Shadow Falls: Badlands by Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff

first time he gazed into the milky cornea, he’d seen how the crone had drugged him and used him to gain that which he had brought to the banker. But that scene was now replaced by a new, much more terrifying one. Again, a headache struck—an intense pressure building up between his temples; a pounding ache, as if something inside his skull were to break through like a hatchling from its shell.
    Galen screamed as the pain grew and, without warning, his body felt limp, as if his brain had lost the ability to control its, to command its verticality. The pain welled, his brain felt full of fire. He thought he screamed again, but this time no sound came forth—only the hiss of air escaping his throat.
    The mounting pressure inside his head built to the point when every aspect comprising his body began shaking violently, as if trying to escape their bonds. Then suddenly, as quickly as it started, it stopped, leaving Galen with an overwhelming sense of silent levity, an acute sense of the soft whoosh of air gently passing him.
    Here, there was no pain, no suffering—only an inescapable brightness. Galen looked around before finally gazing down. Below his feet—several hundred yards down—he could see the ground. He was above a dense forest—serene and silent, stretching infinitely into the blue sky. Galen cocked his head. He could hear birds singing in the trees. But suddenly, their music stopped, and from the woods below thousands of birds took wing, scattering every which way—as if escaping.
    Smoke was rising in black wisps, funneling into the sky, obscuring anything beneath the tree line. But orange flames began to break through, spreading with astounding speed. Within moments, the fire expanded with a deafening roar, consuming everything in its path as it reduced the forest to a cinder.
    The birdsong Galen heard before was gone, replaced by something more sorrowful. One voice gently sobbing in the distance was followed by another, as anguished, whispered cries for help grew to a level higher than the fire, as they multiplied by the thousands. Voices swarmed around him as the sky suddenly began to grey, finally giving way to a frightening and oppressive sense of total dark.
    Galen sensed their ascendancy from untold depths—monstrous creatures of the abyss spreading like a plague across the world below, their gnashing yellow teeth making short work of all flesh unfortunate to fall within their indiscriminating jaws. Those unlucky enough to survive then cast into chains, turned into slaves. With a crack of thunder, the sky above Galen opened as a single shaft of pure illumination punched through the darkness, containing illuminated winged figures pouring from the sky.
    So he watched—timeless warriors locked in ancient combat. The blood of the righteous and unrighteous flow until every last river runs red. The carnage is magnificent, no quarter offered, none taken.
    Standing at the head of the unending phalanx of darkness was a man with eyes of smoke and the head of a coyote. Suddenly Galen is upon this face, himself struck silent by recognition.
    ***
    The dirty ghetto street in Veracruz muddied the spilt blood. Galen watched a now coyote-headed Cyril carve the scalp from a young girl’s head.
    He could feel the heat radiating from the door of the church that Cyril set aflame, innocent Mexican Catholics locked inside. And as Galen stood immobile to the atrocities before his eyes, Cyril turned to grin at him, reveling the long teeth indicative of his maw.
    The enchanted eye fell from Galen’s trembling hand, its spell broken; he was back sitting on the floor of the abandoned house. For minutes he stared at the eye, which lay on the floor, gazing blankly upwards through its milky cornea.
    Galen shouted at the eye. In a fit of rage, he scooped it off the floor and cast it into the fire still burning in the hearth.
    The night brought a fitful sleep for Galen, for the images he’d been shown were emblazoned into his mind.