Free Read Friday: Billy Part IV

Reading over the past installments before writing this one I see I have a serious problem with repeating myself. Something I'm working hard on controlling. Will need some editing for sure to whip this one into shape. Let's get to it.

Billy

Part IV

He yanked his hand back from the poster, his finger coming free with an audible pop, and he turned and fled from the room. The image of those shadowy shapes leaping and jumping around one another in a primitive dance to some ancient god burned into his memory.

He raced down the hall, stopping when he spotted his dad standing in front of the mirror in his bedroom, his gaze fixed on some distant point that existed beyond the reflective surface.

“Dad,” Billy said as he pushed into the room.

His father remained motionless, frozen in place, and when Billy slipped his little hand into his father’s larger one he felt how cold his father’s flesh had become. At one time his hands had provided a comforting warmth that offered a sense of well being and security that had been absent lately.

“Dad?” Billy said as he gazed up at his father’s immobile features, unblinking as he continued to gaze into the mirror.

“Dad?” Billy said again, more forcefully this time, yanking on his father’s hand, pulling him off balance. His father straightened up, his stare never leaving the mirror, and Billy released his hold.

Downstairs, in the kitchen, he found his mom standing at the sink, the water running into the bowl, slowly reaching the lip over which it would flow into the bowl next to it. Her hands were in the soapy water, her gaze fixed on the small window over the sink.’

“Mom,” he said with quiet fear that blossomed into unrelenting terror when she remained where she was, never acknowledging his presence, blinking, or looking away from the window where sunlight filled the day with warmth.

It was then he realized that not a single sound was coming from the neighborhood beyond the walls of the house. Racing to the front door, his heart clambering into his throat, he yanked the door open on a silent world that appeared to have stopped in mid-stride.

Mr. Winslow sat on his silent mower across the street, the spray of grass issuing from the chute on the side of the deck hung in mid-air. The Baker kids had ceased their rowdy yells, becoming frozen in place, the football they had been tossing back and forth suspended in mid-air between them.

Struggling to catch his breath he took a hesitant step back, then another, before he slammed the door on the silence that awaited him outside. When he did he became aware of a steady pounding that was coming from somewhere in the house. He went from room to room, searching for the source of the pounding that kept its distance. Once he’d finished with the first floor he stood at the bottom of the steps gazing into the shadowy hallway above as the pounding intensified.

He knew where it was coming from.

His sister’s bedroom, the poster over her bed, and with a slow gait he mounted the steps to the second floor. 

To be continued!

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Free Read Friday: Billy Part 3

Welcome back.

Sorry I haven't posted all week, sciatica has been having its way with me making it difficult to sit and concentrate on anything. But I did manage to get part 3 of the current story done. I hope you enjoy it, and I look forward to your comments.

Here's a link to the whole story if you would like to start from the beginning. Billy

Billy

Part III

After a breakfast of waffles with strawberries Billy was returning to his room when he stopped at the door to his sister’s bedroom. The mystery of what was waiting behind that closed facade had been dispelled when he’d come upon his mother standing in the doorway that morning. Beyond the door lay his sister’s bedroom as it was the day she passed away.

There was no secret forest, no babbling brook, no dark and slithering shapes that moved along the periphery. It was just a bedroom. Though the poster over her bed had disturbed him on a deep and primitive level, it was after all, just a poster.

Emboldened by what he had seen earlier he opened her door and slipped into the silent room. He stood just inside the door, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom, slats of morning sunlight lying across her unmade bed, segmented by the drawn blinds covering her window.

From beyond the window came the sound of everyday life, a lawnmower roaring as Mr. Winslow cut his grass. The Baker kids across the street yelling at one another as they played in their back yard. The occasional car gliding down the street as sunlight twinkled from the glass.

In her room it was as silent as a tomb.

To his right the door to her bathroom stood open, a white towel draped over the top, a pile of dirty clothes at the base. The bathroom was where they found her, and he flashed briefly on the memory of that night. The air alive with the crackle of radios as uniformed men moved down the hallway to her room. He had watched from his own room, the door slightly ajar, his parents standing to the side as the police and paramedics did their job. His father had wrapped his arm around his mother’s shoulder as she wept into her hands.

They brought her out on a stretcher, two paramedics maneuvering the wheeled gurney between them. He thought he would see her face and was disappointed when he realized they had wrapped her in a thick black plastic. After they were gone his mother and father  remained where they had stood the entire time the paramedics and police were here. The hallway beyond his room filled with their sorrow.

The memory receded like the waters of the ocean rushing out to greet the next incoming wave as he moved across the room towards the open bathroom door. He didn’t know what he would find, but when he stepped around the door to find a sparkling clean room he was relived.

Word was she had slit her wrists, lying in a tub of warm water as her life giving blood fled from her body. This he did not hear from his parents or anyone in a position of authority. It had come as most information did, via rumors and whispered gossip. So he was surprised, and not a little relieved to find the bathroom clean.

He didn’t know what to expect.

Turning from the bathroom his gaze tracked across the room until it came to rest on the poster over her bed. In the shadowy gloom of the room it glowed with a malicious intent. From the base of the tree came a hint of a breeze that carried with it the muted odors of decay.

He wanted to flee, to run from the presence of that poster, yet his feet had become rooted in place as the shadows around the tree slithered over and around one another with a sinister intent. It was calling to him on a dark, instinctive, level, drawing him to that emptiness like a moth to a flame.

He took a step towards the poster, his feet moving in accord to a sinister presence that offered little hope, and an eternity of despair. And though a part of his consciousness rebelled against everything this essence had to offer, he could not stop himself from taking another step closer.

He lifted his hand, reaching for the emptiness gathered around the base of the tree, his finger getting closer and closer. As his fingertip came into contact with the surface of the poster he felt a momentary resistance. It was overwhelmed as his finger vanished into the emptiness, and a cold chill washed the length of his outstretched arm, burying itself in his shoulder as the first knuckle of his finger slipped into the nothingness behind the wall.

To be continued!

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Free Read Friday: Billy Part 2

The journey continues. I'm beginning to get an inkling of an idea of where we're headed here. I believe I know how it will end, but we all know how that usually turns out. Billy is one very special little boy, he just doesn't know it yet. 

Here's a link to part one if you'd like to get caught up. Part One

Billy

Part 2

Did he? He wondered as he watched her door anxiously. At any moment he expected the door to swing open and for Sarah to appear, wearing an oversized tee shirt, her hair a wild tangle as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

“Go back to bed squirt,” she would mumble as she passed his room on the way to the bathroom.

Tonight, as it had since the day of  her death, her door remained closed, locking away a secret that might explain what had motivated her.

Did he believe?

He didn’t believe in much of anything anymore, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy were nothing more than fairy tales designed to keep little children in line. If you didn’t listen to your parents you wouldn’t get that special gift you wanted. You would get something else, something functional you could use throughout the year. Socks, underwear, new pants or shoes. The lumps of coal that had once been doled out to those who refused to listen had been replaced by the necessities.

With these thoughts in his mind he slowly closed his door on that shadowy hallway filled with secrets and crossed back to his bed where he slipped under the covers and fell asleep. A part of him wanted to recapture the wonder he had felt in that small cabin, yet another part was afraid he might fall into that dreamlike place and never escape.

As it was the remainder of the night passed uneventfully and his dreamless sleep was only disturbed in the early hours of the morning by the soft sound of crying coming from beyond his bedroom door. Carefully he crossed to his door and gently eased it open enough for him to peer through the slender crack.

Across the hall his mother stood with her back to him, the door to Sara’s room wide open as she filled the doorway. Her shoulders shook as she wiped at her eyes as that sound of her crying softly came to his ears. His heart broke for her.

He wanted to tell her everything was going to be all right, that Sarah was not really gone, in fact he had tried just that shortly after her death, and his dreams of that secret forest began. His revelation had earned him a trip to Doctor Morgan’s office, where the older women who once cared for Sarah tried to trick him into telling her how he knew everything was okay, and Sarah was safe.

Sarah had warned him they would try to do that and that he had to be real careful about what he revealed. If he told them about the cabin in the forest it would be all over, they would win, and Sarah would have to go away forever. He had done pretty good until he let it slip about the small stream running through the forest and how if one listened real close they could learn all the secrets of life  and death.

That little mistake had caused his dreams about his sister to devolve into the nightmare of fleeing through the forest depths as the others, those shadowy shapes that flowed over and around one another with sinister intent, pursued him. The cabin was still there, but they hadn’t found it yet, and every time he dreamed of them, he made sure to run away from the cabin, to lead them away from his sister.

“Are you all right, Mom?” Billy said as he stepped out of his room and pulled the door shut behind him. His mother spun around, startled by his sudden appearance, and knelt down to wrap him in a desperate embrace.

“Don’t you leave me,” she whispered fiercely in his ear, her breath hot as it tickled his earlobe. With his head resting on her shoulder he had an unrestricted view of Sarah’s bedroom, his gaze drawn to the poster tacked to the wall above the head of her messy bed.

“I promise, I won’t,” he replied dutifully as his gaze took in the sinister intent of the poster. It was of a massive tree at night, awash in the light of a full moon, its spindly branches reaching for the dark sky like devoted worshipers reaching for the heavens above. Around its massive trunk the shadows were dense, filled with slender appendages that whispered over and around one another as glowing red eyes gazed unblinking from the other side.

“Do you believe?” his sister’s urgent whisper filtered through his thoughts and he nodded his head.

He did believe.

But what did it mean?

To be continued!

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