Lady of Grey
By Sebastian Tolhurst
The
world explodes, flashes and goes black.
Everything stays black. Where am
I, what happened to me? The only sound
in the blackness is a gentle ringing.
My eyes are squeezed tightly
shut. I gently pry my eyes open, and the
black is washed out in a painful flare.
The landscape is momentarily washed out by the bright sun, slowly taking
shape around me. I’m on my knees in the
middle of a wide field. Around me the
long glass stands perfectly still. A red
mist hangs in the air in front of me, giving the scene the monochromatic
appearance of a cheap horror movie. I
peer around the mist, trying to get a better view of my surroundings. The field is broad, the golden blades of
grass glowing in the bright sunlight.
There’s something odd about the light, a wall of shadow cloaks everything
beyond the limits of the field. My eyes
must be deceiving me; it’s summer in the field, but the surrounding country
appears to be locked in the grey of winter.
Gnarled, dead trees mark the edge of the clearing.
How did
I get here? Last I remembered I was in
the city. I remember fear, but nothing
more. Who am I? Even that’s gone.
I try
to move, but my arms are pinned behind my back.
I strain, but all I do is hurt my wrists. My legs are numb, and refuse to listen to my
demands.
A
flicker of movement at the edge of the clearing breaks my focus. I stop my efforts, gazing intensely where the
shadows have begun to dance. Slowly a
figure steps from the dark. It’s an old
woman. She’s wrapped head to toe in coarse
dirty cloth, a black shawl wrapped tightly around her head, her long grey hair
trailing behind.
“Help
me, help me!” I yell.
She
doesn’t respond, continuing to move slowly in my direction. Her hair is flows behind her, moving in slow
motion, like it’s suspended in water. As
she moves the shadowy curtain is pulled along behind her, like it’s affixed to
her back.
I’m
starting to panic. I scream at my legs
to move, but they remain as deaf as ever.
As the
figure moves on, wild flowers wilt and die around her. As the pedals drop they become great grey
moths in mid-air. The moths flit around
her, landing only to tear holes in the ragged cloth draped over her body. The skin beneath is grey and loose, like a
corpse that’s been underwater for weeks.
Beneath the shawl all that shows of her face are two eyes that seem to
be all black pupil. Those eyes never
leave me, never blinking.
I’m
straining at my body, desperate to get something moving. My heart should be pounding in my chest, but
I can’t feel it beat at all. I throw my
head back and scream until my lungs are empty.
When I bring my head forward again she’s looming over me. Hundreds of moths flit around us, blotting
out the sun. Never taking her unblinking
stare off me, she slowly unwraps the shawl from her head. As she does her mouth falls open. It drops half way down her chest, her jaw not
connected to her face. The skin
stretches around the great gaping black hole of her toothless mouth. She begins to inhale, making a horrible
rasping sound. I feel a pressure
building in my head. She keeps inhaling,
her lungs should surely burst. The
pressure keeps building, I feel like my brain is being pulled through my
skull. The world is starting to distort,
curving into that gaping maw. I can feel
myself being drawn closer……closer…….
Two men
leave a field, where three had entered.