A lone lamp post cast a faint circle of light onto the damp cobblestone path. Darkness echoed around. Dampness hung in the air. My coat tails flapped behind as I meandered home. A top hat perched on my head, a silver watch hung from my pocket. Headed home following a full day of business dealings, only one notion in my mind. I despised my occupation, yet found it a necessary evil. I worked only to earn permission from my love’s father to take her hand in marriage. She was the most beautiful woman that walked the earth. She was not affluent, which made necessary the dowry, but she held my heart in her hands. I could do nothing if not for her. I had lost sights of my purpose, and I found it in her. Earning her hand in marriage was my life goal, and so, I worked.
That night, I had forgone the offer of a carriage, wishing to enjoy the night air. I came to a halt under the lamp post , surveying my surroundings. I took in the ramshackled two story house off the the side. Leaning to one side, and shedding roof shingles, the house looked a miserable disaster. An eerie glow emanated through rotting shutters. Stones fallen from the wall lining the yard spilled out into the street. A garden had overcome the yard, spilling out of the disintegrating stone wall. Thorns threatening to snag passersby. Altogether, the house was not a pleasing sight, and in my mind, it brought up images and reminders of despair.
It was no sooner than I had stopped to examine the house, that I saw a dark figure emerge from the gloom of the porch. This man couldn’t possibly live here, could he?
“Hello, good sir,” the dark figure spoke. His voice was melodic. He stepped forward, and the lamplight spilled on to his face. I am relatively sure I gasped aloud, for this was quite possibly the most beautiful man I had ever seen. This was the type of man people gave their fortunes to. This was the beauty of kings. How could such a well-off man live is such a terrible place?
The man laughed. Without realizing it, I must have voiced my wonder.” Surely you could not consider my home repulsive. It has a certain… charm. Does it not?” His voice floated across the air as if a mist. It muddled my mind. I was filled with momentary confusion. I looked once more at the yard. The eerie reminders of despair now gone, there was instead, a lovely cottage home with smoke floating from the chimney. Where I had before seen an overgrown decrepit garden, I now saw lush flower beds, bursting with lilies and well kept blooming flowers.
“Would you care to step inside for a drink?” asked the man. Something nagged at the back of my mind. There must be some reason why I should not go into this strangers home. A faint memory resurfaced of an old and decrepit house. From where did this memory resurface? I could not recall. In fact, my mind was so disarranged, that I had even forgotten that I was headed home. Surely, I could stop in for a drink with this kind gentleman. “It would be an honor.”
“What is your name?”
“Charles, sir.”
I walked up the path to the cottage, my pant legs snagging on thorns I could no longer see or feel.
Upon entering the house, a sharp clarity fell over my mind. I could take in every detail of the room I had entered. The only hint of warmth was from a pile of dying coals in the blackened fireplace. The floorboards that were not collapsing from decay creaked as if in warning. A small couch, fraying and ripped stood in the middle of the floor, discolored and deteriorating. Apart from the couch, nothing but a large black chest occupied the room. No pictures hung on the walls, however, they were painted with horrific spots of red. Perhaps it was the sudden realization that blood painted the walls that returned me to my mind, or perhaps it was the smell of death that filled the house. Either way, I could feel an unearthly emptiness that filled the air around me. Though the stranger stood behind me, keeping me from leaving, I could not shake the feeling that I was there alone.
“Welcome to my home,” he smiled a ghastly smile that took away the beauty that had originally engrossed me.
“You are a sorcerer?” for that was the only reason I could surmise, that he had some power over me.
“Please, take a seat.”
Suddenly finding myself unable to do anything else, I walked over to the battered couch, floorboards creaking under my feet. The stranger smiled another gruesome smile, and began to pace feverishly back and forth across the floor.
“As you sit, I will tell you my story. You will listen, for, as you may have perceived, you must do as I say. But first, my good sir, perhaps you would like a drink.” he smiled devilishly, and strode over to the black chest, pulling out a glass, and a bottle of wine. He poured a glass, and I took it.
“Drink,” he said, and I drank, for I had no other choice in the matter. He poured another glass for himself, and sat upon the chest, facing me. There was a surreal atmosphere about the entire situation. Here we sat, drinking as if two old friends, however, I could not shake the feeling that this man meant me harm.
As he drank his glass of wine, he began to speak. He spoke gleefully, as if every word he spoke pleased him greatly. He spoke in great detail, and gave descriptions that I can not now erase from my mind. He spoke of his childhood, and how he was mistreated. An alcoholic, hateful father, and an unloving mother. He lived a life that no child should. It was in his loneliness that he learned of his own supernatural ability. His voice could entice others, and confuse them. He could make them see what he wished, and do as he wished. It was one day, when his father had struck him, and his mother had done nothing, that he spoke with his supernatural voice. As a child, he told his father and mother to take their own lives. He was exposed to evil unlike many see in their own lifetime when he was just a boy.
He felt guilt, eventually. Guilt of an unimaginable nature. Such was his pain, that the only way he could continue was to block out any form of it. He blocked out his guilt, and he blocked his compassion and love along with it. So he gave into sin.
He has grown up in sin, living only to take lives. His only pleasure derives from seeing others in pain. He uses his voice to compel others into his clutches, where any amount of torture would occur before he would at last tell them to take their own lives.
It was at this point in his story that he stood, and pulled a rather large knife out the black chest. Wielding it as if a loyal friend, he reached out and ran it across my cheek. Never in my life had I felt more fear. I feared for my life, and I feared that I may never return to my dear love. I believe it was a combination of that fear, and the blood running down my face that caused me to act. In some sort of moment of clarity, his spell over me was broken. I hurled out of my position on the couch, grabbed the knife from his hands, and plunged it into his heart.
He looked at me in surprise, his eyes filled with astonishment. I watched as his eyes glazed over, and the dark life I had seen left his body. He pitched forward, knocking me to the ground. I laid there for a moment, astonished at the act I had just committed. I had vanquished his soul, plunged his soul into an eternal darkness. I immediately thought, no man can know what had happened here, for the love I had spent my life working toward, the life I had built would be eternally damaged if one were to find out, so taking the knife I began to pry up the previously glamorous wooden floorboards that I could now see as rotten planks in the old house to find a place to stash the man who had almost taken everything. After prying four boards of a maggot infested nature, I found the man could fit quite comfortably into the space in the floor. Not that comfort mattered at this point, for the act that I had committed had taken all from him as well. I pushed him into the hole in the floor, and placed the boards over the pit of darkness, covering up maybe the physical evidence, but covering no guilt within my soul.
I walked out of the house pausing only for a moment to consider the smell that may emanate from the old house in the following days, but decided it would more likely be decided that an animal had died within the house, for the windows, as I could now clearly see, were broken and mangled. A rodent or some other unwholesome creature could have crawled into the house and never come out again. Finishing my ponderance, I continued my walk down the street toward the house of the love previously mentioned.
It is now, as I sit at home, writing the tales that this night holds, that I can feel a… difference, settling over me. As every second passes, the guilt of tonight’s slaughter lessens. As every moment passes, his words make more and more sense. Perhaps it is some supernatural power now, that I feel taking over my mind. With every passing moment, I feel my mind changing. Morphing. Every moment, my love grows less dear to me, and the desire to continue his legacy grows stronger. I fear that soon, she may mean nothing to me at all. Her picture is here, on my desk. I do not wish to lose the love that I have for her. I do not wish to succomb to the darkness of this new evil. It is in love, that I now lay down my life. I will not continue the legacy of evil that I have seen tonight. I will instead, end it. Tonight, I will enter the world of death myself. I will wait, on the other side, until my true love finds me. For love, prevails over evil.