THIS BOOK WILL KILL YOU

25_witch_

_witch_

added by _unknown_ on 09.04.2013

You were six years old when you first saw the witch.

You remember that moment between dreaming and waking, that moment when you're swimming up from golden dreams, crossing that liminal, magical no-man's land where two worlds collide. You remember knowing that dreams were safe, that waking was safe, but that space in the middle, where you're neither one thing nor the other, that's a bad place, a dangerous place. There's nothing to protect you there, there's nowhere to hide.

And that's where I always found you.

I always found you.

I would wait for you, right on the edge of the dream, pulling a cloak of cold darkness behind me. Not me, I'm never there myself, just a force that would wrench you up, up, over the streets, over cars and buses and people, down into the darkest parts of the city to the building where I live. And you'd see me, you'd see my window, as crooked as a mouth, getting closer and closer and closer and there was nothing you could do but be pulled through it.

I bring you to a room, the floor bare wood, the walls plaster. There's nothing in here except dirt, and it's dark, but there's another door right in front of you and through it you can see an old kitchen, the stove on, a saucepan bubbling, all of it cut into harsh lines by a single, bright bulb hanging above my table. There's meat on my table, a butcher shop's worth.

And you know I'm there too, because you can hear me. I want you to hear me and you can hear me moving toward the door. I can move quickly, because I am younger than you think, but I choose to move slowly the way a slaughterman chooses to scare the flavor into his prey. And I'm coming, my bare feet scuffing the floor, the lump of my hand knocking against the wall. Knock knock, Tommi. Knock knock, Tommi. I'm grinning. You can't see me but you know I'm grinning. You can feel it through the wall, as bright as the bulb. I'm grinning because I know you're not going anywhere.

I'm grinning right now.

I'm right, aren't I? You might as well be wrapped in duct tape. You cannot move, you cannot breathe. You just stare at that door, seeing my shadow flood the floor like dirty water, seeing the eclipse of my head push itself around the sill, twisted and bent, my face buried in clumps of matted hair but one eye sliding up in its socket, one blistered, boiling eye and beneath it one arm, too long and broomstick thin, sliding out to touch you.

And you know, you know, that if my crackboned fingers touch you you'll never be able to leave this place.

So you fight it, you fight it like there was somebody on top of you, pinning you down. You fight it like there was a hand over your mouth and nose and you are out of air. You kick against the broken shell of your body, you punch, you open your mouth and scream and scream and scream until suddenly your body responds and you're screaming right now, you're kicking, you're hitting, and that same force suddenly sweeps you up like a pair of arms around your middle and pulls you back out the window and back through the city and you can still see my shadowed body grunt and slide through the doorway, you can still see my eye watching me go, you can hear me laughing.

Oh how I laugh at you, Tommi.

How I grin.

Because I know you'll be back.

I know that one day you won't get out in time.

Look, Tommi, look and see me grin.

Look.

"Look."

I won't do it. I can't do it, because I can't move, I can't breathe. I just stare at that piece of paper like my eyes have been glued to it, even when I hear the voice again, coming from my side, coming from the kitchen area, even when I hear the scuffle of bare feet there, even when I hear the stump of her arm thumping against the cabinets, even when I hear her lick her long, dry tongue over the blood in the sink, I can't look, I just can't.

"Look," she says.

I stare at the story, at that familiar not familiar printout, at the words that have been scrawled beneath again and again and again and again in Cara's handwriting, so hard that the pen has been pushed through the paper.

there are no rules she always wins

there are no rules she always wins

there are no rules she always wins

there are no rules she always wins

there are no rules she always wins

"Look."

The witch is grinning, I can feel it like a heat lamp, hot enough to make the flesh of my face sizzle. So I fight it, I fight it like there was somebody on top of me, pinning me down. I fight it like there was a hand over my mouth and nose and I was out of air. I kick against the broken shell of my body, I punch, I open my mouth and scream and scream and scream until suddenly my body responds and I'm screaming and throwing myself up, turning, the room cartwheeling around me.

The witch is there, but she's also not there. There's a bubble of not-quite-right in the middle of the kitchen area, a patch of darkness where somebody has cut the world away. I can still see the kitchen but I can't, because there's something standing right there, drenched in shadows, drenched in nothing, grinning, grinning, its teeth big and yellow and blunt, horse's teeth hammered into its gums.

I haven't got the strength to not move this time, I haven't got the strength to not run, because I know those teeth are strong enough to crack my bones and I can't be here, I can't not move as fast as my legs will carry me, not when she's laughing at me, not when she's grinning at me, not when she's reaching for me with broomstick arms and hazel twig fingers. I run from the room, bag in hand, no noise leaving me because there's no space for it to escape from, my teeth clamped, my lips clamped as I run past the kitchen area, finding the door, opening it, seeing the corridor ahead of me and knowing she won't let me leave, knowing she's going to hook a finger in me and reel me back inside, throwing myself out—