In Parched Gardens: Book 1

Chapter 11: From Within the Waving Lines

He woke, unexpectedly, alert. Looking around his bedroom, Fin squinted his eyes through the blur and turned his ear toward the door. Listening, there was nothing but silence and the standard nighttime drone of the sleeping town around him. A dog barking, far away in the neighborhood. A train horn, calling from dark to dark. The light patter of night rain, beating against his window and against the world.

For some reason, he felt like going downstairs. Like something called to him, or whispered, hushedly, through the house. Like some dark song found him, and pulled him in note and chord through the bedroom door. And so he sat up, not exactly fearful, but not at ease, and walked sleepily toward the edge of the room.

Somehow, as he groped through the house, the dark didn't bother him. And though it rained, there was enough light from the streetlamps and the small devices of his house that he could see thinly in front of him. He reached the door to his bedroom and peered outside. The hallway seemed fine and he heard nothing. But there was still the pull, as of a warmth in his bones, toward the stairs. He walked to them, and waited at the top of them, peering into the gray darkness below.

Again, he saw nothing. He heard nothing. Yet, he felt something, down the steps perhaps. Just out of sight, perhaps. And he yearned for what he felt, a thin blue shadow, waving, he hoped, between the gray and the dark.

He started down the stairs and they creaked beneath his feet. But he didn't stop. He didn't even notice really. He was too drawn now, too focused on the corners just beyond his vision. He imagined what could be there, what could sing this silent song to him, could plead and wait for him in the hushed gray. He was all the way down the steps now, in the foyer. He saw the boxes at his feet and in the corners of the room and for a moment, briefly, he wasn't ashamed of them. He wasn't afraid of them. They didn't matter now. They didn't haunt him. For a moment, this moment, they had no power. They looked at him, judged him from every nook of the room, he could tell, but it didn't matter. What could they judge? What did they know? Look, look! He wanted to scream at them. Look there now, farther, there! See the blue! See the lines! Yet, he didn't even mind them enough to tell them. He simply continued, passing them now, toward the dining room.

Here, truly, was the haunt of memories. This room, this sanctuary of cardboard and duct tape. Full, more than full, the boxes reigned and watched him; usually. Yet now, they seemed strangely thin. Oddly empty. Weirdly pressed toward the far walls of the room. He had space to move now. He didn't need to shuffle through the small path between the boxes, between the sentinels of the watch. He watched them and they seemed so weak now. But only because he felt like he neared the blue and the waving lines.

In the back corner of the room, near the wall the dining room shared with the kitchen beyond, he felt like he could feel it. Could feel her. And, straining, he felt like he heard footsteps walking there now, as if calling to him, from within the blue. And it was almost like he could hear a voice, still and small in the dark and shadow, speaking to him; speaking to him. So he turned his ear, desperately almost, and it did seem to speak to him. But it was a whisper, a whisper's whisper, like someone talking at the end of a tunnel too dark to see. And stepping forward, one step, he heard it slightly better. Fin, he thought he heard. Fin. Yes! He wanted to scream. Yes, what is it! But he stayed quiet, and nearly still.

A moment of nothing, and he took another step forward, toward the whispering, like the sounds of an unknown language spoken softly into the deep. Again, it was clearer, though not clear. Don't... Don't. And he took another step. Don't what! He wanted to yell. Please, please, don't what! But instead, he took another step, hoping to hear. Don't fall asleep on me again, he could barely hear now. Of course, he heard himself saying, yet he didn't feel like he spoke. As if through the air, he heard himself, somehow, out of the quiet dark. When will you be back? He could hear his voice like the voice of an animal, tired and alone.