Encounters – The Word Worker

Portal

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Hugh carefully backed around the corner he had just rounded and leaned against the cool stone, sucking a deep breath into his startled lungs. Eyes wide, he took another peek. The hole in the wall was still there. It definitely wasn’t there before. He trembled; his old nurse maid would have mumbled about witchcraft and made a ward sign with her gnarled fingers.

Hugh shook himself. Twelve winters was far too old for nursery superstitions. What would his father think to see him shrinking here? A hole in the wall meant a threat, and a man would face a threat ready to defend. He tightened his fist around the handle of the short blunt sword boys in training were allowed to carry.

His skin crawled at the unreasonably warm air pouring through the gap. The sides were too smooth; a ballista would have left broken edges and rubble, and would have sounded throughout the keep. He drew the sword and held it ready with both hands, staring at the lumpy green hill impossibly leading from the third story in which he stood.

Swallowing hard and refusing the urge to look down the corridor for help, he stepped through, head brushing the leaves of vines and bushes growing in illogically ancient cracks in the stone. The village that should have lain below had vanished, along with the valley overlooked by his father’s castle, replaced by a windbeaten plain studded with sparse weedy trees.

A figure even more bent and wizened than old Beatrice emerged from behind the nearest one, a crackling chuckle rolling from beneath bird-like eyes. “Wouldn’t it just be my luck to get a lad, after all! Well, no matter, perhaps you’ll do. Welcome to Oblia, boy.”

The Phantom’s Mask

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The flashlight beam reflected from the dark water, and she stirred the water with her toe just to break the unnatural stillness. Even her footsteps barely whispered in the cavern. Quite a contrast from the busy, vibrant stage far overhead.

She continued skirting the lake, passing her light over damp columns. The years had left their mark underground in far different ways than they had above. Few knew or cared about the foundations of the Opera Garnier anymore, the stories that had surrounded its debut period reduced to little more than ghost stories for children.

Even Elodie herself wondered how much, if any, of the legend was true. So many generations had passed; memory changed in the telling, giving ordinary events mythological proportion. Still, she had promised her great-grandmother, the last Chagny to inherit that famed soprano voice, that she would visit the lake once in her lifetime, and the tour she had slipped away from had seemed the perfect opportunity.

Her flashlight beam caught a moldering wooden box perched on a pile of rubble left from some forgotten repair. Curious, she fingered the rusty lock, then winced as the board behind it peeled away like paper. She gingerly lifted what remained of the lid and gasped.

In a threadbare nest of velvet lay a pristine mask, black and gold accents glittering new in a seeming halo of light. Unable to resist, she lifted it to her face, daydreams of masked dancers and soaring music filling her vision. A silken whisper touched her mind as her hand fell in shock. “Christine, my love, I have waited so long for your return. Sing for me once more.”

Conscious

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The wreckage from the treetops littered the moss, cracking under Pim’s feet. He placed his palm against the bark of the nearest trunk, feeling the thrum of distress from its heartwood. The storm had happened too early, whipping into the new growth forest before the development of deadwood.

Pim didn’t understand the complex algorithms that controlled the dome; nothing the colony teachers had done could make numbers stay in his head. He didn’t understand how bickering over formulas in a techlab could solve problems involving living things. He did know something had gone very wrong, something that tickled the edges of his senses, and the farther he went into the steaming woods the stronger his unease.

He hummed tunelessly, absently, a rhythm he could feel like breathing. Breathing. He held his own, mouth open, fingers twitching with realization. Slowly he sank to the moss, the overly green carpet that somehow prevented the usual forest undergrowth from taking hold. He sank his hands deep into its furry softness and closed his eyes. The thrum he had felt in the trees enveloped him, and he understood what the engineers had not.

The plans and algorithms weren’t wrong. None of the dome administration departments had failed their assignments. The planet simply had other ideas and none of them knew how to hear her. Their own voices were too loud. Only Pim, wordless and forgotten, had been quiet enough to listen. He stroked the mossy fur gently and hummed with the rhythm again. Tomorrow he would show them. Tomorrow.

The Folly

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“Come on, Sal, what kind of place is this for a picnic? It’s creepy!”

“Donny, you’re the scariest guy I’ve ever met. It’s just an old building and some dead trees. Can’t you imagine what this place looked like in its heyday?”

“Heyday? Sometimes I think you’re an old ruin, Sal. Who talks like that? And that’s not what scary means.”

“Look, we can sit here among the stones and no one will ever know. The river will even cover our voices. It’s romantic!”

“There’s plenty of romance right over there in the city, Sal. We’re gonna get rained out, anyway, look at the sky.”

“What are you talking about? The sun’s blazing, and anyway, the folly would keep rain off. Don’t be such a grouch.”

“Sal, did you see that? I guess you aren’t the only weirdo around here; somebody beat you to this place. I saw movement in the shadows. Can we go now?”

“Hello? Who’s there? Wow, listen at that echo, how cool is that? Nobody’s here, Donny, now cut it out. It’s a lot cooler in here, you really shou…”

“Sal? Come on, that’s not funny. Let’s just go, I’ll buy you a nice dinner instead.”

“Sal? Oh, hi. I told her there was someone in there; she rope you into her little game? Tell her she’s a royal pain in the backside, will you? Maybe she can hitch a ride home with you, I’m through.”

“Dooohhhnnnyyyy…”

The Watch

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The sound of the sailors’ feet shifting against the boards grated on the silence. A whispered prayer floated unintelligibly over the water, blending with the fog like something unearthly and dreadful. There should have been waves noisily licking below, the creak of rigging in the shift of the wind.

Edwin closed his eyes, his hands clenching on the railing. Why did the sun he could just make out blazing above not burn off the fog? Could it be the sea witches come to claim souls, as the old seaman claimed? He forced his eyes open and peered into the blanket of white. A good watchman might even see the witches in time to save the crew. Maybe.

A shadow flicked across the dull red glow that was the sun, then another. Whispers became mutters, and a hatch rattled farther up the deck. Edwin set his jaw. He would not abandon his post, no matter how cowardly his peers. He did wish for one of those fine pistols he’d seen while scrubbing down the captain’s cabin, though. He’d bet his shark tooth necklace that a bullet from one of those would even stop a spectre in the fog.

Were those shadows or just swirls in the fog? He swallowed. Maybe not his necklace, after all. He rubbed his thumb across the edges of the teeth, the sharp danger of it slowing his racing pulse. A deeper darkness spread like a great wing just beyond the grayness, and he opened his mouth to call the alert, unaware of the other wrapping soundless coils around his neck.

Frost

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There were lights in the mist. I glanced at the sun overhead as if to reassure myself that it was in fact daylight, that the glare that squinted my eyelids reflected from the snow. Surely that’s all it was, my eyes playing tricks. It was just bright spots under the trees where the light made it through the canopy.

There was no canopy. The branches were bare except for the straight evergreens, but they stretched over summer shadows. And there were lights, dancing now in a fog that drifted like smoke. I shivered, shuddered really, but my feet wouldn’t obey my will to run. Run as fast as you can. Run away!

There were footprints on the bridge. Someone had scraped the path, and the handrails might have never seen snow, but the boards underfoot were invisible through a layer of scuffled snow and ice. Flakes puffed up and fell again as I watched, leaving new marks. My teeth chattered, and I shook my head frantically.

Gran had told me of the frost brownies. Tales for children. No serious adult would believe such fairy stories, but then again Gran had always been a bit strange. A puff of snow fell across my shoe and I stared at it without comprehension. Ice crawled up my leg, tickled my spine like sweat in the summer except in reverse. My hair crackled slightly and a loose lock fell into my face, swinging oddly. Then it giggled.

The Castle

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“Hurry! We’re gonna get caught in it!” Jenny shrieked, stumbling over the rocks on her way down the hill.

“Don’t be a wimp!” Jake grumbled behind her, hopping from stone to stone instead. “It’s just water! Why are you such a GIRL?”

“I AM a girl, stupid!” Jenny stuck her tongue out, then pulled up short at the path, staring straight ahead with her mouth open.

“Woah, where’d that come from?” Jake hopped from the last stone into the dirt. A loud pattering of drops slapped the top of the hill, accompanied by a gust of wind and a clap of thunder. “Come on, let’s go inside.”

“It’s creepy!” Jenny hung back, glancing from the shell of castle that had apparently sprung out of the moors to the sheets of rain darkening the clouds behind them.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Jake grabbed his sister’s arm and yanked her into the shelter of the stone tower at the corner of the castle. Despite the high, circular windows, the tower was dark, and the children shivered in the still air.

“Jake,” the girl whimpered. “I don’t like it here! I wanna go home!”

“Shh! Did you hear that?” Jake clapped a hand over her mouth and peered wildly into the darkness. The children huddled together, even Jake beginning to admit to himself that he was frightened.

Lightning flashed, and something far above split with a resounding boom that drowned the thunder. The walls of the tower shimmered and crackled with energy, their dim light reflecting from something tall and metallic in the center of the room.

As the light went out, Jake caught his breath. “Jenny,” he whispered, his voice quivering. “Did you see it move?”

A clank echoed against the stone, and Jenny screamed.

The Accident

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Something was wrong. She must have hit her head harder than she thought; could a concussion make you see color differently? She touched her forehead gingerly and pushed herself to her feet. What had she been doing? Oh yes, running. She had tripped and hit her head because…

Something had been in the woods, and she had looked over her shoulder. She’d tried to catch herself. Why hadn’t it worked? And seriously, why were the trees pink?

Green light lit the trees from behind, and she took an involuntary step back. A wild glance all around only disoriented her and made her head hurt worse, so she stood still, breath coming ragged in her throat.

An old man stepped out of the trees, kicking purple dust into the roadway as the toe of his boot caught in the loam beside it. “How do you come to be here?” He demanded, his brows lowering above sharp cheekbones. “This is not the way!”

“I must be delirious,” she muttered, but ice crawled up her spine all the same. She touched her aching head again, just as the old man stepped toward her, his stride impossibly long. Deep purple eyes smouldered inches from her face, and his voice rose to a screech.

“Where is the Artifact?”

Yellow Eyes

This story is brought to you courtesy of my ten year old son, with a few slight changes on my part for clarity. I hope you find it as entertaining as I did.

One night a family of four was driving out in the woods. They heard a howl, and the dad said, “It’s just a few wolves. We’ll be fine.”

While they were driving they heard another howl, closer this time. It was way too loud to be a regular wolf. They heard heavy breathing coming closer, growing louder and louder, followed by the rustling of leaves. Then a man jumped into the road; no, he appeared to be half wolf!

The dad jerked the wheel and they went into the brush. All of a sudden, they heard a scream, unlike anything they had ever heard. The parents turned and saw two yellow eyes above two sets of brown claws clutching the children by their necks. Then the eyes disappeared along with the children.

The truck had crashed into a tree; with no other choice, the parents fled on foot, headed for their home. As soon as they reached the house they placed a frantic call to the police, but unfortunately all officers were tied up. It was the next morning before someone arrived to investigate.

The policeman followed them into the forest. After hours of searching they finally found the children, strung up by their toes in the branches of a tall tree. Each had two welts rising from the backs of their heads, and the fire department had to be called to retrieve them. Emergency medical personnel checked their vitals and they were alive, but barely.

Only later when the children revived did anyone learn what had happened. The yellow eyes belonged to a werewolf. No matter how good-natured a werewolf may be, when he gets hungry he becomes very grumpy. The children led the police to the werewolf’s home. The officers kicked in the door, which had been firmly bolted shut, and found the carpet stained with blood. The last thing they ever saw was a pair of yellow eyes.

The Tomb

“What a depressing place! Why on earth did you bring me here, Jack?”

“Oh, I dunno, I think it’s pretty cheerful with the sun shining through the trees and all.”

“Whatever, weirdo! Seriously, what’s with the creepy mausoleums?”

“Come here, I wanted to show you something. Look at the door on that one.”

“What about it? It’s an old slab of stone, like everything else around here.”

“Don’t you see the color?”

“Ooh, I see what you mean. That’s weird! Why would somebody just clean the one door?”

“There’s no writing on it either, like there is on all the rest. I wanna know who’s in there, don’t you?”

“Now that you mention it, but how are we gonna do that?”

“I left a crowbar in the weeds there yesterday. Nobody ever cleans up here, it’ll still be there. Yup, right where I left it.”

“Oh, hurry if you’re gonna break in. What if somebody catches us? Wonder what you get for graverobbing?”

“I told you, nobody ever comes here. Besides, we aren’t robbing, just looking. Come here, help me, this rock is heavy.”

“Whoa, what in the world is that? It’s awfully dark, did you bring a flashlight?”

“Yes, let me… Did you hear that?”

“Hear what? Ooh, no, something is moving in there. Let’s get out of … Jaaaaaaaaaaack!”