The Terror of Old Ghosts and Unrest

The Downward Spiral

The Story of the Marsh Boy only has a few chapters left.

The Marsh family is in conflict and the spiritual battle has taken on flesh. If you missed how we ended up in these dire straights, check out the chapter list by tapping here to start at the beginning. If you only missed the last chapter, Laid Upon the Altar, tap here to go back and read that one.

Now it’s time for the song. Hang on.

The Terror of Old Ghosts and Unrest

“Them songs, them songs,” he said as he clutched the sides of his head. The weight of the past was pressing in on his temples. A thousand leagues of travel to the depths below the sun’s reach sat on his chest like a hateful succubus with an axe to grind. No way did he want to sing again.

Yet, the song called. It sang a lullaby that the darkness wouldn’t harm him and everything would be okay in the arms of the tune. Even the priestesses had been humming the lullaby melody to let loose the ancient note.

There was air beneath the wall that held him in. It truly was a chamber. A prison. A cell of his own will. Enchantments born out of the shadow and woven with the emerald light of the deep danced throughout this dark cave. The shimmers, like a green glass in the moonlight, betrayed the spell at work. The song desired to be sung. It must be sung, and the children of Apkallu must be the ones to sing it. Dominion holds his children as his fear holds his wives.

He pulled his toboggan down over his eyes and rocked back and forth. “Wish I ne’ah sung that song!” he cursed to himself. The memories flooded within his mind as the shadow billowed without. The whispers on the winds had called to him. Tannigath called to him and so he sailed to awaken that which lay dreaming, like a sheep to the slaughter, toward the sirens that would usher in his rebirth. Tales to amaze of voyages past held no candles or lamplights for the journey before him.

In the whirlpool of his lusts, there on the forecastle of Bennet, he sang the song for the first time. He felt the blackness fill his distended eyes as the hunger extended his jaw and collapsed his stomach. The green light coursed over his body as the webs filled between his fingers and toes. It was done. He sang the praise of his maker, the single, monotonous note that was to the glory of Apkallu.

The song opened up the rock and he would travel to seek new sons for the father. The lost sheep. The forsaken sons of the earth, ironically recreated into sons of Erets. All was a mirror, all was the light and song, and so he swam through water, he swam through rock, he swam through aether. The barrier he could not pierce was the purple light of the nexus.

Until he began to sing a new song. Old sailors’ songs from above the waves. He’d heard the tales even as he’d taken part in haunting the voyagers, hovering beyond the edge of their sight in the darkened mist, as he quested for new sons. “Mermaids!” they’d say. In cold silence, they would lean over port and starboard before their greedy eyes bulged with the song themselves. Yet, some men who did not join the others. They sang songs of other lights. Hymns that sounded like the praises of his own father below, but true. So he hummed them from his gut. They lodged there, repeating and echoing into a melody he could not be rid of.

In the temple, he performed his service in the slumber of Apkallu. While his father laid dreaming, he tended to the throne room. As he served, the new melody of light took hold of the chords in his throat, and he began to choke. The air was thin and his silver skin began to split from his body. A crack straight down the center of his forehead, splitting between his black, bulbous eyes, began to tear. His fingers stretched and the webs separated. In fear, he sang the old song, all the world around him shimmered green and he shot into the rock. He passed through air and stone as the note left his wretched lungs.

From within the rock as he passed through the aether, the new song returned. The single note broke, into two at first, and then four, and then he was singing a new song. The song he had heard the sailors sing. A song of kings. A song of a king. Common men were made into heirs of a glorious throne. Men like him, or men as he used to be. True unseen realms of glory and honor made manifest in sons, heirs, and kings. The rock of Tannigath fell way beneath him and as he sailed himself through the aether and the air, for the first time, the air shimmered purple around him. The violet light of the nexus broke and spat him out on the shore.

He looked down. Hands. His hands. Hands that had pulled at the ropes and tied the rigging of the Bennet. Hands of a time before the song that had made him into a creature of the deep. Hands before he was a son of Apkallu. At the man’s feet lay a split skin of silver, protruding with bony claws, caved in eyes, and needle teeth. He kicked it and cursed the abomination that he had become but praise the Father of Lights he no longer was. Then he fell to the earth and wept in a combination of sorrow over singing the songs that had turned him into a Tannite and the joy of his physical awakening. He had been reborn.

The grass and sand were forgotten delights he had not realized he might have never seen again. He was free of the song. He had escaped the nexus and Tannigath. He breathed free air and no longer entered the aether.

Yet the dreams did not stop. Visions of the dark temple, with its sleeping elder and its unholy rainbows of crimson and shadowy stain. Horrors of the deep danced behind his eyes, no matter how many times he closed them. The webbed claws of the Tannite he had once been pulled at him to sing the song of Apkallu again. Come home, to Tannigath, into Erets, before your father, where you belong. He did not forget his joy but his eyes to see it became dim.

Who would believe him? Who would call him sincere instead of an old loon? Even his brother’s son turned him out. Zeke had crawled up to the porch, stinking like fish and babbling about blasphemies. “I don’t even have an uncle,” the boy had said. His nephew pulled his own boy back into the house and shut the door. And so it was that he became the patron saint of The Green Glass, spinning intoxicated yarns for ignorant mockers. May they never know the horrors of the deep! May he forget all his eyes beheld! He could not.

Then the boys heard the call of the song themselves. They went to the rock. Jeremiah lost Lily at the rock. He saw the Tannites pull her under. Who would believe him? Cole followed his friend to the rock. Jeremiah and Jeddy Lee went to the rock after Lily, not dead after all, who had learned the song and traveled through the aether herself. How had she pierced beyond the nexus? She sang the song in search of rescue and betrothed herself to the dark lord instead. Her love must have freed her even as the darkness bound her.

Ezekiel Marsh could have stayed on land. He could have lain in the gutter at The Green Glass, drowning out the sorrows that had plagued him since his escape. Little did he know when he attempted to drown them his sorrows knew how to swim.

They were all there, inside the rock. He sang the song again in hope to harmonize with Lily, and he traveled the shimmering green currents through aether. The Tannites had done their work on Jeremiah, Jeddy, and Cole. The women had seduced Lily with lies. Deception ran thick in the stale air of Erets. The shadow waited and had heard Ezekiel’s song. There was no love for his maker in his heart. No hate, no malice, no pull to the deep. Only pull for the Marshes.

The pools had held him, aware of his intent. The pools knew him, and he was not as they had known him before. He had been made new, a shell of who he once was. A shell of who he now was, really, but he was here. He saw it all from behind the watery, translucent barrier. Jeddy and Jeremiah’s fight. Jeddy’s turning. Lily’s rejection of Jeremiah’s authority and protection over her, effectively opening herself up to Apkallu’s rule. Jeremiah’s turning. Cole’s teetering and temptations. Tunnels in the rock allowed him to follow the procession as they entered the throne room until he was finally caught up into the cell by the altar. The dark clouds swirled above the shadow throne as Apkallu’s ominous form dominated the room. He thundered his voice and crashed in his anger with a backhand to the boy. Cole flew through the air in Apkallu’s fit of rage and slammed into the water cell that held Zeke.

Tannites followed the arc to the crumpled boy, chirped the note of their maker’s song, and thrust their webbed claws into the cell. The water shimmered green and they pulled Zeke out through it and back into the stale cavern air. The pungent odor invaded his nose. It smelled like smoke and dead animals, he thought.

As they carried him to the altar, he knew him and Cole were about to face the hungry wrath of the watcher from below. He was failing, all because he did not want to take the step that he knew he must take. Anything but that, God. Anything but take on that burden once again. Could he even control it?

There was no other way.

The Tannites slammed Zeke and Cole onto the altar. Apkallu loomed above them from his crooked throne.

There was no other way. It didn’t seem right. He hated the thought of it. Surely, this was not the only way.

Without opening his mouth or moving his lips, Zeke prayed a silent prayer to the author of his new song.

Then he sang the ancient song of shadow.

The Family United

Will Zeke’s efforts be too little too late, just like his nephews? Is there any hope for this family?

We’ll find out in two weeks.

Do me a favor and tell someone about the Story of the Marsh Boy in the meantime.

We’re building momentum towards the end. Now’s the perfect time to catch up so you can read it when it gets here.

Talk to y’all in two weeks.

~ J.P. Simons

PS: If you’re interested in keeping up with my other writing, check out my first article with Meeple Mountain: Board Games as Conflict Simulators for Families. It went live this past weekend.