[HR] The Lineage
The following was found in the safe-deposit box of the late Arthur Sterling, 1998:
The mists of Sintra do not merely descend; they swallow. As my car climbed the serpentine roads toward the Quinta da Regaleira, the world of 1967 fell away, replaced by a humid, verdant silence. I had been summoned there by a man named Senhor Alvelos, a recluse of staggering wealth who promised a biography that would define my career. Yet, as I stepped into the foyer of his crumbling limestone manor, the prestige of the assignment vanished. Beneath the scent of damp moss and expensive tobacco, there was an unmistakable, jagged bite of something modern and volatile. Gasoline. The groundskeeper said their generator was their only source of electricity on such a remote place and it was leaking "it will be fine". I could swear I saw street lamps outside.
Alvelos sat in a high backed chair of age blackened oak, his skin like yellowed parchment stretched over a bird’s skeleton. He did not offer me any welcoming drinks, a story instead.
"In the twelfth century," he began, his voice a dry rasp, "the cross and the crescent were carving the Iberian Peninsula into a mosaic of blood. There was a young monk, a shadow following an elder brother through the charred remains of the Reconquista. They encountered a girl in a village of ash—she was small, skeletal, and possessed by something that spoke in the geometry of nightmares. She gripped his wrist with a strength that bruised bone and shrieked words into his mind—vowels like breaking glass. 'You will know when to use them,' she howled. The mentor drove the spirit out, but he gripped his shoulders and commanded him to bury those words in the deepest cellar of his memories."
The old man leaned forward, his eyes bright with a terrifying, lucid fever.
"They reached it finally, a frontier village, a place where the sun seemed to pause. The mentor died in the first skirmish of a surprise raid, leaving the young monk to shepherd a flock he did not yet understand. He fell in love, Mr. Sterling. A sin of the flesh, perhaps, but she was the only light in a world of iron. It was the first time in his young life that he considered leaving the order. Then came the battle. A Moors garrison retreated, but not without leaving a single wounded soldier behind. She found him. She nursed him. One evening, under a canopy of stars awaing her love the young monk heard her words as she confessed she loved him... the enemy. She asked if it was a mortal sin. With a piercing pain in his heart he told her it was not, and wept for the death of his hope and joy."
He paused. Perhaps he saw my confusion as to why I was hearing this story.
"Peace followed, briefly. Christians and Muslims lived in a fragile, beautiful heresy of coexistence. Then the Templars arrived. To them, peace was a stain. They herded the villagers into the great barn, his love and her soldier among them, and barred the doors. Intended to burn the sin out of the land. They took the monk to the church, nailed his hands to the floorboards before the altar, and slit the throat of the young altar boy so his blood would mingle with the monks prayers as they set the rafters ablaze."
I felt unease at such a grusome story mixed the smell of gasoline thickening in the stagnant air. Alvelos stood up, his movements fluid and unnaturally certain.
"As the heat began to peel the skin from his face, the words of the possessed girl returned to his mind. He tore his palms from the nails, sounded like wet linen ripping, and traced those forbidden symbols in the boy's blood upon the church walls. The boy sat up. His eyes were pits of absolute void, and his voice was the sound of a thousand hives. He called himself the Prince of This World and asked what would the monk give for his soul. He cried out: 'Stop the fires! Spare the village!' The Devil laughed. 'Even the girl who broke your heart? Even the man she chooses over you?' He murmured yes. And just like that the world went silent. The flames died instantly, leaving only the smell of soot. Not even embers were lit anymore."
"Is that the end?" I asked, my notebook trembling in my hand with a desire to leave this place.
"I wish," Alvelos whispered. "The Devil looked at him and said, 'I cannot have a saint in my hell. You shall never die. You will be reborn into the world you saved, again and again, until you undo the good you have done.' I have lived a thousand lives, Sterling. I have seen empires rise and rot. I have felt the boredom of eternity, a weight so heavy it makes the agony of the cross feel like a lover’s touch. I have spent centuries hunting. You see, God, or perhaps the other one, has kept the ledger balanced. Every person I saved that day has a lineage that survives. But it is a fragile thread: one father to one son, never more. A singular, golden line."
Suddenly, Alvelos struck a match. The small flame seemed to roar in the gasoline-heavy air.
"I am that monk, and I am tired of the sun. To die, to perish, to disapeer, I must erase the mercy I showed. I have spent decades finding the descendants. I have pruned the tree until only one branch remains."
He dropped the match onto the velvet curtains. The room erupted. A wall of orange heat surged toward me. I lunged for the heavy oak door, but it was locked from the outside. Panic, cold and sharp, pierced my chest. I threw my shoulder against the wood, once, twice, until the ancient frame splintered.
I looked back. Alvelos stood in the center of the inferno, his clothes melting into his skin, his laughter echoing the demonic voice of the altar boy. He didn't move to escape. He just stared through the wall of fire, his eyes locked on mine with a terrifying hunger.
"It matters not for I have more time than I want!" he screamed over the roar of the blaze. "And you are the last one, Sterling! If not you, then..."
I fled into the mist, the heat of the burning manor chasing me down the mountain like a physical hand yet I could hear the his last words "...YOUR LINEAGE!".
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For my son when I am gone from this world:
"My son, I have spent every night since 1967 looking at your face and seeing the 'singular, golden line' Alvelos spoke of. I was the only son of an only son. And you are mine. I thought I had escaped that fire in Sintra, but you cannot outrun a man who has nowhere to go but back to life. I have seen a man in the shadows of our street for thirty years—a man who never ages. He is coming for you next, and he has all the time in existence."