There Comes A Prophet Read Online Free Page A

physical pain.
    He was brought food and water at intervals, but was unsure if it was enough. He always felt hungry and thirsty.
    His legs began to throb. To escape the cramping, he imagined himself separate from his body, floating in the air above. But he kept looking down at the wretch that was him. In his imagination, he could see himself clearly, all but the eyes.
    Exhaustion reigned above all. At first, he was too uncomfortable to sleep. But after a while, he'd drift in and out, his head nodding until his chin dropped to his chest and woke him.
    Sometimes, he'd startle to the grating of the ceiling cover being removed. Light would pour into the room, flooding him with exhilaration. Such moments meant more to him that the scant food or water he was provided. He'd stand, stretch his stiff limbs and look into the plump faces of the vicars surrounding him, seniors all with their decorated hats. They, in turn, would look down on him sympathetically before beginning a litany of the horrors of the darkness.
    In the darkness, they claimed, people spoke different languages and worshipped different gods. Their leaders used these differences to separate the people, one from another, and to rail against the others so they might focus on their enemies and not on their own shortcomings.
    They fought these enemies, at first with simple weapons, similar to the pocketknife the vicars had taken from him. But then their wise men studied in schools and toiled for years to create bigger and better weapons to destroy their enemies in greater numbers. A tale to scare children, Thomas thought, and he was not a child.
    Then the cover would close, and the darkness would return.
    After a time, he'd awake, his mind confounded by sleep, and watch the air above his head glow. Visions of the darkness appeared. He saw ranks of people rushing toward each other with strange weapons in hand. And he heard them chanting the name of their god as they ran, each side in a different language.
    It had to be a dream.
    The vicars returned. They questioned why he carried the flute, and warned that music, taken to excess, might facilitate the return of the darkness. They told how, in the darkness, the young had hated their lives and gathered at night dancing to forbidden music.
    Later, his cell was lit with visions once more, this time showing young people, tenfold all those of the Ponds, boys and girls, some not yet of age. They were crowded in the dark with strange lights flashing over them. On their shirts were skulls, and etched into their skin were symbols of death. Then another sensation, a sound so piercing it pained his ears. A kind of music, but played not with the sweet flute and drum of festival but by impossibly loud instruments. And the people swayed to the beat, unaware of each other's presence.
    Another dream? He began to wonder.
    The vicars told how scholars had created a liquid that melted flesh off bone, and the leaders allowed them to drop this liquid from the sky so they wouldn't hear the cries of their enemies. In their arrogance, they even created a false sun, and their leaders let them drop this too, so the heat would burn their enemies, leaving nothing but the outline of their bodies in ash on the ground. This time, when the vision startled him awake, he pressed his eyes shut to block out the light. But the flash of the false sun glowed through his eyelids.
    Perhaps the horror had been real.
    Again and again, the vicars told of the darkness. Again and again, the visions of the darkness appeared. And what the vicars described showed in the dreams.
    The vicars came so many times he lost count. Each interview would start with a question.
    "Do you know the darkness?"
    "Yes, sir," he always replied.
    Each time, he was asked to recite the precepts. Each time, he tried to be more sincere until he was sobbing and hardly able to get out the words.
    And then, the interviews stopped. No more questions, no more visions of the darkness. He waited in