"Um, honey, what are you doing?"
Bryn's shadow was stretched across the yard from the light in the doorway. Her hand was perched on her hip.
"Andy?" she asked again. She could barely perceive his still silhouette.
"Come here for a second," Andy said quietly. "And turn off the light."
"What? I don't have any shoes on," she protested.
"Get some. I need you to see something."
Bryn squinted. "Why? Can't you just tell me?" she asked.
When Andy didn't respond, she sighed and circled back into the house. She spotted a pair of slip-ons, sparing her the trouble of bending down. Her footsteps flapped softly as she passed out into the hushed air.
"The light," Andy reminded.
She muttered something at him as she retraced her steps yet again.
Two switches flipped in succession. Andy's left side joined the night, then his right. The darkness soaked into his eyes, and the field grasses sharpened. The object in the distance grew more defined. To Andy, the thing seemed to slow, almost as if it knew his adjusted eyes didn't need as much to hold them. The graceful arcs and spins glided against the sky in a silent ballet.
The hiss-crunch of Bryn's shoes in the grass eased up behind him.
"God, I can't see a damn thing," she said.
"Give your eyes a second."
"Is anything wrong?" she asked.
"No. Just weird. I can't figure out what's out there."
Bryn turned towards the fields. Despite the purple afterimages of lightbulbs in her vision, she nailed onto the apparition almost immediately.
She sucked in a surprised breath.
"So you see it?" Andy asked.
"That light? You mean that moving light?"
"Yeah."
"Uh huh," Bryn said.
"Good. So it's not just me. I'm not seeing things."
"What is it?" she asked. "Is somebody out there screwing around?"
Andy rubbed his forehead.
"Maybe," he replied. "But I don't think so. That thing's been moving fast."
Andy started forward.
"Hey, where are you going?" Bryn asked.
Andy hitched in his stride and stopped again. "I-- I've gotta get a closer look. This is...driving me crazy."
But Andy was lying. During the past minutes, the tension is his body had bled away. The soft light caressed his thoughts. A gentle desire hatched deep inside him and snaked through his extremities. As the heaviness in his feet flitted away, he had found himself walking before he had even formed the impulse to walk.
On to Part 4
Back to Part 2
Based on the legend of the Will-o'-the-Wisp
ghost
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7 comments:
I'm trying to format this text more like standard book formatting. Does it look correct, or is it kicking the rest of the page off? Thanks!
Looks fine to me. Reads fine to me too. :)
Thank you Anne! I feel better. If anyone is seeing the right side information (links, previous posts, etc.) kicked to the bottom, please let me know.
The links seem to still be to the right, but there's some overlap of the text over the links. I can read it though...very interesting.
Dang, I was afraid of that. The little html trick I did is probably not wise, given the rest of the setup.
Here, I'm trying another trick. Does it look right now, Kara?
FM, glad the formatting seems to be working out. Yesterday, I got obsessed with figuring out how to do standard paragraph formatting in html. Sadly, there is no easy/proper way to do it. Some browsers will not render the indenting I did here.
I am writing Will-o'-the-Wisp piece by piece. I generally know what is going to happen, but I'm also letting it unfold as I go.
Works for me, running Safari on a Mac. Now I have to get caught up in the story!
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