Dark Sight chapter III

III

Morning.

It comes silently, and with it comes the sunlight, banishing the darkness, banishing the night, banishing whatever horrors that come with the absence of light.

The sun was well on its way to lighting almost every nook and cranny of the city, bringing light and warmth to the households, signaling the start of another busy and noisy work day.

Virtually everywhere in the city, everyday people are starting to stir and prepare for the day’s activities with the possible exception of the old cemetery; there is a portion of the old Ferdinand mausoleum that remains dark and unlit. It’s as if it refuses to let the sunlight, or any other form of light penetrate the pervading darkness in its recesses.

The mausoleum, which virtually dwarfed every other mausoleum in the cemetery, had a distinct eeriness to it, despite the lovely black marble exterior and ornate carvings that decorated it. The Ferdinand mausoleum was perhaps the only structure in the cemetery which thieves and grave robbers left untouched. While other similarly ornate repositories of the dead had missing light fixtures, iron grates, and even marble and granite slabs, the Ferdinand mausoleum remained intact.

It’s little wonder, therefore, that people fail to notice that there appears to be signs of life where there should only be the remains of the dead.

If only there was someone brave enough to risk a peek inside the mausoleum, it would be known that someone had jimmied the pad lock to the inner vault. It would also be known that someone had actually been into the inner vault regularly, where the much older generation of the Ferdinand clan had been buried.

It is here that a lone, naked, and sweaty figure chants in a low, guttural tone in an unintelligible language. The figure is illuminated only by a single blood-colored candle, set in the middle of an ornate eye carved into the floor of the chamber.

The chamber is actually larger than one would assume it to be when seen from the outside, mainly because it is partially submerged under the main structure of the mausoleum. The walls of the chamber are lined with headstones bearing the names of the various members of the family buried in the chamber. In the center of the chamber is a massive burial tank surrounded by a small moat, filled with a dark, viscous liquid.

The lone chanting figure, positioned at the foot of the most massive burial tank, appears to be oblivious of the fact that all the while that he has been chanting, the dark viscous liquid in the moat surrounding the massive burial tank has started gently churning, as if stirred by things swimming in it.

Dark, visceral things, unclear and amorphous in the viscous liquid, squirm and writhe within the dark liquid, making it even more menacing, giving it the appearance of a shapeless, formless mass of evil, much like what you would expect the stuff of nightmares to be made of.

Every once in a while, a dark bubble would rise up to the surface of the black liquid, and pop with a sibilant hiss, then a dark mist would issue forth from the burst bubble, and slowly join the overwhelming blackness of the confines of the mausoleum.

It is an overwhelming blackness that doesn’t seem to bother the naked and solitary figure chanting in the middle of the chamber. A closer inspection of the figure will reveal that he bears scar-like markings all over his body, all of them seemingly self-inflicted. The only portion of his body not covered by the scar-like markings is his face, and a closer inspection of that will reveal that his eyes are half-open, although they are rolled-up almost all the way into his head, as if he was in a trance or dream-state. Only this dream-state doesn’t allow him to partake of imagined fantasies or visit far-away places in his mind, instead, he sees pictures of real people in his head, real people doing real things. Real people with real jobs and real lives. Real people with real blood… and real eyes.

Eyes. It was the eyes that he needed. The blood was just an incidental bonus. Copious amounts of blood actually made for a good painting medium. Allowed to dry, it made the best shade of black ever seen, and it was quite difficult to remove once it had settled. No wonder the ancient rituals performed by the Aztecs, the Norse, and all the other cultures that practiced ritual sacrifice needed blood during their proceedings. Primitive as these cultures may have seemed to many, they KNOW that to use blood in their rituals was a virtual beacon to the unseen elements of this plane.

Writing in blood was to the ethereal what email was to modern day people, you’d get your message across for sure. Plus, being as difficult as it is to remove; spells woven and written using blood were particularly long lasting. This was delightful in itself as there have been many times when he was forced to flee the crime scene after hastily writing his spell, and he has relied on the stupid practice of the police of not “disturbing” the crime scene, in the hopes of finding some forensic evidence that would allow them to trace the “gift” to him. This allowed his spells to achieve their potency, and try as they might, they would not find him, for he had removed himself from their sight.

They could very well take him to join a line-up of suspects and even take his photograph, but none would recognize him. He had usually eaten, bathed, smoked a cigar, even made love to one of his victims while they were dying because of the massive blood loss from the gaping hole where their eyes used to be. He had left enough DNA evidence of himself for the authorities to arrest him for all the grisly murders, and for the courts to hang him many times over, but they would not find him. Only he has the sight. Him, and no one else. Everyone else was blind. And he would indeed make more people blind… and dead…