A Witness in Suffering

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Claudia jolted awake to screams that did not belong to the living. The air was cold, and her clothes were wet with rain.

A thought flashed. Rain?

Staggering upright, she blinked into the darkness, as the truth settled over her, slowly at first, and then all at once. She was outside on the sandy and salty bank of the Dead Sea. The wind came in cruel, sweeping gusts, carrying a sound like children’s screams. She stood still for a moment, listening. And shivering.

Then the screams got louder. She was about to cover her ears when she felt a different kind of wetness in her hands; thick and sticky. Blood.

It flowed from her hands and feet and more seemed to seep steadily from her side. The flow was dark and unhurried, but enough to for her to wonder how she could feel so… alive. She pressed a palm flat against the wound and waited for the pain to arrive, but it did not.

She stood there in the cold darkness, soaking the sand at her feet, and realizing that she could not move. And then a thought seemed to come to her from somewhere beyond reach. A realization. Something older and heavier than fear had brought her here, and it would keep her until it was done.

And then she saw it. An island, rising from the middle of the Dead Sea. It grew out of the water and shook the ground beneath her, growing and stretching until it kissed the horizon. The base of the island hovered above the sea, and the wind continued to grow louder.

The island stilled and seemed to stare at her and command her attention all at once. Then the shaking on the ground stopped. But the shaking in her body had only begun.

And then the water began to stir. Clauda placed a hand over her eyes to shield from the rain drops as she took a few steps toward to the water. But she froze at the sight of what was stirring the water.

They looked like branches at first. Thick, black, and spiraling out of the sea with terrible purpose, they shot up stretched toward the island’s surface like fingers that had been reaching and had finally found purchase. But these were not branches. Claudia could not quite place them. Frankly, she did not want to.

What she wanted to do was scream. Run. Find any darkness deep enough to disappear into. But her legs had forgotten themselves, and all she could do was watch.

Then one of them found her.

It came faster than she could run. It curled around her waist with a grip that was almost planned, the way a tide takes what the sea has already decided belongs to it. It wrenched her upward with ease, and the ground fell away beneath her. The cold air rushed past, and the rain drops felt sharp on her skin. She clawed at nothing, and then —

She was still. Suspended. Hovering just above the height of the island itself, held in place as though the thing that carried her just wanted her to see. And see, she did.

The ground at the top of the island was covered in grass, and it was dying. A shadow belonging to the creeping things moved across the ground from the four corners, heading toward the center from the edge of the island, turning everything green into brown and black. It creeped at a steady pace toward the middle. Following the shadow, Claudia caught a sight that pulled an unfamiliar sound from the back of her throat. Crux immissa— a cross of punishment.

Nailed to this cross was a man with arms stretched and feet bound, bleeding just as she did; except his face carried the pain she should have. On his head was what looked like the most painful crown she had ever seen. It dug into this skin and caused blood to pour down his face. His eyes were swollen shut and he wept bitterly, but his tears just looked like more blood. Claudia gripped the clothing on her neck and began to weep with him.

Then she realized she had seen this man before. He looked nothing like she could remember, and she could not place where or how, but something felt irritatingly familiar about him. And somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew he did not belong there.

Then, as if in horrid anticipation, his breath quickened and became shallow. She lifted her gaze from the man toward the horizon ahead of her. From the edge of the horizon, stretching as far as her eyes could see, came storm clouds— black and bloated, like the breath of the underworld itself. The air grew heavy with sulfur, and she began to choke.

Within those clouds churned a thick mass, swirling like spilled ink in water. But there was no thunder and there was norain. Instead, the sky seemed to screech with laughter. Unholy, screaming laughter.

She looked back at the man and again at the approaching cloud, this time gasping in horror.

Inside the cloud were spirits writhing and swimming like fish. Countless and vile. Each one was no larger than a locust, and each one more grotesque than the last. Their heads were human, twisted in agony, mouths opened in eternal screams, and their bodies looked like naked, raw torsos of plucked birds distorted and stretched into unnatural forms. Their talons gleamed like shards of obsidian, so sharp they seemed to slice the air. Their eyes, bulging, unblinking orbs, burned with hatred and fixed on one thing—the man nailed to the cross of punishment.

In an instant, they dropped like arrows. They arrived in screaming droves, and just as the shadow beneath arrived with its creeping things. From above and beneath the cross, they came over the man, entering every opening; his mouth, his wounds, beneath his nails. His screams fused with theirs until it became impossible to tell where his suffering ended, and their joy began. Horrified, she could bear the sight no longer and turned her face away as she wept.

Then Claudia jolted awake again. The silence in her bed chamber felt… wrong. It felt too clean for what she had just seen. She wiped tears from her face and took a deep breath.

Once more, the night had betrayed her with a dream so vivid that she roused herself in a cold sweat, half-expecting to find blood on her hands.

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“While Pilate was sitting on the judge’s seat, his wife sent him this message: ‘Don’t have anything to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him.’” — Matthew 27:19