So Many Voices

Echoes down the hall and into the dining room. Clamor of tools and pounding of hammers come from the basement. The scratching of pen on rough paper run through the office and into my perked ears. Pots and pans from the kitchen and chattering from the living room. In a corner, I hide from the haunting sounds.

Footsteps coming down the hall and screaming from outside the door. Clanging of metal against metal come from the sparring arena where sounds of jeering emanate. Soft and harsh voices clash against one another as I sat there, waiting. Waiting, waiting, for some liberation from this hell. My mind pleads guilty to some unseen judge and jury, but I still sat there, waiting, waiting.

Murmurs from the front door and shouts from above. A low growl comes from the stairs to the basement and through the darkness, a pair of eyes stare. My body shivers as a chill runs through me and into my soul. The eyes were my own from a darker time. For a while, we stared and searched each other. Me searching the darkness, the darkness searching me, a crumpled mass in a corner.

"I am you no longer. Leave me be you accursed being!" I said. A dark laugh came out of the darkness and a rumbling sounded softly. The eyes grew angry and strained as I stood my ground in my little corner. The voices from the hall grew louder and the conversations became clearer. It seemed to make my hell even worse than what it already was.

"I am you." A dark power boomed. "I am your history. I am you."

I stood with a start and the eyes were gone. The voices grew and their horrible sounds filled my ears. I ran about my empty home, trying to get away from the echoes of the past. My office, my room, my door, all had voices. Were they real? I could not say for sure if they were.

I came to the stairway up and there, resting upon the 48th stair was Shelgoth. His dark eyes locked with mine, unblinking, unmoving, and lifeless. His gnarled hands opened and closed upon some unknown weapons. Teeth, sharper than the best daggers made by Hillmen craftsmen, poked in from the sides of his wide mouth.

"Leave me be! I am you no longer!" I shouted at his bent figure. "I am different from you now!" The figure threw back his head and laughed. The entirety of the house grew dark and shook violently around us. "I am forever you Mooch." The figure declared. "Your past will never leave you."

A shadow passed over me and I darted away. I came to my office, looking for safe haven, only to be confronted by screams of death. Voices shouted and rang as I rushed by, looking for something, someone to save me from this nightmare. Yet no matter how I tried, nothing came to be. I was alone in this dark and haunting home.

I ran to the basement and took shelter in the corner. At first, there was nothing down there, until the voices began to spread into my final stand. A dark presence then came into the room as a specter in black and the closer it came, the colder and darker the world became. Life seemed to die around me and the specter, with a crooked finger, pointed at me. The lights around me were extinguished. Nothing was living anymore. The colors faded from the world.

"Time for your bells to be rung."

"Leave me be you creature of the dark! My bells could not be rung from the start and you will not ring them today!" I yelled in a fury. "Begone reaper! Your quest is for naught! Leave me be 'Bell Ringer'!"

The figure grew and the world faded away entirely. Every second, the air was sucked away. It was as if the specter threw a sheet of dark metal over us and locked us in the freezing cold. My breath froze before me and faded into black. My body shivered and shook from a chill that fused with my bones.

"None may defy death." A voice said.

A bell rang off in the distance.