Of All the Things that I Don't Know (Spot Conlon + OC)

Chapter 27

Something was wrong.

Spot felt his breath catch within his chest as bright sunlight abruptly illuminated the space around him, an old brick building's open rooftop immediately settling into the forefront of his view. There was an odd familiarity about the dirty pavillion he now looked upon-a tingling flash of hazy memories that were much too disjointed for him to place together in any meaningful way. Yet when his gritty eyes cleared enough for him to discern the slim figure of a woman, motionless amidst the swaying laundry lines in the foreground, his present location seemed suddenly undeniable. He floundered in momentary disbelief, unable to make sense of the presumably delusive scene quickly unfolding before him. But as his strangely lifeless body somehow inched ever nearer to the woman's form, her auburn hair shining brightly in the warm summer glow while her blue eyes turned toward him, he knew with an unmistakable certainty that it was his mother, Nellie Conlon.

"Why have you come here?" she demanded, her voice echoing eerily in the air around them as her eyes narrowed at him in concern.

He stared into her troubled face, looking deep into the piercing sapphire orbs that matched his own. But, almost as if his mouth had been forcibly stitched shut, he found himself unable to respond to her unsettling query. He could see she was displeased-unhappy that he had dared to be so near to her. Yet even with the warning timbre rippling in her voice and the coldness emanating from her gaze, he felt his body continue to close the distance between them, as though his limbs had no say over their own forward motion.

"I've told you to stay away from this place."

Her voice hardened in further consternation as Spot found himself only inches away from her stiff body, fighting with all his strength to reach out and grasp her delicate hand in his own just one more time. But his limbs remained immovable, an emptiness strikingly evident in the small space between them.

"You're no longer welcome here," she snapped after several more quiet moments passed. Her eyes flashed with anger, but as she began to turn away from him, Spot alarmingly noted a strange black smoke steadily wisping over the building's brick overlay and through the hanging lines surrounding them.

He tried to reach out, to scream her name into the darkening space, but found her form quickly enveloped within the billowing shadows. And soon, he too was forced into the cold obscurity, his body paralyzed by its immediate detachment. But even with the flash of terror that initially filled him in response to this forced passivity, a tiredness pervaded, like a numbing drug, wiping away not only his fear, but also every other emotion or thought he had held only moments before. And in the following silent minutes, he found himself gradually warming to the jolting transformation as he allowed his mind to dull and his limbs to remain unresponsive-finally ceding himself fully to the void. He no longer wished to fight-to struggle for anything that might lay beyond the blackness-he merely hoped to fade away, as his mother had before him, with no further resistance.

You aren't alone.

Spot started, choking out a deep, rasping cough as Kate's emotional words echoed clearly throughout the suffocating hole. And when his body habitually jolted into further awareness as well, his numb fingers and toes trembling in sudden restoration, he felt a slow anxiety begin to fill him-an unwillingness to relinquish the painful, but recognizable space in which he now resided.

You can trust me.

Yet his blatant evasion of Kate's initial statement proved ultimately futile as her voice again harshly penetrated into the all-consuming blackness. And this time, an even stronger wave of sentience flowed throughout him-his limbs further stimulated by the melodic resonance of her words. But a lurking unease remained present within the void-the nothingness around him seeming to almost come alive in opposition to her call. Thus in swift contradiction, he felt the darkness violently counteract Kate's summons, pressing down upon his body and pulling him further into the suffocating emptiness.