The imprisoned, p.1
The Imprisoned, page 1
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
THE IMPRISONED Prologue
Chapter 1 - The Village
Chapter 2 - The Applicant
Chapter 3 - The Tournament
Chapter 4 - The Castle
Chapter 5 - Junkyard Bay
Chapter 6 - Hermits and Scarecrows
Chapter 7 - The Meeting
Chapter 8 - Love and Community
Chapter 9 - The Letter
Chapter 10 - When the Sky Falls
Chapter 11 - Flickers in the Darkness
Chapter 12 - The Sun
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Visual Books by Paul Laane
About the Author
A Secret Passage Opens...
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Paul Laane
2021 1st eBook edition
ISBN: 978-952-7346-04-4
Published by Honey Hill Publishing
Cover art & all art copyright © by Paul Laane
Layout & Design of this book by Paul Laane
www.paullaane.com
www.honeyhillpublishing.com
to my family,
may I never lose you
THE IMPRISONED
Written and Painted by
Paul Laane
Prologue
The man sat still, a sun above him failing to warm his cold husk, for it was not the Sun, but a painting smeared across the ceiling as if a caveman had gone insane. The prisoner slouched blindfolded, bent over like a corpse exhausted from its ultimate breath. The fellow, had he been standing, would have been tall, slender, and well-proportioned, perhaps in his forties, judging from the light lines around his mouth. He wore a clean, light-colored shirt with one breast pocket and a pair of gray prison-striped pants—neither item divulged visible signs of wear. His hair, where it escaped from the cloth that covered his eyes, was cropped short and otherwise neat, and his jawline was strong and clean-shaven. A closer look at his forehead revealed something there...
A sudden tremble ignited the little finger. Afterward, another jerk. Then another...soon the entire hand displayed symptoms of life. As if the man had been jump-started, his whole body suddenly burst into a jolt, shaking the entire torso. The person moaned and tried to open his eyes, unable to see beyond the blindfold, which was bringing him great distress. Inside his darkness, the man tried to bring his arms up to his face, but they were blocked, each hand bound with manacles with chains attached to the cave wall. The prisoner tried in vain to shift his body, not fully understanding his captive situation. All that came out of the mouth were low, primal, guttural sounds as he kept trying to reach to tear off his blindfold. Bending down, he managed to rip the bandage and turned his head back and forth with wide, reddened eyes.
Around the prisoner encroached a dank cave, the odor stuffy, but less moldy than expected by the encrusted walls. The space was dimly lit by cool outside light from an opening. As the eyes further adjusted, he noticed a couple of busts near the exit. As if they stood guard. He scrutinized the Greek-style statues—his heart leapt at the probable recognition of the features of Plato and Socrates. Below one, a symbol of the Sun was carved, the other adorned an image that might have depicted a hole…or a cave.
Suddenly, he noticed movement in a corner of the den. A small companion was sitting on a nearby rock, a little horned owl that appeared to have its leg tied up by tight-wound nylon string. The bird had something shiny around its thick neck, a necklace perhaps.
"Why am I here?” came a whisper between the man’s lips, the taste of it metallic.
"Hoot,” the owl hooted in response.
"Yeah, you and me both. I see they got you too, buddy,” came the dry croak, as if his hoarse throat had been used primarily for screaming.
"Hoot.”
He glared at the bird. The owl an ill omen in the dark ages, but for the Greeks, Athena’s messenger of knowledge and wisdom, a symbol for…awakening.
"Are you gonna tell me what’s going on?” he asked the bird. "Gonna wake me up from this?”
"Ho-hoot,” came the response.
"So where are we?”
No response.
"Yeah, right.” The man pulled back his lips, the teeth exposing. He kept yanking the chains.
"Hoot.”
"Well I’m trying. Why the hell am I shackled?”
The owl blinked. "Hoot hoot,” came the answer.
"Do we know each other?” the fellow asked the bird. He chewed on his lower lip and gave a grimace. "No, I don’t remember you…at all…” He closed his eyes and tried to see far. The gash on his forehead started to hurt, the taste in his mouth making him cross. The prisoner started to yank on the chains with force. All of a sudden they tore loose from the wall, nearly disintegrating into pieces. He freed himself from the bonds, which felt curiously made of soft matter. "That’s weird…” Frowning, he examined their frail make, then brushed the toy shackles and chains off, casting them down. Hitting the ground, the plastic made little sound.
The freed man took a few limping steps toward the owl, his legs looking like not having been used for days.
"Who brought us here?” He kneeled before the bird, which became frightened and tried to fly off in vain. "Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you, little one. I’m not that type of guy…” and as he said the words, he paused to think about them. The twitches at the sides of the eyes divulged an attempt to recollect. His subsequent grimace told of the result.
"Hoot, hoot!” the owl screeched.
"Yes, yes, so I guess I don’t know what kind of guy I am. Stop rubbing it in.” The man re-took to the work of freeing the flapping bird, untying the string, muttering. "Who’d tie you up and leave you like this, without even leaving you a cup of water? How irresponsible.”
Finally, he managed to release the tiny leg. The small owl gave a couple of frantic flaps across his savior's face and was up in the air. "Hoot,” it said, and in a blink of an eye flew out the cave and into the bright light.
"You’re welcome, buddy…” The loner gave a light caress to the spot where his fellow inmate had just been. No warmth lingered. His smile soon turned faint.
The figure then straightened up, lifted his head and saw what hovered above him…
Splayed across and up the stone walls were a sequence of carved images. Sculpted in high reliefs, the first image depicted people chained in a cave, facing away from a fire. From behind the flame, small hand puppets were casting giant shadows in front of the prisoners. The next sequence showed a single man breaking his chain and then running, climbing, finally making it unto what appeared to be the top of a mountain. The next carving showed the escapee looking up at the Sun, his eyes bleeding from the rays. In the last of the series, the figure returned, crawling back to the cave, finally re-chaining himself.
The man kept staring at the reliefs, then stretched his neck back further and saw that above this whole display was a caveman-styled painting of a blazing Sun. With a smiling face in the middle...
As if the vision had suddenly burned his eyes, the man shot his head to the side to divert his gaze. He let out a short scream, and kept covering his eyes bleeding with tears. The man began to stumble blindly out of the cave, evermore frantic in his blind pursuit to flee. Teetering there on his two wobbly legs, ready to bugle at any moment, the fellow kept blinking, attempting to regain his vision. He dashed out of the tiny cave and clamored right into thick underbrush, stumbled, his mouth now full of grass, then pried himself off the ground by pushing against his shaking knee. He squinted his unadjusted eyes and kept inhaling fresh, salty air.
He was in a small clearing. Above and around him towered a semicircle of pillars, a forest-like temple entrance of gray columns encroaches him with a natural opening into the place. A great maw opened as he entered the hollow between the aspen trees. The leaves welcomed the visitor with a faint clattering sound and a smell of spring. The fellow gazed at the trees circling him. He now felt compelled to touch them, letting his fingers glide along and over the bark of one, then moving onto the next one and another and then another…in this manner he ventured deeper into the forest, giving a longing caress to the arbor as he ventured further into the shade beneath the canopy. The odors turned to those of autumn.
The man stopped.
A branch and its leaves rustled in front of his face. The leaves were plentiful, dancing in a soothing manner, each caressing his cheek softly. He narrowed down on one, a particularly fine leaf, and gently, very gently ripped it loose. He held the piece of plant carefully in both palms and brought it up to his face, as if ready to kiss it. A sudden gust threatened to make the thing fly, and the man closed his hands, imprisoning the leaf into a protective cage. He carefully placed it into the breast pocket of his shirt and buttoned the pocket close.
As he was about to leave, the man noticed a few vertical torn markings along the mid-section of one of the tree trunks. As if compelled, his right hand began to dance gently across these cuts. Suddenly, he pulled back as having touched fire. The hands held open, he stared as they coiled and twitched like a bonfire of ten flames. Beyond the palms, he saw a sharp-edged stone laying at the foot of the tree and picked up the crude instrument with both hands and raised it up as if in sleep. For some reason , he could not explain why, he now had the urge to carve a mark into the trunk. With a shaking, resisting grip he started to tear into the flesh of the wood with the dull stone blade.
A bird flew past him and landed on a branch nearby. The prisoner grimaced as he met the unblinking eyes of the little owl from the cave—it stared down at him as if having come to witness a crime. Turning back to his task at hand, putting his whole weight into the act, the man then proceeded to carve a long straight line down. It did not look like the letter ‘I’, but a wound, a familiar to all the other markings. Clear, thick sap flowed from the cut, like a large teardrop.
He now noticed further cuts at the foot of the tree. Made into patterns. They formed letters and read:
THE SUN
Shaking hands dropped the stone blade. It landed at the foot of the tree while he kept stumbling backward, eventually falling on his back. He shot a frightened glare up to the ceiling of the tree canopy: all the trees were full of leaves, all the branches twisting, coiling upward as if reaching for the freedom of the darkening sky.
The man quickly scampered up and through the forest of vertical bars, trying to writhe out, grasping at each trunk, each branch for support, for help…but all the trees were smooth and non-supporting. Trying to let oxygen into his lungs, he reached out with an extended hand, desperate to escape.
A dash out through the arboretum and a crash onto the ground. Panting, the man took a fresh gulp of air. Cool air. He could feel the chill in the breeze.
Now clear of the forest and lying in tall grass, the wide open space gave the wanderer a fresh viewpoint. He saw he was on a hill, looking over a landscape filled with moors. Just below the horizon opened a horizontal column of water—a vast ocean that spread its dark embrace all around. The Sun was drooping, hiding behind some clouds low in the West. The loner rose shakily and turned his head to gaze out to the East. Desperate for warmth in this bleak world, he wrapped his arms around the body as the frost curled around him, and in through his nostrils, coiling inside like a metallic vine. Something was in this wind. Huddled so, he kept staring far towards the Eastern Horizon…as if a thing had stirred within him, creeping up like an inexplicable premonition.
And just then, he knew, that something was coming…
Something cold.
∞
The man blinked a few times and realized that in front, the barren landscape made a gradual slope down, then at a steeper incline. The cloudy sky seemed lighter towards his right—the Sun was setting there. To this Westerly direction, the land stretched on for considerable lengths with sprawling hills later turning to forests and rocks, which all rose to block the view to the sea.
"Where the hell am I? Is this an island?”
Then, a sudden, but faint flash woke him from his stupor. The man kept staring. He squinted. "There again!” Far in the distance beyond some steep cliffs, he witnessed a pulsating beam shoot out again and again, maybe indicating a lighthouse. Whatever it was, it remained too distant and hard to reach before nightfall. Needing alternatives, he turned to look behind and above him. Here, just beyond the forest, the terrain made a sharper ascent up a steep hill, later turning into a sheer cliff face. On top sat a dark structure looking like a black monolith against the graying sky. It appeared to be a Castle. He could just make out a single, tiny yellow square in one of the towers. A cold shiver frazzled the man's body. He hurried to turn away from the sinister sight and sought visual refuge in the lowlands.
Here, toward the East, the terrain sloped downward in a more open manner. He spied a curling line, possibly indicating a road, leading into a dark mass of a forest. Beyond it there shone something. The man made a whimper. His feet refused to move, yet the coldness of the wind enticed him to advance toward this gesture of a light source.
After hiking down the fields for a time, he reached a road, more akin to a narrow worn-out dirt trail that sliced across the moor. To his right the terrain slid further down toward the South where he noticed...
He froze. Something stood in the far and dark plain. He blinked, and the thing seemed to dissolve into the murk. It had looked like a figure with a black robe and a pale face.
The stranger shuddered and took off in the opposite direction. There the trees did not appear more hospitable, but getting far from the dark silhouette was now all that mattered. The twilight was falling quicker—he hurried his pace, walking through some cypress-laden woods. To his relief, the somber forest part of the trail was short, and he was soon traversing a wide meadow heading toward the Eastern coast. The foreigner could now make out a group of buildings; it was a little town perched on top of a natural rock formation. The little lights blinking in the face of the forthcoming night promised warmth and shelter.
As the sky kept darkening, the man quickened his descent down the zigzagging path to the village, but a sheet of mist began creeping in as the ocean air cooled, the Sun’s final rays failing to warm it any longer. The vapor suddenly thickened and began to block the view now, barely revealing the town. The fog permeated the scene and the scarlet twilight colored it with purplish cool colors in the most strange ways.
The wanderer reached the outskirts of the little town teetering on top of the jutting cliff face. A peculiar-shaped sign welcomed the visitor. It read ‘Welcome to Sunny Shores’. On the sign was painted a blazing Sun, with a smiling face in its middle. Was it the cold, or did the grin just make him shiver?
The visitor crept through the town’s foggy gates. The man’s heart pounded with inquietude as he shortened his pace, tiptoeing onward down the foggy street of what appeared to be a ghost town. There to his left emerged some obscure forms of the first houses. No living creatures seemed to dwell in the midst of these murky structures. His impression was that the buildings were designed in an older style—architecture reminiscent of the designs of the Mediterranean, a strange version of the Italian Riviera.
Some street lamps began to glow, the orbs hanging heavy in the air. No people prowled about, but then he spotted a stronger light source coming from one of the alleyways. He stopped, as if listening to a sound. Carefully, he entered the mist and lurched toward the glowing display.
As he got closer to the shimmer, he noticed it was falling from a street level, grid-framed windowpane, shining, promising warmth of refuge through its green stained-glass. He could distinguish faint sounds coming from inside. Something shifted above him. Glancing up, he noticed a sign swaying in the chill of the sea breeze. It read ‘Cat & Mouse Tavern.’ The man swallowed. Slowly, he yanked on the heavy oaken door. The iron handle felt like ice.
The low murmur of the talk inside halted as soon as the guy walked into the tavern. Some wooden chairs and tables were spattered around the shabby space occupied by a half-a-dozen men. All sounds had now ceased. Everyone turned to stare at the stranger.
Behind the bar counter stood a fair young woman, appearing to be the barmaid, who now stopped her work of wiping a beer glass clean. She was wearing a red and white checkered apron around her young petite figure, with short-cut dark auburn hair, and a face shaped like a pretty pendant. The jewel was framed by dimples that could melt an iceberg—they now disappeared as she noticed the newcomer.
Amid the oppressing hush, eyes pointed at his back, the stranger held his shivering breath and took an unsure step forward, then another, each slouch making a thunderous noise. He eventually reached the bar counter.
"Good evening?” the barmaid said.
Daring not to turn around, the stranger merely focused on the barmaid and gave her a faltering whisper. "Could you please tell me…what is this place?”
She returned a little cock of the eyebrow as if having encountered yet another drunkard. "I suppose you’ll be wanting another drink to refresh your memory, huh?” The maid continued wiping the glass clean, then rose to her toes to peer over the newcomer’s shoulder. "Last calls, I’m telling you boys.”
