Notes Of A Dead Man Sequel (Notes - #3) by Clive Cooper (best contemporary novels .TXT) 📖

deem to speak His Word to a living soul if the prophetic signs were not present, that perhaps He was testing my faith in a way; by showing me a vision of what my eternal self might suffer if my temporal self failed in its devotions, He might encourage me to more fervently follow the right path.

 

These words provided me little comfort during my adolescence, but as I came of age, I began to find more comfort in the admonitions of the priesthood. I committed myself to the study of the Great Scriptures and sought to live in word and deed as St. Azarius had commanded. In time the dreams grew less frequent, and had stopped altogether by the time I came of my thirtieth year. I had been successful to a fault in my career, and took full advantage of the rare opportunity to enjoy a night of leisure, making my way through the finest public houses and dance-halls of my native Austhaven. I danced and ate and drank and sang and caroused into the small hours of the morning, and then…

 

I awoke with a pain in my head, my body sore, my mouth dry, my stomach in tumult, an ache in my bladder, and a strong desire to return to a slumber I could not remember laying down for. I was no stranger to the ploughman's curse that is the hang-over, but seldom has it occurred in my life that I drank to such excess that I could not remember the end of the night. No sound perturbed my ears that morning, so I judged that I had either found my lodgings, or had taken unconscious in a poorly-trafficked alley. In either event, it seemed, there was no urgent need to me to arise, so I rolled over on my side and sought to settle in - when I felt a sharp object jab me in my side, and a stench like nothing I have ever known assailed my nostrils.

 

My eyes darted open and the flash of the naked sun, blazing brilliant in the clear orange noonday sky, blinded me. I reached to my left for a hold to raise myself up, and my fingers sank into something warm and soft. Squinting, I turned my gaze from the sun to my hand, and an unholy horror consumed me when I espied what I had laid my hand upon - a human skull, sun-bleached, bits of discoloured flesh clinging limply to its surface. I drew my gloved hand back in horror and took with it a dram of brownish ichor that had once been its owner's eyes.

 

I wretched, ejecting nothing but my own stomach juices, as a dread realization overcame me. Below me was a pile of discarded rags that had once been loosely wrapped around the dead. To my left, to my right, in every direction, was nothing but gore - broken limbs bending in every direction, bone shards jutting from distended flesh, thick and opaque puddles of congealing blood, undulating pools of worms and maggots feeding on the bounty before them, and surrounding everything, the undeniable miasma of death. This was far more vivid than the dreams had ever been, and in that instant I was forced to recognize that my dreams had been prophetic after all - for here I was, a living breathing man, lying discarded upon the surface of the Dead Sea.

 

How was this possible, I wondered? Austhaven is many thousands of miles from Leng; could I have drank so heavily, so excessively, that I was mistaken for dead and loaded upon one of the trans-continental air-coaches? I still wore the heavy coat, gloves, and boots I had decorated myself with the prior evening, though definitely less fashionable now coated with gore as they were. Perhaps, in my cups, I committed some intolerable act and had been convicted by the state - or worse yet, found soulless by the church - and compelled to walk the Long Walk?

 

Somehow, I found the wherewithal to rise to my hands and knees, finding some footing upon the bones of the dead, and it seemed that Providence, in the most meagre of ways, had shone upon me. Though noon had passed and the sun was already bearing towards its rest in the southern sky, I was able to glimpse, in the west, a shallow cliff face. I had not taken the Long Walk, nor had I been disposed of in the heart of the sea where I would have had no hope for survival. It would be a struggle - but it would not be impossible for me to reach the shore of the Dead Sea, climb to the edge of the pit, and survive this ghastly ordeal.

The journey was slow in the going. Every step I took, every foothold I spotted amidst the rough uneven mass of carrion, could potentially give way and leave me to sink and drown amidst the dead. I tested each step with the utmost of care, often falling to all fours to better spread my weight among the clusters of bone and lumps of skin that could hold it. The heat was unbearable; though Leng is known for being a frigid climate, the chemical processes occurring within the depths of the sea kept it considerably warmer than its environs. My thirst overpowered me; and though all my senses rebelled against the notion, I forced myself to lower my lips into a pool of blood and drink a few sips. It tasted of death and sin, and I evacuated most of it sheer minutes later; it was evident that the sea would provide me no nourishment, and I was doomed to die if I could not reach the shore. Though I could easily have walked three miles in an hour on open land, I found myself making less than half a mile each hour, as the sun drew closer to the southern horizon and the bright orange of day grew a darker blue and purple. It was apparent that I would not make the shore by dusk, and I had no confidence in the moon, that mother of liars, to not guide me around in a circle until I dropped from exhaustion, so there was nothing to be done but to spend the night at sea. I pulled several of the larger, more intact cadavers together and atop one another to form a raft of sorts, and I lay flat on my back upon it, gazing up at a starless sky, as purple gave way to black.

 

I slept little that night, fearing that, should I let my eyes close fast again, that they might never re-open. As the moon rose contemptuously over the horizon, the fabled corpse-fires of the sea began to alight, bathing the feculent stew in an eerie gleam. I remembered hearing a rumor supposedly passed down from the soil-harvesters who plied the sea under cover of darkness, that the lights were the souls of the dead, trying to escape and burning up instead. I remembered the doubts of my youth - that my soul would perish in the Dead Sea with my body - as I stared at the gyring blazes that seemed to confirm my fears. I did the only thing I could think of to do in such a dark and seemingly hopeless hour - I prayed.

 

And in that dark hour, my prayer was answered. I heard a voice, both quiet and bold, humble and resplendent, seeming to whisper and shout at once from some cavernous void in the back of my mind. Fear not, it said to me in a language I could not recognize. I have promised you life eternal; endure now, and it shall be granted. It was in that instant that any trace of agnosticism I had ever experienced was put paid to; for here, at the edge of the world, in the land of the dead, in the darkest hour of my existence, I knew, without any doubt, that St. Azarius Himself had heard my prayers and had spoken to me.

 

In time, the first rays of the morning sun began to shine from the north. As soon as I could fix my eyes on the shore, a scant five or so miles ahead, I resolved that I would reach it by sunset. It was unlikely that I could survive another night on the sea without food or water, and St. Azarius Himself had commanded me to carry on - what choice did I have? Hours passed as I picked my way across the wastes. As I drew nearer the shore, the going became easier - here were the ripest of bodies, those delivered by train from the lands closest to Leng, and there lay less distance between them and the bottom of the pit than did those further asea. I was nearly a mile from the shore when I spied an unusually old body amidst the mass of the newly dead - its skin was dry and practically mummified, leather wrapped over bone. It jutted skyward between two corpses that had lain there a week or so, its eyeless sockets fixed on the heavens, one sinewy claw seeming to grip for dear life to the bosom of one of the newer bodies. A shudder befell me as I considered this remnant that had once been a man - his posture, his stance, the look on his dried face, told me that he had died after arriving in the Dead Sea. Logic dictates that I could not have been the only person in the history of the Empire to have befallen such a fate, but here, it seemed, was the proof.

 

I reached the shore an hour or so before sunset, and began to crawl and climb my way up the slope to the edge of the pit. I was halfway up when one of the carrion-haulers slouched up to the edge and discharged several hundred cadavers over the edge in my direction. I clung fast to the rocks and prayed, and again I heard St. Azarius urge me to persevere. Though they rolled over me, falling apart on the rocks, wooden caskets and linen wraps disintegrating on the way downward, limbs tearing asunder and buffeting me as they made their way downhill, I managed to avoid losing my grip and rejoining them below. Dusk had fallen by now, but I no longer had need of the light to guide me, for I knew which way up was. It must have been midnight before the slope gave way to level sand, the green glow of the Dead Sea lay behind me, and I knew that I had escaped with my life.

 

What now, then, I wondered? Though I was free of the pit, there was no succour to be had at its edge; it was a good hundred miles to the nearest town, and even the carrion-haulers dared not overnight here. I glanced around in the darkness, hoping that the corpse-lights would illuminate some sign of salvation, and as I looked westward where the lying moon rose above the plateau, I glimpsed the unlikely silhouette of my rescue; a relief station, from which no light now shone, but which the carrion-haulers surely had need of before making their return trip back to the depots where their next load of unfortunates was to be received.

 

I recall not whether I admitted myself to the men's chamber or to the women's; it hardly seemed like the most significant of details at the time. All I cared for was that there was a sink within, connected to a reservoir no doubt resupplied with waters from far outside this accused land. Water! Few sing hymns in its praise but those who have been made to do without. I suckled greedily at the tap like a baby hungry for its mother's milk. Having had my fill, I splashed my face, washing away the gore and sludge that had accumulated during my trek