Forest of the Dead ch 1

~Chapter One~

One day, I died.

The building heaved at once and threw its walls aside. Breaths of fire snapped the beams likes twigs. The ceiling groaned and a spiderweb of cracks spread rapidly through the stone. Windows imploded and glass rained on all within the house. There was a terrible whistle, high and screeching, shredding the sky to pieces, drawing closer and closer until another collision rocked the building. The air filled with flames, the ceiling collapsed and all the levels above it came down with it, and then the blackness came in and swallowed them all.

I didn't feel a thing.

There I was, there I wasn't; I felt as if I was sand that had slipped through the cracks and vanished into an expansive basement. At the same time I was also a blanket covering a field, spreading out wide and then writhing in on myself again, folding and crumpling smaller and smaller until I was just my one single cell of creation and then back into one atom. I was tinier than everything that existed, and I felt the entire huge universe all around me, ever-present but also distant and untouchable. I caught glimpses of great stars and clouds as they formed into planets, rainbow-colored dust and rings of red, and huge firey explosions as stars themselves died. The nova was brilliant, a hot seer of white light that I saw but couldn't feel, and then it all drew itself back in and was nothing but a dimly glowing speck, amorphous and lost of energy. I saw the plumes of dust coalesce into rocks, then moons, then planets, and from the stewy oceans of brine crawled insects and fish and all manner of amphibians, and they grew legs and lungs and in a few minutes there were cities full of distorted humanoids. All this happened in the split second of existence that I was in before I exploded again.

I was slipping again, falling not in any direction but through dimension, and I was so insubstancial that gravity had no pull on me, time never wore me, and the laws of physics were thrown to the wind. I was compressed, I was underwater, drowning, and fading, and beyond all worlds, under and above them. I could not act, only be acted upon by this great incredible force as it yanked me through dimension after dimension to who-knows-where. I was a beast drawn through knotholes by an invisible hand, I was a plane squeezing through a mousehole, I was a galaxy pushing through a pinhole...

Then I was dropped. I was a leaf fluttering by autumn winds, a straw tossed on the waves of an ocean. I felt physical sensation at last! It seemed that I had experienced feeling many millenia ago, and I slowly remembered more of my body as it reappeared around me. The more corporeal I became, the less I knew. Who am I? Who was I? What had just happened? I seemed to remember some great feeling of floating through the universe, but it faded and vanished and finally disappeared altogether. I did not remember being a shelless spirit; now I was a soul in a body to command. The space solidified into air around me, the temperature grew to chill cold, and then the blood poured into my veins again and my equilibrium told me I was not right-side-up. Hard ground appeared against my back and I realized now that I was lying down, had been lying down for quite some time now. How long? I couldn't remember.

My ears popped open and heard the wind in the trees I couldn't see yet. Then my eyes formed, blank and white, then dark with color, then eyelids grew back over them. I pulled them open with a tremendous effort and quickly closed them again as rain stung the new flesh. The numbness leaked from me and I soon realized the rain was falling everywhere on and around me, and then I realized I was wet and cold. But I knew nothing beyond that. I knew no speech, no motor function, no thought. I had forgotten everything. I became aware of having a mouth and forced it open, testing the motion and feeling, learning that rain didn't hurt to touch my tongue.

I heard noises -- voices! I opened my eyes just a little and saw looming figures burbling and grumbling something I couldn't understand. Warmth closed over me, rough but fuzzy, something wrapped and wound, and then many hands lifted and carried me away. I saw the trees move away, and little streams and creekbeds, rocks and leaves...Not that I knew that's what they were called. I could hardly understand the concept of their being as it was, let alone their names.

The trees vanished as walls appeared around me. A door slammed closed with a noise far too loud for my new ears. There was the feeling of a surface beneath me again, but not the spongy dirt of outside; rather, something hard and flat and unnatural.

The people babelled more amongst themselves. They shrank down to half their size - no, they were sitting down. They went silent, watching me, waiting for something or someone. I began to shiver in the blanket, and a dull ache crept into my stomach. I couldn't understand any of these sensations, pain or cold or anything else, but only knew that it was uncomfortable and that I ought to draw attention to it. I whimpered softly, the only noise I was able to muster, and the brows of the people fell, their mouth corners pointing down. But nothing transpired to ease my suffering. How long would this last? Would I lay here unsatisfied forever? Would these people keep waiting for nothing eternally?

The door swung open and closed with a more gentler noise, and a person approached. They, like everyone else, was swathed in gray, but at the time I couldn't make the distinction between clothing and skin and I thought their body was contorted and discolored. More burbling went on, and then the person came to stand behind me and reached out a gnarled hand. The cold flesh pressed onto my forehead and just as I opened my mouth to voice my distress, I knew everything.

Knowledge rushed from his fingertips and reached into the farthest expanses of my brain, bringing back the knowledge of life and movement and beauty and wonder. I knew my pain was hunger, I knew the language of their burbling, I knew I was in a building, I knew a forest was outside, I knew I was a tall thin human being with hair and eyes and workable vocal chords. But I still didn't know what this building was, why I was here, or even my own name. I knew the basics of general life but not the details of my personal life. I felt relieved at first as I knew that I had known all this before, and wasn't learning but relearning. But then the relief was replaced by distress when I was intelligent enough to know what I didn't know, as in, my identity.

"What?" I croaked. My throat was aching, as if I'd been screaming loudly for hours. I knew that I had only existed for a few minutes, that my only noise so far was a whimper. But then...My brain itched. There had been something else, something before all this. The memory of it was just beyond my reach. I felt like I was reaching my hand out through the darkness, grasping, feeling an object with just my bare fingertips. But I couldn't hold that object, couldn't pull it towards me and identify it, only be aware that it was there. But the feeling was so faint that I was hardly certain of that.

The elderly man (I knew gender now) moved to stand beside rather than behind me. His neatly-trimmed, bristly beard quivered as he spoke, a motion which strangely fascinated me as if I'd never seen it before (which I hadn't, although part of me thought I had).

"You are in The Inn...The only inn," he said.

"Where...where is...the Inn?"

He took a deep breath and said, "The only forest. The Forest of the Dead."

My mind reeled at those words. Only inn? Only forest? The dead? Part of my old memory was telling me that there should be more than one inn, one forest to the world...And that no place was Of the Dead. But here they were. Here I was. I shivered more and pulled the blanket tighter around my body. I realized I was unclothed, and shame reddened my face now that I had the knowledge that nudity was indecent.

"I will explain more later, once you are fed and clothed," said the old man.

"I feel like I've never eaten," I said through chattering teeth.

"Yes," he said. "We all feel that way when we first come here."

"You...you mean...I'm not the only one...who has..." Who had what? I didn't know what I had done.

He shook his head. "No. Everyone in the Forest has come the same way - lying down, naked, with no memory of their former life."

"F...former l-life?"

"I will explain everything, later," he said. "For now, you need food and clothing." He turned to the other people in the room, all four of them, and said, "Carlie, Raine, Will, Theodore -- get robes, and secure a table in the mainroom." The four young adults nodded and left the room through a second door. I looked around me and studied the room, taking it all in for the first time, every dusty corner and bookshelf, every bed, and the low table I was sitting on. All of the beds, apparently, were in use: the blankets were rumpled and the pillows imprinted with the shape of a head.

"Who are you?" The old man's voice surprised me, a sudden noise cutting through the still silence.

"I...I am..." I thought hard, trying to bring my memory back. I groped in the dark recesses of my mind again, trying to recall any small piece that I could.

"It's alright." He patted me on the shoulder. "It takes time for everyone."

The door swung open again and the woman named Carlie entered with folded gray in her arms. She held it out to me and then exited again. The old man left also, closing the door behind him, and I heard how dreadfully silent the room was. There was not a stirring of the faintest insect, not a breeze outside, and even the rain had hushed. I focused harder, and now voices filtered in from the next room, soft and distant. I shirked the blanket and quickly donned the robe before the cold could bite at my exposed skin. But there seemed no difference, and I noticed that the air was not cold at all, but it was only myself. It seemed as though my body made no heat, expelling rather than drawing it. The standing hairs of my arms prickled uncomfortably, and I wished that I could warm myself somehow. No matter how much I hugged myself and rubbed my shoulders, no matter how many blankets I took to drape around myself, the chill wouldn't leave me. I exhaled, expecting to see a fog of breath, but there was nothing. And then I did a double-take. I had not inhaled back.

I thought I was holding my breath by accident, and huffed to put air in my lungs. But as soon as my thoughts wandered, my lungs stopped their effort. As odd as this was, it disturbed me that I did not find it disturbing at all. It seemed less natural to breathe than to not bother. There was no burning ache of suffocation at the lack of it. I did not become dizzy or weak.

I opened the door and went into the inn mainroom. The atmosphere was dark and heavy, only the candelabras and candle-lamps holding back the encroaching shadows. People, all in gray robes, sat together and spoke in low tones, although most did not speak at all. This wasn't surprising to me. What could there be to talk about if no one had any memory?

I spotted a table at the far end of the room with only the old man seated. I walked over and sank into one of the chairs. There were plates of food arrayed, one from which the old man ate, the rest untouched, apparently all for me.

"Taste everything," he said between mouthfuls, "Find out what your favorite foods are."

"I-I'm cold."

"We all are. You won't feel it any more, in time."

"I don't l-like this...I...I don't want to be here..."

His expression didn't soften like the others' did. His age-lined face remained stoic and impartial. "No one does. But you're lucky. Many who appear don't do it fully."

"W-what do you mean?"

"How many voices do you hear now?"

I focused my ears again, closing my eyes. After a few minutes I opened them again. "I think...I think at least a hundred...whispering v-voices."

He nodded knowingly. "And how many people are in here?"

I looked around the room and did a headcount. One, two, three...Fifteen, not including me and the old man. Fifteen people, a hundred voices. I didn't have to speak for the old man to know what I was thinking.

"Many appear here only in spirit. Some can speak, some can't. Most can't be seen," he said.

"H-how can you...you tell they're here?"

"Our bodies appear even when we do not. There is a building here in the Forest...both the morgue and my home. That is where all the new bodies appear. Many are left unnamed, but they are all there. Yes, even yours...Your body as it was, before you died. What we all see in the mirror is a pristine, perfected version of ourselves, what we were like before death. Any scars we have are unrelated to our deaths. The ones who appear formless don't even know what they looked like before."

I mulled this all over, rolling the thoughts in my head. "I...I don't want a body...if it means being cold...and in pain..."

"That is hunger. But if you don't want to eat, you don't have to. It makes no difference, only dulls the pain slightly. But it won't go away. You'll get used to it; we all have."

"We're dead."

"We've died, yes. But we're not quite dead. No one knows how we got here or why."

I bowed my head, half of my mind boiling with mixed anger and depression (why me? why am I cursed?) and the other half strangely hollow. Like my chilled body, my emotions were numbed at the edges. Perhaps my brain was too undeveloped to feel so deeply. The unfeeling frightened me worse than anything else. Was I becoming something heartless, something insane? I needed emotion, I needed a sense of willpower! I needed proof that I was an actual entity, not an avatar of a concept!

I stood with such force that my chair fell back, at the same time lifting the table with my hands and throwing it forwards. The old man barely managed to roll out of the way as food and silverware flew over his head. The table thunked loudly onto the floor, its legs up in the air like an inert beast. The chairs lay still on their sides as if stunned. I clenched and unclenched my fists, forcing blood to pump through them. I made myself pant, feeling the burn in my lungs as my breathing heightened. The old man stared up at me with amazement from the floor. All around me the thirteen people had turned to stare with half-interested, half-dead eyes. The disembodied voices hushed to bemused whispers.

"I am a person!" I shouted. "I am alive! I am alive! I have a name, I have a body!" I was trying to convince myself, trying to drive these things into my mind and make them stay.

"You are disoriented," said the old man as he stood. "You should rest."

"I am...I am...I am Imogene!" I caught my breath, my words echoing back in my brain. Imogene? Yes, that was my name! I grinned, then broader, then laughed. I could remember my name, and it felt glorious!

The confusion of the others' changed to disturbance, then faded into nothingness. They lost interest in the scene quickly and turned back to their hollow conversations. The old man adopted a gentler, more paternal face, moving towards me with a hand outstretched for my shoulder. I let his hand rest on my arm as he tried to comfort me from what he thought was madness.

"Yes, that is very good," he said. "I'm glad for you. But you should rest. Perhaps you will remember more, hm?"

"Let me see my body!" I exclaimed. I kept my voice raised to ensure that I was an emotive being.

He was taken aback. "Your...cadaver? I'm sorry, but...You cannot. No one can but I."

"Then lend me a mirror! I want to see myself!" I had to make certain I was unique in all ways, to keep me set apart from these phantoms around me.

"Of course," he said, withdrawing his hand. He departed to a back room. When he did not return, I followed. It was a musty old room long out of use with full-length mirrows leaning against all walls. Their frames all differed; some were wood, some metal, some plain, some ornate. I didn't question the logic of a room full of mirrors. I was too elated to question anything. I stood in front of one of the mirrors, studying myself head-to-toe, taking in all the details. I was unique! I didn't look like any one of the people here. No one else had my hair, jet-black like the heart of the night, wild and cut in uneven layers. No one else had my eyes, dark and piercing, narrow and high. No one had my wide nose, my oval chin, my slim arms.

"Imogene," came the old man's name. "I do not recommend standing between so many mirrors for so long."

I did not turn to face him but I saw his drawn face over my shoulder in the glass. "Yes? Why not?"

"For the living, these are simply vanity devices." His hand slid deftly away from the folds of his robes and went to the door, nudging it closed with nary a noise. "But for us, whose souls resonate more strongly past our skin, mirrors are doorways. They reflect not just our skin, but the spirit therein...And they can move spirits as well."

I felt a hint of danger, like prey in the field, and I felt the desire to flee and hide suddenly. I turned now and looked at the solid face of the man with confusion. "Then let me out." My eyes strayed to the door, and his hand still poised on its handle. A heavy darkness fell on the room, seeping in from all corners, enclosing and thick. I felt suffocated in this small space, and disoriented with many slanted Imogene's staring back at me from the metallic plates.

"You're such a nice, powerful soul..." His voice was appraising, gentle yet hard-edged, like the soft rustle of a snake accompanied by its hiss.

"You...you will let me from this room, old man!" I demanded.

"Please," he said, "Call me the Keeper." He did not move from his barring position. I felt more oppressed and shivered in my clothes.

"Such a strong, strong soul," he went on, looking me up and down. "So perfect. Maybe finally my string of duds will end here...Maybe you'll be my summonee to break my chain of failures. I am so tired of failure."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said. My voice regained its earlier quaver. "I...I really think w-we should discuss whatever this is...in the m-main room."

"All of them will see, they'll see, that I'm not insane, not at all!" His pitch turned into an eerie drone, his words foreign and garbled, becoming gibbering nonsense that nonetheless rang of the arcane. I felt a tingling presence in the air as he chanted, as if some other form were here, pushing against the air and the air in turn against me. I was wrapped in a crippling blanket and was being drawn backwards. The Keeper shrank before my view, becoming smaller and dimmer, more distant. I jolted as a cold wave ran over me and I realized I was just passed through one of the mirrors. My view became disarmingly distorted, wavering and warbling like the surface of a pond. And then it all went dim and I was rushing through a tunnel.