The Phantom Blade
I fled into the graveyard, for I had no hope among the living. The masked men were coming for me, and had surely been to my home already. I shuddered to think of what they had done to my mother and father. Perhaps my family was dead, watching over me as I cowered behind the carven stones of that gloomy place.
I knew not the name of the man or woman whose archaic headstone I hid behind, but in that moment they were my last protector. Behind me was nothing but miles of open desert, and on the other side of the yard naught but the perilous streets from which I had come. So I remained crouched among the dead, laboring to cease my heaving breath and praying that the men hadn’t followed me there.
The night was horrifically silent, as if the frogs and crickets were holding their breaths as well. I held still, comforted only by the fact that I might hear the men coming. Agonizing minutes passed. My heart hammered savagely at my chest, and I was tormented by things I could not see. I forced myself to peak out from my refuge. My blood chilled. There they were; dark shapes lumbering into the edge of the yard. Their guns were long and black and cruel, and behind their masks their eyes glinted fiendishly in the moonlight. They turned on their flashlights as they entered the darkness, and I fell back behind my stone as if stricken.
I could hear their boot-steps now. They trod slowly, even lazily; as if they had all the time in the world to find me. They began to whisper to one another in sneering, monstrous tones; quietly at first, then louder, and louder still, as if their cautious regard for the silence of that hallowed place was waning. Then they began to laugh. The wretched terror that gnawed at my very soul pierced me further still as I realized that my suffering was but a cruel game to them.
They were only a few feet away. Their cold beams of light were drifting all around, casting terrible shadows behind the stones of the dead. If I ran for the desert they would see me and shoot me, or worse, follow and take me alive. I could not bring myself to think of what they might do to me if they took me. Maybe if I tried to fight them, they would be forced to shoot, and make it quick.
These were my last moments. I found myself longing for a savior, mournfully imagining the heroes that I had fantasized about as a child; how they might swoop in with a smile at the last second and fight off the monsters before anyone got hurt. The thought brought tears to my eyes, for all I had was the headstone of a dead man. The hateful beams lingered over it now.
I felt a cold chill pass over me, and a shadow fell upon the moon. Now I wept fully, for my fear only grew, and I knew I could not fight them. But the beams turned away. The fiendish laughter ceased. One of the men cried out, and I could not understand the words he said, but the quivering tone in his brutish voice told me that he was now afraid. There was no reply for a moment, until I heard the slow, ghastly ringing of steel scraping across stone.
The thundering of guns filled the night, and I wept more in terror. The men were all shouting now as they shot their guns, and their beams of light flew about the graveyard. The shadows danced about me as bullets whizzed and cracked into the gravestones all around, and I squeezed my bleary eyes shut as dust and rubble fell over me.
Now it seemed as if the cracking of a whip joined the thunder of the rifles, and screams of agony followed as well. I heard men gurgle and choke as if their throats were cut, then the thudding of guns and bodies falling to the dirt. Then there was a new sound. Once again laughter filled the night, but it could not have belonged to one of the wicked men. It was a warm, resounding laugh; the laugh of a man that hadn’t heard a good joke in a long, long time.
One by one, the shots and screams were silenced, and only the laughter remained; falling to a quiet chuckle when the cacophony was over. Then it too fell silent, and I heard the slow clinking of spurs as the laughing man strode towards me. Still I dared not look upon him. His footsteps stopped a few feet from my stony refuge.
There was the swift, cracking sound of three sharp strikes upon the headstone; each making my heart jerk against me. Then I heard the spurred feet turn, and walk away. When the sound had grown faint enough, I risked a glimpse at my savior.
He was a man dressed all in black, with a tattered cape drifting languidly in the chilling breeze. He wore a wide-brimmed, flat-topped black hat like a sombrero, and at his side I could see the shape of a sword. He halted in his stride as soon as I looked upon him, as if he could see me through the back of his head. He turned, and I could see no face, for he wore a veil. Slowly, he bowed to me, with his arms outstretched; almost like a curtsy. Then he rose again, and I gasped, for the breeze had lifted the edge of his veil, and I could briefly glimpse the stark white corner of a bony jaw and grinning bare teeth. With that, my savior lept high into the air, and seemed to vanish like a crow in the night.
Stunned, I sat there for some time, wondering if I had really seen what I had. When my heart finally slowed and my breathing returned to normal, I crawled around the headstone to see what my phantom had marked. The stone was cut deeply with three precise grooves, and I cried with joy, for the carven marks formed the letter Z.