The Last by Grant Stone

Author:Grant Stone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: new zealand, science fiction, sci fi, horror, novella
Publisher: Paper Road Press
Published: 2015-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

RACHEL WOKE AND FOUND herself lying on bed.

She sat up. There was a noise in her head, a background roar, as if she were on an airplane.

The curtains were drawn, but a thin light seeped around the sides. Rachel reached for her phone to check the time. It was past midnight. She had been sitting at the kitchen table with Katherine, then – she didn't know. She'd lost the better part of a day.

Katherine must have helped her up the stairs, though how she managed it Rachel had no idea. She wasn't fragile by any means, but Rachel was taller and heavier. Rachel didn't know if she'd be able to carry St. John if the situation had been reversed. She was still wearing the clothes she'd put on that morning.

A light was flashing on her phone. Voicemail. Simon, most probably, but she didn't check. She walked over to the window, pulled back the curtain, gasped.

The sky was wrong. It was light, far lighter than it should have been for this time of the night. There was a burnt look to it, a dark-tinted orange that made her think of fires burning in a desert at sunset. The milking shed and recording studio stood out like exhibits in a museum. The trees behind the studio remained resolutely dark.

There was movement, on the grass below her window. Someone was standing in the shadow of the house. The orange light reached tendrils into the shadow, picked him out in shards and flecks. A boy, no more than thirteen surely, wearing an old vest and threadbare trousers. He looked up to her window. Their eyes met and his teeth grinned orange.

Rachel pulled away from the window and leaned against the wall. When the hammering in her chest slowed a little, she peered around the edge of the curtain again.

The boy was strolling across the lawn, back towards the milking shed. Slowly, as if he didn't have a care in the world. As if he wanted her to follow.

Rachel hesitated, for more than a moment. The boy disappeared around the corner of the milking shed and the orange moon shone on the empty paddock.

She turned back to the bed and fumbled for her shoes.

As she placed her foot on the first stair, a sound made her stop, turn. She listened, looking into the darkness of the hallway.

There was a whisper from Katherine's room. Rachel couldn't make out what Katherine said. Her voice was muted, heavy, as if she were talking in her sleep.

Another, deeper voice made a reply.

Katherine said something else, followed by a silence again. Rachel stayed where she was, almost holding her breath, but she did not hear anything else.

She began to move down the stairs, hoping each time she put a foot down that the stair wouldn't creak beneath her.

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