Actor From the Year 1200

Actor From the Year 1200

Many people from all around the world come to our sacred place. Day in and out, we watch the corrupt of this Earth stomp over our land, dooming them and their families to be cursed for centuries to come. They wonder: “How did they build it? Why is it even here?”. The creation of our temple was a feat in its own, but such a story would be too simple to tell. An explanation of greasing wooden tracks to move massive stones miles to the Salisbury plains. Our creation of ramps and knowledge of gravity beyond our time will be analyzed by scientists for thousands of years. But none of that is important. The Great Lord tried to make us immortal and that is the real mystery. The story that no one knows and no one will know for many moons, until another man as great as I try to summon him. I am Toradban and I am Chief and Shaman of the Windmill Hill people.

***

In the year 3000 B.C., construction had already begun on the temple for the great one. Finding peace in his teachings with his acceptance of all, the Windmill people worshipped him day after day, praising him for finding the balance between good and evil in this world. He was all knowing and a blessed Toradban with the ability to learn from what could not be learned by others. He was different from the rest. He stood a whopping foot taller than the rest of the people. While their skin was darker, his was a reddish tint, and many believe it was due to the knowledge his was instilled with.

For him and through him, he wrote the prophecies all Windmill people lived by. That was of course, why they all left their small towns to live in such a desolate area. He proclaimed he needed food, so the tribe sacrificed their youngest children for him. He proclaimed he needed land to rule over, so they expanding and explored the country. He proclaimed he needed a temple, so they built. And so for 45 years. under the command of the shaman they worked from dusk till dawn in attempt to help create a sanctuary for their savior, he who promised immortality to their people in exchange for one simple task: they rise him and his minions from the depths of the Earth to once again reign supreme over all people. We called this temple, Stonehenge.

***

When it was all finished, there was only one last thing to do. The final sacrifice: I would sacrifice my own life, the life of one in touch with nature and his teachings, to give him my body to assume for his own. Everything had to be perfect. The blood of an sheep to be slain in front of the village.  Everyone had to be present and chanting the ceremonial hymns. And most importantly, the stars had to be perfectly aligned.

When the day came, June 6th, the village and its people rejoiced and I knew it was going to be time soon. In a few hours the sun would begin to set and our ceremony could begin, and we could raise Satan from the depths of the Earth and into my ever-willing body. And so at 5 in the afternoon we began. The hymns were sung wonderfully, and they ought to have been after the weeks of practice and interpretation of the ancient text I did for my people. Then, during the fourth psalm the sheep was brought forth. Having his legs already been chopped off, he was dragged alive to the center of the great temple. And once there, the youngest man of the village proceeded to tear out his innards, spilling them all over the mossy-stone floor. Once emptied, and the sheep drained of all blood, the ancient symbol was drawn across the ground with the still luke-warm blood that had been poured out of the animal’s carcass.

It was perfect; everything had gone according to plan. As I chanted the final words a great rumble was sent through the ground, and before I could figure out why there were screams of joy from the people. A short distance away, we could see the ground slowly rising up into an odd looking hill like formation. As I continued my chants, as to not interrupt the process, the hill grew taller and taller, rounder and wider into it was near one-hundred and fifty feet tall and must have consumed over four acres of land. Then suddenly, it stopped. The land stopped shaking, the hill stopped rising. Complete and utter silence. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Standing before me was a mountain of dirt, a hill of sorts, which must have been where Satan was rising from with his minions. As we chanted and prayed, the land mass grew higher and higher until our chants simply stopped working. Everything froze as if time had stopped and the process was delayed. I didn’t know what to do. Everything was done perfectly, everything...everything except... The stars!

That must have been it, the sun was slowly setting, I knew I would be able to tell soon. The mound, that was my only hope of finding out. As I ran to the newly formed hill I felt the temperature slowly rising, knowing that Satan and his minions were so near to their escape from hell. As I slipped and clawed my way to the top I looked up on the sky. They were all there, perfectly aligned from the center of our temple all the way through in a perfect line. All except Saturn. It must have been the wrong date, just a single day off. A near perfect line was present in the sky. Everything had been done right but the utmost important detail of all had fallen through. Our ability to track the stars and planets had failed us many times before but none so as important as this. What of our immortality? Would the dark lord punish us, or be happy we attempted our best effort at raising him.

A great boom shook the ground. I fell to my knees to hear the voice of what only I knew to be the great one himself. He was clearly angry, furious with me and the people.

“Toradban, for the last time you have let down not only me and the other demons of hell, but you have let down your village as well. This will be your final chance. The last time I will grant you a pardon”

“What must I do master. This time I will do it perfectly and correctly, I swear to you my master. Whatever you speak to me I will do”

“You must bring me the next youngest born child out of your village and it must be of your direct blood relation”

My...son? I must give him up to the Lord, but he is only 2. So young and so much life to live. And now I had to give his life away, in exchange for immortality and bringing him into the world. I regretfully agreed. The next night, during the middle of everyone’s slumbers, I returned to the hill; this time not alone. My young child still asleep in my arms as I trekked to the top of the tremendous man made mountain. And there I saw something unexplainable. Swarming around the top of this mound of dirt was over 500 blackbirds, dipping and diving down to the Earth scraping the tips of their claws into the ground leaving a soft enough imprint for me to see. The symbol of the Devil right in the center of the hill. It was there I was to lay down my child to die. It was there I was to send his soul to hell to replace the Devil’s. It was there I was to betray the village, for my own personal gain. How was I allowing myself to do this?

But yet, with every step I took towards the center of the hill, the more and more right it felt. Until my son gently awoke from his sleep. He looked me in the eyes as if to say “Where are we daddy what is this place?” and pressed his head into my chest. There had to be another way out of this. And I knew exactly how. I gently placed my son onto the ground and began to chant the traditional hymns, with ever so slight manipulations of the words. He never knew. He came out of his hiding. He headed straight for my son. He was stopped dead in his tracks. Imprisoned within a glass bottle.

“Now it is my turn to strike a deal with you Devil” I spoke “I will free you back to your world and let you leave this enchanted bottle on two conditions, my son lives and I gain my immortality”.

“You think you can bargain with me? The all-powerful, all-knowing Lord of all that is darkness. I pity you, you simple minded fool. I was imprisoned in hell before, what makes you think I can’t last another 40 years until you die off and find another simple-minded to fool to trick into letting me escape”

“Satan my dear friend, did you not here my words in your native tongue? That was no psalm to allow you to escape; it was a curse that I placed on this bottle, which causes anyone or anything to die within this glass after ten years. Now I am playing games with you, because when those ten years run out, I gain your powers, your strength, and your immortality. This isn’t a game anymore”.

***

And so goes the story of Taladban, a simple shaman who was tricked, came ti his senses and in time, tricked the life out of the devil himself. Now you may ask what ever happened to the Devil? How can there still be evil if Taladban killed him. Well there is because the wise shaman knew that he needed to let him live. We needed Satan to exist for a balance of good and evil to be present in our world, because without it, life would deteriorate. Good and evil must exist for one to know true happiness, for one can only experience it after times of true sadness. From the darkest hours come the brightest lights, and that is the true miracle of life.

***

It is the year 2014. I am a famous actor who prefers to stay “behind the scenes”, so to speak. My name... is Keanu Reeves.