I - Echoes - Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Her heart also began to beat fast, but she remained deep in slumber as
the night grew old outside. The moonlight was banished from the room,
shut away by thick, stained curtains and grey blankets which hung like
fog over the window. The air was humid and still, a contrast to the
windy weather outside. She slept in her own little pocket, her own
climate,a space which she ruled yet at the same time was held captive
by.
The old boards of the house creaked with the presence of another
being, lurching aimlessly along downstairs, drowning his memory in
alcohol, staring with tortured eyes at the filthy walls which spun and
twisted before him. The pictures on them spun and twisted too; the
mountain range uprooted as if by some huge earthquake; the dark sea
swinging below the golden horizon as the gargantuan Atlas finally
tumbled beneath the world's weight.
He finally collapsed onto something soft, a sofa that reeked of age
and stale booze. He buried his face in the warmth and moistened it with
his tears. They stung his unshaven cheeks as they slid down, and his
eyes stung bitterly.
He suddenly sat bolt upright, and stared out through the door, into
the dark hall where he could only just see a flight of stairs, blacker
against the gloom. He rose, and hurled himself towards them, clattering
against the door-frame and ignoring the pain that began to flare in his
bruised left arm. It seemed to him that the stairs floated below him as
he ascended them, that his alcohol-enhanced powers enabled him
transcend such petty concerns as steps. In reality, he half crawled up
them, hitting his knees against the lip of each higher level. On either
side of him, paintings hung, the outermost edges of a rapidly narrowing
tunnel into which he was hurtling, heedless of his fate when the walls
finally closed in on him and he was trapped in this stifling darkness,
with only his ragged breathing for company.
Instead the narrowing space widened, and the steps below him flattened
out into smooth floor. He vaguely heard echoing footsteps clattering
clumsily, as if at the far side of a darkened cathedral before
realising that they were his, and that their harsh sound was carrying
him towards a door. A painting hung on either side of it. To the left,
a forest, brooding in its own dark immensity, straddling a deep, rugged
valley. To the right, the same valley, but devoid of trees, bare and
open to the slicing wind which flattened the thick grass into furrows
and troughs.
He glided forward, and his hand, corpse-white, stretched from below
him and grasped the handle. He turned it, yet the click that he
expected did not come. His sodden brain struggled to make the necessary
connections, while his hand stroked the splintered wood of the
door.
He began to breathe heavily as he fumbled for his key-ring, buried
somewhere in the lining of his jacket. His eyes strayed from one
painting to the other, and it seemed to him that the trees were
vaporised by a bolt of white fire which roared out of the serene sky
and engulfed the valley in a split-second inferno. Leaving only
desolation. And the wind in the lifeless grass.
This time, a satisfying click briefly disturbed the oppressive
silence, and the door swung open before him. His first sensation was
one of heat, a solid wave of it which slammed into his face and broke
open his pores, causing sweat to flow freely. The second was one of
disorientation, of a wall of dark into which he had suddenly plunged.
For a moment, he feared he had gone blind, until he turned round and
saw the dim light of the landing.
He reared forward and his hands encountered rough material which he
pulled at until it came away in his hands and the room was suddenly
awash in white light. He laughed, and turned to the bed, where she lay
on a thick strip of moonlight, sheets thrown onto the floor in a
glowing heap, white skin shining with heat and fire. Her eyes flicked
open and she started, seeing murder in his ravaged face.
"It's alright. I'll never hurt you. I just wanted to make sure that
you were alright."
Her eyes squinted against the light. Sleepily, she reached down and
pulled the sheets over her as he moved round and settled on the end of
her bed.
"I'm fine. Just a bit hot. Please don't put the curtains back
up."
"No? Don't you like the moonlight? Are you afraid of it? How strange.
How unlike your mother."
She pulled the sheet up to her mouth, and bit down hard on it, fearing
the stench of whisky on her visitor's breath, and at the echo of
madness in his words.
He leaned forward, and his face floated like a pumpkin, dangling on an
invisible string. His mouth yawned.
She sprung from the bed, and flattened herself against the wall,
breathing hard, the sheets wrapped around her. In the light, she was
like a resurrected saint, rising from the blackness trailing celestial
glory. He was dazzled by her.
She screamed at him. "Leave me alone! Free me, father! Just let me out
of this room!"
His face softened. "You yearn for freedom, yes? You want to feel the
wind, and kiss the dew on the grass? You forget, don't you? All that
you know has come from me. Your experience is merely part of my
experience. A whole life crammed into this little room. I own you. I
ensured that long ago. I'll never let you leave here. You're too much
for this world."
She had begun to sob, and as her vision became obscured by hot tears,
his blurred shape shuffled towards her, and he kissed her on her cheek.
But it was not going to be like last time. Then, he had kissed her
deeply and tenderly and then slammed her to the ground, knocking her
senseless before raping her. She opened her mouth to receive him, but
instead of yielding, bit deeply into his lip until she tasted salty
blood.
He screamed and staggered back, before bringing his knee up into her
stomach, doubling her up on the ground in breathless agony where he
swung his leg back and slammed his foot into her side. He leaned over
her and tore the sheets from her and moaned in ecstasy as the blood
dribbled from his lips and the night glared on.