“How are you doing down there?”
A voice, from above. His mother? No, a man’s voice. What is it saying? “Hello? Mr. Whitley? Everything okay?”
I’m okay, Blue thought, and, “I’m okay,” he called out, his hands fixed to the cage bars. Not from the inside, he was surprised to see, but from without. “Everything’s fine!” he shouted, more to himself than to the man upstairs, whose voice he now recognized as belonging to the property agent.
When he tried to remove his hands from the bars, however, he found that he could not, his skin fastened to the iron like a mouse stuck to a glue trap.
leave this place
A voice in the unknown tongue, the alien language, spoken in the otherwords. His words.
go now
go
He focused on his hands. His attention telescoped, and he ignored the mounting dread that accompanied the enervating force from the iron. It was like being incrementally murdered, how a lobster must feel in a gradually boiling pot. He concentrated his strength, suppressed a scream of pain and terror, and pulled away.
With a wet squelch he lifted his hands, the skin of his fingers and palms sloughed from muscle and tendon like braised meat. Stuck to the bars were the outer layers of his hands and forearms, left behind like a discarded pair of ladies’ evening gloves. All this he could see, in this black hell; he could see everything down in the dark. And still the alien voice rang in his head, his own secret voice. And it said
go
leave now
go
go
Blue staggered to the stairs, his hands and arms a mess of bloody cartilage and pulp. As he climbed the steps, though, his fingers twitched, and they glimmered as if threaded with gold filament. He watched in shock as his hands began to change, skin muting from angry red to rose to pink. One last glance at the cage and it really was there, suspended like a noose over the pit in the middle of the room, the flayed skins of his arms draped there as well, as if hung out to dry. Those too began to shimmer, and they faded into the darkness.
By the time he threw himself through the basement door, his hands were as he knew them. His familiar alabaster pallor restored, neither bloodied nor scarred: he was whole again. He wanted to lay his hands on the property agent to see if they’d leave marks on his shirt, but instead Blue barreled past him, nearly falling through the screen door as he tried to get it open.
“You all set, then?” Stanley said, looking at him askance. Blue could barely meet his eyes, afraid that the man would see the panic there, which would make the fear all the more real.
“Sure. Let’s go.” Go. Leave. Now. Go. Go.
“Why don’t I run down and get the paperwork?”
“That’s okay,” Blue said. “I can sign everything in the car.”
A painful minute later, the other man climbed into the driver’s seat, Blue already inside. “Sorry,” Blue said, “I just remembered I’m late for something. Really late.” Stanley put the key into the ignition, turned it once, twice, a third time. Please go, Blue prayed, sweaty palms gripped onto his knees in the crash position. Please. Please. Please.
YOU ARE READING
The Glittering World
ParanormalIt’s a long way from the grit of New York City to the stark beauty of Nova Scotia, and many years separate Blue Whitley’s only two journeys between them. One occurred at five years old, when his mother stole him away from the hinterlands of Canada...
