LeJeune Media

 

 

Chapter 8

RAPHAEL LAY ON HIS BACK, eyes wide open, stewing beyond rage at not being able to sleep. The revelry had clanged louder and longer than usual. Even the torches seemed brighter and bouncier through his window, the whole of Mount Cain’s worshippers seemingly yelling right outside his bedroom window. In an attempt to bring humor to the anger he felt inside, he rolled out of the bed and dumped himself flush onto the floor.

“Yeah, that was funny, Raphael.”

He blinked to try to see. The torches were not touching his house, but they were close, close enough for him to see the normally wild spread of drunkards merging into a unified line. They were dancing and chanting. Raphael stared for a long time from behind the protection of home, observant of the lighted procession, waiting to see her. Why he put himself through this torture, he didn’t know.

The dots of fire were hypnotizing if not sleep-inducing, but it wasn’t long before he saw her.

“You don’t even belong there, Puah,” he said as if she were there. “You don’t belong with him.”

He watched her skip past without as much as a glance at his house.

“Stop it, man. Don’t do this to yourself.”

But he didn’t stop. He continued to look, searching for the crux of all of his fears. It didn’t take long. Cain came dancing up behind her in the line and Puah laughed when he grabbed her.

“You no good…”

Cain had not forgotten Raphael as Puah had. He jerked his head at him strangely, like a twitching bird, a yellow malice in his eyes.

Raphael turned away. He had tortured himself enough. Though the music outside had kept him awake, it was the silent music in his head that was really driving him mad. He felt as if his head might burst from the need to run, to get out, to forget, to never look back at this awful, God forsaken place. Empty voices in tune with invisible melodies raged louder than any musical instrument. No drum could thump him as senseless as did the need for unattainable love. The racket outside became an innocuous echo fading in the distance while the earsplitting raid of silence streaked to the front. Raphael had often joked to himself that Puah’s allure was the culprit in driving him mad. The joke now suddenly took on a more pressing tune.

He did finally sleep, though it was turbulent. And so were his dreams….

There was a roar from the townspeople as they honored a new king on his throne, newly crowned Cain, and the noise embossed the final words on his acceptance speech. No one realized what weight the moment held. Still, his words had mesmerized them, had inspired them, fueling them into bedlam. No longer was there organized, discernible chanting; now only crazed, mindless yelling tore the valley walls, echoing through the woods and to all five horizons. Men, women, and children alike reveled in the madhouse; fathers battered their sons for the taste of the virgin; mothers challenged daughters for the right to the hero’s bed; women castrated the weak; men ravaged the virgin. Fights erupted, the losers being knocked to the ground, all trampled under the weight of a thousand horses.

And yet there was only one. One black horse and its rider, and in his dreams Raphael watched that rider go into the woods. The rider was coming for him.

…The sunlight woke him up. Though pleased that his dream was just that, the next morning was still maddening. He rolled out of bed, drained and vexed. He dragged his feet across the floor and out of the house. The water he splashed on his face was biting, but it did jolt him out of his stupor. The fever gone from his head, he looked around, amazed that the city streets could look so pristine after the party had ended mere hours earlier. He laughed at their foolishness and turned his head toward Puah’s window. The window showed the brilliance of a jerky flame, a candle still lit inside her room.

Raphael checked the urge to visit her. He felt different today. He didn’t feel the need to talk her out of her hangover or reason with her over personal issues. He even decided against his morning walk up the mountain.

Looking there, toward his secret niche, he thought of the dark bird that had tried to destroy his image in the dirt. He pictured the boy, the same boy on the distant bluff speckling his dreams at night. Slowly and thickly, his mind began to spin and groan. Sucked from the reality of the town, he was up close, mere feet away from the boy. The boy was resting against a log, his eyes fixed and unassuming on the town in the distance. A grin on the boy’s face made it calm.

The boy turned from his wandering and lifted the log. He slipped and stumbled with the unwieldy weight until he reached the edge of the hill, where he finally attained enough of a grip to let it loose. The log nearly pulled him down, but one swift kick later it was stuck in the stream, trapped between the jutting stones. Struggling to regain his breath, he realized how light he felt. The wood had never seemed so heavy.

In the next moment, Raphael was sucked back into the town, back to the well. With a strange and sudden clearness in his head, he became aware of the absence of burden as well. There was a weightlessness in his feet that made him want to float, yet he rested against the stone edge of the well with an unconscious smile on his face instead. That sense of futility, the fear of never liberating himself from his own mind, was gone. Poof. Last night it was there. And now it wasn’t.

“And all it took was a terrible night’s sleep to get it.”

The humor made his smile widen to a chuckle. He looked up and saw the black birds in the distance, so beautiful, like a dream to him, flying with such harmony that it numbed Raphael into a cool nothing. Indeed, it didn’t even look like they were flying as most birds do; they were soaring to some reach he now understood plainly. They were reaching for heaven itself. In all their grace they made the blue sky higher by their harmony. Raphael wanted to float up there with them, and for a moment felt that he could.

Adrenaline juiced him and he found it difficult to calm his breathing. Into focus came the impression of footprints approaching him. There was no body. The voice was both old and new. Time had no meaning.

“You are almost home, Raphael,” the voice said.

“I am not home now,” Raphael answered, not knowing if it was a question or a declaration.

“No,” the voice said. “You have done what needs to be done. You have paid your fare. There is only one thing left.”

“Does this involve the boy?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Everything.”

“Cain? Puah?”

“Yes. And Charles.”

“You didn’t need me to save him.”

“He is not saved yet,” the voice said. “But after the next phase, your duty is done.”

“Of all people though, you didn’t need me.”

“You’re right. I didn’t. I chose to need you. He is your brother.”

“Wha-?”

It was all clear now.

“What about Puah?” Raphael asked him.

“She is not as far off as you think. Something is about to happen. She will see, she will know, and then she will meet the boy herself.”

“And?”

“Just do what is in front of you, Raphael. Trust only that, because there is only that. Just one more thing to do.”

“I love her.”

“I know you do. But it is the boy’s time now.”

“When will you reveal yourself to him?”

“You already have revealed me to him, Raphael. When you lived with him.”

It was so clear, so doubtless. Raphael couldn’t figure how such clarity had eluded him before. His past, his present, his bittersweet last day ahead, all crystallized neatly. Everything was visible. Everything had sharp edges, even the very thoughts in his mind. He laughed at his confusion, his vexation, the blind citizens of Mount Cain.

“I’ve been living in two places at once,” he said, believing it and not believing it at the same time.

“Actually three, but to know that is for another time.”

“Anything else?”

“Just do what’s in front of you.”

The man put his hand on Raphael’s shoulder, smiled, and vanished. Raphael was floating again, and he wanted so badly to share it with the one attachment he did have to this world. He looked around the corner again, but this time, there was no light. Puah’s room was dark, the flame from the candlelight extinguished.

“I’ll never see you again. Not in this world. Take care of the boy. Take care of him.”

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***Dream Chase is the wholly reimagined version of The Final Chase (out of print, but used ones still circulating) and the author’s preferred version of the story. It is better, and frankly, more readable. Please consider this as you make your purchasing decision.