Before the Veil - Chapter Two: Hanged Man’s Escape
The man with the grey hair had stumbled, and given a slight cry as the man was hanged; he looked like he was going to faint, or be sick, or something else unpleasant. He allowed himself to be helped to a seat by the side of the square, making excuses that this was his first hanging, he wasn’t very well, and this was probably too much excitement for him, but he’d be all right in a minute or two. He gratefully accepted any offerings of spirits, but declined when a few men asked if they could help him home. Eventually, the crowd around him, and around the gallows, cleared; the drop itself was the main event, the unveiling of the new portrait; the act of hanging was just another art display, something to stare at as you go about your business.
‘And now… I wait. The worst part,’ the man thought, withdrawing a hipflask with one hand and taking a swig. The other hand was tucked between the buttons of his shirt, his finger and thumb pressed firmly against his chest. ‘Nonchalantly gasping for breath; unobtrusively sweating myself to dehydration. The pounding heart; the mental anguish of holding everything in place; the other presence continually gnawing at the side of my mind; all need to be dealt with while maintaining a calm manner. And then… the finale. That’ll be a relief, compared to this.’
Finally, it was time. The grey haired man didn’t know how long the hanged man was up there; ten minutes, thirty, an hour… He was in no condition to take notice of time. His only indication was that he had emptied his second flask, and was on to the third when the noose was cut. Hearing the thud of the falling body, the grey haired man immediately snapped to attention. The gunmen were, unfortunately, still there, waiting to help hoist the body on to a wagon that would take it to it’s final resting place. The crowd had reassembled, as well, allowing him to blend in with greater ease, though there would be more gazes to avoid...
Rising unsteadily but purposely to his feet, the grey haired man joined the crowd with something between a stride and a hobble, and slinked between the spectators until he had a good view of the body, but was still fairly well concealed.
His right hand still on his chest, the man made his left hand into a fist and jabbed it into his own stomach; he bent double, and with a hork! a thin fog, barely visible unless viewed directly in front of the Sun, rose like bile from his throat, emanated from his mouth and flew towards the dead body, into it’s mouth and nose.
For a moment, nothing happened. No one seemed to have noticed what the man had done, and the body lay, still lifeless as ever. Straightening up and wiping his mouth, the man waited, breathless and anxious, staring at the body, preparing his next step should he have come too late.
Suddenly, one of the corpse’s arms jerked up, causing everyone around to gasp and step backward. Both arms began flailing wildly, and the body raised itself up on the edges of its feet, legs bent at weird angles, as if it were a puppet being raised by the strings on its arms, the feet sliding into position purely because they were stuck on the ends of the legs, as opposed to being used for the purpose of balance. One grasping hand, and then the other, began clawing at the noose still around the not-quite-dead man’s neck, and after a brief struggle, it came loose and was thrown off, the body giving a desperate gasp for air. Only then did the corpse’s eyes open, his limbs slow their mad thrashing, his feet begin bearing his own weight in a more obvious manner. His head still lolled crookedly from his broken neck, but with a quick gesture and significant flow of energy from the grey haired man, as well as quite a bit of cracking, it fell more or less back into place. All at once the man looked less like a reanimated cadaver, and more like a living being, confused and in pain, but alive nonetheless.
The crowd was in a complete uproar as soon as the no-longer-dead body had begun to move; shouts of “demons,” “witchcraft,” “necromancy,” “Satan” and one of “post-mortal spasm,” from a less superstitious individual, echoed around the square. No one seemed to consider that it might be the will of a god; they never do, in such circumstances. The gunmen, regrettably, rallied quickly and began taking aim at the man, still too disoriented to realize he should be running for his life. Removing his hand from his chest, the need to transfer air between himself and the hanged man no longer present, the man with the grey hair closed one eye and positioned his hands to form, if viewed in two dimensions, a curving wall between the gunmen and the other man, barely before the first shots began ringing around the square. And as each bullet flew towards the executed, they ricocheted off something in midair and fell to the ground, and at each ricochet, the grey haired man recoiled slightly, before bracing himself once more against the next blow.
The gunshots seemed to snap the previously dead man out of his daze, at least enough to realize he was in danger. Whirling around, he pounded down a street leading out of the square, raced around the corner, and raced back again; a group of guards had heard the commotion from a few blocks over and were now running towards the square. As the man headed for a different street, three of the gunmen broke off from the rest and managed to cut him off. He was trapped; gunmen in front of him and to his left, a patrol of guards closing in on the right, and the large white plaster-and-wood wall of a building at his back.
Casting around wildly for another avenue of escape, he locked eyes again with the grey haired man, there was another of those flashes of conversation, shorter this time, and they both nodded in unison. The man still couldn’t remember what had been ‘said,’ but he knew what to do, crazy as it seemed to his conscious mind.
He sprinted directly at the gunmen in front of him, turned just before where the bullets stopped, and dashed back at the wall of the building. A moment before he would have crashed into it, the grey haired man turned towards him and threw up one hand, the other one changing position to shield the man as he was thrown up into the air and landed, staggering, onto the rooftop. Giving one last look back, he saw the grey haired man slipping between the crowd, trying to put as much distance between himself and the square as possible. The man on the roof followed suit; scrabbling across buildings, leaping between rooftops when the gaps were small enough, eventually dropping down into an alley, focusing only on escape, until he had lost himself in the city.
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This chapter and Gallows have largely been introductory material to the main story, and almost a stand-alone short story (Gasp! I've never managed to write a short story before!), so in the next chapter, we'll get into the main plot more. Such as it is, anyway... As always, comments are appreciated.
Azrael42 Community Member 
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