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I was only thirteen years old when the hallucinations began. A few weeks after my birthday, I began to perceive objects not visible to others around me. That is why I find myself where I am now.
In the very beginning, I did not realize the unusual things I saw were real. The first situation in which I recall seeing something intangible, some friends and I were hanging out in the forest behind our small secluded neighborhood. A buddy of mine snatched some pot from his father’s stash, and we darted off into the woods to hide while we got stoned. Back here in the country, there were not many places besides the forest were teens could hide and hang out.
The four of us lay with our backs against a large smooth boulder in a small clearing. We spent many of our days speculating on what our futures would be like. Brandon dreamed of being an agricultural engineer, as did Francis. This was nothing unusual as this was primarily an agricultural community. Scotty dreamed of being in politics; he thought he could help change the way the world thinks. Me, I always thought I would be a doctor. I wanted to help sick people.
I thought I must have gotten a major head rush, because I swore I saw a couple of men standing to the right of where I sat. What instantly clued me in to the fact what I saw was not corporeal was both men wore clothing common to the days shortly after the American Revolution. To compound upon this surrealist nature of the scene, the men conversed in a dialect of the English language not spoken in more than 400 years. I remember reading in school words like these, but this is the first time I ever heard them spoken fluently.
Immediately I pointed the unusual sight out to my friends, but all they did was laugh and mock me. The three other young men with me thought I was just incredibly stoned, or I was pulling their leg. Either they lied to me, or I saw things that were not there. I don’t think my friends had any reason to lie. We’ve been pals for a long time. Surely they would say if they beheld the same site as I. That left only one option; I must be going crazy.
Drug propaganda at the time tried to make the public believe any mind altering substance brought about with it serious mental and neurological ramifications. I did not believe it initially, but as the number of visions increased I started blaming them on the marijuana. At first, when I gave up smoking the psychedelic plant, the visions did seem to stop, but not for long though, for slightly more than a month later, the strange sightings resumed.
An old road – a road cleared several hundred years ago – twisted through the endless forest behind my small neighborhood. Our town consisted of nothing more than six residential blocks of homes. Even the nearest convenience store was thirty minutes from here.
Grass and weeds now choked the long abandoned thoroughfare. Young green saplings rose from the grass in spotted clusters with the occasional climbable tree mixed in among them. To the untrained eye, it may not be evident at all that this pathway ever saw the traffic of an innumerable amount of horse-drawn carriages, wagons, and stages. No one used this road for travel or trade for hundreds of years. To be fully honest, I did not understand why the trees did not completely conceal the road. Still, anyone from around here knew without a doubt it was indeed an old travel route.
A few weeks later I had about the most terrible day. I failed a test, I was sent to the office because of disruptive behavior, and the resident ruffians threatened to beat me at the end of the day when the school bell rang.
Fighting was not a skill I possessed in any large quantities. Thinking and attentiveness were more descriptive of me. My exceptional intellect and my small size made me the target of not only the resident bullies, but also by most every other student in school.
Because of my advanced book smarts and my uncanny perception, the school placed me in two classes higher than the other children my age. I was glad to be taking courses that somewhat challenge me intellectually, but it always made me the smallest student in class. It aggravated many of the other students that I had such an easy time with my schoolwork; some of them studied constantly in order to receive marks one or two letter grades below mine. I knew they resented the ease with which I approached my assignments, but I didn’t really understand why. It is not as if my good grades made theirs worse.
I slipped out one of the side doors as soon as the school bell rang. My antagonists expected me to get on the bus where they would torture me until the transport reached my stop. I knew the trails through the hardwood forest very well, so I decided to flee into the woods and walk home rather than let that football player and his pals amuse themselves at my expense.
I meandered along the winding trail until I reached the old road. By following this pathway, I would reach the back of my family’s yard within thirty minutes. This long stretch of the old path was unfortunately filled with thick briars, so I was forced to walk through the cover of the trees for a good hundred yards or so. When the mass of thorn bushes finally came to an end, I got back on the road and bounded off for home.
Grasshoppers, crickets, and innumerable flying insects created a blur of motion as I pushed my weight through the four-foot high grasses. My disturbance of the foliage roused gnats, flies, and worst of all mosquitoes. My body was accustomed to the needlelike bites of those bloodsucking insects, but it was still annoying when they swarmed and fluttered around my face.
With the skill of a veteran hunter, I trod along the old pockmarked road at a fair pace. Not really focusing my attention, I enjoyed the sounds of the birds, frogs, and insects. When the noises nature sang to me ceased abruptly, I knew something was terribly wrong.
The abrupt cessation of nature’s singing was not due to the presence of other children. Their presence may cause a ruckus among the forest denizens, but if anything it would rouse even more noise. Not even the gnats and bloodsucking mosquitoes buzzed about the late afternoon air. I grew so accustomed to hearing the sounds of nature after my parents moved me out here in the country, and when their songs ceased, I instantly knew something was amiss.
I turned in circles trying to catch some glimpse of whatever was responsible for the sudden change in the behavior of the insects and reptiles causing them to cease their songs. I did not see anything; I didn’t see anything other than what I should expect to see in this forest. Still, I knew something aberrant was happening. Exactly what that was I did not know.
I stood motionless for several long minutes afraid to move. I didn’t want to alert the unnatural thing that may be hidden. It might spot me if it did not do so already. I carefully scanned the area with my eyes, too trepid to move anything else. I finally mustered the courage to move my head, and once again scan for anything atypical of this region of woodlands.
I turned back towards my house and ran. Even as familiar as I was with this old thoroughfare, I still could not miss all of the potholes and ruts dug by wagons centuries ago. I tripped on one of the old ruts, and then I heard something strangely anomalous.
Not too far off in the distance, I was sure I could hear horses coming, but that was not possible. No one I knew who owned horses ever rode them along this road, not at the speed at which they seemed to be coming. It would be really easy for a horse to break its leg galloping here. Regardless, I knew the clatter of horses, and this was it.
The sounds drew nearer, and the crack of a whip pierced the air. By now there was very little doubt the horses were towing a wagon, but no wagon could possibly navigate the old tree spotted road at this current rate of approach. I tried to jump above the tall grass so I could see the source of the noise, but unfortunately I was not able.
I should have run. I should have dived off the road. I should have done something more than I did. I stood petrified in front of the venerable dual carriage-way unflinching and unmoved. The absence of the croaking and chirping of the forest creatures, hearing the sounds of a horse-drawn wagon, and the congested foliage told me something not normal was heading right for me.
It seemed to leap out of nowhere. A stagecoach followed four draft horses, and they were moving in a hurried pace. The driver wore the clothes of a 16th century pauper while a nicer dress man sat atop the carriage tightly gripping a blunderbuss.
By the time I saw them, I ran out of time to jump out of the way. The driver of the wagon did not seem to notice me. He could not avoid hitting me without turning over the coach anyway. Throwing up my hands in a futile effort to protect my face, I prepared for my imminent demise.
None of the foliage choking the road wavered; none of it gave way as the wagon barreled down the path. Instead of trampling me, the horses passed harmlessly through me. The wagon did not run me down. It continued to advance along its way, and left me without ever seeming to have any idea I was present.
I turned to look at a horse-drawn wagon as it sped away from me. Not only did the conveyance manage to pass through the tall grass and weeds, I watched it pass unhindered through an 18 foot tall oak tree.
I did not know what to think, believe, or trust about the things I witnessed. Pushing through my panic and fear, I tried to remember everything I saw. I thought if I could recall more of the ghostly apparitions, I might understand more clearly their meaning.
By no means was I any sort of historian, but I was still sure the clothes worn by the driver and the man riding shotgun belonged to a time long forgotten. The weapon the man sitting on top of the stained wooden carriage carried was a very early version of the shotgun. The blunderbuss was never a widely used weapon because of their tendency to explode in the face of the user. That was a weapon much more associated the 14th to 17th centuries. I remembered the style of weapon as shown in the illustrations in my history books.
The wagon was of early colonial design as well. Thinking of these spectral images, I believed what I saw to be ghosts. Even though I sustained no physical injuries, my mind went into sensory overload. My limited brain could not logically explain what happened. Although the apparitions ran right over me, I did not think they meant any harm. Regardless, the whole ordeal terrified me, and I ran as fast as my trembling legs could carry me. In less than five minutes, I found myself jumping the fence into our backyard.
Mother and father still were not home, which was a relief to me. That gave me time to wash off my face and calm myself. My parents would never understand me if I told them what I saw. They thought me peculiar enough without telling them stories about ghost carriages. I felt it best not to inform them about anything concerning my recent hallucinations.
During supper, I lingered around the dining table not saying much of anything. It took me much longer than usual to finish my plate. My parents could see something was bothering me, and I could feel their worry over my well-being. It was obvious they were concerned about me.
After dinner I cleaned up the dirty dishes from the dining room, and headed on up to my bedroom and went straight to bed. The dreams I experienced during this nights rest put me in a setting very early in America’s history. When I awoke, the memories of my dream quickly faded. I grabbed a pencil and notepad and instantly recorded everything I could remember. By the time I touched lead to paper, nearly all memory of last night’s dream was gone.
It was now the weekend and I politely ask mother if she would be so kind as to take me to the community library. I hoped I might find some answers to help explain my visions.
Mom already planned to head into the tiny municipality we called the city – and we lived quite some distance from town – so she said she would drop me off at the library before running her errands.
I went straight to the back of the book repository because the bulk of the town’s recorded history was stored there. With fervor and speed, I flipped through the pages of the book until I found some information about this area around the year 1521. The book was old and unique, so I could only study it very carefully under the closely watching eyes of the librarian.
I went through several books – most of them contained dry historical facts of the time – but I finally found the information I sought. I did not know what I was looking for when I began, but I knew what it was when I found it.
My neighborhood, the town, and much of the rest of the area were settled by what were repeatedly referred to as witches. In truth, they were not witches. They did not worship Satan because they did not believe in the devil. The people of this new settlement paid homage to on archaic pantheon of gods.
A common misconception was settlers first came to the New World so that they would have freedom of religion. The problem was these Christian sects wanted freedom only for their own creed, not for everyone else in the budding country. The Christian denominations in the New World did not stand for any sort of religion that did not acknowledge the Christian savior as their own.
The original settlers of this community faced hatred and persecution from any nearby Christian settlements. After repelling several attacks, the settlers turned to nature to protect themselves. Suddenly outsiders found the perimeters of the nature worshippers’ territory surrounded by a thick wall of thorny blackberry bushes.
Within days, wide bands of poison ivy wove through the briars, climbed the trees and created sheets of the caustic plant stretching from one tree to the next. Trespassers attempting to lynch the founders of the community began to mysteriously disappear in the forest never to be heard from again. Eventually, outsiders learned to leave the pagan settlers alone.
Many generations passed and the citizens of the reclusive community resumed trade with the surrounding settlements. It seemed others forgot the stories of the pagan society as the decades passed. The communities growing in the region now remembered such things as nothing more than legend and myth.
Despite the reclusive peoples’ assimilation into “normal” society, no amount of acceptance would get the nature worshippers to stop worshiping their false gods and join the Christian fad that seemed so popular at the time.
Over the next several hundred years, many of the decendants of my town’s forefathers gave in to the pressure and placed their loyalty in the trio of gods all of my ancestors believed to be false. Despite those who renounced their true belief in their gods, the old religion continued to thrive and grow.
When the witch hunts of Salem began, the worshipers of the ancient gods moved their religion to the underground. They held meetings in secret. They hid their sacred relics in a variety of sealed chambers, and many faithful worshipers held their rituals in secret behind closed doors.
The elderly yet beautiful librarian approached me from behind. As I glanced at my watch, I knew she was about to make me leave. Sure enough, the kindly woman told me the building was closing. I wished I could bring some of the ages-old books home with me. Unfortunately, due to their condition and uniqueness, the tomes were not allowed out of the archives room.
Because of school five days a week and the distance to town, it would be several weeks before I could again return to the library. Until then, most of my free time was spent out in the woods looking for something not truly there. A whole week passed without any more strange visions. Then the sleepwalking began.
My parents began finding me sleepwalking and sitting on the floor engrossed in a book or magazine. Never once did they find me reading textbooks or any other similar educational materials. Most of the time they found me reading unusual materials such as owner’s manuals for their cars, the warranty packets for our kitchen appliances, and even the phone books. When mom and dad could rouse me awake, I never remembered any of this strange behavior.
Nearly three long weeks past as I awaited my next visit to the library. I held anticipation for my return as many children would look forward to Christmas. I took a stroll in the woods after school one day to clear my head and calm down my fear of being a target for bullies.
I tried to find the trails I walked countless times, but I did not come across a single one of them. I knew the pathways winding through this forest like I knew my own name. The trails twisted and crossed through one another in hundreds of places, so I should not have to walk far to find one of them. I walked this forest virtually every day and I could not find any of my usual landmarks. None of the trees were where they were supposed to be, and the heavy undergrowth appeared to completely obscure all of my familiar trails.
Until this point, none of my hallucinations possessed any tangible forms. I thought the same might be said about the hidden trails, but I was wrong. As I felt about for spectral foliage, I discovered everything felt very real. I could not find any walking trails at all. The only trails in the area were those created by the forest animals.
Something else was not right, the trees. The woods in which I spent countless hours were all hardwood trees. A majority of the trees now surrounding me were massive cedars. I never saw such gigantic cedar trees in my life. A thought suddenly occurred to me. Just outside of my neighborhood sat a small village comprised of recovered historic homes. The logs from which the buildings were constructed were cedar.
Even though none of the forest appeared as it should, I knew my direction by the position of the sun. Afraid I might become hopelessly lost, I turned and followed the blazing white orb towards home. As I walked, I examine the passing underbrush and saw many plants I was not used to seeing. I spotted a beautiful flower – it appeared to be a perennial – and reached down to pick it.
My heart lept into my throat, and I could not breathe. I trembled in panic as I looked down at my hands. Jumping back from the flower as if trying to jump away from my hands, I nearly tripped and fell on my back. Up to now, it was other things that appeared out of sorts. When I saw now horrified me. The flesh on my hands and arms was wrinkled and covered in liver spots. Fungus stained my fingernails a sickly yellow. I stood and stared at the hands of a very old man.
Experiencing intense reluctance, I finally raised my aged hands, probing the flesh on my face with my bony fingers. This skin I felt with my callused fingers was that of a man my grandfather’s age. I fought to take in a breath. It seemed like my chest constricted and squeezed the organs beneath. It all became too much for me to take and I fainted.
When I awoke, the sun was close to setting. My immediate reaction was to check my hand. To my relief, I saw the hands I should see. My short stubby fingers showed healthy and clean fingernails. The skin was tight and elastic. I looked at my arms and saw no liver spots. Feeling my face, I felt the skin of a 14-year-old boy.
Early in the morning of the following Saturday, I decided to go and check out the historic village a few miles down the highway. I emptied all of the school supplies from my backpack and loaded it with things I would need for my hike. Among other things, I packed a few bottles of cola; some toaster pastries and potato chips; and a magnetic compass. I did not want to have to rely on landmarks and the sun for directions. I told my mother I was going out in the woods to explore and was on my way.
Walking through the forest rather than walking along the highway, it took me nearly two hours to reach my destination. When I arrived, I once again found myself in a place out of time. The village was exactly where it was supposed to be. One major indicator I once again suffered from my hallucinations was, rather than being a place for tourists and school field trips, residents moved about the area. One modestly dressed woman ran laundry throughout hand-crank drier, one woman drew water from a well while a young boy carried firewood from a pile and into a house. I watched for hours as the 16th century Americans went about their manual chores.
I examined my body as the multiple families tended to their daily duties. Once again I found myself occupying the frail body of an elderly man. This time, I paid attention to the garments I wore as well. My britches were made of itchy wool and I wore no shirt at all. Instead, a tunic folded over my upper body, which hung down to my thighs. The belt holding it together was crafted from leather and the buckle was either silver or platinum. I never saw anything remotely resembling the design of the valuable ornament. It was so very out of place when compared to the rest of my garments.
I nearly jumped out of my skin and my heart fluttered when someone addressed me from behind.
“Master Picard, is everything all right?”
I spun around to see a poorly dressed man who, judging by the close resemblance of his face, was the father of the boy toting the fire wood.
The only thought in my mind was, how in the hell did this guy know my last name. The anxiety and panic overtook me, and I fainted as before.
When I awoke, the sun long ago set behind the horizon. No clouds appeared in the sky, so I had an excellent view of the stars. Growing up in the wide country, I learned to navigate by the constellations years ago. Just in case, I withdrew the metallic compass I brought with me. Something was not right.
I immediately realized the needle did not point north; it pointed at the historic village. Thinking it might be stuck in position, I tapped the top to try and jar the needle loose. It came loose all right, but it still did not point north. Now it pointed directly at me. No matter which way I turned, the needle swiveled in the water filled compass to point directly at me.
Already too disturbed to deal with a broken compass, I stowed it in my backpack and followed the stars homeward. Within an hour, I found my familiar walking trails. Now on a well-known route, I tried to jog as much as I could. I knew my parents were already upset with me. We always eat dinner at 5:30 PM every day, and it was much later than that.
I did not know what I was going to tell them. If I told them I got lost in the forest, they would immediately recognize it as a lie. No one knew the woods surrounding our diminutive neighborhood like me.
I quickly began to formulate a story about a bobcat. Those wild creatures were known to inhabit the area. Several dogs and house cats over the years fell victim to these feral animals. Taking advantage of my knowledge, I quickly selected a location for the alleged incident. I knew of a very good place for me to climb an outcropping of massive stone, which would have afforded me safety. As I made the remaining forty-five minutes of my journey, I worked out the specific details.
For no reason could I tell anyone the truth. They would think I was crazy. I was beginning to think that very thing about myself. When the encounters I experienced were no longer incorporeal phantasms, I thought for sure I was losing my mind.
Why was I now having visions of me as a very old man? Why did the forest change to be as it was centuries ago? What was the meaning of that ornamental belt buckle?
Mother and father exacted a punishment of grounding me for a few days for my missing supper. I accepted the consequences without a question. I did not really think they bought the whole bobcat story, but telling them the truth would have been much worse. I would be headed to the county hospital to be locked away on the fifth floor.
I stayed restricted to my room until time for school following Monday. During the bus ride, I looked out the window to see a caravan of five horse-drawn wagons. I looked over the other children on the bus, and it was obvious none of them saw the wagon train I saw as reality. The weeds along the road blurred past as the yellow school bus headed to the school. The wagons were well behind us in no time. I watched them – making their way through an open meadow until the bus turned and entered part of the forest.
If hallucinations are only the figment of one’s imagination, I could never have imagined such intricate detail. I knew very little about early America, the history of the region, much less the type of clothing people wore. Regardless, the things I saw displayed more detail than was in my head.
Two weeks before my 14th birthday, the unwanted images ceased their assault against all my senses. I expected them to return any minute, but three years passed without incident. I was both relieved and anxious at the same time. I felt relieved I did not see any more disturbing images, but I was overanxious from anticipating the images return.
At the beginning of my sophomore year, my sleepwalking spells returned. First my parents found me reading Mom’s magazines and novels set in modern times, not those set in a fictional past. On more than one occasion, they found me going through the pantry and reading everything from cereal boxes to the cleaners under the sink. After I read everything in the house, I waited out on the porch every morning for the newspaper to arrive.
Following the end of the school year, the audio and visual hallucinations returned. Again, the things I saw came from early American history. This time, these phantoms increased tremendously in frequency. Sometimes I found myself witnessing the same scenes over and over. It became obvious to me quickly the things I saw occurred at the same time of day every time. From different places, I saw the images from multiple angles. If these things were truly only in my mind, then my mind was capable of creating a very real and vivid world.
I began to study the things I saw. Before long I was very familiar with some of the people I viewed, as well as their homes, wagons, and virtually all of their belongings. Such intricate detail, things that look this real and this consistent, it was hard for me to believe it was simply the product of a delusional mind.
When I was old enough to drive, I decided to return to that library to see if I could to learn about the early settlement that grew to become the community I know today. Ever since the visions became more frequent and more real, I avoided returning to that library for fear of what I might find. Now, I felt it may be the only hope I had to avoid going completely insane.
Cold sweat seeped from my pores as I entered the archive room. Chills ran down my back as I looked at the shelves containing those centurys-old books. I saw them once before when I first studied their contents, but now they possessed a familiar quality going far beyond my previous work with them.
It took a bit of conscious effort before I could muster the courage to walk my way over to them. I felt a consciousness present, calling me through the centuries old tomes. I felt a darkness to this unseen presence that made me want to flee, yet something inside me made me stay. A voice inside my head told me these were something very important I must see, something inside one of the 400 year old books.
Stepping only a few inches at a time, I reluctantly made my way to the aged leather-bound books. Their antiqued weathered appearance made all of the books nearly identical to one another. One book seemed to me to stand out from all the rest. When I came here to research several years ago, I looked through the books at random. Now, I knew exactly the book I needed.
I recalled seeing no tomes during any of my hallucinations, but I was always too afraid to get close to any of the wagons or log cabin homes I witnessed in my all too real visions. I examined my recurring visions from different angles, but I always made sure to keep my distance from them. Ever since that man identified me by name during my spying on the small hamlet, I was afraid to approach any of the spectral images too closely. I was too scared I would again be noticed. I supposed any of those wagons or cabins may have housed one or more of the books through which I now read. As a matter of fact, I was sure of it.
My apprehension caused the short walk to the far bookshelf to feel as if it lasted for an eternity. I knew, I had no idea how, but I knew the exact book that would make this make sense as soon as I read the pages in that tome. I could sense I was about to get the answers to all the questions echoing in my thoughts.
I finally reached the shelf, opened the glass cabinets, and retrieved that beckoning manuscript. I treated it with such care; I had to treat it very carefully. I stepped over and placed it gently upon the table. I did not pay long attention to the cover of the book, but then I saw embedded in the thick cover of the aged tome the platinum belt buckle I saw around my waist as I spied on the small village. I recognized some of the scratches and scuffs on the item embedded in the tome as the same item I wore when I saw myself as a man my grandfather’s age.
Visions suddenly surrounded me from all sides. Phantom trees appeared, their trunks rose out from the floor of the building and climbed through the ceiling. My heart murmured when a herd of deer bound through the walls. Sheets of vines and brush replaced the tables and bookshelves. Within seconds, the forest became real and the library faded to illusion.
I became aware of the sound of dogs barking in the distance. The chirping of forest critters sang an eerie song, and I felt a gentle breeze blowing against my liver spotted skin. The pleasing evergreen sent of cedar hung heavily in the damp air. The foliage looked every bit as real as any other I have seen, and I could feel the soft cushion of a bed of needles under my feet.
Glancing down at my hands, I found myself holding two artifacts. In my left hand I gripped tightly onto a crystal sphere. It was not a clear crystal ball like the fortunetellers use. The crystal appeared to be made up of opaque lines and produced a cat’s-eye like effect. I believe it was selenite.
What I held in my right hand was much more repugnant. It seemed to be a wand or totem of some sort. The yellowish shaft appeared to be crafted from a human forearm bone. Rawhide twine sewn through holes bored through the knuckle fastened tightly bound feathers and three strings of beads. Unrecognizable symbols appeared to be burnt into the length of the bone, and the grip was wrapped in a skin I could only hope belong to a pig.
The distant dogs barked in frenzy. I figured they must be on the trail of some game animal. They sounded like hunting dogs who finally stumbled on the scent of their prey. When the noise drew closer, I realized the prey was me.
Panicked, I spun myself trying to find a trail or some other escape. Seeing no easy route, I decided I would try to push this frail body through the thick virgin undergrowth. A shock hit me when the thorny foliage moved out of my way. I ran as fast as the old body could take me, and the underbrush never stood in my way. I looked back to see it closed behind me as quickly as it opened.
Using the sun as my guide, I fled to the East as the dogs approach from the West. I did not travel far at all before my muscles and lungs burned. With my own young body, I could run for 30 minutes at a time. In this frail form, I tired after only a few short minutes.
The dogs narrowed the gap between them and me with incredible haste. Even with the cooperation of the thorns, I simply could not travel very fast. I felt them closing in on me when I reached a curtain of poison ivy. The caustic vines covered nearly an acre of forest. To my despair, the skin irritating ivy did not yield its way to me. I thought all hope was lost, and then something amazing happened. The overgrowth of vines opened under no control of my own to reveal a long tunnel.
Not wanting to second-guess the stroke of luck, I walked into the tunnel. Within a couple of minutes I reached the other side. I found myself standing at the edge of a small 16th-century settlement. It was the same town I recognized as the historical attraction only a few miles from my home. The ravages of time had not affected these buildings, and the people living in them were quite real.
They looked upon me startled but not surprised. It appeared they knew me and apparently expected me. I collapsed from exhaustion and several young men came rushing to my aid. Helping me to my feet, they escorted me to a rocking chair positioned in front of the nearest dwelling. All through this, I managed to keep a tight grip on the articles in my hands.
I drew the attention of everyone in this secluded hamlet. One young woman ran to me with a burlap cloth wet with cold water. Using it to dab at my cheeks, she looked at me as if she were suspicious of something.
A young girl came to me with the bowl of bitter tea served in a kiln-baked clay bowl. Everyone seemed concerned with me, and I got the distinct impression they were more worried with making me coherent than with my overall well-being.
When the herbal tea soothed my parched throat enough to allow me to speak, I inquired as to my whereabouts.
“Master Picard, dost thou feel well?” one man asked. It was the same man who asked me that question once before.
“What’s going on here?” I asked with a weak voice.” Who are you people?”
“Did not Master Picard have a safe journey?”
“What do you mean?” I asked out of general confusion.
With that, the villagers turned and walked away from me. The children went about playing and chores. All the men of the village moved across the courtyard to talk. On more than one occasion, I caught them peering at me. I was not being paranoid; I know they were talking about me.
Suddenly I heard the dogs closing in on me again. I turned my head to the barrier of poison ivy as it withdrew from my sight. One of the younger men in the hamlet ran out into the fresh clearing and began to shout to the hunters. The muffled ears of this decrepit body could not make out the contents of the man’s calls. Even though I could not make out the words, I recognized the tone as one of anger.
A group of approximately fifteen men emerged from the forest tightly gripping the leather leashes of their hunting dogs. The villager pointed to me and led the angry mob across the open courtyard to where I sat.
“There is the witch,” the man shouted. “Even now he clings to his scepter made from a human bone, wrapped in the skin of a virgin.”
I could not find it believable this thing in my hand was what they said it was.
The newcomers drug me out into the courtyard by my long unkempt hair. The resident villagers pelted me with flasks of lamp oil while the hunters threw fistfuls of dry pine needles, nearly covering me in the evergreen leaves. The pain from the shattering pots was incredible and the chemicals splashed over my body and blinded my eyes. I never felt or saw the other men piling dry leaves over my body.
A burning lantern smashed against my now broken jaw igniting the flammables with which I was covered. Agony like I never thought possible slowly coursed over my body as the flames spread. My flesh blistered and sizzled as the oil and pine sap burst into an enveloping flame.
It turned out my visions were not hallucinations at all. I saw things from this time because someone was pulling me here. The warlock born to this aged body now inhabited mine. The evil soul of one of my pagan ancestors sent me back here to this time to die in his place.
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