I said already that Little Rock can get “country quiet” at night. Another of its charming, albeit unsettling, qualities is that it can also get unnaturally dark for a typical urban hub. As I pulled into the church parking lot, I couldn’t help but feel like the light was not going to be my friend this night.
The church was an old one-building affair with a columned entranceway, a steeply angled roof, and a tall, imposing bell tower attached to its side. In the dark it looked like a wide mouthed beast with one arm stretched toward the sky.
Up until the point where I exited my car, I could hear the bells screeching their uncharacteristic moans as I drove nearer the church. As soon as I opened my door, they abruptly ceased. Uneasy silence and darkness stabbed my senses like a hot poker and put me on an animalistic instinctive edge; I hate saying this because I know it comes off as total cheese, but believe me when I say that nothing good comes from the dark and quiet (except food from the refrigerator).
I won’t mince words here or do anything but state the next thing that happened: I saw someone standing on the front steps of the church in front of the open, gaping, pitch black entry way.
The Army combat guys I work with talk all the time about their “spider senses” tingling in the moments just before a dangerous situation springs up; the person standing in that doorway physically made my flesh crawl. From the split second I locked onto that figure in front of the church, I knew instinctively that it was going to hurt me.
It stood about 6 foot 5 inches tall and had the build of a stout man with chin length hair. Menace dripped from it and seemed to roll over me in waves. I imagined (?) that I could smell its hungry longing to shred me. In my life I’ve been in like two definite situations where I knew, if I didn’t do something proactive to ensure my safety, I was going to die. This was one of those times.
A sibilant hiss issued from the bell tower above us as whatever-it-was and I stared one another down. Then it opened its mouth.
Forgive me for digressing away from the timeline of events here, but I feel that I need to preface the last portion of what I’m going to tell you.
When something large, menacing, dark, threatening, etc., locks onto you, it’s typically not a good idea to stay around to find out what’s going to happen. But fuck me if I didn’t, for who knows what reason, stay firmly locked into my spot next to my car. This…thing bore into me with such an intensity that I could not rip myself away from its gaze. And as it opened its mouth, I found myself almost eager to experience its voice… In my experiences with music, tonality, synesthesia, and absolute pitch, never have I once been confused or “blanked” by anything I’ve heard. Sure, I’ve listened to some avant garde shit that jumped around the tonal spectrum like someone dropped a ping pong ball inside a piano (three guesses as to which composer), and I’ve heard some voicings in compositions that sounded like someone took a bucket of poorly mixed paint and threw it at a wall, but never once was I truly confounded by, and surely was I never afraid, of any sound I’ve ever heard.
Until this fucking thing.
I can’t even begin to describe the noise this god damned thing made. There isn’t a name for what came out of its mouth. And the only color to describe its quality is whatever color “the void” is. Deepest black. Black of the infinite. I don’t fucking know.
This thing, this monstrosity, this amalgam of every nightmare had by every person in the history of humanity, roared with its full might as I stood helpless against its tirade.
Just when I thought I could bear no more and would surely crumble to dust under the assault of its voice, the sound cut off. Silence like a vacuum enveloped us.
And then, suddenly, as if to shatter the earth, it bellowed one word:
“BLEED”
Submitted August 04, 2015 at 06:36AM by nance511 http://ift.tt/1IBZBqv nosleep
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