The Figure

II.

A woman and child entered the empty house. It was old and dirty; nothing like where they used to live before.

The woman saw that her son was upset, and she bent down and smiled at him. "Don't worry, sweetie. We'll clean it up and do some repairs and in sha Allah, it will look beautiful."

The boy smiled back bravely.

"Now, c'mon, let's go get the rest of our stuff." She took his hand, and together they made several trips to empty out an ugly van outside, carrying boxes and suitcases.

The sun shone brightly on mother and son as they bustled about the house, trying to make it livable. But sunshine is a temporary thing, and its protection does not-- cannot-- last forever.

Darkness fell, and from the recesses of the house, a figure awoke after centuries of laying dormant, lured by the scent of fresh life.

The woman tucked her son into bed. She gazed upon him for a few moments before walking out of the boy's room and sitting at the top of the stairs. And she cried out the pain that she had been holding in all day.

The figure observed the boy on the bed. It had known a boy once but this was not that boy. If that boy was not here, then this one had no right to be here, either. It moved towards him, but then stopped at the sound of crying. That was strange. Usually they cried after it was done with the children.

Following the sound, the figure floated out of the boy's room until it came to the woman. It listened to her anguished sobs that she tried so desperately tried to muffle. The figure stayed there, watching, taking pleasure in the despair.

After a little bit, the woman stopped crying, and let out an occasional dry sob. And then the boy approached her.

"Mama?" Wrapping his arm around his mother as well as he could, he said, "Don't be sad, Mama."

She unwrapped his arms and took him into her lap.

He looked up at her and asked innocently, "Are you sad because of Papa?"

She took in his hazel eyes, his dark hair. His brow was furrowed, his lashes long like a girl's, his chin just a bit too small for his face.

"You look just like him," she whispered, and the figure smiled a ghastly smile, for it knew what was coming next.

The woman grabbed the child's arm and pulled him closer to her, her tears falling afresh. "May Allah make you a better man," she said, weeping.

The figure went still. This was not how it was supposed to happen. In fury, it lashed out its arm. It would kill both mother and child with one push. But it could not touch them. It tried and tried, but it was like a barrier protected them.

And then it realized that the woman was singing? Chanting? It did not know, but the words were of a strange tongue, and somehow they were weakening it.

The figure screamed, and had the humans been able to hear her, they would have fled in terror.

And thus the night passed with the figure screaming and a woman holding her child, protecting him with words of power, for they were the words spoken in faith.

When the very first stream of light hit the dark sky, the figure disappeared, and the woman picked up her sleeping son and put him in bed.

But darkness falls again, as it always does. Once again, the figure appeared in the little boy's room. It watched as the woman tucked in the boy, and she spoke in that strange tongue, and whatever she said, the boy repeated.

And then the woman left, and the figure reached for the boy, but again, it was as if there was a barrier between them that it could not cross.

The figure howled. In an old tree down the road, a murder of sleeping crows suddenly roused and took flight, fleeing from the evil that emanated from the house. But the child and his mother continued to sleep, oblivious and unafraid.

It came back every night, but each night, it was powerless. Frustrated, the figure would howl for its master and curse at the woman, that weak, worthless collection of bones and skin that unknowingly thwarted its every attempt.

One night, the figure stood over the boy as he slept.

Everything within the figure burned with hatred, and how it wished that it could burn the boy and his mother just as they burned the figure.

The boy startled awake, and looked at the figure, and the figure felt a ghastly pleasure for it knew in that moment that the boy could see it.

The boy screamed and the figure laughed.

The mother came running in. She ran past the figure, and clutched at her son. "What is it?"

Unable to form the words to describe it, the boy merely pointed at the figure. The mother looked back and saw nothing. Turning back to the child, she chanted in her strange tongue and the figure writhed in agony until it fled.

Glossary:

In sha Allah: Allah willing