First and foremost, it was the sound
A creaking, scuffling that peaked and troughed
with the waves of sleep until it cracked
the surface
flooding the dream
and terrifying the life out of
Jacob
He could feel
the sound lying in wait, hunched and fretting at the iron lock
of the closed, square abyss of the bedchamber door
beyond the landscape of his brothers'
sleeping shoulders
If it discovered him
their sleeping hills would offer no protection
Jacob was the smallest
Jacob was the most vulnerable
Jacob would be first
The sound moved like a creature
scratching along the wooden floor planks as it roamed
searching him out
peering
into the veiny cracks that ran
like spider's legs up the plaster of the walls
between the wooden panels and the mortar-work
peering
into the painted faces of his ancestors hanging in dark frames
all along the night-shrouded hallway
shocking them with its dry, glassy stare
peering
out onto the moonlit courtyard and stables below
where the horses grew uneasy and stomped in their boxes and
leaving greasy, ghostly smears behind
on the panes of the upstairs hall window
The sound was looking for him
and it would
find him
YOU ARE READING
The Sleek Skin of the Leviathan
PoetryHolland, 1730. A young boy haunted by nightmares is captivated by the drawing of a Leviathan on his uncle's sea chest. But when the Leviathan begins to invade the boy's dreams, is he seeing reality, or only his own imagination? A verse novella (a sh...
