Flash Fiction: When the Demons Came Knocking

This was the second story I wrote for the Flash!Friday Flashversary (as one of the semifinalists). The photo was the prompt.

When the Demons Came Knocking

The day the knocking started dad said it was demons that wanted to attack us. He said the sky would break and fall. Gran said it’s the old people who stayed outside in the Otherworld when we came to the True World. She said they had realized their folly, but could not find their way to us. But we all knew grandma was crazy.

Not far from our house is one of edge-mountains supporting the skydome. The white expanse, lit by the everlasting sun curved over the True World, locking us safely inside after fire burst from the ground in the Otherworld and covered everything in ash. But that was countless years ago – if it had happened at all.

The knocking became louder and more frequent and soon many heard the sounds emanating from the edge-mountain and the skydome. Dad kept watch. Watching for cracks, waiting for the demons he would burn and send back through the mountain.

But then I found the tunnel in the mountain. It was big enough for me to crawl into and I shivered at the thought of finding a demon lurking in the darkness. As I crept along its length it sloped upwards and a white light, like our skydome, flickered at the end. I rushed back to the safety of my home, but the call of the light would not let me rest. It was not long before I crept back into the darkness. Gran saw me, but she let me go.

The darkness of the tunnel was suffocating. The knocking reverberating through the skydome now seemed far away. The white light turned blue as I neared it. I stepped from the tunnel into blinding light. Vertigo flung me to the ground as I looked up into an impossibly big blue skydome. It did not curve with the reassuring safety of rock, but stretched on and on and on. The world before me was not covered in ash and fire, but with bright grass, trees and flowers. A few houses stood to one side and there were people like me. Women. Children. Men covered in soot and carrying metal tools. Had they been knocking? I picked up a stone, slipped it into my pocket and fled back into the tunnel when a man saw me. I slid and slipped to the bottom where my father, gran, and others were waiting.

“Did you see the demons?” one asked. I shook my head.

“We must destroy it,” father said. “We must break the rock and close it forever.”

Afterwards they acted as if the tunnel had never existed. But gran saw I’d changed. She asked me in front of my father what I had seen at the end of the tunnel. I read his face. Perhaps I am crazy too.

“Nothing,” I lied.

But now when I’m alone I stare at the stone I stole from the Otherworld and wonder how far their skydome stretch. I wonder if they even know we exist.

Didgeridoo. CC2.0 photo by Francois de Halleux.