Ripping the Veil
Agatha stood upon the mound and stared at the world at her feet. She saw it for what it was: a collection of pain and suffering; ghosts floating by, their souls tethered to the human reality by deeds undone, unfinished affairs, or innominable wrongdoing. Some people, amateurs all of them, thought that those wrongs could be mended; that making the guilty pay would release the innocent.
Agatha knew better.
There was no such thing as redemption. The fallen didn't stand up again and walk on, but stagger and keep falling back for all eternity, or until they dissolved into nothingness.
Beyond the Veil.
It was a testament to Agatha's powers that she had been aware of the Veil's existence almost from the beginning. Most never realized, no matter how much they contacted the dead, that the Veil was there, a barrier between worlds. A selected few noticed. Among these, almost everyone shied away from it, fearing the power beyond. Only a few poked and probed it.
There were rumours of one having traversed it.
And then there was Agatha.
It had been during her third séance when she had realized it was there. A wall, limiting her scope: that's how she perceived it. And thus she came back once and again, testing it, until her image of it changed and became the Veil: a gossamer curtain that hinted at infinite possibilities beyond.
Agatha had tried everything she knew, but back then she was young and inexpert. Her efforts had been fruitless, since she had no weapons but her bare hands and her wit.
But, young as she was, she was also patient. And willing to learn.
And she learned, from the best. Or the worst, depending on your point of view.
From the mound, Agatha remembered Armand. Tall, dark and handsome, like a simple soothsayer would have said. Already leading a life between worlds, he taught her how to always remain in control when walking that fine line between sanity and madness. Until she revealed her plans to her and he fled. Agatha didn't mind: she was already more powerful than him. She had obtained what she desired.
The Book taught her next, though she paid a dear price to secure it. But what's a child compared to the power supreme? Most others had gone mad just by reading the Book, but she had already taken her precautions and treaded that territory with sure feet. And she kept learning.
Stephen had been weird. He could read her like an open book. He knew from the start what she wanted, and warned her against it. However, he also insisted each one should follow their own path, and agreed to teach her whatever she desired. Agatha took his life and his power without remorse.
She floated off the mound, towards the Veil that was, at the same time, here and there, close by and far away. She extended her hand, murmuring the spells, using the correct voice and tone. Runes and sigils danced along her arms, tattooed forever on her skin, and shone with unbound power.
The Veil ripped.
It started small: only a point of light that blinded her nonetheless. But Agatha pushed on, never faltering, her chant steady and unrelenting. The point became a crack, then a rift, then it opened up and stayed there like a useless floodgate.
Agatha stepped in.
She felt it immediately. The immense malevolence, the infinite evil of an innominable creature. Chained here for eons, the massive power of the creature had allowed it to leave hints and clues. She knew it at once: it had been a trap.
And she had fallen in it.
The Veil closed back behind her.
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This is my accompanying entry for the Weekly Writing Exercise: June 20–26, 2016 on the Writer’s Discussion Group in Google+. I am responsible for creating the prompts for the Exercise, so I don’t take part, but I still like to write a story each week.
For this week’s exercise I explained the process I followed to get the prompt:
First of all, I looked for a random word generator, and I ended up using this one:
http://creativitygames.net/random-word-generator/randomwords/1
Next I used it to, ahem, generate one word. To be honest, I did this several times until I got an interesting word. I got this:
ghost
Then I went to unsplash.com and searched for images tagged “ghost”. I got eight of those.
Last, I used random.org to generate a number between one and eight, and I got five. The fifth image is the one in this post, by artist Steinar La Engeland.
I asked the participants to use only the image, or part of the process as well if they felt like it.
I thought about the image, and then just sat down one afternoon and wrote the above piece in one go. It’s nice when it all works out like this.
