The Din - Chapter 1

The Din - Chapter 1

In the nine years since her father’s disappearance, Annabeth Wilkes (or Wil, as most called her) could not remember anything interesting happening. It didn’t matter that her mother hosted bi-monthly parties at their large estate, where the best and brightest of the Ritannian gentry came to try their hands at wooing the widowed Madam Wilkes, or one of her two daughters, of which Wil was one and her sister Elizabelle was the other. It didn’t matter that Elizabelle was the sweetest person she’d ever met, and was always trying to cheer her up or entertain her with little puppet shows and plays. It didn’t matter that her best friend, a boy named Cait who worked in the kitchen, was allowed as much free time as he wanted to spend with her. None of it made a difference because in seventeen years, she’d had been outside twice—and this was truly outside, not on the balcony, which would only have brought the total up to 6 times, anyway. She’d spent seventeen years in the Wilkes’ mansion, staring at the same cream-colored walls, the same fancy red and gold carpets, the same old paintings of smiling Wilkes family members long since passed, learning to sit upright and breathe in a corset, and how to smile politely and giggle during conversation to show you were listening, even though you think the person is by far the most dull being in the room. About the only fun she’d had were her fencing lessons, twice a week since she was ten, where she at least had the chance to release her bottled frustrations on her unfortunate instructor in the form of perfectly executed thrusts and parries.

Her mother, by far, has been the least affected by the absence of Mr. Wilkes. The only change she actually made was to wear black for the first year following his disappearance. Other than that, she’d acted perfectly normal, excluding, of course, the beginning of the parties.

One such night, Wil crept out of the ballroom near the beginning of the festivities, leaving a few gentlemen by the punch bowl to think she’d gone off to powder her nose. She was instead sneaking along the corridors through the kitchen, down a hall, and down the steps to the basement.

As soon as she’d opened the door, there’d been no sound. It came to her every time the people flooded her home, a whisper beneath the din that always seemed to reel her in. Every time, she slipped away, following the noise blindly to its end. She followed it that night, too, the same as all the others, and was once more sorely disappointed by the lack of anything out of the ordinary in the basement. Ice box, meat hangers, spice storage, all normal, all plain, all boring. No sound came from anywhere but above.

Frowning, she switched the light off once more and tromped up the stairs, then back to the kitchen, and plopped ungracefully on a stool.

Cait came out of the freezer, yelling a stream of what could only be Wynnish curses with a wicked grin on his face. He spun and almost ran into her, but stopped just short when he saw her.

“Wil, shouldn’t you be at the party?” He walked past her, raising the tray in his hand over her head. “I’m sure the Duke of Something-or-Other is anxious to continue what must have been a riveting—”

“Duke Charlagne of Brimbury talked for at least twenty minutes entirely about his last hunting expedition,” she spat. “I already find the sport horrid.” She sighed and covered her eyes with her hand. “Cait, I heard them again.”

He stopped and immediately sat the tray down, then spouted something off again to another server. Wil’s mother disapproved of her daughters’ learning the language. She said it was too complicated for girls, and that Wynne was too common at that, that proper ladies did not need to know it. They never questioned it, mostly because they knew she was Wynnish herself, which made them each half. Once, when they were younger, they’d brought it up, but they had never spoken of it since.

Cait and his father were from Wynne as well, and had been brought with Wil’s mother when she married the late Mr. Wilkes. No one really knew why.

“Hey,” he said, pulling a seat up next to her, “you need to stop this, nykta. There’s nothing. You’re hearing things, you miss your dad—”

“I’m not crazy!” she shouted, her expression contradicting her statement. “There’s something, all right, I just haven’t found it yet!”

Cait frowned and shook some of his hair out of his eyes, a small cloud of flour ringing his head. It was longer than was fashionable for boys in Ritannia, but he was a kitchen boy. Who looked at the kitchen boy? He opened his mouth to speak, but as he did, she heard it again.

“Come on!” She grabbed his wrist, giving him no choice, and took off down the hallway, almost slamming him into the walls in the process. She threw open the door to the basement, ignoring the thick curls that fell about her face, and yanked on the light chain. She was sure they would be there. She was sure she would see them. Cait would see them too, and she would finally feel like there was no chance she was crazy.

It took her a moment to realize that they light had not come on.

Cait looked around and sighed. “Wil, I’m sorry, but I think you may just be loony.” He patted her shoulder and shook his head, then went back up the stairs to help his father with the rest of the food for the night. At least that way, he wouldn’t sit worrying that his friend, his only friend, was losing it.

The dark merely closed in on Wil. She’d been hearing things for months, years. She’d been checking for the ones making them for almost as long. She couldn’t be wrong.

It was then that the shadows started talking.

She’d been distracted, so she hadn’t quite heard it at first. It started out as a small whine, then slowly grew into a yowl of pain.

It turned into words, barely discernable as speech. “Agh, it burns, it burns!” The voice was high and squeaky, and for some reason reminded her of burning rubber over shards of glass digging into the face of a dying cat, which happened to be clawing the hell out of some poor pedestrian (who, in turn, happened to be a leper).

The lights then flashed on, but there appeared to be gaps where umbra lay, though nothing seemed to cast them. They came in various sizes, stretching and bending before her eyes, yet remaining still somehow. Her eyes widened to take the multitude in, some tall, some short, some thin, some wide, some human, some not, but all shadows just the same. A small one danced around on the floor, clutching its hands and whimpering before another. A larger one (and by larger, we mean it was only large in comparison to the other shade people) stood at the front; it appeared more human than the rest, draped in a long black cloak that kept the upper half of its face in shadow. What showed of its skin was white—not just pale, but white, like the fine silks of Wil’s dress, like alabaster or porcelain. Only its eyes glowed out from under the dark created by its hood. It smiled.

“Took you long enough,” it said, leaning down to scoop up the little one that had been shouting before. It tucked it into its cloak, where the sound immediately ceased immediately and it disappeared.

Wil wasn’t sure what to say. A shadow has just spoken to her. She pondered a moment, then decided that she was, in fact, crazy, that Cait had been right, there were no noises, and if she ignored them like everyone else, she would be generally okay and not be carted off to the asylum on the corner of Birch and Lark where everyone said they ate people for lunch. Yes, everything would be fine.

She didn’t even scream when it touched her. Strange, though, that she could feel a hallucination.

“Hello, uh, shadows,” she chattered nervously. She wasn’t sure how one really conversed with figments of their imagination. “Lovely to finally meet you, but I’m expected back at the party soon. Lovely, lovely, bye!” She tried to walk away, but it did not let her go.

“We’ve been waiting for you to finally come and see us,” it said—it sounded decidedly female. “You never seemed to make it in time before.”

That made sense, in a way. She almost believed the shadow-girl, but it then struck her that delusions probably did make sense to those crazy enough to have them.

“I-In time?” she heard herself say.

“Yes. I’ll explain it to you later.” The girl pulled her along, her odd, toothy smile never fading. “Come.”

“Wait!” Wil said, pulling back. “Come where?”

The shadow girl stopped a moment and looked at her. The smile had faded; she appeared confused. She narrowed her eyes again and repeated, “Come.”

Wil stared blankly back. “N-Not until you tell me where we’re going.”

She relinquished her grip on her arm and smirked once more. “All right, then. You’ve been hearing us for months, correct?”

Wil nodded. She said months. She’d never mentioned exactly how many.

The girl gave a curt nod in return and waved a hand at the rest of the shadow figures, who all backed away until they vanished into the walls. “We come from a different realm. We can only cross into yours on the nights of these parties, when—”

There is a city in the sound, Wil thought, her imagination lighting like never before.

“—if there’s enough noise, you can break through and appear here,” she burst, grinning. Nothing exciting ever happened to her. Nothing exciting ever happened—ever. Her world was confined to the walls of her castle, her mansion, and every day was the same. The idea that there was another world to venture into, a place where she wouldn’t have to fence and practice embroidery and learn just how to eat without ever gaining weight—it sounded almost too wonderful to be true. She refused, however, to believe once more that it could be a hallucination. That just wouldn’t be fair.

The shadow chuckled and patted Wil’s shoulder. It was at this time that Wil realized that the hand now near her face was clawed. That didn’t quite seem safe to her.

“Correct,” the voice cut into her thoughts. It wasn’t as strangely discordant as the little one; in fact, when she actually thought about it, the only thing that came to mind was wind chimes.

“So why did you keep the light off?” she asked. “I mean, you sound like you wanted me to find you.”

“Exactly. We only wanted you to find us.”

Wil frowned. “But what about Cait? He’s my best friend.”

Neesha smirked. “How do you think he’d‘ve reacted?”

The incident last year in which they’d nearly run into a few Things by the woods was her answer. Cait had refused to speak for a month or so after for fear the beasts would come back to cut out his tongue. She nodded and let it go.

The girl then grabbed her arm again and started hauling her away. Wil blinked a few times, but did not protest. Adventure was staring her in the face, and she couldn’t say no.