Darkness Rising 1 - Chained

Darkness Rising 1 - Chained (Prologue- The House of Preparation)

Copyright Ross M Kitson 2011

Prologue      The House of Preparation

Sunstide 1911 (nine years ago)

Emelia dreamt of dark things. She stumbled down the expansive beach, the sands sticky beneath her bare feet. The waves thundered and the trees bordering the sand bent like old men as the storm whipped up. Rain lashed against her as she saw the lone figure knelt ahead. His sobs ripped through her chest like a knife.

“Papa? Papa, why are you crying?” she asked.

Her gaunt father made no reply but rather turned and with horror Emelia saw his eyes were two gold coins. Terror gripped her heart as she staggered back. The gold began to run, pouring in molten tears down his cadaverous cheeks, steaming in the driving rain.

Emelia screamed but the sound was flattened under the crash of immense waves. Her father dug his fingers into his smoldering cheeks and wrenched, tearing the skin off as if breaking open a crab. No blood ran as he shredded the flaps of flesh away but rather Emelia saw a grey hue beneath, like rock.

With a final wrench her father ripped apart the skin and a man made of stone remained. He regarded Emelia and then slowly began moving towards her, his sockets gaping voids.

Emelia scrabbled backwards in the sand but her legs felt like lead. Then she looked down and she saw:  saw the sand become stone; saw the stone become dark and saw the darkness harden across the pale sands of the beach like a giant shadow. All around her, the island surrendered its colour, slipping beneath the featureless dark. Then the stone came for her too, began spreading up her legs, closing tightly about her chest, sealing up her mouth, her nose, her eyes with cold, uncaring rock.

***

The dormitory was pitch-black. The terror stayed with her as her sleep-caked eyes adjusted to the gloom. Emelia was shivering uncontrollably. She bit her lip hard, to stop her teeth chattering.

Had she woken the other girls? She cautiously lifted her head from her bed and checked. No—they all slept despite the chill of the room. Her hand slid beneath her single sheet and her heart skipped a beat as she realised she had wet the bed in her fear.

Hot tears flowed from her eyes. She would get the birch for sure. But even that would be as nothing compared to the taunts of the other girls. The Azaguntan girls particularly would seize on this as a sign of weakness.

A dozen fantasies ran through her six-year-old mind. She lay there wracked with indecision for half an hour, the cooling wetness of the urine feeling like a blanket of snow on her body.

Emelia rolled quietly from her bed and then carefully removed the wet sheet. She bundled it up then crept across the flagstoned dormitory. The other girls did not stir, lost in their own private dreaming.

Emelia stepped out into the corridor. Light from the blue Aquatonian moon, her moon, shone through the frost-painted window. Emelia shivered from cold and fear as she scuttled down the corridor. The stone walls of the servants’ quarters were a featureless grey and harsh to the touch.

She passed into the grand entrance hall. Warmth flickered from lanterns set in the ornate brass hooks which studded the oak-paneling. Dour faces of the still living and the long-time dead glared down at her from the portraits on the walls. Emelia forced her eyes downward as if to look back at one of those fearsome portraits would set them screaming an alert.

The linen room was adjacent to the entrance hall. She passed a huge tapestry, its threads as thin as the grease the servants spread on their bread in the mornings.