Season of the Dead

While the old bum is looking for his lost soul in garbage cans and discarded drinks, elsewhere in the French Quarter another man is staring out over the city, searching for his lost soul in his own way. He stands on the balcony with the blank expressionless stare of one who is lost in thought. With a full moon on the Day of Souls in the year of the true millennium, the ancient prophecies were at hand, the ones that foretold of the gates of Hell opening and the beginning of the empire of one of Hell’s most evil dwellers. The man knows New Orleans is the perfect place for this newly formed army of the undead to converge. It is a city with a rich history of the occult and black magic. This evil could start like a ripple in a pond and spread until it consumed everything, without ever being noticed. With a new casino in the city, and with more hotels than ever, all full, this year’s celebration could be expected to be one of the biggest Halloweens in the history of the city, the streets jammed with loads of tourists and unknown transients. This is the kind of celebration the evil one waits for, a situation that provides unbridled feeding frenzies for the creatures of the night. He knows his evil benefactor will be there, leading the damned. He can feel their presence and this time he will have only one week to be ready.

He watches the sun setting and his mind drifts back to a time when his body was alive with a mortal soul, when he was a warrior and roamed with the freedom associated with being the leader of band of well-seasoned warriors. He was the son of a fierce Viking king forged as a leader since birth. He remembers the battles he fought, the riches he plundered, and the women he conquered. The entire world was his to explore, and life was his for the living, giving or taking whenever he so desired. At times it seems like only yesterday; still yet again, sometimes far away and lost as if in the mist of the cold Norse fog. The only thing that is truly clear was the night it all ended.

As his mind drifts back to that fateful night, his jaw tightens and his fists clench the balcony’s rail, and he remembers the attack that had come out of nowhere. He had been in battles before and seen death hundreds of times, being no stranger to all of its brutality, but nothing like this. No living creature, man, or beast in the wild could have ever perpetrated such a horror against his men, at least none that he knew of before that solemn night. It was as if they were being slaughtered like animals. He watched as his men fell one by one, some with their limbs literally ripped from their bodies. The only way to kill the attackers was to behead them but they were so many and they were inhumanly strong.

Jon’s mind clears and returns to the present.  He takes another sip and finishes the mixture of blood and wine while he watches the last of the sun disappear. As he drinks, again his mind drifts to the past almost unconsciously, and he loses his conscious grasp of present reality this time. It is as if he is living the massacre for real. His mind carries him back to the moment when he is the last one standing, his fallen men’s bodies littering the ground. He looks around, watching in disgust and mortal horror as the mangled flesh of his fallen friends and comrades are being fed upon as if they were animals, but strangely only the ones that are not dead. He hears the popping of their bones as their flesh is being ripped from them along with the slurping noises as the final bit of life’s blood is being sucked out of them. Then he looks upwards into the glaring eyes of yet another beast, now standing right in front of him. Barely having the strength to hold the sword of his father he attempts to attack, but he is no match for the inhuman creature facing him. A hand, resembling nothing human, but more so like a demon or monster from legends told by the old, reaches out from the cloak that covers it and grabs the heavy steel sword from him in mid swing. Then with ease and fluid grace, the unholy monstrosity snaps the blade in its hands.

He falls to his knees from exhaustion and horrified amazement at the sight of this exhibition. The large beast drops the broken blade and steps aside. All mutilations now stop, as out of the mist walks the leader of this hellish band.  All part their ranks to clear a path for this new robed figure, which is smaller in size than the others. As the figure approaches, he thinks he hears a voice, but it is not like the sound of spoken words carried on breath and air, it is more like a thought in his head.

“You are strong, Northman. I have waited many years for one such as you. You are the one who will lead my legion and you shall serve only me until the time of the Master's return.”  With this proclamation, the others raise Jon up like a sacrifice to a god. The last thing he feels is a sharp pain in his chest, right above his heart, like that of two daggers piercing him and his life force being drained from him. Then, just before consciousness leaves him, the voice says, “Now you are one of us.” And thus ended the mortal life of Jon Erik Garneau and began his life of eternal death.