Tales of Chills and Thrills: The Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Novels) (42 page)

“It is. Mahavira and Buddha were
contemporaries. But they are not the same.” The dead man paused before
continuing. “Because of their belief in the cycle of rebirth, Jains also
believed every living thing had a soul. Not just intelligent creatures, but the
trees, birds, plants. Everything. So the pain man inflicts on other living
creatures is really the pain he inflicts on himself. ‘Many times I have been
drawn and quartered, torn apart, and skinned, helpless in snares and traps, a
deer. An infinite number of times I have been felled, stripped of my bark, cut
up and sawn into planks.’”

“That’s not possible. You can’t exist
without destroying something else that is living,” Samuel said. “I must kill to
live. Everything in existence must kill something to stay alive.”

“You can if you are not of the living.”

Samuel raised his eyebrows.

The dead man stood. His bones cracked. He
turned toward the marsh and took stilted steps to the water’s edge. When the
black liquid crept up to his knees, he turned to face Samuel once more.

“Rest. Sleep. Dream. I hope you can find
the peace I cannot.”

The dead man, known as Deva,
pushed forward until the water of the marsh converged over the top of his head.
Samuel watched a single bubble arise and pop soundlessly in the darkness as he
fell asleep.

***

The Great Cycle existed before time
began. Worlds expanded and collapsed repeatedly like a cosmic heartbeat. Deva
was one in a long line of overseers, responsible for managing the powers
of the reversion and then transferring that power to a son. The Great Cycle
could not operate without a guardian in the same way a timepiece could not
operate without a watchmaker. Deva had what might have been known as a normal
life. But that existence was so far in the distant past, memories were nothing
more than fleeting sensations of love and pain.

On Earth, civilization degenerated
into war, famine and disease. The leaders of the world did nothing to stem the
destruction, making decisions that filled their pockets with riches while the
masses starved and died. It was then the unknowable and omniscient
powers that sustain the Great Cycle cast the souls of that wretched world into
another more desperate place, in an attempt to cleanse it. The people of Earth
awoke to a barren and lifeless landscape. A black cloud came from the
west and those who fell beneath it were dispersed to another random reversion,
thereby spreading Earth’s original population across many worlds. Some
inhabitants took their own lives during the transition and those souls
re-entered by falling from the trees with a noose around their neck, as Samuel
had.

As more people arrived in the world of
the reversion, the same patterns emerged. The strong formed clans for
protection against rival clans and men built strongholds in the mountains. The
reversion protected the space where the final portal would open, usually at the
point of highest elevation. Territorial disputes led to war, just as they had
on Earth. Many souls gave up and let the cloud swallow them, reducing populations
in the reversions to pockets of survivors trying to outrun the cloud. They had
no promise of surviving if they could outrun it, and no knowledge of
what waited for them if they did.

Deva came through the forest with his
children, but he never learned the fate of his Earth wife. He pledged
allegiance to a tribal leader and the group fled from the forest and into the
raw wilderness of the reversion. Samuel and Mara were with him. They
came as his spiritual offspring after having many past lives on Earth, as all
people there did. Kole was Deva’s spiritual son too, but he did not come
through the first reversion with Samuel and Mara. He arrived in a different
reversion and ended up in the same one as Deva much later. As the group ran
from the horde, Deva was separated from his children and knew nothing of their
fate. After conversations with others coming through the suicide forest, Deva
discovered souls swallowed by the cloud were dispersed to different reversions
until they could find redemption by righting a wrong committed in a past life.
It was his first true understanding that the reversion was not a new world but
an infinite series of worlds.

Over the years and through countless
cycles Deva came to learn the ways of the reversion. In the reversions he would
encounter his spiritual children in different physical forms, but he always
knew it was them.

In Deva’s thirty-third reversion, he
discovered the orb. He found it deep in a cave when the cloud pushed him
inside. He spent the next seventy reversions of the Great Cycle staring into
it, studying the natural laws of the new world. Deva learned the reversion had an
overseer, a guardian. It was the duty of the lord of the reversion to ensure
another was in succession. He discovered his spiritual father left the orb for
him. When Deva knew he was next in line, he marched the orb to the mountain
peak of the reversion and sat across from his father at the cauldron. Without
much ceremony, Deva’s spiritual father gave his son control, with the
understanding he would have to do the same someday. Deva’s release from the
cycle would be complete when the next guardian, his son, was in place.

Although he had not done so in eons, Deva
made the climb to the peak many times with hundreds of his spiritual sons, and
yet none made it all the way to the cauldron, the point of transition. He
always saw an aura around his spiritual sons which distinguished them from
others moving through the reversion. Deva knew Kole and Samuel were not like
his other sons. They came through portals and slipped reversions and gained
knowledge of their new universe. Samuel was his natural firstborn and therefore
most likely his successor. However, the paradox was not lost on Deva. He wanted
Samuel to take his place and set him free.

At the same time, Deva’s responsibility
dictated he put every obstacle in Samuel’s path in order to make sure he passed
the test. Only the true heir would make it to the peak, and Deva expected to
see Samuel on the other side of the cauldron when the time was
right. Until then, Deva would wait for the cloud to push the inhabitants of the
reversion toward the mountain, hoping the next climb to the peak would be his
last.

The cloud would keep pushing Samuel to a
cave where he would talk to Deva again. Getting Samuel there to make amends
with those he wronged in past lives was the first step in the process of
becoming the next overseer.

***

Samuel awoke tired and achy. He gathered
his things and took one last look at the marsh before continuing on the path,
heading east toward the Barren and his meeting with Major. The dark cloud
pushed ever closer, devouring this place.

Samuel could not remember the point he
left the path. He recalled the snow and the cold, and the continued silence,
but he felt as though one moment he stood on the worn ground and the next he
was knee-deep in grey snow.

The heavy flakes floated from the sky.
They landed one on top of another and covered the ground within an hour. Samuel
thought the snow could have been white, but without daylight and the reflection
off the snowpack, the precipitation fell in waves of grey. He could not see the
dark cloud that came from the west, but he felt it. He knew it was there, above
the winter storm in the place where winter did not exist.

He trudged onward, sensing east as best
he could. The snow came in silent waves, burying the marsh, the path, and
obscuring the mountain from view. Samuel realized his shirt and pants would not
be enough for him to survive if this was indeed the onslaught of winter. This
place carried no warning of the changing season, no hint of the autumn’s
leaves.

Samuel felt the snow suffocating his
breath with the cold wind on his back. The ice kept his fingers numb, the
fatigue pulling his eyelids down. He stumbled and used his left hand to brace
for the fall. Samuel’s body collapsed and the snow filled his mouth and stole
his breath. He remained motionless as the cold flakes fell in silent waves. The
snowy blanket covered his body, the frozen earth stealing what little heat
remained. He raised his head and noticed conforming lines standing out against
the random, spiky branches of the leafless trees. He rubbed the snow from his
eyes and looked again, pushing himself up until he was on his hands and knees.
He stumbled forward until the outline turned into a cabin, much like the
first one he found.

The cabin stood in the snowstorm, its
chimney a defiant, obscene gesture to the raging elements. One door and one
window faced Samuel, just like the other cabin. However, this one seemed
a bit larger. He held his hands out, hoping to reach the door before the storm
claimed his soul. Samuel staggered forward and fell on the step. He reached up
with one hand until he felt the brass knob. The touch jolted him like a
bolt of electricity, reminding him that failure to open this door meant a cold,
slow death. His right hand seized it, but he could not make his fingers
grasp the knob with enough strength to turn it.

He would not consider what would happen if
the door was locked. Samuel let his right hand fall, and lunged at the knob
with his left. Snow caked his head, and his feet tingled with the itchy pain of
frostbite. He felt his fingers claw the knob, grasp it and turn.
Without the clinking sound of the opening strike plate, Samuel assumed he was
dead, that the door was locked. But his left arm fell at an angle as the door
to the cabin swung open. He raised his head and smiled, crawling across
the threshold with a final lunge and rolling onto his back. He used an elbow to
slam the door shut, and it shook the cabin without a sound. Samuel looked
around and closed his eyes. His breathing slowed as relief and exhaustion
pulled him into a state of unconsciousness.

***

The crackling fire woke him. Samuel heard
the hiss and pop before he smelled the rustic aroma of the hearth. He smiled
with his eyes closed, savoring the sound and smell, senses he sometimes
neglected in life and never would again, thanks to this place. He’d caught
whiffs of scents, but nothing lingered for more than a few moments.

He debated whether or not he was dead.
Maybe there was fire. Maybe he was in hell.

Curiosity won the mental duel, and Samuel
opened his eyes in the glare of the bright yellow and orange flame. It caught
his attention as it did not have the sickly yellow shade of the fire he lit in
the forest. He placed a hand over his forehead to shield himself from the
unexpected light and blinked like an ascetic emerging from a cave after years
of meditation. The warmth relaxed his muscles. As his vision returned, he
noticed a fuzzy aura at the edges. He pushed up onto his elbows and looked
around the cabin.

The hearth sat inside a black potbelly
stove. A single iron pipe ran at an angle from the top and into the brick
chimney, which extended up the wall and beyond the ceiling. A saucepan sizzled,
with tendrils of enticing steam spiraling away from the stovetop. He turned to
see a wooden table with two chairs, one at each end. A napkin holder, candles
and steins were set on top. His rucksack sat next to the door, along
with a pair of suede boots he did not recognize. Above the boots and suspended
by a single iron hook was a long, black, leather trench coat. Samuel smiled,
thinking of the futuristic sci-fi heroes laden with enormous weapons.

In the corner sat a single reading chair
with swirled sides and brass rivets holding the soft leather
tight over the cushions. Samuel thought he could become lost in that chair with
the help of a good book and a glass of wine. His eyes moved through the cabin
so quickly that he did not notice a thick, plush sleeping bag held his body
like a cocoon. He felt his feet. They did not tingle with the burning pain of
extreme cold, but rather, his toes wiggled in warm comfort. He glanced at the
window next to the door and saw nothing but a charcoal square, as if someone
had painted the window to block the outside. Samuel drifted into a deep sleep
while the potbelly stove kept him warm.

***

He felt the panicky flutter in his chest
of awakening in a strange place until he saw the potbelly stove again.
Contentment chased away his anxiety until his hunger made itself known. He had
eaten little since arriving. Samuel sensed a cellular duty to push sustenance
down his throat. He welcomed the hunger pangs and the feeling of being human
again, though his brain cautioned him about his temporary euphoria. It reminded
him he was in a single-room cabin in the midst of a strange world that was
slowly unraveling.

Samuel climbed from the warmth of the
sleeping bag, standing naked in front of the fire. He let the heat warm his
skin until it hurt, and then a little bit more. His clothes lay draped over the
back of one of the chairs, and he decided a meal would take precedence over
modesty.

As if the cabin had suspended time while
he slept, the pan on the stove continued to sizzle.

“That can only be bacon,” Samuel said as
he rubbed his hands together and licked his upper lip.

He saw the familiar fatty strips
bubbling, crispy at the ends, and he inhaled the aroma until he could almost
taste it. Samuel grabbed his shirt and slid it over his head. With his right
arm retracted, he used the sleeve to lift the pan off the stove and onto the
brick pedestal supporting it. Without waiting for the grease to stop dancing,
he grabbed a slice of bacon and held it in the air in front of his face,
cursing the burn on his fingers and blowing on it until he could take a
bite. A warm, salty sensation flooded his mouth and he closed his
eyes, leaning back against the wall and chewing like a junkie with the needle
still protruding from a vein. At first Samuel’s stomach lurched. He felt a
rumble and heard a gurgle. He paused, and then he devoured the other three
strips lying in the grease.