(GE Copy)

Chapter 15: As Seasons Past, Come Turn, Turn Again. (Part 2)

“...So too does a fool returneth to his folly.”

Aaron passed through the dead river onto a dead flat with dips of dried ponds. This old forgotten wetland was surrounded by greenery that refused to invade onto the heavily saline soil. With a woodland hill on each side that was reminiscent of some alpine country, Aaron was becoming more and more confused. No land marks of anything he had seen before, nor recollection of which way was north.

“Starting to wonder if the Belship really did had some wisdom to him after all...” Considering his insult to old guy’s teachings. “Gonna be late when I get home... Parents are gonna have a shit hemorrhage after all... Not like it matters though. I’m fucked either way, might as well just enjoy it.” Throwing his arms up, he walked through the open ground.

There existed a beaten road up ahead, where both ends had disappeared within the bleak veil of a washed up forest and an eroded hillside walk in either direction. On the far end was a wall of trees, boardering a flat field of green that could be found without a path. He walked to it’s edge, peering through the wall as though a pane of glass separated his ambition of visiting it. Like a force simply denied him in his mind from even moving forward. A force like that which his youth had noticed, guiding him further into a slumber from the mysteries of the world. At last, he was met with the edges of his captivity, the known limits, fear.

It was beautiful, picturesque. Like the image that a hundred travellers would see walking by, admire with eyes, and continue on by but never explore. He could see strange spotted deer frolicking, and the smoke of an old chimney from a farm where kids would likely be playing before supper. Though it was far from his sight, he could see mountains beyond the grassy edges, and past them were cities still unseen. Aaron awoke from this as though his eyes returned back to his head, and he stood at the foot of it’s edge where the impeding wall had vanished and he was now somehow in front of it. Past the trees and outer wall, at the edge of reality itself. The crack in the illusion.

There was a voice calling him back to safty. In his ears, he could hear the clacking of each leaf and every blade of grass. It was visceral, like life once was years ago at a bright sunny burger place, before Zachery had spoken those vain words, and before Aaron had believed it as wisdom.

It was as though Aaron had returned to a primal place of peace in his mind, at the precipice of a paradigm, a place without precept. These memories were different from the rest, a sense that he had forgotten, something deeper than sight itself. It seemed as a place where emotions would echo like the metallic clap in a small room yet he beheld only the vastness of a field with infinite possibilities. Even sight, was without bounds here. Aaron reached out as to feel for a wall in front, but there was nothing. He could remember almost anything now, without a thread to his lips, nor the force which to alter him back into the alignment of a lie. Something glimmered out in the distance, a beckoning thought, to an even more primal place.

He was alone, like only an hour ago when he sought out this same choice but never aware to even see that he had it before him; hidden under a layer of guilt and ignorance. He was truly and utterly alone. This frailty was also a freedom he long desired, and fought with. No nagging which way to go, no obligations to appease his travel companions or give up on his ambitions because they wanted to go somewhere else. He was his own leader, a freedom that he finally understood. He could go anywhere, without ridicule, or recompense. A single moment of bliss, to overshadow a month of joyous turnouts. A very living moment, both awake and aware. Something that was often stripped from him by another hand. It was in his own hand now.

“Where do I go from here...” Seeing the endlessness of the valley, knowing for once, that if Aaron saw something he could go there, and no longer dismissed it. Aaron stood bewildered, “If I go, right now... I could see what else is out there, the beyond... The thing that has been begging me to see it since the start.” And a new memory appeared before him “The Gateway...” A tear dripped along his cheek. Every longing desire to break from the path, for his freedom, and one nagging desire for the longing of the people he loved, who still waited for his return: Of Zack, and Sophie, his teacher, and parents, people that might never see him again, should he walk past the threshold. Another memory played, when Zack told Aaron upon the hill, that he’d be the kind of guy to just walk into the woods and never return. It was that voice that called him back to safety. Yet, the truth everyone ignored was before him, a new untouchable realm. “If I don’t choose now, I will be numb for the rest of my days, that if tomorrow came, I would not have the conviction to make this choice again, and I would be like them once more... In this realm, behind me, unable to leave... A willing ignorant. I just don’t know if I can leave behind everyone and everything I know... Because I know what it means,” More memories return, and his heart was very heavy. “What the Truth is... What I can’t acc...” He saw it, the gateways to realms beyond imagination, the very knowledge of their existence. Not from a location, but from a moment in his mind where he knew that he could make it. “Why then is it so hard to choose what I know is right?” Aaron lowered his head, and in a deep uncharacteristic voice he spoke. “Everything has been a lie... I will not have this taken away from me again...” And at that moment, he chose.

Aaron walked out into the open, where the earth slowly rounded around down the hill, continuing in on itself as he walked towards the gateway. It was like there was a small rotation of gravity where even sight would not reach anything, but still it continued anyway. He knew of these places, these passages; something inside him began to remember, the memory of what this realm was. Yet never could he say that he was at one. He knew also that if he forced it, it would not come and the world would be as it was behind him, dull, numb and without a soul. To travel, he had to allow it within. To understand the truth, he would have to face it’s weight in faith.

In this strange world, he retraced the thought of his steps, trying desperately to catch the slippery thought in his head that understood this place but it wouldn’t matter. As he did, things returned to him, much greater than any physical reality. Like his mind recalled with a different gear and logic, and almost a second mind. His memory came to a moment in his life where he was a child, looking up at the sky, as though everything around him was all wrong; twisted and improper. A perverted ruse that slowly killed him, being told to accept it, and a broken moment when he finally believed it. The way it was supposed to be, was as he was now; in this crossroad between worlds, tracing the cracks in the illusion.

Before him were more sights now, he could see a hill overhead, yet the ground he stood upon still rolled off below him out of sight into a pit. The gravity seemed overwhelmingly tight on his body and mind felt itself being crushed. Only two directions remained, but back was frightening, as though it was the slow decay of death itself. When he looked behind, he felt a voice which condemneth him and Aaron moved forward away from that voice, onto a skull crushing weight. As Aaron saw the ground develop inward, he found himself wandering down a darkening hole where the hillside ahead became a roof and he wandered into the cavern’s blackness to it’s core of repetitive images. Image upon image, sight upon sight, unending.

Somewhere between the truth and the failure, this is where Aaron was now, these were the names he was given for this place because there was no sight, nor object anymore. Tapia was long gone, and the very thought of it’s existence seemed void as fantasy. A lie he chose to accept for so long. He had no face nor name and fell into a depth of wonder which he could not logically comprehend but it’s nature was undeniably solidified. A truth that He, and many others once shunned. He simply chose, to reach out, and pluck the world from His eye and look beyond that thought. It was then that he remembered why the wall existed. He remembered why he hid himself away from It, and what it was that He veered from. It was the reality of fear, and what was left behind... And once again, He wished to forget what came next.

And so He did...

Time itself seemed to come up from a crawl, trading one voice for another like a primordial memory that cried out. “I did everything you asked, why have you forsaken me?...” It was as though the sound were being stuffed back into a box by the panic and worry of it’s owner. Then, hearing the name which scared him, as though it were his own. A synonym to one he heard once before, then another, then many names. He remembered all of them. They were all him at one time.

Aaron screamed, his heart beat ran out of his chest, fleeing for light. There had to be light. He found a pinhole in his sight and it widened as he ran forth. All he could remember of his last five minutes were of dread, and guilt, and anguish of remembering Everything; where he had been opened up and somehow put the pieces of himself back together. He crawled out of the cave, however difficult it was: Like a wind pulled his existence into a black hole. He clawed his way back, forcing out from the crypt of his unfathomable prison and looked behind. His sight could only see a black within the abyss that crept up behind him from whatever ungodly realm he had fallen pray to. “I should have returned to my friends, I’m so selfish, I’m so selfish!” Crying to himself through a rocky valley floor bottom in the dead dark of dim shadow. His heart winced, and remembered his journey. Memories of places he had never seen, still in his mind as he ran. He had seen a sight flash before him of a sandstone house where corridors lead onto a table with fourteen empty seats, one being a throne or poor wood and his own knocked over. A woman in a city street, who’s cold shadow was a love to him and they were inseparable. He saw a catalyst of power which coursed through him, from it’s source, which was a place that did not exist, not in this mind. There was the crowing of ravens, and a man who spoke through windows to those asleep. “I want to go home!” Aaron cried, and in his sight, though overlapped, he could not remove the image from his mind. It was a garden, corrupt, covered in ash.

“Please let me forget, I wish to live, please, I want to forget!” He saw a man, who ruled over a people from secret and chose for them. Then to a woman who’s prophecies were severed by his own ignorance. Her blood, because of his blood. A man laid upon his brother with a knife, and they were both the same man. Lastly to a place where light had been ripped from the sky and bled a blackened tar. “Please, no more, I’ll die if you do this to me!” But they did not stop... He merely forgot what came next like he always did.

Aaron rushed for the ends of the valley but the shadows were like people. Even names arose, which he could not comprehend. “Please, let it go...” But he had seen too much, that the figures took the form of lepers, who had existed somewhere else but only their missing parts had remained to reach for him. Aaron ran through the valley in the shadows from the creeping death. His memory had foreseen this before, and at the end, would be himself as it was once before, but the edge was as a guillotine and a fear struck him. He watched as the walls closed down above him, though without sight, he felt their weight crushing something inside him; like a part of his soul had died and yet his corporeal vessel lived at the breach of this spiritual weight.

In a faded haze, Aaron was as he was before the rabbit hole: A man, Aaron. Not knowing why he was there, nor to what had just transpired. Only that he was himself once more. He was relieved, finally free of those memories, which convicted him. The thoughts from other worlds which phased beyond his comprehension, slowly faded. His eyes drained like waterfalls, weeping gratitude for the grace of his ignorance... Even knowing there was one last memory he would have to hurdle past to rid himself back into a man, however this was no simple memory, but a choice he made once before.

The valley walls were gone now, and he had no desire to look behind. He felt them still trying to creep onto his thoughts, to scorn him, but he rejected it where he stood. In the distance Aaron could see a hillside, and the steam of an old volcanic passage to boil away the underground veins. The rock was yellow like sandstone, and the piles of stone like fallen skyscrapers without rebar; cracked and crumbled. A place where puddles shimmered without light. Where paths laid straight like the arteries of a city block.

His shock came, as the familiar air felt like the singing chore cadence of his soul and the peace of his heart burned like loves first kiss: Palpitating, and wheezing, enchanted in blinding desire. His pace slowed to a stagger, and he stood, in awe. How could such a precious memory, like this one, be lost? As though the crux of the very world had laid forgotten, he came upon it. Though travelling through a thousand roads, what were the chances he’d ever see it again? He thought it was all lost, the most precious thing he had ever known returned. How could he forget? Why would he ever want to?

He stood as though an eon of roaring waves laid out upon the shore to die and he came onto another like minded and melancholy. As though time had brought two souls together. The glaze of his eyes awakened into a light that seemed all so pale and familiar. Aaron looked to the serpent in the pond and called out to it as though by name but none could be spoken. It looked onto him, and then onto it’s dreary, watery kingdom, knowing that the fleeting world would no longer flow onto it’s door for the flood had receded and only It remained. Their eyes sparked a deadened passion until there was no denying it’s explainable connection.

Aaron pitied the creature: He saw the dry encroaching edge overtake the stagnant lifeblood, and it was only a matter of time until this memory would die forever. He couldn’t let it happen. It was as though the serpent understood him. And in turn it looked into Aaron, and saw the loneliness in his heart, and it was as though Aaron understood the serpent as well.

It slithered across the surface until it meet with Aaron’s arm and it grew around him. Aaron felt himself wince tears as it’s ice cold body connected, like he had fallen from a cliff while his body stood upright. He soon remembered the fuzzy weeping warmth that came intrinsic to his soul, and he forgot the still living pain upon it’s cold, searing contact. Like the swirling of mists he was taught to sense and feel, like those within gems and rocks and air: This warmth mingled in contrast with him, latching desperately onto him and sharing it’s aura with his own. He could hear it whimpered, quivered, wept silently along side him, and Aaron held it closer until it would stop shivering, but he could not recall when that was. As though he had entered a fleeting dream, he had walked for hours remembering only of that feeling in melancholic repeat, but the pond was still only a few feet out of sight and the sun had not changed.

From there, the vibrant blue snake nested in his shirt, still coiled around his arm and latched lovingly upon his opposing shoulder. His new friend spanned a great frilled length and many wraps around him but before Aaron could come to realize the outward dangers of his encounter, he felt the purr of it’s breath to enchant him. Like a maiden in distress, who finally found a refuge to crawl into, to shield herself from the world. “Well... You haven’t killed me yet...” Aaron admit guiltily, taking it with him the rest of the way.

They saw many sights, of places both grand and marvellous. Where ruins stood, and fields blossomed. Aaron no longer remembered the horrors he had witness in his mind, and that’s all that seemed to matter to him right now. Maybe in time, this flavour of bitter pleasure might even amount him the joy of a single moments’ bliss, and he held desperately onto his compensation through the hilltop highlands and the sinking wetlands.

Aaron happened past the veil of trees where a break revealed a bending lake. It’s untouched dark chocolate soil and deep everlasting green was unparalleled upon the sunset. It bowed inwards towards them, with a large tree in the kink’s centre, spanning its boughs over both sides beyond where waters slipped out of sight. The rock shore lead him to the water’s edge. It’s cool summer air had ripped away the warmth inside him with the moist fee for it’s magnificence. He knelt to the waters’ edge, beholding it’s beauty from his side the river, and gave passage by his arm to it’s way. The serpent slithered out to it’s surface and without even tasting of the brilliantly reflective ichor, it retreated back for the warm of it’s host to watch such beauty, entwined as one.

Through the deep forest, a path had spun where roots made a stairwell of dusty sunken plates. The outer edges sprawled with dead fall and flattened wall fungus. The tree moss was moist, unlike the dry crisp of home, and the air smelt of a running stream where there ears could not reach nor sight to confirm.

Onto the meadow, a few stone pillars stood as though marking something. When Aaron caught sight of it’s gateways, the old stone courtyard to his right was encased in an ancient overgrowth. It’s gate, strangled in vines. Without reason, the air was like a thick dry wine leaving his lungs as like the crypt and the sound was deafened like the looming haze where no mist stood.

There was a marking upon the wall that Aaron read out. “One, of many.” But when he looked back upon the carving, it was instead a strange language, that merely appeared similar to the words he had spoken.

In his mind, he could see a passing of time, where the rocks fell from their holding. When the mortar stood like a slop between bricks, that slack setting had cast a staggering erection of a fragile wall. It’s sunken path, where pools of water had collect, time had hammered them dry into the earth. The weight in the air, like a sad state of depravity and decay, with no one to morn them. Aaron could feel the presence of a thousand stories, all lead onto their own demise, watching their corrupt lives die away. The vines were stiff, cold, like a wood exterior that hadn’t quite coloured into bark like the rest of it. Aaron peered into the courtyard from behind the gateway. The serpent, tasting the air, curled in it’s light blue fins sorely, and the verdescent aqua of it’s scales dimmed like a pale matte blue. Almost hearing voices, he heard the laughter of children, but their joy sounded of sadness, as though a baseline for the evil within. There came a silence from behind him, like a travelling void came on near them to where all sound left to die. Where even in quiet, the latent hum of the world itself came to a deathly dire null.

Aaron’s eyes were pulled back to a stalking mist which had not existed before, flowing on toward him in a heavily defined detail like the miniaturized rolling of thunder clouds. From his hands the serpent slid out, onto the ground in search of cover. Aaron following in behind past the threshold of the gate’s near invisible barrier of immense pressure. He soon acclimated as his mind’s only thought was onto the snake’s keen animal instincts as he chased the wise creature for safety from the foggy tides. It crept in, unhindered by the walls, neither billowing in through the gate from any pressure as it should; but like a wave it simply passed through with a force unbridled. It seeped in through the floor from under the walls in a thin filament.

Aaron invited himself into the house of a commonwealth, whos’ roof had fallen in, and all that remained was the timber split upon the floor in two. His new friend, slithered for a small coal chute in the back room. Aaron could hear the cries of a newborn, and he fell beside the hole. All he could see however was a stone panel with a hex marked upon it, which was sunken in as though something was missing. Aaron crawled out through the chute, where the fallen city walls made escape but the fog came even here and he watched the serpent stall. The tides rolled towards it, though circling. From the edge, a shadow emerged, then another. Aaron soon questioned the safety of his exit port and halted mid passage. The dark came from the edges, hovering. His friend slithered back but was halted by a figure that blocked it’s exit. The spectres loomed around the snake, four, five, more, and more, swirling it’s prey. The encircling slowed to a crawl, and the spectre risen it’s head disappointed, leaving the quivering snake squirt a green liquid from it’s throat and roll over, stiffening out. Their heads then turned to Aaron, in a synchronicity that was gravely unwelcomed. Their eyes like the hollow expanse sucking in all sight, and Aaron was sorely afraid.

The serpent, took this moment to sneak off while the attention was off of it’s presumed dead body. Grade ‘A’ performance.

“Yup, that’s a serpent for you...” Aaron threw himself back from the passage, making his way onto the main room. The shadowy figure greeted him at the door, and Aaron was fell into the next room. The only sight of escape was of a collapsed window that refused to budge it’s rubble out of it’s filled encasing. He took to the nooks between the fallen brick as a ladder, and pulled himself over the wall. His eyes met below where a shadow behind him, clawed out after his legs, but the boy teetered and fell off the wall into the raised bed of weeds outside. Aaron could see the ghosts overhead, flying over the walls, and he threw himself from the earthy coffin, staggering onto his feet.

They covered the main gate from where he arrived, and he took to the alley instead. To his right was another fallen city wall, which gave him the gateway to escape past the thorny bushes. His exit was taken by evil which stared towards him, and behind him was also blocked. Aaron grabbed a hold of the walls, finding the strength in his hands to climb. What few bricks had room for his fingertips, became few and far between and he soon ran out of ledges. Aaron’s fingers slipped and he fell his back against the adjacent wall behind.

The shock of his landing gave Aaron the motivation he needed, as he found himself in the position to crawl up between the two walls. They were perfectly distanced to brace his legs against and shimmy up with his back. Stalking him slowly, their nails pressed into the stone likes stakes into butter, their eyes ever hungry, appeared to devour the air itself. Aaron’s back felt the stone tops of the wall give way and it collapsed inward with him on top of it.

He rolled out into the room of a house where old animal bones laid in piles, discarded, painted and stained with engravings. The old wooden table stood sturdy enough for one climb as Aaron gripped the wall’s edge for the vacant broken rooftop. His hand slid onto another stone, reaching for a more stable one as his old one fell out and clacked upon the floor. His strength was weak, and could not pull himself up by forearms alone. He levered himself on the room’s corner, finding an inch thick foothold of chimney to brace against. With his elbow up, he could finally lift himself from the ghastly claws of death.

Aaron rolled onto the wall’s edge, feeling it give way underneath him and carefully stood up. Their claws were nearly at his ankles now. Aaron leapt out towards the city’s edge, collapsing the foothold upon the spectres behind him, and leapt over top of the remainder who waited for him below. Landing he rolled out, clinging to his foothold as they swarmed to pile onto him, but Aaron was outside the gates once more.

Aaron ran for all he could muster, taking the path where he could make his greatest distance from them. He hoped for the chance to dip out of sight, but their uncanny senses made him uncertain of ever obtaining the luxury of his anonymity so soon.

On the road, he saw a certain someone making a high tail out of there, that is to say their whole body was a tail. Aaron plucked the serpent off of the ground and carried it off. Ahead he could see a lone shadow haunting the roadways where the fog was less thick. The spectre turned to him, but with nowhere to go as the silent rabble paraded in from behind him, Aaron charged straight through. It’s body was a darkness that clung onto him, and encased him, trying to claw at him from behind but Aaron wouldn’t let him. Aaron rolled onto the ground but it clung like stink even still. From within Aaron felt a weakness that took the air from his lungs, like it were ripped from his side. He felt void of all function, like the hole simply ate up all he could hear and feel; every thought, and every ambition. His voice faltered from his scream, and it too became a silence.

Aaron fell off the side of the road where a lip could trip him and with what little he could still feel, he became wet. He held on tightly, nearly snapping the life out of the serpent who’s frantic squirming only amplified as a result. Slowly he could feel the life returning to him, and the haze lifted from his eyes. Aaron still couldn’t see much, but as he gasped for air outside the water’s surface, he could see the trees moving overhead at an alarming pace. Travelling down river, his friend was paddling for it’s life until the strength no longer resided and it’s squiggles were a frail, exhausted flogging.

Aaron yanked the pitiful creature out of the creek, along with himself in that regard and rolled out onto the lush evening grass.“That’s the last time I follow you, I was better off charging past the smoke and cinders...” He spoke as it bit him. “Shit! You... Better not be poisonous.” He looked over, watching it flick life back into it’s tail. “Sorry... About cutting off the circulation and all that. When I’m tense, I... I kinda grab things... Jerk them a little” Stopping short at his excuse. “You’re swimming its... I guess I shouldn't be surprised, being as I found you in the water. I just can’t figure out how you dragged me like that so quickly though the stream.” He laid there, recuperating until his senses would regain their composure and the numbness left his fingertips. “You don’t believe me when I say sorry, do you?”

It flicked it’s head sideways.

“It’s weird, it’s like when I speak, you can actually understand me... You know how many animals I’ve spoken with, and they just fleck off. Here I thought they hated me. It feels like this shit is right out of a book sorcery, like I should have some owl heckling me on my way to the castle. This... All of this. It’s so... I’m sorry, I’m going to start rambling. Thank you... For saving me, sorry I gave you heck. You came through form me. I was just talking... Guess I’d hear some harsh words from you too, if you could talk, huh?...” “Night will be coming soon. I’m going to be in so much shit.”

Picking himself off the grass, Aaron waddled back upon the trail. There was no clue where it would lead but all he could hope for was home. All he could think of, was home. For half an hour his feet wearily paced one in front of another. He almost lost focus to the world, exhausted, and weak. He opened his eyes and beheld the dim world, everything hazed. He looked to his bite wound but nothing more than holes existed. In a moment, it seemed bleak but Aaron began to notice a fragrance in the moss which littered the stone. Aaron remembered it well. It was as though he could recall it’s aroma by heart. Aaron’s pace picked up, his senses reignited.

He sprinted along the trail. Within the coming bend, the trees cleared up enough to see the old house along the cliff side. Somehow, the loop had not strayed, but the circle actually met with the earlier path after all. “Deserves Forest... Yeah, right...” Returning with the snake as a consolation.

Although, the way we came, is not always what is behind us either...