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#12
08-09-2006, 07:14 PM
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"The Necklace"
PART FOUR *************************** For a moment I panicked silently, wrestling with the urge to bolt up and get out--and finally decided, squinting in the darkness, that I must collect myself and light the lighter. I did, leaving the flame on for several seconds. The door in front of me was now closed. I froze. And then I scolded myself. I was always so gullible. I began to contemplate the possibility that this might be some kind of bizarre practical joke, perhaps even orchestrated by more than one person. The situation couldn’t be the thing I was imagining it was. I refused to accept it. I let the lighter go out as I approached the doorway with plans to relight it as I opened the door, to surprise my tormentor or tormentors. But when I opened the door the flame revealed only the next room, its emptiness like the other’s. Outside the rain continued steadily. I stalked in, seeing another connecting door across this room. I approached it. Moonlight came in through breaks in the ceiling, providing just enough illumination to see things here without keeping the flame alight. Did I hear whispering over the rain? A noise? I did think I heard whispering coming from behind this second door. Certain I was on the verge of discovering what was going on, I flung the door open. Don’t ask me to explain what I saw more than this, because it might have been a trick of my mind, my imagination. It seemed as though something in the room vanished, disappearing suddenly just as I opened the door, but it’s hard to say what this something was. I might describe it as a sort of murky, cloudlike mass, like a shadow impossibly cast in midair and with nothing to cast it, which disassembled instantly into fragments which leapt back into the corners and crevaces of the room, as though the darkness had been gathered in pieces and commandeered for some purpose of which I was not to know. Whatever the case, something seemed to be there one moment, and then gone the next. I stood there for a moment, staring into the dimness. By this time, I was becoming certain that my imagination and my injury had everything to do with this predicament. I realized now that I had been programmed by the woman’s story, that I had been prepared to expect unusual things to happen, and so now they were. It had only been a breeze that had shut the door in the other room. I had imagined the sound of the footsteps, and it was not difficult to imagine that the din of the rain obscured the sounds of voices. And then I saw it--a glint of greenish light, coming from the floor. I approached the glint warily, bent down. I didn’t want to find the necklace at that moment, because I feared this final validation of my employer’s tale. When I grasped the pearl string and lifted the object up, I knew that it was too late. I held the necklace up under a shaft of moonlight and saw the beautiful green stone, mounted in an ornate gold encasement and whose outer surface was cut into ten facets, one in the center and the others, smaller, surrounding it. After debating a moment, because I felt for some odd reason that I was doing something wrong, I placed it in my coat pocket. I knew that, despite the problems I had encountered, my compensation was secure and waiting for me at the house, and I had only to complete the final step of returning; and, fortifying myself with this knowledge, I started for the door I had come in through. I had little difficulty getting outside, and was very glad to be in the open air again. The rain, which still fell unchangingly, had revitalized the air and charged it with an electricity. I got through the weeds and shrubbery surrounding the house and started back on the path, which was now very slick with mud. I had done it. I had trudged through mud and rocks for a couple of minutes when I felt something very odd. The necklace appeared to be getting heavier in the coat pocket I’d placed it in, seemed, indeed, to be sinking deeper into my coat. I stopped, and reached into the pocket and pulled the necklace out, hefting it in my palm and scrutinizing its weight intently. The necklace seemed to lose this quality as soon as I began to examine it, for everything seemed normal once again. I put it back in the pocket and continued on, keeping my hand clenched tightly around it. I was determined, despite anything, to achieve my goal.
__________________
************************ Friend....gooooood! 
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#13
08-09-2006, 07:21 PM
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"The Necklace"
PART FIVE ************************ The bend lay ahead of me a ways up the path, and made my way towards it. And then I stopped, because I became aware of a strange feeling, a chilling sensation that penetrated deeper than that of the freezing rain all around me. And with the chill came the strange, magnetic compulsion to look behind me. I didn’t want to, yet I found my head was turning, and my body was following. I realized I had no control over what was happening. Something stood before me in the path. I could not see it; but the moment I turned around I was assaulted, my mind was assaulted, by something I will call an energy, for I have no idea how to classify these kinds of things. I will say that my eyes were drawn to an area five or six feet away from me. And I knew that, in this space, something stood. It was something that was emitting an energy that my mind was receiving and interpreting; and the energy was a communication. Whatever it was, it was insisting to me very fiercely that it was there. The space in front of me seemed to throb with a solidity that the surrounding air did not have. And as soon as I recognized this solidity I heard a sound, a truly audible sound, coming from this space, first faint and then growing louder. It was a rasping noise, unmistakably the sound of breathing.
__________________
************************ Friend....gooooood!
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#14
08-09-2006, 07:28 PM
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On the one hand I just want you to complete this story all at once,cause when I get to the end I am thinking "already?,damn!"
But on the OTHER hand-it's really quite genius. Like a really sweet little dessert: small enough to make you savor it slowly and leaves you wanting just a TAD more. Also,and I have no idea why,but I have been picturing this story like one of those B&W episodes of Twilight Zone:cool:
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#16
08-09-2006, 07:48 PM
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"The Necklace"
PART SIX ********************* The sound lingered there a moment, then it started to cruise slowly towards me. My legs felt rooted to the spot. I did not want to consider the unspeakable things that were about to happen, only allowed my dread of them to motivate me. There was only one thing to do. I knew what it wanted. I pulled the necklace out of my pocket and flung it at the thing advancing on me. Finding my legs free to move, I turned and ran and didn’t look back. *************************************** It took me, at the speed I was running, only a minute to reach the house. I scrambled instinctively over a number of rocks which might have tripped me had I not been in such an electrified, such a totally aware state. The moment I turned and ran, I knew that my life depended on my immediate flight away from this place. I felt my dread subside gradually as I rounded the bend and saw the large house. The rain appeared to be subsiding too. I had escaped. I slowed down and approached the place. The lights were off, all the windows completely dark. And all of a sudden, I was consumed by a feeling--not an alarming one, but one that arose instantly and which was startling at that moment. I had sensed the quality of the silence that hid beyond the murmur of the fading rain. I knew I was alone; I knew that, when I got to the front door, I would find no one inside. I went up the front steps, opened the door, and went in. Inspecting with the cigarette lighter as before, I found the floor bare; all the furniture was gone; the floor looked much older than it had before. I saw with astonishment that a number of the floor boards were broken in or missing. I stepped outside, placing my lighter back in my pocket and resolving not to let the dawning horror paralyze me. When I got in my car, I averted my eyes from the place and trusted and hoped that nothing further would go wrong this night. I started the car up, turned it around on the road, and got myself out of there. ************************************** For several days following, and my friends will tell you if you ask them, I went into seclusion. During those days nothing seemed solid around me; I spent most of the time sitting and thinking. Sleep was fitful when it came. Though I do not profess to understand the nature of the events which befell me, I do believe that, when I was experiencing them, I was exposed to some unknown type of energy, the effect of which stayed with me for some time after the exposure took place. I believe that my consciousness, my mind, intersected with that infinite aspect of reality that modern science does not yet understand, that realm in which people’s intentions, their desires and apparently their personalities continue beyond their physical end. The Henrietta Phillips I had talked to had proved to be illusory, but I had talked to her, had somehow received a phone call from her that morning. I find it disturbing that during my period of seclusion, I was awakened two or three times in the night by the ringing of the telephone, which I answered each time to find only a dial tone. During these occasions I noticed that the telephone never seemed to ring more than a moment after I’d come awake, seeming to cut off, or fade off, shortly after I opened my eyes. I was also plagued by dreams of a frightful nature, though this surprises me not, since they were usually odd, distorted recollections of my terrifying trek across the muddy hillside path. In these dreams I was always trying to make my way back to the large house, running in fear from an invisible thing that was chasing me. But this did not go on forever. As the days passed the frightening dreams, at first vivid, became vague, and the time I spent trapped in them became shorter and shorter. Interestingly, too, I noticed that with each successive dream, the thing chasing me seemed to weaken: At first it was always just behind me, but I noticed, each time I had this recurring dream, that it fell back more and more, as if unable to keep up. At some point I decided that my mind’s unwillingness to forget the experience must be blamed, at least in part, for any lingering aftereffects, and that I must put a conscious effort into blocking such thoughts out. This turned out to be successful, and my life did return to normal, as I learned again to grapple with the blessed problems of ordinary days and nights.
__________________
************************ Friend....gooooood!
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