"Deacon Ash"

Chapter 1: Shadows

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

                                                                                                                                                                    - Ephesians 6:12

I have contemplated death many times over. I have accepted it as an inescapable fate that befalls all of us. The seed of concern planted in my mind was how death would find me.  Drowning, a fatal heart-attack, the innocent victim of a violent crime? Ever the optimist, I was confident that death by natural causes would be the sure-fire reason.  That was until the old man showed up on my doorstep in the midst of a storm that he himself had wrought.  He had lied to me, advised me that he had been looking for shelter. Come to find out, he had been looking for me.  I tried to flee but am trapped asking myself why he had come for me?  Intoxicated and imprisoned under the roof of an ancient inherited Victorian in Blackwood, Mississippi, I sit alone at the head of a rickety, cherry wood kitchen table enveloped in fear, waiting for the old man and the demon within him to come and take me.

I'm a mere thirty years young and my rendezvous with death has come. It is no longer the physical evaporation of my life that frightens me, but the spiritual passing that will follow.

My once sound vision is severely blurred. I can only see shapes engulfed in shadows. Economy of breath is of the utmost importance during my final moments. I breathe as if every inhale and exhale will be my last for it may very well be the final cycle of breath from my crushed lungs. The old man has robbed me of those once unappreciated privileges and the demon within him is soon to rob me of the joy of having my wife and daughter in my arms again.

They both have promised to take my life only to reward me with death, the penance of failing to escape. They said that if I could find a way to defeat them, then my life would go on and I would be set free. I have failed miserably and in so-doing have lost both life and soul.

The dreaded third night is upon me. I have no doubt that they will come to collect my soul as promised, exactly as they had come the first night to deprive me of sight and the second night to steal my breath. I had my chance and now they will come to capitalize on their gain and my ultimate loss.

Hope had withered away in a burning cauldron of doubt shortly after their arrival at my doorstep. I am forsaken and when they show to take me, no holy relic will protect me from them. Believe me, I have tried that twice and both times I have failed.

Do you believe that demons exist? I didn't. The old man made a believer out of me and I can assure you that they do indeed exist. You may refer to them in the figurative sense and for a time, so did I. They can touch one's life for years, breaking them down, slowly deteriorating their foundation so that their being should crumble into dust and be carried away by the hands of a violent gust of wind. A blind prisoner to my vice, I had been unable to see the old man or the demon.

I was warned by my late foster mother years ago. She told me over and over that demons walk the earth and that I needed to be ready. She told me to be wary of their power. I simply thought she was an insane, religious freak completely devoid of any sense of reality. Her words had fallen on deaf ears, rejected by my hardened heart and my closed mind.

Refused phone calls, discarded letters, and messengers had given warnings that never even made it to the lowest level of my understanding. If only I had acknowledged, maybe I would have survived much less not delved into this terrible situation.

I should have taken heed. It's too late now. Way too late. The old man and the demon are coming. I can feel it. Soon the ethereal entity sporting rotten, maggot-ridden flesh shall venture for the last time up the dirt road to smother the last embers of my life and take me to the eternal flames of the deepest plane of hell.

The last currents of fate's river of death are pulling me asunder. My time is short but I must tell you how I ended up in this murky tomb. I cannot tell you how it will end, but I can tell you how it all began. Much like the recent state of affairs, my memory is dark, hazy, pieces of a puzzle that I cannot piece together, compliments of the booze.

I will tell you about the storm. I will tell you about the dim lights. Before my eyes close for the final time, I will tell you why the demon has come for me. I will tell you how the old man has tormented me in this absolute darkness. With my last troubled breath, I will tell you as much as I can before the demon consumes me. I ask that you do what I failed to do, something that may have kept me out of this prison. Simply listen to my tale, for it is a warning.