Void Seer

Nobody knew where the Shadow Callers came from. They appeared one day, and it was on that day the first of the Void Seers were selected. Shaun remembered those first days well. He did not sign up to become one, nor did any of the other Void Seers. It was a sick cosmic lottery; his dreams were invaded by chance, nothing more.

He still remembered that shadow of the titanic, cold presence that originated far beyond the edges of humanity’s knowledge of the stars that brushed up against his consciousness. In a single moment, a flood of images, impossibly compressed, tore through his mind: a great maelstrom of broken souls, something tearing away a handful of them, that something molding them into a figure, that figure being cast out into the cosmos, that figure landing on Earth, more figures joining the first, and those figures reaching out to him and the other Void Seers.

After the encounter, he’d gotten up and wandered to an unassuming building, drawn there by echoes of the presence. Beneath the place was an imitation of a cathedral carved into the stone, its vaulted ceiling reaching far higher than the space should’ve allowed. The typical stained glass depictions of saints were replaced by blank stone. Others milled about, also drawn in by the presence that had brushed their dreams.

Beyond the crude pews, where Shaun imagined an organ would’ve been, stood a set of double doors flanked by what he knew as Shadow Callers. The name, just like the title of Void Seer, was something he knew from his brush with the presence. They were seven feet tall, their features obscured by cloaks that reminded him of cheap grim reaper costumes bought from seasonal Hall-o-ween stores.

He approached them, and one held up its hand in a motion to stop. The hand reminded him of a doll’s hand, something trying so hard to look human but doomed to be a poor imitation. So he waited. The other Shadow Caller beckoned to the people in the false cathedral. One at a time they passed through the double doors. Eventually it was Shaun’s turn.

He tried looking under the hood as he passed, to pierce that murky darkness beneath, but to no avail. Beyond them was a hallway with five doors, two on either side and one at the end. He felt compelled to enter the second one on the left.

Inside was a plain circular room with three Shadow Callers standing opposite him. The one in the middle wore a black stone suspended from a small golden necklace. Shaun approached them and kneeled in the center of the room. With his head down he noticed the carvings on the floor. They were symbols he did not understand.

Something touched the crown of his head.

It was the presence again. In his dream it had only brushed against his mind, but here it coiled itself around his psyche, wriggling into every nook and cranny. Just as before his mind flooded with images: him shepherding others who came, him talking to people, him taking to the streets with its message, him meeting with other Void Seers.

He came to laying in a heap. He didn’t remember going back home afterwards, nor did he remember falling back asleep. When he awoke he returned to the same building, went down the stairs to the same stone cathedral and waited. Others joined him. Some arrived in their best suit or dress and the rest were like Shaun, here in a t-shirt and jeans.

The first client to arrive was an elderly woman. Like a missile, she sought out a specific Void Seer. They spoke in hushed, fervent whispers and he led her through the double doors. Two more people came, and like the first woman they were led through the doors. Shaun waited.

Eventually, the elderly woman came back through the doors.

She and her Void Seer were accompanied by a third, an old man who looked to be about the same age as the woman. He was holding her hand and shaking it in excitement. The woman was holding her head with her other hand, no spark of recognition for the man chatting with her. The Void Seer was leading them out of the cathedral, a strange smile across their lips.

Thus the days passed. Every day Shaun would awaken, get dressed, and wait for a client to arrive and seek him out. It took three days for his first. His client was a man who looked to be in his mid-twenties. He could see the relief wash over his face once their eyes met.

He spoke of the dream that he’d been having. One of him and his lover, who he’d lost to a car wreck, together and happy again. He told him that he’d seen his face in the dream and now he knew why. Shaun took him through the double doors, down the hall, and into the first door on the right.

It was an exact copy of the room he’d been in, complete with the ritual circle and trio of Void Seers. Like one of those coin operated fortune tellers when you put a quarter in, they jerked “awake” when he entered. Shaun bade the man stand in the center of the circle. He placed a hand on his back.

“Be still your heart.”

The voice that came from him was not his own. The man fell limp without collapsing. The center Shadow Caller placed its hand on the man’s head and yanked. A pulsing ethereal gold sludge came with it. The Shadow Caller on its left produced a dagger, the blade made of the same pitch black stone on the necklace.

It cut the sludge. The center one let his hand drop, the sludge slid off its fingers and onto the ground. The other Shadow Caller kneeled next to the sludge and chanted in an unknown language. The center one now grabbed the man’s chest and pulled out a form. It was silver, and pulsed to the same rhythm as the gold sludge.

The Shadow Caller with the dagger carved a flake about six inches in diameter off the form. It fluttered to the ground and fell into the sludge. The chanting one finished, placing his hand on the sludge. Shaun watched as its hand did not stop at ground, instead it reached into the earth and pulled out, with some effort, another form.

It looked like the man’s form, but it was a sick grey instead of silver. It did not pulse with the same vigor; it almost wasn’t pulsing at all. The golden sludge flowed over the form, its volume increasing until it swallowed the form in its entirety. The sludge became muscle, blood, and flesh, knitting itself into a woman.

He pulled away from the man, who woke up face to face with his lost lover. She cried and embraced him. He rubbed his temples and asked who she was. She buried him in assurances and sweet talk, and Shaun led them back to the cathedral. That was his only client that day.

He bided his time on a pew, watching the grim parade of clientele come and go. When it was time to go home and sleep, he hung back. One of the sentinels noticed and beckoned to him. He approached. It raised its hand, two fingers up. The voice he’d spoken in earlier echoed in his head.

“Seek answers?”

Shaun didn’t move. It pressed its two fingers to his forehead. Like the other times the presence communicated, it was a flood of images: Shaun’s client and his lover, a collage of pictures of them, the wreck, her coffin in the ground, the man approaching Shaun, the ethereal sludge being cut, the earlier collage but now with the woman missing, the pale form Shaun had seen rising out of a tranquil endless sea that predated time, the flake carved off the man’s form being flung into the cosmos to join the maelstrom of souls.

Shaun returned home. The next day another Void Seer was to accept their first client. Not three minutes after they’d passed through the doors, the Void Seer ran out screaming. Terror and sweat drenched their face. They fled. Nobody moved. One of the Shadow Callers pointed at a Void Seer, who went through the double doors.

That night Shaun had a dream of the Void Seer that had abandoned their post. The sky split open and from the gaping maw the presence reached down into their house. It plucked their form from their body. It held it in its palm, where a whirlwind grew that shredded the form into a grotesque confetti. The presence closed its hand and retreated, taking the blended remains of the Void Seer’s form with it.

Which brought Shaun to now. He did not remember how long it’d been since the Shadow Callers arrived. He did know where they came from, but did not know what it was that drew the presence to him and the other Void Seers.

He just continued to care for clientele, as he always had since becoming a Void Seer, and how he always would, until it was time for him to join the great maelstrom of souls.