(Inktober: 16 & 17 – Angel, Demon)
Travel Log Entry #10
A great trembling of the earth forced me awake on yet another moonlit night. She sits high in the sky always close enough to touch yet so far out of my reach…like the treasure. Every night she reminds me of just how small I am in her universe. If there is one. Nothing makes sense here anymore. Not even my own thoughts. I think of home and my wife, if she saw me now she’d run screaming at the man I’ve become. I think of the sea, which I’m sure I’ll never see again, and its welcoming waves. And I think of the treasure tied to this map… and … well nothing matters. Nothing.
The wood seemed to close in around me and the air instead of thick and humid, was thin and cold. The ground became soft, too soft to be true. I called out to my men only to hear the sound of my voice echo back in laughter. The eyes returned, blinking and shaking as they too laughed. I felt myself sink into the earth. I reached out for anything to grab hold of. I wasn’t ready to sink to the next level of hell just yet and that’s when I spotted it leaning against a tree. The quaking of the earth caused it to fall within my reach. I took it in my hands and swung it so it lodged into the trunk. I began pulling myself out of the earth. It happened that when I struck the tree, a great roaring issued through the wood. I got to my feet with the ax in hand and ran further into its depths. I could hear the voices of my men calling out to me… then I saw them. Staggering forward with wrinkled pale gray ghostly skin and sunken eyes while moaning and groaning. They were headed right for me. Their clothes were torn and soaked in something black and sticky. I let out a ghastly scream and did the only I could think to do. I swung the ax.
The vision before me was unnatural and so surreal – the men, all 12 of them were among the dead but somehow…living. This forest is, indeed, hell. Their gaunt faces were twisted up in ghoulish disfigurement. Their cold undead fingers sought my neck. They wanted me to join them. I did the only thing I could to preserve my life.
I cut them down.
My ax connected with bodies. I separated heads from necks, limbs from their torsos, and drove my dagger deep into their undead hearts. I could feel their blood splatter and wet my skin. But they still stood and kept coming so I kept cutting. With a grotesque and unfamiliar sound issuing from my lips – I kept swinging until they all stopped. Until all went dark.
Travel Log Entry #11
I woke to a great throbbing in my skull and soreness at the back of my neck. As my eyes came into focus – daylight stung them and a terrible soreness overtook my limbs. When my vision cleared, I looked down at my hands to see them covered in blood, scratches, and scrapes while bound with rope. I surveyed the area around me and quickly wretched.
The terror… of what I did placed me in shock. What tremendous horror I committed.
There before me were the mangled bodies of my men- hacked and torn to shreds. Four of my men stood at a distance weeping and talking amongst themselves. I was tied up at the ankles as well and couldn’t lift myself to go to them to explain what happened in the night. To tell them that it had to be done. They were not …but as I looked upon them, there was nothing …no gray skin or evil faces on them… they were who they’d always been. I looked around to see the map lying open at my side on the ground, soiled with the blood of the innocent. I cried out. What happened, the things I did… I couldn’t even put to words.
I asked where they had all gone and why had they left me alone. The men told me they never left the camp, that they’d been there the entire time. They claim that I’d gone mad, hearing voices and listening to a talking map. All the while the map was telling me all that I needed to know. So I told them. I spoke the very things it was speaking to me at that moment – that I had to become death to dodge it.
One of the men came over and picked up the map. He opened it to reveal an empty wineskin with crudely drawn landmarks on it. They said that I stole it from an insane man at the tavern we visited before I killed him. And how I lured them all in the promise of treasure on a quest to find something that never existed.
I told them about our guide Cimik and how he’d gone missing and the story he told about the Memic. About how it can appear to be anything and anyone and that it was in fact, the very forest we were in and how we’re never going to make it out. I was slapped and told to be silent. There were voices of men in the wood calling out for help in the daylight. The sound of rushing water and a voice telling us we could have it all.
It was all a trick of the Memic, then as if on cue, a young man came running through the forest toward us. He told us that we needed to get out, war was coming. We needed to get back to the ship and he could show us the way… he was a native of the land. It was Cimik! I called him by name and he didn’t acknowledge me. But I recognized him. He was our guide!
When my men turned around to gather up their belongings, I called his name again and he still would not answer. I looked at him. His green eyes with an offset glow behind them. I then called him by his true name…Memic.
He turned to me and put a finger to his lips in a gesture to hush me and smiled. Some knowledge passed between us… The man in the tavern with the green glowing eyes. The isle we landed on and now Cimik… are all one. It was too much for my mind to handle and I lost myself to the darkness of mind.
How did we get here? Back to the ship. So much is lost to me. I’m locked in the ship’s brig with the one thing I am allowed to have, this travel log. What level of hell is this? Have the angels turned me over to this demon? What is the truth? I don’t know anymore.
I fear the Memic will have its run of souls if we make landfall. It will claim us all – so I am writing to log it all. Here in the belly of the ship where I am safe amongst eyes that watch my every move. I fear I shall become one of them. Lost at sea or doomed to be tied to the map and meet the same fate as the cartographer in the tavern.
Unless… I manage to break free and send us all to the watery depths of our beloved sea to keep the Memic from exacting true terror. Yes, I believe that is the only course to take and the eyes agree…
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