Old Man Iscariot

The night air was crisp, and a cold fog was rolling in. Old man Iscariot could feel in his bones that a storm was coming. How big, he did not know. Looking to his right he could see that his wife was fast asleep, a gift his achy bones would not grant him. After adjusting his night cap, he lit the bedside oil lamp, slid on his slippers and tied his robe tight. Though he had to work for what he had, in all his years, he had never wanted for anything, except perhaps for children. Tonight, all he wished was that he could buy himself a little more warmth and younger bones.

Upon walking into the living room, he noticed a note inside his window. “Surely I must be dreaming,” thought the old man, but the bitterness of the cold assured him that he was in fact awake. Trying to make sense of the strange situation, the old man grabbed the note at once, and held it greedily against his chest.

“But what does the note say?” he wondered. His eyes were too old and too tired to read it without his spectacles. “Where did I leave those blasted things?!” he murmured to himself.

As he began searching around the room, he noticed that the note was tied securely to a string. He could not reach his desk on the far side of the room and still hold on to this note. Afraid of losing the mysterious note before deciphering its meaning, the old man placed it on the windowsill under the lamp while he felt about in the dark for his spectacles.

After some time he found them on his desk. Hastily he put them on and ran to his note. It read:

Come along,

From dark of night,

Come rest your weary bones.

Strife will end,

Pain will cease,

Your wealth by 20,000 shall increase.

Your lifeline you hold,

Inside your hand,

Pull it if you choose.

Old man Iscariot’s heart leapt inside him. He began to dance around the room. “I’m rich! I’m rich! I’ll never have to work another day in my life!” he rejoiced.

Without bothering to dress for the night, the old man ran outside and began to pull the string. Quickly he pulled the string up from the earth, following it wherever it led him. In his excitement the old man felt neither pain nor cold, all he could feel tug of the string on his hand. At first the string came up easily, as if being pulled through shallow sand. But as the night wore on, the string became tougher and tougher to pull. Soon the pains of the cold returned to the old man, but with determination he yanked on the string will all of his might.

Not long before morning the old man was led to an old sturdy tree. Yank as he might, he could not free the string from the ground. “The string must be tangled around the roots of this tree,” he thought to himself. So, with his bare hands the old man began to dig up the cold, hardened soil.

Just as he was about to faint from exhaustion, the old man pulled up a little black book, tied closed by the string. He fingers were clumsy and slow from the cold. He quickly tucked the book under his arm and rubbed his hands together, breathing his hot breath on them to warm them just enough to untie his newfound treasure.

As he tugged on the string with all his remaining strength, the little black book began to fall open. Golden light shone out from within. Shielding his eyes, the old man peered inside and saw the money he had worked all night to uncover.

It was in that instant that the old man knew in his heart that something was not right. Looking down at his hands, he saw the string he had been holding all night slowly fall from his fingers. Suddenly, panic hit his soul. As the string hit the ground the old man let out his last breath in a cry of anguish. In stillness, his body fell to the ground beneath the great tree. In that moment his weariness ended and all his pain had ceased.

That night, while the old man had been chasing his treasure, the wind blew open the window in front of the sill where he had so carelessly left his lamp burning. It knocked down the lighted lamp, burning down his house and killing his wife as she slept. Having no children to pass the money too, his newfound riches were shared among the townspeople who stumbled across him in the morning. “It’s a pity,” they said, “He thought the string he held was a lifeline, thrown out to rescue him, but instead, it was the small thread by which he was clinging to life; and he pulled it out from under the tree of life.”