Release

Release by John-J Anderson.

The river grew black, glowing with the faint spectres of ghostly pale hands reaching up from the depths, unable to break the surface, trapped in a sodden muddy prison of breathless torment. Cries echoed out through the desolate landscape surrounding him, alone on the grassy winter banks.

“RELEASE ME FROM THIS NIGHTMARE!.”

Adding malice to anguish came the whippings winds that howled about the ears and drew up spiky grey hairs from his necks and arms. Shrouding the night sky that had grown weary with a black cloaking mass, the darkness held a canopy of withered tangled tree limbs. They seem to dance in the wind as though orchestrating the events unfolding mercifully below their reach. Nature succumbs to the forces of dark splendour that danced on her soils that evening. With sudden disarray, the river ceased its tempest storm of harsh, crashing waves and became deathly still. As though the arrival of an expected guest broke the focus of hatred, the fog that could not penetrate the rivers tension parted with slow ease, shapes of dark greys and blacks made their way through the dense cloud as the rivers remained undisturbed and eerily pleasant. I fell to my knees in devastation, crumbling the last strands of strength that clung on like desperate features of armour. Winds continued to rush past in panic frenzy, the nights creatures scattered into the undergrowth and down holes of abyss that littered the brush.

“What would become of me if this were my fate?” I called out with little breath retained; no answer returned from the fog alone besides the playful tease of rippling disturbed waters. “Please, I beg you release me from this torture, release me from the binds of the river!” desperation was brazen and unhidden in my voice as it cracked and squeaked out a living into the frost-bitten night air.

As though the shapeless mass of writhing colours answered the call, the fog was once again split open like rotten fallen tree limbs. The ripples on the water turned into the indistinguishable trail of a tide being forced by the driving force of a vessel.

“Hear me once more spectre. I will not fight you on this night. Show me the mercy I desire,” I screamed out once more into the wet void with a beg of despair.

Finally, emerging from the thick cloud of dense mist came the unmistakable bow of a wooden ship, black wood in construct with an aged rust perforating the ship’s body as a cancerous orangey brown coat. Atop the bow of this emerging wooden vessel was the now visible decoration of the macabre. My heart shrieked and recoiled in my chest as I made the vision of this trophy clear, a demonic skull of a humanoid shape tied with crass rope. Dripping blood had stained the eye sockets and the tips of the teeth, what few remained, seemed browned by time. The ghastly ornament that stood as a token of malice was split almost in half at the middle of the skull. It seemed otherworldly in my eyes that struggled to conceive what I witnessed on that terrible evening at the river’s grimy shore.

Emerging now in its full glory stood this wooden haunting carriage of the river. Mist swirled in confusion besides the boat’s underbelly that bobbed above and below the river’s surface, almost teasing the bodiless limbs that grasped at the surface world with hellish hunger. Raising my eyes to the centre of this paranormal image of nightmarish proportions, the strands of reality began to disintegrate before my eyes. At the oar of this ten-foot ancient boat, teeming with a nefarious presence unfelt before in this life, stood the lumbering giant-like figure unmoving and dressed in black garbs as though all the colours of plain life had faded. I could feel my mind writhing in disgust at the very image of this heart-breaking luminary sculpture that stood without breath before me. No doubt remained that this was to be the end of my life, sunken to my now filthy knees in the soil and damp at the arms of the river. One last challenge must be posed if this was to be my end.

“Show yourself spectre!” I declared into the darkness that presented itself before me. No reply came from the hooded figure still clutching at the black splintered wooden oar of his vessel. “Identify yourself, boatmen. I do not wish to play games on this horrid night!” I once more shouted across the break of the river. No reply came.

“SHOW YOURSE…” my words became lost in the roars of the wind, interrupted, as the twirling gust of wind blew over the scene that played out on the theatrical stage of the river that evening the spectres hood fell back about his shoulders six feet above the grounds of the ship.

Breath once more left my body as I observed the horrors beneath the hood. My eyes fell towards the earth as I wept into my hands warm tears that froze in the night’s atmosphere. Stood before me, atop his vessel of damned wooden cruelty, was a figure of living skeleton form. Skin almost entirely removed but for a sunken white sheet of remaining cover that dressed over the bones of a monster from the depths of the dark places. Identifying this creature now felt of the utmost redundancies. For this spectre that rode a wooden hearse along the black river, Lethe was the visage of death itself. The stare of this looming death never left my eyes, almost imprisoning my body in a paralysed fear of a lifeless nothingness that crushed the desire and loves alike in the pit of my stomach, it raised its hand and upturned its palm, beckoning that I might inch closer to the river’s edge and meet my fate. Crawling on all fours through the soaked mud to the edge of the dark waters, my shadow underneath seemed to almost abandon me completely, a loneliness I had never felt, stood in place of all happiness and joy that I once knew, memories became unobtainable in the presence of this beast from a forgotten land. The very light that guides all moral and sentimental notions of individuality seemed to be shrinking inside me. I was a husk in its presence and in its presence was nothing.

Flashes of lightning accompanied the booming bellows of thunderous tremors as I found myself to my feet. Wind continued to whirlwind through my ears and the overwhelming weight of the night’s darkness sat heavy like rolled stones upon my shoulders. My body ached as if the very bones that carried it attempted to leave through my skin. Motioning me on with his still lifeless upturned hand, the figure of immense horror now creaked in the wind as though it was bonded to the ancient ship itself. One weighted foot after another fell in front of me as I stumbled devoid of control of my actions towards the river’s edge, mud splashed up with violence against my legs and the frigid air gave no alleviation to my goose pimples that refused to vacate the shaken body that I merely now inhabited. Reaching the river’s bank, I took one unaided and unsteady large step down into the shallows, icy waters of black swirling dankness chaotically broken under foot. Bodiless forearms now waited patiently in the deeper reaches of the torrent to anticipate my next movement, eyes felt everywhere and the continuing sense of being controlled beyond rational reason took hold of my mind. I stand with both feet in the river facing my spectre, the waters splashing about my knees in excitement. Movement of the ghostly trapped souls beneath the surface could be felt with unease.

“Carry me not from this world” I sought the words with force, but they arrived with desperate begging tones, as that of a child being punished for a naughty deed.

The splatters of raindrops fell, the skies no longer content to hold the waters at bay. Water surrounded me, and the air became thick with the sweet scent of petrichor. But no comfort could be taken. The scent that was prior of the sweet smell of summer rain and fall exploration was now a shadow of its former self. The spectre of the river seemed almost to creak in disapproval as it absorbed the scent of life from the air. No good would find its place in the presence of this figure of dark evil. Defying every fibre of my being, every instinct in the primal recesses of my mind, I clambered clumsily onto the ship’s port side. In my hands, the wood of this ominous boat felt hot to the touch. Splinters dug into my wrists and torso as my soaked body crashed onto the ship with ungraceful embarrassment.

Pulling myself to my knees, now at the ivory bone like feet of this visage of contempt for my world, the winds stopped in a second. No roars could be heard from the river or the winds alike, all sound had been swallowed from the world. All that remained was the creaking that became indistinguishable. Boat and spectre creaked the same soulless creak as the world shrivelled around me. Holding out a hand draped in tissue thin skin, black veins could be noted, no blood ran a course through this teacher of evil. The lifeless hand slowly crept under my chin as the figure now crouched over, as if to meet my fallen gaze, lifting my head to ensure we met face to face. It started with lifeless hollow voids back at me. Features of a human face past still presented themselves through this disfigured mirror image of a man. Eyes no longer located but in their place, black pits of scarred tissue that sank beyond knowledge. Lips so tightly pressed; I was unsure if they could prize apart at all. No hair adorned the head, life did not grow on this creature of the damned world. Impulsively, without control at the vision of my haunting capture, a scream of twisting agony left my mouth.

Unmoving to the noise or my reactions in its presence, the creature merely held my chin in place and stared with an empty loss into my eyes, pierced the safe spaces in my mind and infesting hatred and sorrow wherever it reached. Unable to end the painful throat aching scream that left my body, I began once more to weep salty tears down my face that fell onto the withered, stiff hand that cradled it. Without warning, the creature opened those locked lips and let out a scream of its own. With tremendous force, the noise ruptured both of my eardrums in an instant. Pain and ringing tolls echoed through my mind. The creature continued this scream as I closed my eyes tightly, still unmoving from my knees in the clutches of this monster. In a turn of added torture, it had now become wrenchingly apparent that my eyes would no longer open. They had been sealed shut in the face of this screaming phantom, locked in my mind with the ringing pain and screaming notes. I faded internally to the blackness, only to be awoken at the river’s bank in the bright break of day.

The river was calm, the canvass solid once again beneath. My body was aching as though a shiver was ever present dancing along my spine. The horrendous ballet upon my bones carried itself through. I sat up with muddy palms and soiled clothes, sodden in mud and clay from the rivers break. Could my phantom have left me here in the cruellest turn of fate, wondering if I had passed over into the dread. Or perhaps my time was not yet to come, and the skeletal dispatcher of souls was mistaken in his identity that night upon the tepid pools of mossy green. Give back to me the assurance that I am living, that the beating in my chest is that of my heart and not a mere echo of a drum beat lost in the void of great hollowness. Could the dew upon my face be the moisture of a new day promising of safety and a lover’s soft protection or was this wetness the damp rot that sets in on all those doomed to fall into the murky underworld’s labyrinth of loss? Buzzing thoughts of swarming dread circled my mind as I pieced together the semblance of reality and fiction. Was the boatman real and would he return. Although my nightmare appeared over at the break of day, I caught myself shedding tears onto the riverbank as I knew I would not be released from memory or spectre of the river Lethe.

END