The Lumberjack

The Lumberjack - Part Seven

 The villagers awoke rested, but the realities of the previous day could not be avoided. People had been murdered. Buildings had been destroyed. And the charred remains of the lumberjack remained in the town square. A committee was made to bury the corpses of the deceased into one mass grave. There was some objection to this plan, but the bodies were completely unidentifiable. The only person who got his own grave was the lumberjack. He was unceremoniously dumped into a hole in the ground. There was nothing to mark this burial ground. No one mourned his death. There was not one person who seemed to grasp that this man was merely a puppet with no control over his own action. Oh, well. They would understand well enough with time.

The grave of the lumberjack had only one visitor. The old man emerged from the darkness, and, with a flick of his wrist, the ground parted. He grinned. The body floated up, arms outstretched. "Nice try, old friend. We both know that this humble prison would never contain you for long. Follow me." As if in response to the old man's command, the lumberjack floated along behind him, and the two made their way into the woods.

The old man kept the body in his own home for a few days, with candles around him and glyphs on the wall preventing the dead body from regaining consciousness. The man lived in an old shop, owned by someone else a long time ago, long forgotten by the world, as the corpse lay in the corner, it was watched by the similarly dead eyes of several puppets, the old man's own handiwork.

Eventually, the man finished a suitable coffin for the deceased being. This structure was made from aspen wood, sprinkled with a strange clear liquid, and several glyphs were carved into it by the man. Finally, the lumberjack's limp and lifeless corpse was laid to some semblance of rest in the coffin. The old man brought the coffin to an ancient well, perhaps even older than himself, or at least this current form. He instantaneously traveled to the bottom, and brought the wooden box alongside him. Finally, he produced a knife, and poked a hole in the box. Sunlight filtered in. "The light of day will interfere with your regeneration, and you are powerless to resist. I know that nothing I do will prevent our final showdown, but while you are like this, I will relish every opportunity I have to prevent your rise to power. It will take you quite some time before you ever see the top of this well," the old man said, and suddenly he was standing at the top of the well, looking down with his unbearable toothless grin, and then he was gone.

The coffin seemed to change shape. It grew and grew, until it was almost as big as a room. There was a man, sitting on one end, not the lumberjack. Me. I saw through those eyes, and breathed through those lungs. I was back. I breathed hard and began to hyperventilate. I had died, or it had seemed like it. What was that? I saw through another man's eyes, and then I was dead. But I was safe now. I was back.

There was another man at the other end of the wooden room, or coffin, I suppose. I could clearly see that he was the lumberjack. He had the same build, and the same clothes. But he wore no mask, and his eyes were kind. This was no monster. "Hello," I said to him. "I have been lost in an ungodly fog for a day now. I don't know my name. I... I think I fought you."

"I know who you are," the man said. I could see that there were tears in his eyes. "I wish I could tell you what happens after this, or what any of this means, but I find myself at a loss for words." He was sitting on the floor, cross-legged. I could tell that he was upset, but there was a strange calm to the way he held his head. "I have been here, trapped, ever since the day you just witnessed, and maybe some time before that. Something escaped here, a long, long time ago, something that wore my face, but it was not me. I know that you are familiar with the dangers of the fog. How have you been able to resist it so well? I convinced myself that it was possible, so that the things I did might not feel so horrible. But you've been out here for hours now, and you haven't caved in. What is it? What makes you so special?"