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.
