The Gatekeepers

It was just another night of May.

The weather was strangely damp, in spite of the season. Broderick hid himself under the blankets and thought about the following days. His father had decided to move to a better job, in a better company in another place, far away from there. The prospective of living in a bigger city scared him, but not as much as dwelling in a urban jungle of grayness and cold floors. "You'll do good, Rick. You'll do just fine" said his father. Rick was not that sure.

He loved that town. Ballburg was nearly a village, and even as time passed it did not grew nor diminished. It felt like it would be eternal and forever like it always was. Rick loved how the stars could be seen at night, how the willows grew in the sidewalks, when it rained and it washed all the way through St. Antonia Street; the smell of new made bread from Big Al's family bakery, the secret hideout he built by himself near the woods, where he kept his comics and some cookies and other provisions, just in case of an incoming end of times.

However, he had to follow his father and it seemed definitive. The day before he had avoided saying goodbye to his friends and spent the whole day in his bedroom, peeking throught the window to see if anyone would come to talk to him. Big Al came once, but did not insist, and left soon afterwards. Rick felt a little bit upset and disappointed. Maybe Big Al should have insisted more. No one came for him, though he was certain that their departure from that small town would have been news heard anywhere. Maybe even noticed in the newspapers that day, he wondered.

He could not sleep, at any rate. The blankets felt too warm and he felt his skin clamp with sweat. He threw them aside and opened his window. Outside the night was rather muffled. The neighborhood seemed quiet, except for some cats that querreled once in a while in a roof somewhere. The wind was not blowing, the trees were static and the stars seemed painted in the sky, pale and faint. Beyond the limits of Ballburg he saw the only road that crossed the town silent without cars nor trucks. 

But then, Rick noticed the slightest trace of gold crossing somewhere near the woods. He realized that that happened oddly near his private hideout and found that queer. Perhaps he should check that out? It would be his last night there anyway. Once, he tried to sleep over in the hideout without his father knowing, though he was quite unsuccessful. Amidst his not so comfortable sleep in a bed of leaves, he heard someone shouting his name in the woods. Afraid of being discovered, he simply ran back home, where his father was waiting, in disbelief and anger. Rick was grounded for two weeks after the incident, but at least his hideout was not found.

Grabbing his backpack and flashlight, he sneaked out still wearing his pajamas, though he had the care to put his sneakers on and to stuff his towel inside one of his pack pockets. He crept carefully until he reached the front door, and then he was gone.

Rick knew every single street that existed in Ballburg, mostly because of his walks and plays with Big Al and Alan and Fra. Everybody would know that they were playing, not because of the noise or anything, but because they used to use the whole town as playground for their games. It could represent both the smallness of Ballburg - often called Smallburg, for all that mattered - or the grandiousness of the children's play, which seemed much more accurate, since the town were not that small either. Should he know his way, he would remember very clearly about each time he had first found them, as Jacko The Pirate or Eddie Dane the Gunslinger or Sir Plume of Roundhill, and so on. 

Lurking behind the barber shop and following the alley that led to the gas post of Mr. George, he found no one. Blessing his luck, he even stopped moving so slowly and started to walk swiftly and more unworried. The road beside the gas post was flanked by high grass, and in a sharp turn to the left where the "Welcome To SmBallburg" stood he strode.

Walking past the grass and shrubs that hindered his movement was not a challenge for him, he had done that so many times before. Soon the unseen path followed towards the woods, which lied tall but compact in the far borders of town. Rick would soon find the right rocks and figure the way to his hideout. He was searching for anything that would seem to be the source of that golden light, but he did not see anything out of usual. The trees were broad and had sharp leaves, hiding the night sky from him as he entered deeper in their grounds. The earth was moist as if it had rained, but Rick did not know if the rain had happened at tall. He held his flashlight tight and decided that that would be the right time to light it up. Turning on the cranky switch took a while, but he finally did it and pointed the mechanic light towards the dark under the leaves.

There it was, his private bunker. Cleverly built in the middle of three particularly big oaktrees that grew too close to each other, he fixed the wooden roof with some scraps from the carpentry and did some personal decoration in its insides. Up the den he had spread many leaves and some mud as camoufflage, and at its sides he nailed the sheets of some sort of rough plastic used in tents. It was more a hole in the ground than a lodge, but it seemed to work as hideout just fine.

Rick crawled inside and saw his comics, half buried in soil and wrinkled by humidity. He cursed for having forgotten to put them in the plastic bag the last time he had been there, but nothing could be done then. He put them in the bag anyway, with a taint of annoyance in his face, and checked for the survival package he had hidden there. Food, water, a tiny medical kit, one battery, scissor, knife, a pair of clothes and socks, and that was it. Rick was especially proud of his insight of managing to think of a pair of socks, since it would be terrible if he had to keep living in a post-apocaliptic Ballburg wearing the same dirty ones.

As there was nothing unusual in the hideout, Rick crawled outside and began his search for the golden phenomenon. He had no idea of what that could be, though he expected very secretly that that would be the unrebukable evidence of life beyond Earth. Maybe he would ran into a couple UFOs and palaver with alien ambassadors from Venus, but he could not be sure. Once he saw this TV program lecturing that people should be skeptical and scientific, yet he had only the faintest clue of what that meant.

Striding in the woods, he held his flashlight and walked over the same places without finding anything different or extraterrestrial. But then he glimpsed a quick brightness right where the trees would end and the wide crops of corn would soon start to be visible, should the sun rise again in the next day. His pajamas were already soiled with black earth, but he did not care. He kept following invisible tracks among the oaktrees and then he divised a tiny golden streak gleaming in the night.

In the other side of the woods the air was much cleaner and fresher. The rambling of the breeze was soft, and the trees moved their leaves without much noise. However, Rick stared in pure bewilderment to a golden streak that crossed the nocturne darkness, crossing star and clouds in a perfect line. The streak would run again through the same route to form a square made bright. To Rick it seemed like a door being drawn with golden ink by God's hand. It was huge.

The light lines shone in the dark without going away. Its radiance grew stronger, and then it opened from the inside. Silently, a door made of the night and of the stars simply appeared out of thin air. Behind it, there was a light that overhelmed everything. Rick could only protect his eyes with the back of his hand, but after a while he was able to see what was coming from that door of wonders.

A shadow was standing. The shade of a giant, with limbs and head and body that resembled much those of a human, yet much bigger and strange. Its shapes were round and long, its features concealed in the shadows cast by the tempest of lights behind it. It just stood there for a long while.

And Rick just stared at him. He believed in every single detail of that mad appearance: it was there and it was truest than anything he had ever saw or heard or felt. Tears poured from his eyes, but he did not feel until his mouth tasted their unexpected saltyness.

"Who...who are you, mister?", a tiny voice claimed.

Rick woke up from his bewilderment and searched for the child that had spoken, only to notice that he was the one. He was speaking to the shadow giant under the threshold of light.

The shade did not move, but inside what was supposed to be his head a white globe opened and shone opaque. Rick felt his gaze upon him as if the weight of many ages were put over his back. He felt tired and weary and old. He wanted to scream, but he had no mouth, and no one to speak with. He was alone, yet everything happened in front of him, and behind him. He was supposed to be there and could not leave unless many weird and bizarre things would happen to everything and everyone. He was prisoner of the Door. He could not leave, never.

But he was leaving.

"THE GATEKEEPERS...THE GATEKEEPERS ARE LEAVING THEIR GATES"

Spoke the shadow giant. His voice was higher than heaven, deeper than hell; it spoke to grandest things and tiniest things, to the oldest things and newest ones, spoke to Rick and went deep to his heart and soul. 

And then he was gone.

Rick blinked many times, astonished with the vision of the door being left open, the golden lines fading in the twilight that preceded the sunrise and dawn. He felt a sudden emptiness in his chest, a sense of sadness and relief. Something that was always there had left forever, and all he could do was to look for something to fulfil that hole again.

He felt dizzy and sat under the branches of a silver fir that stood nearby. He scratched his eyes in a way that only children might fashion, and stared to the corn field that now could be seen in the rising sun light. If he focused for some seconds, he would see the faintest gilded lines still shining. Rick was amazed.

"I do believe it, yes I do" he said, in a half murmur.

"Hey-lo, yo'd betta believ', me-boy!" a voice behind him spoke. Rick turned horrified, just to see that the tree was moving its branches with almost a happy tone. It was dancing. 

"You! You talk!"

"Hell-ya, I do, I do ver' much! If thes' trees coul' talk, they say? Well-o, they'r now!"

And all around him the trees started to dance and chant with awkward voices that soon became choirs. Here and there stones would grow legs and walk as they wished. Butterflies soon appeared with tiny humanoid bodies, roaming randomly around the woods. From the corn field ahead, Rick saw wolves made of earth and mud sniffle the air, snarl at the trees and pack together to go some place else. Far in the horizon, clouds gathered together in the shape of enormously fluffy statues, soon to clash thunder and storm among themselves. Rick was overwhelmed. 

The Gatekeepers were really gone.

All The King's Horses

The walls of the city approached in deep silence, passing by the windows of the car like flies in a frenzy. Everything seemed helpless, beyond despair or self-pity. A dark feeling broomed over his shoulders, the hair in the back of his head in unsuccessful attempt to escape from the scalp. There was nothing to do there. There never was. There would never be. Yet he drove in the night, into the realms of ancient solitude. The city rotted alone.

A sudden shadow passed, then a bump and the sound of a violent brake. The car skidded and nearly overturned. Silence followed. The man left the car, closed the door. He was wary. In his hand a knife shone, reflecting glimpses of the few lights that had not yet faded away. Urbane lights.

He walked towards a black mass, maybe a body, who could know? His vision felt blurry with the drops of sweat that flowed from his forehead. He weaved them away with a sleeve.

But the black thing was not there to be seen.

The man got nervous. His knife loosened in his fingers. He checked the car, the door left open. Nothing moved in there. He could devise nothing but the faintest blue in the nightfall beyond. Stepping back towards his vehicle, he heard something droping, something liquid. Water? Oil? His eyes widened and his pupil dilated. He stopped for a moment to listen very carefully. It had stopped. Spasms of fear started to take over his body in each heartbeat. He ran.

Soon he was inside his car, driving madly by the streets of the city. The man wondered what had happened there, until he could no more. His imagination faded away as the days went by, but somehow he knew that he should not have stopped. He should have never left the car, the safety of speed and steel. As the vehicle crossed downtown, he promised himself he would never do such thing again. He would survive.

After half an hour he had to stop. He had to cross through a broken highway. Probably an earthquake or a bombshell, no one could know for sure. Yet there it lied, uncrossable. Scattered here and there were the carcasses of buses and other cars, trucks half hanging in the blink of the fall. The night could almost be touched, the air filled with a morose, greasy feeling. His skin was damp, his armspit swam in sweat and he did not care about whipping his wet forehead anymore. The man's face shone, touched by the dim lights of the car panel. A streak of despair started to roam in the deep of his eyes.

The man made his way back. He had to find another road to the other side.

The city held many streets, many ways, many bridges and many tunnels. The man followed one of them, fearing for what he could find. Or for what could find him. The tunnel had no indication whatsoever. It seemed half buried by dust, grey and dry. He drove slow but steady, and could not help to notice dark marks in the walls, along with white crosses that spreaded infinitely. Some written words, unintelligible. Yet, near the end of that underway he read one that could not be too old.

"All the king's horses and all the king's men", it said.

And then he left. Ahead, the concrete made twists and turns in itself, distorted by nothing the man could slightly understand at the time. Where once lied foundations and cement there were holes and ashes lingering stubbornly, even though the wind would blow harsh and strong. There were no people.

From there the car refused to work. The ignition would not turn. The panel lights were gone before he could know where exactly he was. But then, he had already understood. The man was close. He took his knife and strapped it to his hand with a strand of leather. He was trembling so much. It was cold outside, but even colder inside. He had not even realized that his sweat was crystallizing over his skin, frozen by an unannounced winter. Tears hung like diamond trinkets in his eyelashes. His beard was turning snow white.

He walked through the distorted skycrapers and overturned columns. The street were covered by shattered glass, and here and there flocks of snow started to pack together. A few steps and the man saw shadows lurking in the alleys. He could not truly see them, for they were nothing but vanished faces. He knew they were touched by the hunger of the shades, and that they were ruined. He was afraid he would turn into them, like many more did before him.

The man rushed and held his knife dearly to his chest. The road followed slowly uphill. By then, the buildings were bending over it like tunneled trees, moving slowly to the chant of the weather. The cold winds were rising. In the broken windows he saw pale children with gleaming eyes, starving to death but clutching each other tight. He could not see the sky anymore.

At some point he stopped hearing anything: the silence finally broke into his hears like a battering ram, swift but unnoticed. He did not feel the blood streaming over his neck. The man's hair froze and pulverized with each gust of wind. The path was covered with snow, the whitest snow that ever was. A tiny rose red bloomed whenever a drop of his blood would touch the ground. The roses sang, but he could not hear.

The man did not remember how long had he walked, for the path seemed much longer than he had expected. The heavy blanket of snowflakes only made it worse. The inward city was there before him, but it kept twisting and bending, as if reducing themselves by some sort of spiral gravity. Then he saw that he himself was walking with his spine bent gradually to the left, and that he could not change it anymore. He was bent like a tree whipped too long by the ocean breeze. But he felt no pain at all. He felt numb.

At last the path came to an end, it seemed. The knife in his hand had become his hand, his beard had grown long like glacial stalactites, he walked twisted to the side and felt blue and purple and gray and red and old. But he was there, he could feel it. There was a door, and there was a golden knob, and he pulled it and it opened.

"My dear, oh, my dear, oh, so long!"

A voice echoed. The man entered in a room, lavish and antique, furnished with the most luxurious itens. Everything good, but everything in bad shape and broken, spoiled by mold, darkened by smoke, decorative jars and frames shattered or hanging in pity. The back wall had been teared down. From there he could see a vivid electric-blue horizon peeking at him over the spreaded body of the city. It was huge, but the man was in its heart. Behind him, someone touched his ears with both hands.
"You have come to meet me, have you not?"

The man could hear the voice. He was surprised, but made no movement.

"Oh dear, you can talk to me. You must!"

"Yes. I came to talk to you." His voice was raspy cold. Bits of his beard splintered.

"Why, you have just talked, did you not?"

"No, not yet. I didn't come to talk with words"

A flush of shadows, a rush of dust, a sudden whirlwind surrounded the room. In its center a vulture appeared. Her skin was black and ashen. Plastic ripe. She had no hair, she had not eyebrows, she held no lights. Her lips were dark cyan, her eyes dark sapphires. Everything about her was dark, as if covered by layers of contempt, shame and decay. She hid behind her darkness and her shadow concealed her from others. Her cloth smoldered in smudge, a silk of dark sludge. She had wires in place of veins. She had a twister for a heart.

She was tall and reached the ceiling, and grew more and broke through it and the whole building went apart. Yet there the man stood, a small, dismayed figure, bent, frail and weary. The night sky reigned over them, filled with constellations, absent and distant. The electric feel of the horizon was there to be felt, a slim line of blue and thunder.

"You fool! I saw you when you touched me with your filthy wheels. You were never brave, never bright! I sought to speak to you, but your fear was so pitiful, so ridicule, shaking like a child. And yet here you are, the most foolish of them all!", boasted her, her voice deep and grave. The snow storm swirled around then in madness.

"You let it be, we all know it. We mourn you for what you were and curse you for what you have become", said the man.

Then he held his knife-hand high and yelled, a shout so powerful it shattered all the ice that covered him and unbent his spine. He was afraid, and he knew it. But for that he tamed fear.

The man ran to face the shadow of the city.

Spirals of blackness swirled, shades were cast and rebound. The clash of man and giant spelled quakes that made the city tremble. She was hurt, but so was he, for though he fought with blade she fought with her bare, black hands, which moved swiftly and fierce. Her sapphire eyes radiated contempt and pride, anger and loss. An obscure grease covered her skin as she moved and danced in the tune of the battle. She seemed to orchestrate a thousand chants of urbane colors and smells, traffic lights wandering in the waning night. All sparkle that was left in the city faded away.

"You could not be saved. And now you must be undone" yelled the man. And with a single blow he cut through her backbone and spine, descending from top to bottom in a flash of steel. She screamed and cried and cursed with words that dripped oil and asphalt, melting all around her.

A timid sunrise started to show its luminous limbs in the dark sky. Here and there scraps of metal and glass shone and blinked in the midst of the ruins. There was no movement, no breath, no life. The city was gone. But the man was there.
 

He was still there.