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Apr. 19th, 2007 10:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spooky_shrinkThe sound is piercing, as if a gargantuan man had drawn in a great breath and let it loose again in a shrill, prolonged whistle. It’s distant at first, but as he takes step after step, the din grows and fills the air around him.
He would stop walking if he could. He has no wish to see what great, unnameable thing could make such a sound. But still he moves forward, step after step. The darkness lifts a little now. He is in the hallway of an ancient manor. His shoes fall against the heavy oak of the floor as he walks between the tapestry shrouded walls.
He tries to force his feet to stop, but the compulsion to keep moving forward is overwhelming. The monstrous whistling drowns out everything else now, and Malcolm knows where it’s coming from. He would give anything or anyone--except Anna, never Anna-—not to look inside that one room at the end of the hall.
He’s at the doorway now, and despite his every effort, his body begins to turn and his eyes come to rest on the center of the room. The windows are buried behind great heaps of velvet curtain, and in the murky shadows clustered in the center of the room, there is a greater darkness, a strange opening in the floor. Malcolm watches in horror as the whistling sound shifts, and he now feels air rushing by him in the opposite direction, down into that crevice. As if an enormous chest was collecting a mass of air for another long whistle. And now the floor begins to creak and groan. Something large is rising up, straining to burst through it....
Malcolm shrieks and a sudden jerk snaps him awake. Safe in his bed, back in Milliways.
”Shit,” he mutters, rubbing his eyes. Even back when he first arrived, back when the thought of having been dead and then 'alive' again still shocked him, he hadn’t been plagued by nightmares. Never any like this, at least.
He blindly gropes for the clock on his nightstand, but his hand comes to rest on the Night Side of Nature instead. Of course, that damn book had inspired the dream. There could be no doubt about it. And just like the dream, Malcolm knows he isn't going to be able to stop reading it. He'll keep going, page after page, until he finishes it. And if the book is having this effect on him now, what will it be doing to him later?
Shoving that thought aside, he gets up to shower and head downstairs. Tired or not, he isn’t going to be getting any more sleep tonight.
[ooc: With apologies to William Hope Hodgson!]
He would stop walking if he could. He has no wish to see what great, unnameable thing could make such a sound. But still he moves forward, step after step. The darkness lifts a little now. He is in the hallway of an ancient manor. His shoes fall against the heavy oak of the floor as he walks between the tapestry shrouded walls.
He tries to force his feet to stop, but the compulsion to keep moving forward is overwhelming. The monstrous whistling drowns out everything else now, and Malcolm knows where it’s coming from. He would give anything or anyone--except Anna, never Anna-—not to look inside that one room at the end of the hall.
He’s at the doorway now, and despite his every effort, his body begins to turn and his eyes come to rest on the center of the room. The windows are buried behind great heaps of velvet curtain, and in the murky shadows clustered in the center of the room, there is a greater darkness, a strange opening in the floor. Malcolm watches in horror as the whistling sound shifts, and he now feels air rushing by him in the opposite direction, down into that crevice. As if an enormous chest was collecting a mass of air for another long whistle. And now the floor begins to creak and groan. Something large is rising up, straining to burst through it....
Malcolm shrieks and a sudden jerk snaps him awake. Safe in his bed, back in Milliways.
”Shit,” he mutters, rubbing his eyes. Even back when he first arrived, back when the thought of having been dead and then 'alive' again still shocked him, he hadn’t been plagued by nightmares. Never any like this, at least.
He blindly gropes for the clock on his nightstand, but his hand comes to rest on the Night Side of Nature instead. Of course, that damn book had inspired the dream. There could be no doubt about it. And just like the dream, Malcolm knows he isn't going to be able to stop reading it. He'll keep going, page after page, until he finishes it. And if the book is having this effect on him now, what will it be doing to him later?
Shoving that thought aside, he gets up to shower and head downstairs. Tired or not, he isn’t going to be getting any more sleep tonight.
[ooc: With apologies to William Hope Hodgson!]
