DREAD

Dusk was always a strange time on the George Estate. 

On the one hand, it was gorgeous. The ancient trees wore their autumnal colors - reds, oranges, and purples bathed in the pale cool blue of the full moon. Crows flitted from treetop to treetop, cawing out in farewell to their friends as each found their roosts for the night, bats hunting for bugs marked only by their silhouettes as they appeared and disappeared through the treetops. The sun, already long set, left streaks of purple and gold trailing across the sky as reminders of the glory of the day. But on the other hand, it never felt comfortable. The stunning sights left a distinct impression, but somehow everything felt off, wrong. Shadows danced, macabre silhouettes and sinister outlines born of innocent trees. The darkness writhed with horrors unseen, itching to burst forth as one’s imagination gave them form. 

It was nearly time for the Weighing. 

The Weighing was probably a strange custom to anyone who hadn’t been raised with it. Certainly it seemed strange to Opal now, after just a few years away from home, but so much had changed about himself that she felt she scarcely recognized the streets she’d grown up on. The last time she’d walked this gravel path, she’d been on the cusp of adulthood and ready to set out for adventure - but now her boots had seen four continents and she was the best part of a decade older. 

No matter how old one gets, though, some things remain magical. Watching the wrought-iron street lamps spark into green phosphorescence at the first touch of moonlight was one of those things for Opal. Her great-grandfather had engineered their location, and the route of the gravel path they lined, such that they would light up in order as one walked along them, guiding you slowly into the center of the grounds like stolid companions on a sleepless night. 

As she trudged through the grounds, shoulders chafing at the suit she hadn’t worn in eight years, her fingers drifted inexorably to the centerpiece of the whole ceremony. Her Shard. 

The hexagonal crystal shivered under her touch, thrumming to her pulse between her fingertips. She resisted the urge to take it from her pocket, or to return it to what her family swore was the only proper place for such a sacred item - she’d grown to hate the feeling of necklaces, and besides the discomfort there was a very real danger associated with such jewelry. So it had remained in her pocket, day in and day out, through the night, like a rosary bead only given token attention when necessary. Maybe that was sacrilegious of her, or perhaps it was simply irresponsible, but she didn’t have much alternative. With each step closer to the center of the grounds, the Shard grew warmer, until it was nearly too hot to touch. 

She arrived at the bonfire just as the last hints of sunset faded into murky blackness. And what a bonfire it was - more than a dozen feet across and with flames licking skyward into the night air, casting light for hundreds of feet to the very edges of the clearing. In doing so, it lit up faces familiar yet estranged - there was Henry, to his left Abraham, and… 

Holly. 

Great Gods above, Holly. 

She was a vision in a navy-blue dress, Lunestone earrings glowing faintly where the moon’s rays touched them, her beautiful smile as warm and inviting as the bonfire which lit it. Long, flowing brown hair trailed over one shoulder. Opal felt her heart skip - felt her legs lock - just barely recovered before she took an early dinner of gravel. Those sharp eyes found Opal’s own and that look she knew so well, that little silent shared laugh, came over the brunette in the same way Opal remembered from so long ago. 

It wasn’t possible. 

She blinked, and Holly was gone. Maybe that was for the best. 

Despite the years that had passed since her last Weighing, much of the ceremony came naturally. The mingling, the bells which announced the beginning of the ritual itself, the thunder of the drums, the sight of the scales weighing shards against empty air. But as she drew nearer to the scales himself, the set of measures silhouetted harshly against the bonfire’s orange tendrils, a deep sense of unease settled over him. This, too, was familiar, but it was not any easier now than it had been at any time before. If anything, the newfound breadth of her worldly experience felt daunting, a weight she had not ever had to carry to previous Weighings. Perhaps she had seen four continents - but that left her much more wary, much more interested in honest understanding than ever before, and this was not something that she could find easily here. 

The Weighing, according to her father, was the measure of a person’s life. Typically, this was understood to mean a figurative consideration of their actions over the past year, though the more literal adherents insisted that the ritual assessed the state of one’s very soul. 

Opal’s mother, by contrast, had called the Weighing a bunch of meaningless, pseudo-spiritual nonsense that served only to repress those who failed or refused to conform. There was a reason she, like so many, had slipped quietly away one night. 

More than half the gravestones in the cemetery stood six feet above empty pinewood boxes, commemorating those who had ‘deserted’ the town. Her mother’s was among them.

Another bore Opal’s name. 

When she finally found himself standing in front of the enormous scales, waiting for the Herald to beckon her forwards, she clenched her hands into fists to try and conceal the shaking. 

“Come, friend, and be Weighed.”

Opal stepped forwards. In her pocket, her Shard thrummed. 

Slowly, she withdrew the green crystal and held it by the leather string before lowering it as gently as she could onto the left-hand scale pan. On the opposite pan rested only air. The scales settled as they usually did - a gentle rocking left, then right, then left again, and equalized. Faithful adherents to the ritual insisted that this was when her soul was weighed, or more properly, Weighed, for the amount of sin in her heart. Opal was pretty sure it was just a trick mechanism, but that didn’t really matter. 

“You have been Weighed,” began the Herald, already expecting the usual outcome. “And you have been found…” he trailed off, brow furrowed, eyes locked on the scales. 

Inexorably, the scale began to settle to the left. Then, without any further ado, they exploded into ten thousand tiny shards of silver. 

With a burst of blue light, a form began to rise from the flames of the bonfire, which began to coalesce to form two gigantic, twisted horns and an evil, grinning face. Its edges flickered with the surges and ebbs of the bonfire, crackles and pops and herses momentarily erasing small areas of the figure only for them to return, born anew, when the flame grew more intense once more. Where previously the bonfire had been warm, carefully controlled and designed, it now raged like an inferno, only barely constrained behind the hand-laid stone walls which made up the fire pit. The face was gnarled and weathered, its brow furrowed in constrained anger. 

Before Opal could even process the sudden existence of what certainly gave the appearance of sentient flame, a horrendous hers nearly deafened him. It sounded like a massive leak from a steam boiler - and as a huge scar opened in the surface of the earth, a canyon ripping the earth apart more than a dozen feet and several hundred feet in length. From the pit lunged a single hand, rotted flesh sloughing off its bones as it scrabbled for grip in the dirt and grass. 

The skeletal hand was joined by throngs of others, sprouting like daisies from the earth and followed quickly by twisted masses of flesh and bones that had once been men. Quickly, the throng of people scattered, diving for cover or running until they felt like they were a safe distance from the evil bonfire-face and the living dead. Opal didn’t think there was such a thing, but somehow she could not compel himself to back away. Her knees would not move. 

The face in the bonfire spoke. 

“Ah, Opal… I’ve been waiting for you.”

“You… you have?”

Could bonfires smile? This one did. “I’ve been waiting for you for years, my child. Eons. Time beyond your comprehension.” A cackle without humor. “Well, I suppose it didn’t have to be you. But it is, now. Congratulations! Please come quietly.”

If there was one thing Opal absolutely did not want to do at that point, it was come quietly. So she did the first thing that came to mind instead. She kicked the shattered remains of the balances towards the bonfire, leapt past a skeletal figure to snatch her Shard, and bolted. 

Amidst the terrified screaming of ritualists and the disappointed sigh of Mr. Bonfire-Face, Opal could hear the horrific moans of the shambolic undead hordes on her tail. As she ran, massive fissures continued to rend the earth around her, steam gushing forth into the sky as still more decrepit undead surged through the holes in the crust of the earth. 

“There’s no use running,” taunted the voice from the bonfire. The face began to appear in the light of every lamp, in flames which burst into being above the treetops, in the glow of the moon. In the treetops, it laughed at her - in the lamps, it lashed out with gnashing fangs - in the moon, it simply smirked downwards, content in its inevitable victory. 

The cold edges of the brisk fall air were being blasted away by the geothermal heat which spewed forth alongside the undead as they rose from the earth. The clashing temperature extremes stirred up ferocious winds which buffeted Opal back with every step. She could barely make progress in the face of the gale force winds and pretty soon she was left entirely at the mercy of the air, barely able to stand. 

Grotesque, horrifying faces drew ever-nearer. Shambling masses of twisted flesh and bone, barely-recognizable heaps of gore and viscera which had somehow achieved motive power. They flowed from the earth like water, bearing down on Opal. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t escape. There was no way out. All that remained was a slow, horrifying death at the hands of these twisted fiends and a face in the Weighing’s bonfire. 

Opal looked up and the world paused for a moment.

Holly leant against a tree on the other side of a fissure. The same wind which nearly took Opal into the sky gently tousled her hair. “Giving up already?” She challenged. Blue eyes twinkled at Opal, lit softly in orange by the fires of hell. “You can do better, Opal. Think a little.”

Opal tried to shout back to her, but the wind whipped away her words. She hoped that her expression adequately portrayed her confusion but the only response she got either way was a roll of those beautiful eyes. Holly smirked fondly at her and Opal fought to remember what she should - or even could - do to stop the end of the world when her soul had been judged unworthy of life. 

And then she remembered. Long-lost lore, from her youth. A hushed whisper, tucked in the arms of a caring mother. Protection from the zealousness and anger of a world that could not accept him for who she was. The knowledge that some connections did not need to be maintained.

Only one way out.

Opal lifted a trembling hand against the wind and looked at her Shard. When had it turned green? Wasn’t it white, years ago, when she was a girl? The undead hordes shifted nervously, ceasing their shuffling at the sight of the totem. Could she do this? 

She had no choice. 

Slowly, she placed the vibrating crystal beneath the heel of her boot and pressed downwards. A sickening crunch, the sound of bone snapping. A burst of brisk, salty air rushing outwards in all directions.

Then, silence.

The wind abated. The undead fell away, crumpling to the dirt and grass. Holes in the earth knit themselves together. The face in the bonfire shrunk away to nothing. All that remained was Holly’s soft, sad smile.

“You shouldn’t have come back, hon,” she said. “It never ends well.” Words failed her. His pulse pounded in her ears. What had she done? She lifted her boot slowly. Beneath her heel were two sharp chunks of hexagonal green. Her Shard, now split in twain. Holly shook her head. “Don’t worry about that, Opal. It doesn’t matter now, anyways.”

Finally, she found something - anything - to say. “How are you here?”

A sad frown for an answer. “That’s the wrong question.” 

She had so many more - what had happened, why were there hundreds of corpses surrounding him, what the hell had been waiting eons for her - but none of them mattered nearly half so much as the thought that Holly could be with her again. “It’s the only question,” Opal insisted, ignoring the way her voice broke and her chest trembled with exertion. “The only one that matters.” 

“We don’t have much time,” Holly deflected. “What matters is this - it’s over.” Wistful, resigned to the tragedy of it all. “I can’t ever see you again.”

“But I just got you back,” she said lamely. She reached out towards her - she shrunk back, even from twenty feet away. 

“I’m gone, sweetheart,” she said. “You know that. I’ve been gone for a long time, you just never admitted it. Stay the fuck away from here. Stay safe.” Her eyes lost their edge, for just a moment. “I’ll see you again. When it’s time, not before.”

The night became empty and silent once more. 

And Opal wept. 

Photos by Béla Kershisnik (@infocuswithyou)