The Thirteen-Hour Visitor
Suzy felt as though an enormous shard of glass was piercing her stomach. Her intestines were knotted, her blood had turned cold and her face was drained of what little colour it had once contained. She tried to speak, but not a word spilled out from her lips. She couldn't think of anything; her thoughts were whipping round so fast she couldn't even identify them. One thing that made sense one second was suddenly gibberish the next.
The first thought Suzy could cling on to was the acknowledgement that she felt as though she had a hand of ice inside her throat, gripping it hard and stopping her from breathing. Surely enough, Suzy was having difficulty exercising her lungs even though she knew she could.
She could feel the stranger behind her staring at her, for she could sense a cold burn on the back of her spindly neck. She clenched her fists and breathed out for the first time in what seemed like hours. She felt as though she were blowing out just a tiny bit of her worry, but it still made her feel a little bit better - she relaxed as much as she could've in that situation.
Then the stranger spoke.
"Isn't it odd," his voice was faint and eerie, as though it wasn't quite there. "That even when you can't hear, feel or see a person, you know they are there?"
Suzy said nothing - she couldn't have, even if she wanted to.
"And what's more, even when you know they are, you pretend they are not. Don't you, Suzy?"
Suzy spat out some stuttering words very suddenly. She still hadn't turned around.
"How do you know my name?" she hissed, sounding as eerie and snake-like as the whispering voice she had so often heard on the wind.
The voice she'd heard on the wind...
"I know you very well, Suzy, even if you wouldn't think so."
"Who the hell are you?" Suzy screamed, though she knew her parents wouldn't hear her through the thick stone walls.
"Me?" said the stranger, sounding very lost and drifting. "Does it matter?"
"Yes, it damn well does!" Suzy cried hysterically. "You've broken into my house!"
The stranger behind her scoffed, which made her blood boil. She whipped round, her mouth already in a fierce shape. It melted at the sight of this stranger - she couldn't understand.
He was a boy - a teenage boy with tawny, dark-blonde hair hanging in his eyes in lank tendrils. His eyes were strange; they looked as though they had once been glowing brown orbs in his peaky face, but had now faded until they were simply a very vague ebony, like a once-beautiful painting that was now coated with dust.
His frame was weak, and he was dressed in odd clothes; a black, long-sleeved shirt with wet cuffs, and particles of what looked like cinders of ice spattered his tailed obsidian waistcoat. There were tears in his dark, drainpipe trousers, and at the heart of them were his knees, which were dappled with wet blood. He had no shoes, just blistered bare feet that were scraped and bleeding. Being in his presence was chilling, hence why Suzy felt so cold.
"But you're not a burglar," Suzy sneered, and her fear was drained to the merest puddle. "You're just a boy!"
"Keenly observed," the boy said, without the slightest trace of irony in his voice. He raised one thin eyebrow. "I never said I was."
"Well, normally they don't," Suzy growled, remembering the time when she had walked into the kitchen of her old house to discover a burglar groping inside the fridge. "They just take and go."
"Do I look like a burglar?" the boy said with interest, as though they were simply having a chat.
Suzy hesitated, looking at his peculiar clothes and bare feet and bulb-like eyes in his gaunt face.
"No," she sighed. "So what the hell are you doing in my house?"
"It's not your house," the boy interjected, sounding as curt as his floaty voice could manage.
"My parents' house, then."
"It's not theirs, either."
"Whose is it then?" Suzy snapped, seemingly cutting the air.
The boy didn't answer; he simply fiddled with a strand of his dark, straw-like hair, looking so pathetic that Suzy almost felt sorry for him.
"Go home," she said, firmly but gently.
The boy's lips mouthed something, but so slowly and softly that it was next to impossible to make out. But if Suzy had to guess, she would say he had said 'I am home'.
She flinched, an icy currant shooting up her spine.
"You can't stay in the house. Go."
"In a few minutes," the boy mumbled, pointing briefly at the clock. "It's almost one."
Suzy stepped back, unused to such surrealism. Back in her old life everything felt real, and even though she sometimes would have preferred it to all be a mildly amusing fantasy, she was at least glad that her world was solid around her. No one wants to live in a house with disappearing walls, which was what this cottage was. Nothing felt as though it were there; everything seemed like a dream. No, not a dream - a nightmare.
"Who are you?" Suzy whispered, her drained fear now flooding her again.
"It doesn't matter," the boy replied, as though she had asked him a stupid question such as 'are you a boy?' "Names are a waste of time."
"I'd like to know," Suzy said firmly.
The boy sighed, his breath frosty.
"You don't need to know my name; I've got my messages across before you even saw me."
"What do you mean?"
"Warnings, voices, have you heard none at all?"
It took a short while to dawn on Suzy, and when it did it felt like thick mist. Yet another thing she couldn't understand was swamping her brain, and there seemed no room left for what little sense her new home made. She felt faint, and sank to the floor, her back to the boy, clutching her forehead and gripping random locks of her hair.
"You're the voice who's been speaking to me?" she whispered.
Then came a perfect, haunting moment of silence - the wind stopped, breath was clenched, bodies were frozen, birds clamped their beaks shut, the moon stopped, the earth stopped - it seemed like the entire universe was sleeping except for the two souls who were so closely connected even though Suzy didn't know it.
The boy then answered.
"Yes."
There was a sharp intake of breath from Suzy, and she felt as though she had drawn in hate and anxiety and mourning. Every cell inside her momentarily stopped working, but not enough to really notice. She exhaled, but the worries inside her still swam around inside, haunting her.
"Y-you told me not to go into the woods..." she stammered, her voice hoarse.
Her heart was thumping in her throat so hard it hurt.
"I did," said the boy.
"Why...?" Suzy asked quietly.
There was yet another pause.
"That...would be telling," the boy mumbled.
Suzy turned round, her eyes narrowed into slits, but only to discover that there was nothing more to look at. The boy had vanished into thin, icy air leaving nothing but a vague smudge of what looked like long-ago blood on the stone floor.
Turning round and tilting her head upwards, she saw the twisted iron hands on the thirteen-hour clock tick towards the first hour - number one. A powerful chime emitted from the base of the mighty grandfather clock and the pendulum swung with emphasis, indicating that it was time to return to normality once again.
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Another long chapter! There was a lot I wanted to fit in, and a lot I had to miss out. Don't worry though, Suzy's going to be having a lot more meetings with the thirteen-hour visitor...maybe you'll guess who he is...?
Please point out any nitpicks and please keep reading!
