iced my burning lungs through to my very soul I heard the beat of a deep drum with a reinforced surge of the full brass section of an orchestra of damned with an accelerato of fury and heavenly style broke through the barriers standing against us, stood Xanthic facing away from me, from us, in a fighting stance. Bent knees to lower his centre of gravity, straight back to strengthen his defence and a length of rich brown wood just over his own high swung from hand to hand clearing a free space between him and he now frothing fog. Where the wood touched the smoke as it arched in long strong swipes it cracked as the smoke escaped jumping into hissing snakes of angry smut either side of the timber weapon like mud leaping out of a puddle as if struck by a jumping toddler's boot. Where the circular end struck in quick striking jabs it cracked golden bolts of energy that sent the clouds into spasm.
The air cleared around us, the girls and I, taking the radiant heat with it. The cloud contracted, rolling in on itself but this wasn't an extinguishment of the conflagration nor was it a clearing of the air. The best it was a stay of execution. The ruins of the cottage was clear from all but the merest hint of vapour as I watched the remains pull into the body of the whole which rolled out and up budging as it grew. With a roar it boiled up into a tornado and pushed a tendril out which span and thrashed at Xanthic striking him against the side of his head and sending him spiralling through the air to strike against the grey block wall with enough force to cascade them onto the burnt earth outside. With a gasp I feared the worst but my heart lifted when I saw him spring back to his feet with a liberal covering of grey brick dust and charred brown earth. A bold upwards swing starting at his feet and up so the swiftly moving circular end saluted the dark night like a terrible golfer ripping the fairway with an anger fuelled shot that sends a divert of 100 year old perfectly maintained turf further towards the green than the ball; and like a bad golfer struck on the head by his own mis-struck ball, Xanthic then turned his man height staff into service akin to an adz as he smashed it repeatedly into the ground effectively cutting the fallen smog tendril into smaller and smaller splashes of fumes.
The gigantic smoke creature slowed its frothing assault and pulled its insubstantial mass back in to form a hard bodied hoof footed giant that even as it was pulling the last of itself into forming its large mane of hair it brought its thick leg down stamping its hoof into the ground showering me with dirt in a heavy rain. Xanthic took the brunt of it but didn't show it apart from dusting himself down before instantly changing position from standing upright into a tiptoed spin bringing his weapon around and forcing it through the giant at knee height bringing the huge form falling to the ground. From my vantage point I could see the staff now and remember it, it was the stick found by Hastings to aid his departure from the Barrow, twigs and sprouting branches had been removed and it had received a bit of work with sandpaper and what looked like carved signs lined by rings around the centre; but it was unmistakably the same stick. I started to wonder where he retrieved it from but from the dregs of my memory from a long forgotten dream I could almost see an elderly man taking out the staff, holding it almost reverently before handing it over to a smaller younger man who took it with grace. The older man held out his hand and the younger looked at it as moments slipped away to their deaths, then with a slow hesitancy as if unfamiliar with the situation, he took the hand for the briefest of time before dropping his own as if the other was scalding.
Xanthic struck again and again in time to his tune that played only for me and drove the smoke back causing a greater clear area between the unnatural fumes, Mary and the few girls I could see through the smoke fumes and those of us left in the ruined shack. Xanthic danced around the Dancer taking his shots with cool calculation which hit without fail; he was beautiful in his performance of skill and daring reminding me of a matador twirling his cape as he turned to let steaming four footed danger thunder past. The smoke was visibly thinning with each strike and my heart soared with anticipation of making it through the night to see the light of a fresh new morn.
Mary sang, I heard her voice carry over the drifting fog and crackling fires still burning high above our heads and all around us. It was not the inspiring voices of the Akelarre or the honey sweet tones of the song in the woods when I met the three girls as I walked into town but that of a crow calling to its kin that it had found a feast of rotting flesh of a decaying unfortunate so come join in the bounty.
Rampaging horses with dagger teeth and double curved horns with eyes that burned like coals in the centre of a fire stampeded out of a wall of rising steam and covered the distance to Xanthic in seconds. He brought the staff up in defence but he wasn't fast enough and after fending off the first rampaging animal the second one caught
him in the chest with its wickedly pointed horn raising him through the air with a screech of mis-played violins that ripped apart the bounding aura-sonus, only to fall behind the creature on his back with limbs flailing, the staff falling from his hand and tumbling somewhere into the dirt. Before he could regain his footing the first satanic unicorn was about and reared up kicking the air before bringing its body down hard and fast so trails of smoke escaped from its billowing mane like exhaust from the falling branches separated from their trunk by the severe blaze driven to glowing white temperatures by the fresh night winds. The front hooves pushed through Xanthic's chest and the legs broke down into swirling smoke that spread up the animal until it was nothing but a wafting haze. The second turned in its sprint and pushed towards its prey which was prone on the floor, lowered its head and charged forward with vigour eager to lay the final blow. My actions to race the few meters to pull Xanthic away was in vain as the smoke creature was by far the better athlete and I skidded to a stop as the animal's head passed through Xanthic's side rolling him over and over until he came to a halt in a mess on his belly and the horse dispersed into evaporating clouds which floated against the breeze to re-join the self-satisfied smoke giant. My internal soundtrack stilled with only a drum beat carrying on Xanthic's song with each beat marking off the seconds until even they started to slow.
Diary Of An Occult Resolution Assistant Page 33