Barren, blank and dead. The landscape was nothing more than a couple of craters made of gray and black rocks meeting up with the darkened night sky at the horizon. Stars were plentiful but there was no moon. Out of this dead land grows a tree. Dead and twisted with no bark and no leaves it sits in the soil like an old forgotten headstone. Along side the tree a fence starts leading a path to the porch of an old forgotten house. On the outside it looked rundown. Gargoyles were watching over the outside of the old home while the tall thin columns were barely holding up the top two stories. The bottom floor was made up of six main rooms: Main entry, Living area, Library, Kitchen, Dinning room and the game room that seemed only to have one game, chess. From the main entry there’s a spiral stare case that goes up to the second floor that was basically just a hallway with 12 bedrooms, all empty, and at the end of the hall is another spiral stare case that leads up to the third floor that is nothing more than a master bedroom with a grandfather clock that stopped working a few thousand years ago. In the center of this room there is a grand chair made of animal skins that were never found on Earth. On the arms were skulls and bones of ancient warriors that are now forgotten war heroes. In this chair was a man. And old man. A man with nothing but a horrible dream.
“Gah!”
The man woke with a terrible jerk out of his chair, landing face first on the rotting, hard wooden floor beneath him. The air was dry and rancid. He got up and looked around the room.
“What the hell?” he said, checking his face for cuts or broken parts. “Where the hell am I?” There was no noise except the echo of his voice bouncing down the hall and back again. As he got up, the floor boards creaked under his weight and felt as if they were going to crack. He walked down the spiral stares to the first floor and looked around. The most interesting to him was the library. All the books and tapestries were in a language that was familiar in looks but he couldn’t read them. Every picture looked so familiar; he had dejavu whenever he looked at them, as if he had actually been to each and every event and place shown. But, every time he had the flashbacks he just shrugged them off as if they were nothing more than a bad dream.
He opened the front door to see a better view of the outside world. The windows were blocked off by brick and the only other way to see outside was to look through the little holes in the walls that looked as if they were created by a storm of rocks. He walked through all the rooms and halls to see nothing more than ghosts of his past, spirits he can not remember and empty space in the rooms and his memory. When he finally walked outside to the cracked and weathered front porch, there was nothing outside. He couldn’t understand it. What happened to the entire society he was seeing in the library? Was he the only one left?
The only tree he could see was the twisted, dead oak in the center of his vision, blocking the horizon in the center of his view. Something was happening. As he looked at the tree it seemed to move, but there was obviously no wind and really nothing to move it in the way it was moving. It was creating its own movement. As the man pondered this oddity in his mind the tree began to split down the center. A bright light shot out and practically knocked the man onto his back. As his eyes got used to the extreme brightness he began to see lightning coming from the tip of each branch, zigzagging its way to the ground and making its way to the horizon. Suddenly the electricity stopped in place like ice-sickles. The tree started slipping off its outer layer and tearing apart its inner layers. The snapping and popping noises nearly deafened the man. A ball shot out of the top and floated twenty feet above. The man watched in disbelief as he realized that at the center of the ball was a human figure, curled up in a fetal position, it seemed to be a woman. As the ball lowered he seemed to feel a sense of abandonment. He felt as if he had forgotten something. He had forgotten everything. He wasn’t sure if this was another case of dejavu or there was actually something very important he was supposed to do right now, at this moment.
As it all ended, the tree closed, the lightning vanished and the woman lay on the ground. She seemed to be sleeping, but the man didn’t want to take any chances. If there was something he wanted to remember what it was before doing anything else.
She got up. The man just stood there looking at her. He couldn’t remember seeing anything so beautiful in any of the books in the library. Who was she? What was she? She didn’t seem to have any distinguishing marks over any part of her entire body. She was perfect. Completely nude with long red hair flowing down her back to its purple tips. Her eyes were closed and her skin was pale and smooth. As she drew closer she seemed to hover, and her eyes slowly opened. One eye was blue; the other was red with yellow around the outside. She was short, like an elf. He didn’t see anyone this short in any of the books.
“What the hell are you staring at?” she snapped at him and stabbed him in his right leg with a sharp object she was holding in her left hand. He fell to his other knee as she walked passed him into the house. “Where’s the library?” she asked him then turned toward him fully clothed.
“In there,” he pointed. She walked into the library and started looking around. He looked at his leg where she had stabbed him. It had healed. What was going on? He followed her into the library. She was going through all the books looking for something, when she realized that what she was looking for wasn’t there, she’d toss the useless book over her shoulder then go for the next book in the sequence.
“What are you looking for?” he asked curiously.
“What’s it to you?” she snapped at him grabbing the knife and holding it up to his throat.
“I really don’t know, I just thought I’d ask. It seemed like the appropriate thing to do.”
“And, I suppose the most appropriate thing for me to say would be to answer your question and move on?”
“Yes. I suppose it would.”
“That’s tough,” she pulled another book off the shelf, looked at the cover and moved on to the next. “Don’t you have a job to do?”
“I don’t know. Is this my house? Where are all the other houses?” he started to approach her slowly. Being as careful as he possibly can he moved behind her and looked at the book she was looking at.
THE GIGANTIC BOOK OF UNCOMMON SPELLS
“How is it that I can read the title of that book but none of the others?” He asked confused.
“Because,” she began to answer, very annoyed. “It is a book made for all and none. Everyone can read it.” She searched through the pages some more. “Found it!” She said excitedly and ran out the front entry and stood in front of the house. “Strala Impactoo Lartada Bela Grndle Holadra Bre Gythres Empo Chelestroo!” With that the air around her seemed to rip apart and flames made of water shot from the sides. A man stepped out. He had huge wings coming out of his elbows and hips. His eyes shined a dim maroon with a kind of baby blue outline.
“Mi Golar indu yiy iplo han-dis tiq,” the man said to the woman then bowed.
“Str atumble an are instudentar.”
“Mi Golar indu upl artitutar amplax qew.”
“Str amblantanic a wre.”
“Mi Golar indu.”
“What’s this? What’s going on?” the tall man asked.
“It’s none of your business,” she said looking at him annoyed. She then turned to the winged man, kissed him and they both vanished.
The man stood there in disbelief of what just occurred. Did the woman just vanish into nowhere? The man, confused with everything that has gone on for the last couple of hours, just stood there and sadly stared at the stars that were visible to him through every aspect imaginable. He went inside, more exploring would do him good. Maybe with more exploration he would be able to remember who he is, where he is and what it was he just saw.
After a couple of hours he decided he wasn’t going to find any answers to any of his questions. He sat down in the same chair he awoke from earlier. It was comfortable. As he watched the grandfather clock tic tocking away he drifted into a state of unconsciousness.

“Essssssssssssssssss.”
The man woke up. Everything seemed to be the same. Nothing seemed to have changed during his rest. Why would it have changed when there was nothing there to change it? But, he did hear someone say something. It was a voice, a light, raspy voice that seemed to have come straight from his ear. As he looked around he realized that there was nothing there. No man, no source from which a voice could have been imitated by wind or the house itself creaking under some pressure. By no means was there anyone in that house, or room with him. He tried to settle down in the chair by gathering his thoughts. But, he found that difficult not knowing exactly what his thoughts were. He had vague recollections of large groups of people gathering in what seemed to be a celebration.
“Bllllaaaaaaack.”
He heard the voice again. This time it was more real because he wasn’t half asleep and he could hear everything so clearly.
“Who are you?” he said scared and shaking. “Who’s there?”
“Essssssssssssssssss.”
The man looked around and couldn’t see where the voice was coming from. There were no holes in the walls.
“Am I going mad?” he asked himself as if expecting an answer. “Am I already mad?” The windows were blocked off on this floor as well so there was no way someone could have been outside one of them speaking in. There was one aspect of the room he hadn’t noticed before. A huge chunk of the ceiling was missing as if a giant explosion occurred in this very room blowing out the roof.
He felt a gust of wind coming from the door behind him. Stale, musty wind. It had a feel like it had never moved before. It was thick. A mirror fell from the wall on his left. The crash made him stand up quickly preparing to be struck by some unseen force. He walked over to the mirror after realized that it wasn’t a threat.
Funny, he thought to himself. I don’t remember there being a mirror in this room.
The mirror was an old medieval design with dragons all around the outside rim. As he looked into the mirror at himself, he realized that he looked nothing like the people in the pictures he had seen in the library. His face was long with strong cheek bones that nearly covered his eyes. His eyes were entirely black, with no white and no pupil. As he touched his face he noticed that his hands were long and bony. His arms were covered in a long, windy tattoo that curved all the way up to his neck, down his back, sides and legs and finally stopping at his ankles. His hair was long and thick with mud and dirt. As he looked at his mouth he opened it to find long sharpened teeth, or fangs filling up the inside. He was confused. The woman he saw earlier didn’t look like him at all. Or, maybe she was all just a dream.
“What kind of freak am I?” he asked the mirror. “Was I born like this? Or was I in an accident? Who did this to me?”
“Bllllaaaaaack!”
“Who are you? Why are you haunting my life?” he yelled at the wind. The roar of the echoes through the house lasted for minutes. He heard a faint breathing sound flowing down the halls and up the staircase to the master bedroom. The wind started gushing in until a force, like a rolling boulder knocked him off his feet and slammed him up against the wall behind where he was facing. He was pinned there for several seconds until a voice spoke, it was the same voice that he kept hearing.
“Blaaaack! You are failuressss of darknessssss!”
“Who are you? What do you want?” he said nearly chocking on the pressure put upon him.
“Blaaaaack! You are failuressssssss! Essss isss not hear to tolerate your presssensssss!” he was then thrown from one side of the room to the other, picked up and pinned again.
“Who are you?”
“Essssss.”
“Why are you here?”
“To tolerate Nothing!”
“But, I have lost all my recollection! Please, enlighten me…”
“I am not a teacher!” The force picked him up and through him to the floor putting so much pressure on him that he broke through to the next, and broke through the next and the next until slamming him against the hard rock floor of the sub-basement. The pressure was stronger now that it was on top of him.
“Please, I can’t breath, and I don’t know what I have done wrong.” The pressure left from on top of him. A slight breeze seemed to be circling his body.
“Very well. You are black. I am ‘Esss’. You will do everything I tell you to do sssso that you may fixss your error!”
“What was my error?”
“Ssssilensssse!” Black was picked up again and thrown against the north wall. “All issss not well!”
“I’m sorry! Please, put me down.”
“You mussst go back to your planet and fixss your missstakesss! You must follow Redla and ssstop her missssionsss before I kill you.”
“Who is Redla?”
“The woman from the tree!” The environment around Blacks body slowly faded from the sub-basement of the house to black floating around the tree. “When you came here you were to never ssset her free! Now ssshe isss gone from the prissson we had given her! We are to bring her back to her damned home once again! And, leave her there for all eternity!”
“Why? W-what did she do?” he asked as he floated around the tree. “What was her crime?”
“You asssk too many questionsss!” Black was thrown to the ground. “If you had lost your memory, I do not feel like refressshing it! You must continue your job with no more interuptionsss!”
“How will I get to my home world?”
“I will take you there shortly! You mussst be quick to catch Redla, or you will die trying!” Black felt S wrap around him so tightly it felt as if his head would pop off.
“What are you doing? How will I know where to find you if I need help?”
“You will not find me. I will always be there. I will be watching your every move! I am your god!”
A strong gust of heavy wind fell from on top of Black, and then he was gone.