The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
We Shouldn’t Know
by Nina D’Arcangela
Oma arrived with the fog. She rode the planks leading from the shore to our stilted cabin, the bell on her bicycle dinged in frantic rhythm. The water had risen, her wheels squelched through the overflow. She’d warned it would come, and we’d practiced: shutter the windows, bar the door, slide the curio over the fishing trap in the floor – all tasks we completed within moments of her arrival. When we no longer heard sounds from beyond our walls, we snuffed the candles, sat quietly together on the floor wondering what was out there. Oma said we shouldn’t wonder, we shouldn’t know. Knowing would be worse than not.
The hush from without became deafening. Oma breathed, “It’s begun.”
All was muffled, even our nervous whispers. It was as though we were hearing sound from far off, though we sat shoulder to shoulder. Oma stood; we fell silent. Arms extended with hands palm-up, Oma began to move about the room in a noiseless, disjointed dance. She kept her own measured pace to a metronome none could hear other than herself. She sighed her prayers with the motion of her body; I knew those prayers did not end with an Amen. Oma’s other people did not have such a word in their language. Backing into the corner farthest from the door, Oma stood stock still, her lips quivering. She looked to each of us one by one, tears rolling freely down her face. When her gaze settled on the last of us, her resolve strengthened. She shakily slid a piece of paper out of her pocket and carefully unfolded it, held it to her chest. Looking to us again, her eyes urgent this time, she did the last thing we’d practiced.
My heart slowed to a bare thump, my breathing calmed, my mind cleared; I was to inherit this duty if I survived. If not, others had been trained. I knew what the paper said, I knew the dance and its foot-scuffed sigil meaning, I spoke the words of the prayers with foreign lips for Oma had taught me, prepared me for my turn. Whether or not my people followed the ways, Oma’s did, and as her descendant, I was obligated to protect the mountain and its people. All of this I knew, and all this I would perform if necessary.
Oma flipped the paper over, and screamed the single word scrawled upon it – RUN! As we unbarred the door, we heard a deep rumble from under the house. A look back revealed a waterlogged arm punch its way through the floor, followed by a bulbous head and strangely elongated torso. Moreso than its appearance, its presence was paralytic. We locked eyes, Oma and I, just before it wrapped its mouth around her throat and dragged her broken body into the lake.
Now it’s my duty to watch for the fog, my obligation to protect what Oma left behind. If I’m lucky, it will skip my generation, if not, I’ll serve as Oma did. I’ll give birth, raise my children, and grandchildren, and one day, if the fog comes and the lake calls, I will have already passed on the ways, my new ways, to one of my own, and I will pray they never bare witness to what I saw that day.
Oma said we shouldn’t wonder, we shouldn’t know. Knowing would be worse than not. And she was right.
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Fiction © Copyright Nina D’Arcangela
Image courtesy of Pixabay
More from Nina D’Arcangela:
Bent Metal
Where does reality end and dreamscape begin?
Woken each night by the sounds of screams and twisting metal, Lauren must relive the panic and fear of discovering her brother’s broken body on the asphalt. But each morning, she finds it’s only a dream… One she doesn’t want to keep having.
At what point does a dream become a nightmare, and a nightmare more than a figment of her subconscious?
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