combined elements
"Keep Out" the chain linked fence said. The aluminum sign clanged against the metal links in the heavy breeze. Wind rushed through the trees of the protected forest and chilled the night air. Suddenly, as starlight filtered between wisps of clouds, light was reflected from a pair of eyes lurking in the shadows.
He knew he shouldn't be there but, the irresistible urge pulled harder than his common sense. The empty field echoed a heavy silence as he took the last few steps up to the fence out of the protection of the shadows. Knowing it would follow him, a chilled sweat broke out on his neck as he took hold of the links in the fence and made his way over. Every rattle, every sound, was made ominous as the present met the future.
His thoughts had driven him to do this, and the cognizant awareness that this encounter was inevitable led him to believe it was the only alternative. Quickly fear prompted adrenaline to pound in his ears as thoughts screamed through his head. The dark breath of wind caught his attention and he pivoted to face the black oblivion. The insanity of his thoughts was driving faster as his eyes met the apparition's.
As the boy gazed at the sight of the looming dark, its breath was visible, and yellow eyes reflected the short lived light; and it spoke. "What did you expect?" the deep grating voice questioned, reading his thoughts. "Did you think you could live realizing so much about us without seeing us?" The boy winced as it laughed then shielded his eyes with his arms as it spread wide its taloned hands and shone with an intensity greater than a supernova. Dimming to the relative darkness, the beauty of comparable light was gone.
Steadying his shaking voice, the boy replied with mustered faith, "I know your ways; you will be revealed."
"Ah, that would pose a problem wouldn't it?" came the satirical reply, dripping with disdain for the creature it was facing. "Just trying to fathom us is a problem for you," the brilliant orator began. "Over-reading your own thoughts, you try to find us where we are not and cast us out of our own home!" The grating voice has abated from a growl to hiss.
"You have no place here," came the chattering reply. The air had suddenly grown cold and the boy balled his hands into sweaty fists at his side.
"Insolent child!" came the mocking reply. "No one will listen to you- blindness will slip over their unbelieving eyes and naivety will stop their hearing." Amusement curled around the fanged teeth of the spirit.
"I am not Alone," was the simple answer and it shivered at the implication. What the simple answer meant, only one could guess. It growled with a veracity that shook the insides of the boy and returned to the wind, a dark cloud sifting through the fence from whence it had come.
Produced by Frank Paretti's series This Present Darkness, C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters and a multitude of thoughts.
--Rebecca