15
When I came back to my senses and the voice inside my head stopped the torture, all I knew was that I had to leave. Now or I would never. What happened earlier I couldn’t explain. I didn’t want to. I just wanted to flee, to get as far away from this place as was physically possible.
Tucking the blood-soaked photograph into my pocket, I tried to turn the handle to no avail. It was locked. It would be a lie to say I did not expect that to happen. Thus, instead of feeling panic, I scanned the room until my eyes once again fell on the bed, where a dark streak had struck the wall long ago. I tapped along the surface, listening. It was hollow. But not all the way through.
I traced the edges carefully, pressing down at the corners. It groaned and resisted briefly, then shifted just enough for me to see darkness yawning beneath the skirting board. I did not know what awaited below, only that the air from the gap smelled of damp and something that had been sealed away for years.
But there was no time for such considerations. I had to exit this place whatever it took.
When I pried the panel open with bare hands, it revealed a rickety ladder that descended too abruptly. Great, I thought, down we go again.
I took my chances and steeled himself; then stepped onto the first stair. Each rung of the ladder groaned, threatening to come apart and send me whirling down – a vicious descent straight into the abode of the damned – going deeper and deeper, like there was no end to the madness, no end point at all in sight. And just as I thought I had had enough, the ladder spat me out into a room that made my stomach twist with nausea. I knew this place. It was the laundry room I had only caught glimpses of on my brief tour around the main hall on my first night here. But didn’t I just go downwards? Not up.
Although none of this made any sense whatsoever, I couldn’t help but feel relief wash over me. The danger was over. At least that was how it felt as long as it lasted. Even that overwhelming fear of not being able to escape Neve Emek perished and I swore I would never wander off again.
When I scrambled out of the laundry room and stumbled into the main hall, the nave stretched before me in all its mighty glory. Something about the building seemed off, though. At the time I didn’t know why I felt that way, only that I did. But the whole place looked newer, as though I had travelled back in time when it had been newly built.
But in my panicked state, as I started for the exit, I failed to notice those things. Until I opened my eyes to a place different from what I recalled, that is.
Sure, I was still at the burial grounds and all that jazz, but it was not nearly as old and abandoned as it should be. Even the village beyond was no longer dead and forgotten, but bustling and alive.
I froze in place as the unfamiliar sounds in the background slowly changed shape and made sense to me. It was Arabic. How could this be? At the same time, I knew it was possible, that I had not been mistaken, because I was no longer in the present, no longer trapped in the agony left in the wake of the past. But how?
Still yet, I could not believe what I was seeing before me, dared not believe. Did I really time travel? How, when? Did it start when I first entered the basement? Or when I heard—
I looked away as a sudden thought disrupted me. What was the date? How long back in time had I travelled? Then another dark thought took up space: what about my missing aunt? Was she here, too? Did she need me? I had to find her, one way or the other. I had to.
Then, a sudden darkness fell over the settlement and relentless flames rose from nowhere and everywhere at the same time, followed by chilling screams growing louder by the second. I followed the jarring sounds to the threshold between the burial ground and the heart of the village, my breath irregular and coming in short bursts.
People started running, past me and through me, like I was some kind of ghost they could not see. But I did not notice. All around me, the merciless flames licked the villagers’ skin and erased them from history, like they never existed, and through it all, through the chaos, the familiar dragging sound returned, drawing closer from somewhere behind me, reverberating through the cobbles, through the air, through my aching chest.
I spun, scanning the lanes swallowed by the fire and reduced to nothing but dust and ashes, and there it was indeed, pursuing me still. But I didn’t wait for it to claim me. Instead, I broke through the heavy smoke and sprinted in the opposite direction, where the flames were fiercer and the masjid still intact.
The lanes narrowed and shadows leaned closer for every step I took through the inferno, the smoke crawling along the collapsing buildings. I didn’t know where my feet took me, why it was so adamant about going this route when everyone who passed me ran in the opposite direction. All I knew was that something pulled at me, forcing me to follow it through the chaos.
Before I knew it, I found myself standing at the mouth of a well.
I hesitated. I didn’t know why.
Then I saw something resting against the well.
A photograph. It lay buried in the dust, the edges curled and the paper as brittle as could be from water damage. It was a picture of a classroom, depicting children standing in three rows, their faces turned obediently towards the camera, all so ordinary it hurt. Unaware.
Until they weren’t.
I blinked, and the faces hollowed. Sockets gaped where eyes had been, and mouths opened in a grotesque rictus. Then came the sound. At first, it was the wind, high-pitched and shrill, and then, the cries of children pierced through the lanes like a procession of death. It came from somewhere beyond the masjid. I followed the sound to the distance, where a school building lay, the gates swung open and giving me a glimpse of the playground.
The screams grew louder at once, carried with the wind.
Then it hit me and my feet staggered back. There were children inside. There was—I dropped the photograph and ran. Just ran.
Before me, beyond the masjid, what remained of the school building, was now a hellhole. The flames had licked at the building and caused it to collapse completely. There was no way out of this place, no way in. Anyone who failed to escape when the fire first broke out had been condemned to death with no exception. And the children, those poor children, were trapped inside. Helpless. Sentenced to death for merely existing, accused of being terrorists, terrorist who wished for a better tomorrow, who hoped for the bombings to end, for their fathers and brothers to safely return home in the prisons they were locked up in without a proper trial. What for? For resisting the siege on their homeland, of the homes they no longer had access to and was forced out of.
Those poor, poor souls; angels without wings. Flowers born of agony, born in the desert, raised amidst the olive trees. Innocent blood spilt for nothing but an ugly lie; a murderous scheme to steal when those capable of stopping the murder willingly turned a blind eye.
I poured water from the well over me and returned to the school, determined to save as many children as I could, covering my mouth with my sleeve as I did so. Even then, the dampness did little to stop the stinging of my eyes or the smoke now finding its way into my burning lungs, not to mention the heat searing my skin. Yet none of those things was not enough to stop me.
I saw my own daughter in every child who reached out to me, who begged to be saved. If I turned a blind eye, how could I ever dream of a reunion with my daughter and proudly tell her she is the most precious thing to me? I could not. Even if it meant I would die here, in the past, and never see her again.
I grabbed the first child just within my reach, a limp boy stuck underneath two broken desks folded over one another, before the roof collapsed completely, and dragged him out into the open. When I returned, coughing, the collapsed beams had blocked an entire section, where children pleaded for help.
Distraught but not one to give up, I scrambled forwards and forced my way through the flames, paving myself another way around the collapsed section. At some point, however, the thick smoke completely blinded my blurry vision and caused me to lose tracks of my whereabouts. When my vision cleared once more, all I could hear was the poor souls shrieking and the groaning collapse of the building, until, one by one the voices faltered and snuffed out in a morbid crescendo, leaving me alone in the suffocating dark, in the deadly silence, before the buckling building gradually forced me out.
By the time I regained back enough of my bearings to re-enter what little remained of the building, it was nothing but a heap of glowing bones, threatening to take with it whatever dared to enter.
Still, I did not back off. I knew the children had all perished, that none of them were alive, but I could not help it. Couldn’t make myself stop.
I stumbled across the wreckage with my arms outstretched, fumbling to find something to hold onto in the dark to navigate, shouting as much as the smoke allowed me, for a sign of life. That was when I saw her.
It was a girl no older than ten, her skin blackened and singed. Her hazel eyes were wide with terror, wide with the fear of being left to die all alone in the fire. She was crying for her mother in Arabic, telling her she would be a good girl from now on, that she was sorry, that she wanted to go home, that she was afraid, afraid of the dark, of the heat, of the smoke slowly suffocating her.
I leapt towards her, but before I could close the distance, a plank gave way above me, crashing down across my shoulders, pinning me to the floor. The pain was unlike anything I had ever endured, but worse was the helplessness.
I could see her, I could hear her, but I could not move.
I could not move...
Then, she saw me, and her cries stilled; the tears replaced by a smile, one that told me she was thankful, that she was no longer alone, no longer afraid to die, and something inside me broke.
I had never once shed tears like these before, never felt such agony in my adult life, such helplessness. And yet, all I could do was watch as the fire claimed her tiny frame, inch by inch. My body shook with the sobs, the heat blistering my skin, causing my vision to swim and blur, until even the flames themselves merged with the darkness closing in all around me – a violent surrender of a body that had nothing left to give. I let it take me, returning her smile, as her heart gave way under the pressure of her liquifying lungs, a mix of saliva and blood spilling down the corners of her mouth.
The morbid sight would not leave me; I would make sure it never did, like a tattoo, and forever remind me of the cruelty of humanity, the way everyone turned a blind eye to the helpless for the right price.
A tear trickled down then, tracing a clean line against my soot-strained face, and my heart gave way. And I—
—gasped.
To be continued.
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