The House that fell from the Sky by Patrick Delaney

Author:Patrick Delaney [Delaney, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oblivion Publishing
Published: 2020-08-31T22:00:00+00:00

PART 3:

THE

ARCHITECTURE OF FEAR

THE HOUSE:

CANARIES

THE HOUSE WAS unlike anything Scarlett had ever seen. It was vast and it was cold, but most of all, it was disorienting.

Her pupils pulled tight as she jolted awake on the cold floor of the foyer, blinded with an unexpected glare of gray and white light. For a second she thought that maybe she was still in the plaza, with hundreds of camera flashes and the towering floodlights burning into her eyes, perhaps fainted from all the anticipation.

But no, she was indeed inside the house.

The foyer was a cavernous space, the majority of the ceiling a giant gridded skylight allowing in a pour of filtered and depressed light. The size of the room was impressive, much larger than she assumed would fit inside the entrance of the mansion.

Scarlett slowly came to, finding Jackson crouched down beside her, lightly slapping her cheek.

“Scarlett?” he said, his voice muffled and distant.

She stirred, her eyes blinking sluggishly.

“Come on, Scar, come on!” Jackson repeated.

“Jackie?”

Jackson smiled at her, gently placing a hand on the side of her face. “Finally. Jesus, you scared the shit outta me,” he said. “Are you okay? Can you stand?”

Scarlett sat up groggily. Jackson steadied her while she rose, taking in the entirety of the foyer.

The entry was bright, as if a lining of silver clouds had settled over the room, diminishing the sun and leaving behind a dead light. In front of them was a sheer face of Cyclopean masonry that separated the front half of the foyer from the back, with passages allowing access on both sides. In the center of the rock wall, near the top, was a narrow horizontal slit where a ghastly waterfall of a black ooze cascaded down through the floor, disappearing into the darkness. Scarlett thought it sounded as if an immense vat of hot jelly was being poured into a bottomless well.

The other walls of the space were sand swept limestone, framed with a peculiar black crown molding that met at unnatural angles, reaching off the walls where it should have followed and twisting in midair like the tracks of a mangled rollercoaster. Scarlett thought it was odd seeing rock complimented by the wood, but there was something inherently beautiful about it.

“What happened?” she asked. “Where is everyone?”

“I don’t know,” Jackson said with a shrug, glancing around. “I woke up and everyone was gone. You were the only one here.”

“Where are we?”

“We are…inside,” he said, his brow crinkling in an apprehensive frown. “Inside the house.”

Jackson and Scarlett took in the immense room and all of its unsettling features.

“This isn’t quite what I was expecting,” Scarlett said. “It’s freaking bright. And look,” Scarlett said, pointing a finger and noting the gray light beyond the skylight. “It was night, like, five minutes ago,” she said, disoriented. “Wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Jackson said, the sheet of nickel reflecting across his eyes, “it was.”

“Wait a minute… How long was I out for?” she asked, taking out her cellphone. She clicked the power button. “It’s dead.”

“I tried mine already,” Jackson said, teetering his phone between his fingers.

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