The Maiden's Hand- Part 3.
Night terrors (there's an important update at the bottom, too)
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 |Part 4
III
Peter woke to silence, some time in the early hours. The moon, her wide face peering into his room, presented him with the silhouette of a woman, sitting at the foot of his bed. She looked at the door, showing Peter only the back of her head and her back. Dry grass whispered in the wind somewhere. The air, hardly moving, brought hot beams of light down onto Peter’s sweating face. There was no lake. There were no clouds.
Peter closed his eyes, and saw her in the light of day. She did not turn around on the bed that was now in the middle of an oasis. Her beaded, backless dress twinkled in the sunlight, illuminating her bronze skin. Her wig, black as the shadows, hung to the small of her back: Rapunzel of the desert. Peter rubbed his eyes. She didn’t move, but he could hear her voice. Like desert sand, it covered every inch of him like air, settling in every crevice, brushing against the hairs on the back of his neck.
Such beauty in her youth. Such death in her beauty.
You are a noble warrior, Peter. Your heart is pure. Your heart is good.
He couldn’t bring himself to speak as she turned, crawling to him—her small firm breasts swinging gently as she approached. Her eyes, outlined with kohl, pierced through his heart. As though she had anticipated his shyness, she shushed him. They cannot hurt you now, Peter.
Her kiss warmed him like the desert sun. He basked, only for a moment, only for a blink.
She was gone. He opened his eyes. It was just Peter, alone in the moonlight once more—his memory of the vision fading into the air by the time he heard something moving outside of his room. The sharpened senses, strengthened by night’s lack of distraction, told him everything he needed to hear. Anticipating a violent visitation from Jack, he’d pre-emptively locked his door. Peter, at that moment, was the wisest man he knew. Whoever, or whatever was trying the handle tried only for a few seconds more, and left.
When Peter had successfully swallowed his heart back into his body, he made for the door. Curiosity compelled him to find out who was out there. Was it her? Had she tried to come back? He turned the key and peered out. Nothing waited for him there but the night's distinctive stillness.
Barefoot, he hurried to his cousin’s room and knocked on the door. No answer. He turned the knob and entered anyway.
Wilfred’s bed perplexed him. It appeared empty at first, but when Peter turned the bedside lamp on, an outline of dust rested on the sheets where a body once slept. The covers, cold to the touch and turned down, had no recollection of him. Peter, not knowing if it was dust from the canopy above, gave it a shake. Nothing. He leaned closer to the outline and inspected it.
His focus was broken by a reptilian hiss. He stepped back, and after a moment's pause, fled the room.
Jack’s room—the nearest of the guest rooms—was his first port of call, but he was too late. His stomach lurched as he watched her lean back, looking in his direction with a mouth too large, too black to be human. Jack’s body, or what was left of it, shrank away, appearing at first like a wasp's nest made in the image of man before it collapsed into a cloud of dust. He hadn’t seen her clearly in the light of day or night, but he saw her now: she had one hand, and she was Death as much as she had been The Maiden.
Downstairs, the relic of her hand leapt and beat against the door of its glass case. The case wobbled, and teetered over the edge of the mantelpiece. It would have succeeded with its breakout and return to its owner had Peter not caught it mid-fall.
My hand, Peter. Please give it back to me. I cannot take it.
He grabbed it and ran off in the direction of the library, but not without difficulty. Like the wide-eyed prey animal sensing a shadow pass above its head, he froze. Something was watching him.
He heard the low, guttural growl first, and then the trembling of the house under the thunderous footfall. His heart thudded in the back of his throat, but he didn’t stay still. With unnatural nerve, he continued down the corridor to the library. It was behind him, bellowing with its deep, porcine rumble.
His sweating hand gripped the knob of the library door, slipped, and banged against the wood instead, stinging his knuckles as the skin broke. Peter tried again, looking once over his shoulder.
Peter, please. My hand.
Whatever had been interested in him had changed its mind and turned away. He heard it make its way up the stairs, each step creaking under its cumbersome weight. The growl, so awful, so naturally predacious, echoed around the house.
Rupert Benyon, who had been awake and heard everything, was already in the library, rapidly flicking through pages of Egyptology periodicals. “It’s a God,” Benyon said, without looking up. Peter fell against the door, sweating and panting, with the hand cradled in his arms. The hand—like a specimen struck by the pin, or secured in the bell jar to run out of oxygen—occasionally twitched, but as with all mortal things, the fight was fading.
Benyon looked up, admirably calm. He held a book in his hands and brought it to Peter. “I remember this from earlier. It has a reptile head. I stuck a chair in front of the door—don’t ask me why—I saw it—I saw it nosing through the gap in my bedroom door. It turned and went somewhere else but I didn’t take any chances. Look, here.”
They looked down at the picture of Sobek. The body of a man and the head of a crocodile. Protector. Unifier.
“S-s-sobek,” Peter said, nodding.
“Yes. Now we just need to work out what he’s doing here.”
The hand startled them and bounced back in a second wind. The bandaged fingers clenched as it leapt toward the glass. “T-t-trying to escape!” Peter said, holding it tighter.
“Is that what Sobek wants?” Benyon said, pointing at the hand. “It says here… God of unity? God of royalty? God of peace… perhaps?”
Peter didn’t know. He handed Benyon the case to hold and raised a finger. He quietly turned to open the door and looked out. He could hear the footsteps upstairs again, making the chandeliers shake. Peter went as far as he dared down to where the passageway met the central staircase. That was enough. Primal instinct in the face of fear separated boys from men. The boy would return and hide, crying for his mother, soiling his trousers in the process, or find his thumb. The man would acknowledge the fear, and draw up a plan.
He closed the door firmly when he returned, pale and shaken.
“It’s n-n-n-not S-S-Sobek,” he said, looking Benyon dead in the eye.
Benyon, startlingly cool given the circumstances, looked on incredulously. “Sure it is. The crocodile face. I saw it.”
Peter shook his head, and went to the book that Benyon had put back on the table. He flicked through a few more pages and slapped his hand on the open book. “C-c-croc face, yes, but n-n-not S-sobek.”
Benyon leaned forward to look at the page Peter was pointing at. The bold title caught his eye first, then he read the words: The Devourer.
Part 4- 14/03/2025
Announcements! The one’s I could remember, anyway.
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Yay! 🎉 This is great news! I’m both excited and nervous for my critique. 😬😊
Great line: Such beauty in her youth. Such death in her beauty.