Lost Hand: Summons (part 2)
Nature of the Piece: fictional prose
Character(s): Master (here simply 'the child'), Hand
Universe: the metaverse
World: Unnamed world, home to Master (here 'the child'), not home to Hand.
Context: second part of Summons (part 1), in which a child invents a symbol (a circle crossed by a horizontal bar with an X at either end) and carves it into the floor of an abandoned chamber. By placing his hand in the centre of the symbol, he uses it to summon his imaginary friend, the Hand. It ends with the Hand speaking to the child from the shadows, proving that the spell has worked.
Note: I wrote the first part a while ago and have since revised the shape of the symbol slightly: there used to be a square diamond on either end of the bar, instead of an X. I have since gone back and made the change in part 1 as well.
~'.'~|=|:~O~:|=|~'.'~
`You wanted to see me?' the Hand inquired.
The child turned in the direction of the voice and immediately second-guessed the judgement that had prompted him to do so, for he found nothing there.
`This isn't a joke!' he said, glaring. `Show yourself.'
`Yes,' said the other, `But . . . you'll have to help me.' He thought he heard it sigh a little. `This was your idea.'
The child turned and turned again, piercing the corners of the room with his eyes. An expression of mild puzzlement settled over his brow. `How can I help you when I can't see you?'
`Your investment in the faculty of sight,' said the Hand, `is bound disappoint you.'
The child stopped, considering the remark carefully. Sight, apparently, was the problem. He didn't understand much more than that, but knew from experience that further explanation would not be forthcoming. It would have to suffice. He closed his eyes, took a breath, and reached out into his surroundings with his other senses. He could smell the dampness of the earth, mingled with the distinctive odor of the dilapidated, post-human structure. Beyond, the leaves rustled gently in the summer breeze. Holding his hands out before him, he took an experimental step forward.
`Not quite,' said the voice, quietly.
The boy paused and, boldly, let his hands fall to his sides. He took another step, and then another.
`No,' said the Hand, sighing again. The child paid it no heed, stumbling on in a kind of circle. There was another smell, now --- a smell like the colour of darkness --- and another feeling, like an electric wind. He reached towards it.
`No,' said the Hand, and for the first time in their acquaintance it raised its voice in alarm: `No no no no no STOP.'
The child froze, a little startled. The wind subsided, and the smell along with it, until they were no more than a scarce-perceptible hum beneath the surface of the room.
`---please,' finished the Hand, retreating once again into its more customary, demure tones. `Your eyes are not the problem,' it explained, `and since as you are so accustomed to their use, I don't suggest this as an occasion to experiment in getting by without them. All you will accomplish with that is . . . a head injury.'
The child frowned. `Then why did you---?'
`I meant only that you must not invest too much in them. You must not . . . you must not think with sight alone,' it concluded, and fell silent.
Still fixed to the spot, the child furrowed his brow in concentration, then relaxed. He opened his eyes, but continued to hone in on the underlying hum --- the inner wind, and the scent of darkness beneath the skin of things. He scanned the room, trying not to expect merely to see what he was looking for. He looked without looking.
`Show yourself,' he said again, and there was a deadly authority in his voice.
`That's better,' said the Hand. `Now step a little to your left.'
The boy complied.
`Other left,' the Hand corrected.
As the voice guided him, it seemed to converge upon a more distinct location, somewhere directly in front of him. As he stepped to the left, he felt the world around him shimmer and shift like a hologram.
`Now look down.'
Looking without looking, the boy obeyed. He was standing over the symbol that he had carved into the dirt, but there was a depth to it that had not been there before. The circle and the bar, once merely a two-dimensional figure, now appeared to be made from thick metal rods, affixed not merely to the floor, but to the surface of the world itself. More striking still was that which lay beyond that surface: within the circle, behind the bar, a gaping recess of black fog. It writhed and turned upon itself as if moved by an internal life. The boy recognized it immediately as the origin of what he had taken to be a smell and a wind, for upon perceiving it the sensation redoubled. It was neither sight nor smell, nor indeed any other sense he could distinguish, and yet it was all: a pan-sensory impression that shot through the pathways of his cognition like a seizure, inciting a kind of primordial vertigo that made him want to reach out into the very space that held him and cling fast to it with every particle of his being. Although he did not understand the nature of the thing, he knew instinctively that were it not for the bar he had made across the middle, the fog might have flooded the room and ripped that space from him, or perhaps sucked it into itself, like water down a drain.
He looked away and took another deep breath, forcing his thoughts back to reason. He was in the middle of a procedure. Looking down again, he realized that the bar was clasped about the middle from behind by a boney, colourless hand.
`I presume you know how to let me out,' said the voice, now originating distinctly from the entity to which the hand belonged, dangling unseen into the seething fog. `Not to rush you or anything.'
The boy nodded. He could still feel the corrosive effect of the fog upon his senses --- a fever in his body, a pounding in his ears --- but, having overcome the initial shock, found the excitement of the task at hand more than enough to distract him from any residual horror. He knelt before the symbol and took the X at the right end of the bar between his fingers, rotating it 45 degrees to the left until one pair of opposing arms clicked into alignment with the bar. A brief effulgence ran down its length from right to left. The wind intensified, and the boy swallowed hard to fight the accompanying wave of vertigo. Then, with uncanny confidence, he extended his hand to the one below, his own flesh passing right through the metal rod to which it clung.
Its touch was like a breath of cool air.
As soon as their hands were firmly met, the rod dissolved, and just as before when the child had felt himself welded to the ground, some force momentarily cemented them together --- only this time there was no pain. A reddish glow crept out from between their palms, then went blue and shot rapidly down the Hand's arm, until it had overtaken the entirety of its form. Without letting go, the child stood up.
The world shimmered again, and all at once the glow went out. His friend was standing before him in the middle of the circle, its hand still joined with his. Releasing it, he stooped to twist the knob back into a closed position. The wind immediately subsided, together with the fever of its impression.
`Thank you,' said the Hand, not a little wearily, straitening its garments and retreating to a more comfortable corner of the room. It situated itself atop a pile of rubble, sinking into the shadows until it was nearly invisible. As it did so, the boy noticed it flexing and its hand in a manner that prompted him to wonder if perhaps there had been pain at the binding after all, but on the other end this time.
He remembered something, then, and approached the creature with a smug smile on his face.
`Well,' he said, `I guess you were wrong.'
The Hand looked up.
`About. . .?'
`I've touched you.'
It blinked.
`You said I would turn into a ghost if I touched you. But I haven't.' The other said nothing and continued to gaze at him in a somewhat discomforting manner. `. . . have I?' He patted himself, just to double-check. Solid.
`What exactly do you think a ghost is?' said the Hand slowly, watching him with some bemusement.
The child reflected only a moment before answering. `I don't know,' he replied. `I suppose you'll have to tell me, someday.'
`I am yours now,' replied the Hand. `If you want to know, I shall not be able to keep it from you.'
`Oh, you will tell me,' said the Master, `but not today.'
The Hand smiled. The boy could only ever take so much of theoretics. His eyes were gleaming with anticipation.
`Today,' he said, `We have work to do.'
It was the most beautiful sentence the Hand had heard in over 600 years.
~'.'~|=|:~O~:|=|~'.'~
Character(s): Master (here simply 'the child'), Hand
Universe: the metaverse
World: Unnamed world, home to Master (here 'the child'), not home to Hand.
Context: second part of Summons (part 1), in which a child invents a symbol (a circle crossed by a horizontal bar with an X at either end) and carves it into the floor of an abandoned chamber. By placing his hand in the centre of the symbol, he uses it to summon his imaginary friend, the Hand. It ends with the Hand speaking to the child from the shadows, proving that the spell has worked.
Note: I wrote the first part a while ago and have since revised the shape of the symbol slightly: there used to be a square diamond on either end of the bar, instead of an X. I have since gone back and made the change in part 1 as well.
~'.'~|=|:~O~:|=|~'.'~
`You wanted to see me?' the Hand inquired.
The child turned in the direction of the voice and immediately second-guessed the judgement that had prompted him to do so, for he found nothing there.
`This isn't a joke!' he said, glaring. `Show yourself.'
`Yes,' said the other, `But . . . you'll have to help me.' He thought he heard it sigh a little. `This was your idea.'
The child turned and turned again, piercing the corners of the room with his eyes. An expression of mild puzzlement settled over his brow. `How can I help you when I can't see you?'
`Your investment in the faculty of sight,' said the Hand, `is bound disappoint you.'
The child stopped, considering the remark carefully. Sight, apparently, was the problem. He didn't understand much more than that, but knew from experience that further explanation would not be forthcoming. It would have to suffice. He closed his eyes, took a breath, and reached out into his surroundings with his other senses. He could smell the dampness of the earth, mingled with the distinctive odor of the dilapidated, post-human structure. Beyond, the leaves rustled gently in the summer breeze. Holding his hands out before him, he took an experimental step forward.
`Not quite,' said the voice, quietly.
The boy paused and, boldly, let his hands fall to his sides. He took another step, and then another.
`No,' said the Hand, sighing again. The child paid it no heed, stumbling on in a kind of circle. There was another smell, now --- a smell like the colour of darkness --- and another feeling, like an electric wind. He reached towards it.
`No,' said the Hand, and for the first time in their acquaintance it raised its voice in alarm: `No no no no no STOP.'
The child froze, a little startled. The wind subsided, and the smell along with it, until they were no more than a scarce-perceptible hum beneath the surface of the room.
`---please,' finished the Hand, retreating once again into its more customary, demure tones. `Your eyes are not the problem,' it explained, `and since as you are so accustomed to their use, I don't suggest this as an occasion to experiment in getting by without them. All you will accomplish with that is . . . a head injury.'
The child frowned. `Then why did you---?'
`I meant only that you must not invest too much in them. You must not . . . you must not think with sight alone,' it concluded, and fell silent.
Still fixed to the spot, the child furrowed his brow in concentration, then relaxed. He opened his eyes, but continued to hone in on the underlying hum --- the inner wind, and the scent of darkness beneath the skin of things. He scanned the room, trying not to expect merely to see what he was looking for. He looked without looking.
`Show yourself,' he said again, and there was a deadly authority in his voice.
`That's better,' said the Hand. `Now step a little to your left.'
The boy complied.
`Other left,' the Hand corrected.
As the voice guided him, it seemed to converge upon a more distinct location, somewhere directly in front of him. As he stepped to the left, he felt the world around him shimmer and shift like a hologram.
`Now look down.'
Looking without looking, the boy obeyed. He was standing over the symbol that he had carved into the dirt, but there was a depth to it that had not been there before. The circle and the bar, once merely a two-dimensional figure, now appeared to be made from thick metal rods, affixed not merely to the floor, but to the surface of the world itself. More striking still was that which lay beyond that surface: within the circle, behind the bar, a gaping recess of black fog. It writhed and turned upon itself as if moved by an internal life. The boy recognized it immediately as the origin of what he had taken to be a smell and a wind, for upon perceiving it the sensation redoubled. It was neither sight nor smell, nor indeed any other sense he could distinguish, and yet it was all: a pan-sensory impression that shot through the pathways of his cognition like a seizure, inciting a kind of primordial vertigo that made him want to reach out into the very space that held him and cling fast to it with every particle of his being. Although he did not understand the nature of the thing, he knew instinctively that were it not for the bar he had made across the middle, the fog might have flooded the room and ripped that space from him, or perhaps sucked it into itself, like water down a drain.
He looked away and took another deep breath, forcing his thoughts back to reason. He was in the middle of a procedure. Looking down again, he realized that the bar was clasped about the middle from behind by a boney, colourless hand.
`I presume you know how to let me out,' said the voice, now originating distinctly from the entity to which the hand belonged, dangling unseen into the seething fog. `Not to rush you or anything.'
The boy nodded. He could still feel the corrosive effect of the fog upon his senses --- a fever in his body, a pounding in his ears --- but, having overcome the initial shock, found the excitement of the task at hand more than enough to distract him from any residual horror. He knelt before the symbol and took the X at the right end of the bar between his fingers, rotating it 45 degrees to the left until one pair of opposing arms clicked into alignment with the bar. A brief effulgence ran down its length from right to left. The wind intensified, and the boy swallowed hard to fight the accompanying wave of vertigo. Then, with uncanny confidence, he extended his hand to the one below, his own flesh passing right through the metal rod to which it clung.
Its touch was like a breath of cool air.
As soon as their hands were firmly met, the rod dissolved, and just as before when the child had felt himself welded to the ground, some force momentarily cemented them together --- only this time there was no pain. A reddish glow crept out from between their palms, then went blue and shot rapidly down the Hand's arm, until it had overtaken the entirety of its form. Without letting go, the child stood up.
The world shimmered again, and all at once the glow went out. His friend was standing before him in the middle of the circle, its hand still joined with his. Releasing it, he stooped to twist the knob back into a closed position. The wind immediately subsided, together with the fever of its impression.
`Thank you,' said the Hand, not a little wearily, straitening its garments and retreating to a more comfortable corner of the room. It situated itself atop a pile of rubble, sinking into the shadows until it was nearly invisible. As it did so, the boy noticed it flexing and its hand in a manner that prompted him to wonder if perhaps there had been pain at the binding after all, but on the other end this time.
He remembered something, then, and approached the creature with a smug smile on his face.
`Well,' he said, `I guess you were wrong.'
The Hand looked up.
`About. . .?'
`I've touched you.'
It blinked.
`You said I would turn into a ghost if I touched you. But I haven't.' The other said nothing and continued to gaze at him in a somewhat discomforting manner. `. . . have I?' He patted himself, just to double-check. Solid.
`What exactly do you think a ghost is?' said the Hand slowly, watching him with some bemusement.
The child reflected only a moment before answering. `I don't know,' he replied. `I suppose you'll have to tell me, someday.'
`I am yours now,' replied the Hand. `If you want to know, I shall not be able to keep it from you.'
`Oh, you will tell me,' said the Master, `but not today.'
The Hand smiled. The boy could only ever take so much of theoretics. His eyes were gleaming with anticipation.
`Today,' he said, `We have work to do.'
It was the most beautiful sentence the Hand had heard in over 600 years.
~'.'~|=|:~O~:|=|~'.'~