Possession - J.M. Dillard [0]
YOUNG SKEL WOKE with a start, opening his eyes to the moonless black of Vulcan night. A noise had roused him—a soft, subtle sound that had merged into his already-fading dream, a sound that had been meant to warn him.
Just in time …
In the cool darkness—thin arms propping him into a sitting position, palms pressed hard against his warm cot—Skel struggled to suppress a gasp. The desperate thought had not been his own.
In time for what? he asked its source silently.
In time to save your life.
A telepathic message? He furrowed his brow, concentrating, but the sense of it was gone, and as he mindfully controlled his breathing, the panic slowly eased.
Look about you, Skel, he urged himself. Here you sit in your home, in the town of Rh’Iahr, peaceful as all Vulcan towns are peaceful. You are in your own comfortable bed, surrounded by your own things, and but two doors down the hall, your parents lie sleeping… . He was only ten years old, but a good student, interested in the quantum sciences. His teachers said his emotional control was advanced for someone his age, and he knew that brought honor to his parents.
Then why are you sitting up in your bed in terror? He was calmer, yes—but the unease persisted. Perhaps he had had a nightmare; he had read of such possibilities. Vulcans rarely dreamed, and nightmares, even among children, were uncommon.
No. He retrieved a few fragmented scenes from his dream. It had been a distinctly unstartling review of activities at school… . Then why the fear?
Because I heard something. Or sensed something. Something—I cannot recognize. Something alien. Something—evil.
His intense self-honesty demanded that he correct his own thought: Not sensed. Sense. Even now …
Silently, he drew back the lightweight blanket that covered him and slipped from his bed, bare feet padding across the cool floor. At the doorway, he paused, swiftly manipulating the door’s control mechanism before the simple sensor detected him and opened it. Instead, the door slid open a few centimeters, its well-cared-for mechanism making no sound at all. Skel peered through the crack: beyond lay the expected wall, with its holographic display of his own childish artwork, created at school, draped in the dark of night.
Yet the illogical feeling of terror—that despite the normal appearance of his surroundings, something terribly abnormal hovered nearby—persisted. Skel pushed back a fringe of brown-black hair away from one long pointed ear, which he pressed to the opening to listen.
There would be nothing, of course, except the soft sound of his parents sleeping; thus reassured, he would return to sleep. Yes, this was a logical way to handle a most illogical feeling.
A heartbeat of silence, and then—a sound, low and quiet, soft as a breath. Yet not a breath, for it held an undercurrent of pain. It was a moan—a low, quiet moan.
One of his parents was sick—his mother, he decided, when the soft complaint came again. Skel’s slanted brows furrowed with concern. Once, when the family was camping, his mother, T’Reth, had fallen from a cliff; Skel had never forgotten the sight of her shattered forearm, pierced by ivory bone, spattered with emerald blood. His father had splinted the fracture on-site, but no sound ever escaped her ashen lips, though hours passed before they reached a healer.
If his mother had uttered this gentle murmur of pain, she must be gravely ill; no doubt his father would be tending her. Skel could provide some service. He was not an infant, after all. He was ten, and advanced in his emotional control. He would help his mother.
He moved to press the door controls, then pulled quickly away, prevented from touching them by an internal force—an emotion, a sensation of such fear and revulsion that it shamed and perplexed him. He was reacting like an infant, and yet—the emotion was so compelling that he yielded to it and dropped his hand.
Soft, familiar footfalls emanated from the corridor, moving toward his parents’ bedroom; he listened with a mixture of wild, unreasoning fear and a sense of relief