The Dark Beneath the Ice by Amelinda Berube

Author:Amelinda Berube [Bérubé, Amelinda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2018-05-06T23:00:00+00:00

It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me.

I lift the phone, almost throw it. But it won’t help. It won’t even make me feel better. I’ve tried that before. I will not be the hurricane. I force my arms to my sides, taking slow, desperate breaths. Calm down. Calm down. There’s a way to fix this. I just have to calm down. I close my eyes, but in my mind’s eye there’s no more sunlight, and all I can think of is that empty horizon. The fringe of ice over the bottomless depths.

When the sound begins my first thought is that I somehow missed pressing the End button on my phone, leaving the static to hiss and simmer. But the screen is dark, and as I stare at it, the scouring metallic noise grows louder, more distinct. It’s coming from behind me.

From inside the closet.

I set the phone down carefully on the dresser, my fingers gone nerveless. The sound pauses, starts up again with a rattle: chickachickachicka. The closet door jerks and trembles, making me jump. But then silence falls, cold and mocking.

None of this can be real, none of it. Something’s broken in my head. The difference between reality and a nightmare should be obvious, a sharp line, an on/off switch. I can’t open that door.

I have to.

Unable to contain a whimper, I give the door a little yank, as if the handle might burn me. And a little metal box, a candy tin, tumbles off the shelf and lands at my feet with a clatter.

I shriek, spring away from it. But it rattles to a stop with the lid flopped open. Empty.

And then all around me comes a shower of little metallic pings and rattles, and I throw my arms up to shield my face against a hail of little stinging somethings raining down on me, tiny sharp bites against my scalp, through my sleeves. When it stops, it’s a long, sobbing moment before I can bring myself to slowly lower my arms. They’re peppered with sewing pins: slivers of silver jabbed through my shirt, stinging bright needles topped with bright little plastic globes. I pick them out with trembling fingers, run a careful hand through my hair, dislodging a few more. They ping across the linoleum. I remember just in time not to move my feet. I sink into a shaky crouch, collecting them one by one into a little pile on the dresser. After a long hesitation I collect the empty tin, sweep the pile into it, drop it into one of the empty drawers. Slam it shut.

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