Sunday: 11:46 p.m.
His song awakens me once more. It is still a low and lovely sound that fills the shadows of my mind and opens my eyes. It cannot give me peace or change the past. It cannot put back together my sanity or save my soul. It can only open up my eyes, which it does, allowing me to take in my surroundings.
I am still lying on my back, and I can’t move. My mouth hangs open, my head awkwardly cocked to the side, and I feel a strand of saliva running down my cheek. I am lying in a growing pool of my own blood, and I watch, mesmerized, as it flows quickly away from my broken frame, desperate to escape the confines of my body.
Jeremy is here, lying next to me. His eyes are empty, and they stare coldly into mine. He is dead. That much is certain. To come so far for nothing should be tragic, but it is not. I study my deathly reflection in the glossy white for a moment before allowing my vision to flit carelessly away and toward the odd scene in the middle of the shrouded room.
Old Dave sits here cross-legged, his face and arms covered in dark red. Matt’s head is resting carefully in his lap, and he strokes my brother’s hair softly in time to the rhythm that pulsates through the darkness and into my mind. There is a long gash on the side of Matt’s throat. His blood spills from this slit and runs down his shoulders, swirling together with mine on the cement floor.
Willus is here, too, but he is not scary anymore. He is dead also and sprawled on his back in an over-turned chair—the very chair that he was tied to when taken earlier. His legs flop ridiculously in different directions, and I notice two identical slashes running down the fronts of his turned up arms. I wonder what they are for . . .
His Song sweeps my thoughts away, turning what should be horrific into something commonplace. I know that I shouldn’t, but I accept the brutality. I allow it, hold it, almost draw it to me. I have no choice. His Song controls me. It has controlled me always. It is the numbness, the lack of life, the path, the pull. Yet, even knowing this, I cannot let go. I cannot resist, and, sadly, I don’t even want to.
“Ok.” For some reason, I breathe this aloud.
“Are you still here?”
Old Dave’s voice is as callous as I remember, and it echoes hollowly through the blackness. I don’t respond. He groans, pushing Matt’s head roughly away, shifting his position on the hard cement.
“So much to say and no one to say it to.”
I suspect that he must be talking to me, but our eyes never meet.
“Look.” He points away and into the darkness. “That’s it, my whole life, my whole existence. Everything I am and have lived for . . . a hole in the ground.”
He laughs quietly to himself, and the sound turns grotesque as it shifts and breaks away across the ceiling far above me.
I strain my eyes toward the direction of his shaking finger. At first, I see nothing, but as I grow accustomed to the flitting light, I am able to make out a large chasm in the middle of the room. It is an opening or tear, as if the ground has been pulled apart like the seam of a garment. It seems oddly familiar.
“And look, the blood! It stared the moment I spilt it and has grown wider with each death.”
My gaze returns quickly to the pool I lie in. I now notice that it is running toward the hole and spilling silently over the edge.
“Are you curious?” his voice mocks. “What could this oddity be? What is it that makes us who we are? Are we the sole makers of our future, or could there be forces beyond us that lead us along the path of our lives? What a day . . . What a strange day to be alive . . . What a strange day to die.”
YOU ARE READING
In the Tears of My Saints
Spiritual"I cry. That's all. And as I cry, the tears fall from my heart and change the world around me. They take pain, they take fear, they take horror and they destroy them. They gather up the bodies and blood, carrying them away toward the pit, flinging t...
