The beast returns
The beast returned to Singleton Cottage last night. Daidogan was there and she sensed it first. Initially, O’Heir didn’t believe her when she said something (some bad energy she described it as) was prowling about outside the house. Then an upstairs window broke, and Daidogan broke into a sweat and started to tremble.
All three of them went upstairs and found it in my office rifling through the room. They didn’t see it. Not properly. All they saw was the same thing O’Heir saw last time, a bodiless shadow and how everything beyond it seemed so magnified and twisted like they were looking through some warped or fluid glass. It ignored them. It just kept moving about the room upsetting everything. Even when Justin lobbed a stapler at it, it didn’t stop. The stapler passed straight through and crashed to the floor.
That’s when Daidogan’s eyes glazed over and her shoulders sagged. She just hung there, O’Heir said, loosely, like a puppet. At first he thought she might have slipped into shock. Her pulse had quickened and her breathing was shallow and fast. He was about to lead her downstairs when the shadow passed through the wall into our guest bedroom. Daidogan’s eyes flickered and briefly cleared before closing. Then she went after it, arms limp, face blank, her feet barely lifting a few inches from the ground.
The shadow searched the house, and Daidogan stayed with it every step of the way. O’Heir had never seen anyone walk like her before. Like a horror movie, he said. Just like a horror movie. She never spoke a single word in all that time. For some reason the shadow never went near the basement. It hesitated at the stairs leading down, but never followed them.
A few minutes later, after tossing a few things about the kitchen, it slipped out through the wall and was gone. Daidogan snapped out of her trance shortly after that.
If anything good came out of this incursion, at least she’s more eager to involve us in whatever mission she’s on. She says the house needs to be protected. The beast is searching for something, and it’ll return. I don’t know if she made some kind of connection to the thing, or whether she’s speculating, but she doesn’t think it’s searching for a way home. No. If anything, it’s the opposite. It’s looking for the gateway to open up some communication to its master.
She hasn’t hinted at how she might protect the house, but I’m willing to go along with her on this one. The others agree. O’Heir said she was so exhausted when she emerged from her trance, he insisted she stay the night because it wasn’t safe for her to drive home.
Maybe we’ve overestimated the Basilod’s reach. This part of it, this shadow, appears lost and confused in our world. But we realise that, much as we’d love to, we can’t let it find the gateway. It knows too much. If the Basilod hears what’s through the gateway it might just decide that Maya was only the starter while there was an unlimited main course waiting on our side.
Somehow we’ve got to find that shadow and destroy or contain it. Maybe Daidogan will come in useful yet and earn the right to be called Mrs Daidogan again.
Categories: The Parawerthan Opens
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