The Crawling Death

Hudson’s sleepless bloodshot eyes nearly appear as if they protrude completely out of his sockets; It has been a hellish journey in the red mists of the forest of deep into the Carpathian forests as he has ridden through the night with sounds that not only wake the dead but sense their tenebrous curse. His horse, a pitch-black Arabian with a glowing fiery patch of white as if drawn artfully on its forehead, acts as a beacon warning passerby of its incoming doom, but it fears no specter or demon. It is intrepidly moving forth toward…onward…ever onward.

              Hudson knows not how he’s come to ride this mighty steed, with only flashes of memory scattering as specks of glimmering dust on his mind. He only knows that he answers by the name of “Polios”, which means pale in Greek, but how silly, he’s darker than night! He chuckles under his breath as he sees the destination within reach: a mystical dark castle atop a mighty mountain, its summit glinting a powerful light as if it were a North Star guiding him forth.

              He sees a sword strapped to his horse’s saddle, but…whose is it? Where is he going? What is his aim? Polios suddenly stops as if he had struck an invisible wall. “Whoooa Polios!” Hudson nearly falls over in his tired state as the abrupt halt nearly topples him. “We must go further!” Polios looks onward with its sharpened sight as it has sensed a mist so thick and a presence so dark and vile that it even befalls the steed with great dread. Hudson’s gloved left hand glows a dark crimson as he instinctually touches Polios’ head. This sight has rattled his very being even further than expected. ‘What is this power arcane?

              As if possessed by the thing below, he exclaims in a double-tongued growl “Onward Polios!! Do not disappoint me!” As if possessed, Polios marches on ever so aggressively with even more verve and speed than ever before, as they approach Kersglah castle, the mist thickens with even more of a vile crimson glow, the presence of evil in the air grows, as Polios pushes through the thick fog and sharply powers forward towards the entrance of the famed castle, which will become a refuge for this mystified, confused man.

              As the horseman unveils himself from the unnatural fog, the horse slows its pace as its hooves now land on cobblestone steps; the fog clears and the entrance to the castle could not appear any more apparent in front of Hudson’s tired eyes. Relief overcomes his eyes as he notices a change in the horse’s pigmentation to an unnaturally pallid verdant colour that engulfs its entire body from tail to hoof to head. “But, how? What is this? Where am I? I’ve been running for hours, perhaps days, and I appear to be missing time.”

              Following only his instincts, he dismounts with one swift graceful motion despite his apparent exhaustion. The horse changes in demeanour and spirit, now a far more fearless beast of unpredictable sense, but with a clear bias towards its owner, the horseman that may also wield a powerful sword, or so he thinks. He sees an ancient Greek engraving on the sword’s embroidered golden and onyx sheath, polished to its finest glowing luster: Θάνατος, or Thanatos. Hudson recognizes Greek in his studies is versed enough to comprehend its meaning: Death, as it were.

              ‘That’s strange. I feel like Death warmed over’ he chuckles, perish the thought. He walks up the long flight of elegantly curved oak, dark red stained stairs adorned by a beautiful exotic ornate carpet in the center. ‘It's good to be home.’ His mind possessed by another entity as if seared inside his vessel of flesh and bone spoke out ever so subtly. “Home?” he speaks out loud as his feet thump step by step along these endless stairs to the main floor as he walks across the hallway to his study and bed that he glances over. “I must…I must! Find out what this is…” He notices a diary of his with spilled ink. The date of July 6^th, marked as the beginning of a new entry, only to have it abruptly halted on its crisp pages with a spill of the ink overflowing in a long strand of black across an otherwise perfectly clear page.

              ‘What is this foolishness?” He lights a few candles on their stands and stares into the nearby ornate golden painted bronze framed mirror with an unusually clear reflection that no longer seems to be as glass, but as mere water in calm pond. He sees his face, but does not recognize it. This is not him, it’s not Hudson. He may have the tangible features of the man he’s supposed to be, but somehow he is very different. His eyes glowing in an unusually bright manner in the candlelit room; his reflection, his skin looking translucent with the image of his skull suddenly sparking where his human face should be, at the same time as lightning strikes near his lonely, spacious lair.

“What is this vile sorcery? How can I witness my skull if my face is still covered in the pinkish hue of my skin? This is mere madness! MADNESS!!” He shouts out in an echo, his pain and anguish, resonating throughout the entire castle, as if it reacts and senses Hudson’s pain, yielding to his every thought and mood. With the same frustration he felt, another voice emerges from his mouth, as if stealing his tongue and speaking double-tongued once more “Do you now know who you are, Thanatos? Do you not see your true face? How can you deny your true self. You are a god, not a man. You embody the very thing that the world’s citizens submit to every day.”

“Stop this! What is this” He struggles to get his words out, as Hudson sense a battle with his inner self, attempting to beat down a demon, a dark ethereal being that has claimed his body without any notice, any permission to give in to.” He thinks about he red mist that he’s been exposed to, the feeling of lifelessness at every step. The strange double-tongue voice overtakes his body once again “YOU ARE DEATH! YOU ARE ITS VERY ESSENCE!”

Hudson wrestling with his inner demon attempting to regain his senses: “That’s…impossible!!! How can you possibly say such a foolish thing?” He struggles harder and harder as his body trembles, attempting to root out the evil within him. “You are a fool if you think you are this all-powerful being! I am merely Hudson, a philanthropist, a man of wealth and stature, a man of influence in governmental circles, and a man of civility, not this barbarity I see before me! How dare you address me otherwise!”

“Oh….” The demon in him giggles “You are not a mere puppet, but the very embodiment of all that is and all that has been, and all that shall every exist…You are the world’s executioner! A knight of ethereal form, a specter for all seasons, an intangible thing that cannot be seen by human eyes but can only be felt by their feeble, short-sighted minds. You instill fear and fascination in their hearts, and provoke their ultimate sacrifice, Thanatos.” The harder Hudson struggles, the further he seems to descend into this demonic horseman’s soul.

- “What…do you…want, you foul thing!???”

-“I want you of course, silly creature…except I have always been a part of you! LOOK! FEEL THE MEMORIES GIVE IN TO YOUR MIND’S EYE!!” hisses the demonic presence within him. He sees flashbacks of war, of death of magnificent proportions, of wars fought, lost and won over thousands of years, of prophets, false and true, of ancient gods and of victories where only more death occurred time and time again, as if it was only a mere innocuous task to take souls to the afterlife.

“HOW!!?? HOW!!?? I AM…HUMAN!” yells Hudson in a fit of unbridled rage, questioning his very existence. The voice once again screaming more and more clearly into his mind “You know what you are. You only appear human to hide from everyone else, to make you unsuspecting when you perform your duties as a knight, Thanatos!”

“I need this to stop! This must STOP!” He sees the sharp ornate sterling silver letter opener as he pulls it against his pulsating neck, his veins looking as if they are pounding out of his skin. The presence once again speaks out, this time laughing profusely in its double-tongued voice “You are Death, you cannot be extinguished. It will never end! Come back to me. Do not abandon what you are…What you have already been for an eternity!” Hudson senses his true nature washing over his frail human figure draped by the finest robes and suits.

“Go on then. Try and rid yourself from this mortal coil.” Hudson is plagued by morbid curiosity. He must know of his true existence. He suddenly uses the letter opener to slash across his own throat, only to see no semblance of human blood flowing out of his body at all, failing to sense his demise. “Very well.” Hudson whispers. “Let’s celebrate our victory with misery.” Hudson laughs with maniacal, cruel amusement, as he returns quickly sprinting to the Eastern entrance of his castle where he climbs further to the highest point of the castle, in a dust-filled old watchtower, inundated with the cobwebs of long-dead spiders, killed by his mere presence so long ago.

As he looks onward from up above, as far as his eyes can see, he can hear silence. Total eerie, unnatural silence: no sounds of animals, not even the faintest call of crows or the rustle of growing trees, or the clamoring of human existence; he sees the all-encompassing crimson mist strewn about with an endless array of dead bodies, human, fauna and flora, butchered, slaughtered in only what could be described as a cornucopia of ways. The powerful smell of rotten flesh finally attacks his nostrils, as horror strikes his face.

A mere moment later, the stench of death snaps his consciousness back to his truthful place on this earth, and feeds his arcane sadistic glee with the gruesome scene stained with the blood of endless innocent lives. Thanatos has finally arisen in all his immense maniacal, power-hungry glory.  “You were always there, my friend. I was indeed the fool that denied you.” Hudson says in his natural voice, uttering his final words before completely submitting to the demonic intellect and charm of his unusual host.

The powerful presence in him now shouts clearly with words that cannot deny the truth he’s tried so hard to escape from. “Indeed, you are nothing more than a means to an end, a caretaker, a cleanser of this world. Embrace who you are. Do not deny the world of your purpose! Without it there can be no balance! You must return to your true form. You cannot escape who you are! This is but a fool’s errand” The mysterious castle fades into obscurity in the blood red mist, as the double-tongued vile laugh of Death itself reverberates throughout the entire deep, dark forest.

Prepare to run….run away from the crawling death.