Stone Shadow

Dallas Lockup

It comes in a nightmare, death masked as an artist, coming paint his mind's portrait in shadows and blood, and it will call him Still Life with Frame and hang it face to the wall and before he can beg it has taken him there and the stone corridors of the dark pathway are empty.

“CLETUS!” A blood-chilling scream from the deep blackness.

He feels the penetration like his mind was a veil splattered in scarlet PLEASE NO DON'T but its fury takes him and the fall is like diving down into burning liquid crystal and the silken whisper from inside this darkened mirror is the scream of madness, “C L E T U S!” An exploding, blazing mirror in black, angel on fire, the scream boiling out of his deepest fears.

PLEASE, OH GOD, he begs and the thing in deep shadow, tall and fierce, catches his mind praying and hurts him making him scream again, laughing, forcing him to quote the bible but twisting it, making him blaspheme, and he feels the words: “And again I lifted my eyes and saw, and behold, four chariots came out from between the mountains; and the mountains were mountains of bronze,” the words of ZECHARIAH 6:1, but what he hears himself say is, “And again I lifted my eyes and saw, and behold, four corpses came out from between two graves; and the crimes were crimes of bronze."

Now, it thinks to him, gaze down into the graves and taste it. Taste the raw power of blood sacrifice.

It laughs again, satiated for the moment, and allows him to jerk his mind free, sobbing, gasping for air, fighting his way out of the nightmare and hearing the scream of his own voice as he comes awake, hearing that the shattering scream is only the whisper of black silk.