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Chapter 13 Excerpt Teaser
Description: The Resurrection of Lazarus ~ 6 Paragraphs

Where the silhouette once stood, a winding and twisting cyclone descended out of the heavens, swelled into an ebony nightmare, and wandered northward up the rear wall of the thunderstorm. Altogether, the swirling gloom towered three miles high whilst commanding no less than a quarter-mile of ground. Apparent as the Finger of God, the pillar scoured a polished line across the earth and, like fat insect feelers inspecting the ground, bolts of lightning streamed, whipped, and spewed forth from the monstrosity. Wholly, the sluggish column heaved and twisted, lugging itself forth like a meandering old man on a cane stick.

The rains flipped sideways. Gale winds yowled as the whirling Giant lumbered toward Mountain Mouth. Rocks tittered down the ridge. The column heaved itself over the crest of the hill and planted its dense foot inside the valley, altogether ploughing headlong for the mountain womb which, deep within, contained a laying statue streaked with guano and that clutched a worn goatskin satchel to its breast—the stony remains of a Grotesque—a petrified Eljo—since condemned by sunlight. In expression, his mouth stood agape in a frozen scream and his dead eyes stared at a grotto ceiling covered with a churning upside-down sea of trembling bats. About him, his tattered stained robe whipped and popped in subterranean winds like some charging war banner.

Since its death, the Eljo lay imprisoned in perhaps a rather peculiar place best characterized as the region of ‘Void.’ Void was an eternally empty limbo for creatures not human—for those living things unworthy of a divine experience. 'Twas where the bats, the birds, and the bees went when they passed on. Void was a dusty attic of Creation, cluttered with the memories of Life's less fortunate. 'Twas feasibly the highest hollow of Eternity, deserving of the swatted fly, the netted fish, or the slaughtered lamb. Wholly, the Kingdom of Void was as much a raven afterlife for creatures seemingly damned to an eternal nothingness for lack of a soul. 'Twas this Kingdom alone, which the Eljo since inherited.

Yet, with winds of immeasurable speed and terminal ferocity, the tornado slammed into the hillside and Mountain Mouth screamed, thoroughly assaulted by an abrasive wall of whirling sand, rocks, and tree parts. Debris exploded against its face, grinding down its features—waxing it smooth. Above and high in the sky, millions of charged regions ignited within the writhing clouds, connecting and collecting to spawn thousands of glowing and descending branches, whilst also converging as several thick adjoining bolts. They too combined to form a single colossal column that conceivably stripped all force out of the heavens.

Boom! Like some incensed lance of God, the brilliant stream slammed into the earth and cleaved the crest of Mountain Mouth, blasting away its topside with an intensity to penetrate the mountain and violate its deeper parts. Within the cave, roof sections broke loose. An ocean of bats dropped from the crumbling ceiling and rocks and dust rained down over the Eljo statue, burying its legs and covering the leather satchel that lay draped over its chest. Riled by roaring winds, the inner grotto dissolved into a boiling mess as, outside, the monstrous vortex drew nearly a third of the bats out of their cavern haven and swallowed them up, crushing them into the Kingdom of Void.

The whirlwind lumbered away from Mountain Mouth only to heave its fat foot out of the valley and ascend into the black heavens from whence it came. Ultimately, the winds departed and the dwindling rains lessened to a mere drizzle atop swollen pools. And with the chaos ended, those surviving bats returned to the ceiling and the grotto fell motionless as Death, save the occasional echoes of clicks and titters of stubborn roof stones that surrendered their high positions for the cave floor, whereupon the statue of the screaming Grotesque lay....

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