Ethan Blackwood

The Dark Tunnel

PART ONE (The Dark Tunnel)

The day death was born, it didn't need a mother to be ushered into this world of chaos and vain disorder. No, it only needed a simple-minded farmer who knew no evil but the work of the soil. And all it needed was two decades to metamorphose into the vile beast of wickedness that fed on more evil. This monstrous seed sprang out from a meek, clueless farmer.

Twenty Years Ago

Ethan Blackwood had many names in the silent town of Salem. However, Ethan the farmer stuck. It didn't take long for his last name, "Blackwood," to be forgotten. It was either simply Ethan or Ethan the farmer.

However, when the sun darkened, and the sky refused to shed its tears, Ethan the farmer became Ethan the griever. He sank into a sea of depression, battling the spirit of sadness that engulfed him. His daughters rolled in starvation, his family plunged into hunger. Hence, on the fourth day of the 13th month of his count of his misery, when the sky finally wept, happiness sang in the air.

That day, he kissed his daughters, embraced his wife, slung his ax across his shoulder, and dragged his plough of labor out of his wooden cabin home, hurtling off to his farm. Bursting with joy upon finding his field of acorns not completely withered, more happiness followed at the outburst of the heavens. He danced in the tears of the long white thread pouring down its watery cries to the earth.

In the hard-falling rain, he toiled, making ridges of rows upon the earth, cultivating anew. Passersby, fond of him, rendered helping hands, with the selfish interest that he might be the saving grace to rescue the community from an impending famine. He worked until his body protested and yet still toiled the soil, not stopping until his community clansmen compelled him to cease working, ringing in his ears, "Work knows no bounds, but the body knows its limit."

When he began his return journey back home, the moon was casting a silvery glow upon his world. Surrounded by the laughter of his fellow townspeople, Ethan finally cracked a smile and shared jokes. For the first time in a long while, he felt sane and ordinary, sane enough to whip in more jokes during the rest of the journey home.

Upon reaching the rich greenery sight of his cabin, he couldn't wait to share the day's good news with his maiden lady and daughters. But something peculiar caught his eye. A sinister dark cloud loomed ominously over his cabin, stubbornly hanging on. Perhaps more rain would follow, he thought. His soul was feverish with happiness. He dumped his ax, raced into his cabin, hoping to meet his wife's sullen face, infect her with joyous news, and watch those sad lines turn into laughter.

But a hold of shock overtook him. His last name, "BLACKWOOD," was spelled in blood across the floor. Two lifeless bodies, battered beyond recognition lay strewn about, and to his horror, he realized he had stepped on a severed foot. A brave chill of iciness overtook him; he felt lost and dazzled, momentarily mad. What was before him? He could not comprehend.

The sulking cry of his wife brought him back from his far-gone craze. He yanked into motion to find her on their wooden woven pine bed, a dagger stuck in her waist, dirtied in her own black blood. He jumped to her.

He watched the light of her life struggle to hold on in her eyes. He choked to find words of comfort but he heard himself roar "Don't Die Don't leave!"

All she managed was a response of three words, "Make them pay," and she became a ghost of flesh, the light dimming and gone from her hazel green eyes.

Ethan felt uncontrollably shaken, spit, tears, and mucus streaming down his face. His happiness, a bottomless pit of despair. He called out for his daughters, but a thick leather glove muffled his lips into silence, choking their names back down his throat. He struggled and wiggled, punching voraciously at the air. However, the icy feeling of a red sharp-edged object running across his throat shook calmness back into him.