The Box (part 6)
Hilly kept screaming, staring at the shoed feet of her friend lying there, a foot from the black cube. From inside the school, Miss Yarris heard the screams and ran out to see what the problem was.
She found Hilly there, staring at the cube and screaming hysterically.
“Hilly, what happened?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
Hilly began stuttering, now through sobs. “Bailee was sitting-g th-there,” she began, “and I looked away and I look-ked, and she was g-gone.”
That’s when Miss Yarris saw the shoes. The little girls’ shoes had stained the grass around them a dark brown. Otherwise, the cube and the area around it looked the same as ever.
“Come inside Hilly, let’s call the police and you should wait for your parents inside,” said Miss Yarris, putting her arm around Hilly.
Mr. Bearhair had walked quite a distance along the edge of the drop-off and saw no way to get down. Every now and then, he continued to hear the little voice crying out from down below. “Hello? Is someone there to help me?”
He made a decision to try to climb down. Either he went now, or his lantern would eventually burn out and they would both be back in the blackness.
Mr. Hairbear set the lantern on the ground and lowered himself onto his stomach on the corner of the abyss and spun so his legs dropped off over the blackness. He inched himself backwards, still on his sizeable stomach, and grabbed the lantern. There was no solid plan at this point; he was making it up as he went and hoping for the best.
But as he grabbed the lantern with his right hand, he noticed something strange happening with his left hand, which lay flat on the smooth ground, holding him from sliding into the pit.
The vines which had grown out of his wrist had slowly been multiplying, and now seemed to be alive again. They were moving around like snakes, seeming to sniff along the ground. Each one found the smallest fissure or crack in the ground and dove into it, securing itself to the ground.
Each vine latched itself to the floor as Mr. Bearhair watched in fascination. He almost forgot that half of his body was dangling over a dark cliff, and caught the lantern just before it slipped out of the fingers of his right hand.
As the vines seemed to multiply before his eyes, each finding a new spot to latch onto the floor, they began to extend in length as well. He let himself slide further over the corner and into the darkness, and to his relief, the vines began to lower him down until he was hanging down the side of the ledge by his left hand, with the lantern in his right.
Its rays of light reached out as far as they could into the abyss, but found nothing but more blackness. He could see the smooth black wall along which he was being lowered, and the vines letting him down slowly, and nothing else.
As he continued to descend into the darkness, he yelled, “Timmy, I’m coming!”
Bailee fell backwards into The Dimension.
The wall of the box had opened as she leaned against it and she fell through, but it closed just as quickly, chopping off her feet. But as she fell through light, yellow air, she felt no pain. She didn’t even feel afraid.
Bailee simply felt content for the first time in a long time. As she fell for an incredibly long time, she noticed two things. She seemed to be falling slowly, as if gravity was suddenly half as strong. It felt more like she was being lowered through thick, full air to a gentle ground — she had no fear of hitting it.
And the other thing she noticed was what grew out of her ankles. Where her feet once were, now something else was emerging. She couldn’t tell what it was, but there were no wounds or blood — something hard was emerging from the ends of her legs.
She hit the ground with a poof, like a pillow being tossed onto a bed.
Bailee sat up and began to take in the surroundings. Her eyes had been fixed on her legs during her fall, so now she could actually look around and see where she was.
Bailee, too, quickly realized that she was not in Crumb Hill, or anywhere she knew before — it must be The Dimension. She was on a grassy hill in an idyllic prairie, only the grass was not green but gold. It wasn’t dead though, it was a vibrant sort of gold, as if it had surpassed being green and become more alive and golden. The sky also was a permanent shimmering gold, as if it had gotten stuck in an eternal sunset.
Bailee didn’t see any other living things at first, just some gathered trees in random clusters in the distance. The soft, golden grass below her was comfortable like a cushion and she felt at peace.
After taking in her surroundings, she looked back at her feet and was shocked to find that they were being replaced with something else entirely. The skin around her ankles was hardening like a fingernail, with cartilaginous strands. The bottoms were becoming black, thick and dense like a four-inch nail.
The process happened quickly, before her eyes, and she was shocked as she realized what was now growing where her feet used to be.
Bailee spoke it out loud.
“Hooves?”
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Day 64 of 100 Days of Blog
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