The Dark ✔

The Beginning Part Four

A rational part of her brain refused to acknowledge what her eyes could not deny. An entity snaked across the ceiling, darkening in color by the second.

Finally, a large shadow undulated from above.

Marilyn had seen it, too. She cried out:

"That thing. It knows my name. How does it know my name?"

Martine would have thought Marilyn was losing it if she hadn't heard the whispers originating from seemingly everywhere. She listened hard. Beneath the layered sounds, she recognized a distinct word, which could have been Marilyn, or something like Senna. Although, she knew better. The thing whispered Martine, too.

"What's her name?" Martine asked the girl's mother.

Dry sobs and nothing else. She repeated the question louder and slower. The mother blinked rapidly, barely registering the words.

"Sienna," she said. "Her name is Sienna."

Martine bent down to speak to Sienna. Her hope was unfounded and instinctual, but it was all she had.

"Don't listen to it!" she whispered into the child's ear.

Tears coated Sienna's small cheeks. Martine was crying too.

"Help is coming soon. Just wait. Please stay," she said.

She repeated the phrase, a mantra. She felt she could protect herself and the child, so long as she kept on with the words. Minutes passed, with the mother crying quietly, Martine chanting "Please wait, please stay", and Temple and Marilyn standing watch.

Sirens wailed in the distance. Another customer stumbled in the front doors.

He gestured outside. "There's an ambulance..."

"Duh," Temple said.

The man looked surprised.

"Shut up, Temple," Marilyn said. "And put that damn money back into the damn register!"

Temple sighed, but she slid the bills from her pocket and returned them to the till.

Snapping at Temple was Marilyn's first mobilizing act. She abandoned her safe zone behind the counter to join the group of women on the cold tiled floor. One of her hands touched Martine's back, and the other moved to close Sienna's unblinking eyes. Marilyn checked the ceiling, but It was gone, along with the whining noise that had clogged her ears.

"Martine," Marilyn said.

Martine ceased the whispered plea.

"Martine. She's gone."

A sob burst from the mother, and she shoved Martine aside to gather Sienna in her arms.

Marilyn pulled Martine in for a hug, her friend's chest heaving with the force of her sobs. Marilyn was glad to comfort her, even if she couldn't fathom the despair. They hadn't known little Sienna. What was the point of crying over her? But Marilyn knew why Martine was really crying.

Later (not that night or the night after, but later), Marilyn cried too. She cried for the dead child, for the mother's pain, but mostly for herself. Terror spiked inside as she stared up from her bed at the darkened ceiling. That shadow...it had called to her. Not to stake a claim, but to remind:

I already have you.

Marilyn wondered when death would come.

Already her mind refused the reality of the shadow, though the dark ceiling insisted on the truth. Marilyn closed her eyes and hoped she had at least a handful of decades left before the shadow returned, whispering her name with purpose.

A/N: If you're likin' things so far, grab hold of the star button and go nuts!

Then mosey on over to garyjarvis1976's page to read Poynton's Crow, a horror story with a Wicker Man kinda feel to it.