[#064] Four and a Half Days

I counted down another hour by the dripping from the cracks in the floorboards overhead.

Four days, fourteen hours, fifteen minutes, and twenty-one seconds. Twenty-two seconds. Twenty-three.

Four and a half days left in darkness since the door shut behind me. Four and a half days since I first heard the voice singing in the corner of the cellar. I'd come down to investigate, and...

I still hear it from time to time, four days after the rain began to fall so hard it shattered windows in the floors above, sweeping through my home and washing away the tokens of my life. Four days since I heard the roof crash down and turn my plants and photographs and memories to dust. Anybody passing by now would see a wreckage, and they'd never think to check the basement even if they see the door.

Because who hides in the basement just before a flood? Who survives?

Me, that's who. And them, whomever still sings in the corner at all hours of the night. I might have drowned in the water if they hadn't called my name. But now, after four days, fourteen hours, seventeen minutes, and seven seconds...

I wish they'd just kill me or shut up.

[#063] Even the Grave

The video tape lay in shadows on the table as I stared. It felt cold to the touch, as frigid as the snow in which it nestled for hours just outside my door, wrapped in a thin yellow envelope without a scratch of writing. The cassette bore no label either, save two stretched ovals standing straight up over a wide circle in a crude drawing of a rabbit head.

Her drawing.

My daughter used to plaster the rabbit all over everything she owned. Binders, boxes, bedframes, everything. They even had to scrub it off the walls after they pulled her out of here and hauled her away.

I couldn't watch the ancient tape; nothing in the house would read it. Still, I could sense its contents when I my fingers traced the rabbit's ears. I knew it was a promise, or maybe a threat. It wasn't the first time she'd tried to make contact, even though I'd left imprints of my fingers in the threshold resisting the call. I'd seen the circles she drew on the living room floor, the candles burning just too far for me to feel them through the wall of sleep. But this was the first message she'd managed to push through to me.

Tremors shook my hand as I lifted my daughter's video tape from the surface of the dining table and held it to the thin rays of sunlight drifting through the boarded windows. When I lifted the door along the edge, I could almost make out frames on the magnetic ribbon, tiny pictures of a better time mingled with another worse.

Fifteen years since my little girl took her father from the world, and still she won't just let me rest.

What else can I do when even the grave cannot protect the dead from the living?

[#062] Fire in the Eyes

The statue had already come into view at the top of the mountain by the time I noticed the shape following us through the snowy pines. It stood upright like a man, but that alone wasn't convincing anymore. I tugged on Mother's sleeve and pointed back, watching as it melted into shadows just before she turned around.

Her eyes gleamed blue in the moonlight as she scanned the slope beneath us. Her voice whispered in my ear from inches away, and still I jumped at the sound of it. "Just a bird, little one," it cooed. "They cannot stop us now."

My heart raced laps around my insides as we carried onward up the hill. The shape emerged from the brush below to trail at least a hundred yards back, while above the towering figure of the Owl came into view.

It perched atop a fallen log itself a dozen feet tall. The Owl stood at least four times as much, and I wondered how they hid it for so long at such a height. The road we traveled ended right at the bricks mortared over the entrance once carved between its talons into the stone foundation. Above I could just make out the bundles of straw and twigs bound tightly in the statue's eyes, constructed by the supplicants who brought this curse upon us almost ten years ago.

We wouldn't need the door, of course.

Mother drew her bow and lit the arrow, and this was the only signal the shape needed to attack. I watched as yellow orbs of hatred opened up behind us, and the thing which had followed us for a hundred miles stretched its wings and dove.

Talons raked across my mother's face, blood pouring from her cheeks as she fell to her knees and cried out. She tossed the bow to the ground and stabbed at the thing just as it swooped on her for the second round, driving the point of her arrow into its feathered chest and screaming righteous fury.

She had said the owls were prideful. She knew they would only send one to stop us. And she was right.

Which is why I came. No bird would suspect a child so young to be a threat, but a child who's lived their entire life beneath the rule of monsters has little to lose.

And so I drew my own short bow from the pack around my arm and lit up. I nocked the arrow, took my aim, and fired at the massive, leathery eggs resting in the nests above. The fire spread quickly, and an entire parliament of owls went up in flames by the time my mother had wrestled the thing onto the ground and extinguished the glow in its eyes.

We stood beneath the fire and waited for its warmth to drown out the cold winds blowing over the mountain top. We breathed in victory, and we breathed out a promise. We knew they would send more next time, but we had nothing to lose.

One nest down. One hundred thousand more to go.

NaNoWriMo Break #002 - A Late Conclusion

I ended up making fewer posts this year than I expected to. I also missed my goal by about 30,000, having allowed myself to drift off schedule far too often. That said, it was still a fantastic experience, and it got me back into writing longer works after a months long break, so I'm going to cheat a bit and dub this year's Nano a success. I'm still working on my new book, but it probably won't see completion until early next year.

In the mean time, I'm getting back into the habit of posting stories here starting this very week. I am considering writing fewer stories and aiming for longer, more complete entries, but we shall see how I feel about it in a few days.

For now, rest assured the story isn't over. Keep on Living Halloween!