These Nameless Things by Shawn Smucker

Author:Shawn Smucker [Smucker, Shawn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christian fiction;FIC042000;FIC066000;FIC061000
ISBN: 9781493423132
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2020-04-23T00:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

16 THE HOUSE

I EXPECTED MY first steps into the canyon to be difficult or heavy, as if the terror would be waiting for me as soon as I crossed over some imaginary threshold, but even though the light was dim and smoke followed me in from the burning town, I found the going strangely easy. And quiet. I knew the way in led uphill, into the mountain, but it felt like I was walking downhill. My senses were confused, so I turned around and looked back toward the opening. There was the split in the mountain, a dark line of nearly black sky between the shadows of the cliffs, the space that led down and out into the plains.

Was I actually doing this? Was I actually going back into the mountain?

The farther I went, the darker it became, until I couldn’t see the difference between the cliffs on either side, the sliver of sky above me, or the boulders that lined the path. I kept tripping over dead stumps of trees. There was a short stretch of what felt like tall, brittle weeds that rustled and snapped off when I meandered through them.

I thought it might be best if I waited until morning to keep going, so I felt my way to the side of the canyon, waving my hands in front of me. It was narrow at that point, but the dark was so thick I couldn’t see from one side of the canyon to the other. I found a series of breaks in the rock wall and cleared the ground of larger pebbles, sweeping them to the side with my bare hands. Even then the ground remained rocky and hard. But I was exhausted. Hearing everyone’s stories, running through the fire, and my last conversation with the woman in my house weighed heavily on my mind. I fell into a fitful sleep, worried about Miho and Abe and everyone else. Worried that they had already left without me. Worried that they were following me.

When I woke up, an anemic light illuminated the narrow crag of sky at the top of the canyon, the color of blue-gray smoke. Everything was completely still. I realized that what I had been walking on was not dried-out weeds but rubble-strewn ground covered in old wasps’ nests. A surge of panic filled me. There were hundreds of nests scattered along the canyon, so many that it was nearly impossible to walk without stepping on them. In a panic, I walked quicker, trying to avoid them.

But when I did hit them with my feet, their gray, honeycombed surfaces peeled apart like ash or tissue paper and floated around, lighter than air, so that I left behind me a wake of shimmering, sheer flakes hovering in that liminal space. I saw nothing alive among the remnants of the nests, nothing moving. As I walked farther into the canyon, they thinned out until there were only one or two here and there, hidden among the boulders or resting in the cliffs.

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