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Terrified first-timer is in with this 
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Sep 12, 2017 03:16
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| # ¿ Apr 16, 2024 18:12 |
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The Chalk Line 1868 words Josiah ran, legs pumping, a smile slashed across his face. As he rounded the Greene Drug on the corner of Powell and First, his smile began to dwindle. He couldn't see Sammy anywhere. The younger boy was small, but quick, quicker than the last time Josiah had seen him. Now that he was ten, Sammy could run. Jo hadn't counted on that when he'd suggested they play cat and mouse around downtown. The suggestion had been good, of course. Jo could see his cousin's face falling with every hour he spent in town. Sammy's mom was off on a business trip, a rare occurrence, but big enough to remind Sammy that his dad was just... gone. Jo scanned the street, eyes jumping from storefront to storefront. Their rusted and rustic signs advertised a variety of wares, though truthfully only a couple of shops were still open. Jo walked up to the dirty pane of glass at the front of Weissman's Meats, looking for sign of his cousin. He tested the door, finding it locked and breathing a sigh of relief that Sammy couldn't have ducked through the ruined building. Jogging down to the next intersection, Jo considered stepping into one of the inhabited stores and asking if they'd seen Sammy. But no one around here would know Sammy by sight, since he wasn't a local. And most of the locals didn't pay much attention to wayward kids, as long as they stayed away from the center of town. A cold sweat broke out across Jo's body. The center of town. Sammy knew, didn't he? Everyone knew. No, that's not quite right, Jo thought. Everyone who grew up here knew, but Sammy had been whisked away to live across the state after his dad was gone. He was barely a year old at the time, and chances were slim that Aunt Mary had shared the stranger details of Uncle Neil's disappearance with her young son. Sammy didn't know. And he was eager to find the best hiding place, to outlast Josiah and win the game when the clock on the town hall tolled five. Where better to hide than the thicket? Josiah pumped his legs harder, his heart beating like cannon-fire with every rapid step. He took a quick turn around the carcass of a K-Mart and into Island Park. The stretch of tamed wilderness in the center of town was hardly out of place, but for locals it still felt eerie, given its well-guarded secret. Josiah grew cold again as he weaved between trees, looking for Sammy, still at full tilt. As he rounded a tree, he nearly charged directly into a bright yellow sign with big block letters: PLEASE STAY OFF GRASS INSIDE CHALK LINE. Why is this here? Josiah thought. It was never this close to the treeline, you had to come into the clearing proper to see the sign much less-- He caught up short, stopping so suddenly he almost slipped. He shot an arm out, grabbing the sign to steady himself. A bright red line blossomed on his hand where the metal of the sign had cut through the flesh of his palm. A breath caught in his throat as he looked down at his left foot. It was mere inches over a bone-white chalk line. It wasn't chalk, strictly speaking. The city had changed over to using field paint years ago, same as the stuff they used on the high school football field. The paint described a generous oval, stretching off north and south of where Josiah stood. He looked at the sole of his shoe to see speckles and flecks of the paint. They'd redone it, and recently. The thicket was growing. It always did, of course, like any other collection of plants. Nobody could get close enough to trim it back without putting themselves at a huge risk. The few attempts that had been made to prune some of the closest bushes or trees using cherry pickers or tree saws hadn't made much of a dent. Rumors were it had only made the thicket grow faster. Josiah slowly began walking north, staying just outside the white line, watching closely. There was no obvious sign of Sammy, there among the thick buckthorn bushes and strangely twisted elms. He started to call Sammy's name, but stopped himself. There was a chance the sound would draw one of them. Before long, he came to a tree that had been marked with a white X, meaning it was close enough that the city was going to start treating it as part of the thicket. It was safe now, though, lending Josiah some support as he hooked his hand around a thick limb in order to navigate a pile of loose rocks at the base of the tree. His hand left a bright red smear on the limb. His hand. He'd cut it. No, no no, he thought. Not yet, not until I know whether he's in there. Maybe it's too far out, maybe they won't feel it or smell it or taste it or whatever it is they do. As he rounded the tree, there was something new, about twenty feet away, just on the edge of the thicket. A man stood stock still, as if at attention. He was dressed all in white, with raven-black hair and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. It was Josiah's third grade teacher, Mr. Morland. Or at least, it looked like him. Or was wearing him, or something. No one in town was sure. They all looked like people from town, people who had gone missing. Mr. Morland was one of the few that had actually been seen wandering into the thicket one day, never to emerge. It happened four years ago. Josiah looked at it, unsure how to proceed. Sometimes they talked, sometimes they just... watched. Though that wasn't quite right, was it? They never actually watched. Their eyes always rolled around in their heads, aimlessly, like they weren't sure how the little orbs worked. The rare times they actually managed eye contact, it... did something. Reports differed. Jo had never had it happen to him, though he'd seen them two or three other times. He resolved to ignore the not-Morland, continuing around the circle. It didn't speak, and eventually dropped out of sight as he rounded the curve and put the thicket between him and it. And yet there it was again, a few long strides ahead. "Go away," Josiah said, though it came out more quietly than he'd intended. It turned its head toward him, its eyes never quite fixing on him. Its mouth slowly dropped open as if to speak, but instead it simply disappeared back into the thicket. "Thank loving god," Josiah muttered, continuing on. He began to call Sammy's name. The things knew he was here now, there was no harm in it. The sun was setting quickly, and the idea of Sammy being somewhere in the park by himself after dark was not one he wanted to entertain. Off in the distance, he could see into the main drag downtown. Shops were closing, people were getting into cars and driving off to their homes, which were no doubt as far from the park as the inhabitants could afford. More than one native of the town thought they could get much farther from the thicket in the dark. Josiah heard a crunching sound from behind him, and whipped his head around fast enough to hurt his neck. There was another one, a different one, standing with his back to Jo. It was so close... If Jo stood right at the line, he could have reached out and touched this one. Not that he could ever be convinced of doing that. No one was sure what would happen. The failing light made it hard to identify this one from where he was. Jo edged closer, not sure what it would do if he came within reach. So far, it hadn't stirred. Josiah pulled out his phone, switched on the light. It was his uncle Neil. The family had always suspected. Josiah was seven when Neil disappeared, and didn't remember him all that well, but he recognized him from family photos. He'd heard his parents whispering late some nights, talking about how Neil had always been too curious, too troubled by the town's secret. Jo's dad had even suggested that they took Neil, though that was probably meant to scare the young boy into not wandering around after dark. As Josiah looked at that strange, lined face, it whispered. Jo couldn't make out what it said, but it probably didn't matter. They rarely made sense. It whispered again. There was something insistent about its behavior, something more intentional than was normal. Jo edged closer, always keeping one eye on the white line, not wanting to lose track of it in the growing twilight. "are you a friend?" The words sent a shiver down Josiah's spine. Something about its voice felt wrong, the way they wormed into your ear. They spoke like they didn't understand what they were saying, like parrots just repeating speech they'd heard before. "are you a friend?" it asked again. It turned to Josiah. He could have sworn it was looking for an answer. "Maybe I'm a friend, yeah... I'm looking for someone," Josiah said. "A boy, he may have gone past. He looks like--" he stopped himself. He'd nearly said he looks like your son, though Jo wasn't certain why the words had risen, unbidden. It looked him in the eye. "friends help friends." "Yes, they do. Can you help me? I could be your friend," Josiah said, though the words gave him a deep, sickly feeling in his gut. "between friends, there are no secrets. he is here. he is new. he could leave, if shown the way." Josiah was speechless. He'd never heard one talk this much, or this coherently. "How? How do I show him the way?" "i will show you the way first." It raised an arm, pointing back the way Josiah had come. A few strides back, the white line had changed. It had been an unbroken circle, Josiah was certain of that. But now it wasn't. A few strides back, the white circle was broken, and instead two long parallel lines led right up to the thicket, like a garden path. It was giving him a path in, a path to find Sammy. Josiah looked out at the lights of downtown again, not wanting to enter. But if Sammy was in there, he had to get him out. Jo walked to the start of the path and turned to look, one final time, at the not-Neil. It nodded, then turned away once more. Josiah walked down the path, feeling slightly faint. With a tentative hand, he reached out, brushed aside a springy limb, and stepped into the thicket. The foliage closed behind him like a solid verdant wall. The not-Neil was not Neil anymore. "friends do not abandon their friends," it said in a younger voice, to no one at all, as it looked at the bright red line on the flesh of its palm.
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Sep 18, 2017 02:25
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Thanks for the crits tyran! And I was certain I'd end up with a DM on my first time out, bullet dodged for now
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Sep 19, 2017 19:32
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I am in, news at 6
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Sep 26, 2017 16:46
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Beyond the Black Curtain 1651 words I wrenched down what felt like the thousandth clamp, locking another light to the row of battens over the stage. “Coming down,” I called, turning a dial and pressing a button on the control panel of the basket lift. I scanned the stage below as the Genie whined and cranked downwards. Andrew was nowhere in sight. If he had any sense, he’d finally given up and was curled up on a cot in one of the dressing rooms, hemmed in by the colorful collection of costumes, ready for the actors who’d be coming in just a few hours for morning rehearsals. A yawn forced its way out of my own mouth. Andrew wasn’t the only walking dead around the theater. The whole production team had been thrown by a sudden change in what show we were staging. The board at the Randolph Theater had been building up to The King in Yellow for ages, touting the remounting of a “long lost work of art.” The whole process had been strange, though. Information was sparse, Jonas the director was a walking enigma, the show itself was an odd mashup of a sacred text and murder mystery. None of us had a script in hand for more than a day or two when the lead actor just up and disappeared. When Noah left, so did the show. We were all pretty shaken, given he just walked out of the theater one night and never returned. Andrew and I had come up through college with Noah, so it felt particularly sharp to us. It only got worse, though. After Noah split, director Jonas locked himself in a hotel room for a couple of days, buried his head in the script. We thought he was re-staging the show, or meeting with a new lead, but turns out he was piecing together evidence that Noah was taken by someone. It was a batty idea at first blush, but Randolph was no sprawling metropolis. Few hiding places sprung to mind, and fewer still when it was discovered Noah hadn’t taken his car when he split. We tried to coax Jonas out of his hotel room, but ended up having to call the cops. A desk clerk opened up the room. No Jonas, just a mess of script pages strewn across the floor, and a few select pages tacked up on the wall, certain odd passages circled in dark ink. I had a nagging itch at the back of my brain from the whole experience that wasn’t totally quieted by the shift to working on a kinder, gentler Golden Age musical. I still half-expected Noah to walk through the stage door at the start of each rehearsal. Tonight was another of an unbroken string of all-nighters I had to pull. Scenic was busting their asses to get the sets upright before tech rehearsals, so they were camped onstage just about any moment it was free, at least until 11pm. Then it was my dark, lonely kingdom for a few hours, until the actors rolled in a little after breakfast. Well, lonely but for Andrew, who had appointed himself the team’s all-in-one cheerleader and drill sergeant in an effort to bring all the pieces together in time. “I’m downloading the video from tonight’s rehearsal if you wanna take a look.” The voice made me nearly jump out of my own skin. I spun around and spotted Andrew hunched behind his laptop, his face lit up with a dim blue glow. “Awesome, I need to take a look at the last number in Act II, I was staring at my script and it flew by me,” I said, tossing the wrench on my backpack and dropping into one of the red-cushioned seats with a satisfied plonk. Andrew scrolled through the footage, finding the top of the final musical number in the show. A few dozen tinny voices crackled out of the laptop’s speakers. As the number ended, I pulled out a notebook to write down some notes. Suddenly I heard more singing, before it stopped again. And once more. I looked up to Andrew. His eyes were glued to the screen as he backed up the footage to watch the last few seconds of the number again. His jaw was clenched. “What is it?” I asked, moving a seat closer to him. I opened my mouth to repeat the question when he didn’t respond. At that moment, though, I saw what he did. Far upstage, behind the dancing actors in the video, there was one stationary figure. It seemingly appeared from nowhere as a dancer passed by, and similarly evaporated into nothing moments later as another actor moved between it and the camera. It was stock still, dressed in ragged pants and a faded red military jacket. It held what looked like a twisted shepherd’s crook, the end of it placed just next to one of its dirty, blackened feet. Worst was the faded indigo sack that covered its head. The eyeholes cut into the sack seemed to glow faintly from within, two ruddy pinpricks of light staring out from their depths. “Somebody thinks they’re goddamned hilarious,” Andrew said. “You think it’s a prank? Someone with poor taste trying to shake everybody up?” I asked. Andrew turned to lock eyes with me. “Could be. Then again, maybe it’s not a prank.” The insinuation hung in the air, like a cloud, between the two of us. The costume had been Noah’s. I couldn’t take it any longer. I slapped the laptop shut, cutting off another repeat of the final verse and nearly smashing one of Andrew’s fingers in the bargain. “Enough. We’re tired, things have been… trying, and someone has a poor sense of appropriate pranks. Whatever was up with Noah, I don’t think it’s like him to show up weeks later, haunting the theater.” I went to the light board a few seats away and began punching in cues. Andrew tapped his laptop absentmindedly, as if debating whether he should crack it open again. The tapping stopped, and I heard a sharp intake of breath. “What’s that?” Andrew asked. I looked to where he was pointing. “Behind the scrim,” he added at a near-whisper. I pushed up a fader, bringing up a bank of lights behind the scrim. A figure stood behind the gauzy black curtain. I stood, leaning over the table to get a better look. Andrew mirrored me. “Could you switch on the work lights?” Andrew asked. I turned to head to the control booth. It wasn’t there. Neither were the four hundred seats that should have sloped up behind us. Instead, there was a single line of chairs, covered in cracked, ancient leather. Beyond them was an inky blackness that seemed to yawn into nothingness. I reached out to grab Andrew’s arm, but he was gone. Turning around, I suddenly found myself onstage. It was bare, and huge-- much larger than the Randolph. A black scrim still spanned the stage, a few long strides in front of me. I couldn’t see if the figure still stood behind it. I called out Andrew’s name. My voice seemed to die in the air. A sound seemed to come in response, a repeated thud-thud-thud, slow and deliberate. The scrim began to rise, exposing the figure with his sackcloth hood and shepherd’s crook. He was slamming the butt of the crook into the stage floor, over and over. “gently caress this,” I said to no one in particular, rushing forward and tearing the sack from the figure’s head. Andrew’s face stared back at me, though he seemed to fix his gaze on something far beyond me. In that moment, a thunderous chorus of thumps came from all around. More figures had appeared, in robes and coats and all variety of garments, all slamming staves or sticks into the stage. They had me ringed in. Each time I turned my head, they grew nearer and nearer. Andrew began chanting something, slowly, like a prayer. In a panic, I charged through the circle of figures, heading toward the wings. I found a heavy wooden door set into the wall of the theater. A sickly red glow bled beneath it. I gripped the handle, terrified of what I might find. The percussive crack continued behind me, drawing closer with each strike. The door was a risk, but staying there didn’t seem a wise choice either. The door swung open inward on silent hinges. I stepped through, and I heard the door click quietly behind me. I was thrust into near darkness broken only by the dim red glow. I felt suddenly claustrophobic, unable to breathe. There was something on my head. And something in my hand. The sack was torn from my head. My hand raised, gripping the staff within it. I was no longer in control. The staff descended to the stage floor with a powerful, resounding crack. I regarded the seats stretching out ahead of me. Each was occupied, but I couldn’t put a name to the inhabitants. I strained to move, to turn, to run back the way I came. But it was no longer my choice. I twisted one foot to the side, snapped my body with it in a crisp military turn. Next to me was a pedestal bearing a twisted crown. Words rose to my lips. I bit my tongue, refusing them for as long as I could. It was not a battle I could win. I heard my voice, used by something else, perverted and strange. “And so we rose from Lost Carcosa, to bear the crown forth. The King awaits.” I thumped my staff once more, and a distant light began to glow. A silhouette glowed, inhumanly large, casting a shadow that stretched like a creeping hand toward me. The figure turned to look at me. I screamed silently, lost in my own mind. The King awaits.
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Oct 2, 2017 04:09
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| # ¿ Apr 16, 2024 18:12 |
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In
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Oct 17, 2017 15:48
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