Exactly one week ago, Monday to be exact, I was going to have to keep my word. I made an oath to restore the Drowsy Spectre and in doing so betrayed Selene. Rykar would have her name for his dark purposes and I think we can all be certain whatever he did with it would be bad for all of us at the shop. If this is your first time finding me, though, start here.
When I heard a knock at the door, I felt a full force anxiety attack strike. Suddenly I could float, or at least felt equally weightless. So empty that I worried opening the door might see me taken by a breeze. No, I was not scared that Rykar would hurt me. I was too useful to him. I was frightened at the prospect of losing what I had built at the Drowsy Spectre. My relationships, my friends. What else did I have? The cafe had a way of making sure it was your life. Dan learned that the hard way, but at least he had something out there in some fashion. I have nothing.
I could betray my oath. Rykar would take me as his puppet, in servitude, and I would lose everything regardless. That scared me too.
Regardless of the decision I would make, I approached the door. The action of reaching for the doorknob seemed so slow, but finally I pulled back the only barrier protecting me from the golden-eyed devil.
But there was no Rykar. Instead, a young child with the void in their gaze stared up at me. Their eyes weren’t black, they were just… endless. I felt as if light was being pulled into them, consuming even the lights of the apartment complex and the room I stood in. The young girl wore jean pants and a graphic t-shirt with a design that I didn’t recognize. Aside from the terrible gaze, I would have assumed she was simply lost.
“It is cold. Can I come in?” She asked, her voice no different than expected.
Did that ever work? There was such an overwhelming sense of doom in the air that I don’t think I was physically capable of accepting. “N-no.”
The girl did not argue or fight with my answer. Instead, she turned and looked on at the night sky. Where were the stars? “The Eyeless bids you speak, else gold and crimson be your tomb.”
“Speak? What do you want me to say?”
“The interloper’s name. Her safety shall waken the eyes that know the flesh.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You are not asked to.” Another voice stated, this one a boy’s. I hadn’t noticed that at least four more children had come with the girl, with ages all ranging from eight to teens. “Answer true.”
Were they here on Rykar’s behalf? “Did he send you?”
“No.” She lifted a hand, revealing teeth. “You did.”
That didn’t make much sense, even if the tooth issue was somehow my fault.
“It eats us. If we lose our numbers, eyes will be taken. Speak true, and banish your child.” With that, the children went on their way.
“Wait!” Answers were worth the dread their presence brought. “I don’t have a child! What do you want from me?!”
It did not seem wise to chase them, so I didn’t. Despite that, I was awarded with one last, cryptic message.
“Stay inside, Fatewriter.” That kid could be no older than four. “A rain not unfamiliar is coming.”
“What does any of this mean? What is Fatewriter?”
“Your story is but a prologue to the end of all things. The void cannot end.”
With that, they were gone.
I closed the door and was left to think of the strange, unwelcome questions that those children had laid upon my mind with words far older than the tongues that spoke them. When the child said rain, did he mean a storm? As in there were bad times coming?
“That wasn’t him, was it?” Laura climbed out of the top of her room. I call it a room, but it is really a repurposed terrarium typically meant to house a lizard of her species. It was large, though, and contained certain miniature amenities that a woman (or anyone that liked comfort, I guess) might want. She was originally human, after all. “That sounded like a girl.”
To those new here, Laura came to our cafe seeking help after she was turned into a gecko by a trickster in the woods. As it turns out, that was Em’s father. We tried to complete a ritual to get her body back, but we screwed it up and she was put into a fly instead. Well, we kept the gecko she used to be (which had become a regular lizard) as well as Laura in her new… well, less preferred form.
I’m sure I will get to writing it all down eventually, but her spirit and soul is back in the gecko again. We are sort of stumped on how to proceed. Her experience as a fly, however, has made her much more appreciative of her reptilian state.
“No, that was someone else.”
A head escaped the pillows of my small couch. “The Eyeless.” Silence stated. “They live in the woods. I have seen them at the treeline when you are at work.”
Similar situation with Silence. Em’s father cursed quite a few people, Silence was one of the few to escape. She’s been a snake so long, however, that she can’t remember who she was before. In a way, that makes things more convenient for me; at least I am not trying to figure out how to fix her. The wishing doll would probably do it. Unfortunately it can’t help Laura seeing as the ritual we did invoked the Eye of Gold.
Hindsight is twenty-twenty, right?
“They have eyes, I am pretty sure.”
“Like the woman that spoke to you months ago?” Silence came further from her cozy hiding place. “You said she had no eyes. The children have none.”
“I was just talking to them. They have eyes, they are just… not right.”
Silence flicked her tongue. “Or they are not eyes.”
Suddenly she turned her head towards the front door. Without hesitation, she retreated to her place inside the couch without a word. Laura wasted no time either, entering her hide as new animal instincts told them of some threat approaching. Even I felt it, like a mighty thunderstorm was on the horizon and just out of sight.
It was Rykar, of that I was certain.
There was no knock, but I went back to the door regardless. I took a deep breath, having lost most of my anxiety when the children came along, and steeled what was left in my nerves before pulling it open.
He wasn’t waiting on me. Not at the door, at least. In the parking lot of the small complex, which was lit by two weak lights, stood a man dark as the night. His teeth shined like stars when he smiled.
“Come down, my friend.” He beckoned. “We have much to discuss.”
“You can come inside.” Maybe it was a bad idea to invite him in? I didn’t want to go out there. “You said you were going to come to me.”
His smile faltered. “There is something…” Rykar looked at the sky. “Familiar.” I had never seen Rykar nervous, nor had he ever stepped away from something he wanted. He was like a god to us, and suddenly he was a scared one. “What have you done?”
I honestly had done nothing to keep him away. That would sort of go against our deal. Without another word, Rykar became one with the shadows and vanished.
That is when the rain started.
I didn’t think anything of it. Who would? But when it started falling more steadily and began pooling on the walkway outside my door, dripping over the railing, I noticed that it wasn’t right. It was… yellow. Thick too. My first thought was that it had ran through something on the roof seeing as the structure wasn’t well-maintained. Only the pasty, waxy consistency was on the ground too. It was as if a great candle burned above me, high in the clouds.
“A brief glimpse.” A voice spoke from down below. Was that a mouth set in the pavement? “A brief glimpse of what could be.” It licked massive, pink, fleshy lips that seemed to have formed from the rain itself. “A fading flower, a scent of a greater and endless field. What do you think, Fatewriter?”
I wasn’t going to speak with it. That would be stupid.
“What say you, writer?” Another voice beckoned. A smaller mouth had taken root on the support beam of the complex. It slid down slowly with the rain. “Speak…”
“…sweetly.”
I closed the door. No, I wasn’t going to get into something new. Or old, I guess? Here I was with two sentient animals, a cursed doll that burned me when I didn’t make wishes, a deal with an actual god-demon, and now this. What the hell was that?! It still rained outside, but if the mouths were still there the door muffled them too well to hear.
But my blinds were open.
Eyes had formed on the railings, that was unnerving. What caught my attention, however, was something far in the distance. It was like a star, but closer and with more detail. I knew what it was, I had seen it before. A immeasurable golden eye, set deep within a great storm. It scared even Rykar away, but it wanted me. It had seen me and now it wanted something.
“I’m not going to.” I said, hoping that it could somehow hear me and understand. I wanted and want nothing from it. With a finality I hope I can live up to, I shut the blinds and closed the curtains.
Then I sat on the right side of the couch (Silence had claimed the left side, a rule set so I didn’t accidentally sit on her). I wasn’t going to sleep that night, not that I was tired considering my overnight schedule.
But even if I had been, the eye that watched me from the skies above ensured that there was no rest for neither my body nor my soul.
“Don’t come out.” I advised my friends. “Just… don’t. Sleep.” They wouldn’t if they knew.
Why was I being focused and not the others at the shop? I am not quite as new as I once had been, but they’ve been there longer!
It is all getting exhausting and quite old. I am lost.