by Norma Gacy
I guess this all started with the flu … or at least that’s what I thought it was. I’m not so sure anymore. I’m hesitant to share this experience because you’re going to think I’m nuts.
Category: Short Stories (Page 2 of 8)
This is only happening because of what we did. I regret it, but not because of the consequences. I regret it because I could have been good; I should have been kind. I think we deserve this.
It’s a fever hallucination, nothing more.
That was what I convinced myself when I heard the sounds. It was an auditory hallucination and that was a reasonable enough explanation.
The dog won’t shut up. He’s out front, barking his head off in the yard. All of the neighborhood dogs are going wild. It’s been like this all day.
It was my time with Bentley. I get him every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I was so excited I felt like I was going to burst when I picked him up at 7am from my ex’s house. It was still a little dark out but we headed to the park anyway. This was where we spend a lot of our time on these days and I didn’t want to miss a moment. When it’s my turn to have him, I try to make the most of it.
We adopted Charlotte shortly after we got married. We always knew that we wanted to be parents and we were finally in a position financially to allow that to happen. We had so many plans and dreams for the person she might become–plans for what we’d teach her–an architecture for her entire life; blueprints stolen away from us less than a week after her first birthday.
Great-grandmother Rhonna was a necromancer. She didn’t actually die from the bout with cancer, as she’d led the family to believe. She lived a good life but long enough to suffice, she lasted to be one-hundred thirteen. Life had grown banal by then, so she concluded it should finally end, but not before taking me in as her dark inductee. Nobody knew the plan of her death…that is, nobody but me. It was a curious thing that she was dead a bit earlier than she’d planned to be, for she hadn’t finished passing down everything she’d agreed.
I was 13 and Sarah was 10.
The dark things arrived in the room where we sat, encircled in our protective salt. This was intended for we had summoned them to us in the magic of after-midnight. Silence and black had reigned in the gloomy dark of the drafty attic until we had broken it apart with our dark chanting. The chanting now complete, the silence was broken as the house rumbled to life.