Friday the 13th

[Isaac Wheeler]

The Dream had been the same ever since Isaac had first, foolishly, touched the crimson crossed medallion that had been hung from his door. Every night the same images replayed themselves…sometimes exactly the same while others gifted new insight, images or thoughts…not that any of it made sense as he was always snapped awake and stripped from answers that always felt so tantalizingly close. Tonight was no different save that it was Friday the 13th, an ill-omened night where the veil of past and present over-lapped one another and the transition from one to the other could come with a single breath.

“They’re close.” The man in front said over shoulder as he reached a hand to help Isaac usher the woman forward. Isaac instinctively knew the man’s name to be Asher…just as he knew they had been as close as brothers for some time. “Is it Rome?”

“No.” Isaac answered and glanced back over a shoulder while holding the torch high and easing Mary and her precious, unborn child, forward. “Rome cares nothing beyond peace…peace they’ve bought with blood.” A chasm of anguish lacerating his very soul at the mention of the Sacrifice. “It’s alright.” Reassuring as he moved behind the woman, reminded that his loss was nothing when lined up against another’s. “They will not harm us…the captain is one of us and will sail us to a new life…far beyond the reach of the Eagle and the Lion.”

It had just been a week…

The Dream shifted, swirled like a narcotic watercolor and faded to reveal a barren, windswept outcrop of rock not far beyond the walls of an ancient city. Three wooden crosses stood, empty and silent sentinels, upon Calvary’s mount. Isaac’s perspective was like that of Giovanni Bellini’s magpie perched above Christ Blessing.

Below, Isaac saw a single figure cloaked in white and standing before the central cross, head bowed in prayer and even from this distance and bird like vantage Isaac could hear the figure’s words.

“If it be Your will then I beseech Thee to help me see…You gave Him to the world and the world spat in Your face…I beg You for the freedom to punish…to grind their pathetic empires into dust and help You start anew…Father…I beg…” The prayer suddenly censored by a Higher power, the answer given on a tranquil…even tender…breeze, its message meant to calm and soothe yet it was met with savage anger.
“You honor them more than they deserve…” Spoken with the same sense of abandonment as He had surely felt when crying out ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’ Yet the cloaked figure had not His eternal patience and limitless love…what had been there replaced with a bitter and frozen wrath.

Isaac saw the figure rise up, the three crosses blown down with a sudden explosion of what he could only describe as divine force, the eruption of such energy possessing a magnetic power as Isaac watched the crosses thrown from Calvary like match sticks and then saw the figure’s aristocratic and elegant features as the hood had fallen back, fabric buffeted by the raw, sizzling power which still radiated off the figure. He felt the hate mixing with anguish within the man, felt it instantly chill into something so cold and everlasting that it scared him to his very core.
He had never seen this before…never borne witness to this particular dream-strand.

“You will not be able to save them…I will damn them all as punishment.”

Isaac hearing the last words as the figure lifted its leonine gaze to stare directly into his existence and smile as if he knew another watched from on high.

A blink of eye and Isaac found himself not in the tunnel but in a stone room and barring a heavy door with a beam of stout oak. There was a chill in the air and the acrid scent of fire on the air. Distant shouts and screams, the chaotic clang of melee combat rising from below. He was garbed not in the simple threads and cowl from the subterranean passage but in tunic and chain mail…a distinct feeling of claustrophobia as he stared from a great helm. He twisted away from the door which had immediately come under heavy barrage from an attacking force on the other side. In fact, Isaac became distinctly aware that the entire castle had fallen under relentless siege and attack. “Go.” The language he spoke this time was different than before, the white tunic fluttering as he moved across the room, the crimson cross looking like so much spilled blood. Isaac grabbed another knight to guide him and the young noble boy towards the narrow passage opposite the room. “There is no time…as long as one of us still draws breath then our purpose still lives. Take what we know, what we protect and flee this place.” Isaac was saying as the door began to give way at the hinges. “Now.”

Isaac knew he would ruffle the lad’s hair, that this would be the last time he laid eyes upon his son as the dream shifted, vaulted and raced centuries into the future yet still remained centuries in his own past. Just as he knew he would turn and draw his sword against the same Papacy he had sworn to protect.

It was Friday the 13th, 1307 and apocryphal justice had come thanks to jealousy and debt courtesy of one Iron King.

“Dieu n'est pas content, nous avons des ennemis de la foi dans le Royaume.” The leader of the half dozen men which had stormed the room spoke the King’s words.

“Yes…” Isaac agreed. “God is not pleased and there are enemies of faith in the kingdom…you, Roland…you are the enemy today and the man you serve is the true devil.” Spoken with leveled sword. “Forgive me, my Lord, for the blood of brothers shed today.”

“A special punishment awaits heretics and idolaters. Tonight, you shall burn in hell Templar.” Roland spoke and rushed forward with the rest of his men while the battle raged beyond the castle walls.

When it was done Isaac stood alone in the small room, sword slick with blood of his enemies…the half dozen of them lay strewn about the room. His tunic no longer possessed of alabaster purity, spatters of half a dozen men’s blood staining it as richly as the crimson cross which adorned his chest. He could feel his limbs growing so heavy, could hear the wheezing bubble of breath flecked with blood struggling to escape his lungs. His wounds were many…but he only needed to sit awhile…

The sword clattered from his hand as he scraped and shuffled to a chair, armored body faltering and then collapsing into the chair. Breath came more labored as lungs slowly filled, eyes blinking against the streaming morning light and flurry of snow which blew through the windows. He could hear the distant clamoring of battle yet felt allaying breath of cool air and experienced the breath of salvation on a tranquil…even tender…breeze.
His son was safe…the line would be preserved.

He blinked again as the warming rays were eclipsed by a figure in black, his lithe body shifting to drive Isaac’s chin and failing neck upwards so that moribund eyes would find the chartreuse smear of one still very much alive. The same eyes from Calvary now staring down at him.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Asked of the Templar, fingers stabbing into soft flesh beneath the jaw as sharp as a well-placed and driven blade.

“Someplace you’ll never see again.” Isaac answered and smiled, teeth smeared and stained with blood. “The boy is gone…and with him vanishes any hope of completing your cursed quest.”

“Your death will be painful, Templar…but it will only come when I have exhausted your knowledge. And you know I care little for your dying body…I will take what I want from what is housed within. ”

“My soul is prepared…” Isaac answered, exhaling a long, rattling breath. Pupils rapidly dilated and the noble knight accepted the beckoning call of streaming light. He slumped to the side, an enigmatic smile forming on blood stained, fulfilled lips even as the man with the golden green gaze scowled and turned to glare with purest enmity and loathing at the sky. Whatever was said Isaac did not…could no longer…hear.

He drifted up…up…up towards a burning, cleansing light yet before he could reach it his Dream twisted, turned and tumbled his observation into a modern room with modern settings and modern men…

“In hoc signo vinces, Veritas vos liberabit, Sicut umbra transeunt dies, Testis sum agni.” The recited ritual was known to him, seared into his memory from so many dreams. It was the words of his father, an oath reverently taken. He knew the words just as knew his father would turn to him in a moment and reach out to embrace him and Isaac would snap awake yet again…but that ending was not to be.
Instead the image of his father disappeared like a smoky exhale caught in the wind. Twisted and obliterated before swirling into his father yet again…but his father laying on the ground, not moving and not breathing.

Isaac strained to run to him yet found his could not move; his feet rooted to the murky, shadowy floor of nothing. All he could do was watch the one man, one act play of what he knew on a cellular level to be his father’s death.

Yet his father wasn’t alone. A silhouette appeared, slithered from the darkness with the tap of a silver wolf’s head cane. Isaac strained against invisible bonds as he was forced to watch the man kneel alongside his father and appear to check if he was breathing…yet Isaac knew nefariousness wafted in this one’s wake. He watched as he beckoned with fingers, teased iridescent stands of lifeforce from his father’s chest. Fingers twirled in a circular motion as if gathering yard, the golden strands shimmering as they sought to return to body of his father yet were finally ripped free with a predatory growl and held within a clinched fist.

Isaac wanted to weep as the realization of what had happened to his father set in. That it hadn’t simply been a regretful and gradual passing. It had been murder. The figure paused, head lifting as if he had just sensed Isaac’s presence.

He turned, those same eyes from before the crosses, from the castle now staring directly into the thunderstorm of his own.

“You would do well to remember what you’ve seen here.” Iniquitous edge just barely sensed beneath the luxurious tenor. The wantonly wicked spark within those eyes more than matching the terrible and promising wrath which undoubtedly flashed like lightning within Isaac’s own eyes.
“This was just motivation…” Absently gesturing with a jut of his chin towards Jonathan Wheeler’s lifeless body. “Misplaced motivation it seems.” Eyeing Isaac up and down with disappointment. “Deliver the one I seek…or I shall pair your father with his delectable little sin.” Gesturing to the golden tangle of soul-strand still firmly within his grasp. “I am willing to destroy what I helped create, Isaac. I was amused by her little stunt at the Masquerade yet even my patience wears thin.” The verbal twist of the knife accompanying a carnal curve of the scythe bladed smirk for the confession. “If you do not obey, I will tear out her spine while you watch. And in the end, you will realize that you are the reason for all of it.”

Isaac jolted awake and fell from the bed in a chaotic twisting of limbs as he blindly grabbed for his blade kept at the bedside table. He held it low, like the Templar had held his sword and turned about the room as adrenaline overpowered his senses and sweat soaked through everything. There was nothing in the room…nothing…

Nothing.

And yet he was certain he could feel that pressing gaze weighing him down from ancient times to the present, doggedly present at every turn of the soul’s progress through eternity.

Nothing.