The Awakening Part 1. Chapter 5

Firelight grew dim, its flames flickered anemically letting off little warmth. Ezra shivered and damned the weak embers that seemed as cold as Jasher’s body, as his heartbeat raced away, chasing after shallow breaths in the suffocating darkness. He tortured himself with regret - Why hadn’t I just listened to Jasher, Ezra wondered, bemoaning the foregone zeal that spirited him down to the pit of hell in which he languished. “We could have felt sunlight’s embrace by now, and that deceitful locust would have been the one rotting away in this pit,” Ezra whispered to the uncaring gloom.

“And left me all alone,” a low voice from the darkness rumbled.

Tiny hairs stood up on the back of Ezra’s neck and he brandished the dying flame like a sword, swinging it wildly to stave off the source of that voice. “Is that you death?” Ezra stammered, fighting a losing battle against his own primal fear.  

The silent darkness responded in kind, consuming the last echoes of fire from Ezra’s torch. Ezra collapsed to his knees. “I heard you,” Ezra shrieked, fierce tears streaming down his face as he continued to frantically swing his torch, searching for something in the unrelenting abyss.

“I know that I heard you,” Ezra sobbed, clawing at his ears to force them shut. “Why won’t you answer me?”

Sufjan watched the man in the pit fall to his knees and begin to paw at the earth. The dying torchlight barely illuminated the frenzied man and the body. He knew the mob was rushing and clawing at his back. He heard their avaricious footsteps clamoring for blood. Sufjan couldn’t risk asking questions when there were two men, but the pitiful man at the edges of his own mind, seemed a safer target. “Be sure to dig it deep enough for two,” he chuckled from the edge of the pit.

Ezra was unwilling to look up to the voice. “You’re not real,” Ezra spat at him, his tears making mud out of the dirt he was digging. “I’m as real as the shining sun, and though neither of us can see it, it is there, even in this night in which we are trapped,” Sufjan answered calmly. Ezra got up off his knees and picked up the torch holding it up in the direction of the voice. Ezra studied Sufjan. Sufjan’s shorn head and sunken cheeks looked skull-like to Ezra as he scrutinized the figure in the darkness. Ezra also noted the black robe encircling the man like a terrible shadow. “Ishtala,” Ezra said reverently as his chin quivered uncontrollably. “Let me pass, you who stalk the silent and the damned.”

“If I am death, then why should I suffer you to live?” Sufjan chuckled. “Because you have already taken Jasher,” Ezra bargained, desperately hoping to prevail on the phantoms mercy. “Yes, but were there not three of you? To where has the small one escaped?” Sufjan asked coyly. “He’s pestilence of the vilest sort. You should take him and leave me here to bury Jasher.” Ezra watched as death himself, the dark Ishtala, mulled his offer – he felt uncomfortable as he tried to look for any semblance of meaning in the black voids where a normal man’s eyes would be.

“That is acceptable but first tell me this.”

“Anything.” Ezra responded hastily.

“How did the small fellow escape.”

Ezra fidgeted, bristling at Sufjan’s question, making a wry smile spread across Sufjan’s face.

“You had the vermin cornered,” Sufjan teased, although Ezra’s fear of what he could not see prevented him from seeing the amused grin spreading across the phantom’s face.  

“He’s a beguiling sort of vermin, but surely no one can outwit death,” Ezra said bowing obsequiously. “Many have tried, I suppose, yourself included,” Sufjan chuckled darkly.

“Speak plainly. I find flowery words soothe the ears but addle the brain.”

“Yes sir,” Ezra spoke plainly. “Jasher and I witnessed a prophet today. Like you, he stripped the varnishing from the wealthy and the priestly, so at long last we could see them for who they were. Parasites. We sentenced a priest to death.” Ezra recounted. Sufjan watched the man’s eyes flicker brightly, even as the torch in his outstretched hand had all but extinguished. “The masked prophet opened our eyes and told us to reclaim our freedom. And we did!” Ezra exclaimed proudly beating his chest. “We marched high up to the monastery where they feasted on our ignorance, and we burned their high place.” The torch extinguished, and Sufjan let himself shudder as the man in the pit recounted burning manuscripts and priests alike.

“Was it not enough to burn the monastery and the manuscripts?” Sufjan interjected. “There is no liberation while our oppressors lived. And there would be no lasting freedom while even a one survived,” Ezra expressed passionately, revealing the iconoclastic zealotry that had spirited into this dark abyss. “And so, you followed the mouse down to the trap and he escaped while you were ensnared,” Sufjan scoffed at the bloodthirsty man. “Sate my curiosity of how you found yourself imprisoned in such a delicious irony.”

“He pulled me to my feet after I found Jasher’s body. He shook me and begged me to help him escape. ‘We’re on death’s path. We need to flee now,’” Ezra said mimicking the monk. “He…” Ezra fidgeted uncomfortably. “I made him try to hoist me up the side of the pit, but he moaned and groaned about my weight. So, he made me lift him up. I don’t know how he did it, but he managed to pull himself over the ledge after I hoisted him up on my shoulders.” “You played the fool,” Sufjan chuckled. “He was a weak little insect, he couldn’t have lifted me up,” Ezra protested, his cracking voice belying his embarrassment.  

Sufjan called over his shoulders, “If you say so,” and receded into the darkness. “Aren’t you going to help me?” Ezra begged. “A man is deceived once, a child is fooled twice, but only a true fool is tricked a third time.”

“Just help me, please,” Ezra pleaded wringing his hands in desperate supplication.

Sufjan turned around and considered the silhouette laying prostrate in the dirt. The torch’s last fading embers cast a serene glow on the man. He was a fallen angel begging for Sufjan’s intercession. That man didn’t deserve saving, Sufjan thought to himself, judging the man for torturing the helpless monk. But Sufjan hadn’t deserved saving from his entombment. Not if the old man really knew of Sufjan’s past sins. But perhaps salvation is wasted on the deserving and undeserving alike, Sufjan considered as he looked down at his hands; their lines crisscrossing in deep wrinkles, telling a story that he wasn’t entirely certain still belonged to him. None of that’s mine, he determined once more studying the lines in his hands. But this decision is. Without another thought, Sufjan eased himself down the side of the pit and hoisted the man on his shoulders and threw him over the ledge to freedom.

Ezra scrambled to his feet and looked down at the shrouded figure at the base of the pit. “Who’s the fool now?” Ezra chuckled. “Only one of us was stuck in the pit,” Sufjan responded with a low voice. Ezra stumbled backward and struggled to his feet and sprinted away.

“Don’t say that death isn’t without mercy,” Sufjan chuckled as he listened to the Ezra laugh manically while racing for an exit he wasn’t sure the fleeing man would be able to find.