Part Two

Bright Death

(an hour later)

The Sear of the Mosel Valley

(The Seer) She was a woman in her middle 60s, or perhaps one could say, unaged; neither short, nor tall, nor thin nor stout (and cast no shadow at all about). She had a cold contemptuous idiotic face, and a lazy voice, a dweller among the valley. "long resident, who had impressed many with her fortune telling, necromantic life; even those who had never seen her work.

For the most part,

it is not as you think "

the dead live, and can be witnesses for the living on what lays ahead. They are in their own prisons though, an exile to the full"physical world, and that misty face of a Duke in the window, in the castle window, is still looking down upon the courtyard (as Eva noticed)"neither alive nor dead, in one of the 72-deaths given to man (given to him 1000-years ago or so), what was his fate, and is he just an illusion, for a moment's grace he had, earned, a projection. Whoever he was he was like a thief for a moment in time (perhaps the husky one now; taking the Dukes place), he had flung thoughts into vapor, and created a moment of time"; snuck back to the castle to sees the starlight, the moons he was still watching, creating out the window, pulling Eva to him: he was standing in a room of 'bright death,' where a candle was lit, and it lit the whole place.

I do believe he was looking for lost and warm memories, making it shape itself, in itself, the memories from whence he came; or had, or wanted to make. He looked at Eva, as if she was a goddess, walking the path to the castle, as if in another trance, the five moons overhead: magnetically pulling her to the gates. He could see through walls, and all such things, and followed her every stop.

"Ah! To be like her," he said, rustically.

As Eva looked up at the moon, it seemed on fire again, spreading out, in ripples, akin to a lamp lit, with no holding stick, a macabre fire surrounding it.

The shape in the window, wished to hold her in his arms, but he was just a shadow of death, lit up in a room, a room called 'bright death,' for no other room could he stand in. Death and the underworld have its rules: its hierarchy; its courts and counsels. And this was the only room they were allowed; it was where death took place, it was where death could linger, lurk.

"Come, oh come," he summons her, looking out the window, like a bird in a cage.

"My love, my love," he echoed out into the courtyard, she caught his eyes, "O," she screamed, "No, no, no"not again!"

And ran behind a tree, away form the window; as she glanced around, and up, but she saw the side curtains aflame, and he was dancing.

She fell to the ground, hid now under the leaves, watching the spirit dance around the flames (peeking), as they filled all the room: an illusion she claimed, for there was no heat or smoke, or crackling, or any such thing.

'Ah! there he is...' she thought, the old devil, the one with the husky voice, mixed within the frame of the Duke, who was really not anything, just an illusion, a fluke, from some dark, hidden place.

The quick crescendo, of this voice, lulled her back under that brutal arch of a gate, to the window (a long day, it was).

"You evil spirit, leave me be!" she cried loud, and she clung to her knees shaking, and the moon was bright, she knew now, that death would not leave willingly: she screamed within her scream, silently, until the courtyard was full of bright death; light from the moon's breath never ceased.

"But why did you come back," said the voice, to say something, to have a conversation, to hear her reply. She was on the edge of escape, and came back, but then so did he.

And she looked at the moons once more, there were yet five of them, one transposing...the others.

Behind her, stood the old seer, she was back again, she murmured, "Did you think you would go home laughing at us?"

And the old seer, fierce with orange and purple light, embraced Eva, and she cried:

"Christ has mercy

Christ has mercy...!"

And the trees and the great fortress walls were terrorize with flaming fire, and the wind from the valley come back with double force.

"Fire, fire," moaned Eva, it was the fire didn't burn; the physical, only the invisible, and grief came quickly, insidiously.

Said the seer to the devil-spirit, in the window, "We must escape, or we shall be nothing, soon ..."

With nausea in her, she smiled nonetheless, at the moon, which was single again: she thought how funny"illusion, or real: too much for the mind to endure.

For the fire can kill a ghost, demon, devil or imp; especially the fire from the Holy Spirit; and the fire now had subsided, bright death had reversed itself. The seer had staggered and her arms grabbed the spirit in the widow still in a trance form the fifth moon himself, and wanting his desires filled, disassociating for the moment, yet he left in a menagerie raving.

Elegy: Like bugs swirling across the light of the moon"the ghouls ballooned away"; debased and brutalized, spirits slewed"but at least they had memories.

(The Husky Ghoul: End) And the Ghost, the ghoul of the courtyard, the one of the fifth moon, who had the powers to subdue, to put into a trance (with hypnotic chanting); in fear he would return and be silenced by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God: glanced at Eva, then he vanished, leaving an echo of rage...!

Note: I have traveled up and down the Mosel River, (in what was known back in the 1970s as West Germany), and throughout the valley area; the castle I am referring to here is Burg Eltz, it is back in the hills on the other side of the Mosel River, probably the only castle you'll ever walk down to. At your first glimpse, from the cliff, you can see it. It is far from the river and road, perhaps that is why it was not destroyed in past wars. It was build near the time of the Dark Ages, around AD 1160. Henry, son of the Duke Henry the Lion of Saxony and Bavaria lived there from 1129-1195; written at Barnes and Noble, Part I: 2/15/2006, in poetic dramatic prose form. Part II: 1/16/2006