Hangman Chapter 8

Chapter 8-

Falling…

Falling…

Falling…

Falling….

Falling…

Falling…

The water seemed to fall deeper and deeper down into an abyss. Gallow could make out a small speck of light many meters above him, slowly shrinking in size. Floating in the water, his body was turned upwards, sinking down lethargically.

“I don’t think I ever learned how to swim…” he thought. “I always turned down lessons for it from my mom, I always said ‘when am I going to need to know how to swim?’ I guess I look stupid now…”

The faint memory drew a small smile across his face; he suddenly realized his mouth was open. Survival instinct asked him to close it immediately, but a half second of thinking noticed that it was not filling with water.

“In fact,” he mused. “I haven’t had any trouble breathing this whole time.”

Curiously, he inhaled, and to his surprise his lungs were not drowned.

After a minute of practicing his breathing, he began to notice other curious details. For one, his clothes were obviously drenched, as the fabric was flowing loosely upwards. In addition, each breath was accompanied by a string of bubbles leaving his lips. Eventually, he also came to realize that the source of light which had been shrivelling above him had vanished.

“It’s absolutely dark down here,” he noted. “But I can see my feet, I can see my arms, I can see my-”

He held out his hands to observe them, and saw the back of his right hand, emblazoned with the sigil he’d been given by that mysterious woman. It was glowing with an otherworldly blue hue, it seemed to illuminate his whole being.

“This is the work of that woman!” he thought. “She’s after the spring too, she wants to kill me!”

Anger boiled up inside of him, until he took a pause.

“If she wanted to kill me,” he rationalized, “why am I still alive here? Unless- oh god- this is hell, isn’t it? Or… purgatory? God… God… please… I’m sorry, is it too late to atone?”

Fear welled up in his heart, he could feel its beating hasten. He took a breath, his mouth was flooded with water. His eyes widened in terror, his body trembled in panic. His breathing only intensified, his lungs were inundated, a burning sensation filled them, as if they were being doused with alcohol. His vision began to blur and dizzy.

“God, please! God, please! I’m sorry! I’ll atone! I will! Please, just spare my life!” His desperate pleas went unanswered. For torturous minutes he refused to drown, like God- or the Devil- was toying with his soul.

“This is my punishment, isn’t it? Did I deserve this? It’s my fault, isn’t it? It was my fault!”

Anger filled his being, a self-loathing that stretched deep into the recesses of time.

“It was my fault! It was my fault! It was my fault! It was my fault! It was my fault!”

A hand touched his chest. Instantly, the fear and anger in his heart was lifted. The water left his lungs. Within moments, his breathing steadied and the searing pain was gone. His vision returned, and he was able to see who had ended his suffering.

Before Gallow was a beautiful woman of no apparent age. Her hair seemingly flowed down and faded away into space. Her form was ethereal, indescribable, and not observably physical. He could see through her, but he also recognized that she was in front of him.

“Is this God?” he questioned in his mind. To his surprise, she seemed to read his thoughts, and smiled kindly in response.

“I’m not God; you don’t remember me from your time in the Garden?” Somehow, her words were whispered into his mind without her even opening her mouth.

With a start, Gallow realized that this was the Spirit of the Garden he’d met on his first visit.

“I’m such a tool…”

“You’re fine,” she said in a well-meaning voice.

“Sorry I used you to make a profit.” His tone was flat, like a child apologizing for breaking their mother’s vase.

“If it makes you feel any better, I never actually sold it to anyone, just a test run for the market.”

Her hand left his chest, straightened out, and delivered a bop to the center of his forehead.

“Agh!” he said, flailing back in the water.

“That wasn’t for what you did, it’s for what you said.”

“Huh?” he replied. “What are you talking about?”

“You keep apologizing to me.” Her voice was soothing, she seemed to take no issue with him.

“Are you telling me I shouldn’t be sorry, or what?” He couldn’t seem to fathom a reason not to be apologetic.

“Do you know why you weren’t drowning until a moment ago?” she questioned.

Unsure of where she was going, he replied with a cautious “No?”

“The Earth you know is bound to the physical plane, it is a place of hard facts and absolutes.”

“Yeah?”

“The Garden is like a medium between the absolute and the abstract, it is perceived the same way by all living things, but exists outside of the physical plane, it is the borderline between what is possible and what isn’t.”

“The border…?” Gallow was hearing things beyond his scope, from the mouth- or mind- of a being whom he still wasn’t entirely convinced was not God. Yet, despite this, he had no trouble believing it; his mind soaked in the information like a child learning about the way the world works.

“If the Garden is the border between those two, then this…” he began.

“This place” she answered. “Is the world on the other side of that borderline. A world of pure mind and soul. That woman above, the one who sent you here, her people would call this the Spirit World, yours call it Heaven, or God’s Kingdom.”

Gallow looked around. “God’s Kingdom?” he said with some disbelief. “Isn’t that supposed to be a big shimmering palace with God and everyone you know who died?”

“Perhaps that’s his Kingdom for some,” she began. “But it seems not you.” She paused. “Either that, or you haven’t found your Heaven yet.”

Her words hung in the air like the bubbles of breath that left his lips.

“Do you mean,” he started hesitantly, “that I’m dead? And this place is Heaven?”

“Dead? No,” she reassured him. “Right now, your physical body is still in the Garden, probably lying face-down in the water at the bottom of the Spring.” She noticed his startled reaction to hearing that his body was evidently drowning. “Don’t worry, you won’t drown, I’m keeping your body safe as we speak.”

“So why did that woman send me here? What does she want with me and you?” Gallow still had not puzzled together why the Spirit would keep him there.

“She doesn’t have anything to do with your presence here, you were just a means to finding me.”

“So just give me an answer, what am I here for?”

She looked at him with a warm, motherly smile.

“That sigil drew your here,” she recited. “You’ll understand why when you awake. For now, you need to find that out yourself.”

The Spirit swept her arm to the side, the darkness of the water suddenly parted, before Gallow could comprehend what had happened, he was standing on a rooftop in broad daylight.

“What? but this is-”

He immediately recognized the city as being his hometown of Pettma, in the Eastern region. Buildings as tall as four or five stories towered in the sky about him.

“Why am I here?!” he shouted at the Spirit.

She merely stepped up next to him and looked out at the skyline with him.

“These waters are meant to heal you, but to heal the deepest scars in your heart, you must try as well.”

Gallow could not understand what she meant by this, until he heard the sounds of creaking and clanging from behind him. He whipped around to catch a metal door being thrown open; the roof entrance of the building. From the door, two children appeared. The first had dark hair dashed with a single blond streak.

“Are these my memories? That’s me!” Gallow exclaimed.

“You were cute when you were ten” the Spirit teased him. Gallow had never really looked at himself when he was a child, there never seemed to be any mirrors in his house as he grew up, and the murky reflections he could make out in the waters of the river which ran through Pettma never seemed to depict an appearance quite noteworthy.

He watched with some amusement as he played with another child, whose face couldn’t be made out. They ran about the rooftop, picking up sticks and playing soldier with each other. They laughed and got into a few small arguments, but they were the best of friends.

“I wonder,” the Spirit began. “Who that other child is?”

Gallow looked more closely at his friend’s face. What was a blotchy, unclear image slowly began to sharpen and clarify. As the obscurity of memory was lifted like passing fog, the pleasant grin on his face began to fade.

Yes, he could see who his friend was.

Yes, dark shades began to befall the pit of his stomach.

“Child?” the Spirit asked. “Do you remember who that is?”

“Yes, his name is Warren Roseraid.”