Stefanie NeumannA realisation that came too late for him. All his life, he had been so afraid of death that he completely forgot to live. When his time came, he desperately clung to the experiences he never had, and caused himself, and his loved ones, long weeks of suffering.
Until, one day, he couldn't hold on, any more. Life slipped out of his metaphorical hands, as he suddenly found himself looking down on his fading body, getting ever smaller as he rose up towards this indescribably warm light, beckoning him.
He allowed this light to embrace him, to consume him, until he was nothing but unconditional love. The human ego would have called this heaven, but here it was the natural state of being, too vast to be contained inside a human mind.
Time did not exist in this state. There was only Now. Not an ever-renewing idea of the current moment. Just Now. Just Here. Just Love. And it was the best experience of all. It was the only experience. The truth behind - inside - everything.
In the reality we call life, the years came, and went, until nobody who remembered him was alive, any more. Two more centuries passed. The churchyard where his remains were buried, forgotten in the woods, his headstone crumbling, and overgrown with lichen.
One day, a group of teenagers broke away from the treaded path, and discovered the old graveyard. Bored with their lives, and curious about the afterlife, they decided to come back at midnight.
It was All Hallow's Eve. The full moon illuminated the night when the veils are thin, and spectres from both sides seek to cross the borders.
The kids sat down by one of the derelict tombstones, ready to perform a ritual to bring back the soul of the deceased.
The next thing he knew was ... that he knew things. He knew, all that was left of him was bones. Not even a #corpse, only a decaying skeleton.
Six feet above him, a group of teenagers who had just performed a ritual of necromancy, didn't know that it had worked. As far as they could see, nothing had happened. Apart from a chill that drifted through the woods, and then ceased to be.
With a mix of disappointment, and relief, they gathered their belongings to go home. When they had almost reached the footpath, the earth in front of one of the headstones back on the old churchyard lifted under the pale moon light.
An ivory-coloured, bony hand appeared, followed by the rest of the skeleton that had been a man of flesh and bones over 200 years ago. He had no nose, but he could pick up the scent of the kids, and followed it.
Once he arrived in the village, the trace of the three teenagers split up. This must have been where they parted ways to go to their individual homes.
He followed the scent of one of them, a boy, and stepped up to his door.
Knock, knock...
Knock, knock...
KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK
A sleepy, red haired 16-year-old boy opened the door and looked at a grinning scull that once had been a face.
He rubbed his eyes, and then fainted.
The thump his body caused when hitting the floor, woke up the boy's parents. When they saw the nightly visitor, the mother started to scream hysterically, while the father grabbed an axe that had stood by the door from splitting wood, earlier.
The protective dad launched at the skeleton, which stumbled backwards down the front steps, bones scattering. It collected them up as fast as it could and fled, the red-haired boy's father running after it.
Window by window was lit, as the villagers awoke from the mayhem.
When the other two kids, a blonde boy, and a brown haired girl of the same age as the red haired boy, realised what was going on, a chill ran down their spine.
They arrived almost at the same time at the red haired boy's house, who just awoke from his blackout, his mum all over him in panic.
They looked at each other and knew they all had the same question:
What had they done?
She awoke when she heard screaming from the village square. A chill ran down her spine and told her, something untoward was going on. She could feel traces of magic. Snagging her medicine bag on the way out, she went to get an overview.
When she arrived in the village centre, she found a scared, and confused skeleton being chased by an angry father. Following her intuition, she didn't bother to try, and ask questions. Instead, she made straight to the old graveyard in the woods.
The sight of the dug up ground in front of one of the headstones told her, that she had been right. Also, the traces of necromancy, she picked up on, were almost overwhelming.
Stupid, ignorant kids!
No time for grudges, now. She had to get to work. All the ingredients she needed grew in the feral cottage garden the monks had planted, long ago. In the olden days, people knew their ways.
She drew a sacred circle over the desecrated tomb.
Then she began her healing magic. It involved smudging, and chanting, and firm intention, to appease the angry spirits. But to open the gate, it needed more than that.
Love was the only way.
His bones were scattered all over the place, when the light reached the square.
With the villagers, the kids watched in awe, as bones became flesh, became love, and returned to the All.
All fear had gone. All that remained was love.
The shaman smiled.
Afterlife
Are you curious about the afterlife?
I accidentally finished my #7DayTale a day too early. So, here is the complete microstory, posted on Medium, & read by me on YouTube.
