Sequestered ((Solo))

[DarkDelights]

With a dexterous flourish of her arm, the ebon torch burst with light the colour associated with the autumnal equinox, and the heralding of harvest season. An eerie orange illumination danced on the Witch as she pressed on through the third of her sanctum's five pathways of wisdom.

Apple pie, and cow's cream.

The Woman fortified herself and her first steps were much more ginger than the first she had taken on her previous wanderings.

I made this place. It's all just symbols and memories and dreamweave. This is my place, I don't share it with anyone.

Things crawled, always just out of sight, unable to breach the sanctity of her realm. The boundaries of the tunnel were unlit, and seemed as if they could simply be starless space. At the end of the tunnel though, a twin archway opened to the ethereal light of sunset. The woman carried her torch to it, and stepped out of the cavernous blackness onto roughly cut green grass that tickled her feet. She was in a small glade in the forest, surrounded by lawn which wreathed a house with dark windows.

There was no dirt road that ran to the front porch of that dilapidated house, so she crossed the grass that her subconscious had the foresight to mow. The old stairs creaked, but inflicted no splinters on her bare soles. There was no need to knock. It seemed somehow blasphemous to pass beyond the cracked and peeling paint of the front door completely naked. Even sure-footed, she took special care to avoid touching the walls with her skin, as if the taint would cling like mould spores.

Further into the labyrinthian maze of rooms and hallways, something enormous stomped up some stairs with so much force dust unsettled from the crossbeams of the ceiling. The Witch paused and held her breath, and waited for it to pass.

Henwa, Mother of Abberations...

She flowed into a gallery, trailing her torch behind her carelessly, like a child at play, but stopped inside the small studio, and gazed at the only thing occupying the space. Once, sailboats, bridges, parks, animals, stunning vista views, and other imagery decorated the walls as the subjects of paintings. Only slightly less-grimy rectangles of wallspace was evidence that anything had ever hung there. In the farthest corner of the room, a slimy, green egg sac pulsed and squelched. Hundreds of transparent, opalescent pods with dark inner pits that seemed to move in spasms, hung in a smear of glowing olive slime. The eggs vibrated one or two at a time. The slime crept from a crack in the mid point of the wall and dribbled down in tendrils, but there seemed no end to the stuff.

One of the eggs burst without warning like a pustule, casting white ooze out a few feet. A black tadpole rolled down the slime bouncing off other eggs, and flopped onto the dusty wooden floor with a few slimy bounces. It formed a fanged mouth, screeched once, spasmed, then died.

Further down the hallway which would terminate at a set of stairs where the stomping earlier came, was another room, larger than the first, and seemingly unchanged by time. A black piano glistened in the light of the setting sun that filtered in from the western window. She took a seat so that her bare back was to the sunset, and played a few notes on the ivory keys.

“Haaail to thee Ra-da-saaaanth,
Spires tall and vistas wiiiide.”

She sang and her words were as honey and well rehearsed. Then she unceremoniously slammed all ten fingers onto different keys with a raucous crash. She picked a few choice notes with her index finger, and then rose from the polished black bench.

Deeper still another room opened all the wider.

The dining room? Clinking tea-cups?

The room remained featureless, save a curtained window.

A parlor? The smell of whiskey? Cigars?

The room remained featureless.

The ceiling shook suddenly with a great “bang!” Somewhere on the second story, a woman's moan rose in volume steadily. The moan ended in a crescendo wail, and from on the floor directly above the Witch's head, there came a great squelching noise like a bucket of slurry being overturned, followed by the dull patter of many small objects falling into the slush. The moan began to rise again from quiet, and once more a piercing shriek tore through the house, and another wave of mush hit the floor upstairs. There was the sound of many fingernails scrabbling at the floor. The scrabble became a scurry, like hundreds of rats, leading away from there.

Time to go.

The Witch made her way to the entrance of the house, but did not run. Her movements were controlled and sure. On the way, she spied an arch into a room that wasn't present on her previous examination of that particular hallway. Drawn in by a familiar scent, she peeked her head into the dusty room, her hand on the antique door frame, ignoring her personal rule of not touching anything. The room was high to the ceiling on all walls with shelves of books that bore spines of all colours.

I definitely got this room right.

With a reaffirming nod, the Witch made her way outside where the last wisps of sunlight were beginning to play on the encircling pines. She crossed the radius of the emerald circle with the orange light of the ebon torch held aloft, and heard again the agonized wail of a woman from the second story of the house with dark windows.

***