Page 34 of Florescentia

My Peculiars ruled by my feet, their cool bodies slinking over my skin and back to the floor. They could feel it as well as I could, I knew it.

I held the book, staring down for instruction.

There was none.

“Florescentia,” I demanded of my shadows.

They loomed around my ankles, not in refusal, but it seemed they were lost.

I pulled the robe closer around my body, every hair standing erect and waiting. A chill cursing my blood, my heart weighing heavy, nestled between my lungs.

A creaking sound from within the home. Not something by footsteps, but something from within the walls. First the moan of pipes, then it evolved into a steady, more lifelike groan.

Whispers bounced, laced themselves in my hair. A sharp hiss at my ear, then even the wind from the window whined.

My Peculiars vibrated, clinging to me under the robe. Their cool, slick bodies became staticky, alive with electricity.

It was here.

It had never left.

As far as I could tell, my library was empty.

I could not say the same for the darkness right outside the door.

I saw the staircase, the runner clasped to the steps by brass rods, even the accent table, comically small in the corner and only able to hold one single fern.

I made it to the doorway before I felt an energy, sick like smog, suffocating like it too. The acidic air burned in my lungs, as if breathing wasn’t already hard enough.

My skin raised in bumps, the hairs pulling as if they could relieve themselves of their follicles. It was magnetic in the worst way. Like two negatives pressed together, aching to flee from one another.

One second of bravery became two, then three. One deep breath and one step out into the hallway. The rug was soft on my bare feet compared to the damaged wood of my library. Everything seemed normal, still. The darkness from the window made it harder to discern between shadows and possible visitors.

Stop breathing.

I held it. I held it for as long as I could.

I am not afraid of the dark.

But it wasn’t nighttime.

My eye strained to peek back at the library, the last bit of the golden hour slowly retreating across the floor. Then my gaze returned to the blackness in the skinny hallway window.

If not the night, what was the dark?

Not many thoughts were manifesting in any meaningful way when I ran. The stairs wailed with each thud of my foot, a shrieking from my Peculiars behind me, and then a rumbling from all around.

The chandelier bounced and dangled as I passed it for the next floor above. It was like I was thrown into vertigo, clawing at the walls before I could slip into the bathroom. The window at the peak of the gable mocked me as if to ask if I had any last prayers, any last stars to call upon before I was swallowed whole.

No more sounds came from the cavernous dark beyond the bathroom doorframe.

There was a predatory type of silence, the kind that could trigger tinnitus in your ears. Every bone inside my body knew that it was unnatural, all-consuming.

The door was blocked by darkness. It filled the hallway, where I could no longer see the furnishings, the window by the stairs, the pictures on the walls. It was just a void.

From within the dark, three specks of light. They didn’t blink, just grew slightly larger in approach, a slow stalking movement. The memory of the beast’s form only made my mind swim with what would come through. What limbs would present themselves first? Would it be human shaped? Or beast? Or maybe even something my mind couldn’t comprehend yet. Something never seen before. Something my nightmares couldn’t even conjure.

Closer and closer. I thought I heard steps.