Slave: The Ghost of Cambria - Book Two

Chapter Twenty-Five

Valon opened his dreary eyes. It felt as if the inexplicable slam to the floor had broken several bones. The intense pain had forced him to blackout. But to the young man's surprise, he now felt no pain at all. Valon sat up gingerly, concerned with possibly inflicting more damage. But whatever had happened to him, the young man couldn't feel any evidence of it now.

Again, he felt anxious to leave the house and quickly made his way to stand. Arriving back at the front door, Valon opened it to find nothing beyond the frame. Though he could see the natural world through the windows, still thriving in the early evening sunlight, Valon saw nothing but a black, empty void when he stood at the open door.

From behind him, Valon again heard the bodiless voice that had terrified him when he touched the crown moments earlier. It was a deep, animalistic sound that filled his mind. He'd been seized by the vision of men praying before him, their hands held out in praise.

"Stand guard, slave," it rumbled like a vicious beast.

In a panic, Valon turned back to the living room to find the source of the sound, but no one stood behind him. On the floor, just five feet away, Valon saw the body of a man, his head frozen in horror with his eyes and mouth open. Blood pooled around his head and seeped through the exposed subfloor boards.

The man's stricken face was his own.

Valon couldn't remember how long he sat down on the living room sofa to stare at his lifeless body on the floor; it might have been days. Flashes of understanding came and went while the room too dissolved around him and then reappeared when something happened: the telephone rang, the postman pushed mail through the slat in the front door, or his alarm clock on the upper floor buzzed. It was all very much like a dream; the landscape of the house fell away from Valon's mind, then returned when something changed, but it never quite felt concrete. In time, he was able to exercise some control over his mind and shut out certain stimuli so he could rest for longer. But that control was taken from him when a series of hard knocks landed upon his front door.

Valon's head jerked sharply at the sound, but before he could look through the living room glass to determine who was there, his body was pulled with an iron grip off the sofa ten feet towards the coat closet door. The invisible force turned him around to slam his back against the closet door. It held Valon's chest, legs, and arms rigidly in position as if he were a shield. Without speaking, the young man understood that he was to stand sentry over the room and guard the door.

After a series of repeated knocks banged against the home's front door, Valon watched it crash open. From the void, a tall man wearing an olive uniform walk into the foyer with his hand on the gun holstered on his broad, black leather belt.

"County sheriff," the man called loudly. "Is anyone home?"

From the void behind the sheriff appeared Debi Parsons, a young blonde holding her purse pensively in the darkened foyer. Before she could call out his name, she screamed in panic at the sight of Valon's dead body lying on the ground. The young woman's instinctive attempt to advance on the corpse was deftly stopped by the sheriff, who'd already spotted the remains of the young man on the living room floor.

"No, no, miss," he whispered as his arm caught the girl's advance firmly. "You need to leave it be. He's dead. I'm sorry, but your boyfriend's gone. Now, you need to let me check the house."

Debi buried her head into the man's chest and held onto him in panic. From his lapel, the sheriff seized his radio broach and called to confirm that Valon Williams was located, deceased, before requesting backup and paramedics come to the house.

"You're alright," he said to the young woman repeatedly. "Go wait outside away from the house for me right now. You're certain no one else would be here?"

"No," Debi's voice caught as she trembled, "he lives alone."

"Okay, go now," the sheriff told her, "go down by my car and wait for other officers to arrive.

The girl nodded and clumsily walked backward before disappearing into the void beyond the front door.

Left alone, the sheriff pulled his gun from his holster and kept it aimed at the floor.

"Is anyone in the house?" he yelled. "Call out now, so I know you're here!"

The man paced slowly through the living room and made his way through the dining room and the kitchen. When he had started down the rear hall past the laundry and guest room, he shouted out the same order again to silence. Returning through the study and landing back in the foyer, the sheriff climbed the steps to the second floor.

Valon remained affixed to the coat closet door. He could hear the sheriff's footfalls through the timber of the home's walls. After some time searching out of sight, the man returned downstairs and approached the corpse on the floor. Holstering his gun, he stared down, taking in the view of Valon William's lifeless face, which still bore a distinctive expression of terror. The sheriff averted his eye from the face several times before he turned and looked up at the coat closet door.

Valon was startled by the man's expression. It was as if he hadn't noticed the closeted door during his first search of the downstairs. He reached again for his gun and withdrew it, pointing it downward in front of him. As the sheriff approached the door, shifting to reach for the nob safely, Valon felt the steel grip that held him pull his body backward through the wooden door until he was must crouch at the back of the closet under the stairs.

The door opened, and the sheriff aggressively pushed aside the coats that hung on the rack. He shone a flashlight beam toward Valon before noticing the solitary lightbulb above his head and reached to pull on the hanging cord to light the space. Seemingly comfortable with what he saw, the sheriff soon shut off the light and closed the door, shuttering Valon in the dark.

"Rest," the voice rumbled beside him.

Valon, finally able to move again, thought to rise and leave the tight, claustrophobic space. Instead, taken by grief and the sense of emptiness, sat down on the rear closet floor where he crouched, drew up his legs to his chin, closed his eyes, and cried silently into his shirt sleeve.