by T. M. Lakomy
“Set a cairn for me. It is the last service I will ever ask of you. And remain here till night falls, then everything you need to know shall be completed. Here in this desolate, unforgiving land I shall find my repose in the bowels of earth, immured to sleep for ages unknown. It all ends here—I end here. And I know not where I shall go once the gates of death claim my soul. I enter death alone, without guide or friend, into the unknown, the last and most feared mystery.” Mikhail’s voice was hoarse now, and Oswald saw in his face hidden sorrow tinged with relief to be closing the mortal chapter—at least for now.
“My only true friend, how I wish I could relieve you of this burden or cast aside my own mortality and follow you wherever you go!” Oswald’s face was a stricken mask as he spoke. Suddenly the weather shifted, turning swiftly into a sour turbulence of lightning. The woods moaned, the branches of the trees like broken fingers grasping at them impotently.
“Help me lie down, I cannot stand on my feet,” said Mikhail, his voice weakening.
With as much gentleness as he could muster, Oswald helped his old friend lie down on the ground. Mikhail’s eyes were open, his breathing labored, and the color slowly began to drain out of his handsome face. Oswald knelt beside him as the wind rose, waiting patiently. Mikhail’s eyes suddenly fluttered closed and Oswald, fearing that the time had come, began to weep. But Mikhail spoke in low, distant tones. “Do not be sad for me, be sad for the world. Have no pity for me, have pity for the world.”
“And what about pity for me, O strangest of men? To be your friend was once a blessing, but now I think it is more of a curse! What is this fate you have cast onto me? What have you made of us? Even the old books and truths we once believed in seem hollow in light of all that has transpired here. I am lost!” Oswald cried out.
“We are players in a divine game, my friend,” Mikhail rasped, “for have we not asked to serve in whatever way we could when we took our sacred vows? The ways of the Lord are mysterious, and in this he has proved to be the most mysterious of all. We shall meet again, they have not defeated us yet!”
Oswald watched transfixed as the shadows danced across Mikhail’s ashen visage. He seemed like a carving from ages gone by, some ancient king from mythical days.
“Behold the first wandering father, Oswald, Keeper of the Lore,” he said. “I depart now, I see the light, the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. But no, there is no light, for we have all lived in perpetual darkness. Bury me and forgive me, my brother, my friend, my successor!” Then Mikhail’s eyes closed and the laden skies opened and rain began to fall softly. For the first time, Oswald felt the true meaning of solitude.
After a time the rain ceased and Oswald wiped away the tears clouding his vision. Shaking himself from his reverie, he set about digging the grave. The soaked black earth yielded easily to his groping fingers, and the ravenous fury with which he applied himself took over his senses. Soon he forgot where he was, the trees, the droplets of rain, the chill in his spine, the blows of the lashing wind—all fell away, and he was alone with the earth, digging relentlessly, heedless of the stones that made his fingers bleed and the stiffness settling in his limbs.
The skies had cleared, and the cold stars and full moon were his only witnesses. Into the early hours of night he dug, until the deep pit was complete. Then with slow reverence, he cradled Mikhail’s head one last time, kissing his brow in devotion, and lifted him into the grave.
As the emptiness settled in, Oswald rose to his feet and smoothed the earth over the grave. Then, without hesitation, he set off into the woods for the laborious task of fetching stones for the cairn. He sought them one by one, searching for those most fitting for the task. Some he discarded without inspection, and others he cast away after much dark thought. When he found one that was just right, he would hold it like a precious gem, setting it carefully upon the grave.
The arduous task took much of the night, but the moonlight led the way and he wavered not, and felt no creeping weariness dull his senses. The stones were often revealed to him by the striking moonlight, and it seemed that he felt their cold core as they responded to his touch. His mind suspended its sanity for the moment in grief, but his thoughts were clear and ruthless.
When the task was near completion, fatigue began to descend upon him. Yet still he persevered till his bones ached and his fingernails split and broke, paining him with every movement. He hauled the last stones and erected them grimly, feeling his pain lessen. Then he fell beside the cairn to rest.
OSWALD STIRRED AS dawn approached. His mind was still clouded with grief and sleep, but he felt a presence nearby. He inspected the cairn he had built on Mikhail’s grave the night before, feeling as though something watched him. He circled the clearing tentatively, the crunching of his footsteps on the frosted field unnerving him. Then the shivers down his spine renewed. Looking back at the cairn, he beheld a tall figure standing by, watching him almost predatorily. As he neared the cairn cautiously, he noticed that the figure was not human. He halted hesitantly, taking in the curved horns and long, golden, braided hair.
The Horned God approached Oswald with the dawn light shivering through the pristine skies behind him. The grey of his filmy, silken robes shifted and ran with his every movement, forming patterns like leaf veins or the golden sap of trees. His clear eyes were limpid pools of the clearest waters, and Oswald lowered his eyes in shame, for he felt small and of little consequence, deformed and ugly. Before him the Horned God halted, and Oswald forced himself to look up into his face. He seemed to see mirrors in those eyes, his naked soul reflected there, stripped bare of all pretense, as if it were weighed by the one who held the balance of the cosmic infinite chaos.
“I see you naked before me, your living soul before my eyes,” came the solemn voice of the Horned God.
Oswald inhaled sharply and averted his eyes to the ground where lilies had sprung at the god’s feet. “How shall one such as myself address the likes of your majesty, O eldest father of the earth?” Oswald was painfully aware that his voice was brittle and riddled with sin.
The Horned God stirred and addressed the trees. “They know me by many names and countless epithets, each one a shard and facet of the same gem and the same reality. All are fragments of a forgotten name whose power you shall never be blessed enough to know. I am Cernunnos, the Horned God, the initiator into the mysteries of apotheosis, watcher over the nine worlds and the Twilit Realms. But now let me see your face!”
The undeniable command in his voice was like the crack of a whip, and Oswald turned to meet his gaze. Many years later he would still remember those clear eyes like glass, the impassive and cold visage unravaged by time, in which he saw his fate and finally understood the beginning of his long journey beyond the veil and the weighty tribulations that awaited him. Those eyes held his doom.
“I have come to break you apart and forge you anew, for you are of the loyal few that merit our pity. We have chosen to give you a worthier task. You shall become father to a new order, shepherd over a lost flock that you shall tend, deathless, till Mikhail returns and relieves you of the stewardship. We shall strip you of yourself and reclothe you anew, that you may be born of a stronger matter and deeper knowledge. Do you accept?” The eyes blazed into a conflagration whence merged together all of the resounding energies of the cosmos, and Oswald recoiled in horror.
“But I am not worthy, and I know not what task you are bestowing upon me. What if I fail?” he asked.
The Horned God smiled, his face cruelly beautiful. “We shall rebuild you of a stronger material than you are made of now, and your feeble mind will soon be a bygone memory. I will pass you through the gates of the threefold death, where you shall die and be dissembled by the old demons that molded the shamans. They will break you down and build you up till you are a fitting conduit for our will. Are you afraid?” The mocking tone was a blade, and Oswald felt a surge of his habitual pride.
“I am worthy for the task,” he said, squar
ing his shoulders defiantly. “Fashion me into an instrument so fierce it shall reap the souls of these damned ones like a scythe before the hay.”
The elven king smiled at him with lucent eyes, and before Oswald could decipher the malice that lurked within, he had lifted one quick hand. The velocity struck him in one single, ruthless blow.
35
THE THREEFOLD DEATH
For the knife to snap, for the vein to drip, for the fleeing red
To leave behind the whitened flesh, errant snaking stream
Seeking whatever awning chasm to collide, across the ground to spread
Making of life’s endless musings, a derisible human dream
Few things will turn a human into a god, but since we are not discussing gods, I will dwell on the others; the sages, wizards, and magicians. Throughout the ages there have been many initiates that passed through death and emerged from it, either victorious or forever crazed. I will not dwell on the ones who failed but the ones who triumphed. Mithra, Horus, Myrddin, Odin, Lug, and yes, Christ, were all initiates of the threefold death. Few are they who survive this hidden path, to wield the black key made of glass. The Impenetrable Door.
FIRST YOU ARE awake. But you realize that you aren’t alone, though you do not know who is prowling nearby. You are somewhere indescribable—somewhere else, another plain, another forest, another indistinguishable, forgotten glade. But this is nothing like the earth you know. In fact you cannot hear anyone or anything. Perhaps everything is drowned by the clamor of your own heartbeat, all too loud, attracting hostile attention. You are aware of your breathing, too, that you are prey, naked and forsaken, somewhere unsafe. If delirium were a sickness, then you have it. It devours your sanity and the frenzy is a deafening chaos that plunges your body into agony, and your mind into the excruciating throes of depravity.
Anxiety, paranoia, and horror ride your body like violent paroxysms. You scream, fighting the impulses flooding through you. Then you realize your mistake all too late. They are already here for you. They are irrevocably drawn out of the whispering shadows having smelled your fear. They are watching you now with lurid, soulless eyes, malevolent and red as burning coals. Their faces are from your darkest nightmares—primeval beasts with rapacious jaws and razor-sharp claws of steel. They lust for blood and carnage, and their horror is only surpassed by the ruthlessness in their eyes as it excoriates your soul. Then you know the first darkness; the primordial fear that lurks in the dark. They are the ones we have feared all along, those bred of the very blackness of the fallen archdemons’ souls—the excrement of infamy, the very defiling force of life.
And then you are nothing more than food. They rip at your flesh and tear it with their hooked claws. Your cries only elicit their mocking laughter as their fangs crunch your bones and lap up the blood. You are nothing more than a dripping carcass of blood and guts. But you stay alive, somehow, your disembodied voice lingers. The agony amplifies to such heights that your pleas for mercy soon turn to curses, and you are hurled beyond the gates of reason. Your logical, rational mind has ruptured like those lungs and liver they have savagely ripped from you and relished. You are cognizant of the pain of each bite, each gnawing of bone, while your sanity irreparably crumbles. The separation between the conscious and subconscious mind comes crashing down, and you are raving, dying a thousand deaths.
Even your mind is not immune to the torture, for they are taunting every naked thought you ever possessed. Then they defile your memories, dissecting and discarding them carelessly. Like heated pokers wielded by expert hands into flayed flesh, they extinguish each one and char it to a blackened nothingness. Then you howl to the unforgiving skies like a rabid beast, an unwilling subject to the arts they have contrived for your torture. Your mangled body is contorted and twisted, and the blood on their faces and jaws is ruby red. They lust for more, but nothing is left. Your shrieking, naked soul is burning in their baleful eyes as their infernal infamy, the depths of ultimate decay, is revealed.
Then they set about deconstructing your personality. You no longer own your thoughts, nor any of your vices or virtues. They have severed them from you, cruelly asphyxiated till they become neutralized, distant components of a faraway dream. Your consciousness struggles and fights back, but they tear it away harder. Weeping, you give in to oblivion, to the destruction of your self. You fall into the noiseless void that is deeper than the slumber of death. The completed obliteration of your body and soul is revealed, and you are erased from memory and existence. There is nothing left of your earthly imprint but your last mortal cries before you became the banquet of the demons.
THEN YOU ARE alive again, like light newly kindled into being. You exist. You are naked, crawling pitifully on your knees like an animal, and you have forsaken the power of speech. You moan and groan hideously, and your futile attempts to think are clouded with the dull memory of impending pain. But you know where you are going. Right in front of you is a large, boiling cauldron. The fires beneath it are licking at its rim, dancing in vivid spires. From that cauldron emanates smoke and fumes, and they rise like dark plumes into an oblivious grey sky. The bubbling is impatient and crude, harsh on your ears and coarsely demanding.
You understand. It cannot be ignored, and its demands cannot be placated further. So you crawl towards it like a beast, the stones on the ground digging into your weakened flesh and the dust filling your nostrils and choking you of breath. Urgency grips you, and a growing frenzy sends tremors into your spine. You dig your broken nails into the unyielding ground, unwilling to cede, and your desperation prevails. You continue your delirious crawl towards the cauldron. The heat is scorching hot now, and you can taste the sweat on your grimy skin.
You have arrived now. The cauldron is large, and many strange runes are etched upon it that your broken mind cannot comprehend. Many figures are drawn on it, too, in various positions of torture, but your eyes are too unfocused to see. The odor of the concoction is putrid, but your nose has been long accustomed to the repugnant reek of graves. The fires, unyielding to your supplications, lash at you, trying to partake of your flesh, and you oblige. Rising to your feet, you clamber into the cauldron unceremoniously with a mighty splash. Then you howl your lungs out till they rupture.
An old woman with stygian eyes is stirring the cauldron. There are no whites to those eyes, and no mercy in her immovable, callous stare. She mixes strange herbs and sings in a deathly litany of sound. Then she begins to peel your skin from your body, inch by inch, reaping a shrill cry with each cut. She scalps you with relentless agility, and you cannot elude the grasp of her gnarled hands as you plead futilely, earning her rebukes.
When she is finished, she rips out your muscles, severing them from arm to leg dexterously and with deliberation. You curse yourself, turning your appeals to the heavens and the devil, but she seems both deaf and cruel as she smiles with the tenderness of a lover. The trees around the cauldron are now littered with slivers of your carved flesh as ravens squawk ominously overhead. Your severed mind is set above the cauldron to watch and relive the agony of your disembowelment while your bones are broiled and bleached.
This could have been a day or a week, for the endless, languishing torture transcends all the dimensions of hell. But then she comes again to the cauldron and seeks your bones. She binds them back together with her incantations, and the skeleton becomes whole again. Then she clothes it afresh with blood and vessels, and it shines raw in the morose light. Then the flesh comes anew, fresh and sinewy. Then the new, pristine skin. And when you are returned, reassembled in your previous likeness, you weep with immeasurable relief, then fall into oblivion.
YOU ARE STRUGGLING for your life against a giant serpent, its fangs dripping poison. You strive to prove your temerity and the mettle of your spirit. You do not wish to die again and decompose into the darkness of the demonic hells. You wield your mind, your soul, your essence, and engage with the serpent for your right to exist. You do not plead or cajole, for you kno
w the reward of both shall be the cruelest death imaginable. You win and she accepts. She nods and you fall into the abyss.
You are alive and in a beautiful glade. The sunlight is warm upon your unmarred skin. The music of the birds fills your buzzing ears with joy, and your heart is light like a feather. You are hanging from a yew tree by a rope suspended precariously above the ground. You struggle and the rope tightens, and yet you cannot die. Your life is gently squeezed out of you, and your body is alight with ecstasy and pain. You convulse and tremble, and each tremor sends your mind into further chaotic realms of consciousness. You have broken the doors of death and stand in its pathway between both worlds, each pulling harder with opposing force, fragmenting your mind.
You are aware and alive and your eyes see for the first time; the tree’s veins and the breathing of its leaves, the sound of the light falling upon your face, and the names of the runes it was fashioned with. The speech of the wind is revealed to you, as well as the wrathful pride of earth that is beckoning for you to fall into its embrace. Days go by, and you understand the patterns of matter and thought and discover the will that forges existence and the secret codes of magic that peel away the dead layers of dimensions.
Your mind threatens to cave in and divulge its craving for death, and it is denied it again. It is chastised and taunted, stretched as far as the stars till it is gossamer thin. Then it detaches itself entirely from the reality of earth, set free to roam astride the solar flare. You are singing the music of death and staring into the eyes of the deathly warden, withheld from his clutches, and all the layers of space and time converge on you, and your mind is sliced away.