Fragments by Brian Berry

Author:Brian Berry [Berry, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-07-15T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

A splash of noonday sun hit her eyes on the bed, driving deep into her brain, awakening her with a scream. She lifted away from the mattress, eyes wide—hunted—strained by fatigue and the horror of the night. She was stunned to find herself in the sheets of a bed, a place of peace. It gave her a feeling of safety and protection. Unlike the cottage, the place of ever-lasting shadow and whispers on the wind—a place where the dead rise in jumbled bone heaps dripping with blood and eyeless sockets, calling out to her, reaching for her with fingers gone to rot—the place of her nightmares.

She looked around in fear, apprehension to what awaited her glance.

Brandon’s place. I’m in Brandon’s dorm.

But was she safe there? Was this not some illusion drawn up by the memory of safety and comfort, a way to disguise the true nature of where she was—a place of chaos and blood, of madmen thronged in waves of murder, swords red in the meat and juices of the dead.

She stopped her search at the door.

It wasn’t a cheap panel of wood and screws and brass, but a portal to her doom. An aperture that would admit the phantom knight in black, the man with the sword edged in fresh blood. He was coming for her, she could almost envision the door splintering and bulging with an outside presence; see it fall away in a frame of ether and the dark man coming through. The delusion charged through her blood, swinging right into her heart, speeding it up until it slammed against her chest in hyper-swells. Sweat ran down her face—

The door opened. Its creaking hinges went through her like a whip of razors. Cords stood out in her neck as her mouth tightened to a seam. She was whimpering at the shadowy blur of the man coming at her with outstretched arms.

“NO!”

Panic sent her scrambling into the corner where she bunched into the wall, wrapping the blanket firmly around her, cocooning her, ending what she mistook as the Devil himself.

“It’s me, Molly, it’s Brandon!” the familiar voice said.

Slowly, the blanket loosened, and out poked Molly’s pained grimace and watery eyes.

“It’s Brandon, babe,” he said again. “It’s just me. Nobody else.”

Carefully, he took a seat next to her, taking her hand, and gently urging her closer to him. The waves of her fear were sent through him. She was shaking badly as if she were cold with frost, muttering garbled words.

Stroking her hair, he said, “It’s okay, babe. Nobody’s here to hurt you. It’s just me.”

Relaxing his hold, he lifted her face which was like shifting something plastic and lifeless. But she was plenty alive, that much was shown in the tic repeating in her right eye, and the way her lips trembled. Her complexion didn’t fair much better than a store mannequin and notched in there where her eyes always shown bright, were two dark wells that fell into some terrible place.

“You’ve been sleeping since I brought you here, babe,” he said to her.

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