A Little Scared Boy (An Excerpt)

A Little Scared Boy (An Excerpt)

Posted by A Great Liar

(The following is an excerpt from the currently undergoing novel, The Liar's Lobe)

At first, it seemed the descent would never end as a little scared boy trailed down the wooden stairs. Then his stumbling blind feet hit the surface and the boy took a sigh of relief.

The earth beneath his feet felt hard and cold as he took first couple of steps. Feeling his way in, swallowed by the blind eater that masqueraded as dead darkness all around him.

Have mercy! Something in him screamed. Part of him that was wallowing in hopelessness since the day Grandpa has passed away.

Watching someone die like the way Grandpa did was like catching someone with his pants down. Stripped of all human dignity, and Danny didn’t think you are ever forgiven for that little sneak peak into reality.

He recalled the time when he saw the thing from the Grandpa's room for the first time, a night after Grandpa's died, a thing that walked and even made itself sound like Grandpa used to, approaching his room in the middle of the night, his back against me, and it starting to turn around.

And it was just as well that Danny got scared and ran back before he could face him. Deep within he knew he could never face Grandpa again, not even when it wasnt quite Grandpa that he had to face, but something else, something that only walked and talked like his Grandpa used to. 

From above he heard Jimmy calling out for him. He sounded worried. But Danny chose to stay and begged for darkness to feed him. He had come too far and there was no turning back.

His patience paid off as it seemed that the darkness finally listened to him. He began to see. The cellar was a small round sphere surrounded by layers of thickly infested dust and cobwebs. Against the wall on his left he saw shelves with portholes carved in them.

Most of them seemed empty, except couple of them as Danny poked around in the dim light.  

A square looking black object seemed to peek through the shelf’s opening.

Danny thought the little thing smiled at him.

He didn’t think when Lewis Carroll dreamed of rabbit holes of his own, he ever believed it could prove to be a doorway to things so demonic and destructive. He had thought rabbit holes to be fantastical apertures to other worlds, where life is full of color and magic. Warped in a strange but nice form of reality that make our most outrageously enlightening dreams seem like a discourse into dullness.

When Danny first laid eyes on the book, he forgot to breath. The blood underneath the skin slowly flushed out of his face, his eyes unable to focus on the black leatherbound book he found from the secret cellar in our backyard, stranded in the cobwebs and layers of dust.

Because for one brief moment, what Danny saw wasn’t some old book from the Grandpa’s past, but a thing born of darkness, of Danny’s worst nightmares and most secret dreads. A dark and slimy thing crouched in one of the portholes lined up against the wall of the cellar.

Who are you? Danny choked as the words he began to speak only succeeded to echo deep inside of him.

I am you. The dark-thing said and gave him a winning smile. Danny believed the things had eyes watching him. Weighing him down with a lots of love, the kind that gives you goosebumps and makes your blood run cold. 

I am you. The dark-thing repeated.   


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