The Room
I haven't always looked like this you know - a mixture of old world charm and space age technology. This room, I, was once a stable but now the beautiful home of a gentleman-farmer's eldest daughter, is wide, bright, open: every chair, every cushion, fabric and colour uniting into a welcoming womb.
Nothing here is out of place. Nothing screams for your attention. Though to say that nothing has screamed here would be a lie.
Over the years I have changed in colour, size and shape, beyond all recognition and though my innards have endured every perversion of human nature my spirit, so lovingly fashioned by unimaginably crude, rough hands, remains intact.
I am eternal.
There are few things on earth which can justifiably make this claim because eternity exists only to those alive. To those gone there is nothing. Neither you, nor I or them. Others claim to be infinite. Giant Redwood trees laugh in the face of human longevity and glaciers still talk of mediaeval times but even mountains turn to dust. To you human beings - with your fast heartbeats and spectacular expectations the Andes and the Himalayas have and will always be. But, fools, have you ever heard the lifeless rock argue its case? To have longevity you must have life otherwise you cannot even join in the debate - and those beautiful soaring heights remain silent.
No, only a few of us can make claims to immortality.
How long have I been around? I cannot answer this question properly because whenever I think back through my various existence's I get lost in the many sordid dreams of happenings past. I know my present form - which lies hidden behind some trees, surrounded by a few isolated acres of rolling yellow fields and a dark slow moving stream - has existed for 150 years or more but it is only a shell, just one of my many faces and hardly a moment in my existence.
One of my earliest recollections is of those crude and ignorant hands which created my ill-formed mud walls. But this does not mean this was my beginning, just the furthest back I can be bothered to recall.
Eternal life does not guarantee a perfect memory. And what of the owners of those hands? They were crude indeed in form, in manner, in custom and belief.
When they had completed the windowless room which was me they lit a smouldering fire of wet grass and young branches savagely torn from trees, closed the doorway and left. The fire of smoke filled my innards, flowing hot and fierce around my walls and roof until I had sucked in its heat and every dry crack of my body was permeated by its soot and smell.
This was no ordinary room. I am no ordinary room.
When the fire gave up its last choking breath and I finished drinking in its last wisps the door opened but if it was day outside it was impossible to know: light was not permitted to enter but a withered spirit posing as a human was. Walking through the black ashes and muttering noises unfit for the delicate minds of most humans, even the savages who were around then, he kicked them into a rough black carpet covering what little greenery survived the fire. In tune with these awful sounds I began to grow, expanding in all directions, filling with strength and power reaching out to the horizon and up to the moon. Yet no matter how immense I felt, I was always a small, smoke blackened mud room.
The door closed again and the maniac whispers shook my foundations with the evil incantations and I laughed back honoured to be the receptacle of this miserable core of human belief. Eventually the sorcerer fell into a trance and onto the floor where he rolled around in the small pile of cinders until his rotten, stinking garments with their strange colourless patterns became one with the ground and he disappeared.
Some time later, a few days perhaps though I cannot tell as the eternal do not count the passage of time in human terms, the door opened and the small shambolic figure walked as if dead from the gloomy shadows of my interior back into the light to be met by his disciples, the chief and the followers.
Then I, the room, was ready for what was to come.
And so the ritual slaughter began. Gods need satisfying with the flesh and blood of animals and humans if food is to be bountiful, enemies defeated or the spells and curses of others lifted. I cannot remember the numbers of corpses I spewed out after drinking their blood or feasting on their still flexing hearts. Dogs, chickens, lambs, slaves, virgins, young children, the old, the infirm: those with slow legs. All were offered and gladly taken in the pitiful hope that some invisible but divine being would look favourably upon those offering the sacrifice when all the time there was nothing more here but me. And as they begged for a good harvest, the more anger they felt against those they saw as enemies, the stronger I became, the more I bent them to my will directing them to do my bidding.
Humans, always so gullible, so credulous and fearful. Even now you are stilled gripped by fear and superstition. How many dark hours do you lay trembling at the slightest sound in the night, how many times have you prayed for divine guidance or help?
Why in these civilised, hi-tech times where the mysteries of ages are giving up their secrets, where you have held the moon in your hands, where the burden of belief has dwindled so low, do you still cling pitifully to the hope of life after death? Or believe your own superstitious behaviour and beliefs are of any value and worse - that they are superior to that of others?
Not that I mind. There is more to my being when you are at your most fearful. My heart is stronger and my power flows in rivers dragging all who fall to their doom and my sustenance.
With every sacrifice building my powers I slowly took control of those tortured and fearful believers turning their behaviour to my advantage. Making them use me, to see me as their only salvation, their only possible way to deal with their problems.
Winter was always the best time. Terror upon terror was piled on with corpses accumulating within and without my walls: pilling higher and higher in proportion to the mindless, hysterical behaviour of my subjects.
But, as I learned over the centuries, it couldn't, wouldn't last.
What had once been the centre of a village now stood alone in a clearing some distance form the main group of mud huts. People would no longer approach me unless they were compelled by those in my control. The stench of death hung about the doorway waiting to reach out and trap any living object which strayed within reach and below, below the stinking ground was swollen and purple. The smoke-filled room became a palace of awe and fear. Few who entered came out again with blood still coursing through their veins. Inside, the room was drenched in black and crimson as blood mixed with burnt offerings of candles and carcass: even the screams of those long dead were still trapped in my walls. Sometimes, when a victim, particularly those who had been captured in battle - those with ears which had received the most horrific accounts of the inhuman practices held here - struggled and fought against the inevitable, my walls would split and hideous cries of man and beast would fill their minds with unimaginable terrors, silencing tongues, bringing stark-eyed madness and death. There was no escape except for those who did my bidding.
But I was growing bored with all this. It was too easy to have my bidding done. I needed something to resist me, something I could fight before it surrendered to my will, my desire. My stock of human and animal life began to dwindle. Over the years so many passed through my door to damnation that the fear I once used to draw them to me now pushed them away. And with them went my powers.
As they fled the tales of unknown horrors slowly the village turned into a ghost. The small shabby homes became deserted, falling back into the ground. My own foundations, now a mire of blood and bone, gave way under the weight of human misery, my walls, torn apart by anguished screams, collapsed in and rotted in the festering pool of human superstition.
Once more the trees and bushes took over, reclaiming what was theirs and, fighting against the lingering wisps of evil I created, turned what remained of the village into just another patch of England's green and pleasant land.
But my spirit lives on. It is true that after such collapses and desertions I no longer possess the power to bend humans to my will but, being eternal, I continued to exist as a shadow in the moonlight.
All I have to do is wait. Wait for Mother Nature's beauty to lure a few superstitious people back to tend the land, to build their homes, to worship their Gods. Because as they do so do I return. My strength grows, my wicked soul rejuvenates, my awful, transparent magic weaves its spell and finally, once again, your fear makes you a prisoner of my desires.
For as long a there is one ounce of fear, the tiniest shard of religious belief or hope for divine intervention for me to exploit, I shall go on. This is the secret of my eternity. I exist while Man exists. His fear, His anxiety, awe, dread and gullibility feed me, keep me here: only when He drops these useless things will I disappear for good.