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ashkent
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 Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 2:56 pm Post subject: The Last Magician - Chapter 5 Available |
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Well, it took a while to get here, but here is the first chapter in my linear story. The story is part of a much larger work...and in all honesty i think it comes second in the consecutive running of the whole story. Don't worry though, it can be read a sa stand alone novel too - the first two books are only loosely connected so it is only by the third book that i need to get things in order lol. Anyway, I am going to try and run this one as a weekly serial...I have a few weeks work in hand so it shouldn't be too difficult to keep it flowing. Hope you enjoy it, and any comments you care to make, please feel free.
As a whole this story contains infrequent strong language and scenes of horror. Warnings specific to isolated chapters will be posted accordingly.
The Last Magician
Part 1 : First Steps
1. Jack.
He tentatively opened his eyes to the light.
For a moment that was all he could see; a dim but dominant light that blinded his vision. He blinked away the pain in his head, feeling like a man waking in the middle of the night to the glare of an overhead lamp.
His mind seemed strangely void of thought, empty like the sight before his eyes. Then suddenly…
What is my name?
The question filled his mind, reaching from the dark recesses of his brain to the depths of his soul in search of an answer. Somehow no reply was forthcoming.
Surely he must know his own name. He had to, didn’t he? It should have been as natural to him as breathing, yet somehow he could not pull out…
Yes, he could. It was there, deep down just beyond his reach but edging closer. If he concentrated he could almost bring it into the light.
Jack? It could be. It sounded almost familiar. Jack was his name but there was no more than that.
Where am I?
That was the next question. This time a substantially darker void faced him. No inkling of an answer presented itself. His name had come to him, he thought, after a moment of certainty that somewhere in his memory he held the answer. Nothing came to him this time; he simply didn’t know where he was.
Or why he was lying in the dirt.
Loose stone and soil littered the hard surface under him, just another question to ask the void of his mind.
As his senses slowly returned, one thing became apparent; he was hurting like hell. Sharp stone cut into his skin, dug through his clothes while the hard ground provided a less than accommodating resting place. The questions circling his thoughts gradually gave way to his need to relieve some of the discomfort his body sensed.
Jack raised his upper body, a groan escaping his dry lips. It was as though his body had seized up.
How long had he lain here?
The number of questions continued to rise while the answers remained as elusive as ever. It should have worried him, the void in his mind, but there were plenty of things to concentrate on other than that. His pain and disorientation were issues he had to question, but he was not anticipating any responses.
Despite the circumstances, Jack found a smile crossing his face. If his collected queries were conundrums in themselves, then that one was The Daddy.
The Daddy.
A bloke called Ray Winstone had been The Daddy. Jack had no idea who Ray Winstone was, or why he was The Daddy, but the name and the connection were clear in his head. He knew nothing about his surroundings and his name still contained the slightest trace of a lie about it, yet somehow a random name had come to him without any effort.
He turned to sit, biting against the numbness running through his lower body, and surveyed his surroundings for something familiar that would bring memories flooding back to him. There was little to see around him, only rough earth and a number of trees. A little further away were the beginnings of what could be a street of houses, maybe even an estate.
He turned around, the sound of his neck like someone twisting apart a cabbage.
Suddenly something shifted in his mind. A door was unlocked and a single thought fell free of the void accompanied by an unexpected sense of dread. Soon he was overtaken by a fearful realisation that he did not want to be seeing what lay before his eyes.
He was home; at least, in his home village or some twisted, nightmare version of it. His memory had not provided many reliable reference points for him, but on this he was certain; he was home, but home had never looked like this.
The story continues in Chapter 2 : Altered which will be posted Sunday 2nd March.
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Last edited by ashkent on Mon Apr 14, 2008 10:07 am; edited 3 times in total
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ashkent
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| Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2008 10:58 am Post subject: Chapter Two. |
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Chapter Two : Altered States
He rubbed his rheumy eyes, attempting to shift the yellow glaze that coated his vision. Only when he glanced down at his ruddy pink hands did he realise he was mistaken; there was nothing wrong with his vision. There was something in the air.
He was sitting on what could have been the village green. Images filtered into his mind steadily, filling his vacant memory with familiar sights of lush green turf and rich textures of blue, red, purple and pink bordering the vibrant lawn in the blooms of summer plants; innumerable variants of green in the solitary, ancient oak that provided shade from the roaming flame of the sun high above.
That was the scene in his mind.
Before his eyes was a putrid vision of diseased, yellow stubble where lush sweeping greenery should have been, surrounded by an uninspiring and disheartening border of arid broken earth, and littered with wretched, wizened leaves of a dark, unnatural tint. Behind him, as it had been in his surprisingly accurate recollection of the place, stood the barren anorexic branches of the once mighty oak; the centrepiece of the village green. Pitiful was a truer description now.
The tree was a shadow of the goliath in his mind’s eye. A disfigured tangle of twigs and branches resembling some ancient sea-creature of Greek Myth, tentacles clawing at the sky with hellish intent on ripping it to the ground. Gaping wounds lay open in the trunk he would once have struggled to reach halfway around with a full embrace.
It was the legions in the wood that drew his attention. He unsteadily rose to his feet, the needles of grass-stubble digging painfully into the soft flesh of his palms as he pushed himself up. He moved slowly, cautiously, towards the monumental oak, his eyes fixed on the wasted bark.
The gashes in the trunk were deeper and wider than they had first seemed. They appeared to be small ruptures, areas where the bark had simply split under the release of some internal pressure. All he could assume was that some of the ruptures had been more violent than others, leaving small cracks alongside gouges the length of his arm, but in all of them the presence of the expulsion remained..
Gathered in the deep crevices, oozing out to form rivulets that joined and interlinked in intricate patterns across the bark, was a sickly-yellow pus. It was fungous in appearance, especially where it had been given lengthy exposure to the atmosphere, nearer the bottom of the trunk.
Jack leaned closer to the nearest bleeding gash, his curiosity defying his sense and his stomach. The closer he drew, minute detail presented itself to him. He could almost feel himself being urged to move ever closer, could feel the tangible promise of revelation ushering him to reach out and touch.
He was soon able to discern tiny movements on the surface of the yellow substance; deeper movements within it; minute forms growing on the surface; dozens of minuscule, dagger-toothed mouths opening to greet his arrival with hungry intentions.
Jack staggered backwards in long-legged bounds, rocking on his heels before toppling to the floor. He thudded down onto the hard, dehydrated grass, releasing a pained grunt on impact.
He brushed his limp hair from his face and stared disbelievingly at the yellow fungus. At distance, it was once more nothing but a diseased pus leaking from the innards of the oak. It could still be so. He had wakened to an alien world that should have been his own and he believed it easily possible that his mind was playing tricks on him. The crux was that without returning for another inspection, he would just have to accept what he thought he had seen
With a last dubious glance at the oozing tree, Jack picked himself up and moved away over the green.
An eerie desolation surrounded him; every direction bringing a new image of despair. To his left, a terrace of five dilapidated houses stood, just, as skeletal shells of what they had once been. Rotten, woodworm infested window frames crumbled to dust, their task of holding glass panes taken from them as not one sheet remained intact. Frail rags of curtain strayed from the musty interior into the stale air that Jack shallowly breathed.. Paint hung in curled, yellowed flaps, a sight that made Jack feel he was walking through a place that had been dead for some time..
An old question arose in his mind, coming closer with every step he took. What had happened, and if it had been so apocalyptic how had he surviuved it?
Signs of great force of descruction littered the area, more evidence than he could ever have wished to see in order to make some kind of conclusion. Mountains of rubble, skeletal frames of automobiles and shattered street lamps awaited his wide, disbelieving eyes. Then there was the dominating presence that could not be seen but only heard and felt; a solid dome of unbreakable silence lording over the land and the accompanying unwelcome, thick atmosphere that choked his breathing.
He was able to breathe, laboured though it may be, but the sensation in his throat and lungs was that he was inhaling something ancient, something stale like air from a lost tomb. It tasted foul, brimming with a sour flavour yet he had no urge to convulse against it. He could only assume he had become accustomed to it during his lost hours. The question that immediately followed was this; how much time had he lost?
There was only one answer he could provide. Regardless of the number of days, months, or, God forbid, years, it had been too long.
He turned full circle, taking a panoramic view of the green. He could recall more now. Images of his childhood returned to him as he rotated on his heels, vague in appearance, but there all the same. He seemed to remember flags waving from some of the buildings, an family celebrating some grand occasion though he could not recall what the celebration was in aid of.
A further rotation and it was there before him; the metal, rusted flagpole, topped with three tattered discoloured strips of cloth that could quite easily be all that remained of the flag.
Reminiscing was not something he had heavily been into, and now, in this sinister place he had once loved, it did not seem the most appropriate time to begin.
He ended his revolution at the point he had started. A sudden dizziness claimed him. He conquered the sensation at the moment before his legs gave out, steadying himself both mentally and physically.
One hand on his throbbing temple, Jack moved across the remaining area of stubble, out onto the solid concrete of the small road that encircled the green. He took each step as it came, his thoughts concentrating on completing one stride before progressing to the next. He had the distinct impression that he now knew what it was like to be a young child taking its very first steps unaided.
Out on the road, he stopped. The thumping by his temple had subsided enough for him to lower his hand, and he allowed his thoughts to wander once more. Home was the direction they turned to
It was the only place he could aim to locate. Easier said than done when he could not recall a house number or street name; not yet. He had the growing hope, spurred on by his recollection on the grass, that if he began walking the sights he passed, depressing as they were, would inspire his underachieving brain-cells to reignite.
Hope was the only thing he had now. It was his ally; the only one to have stuck with him when all others had deserted.. If hope did not mislead him into false belief, then home would provide him with many of the answers he sought.
Together, metaphorically side by side, Jack and his companion named Hope strolled onto Front Street; onto the road that would lead him home.
The story continues in Chapter Three : Tombstone on Sunday 9th March.
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Crunchyfrog
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| Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 11:09 am Post subject: |
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I kinda got drawn to this because it had the word 'Magician' in the title. 
Spotted a few technical hiccups here and there, the most obvious one being the legions in the wood, but quickly realised you were referring to wounds in the treetrunk rather than an army in a forest. 
Enjoyed the details as Jack starts to explore his world (the pus in the tree... eeew!) and looking forward to the next instalment. Most intriguing! 
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ashkent
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| Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 2:16 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks, Crunchy. You're not the first to see the "Magician" of the title, but be warned he doesn't make an appearance for quite some time and when he does he isn't your average Merlin clone.
Hope you do follow this though. It's one of the more major projects I'm working on and new fans are always appreciated.
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ashkent
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| Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 3:16 pm Post subject: |
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Chapter Three - Tombstone.
He was walking through Tombstone. A lone ranger carried onwards by weary legs. Above him burned the blazing desert sun, signifying the arrival of High Noon.
It was a queer notion, but neither unjustified or in any way inappropriate.
Jack limped down Front Street, once the main road that ran through the centre of the village. The tarmac had lost all sign of the black surface that should have shone in the midday sun. Its place had been taken by a heavy, if not complete, layer of arid dust.
He had seen no indication of life since his awakening into the nightmare of reality, and Hope was about to desert him in his hour of need He was coming to realise that somehow, incredulously, he could be the only living person in the village, maybe even beyond.
There was a sense of expectancy in the air that did little to alleviate the darkness of his mood. It was eerie, and the paled complexion of the street only served to add to the haunting ambience that oozed from the village itself. It was like a tangible manifestation of dread and foreboding; the sense that something bad had happened but the possibility that it was only just beginning.
Derelict houses passed by as he walked on, their resemblance to the occasional snapshots his memory provided minimal to say the least. For all he knew, the frozen images in his head could have been true in another lifetime. He could not discard any idea outright no matter how improbably or inexplicable it seemed; he did not even know what day it was let alone what year. The tall, proud, upmarket buildings in his head stood mournfully around him as decrepit ruins and abandoned shacks; chilling monuments to what had been beautiful and picturesque. Unique features of varying architectural design, purchased by homeowners with the intent of upgrading their residence to higher standards than their like-minded neighbours, held a strange vigil over the dilapidated structures they had once improved the appearance of. Now they served as only hideous reminders of what had been.
Barren, sun-scorched gardens surrounded withered bird-tables, which leaned close to the point of collapse; water fountains, long dried up and overrun by yellow weed and the alien fungus he had already encountered; topiary animals, mutated into deformed abominations that loomed as starved menaces and bore no resemblance to the creature their owners had once intended.
Boarded up windows faced the street from both sides, though they were few and far between in comparison to those simply eaten away by rot. Glinting shards of glass flashed occasionally, some in the shattered fragments still attached to a frame, others in untidy piles beneath the boards and voids.
This was Tombstone after the mother of all gunfights; the one which ended with the entire population dead and the town stricken from the map and confined into rotting obscurity. Welcome to Tombstone, Engand.
It did not have the same ring to it as Tombstone, Arizona, but the fantasy was transcending the boundaries of reality. At any moment he expected to feel a Smith & Wesson at his side, or possibly even to see Wyatt Erp stalking towards him, sheriff badge gleaming in the burning light of the sun. If it did happen, Jack would have asked the good sheriff if he wouldn’t mind pointing that big old gun he was carrying right at his forehead and...
‘Forget it,’ Jack told himself, his low voice a thunder-crack in the deathly silence of the street.
The only good thing to come from his little flight of suicidal fantasy was the knowledge that his memories were still continuing to return from the dark recesses that had held them captive. Recollections of the Wild West were not entirely what he had expected but it was still welcome.
He walked on, his feet crunching on sand and stone, occasionally scuffing a pebble into the gutter. The sun beat down on him, a baking heat accompanying the glare, the likes of which he had never known. He wondered if the heat could be a vague indicator of the time of year, or could it be nothing more than another of the innumerable peculiarities that awaited his every breath? For now, he could not tell either way.
He came to the end of Front Street and looked around, hopeful of something that appeared slightly familiar to him. The faded name plates of the adjoining streets offered themselves to his need.
Camborne Street and Ashbrooke Road.
It was a choice that had to be made, and Ashbrooke was somehow the most appealing. He couldn’t convince himself that the name brought a dawning to his mind, but under the circumstances a bright moment of instinct was worth holding onto. Ashbrooke had called to him in a way he could not explain, and that was good enough for him.
After only a few steps Jack felt the sweeping sensation of deja-vu creeping into his mind as he looked down the street that looked identical to the one he had just left. Deserted, desolate buildings that had once thrived with life, and a lonely, empty road that could easily have ran forever, even though it was no longer than one hundred metres. A rogue memory told him that Linford Christie could have run from one end to the other in under ten seconds. Gazing down its length, Jack thought it could take days. His legs were becoming heavy, dead weight almost, with every step he took, and his energy seemed to be draining from him at a frightening rate.
Jack ran his tongue around his mouth. He was not surprised to find it as dry as the road he trod upon, and his tongue itself was nothing more than a sheet of sandpaper grating against his gums.
He walked on down Ashbrooke, the air unchanged yet somehow easier to breathe the longer he was forced to do so. It was certainly a long way from the choking sensation he had felt earlier, from the moment he awakened — How long ago was that now? — to the moment he was now standing in the clutches of.
Jack glanced at his wrist. His watch lay on his wrist like a coiled snake, deceptively innocent in appearance. It should have been the answer to at least a question of time, but as he had expected it was not as simple as that. The watch hands sat frozen in some hour long passed. It was a waste to take a good look at what hour the frozen hands indicated. There was an odd finality that came with the sight. Time would have given him something normal to hold onto, something to defy the alien world he knew had once been his England. Now even that small hope had gone.
With a heavy heart, he walked on.
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ashkent
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| Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 3:25 pm Post subject: |
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Chapter Four : The Road Home
Ashbrooke Road gave way to Rushton Lane.
A familiarity crept into Jack’s head, the occasional snapshots, as unlike his surroundings as they were, came more and more frequently. He began to recognise places, buildings, roads.
Rushton Lane lay as just another line of dead grass and devastated houses. Deja vu was a term that could have been created for this unique situation; the belief that every turn led to somewhere he had been before. Yet it was more the sights than his recollection that brought the feeling to him over and over again. A constant world of dead grass, dead buildings, dead gardens; dead people?
It was probably the one question he did not wish to know the answer to. There had been no hint of life in the village, but likewise no sign that the dark shadow of death had passed through. None of the ramshackle homes appeared to be lived in, but could that not be said of many homes during any war zone? He had no proof that the boarded up windows or the crumbling walls contained no life, not yet.
His body was suddenly feeling the effects that his walking and the lost hours of sleep had had on him. He was becoming dehydrated in the hot sun and needed water, desperately needed it, would sell his soul to have just a few drops of cool liquid pass his lips.
The last few minutes had brought to him one of the memories he had longed for since his awakening. The one that showed him where he should be heading. Home.
The image was there but unclear. It was just the outside of a house without any distinguishing features, nothing that would make it stand out from the other shells around it. When he found it, though, he would know. If he could make it to his house nothing else would matter.
Rushton Lane was his street. The house could only be minutes from where he stood. Once he began walking it would be no time before he found the house, found the familiar sight of his hallway and sitting room.
And something else that almost brought him to his knees. Someone his mind had forsaken until the moment it had chosen to spring it on him.
Charlie.
When he found his house, would he also find Charlie?
Would he find his wife?
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| Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 10:04 am Post subject: Chapter 5 : |
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Chapter Five : The Final Distance
The heat of the sun was rising.
Jack felt his final reserve of energy being evaporated through his open pores by the ferocious eye of the blazing ball. Soon he would lose the strength from his legs, the feeling from his skin and he would hit the dirt with the thud of a carcass. Another lost soul in a land of damnation.
His eyes were playing cruel tricks on him. Ashbrooke had appeared to him as a golden mile, now Rushton lay before him as an eternal highway, stretching out into the unknown for all time.
He turned to his left. The shell of a house with a large number one hanging on the wall in paint so faded and flaked it was as though the house had begun to shed its skin. To his right was number two. Neither of the houses were what he would describe as livable, but they were a damn sight sturdier and healthier than many of their counterparts he had already encountered.
His house was close. The number seven dominated his thoughts. His house; he had seen the number in another fragment of memory. He could be wrong, but that was all he had to aim for.
Number seven was three buildings away, but those buildings were so far apart. There was a mile between each individual home. It was just the heat playing with his head, his dehydration taking its toll on his basic functions. Yet believing the vast distance before him was nothing but a desert mirage was beyond his drained body’s capability.
He closed his eyes tight, pressing his fingers into the soft orbs. It hurt like a bastard, but it helped. His eyes were almost as dry as his mouth, but his continued blinking shrank the distance he was expected to travel dramatically.
He blinked.
The distance halved.
He blinked.
The distance halved again.
Moving slowly forward, his feet dragging in the dirt, he blinked again, and again, shortening the distance he was expected to traverse every time. Each step took immeasurable amounts of willpower, his mental thought bent on forcing his limbs onward, his physical ability pushed to the very limit of what it was capable of. His muscles roared in agony, grinding against each other like rusty, disused cogs.
Number three appeared beside him. Not far to go now. A blink and his destination was even closer. He was closer to home, closer to Charlie. Closer to water, to food, to shelter, to all the small things he had taken for granted until he found himself without them. When beggars on the street hounded him for spare change, he used to ignore them. He of the black suit and common luxuries, they of the rags and scrounged food.
Who’s begging now? Jack thought.
Number Five passed by. He was there. His house; his home.
He glazed up at the building, its state much better than he could have hoped. Only one window was broken, the masonry work remained mainly intact in all respects; only a section of the roof was missing, either caved in or purposely removed.
He was only a few steps from the door. Only a few more...
His legs gave out, folding under him, sending him onto the floor with a numbing crunch. His palms stung as the sharp gravel ripped the soft flesh but only for a short time, as his arms refused to take the weight and buckled under him. His face slid along the ground, a series of deep crimson gashes opening across his cheek
He lifted his head with the strength of his pain. Right before him, teasingly and tantalizingly close, was the front door of his house. It was mocking him; the man who had struggled with his amnesia to remember anything about his life only to fall at the last hurdle when the information was his. He had overcome every obstacle this hellish vision of reality had trown his way, and he was damned if he would allow himself to give in so close to his goal.
He pressed one bleeding hand against the hard road, then the other He pushed against the tarmac, ignoring the flare of bright pain that ran through his arm like lightning. On his knees now, the sharp stones under him pressing through the dark material of his trousers. He ignored it. His limbs could be gushing pints of blood but it did not matter at that moment.
He had to make it to the door.
Crawling onwards, on his hands and knees like a sinner before the gates of heaven, he focussed on the sight of his goal and in his mind’s eye he had already seen the outcome. He was going to make it to the door, he was going to make it if he had to slither on his stomach ripping every inch of his flesh from his bones.
Five metres to go.
It was becoming the longest distance he had ever travelled. Longer than when he drove from London to Edinburgh to see in New Year with Charlie; when he walked from Land’s End to John O’Groats from charity; when he cycled, as a ten year old boy, from his parents house out into the wide open country with no intention of returning home.
The memories flooded his head, the gates that had barred his access to his past had been breached in a great explosion of unwanted images and information. He was bent on reaching the door ahead, and the bombardment to freshly released memories only served as a hindrance.
His knees scuffed the road as he pressed on, mentally forcing the one image of himself in the arms of Charlie to muscle out all other thought.
Four metres to go.
But he was on his knees. How could he expect to fall into anything except the dirt again? If he fell at her feet she would pick him up. If he fell by the door, she would pick him up. All he had to do was get closer. All he had to do was get to the green door.
Three metres to go.
But the door was no longer green. He could see the door clearly and there was no denying what he saw. The lime green paint that had coated the wood was gone. Only a few loose flaps hung from the wood. Behind the remaining flaps was the same sickly yellow colour that seemed to be everywhere in the village.
Two metres to go.
And the house, far from the untouched, unchanged building he had seen through lying eyes, was a shadow of itself. All but one of the windows were jagged-toothed wounds, a sight he had somehow reversed in his mind until that moment. Tatters of curtain, the flowery design the only constant item in his dual visions, waved forlornly at him. And around the frames that should have held panes of glass, the fungus grew in bulbous, putrid clumps.
One metre to go.
His arms buckled, crumpling under his body as he crashed to the ground a final time. His already bloody cheek raked over the gravel, loose chippings tearing into his open flesh. Released blood spurted onto the concrete, a crimson pool forming quickly around his head.
He was home. As close as he could possibly have been without actually being inside the building, yet he was not close enough. So far he had come, so near he had been, but in the end it was the distance that had beaten him.
The white fire in his cheek flared; the ache in his arms was enough to make him want to rip them from their sockets; the dryness in his mouth and throat made every breath an agonizing chore.
It was all a conspiracy against him; a rebellion by his body to prevent him taking those last two or three movements to the door.
The came a distant click, somewhere far away, then there was a voice in another world. The words could not be defined, the distance between Jack and the speaker, at least in his head, too great to contemplate reaching out for help.
He was dying. That was why the voice was so far away. He was passing on and he was leaving the world of the living. He was going to die and he was going to do it on his own doorstep.
No metres to go.
The blackness swallowed him, and the pain faded into the dark.
The story continues on 20th April in "Chapter 7 : Amanda"
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