#flashfriday: The Glowing

The Glowing by Louise Dragon


Chase followed the sound of chanting to a lone rock sitting on the hillside. He laid his hand against it and immediately the landscape wavered, darkened, and smoothed out to become Moss Moor. The lone rock kept its color, but instantly transformed into the rock radio type devices known over here as calmblinks. The chanting words traveled from Chase’s fingertips, up his left arm, and stabbed into his brain cells like tiny needles of relaxation.


Passing through time and space to find himself in another dimension used to sting Chase’s brain with spines of terror until he discovered holding on to the calmblinks for a few moments after the wavering. Grandad called it The Glowing. Chase’s mind always moved back to Grandad when he visited Moss Moor. Grandad with his secret room of potions and tiny strange animals. The Glowing was something in Chase’s (and Grandad’s) brain that allowed them to hear the whispered chanting from Moss Moor even when nobody else around them could hear it. Grandad said that they Glowed a little, that’s all – he said the Mosmorians left some Glowing Americans behind to help them keep up with our world . . . or our dimension . . . Chase was never very clear on some of the details. He only knew that when times got tough in Sulpher, Maine he could follow the smooth chanting glow from the recesses of his brain out to a calmblink and disappear to the other side for an hour, a day, or even weeks of warm calming bliss at Moss Moor.


Mosmorians didn’t speak, they chanted. They were beings of airy light -- shrouded in dark gray hooded robes -- that wandered in packs across the Mossy hillsides of their land. They roamed like monks with heads down and hands clasped in front of them. Chase usually steered clear of them as Grandad had once instructed. The Moor was always warm. Cloudless purple sky was the backdrop for hills of soft gray mossy rock filled with natural caves and outcroppings as far as the eyes could see. The air was denser, heavy almost, but breathable. It was also not what you would call bright at Moss Moor. Perpetual twilight – predawn or dusk – was the best description Chase and Grandad could come up with whenever they dared speak of The Moor in the privacy of Grandad’s secret room back home.


Grandad had warned Chase never to speak of The Moor to regular Americans. Grandad said he had two friends once who knew about Moss Moor. He thought they had tried to talk about it to some doctors in Portland. Grandad didn’t see those friends ever again.


Now Chase was growing ever more perplexed. His Grandad had been missing for several days. Strange men in silver suits kept coming out to the cabin in Sulpher and calling Grandad’s name. Chase got scared and wavered over to Moss Moor, but Grandad wasn’t over there either. Yesterday, Chase took all of the little Mosmorian critters back to The Moor and set them free. He had to be really careful and only take a few at a time. Some of them have huge fangs and sharp orange talons. Others have hideous grinning snouts and large hopping legs. One was completely hairless, black with yellow spots, and looked like the cross between a bat and a snake. Grandad had named it Wix and said it glowed AT him sometimes – like he could hear its thoughts.


Today, Chase took Grandad’s potions over to Moss Moor before the men in the silver suits found the secret room. Wix helped him find a cave on the other side and wanted to help Chase finish Grandad’s work.


Only problem with that was . . . Chase didn’t know what Grandad was working on. Wix kept shooting glowing pictures of new beings shrouded in dark gray robes into Chase’s mind. The new beings were just a bit denser than the airy Mosmorians. One of them had an outstretched hand and looked like Grandad.


~~~


As Chase keeps a hand firmly on the closest calmblink, a knowing smile passes over his calm features. The soothing chants glow into his brain. For a moment, his entire body wavers in and out of existence but then blinks partially back. The Glow shows Grandad standing in his cave holding out a hand. In that hand is a new robe for Chase to wear.


The End



Author's Note: The first two sentences of this story (although somewhat modified) are courtesy of #storystarters, a Twitter Application.



The Glowing Bones in the Old Stone House

#flashfriday: The Glowing

Eyeland, part 3

Eyeland, part 3
Link to part 2

By the time I’d wrestled through the waxy thicket, I felt washed out again. My brain told my eyelids to lie down even as I struggled to keep them open. The warm soft sand on the shore beckoned me to rest some more.



What the hell’s going on here? This was my last lucid thought before I stretched out on the inviting warmth of the shore.


As I slept, strange eyes watched me from everywhere, plagued and tormented me. Like a hermit crab, I clambered restlessly trying to escape the eyes. Everywhere I hid, another eye opened and peered curiously into my dream. I awoke with a start expecting to find eyes, like stuffed olives, floating on the horizon. Luckily, I was quite alone. In the distance, I could see my house perched on the shore and was thankful that the island had stayed put while I slept. I couldn’t imagine falling asleep in this strange place. Usually I can’t sleep well anywhere but in my own bed.


Marilyn would be out of her mind with worry.


What was I saying? Marilyn worry? She’d probably headed off for work this morning glad not to have me underfoot. She was always after me to get out more. Could I help it if I liked staying home? Enjoyed the solitude of my castle? Wistfully I gazed over the river at my house. If I couldn’t find the boat, I’d have to swim for it, weak and tired or not. My muscles screamed at the thought, while my stomach rumbled and my mouth felt like the desert after a drought.


I had to find that damnable boat.


After searching the entire strip of sand, I concluded that I mustn’t have moored it securely enough.


Washed downstream, I mused, striping out of my shoes and socks and stuffing them into my pockets. Not the ideal weather for swimming but that’s what I got for larking out on an adventure instead of working.


I expected the bite of cold water on my toes. What I got instead was, knocked on my butt. As I approached the river—I swear I could smell river water—my face slammed into . . .


Into . . .


Nothing . . .


Don’t get me wrong, I slammed into something hard, but nothing was there. The horizon stretched before me, across the river and into my back yard. Yet, as I neared the river, I smashed into an obstruction: a barrier of some sort I discovered as I traveled down the beach and tried to get off the island at different points.


I could run my hands over the river view, like it was an artist’s picture. Stronger than mere canvas, I found as I bounced a rock off it with a sharp ping. The barrier holding me in place was smooth and cold. Little currents pulsated beneath my groping fingertips.


Madness edged across my cranium, as I pounded on the perfectly replicated waters of the Rainbow River. When my pummeling fists were raw, I slid dejectedly into the soft sand. My mind refused to accept this situation. How could this be? How could I gaze at these familiar scenes of home and be as far removed as if jailed?


As I watched, the river raged, clouds rolled, and the sun went down just like any spring day in Maine.
Continued in my next post

Eyeland, part 3

Secret Eyes (9-conclusion)

I wish I’d never gone over there.
Determined to talk to True after I hadn’t see him around for a few days, I wanted to draw him out. To go exploring like we’d done in the old days before we’d ventured into that accursed old farmhouse. I figured that he was just holed up working on that painting of his. The painting, which seemed to have become the center of his existence.
Nobody answered my knock that day, which is usual in Maine, folks tend to knock once then walk right on in. I’d been entering the Mister’s house like that since I was in the second grade so it took me a moment to realize that something was wrong.
The Mister’s car was parked in the driveway and the door cracked open, but nobody was home. Breakfast dishes still on the table.
Just like . . .
No! My mind screamed. Don’t think about that farmhouse!
Tendrils of fear snaked through me as I cautiously approached True’s room.
In the center of his typically messy boy’s bedroom stood an old wooden easel. The painting perched on that easel sent my mind careening toward the edges of insanity. Inhaling sharply, I grappled for a better hold of my senses -- pulling them in before they totally slipped away.
The painting wore muted earth tones of olives, golds, and browns. It held many of the features of the farmhouse painting of horror, but contained a few subtle differences. In True’s painting, I was frozen atop Pancake Rock with my skinny arms outstretched to the boiling tan sky. Hidden in the fingers of my hands – just barely visible if you unfocused your eyes slightly – were two tiny sets of eyes.
The horror doesn’t stop there!
Down in the bottom corner, the one reserved for the artist’s signature, dwelled two sad yellow eyes.

End

Author’s Note: Secret Eyes first appeared in the Magazine: The TearSheet in 1993. A special thanks goes out to all of you devoted readers who stuck around to see how the story would end. I hope you were not disappointed. Comments, critiques, and musings are always welcome. I will try to respond to as many as I can.
In the meantime . . . let’s glide down the silky cobwebs of imagination. Don’t look back; forge ahead with me into the mysteries of the unknown. Don’t fear the darkness, welcome its comforting shadows . . . and follow me into the vastness of tomorrow.
--Weezel

Secret Eyes is © 1993

Best Horror Comic Books!

Secret Eyes (9-conclusion)

Secret Eyes (2)

He didn’t share these theories with the Misters anymore after he’d once heard Hester murmur to John, “more like she was a little slut, got herself knocked up one day.”
I think Hester's words really hurt True. Tears had welled in his big yellow eyes when he told me about it. He’d always liked the Misters, said they were pretty decent as foster parents go, treated him like a regular kid instead of a farm hand. As far as I know True didn’t hold that remark against Hester, he just didn’t ask her so many questions afterwards. Course, by then he had me for a friend and I could listen to True talk all day. I think that’s why we hit it off so well. True’s a talker with big ideas; I’m a listener with hives.
True had come to Maine as an inquisitive seven-year-old. Together we spent the remainder of our childhood exploring the wonders of small town living. Everything was such a huge deal when I looked at it through True’s eyes. To True, everything about the country was exciting. He absorbed the hills and valleys of West Ellis as though he were studying for a test or something. And questions, the questions True could come up with always floored me. I’d lived in West Ellis my whole boring life and never questioned anything about it. The town was just there. That had always been enough for me until True came along with his never-ending curiosity.

Continued in the next post

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Secret Eyes (2)