Hangman Chapter 33

Chapter 33-

Ash floated through the air.

“It’s not right…”

The heat of flame bore down from all sides, and screams shook the sky.

“It’s not right for something so evil to happen in broad daylight…”

“But they do all the time, don’t they?”

“In the dark, I can ignore it…”

“That’s the rub, right? In the dark, you can ignore it, but in the light, you just try to accept it.”

“The great shame of our race…”

Sonsee’s heart pumped snow through her veins. Somehow, this dream was more vivid than waking memory.

Her bones felt heavy, movement impossible.

“How was I able to run back then, but I can’t even breathe now? Am I even weaker than I was as a child?”

“What’s weaker?”

Sonsee was abruptly shocked out of her stupor by Melty’s voice. The woman was leaning against a burning house, wearing an ambiguous expression.

“W-what?” Sonsee’s voice was barely audible, but she knew that Melty could hear her.

“What’s weaker,” she repeated. “Running away, or standing still?”

Sonsee considered the question for a long while. The world around her gradually became quieter, though the movement did not stop. The sound of waves crashing in the distance was the only sound that penetrated her bubble of thought.

After working through the query in her mind, Sonsee was finally able to look Melty in the eyes again.

“Running away,” she answered with confidence.

Melty gave her a deep, transfixing stare.

“Why do you say that?” she wondered aloud.

Sonsee suddenly felt unsure of her answer.

“Because…” her voice cracked. “When you run away, you give up on the people with you, but staying still means you’re standing with them.”

It was a serviceable explanation, but her voice didn’t sell it.

“It was a trick question,” Melty replied. Sonsee took a small step back.

“There really isn’t a difference,” she explained. “Between running away or standing still.”

“Are you saying I should just let myself die?” Sonsee protested. “There’s nothing I could have done in that situation!”

Anger bubbled up inside of her. Was this woman blaming her for the decision she’d made so many years ago?

Melty only looked out towards the chaos of the scene.

“It’s your dream, Sonsee.”

Her words pierced her heart. In a rush, the sound of screams, gunfire, and flame returned to her senses. It was an almost overwhelming barrage.

“This is my dream…”

An uncle fell to the ground, dead, only a few feet away.

“I don’t remember this…”

A house crumbled behind her.

“I didn’t see this…”

A bullet whizzed past her head, followed by three more, each striking a friend.

“But it’s what I know happened… back then…”

“I don’t want you to suffer, Sonsee,” Melty assured her. “I think you’re a good person, I just wonder if you think the same.”

---

The ground was covered in patches of flame, tongues reached up and crackled furiously. Bleech felt the weight of fear on his shoulders, which soon gave way to guilt. He couldn’t see the victims, but he could hear their cries of pain. The world was on fire, filled with nothing but agony.

With the memory of this massacre came the knowledge that he followed the man who had led it, an inexplicable choice.

Bleech clutched his stomach and screamed for it to stop.

“Why did I do it?” he begged himself for answers. “What did I see in him? There was nothing, it doesn’t make sense…”

He stood alone with his suffering for an eternity, until he couldn’t stay there anymore. There must have been a reason…

“I followed him because he looked like he would save me,” the boy finally spat out.

Of course, Warren Roseraid was the closeness between savior and killer, or at least, he was in that moment.

“But it wasn’t right…” he cried. “I should have died there, I should have let him kill me!”

Bleech howled with anguish; he fell to his knees.

“Do you think he would have killed you?” Melty asked from behind him.

“You…” he growled, turning around to look up at her. “What are you doing to me? Why am I remembering this?”

“It’s your dream,” she replied.

“So why are you here?” he asked angrily.

“To find out what you think,” was her answer. “Do you think he would have killed you?”

Bleech’s voice was cold.

“It doesn’t matter, even if he didn’t do it, I would have died regardless.”

“What are you implying?”

“That I…” he hesitated. “I would have died anyway, from grief.”

“Only old people die from grief,” Melty tilted her head and walked around him.

“I would have killed myself.”

“Don’t say that!” she scolded him. “Someone like you shouldn’t say things like that!”

“What do you know?” he retorted. “Why wouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I?”

“B-because,” her voice stammered as she became upset. “Because you’ve felt so much pain!”

He gave her a confused look. “What are you talking about? That’s only more reason to do it.”

“It’s your job to carry on the hearts of the people you lost!” she preached. “It doesn’t make any sense to let your sadness win!”

“But it’s justified!” he argued. “There was no reason to do what I did, it was because I was weak!” He hung his head. “There’s no excuse… there’s no excuse,” he repeated.

“There’s no excuse… there’s no excuse for what I did...”

“Huh?” He looked around, the voice hadn’t come from Melty. “Who said that?”

Without warning, he was standing beside Sonsee.

“H-hey!” he called to her, but she didn’t look in his direction, didn’t even seem to hear him.

“What’s going on?” he asked Melty. “Why can’t she hear me?”

“She’s in her own dream right now,” came the reply.

---

“How long are you going to stay here?” Melty asked Sonsee.

“As long as my people are dead,” she answered coldly. “That’s why I need to see them, why I want to see spirits!” She stated her convictions forcefully, clenching her fist.

“If you want to see spirits, just open your eyes.”

Sonsee looked back at Melty.

“What?”

“To the people standing next to you,” the woman replied. “You just direct so much to yourself, you can’t see the people outside.”

“But my companions are important to me,” she protested. “When I see Bleech, I know that he’s going through what I am!”

“And what do you say to him?”

“Well...” she paused. “I haven’t told him this exactly, but I always feel like he needs to stop letting one mistake ruin himself…” Strangely enough, she didn’t want to say it, because she knew it was advice she knew she didn’t even follow.

“And why don’t you feel the same about yourself?” Melty pushed further.

Sonsee was quiet for a long time before she let out a soft and bittersweet chuckle.

“I guess, I don’t want to hear it…”

“Do you think that somewhere deep inside, you like hating yourself?”

Melty’s question hurt her soul to consider.

“I think it gives me something to think about myself,” was all she could say. “I’m still hung up on it, I guess. It’s hard to think of that as being anything but my defining moment.” Her voice was lifeless and tired.

Once she could spell it out in such a blunt way, the next step was obvious.

“So,” she started, closing her eyes. “I need to tell that to Bleech, then I need to find something else to think of myself as.”

“You don’t think you already have it?” Melty asked with a soft smile.

“Already?”

Her mind went in a myriad of directions, what else did she have to know herself as?

“Of course.”

She stood outside a small campfire. No one was around, just her and the warmth of the flames, different from those at her village. These weren’t ferocious or hateful, they were kind and welcoming.

“Open your eyes…”

“Open your eyes?”

“I just have to-”

She turned, and Bleech now stood beside her, staring at her like he’d been there the whole time.

“But he was here the whole time,” she realized.

“Bleech…” she whispered. “I just wanted to tell you-”

“I heard,” he struggled to hold off a smile. “Thanks…”

His words were uncharacteristically kind for their honesty, it warmed her heart.

“It’s hard, I know it’ll be,” he added. “But I want to try.”

She took his hand in hers and brought him into a hug.

“I believe you can do it.”

“I think you can too.”

He was obviously unused to contact, so his hug was an awkward attempt to avoid it while, at the same time, desperately wanting to return her care.

“Thank you…”

---

Dion stumbled through the doorway of the inn, his eyes still adjusting to the darkness. Carefully, he crept up the rickety stairs and slipped into their room. Dawn’s glassy green and blue had begun to envelop the sky; he needed to get a few hours of shut-eye before heading back out.

The young man felt his way through the room to his bed, and gently laid down, making as little noise as possible. He locked his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling before closing his eyes. He was thoroughly satisfied with the night, paying no mind to the idea of Capri waking up to an empty home and no explanation. The ritual wasn’t complete until she felt thoroughly used and defeated; the idea that he could flash so quickly in and out of someone’s life, yet affect it so intensely, gave Dion a tremendous sense of power.

His heart was at ease, all the anger had been flushed out of his system. Finally, he could rest.

Dion took three deep breaths.

…

……

………

“Alright, rise and shine!”

He awoke with a start.

Susarion was standing above his bed, fully dressed and holding a big smile. Dion sat up and touched a finger to his temple.

“How’d you sleep?” the older man asked, throwing on his jacket.

“I- Great, I slept great…” Dion replied unenthusiastically.

“Did’ya?” Susarion pressed, noticing his companion’s tired eyes.

“Ah, well, you know,” he croaked out. “Must have just slept a little funny on my shoulder.” He went so far as to rub it as if it was stiff.

Susarion straightened his collar and put on his hat.

“Okay, just making sure.”

Dion sighed and stood up.

“How far away to Mount Dement?”

Susarion double-checked the map, which was still open on the dresser.

“About two days,” he answered, running his finger from their position to the destination. “Maybe less, if we can get transport.”

Dion shot him a confused look.

“Were we not going to look for transportation?”

“Well,” Susarion scratched his chin. “There’s no guarantee; there’s a lot of tourists coming into this town, but not a lot looking for Mount Dement.”

“There’s gotta be somebody giving tours of it, don’tcha think?”

They looked at each other for a moment, thinking in tandem.

Ten minutes later, the two traveling assassins had stepped into a local tourism service. The guide looked at a list of timetables and transport, before looking back up from behind the desk.

“There’s one tour to Mount Dement in town,” he informed them. “It’s a family owned business, but it’ll get you there as fast as you need.”

Susarion thanked the worker and told him to have a great day, turning back and prompting Dion to look up from where he was sitting, arms crossed, across the room.

The tour service was located on the other end of town, to the northwest, facing the mountain. It was a modest wooden building painted in light blues. The white doorway was dominated by a grid of windows that let one look right through to the storefront. A large sign in the window read “SOL FAMILY TOURS.”

“Sol?” Dion inspected the writing. It sounded familiar, but not in a way he could place.

A man was sitting behind the counter, a chalk board looming against the wall, with various times written across it.

“Good morning, nice to see ya’,” he greeted them in a kindly voice. He had graying hair and was close in age to Susarion, with wide shoulders and a sun-beaten face.

Susarion arranged a tour to Mount Dement of the nearest time. No one had signed up for a tour that early in the morning, so only the three of them loaded up into Mr Sol’s horse-drawn buggy.

It would only be a day’s worth of travel this way. Some tourists, the more adventurous type, liked this kind of excursion, as it combined beautiful scenery and outdoors-ing with the ability to sit in the shade.

“So, where do you folks come from?” Mr Sol asked once they were on their way.

“We’re out here from Hilltop,” Susarion answered. Being the adult, Dion let him do most of the talking and business.

“Hilltop? That’s a ways away from here,” the man noted with a guffaw. “What brings you to Peet?”

Susarion paused for a moment, concocting his story.

“We’re looking for an old friend of ours, they live near the mountain.”

“The mountain?” Mr Sol wondered aloud. “You don’t mean the witch?” he looked back and raised an eyebrow, showing off a joking smile.

“The witch? Never heard of it.”

“Really?” his eyes widened. “You two really are from outta town!”

“What’s this witch business?” Susarion asked, leaning against the window of the buggy.

“There’s a legend in these parts that a woman lives at the base of the mountain, she practices witchcraft and some devilish magicks,” his tone of voice attempted to build a tense atmosphere, but just sounded silly to Dion.

“Has anyone ever seen this ‘witch’?” Susarion asked.

“They have!” Mr Sol proclaimed. “She lives in a cabin that will appear and disappear depending on who’s looking at it, and she has the power to heal plagues!”

Susarion and Dion looked at each other with a look that said, “do you think this is a…?”

“Well, in any event,” the older traveler dismissed. “We aren’t looking for any witch.”

“Alright,” Mr Sol chuckled. “If you say so, I’ll let you make your own conclusion.”

“Say, how long have you been running this business?” Susarion asked, trying to steer the conversation in a different direction. Dion looked out the window, lacking interest.

“Oh, somewhere in the park of…” the man thought for a moment before coming up with a rough number. “Thirty years.”

“Thirty years?!” Susarion exclaimed. “That’s quite a while!”

“It’s my family’s business,” he explained. “My father did the same, and I expect my daughter to pick it up as well.”

“You have a daughter?”

“Yes I do, one,” he beamed with pride. “I dare say she’s the prettiest young lady in this town, after my wife, of course.”

Dion turned his gaze from the window to Mr Sol, realization filling his chest.

“Is this-?!”

Susarion noticed that his companion’s expression had suddenly become strained, a hint of panic swelling to the surface.

“Dion?” he whispered, low enough that their guide couldn’t hear.

The sound of his name brought him back to reality, and all of the stress disappeared from his heart.

“Hm?” he asked, now looking exceedingly calm.

“Nothing, you just looked pale for a second,” the older man assured him.

Dion crossed his arms and closed his eyes, pointing his head down at his lap.

“Of course, there’s no reason to fear. By the time he even has the chance to hear about me, we’ll be long gone.”

He smirked to himself.

“Besides, he doesn’t pose any threat to me in the first place.”

Dion opened his eyes and peered out the window.

“It was a stupid, kneejerk reaction…”

The landscape passed by like the hours, with small, intermittent breaks in the silence for small talk. Besides that, the sound of the wheels rolling over the gravel path and horse hooves clopping were the only thing audible, the occasional rattle of tassels or metal objects after passing over a bug bump.

---

“Pops?”

Susarion Horace’s father looked at him from across the dinner table. His wife, who was sitting between the two, looked nervously back and forth. When her son spoke in that tone, he was asking for something.

“Do you think I could go to school?”

His father put down his fork and looked him in the eye with his time-weathered face.

“Do you wanna waste your time?” he asked critically.

Susarion tried to hide his fear.

“No, if I can, I wanna go into the university, and take up law.”

“Law?” his father asked. “You wanna be some kinda lawyer?”

The boy swallowed.

“Yes, pa.”

After staring intently at his son for a moment, Susarion’s father pierced his steak with his fork and cut a piece off, chewing it for some time. The silence that hung over the table was oppressive. His father finally swallowed and went to cut the next piece.

“There’s a school in town,” he said without looking at him. “We can enroll you on Sunday.”

From that point on, Susarion became a rigorous student, devoting himself to the academic pursuit. Even if his father was a rough lifelong farmer, he poured his life’s savings into his son’s education. All of it was done without any entitlement to thanks, it was a silent act of love for his son.

As Susarion grew older, he learned to appreciate this gift, and his relationship with his father gradually became stronger.

This all changed when he was just entering university, at the age of 19. Andeidra was still a fledgling nation, and entered into a small war with the established Klouvian country of Esmerada for territory. The war was quite popular, as most citizens believed they had something to prove on the world stage. A draft was enforced, and Susarion found himself suddenly thrust into the military after only a year’s worth of studying at a prestigious University, one he’d earned his way into through academic scholarship.

With only a month’s worth of basic training, he was placed on the frontlines of combat. Stationed in a small cluster of islands southeast of the Andeidran coast, Susarion ‘s platoon was tasked with leading the assault on a nearby Esmeradan fort. It was night time when they crossed the strait into enemy territory, landing on a beach only a few miles away from the objective.

Silently, Andeidran forces lined up on the beach, sneaking into the jungle in squads. The night air was cool, and the chatter of crickets filled the air. Susarion was decked out in gear, carrying a musket, and attempting to make as little sound as possible with his comrades. The moon shone just enough light to see the path ahead.

Suddenly, Susarion heard a great *SNAP* followed by a *WHOOSH* as something flew through the air. He spun around just in time to see a member of another squad be decapitated by a descending blade.

“What in the-?!”

The panic of the moment cause someone else to trigger another trap, falling down a five-foot hole into darkness. The resulting commotion was enough to alert the enemy watchmen to the presence of the approaching platoon.

Gunfire cracked through the night as the Andeidran forces desperately tried to defend themselves, taking cover behind trees and foliage.

Susarion turned to run.

“Hey, what are you doing?!” the recruit next to him cried. A split-second later, a musket-ball shattered his skull and he fell to the jungle floor.

Susarion ran all the way to the beach, helmet in hand, before collapsing to his knees and declaring the battle lost. The reserves left to man the boats asked him what had happened, and he explained that they were detected by enemy traps and gunned down.

“Who sent you back?” one shipdriver asked.

“I-” he choked. “Captain Telle,” he finally managed to lie through his teeth.

They waited for close to thirty minutes for others to escape, but to no avail.

Susarion was the sole survivor of the excursion.

When he returned home, he attempted to return to his University and pick up his studies once more. It was a useless endeavor, as he couldn’t wash away the shame of the experience from his conscience. Spring passed into Fall, and Fall into Winter, yet he stood still.

When the snow fell, he received a letter from his mother. He saw her name and the return address of their family home, and it brought back to him a renewed sense of warmth and comfort. That feeling was soon crushed by the contents of the letter.

While he was away, his father had become deathly ill. At the time she’d sent the letter, he had just passed from heart failure.

Susarion’s hands trembled as he read the news.

“This can’t be happening…” he thought. “Please God, please don’t let this happen…”

But it had already come to pass. He knew in the back of his mind that trying to deny his father’s death would be like denying the leaves falling off the trees outside his dorm.

A month later, he dropped out of University and went back home to live with his mother, in the hopes that he could be there in her final days. Those came sooner than he expected, as the grief of losing her husband of sixty years was too much for her heart to take, even with the presence of her son.

Susarion’s mother soon passed away as well, to be buried beside her husband in the cemetery of their town.

At the funeral, Susarion met the woman who would become his wife. She was the daughter of a family friend, and her eyes shone like the sun. She had an almost supernatural kindness, and in the midst of comforting the grieving young man, formed a close bond.

After three years of contact and affection, they decided to marry, and she moved into his family home, where he tended the fields. He may have lost his parents and passion for knowledge, but this woman had breathed a new life into him, like the first blooming flowers of Spring.

Susarion and his wife tried to have children for years without success. Finally, one month, she reported to him that she had missed her period. Overjoyed, they celebrated with their friends and prepared for the coming new life.

Month by month passed, August into September, October into November, December into January, February into March, and finally April. The snow had just melted on the ground the day her water broke, and she was rushed to the town physician.

Nervously, Susarion waited outside while the midwife and doctor delivered the child. His thumbs twiddled for hours until the door opened.

He looked up excitedly, only to be met with a solemn face from the physician, who had come to inform him that his wife had died in childbirth, and the baby had been stillborn.

In that moment, Susarion’s life shattered completely. His marriage of five years, his love for this woman, and the new life they would bring to the world, all of it was gone in a single moment.

He cried for an hour in the office, unable to bear looking at her body.

When he finally returned home that evening, he walked into an empty house. He sat at the kitchen table, in the dark, and waited out the night. In that time, he contemplated things unimaginable only the day before.

When the sun came up, he left the kitchen and walked outside to his back porch, descending the steps to gaze over his land. The buds of the flowers were just starting to open.

“Why is it…” he thought. “That the seasons change, yet I stay still?”

---

The buggy had been traveling for half a day’s time, when the sound of horses thundering across the plain could be heard.

Mr Sol looked out to see where they were coming from, only to find that three men on horseback were approaching them at an alarming rate.

The mysterious men pulled in front of the buggy, causing Mr Sol’s horses to slow down and buckle, scared by the aggressive action.

“Excuse me, young men,” Mr Sol called, rearing the horses. “What’s the meaning of this?”

The men dismounted. The passengers of the buggy looked out at the road, and Dion recognized the horsemen.

“We’re looking for a fella’, about this tall,” one of the horsemen demanded, holding his hand up to Dion’s approximate height. “He’s got red hair and wears this funny vest.”

Mr Sol looked startled, he had hardly ever encountered trouble on this route, much less from somebody looking for one of his own passengers.

Susarion gave Dion a frantic look.

“What did you do? Who are they?!” he whispered forcefully.

“Look I… It’s a long story,” Dion replied. These were Smitt’s cronies, obviously upset and looking for revenge. They’d somehow tracked them to the Sol family business and followed them there. It wouldn’t have surprised them if they’d waited this long just to draw the buggy out far enough that running for help wasn’t an option.

“Dion, I don’t know what you’ve gotten us into,” Susarion warned. “But I’m going to handle this, okay? Just lay low.”

“Alright, I’ll explain later…” Dion knew he could take on all three of them in a real fight, but his companion preferred to negotiate their way out of unnecessary confrontations.

Susarion hopped out of the buggy and stood off against the three men. Each was about his height, but his build had deteriorated somewhat with age, and they had the advantage of youth.

“Look here, boys,” he started. “I really don’t want any trouble from you all, so I’d recommend you return to town before you make any bad decisions.”

“Get out of the way, old man, we’re looking for the guy with you,” spat one of the goons.

“Are you willing to talk this through?” the older man asked. The aggressors hesitated for a moment; Susarion had taken on a new, intimidating air. Even though his question was phrased politely, there was an underlying threat within it.

It wasn’t long before this brief doubt vanished from them.

“Do I look stupid?” one of the men asked rhetorically. “Out of the way.”

He advanced toward Susarion without even considering him a threat, looking past him to the buggy. As he passed just beside him, he felt an incredible force meet his gut.

“Ugh!” he gargled, looking down. The older man’s fist was planted squarely into his stomach. He stumbled back, shaking his head and blinking rapidly as if he felt light.

Susarion stared him down, fist still clenched, with a calm gaze. Suddenly, the man froze, his whole body seizing up.

“Hey, what’s up?” one of his cohorts asked, noticing his friend’s stiffness. Only the man’s eyes could move, even his jaw was locked up, his muscles frozen.

“Hey, are you alright?!” he asked again, before looking furiously at Susarion. “What the hell did you do?!”

The older man released his clenched fist, and his victim collapsed to the ground, slowly and weakly trying to pick himself up.

Susarion spoke quietly.

“This is the power… of [CHANGING SEASONS]...”