Shadows in the Darkness

Troll Under the Bridge

The stairs creaked under his weight on them. CREE-EE, CREEE

Perhaps they needed to be replaced, he thought. After all the house was old and had been uncared for so many years.

He pushed open the door to the attic. The door protested far more than the stairs had. The anger of the squealing door made him feel as though every inanimate inch of the house resented his intrusion upon its solitary life- resented him.

He shuffled around the attic looking for the item he had come up for in the first place, but the deafening noise of the cranky house distracted him too much and he forgot what he wanted.

Isolation was making him paranoid, he reasoned with himself. Houses don't feel. They just make noises after time. Nothing more.

He turned to go back downstairs when he brushed against the wall, unexpectedly knocking loose a large frame that was being stored behind a few flimsy boxes. It clattered to the wood floor with a blunted thunder. Muttering insults against himself for his carelessness he stooped to pick up the fallen frame.

He froze.

Within the frame was housed a mirror, its glass dusted over with grime.  But enough of it was still exposed for him to see his reflection in it.

Silence descended upon the entire house right before a sharp shattering pierced the air as the mirror, flung from the attic window, met its demise on the rocks outside of the house.

The last piece of reflective glass in the house was finally destroyed.

Banshee in the Way

The voices grew brazen- chattering, chanting, mocking. The dissonance echoed in her head, unhinging her from the task she was supposed to be doing. Her mind wandered as she twisted within herself to escape from the bedlam that surrounded her.

Free, free, free, free, she hummed in her head attempting to submerge the rowdiness. Her hands reached inside her desk, fumbling in the darkness through the disorder of a third grader's desk. Her fingers enclosed around a pencil top eraser and she ducked her head down to peer into the gaping mouth of the desk at her discovery.

Vaguely, she was aware of her teacher calling her to the board. The voices were suddenly muted as the impatience in the instructor’s voice crescendoed. She tried to surface long enough to form some response, some recognition to assuage the glowering woman she knew was in front of her now. Before she could pull free from her solitary confinement, she glimpsed lovely purple dust falling from the eraser that laid picked to pieces in her palm.

Pixie dust, she thought hypnotised by the rubbery substance. Lovely pixie dust... so lovely...

“KRISTIN!”

In a split second, the voices were back louder and harsher than before. They were laughing now, jeering and ridiculing her.

“Freak,” someone snickered behind her, triggering an onslaught on nasty remarks.

“Someone didn’t take her me-ed’s,” came a sing song voice next to her.

Laughter pelted from her classmates sounding like the surge of some terrifying swell as the teacher tore the broken eraser from her hands and flung the remains into the waste can. She watched with unmasked heartbreak as the last of the purple dust succumbed to the black hole of the trash bag.

Immediately, she retreated within herself, dead bolting the door behind her. Thump, thump, thump went her spine against the back of the chair.

In time, the teacher regained control of the classroom and voices drifted away. Time vanished. Only the sharp announcement from the bell brought her from her dungeon. It was recess.

She jumped up too quickly, knocking her chair into the boy trying to run behind her to the aisle. Hands grabbed her shoulders and shoved her mercilessly to the side.

“Stupid freak,” the boy cursed, casting her a loathsome glare. “What’s wrong with you anyway?!”

The torrent of bodies bursting with pent up energy forced her out of the classroom. She stood in the hall, dazed and trembling. In time, silence fell over that wing of the school. Minutes ticked by and she continued to stand as though sculpted out of the same tile as the floor, inanimate and emotionless.          

No one came to shoo her out to play. No one came to scold her for being without a hall pass. No one came because no one realized she wasn’t amongst the children outside.

Something reached out from the blackness that numbed her being. She couldn’t identify it and she couldn’t fight it. Something wrapped around her throat and with great cold hands ripped from her vocal chords an anguished scream.

No one came.