Northern Wind

Northern Wind by Alex Kartelias

“Don’t go in there, he’s sleeping” they whispered in unison. Looking both directions, they split into two separate groups, one walking left and the other right. They disappeared into the fog which enveloped their forms on both ends of the hall way.

I turned behind and was about to walk out when the front door that brought me in slammed shut, it’s resounding echo filling the hall with a ghostly reverberation. It’s wooden and half eaten edifice starred me with it’s brooding presence. The tormentous wind howled through the mouths of the trees.

             Turning back to the door which those figures warned me about, I slowly approached it. Feeling the hidden presence of them upon me, I fearfully twitched my head at both ends of the hall way. Not a presence in sight. I felt the warmth of the room sliding through the cracks and resting my forehead against the wall, could see a dim glow.

          Putting my hand on the knob, the sound of trumpets creeped down the hall way. Panicking, I ran to the front door and tried opening it, kicking it and banging my palms against it.

          Turning towards the sound, two groups of three white angel’s hovered over the red carpet, gliding through the air, their trumpets getting louder with each step. Behind them was a hooded figure in black. He gazed towards the floor as if in prayer.

          He continued walking up to me and with hands raised humbly, the trumpets were silenced. Sliding his hood behind, a skull was revealed. He lifted his head towards me and said,

“The Key is needed.”

I cautiously asked, “Do you have the key?”

“Who does not have it? But you must find it.”

“What?”

Grinning, he turned his large back to me and putting his hood back on,

“Where did you last have it? And where were you last lost”

          The Hooded figure was slowly lifted up in the air and when the Angels began singing, his black robe disintegrated as my eyes widened, revealing a skeleton.

          Flesh starting growing on him, birds chirped around him and tress circumambulating his transforming body. In a matter of seconds, the bones we’re covered in female flesh.

          Seeing the fear inside me, his belly expanded as if a fetus grew at sigh of me. From feeding off of my fear.

Blood was seeping from his grin, his jaw expanding because of thinning and elongating of his teeth. Going on all fours, he slowly crawled towards me, his hands branching forward and twisting into arabesque patterns, spreading like foliage across the castle walls. The ceiling gently descending as I crawled backwards away from his pursuit.

          In the same deep manly voice, he said,

“You have the key. Don’t let her steal it”

But in a female voice he said, “Consume me. I have the key, lover.”

          His hand leaped forward and grabbed my leg. Tears falling from his eyes  while laughing , the deep voice crying and the high- pitched voice laughing menacingly.

          Finding no way out, I jumped forward and bit her heal.

          Shocked, she starred at me in shock. Then, she fell back in what seemed like relief, her tree-like limbs returning to her. Then with a gentle sigh, said,

“Lover, this key”, she pointed at my chest.

“Take it”.

          Her ring finger grew an inch longer and once stopped growing, fell to the ground. Fearfully, knelling down to my knees, I picked it up and held it in my hands. Looking at her, her nod assured me.

          I held it against my chest and almost magnetically, the finger quickly slid to my heart. Sliding back to my right hand slowly, it turned into an ivory key. The Snakes imprinted around the key with the words,

          ‘I am whole’.

With a satisfied look on her face, she fell back. But before hitting the ground, the six angels caught her and then gently laid her to the ground and bent her knees. She muttered to me,

“Take one long breath in and when I say release, breathe back out.”

Calmly breathing in, the castle was shaking like mad, the walls crumbling from the quaking.

“Go deeper” she said.

Suddenly, the group of us seemed to hover over the castle, it’s star-like shape spreading out into a circle. Though in the winter air, the snow past through us and the wind had no force upon us. Then once the air went far deep into my stomach where I was close to panic, she said,

“Release”.

Then the white ground covered in snow and scattered bricks and wood started shrinking ahead of me as we ascended higher. No longer looking down, as my breath starting reaching my chest, the aerial view turned towards its side and presented itself to us as 7 hazily defined layers of a rainbow.

“Now pause” she said. Then we expanded into the Green layer in the middle and with a nod, “Release.”

We we’re back in the castle. As my breath was fully out, lungs completely empty, a baby was sitting on the woman’s lap. Her bloody mouth was clean, only a smile on her face. The baby looked in wonder at her and said,

“Where is my father?”

“He will show you?” smilingly looking up to me.

I stood up and walked ahead of them towards that same mysterious door. The presence of this woman, her baby and six angels calming me.

“Take him with you love. This is for himself as well”.

          Holding the baby in one arm against my chest, I placed the key into the door and turned it to the right. When it clicked, the key was pulled in. I stood back and watched as the key hole expanded and turned into a gapping whole. It kept expanding into there was no longer a door.

I cautiously stepped in and finding a figure sleeping in a bed, I recognized that same glow I saw before. The room was painted red and pink, four trees of dates and figs standing at each corner of the bed. When the woman saw him, she ran towards him and cried excitedly and laid next to him. Her voice and touching hands woke him up and the glow from his body turned from red to yellow.

          “Come here my love” she called me. I walked close to them with the baby crying in my arms.

          “You can hand them to us my love” he said. Not sure why he called me love, I obeyed and laid the baby in his arms.

          “Why do you both call me love if you are both clearly each other beloved?” I asked forcefully.

          Looking at each other in peaceful recognition, she fell unto his chest, with the baby between them. Aghast, I tried saving the baby from being crushed, but then both of the were quickly covered in a brown cocoon.

          Walking back, I watched as the brown turned into purple and when the covering started cracking, I felt a force coming from it pulling me forward. When a large crack split it in half like an egg, a delicious glow made me leap into it. Its warm glow drowning my vision.

          Opening my eyes, I emptied myself, of myself, to myself upon the mattress of my Rose- Bed. A five-stringer lyre played in front us, singing these words:

          “Here lies Lover with his beloved. No northern wind will disturb them anymore.”      

"Dark Castle" by Konrad Cieslak