01-04-2021, 05:27 PM
The birds are confused with this long-lived darkness. The cheep at all hours, but quietly, inconsistently. Their songs are interrupted with nighthawks calling, with bats squealing and foxes yowling. I sleep, fitfully, and wander in the nocturnal dim.
Like an evil eye, the eclipse hangs threatening in the sky, the thinnest ring of light in a starless expanse. The Voices have gone quiet. That worries me more than their incessant bile ever did. They are quiet, but I still catch phantom movement in the edges of my vision. The morpheous shadows and half-seen reflections of predator's eyes are gone as soon as I turn to look at them, but they are never absent long.
Instead of Voices, I hear them moving. Silently, or very near it. Only soft steps in the loam, the whisper of skin on leaves, of claws scratching ever so softly against stone. It is unnerving in the worst ways, but I have a silver lining: I am not the only one to hear them.
No, none of us are alone now. Screams in the endless night assure me of this. Whether it is Them or their prey screaming, I can't tell. I'm not foolish enough to investigate. Not again.
I pause my wandering at the snap of a twig. It was not my foot that caused it, and They do not make such mistakes. I stiffen, eyes wide in the absence of light, only aware that I am no longer solitary. There is something solid out there. Very nearly tangible. The yellow gleam of jaundiced eyes catches my attention for one endless moment, before it blinks and does not reappear. A reminder, that I was not alone to begin with.
"Who's there," I ask, voice flat but steady. Maybe it is foolhardy to give away my position so easily. The not knowing is worse, though.
Like an evil eye, the eclipse hangs threatening in the sky, the thinnest ring of light in a starless expanse. The Voices have gone quiet. That worries me more than their incessant bile ever did. They are quiet, but I still catch phantom movement in the edges of my vision. The morpheous shadows and half-seen reflections of predator's eyes are gone as soon as I turn to look at them, but they are never absent long.
Instead of Voices, I hear them moving. Silently, or very near it. Only soft steps in the loam, the whisper of skin on leaves, of claws scratching ever so softly against stone. It is unnerving in the worst ways, but I have a silver lining: I am not the only one to hear them.
No, none of us are alone now. Screams in the endless night assure me of this. Whether it is Them or their prey screaming, I can't tell. I'm not foolish enough to investigate. Not again.
I pause my wandering at the snap of a twig. It was not my foot that caused it, and They do not make such mistakes. I stiffen, eyes wide in the absence of light, only aware that I am no longer solitary. There is something solid out there. Very nearly tangible. The yellow gleam of jaundiced eyes catches my attention for one endless moment, before it blinks and does not reappear. A reminder, that I was not alone to begin with.
"Who's there," I ask, voice flat but steady. Maybe it is foolhardy to give away my position so easily. The not knowing is worse, though.