What’s That Sound – Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

But nothing greeted him, not the girls’ hanging cotton garments or scattered shoes or forgotten toys, just an imaginable, infinite darkness. For an instant, he was a boy standing beside Pappy Yocum deep inside the earth as the tour guide snuffed out torches to demonstrate the absolute darkness of the cave the family had come to see. It was a complete and utterly soul-wrenching darkness that left the boy disoriented and frightened and searching for his father’s hand. That same sense of emptiness, of falling inside himself, gripped him now as Zachariah looked into the cave of the girls’ closet. Was he mad?

“You can’t kill me, Zachariah” came a baritone voice that made him wince. “You tried,” it reminded him.

He glanced at his wife and children who still watched him fearfully from the distance they kept but without the alarm he expected on their faces.

“They can’t hear me,” the voice said. “Only you.”

As much as he instinctively wanted to cry out “Who are you?” he stopped himself. What would his family think? Maybe he was mad.

Carefully and deliberately, he closed the door, hoping no one detected his trembling hand.

The room was quiet as a tomb, ts occupants waiting for Zachariah to speak. Finally, Hezekiah broke the grip of its silence: “What was it?”

“Nothing,” he answered too quickly, the defeated whip hanging loosely in his hand. “Wind,” he said, stepping away from the door, but the answer did not satisfy Hezekiah who gathered her wits and bravely approached to see for herself.

“Don’t!” he warned and reached for her arm, but it was too late. The door stood open, revealing scattered hanging garments and the rough timber of the back wall peeking between.

Zachariah trembled. He expected the Darkness that might pull Hezekiah inside it forever, like the emptiness that held Bethazar and Fortensia. A sudden realization swept over him and made him tremble anew. It was all connected; this was his private hell and it was just beginning. No escape, no atonement.

He looked mournfully at the bare floor beneath his feet and wondered what would happen next…and when?