Status: To be updated in micro-segments.
It's Only the Rain
Thirteen Mean
By moonlight, large shadows glided through the nightmares of two little girls, blacking out the stars here and there. They sometimes joined together to form a barrier before Heaven, so that those children could never meet God.
In the twilight, the hour of moths, many shapes flitted. Jen and Amy sat in the loft by the window, kneeling in the fresh straw harvested that autumn, an ancient kerosene lantern for their light. Wrought iron and black as the Hell’s furnace and the darkness it guarded against, it had an eye that shone from behind clouded glass, half blind from seeing through time.
Suddenly, a bolt of lightning split the sky, illuminating soaring hexagons as wide as the barn’s double doors. Amy, with her auburn hair, and Jen, black as sin, shrieked and huddled together. ‘The Other Ones!’ they cried. ‘The Other Ones are coming to get us!’ That night, it was my job to look after the younglings and their bogeymen. I brought them a blanket, hushed them up and put them to bed.
‘They’re only big bats,’ I assured the children. ‘Taylor is fast, and has never been caught by an Other One. He’ll be just fine. Daphne and Alastair will be, too.’
As I tucked the girls in, the biggest of the black shapes wheeled closer to the barn, buffeting the walls with air that howled and whooshed. In the distance, the sound of wailing could be heard, lashed apart by the downpour. Screams were also audible. Like the slavering thunderclaps on the edge of hearing, they were torn away too quickly by the wind. I ignored all of these noises, smiling handsomely through sharp teeth.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said to Jen and Amy, and they lay with the blanket pulled up to their faces, ‘it’s only the rain.’
In the twilight, the hour of moths, many shapes flitted. Jen and Amy sat in the loft by the window, kneeling in the fresh straw harvested that autumn, an ancient kerosene lantern for their light. Wrought iron and black as the Hell’s furnace and the darkness it guarded against, it had an eye that shone from behind clouded glass, half blind from seeing through time.
Suddenly, a bolt of lightning split the sky, illuminating soaring hexagons as wide as the barn’s double doors. Amy, with her auburn hair, and Jen, black as sin, shrieked and huddled together. ‘The Other Ones!’ they cried. ‘The Other Ones are coming to get us!’ That night, it was my job to look after the younglings and their bogeymen. I brought them a blanket, hushed them up and put them to bed.
‘They’re only big bats,’ I assured the children. ‘Taylor is fast, and has never been caught by an Other One. He’ll be just fine. Daphne and Alastair will be, too.’
As I tucked the girls in, the biggest of the black shapes wheeled closer to the barn, buffeting the walls with air that howled and whooshed. In the distance, the sound of wailing could be heard, lashed apart by the downpour. Screams were also audible. Like the slavering thunderclaps on the edge of hearing, they were torn away too quickly by the wind. I ignored all of these noises, smiling handsomely through sharp teeth.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said to Jen and Amy, and they lay with the blanket pulled up to their faces, ‘it’s only the rain.’
-fin-