Music Prompt: Let Me In
Apr. 10th, 2012 11:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kasihyaThey come in the night. They come in the night, just after you have turned out the lights, so that at first you think you are just imagining it; the transition from bright light to total darkness is disorienting to all of your senses, and it’s not unheard of for minor auditory hallucinations to result. Little noises like sighs, or fingers tapping on the windowsill: just your imagination. You shrug them off, and turn over uneasily in your bed underneath the window, eyes squeezed shut. You had problems with nightmares when you were younger, and you are loathe to disturb your parents once they have sent you to bed, for fear that they will be disappointed by you once again.
You can convince yourself that this is the case for the first few days, enough to get to sleep, anyway. Then the little sounds niggle at the edges of your hearing even after those first few, disorienting seconds. Pip, says the windowsill; shhhhhh chide the floorboards. You cover your head with the blankets and turn your back on the noises, but they persist; the branches of an unseen tree knocking against the walls, a creak in the hall outside of your door as the house settles down for the night. The creak is the final straw. You open your eyes with the intention of turning on the light to reassure yourself that these are all perfectly normal. This illusion is shattered when your gaze lands on a pair of pale blue eyes, wide and reflecting the green glow of your alarm clock, several inches from your own.
Paralysis sweeps over you; your life depends on your ability to jump out of bed and flee the room, and you can only lie there and blink while your eyes adjust to the darkness. As they do, it becomes apparent that the owner of these staring eyes is a human figure, lying under the covers on the edge of your narrow bed. It watches you, never moving. Shhhhh, says the windowsill.
You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding, stirring a few strands of the figure’s hair. It reaches up with a long-fingered hand to brush them back out of its face. Its movement breaks the spell on you; and you spin away from it with a gasp, heart racing, to turn on the light.
The light will not turn on. You click the switch back and forth to no avail, and you would scramble out of bed and into the hall but the floorboards whisper at your feet and something metallic snicks in the door. You shut your eyes, squeeze them so tight you see stars, press your hands over your ears, and bury your head in your pillow.
When you open your eyes in the vain hope that this is nothing more than a waking dream, the figure is watching you. She is propped up on her elbow, covers sliding down around her shoulders to reveal a yellow nightdress. You let out a small, frightened sound.
Shhhhh, she says, with one finger to her lips. She slides out of bed without disturbing the covers, and you press yourself into the sheets, following her with your eyes. Standing, her nightdress floats around her, arms and legs sticking out like the limbs on a hangman, and the pounding of your heart increases. When she turns around, you expect something horrible: a changed face, one with the eyes gouged out, or the mouth slashed wide in a Cheshire Cat grin. But the smile that spreads across her face is, if unnerving, not unnatural. You lie as still as possible — what else can you do? — and when you fail to acknowledge her, she turns away and glides to the other window in your room. Her feet touch the ground, and you fancy that you can see faint, glowing footprints, but she makes no noise.
What’s going on? Your voice emerges from your mouth as barely more than a dry whisper.
The girl at the window makes no reply. She shifts her weight to reach for the locks on the windows; when she touches them, your room fills with voices, soft and rippling. Let us in, murmurs the voice of the tree against the side of your house, coiling around her arms and away, sliding snakelike across the floor to creep onto your bed and wrap around your ankles. Let us in, plead the voices of the wind whipping the snow outside your window, as they make their way up to your ears.
I will, breathes the girl.
Don’t! you cry, finding your own voice.
She shakes her head, sadly, and presses her hands against the glass, The moonlight shines through the flesh, illuminating the bones the way you wished that your flashlight would when you cupped your fingers over its bulb as a child. No blood tints her skin red. She leans into the window and pushes it upright, levering it protesting out of its resting place ever since the first chills of October. The sounds from without double in intensity, though with no change in volume. It sets your skin crawling with gooseflesh despite the warmth of your blankets.
Let us in.
The snow is so cold, we won’t survive.
Let us in.
Let us stay with you.
No, you protest, as the first few wispy tendrils of fog creep over the windowsill, ushering in a gust of frozen air that sweeps across the room and ruffles your hair. It settles around you like a mantle, a scarf designed to keep the heat out rather than in. The fog slides along the floor, and the aging wooden boards groan out their welcome. Something outside taps against the side of the house, feeling its way along towards the gateway that the girl has created to bridge the gap between the outside and you.
The girl herself glides back towards you, her smile widening to reveal small white teeth. She extends her hands, as though reaching out for an embrace. With the only form of movement allowed to you in this present state, you shuffle sideways along the headboard until you are at the far edge of the bed, in danger of falling off onto the treacherous floor. She lifts the covers and slides in next to you once more. This time, the chill of the night air follows her in — or is that the cold around your shoulders settling into the bed between you?
Go to sleep, she says. She lays a hand to your cheek. You expect to feel cold, but feel nothing except dry skin against your own, which neither gives nor draws heat. The touch is reassuring where her smile is not; sights and sounds you might explain away as a vivid dream, but this proves that this exists outside of your imagination. And if it does, then there is nothing you can do about it, not any of your usual methods you can follow that will shut out unwanted images. You shut your eyes. It does nothing to hide you from the whispers and murmurs that now surround you, contented mutterings and crackling like broken icicles as those outside settle themselves within, but you will yourself to ignore them.
And you sleep.
When you wake, it is to a thunderous sky and a room filled with mist. The girl remains beside you, eyes fixed wide on the ceiling in sleep. In daylight, the texture of her skin resembles nothing so much as fine parchment, tinged faintly grey and translucent. Her fingers curl over the edge of the covers, drawing them to her chin, where a foggy creature rests.
Your heart beats fast with fear, but you find yourself able to move again, so you get up gently, careful not to disturb your unwanted guest. When your feet touch the floor, they brush against soft fur. You bite back a shout and look down. A snake covered in grey fur lies coiled by your bedside; you look for its beginning, and find a head lying by the window, and you look for the end, and find nothing but a curious pattern that works itself into the floorboards and flows out to meet wood.
You step over it, and leave the room. In the kitchen, your elder brother eats cereal while a white raven perches on his shoulder. It tilts its head in your direction when you enter, ruffles its wings, and he makes no notice.
You let us in, the raven communicates with a flick of its wings and a click of its beak. You shut your eyes and edge around it to reach the toaster, too wary to let it out of your sight.
‘What are you doing?’ asks your brother. Preoccupied as you are with the toaster, and the plug which has been removed from the wall and twisted into a spiral, you do not answer. You will have cereal instead, you think. You will have cereal, and you will not give the raven the satisfaction of knowing that you did not want to let it in.
The girl follows you out of the house, still in her yellow nightdress. Against the stark grays and browns of the outside world, she pales, and drifts after you with the outlines of passing cars flashing dark through her body. She says nothing. She remains at two yards’ distance from you throughout the day, as you go to the store to purchase groceries; she sits on the tables at the diner where you serve wilted salad and graying meat.
They follow you, too; they just take a little longer to get there. The first gust of wind that presses up against the glass and looks in hungrily — that, you can dismiss. You turn your back and set down a soda in front of a sad couple reading a newspaper spread between them. The cold that a guest brings in, twenty minutes later, is none of your concern, not until it lingers long after the door has closed behind them and follows you around like a ghost.
Now it is time to sleep. I will finish this later, but can I just say, yikes it is probably going to retread old ground, but I do not care. I have a type of story I like writing, and no one can take that away from me.
I love love love this song, for the record, and I will never be able to capture how amazing it is.
Mostly, though, this is because I wanted to write a story I could show my family, and This Is Not The End is a little too close to home. Also I need to revise it. AGH no time to do anything.
You can convince yourself that this is the case for the first few days, enough to get to sleep, anyway. Then the little sounds niggle at the edges of your hearing even after those first few, disorienting seconds. Pip, says the windowsill; shhhhhh chide the floorboards. You cover your head with the blankets and turn your back on the noises, but they persist; the branches of an unseen tree knocking against the walls, a creak in the hall outside of your door as the house settles down for the night. The creak is the final straw. You open your eyes with the intention of turning on the light to reassure yourself that these are all perfectly normal. This illusion is shattered when your gaze lands on a pair of pale blue eyes, wide and reflecting the green glow of your alarm clock, several inches from your own.
Paralysis sweeps over you; your life depends on your ability to jump out of bed and flee the room, and you can only lie there and blink while your eyes adjust to the darkness. As they do, it becomes apparent that the owner of these staring eyes is a human figure, lying under the covers on the edge of your narrow bed. It watches you, never moving. Shhhhh, says the windowsill.
You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding, stirring a few strands of the figure’s hair. It reaches up with a long-fingered hand to brush them back out of its face. Its movement breaks the spell on you; and you spin away from it with a gasp, heart racing, to turn on the light.
The light will not turn on. You click the switch back and forth to no avail, and you would scramble out of bed and into the hall but the floorboards whisper at your feet and something metallic snicks in the door. You shut your eyes, squeeze them so tight you see stars, press your hands over your ears, and bury your head in your pillow.
When you open your eyes in the vain hope that this is nothing more than a waking dream, the figure is watching you. She is propped up on her elbow, covers sliding down around her shoulders to reveal a yellow nightdress. You let out a small, frightened sound.
Shhhhh, she says, with one finger to her lips. She slides out of bed without disturbing the covers, and you press yourself into the sheets, following her with your eyes. Standing, her nightdress floats around her, arms and legs sticking out like the limbs on a hangman, and the pounding of your heart increases. When she turns around, you expect something horrible: a changed face, one with the eyes gouged out, or the mouth slashed wide in a Cheshire Cat grin. But the smile that spreads across her face is, if unnerving, not unnatural. You lie as still as possible — what else can you do? — and when you fail to acknowledge her, she turns away and glides to the other window in your room. Her feet touch the ground, and you fancy that you can see faint, glowing footprints, but she makes no noise.
What’s going on? Your voice emerges from your mouth as barely more than a dry whisper.
The girl at the window makes no reply. She shifts her weight to reach for the locks on the windows; when she touches them, your room fills with voices, soft and rippling. Let us in, murmurs the voice of the tree against the side of your house, coiling around her arms and away, sliding snakelike across the floor to creep onto your bed and wrap around your ankles. Let us in, plead the voices of the wind whipping the snow outside your window, as they make their way up to your ears.
I will, breathes the girl.
Don’t! you cry, finding your own voice.
She shakes her head, sadly, and presses her hands against the glass, The moonlight shines through the flesh, illuminating the bones the way you wished that your flashlight would when you cupped your fingers over its bulb as a child. No blood tints her skin red. She leans into the window and pushes it upright, levering it protesting out of its resting place ever since the first chills of October. The sounds from without double in intensity, though with no change in volume. It sets your skin crawling with gooseflesh despite the warmth of your blankets.
Let us in.
The snow is so cold, we won’t survive.
Let us in.
Let us stay with you.
No, you protest, as the first few wispy tendrils of fog creep over the windowsill, ushering in a gust of frozen air that sweeps across the room and ruffles your hair. It settles around you like a mantle, a scarf designed to keep the heat out rather than in. The fog slides along the floor, and the aging wooden boards groan out their welcome. Something outside taps against the side of the house, feeling its way along towards the gateway that the girl has created to bridge the gap between the outside and you.
The girl herself glides back towards you, her smile widening to reveal small white teeth. She extends her hands, as though reaching out for an embrace. With the only form of movement allowed to you in this present state, you shuffle sideways along the headboard until you are at the far edge of the bed, in danger of falling off onto the treacherous floor. She lifts the covers and slides in next to you once more. This time, the chill of the night air follows her in — or is that the cold around your shoulders settling into the bed between you?
Go to sleep, she says. She lays a hand to your cheek. You expect to feel cold, but feel nothing except dry skin against your own, which neither gives nor draws heat. The touch is reassuring where her smile is not; sights and sounds you might explain away as a vivid dream, but this proves that this exists outside of your imagination. And if it does, then there is nothing you can do about it, not any of your usual methods you can follow that will shut out unwanted images. You shut your eyes. It does nothing to hide you from the whispers and murmurs that now surround you, contented mutterings and crackling like broken icicles as those outside settle themselves within, but you will yourself to ignore them.
And you sleep.
When you wake, it is to a thunderous sky and a room filled with mist. The girl remains beside you, eyes fixed wide on the ceiling in sleep. In daylight, the texture of her skin resembles nothing so much as fine parchment, tinged faintly grey and translucent. Her fingers curl over the edge of the covers, drawing them to her chin, where a foggy creature rests.
Your heart beats fast with fear, but you find yourself able to move again, so you get up gently, careful not to disturb your unwanted guest. When your feet touch the floor, they brush against soft fur. You bite back a shout and look down. A snake covered in grey fur lies coiled by your bedside; you look for its beginning, and find a head lying by the window, and you look for the end, and find nothing but a curious pattern that works itself into the floorboards and flows out to meet wood.
You step over it, and leave the room. In the kitchen, your elder brother eats cereal while a white raven perches on his shoulder. It tilts its head in your direction when you enter, ruffles its wings, and he makes no notice.
You let us in, the raven communicates with a flick of its wings and a click of its beak. You shut your eyes and edge around it to reach the toaster, too wary to let it out of your sight.
‘What are you doing?’ asks your brother. Preoccupied as you are with the toaster, and the plug which has been removed from the wall and twisted into a spiral, you do not answer. You will have cereal instead, you think. You will have cereal, and you will not give the raven the satisfaction of knowing that you did not want to let it in.
The girl follows you out of the house, still in her yellow nightdress. Against the stark grays and browns of the outside world, she pales, and drifts after you with the outlines of passing cars flashing dark through her body. She says nothing. She remains at two yards’ distance from you throughout the day, as you go to the store to purchase groceries; she sits on the tables at the diner where you serve wilted salad and graying meat.
They follow you, too; they just take a little longer to get there. The first gust of wind that presses up against the glass and looks in hungrily — that, you can dismiss. You turn your back and set down a soda in front of a sad couple reading a newspaper spread between them. The cold that a guest brings in, twenty minutes later, is none of your concern, not until it lingers long after the door has closed behind them and follows you around like a ghost.
Now it is time to sleep. I will finish this later, but can I just say, yikes it is probably going to retread old ground, but I do not care. I have a type of story I like writing, and no one can take that away from me.
I love love love this song, for the record, and I will never be able to capture how amazing it is.
Mostly, though, this is because I wanted to write a story I could show my family, and This Is Not The End is a little too close to home. Also I need to revise it. AGH no time to do anything.
