The Last Magician

Part 1 - First Steps. Chapter 1 -Jack

He tentatively opened his eyes to the light.

For a moment that was all he could see; a dim but dominant light that blinded his vision. He blinked away the pain in his head, feeling like a man waking in the middle of the night to the glare of an overhead lamp.

His mind seemed strangely devoid of thought, empty like the sight before his eyes. Then suddenly…
What is my name?

The question filled his mind, reaching from the dark recesses of his brain to the depths of his soul in search of an answer. Somehow no reply was forthcoming.

Surely he must know his own name. He had to, didn’t he? It should have been as natural to him as breathing, yet somehow he could not pull out…

Yes, he could. It was there, deep down just beyond his reach but edging closer. If he concentrated he could almost bring it into the light.

Jack? It could be. It sounded almost familiar. Jack was his name but there was no more than that.

Where am I?

That was the next question. This time a substantially darker void faced him. No inkling of an answer presented itself. His name had come to him, he thought, after a moment of certainty that somewhere in his memory he held the answer. Nothing came to him this time; he simply didn’t know where he was.

Or why he was lying in the dirt.

Loose stone and soil littered the hard surface under him, just another question to ask the void of his mind.

As his senses slowly returned, one thing became apparent; he was hurting like hell. Sharp stone cut into his skin, dug through his clothes while the hard ground provided a less than accommodating resting place. The questions circling his thoughts gradually gave way to his need to relieve some of the discomfort his body sensed.

Jack raised his upper body, a groan escaping his dry lips. It was as though his body had seized up.

How long had he lain here?

The number of questions continued to rise while the answers remained as elusive as ever. It should have worried him, the void in his mind, but there were plenty of things to concentrate on other than that. His pain and disorientation were issues he had to question, but he was not anticipating any responses.

Despite the circumstances, Jack found a smile crossing his face. If his collected queries were conundrums in themselves, then that one was The Daddy.

The Daddy.

A bloke called Ray Winstone had been The Daddy. Jack had no idea who Ray Winstone was, or why he was The Daddy, but the name and the connection were clear in his head. He knew nothing about his surroundings and his name still contained the slightest trace of a lie about it, yet somehow a random name had come to him without any effort.

He turned to sit, biting against the numbness running through his lower body, and surveyed his surroundings for something familiar that would bring memories flooding back to him. There was little to see around him, only rough earth and a number of trees. A little further away were the beginnings of what could be a street of houses, maybe even an estate.

He turned around, the sound of his neck like someone twisting apart a cabbage.

Suddenly something shifted in his mind. A door was unlocked and a single thought fell free of the void accompanied by an unexpected sense of dread. Soon he was overtaken by a fearful realisation that he did not want to be seeing what lay before his eyes..

He was home; at least, in his home village or some twisted, nightmare version of it. His memory had not provided many reliable reference points for him, but on this he was certain; he was home, but home had never looked like this.