Dark Lord Rob's DarkForce

Inside the Lantern

     The room we stepped into was the freakiest yet. It seemed to have been chiseled out of rock; the walls were stone, but there were no bricks or mortared rocks visible. It was like the inside of a cave, only there were no stalactites. Even weirder, the walls were lined with a series of things that looked like lanterns, you know, the sort of thing you see on top of a light-pole in Sherlock Holmes movies. Glass plates set into a framework of black wrought iron. These were pretty wild looking themselves; whoever had made them had put a lot of effort into the iron-work. It was real gothic, totally Ann Rice.
     Nathan whistled. "These are some sort of antiques," he said. "Someone's collection?"
     Woodbine smiled secretively. "In a way. It's sort of the house's collection." We must have given him a strange look, because he chuckled and picked up one of the lanterns.
     "This one's empty," he said. "Look." We looked at it, and it was, indeed, empty. But so were the others... we thought.
     "Now look at this one," Woodbine said, holding up a second of the contraptions. It, too seemed empty.
     Nathan said as much, but Woodbine replied, "Look closer." So we stepped over to it and looked at it more directly.
     There was, indeed, something inside it; but it wasn't readily visible. It was a rippling of light, like heat rising off of summer tarmac; you could look through it, but it was definitely there. And it wasn't a flaw in the glass, skeptics; it was moving, I swear it was.
     "What is it?" I asked, taking the lead for a change.
     "A soul," Woodbine said, matter-of-factly, as if it were something one saw every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
     Nathan laughed a cynical little laugh, that burst through his pursed lips like a raspberry. "A soul? Oh, come on."
     Oh no, I thought, here it comes, but instead of getting angry Woodbine just smiled. "Well, of course, you do have to take my word for it. I guess that's where Faith enters the picture."
     Nathan nodded, trying to soothe the skeptical mirth from his features and succeeding, somewhat. "I'm sorry, it just struck me as a little, well, unlikely."
     Woodbine nodded nonchalantly. "Of course. It took me a while to come around as well. Of course, I was in a position where I had to figure everything out on my own. But maybe it's easier to believe something you've deduced on your own than something someone else tells you. Or it should be."
     We didn't have anything to say to this, so we watched as Woodbine walked along the wall, surveying the lanterns, now and then touching one, picking another up and putting it down again. Finally he smiled.
     "Here we go," he said, pulling one of the lanterns off of a knee-level shelf. He handed it to me. "Does this soul look familiar?" he asked.
     "What?" was my astute response.
     "Go on, look at it. Does anything about it strike a chord for you?"
     I looked the "soul" over. It shimmered like the other one, but didn't seem especially remarkable. "No," I said, hesitantly. "Should it?"
     "Of course it should," Woodbine responded, curtly. "It's yours."

Next: Keep Out!