Dating : Absolution

Finding shelter underneath the old church, Rupert gripped the sword so hard that all the blood left his fingers. Breathing was painful — and laborious. His legs felt like molten metal, eyes burned from dripping sweat. Bearing witness to gut-wrenching fear, Rupert’s heart raced desperately ahead, seemingly aware of the grim reality outside the church’s reinforced doors.

The small village of Tyneham laid in ruins — silence occasionally disturbed by the bone-crunching sounds of another slaying. There couldn’t be many survivors left; soon enough, only the dead would lay claim to this land. The bodies would be found on the street, gently decomposing — or cowering inside, rigor mortis preserving one last desperate prayer. Some wouldn’t be found at all. A downpour of hair, muscle tissue and bone fragments falling from the sky would be the only indication they were once human beings … before whatever thing was out there ended their miserable lives.

Shaking uncontrollably, Rupert wished he was born a warrior. He wished for true courage in the face of adversity — a rare commodity when a being this powerful makes itself known. Sure, there was a rusty Dane sword on his left hand (a relic from the turn of the millennium) but Rupert himself had never used it to kill anyone. He didn’t even know how to fight. The sword, on the other hand, had tasted enough blood for a lifetime — Saxon and Dane alike. It knew death intimately. In a dark room, away from prying eyes, you could almost see it glisten. It was subtle, of course. Rupert had only seen it once after waking up from a nightmare, shuddering at the thought and immediately cataloging it as a waking dream.

Hiding under the church in a secret room, Rupert managed to stay warm thanks to a compact furnace fitted with a hidden exhaust pipe. His small library, a rotting bookshelf filled with books on the occult, could be found in the leftmost corner, near the stairs. Almost everything he learned about the real world was in these rare volumes.

As Rupert warmed his hands, he experienced an epiphany of sorts: “Enough spoiled food. Enough hiding. I must face whatever’s out there.” Yes, it was a matter of time until the abomination outside eventually came after him. It wouldn’t take much to dig him out, legs dangling, a final warm meal for the road. Or maybe it wasn’t corporeal at all, needing only to direct its thoughts to the church’s crypt and nearby structures. Death would be a foregone conclusion.

No matter. As Rupert knelt on a black cloth containing a pentagram, he thought of the darkened skies above. He saw the deeply grey eyes high above the clouds — higher than any mountain range. He lit the 13 blood-red candles one by one. This was a sacrilegious altar for men who took matters into their own hands — turning their backs to God to pursue the Great Work. For most in Tyneham, Rupert was the frail loner who helped the priest on his earthly duties in exchange for lodging — collecting the tithes, mending crumbling walls, replacing broken tiles, and generally watching over the church. But Rupert was so much more. A descendant of the Slavs in the East — survivors above all else — he was also the only man in 500 square miles who knew the rites, sacred objects, and incantations necessary to face this nightmare.

There was an eerie quiet outside. No birds, cows, pigs, sheep, horses, and dogs — unnerving on its own right. Deep down, Rupert inhaled the fumes that would complete the ritual … earthly eyes rising up, all the way up, where the beast originated. There was only one question in his mind: ‘I must know its name!’

The celestial spheres. Rupert propelled himself at numbing speeds, crossing the empty black of space. Stars streaked past him as he accelerated, leaving the village far behind. Yes, this was beyond the physical realm; more than distance, Rupert was crisscrossing worlds, bounding out of reality itself, entering then quickly exiting entire universes. Finally, at the end of the journey, he saw it.

They were giants in the truest sense of the word. Standing still, the tip of their hands would reach all the way to the Moon. Then, leaning on one of the two larger creatures, Rupert could see a smaller, less developed being. Not as tall but still gigantic. He instantly knew that the god-like power exerted by such creatures was already present in the child. Rupert saw it devour entire planets. Saw the child approach an exceedingly bright blue star only to smother it with a single meaningless gesture. These monsters were born before Rupert’s own universe. They wouldn’t die when the last star flickered out of existence. It was just fate that the child ended up in his world. Who knew what other destruction awaited the rest of England — or France, across the channel?

“Bastard!” he yelped. There was more than anger in Rupert’s voice. He knew this was the end. Standing up forcefully, Rupert took the sword in his hands and headed outside. He could hear and feel the child’s steps shaking the entire valley, brute unchecked power extinguishing all life. He reached ground level, then opened the huge church doors. Outside, not a single structure remained. It seemed that the building itself — and the ritual — offered a moderate degree of protection. But Rupert would no longer have a need for it.

Facing away from the church, he recited his death vows. The previous ritual didn’t tell him the name of the entity, only its true nature. He had no power over it. But Rupert wielded a sword fit for killing, possessed a soul worth taking, and commanded the steel-like will to face a god.

“YOU!” Rupert screamed at the top of his lungs. “I am here. Do as you will.”

The disfigured face of the child. No one could tell if it was happy or sad. Maybe it just didn’t have what we describe as emotions, just primal urges. The child’s head and torso moved so fast that it generated a hurricane-force wind, smashing Rupert against an abandoned cart right outside the church. He was aware he had broken a number of bones in the impact, but it didn’t really make any difference in the end. Rupert’s only goal was to be swallowed whole.

That monstrous hand. Closing tightly around his frail body, crunching, liquefying. But this was no ordinary human. The sword. A focused application of Will. An invisible, unbreakable summoning circle. The child seemed surprised. Dead and alive at the same time, the entity formerly known as Rupert drifted near his mangled body. As the child drank his blood and ate what was left of his arms and legs, Rupert immediately felt a surge of power. ‘Yes, at last!’ he thought. It was working.

The child lost balance, crashing down on the already ruined village. In both spirit and physical form, Rupert had successfully delivered a message. A brief one. Enough to make the child recoil, then freeze for a moment. It had experienced fear for the first time.

The message was:

‘We … are eternal. We shall not disappear in death. We shall follow you beyond time itself!’

With a whimper, the child vanished from Tyneham just like it appeared, suddenly and unexpectedly. There were other worlds to play with. Worlds where the locals ceased to be in death — and left nothing behind.