AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Where?”
“Why?” He laughed wildly.
“God, I don’t know.”
“This way, yeah, this way.”
His laugh caromed in all directions.
“Hold on! I can’t see!”
“You don’t have to. Chanel!”
More laughter.
I swiveled my flash.
Now, as he babbled, I heard something like weather, a seasonal change, a distant rainfall. Dry wash, I thought, but not dry, a flash flood, this damned place ankle-deep, knee-deep, then drowned all the way to the sea!
I whipped my flashlight beam up, around, back. Nothing. The sound grew. More whispers coming, yes, not a change of season, dry weather becoming wet, but whispers of people, not rain on the channel floor but the slap of bare feet on cement, and the shuffled murmur of quiet discovery, arguments, curiosity.
People, I thought, my God, more shadows like this one, more voices, the whole damn clan, shadows and shadows of shadows, like the silent ghosts on Rattigan’s ceiling, specters that flowed up, around, and vanished like rainfall.
But what if her film ghosts had blown free of her projector, and the pale screens up above in Grauman’s, and the wind blew and the phantoms caught cobwebs and light and found voices, what if, dear God, what if ?
Stupid! I cut the light, for the rain-channel-crazed man was still mumbling and yammering close. I felt his hot breath on my cheek and I lurched back, afraid to light his face, afraid to sluice the channel a second time to freeze the floodwater of ghost voices, for they were louder now, closer. The dark flowed, the unseen crowd gathered, as this crazed fool grew taller, nearer, and I felt a plucking at my sleeves to seize, hold, bind, and the rainfall voices far off blew nearer and I knew that I should get, go, run like hell and hope they were all legless wonders!
“I—” I bleated.
“What’s wrong?” my friend cried.
“I—”
“Why are you afraid? Look. Look! Look there!”
And I was thrust and bumped through darkness to a greater mass of darkness, which was a cluster of shadows and then flesh. A crowd gathered around a shape that wept and lamented and yearned and it was the sound of a woman drowning in darkness.
As the woman moaned and cried and wept and grew silent to mourn again, I edged near.
And then someone thought to hold out a cigarette lighter, clicking it so that the small blue flame extended toward a shawled and unkempt creature, that fretting soul.
Inspired, another lighter drifted out of the night, hissing, and breathed light to hold steady. And then another and another, small flame after flame, like so many fireflies gathered in a circle until there was illumination circling steadily. And floating within to reveal that misery, that exaltation, that whispering, that sobbing, that voice of sudden pronouncements, were six, twelve, twenty more small blue fires, thrust and held to ignite the voice, to give it a shape, to shine the mystery. The more firefly lights, the higher the voice shrilled, asking for some unseen gift, recognition, asking for attention, demanding to live, asking to solve that form, face, and presence.
“Only from my voices, I would lose all heart!” she lame
nted.
What? I thought. What’s that? Familiar! I almost guessed. Almost knew. What?
“The bells came down from heaven and their echoes linger in the fields. Through the quiet of the countryside, my voices!” she cried.
What? Almost! Familiar, I thought. Oh God, what?
Then a thunderous flood of storm wind flashed from the far sea, drenched with salt odor and a smash of thunder.
“You!” I cried. “You!”
And all the fires blew out to screams in utter darkness.
