The Stairs

Tradition. It’s a word that I used to fondly look at. The festivals, memorials, town gatherings and... the worships are some of the few that come to mind, but it tends to fade in and out with my lapses of concentration and the laboured breaths I have to take to climb up the hill to my little cottage on the mountain. However, there is one thing I will never forget, can’t forget. Even when my eyes roll over while I struggle on my deathbed trying to escape from It, I will still see it. Etched into my vision, into my eyes, marking its pearly whites, the gates will close on me. Marred with symbols, scars, letters of arcane, I will be denied entrance at the foot of those steps, and with a push, I will be sent down, plunged into It, where I will suffer for all eternity. I know this will happen, for I have seen it with these eyes. These damned cursed eyes.

I digress, you probably do not want to hear about my own lament, regrets, or the story of an old man doomed. Take my dagger. The dagger hidden underneath the rotting floorboard on which you found this letter. This will not save you, but nothing will save you.

However, do not stop reading. You are the only one given time to read this, to delay your suffering, to remember and see the last testament of my existence. Go slowly, savour it, feed on whatever little time you have left, like a vulture would on a carcass bare of meat. You have no choice. Accompany this man, or whatever of me is, if anything is, left behind.

My body can no longer keep up with my mind, a source of redemption in this pitiable state, as for what I have experienced is something that the mind can’t bear placing a heavy toll on my body. It is a pressure that varies in severity, something that can’t be put to words, only experienced; the tangibility of the intangible, the order in the chaos, the coexistence of antitheses, something that can’t exist but somehow does. You can’t understand, you won’t be able to, so do not bother. Save your energy, your mental willpower, your soul, something that you won’t realise is finite until you come to face It.

You must have lots of questions. I can’t blame you if you’re confused. They never told you, they never told me, they never told us. Why was I dragged out from my house, cuffed and bound to a pole? Why did no one come when I screamed, begged, prayed for someone to save me? Why am I here in this decrepit house? The house your parents told you to avoid at all costs.

Don’t be surprised. I know about the rumours that have spread about me. That I’m crazy, deranged, a heretic, a mad man who has nothing... nothing at all left for him. I’m not angry about those rumours. After all, how else could you interpret a man who came back from the grave as sane, as human, as earth-bound? How else could you view him when he dragged himself across the roads of the towns, digging his fingers into the earth with a vendetta, an unrestrained anger at nothing directed towards something, an attempt to mark the earth for his existence? That madness was something they couldn’t understand, so they shunned him, they shunned me. With whatever I had left of my body, my mangled, wounded, untouchable body I went. I crawled, begged, prostrated myself for help, begging for the town which raised me to save me.

But, they did not.

They shut their doors, closed their curtains, brought their children in their grasp, praying, praying again to their god, their godforsaken god, to save them from me, the embodiment of sin and evil, of everything they preached against.

My friends, once-friends that is, responded similarly. I’ll never forget their eyes. Those eyes full of lukewarm hostility. Eyes that didn’t hate me, but rather revulsed me at the most primitive of levels; that my existence was far beneath theirs, unable to even warrant their despise for what I had become. It was a rejection of an existence that went against them, against their souls.

Don’t confuse me; I am not undead, as much as I would like to be. I am very much human, the same blood that flows in you flows in me. But we are different, for now. You too will very much understand the things that I am trying to tell you, to put into words, regardless of whether you would be willing to or not.

I apologise. The ramblings of this old man have diverted this conversation once more. I will provide answers. Answers that might not answer questions you currently have, but answers they most definitely are.

Right next to my cottage, under the groove of the cliff that it is perched on, you’ll soon be greeted with a path. Do not bother running back to the town, they will get you and they will not be happy. They will not kill you. Under no circumstances will you die here because you are necessary for this... this abomination, but they will make sure that you are slowly stripped of whatever you possess.

You will be the only person, alone, pitifully alone and by yourself, as you navigate the marked trees, the parted foliage caused by the predecessors before us, you will face what they did to me and many others. They will try to break you. Those thoughts you bury, your regrets, hate, malice, your corruption, everything will surface if you let your fragility become apparent and that is what they are after.

Do not give in, this is the least of your worries. You may despair, you may sit down and never stand up again, not knowing whether you are walking somewhere or to nowhere. Always know that they will always be watching and they will always have a way to make you move. Those bastards can somehow make even the most soulless individuals, the most individually empty, gain life, albeit for a very short time.

You have seen it before. Remember, try to.