The Hybrid Cycle: Volume 1

10: The Mouth That Devours

1.

Beatrice drove to the trailhead that morning. It was noon before she reached the house on foot.

She limped through a thicket of tall grass to the porch of the old house and stopped short of the front door. Pain tore through her legs.

She spoke in a half-whisper. Soft. Prayerful.

"Maybe I should be afraid of you. But my dad taught me that fear isn't a thing. It's an expectation. To make demands of the world even if I don't think I'll win.

I want my things back. I need answers."

The speech hadn't been directed at anyone, but rather to the spirit of the house. It was one of those strange carry-over beliefs from childhood – that things had essences which could be addressed the same as people.

A crow called out in the distance. The sound was lonesome. A lost radio signal in the void of space.

Is this my answer?

The door opened as easily as it had before. Dust motes floated in hazy light.

Near the middle of the plank floor was a manhole-sized crater with jagged edges. It looked like the obscene mouth of something that ate people whole.

That's where the house swallowed me up.

The thought of it made her picture a frantic mouse struggling in the jaws of a snake – its eyes wide with the terror of a thing realizing its life-thread is about to be clipped.

Beatrice got on her hands and knees and crept towards it. She figured it was safer. Her hands would feel any soft wood before she placed all her weight on it.

She gazed down into what looked like a root cellar. It was mostly dark, but she could see the debris from her fall. A little blood too. No sign of her camera or backpack. No cell-phone, either.

They have to be here for this to make sense.

2.

An hour later, Beatrice emerged from the house. None of it was there. Even the footprints were gone. Someone had given the place a dust-over.

She sat on the front porch and cried.