3.5 KiB
title: Scene 1 ID: 1 type: md label: 4 compile: 2 setGoal: 1000 charCount: 3398
My sister's angelic face was pale and slack. Her head rotated toward me and her mouth opened. The words it framed were not the sounds I heard as the voice echoed in my head. "GHAZGH THORESSHK ALLOSSA NUARANNAK!" The alien phrase that broke through her throat was not English, yet I understood it way so deep that it soaked my bones in an ancient dread. In that moment I knew their meaning more surely than I know my name, and yet as I try to remember it even now, the knowledge eludes me as my mind shields me from the horrors the memory holds. "GHAZGH THORESSHK ALLOSSA NUARANNAK!"
I had received the text from my mother near the end of the summer. "Come home Eric. Something's wrong with Sophie," was all it had said. There had been no salutation, and none of my mother's customary emojis, not even a "luv u, xxx." I had taken a train back to my parents' home in Reading that evening, and they had been hovering at the front door when I'd arrived. Now that they'd sat me down with a mug of tea, my mum began the tale. "It started at that blasted bookshop. I shouldn't have let her wander around Tomesford alone." "Mum, she's fourteen," I countered. "And Tomesford's just a village." "I know that," she sighed, "but something were different that night. I dunno what, but it just were. Weren't it Henry?" she asked my father, but he was staring at his whisky. Not his first, by the look of things. She was dropping her T's and H's. I hadn't heard her accent this strongly before. Even at Grandad's funeral she'd hidden it more successfully. "What happened to her, Mum?" I asked. "Did someone hurt her? Which bookshop? I didn't know there was one in Tomesford." "There isn't. Well, there is. It must've always been there, 'cause it certainly weren't new looking, but I'd never seen it before. Well, never noticed it anyway. Right creepy old shop. Gave me the proper willies it did." "Did someone hurt her, Mum?" I pressed. "No, nothing like that. Least, not that I can tell. She just... changed is all. It's like she walked out of the shop a different girl." She shivered, and her eyes flicked upwards, in the direction of Sophie's bedroom. "Tell him about the book," my father said, speaking for the first time. "A book?" I queried. "The one she stole," he answered, his gaze upon his glass still unbroken. "She didn't steal it, Henry" my mother interrupted. "How could she have? How could she fit that bloody great thing in that handbag of hers?" "Well where else could she have found it, Jenny?" he snapped. I felt I was still missing something. "Mum, Dad, what book? And what's wrong with my sister?" "She hasn't got it anymore," my father explained. "Or maybe she hid it somewhere. Evil looking book it was. Bound in filthy leather, and pages all yellow and ratty. And it's in some strange language. Not even English looking letters - like Arabic or Chinese. Or Norse runes or heiroglyphs even, but she just sat on her bed all day reading the damned thing." His forehead wrinkled. "Now that I think about it, I can't even remember what the writing looked like. I feel like I ought to, but when I try to picture it, there's nothing." "I'm going to see her," I decided, but my parents tensed with fear. "What?" I asked. "Is she asleep?" They shared a frightened look and shook their heads. Frustrated with the two of them, and more concerned than ever for my sister, I drew in a breath and headed for the stairs.