“Of earthly learning, I feel I have lost more than I can recount, yet I am certain that those who are ignorant of their inexorable fate are in some way blessed. They would only think it empty and malign. I do not care to educate them, still, I beg those who wish to frolic through their days in ignorance to continue no further. I promise, there is nothing for you here. Whoever finds this letter, these words aren’t for you. Do what you will with it.”
He scrawled in a scared fervour. Time crawled, still – unnoticed. Willem held the pen with all his strength, exerting what energy remained to keep his hand from shaking. He tensed, flexing his forearm muscle.
Like strangling something small and feeble, isn’t it?
His entire world felt confined to the soft glow of a candle, struggling to illuminate the spare contents of the table, Willem’s damp parchment, a small revolver pistol and a few spare coins. The light couldn’t stretch to the four rotting wooden walls he had retreated within. Dim, foggy moonlight barely crept past the doorway. Willem snapped with his offhand at his ear, forcing all his scattered, spiralling thoughts back to the task at hand.
“I write this letter to the two who hunt me. Please show me mercy for being stolen away from you. I declare myself rightfully yours and ask only for what was gifted to me upon my death.”
A voice half-remembered spoke in his thoughts, cutting through the deafening static. It felt like Willem’s, but it sounded like a stranger.
Ignore him, you can shed that one now.
Everything from the moment he opened his eyes was like a fever dream. Willem had screamed blue murder in his cold box, his brain boiled and rampaged within his skull. Some terrible barbaric power had come to him, the lid of his prison smashed free from the brittle iron nails that were its guards. Dirt and dried blood hid under Willem’s nails, evidence of his scramble to the surface.
“I heard seductive calls and songs while at your doorstep. I was stupid, trying to resist the pull, trying to slip away from your hold. I was too deaf then, but now I know they were you.”
Willem shuddered at those lunatic dissonant scratches, they remained like a scar on the wrinkles in his brain. The sounds stamped and imprinted inside his head.
Don’t linger on your troubles little one,
accept what you do not understand.
“The instinct to protest is deadly, our senses are blind to your radiance and our knowledge is vacuous.”
Willem remembered the halls as if he still lingered in them, their unbreakable silence and infinitely stretching space, undulating like a breathing creature. Emptiness everywhere but for their treasure. Human treasure, half a body each.
Too greedy to share, perverse and sick.
The stranger insisted. A hoard of desolated husks. He recalled the two beings, unseen and unknowable – looming presences like cloaks draped over his back.
“Love on earth is a mirage, an infatuating lie. Love is yours alone, belonging to two.”
The words sounded right to Willem but writing them felt like sticking a dagger through his own heart. The thump of his chest pounded heavily in his head.
“I do not know why you separate us; I do not know if the siblings call for each other. It is not my place to know. I trust you with all my heart, no questions. My purpose is to be kept and protected from suffering. Free from pain, free from feeling.”
A face tried to find its way back to Willem, distinctly feminine but otherwise abstract. The face had perhaps been important once.
Soho, Garrick theatre, a little café with the red awning.
He tried to focus, but her visage was elusive as something refracted through water. Detail simply faded away in wisps of smoke.
Let it slip away, I promise you will be happier.
“Yet, I was brought back. Two halves stitched back together into one form. I know I did not intend or try to come back here; you see that too – right? So why now deep in my bones do I fear that your wroth is directed at me? I sent you a present to try and make up”
Willem cranked his neck to the still fresh corpse. Viscous black blood met the undertaker’s long drenched hair like a dozen tributaries. The rain soaking the man might have even been a natural cover if not for the shovel head planted five or more inches deep at the back of the neck. Willem felt compelled to cry, a shrill giggle came instead.
The body had stopped its fits of twitching. His butchery lay next to him casting a trance. Willem’s gaze carefully traced the carcass, its discoloured still hands, dirty ragged trench coat and an empty leather pistol holster.
The stranger was sobbing – a faint whisper in the dark.
Burying his face in his hands, Willem tried to conjure some better memories. His mind tried desperately to recall the little café, a red awning, her, something.
No… nothing. Shaking and numb, lost and confused, Willem wrote again.
“I’m your rightful fief, nothing more than twin prizes in your collection.”
“I am sorry, I’m sorry for my unworthy breath. I feel the eyes of your servants stalking my every move, every second I steal.”
“It was not my unnatural necromancy that awoke me from the ground.”
“Regardless, my absence has been noted. The life I lived once was bought and paid for. I’m just a thief now. I write this knowing that once I’ve returned to you, I will have no thoughts or words to explain myself. Please, have mercy. Please.”
Every thought on his mind melted as it began. The stranger’s voice had given up. Willem was trapped within a moment in the eye of a storm. His sole companion was the glow of the candle.
“I’m coming back to receive my judgement.
Willem tried to picture the quaint, little café with a familiar woman, blurry but beautiful. They were drinking coffee, sheltered from the soft summer rain by a red awning.
Aching and alone, Willem grasped the pistol with his offhand… and pressed it firmly against his temple.
