| Text
| - "Yes?"
- Elysa made her way down the hall, but stopped when she reached the stairs. "Jenavere," she said.
- "When you speak to Antius next, tell him..." Elysa struggled for the words. She did not know what she wanted to tell him, but she felt she needed to say something. That feeling that had come over her that night in her bedroom still clung to her heart. That fear that she would not see him again. "Tell him to be careful."
- "Soon," she whispered. "I'll take you up soon enough."
- "Of course." Jenavere nodded.
- The first thing Elysa noticed was the stench. The corpse's noxious metallic reek forced its way down her throat and dredged up a searing wave of bile. Her eyes watered. She blinked away the tears, swallowed back the nausea, and focused on the rotting mass of flesh before her.
- "Thank you." Elysa walked up the stairs, quickening her pace as she neared the exit from the dungeon. She made her way to her quarters and shut the doors behind her.
- After a few moments, Elysa squashed the claustrophobia, stuffed it back down into the dark place where she kept her Isparian memories, and opened her eyes. She wiped a film of sweat from her upper lip and nodded to Jenavere. Jenavere did not question. She simply pointed forward.
- "Brayden Von Grohl, your Highness. He cut it open. Found some fish, some boots, an apple. And toast."
- Elysa gritted her teeth. "Show me," she commanded.
- Six cells lined the hallway. The doors to five of them hung slightly ajar. The endmost cell on the right was closed. "It's like nothing else I've seen," Jenavere said. "At first, I thought it was another variation of the Burun. Some creature they've kept hidden from view. But the more I study it, the less likely that appears." She shook her head. "No, this... this is something new."
- Jenavere nodded, "Of course, your Highness."
- The thing was as large as a cow, though it appeared more bloated than muscular. Its flesh was a sickening shade of pink and was covered in boils, warts, and lesions. It had two massive, trunk-like legs, and some sort of sharp spine jutting from its forehead. But the most disturbing part of its body was its mouth. The beast's massive jaws were full of hundreds of teeth. The power of the thing's bite must be enormous. That mouth seemed to take up half its body size. Elysa grimaced. "This creature was built for eating."
- Elysa squatted and pointed to a long slit along the belly of the beast. "What is this?"
- "Quite an appetite." Elysa stood and turned to Jenavere. "Burn this thing. We don't know what it's capable of. I don't want it springing back to life and rampaging through my castle."
- Queen Elysa followed Jenavere down the dark, damp staircase. Torchlight flickered against the stone walls. The heat and stench of the place crawled upwards and closed around Elysa like a shroud. She had not visited these dungeons in months. She'd had no cause to. Enemies of the realm seldom allowed themselves to be taken captive. Those who did simply killed themselves and returned to their clans.
- The two women reached the bottom of the stone stairs. A short hallway extended before them, its low ceilings awakening a claustrophobia in Elysa that reminded her of the first few years of her life. All those years of running from the King's assassins, creeping through tunnels and hiding in basements. A panic rose in Elysa's chest and took hold of her heart. She closed her eyes and breathed, willing the feeling away. She felt Jenavere's eyes on her, and became even more panicked. A queen should not show weakness in front of her subjects. Even subjects as loyal and friendly as Jenavere.
- Elysa opened her eyes and looked at the bow on the wall, that weapon Antius had taken to calling the Queenslayer. It beckoned to her with its promise of a simpler life. A life of smiting one's enemies, defending one's family, and ignoring the responsibilities of the throne. How she wished to take up that bow and flee this castle. She would take her child and her lover and find her way to Asheron. Turn her back on the citizens who cared not for her rule or the steps she had taken to protect them. Live the life of a free woman.
- Jenavere walked to the cell, pulled a heavy iron key from her pocket, and opened the cage.
- "And that it did," answered Jenavere. "It slaughtered several cows, as well as a few of your subjects. A swordsman by the name of Brayden Von Grohl finally killed the thing near Cragstone. He caught up to it just before it could slay one of our Criers."
- Elysa leaned back against the heavy oak doors and closed her eyes. A new creature was always a fell portent. And there was too much of a coincidence between this monster's appearance and that of the Viamontian in Rithwic. She could not help but assume there was some link between the two.
- It was tempting, yes. But it was not the right thing to do. Not yet.
|
| abstract
| - I just wonder sometimes that I maybe made it all up, if it wasn’t for the fact my family noticed it as well, I would have ignored it as my imagination but I digress. This is my story of the thing in our basement and how it affected my family and altered my life forever. This entire story starts in 2002, a few months after we moved into our old family farm. My uncle had died and had left my mum the farm. We moved over two provinces to make it there for the funeral and to move into the house. It is an old house, built in the 20’s is it close to a hundred years old. It has a history and will probably out live most of us. Anyway, as I was saying it started around spring time in 2002, we started feeling things in the basement. An intense hatred, almost like something was staring at us who hated our guts. The feeling started to fill the basement as soon as you set foot at the top of the stairs. I was only eleven at the time and all I knew was that I hated going down there, but being curious I would play this game. This game involved me standing on the top stair and slowly moving down the stairs. I would stay about thirty seconds on each stair before moving one down. I would keep doing this until the feeling got so bad that my throat went dry, I broke out into a cold sweat, and my heart started beating frantically from the fear that the anger, hatred and malice inspired. Once I couldn’t stand it, I would bolt back upstairs and hide in my room until the feelings would disappear. For nearly a year it would be like that but I never noticed, that during that year, the number of steps I could take down in my little game decreased from eight to only three. In the fall of 2003, I had to get a loaf of bread from the freezer down stairs. Usually I avoided such tasks because I hated how the basement made me feel, but I figured I would do it quickly and have it done and over with. I stood at the top of the stairs, a knot of fear forming in my stomach. I was apprehensive and so I started walking down when I ‘tripped’ on the third step from the top and tumbled the rest of the way down. I lay dazed on the floor, my head had cracked against the concrete wall at the bottom of the stairs. My mum had to come down and help me back up the stairs but I remember lying there and thinking I saw something underneath the stairs, a dark figure with narrowed yellow eyes but I thought nothing of it. I had hit my head pretty hard and had a concussion, yet I couldn’t stop the feeling on my right foot. It felt like someone had grabbed it right before I tripped and fell. A large hand holding down the top of my foot, making me fall. I stopped going down there after that, I would find ways to get out of it if I had to. Passing it off as I was too busy or I had to do something else. It wasn’t till awhile later that I saw that I had a pretty deep cut on my foot. I figured I had gotten it when I tumbled down the stairs but I knew down in my stomach that it had come milliseconds before I had fallen. I still have the scar reminding me of what had happened. The thing down there really started to scare me, because in February 2004, I felt like it was talking to me. Not really talking but whispering things to me as I passed the gaping doorway that lead down there. The basement opening sat right between the living room and the kitchen so I had to pass it constantly. If I stayed near it too long the whispering would get loud enough I could hear some of what was being said. Usually nonsense words, ‘Leave.’ ‘Hate.’ ‘No.’, things like that but if I even stepped on the very top step, I could hear a voice whispering humorously for me to come down. For me to take another step. I would start seeing things the longer I stood there. A dark shadow right next to the stairs, a flash of glowing yellow eyes and black shadows reaching between the steps on the stairs. I would bolt and I swear I could hear the thing chuckling as I ran away. I was terrified because I started feeling the thing on the main floor of the house. It was like hundreds of eyes watching you with such malice and hatred that you wanted to be sick. Around June the thing found its way into my bedroom. I was sleeping on the main floor in what used to be the porch when I woke up to the feeling of something staring at me with great hatred and malice. I opened my eyes and it was there, in the darkest corner of my room. The fear paralyzed me and I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe. The thing didn’t move, it just stared at me with the glowing eyes. I didn’t know when it left or how long it stayed but I just remember being cold with fear and when it was gone, I remember feeling utterly sick to my stomach. I had shook violently for close to an hour afterwards and I was in a cold sweat. I didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. I just sat in my bed, staring at the dark corner that now just looked like a corner for the rest of the night. It wasn’t until the sun rose and the light removed the shadows from the corner that I found the strength to move from the spot. It happened infrequently, the thing going into my room and staring at me. It was never regular, it was if the thing wanted to keep my off balanced and terrified to fall asleep. Always wondering if that was the night the thing would come to my room to wake me up with a terrible fear crawling through my body. Being thirteen, I couldn’t talk about it. I wanted to figure it out on my own but my mum knew something was going on. She told me that she knew about the thing in the basement, that she felt it down there every time she went into the basement. The malice and hatred all aimed at her, she told me it scared her too. I remember thinking that she didn’t know about it. She didn’t have it coming into her room, she didn’t have it watching her all the time. I was so scared I was ready to cry at the slightest provocation. My siblings felt it too but they ignored it, calling the house creepy and old. No one felt the thing like I did. Then, in September 2004, the thing did something I didn’t think was capable. The constant fear had settled onto my skin, like a tight and dark blanket. It dragged me down, the school marks had fallen into the low 60’s and I couldn’t shake it off no matter how hard I tried. I wasn’t sleeping properly and the thing still came into my bedroom to wake me up and terrify me for a few minutes or an hour, I never knew the exact time the thing stayed. All I knew was that it was just there. On this particular occasion I had fallen into an exhausted sleep, going nearly two weeks without having the thing come into my bedroom at night. I woke up to something pinning me to the bed. I was terrified to open my eyes, terrified of what was there. It was like I no longer had control of my body and I opened my eyes, despite trying to clench them shut. The thing was there. Its bright yellow eyes stared into my own and its mouth was open as if it was inhaling something. I screamed but it felt like something had stolen the noise. As if the thing had inhaled it, stolen it, eaten it. Its expression was that of anger but it was if it was enjoying it. Its face reminded me of that of an angry wild cat, the face pulled back in a snarl. It laughed low in its throat and I fought to get it off me. Time stood still as its face got closer and closer to mine. I could feel its hands clutch my upper arms tightly and I remember feeling the heat from them burn my skin. I wanted to cry and scream but all sounds I made were silenced as they left my mouth, the thing chuckled more. I felt my heart feel like it was going to burst from my chest it pounded to hard. I felt like I wanted to throw up, I felt so terrified because I thought I was going to die. Just before the thing’s mouth reached my face. My mum opened my bedroom door and the light chased the thing away. I immediately started sobbing and telling my mum that the thing was trying to get me. She let me lie on the couch and felt my forehead. I had a high fever and she believed me to be delirious but I now know that it was the thing that caused the fever. How hot its hands had been on my skin, how the heat burned through my body and scared me more than its face ever could. It was after that incident that I discovered a change in my behaviour. I felt angry all the time, not just angry but filled with rage. I would shout and scream at the slightest things. Dark and brooding, my mum told me it was like she didn’t know me at times. Like I had changed overnight. I scared myself during this time. I couldn’t control my anger, I couldn’t control my actions. The thing retreated to the basement and I couldn’t understand what was going on but I felt more comfortable around the basement, like I was home when down there. It was only after a few weeks that I realized the thing had accomplished what it tried to do. It had planted the seeds of hate, malice, and anger within me. It terrified me more than anything because not only did those seeds grow but I was losing more and more of myself when they did and had no way to get myself back. I was slowly becoming like the thing in the basement and there was nothing I could do to stop it. It was around the peak of bad behaviour that I met an unusual person, well not so much a person but a thing, like the one in the basement but it was like the ying to the thing in the basement’s yang. Whereas the thing in the basement was evil, angry and terrifying, this other thing was the complete opposite. A ghost, a guardian, an angel, I had no clue. All I know is that when I met him I was free of fear, anger, hate, and malice for the first time in nearly two years. It was such a relief to be free from such negative feelings for the first time in so long. It felt so wonderful that I wanted to cry. I knew it was a male because when I saw him, he was younger, a few years older than me but still young. I was thirteen and I first met him on the family farm. I remember feeling like I knew him, that he had been looking after me for a while but I had never met him before in my life. It was that familiarity that made it so I wasn’t at all concerned for my safety as I asked him his name and if he would like to come into the house for a drink of water. Let me elaborate a bit here, I am getting ahead of myself and my thoughts are scattered everywhere. It was June 2005 and I was wandering around the large span of trees behind the house when I looked through a break in the trees and saw him. Being as curious as I was, I walked through the trees until I broke through and stood on the edge of the clearing. His back was to me and after a few seconds of silence I called out a greeting. He turned around and waved. He had such a beautiful smile and was dressed in 19th century riding gear but he was wearing a loose fitting white shirt. I didn’t think anything of it. Many ideas of why he was dressed like that crossed my mind but all I could think of was the fact he must have been so warm. It was a very hot day, one where you felt like you were melting if you sat down on the couch or stood still for any period of time. We stared at each other for a few minutes, the smile never left his face and I finally realized that I felt no fear or anger. Being as calm as I was and relieved as felt, I asked him his name. The answer made me a tad wary, not for the fact his name was William but how the answer was received. It was like it surrounded me, as if he was far away and a gust of wind carried the name over a great distance. Like an echo of an echo. He continued to smile and I had to smile back. I told him my name was Throwitawayscotty. I asked him if he would like to come in for a drink of water and to cool down. He nodded and when I turned to the house, I felt him take my hand. I looked over and no one was there but after all I had been through so far, I could no longer muster the urge to care. I walked with his hand in mine all the way to the house but as soon as I opened the door to the house, I knew I had pissed off the thing in the basement big time. I could feel him everywhere, just waiting in the porch and I stood in the open doorway to the house for a long time, not wanting to step into that, not wanting to subjugate myself to that form of mental torture. I wanted to cry because the peace that the figure William had given me only a few minutes ago was completely gone. I was terrified once again. I forced myself to take that first step into the house and I wasn’t assaulted by the feelings as I had grown accustomed too but I could feel another presence with me as I walked through the house. I could feel it put itself between me and the thing in the basement. That night I spent the first night sleeping like I never had before. I could feel William in my room. (At this time I had moved upstairs to sleep, the porch bedroom no longer feeling safe to stay in.) I remember waking up in the middle of the night to see William again, sitting in a chair staring at the door. As if waiting for the thing in the basement to try anything while I slept. I fell asleep after he looked over and nodded as if to say I could sleep without fear. I woke up feeling so refreshed and happy I actually surprised my mum. She gave me a hug and told me that she missed me. I knew what she had meant, it was the first time that I had full control over my emotions and my actions and I reveled in it. Weeks went by and the thing in the basement was stuck where he started, the basement. Those weeks turned into months and it wasn’t until the last remnants of the summer of 2006 passed that the thing in the basement came back out. Not for me but for my year old niece. She started having nightmares, she didn’t want to sleep in her crib. William, who had hadn’t left my side since the day I met him, left me to stay with my niece. I knew this because I found myself feeling like I had before he had came. Angry and terrified. The thing in the basement switched targets again. I didn’t know why it targeted me like it did and I didn’t know why it affected me like it did but then again, I didn’t know then what I know now. For a month I felt like that. Then I felt William around me once again. Staying in my room, putting himself between me and the thing in the basement. Shortly after, my niece started having nightmares and refusing to sleep in her crib. We were in a battle and the thing in the basement knew he had caught William between two things. It was me or my niece. He was going to have one of us and there was nothing William could do to stop it. I knew that at the time. I knew it was me or my niece and I made up my mind that it would be me. I refused to allow my niece to be taken in by that thing like I had. It was during this time my sister called one of her friends, a shaman, who told her he could feel the thing and that either we had to leave or it did. My sister tried to do a simple cleansing but the thing in the basement just shook it off. It was close to a year before she had enough help to do a complete cleansing. I was at school at the time she and my mum did it. I came home to a different house. The thing in the basement was gone, not destroyed but banished from our house. With him, the cleansing banished William as well. I felt bereft without him. The house felt empty but a good empty, just humans in the house, nothing else lingered. It was a peace. I had never believed in the supernatural before the incidents, I am an Agnostic Atheist so I shouldn’t believe in this stuff but having lived it, I find that I can’t not believe it. I did some research afterwards and I discovered that I am an HSP, a highly sensitive person. Also known as an Introvert I am able to perceive things that others cannot. This is why the thing in the basement affected me so much. I am still scared though. Not that the thing in the basement might come back but for the fact that we banished him from our house. It’s for the fact that it is still out there, it is not gone. We did not kill it. This thing is still out there preying on people like me. Hiding in the dark, waiting for the perfect time to strike. The perfect time to plant its seeds of hate, anger, and malice to create more things like himself. I am one of the lucky ones, one that escaped its angry gaze. Others might not be so lucky but if it exists, others may as well. More creatures, more things out there preying on the unsuspecting. Hiding in the dark shadows of bedrooms, closets and basements. I don’t know if you can destroy them or even fight them. All I know is that you have no defense against them. You can’t fight them, you can only resist but once they get their claws, seeds, fangs into you. There is nothing you can do. Unless you find your own William, it is impossible to truly rid yourself of them. We banished the thing in the basement, kicked him out the door but once must remember. Doors open both ways and we forgot lock ours. That much I know because we accidentally let some other things in. -NBA
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)