A Bad Can of Worms
Jacob awakes to an icy breeze. His dreams have been skittish, uneasy, dark. As always, the content of these begins to slip away almost as soon as his eyes flick open. Yet he vaguely remembers visions of black clouds, so close that he can almost touch them, and stomach-lurching heights.
He is in discomfort. The cold wind bites deep into his flesh.
Where is he?
How has he gotten here?
He feels like he could fall at any time. The last thing he remembers is being snug in his dressing gown, in front of the TV set. He was babysitting his kid-sister, Grace.
He peers around in the gloom. He sees the dark clouds now, and questions whether he is truly awake. The first drops of chill rain confirm his conscious state. He tries to rise. Something holds him fast. In the dull light provided by a masked moon, he faintly makes out a shape against the night sky. He is bound to this by the cord of his dressing gown.
Dizziness and nausea rush in on him as realization dawns. He looks down at a vertiginous void, leading to a gloomy patch of ground, punctuated by haphazardly spaced eminences.
Gravestones.
The breeze gusts anew and the rain starts to fall with a vengeance.
Grace begins to cry. Right in his ear. She cannot yet speak, but her moods are always clear. She’s frightened. She moves against his body. Twisting his head, he can see that she is in her harness, strapped to his back.
She yells now, in deep distress, and the soother falls from her lips, over his shoulder and down into the spiraling abyss of nothingness that leads to the hard, jagged ground; ground that beckons like an ethereal child abductor.
Lightning illuminates the scene momentarily, like a camera flash. Jacob clings to the stonework of the building upon which he is tied. In that instant, he sees that he is attached to the pinnacle of a gothic church spire. A hundred feet below, Jacob fancies that he sees things moving, dark and writhing, amongst the realm of the dead. Thunder growls, frighteningly close. Grace screams louder now.
Jacob is lost, doesn’t know what to do. No way down. No way up.
Stay put. Ride this one out!
His mind flicks back to the previous night; working the Ouija board with Lucy, his girl. She was convinced it was him that had flipped the glass in the air. Yeah, right, he knew it was her. Mom had gone berserk. Told him never to mess with the damn things.
“Open up a whole bad can of goddam worms! Summon up dangerous things, Jacob!”
Bull. Just a bit of fun. A laugh, right?
You can’t summon up shit with a painted bit of cardboard and a glass.
The thunder subsides. Grace quietens to a low whimper.
Jacob hears a new sound.
A hissing. Snake-like. Coming from above!
He turns red-streaked eyes to the sky, which bears the darkened image of an open mouth. A bestial mouth. It grows nearer, hissing loudly and hungrily.
Jacob shivers, from something other than the chill temperature. He twists and turns. Sees no way out.
A new sound joins the fray. A sliding noise. A slithering. From below. And it’s getting nearer. At the point where the church roof meets the spire, a strange tentacle-like appendage whips over, attaches itself to the base. Something squelches and slops as it proceeds relentlessly upwards.
Jacob’s heart hammers. Sweat, urine, tears mix with pouring rain.
He scrabbles up to the weathervane that spins madly; lacerates his hands as he grabs it. He stares, hypnotized at the looming maw in the broiling sky.
Something lashes at his back. He feels suddenly lighter.
Grace screeches and screeches. And with each pitiful screech, her sound diminishes; gets further and further away. Below. Amongst the slithering, writhing creatures.
Jacob’s mind breaks.
He howls like a wounded animal, as the jaws of the sky close in on him.