Sabbath

The…the dark.  God, so dark. Can’t feel, can’t think, can’t…
I’m floating in the black.  No, not floating.  There’s something under my feet.  My God there’s nothing here but me.  Am I dying? Am I…dead?
Can I move?
I lift my hands in front of me.  Don’t want to stumble blindly into a
wall.  
Jesus! 
Something, I touched something.  What the hell…
Movement, in the black. 
“Fraaaank.”
Who’s there?  
“Fraaaaaaank!”
Mary?  Mary is that you, baby? God, baby, I’m sorry.  I never meant to hurt you!
Light then, blinding, bright, so so bright.
I’m somewhere else, I recognize this place.  My living room.  I look down, there’s a beer in one hand, my belt in the other.  I gaze up to see my wife huddled in the far corner. She stares at me through one good eye, the other swollen the size of a grapefruit.  Her hands reach out to me, pleading.  It’s like she doesn’t recognize me.
Baby…
Who did this to her? 
Movement, behind me.
I turn, fast as lightning.  A boy stands there.  It’s my boy, Jamie, my firstborn.  There’s fear in his eyes, tears threatening to overflow, the baseball bat cocked over his shoulder barely more than a twig.  He screams and swings.  I drop the belt and rattlesnake-quick pluck it from his trembling hands.
“You little shit.”
What? No. Those aren’t my words. Can’t be!
A hand darts out.  My hand.  I feel the impact as my knuckles make contact with the side of his head, rocking him back.
No. God, no!!
It doesn’t stop.  God, it doesn’t stop.  My fist crushes the boy’s chest.  
“Think you’re man enough to take a swing at me, huh?”
I rage on the inside, screaming, crying.   
My son is crumpled on the ground, my foot lashes out to strike his face, his ribs, over and over again, hard angles growing soft.  I feel him break. 
“See how you like a taste of your own medicine, boy.”
The hand, my hand, somehow (impossibly), God, it’s my hand that raises the bat.  Jamie’s eyes grow wide.  How are they so wide?  It’s like they’re going to split the sides of his skull they’re so wide.  
Oh.  Oh, Jesus. Please, God, Jesus and all the angels, please don’t, no nono…
The bat descends.  The world is in slow motion.  I see my wife’s face from the corner of my eye. Such…hatred.  Rage.  Impotent rage.  When did she first start to hate me?
We were in love once.  Weren’t we?  God, if we were, how did we ever get to here? What was so bad in the world that we could ever reach this place? 
Move, Jamie.  Please move.
The bat descends, so slow I can count the grains of its shaft.
Please move.
Closer, closer to the soft skull that will surely cave in.
Please.
Closer.
FUCKING MOVE!
Blackness.
Impossible, inky blackness. Again, like the living room was never there.  Never happened.  
But it did.
I collapse upon my knees to the unseen floor, weeping.  Weeping for what was, and for what could have been, the pain and guilt overwhelming me. 
God, am I dead?  Do the dead cry?
I don’t know how long I stay like that, drowning in my own misery, before I become aware of the presence in front of me. 
Where the dark I’m wrapped in is just emptiness waiting passively to be filled, the substance of the creature before me now is hungry, a malevolent void actively consuming even those untraceable remnants of light.   It points at me there in the black, somehow even without seeing I know it points at me, just as I know its unseen face holds a mouth far too wide filled with far too many sharp teeth, just as I know the soft drip drip dripping sound I hear is drool trickling from its mouth, saliva forming disgusting pools on the unseen floor at the thought of a meal soon to come.  
“Chooooseeeeeen.”
Its voice echoes throughout the cavernous dark, cascading like deep peals of distant thunder, the shear immensity of it rolling over and through me, churning guts I’m not sure I still have, raising hairs and goosebumps on arms that might only exist in my mind.  And, somehow, in spite of the terrifying nature of the call, I find myself rising to my feet and, like a puppet on a string, taking a jerking step toward the creature.
God, no.  Please.
I shuffle closer to its extended arm, unwilling, fighting with every ounce of my being, closer to the pointing finger I know (beyond shadow of a doubt) is tipped with a wickedly sharp claw waiting to be dug into my eyesocket, plucking that tastiest of morsels away and popping it into its too wide mouth to be crushed into creamy jelly by the too many (far too many) sharp teeth.    
I fight, bones and muscles that may not even be there screaming from the effort.  I feel something tear, deep on the inside, followed by a flash of pain like a piece of my soul has been torn away.
Doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t.  The pain forces focus, lets me break free from the hold of the thing.  Lets me turn and run, run stumblingly away, far away from the deep throated too many toothed thing waiting to eat my eyes.
My feet catch on the ground I can’t see and I sprawl hard, scraping my cheek as I fall.  Lights flash like fireworks dancing flittingly in the summer sky as my face bounces against the surface.  I shake my head, trying to extinguish the spots, and realize I can see again.  
Pale light from the sun floats through a broken window far above me.  I recognize where I am, the meat factory I’ve spent so many years of my life, murdering cattle with well-placed sledgehammer blows to the head, slashing their throats and letting the brackish blood empty out of their lifeless bodies.  
The building is familiar, yet not, older and more rundown than I ever remember it. Like my surroundings my own sense of self seems somehow…off.  
I’m myself, but why do I feel so strange?  
As if in answer I catch my reflection in a small cracked mirror hanging lopsidedly from the wall, a stranger staring back at me.  Long, greasy, dark hair falls in a shower around the jowls of my heavyset face, a face covered in suspicious blots of red.  
I become aware of a weight in my hand and, involuntarily raising it, find I am holding a small knife, the sort you might use to fillet a fish.  A moan draws my attention across the room where I spy a woman face down on a table.  The evidence of extensive abuse is all too clear, several cameras arranged around her there to record what is clearly a torture session.
Oh, God, I have to help her.
I try to rush to the woman’s side but instead find myself moving toward her with a slow, jaunty step.  I see she has been chained, the links of her restraints so tight that at some points her skin has chafed away, her wrists and ankles raw and red as hamburger.  My stomach turns as I see where she is missing several fingers and toes, the stumps black from where they have been crudely cauterized shut.
“Please…” her voice is barely a whisper, the word wet and mushy from a mouth missing most of its teeth.
Don’t worry. I try to tell her. I’ll help you.  I’ll get you out of here.
But what comes out is an alien voice instead.
“You begging for it again? Sluts just can’t get enough. Guess that’s where your brats got it from.” 
My gaze shifts to the right and my unconscious, helpless mind starts to scream at the sight of three little girls, similarly abused, similarly strapped face down on tables, horrifically unmoving.  Their backs, dear lord, the skin from their backs has been taken and nailed to the wall behind them like canvas, the words painted across them a crimson matching the spatters marking my face.
God, no, God, no please please please wake up wake up…
“Ah well.  Work to be done, darlin’.  Maybe after though.”  
My hands are moving of their own accord, one holding her skin taut, the other taking the knife and ever so slowly making an incision along her shoulders with the careful precision of a surgeon.  The woman convulses under the blade, the agony of her inarticulate screams growing higher in pitch as the knife slides through her flesh.
“Stop moving, you’re gonna fuck this up.”
My hand holding the knife cuffs the back of her head sharply, her face smashing against the table.
Her thrashing stops though her moans continue and my hand resumes the cut, red blood welling wherever the blade touches.  At last, the human parchment is complete and I peel it from its former owner with a moist squelching sound.  Humming a little tune, I carry it over to the wall by its fellows and, retrieving a hammer and several nails, tack it up beside them.  
Jesus Christ…
“And for the finishing touch.”
Continuing my ditty I return to the woman where she still lies twitching.  I grab the sides of the table and, my observing mind realizing it has wheels attached to its legs, swing it about and give it a shove, bracing myself on my arms and riding it like a child might a shopping cart.  The woman emits a sharp cry as the table crashes into the wall.
“Aw, shaddup, ya thirsty bitch.  I’ll get to you in a minute.  Now where is that…ah, there we go.”  
I bend and retrieve a paint brush from where it lies on the cold, concrete ground, the tough bristles of its head already stained with a clinging redness.  Taking the brush to the woman I run it along her as she jerks, soaking up the blood from her skinless back, and complete my message on the wall.
What…what the hell is “Her Red Right Hand?”
“There! Now.” I turn to the woman, my hand loosening my belt.
God, please no.  She’s had enough.  Get her to a fucking hospital!
“I’ve got some thoughts about what to do with that toothless mouth of yours, darlin’ and…hmm, just a sec.”
I squeeze her cheeks with my hand, forcing her jaws open.
“Dammit.  Almost toothless.  Hang on.”  
What are you doing?
I walk to the worktable along the far wall, perusing the contents strewn across it.
No.  You fucking animal.  NO.
“Here we go!”
The woman’s eyes widen as I turn holding a pair of pliers, moving back to her.
“Now, won’t be a minute. C’mere.”  
I try to hold myself back. I mentally grapple with my unresponsive limbs, hoping by pure force of will to stop my hands that reach for the woman’s mouth.  
Maybe…maybe this time!  Surely I can stop it!
She starts to scream again as I go to work.  Trapped inside my mind I shriek with her.  
Popcorn.  It sounds like popcorn, cracking and snapping.
I feel as though I’m standing on the edge of a mental cliff rising out of a sea of insanity.  The depths call to me, promising a warm release within their dark, seething waters, and I willingly take the leap.
Blackness.
Back.  I’m back in the black.  Is this what being crazy feels like?
“You can’t escape that easily, Mr. Lawrence.”
My heart leaps at the sound of the voice and I turn, startled. 
A man stands there wearing only a pair of dark slacks, his torso as bare as his bald head.  He is a giant, towering more than a foot over me. The only reason I can make out any details at all are thanks to a strange scripted pattern of symbols etched upon his exposed skin and glowing with a soft, otherworldly light.   
Who…are you? Where are we?
The words I try to speak are silent, seemingly only echoed in my mind, but the man appears to be able to hear me just the same.  A cruel smile breaks the stony edges of his face revealing the sharp white teeth behind his lips, his voice carrying the dangerous weight of a distant storm.
“I am called Creed, Mr. Lawrence.  You find yourself in the Interstice, a realm between life and death, an existence between the physical and astral planes of reality.  Here we lie outside of time and the laws so commonly thought of as absolutes by men.” 
That’s…
“Crazy?” his grin widens.
How did I get here?
The man named Creed chuckles.
“Don’t you remember, Mr. Lawrence?  The All-Mother brought you.”
The darkness shifts, and as it was with the factory and living room I find myself in another place, but this time I can hardly see.  I’m lost in a heavy, roiling haze of fog so thick I can barely make out the shape of the structure squatting malevolently in front of me.  I can tell my balance is off, though I still have no more control of my limbs than I did either of the other times, and I fall forward, my leg banging sharply on the steps of the house before me.  With an effort I regain my feet.  
I’m back home, back in Arthur’s Wake.  This busted old place is…the Wicker House?  What am I doing here?
“Hello, Father.”
I lurch about, swaying, the booze still strongly affecting my body’s coordination, and find Jamie standing behind me.
That’s right.  I came here because…Jamie was missing.
My thoughts flash back to the living room.  Relief washes over me, quickly followed by shame.  I remember.  The bat didn’t kill him as I’d feared when I relived the event moments ago, but instead broke his arm.  My kicks cracked some of his ribs, but in a matter of weeks he’d recovered from both. Physically at least.  
Trapped in the strange fog, my mind still somehow manages to wander back to a night not long after the fight.  I’d gone into the room Jamie shared with his brother, Lester, and sat down heavily next to him on the bed where he lay struggling to get comfortable and failing.  Because of what I’d done. 
Jamie tried to pretend to be asleep.  I remember that.  He’d tried, but couldn’t thanks to the cracked ribs keeping his breathing short and hitched.  I sat there, wondered if I should tell him I knew he was awake, but didn’t.  Couldn’t.  I knew he hated me for what I’d done to him and his mother.  I knew he wanted to kill me.  Part of me hoped he would.  
I’d hoped I’d be able to make it up to him, turn over a new leaf.  But then he’d gone missing.  That fucking Fontaine girl that lived down the street…what was her name?  Morgan.  Yeah, Morgan Fontaine.  Her sister had disappeared and she’d convinced Jamie and Lester to come with her to this rundown shithole of a building to try to find her.  The fucking Wicker House, a place whose original crackpot owner had murdered his servants and then thrown himself out the attic window onto the spikes of the iron fence below.  The place every fucking deadbeat and boozehound in The Wake would swear up and down on their mother’s grave they’d seen weird lights and heard the sound of kids playing, a beautiful woman smiling at them from the upstairs window.  They’d come here, Morgan and Lester and Jamie, and Jamie’d gone missing, and so had Lester, and the Fontaine girl wouldn’t tell a straight story, something about fog, and weird symbols, and Wicker’s journal, and black-eyed children and fucking women in white and now the girl was being sent off to the nut house by her parents and my boys, my fucking boys are still missing and Mary’s left me and…
And Jamie is standing in front of me.  
But…he looks…wrong.
My drunken body doesn’t realize it, doesn’t see the unnatural paleness of my boy’s skin, the dark, sunken blackness of his eyes.  Still the unwilling passenger I fall to my knees with my body.
“Jamie?  Is it really you?  I’ve missed you, boy.  You and your brother.”
Get up!  Get up and run, you fucking idiot!  Don’t you see that’s not your son?  
Jamie takes a step toward me out of the fog, and there are other figures there with him.  There’s Lester, my other boy.  And there’s the Fontaine girl’s sister.  And then…
Fuck.  Fuuucking hell.  She was right.  The girl was right about all of it.
A woman materializes out of the fog behind the children.  Or at least, something that looks like a woman, dressed all in white.  Impossibly beautiful, impossibly pale except for her midnight black hair, and her ruby red lips, and her eyes…God, she stares at me with eyes of fire, terrible, cruel.  Hungry.  
I kneel there, a drunken defeated shell, as the children come to me, wrap me in their arms, squeeze me tighter and tighter.  I hold Jamie and Lester both, never want to let them go, even as their teeth and nails start to burrow into me, as the woman approaches with the fire of her eyes burning even brighter, hot as the sun, as her mouth opens far too wide, filled with far too many teeth, as the children begin to eat and rip and tear and the screams from my mouth are lost in the white fog and the woman is bending over me and I feel my guts split open from my belly where Jamie has his face buried in me and I’m still holding him and now her maw is open so wide and I’m being drawn into the dark…
“Do you remember now, Mr. Lawrence?”
Back in the black.  Again.  The Interstice.
The deepness of Creed’s voice does nothing to hide his amusement.
Yeah.  Yeah, I fucking remember.
“Good.  Then you realize that, considering the current condition of your mortal shell, there would be certain…mmm…complications restoring you to it.”
Complications?  I was ripped apart, asshole.
“Yes.  The children are very energetic in their work.”
I seethe silently.
What are you?
Creed bows, the strange symbols continuing to glow faintly.
“But a humble servant, Mr. Lawrence.  An acolyte if you will, a priest perhaps, of the First.  The All-Mother.  The White Queen.  She who leads the way into Darkness.”
You mean the white woman.  What is she, the devil?
He scoffs, “Nothing so trite.”
What then?  A god?
Creed sighs, “Mr. Lawrence, you were raised Christian?  Of course. Then it will do you much good to simply accept the fact that She is beyond your understanding.  It’s one of the things I find most amusing about mankind. You are fully capable of acknowledging the existence of the divine, or at least the possibility of it, the potential that something exists beyond the realm of mortal ken.” 
He laughs.
“And then what do you do? You name it, try to classify it, paint pictures in your mind’s eye, and promptly go about trying to convince one another, even to the point of murder and war, that your interpretation of the uninterpretable is the correct one.  It’s the stuff of folly.”
Creed taps his lip thoughtfully.
“Not that I mind the death and destruction, of course, as it serves as succor for my Mistress.”
Do you have a point?  And what are all these experiences I’ve been having here?  These fucking nightmares?
“Your experiences, Mr. Lawrence?” he grins lasciviously, “why memories, of course.”
A thrill of fear and confusion shoots through me.
What…memories?  But…I mean, the living room, sure, and the fog.  But the factory…that psycho wasn’t me!  Wasn’t even my body!
“Oh, Mr. Lawrence, don’t you understand?  The Interstice, I already told you, exists outside of time.  You are simply reliving some of the events you have yet to experience.  Most who come here play out instances that are of particular significance to them.  And knowing the role you are bound for, my oh my, I can only imagine how special it must have been.”
I barely register Creed’s words as my world spins.
You mean like the future?  Like…like time travel?
“I suppose, yes, after a fashion.  But not really.  You see, if you view time from a certain perspective, one of an outsider, then you realize that past, present, future, these all have no distinction, no true meaning.  All moments are happening now, Mr. Lawrence, and did happen, and will continue to happen, overlapping and inextricably intertwined.”
But, but what about free will?
“Ah, yes, the old Christian maxim.  It still exists, of course.”
Even as every decision has already been made?
“And will continue to be. The concepts are not mutually exclusive, Mr. Lawrence, even though it might seem like they are to an unenlightened mind.  Now…” he grins, “You asked the point of all this.  It is simply thus.  The All-Mother has need of you as her creature, one who can spread her will and influence.  To act as Her Hand, if you will.”
That’s…a being, so immense so utterly beyond.  What use could she possibly have of me?  Why not do it herself?
Creed shakes his head.
“She can and does what She is able.  You’ve met the Woman in White, my Lady’s avatar on your plane.  But She is limited in what circumstances she can affect your reality.  All the more so thanks to the meddling of those who would seek to undermine Her and the actions of Her many children.
“As to your specific purpose, is it such a foreign concept, Mr. Lawrence?  The all-powerful, omnipotent God of your religion nevertheless has his saints and prophets, his angels, those who more regularly interact with the mortal world on his behalf.   And for what?  Because the unfiltered majesty of his being would be too much for mere men to behold.  Truthfully, there are only a handful in any given era that possess the necessary evolutionary traits that allow them to achieve…mmm…ascension shall we say, with most of their faculties intact.  They are changed, body and soul, into something far more than human.”
And I’m one of them?
“You have the potential. It surprises me as well, Mr. Lawrence.”
So let me get this straight.  I’m some sort of chosen one.  You and this mistress of yours want me to become a kind of muscle for her. And in exchange for that you give me what exactly?
Creed grins.
“Nothing less than freedom, Mr. Lawrence.  Freedom from the conscience that has plagued you your whole life, the conscience that whispered those depressing reprimands in your ear as you sat on your boy’s bed after you’d hurt him so.  The very same that caused you such guilt when you saw the anger, the hatred emanating from your wife’s eyes.  You will be able to give in to your basest wants and desires, without fear or possibility of repercussion.  The world will be yours, no man will have the authority, much less the ability, to stop you.”
The sharp white teeth glint as his smile widens even further.
“Do we have a deal?”   
The darkness around us is pregnant with anticipation, the question hanging in the void like a physical object.  And I think now, as this man, this devil, stands in front of me, telling me my desires, offering me everything: 
There has to be a catch.
There is of course. It’s shining in his eyes that glow like fire, mirroring those of the woman in white, and in his sharp smile reflecting the soft glow of the symbols on his body.  
I’d be damning myself. Creed said his mistress feeds on despair and destruction.  I shudder as my thoughts turn back to the factory, to the woman’s screams as I walked to her holding the pair of pliers.
Popcorn.
I was raised in the church. Even after lapsing for years I’ve never been able to rid myself of the Catholic guilt that eats away at me every time I manage to fail.  And God knows there are many of those times.  That weight, present even when I knew what happens isn’t my fault
(though it usually is)
I could be free of that damned, omnipresent weight.  And it would only cost me my soul.
Does my choice here even matter?
The future.  Creed told me I’d seen the future, and the past, and that they were the same thing.  If that’s true, and considering everything I’m going through I have no reason to believe it isn’t, then the tortured woman, the factory, the words written on those terrible tapestries nailed to the wall:  the choice has already been made. 
Mary…we were in love once.  Weren’t we?
I turn to Creed.
All right.  To be free of the guilt.  The pain.  I’ll do it.  I’ll be her Hand.
It looks as though Creed’s smile will split his skull.
“Excellent.”
He steps to the side and my attention focuses on the area immediately behind where he had been standing.  My stomach drops as I recognize the same malevolent darkness from before.  But now, the black moves as a living thing, squirming and coalescing, pouring over and around itself in layers, solidifying, until by the light of Creed’s glowing symbols I see the Woman in White standing before me.
“Chosen.”
The word, Her voice, rings in my head like a bell.
My God, She’s beautiful.
She steps to me, almost close enough to touch before, with a slight shift of Her shoulders, Her clothes pool about Her feet, Her skin as white and pure and smooth as the garments She shed.  With a soft noise of desire She comes to me, Her lips meet my own, my hands catch in the thick tresses of Her ebony hair and She pulls Herself upon me, forces me inside Her. 
And we move together, this Goddess and I, as one.  And I recall:
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  And the earth was without form, and Void; and Darkness was upon the face of the deep.
She is the Void, the Darkness.
People always remember the light.  They never remember that before the light was the darkness.  The darkness was First.
No base lusting of animal desire is this.  No, our union is a sacred rite.  Holy.  A mass to praise the Darkness.  A Black Sabbath.
And as I feel Her change me, feel my soul being twisted and forged anew 
(How have I never felt my soul before?)
I am taken on one final journey, one last memory during my stay within the Interstice.  
The Earth is ablaze.  I stand next to my Mistress, enraptured as the creatures of the Darkness roam across the hunting grounds, the screams and prayers of their prey as they run, terrified, unanswered by the false gods to which they are uttered.  She sings, the All-Mother, in a voice that speaks of loss and despair and wanting.  And home.  Her Song of Joy echoes across the land, leaving madness and despair in its wake, ushering in the end of time and leading the way back into the Dark that existed before all things.  The Darkness that is She.
The memory ends.  I am back in the darkness, the weight of my beloved, my Woman in White pressing down against my chest.  I am happy as She lies there, nestled in the crook of my arm.  
Until I turn, and find the fiend Creed grinning at me triumphantly, and before I can wonder…my perception is opened.  
And the Woman turns to dust in my arms, vanishing as though She were never there.
An avatar…
The darkness.  Oh, God the darkness is Her.  I’ve been within Her all along.  The Darkness.  The Interstice.  The Woman.  All are one and the same.  
Oh God, no. I’ve made a mistake.
Creed told me, more than once, that the Interstice, that the Woman, exists out of time.  
And if that is true, then the decisions made here….
“Yes, Mr. Lawrence.  Decisions here are not a part of the symbiotic loop of past, present and future.  They can, in fact, change the designs of fate.”
He grins.
“You did think to ask about free will.  So close.”
My first instinct when I woke here was to see if I could move.  At the time I could but now…my limbs fail to respond.
”Come along, Mr. Lawrence.” 
Creed grips me by my leg, begins dragging me through the abyss. 
“My Lady prefers to initiate Her conquests, but She allows me to see them through to completion.  I’m afraid that you won’t find my ministrations quite as…mmm…indulgent as Hers.  But we will get you where you need to go.”
The giant lifts me and places me on what feels like a table. From somewhere a fire appears, the flames growing higher around us, then a forge, several pokers resting in its coals blazing red hot, and a table covered with many tools both sharp and blunt.  Creed moves to them, turning one this way, closely inspecting another before shifting his attention to the pokers.
“Almost there.  Almost.  But never fret, Mr. Lawrence.”
He grins.
“We are outside of time, remember.  Meaning we have as much as we need.  But perhaps while we wait.”
He turns to the table, then back to me, pliers in hand.
“Attend.  You are about to be reborn.  Even among humans there is most often pleasure at the start of the birthing cycle. Hold this, it will help.”
He presses something into my hand that emanates an odd warmth before gripping my cheeks, forcing my mouth open.
“Unfortunately it does typically end in a good deal of pain.  Do please try to hold still.”
Popcorn.
He begins.  And my screams…my screams last a very long time.
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