I haven't been able to write for a couple of days, life got hectic and I mostly just moped, but I'm trying to make up for lost time! This is my entry for the contest hosted by @f3nix, you can find it here: https://steemit.com/contest/@f3nix/finish-the-story-contest-week-19 I might be a little late for it to actually count as an entry but I still really wanted to answer the prompt. If you're unfamiliar with his contest, he provides the start of a story and invites people to finish it! So without further ado, here's the beginning of the story, written by @f3nix:
Prague, 22 September 1994
Dear silent friend,
once again, I will force you to bear the tremulous handwriting of this pathetic old man.
Time has yellowed my fingers and your pages in equal measure. But I know you will not complain in finding yourself soiled by my memories once again, after such a long time, after the hiatus of decades of life, spent far away from the ancient leather of your cover. And I hope it did not bother you to try the tickling of my pen again. Not more than three spots of water and ten sheets before this, you still were curiously waiting for the hand of a fourteen-year-old, full of dreams and watercolours.
As I write, the mist rises from Moldova and lingers among the ancient gothic spires, guardians of forgotten secrets, while a pale September sun, as a master of alchemy, transmutes in gold water and heavens.
There is this little kestrel who, for a few days, has been picking on the attic's glass at dusk, while I perform my little preparatory rituals before everything happens like every night. The graceful winged evening’s maid urges me to once again cast my gaze on the hundred towers city, but these eyes will no longer be able to patiently stand on the surface of the mystery.
"I discovered a terrible law that links the green colour, the fifth chord and the heat. I lost the joy of living. Power scares me. I will write no more”. Such were your feelings, Gustavo, and I still remember your trembling voice when you confided in me, the last time we met, before the great war swallowed everything and everyone, forcing us to interrupt our occultic studies. Only now that the layers of reality have finally crumbled before my eyes, like a sedimentary stone on the sides of a primordial river, I can grasp the true meaning of your words. The anxious joy of discovery, mixed with the ancestral vertigo of sidereal abysses, has overwhelmed me and continues to overwhelm me every night I leave.
And, just as in the layers of rock are the remains of creatures lost in time, even these levels of reality are not devoid of surprises .. and encounters. By now, I'm sure they saw me, but I cannot help but go back. Of all, I know that the faceless child already waits for me, every time closer, just beyond the threshold. He craves my warmth, my vibration and, this time, I do not know if I will manage to continue playing the game of deceiving him, while I persevere to the end. Certainly, I cannot draw back right now that my human life ends and, at the same time, I’m experimenting one, a hundred, a thousand lives.
Forgive me, dear diary, for having forced you to bear my poor ravings again. Perhaps, we’ll never meet again. The kestrel flew towards the old city. It's time to leave.
My Ending
The faceless child ran his fingers delicately across the old man’s diary. That was the last entry, but there were plenty preceding it. He flipped through the aging pages. The old man’s handwriting had been atrocious as a boy, nothing like the delicately looping script of his last entry. He skimmed the man’s childish ramblings. He could feel the excitement in every rushed scribble. The ghost of the old man’s childhood had been exploring a new and strange world. His mind had formed thoughts and questions faster than his hands could record them. Wonder and curiosity radiated from every page. The faceless child set the diary back down on the desk reverently.
This creature, who had absorbed the souls of countless occultists, found himself insatiably curious about his latest victim. He could still access some of the man’s memories. They were disjointed and distorted, but they painted enough of a picture to leave an impression on even an immortal being. The man’s life had been as dark and bleak as most humans, but the man never seemed to realize that he was the protagonist of a horror story. He had maintained his sense of curiosity and wonder even upon learning that it had led him to his death.
This was the burning flame that had first led the faceless child to stealing human souls all those years ago. The child faced a mirror and morphed the blank canvas that served as his face into the face of a young girl. She was the first soul he had ever stolen. His deep slumber in the far reaches of the nothing had been broken upon hearing her sing to him from the light all those millenia ago. Her hopes and dreams had been intoxicating. He had been devouring souls ever since to sate his desire to feel a soul like hers again.
He had been so close to giving up, so close to slinking back into the shadows for eternity. But that was before he had tasted this man’s soul. The child wondered if the human had known just how much he was gifting him when he stumbled once more into the fractured realm. Humans often doubted their own worth. To act so carelessly with it, the old man must have thought his soul something of little value. Aged and worn as it was, it was still the soul of a passionate and arrogant young boy, full of dreams and ambition. To the child, its worth could hardly begin to be explained. The faceless child let the girl’s face fade away and twisted his canvas into his newest acquisition. Staring back at him from the mirror was the face of the old man, the way he had looked at fourteen. He wished he could thank the man for rekindling his own sense of purpose. As long as souls like this existed, he would continue to stalk the between places and hunt them down.
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