The Colors of Alemeth - Vol. 1

by V. Cobe

  ***

  He also had bouts of lucidity. When that happened, everything got worse. The foul smell of his excrement disgusted him further. The shortness of breath, the lack of light and the lack of company afflicted him more.

  “Was this what you were afraid of, Mom? Take me home, please….”

  Fragmented moments spent at Sun’s Farm were starting to make sense. They had been fugitives and this was why. Could that really be it? Could that be why he couldn’t talk about the time he was on the farm? Could that be why he had to stay in the monastery while his fellow scholars went home?

  His mother had told the bishop she was being persecuted, but he always had the feeling that it was also him who was being protected from something. From this?

  But it didn’t make sense, it couldn’t be that…. He was there because he had seen what he shouldn’t have in the forest, and that had nothing to do with the past few years. Thoughts mingled in a confusion of memories and smoke.

  Gradually, he began to lose his light. He stopped screaming and talking, merely remained sitting in a corner, sometimes sobbing, sometimes silent. His eyes were open, staring at nothing.

  The man who had come to bring him food before found Alem lying on his side, with his back to the bars, motionless, and got scared. He called Alem and threw water at him from the outside, but he didn’t react, not even with the harbinger of food and water.

  “Oh my God,” said the man, dropping the bowl and disappearing running.

  The cell remained slightly illuminated, indicating that the man didn’t go far with the lantern. Only a few seconds had passed before the noise of iron chains exploded in the silence, and the cell bars began to rise. They stopped just above the ground. The man returned and entered the cell. He ran to Alem, crouched and turned him over.

  He didn’t have time to react: Alem pulled the man’s head down by his hair with his right hand and jabbed the long nails of his other hand into one of the man’s eyes. The man made a chilling scream and punched Alem, who released him.

  After what he had suffered in the days prior, that punch was nothing. He took the flashlight that the man had dropped on the floor, got on all fours and staggered toward the bars. The man was groaning behind him, horrified.

  Alem flung lengthwise underneath the iron bars and rolled through the opening of the cell to the outside.

  Down the hall, a few meters away, from where the man had come moments before, were the levers that opened and closed the cells – one of them was down.

  Alem got to his feet and ran as fast as he could to the levers. He felt something viscous running down his left hand to the floor. He raised the lever and fell limp onto the ground.

  The man was already crossing under the lowered bars, half blind, but his pants got caught in one of the iron spikes coming down and jammed his way out. He pulled and kicked but couldn’t get loose and eventually allowed the bars to close on him, piercing one of his legs. His screams almost broke the walls of bare rock.

  Alem crawled with effort, flashlight in hand, near the cell. The man couldn’t see behind the spotlight that blinded him, but stormed out, stretching his arms, without reaching Alem.

  Alem picked up the bowls that had fallen and licked them until the last bit of water and food that hadn’t been wasted on the floor. Then he ate the porridge that had spilled on the ground anyway. He felt better right away.

  The man, however, was fainting. He seemed to be in less agony, losing strength as the blood leaked from his body.

  It was only when Alem had finished eating that he noticed his cell outside, lit by the flashlight. It was possible to see a symbol, darker, drawn on the entire length of the bars, as if a giant brush had passed over the iron. A horizontal line over a proportional circle.

  He didn’t know what it was, but he had no time to think about it. He grabbed one of the sleeves of the shirt he was wearing and ripped it. He held the piece of clothing around the filthy mouth of the man who had almost lost consciousness. His hair was long, oily and gray, the beard had probably not been shaven in four or five days, and most of his teeth that he still had were rotten. Through one of his closed eyelids, blood and some other viscous substance were flowing.

  Alem stood up and slid as best he could in the direction from where the lantern used to come and go. He ran, rested, ran, rested, but kept going.

  He was traversing empty and abandoned dungeons. There were cells everywhere. A real labyrinth from which he had no idea how to escape. The small rooms he saw had no doors or windows; they were merely open holes in the stone wall.

  When he could no longer run, he went on staggering. He no longer had any idea of how to get back. Not that he would want to anyway.

  Then, at the end of a hallway, he heard voices coming from a room close by. He stopped and turned off the flashlight.

  They might already be looking for me.

  He held his breath and listened carefully, trying to make out what they were saying.

  “…boy cannot leave yet. It’ll be helpful if he stayed for a few more days,” a man said.

  “What’s the point of that?” said a woman. “It’s more than enough. In fact, in my opinion, this wasn’t even necessary. I tried to show that several times, but no one wanted to hear me.”

  “Keep your opinions to yourself, okay? The boy is not ready yet.”

  There was silence for a while, and then the man repeated, “The boy is not ready yet.”

  The sound of a chair being dragged reverberated.

  “Whatever you want,” concluded the woman.

  Then, steps were heard.

  Alem shoved himself inside another room and hid in a dark corner. The footsteps sounded louder and then became softer.

  Peeking into the hall, he saw no one. He went out and ran gently after the sound of footsteps and the soft light that walked away. He had to cling to the wall several times not to plop on the floor, until, after several meters, the woman stopped at the end of a dead-end corridor. Alem hid behind a corner and waited. Something heavy was dragged on the ground until a thud was heard. Nothing else.

  There was no light anymore. Blindly he walked down the hall, and sensing no danger, turned the flashlight back on.

  There were no rooms or doors; it was simply a corridor. On the wall at the end, a switch was lit by the flashlight. He pressed it. The wall rotated forty-five degrees. Alem crossed to the other side of the passage, and the wall closed behind him.

  He found himself in a large, empty room lit by small fluorescent lights in the ceiling. The walls were white, but the ground was still made of the gray stone of the dungeon.

  He opened a door and climbed two flights of stairs to another door, which led to yet another large, empty room. He continued climbing stairs until there were no more steps. He entered the top floor, a smaller room than the previous ones and full of junk: old bicycles, crates and littered plastic bags crammed with toys. At the back were more stairs that went up, as if he was in a basement.

  Alem didn’t rest; he wanted to get to the end of it. He climbed up to another crate-filled room, but unlike the previous one, the walls and floor were made of wood. A red door was in a corner, and from beneath, at the threshold, came a thick beam of light. Next to it was a small dresser on which a mirror stood. Alem could see his reflection. He hardly recognized himself: his skin clung to his skeletal frame and what was left of his clothes was torn and dirty with red spots, many of them dried and glued to his body. His face, bruised and filthy with blood, some of it dry, some still fresh, was ghastly.

  The red door could be unlocked from the inside. He opened it and found himself in the middle of a ground floor hall of the monastery. A nun who was cleaning a cabinet looked at him, stunned, and then ran off, calling for Mother Zilá.

  Alem collapsed on the wooden floor of the deserted corridor and closed his eyes. He could rest. He was safe.