“I want to show you something before you go.”
He held it up to the candle flame, shapes of light dancing on the dark walls.
“My last diamond.” he whispered with a smile.
This memory is over 100 years old but I work to keep it fresh. I touch upon these moments every day, eyes closed, watching and listening to this fragment of my past. These images are my most treasured possession and I cannot allow them to be lost or spoiled.
I return to it. A cold night on the edge of autumn and winter, bitter wind shaking the thin walls. We sat together in his workshop, wrapped in extra coats and a circle of soft light. He lit two more lamps and laid out his tools on the desk.
I see his hands play over them, skin an aged patchwork of scars yet fingers still strong and nimble.
What else? I cannot let myself forget.
Wire cutters, pliers, tape and rulers, boxes of plated metals, spools of thread, pins, sanding blocks and paper, polish and cloths, files and drills. The dusty floor. Papers with pencil drawn designs, a corner torn from one. The smell of the workshop. The creak of the old chairs. His voice.
“Creation is merely … controlled destruction.”
I watched in silence as metal was heated, shaped, cut, folded. Minutes became hours, I’m not sure how long. He would glance at me from time to time, or ask me to pass him tools or materials.
“You know when a piece is special.” he told me as he worked, “It feels like revealing something already there, not making something new.”
He placed the diamond into a tiny silver cup on a thin chain. On the desk a piece of thread had fallen and curled upon itself. For a moment in the dark it seemed to have a life of its own.
He stood, finished at last.
“I must have patience when I work. Use the correct materials and design. But more than any of that … it must be for the right person.”
He smiled again as he met my eyes, then placed the chain around my neck.
“This is how to make something beautiful.”
*
Caoin is not my true name but it will serve for now. After the first century names began to lose their meaning. I have not used my birth name for two hundred years and why would I? It belongs to a forgotten child, a ghost. Even the faintest remnants of that life have long since vanished. In time all names became as interchangeable to me as clothes.
Now what is Caoins story? For the last month I have hunted in this city and my quarry, in turn, has hunted me. We were both predator and prey in our game, both rabbit and fox.
I searched for him in the day when he was weakest. I walked the streets from dawn till dusk, alert for any sign. I did not draw attention to myself. Eyes down, old grey cloak over my faded green dress, red hair tied back. I read crowds, read faces. Chose my paths with care. I am good at remaining unseen.
When night fell my target would take his turn, a monster snapping at my heels. He followed my scent, stalking beneath streetlights as I hid myself away and tried to sleep.
We circled one another for weeks, drawing closer, chasing rumours and shadows. A final dance to the music of the city.
I often worried that he may simply flee, escape my reach. I need not have. He was aggressive, established. This was his territory and he would defend it. Still, there were ways in which he was vulnerable.
Sunlight is intolerable to his kind. At noon, even hidden below ground, he was weak as a child. Then there was the hunger which gnawed at him. Insatiable, destructive, endless. It would drive him from cover, force him to expose himself. We both knew this.
Eventually he would have to feed and then he would sleep, the deep slumber his kind cannot escape once they have fed. It is their greatest weakness. In those hours he would be helpless, something he could not risk with me so near.
Two days ago was as close as I had been. I followed his trail to an area of wasteground before losing it among the abandoned buildings, old factories and boarded up homes. The docks were 30 minutes walk to the east, the bright lights of the city centre an hour to the west. North and south were the population centres. A perfect spot for him.
I took my car as far as I could before walking. After an hour or so I had still found nothing. I crossed fallen sections of rusted fence, picking out paths through rocks and scrub grass, moving from one desolate property to the next. A plane flew overhead, its distant roar the only sound.
Something about the next building gave me pause. I stopped, taking in the scene a second time.
There were no birds here, no sign of any animals at all. A line of grass had been worn down along the nearest wall. I stepped closer, working my way around the site. There was a ground floor entrance on the north side. The door was undamaged and locked. I peered in through a cracked window, saw debris piled high on the other side. Even if I broke the lock it would take time to force my way in. And it wouldn’t be quiet.
Something caught my eye and I looked again. Between lengthening shadows, fresh footprints on the dirty floor. It could be him, I thought.
I glanced at the low sun. I knew even if he were here I may not have time, 45 minutes at most. But would I get another chance? I stepped back and looked up to the first floor.
There was a damaged metal gantry with another door, maybe 12 feet above. The stairs which had led to it lay twisted and broken on the ground. At night he could jump that quite easily.
I looked at the footprints again. Made a decision and started to climb. There were no ideal hand or footholds but I made do. The door handle first, then windowframe, damaged masonry, struts of metal which had held the stairs. When I finally pulled myself onto the gantry I found the handle of the next door missing. It had been torn out leaving only a ragged hole in the wood. I pushed and it swung open. On the steps inside were more footprints in the dust.
I could feel it then. He had been there, where I stood.
I took out my knife and torch. Checked my lighter and 2 bottles (cloth stoppered glass, filled with gasoline). I headed down, following the prints to a maze of empty offices where they faded away.
I searched each room and found nothing. Tried to stay calm, focused. It wasn’t long till sunset. I walked the offices again, pictured the layout of the building in my mind.
Something wasn’t right. I returned to one of the corner offices. The entire back wall was covered with two shelving units. On the floor were drag marks where they had been moved. I took ahold of one and edged it out an inch at a time. There was another door behind them with a stairway leading to the basement. I switched on my torch and started down into the dark.
It was a single corridor, two rooms on either side. The first three doors lay broken open. The last was closed tight, exterior handle snapped off.
I felt it again. The hall and door were thick with his presence, a sickness in the air which clung to every surface.
He was there.
I pushed against the door but it was solid. It would take time to get in there, time I likely didn’t have.
Something moved on the other side. I froze at the sound, grip tightening on my blade. I heard it sniff the air, lean its weight against the door.
A voice, small and hesitant.
“Is that my … little red haired beauty … out there? It smells like you, oh yes. Are you just a girl after all? You feel … older … than you look. What are you? Not like me, no. Something else? More than human, I think.”
I wondered when he had seen me. Some dusk or dawn after realising he was being hunted and deciding to respond in kind.
“Is that gasoline I smell? A gift? For me?” There was a touch of amusement in his voice. “Oh it’s alright, it’s alright. I forgive you. Some things are only beautiful when they are on fire … I know that as well as anyone.”
He was growing stronger, I could hear it. The doorframe creaked as he moved. Could I get to him before nightfall? I shot a look back up the corridor at the fading light.
No.
I was too late, the realisation came sudden and clear. I had to get out or I would be lucky to survive. I didn’t speak, just backed away to the stairs, not wanting to take my eyes off the door.
“I’ve been looking for you too, did you know that?” his voice raised further, “Last night you stayed near the West Street subway, yes? Another hour and I would have paid you a visit. Now here you are! Pity, pity, too late! You almost had me. But almost isn’t good enough.”
He spat those last words and slammed against the wood. Stone dust floated down in the torchlight. He wouldn’t come through, I told myself. Not yet. Not while there was light in the sky. I sat the torch on the floor and left it pointed at the door. Reached into one of the deep pockets I had added in my cloak and took out a bottle, then my lighter from another.
“My my, you’ve left it late. Do you really think you can get far enough away before night? I wonder… why do you pursue me so relentlessly? What is it you want?”
His voice which had begun as a whisper now crackled with rage.
“I think I will make you tell me when I have you. Tonight.”
I stumbled on the steps as I backed up them, nearly dropping the lighter and cursing myself under my breath. Outside the sky darkened.
“Tell me!” He crashed against the wood a second time and the frame splintered, a piece of masonry tumbling to the floor. “Who are you!?”
I lit the cloth and tossed the bottle into the corridor. Flames flowered in the dark, rushing up and across the doorway and I was already running, through the offices, back up the stairs. I lowered myself from the gantry and dropped the rest of the way.
The sun was a dull red on the horizon. Stupid, I thought. I had been stupid. Far too late. I sprinted until my lungs burned and my legs threatened to give out. Into my car then driving too fast through narrow streets. 10 minutes later I left the vehicle and took the subway to my cheap hotel room. The one he almost found.
Lights came on around me as I walked, the heart of the city turning from day to night. I climbed the stairs to the apartment, feeling a layer of cold sweat on my skin, my heart still racing. Once inside I locked the door, changed clothes and grabbed a bag of supplies I had ready. Then out the window, closing it behind me and climbing down to an empty sidestreet. I headed to another subway station and crossed the city. Another hour and I was in a new hotel room, door and windows locked, weak with exhaustion.
I opened the curtains wide to let in the sun as soon as it rose. The moon was bright in the sky, people and cars passed below and somewhere out there he was hunting me.
My hands were shaking. They were pale and cold and dirty. They always are.
I thought I wanted a drink, a cigarette, a needle. I let those thoughts boil inside, watching them claw at the walls as if they weren’t even mine. Among it all I heard his words again. Why did I pursue him so relentlessly? The answer was simple.
Because this was my fault.
I sat in the corner facing the door and tried to sleep.
*
How did I come to live this life? To be what I am? It began almost 300 years ago, though I cannot say exactly when.
Time takes everything and little of these years remain to me.
Singular images or feelings brought back by a sound or smell. Flashes of my family. A lake between mountains, tall trees and long nights. These are the things I remember.
I know I had a mother and father and two brothers. As for their faces? Their names? I have lost them no matter how I try. The ties which bound them to me have broken with the years. Love, pain, regret. All frayed and faded.
I know we were poor, living together in a single building with our animals. There was a peat fire in the centre. Straw bedding. We washed our clothes in a nearby river, fished and farmed.
I remember the last day of that life. Wind moved the grass, a cold breath on the embers of day. The sound of water. I saw a blackbird against the pale sky, shadows of clouds racing over the mountainside. The last of the light fell upon and across the land like a living thing, dusk flowing red as blood through the forest with a low white sun its dying heart.
The ashes of my home were in the air.
I lay on my back by the lake, bleeding. Fire crackled nearby, smoke forming shapes which rose and danced and vanished. The bodies of my family lay still around me. Men had come, I can’t recall who or why. They had murdered my father first, then my brothers. My mother and I were last. I was stabbed through the stomach and left for dead and as we died they set our home ablaze.
I faded in and out of consciousness. At some point I struggled to my feet, delirious and wracked with pain. Stumbled alone into the hills with no destination in mind, no place to go. I just had to get away. I walked and the land seemed to stretch around me until I was nothing at all. A place I had once known now alien to me, bleached of colour and life.
I fell, numb and broken. I fell and did not believe I would ever stand again. Then the Voice.
It came to me across the grass, on the still air, in the twilight between the trees. Something which had searched for one just like me.
“You are dying.”
The moments which followed are not like others from this time. They remain perfectly clear, never fade or change. I do not think I will ever forget them. I do not think it will be allowed.
“I can help you.”
I could see no-one nearby. Was I losing my mind?
“I can’t see you.” my reply was hardly a whisper. “Who are you?”
“I am one who can save you. Now listen well as you have little time. There is evil in this world, there always has been and always will. Demons, spirits of cruelty and malice. They use people to carry them as they have no bodies of their own. I am their opposite.”
I tried to understand but a breath caught in my chest and dragged through me, spasms shaking my body. I drifted, thoughts swimming on a dark ocean, fighting to stay afloat.
“I cannot interfere directly,” it continued, “but I may act through others. I wish to take you into my service for this purpose. In return I will keep you from death. It will not be life as you knew it but it will be life.”
“Why?” I realised I no longer spoke aloud, my words were only thoughts in my mind. “Why me?”
“I may only use those near death, ones whose time is already over. If you are to accept it must be now, you have only moments left.”
I could no longer move, no longer feel myself breathe.
“Are you an angel?”
“Once. Perhaps again.”
I thought of my family, their bodies alone forever in this land of scars and bones.
“Your time ends. Do you accept?”
I was afraid to die. I was only a child.
*
Yesterday.
The warmth of the sun on my face woke me. Another dawn meant I had survived another night. I heard the sounds of morning traffic and voices rising from the streets below. Back to work.
I showered and dressed then headed downstairs. The young man at the desk stopped me as I was checking out.
“Hey, uh, someone just left a message for you.” he searched under the desk as he spoke. “Bout an hour ago, right at sunup.”
He handed me a tightly folded slip of paper.
“Guy was kinda creepy.”
I tried to stop my hand from trembling as I reached out and took it.
“Thankyou.” I replied, unfolding the note.
The handwriting was smooth and elegantly slanted.
“Almost x”
I crushed it and stuffed it in my pocket. My pursuer had taken quite the risk that close to daybreak. Just as I had the night before. I realised he could follow my scent far better than I had believed. I wouldn’t be able to evade him much longer.
I stepped out into the street, breathed in the new day. He was out there, somewhere. I had until nightfall.
I didn’t waste time returning to my previous apartment. He would have been through it and destroyed anything I had left behind. I did not panic, or rage, or despair. I had been in worse situations. My goal was to kill him and that could still be done.
It would not absolve me of guilt, would not erase how I had failed him. But it was all I had. I came to this city to find him, crossed half the world to be here but I was not in time. I was to blame, I cannot hide from it.
I had been struggling for months, an increasingly desperate silence building until at last I broke and relapsed. I drank myself into a stupor and when I recovered my senses it was too late. I had grown complacent. Forgotten the knife edge I lived on, allowing my old weakness to get close, to grow strong and seize its chance. I can’t allow that again. Death is the price of my failures.
When I finally arrived here I found his family home in a quiet suburb. I circled it, waiting for signs of life. After an hour I tried the back door and found it unlocked. The sickly aura of the creature was heavy inside, thick in every room, on every surface.
The first body was on the dining room table. A woman in her 30s, still in nightclothes, all 4 limbs broken and a ragged bite in her neck. The second body was her daughter. Their hands were cut and bruised with several broken nails. They had fought, both of them. I wondered who was first then I tried not to think about it.
There were no more corpses and judging by the rooms and contents of the house only the father was missing. No sign of forced entry, so it seemed most likely he had been the one possessed. Waking in the night to find himself a prisoner in his own body, to watch his wife and child die by his own hand.
What else? Picture frames were smashed and the photos gone. Streaks of blood on the floor where he dragged them. In an upstairs room was a broken piano, hundreds of vinyl records of classical music shattered on the floor, books of music shredded. I moved on.
A smashed violin and torn sheet music in the daughters bedroom. Had he been a music teacher? Had he taught her? It hadn’t been enough to kill, I thought, it had to destroy everything that had been loved.
I placed an anonymous call to the police and left. He had been gone at least 48 hours so the trail was too weak to follow. It would take me time to find him.
I had failed them. I didn’t make it in time and he was taken, his family murdered. I closed my eyes, throat dry and a thousand old needs calling out again, addictions once banished but never killed. I could be in a bar in minutes. Find anything else I wanted on a street corner in an hour.
I told myself yes I should do it, it could help, one last time. I told myself no I should not, it won’t, it won’t be. I fight and I fight and I win and I lose.
I am on that ocean again, growing weak, fighting to stay afloat.
Yes. No.
I remember the face of his dead child in the weak moonlight.
No.
*
Into the past.
The Voice did as it had promised. My life was saved but I was changed in the process, some ways more subtle than others. I had been given a gift of time, still ageing though much slower. Even after centuries I look barely 20.
I had no family left and that would never change as I could no longer have children.
I could eat and drink yet it no longer felt necessary as before.
I still slept although again it was not quite the same. I could go days without rest and only grow a little fatigued. When I did sleep it was … colder? Sharper? I’m not sure I have the words to explain. There was no gradient between asleep and awake, no drowsiness. I could no longer dream.
In time I discovered a new talent for languages, being able to understand and speak any I heard.
I was not stronger or faster or smarter. I could still get sick, feel cold and pain, though the effects were greatly reduced. I was also much harder to kill, with almost any injury healing overnight.
And what of my side of the bargain? What of the duty I had accepted? It worked like this.
When I closed my eyes I saw what appeared as threads in the dark, millions of them stretching in all directions. One would light up. There was no real distance in these images yet the impression was of it growing closer. If I “touched” it I could hear the beginnings of a song, words and music ready and waiting for me. When I opened my eyes an afterimage of the thread remained, leading in the direction of my subject. It would take me to someone targeted by a demon or spirit.
My duty was to reach these people and sing their song. Close enough for them to hear, usually as they slept. I would stay out of sight and flee before I was found. As their time grew close it would torment me to delay, a rising panic nearing pain. Their thread would become visible even with my eyes open.
Every song is unique, theirs and theirs alone. To sing them was to know them as well as anyone in their life ever had, to know them better than they knew themselves. To love them, in a way. Were these songs a warning? A farewell? The Voice would never tell me.
As for the demons? There are no two of these creatures exactly the same. The vast majority pass from person to person, discarding an old body for a fresh one. Some simply kill and move on. New spirits are rare and particularly vicious. All who feed on humans must sleep afterward. They are the things of myth and legend, with names you have heard without realising the truth. Ghosts, vampires, werewolves to name but a few.
I was ordered to avoid them, never be there when the attacks came. Still, I could feel their presence. A nausea in the air when they were close which slowly faded over the course of a day. Of all the things I have experienced this is hardest to explain. It is a sickly aura left clinging to items and places, felt more than seen or heard or smelt.
My first thread was a young girl, a fishermans daughter. I watched her in the days before. Working with her father on their boat, playing with her brothers on the rocks. I saw her laugh and cry and look out across the sea. I sang to her that night from the cliffs over their home, her thread turning in my mind like liquid gold.
It came for her the next night.
In the morning her body washed up on the beach, puncture wounds in her neck. I saw her father pull her from the waves, heard his cries as the boys watched in silence. Saw her mother fall to her knees on the sand, staring with dead eyes at her only daughter.
This was only the beginning.
There were 2 or 3 more each year, all just as painful in their own way. Sometimes they would hear my song and flee, sometimes panic, most often nothing. Always they died or were taken.
“Why like this? Can’t we save them?”
The Voice took longer than usual to answer.
“This is how I must work. The longest game, with goals and timescales beyond your comprehension. You see one death and think only of that life ending. I must think in generations. I must speak through stories and songs, dreams and signs. Things which survive where even empires fall.”
“But you know who has been targeted, I could save them in a moment by telling them the truth.”
“Their fate is not ours to decide. And what do you believe will happen if you warn them? You will be ignored or worse, treated as if you had lost your mind. You may become a target yourself. You see a single falling leaf and wonder why. I must tend the forest.”
So what could I do? I had no real power or strength and was forbidden from acting further. What would happen if I broke these rules? I didn’t know and in truth I was frightened. Afraid my punishment would be a hell I was now certain existed.
Decades passed.
I travelled and carried out my task, seeing the world through the final days of others lives. In between I tried to find a way to live myself, quietly, out of sight.
I had many names. Klagmuhne, Caoineag, Banshee.
In time I saw some of the demons with my own eyes. Despite my efforts it could not always be avoided. Myth and legend is never quite right though there is often a grain of truth around which they are built. The creatures varied greatly between individuals though shared certain characteristics. The bodies all began as human before being corrupted, the form taken depending upon both the spirit and the victim. Some were piteous, some wild, all frightening in their way.
In the early 1800s I crossed the ocean for the first time. I remember the waves stretching from horizon to horizon, remember the night sky above and wishing I never had to reach the shore. Loneliness had become a poison in me though I did not see it for what it was.
Each new thread just a sight of a life, sometimes beautiful, sometimes not. I would watch these people, hear their music and sing to them knowing they would soon be lost.
“This is killing me.”
“You accepted this duty, you must endure or our pact will be broken.”
“Why not make me stronger? I could fight them.”
“It is not within my power. I am constrained by where such actions may lead. Violence begets violence. We must be water on the flame, not fuel. If we fight it will never end. It becomes war.”
I tried to believe what it told me. To understand and make peace. I tried and failed.
It was in these years I began to drink. It was a cheap imitation of peace, a forced forgetfulness which only grew as time passed.
I was alone.
I sang for an old woman who was torn apart the next day in the forests of France. A sailor who was possessed and killed his crew before drowning in a Dutch port. A farmer who was tortured and consumed in the snow of the Italian mountains.
I found laudanum, cocaine, opium. They took me into those deep waters where I could see nothing, hear nothing, be nothing. They let me escape.
I sang to a lonely young man on a European road who died screaming for his mother. A woman mourning her husband who was taken by a spirit and burned alive. A lullaby for a baby ripped from her fathers arms.
On it went.
I hid with bottles and needles and what remained of me began to rot.
I became nothing but a song in the dark.
I lost track of the places, years. I retreated into a shell, a hollow soul, afloat on that ocean without a coast.
I called out to the Voice but it no longer answered.
*
Yesterday.
For the first time I had a fresh trail to follow. He had a head start but it was daylight so he would be weak, slow.
I began in the street outside my hotel then down, into the subway. Being forced to stay out of the light had limited his options. I stopped at every station and walked the area to find his exit. He chose a station inside a larger building, leaving through the early morning crowds.
It took me another hour but I found a door to a maintenance area broken open, then another leading into one of the tunnels. I followed as quickly as I could while remaining hidden.
He was clever, doubling back and using crowds, moving through sewers and basements. I followed in a world beneath the city which he had made his own, beginning to understand how he evaded me for so long.
Afternoon came. He was still ahead but I was gaining. I knew he wouldn’t stop moving, knowing how close I must be.
The trail led from tunnels up into another warehouse near the docks, walls or floors smashed through with ease. He must have prepared these well in advance, when he was strong at night. Punching through concrete as if it were paper.
I was only minutes behind but running out of time.
He went underground again then up into a part built, abandoned apartment complex. I followed up to the third floor. The next corridor opened onto a tower of scaffolding in a central lobby. The trail led over it.
It made no sense for him to go up toward the light, I knew that. But I put the thought aside and pushed on, growing desperate. Foolish.
I stepped onto the scaffold, started to make my way across the boards laid as flooring.
I heard movement above and by the time I looked up a sandbag was already plummeting toward me from a higher floor.
Yes, he was still weak. But even a child could give the final push if the bag was already in place. The simplest of traps and I had fallen for it.
I barely pulled back in time to avoid being struck but the wood beneath my feet was shattered. I fell, striking the frame on the way down.
When I hit the concrete floor I heard my shin break and as the pain came he called to me from above.
“Ah! What’s this? The hunter caught, the trapper trapped! How delicious.”
Through the windows night was coming.
*
Sometime in the early 1800s.
I tried to warn a family of the danger they were in. I was drunk, rambling. They drove me off as if I was crazy. I do not blame them. The thread of the song lashed in my mind and I drank to kill the pain, mumbling the words and losing the melody, then drank myself unconscious to silence it.
In the morning they had been slaughtered and the town was alive with rumour of a red haired woman who threatened them the night before.
I fled. I was consumed by a wild fever, hearing myself speak without control, words tumbling from my mouth fuelled by panic and despair. I was coming apart. The edge of madness.
In the end the urge to follow the threads was all that kept me going. It bound me to the world, an unbreakable chain.
Curled alone in an alleyway of a city whose name I have forgotten, I spoke to the Voice but it would not reply.
“I cannot do this anymore. I want to die. I want this to end.”
Rain poured down through the night as I waited in silence for an answer.
“I know you hear me. Why do you have me go on? Why won’t you answer me anymore?”
I drank and slept on the streets, a broken dirty thing, somewhere between life and death.
I stared at the sky and screamed into the dark where the words were lost as if they never were.
“Let me go.”
I cried and could not stop.
“Please.”
There was no reply, only the silent vanishing of time beneath the stars.
“Let me go.”
*
Last night.
His voice circled me in the dark as I tried to climb to my feet.
“You didn’t think you could win, did you? You are not stronger, or faster. You are no fighter! What are you?”
Pain blossomed in my leg and I fell again, felt blood running down my skin. His voice moved around me, out of sight but close enough that a wave of nausea hit me.
“You look so afraid! I expected better.”
A rush of air behind and I turned too late, he was already gone leaving a cut on my cheek.
“I still hear the little man I used to be. Oh yes, he is here, inside. Horrified at what we do together. He cries at night when I let him. Cries for it to end.”
I put my back against the nearest wall and pushed myself up, reached for a molotov. One had broken in the fall but two remained. As I tried to light it he flashed out of the shadows again and slapped the bottle away before I could react. It smashed on the ground and the lighter tumbled from my fingers.
His laughter echoed around me.
I slid along the wall and pulled out my knife, sweat blurring my vision. Then he was there, faster than my eyes could follow, snatching my knifehand and bending back my wrist until it snapped. The blade fell and I cried out as he forced me to my knees.
His face pressed against my own, cold skin and the stench of death and hate and hunger.
“Now I know what you are.” he whispered in my ear, “You are nothing.”
His hand squeezed around my throat.
“Don’t cry. You go where the music is born.”
Teeth plunged into my neck and I vanished beneath the waves.
*
1885, just outside London.
A thread took me to a man in his 70s, a jeweller who lived alone, his home on the outskirts of a small town. I watched him go about his day, walking to church, tending his garden. I closed my eyes and heard his song. It was the music of a life filled with pain and quiet bravery, the kind most of us never see, a lonely souls private battles. I decided to speak to him.
When he visited the nearby town I struck up a conversation, pretending to be a potential customer who had heard of his work. He was quiet, friendly, quick with a smile. I accompanied him back to his home, under the pretence of wanting to see a necklace but really to hear more about him.
He had only come to this country a decade earlier, he and his wife were refugees from war on the continent. They had lost both their sons in the fighting, lost almost everything they had. They had only managed to escape with his tools and a bag of gemstones which bought them passage and a new life. Then their first year here she passed away, consumed by illness in the depths of winter. Since then he worked enough to get by, giving any extra to the church or the needy of the town.
“I don’t have long left myself,” he told me with a shrug, “my time will come and I will join my wife and my boys. Until then I do what I can, a little good here or there. A little is better than none at all.”
That night I watched his thread spinning in my mind and knew he had only hours left.
No more, I thought. I would rather face hell than see him hurt. And in that moment I knew I would save him or die trying.
So I prepared, chose my spot and waited for nightfall. For the first night in years I didn’t drink.
When the time came I was surprised to find I was not afraid. I knew what I had to do and death no longer held any fear for me. Just after midnight I saw the creature approach, stalking from the depths of forest toward his home. I followed, downwind and out of sight, nausea flooding through me as I closed in.
It was the type I have heard called a werewolf, though in truth this is a poor description. They do not change form between man and beast, care nothing for the moon. It is a carnivorous spirit which distorts and deforms its host over time, rarely surviving longer than a month and always in pain.
When it reached his door and tore it from the hinges and I saw the old man inside, terrified. I stepped from cover and rushed forward, the creature spinning toward me at the sound of my footsteps.
I had stolen some flammable oil and tossed it across its face and chest as it turned. Then I made a mistake, I saw its eyes and hesitated. They were still human, afraid and suffering. I hadn’t been ready to face that.
It gave the demon a chance to leap and it drove me to the ground, teeth closing on my shoulder. In the struggle I managed to spark the match hidden in my hands and press it to the beasts chest. It went up like a torch, issuing a deafening howl and fleeing into the woods.
I was burned myself and bleeding heavily but I followed. 5 minutes walk through the trees I found its blackened body. It was still alive, if only just. I could hear whispered words under its breath which ran on until the very last moment. I used a long knife to end its pain.
I returned to tell the old man he was safe, though I remember little of this. My wounds got the better of me and I collapsed within sight of his door. He helped me inside and when he tried to bandage my wounds he realised they were already healing. I heard him gasp, saw him cross himself. Our eyes met for a moment, then he sat and took my hand.
“I don’t know who, or what you are.” he said. “But I know you saved my life.”
The words of his song were gone from my mind, the thread faded.
“Thankyou.”
*
Where were my dreams?
They should be here, I thought, in the dark of sleep. Perhaps my family are still in here, somewhere. One night I will find them at last, the memories of the things I loved.
A song in the dark.
A single beat.
A single voice.
Light.
I saw a thread, turning, sparkling. I reached for it.
This one was mine. I knew these words.
Listen, it said.
Wake up.
I gasped for breath, blinding light and electric pain rushing in.
My heartbeat struck in my chest and my limbs shook.
Still alive.
Faint sunlight fell on me through high windows.
I tried to sit but only fell on my side and vomited, head spinning.
Blood was crusted on my neck over an ugly wound and massive bruising.
I would be weak for days, I knew, but would recover. I struggled to my feet. My leg was not completely healed but I could walk on it. I collected my knife and lighter from the dusty stone floor.
The creature had been right, of course. I was not stronger, or faster. I am no fighter. But I am very hard to kill. A broken wrist, a broken leg and some lost blood won’t do it.
I had taken a great risk and been lucky. If he had done further damage or realised I might survive … then I would be lost.
Dots of my blood that had fallen from him made a trail which was easy to follow. He would be close, I knew. Out of the light and asleep. He could not have went far after feeding so heavily. I half slid down some stairs, limped through a broken door he had torn from the frame.
Then there he was, back to me, curled in a makeshift nest.
He was unconscious and would be for many hours.
On the ground beside him lay pictures of his wife and child, put there by the demon to torment the soul he had taken.
There were letters scraped onto the wall by bloodied fingertips. I read them as I stood over him, the final words of the man inside the monster.
The first said, “This can’t be real. God forgive me.”
He was innocent but this had to end. There was no other way. I reached for a bottle.
“The taste of death is on my lips.” read another.
I emptied the gasoline over him and he barely stirred. My lighter flickered in the dark, chasing shadows across the walls.
“Now is my final agony. No more.”
The fire took him and the knife ended it.
My hands trembled. They were pale and cold and dirty. They always are.
“Let me go.”
*
1885.
I told the jeweller the truth, there was no reason not to after what he had seen. Much to my relief he asked me to stay until I had fully recovered.
As for the Voice, it remained silent. I was not punished or chastised for what I had done.
When the time came and a new thread lit up for me to follow, I made the decision to continue. To save everyone I could no matter the risk or what my final punishment might be. On my last night there, as a storm raged, the old man asked me to join him in his workshop.
“I want to show you something before you go.” he said, and I watched him make my necklace. It is the only thing I have never left behind.
I saved dozens of lives over the years and in time perfected my craft. A long knife and fire bottles were both simple and effective. I tried carrying a gun but found them more trouble than they were worth. Bullets often passed through the demons thin flesh with little damage and many of them felt no pain.
In the course of that first year I fought another, quieter battle. A desperate struggle behind closed doors, sleepless nights where I felt as close to death as I ever have. I could never be free of my addictions, but I finally broke their hold on me.
In truth it was necessity which proved the deciding factor. I could not save lives when I was drugged or drunk.
Having others to save made me save myself. In the end it was as simple as that.
*
This morning.
Eyes closed I watched the threads turn, lives waiting to be seen, words waiting to be sung.
I hold my necklace and think, to change the world you must first change yourself.
There had to be a way to rescue those who had been possessed. A way past the demons control, a way to save their souls.
If there was then I would find it.
If it could be done I would do it.
And then, at last, I realised the truth. I understood how I had been changed, what patience and design had made me, what all I endured had taught me.
For the first time in over a century I searched for the presence in my mind.
“Will you speak with me now?” I asked the Voice.
“Yes.”
“This was always your intention, was it not? That this is what I would become.”
“Yes. You can save them. You are ready. It is not hopeless.”
Now two threads lit up in my mind, two stories, two songs entwined. A predator and prey and somehow I must save them both.
“Why?” I asked, “Why put me through this? So many lies. Lifetimes of pain. Why such cruelty?”
“It was … necessary.”
“How? How can that be?”
“This is how to make something beautiful.”