What Monsters Lurk in the Shadows

Drip.  

Drip. 

Drip.  

A drop strikes the prisoner’s face. Her puffy eyes open slowly. A dim blur. A glow. Then eventually a room, lit by a single flickering lamplight, comes into focus.  

The rhythmic drip drip of water on stone continues to echo like far off footsteps. Fat droplets crawl down peeling bars inches from her face. 

Bars. 

The prisoner sits up. The room sways. Blackens. Blurs. Becomes clear again.

She is in a cell, and the dripping water is seeping in between the stones that form the ceiling. Dried blood covers her hands and sleeves. She rubs them through the puddles on the floor, but the dirty water can only remove so much. 

Her cell faces another that’s cloaked in darkness. Between the two barred enclosures is a single iron door. She waits, sure that her fate will come charging into the room at any moment. 

Hours pass. The drips come slower now. It is easier to decipher real footsteps approaching. 

A young serviteur enters. They drop a tin bowl at the edge of the prisoner’s cell and retreat hurriedly through the iron door. 

The prisoner tests the lump of supposed food with her finger. It’s mushy, greyish, and otherwise indiscernible. Nevertheless, the hunger that gnaws at her stomach draws her to it like a moth to a flame. She reaches to pull the bowl into her cell, glancing forward, and stops. 

She isn’t alone. Glowing silver eyes watch her from the other cell. 

The prisoner blinks. 

They blink. 

She lifts the bowl through the bars and the eyes follow. They continue to watch her as she gulps down the tasteless mush. When finished, she sets the bowl back down with a metallic ting against the stone. The eyes disappear. 

What seems like days pass, although the prisoner is unable to discern if it is day or night. Her cell has no openings through which to see the sky. 

The serviteur returns. Tin clangs against stone. Footsteps retreat. The eyes have appeared again. The prisoner looks down first at the bowl, then at the bare cell floor opposite her, and understands. 

She lifts the bowl through the bars, and carefully scoops out half of the mush into her palm. This she eats eagerly. When she is done, she licks her fingers. Then she takes the tin bowl containing the rest of the meal and slides it across the stone. It stops with a shivering clang against the outside bars of her companion’s cell.

The eyes remain steady. The prisoner shrugs. 

“They have me for murder,” she whispers. “What good is food to me?”

Still, neither the eyes nor the shadows they belong to moves. 

The prisoner turns her back on them and lays facing the wall, staring at the moist stone until her world slips into shadowy dreams. 

When she next awakens, the tin is empty. 

The serviteur. The metallic ting. The eyes. The splitting of her daily meal becomes  routine, even as her bones become sharper beneath her clothes and she begins to shiver against the stone. 

Day in and day out, the prisoner waits. Enough days pass for her to forget how many there have been since she arrived. She counts the stones that make up each wall. Picks at the dried blood still stuck under her fingernails. Redirects her attention to the other occupied abyss across from her. Sleeps. Eats. Counts the stones that make up each wall. 

She is asleep when several male guards finally enter through the iron door. The sound causes her limbs to freeze over and her heart to race before she even opens her eyes. Even though she told herself she wouldn’t be afraid when they did. She prepares for the click of the lock in her cell door, but it never comes. Instead, the men turn their backs on her.

The creature screams when they pull it from the darkness—a piercing hollow shriek. They cover it in a heavy cloak, silence its screams with their heavy cudgels, and drag it through the cold iron door before the prisoner can even catch a glimpse of her companion. 

The following day the prisoner eats the whole portion of food, and wonders when it will finally be her turn. Her fingers have grown so slender that the shackle-shaped impression on her left ring finger has all but disappeared. 

Not long after, a single guard does return. A decision has been made; she is told. She doesn’t ask what it is. They bind her hands and guide her from the cell with little resistance. She is taken through the iron door, up a flight of narrow steps, and finally out into the open air. It’s dark. She tries to look up at the stars but is interrupted by the cloth pulled over her head. The only light she sees is that which twinkles through the holes in the fabric. She is led up into the dank interior of the jail wagon. 

The prisoner spends the ride wondering if the creature with the silver eyes has already been dealt the same fate that awaits her. Finally, after what feels like hours shivering against the splintery wood, the wagon slows to a stop.  

The prisoner is guided, blind, to her final destination where they push her down into the dirt and give back her sight.  

A small stone arena towers around her, the kind perfect for a show. And a show it is, with a spattering of eerily silent strangers watching her from the stands. She looks up through the open roof, but the stars are obscured. The arena’s pit is empty. No guillotine or gallows. Only guards that line the walls. 

A man stands before her on the wide dirt floor.

Le bourreau. The executioner. But he wields no physical weapon. He looks down at her with cold eyes and a yellow-toothed smile before turning to the crowd of fidgeting nobility that looks down from above. He says many things but the only one the prisoner hears is the word “guilty”, spilling from his mouth like bitter poison and cascading in an echo throughout the room. 

In the space between that moment and the next, the prisoner asks herself if she made the right choice. 

When the executioner is finished, he turns to her and rests a wrinkled hand on her cheek.

“Pretty,” he says. “But disobedient.” 

She decides that she did. 

The executioner leaves to join the rest of the spectators. When he is safely in the stands, a wave of his hand tells the guards to open the gate in the wall of the arena’s pit. The prisoner realizes what they’ve done. 

A cry fills her ears. Chain drags against dirt. She lifts her face to meet her fate and greets the great silver eyes with her own. They belong to a grotesque body of ghostly leathery skin. Like a monster from the village tales, with teeth and claws. 

They are not nearly as terrifying as the pale hands that once gripped her in the dark. 

The prisoner is certain that her death will be a quick one, but nearly a minute passes with none of the anticipated pain or tearing of flesh. The shout of the executioner, harsh as the crack of a whip, tells her she is right. The creature flinches. 

“It’s okay,” she whispers, and closes her eyes. “I killed him. I’m guilty. I’ll forgive you.” 

But her punishment never comes. The screams that fill the room moments later are not her own. She opens her eyes again to find the executioner sprawled over the edge of the stands. The creature stands over him, cowering and bloody. Below him in the pit, the dirt is turning red with the blood of two crumpled guards. 

The spectators scatter like rats as they trip over themselves, shrieking. Futile, since the creature is now occupied with pulling violently at its chain.  

The prisoner looks at the arena’s gaping exit.

It doesn’t take long for the crowd to empty entirely, leaving her standing in the center of the bloody pit. The creature stills and meets her eyes with its own. 

She walks the opposite way, picking up a fallen cudgel from a sprawled guard. 

It takes several swings from the cudgel to break the chain apart. When it finally does her thin fingers are cracked and bleeding. She drops the weapon and climbs out of the pit, walking freely through the now-empty seats and then the open doorway. 

Outside the air is cool and fresh. The clouds in the sky have gone and the girl disappears into the trees, her way lighted by the clear starlight from above. 

About the Author

Jewel Miller is a sophomore Media and Communications student with a concentration in multimedia publishing. She seeks to explore all things related to writing and photography throughout her time at Arcadia. In her free time, she enjoys watching good movies, spending time with her cat and dog, and arguing about books with her friends.  In addition to “What Monsters Lurk in the Shadows” and “Two Strangers in Vienna,” Jewel contributed this issue’s cover image, as well as the issues accompanying “Looking Glass,” “Lamplight,” “to the hippie that taught me how to play jazz,” “Showgirl,” “McDonald’s, or Not,” and “Antonio.”