GHOST OF A CHANCE_CHAPTER 31_STANDING ON THE THRESHOLD

{"Talking Monkey, you are standing on the threshold

of something that befalls every culture, every nation, every soul ...

but with each at a different cost."

-DayStar.}

{Samuel Clemens, ghost and friend of Roland. His skein of days is almost run out. He is accompanied by DayStar, who claims to be Lucifer,

as they walk to the crack in the wall of Hell. Let Roland's charred journal take it from here ....}



DayStar's gray eyes looked at me with something almost close to sympathy as he talked about thresholds.

And that scared me more than if he had sneered.

I turned to the left and headed down the slope towards the walled city. DayStar strolled lazily beside me. His smile said I was heading to my utter destruction.


"Behold the knocked-down portion of the wall."


He smiled wide. "Only the pure of heart may enter the Kol Basar from Hell through that rough portal. For any other to try is to die."


He bowed politely and gestured with a graceful flourish. "Be my guest."


"Oh, go climb your thumb," I snapped and turned to him.


He was gone. I didn't know what bothered me more : when he showed up or when he suddenly left.


How I was going to enter through that opening if only the pure in heart could go through?


But then again, DayStar was the source for that. Still, it would be just like him to tell me the truth so I'd disbelieve him and walk through to my death.


I shrugged. Only one way to find --


There was a whinnying whimper. A shrill scream of pain. And laughter, long and mocking. I felt my face go as tight as my fists.


Someone was torturing a horse for fun. My face became rock. Someone was going to be laughing out of the other end very, very soon.


I clutched hell-sand in one hand, Marlene's saber in the other and walked fast to the opening. I pulled up short at what I saw. Aw, damn it to Hell.


I snarled at myself when I realized my mental curse.


A unicorn.


A poor hamstrung, slashed unicorn. She was struggling towards the opening from the Kol Basar side, longing and sadness in her wet blue eyes.


Her slashed body was leaving a long smear of blood as she painfully dragged herself. And jerking grotesquely towards her was a slender, disjointed figure that was female in only the roughest of terms.


Long, oily black hair hung down beside a corpse's face. Wiry arms flailed froglike as the ghoul skittered with oddly jointed knees towards the unicorn vainly struggling towards the opening.


A blood-dripping long razor was held lovingly by the giggling abomination as she twitched towards the crawling unicorn. She was going to beat the unicorn to the opening.


The giggling got louder, shriller. The unicorn gasped out wet words as she lolled her head to look up into the darkness above her.


"L-Let me see the outside, please. Please just one glimpse of the horizon. One last look."


The ghoul tittered, "Oh, no, Epona. No lookie, lookie. Just screams and screams."


I walked up to the opening and locked my eyes with the ghoul's solid black ones, seeming like nothing so much as a shark's.


"I'm only going to tell you this once : leave the unicorn be."
***