The Return of the Dark Horseman

“He’s coming!”   The shopkeeper whined.  “Who knows who he’ll take this time.”

“Shush! Not the time for lamenting overcharged pennies and selling goods that came at a less than honest price.”  The sharp-nosed woman checked the latch on the shop door.  She looked out through the wavy glass and saw the harbinger of the dark rider- fog had begun to fill the street. From the general goods shop where the hawkish mercantile couple cowered, to the stables down the street and the church further on than that.

The Dark Horseman had not ridden for almost seven years.  Children now lived and played in the town that had never actually seen nor heard the horseman.  To be sure, parents used the Legend of the Dark Horseman to scare the wits out of their children and keep unruly yet impressionable minds in bed or at chores.  For the rest of the town, after a number of years, the legend of the horseman still put children under shivering under the covers, but the adults and those that had seen the horseman allowed convenience, greed, selfishness and indulgence to chase the legend – though seen and suffered by many – out of their minds and into a hidden corner free of recrimination in their souls.  The guilty soul works day and night to assuage the penance of their infractions.  Parsing of conduct and cordiality fall out of worry, and the stunning mortal and moral shock of the Dark Horseman’s last campaign fades from selfish hearts.  Seven years is a long time for those who would do wrong yet feared the wrath of the Dark Horseman to convince themselves of the innocence or justifiability of their actions.   To dispel any fault or lack or moral compass in the summary judgment of their lives and motivations.  When the horseman has first departed, the townsfolk were polite beyond necessity and the church pews were full for Sunday after Sunday.  But again, without a reminder, fear of the past – and any restraints to passion, or desire, or sloth, or greed – lose their vigor as the days, then the seasons, then the years pass.

The last Return of the Dark Horseman before the night some seven years ago had been five years previous.  Only a few had fallen under the horseman’s notice as he made his thundering ride through the streets of the town that time.

So why did the townsfolk not resist, or simply hide from the Dark Horseman?

They had tried that a time in the past. Some of the people had hidden in the church, many in their homes or shops.  The townspeople had shivered in their hiding spots; the children in the church crying despite the continual hushing of their chaperones.  They had heard the impossible thundering of the hooves of the enormous black horse as the horse wheeled and caracoled in the street under the horseman’s rein.  It had grown quiet that night.

Then slowly from one end of town to the other the Dark Horseman rode at a walk, his large figure above the swirling fog at the feet of his mount.  His horse was dark.  Black as the tolling of a midnight requiem. His habit was dark; it seemed to be made of fabric woven of night.  And his head.  There was no head.  No- the harbinger of judgment spoke not a word, made not a sound, but the townspeople knew what his presence meant and what was demanded of them.  Required of them.  With no face to show displeasure or impatience and no voice to chastise the cowering people, still the townspeople knew their penance.

When the dark horse walked the street, as it passed, the doors flew open and the windows rattled up and down in their jambs.  The fog flowed from beneath the Dark Horseman, from beneath his frightening mount, into the doors and through open windows.  It slithered away from the horseman, into the homes, into the shops, and found the residents in every hiding place and hidden cupboard.  The large doors of the church swung open, and the fog entered and demanded the presence of the congregation in the street.  To withstand the fog was to succumb to death right there where a guilty soul hid.  It choked and smothered until the whole town was in attendance, each person in front of their edifices, save the hopeful group in front of the church, praying that their obvious piety would absolve them of being present for judgment.  It was whispered that once the Dark Horseman had burned half the town to the ground when the people refused to come out and tried to resist the fog.  If refused to stand by the street for the horseman’s passing, or if you hid in your home or barn, and you tarried too long, or if the horseman grew impatient with the residents of structure, the house began to burn.  The fog, the fear of choking, smothering, and any resistance beyond that was burned out of homes and hearts.

The horseman knew.  He always knew.  People always suspected their neighbors of sins and indulgences. Gossip was rampant and washer-woman chatter could be almost as accurate as church confessional.  But bitter women and jealous men made much out of nothing most times. But people could never be sure, and so each person turned a blind eye to others, in hopes that they received the same courtesy from their fellow sinners.  But the horseman knew.  Those about whom the chatter was most intense, the gossip the most salacious or even criminal in its content, they inevitably met the horseman on his ride.  But then there were those, sometimes many, that no one had a clue why the horseman had taken them.  Usually, however, dark and nasty secrets of the deceased, later discovered, proved the righteousness of the horseman’s sentence.

“I can’t go out there.  I can’t.”  The shopkeeper was now quaking in his boots.  His shrew of a wife saw the fog now filled the street from both ends that she could see through the window.  Her hand shook as she held the knob.  She wanted to be anywhere and doing anything in holy heaven other than standing with her hand on the knob to the door that led to the dark foggy street to await the pass of the Dark Horseman and the judgment that he may or may not exact in his passing.  Anywhere but here by the door looking out on the gloom and swirling damnation that – perhaps, perhaps not – awaited.  She hesitated, but in her last confident thought, she told herself- ‘He keeps the books.  Not my fault if he charges an extra penny or two.  He’s a grown man and acts as he sees fit.  Not my lot in life to make sure the penny in the left cup was ill gotten while the one in the right wasn’t.  He runs the till; not for me to say what’s right or what’s wrong.  That falls under his watch.’  With this last self-assurance of her piety, she opened the door.

The dark tide that preceded the Dark Horseman’s arrival now filled the street of the town, end-to-end.  It was heavy and cloying to the ground, but it was never still.  It lapped against the feet of the buildings and cottages, swirling impatiently outside the doors.  Seven years had passed in the blink of an eye, and all the willful forgetting was washed away by the waiting fog.  The Dark Horseman awaited.  The people must present themselves for judgment.

Slowly, fearfully, the door of each building opened and the townspeople, trembling and weeping forced themselves to walk and stand by the street.  The truly righteous and the truly deluded stood fearful as the rest but confident of their piety and goodness.  Heads bowed, in short order the road from the edge of town with hutches and shacks, through the small shops, past the stables, the church, and the cottages where most of the simple folk lived.  All the townspeople stood aligned by the road, cowed and weeping.  Youthful ears heard the pounding hooves first.  The righteous snort of the beast was heard over the booming, paced approach as it galloped towards the town.  It was everything stern fathers could do to stand fast, and grip the shoulders of their children, to keep from breaking and running.  To run was worse.  And to live a righteous life was to not fear judgment.

The hooves pounded, children’s eyes were squeezed shut tight.  To not see was to be invisible.  Count the paces of the dark mount.  Pray he pauses not before you and your family.  The Dark Horseman, sitting tall in the saddle, astride the giant black horse, parted the fog as he appeared from the dark at the end of the street.  The fine suit of death’s rider was formal and made of night.  The empty, dark, space that rode above his head was just a void, and stomach-churning beyond the most frightening goblin’s face. His cleaver, an enormous axe, was the only element of the passing redeemer that gave any light or shine.

The Dark Horseman had returned; judgment was at hand.

© 2013 A.I. Mars