The Convent of the Pure by Sara M. Harvey

Author:Sara M. Harvey [Harvey, Sara M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Apex Publications
Published: 2009-03-31T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

The corridor was long and narrow and oppressively dark. Shadows seemed almost tangible as they writhed around Portia in a frightening, lurching sort of dance. What little light there was seemed to emanate softly from her body. She held up a hand and saw that indeed her flesh glowed gently with a pale, golden light. She tried in vain to pierce the heavy dark that clouded the corridor in either direction.

“Which way do I go?” Her voice reverberated away from her, became lost in the shadows, and returned to her ears in a feeble, thready echo. Go? Go? Go? Go? Go?

“Fine! If you’re not going to help me--”

Help me! Help me! Help me! Help me! Help me!

Portia took a step away to the left, thinking that she would explore one side of the hallway to its end and then double back. She had nothing with which to mark her passage, so she plucked a few of her own silver hairs, tied them into a knot, and hung the glimmering bundle on a tiny outcropping of stone or plaster or whatever it was that the corridor was made from. The hair hung there, twisting a little, looking like a bit of broken spider’s web. Satisfied, she set off into the black ahead of her.

After a few yards, Portia had a most disturbing sense of having chosen the wrong path. She could not place the sensation, only that something was happening behind her and she needed to investigate. Turning on her heel, she made a few quick strides back, only to find the passage blocked by an imposing and moldering brick wall. At the very corner where the wall met the passageway hung her little knot of hair. It hung perfectly still now, mocking the fact that moments before there had been no wall there.

“What’s going on?”

Portia expected the echo, but not this one. Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! thundered down on her from behind the old bricks. She bolted.

She ran, on and on down the empty corridor. It had no crossings and no curves. It sloped neither up nor down. There were no decorations of any kind along the endless walls; it was simply an eternity of grey stone that appeared and vanished in the dark. And somehow, Portia knew that if she turned back, she would encounter that mildewed brick wall just a few yards behind her and inches away would hang that damned little knot of hair. But on she ran, terror fueling her legs and echoing in the muffled slap of her bare feet on the stone floor.

She ran until her lungs ached and her heart pounded every sensible thought out of her head, but on and on the corridor stretched. She stumbled to a halt and panted until she caught her breath. And as if she needed such assurances, she summoned her courage, turned, and calmly walked back the way she’d come.

Of course the wall was there. Just a few feet behind her, as if she had been running in place.

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