The Weary Traveler: Original Short Story
Posted: 2006-04-10 11:42pm
A few days ago, my English teacher assigned the class a short story in the style of Poe. Initally, I didn't try very hard on it, since I was rather busy, but when I did some revisions and had a chance to look it over, I thought it turned out pretty well.
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The Weary Traveler
Before I embark upon this tale, I most convey to you with the utmost sincerity that though seasons innumerable separate me from the remembered day, my recollection of it is impeccable, unmarred by the webs of doubt that surmount the passage of time hand in hand with age. Every sight, every smell, every eerie draft of sensation is crystal clear in my mind, as evident to me as the ink upon these pages.
It was at the height of that glorious and most terrible of wars, I do not think I need name it for you, when death lay so thick upon the land that the very act of breathing became an exercise in fortitude. For a time, I had been in the employ of a periodical of some repute, and in my assiduous temptation to cultivate a noteworthy position there, had finagled a posting among the foreign corps, whose job it was to accumulate the most tragic and gruesome reports from the very apex of the conflict. Having never departed the comforting coil of my native land before, and certainly not into the jaws of the most dire of strife, I must admit now, I was ill-prepared from what lay before me.
In my haste to accrue a positive reputation, I acquired my own transport to the area where the fighting was at the moment the heaviest, several days before my colleagues would make the same voyage. Unfortunately, it seems now, that with my speed also came carelessness, and rather than arrive at the headquarters of the force my nation called its ally, I disembarked from a humble chariot at some far-removed crossroads, a small village perhaps a day shy of the embattled front.
A few transient soldiers hastened past on a road outward, intent upon some unknown aim or duty, but the dower byways were largely vacant, cast in dark repose by the gunmetal twilight of the rain-veiled sky. I realized my error quickly, but soon determined that another transport would not be along for several hours yet, and all the while the starless heights swelled with portents of deluge. Motivated thusly, I beat a course deeper into the hamlet, which, even at its cobblestone heart, seemed almost deserted. A few, joyless lights sparkled from high, shuttered window slats, and I perceived from time to time the sealing of a lower door to one side of my path. It was as though some hideous dread hung over every soul, cloistering them from the outside world and leaving only their own personal misery.
At length, as a smattering of fat drops began to plummet and my need for shelter grew dire, an opportunity presented itself in the form of a modest and drab edifice, much like those impassable domiciles and shops that lined the row to either side. However, this stony face was unique among them, for, from a pair of dusty, tinted eyes that flanked its inauspicious maw, grainy light intruded upon the damp pallor of the ground in narrow, flickering sheets. High above, swaying upon a single, noiseless chain, the words “The Weary Traveler” starred impassively at the growing gale.
Though the spectacle was not the most alluring of temptations, for the rest of the structure was just as cold and spiritless as its companions, I nonetheless ventured a try at its door, and much to my satisfaction, found it unlocked.
As the nomenclature of the place suggested, the district I found within was that of the common room of a roadside tavern. Behind a long bar, the liquor man, well endowed with a scraggily mane of iron hair absently scrubbed one of the rows of mugs that lay along the worn wall. Beyond, a handful of tables creaked softly in the glow of a blaze in the arched and cracked hearth. It was this confluence of brick, wood, and ash, not the five figures who bathed in its aura that first seized my notice. Though of a fair size and intensity, the conflagration within seemed to cast an illumination not corresponding with its form. Such an anomaly is difficult to describe to one who has never witnessed its like before, but if pressed, I would say it bore the signs of… hollowness. As if the vibrant, enveloping, irrepressible entity, bringer of light and immolation, warmth and devastation, had swallowed itself in vain exuberance, and left behind only a pale shade, identical in physical form, but devoid of essence. Even from where I stood, the warmth emanating from the blaze caressed my damp skin, but it brought not solace to my soul. Its touch was the kiss of a succubae. There was only emptiness.
I do not know how long I stood there motionless, entranced and revolted by this confluence of light of form and darkness of spirit, but at last the monotonous shuffling and busying of the barkeep at last roused me from my strange stupor. Trying to expel the fire from my mind, I purchased a flask of some cheap liquor, and took up a place at one of the empty oaken tables that populated the place. Taking a long draft of the joyous liquid, which seemed bolster my spirits somewhat, I ventured another look around the place, and this time its cast of denizens caught my notice. The two farthest from me, seated together in a dim corner, appeared to be young lovers, huddled close and animated in intimate conversation. It was odd, though; their lips moved with great interest and intensity, yet I could not pick up upon the voice of either.
Of the three others, two seemed below my inquisitive stare, old men entranced with the mugs before them, or enraptured by the fireplace in a manner I was quite intimately familiar with. It was the last, though, a man perhaps of a few score years who seemed to engulf my attentions now. Seeing him alone and unengaged by any duty other than the ponderance of an empty glass he clutched between two spindly fingers, a sudden impulse took hold of my mind, and seeing no harm in such I course, I drained my flask and made for the man, intent on striking up a conversation or some other, any other exchange to break the doldrums’ chain that still threatened to throttle my heart, forged by that peculiar fire.
It must be said that two things drew me two this man; the first, and most immediately evident, was his dress, that of a soldier (though I could not place the uniform specifically), complete with all the raiment of battle, as if this soul had come upon the tavern stool upon which he sat while still floundering in the cauldron of battle. Now, my family has always held a strong military kinship, and my forefathers all fought and met their dooms in wars so great and mythical that mere mortals can only comprehend them with abject and removed awe. It was perhaps this heritage, and my own removal from it, that had drawn me to that wretched and devastated land in the first place. I know not. Perhaps it was fate.
The second aspect of his draw became only apparent after I had seated myself next to him, placing me in a better position relative to his visage. The oblong disc of flesh was pale and somewhat dirty, its keeper engaging it in a deep and impenetrable frown, but if I may say, it was somewhat handsome nonetheless, as if accentuated by its very starkness. In fact, it very much reminded me of the image I myself could summon simply by gazing into an imitative surface (I never have claimed absolution from vanity).
Despite my proximity and admittedly presumptuous behavior, it took my own reluctant prompting, in the form of a request for his name, for the man to rouse and cast his gaze in my direction. As soon as he did, I was struck by just how pale he seemed. Not a vestigial trace of blush or color remained upon his cheeks or brow, and the thin lines that ran down from his eyes seemed like glacial crevasses in an endless wilderness. What fright or strife could put him in such a state I could scarcely imagine.
“It hardly matters now.”
The response struck me with an increased nervousness, but there seemed to be no malice or ill-will in his tone, only a sort of resigned sadness. Distracted, but not fully discouraged, I pried once more, asking him why that might be.
“What matters at all, really? My name means as little as this uniform, or the glass in my hands now.” Once again, the cryptic response was off-putting, and I stared at him in silence for a long while after, unsure as to whether or not I should press further. However, the man, perhaps noting my apprehension, relented somewhat. “They used to call me Will. Yes, that was the name. Few used it back home, not even her, but over here, it just seemed to stick. Of course, I guess I might not hear it again for a long time. None of the men are here with me now.”
Perhaps that was it, I pondered as he looked slowly away, tracing the furrows along the rough-hewn floor with absent charge in his eyes, all the while twiddling the thin glass between a thumb and forefinger, that had caused him such significant and visible stress; the loss of ones comrades in war was well beyond my living experience, but I had heard of its terrible, enveloping reach. Nevertheless, there was something in his voice that spoke of depth beyond my initial reasoning, of sorrow more for oneself than that of another. And then there was the name, a phantom in of itself that defied the bounds of its own conventionality and teased my brain with ethereal thought and flitting memory.
“So, what misfortune brings you to this place?”
Though the question range with the same fatal ambiguity, I was pleased that the man now seemed more intent on discourse, and thus I embarked upon a short recounting of the events that had brought me to the small den. The soldier seemed to listen with rapt interest, and for the first time I saw some trace of emotion trace his brow with creases of bewilderment. When I had finished, he sank back upon his seat as to regard me better, and probed me with such focus and attention that I felt my hackles raise almost immediately.
Before either of us could speak, however, the chime of a timepiece, one which had previously eluded my notice, rang out from a place above the hearth, crying a tone quite unlike any heard by any other mortal, the call of a true midnight. Immediately, a door adjacent to the bar swung open with creaking weariness, beyond which only lay an impenetrable darkness. Looking back from this distraction, I was startled to see that the soldier had risen, and was affixing a light cap to his skull, intent upon the newly-revealed passage. Behind him, the three other men assembled had similarly alighted. The fairer of the lovers had vanished without trace or warning. Behind them all, the fire, that haunting and enchanting fire, had be squelched completely, without an ember to mark its passage, yet somehow the chamber remained cast in its eerie light.
“Well, it’s our time I suppose. It had to come eventually.” The man ventured a last looked down upon my bewildered visage, and softly set down his crystal chalice. “Do well, friend, and do not fear the end when it comes.”
And with that, he, and the others that remained, disappeared into the black.
I sat a moment longer, overwhelmed and consumed by that ever-rising fear, which now nearly drowned my world senses, but a sudden burst of clarity, a thought illuminating in its barren impossibility, pierced the deathly fog and inspired me to motion. His name, his face, his curiosity and his confusion, the very cloth he bore, all were clear now. Impelled by emotions so convoluted and abstract that I could not dare name them now, I rushed forward from my place, and leapt for the door, which had already begun an inexorable close. My icy fingers could not halt its advance or interdict its icy embrace, but the attempt did nonetheless grant me a twinkling of what I desired; a view of what lay beyond. And what was that, you no doubt ask? Why, everything of course, and nothing. It was eternity; timeless, terrible, and glorious.
It was only as I stood above my father’s grave, his final sheath of the mortal realm, sometime later, as I had been impelled to do after that gate sealed itself once more to all of the unheralded, that I truly could comprehend what had happened on that night. Though I had only in my dreams ever found myself in my presence before that hour, for his fate had been that of all others who bore my family standard to war, well before I could cast him a cognate farewell, I knew truly and absolutely that I had been granted that most dear of audiences. I know not why or how, but one truth is quite evident in my soul, and shall be borne there ‘till my final fading: I shall find myself in that fated tavern once more before the dark.
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The Weary Traveler
Before I embark upon this tale, I most convey to you with the utmost sincerity that though seasons innumerable separate me from the remembered day, my recollection of it is impeccable, unmarred by the webs of doubt that surmount the passage of time hand in hand with age. Every sight, every smell, every eerie draft of sensation is crystal clear in my mind, as evident to me as the ink upon these pages.
It was at the height of that glorious and most terrible of wars, I do not think I need name it for you, when death lay so thick upon the land that the very act of breathing became an exercise in fortitude. For a time, I had been in the employ of a periodical of some repute, and in my assiduous temptation to cultivate a noteworthy position there, had finagled a posting among the foreign corps, whose job it was to accumulate the most tragic and gruesome reports from the very apex of the conflict. Having never departed the comforting coil of my native land before, and certainly not into the jaws of the most dire of strife, I must admit now, I was ill-prepared from what lay before me.
In my haste to accrue a positive reputation, I acquired my own transport to the area where the fighting was at the moment the heaviest, several days before my colleagues would make the same voyage. Unfortunately, it seems now, that with my speed also came carelessness, and rather than arrive at the headquarters of the force my nation called its ally, I disembarked from a humble chariot at some far-removed crossroads, a small village perhaps a day shy of the embattled front.
A few transient soldiers hastened past on a road outward, intent upon some unknown aim or duty, but the dower byways were largely vacant, cast in dark repose by the gunmetal twilight of the rain-veiled sky. I realized my error quickly, but soon determined that another transport would not be along for several hours yet, and all the while the starless heights swelled with portents of deluge. Motivated thusly, I beat a course deeper into the hamlet, which, even at its cobblestone heart, seemed almost deserted. A few, joyless lights sparkled from high, shuttered window slats, and I perceived from time to time the sealing of a lower door to one side of my path. It was as though some hideous dread hung over every soul, cloistering them from the outside world and leaving only their own personal misery.
At length, as a smattering of fat drops began to plummet and my need for shelter grew dire, an opportunity presented itself in the form of a modest and drab edifice, much like those impassable domiciles and shops that lined the row to either side. However, this stony face was unique among them, for, from a pair of dusty, tinted eyes that flanked its inauspicious maw, grainy light intruded upon the damp pallor of the ground in narrow, flickering sheets. High above, swaying upon a single, noiseless chain, the words “The Weary Traveler” starred impassively at the growing gale.
Though the spectacle was not the most alluring of temptations, for the rest of the structure was just as cold and spiritless as its companions, I nonetheless ventured a try at its door, and much to my satisfaction, found it unlocked.
As the nomenclature of the place suggested, the district I found within was that of the common room of a roadside tavern. Behind a long bar, the liquor man, well endowed with a scraggily mane of iron hair absently scrubbed one of the rows of mugs that lay along the worn wall. Beyond, a handful of tables creaked softly in the glow of a blaze in the arched and cracked hearth. It was this confluence of brick, wood, and ash, not the five figures who bathed in its aura that first seized my notice. Though of a fair size and intensity, the conflagration within seemed to cast an illumination not corresponding with its form. Such an anomaly is difficult to describe to one who has never witnessed its like before, but if pressed, I would say it bore the signs of… hollowness. As if the vibrant, enveloping, irrepressible entity, bringer of light and immolation, warmth and devastation, had swallowed itself in vain exuberance, and left behind only a pale shade, identical in physical form, but devoid of essence. Even from where I stood, the warmth emanating from the blaze caressed my damp skin, but it brought not solace to my soul. Its touch was the kiss of a succubae. There was only emptiness.
I do not know how long I stood there motionless, entranced and revolted by this confluence of light of form and darkness of spirit, but at last the monotonous shuffling and busying of the barkeep at last roused me from my strange stupor. Trying to expel the fire from my mind, I purchased a flask of some cheap liquor, and took up a place at one of the empty oaken tables that populated the place. Taking a long draft of the joyous liquid, which seemed bolster my spirits somewhat, I ventured another look around the place, and this time its cast of denizens caught my notice. The two farthest from me, seated together in a dim corner, appeared to be young lovers, huddled close and animated in intimate conversation. It was odd, though; their lips moved with great interest and intensity, yet I could not pick up upon the voice of either.
Of the three others, two seemed below my inquisitive stare, old men entranced with the mugs before them, or enraptured by the fireplace in a manner I was quite intimately familiar with. It was the last, though, a man perhaps of a few score years who seemed to engulf my attentions now. Seeing him alone and unengaged by any duty other than the ponderance of an empty glass he clutched between two spindly fingers, a sudden impulse took hold of my mind, and seeing no harm in such I course, I drained my flask and made for the man, intent on striking up a conversation or some other, any other exchange to break the doldrums’ chain that still threatened to throttle my heart, forged by that peculiar fire.
It must be said that two things drew me two this man; the first, and most immediately evident, was his dress, that of a soldier (though I could not place the uniform specifically), complete with all the raiment of battle, as if this soul had come upon the tavern stool upon which he sat while still floundering in the cauldron of battle. Now, my family has always held a strong military kinship, and my forefathers all fought and met their dooms in wars so great and mythical that mere mortals can only comprehend them with abject and removed awe. It was perhaps this heritage, and my own removal from it, that had drawn me to that wretched and devastated land in the first place. I know not. Perhaps it was fate.
The second aspect of his draw became only apparent after I had seated myself next to him, placing me in a better position relative to his visage. The oblong disc of flesh was pale and somewhat dirty, its keeper engaging it in a deep and impenetrable frown, but if I may say, it was somewhat handsome nonetheless, as if accentuated by its very starkness. In fact, it very much reminded me of the image I myself could summon simply by gazing into an imitative surface (I never have claimed absolution from vanity).
Despite my proximity and admittedly presumptuous behavior, it took my own reluctant prompting, in the form of a request for his name, for the man to rouse and cast his gaze in my direction. As soon as he did, I was struck by just how pale he seemed. Not a vestigial trace of blush or color remained upon his cheeks or brow, and the thin lines that ran down from his eyes seemed like glacial crevasses in an endless wilderness. What fright or strife could put him in such a state I could scarcely imagine.
“It hardly matters now.”
The response struck me with an increased nervousness, but there seemed to be no malice or ill-will in his tone, only a sort of resigned sadness. Distracted, but not fully discouraged, I pried once more, asking him why that might be.
“What matters at all, really? My name means as little as this uniform, or the glass in my hands now.” Once again, the cryptic response was off-putting, and I stared at him in silence for a long while after, unsure as to whether or not I should press further. However, the man, perhaps noting my apprehension, relented somewhat. “They used to call me Will. Yes, that was the name. Few used it back home, not even her, but over here, it just seemed to stick. Of course, I guess I might not hear it again for a long time. None of the men are here with me now.”
Perhaps that was it, I pondered as he looked slowly away, tracing the furrows along the rough-hewn floor with absent charge in his eyes, all the while twiddling the thin glass between a thumb and forefinger, that had caused him such significant and visible stress; the loss of ones comrades in war was well beyond my living experience, but I had heard of its terrible, enveloping reach. Nevertheless, there was something in his voice that spoke of depth beyond my initial reasoning, of sorrow more for oneself than that of another. And then there was the name, a phantom in of itself that defied the bounds of its own conventionality and teased my brain with ethereal thought and flitting memory.
“So, what misfortune brings you to this place?”
Though the question range with the same fatal ambiguity, I was pleased that the man now seemed more intent on discourse, and thus I embarked upon a short recounting of the events that had brought me to the small den. The soldier seemed to listen with rapt interest, and for the first time I saw some trace of emotion trace his brow with creases of bewilderment. When I had finished, he sank back upon his seat as to regard me better, and probed me with such focus and attention that I felt my hackles raise almost immediately.
Before either of us could speak, however, the chime of a timepiece, one which had previously eluded my notice, rang out from a place above the hearth, crying a tone quite unlike any heard by any other mortal, the call of a true midnight. Immediately, a door adjacent to the bar swung open with creaking weariness, beyond which only lay an impenetrable darkness. Looking back from this distraction, I was startled to see that the soldier had risen, and was affixing a light cap to his skull, intent upon the newly-revealed passage. Behind him, the three other men assembled had similarly alighted. The fairer of the lovers had vanished without trace or warning. Behind them all, the fire, that haunting and enchanting fire, had be squelched completely, without an ember to mark its passage, yet somehow the chamber remained cast in its eerie light.
“Well, it’s our time I suppose. It had to come eventually.” The man ventured a last looked down upon my bewildered visage, and softly set down his crystal chalice. “Do well, friend, and do not fear the end when it comes.”
And with that, he, and the others that remained, disappeared into the black.
I sat a moment longer, overwhelmed and consumed by that ever-rising fear, which now nearly drowned my world senses, but a sudden burst of clarity, a thought illuminating in its barren impossibility, pierced the deathly fog and inspired me to motion. His name, his face, his curiosity and his confusion, the very cloth he bore, all were clear now. Impelled by emotions so convoluted and abstract that I could not dare name them now, I rushed forward from my place, and leapt for the door, which had already begun an inexorable close. My icy fingers could not halt its advance or interdict its icy embrace, but the attempt did nonetheless grant me a twinkling of what I desired; a view of what lay beyond. And what was that, you no doubt ask? Why, everything of course, and nothing. It was eternity; timeless, terrible, and glorious.
It was only as I stood above my father’s grave, his final sheath of the mortal realm, sometime later, as I had been impelled to do after that gate sealed itself once more to all of the unheralded, that I truly could comprehend what had happened on that night. Though I had only in my dreams ever found myself in my presence before that hour, for his fate had been that of all others who bore my family standard to war, well before I could cast him a cognate farewell, I knew truly and absolutely that I had been granted that most dear of audiences. I know not why or how, but one truth is quite evident in my soul, and shall be borne there ‘till my final fading: I shall find myself in that fated tavern once more before the dark.
And you too, Ford.