“What are you doing?”
“Recording everything,” the reply came.
The first person would be recorded as the one who saved the world, the latter would be forgotten by almost everyone.
The darkness that had spread over the world had been cleansed and the people who suffered were returned to life. Everyone accepted that it had happened and for the most part didnt speak about it again. It was over. To revisit it would mean to accept that terrible decisions were made by good people. It was best just to carry on and not look back.
“Why?” the first person said. “I thought we agreed.”
“I know,” the writer said. “But this was something far beyond our usual experience. And it could happen again.”
“It wont,” the other said with a steely voice. “We’ll stop it again if it does.”
“Not even you live forever,” the writer sighed.
The other paused and shook their head slowly. “I dont want you to think about that.”
“Cant help it,” came the wry reply and the sheepish look. “We’ve all been there, its incredible you havent and, even if it isnt some external factor, youre going to one day regardless of what you do. I cant not think about it.”
“We should forget about what happened, let everyone else put it in the past too. Who knows, someone might be encouraged by your writing and try it again.”
“They would have to find the writings used to start it though. We dont know any of that. I cant tell anyone how to resurrect that thing. Just how to reseal it. And since its only sealed and not dead, someone could bring it back. This,” their hand patted the thick book, “gives anyone in the future a chance to fight back.”
“It’ll never happen.”
These things always start inside a church. There is a power in defiling sacred places and using them for the reverse of what they were built for. Some people would call it redirection of energy. Others would say its a curse, or a hex. Its the same thing. Its like when you use a wrench as a hammer. It wasnt what it was designed for, but itll do the job.
The three hooded figures stood around and chanted something in a language long forgotten. In those words lay ideas and intentions no one had considered for generations. Things that would have you exiled for uttering. Things that would have you killed for admiring.
A red glow thrummed from the markings that had been drawn on the floor; the stone and wood of the church groaning with a power it had not ever experienced before. At the altar, a large book, open to a page towards the middle, had been placed. On the open page a diagram of the images that had been marked on the floor, others that had been written on the walls and on the following page was the final part of the puzzle, the mark that had been carved into the bedrock some distance below their feet. A place where a majestic goal had been achieved so long ago.
Behind the altar, tied up and bound, the two who lived in the small house behind the church watched in horror as the very fabric of the world bent and twisted at the ebb and flow of the hooded figures chanting.
“To be born again,” the lecturer was saying. “Is to be redeemed of your sins. You cannot be born – in any form – if you have sin. If you wish to be taken from the form you have now and find yourself in the afterlife, you must die without sin. It really is just that simple,” he paused and looked up at the half dozen or so bored faces and three extremely interested faces. It was the latter he was worried about. “Any questions?” he reluctantly asked.
Before any of the three people who actually wanted to be there could respond, a voice from the back of the lecture theatre piped up. “Who defines what sin is?”
“Ah,” the lecturer said, pointing up at the man who was clearly not a part of the class. “One of you.”
“Because,” the newcomer said, pretending the lecturer hadnt spoken. “What if you and I differ on what we think sin is? What if there are different circumstances where something defined to be a sin is acceptable? But, and this is the foundation of this whole thing for me, how do any of us know – for a fact – that there is an afterlife to go to? What if there is nothing? A crushing oblivion that doesnt care for us, doesnt care for our sins or lack thereof? An emptiness from which we came to which well return?” as he had spoken his voice had become dramatic and loud and he had taken two steps at a time to the front of the hall. By the time he had finished speaking, everyone was paying rapt attention.
“There are records of people having died and then being returned to the living,” the lecturer said. “The implication is that someone sent them back.”
The newcomer nodded. “Ive read those reports too, as anonymous as they are. They also contradict each other. Some people saw nothing. Others saw other people. Some saw a yawning abyss of horrors. Could they all be true?”
“Yes,” the lecturer said, confidently now; this was firm ground he could work with. “You see the horrors of the beneath if you lived a life of sin. You are reunited with your family, your friends, and other people who lived a good life if you do the same.”
“Have you died?” the newcomer asked, and before the lecturer answered, he turned to the class. “How about any of you? Suffered through a painful death? Come back to us by means undefinable? Met a deity?” Silence was the only reply. He turned back to the lecturer. “Well?”
“N-no,” he replied.
“I have.”
There is a mountain. Towards its peak is a cave. Of all seven billion people that lived on this planet, the number of people who knew about this cave was less than a dozen. Of that dozen, only eight had seen it. Four of them had seen it with their own eyes and not from a photo. Of those four, only one person had been inside.
There was a light in this cave. It glowed with a slight blue, the colour of the sky when it was so high above, on one of those clear winter days when even the sun shone a cold heat down on the world. The only person to have ever set foot in this cave sat before this light and let it wash over him. The light was dimming and it wouldnt be long before it went out entirely. And then what? He didnt know. No one did. He worried that no one else could know until it was too late. But there was a way to keep the light shining, perhaps even to intensify it. But someone had to watch the light, had to be here.
The child sat in front of the TV. They were engrossed in the bright and colourful story about a young dog and its family. The parents were nearby, carefully monitoring the child as they giggled and cheered at the images that flashed before their face. With the parents sat another person, a well dressed, attractive doctor. The doctor had arrived that morning and was in the process of showing the parents a series of documents they had brought with them. Results from testing the child had gone through several weeks prior.
“As you can see here,” the doctor was saying in their accented voice. “The results show a clear bias towards the ideas shown by the specialist.”
“Our child is someone else?” the mother was asking. She was confused and verging on anger at being confused.
“In a sense,” the doctor nodded. “But not like what youre imagining. Your child is the reborn form of someone who died many years ago. Someone who died in the midst of a battle and that is why they dream the way they do. Why they speak the way they do. Weve seen this before, although not with someone so young. Your child is someone special.”
“We know,” the father said. His voice was ice and while he, also, didnt understand what was happening with his child, he could accept that the doctor across from him knew more and would defer to them. “What do we do about it?”
The doctor shrugged. “There is nothing to do about it,” they said. “Being reborn, as I said, is not totally unheard of. It is rare, that is true, and your child is far younger than any example of it I, or the specialist has ever seen, but it isnt a disease. It isnt fatal. Your child will have to be taught what it means, though and that can be a lot for someone to handle as an adult. My advice is to start the process now.”
“How?” the mother asked, she did a good job of not letting her voice crack as she spoke.
The doctor slid a small business card across the table towards the parents. “There arent many people who deal with this kind of thing, and unfortunately none of them live near here. I trust this person, though. I have dealt with her before. She is supremely qualified, compassionate and experienced. She will give you a consultation if she knows that I have sent you. Talk to her and she can guide you through the next stages.
“Will this other person, the reborn one, show themselves?” the father asked, receiving a gasp from the mother.
Deep beneath the ground, far beyond any hand carved runes, lay a lake of magma. At one time, in the distant past, this lake had been on the surface. Constantly refilled from a crack in the tectonic plates, it became a shrine. A place of worship and supplication. There wasnt much left of the shrine and the people who used it to worship were long dead.
But the beings they prayed to were not.