The road before them was black and dark, fractured only by moonlight cutting through the phantoms of trees.

‘How had they come to this point?’

How to explain it at all was a much better question. Far too many times Paul wasn’t even sure himself, even though it had cast a long, long shadow across so much of his life; stories told by his own father the very day he handed him this old, plain brass urn and told him all these wild, crazy, nonsense fables ...or so they sure seemed to be at least to an 11-year old, Paul Bearer.

Still the epitaph of each memory pooled and echoed from the recesses of his thoughts, to his son, Kane, and to those doctors there at the asylum that couldn’t --WOULDN’T believe the boy! Even he hadn’t believed his son. The doctor looked sympathetic, but serious when he looked at the young boy. Little Kane had scribbled yet another picture of the mysterious man ...the strange man of the fire. ‘He had appeared there.’ Kane said. Surrounded and engulfed in flames, the figure stood tall, rising above the immediate danger sheltering and protecting Kane’s body from their threat of death.

“There was no man in the fire, Kane.” Dr. Forbes only shook his head. “The firemen seen no man. Now let’s think correctly, okay? We’re here to help you, remember? It’s impossible isn’t it now, Kane?”

The child’s doodle relaxed in the falling of his arm. “But..but I saw him. He was there... He was! And ..and he saved me an--”

“Kane ...Hmmmm?”

“Y-yes sir.” Kane looked completely shattered. He didn’t agree with Dr. Forbes’ logical conclusions at all but still gave what he knew the doctor wanted to hear from him, “It was just my imagination.”

The drawing fell from his small hand to the floor. As Kane walked slowly away, the doctor picked it up. Grinning with a shake of his head over at the nurse beside him, he crumpled the artwork up and pitched it into the waste can.

“Smoke inhalation damage.” He concluded in an instant. “It’s obvious.”

Poor little, scarred Kane, his legs drawn up to his chest and starring out across what seemed like eternity out there beyond the windowpane of his room at the asylum; still seeing the memory of the fire alive in his fixed gaze. The room was alive with fiery arms reaching, waving towards him. Closer .. Closer! He could feel the heat of it; could feel the searing burn of its grip. Kane could hear the sirens screaming is the distance, but they were going to be too late!

“I’m going to die .. I’m going to die! .....Mom! Mom!”

Then ‘he’ appeared. Just appeared right there in the thick of the flames and smoke. The figure looked down at Kane with silent consideration before he picked him up and held him close. The strange man was like a shield. As the fire feast on everything around them, they seemingly do not, CANNOT, touch the boy anymore.

Strolling through the flames as though they were non-existent, the mysterious savior sets the child down in the driveway as his focus shifts for just a moment to the blazing funeral parlor. Its front porch suddenly caves and crashes into ruin.

He vanishes.

As the memory replays, is immediately replaced with the faint voice of Dr. Forbes. He was on the phone in the adjacent room now informing his father, Paul Bearer that his son had an ‘imaginary playmate’.

“--Named ‘Kane’ no less.” The doctor spoke. “Just like his. We believe he may be suffering from trauma. ..why, with his mother and all. We feel that we may need to change his medication.” Excerpt from 'Dark Testament'., 1999

Ink and crayola brand markers. 'Kane's doodle' done for me by my daughter, Jewel when she was 8., cir. 1999

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