Who is The Hollander?
17.6.07
The night was dark and the air was clammy. His breath was coming out in steady puffs of white smoke as the moisture on his skin started to thicken - seeming like it would freeze where it was and create a mask clear mask on his rigid face. It wasn't natural to feel this kind of cold and humidity all at once, and his breath still coming out in white plumes like clouds escaping from beneath a mountain.
What? What was that supposed to mean, he wondered. His mind was always sharp. Always steady. He never thought about random shit like that. So why now? Nerves, he guessed. Just nerves making him blunder about in his own mind, like Joey Martinez had blundered about that room, clutching his side and moaning about 'Beth.
He heard movement behind him and quieted his thoughts. Now was not the time to be letting his mind wander - had to keep it focused on the task at hand. Not easy, maybe, but that was just the way it had to be. He hadn't quite realized what he was signing up for when he took this job. Maybe he did and just hadn't let himself admit it. It was pretty normal when you took it all at face value, though. Not much crazy about it. But the dog. Why had he wanted the dog?
The man had been leaning slightly against the wall, and as the footsteps drew near he straightened up and inhaled deeply. He wanted to wipe his face off. Wanted to get that thin liquid sheen off his skin. Too late now, he reasoned... should have thought of that before or not at all.
His eyes were twitching. Why? Never mind. Force it back. Ignore it. It'll take care of itself, and this isn't going to be rocket science - not a blunt and egregious act like this. It wasn't going to be hidden, and that kind of work required very little focus when you had the element of surprise. Still, he had to be silent, quick, and most of all, efficient. Screaming or thrashing would definitely ruin it, there would be passerby above - or the opportunity for them to exist. No sense in taking needless risks.
He had been standing alone by the end of the bar at the Smoking Camel. He was smoking a Camel. Couldn't help it really - when he'd gotten the communique and deciphered it, the idea had popped into his mind immediately. He was quite clever, you see. A biting sense of humor. Never mind the "No Smoking" sign by the bar, that just made it better. More ... ironic. Maybe that casual disdain for rules of propriety is what made the barman eye him with dislike and distrust. Maybe it was just that he was smoking at the bar. Right next to the "No Smoking" sign. He really didn't care, though, that kind of animosity toward him would keep the barman away. When it came right down to it, no matter how much someone wanted to tell him to bugger off, or to put out that cigarette, or to please leave the train because the children were frightened of his cold eyes and hollow cheeks, they never would. His tall, lank figure, a dark gray (not black - never black) overcoat hanging loosely over his frame, his slightly hooked nose, and the whisper of a canine behind his thin-lipped grin, kept most people from even considering speaking up. The rest changed their mind about mouthing off the moment his dark and considering eyes fell on theirs. Those eyes - two misty rings of darkest hazel disappearing into what must have been the blackest pupils on God's Green Earth.
It wasn't what those eyes said ... it was what they threatened. And what they threatened was slow, painful, and dreadfully deliberate.
Not that he'd ever been intimidating in his early years. It was just something that he tended to - fed and watered like a rotting plant that feeds on dark words and darker thoughts. The children would nag and tease, push and trip, and for every small jab, for every snide remark or cruel joke, the rotting plant grew. He didn't really have to tend it much, really, just watch it grow and wait until it blossomed.
And blossom it did! The petals of anger and malice slowly unfurling themselves from a dark and pitiless core. He didn't believe he'd grown this way, not completely anyway. If all it took to create him was jibes and sneers, he was quite sure that he'd be very unalone in his field of expertise. There was something in him from the start, he was quite sure, and that was what gave him his uniqueness. His ... talent? Yes, that was the word. And why not? It's what they might say of an artist, isn't it? And what was he but an artist? Extracting muffled (sometimes) cries and pained (always) screams from even the most stoic of his ... orchestra.
As the bar slowly filled up the regulars kept a seat or two open next to the end of the bar. The man couldn't imagine why.
6.7.04
Paradise by the Dashboard Lights
There was a slight creak as the Hollander pushed his way uncertainly through the front door. Pausing, he listened for any acknowledgement of the sound from within the home. Nothing. There were no dogs, at least there was that, they would have heard the muffled whine of the door as clearly as a gunshot, and that would have been the end of this intrepid voyage.
"Fucking door," he cursed under his breath, easing himself through what space there was in the doorway, unwilling to chance another sound by pushing it farther open. Nervously glancing around the room, he searched for any sign of movement in the still living room. The room was large, the oaken floor solid and cool under his feet. Looked to be around 20 feet by 30 feet or so, a door on each side of the elongated space. The Hollander had come in from the north, to the south was a large wooden door, the bust of some famous greek sitting alongside the doorframe on a dark cherry pedastal, the white of the bust seeming to hover over the dark wood in the night-blackened room.
There was an unlit fireplace to the left, the kind with a gas lighting system under the wood, a thin sheet of black chain metal hanging in front of the opening. Facing it, there were two large, comfortable looking chairs, behind them, in the middle of the room, were two couches - made of the same material as the chairs, facing each other, a small, oval, dark coffee table in between them. The walls were decorated with a few large paintings of ancient ancestry, and several enlarged pictures of the properties they owned.
The trace was still there too, lingering on the ground and in the air like a dull, yellow streamer.
"I found you, didn't I you bastard." The feeling of success would have to be repressed for now, but still he knew how close he was, how near the completion of this seemingly endless mission. "I found you, and I have something for you."
The Hollander moved quietly through the living room toward the far door, which hung barely open. Following the trace was like following a faint yellow fog which never seemed to lift. Except it did. It was the kind of illusion a man could follow forever, convinced he was on the right trail when really his eyes were just playing tricks on him. There was more to following the trace than looking for it - it had to be felt. The Hollander could feel the trace, almost always could, and it had saved him more times than he could recall. As he followed along it's path, the trace swirled and coiled around him, the air becoming warmer around him where it surrounded him. Bending through the doorway at the end of the room, the trace glowed slightly on the other side, casting the faint illusion of illumination on the other side. Most people would have thought the illumination to be real, but it was just a glance into possibility - the reality of what might be, but isn't.
The Hollander knows better because he knows the trace. To him it is as natural a phenomena as the wind blowing mildly against your face in the autumn, the leaves blowing briskly by you as the air cools and prepares for winter. Most people could see the trace if they looked, most just call it a person's aura and the trail it leaves behind, and most would lose the trail after a few seconds, searching in vain for the equivalent of the end of the rainbow. The Hollander knows where to look for the trace, how to follow it, and what to expect at the end of the rainbow - he is a Tracker, a Spirit Follower. He can see and feel what most ignore, and what a few (including Edward Jona Finch the Third, in whose house we currently find ourselves) wish had never existed.
Following the trace through the door, the Hollander stopped laying his hand gently on his sword, Job. The sword seemed to thrum with the anticipation of what was soon to come. It wasn't an evil sword mind you, it just loved the taste of blood, and Edward Jona Finch the Third would not be an exception, not in the least.
"I know," he cooed gently to the sword, "let's go get him."
To be continued...
21.5.04
It was almost noon when I awoke. I could smell Kyrla's perfume in the air as my eyes snapped open in a timeless moment of wonder.
"Where the hell... ?" I felt lost and confused, there was a thin and distorting sheet draped between me and the rest of the world. But there was a tear in the sheet, a tiny tear... and it was getting bigger. "NO!" I shouted out loud. My hands raced to pin the tear together but I was too late, the hole was growing too fast, and through it, I saw her. I saw her!
"No! This isn't right! This isn't my life!" But the yelling was useless, clawing at the sheet was useless - it was immaterial, but I knew at that moment that few such things are unable to affect us.
The urge to scream came from somewhere within the pit of my stomach. The fear and realization within me rose through my body in a slow crescendo as the butterflies which normally contained themselves to my lower regions rose in rebellion, their bodies growing and wings expanding in their exodus. First they crawled, then they flew, their wings beating away layers of flesh from within me as they ripped and tore their way to the mouth - my mouth, their freedom.
As the sheet before me tore itself asunder from the inside out, the agony within fought to reach the outside world. "No," I muttered. "Please Gods, no! NooooOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!" The tear became larger than the sheet, the butterflies gushed forth in waves of agony, misery, and pain. The world spun and I collapsed as the fabric of the world around me exploded and shattered into chemicals, molecules, atoms, and nothingness.
Beranice left the Patisserie at a brisk pace, her bundle of bread under one arm, and her bundle of joy under the other. Jean was just 3 months old, capable of crying through the entire night and waking refreshed and ready for more in the morning as his mother roused herself groggily out of bed to fix breakfast for herself and her husband.
They hadn't much to live on, but it was amazing how far you could stretch a single piece of bread if need be. Crumbs became sacrosanct, and butter ... well, who are we kidding, that had run out weeks ago. But still it was not so bad really - they were making ends meet, and the Lord knows of the suffering in Paris. Yes, the Lord mon Dieu knows, and he will surely do what he can to lessen the suffering of his children. Won't he? Pere Auremon's sermon last week was testament wasn't it? Beranice thought so.
As she hurried home, Beranice pulled Jean closer to her body. There was something wrong with the air, it seemed to be getting thicker around her, coalescing into a kind of soup. Damn, she had forgotten the potatoes for the soup! But she would not turn around - there was something wrong, something in the air. Two blocks, left, one block, right, and home. "Non," she moaned. She was afraid, deathly afraid. She started to run, dropping the bread and pulling Jean to her with both arms.
She had reached Rue de L'Iglese and turned in stride to the left. "Un quartier," she muttered "seulement un quartier!" As she sprinted across the cobblestones in a mad dash to the corner, she spoke again, for the last time. "Mes Dieus, non! No-"
Jean's mother turned as she fell, pinning him to her chest with cold, rigid fingers. Jean began to cry.
Herr Gunther had reached his fiftieth birthday with little ado. He was not a man of celebration, frivolity, or anything else these boisterous youngsters seemed to enjoy so much. Anyone younger than he was a youngster to Gunther, them and a few of those inarticulate fools which had the audacity to think that they were older and wiser than he. In truth, everyone was a youngster to Gunther, and nothing but fools the lot of them.
As he crossed the street to the apothecary (Gunther had a penchant for sleeping potions) he was bitterly aware of the chariot careening down the cobblestones toward him. Young fools were always in a hurry, but they always stopped if you stared them down long enough, this young fool would be no different.
Gunther did not feel the air thicken. Gunther did not hear or speak the phantom words. Gunther only stood there, in the middle of the street. The young man driving the chariot, however, had felt, heard, and spoken everything. Just before the horses knocked him to the ground, and the buggy's wheels crushed his old, frail body, Gunther became convinced that the man driving must be drunk. Celebration and frivolity - bah! The world would soon end if these youngsters- but the thought was cut off and Gunther's body rolled slowly from side to side as it settled on the ground. The speed of the impact and the fright of the horses soon toppled the buggy, setting the blinded beasts free. The two dead men lay in the street.
A man named Khan had been celebrating long and hard following his most recent victory, a pair of beautiful slaves who had refused his orders. Even such small victories were victories nonetheless. One of the girls had managed to smack him in the face with the back of her hand before her spirit, and body, were broken with a few swings from a nearby club.
As his hand reached up to wipe a trickle of blood away from his nose, his body felt enclosed, trapped, claustrophobic. Khan started muttering the words as he collapsed to the ground, face to face with what was left of slave girl number two. The irony did not escape him as his lips finished the helpless plea to the Gods, and the pained screaming in his body and mind became an eternal silence.
Johnathan Spooner collapsed in his office, his secretary discovering the body only when he had not answered the intercom for five minutes straight, by then the drool had started to dry on his desk calendar.
The slave Ishar had escaped his masters and walked through countless nights and endless dunes to reach the small town where it was said that a great man lived. A prophet, healer, some even said messiah. When the words overcame him, Ishar became sure that it was all just a dream, a mirage brought on by the heat, and dryness. He would have died anyway, this just went faster.
Brnyvk collapsed in his Lord's fields.
Susan Tanner slammed into a freeway wall and caused a 7-car pileup across two lanes.
Theoneses' body spun and cartwheeled down the steps of the senate building, landing on a fruit stand and its shocked proprietor.
The tear grown and the shards flung, time stopped, the innocent man hung.
The beginning of the end came for me, and when it found me, I was reborn. The ripple had torn all the way through me, through time, and through all the worlds, and that's just one of those things you can't do a lick about.
-H
20.12.03
So I'm at work today when this big, ugly immortal comes in. He says "Hollander - I have searched for 3 thousand years to find you and my moment of glory. I will not be deterred in my quest!" Before I could reach for my blade he had his in his hands, cold metal gliding through the air, slicing through flesh, bone, and soul.
Bob's head toppled to the floor.
"Hey, jackass, I'm over here - you just killed Bob. Idiot." By the time he finished turning around, his head was slowly spinning off as his body quietly fell to the floor. The shocked faces of my co-workers assured me that this scene had not gone wholly unnoticed. Go figure. Ah well, clean-up time.
By the time the last body had fallen, I had almost reached my car. Funny how the body seems to refuse death even without a brain to argue the point. Reminds me of a joke about a chicken - something about a cross, a road, and a truck. Never can remember those jokes.
Excerpt from the Post: "Police baffled... " (no shit) "apparent murder suicide..." (uh huh) "killer used a pearl-handled sword..." (suicide... riiiight) "18th century or earlier." (16th actually, shape of the hilt's a dead giveaway)
It's amazing what the press will say nowadays, gives "dumbed down" a whole new meaning y'know? I swear they should just start printing picture books for the sunday edition, get it over with. Bob never read that stuff. Poor old Bob.
Little known fact - immortals absorb a mortal's consciousness as well. Think of us as a container - a jar of human cookies. Every now and then you can nibble at the sweets, but you can't eat them all up, not ever. I guess maybe the comparison is lacking since you start to become those same cookies, and nibbling on yourself would hurt. Which it does. Hm, maybe it's a good comparison after all.
Anyways, Bob - Bob the sales clerk - outstanding guy. Did you know he once masturbated 26 times in a single day? Amazing guy, really - almost considered submitting it to the Guinness Book. Sometimes cookies taste really bad.
Janice - assistant manager. Two cats, an impala, a baby girl, a cheating husband. What company we keep.
Alan - sales clerk. Single, gay, unhappy, artist, wishing on a star for inspiration or a big break.
Kate - cashier. Young, beautiful, just starting a new relationship with a sweet, caring man.
Simon - manager. Sweet, caring man, just starting a new relationship with a young, beautiful girl.
Derek - cashier. College student, quiet, studious, carrying twenty dollars from the register in his pocket.
Mavarka - the guy with the recognition problem. Stupid, blind, dead. Simple.
All of life's little stories come together one way or another. I'm the other. The bringer of souls, culler of tales, and cookie jar extraordinaire.
Things weren't always like this, you know. Things were different. Life was good. The world was full of forgiveness, opportunity, happiness - the jar was empty. It's hard to understand how things came to such a pass. How life changed so abruptly.
Kiyrla. Maybe it's not so hard. Kiyrla and Job. Death and rebirth. The jar was once empty, maybe it would do well to remember it's first occupant. Time will tell I suppose. Time and cookies.
-H
26.8.03
It was a dark and stormy night. All around the brittle shack wind blew in a torrid tempest. The creaking of the floor boards would have set the dogs to barking on any other night. Dinah, the small Bassett Hound, and Rufus, the Cockerspaniel were excellent guard dogs, alerting their masters to the slightest hint of danger. But not tonight. Tonight the storm held their attention and blanketed their hearing with the soft rolls of thunder in the distance.
Tonight would be the last time their masters ever fed them.
As the door to the bedroom creaks open ever so slowly, a leaf flutters by the window in a frantic pace, lifted and thrown by the wind towards the west, towards the desert. Quickly it flies out over the dunes, under the branches, through the hills, above the mesas, and into a cactus which shreds it into tiny flecks for the lizards to snack on.
You really think i brought you here to talk about some dogs or a leaf? No, I brought you here to hear my story - the story of
The Hollander
It all began when i was a child. The yearning to cut someone's head off pervaded my entire being. It inspired me and frightened me, soothed me and guided me. It was wrong wasn't it? To want to cut someone's head off? That's what my mother told me when I confessed to her my dark whim. She told me to never mention such a thing again, and so I never did. Though it never ceased to enter my mind, like a shadow, creeping in through the door behind you. It knew me as well as I knew myself. I could never hide, or fight it away - it was always there, burning in the back of my mind as an ember would sear your hand, never enough to kill, but plenty to remind you of the fire next to which you stand, secure in your imagined safety.
As i grew, i learned the trade of my father - the trade of my family. We were butchers... funny how fate coils around you. Funny how fate brings you back, even after five thousand (and 1/10ths) years. When Kiyrla came into my life, i was in the process of cutting the head off of a pig. Go figure.
"Perhaps if you did it in one stroke, the pig could not be heard screaming 2 kilometers away." Her voice was soft, but firm - as full of intent and intelliigence as the ocean is full of unknown creatures. I started at the sudden interruption - your nerves tend to get a bit frayed when you're cutting the head off of a still squirming pig who, incidentally, could in fact be heard 2 kilometers down the road.
I never said I was good.
When i looked up, i was struck by the stature of the woman standing in the doorway. She was tall and lean, her wide shoulders and slender hips seeming to give form to the rest of her body, which appeared to act merely as a bridge between the two. The long red hair which reached down to her waist in a tight pony tail bounced lightly as she chuckled at my futile attempt at slaughter. Her bright green eyes were obscured by shadow, but i could feel them, almost like the sunlight pierces and warms you through the eastern window in the morning - and i knew they were green. I had never seen them before, and they were obscured by shadow, and they were green. I knew that as I knew that i would never forget that moment, not even after all this time.
"I suppose you could do it better then," I said as I layed down my tools. "By all means, go ahead."
As she drew out of the shadow of the doorway, her face underwent a slight change... I don't know if I can really explain it, except to say that the shape, while retaining it's form, had lost some of it's fullness. It was as if i were looking at a bowl of hot metal which, upon cooling, would retain it's original shape, though it's contents were no longer present. It really is a sight which cannot be explained, mostly because half of it is intuition, and the other half is perception, and rarely do the two meet in one person at the same time.
There was a shifting underneath her cloak that could not be explained by the movement of her body. When it began to dawn on me what it was that had caught my eye, it was already too late - her hand was upon her sword, and the blade was unsheathing itself with unnerving speed. I fell back and began to protest, exclaiming that I had meant no insult. My heart began to race faster still as the blade was raised in front of me, the metal gleaming in the dimming sunlight of that late august afternoon - that was the second image of 4 that will stay with me for the rest of my immortal life - it was the last time i ever thought i would die. (except for image #4, where i actually thought i may have been wrong to believe i was immortal - you'll read about that later)
But she didn't kill me. She didn't even try. The only arc made by that ancient blade brought it to bear on Wilbur, the thenceforth officially defunct swine. Laughing slowly and evenly, she picked up the tools and handed them to their relieved, shocked, and desperately-in-need-of-a-new-pair-of-pants owner.
"It may be that the next time you attempt to decapitate something other than a turnip, you will trade in this shovel and this mallet for something a little more appropriate."
OK, just a reminder: I never said i was good.
The sword Kiyrla used that day was called Job, it is my sword now. It has been for over five thousand years, since the first anniversary of the day I met Kiyrla. Over five thousand years since I became immortal. All this time, and still i am haunted in the same way every year on the night before my 'birthday'. The dream comes - the memory returns - and the day the earth stopped turning for one young butcher-to-be lives again. It was the day I shed my mortal life; the day the gods beckoned to me; the day I learned my path. It was the day Kiyrla died.
This is my story; this is my life; this is my world. Welcome.
-H
15.8.03
