NaNoWriMo is in full swing and I spending most of my free time trying to pound out some words. I wanted to share a bit of what I have been working on….The working title is The Eight. This except (unedited and raw, mind you) we find Dave, a 12 year old boy who was out fishing with his father one morning when something very bad happened and he woke to find himself in cave somewhere….he has been there for, well he doesn’t have any idea…but he knows he isn’t along..enjoy!
Complete darkness. Disembodied voices echoed all around Dave.
His senses were useless. Even the sense of hearing was failing him. He couldn’t tell where the voices were coming from and most of what he heard didn’t make sense. The voices can in low-pitched waves and reminded him of chanting. Blackness hung over him like thick cold blankets. Hunger was destroying his will.
Dave knew he was on his knees and that was about all he knew.
“I just want to go home!” he screamed. His little timid voice tried to be brave but the intensity was consumed by his sinister surroundings.
Someone or something had forced him down the unseen hallway and released him.
He knelt with his head sagging low, chin touching his chest. He had an urge to cry but his eyes yielded no tears. His thoughts were getting increasingly bizarre and sometimes scared him. He couldn’t remember what his mom or dad looked like and that really bothered him. He would try to muster up an image of his parents but those results were horrifying distortions covered in blood. Hideous shapes that didn’t seem to even look at Dave, even as a conjured image in his young mind.
Dave wanted to remember his parents as much as he wanted to eat.
Sometimes his mind tricked him and produced a light hallucination. He would stumble toward the light, which never revealed anything just a bright spot somewhere in subterranean space. His arms grasping and flailing at the darkness as he approached the mirage only to have to flicker out when he reached it.
Nothing.
This is what it must be like to be blind, Dave decided.
Then it occurred to him that he may in fact be blind and he didn’t realize it yet. He has seen plenty of movies where people die and their spirits don’t realize they are dead. It might be something like that.
The flat ominous song drooled on.
Dave was scared to move any further and he wanted to find his way back to the hallway and to the place where he started. At least there was water to drink back there. He could turn around and start walking but he didn’t think that would work.
“Why won’t you answer me! I’m hungry!” he cried. It was the first time he had asked for food. It had never occurred to him to ask. The chanting stopped and the silence was utterly oppressive. When no one answered him, Dave found himself wanting the singing to start back up so there was something in the blackness to attract his atrophied senses.
He heard something new. His sense of sound, he imagined anyway, was heightened in this cave. It was something wet and crunching. Chewing. That was what he was hearing. Something started eating when Dave asked for food.
They were mocking him in the darkness.
Dave concluded there were guards on him. Things were there watching him in the dark. Things that could see just as well as he could see in the light. Like bats. Maybe bats are blind, Dave’s bored mind called out and added the word ‘echo’ but that he knew that wasn’t everything about the subject. Why was he evening thinking about bats? He needed freedom, fresh air, and food.
His parents, even though he couldn’t remember them, he wanted them. He tried to remember if he had any brothers or sisters, but none came to mind.
“Stop chewing so loud!” he brazenly shouted.
The chomping sound ceased.
“Thank you!” he called back.
A grunt in the dark somewhere answered him.
Was he communicating someone? Surely, it was his mind playing tricks on him. “You gonna start humming again now, I suppose?”
The eerie, zombie choir music started back up.
Goosebumps attacked Dave’s cold skin and he shivered. He listened to the tune for a while and tried to learn the pattern. He wanted to sing along, as absurd as that sounded. It was something to do. He couldn’t focus on the notes or melody.
“Can you see me?” he hollered.
“Boy, you ask a lot of question for a little guy,” a hissing guttural voice whispered back. “Why so full of courage now?”
“Where are you?”
There was a loud smack as his head jerked to the side and one side of his face burned. “Ouch,” his knees lost their balanced but he kept himself from falling with his hand. He used his free hand to feel the heat radiating off his cheek. He sat down and rubbed his face and decided to stop talking.