Sentinel by Joshua Winning

Author:Joshua Winning [Joshua Winning]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Peridot Press
Published: 2014-05-06T07:00:00+00:00

*

Lucy Walden hadn’t slept since the attack. No, that wasn’t completely true. There had been moments. Snatches here and there, when the exhaustion and worry had become so great that her body merely slumped into slumber against her will. They were tortured moments where the real and the imagined morphed together, and she had dreamt disturbing dreams of sightless monsters and suffocating bed sheets.

Richard knew this because she’d told him when he woke up. When Richard had finally stirred, Lucy told him she had thought that was a dream, too. It hadn’t been a dream, though. Richard had woken up, and he was conscious, and he had spoken. He was drained and his vision was impaired, his eyes still a milky white after the attack, but he was awake.

So for the first time in what to her must have felt a very long while, Lucy slept. She slept deeply, worn out and relieved, curled up next to him.

On that chill night, she slept so soundly that when Richard stirred next to her, she didn’t feel it.

He lay there, his pale eyes open, blankly staring up at the ceiling. Slowly he sat up, slid his legs over the side of the bed and eased his weight onto them. He moved over to the bedroom door and unhooked his dressing gown, shrugging into it. Then he went out onto the dark landing.

He moved quietly, steadily. He stopped momentarily in an open doorway. There, in the room beyond, his father lay in bed, soft snores rising from his throat. Richard regarded him momentarily with his peculiar, colourless eyes. Then he moved off down the landing once more.

Outside, it was bitterly cold. The layers of snow had hardened and become ice, shimmering on the garden path. Richard stepped out of the back door, his bare feet crunching on the frozen path. He didn’t notice.

Despite the snowy deposits that proliferated in the garden, it was unnervingly dark, with only the light of the moon punching a ragged hole in a cloud.

Richard made his way into the garden, coming to a small shed. He stopped and his breath curled out in a mist.

There came the softest of sounds, then a figure stepped out from behind the shed. It was a woman in a red dress. Her pale skin gleamed in the moonlight and Richard’s breath caught in his throat.

“Hello Richard,” the woman purred. “My name’s Malika.”

“Hello,” Richard returned simply.

“Did you sleep well?” Malika asked conversationally. She trailed a finger down one of the shed’s windowpanes, forging a line through the frost.

“I feel like I slept a hundred years,” Richard said. “I feel different.”

“Yes,” Malika said. She licked the ice from her finger, taking a step closer to him. “You have been chosen,” she told him. “You are one of few, but you will become one of many.”

“You work for Them,” Richard said.

A corner of the woman’s lips curled upward.

“You know what you must do,” she said. “Listen to the voice that speaks from within.” She raised a hand and held her palm over his eyes.

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