Gathering Gloom: Tales of Weird Florida by Martin Shannon

Author:Martin Shannon [Shannon, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Weird Florida LLC
Published: 2020-01-30T22:00:00+00:00

27

In Your Eyes

Like the megawatt flashbulb from the world’s largest camera, Ariadne’s Thread flooded the street with a powerful burst of light.

Screech!

The car barreling toward Ed swerved to the side, narrowly missing my fallen roommate before jumping the opposite curb, cutting across the sidewalk, and coming to a stop against a distant light pole.

Malevolent laundry fluttered off the car like a lost tarp on the highway. It caught the non-existent wind and swelled. The tattered and worn edges of that black blanket snapped and twisted in the dark of the gloom.

“Morgan.” I turned back to the dorm to find more milky-white eyes appearing like hungry mice along the edges of the ash-covered building.

Bad, bad, bad!

Porter shot through me and off the curb. Oblivious to my presence, she raced to Ed’s side and lifted his head gently. “Eddie, are you okay? Eddie!” Her voice was a distant and muffled version of its normal self.

Sirens wailed in the distance.

More good Samaritans poured out of the surrounding buildings and off the sidewalk. Like the strobe lights of a cheap haunted house, they popped in and out in various states of help and concern, while against that backdrop, the Death Shroud swelled. It filled the space beyond them with a worn and threadbare darkness.

The pull of that evil bedsheet was strong. I twisted Ariadne’s Thread in my hand, slowly backing away from the ever-expanding Shroud.

Crap, crap, crap! Wait, the Thread, pull the Thread!

With my fingers looped through the glowing string, I readied my hand for a pull.

Here we go, one, two—

“Gene?”

“Ed?!”

My roommate’s spirit drifted out of his body like the last wisps of smoke from a faded campfire. A faint and barely visible thread dangled behind him.

My ghostly roommate rubbed a translucent hand across his face, and then froze. His eyes were wide and unwilling to tear themselves away from his ghostly fingers.

“Ed, what the hell are you doing here?”

The Demon Hunter held up a bloody hand. It glowed bright against the swelling blackness of the Death Shroud behind him. “I was hoping you could explain that to me…”

Flashes of people appeared and disappeared around my roommate’s body. Porter’s whimpering cries turned his attention to the scene playing out beneath him.

“That’s… me? I have blood all over my favorite shirt. Why is there blood all over my favorite shirt?” Sudden realization played out across Ed’s shimmering face. “Gene, am I dead?”

The swelling darkness of the Death Shroud behind Ed drifted closer. Like a soundless blanket of inky midnight, the black cloth sent its tendril-like edges snaking around my roommate’s ghostly legs.

“Ed, you’ve got to pull your cord!”

My roommate turned his attention away from the commotion around his body. “Am I dead, Gene?”

“No, but you might be in a second. You need to pull that cord!”

Ariadne’s Thread drifted gently behind my roommate, only to be sucked up like spaghetti by the tattered black flag.

An ambulance pulled up just past us. Its paint looked faded and chipped in the misty darkness of the Gloom.

“Pull your cord, Ed,” I cried, pointing to the rapidly vanishing string behind him.

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