Sitting in the dark of the wood, stroking Singer’s hair as he kept watch, Marcus poured over the journal, the sad red tome he’d found along with the artifact that had latched onto his hand. From what he could tell, it was written by the last bearer of the curious item. He started at the end, figuring it might explain what happened, and it didn’t take long.

The pages swirled around him. The book, now an empty cover sat in is lap, the swirling paper responded to his thoughts either coming closer to him, or shuffling, providing pages based on his musings. Despite having made some sense of it, it didn’t always provide exactly what he’d wanted. He thought now, to the skeleton its demise.

As the artifact, allows one to pull and weave with the desires of a heart, I should be able to pull at my own, or, pull them out. I can no longer bear the pain of her death. It is too heavy, so, I endeavor to remove my desire for her.

That read ominously, considering he found the corpse intact, completely unharmed, with food and drink in arms reach. He’d not really done anything, in regards to this Singer. She just went from stalking, to talking, to trying to pull his clothes off, in the space of an afternoon. It was for him a unique experience to say the least. His mind wandered over this strangeness of it all, and how weird it was when he first found the damn thing…

FU-LA-SHYU-BA-KU-TA-I-MU!!!

He’d been walking down an old hiking trail. It was an old path mostly worn by the passing of other feet, it was early spring, a bit cold for most, which was how he liked it, having the mountain to himself. Hearing the occasional call of a bird, and the wind whistling over leaf and stem brought him a kind of peace. Something he’d found difficult to find elsewhere.

Climbing up to ward the top, stopping to take in the normal view he’d seen a dozen times before, something new caught his eye. A small footpath, he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen before. Curious, something in him tempted him to see where it lead. The path was narrow. He was constantly pushing a branch or forcing himself through a bush, the small path wound deeper into the wood along the face of the mountain, til he came to a small cave. Along the ground there was some strange carving. He couldn’t tell what though, as it was too eroded, but he was sure it wasn’t natural in origin.

Stepping into the cave he noticed it immediately felt strange, there was an energy to the place that crawled up his skin leaving his hair standing on end. He saw in the back sitting at a table, a body, desiccated skin mummified, wrapped in worn travel clothes, its hand rested on a thick red tome. Feeling drawn in, the strangeness of the place spurred him forward.

Just as he reached arms length to the chair, the body turned. A rasping gust of air being forced from its lungs as it lunged, its hands grasping Marcus’s own. The things head lolled to one side, its eyes unfocused but its bony claws held fast to Marcus, a strange red ooze flowed from its arm onto his own. Where it touched there was a strange sensation, a kind of jittery tension, a twitchy restrained energy waiting to explode. After the last of it crept onto his arm the mummy let go falling to the floor.

The goop had wrapped around his wrist hand hand, solidifying, into a leathery material, like a second skin. His fingers, flexed with jittery motions, the energy clarifying, a desire to grasp, to hold. Unfiltered want floated in the darker parts of his mind though he could not articulate what the want was.

At last, something strange was occurring to the corpse. With the item removed, the body began to decay, starting at the extremities. Slowly turning to dust, including the clothes that once wrapped the decaying frame. Its eyes though, sat slack with a living clarity, but an empty life, like what once lived behind them had long since lost all it was.

A dusty outline of a person, now covered the ground. The fuck was that he found himself thinking, though he remarked to himself how calm his mind seemed. Stepping to the table with the corpse gone he took stock. The heavy leather of the tome seemed of similar material to the glove that now covered his hand.

Food sat half rotten and untouched alongside a full jug of water were the only other items on the table. The only other thing in the cave was a small bag, tucked in the corner. Going over to the bag and examining its contents he found mix of items, a large bit of parchment folded tightly like an old map, a change of clothes including a heavy cloak of some exotic material Marcus could not recognize, and other odds and ends.

One thing stuck out to him though. It was a large locket, though try as he might he couldn’t open it. Putting everything back in the bag, he picked it up and shouldered it, approaching the tome once more. Hoping he’d find some answers he touched it, with the hand that now bore the strange glove, and his world stopped.

The book threw itself open, its pages flipping rapidly stopping at a point toward the end. It began to hover, floating to rest meter from his face. The writing on the page was strange, a swirling symbol, and a voice not his own echoed from the book itself. The world shimmered, as a torrent of red and pink sparkles filled his vision. His mind reeled, feeling stretched as the world fell out from underneath him, floating in an inky void he finally felt something. A pair of hands, gently took hold of him wrapping under his arms and around his chest. A voice whispered though he could not hear the words.

The world finally snapped back into focus. It took him a moment to realize he was floating on the surface of some water. He looked up at a strange sky to a field of stars that were unknown to him. Two moons, one orange and one a bright blue dominated the sky. Shaking off the strangeness he swam toward the shore. Finding the satchel, and the journal sitting just a meter from the shore.

WE NOW RETURN TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING

Singer roused, yawning but still silent. He closed the journal, the pages flying back in to fill the spine. His mind unwilling to focus on the task of sorting out the journal. This whole thing was crazy, and a part of him half expected he’d wake up from this surreal reality any time now. The other half knew well that this was reality now.

“No more reading?”

“Not for tonight I think?”

“Would you like to take your rest? We can exchange our positions. You look as though your tiredness will take you at any moment.”

She wasn’t wrong, he was extremely tired. “Sounds good. Your lap is a lot comfier than this tree for sure.” Taking a moment to rest, his last thoughts were that if it was a dream, he wasn’t sure he’d wanted to wake up.