Witching Hour

I can remember times when my music had moved thousands to tears. It was not so now. But that was to be expected, given the circumstances of the town I had arrived in.

So I finished up the last note, waited for the applause that didn’t come, and stepped down from the decrepit stage back into the smoky atmosphere of the bar.

“Don’t take it personally,” Charon said, as I returned to our table. “They’re not in the mood for a song. It’s been a bad crop.”
He set down two filthy mugs filled with sudsy amber liquid.

“Has it now?” I said, snapping close my guitar case and setting it aside my chair.
The bar was ill-lit but Charon had sat himself next to one of the few light sources - a sputtering lamp - and it’s light shone off the man’s spectacles.

Behind him was the bartender, nervously selling drinks to the few huddled men that skulked in the corners, drinking and waiting for oblivion. Crucifixes littered the bar, and the one eye-catching decoration was a large cross nailed above the bartender, it’s surface smeared with livestock blood.

Charon still hadn’t drank. Neither had I.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” he said.

I smiled. “And you haven’t answered mine, so as far as I can tell, we’re standing even.”

His bespectacled face sometimes resembled a skull, and the pumpkin grin that pulled at his lips only heightened the resemblance. “Quite right, quite right,” he said. “But me first. Why are you here?”

“Just passing through.”
“No you’re not.”
“Do you have any reason to doubt me?”
“Passing through to where?”
I shrugged. “Nowhere in particular,” I said. “I’m drifting.”

I could not see his eyes beyond the glare in his spectacles, but I knew he was watching me, sizing me up. “You have the look of a man who knows exactly where he is headed.”

“I am headed to where we are all headed,” I said. "The future. Tomorrow I will eat and sleep. Tomorrow I may die. We all eventually die. I may go rolling up over a car's hood and into a windshield. I may be mugged and fatally stabbed. I may simply step off a curb crossing the street and break my neck. Or perhaps I will dodge all those dangers, find a wife and settle down in a nice white house with a nice picket fence in a nice white neighborhood. But the Reaper would still get me then. Does it matter where I'm going?"

“But-
”Now my question,” I interrupted. “Who is Claremont?”

He smiled. “A lie for a lie, my friend. I know who he is about as much as you know why you’re here.”

"But you know why I'm here," I said. "So that question is irrelevant. I'm here because Claremont is here."

"So you would know what he is," he said. "And how you can't do anything to stop him."

"On my way into this town," I said. "I saw an abandoned farmhouse. There are dozens like them. I see the farmers with their looks of madness and their ragged faces bereft of sleep. Of the severe expressions the women keep and the rolling froth that stay on the children's filthy mouths. I knew then that something was here."

"Yes, yes, I know," Charon said. "Nightmares visit the men and women in their sleep. The crops go bad due to his pestilence and the mines close because of the hallucinations the men see. Spectres and insanity fester in the workers’ minds. And all this while, he's feeding on their souls. Claremont and his shadows are not secretive."

"Looks like someone's gotta stop him," I said.

Charon smirked. "I beg your pardon? How ever, no, where ever are you ever going to find him?."

"In dreams," I said.
"In nightmare," he replied.
I nodded and stood up.

Charon watched me. “Nightmares and demons come from the same source, you know,” he said, still smiling. “And one breeds the other. You don’t know what darkness you head into.”

“I’ll try to keep my wits about me then,” I tipped my hat to him, slung my guitar case around my shoulder and left the bar, pulling my coat around me as the cool air hit my skin.

The town was small; a huddled pack of homes, clustered around a large, dilapidated cathedral. A crucifix was nailed above every door and around them there was painted the disquieting six-pronged hex sign. The pathetic, dead fields that lay about the town were themselves choked by mountainous hills covered with birch wood. The sky was streaks of fire, trying to let light shine over the small town, but the streets were dark and the shadows darker. There seemed to be an oppressive lurking evil that infected the land, holding sway over the townspeople's thoughts. Lies seem tangible and truths weaker.

A sickly looking dog with one milky eye regarded me for a moment and turned away.

I passed an old boarded up restaurant, and walked along the path beside a ruined schoolhouse, the playground swings steadily swaying noisily in the wind.

And, of course, there was the cathedral. Curiosity struck me that such a large house of God stood in this town. I stepped up the crackling stairs and into it. The huge building must have once been impressive - must have once been the pride of the town. It had fallen into disrepair long ago, and the little light left trailed in through gaping holes in the ceiling. One side of the building had began to sink, and the pews lay on their sides, broken.

Up beside the altar was a man in priest’s garb, seated at the organ. The room was silent, though his playing was clear - the instrument must have stopped working long ago.

As I walked towards him, I noted his most outstanding features : a scar of a cross cut jaggedly across his cheek, and eyes the colour of a thunderstorm.

“It’s that time of the year, traveler,” he said, not looking at me. “Satan’s hellspawn walk the Earth. They are deceptive. They are corrupting. They are unholy beasts. What are you?”

“No one in particular,” I replied. “One could call me a round peg in a square hole.”
“Did you know,” he said. “That some refer to me as the incarnation of St. Michael? God’s warrior-angel, who dispatches evil as God sees fit. Do you believe that?”

“I have yet to see your wings,” I said.
“You are an ill omen,” he said, and would say nothing more.

I then heard the sad, melancholy song of a violin, wafting from somewhere above me. I walked past the priest, through a door and up crumbling stairs.

I stepped into a broken, shattered room. Pieces of the ceiling lay across the large cracks in the floor and glass was strewn about.

The man that stood near a glass-less window, slowly bringing his bow against the strings of the instrument, reminded me of a raven - with his long black hair, the way he perched in this destroyed room, and the immense sadness in his bird like eyes.

“Who are you?” he asked, looking towards me.
“Just a traveler,” I replied. “Just passing on through.”

"You have sadness in your eyes," he said. "You have stayed here too long."
"Not at all," I said, softly. "Everyone has a little sadness to them, is it not so?"
"Yours is deeper."

I tried not to wince. "I do indeed have a... darker past than most, my friend," I said. "One for which I cannot be easily repentant. But there are many people who are the same."

"It is so," he nodded and looked back to the window. “Demons torment us. Doubts torment us. Our past torments us. Demons come from the darkness in men, you know. What good is it dispatching the demons and witches if it changes nothing in the souls of those who create them?”

"It is a vicious cycle," I replied. "Darkness spawns demons and demons spawn darkness."
"So much evil in this land, and no one cares."

“Most ignore it,” I said. “Many simply give in."
"Claremont," he whispered.
"Yes."

"They say he only visits those who dream," the man said. "And in the dreaming, he has so much power. A man can only watch. Watch and scream as his sanity is torn from him."

"In a dream anyone has power," I replied. "Especially the dreamer. If one is lucid enough, perhaps one can combat that power and destroy him."

“Claremont isn’t any actual creature,” he said. “He is simply evil. He is darkness. He is-“

”Entropy,” I said.

He turned to me now, his eyes moist. He was shivering. “Claremont has shown me things... things in nightmare... things I can never ever remember, but can never really forget. Things just lie there, in my mind, like a tentacle’s sucker.”

“He feeds off that fear,” I said. “Like so much bread and butter. And there are things one might never forget.”

(And what monster might I be should I do so? How similar was I once to Claremont? What creature would I become should I forget the sins of my past and simply move on, as if no one had been hurt by my hand?)

“I don’t know what eldritch forces called you here,” the man said. “But I would watch my step. There is darkness here. It permeates this land. It permeates everything.”

"Darkness is nothing," I said, tipping my hat to him. “It is simply the absence of light. The sooner you realize that, the better.”
I left the cathedral and began to walk through the streets.

I left the town, past twisted fences, past abandoned pickups, and wended my way through the fields, through dead plants and mists. I began to climb the hill.

The White Forest enveloped me and I moved swiftly through its hail of glittering leaves.
Above, spires of dark clouds clashed and rumbled, and the wind was a gale, hanging in my ears.

I passed over icing water, past a torrent of waterfall the colour of blood and moved through the territory of wolves, hearing their howls and baying around me.

Pushing through brush, I saw her.
Despite the sunlight that still attempted to creep over the top of the hills like a red glow in the darkness, the moon was high and full, and the young woman that stood in the clearing was bathed in its pale light. She seemed to be glowing, as moon dust floated in the air around her, shimmering.

She was kneeling in the leaves, drawing a small knife across her arm, letting the blood bead from the wound and flow onto the ground.
She was beautiful.

“You look cold,” I said, and she did, for she was wearing very little.

She wasn’t startled. She only set the knife aside and dipped her fingers into her blood; spread it on the trees. “My mother taught me to witch, you see,” she said. “Before they hung her.”

I saw her draw the bloody symbols on the tree, watch her move from each tree into a circle. “Protection,” she explained. “From him and his shadows.”

“Claremont,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Who are you?”
“Just a traveler,” I replied. “Just a traveler.”

She turned back to her work.
“They attacked me,” she said. “Last night. In my nightmares. So I’m trying to protect myself with a circle. A ward.”
“I see.”

“Do you?” she asked. She turned back to her work. “I hope to leave someday, you know. There is more to the world than this valley.”
“I know.”

“I’ve read about them... mountains stretching across beautiful horizons... oceans surrounding gorgeous volcanic islands... and massive, shimmering cities... I want to see cities...”

“I can imagine you do.”
“But he... he is the shadow,” she said. “He is the icy grip of winter. And he won’t stop until everything is dead and gone and his.”

“Yes.”
“I’ve felt his mind before, as if passing through a cold spot on a summer day...” she said. “It was like an icicle, or... perhaps what death feels like. But I was one of the lucky ones. He never wanted me, or took a liking to me. He took a liking to Jenny Baker, though. Have you heard of her?”

“No.”
“First we thought she just wasn’t getting enough sleep,” she said. “She would come into school a few hours late, bags under her eyes and... and her clothes all torn and rumpled. A lot of kids were like that, though, so we didn’t really give it a second thought. But then... she slowly started getting worse. Like, well, sometimes she would be sitting there, right? And, and, the teacher would be giving his lecture, or drinking or hitting someone, and she would burst out into tears. Just burst out in crying, and her shoulders would shudder and shake like she was trying to hold some horrible thing inside her. And the tears would just stream down her face. Some days she’d just snap at her friends and scream at them. Some days she just didn’t come to school, but those were nice days, because she had started taking things with her... Strange things. Weird things. She would start drawing pictures... these horrible scribbles of things with too much teeth or too much legs. Some days she would draw her friends, but disfigured in some way, you know. Like there was something wrong with them, but you just couldn’t see what it was. She’d carry this bear around with her, and it’d be slashed up, cotton spilling out over it’s stitching. I asked her what was wrong with her one time and she only replied in this colourless voice ‘He took me,’ and then she’d just turn away. You knew it was Claremont because every night, the cross on their house would be twisted, and bent.”

“What did her parents think?” I asked.
“Don’t know. She killed them. The Sheriff found them all together, splashed with each other’s blood. Turned the knife on herself, he said. But I think Claremont was the one who encouraged her to do it. If he can get Jenny, then he can get me. So I have to run away. The rest of the town... they’ve given in. But me? No. I’m going.”

“Well I won’t keep you from it then.”
"Can I read you? My mother taught me how."

"I beg pardon?"
"Just..." she approached me and touched my face. There was a flash of energy between us, like a spark, and I felt her mind touch mine, felt her read my thoughts and memory like so many pages in a book.

"I-" I said, and wrenched myself away from her. I had felt the brief connection between us and I tried not to wince at the sudden well of my own dark memories.
"You... did something. You did something very bad. A long time ago."

"That's enough," I said, stepping back. I nodded to her. Managed a smile. "I'm different now. I've changed. My purpose tonight is clear and my past is my own affair. Do you understand?"
"I do," she replied. "But who are you?"
"Just a traveler," I said. "Just passing through."

I tipped my hat to her and continued deeper into the forest.

And when I thought I had found the Heart of it - the deepest and darkest parts of the hills, where the land is as ancient as time itself and a man is alone with his thoughts -I sat down at the base of the largest trunk, waiting for midnight to descend upon me.

They call midnight the witching hour, though what origins that fae expression have are rooted deeply away. It was supposed that the witching hour was a time when the natural world and the supernatural came together, that for one magical hour, anything was possible.

I readied myself for what was to come, for I knew that, in this land, I was never alone.

The darkness that crept over me was blacker than oblivion. It swept over me, destroyed my senses, and sent me into an eternity darker than the thickest night.

Then I was dreaming.
The light that struck me was golden. I saw the roses, their thorny stems wrapping around the stairs that rose before me.

The castle seemed to emerge from the choking white trees that twisted and reached for its tall parapets, its towers and its gates.
Beautiful statues of angels littered the castle grounds, the roses knotting through their legs and between their wings. Their eyes stared stonily at me, deathly frozen.

I began to ascend the stairs.
“Hello,” came a voice.
Charon was standing further up the stairs, wearing an evenly cut black suit. His spectacles seemed to be shining from the golden misty light that fell all about us.

“Charon,” I said.
“Claremont’s servant,” he said, bowing. “I can take you to him, if you wish.”
I noted the way the rotting vines of the ivy around the castle seemed to reach for me, and how unnaturally red the roses were.

“Lead on,” I said, and followed him up.
Charon stepped towards the castle gates, and at his touch they opened, as did the castle doors beyond.

We stepped into the castle and into the great room. The floor below was a dark blue, and if I looked hard enough, it seemed that there were things beneath it, clawing and scratching to get out.

Ahead of us were stairs, gorgeously carpeted in red.
"I wouldn't touch anything," Charon said, walking up the stairs. "You never know what might touch you back."

"This is a dream," I replied. "It isn't real."
"Can you not see the golden light that shimmers through the windows?" my guide asked. "Can you not touch the banister and feel its exquisite smoothness? What you can perceive, my musician friend, can delight or hurt you, is it not so?"

I did not reply.
Instead, I chanced to see through one of the many windows and saw strange and deformed vegetation - corrupted, sinister oddities.
"My Master's gardens," Charon said, following my gaze.

Above, on the second floor, another of the servants passed. Its skin was an ashen gray. It had no eyes, nor much of a face.
Charon strode to the center door, massive and beautiful things they were, and pushed them open.

Beyond was a hall. Massive stained glass windows depicting horrible cruelties and beautiful angelic creatures lay row on row on the walls, framing the huge room.

On the far wall, behind a massive throne, was a large, wall-encompassing window. The view beyond was spectacular. Sparkling golden waters rippled, a sea of beauty, the sun shimmering in the sky.

And Claremont, himself, his features silhouetted by the light, sat in the throne.
"We meet at last, Claremont," I said, as I stepped forwards.

Charon closed the doors behind me and remained within the room - waiting, as a servant would.

Claremont inclined his head in a nod. "You know," he said, in a smooth and charming voice. "Claremont is only one of my names. I have been called Venicio, the Soul Eater. I have been called Lord Crimson, master of illusions and purveyor of horrors. I have been called necromancer and I have been called demon and I have been called angel. And yet, I do not have your name."

"The way I see it," I said. "You're on a need to know basis, and, frankly, you don't need to know."

He stood, and the silhouette fell away. He could've been an angel, with a soft unblemished face, almost androgynous. A dark cape was draped about his evening suit. "Then perhaps I should call you fool."

"I have been called that before," I said. "Many times."
"Do you know what I am?"
"You are nothing."
"I am darkness. I am despair. I was birthed from nightmare and I can send this world you love into one, should I wish it."
"You are nothing."

Claremont turned towards his window, and gazed upon the view. "Many people dismiss dreams and nightmares, as if they were of no consequence. But nightmares can consume the mind, can destroy it."

"Yes."
He turned back towards me. "You have some power, I know. Otherwise I would not have let you get this far. And I know you think that since your body is in reality, that you are protected from me."

"I think that, do I?"
He sat calmly back into his throne. "But I also know how deeply entrenched a mind is when nightmare claims it. How the dreaming becomes the reality."

Charon was beside me, now, and he was swift.
Claremont winked at me. "And now I will watch you die."

The blade in Charon's hand flashed twice - snikt! snikt! - and left me with two gaping wounds in my throat. Blood poured from them. How many throats had Claremont’s servants sliced in people’s dreams? How many screamed, bellowing and twisting as blood rushed from their throats, thinking they were dying, only to awaken, sweat-soaked and shaking, knowing that it would happen again, and again, and again?

Claremont watched me, smiling.
Smiling.
Not smiling.

The smile had leapt from his face to mine. "The mind has no neck to cut,” I said. “Nor blood to pour."

The stained glass windows broke out towards me now : the glass shards tearing me to pieces.

But I remained standing, and I remained whole. “The knives and the glass and, to be honest, this castle,” I said, and I took pleasure in watching Claremont’s eyes harden. “Are simply figments of your imagination. This body of mine is simply a ego-created mental projection of myself. Now tell me, how do you plan on watching me die?”

His illusions and nightmares attacked me like a swarm of chitinous insects, obscuring my vision. Horrific things assaulted me, memories and creatures and fears, and melded together in a single silent scream that tore at one’s sanity.
I could imagine young Jenny Baker writhing in terror as Claremont lavished these horrors on her.

But this was the dreaming, and a dreamer has as much power as the dream. Just as Claremont had power, so did I. I swept the nightmares away with a thought.

"Amateur," I said and the anger in Claremont's eyes was plain.

I took a step towards him and the throne room fell apart. It's beautiful walls turned brown and cracked, the throne imploded, and the light faded.

Claremont disappeared.
Beyond the window now were stormy waters, waves higher than mountains. Lightning shrieked across the skies - lighting up the darkened room.
I turned towards Charon. "I think he's afraid of me."

Charon was staring at me. "I think you should leave."

I tipped my hat to him. "Not before Claremont settles our differences."
"And those are?"
“He's enjoys hurting people and I don't."

I pushed through the doors - now broken and hanging off their hinges.

The room beyond was shattered, crumbling. Pieces of the floor were uprooted, lying in pieces, and the thundering sky flashed in through gaping holes in the roof.

I pushed through claustrophobic hallways, their walls angling and their floors cracked and shifting.

“I know about you!” Claremont’s voice echoed through the corridors. “I know your history! Who you actually are! Why you hide yourself from others!”
“That was a long time ago,” I replied. “And my past is my own affair.”

The rooms I walked through were abandoned and as destroyed as the others. People were littered about, gibbering and muttering to themselves. A woman was on her hands and knees, grabbing for things that weren't there. A child with his mouth stitched closed with thread simply stared about, rocking back and forth. The priest I saw in the cathedral was sitting, playing with an abacus. "The fourth angel sounded as I passed him," he was muttering. "And one third of the sun was struck, and one third of the moon, and one third of the stars; so that one third of them would be darkened, and the day wouldn't shine for one third of it, and the night in the same way."

I passed through a room where the second man I saw in the cathedral stood, staring at me, and all about him were ravens. The black birds covered the room. As I passed through, they simply watched me, never blinking.

I reached the last room and pushed it open. Claremont's mind attacked mine and he tried to strike at my being, turn me to madness, but I brushed his touch away, and walked in.

Claremont was standing, furious, at the other end. "They're mine!" he screamed. "They're all mine!"

I was walking towards him now. The room melted; became a hallway.

"Go away!" he screamed. "I will destroy you!"
The hallway dribbled away; became a dark forest. Huge white wolves were on all sides, striking at me.

I ignored them.
Doors came into being, shifted. Stairs pushed out of walls. Ceilings became floors.
"I am the master of illusion!" he cried. His eyes were fire. "Of nightmare!"
The world became mirrors - his reflection in each one.

And nightmares did strike out at me, at full force this time - horrific, numbing monstrous things that slimed and scrambled over my mind.
I shattered the nightmares and the mirrors and the sound of the glass breaking was Claremont's broken scream.

The castle was gone.
We were simply minds now, sentient wills across space.

He struck at me with all his power. He was like black lightning, his mind lashing out at mine, raining dark blows.
It was here, in the strange darkness, that we fought, like two stars in the expanses of eternity, sheer wells of power that clashed together like Michael and the Devil.

What must it have been like, I would think to myself later, for the townspeople when I finally threw him down?
Would some strange weight be lifted from their shoulders? Would some of their madness recede and show the bright world to them with clarity? Would the sun seem not so harsh? Would the trees be greener? Would the sparkle in their eyes return? Their haggard faces smoothed over perhaps?

I would not know : I was in the deep recesses of the soul, destroying an evil that was born from nightmare and darkness.

And I emerged victorious.

Charon was waiting for me on the stairs when I stepped out of the castle. The roses were falling from their bushes, falling everywhere and the golden light of the air were filled with the flowers, floating down around us.

"You... " he began.
"Destroyed him, yes."
"Why?" he asked.
"What do you mean why?"
"What do you care about those people out there? What did they ever do for you?"

I stared at him, then laughed and turned away.
Charon continued to watch me. "He wasn't the first one you've destroyed."

"Nor will he be the last," I replied.
"Why do you do it? Vengeance? Or is it some foolish altruistic virtue?"

I did not answer at first. I only breathed in the golden light and watched the falling roses, knowing they weren't real, but finding them beautiful all the same.
Then I turned towards him. "Penance," I said.

"Penance?"

"I once did something horrible," I said. "Something very evil. Perhaps... perhaps if I save enough souls, enough minds... perhaps..."

The world began to fade, then, and Charon faded with it, becoming a blur.

(Perhaps I can forgive myself.)

I awoke to a new day, the sun over the valley, shining down on the White Forest with a warm light.

The young woman was there, beside me, watching me.

"Hi," I said, standing up.

"Do you know where the next town is?" she asked.

"Nope," I replied.

"So you're just going to walk until you find one?"

"That's the plan."

"Want some company?"

I hesitated.

Then I smiled. "Sure."

We began to walk, climbing the hill.

"I had a dream last night," she said, happily. "First good dream in a while... it was, I don't know... hopeful."

"Yeah," I replied. "So was mine."
“What’s your name?”

Again the hesitation.
And then I told her.
She smiled and told me hers.

Suddenly I was looking forward to seeing what was beyond this hill.

And the next.