Authors: Craig Saunders
Bloodeye (11 page)
Ran toward his dark brother, faster and faster, his feet a blur and his agonies forgotten.
Brother Shadow ran alongside, too, and then…inside.
They joined, whole at last.
And within the void, the shades waited.
51
To embrace the void is to be embraced.
Keane thought this, warm inside the vast empty places he ran. There was a kind of perfection in the absolute absence of sensation. Pure thought now that the fracture between him and his darkness healed. Complete satisfaction and happiness and calm unlike anything Keane had ever experienced.
Brother Shadow. Whole.
He found he couldn’t stop his legs pumping, even had he wanted to. His legs, too, were happy. They found a rhythm in their fastest stride, in that gear that a runner keeps at bay. The speed where the body breaks down and becomes nothing more than a vessel speeding along a road, through a field, across a gulf, spanning space…the endless, beautiful run that leads nowhere but can only end in oblivion.
The speed at which a heart stops because it cannot take such happiness.
Such contentment is not meant for mortal men.
Pain hit Keane in the chest. Had he eyes, they would have opened, and he was glad he’d taken them, allowed himself to see the really real world that was everything and nothing and just…feel.
Whole, heartbroken.
Loved by himself and none other. A man without a heart. A heart that burst from speed and joy.
Keane died and the shadows came for him. The souls he’d sent to this place, this nothing beyond the underworld and the overworld, this place that encompassed everything that ever was and would be.
The shades were in him, tearing him to nothing more than pieces of flesh and bone. Shattering his bones, tearing at the marrow, trying to punish him.
The wind grew and howled at the dead man.
Keane smiled. He smiled and died and Brother Shadow died with him, together, whole. Happy.
52
Outside the void, on a road north of the city, surrounded by trees, rain fell on a corpse. He would be the last corpse found with that third bloody eye carved in his forehead.
Keane Reid was nothing but a dead man with his face staring at the rain while water filled the holes where his eyes should have been.
Two blind eyes, and a third that stared, endlessly, into nothing. A red, misty light bled from that third eye, a light full of shade and beautiful sunlight. Perhaps the void was nothing more than rain, easing a tired man’s legs, washing out his bloody eyes and filling them with cool, cool shadows.
Perhaps it’s the place where all the dead waited, and among them, the one he missed most of all.
About the Author
Craig Saunders lives in Norfolk, England, with his wife and three children. He holds a degree in Japanese, and lived in Japan for five years where he held a number of jobs: editor, translator, and carpenter among them. He knows enough jujitsu, karate, aikido, and kendo to be a danger only to himself.
He is the author of many short stories as well as numerous novels including
Rain
,
The Estate
and
A Stranger’s Grave
. He writes horror and fantasy for fun and humor when he’s feeling serious, which isn’t often.
He blogs at
www.craigrsaunders.blogspot.com
, or find him on
www.facebook.com/craigrsaundersauthor
, Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
About the Publisher
DarkFuse is a leading independent publisher of modern fiction in the horror, suspense and thriller genres. As an independent company, it is focused on bringing to the masses the highest quality dark fiction, published as collectible limited hardcover, paperback and eBook editions.
To discover more titles published by DarkFuse, please visit its official site at
www.darkfuse.com
.
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