Free IGMS Issue 49 by IGMS

ghost tilts its head to make me stumble, my vision at my own feet. "Why you came to these Woods," the wolf says, "why you have wandered the petrified land of stumps and bones where it is never dawn."
    "It doesn't matter." The lie comes with the practiced ease of sliding a knife between sleeping ribs.
    "Our pasts matter," the wolf replies. "Would you be here if it did not?"
    I won't concede truth to the ghost.
    The Woods are tranquil as a newly dug grave. There, against one of the birch, a gash where an ax split the bark. Here, a skeletal bush where a net stripped it of foliage. And there, at my feet, a footprint: my own, bloodied, old. This is the path.
    My breath quickens, anticipation braided around dread. I won't turn back now, though some buried instinct begs me to flee, to let the ghosts keep my eyes so long as I escape these Woods.
    I scatter the coward's impulse and push forward. Ahead, the trees fall back and we reach the half-moon clearing.
    Six man-shapes stand with axes hanging limp in their hands. They aren't ghosts, but they aren't the living, either. Flesh sags from graying bones. Rotted leather garments hang in tatters about protruding shoulder-bones and jutting hips. Their mouths roil with maggots.
    "You came back," they say in unison.
    Lichen ropes snap from the trees and snare my arms, pulling them above my head. A second forms a noose and snakes around my neck. The ropes heave me backwards, pinning me against a hawthorn. More lichen circles my ankles.
    Bound.
Helpless
.
    The ghouls lumber forward with axes raised. My heart beats in a panicked frenzy. I strain to lever one arm free as the noose tightens, dragging my chin up.
    The ghosts sit back on either side of me and watch.
    Pocked, dead skin stretches across the ghouls' faces. Why do I not remember these details, the rotting teeth and ant-chewed eyes --
    "We are stronger now." The ghouls raise their axes. "We will not fail you again."
    Muscles strain in my shoulders as I pull one arm towards my chest. I feel the warm spot over my heart and hook my fingers inside the vest pocket - last hope. "Burn for me," I whisper, a final plea.
    The sunbeam has grown strong on my body heat. The sunlight expands and blossoms, brilliant, terrible, pulling light from high above until it's a miniature sun incarnate. It bursts in a passionate supernova and the echo of a triumphant scream.
    Both ghosts shut my eyes so I will not go blind.
    The ghouls cry out, their axes dropping to the forest floor. The lichen shrieks and unwinds. Free, I draw my knives and fling myself into the afterimage of the sunlight. Blades meet unresisting flesh.
    Pieces of my stolen memory unwind with the crunch of rib and rip of skin, weaving threads back into place.
    One.
    He remembers the Sun, his God; his purpose is only to obey. He is the Avatar of the Sun, glorious in battle, fierce in peace, merciless in all.
    Two.
    He was once a man, but when he gave himself to the Sun, it burned away all trace of who he was. He is remade only to serve.
    Three.
    He takes the map from the body of his predecessor, who looked too long into the abyss stretched dark across vellum
.
He envies that suicide.
    Four.
    He stands in a cave, surrounded by wolves - eyes gray, teeth bared, bodies unmoved. Too late he realizes he stares not at living flesh but skeletons, with the ghost-images of life overlaid on bones.
    Five.
    And he remembers the shadow; the beautiful, cold darkness that soothes the burning in his veins and the unbearable light behind his eyes.
    When the sixth ghoul falls, I wait for my name, surely caught like a fishbone within the woodsman's throat.
    Only the feel of old blood on my knuckles comes as reward.
    I spin in a circle, though the ghosts now watched the clearing and see all. Six bodies. Nothing more. "Where is my
name
?"
    "They destroyed it," the wolf says calmly. "You asked them to, after all."
    My spine snaps rigid and I turn my head (sightless) until the wolf-eye looks me in the face.
    The