House Of Horus

Extract from a work in progress

It was getting too dark to see, but that wasn’t supposed to matter. It was supposed to be something else at this point, something she knew but couldn’t remember. The tumbling, the swirling, the roar in her ears, as if her body were a centrifuge and her mind thrown clear of it, she couldn’t remember a goddamned thing. Breathe, breathe. Shit, I’m not breathing.

She lay her two hands on her chest and counted where the breaths should be. There had been a voice whispering instructions, directions to follow through this pitch-dark maze. Listen.

Beneath the roar, another sound. She snatched at the thread of that sound, twirled her fingers into it, tugged it and felt it tug back in reply.

Hand over hand, she pulled herself along. Her legs trailed out behind her as she crawled – no, flew – no, crawled towards the source. The unknown source that spun the sound the way a spider spins a line of silk, sleek and invisible and stronger than a diamond.

Now her fingers were suddenly empty. No more thread, no more sound. A stink of incense and horse manure, and a dim glow that rose from her open palms and illuminated her body. She saw her own limbs scratched and bruised, and a tiled floor beneath her feet.

Image in the public domain.

Take a peek behind the veil.