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Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The Kite That Soared 
by Kathleen McCluskey 

Jacob stood in the overgrown field, eyes squinting against the dull, heavy sky. It was here that he’d lost Danny. His son had run ahead, chasing the kite that now hung limply in the sky. Jacob was barely a shadow of his former self. The memory clung to him like a suffocating, cold, damp fog.

Nobody came to this field anymore. The townsfolk whispered about it. They knew that strange things happened to those that stayed too long. How the children vanished, how the wind seemed to howl like it was alive, Jacob never believed in such superstitions. Not until Danny.

His hands trembled as he tugged the kite string. It was the same kite that they had that fateful day. The same battered frame, the same frayed tail, and faded fabric sewn together for his son’s sixth birthday. It shouldn’t have survived the storm that took Danny. But there it was, and Jacob was drawn by a force that he did not understand. He watched the kite list lazily in the wind, no longer graceful. Now it seemed sluggish, like it was weighed down by something unseen. Jacob frowned. The air was thick and still, yet the kite tugged violently, as though pulled by unseen hands.

A whisper, barely a breath, but clear. “Fly it higher, dad.”

Jacob’s grip tightened on the string. His throat closed in terror. The voice WAS Danny’s. But it couldn’t be. He was dead.

The wind picked up, swirling around him in erratic bursts. The sky darkened and the clouds thickened, closing in on themselves. The kite yanked upward, and Jacob staggered. He tried to step back and pull the kite back. But the kite fought him, thrashing against the string like it was alive.

Then in a moment of eerie silence, it stopped. The string went slack and the kite hung motionless in the air. Jacob’s heart and eyes raced as he tracked it. It shouldn’t be suspended like that, with no wind.

A slow, deliberate laugh echoed through the field. Not Danny’s, something much darker. A voice twisted by something ancient and cruel. The kite began to shift, stretching unnaturally, the faded fabric tore open and revealed something writhing underneath. Arms. Thin, elongated, crawling out of the kite’s body like a spider emerging from its web. The wind howled again. It whipped through the tall grass, but this time it wasn’t just wind. It was the sounds of screams, hundreds of them, faint and distant. It was as if they came from under the earth.

Jacob took a step back, the string still in his hand. He wanted to drop it, to run but his fingers wouldn’t release. The kite’s form twisted, bones snapping under the faded fabric. Then something fell from it. No, not something. Somebody.

The figure stood on spindly legs. The remains of the kite’s fabric hung on it like perverted wings. The face was hidden. But the body was small, fragile and unmistakable. It was Jacob’s son Danny. Yet not Danny. This thing that wore his likeness was hollow, its head slowly lifted revealing deep, black voids where Danny’s blue eyes should have been. It smiled. A grotesque mimicry of joy. The smile was too wide, too broad, it stretched beyond human capabilities.

The wind stilled for a moment and in the silence the voice came again. “Play with me, dad.”

Jacob’s knees buckled, “No…no, this can’t be real.” He said under his breath

But the figure stepped forward. The laughter, that sickening, echoing laughter, rang out again. The sky above rolled like an angry sea, dark and full of shadows that seemed to reach down toward the field. The thing that looked like Danny took another step forward. The string in Jacob’s hand tightened, burning his skin.

“I’m sorry,” Jacob whispered. “I couldn’t save you.”

 “You didn’t even try.”

The string yanked hard, dragging Jacob forward. His feet dug into the soft earth as he fought to resist. The figure lunged. Its arms outstretched, fingers like claws, long and sharp. Jacob felt the pull, the weight of his grief, the guilt and something far darker. An ancient malevolent force that lived in this field, feeding on those who choose to grieve.

The kite wrapped around him and in that moment, Jacob understood. It was never “just a toy.” It was a lure. A trap set by something far older than he could possibly comprehend. He’d come here thinking he could bring Danny back. Thinking he could undo the past.

But the field didn’t give back what it took.

The last thing that Jacob saw before the darkness swallowed him was the kite. It was soaring higher and higher into the sky. Its tail twisting like a serpent. And beneath it, the silhouette of his son, still smiling, still waiting.

And far beyond the clouds something else watched, too. Something else waited. Always watching, always.

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Fiction © Copyright Kathleen McCluskey
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com 

More from Kathleen McCluskey:

The Long Fall: Book 1: The Inception of Horror

Lucifer always cunning and intelligent challenges father to a battle of wits. Being the angel of light he casts a judgemental eye upon mankind. He begins a war with his fellow archangels and God. Michael, along with his siblings defend their home and mankind from their deranged brother. Broad swords and hand to hand combat drench heaven in blood. The four apocalyptic steeds are released, each having their own destructive power. Betrayal and lust are at biblical levels. Understand the very creation of evil and the consequenses that transpire in the first of THE LONG FALL series.

Available on Amazon!