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The Watch Light Part I

There are nights in the month of August when a dark, dense fog blankets the silent world illuminated only by a watchful full moon and indifferent stars. On nights like these the world seemed to hold its breath as if waiting to see if anything would move through the fog, stealthily making its way to some invisible destination, from some unknown origin. If you look close enough you may see the fog silently shift and swirl as if opening a dark passage into an unknown world.

It was on such was the night that Marcus Luther sat watching gloomily out the upstairs window of his Uncle's house near the river. As much as he disliked dark nights like these, he was fascinated by the mysterious shapes slowly condensing to form a shrouded demon or perhaps a ghost, only to evaporate back just as mysteriously into the endless river of mist.

He would be glad when a breeze, any breeze at all, would come and sweep the fog away from his window. It wasn't yet midnight, and morning wouldn't come to sweep the misty terror away any time soon.

There has to be a breeze soon, Marcus thought to himself. Making the sign of the cross in defense, Marcus prayed for a breeze, morning was too long to wait for.

He could sense, more than he knew something was out there, something that he couldn't quite perceive, but it was there as sure as he knew that he was safe from the evil as long as he remained inside the house tonight.

Downstairs, he could hear the scratching of his Uncle's quill pen as he labored to transcribe another paragraph of some ancient verse onto stubborn parchment. Somehow the sound was reassuring, although he had no idea as to what his uncle was doing, or what the meaning of it was. Usually, Marcus was not welcome to intrude on his uncle during these times. What ever his uncle's work was, it paid well enough to keep them both in bread and meat, so he wasn't concerned about his uncle's insistence for privacy. Marcus was more interested in other thing, beyond the dusty old books, dark bottles of offensive smelling liquids, and rolls of uncured parchment.

"Marcus," his uncle Thomas called out. "Come down here."

Marcus had lived with his uncle for as long as he could remember. His uncle had told him early on that his parents and family had been taken away by a plague a long time ago. Only he had survived, thanks to the care of his uncle who had also lost his much beloved family to the plague. Thrust together in the aftermath of the plague's undiscriminating harvesting

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