Seeing

Hūr stood underneath the building gasping.

He had been walking among the shadows drawn to something. He could feel the power humming through the place, could almost see the invisible umbrella it formed, covering the mansion and the immediate surroundings. Rats scuttled about, invisible to him, but he could hear them, clanging. The air throbbed with power and energy. Once, he would have shunned things like that, practical as he had been. But he had seen too much, and he had believed it, that he would no longer deny that magic existed in the world. It was here. Shadows moved among the place. Even here, but they were sluggish, compared to the ones outside. Slower, as if slowed down. Time was slower here. Everything was clearer here. He could taste madness in the air. How else to explain it but that. The sun shone through cracks in the ceiling. He felt the ivy and moss walls outside stirring. The floor beneath him crunched underneath every footstep.

He walked onwards, unsure of where he was going, drawn to something. His footsteps were not his own, they were guided by a power beyond him. He could feel it gaping as a yawning chasm in the void of the eternal.

Hūr Amran stood and stared. The walls around him were mostly crumbling, aged by time, barely standing on their own. But the wall in front of him… light shone bright on it, a few rays of light shining generously on this wall. Enough for him to see in all its chilling glory, what was crudely sketched on it. A stick figure of a man standing tall. Another bowing beside him. A third lay dead. Red splotched all around. The sky scribbled with dark blue and black and yellow lines and blue drops shooting downwards. Fire around the men. In front of them stood a magnificent stone. The rest of the drawing seemed like a cartoon from a child’s mind. But the stone, the stone was drawn in intricate depth and detail. He shuddered. Below this painting stood three boy stick figures, hand in hand. The sun was smiling, big, yellow, happy. The sky was light blue. Trees and grass grew all around them. 

He jolted around as he felt someone or something watching. Nothing. He could feel a darting in the shadows. He was terrified. A primal, ancient terror, his flight or fight reflex kicking in. He did not know why. He made for the door. And he fell. The ground tore open beneath him and he began to fall in a flurry of dust and rubble. It took a few seconds, and he stood in the presence of the stone. It was visibly throbbing and loudly humming. Purple lines like veins stood all around its body. It was big, a few heads taller than him. It was magnificent. It was inviting him to embrace it and be joined with his father. FATHER. His father. He had never known his father. The man had died before he had been born. He took a shaky step.